Trapped (14 page)

Once
it was just me and Ash I started worrying. The fight had taken more
out of me than I'd expected, and exhaustion was starting to set
in. I told myself that we still had to have a good lead on Anton and
just focused on making it for one more hour.

Ash's
mystery woman actually beat her estimate by almost ten minutes,
dropping out of the sky in a black helicopter, exiting the aircraft
while the rotors were still going. I'd never seen her before, so it
was silly to have an expectation as far as what she'd look like, but
still somehow I was surprised at her appearance.

I'd
been expecting a female version of the mercenary team Anton had just
torn through. Instead the figure that hurried over to me in the soft
light of the dawn looked like a middle-aged lawyer. Instead of
leather she wore a pantsuit and instead of a firearm she had a
smartphone out. A pair of men followed her, one was obviously some
kind of EMT, the other was younger, maybe just a couple of years
older than me, and looked fairly unhappy to be there.

In
addition to the helicopter pilot I could see one more man in the
aircraft and he looked eerily similar to Shadow as he scanned the
road behind us, a high-powered rifle at the ready next to him.

"Dear
Jane, we don't have much time. If you would be so kind as to help me
transfer the crates from the back of the Hummer to the helicopter
then Peter and Mr. Ames will see to our mutual friend."

I
opened the back of our truck and took one side of the largest crate
and helped her lug it over to the open door in the helicopter. I kept
an eye on Ash, but the other two men seemed to know what they were
doing. Less than five minutes later we'd emptied out the Hummer and I
was left standing next to the woman as she waved Peter back over.

"Peter,
you'll need to take their car. Take care not to stop anywhere
absolutely longer than necessary. I'll arrange an extraction for you
in Albuquerque, probably by helicopter as well."

Peter
nodded and held his hand out for the keys. I fished them out of my
pocket and handed them over and then was hustled over to the
helicopter.

The
flight back was tense. The woman introduced herself as Anya, let me
know that we were headed to Las Vegas, and then we spent the next
hour or so watching while the paramedic worked on Ash.

I
knew next to nothing about what was going on, but by the time we
landed on the top of a fairly tall building in Vegas, I'd figured out
that Ash's blood pressure was back up to something more normal.

The
four of us, everyone but the pilot, carried Ash's stretcher inside
and I was astonished once we got out of the elevator to find that a
mini hospital took up one corner of the building.

Anya
patted my arm. "I find myself needing a discreet place to fix
people up more often than I'd like. I would say it was fortunate that
Ash was injured so close to my base of operations, but knowing Ash he
anticipated the possibility he'd be seriously hurt and planned the
location of the confrontation such that he'd be able to take
advantage of our facilities."

"You're
probably right; he does seem to be on top of things like that."

"Of
course he is. If he were not, he would not have survived for so long.
Now, dear Jane. We're going back to my office where we can talk
freely, and you'll tell me first, your real name and then second, how
Ash incurred such great injuries."

It
went against the professional paranoia that Ash had been working so
hard to instill in me, but there was something about Anya that just
seemed to indicate that I could trust her. Fifteen minutes later I'd
sketched out the basics of the time Ash and I had spent together
starting with my near abduction in Ridge and working forward until
now.

Anya
stood and started pacing halfway through my story, occasionally
muttering something that sounded like it wasn't English.

"Thank
you for your tale. You've been quite unfortunate and lucky all at
once. What the helicopter indeed."

"Sorry,
Anya. I'm afraid I don't understand the expression."

"It's,
how you would say, an old joke between Ash and I. When he fled his
pack, he came to me and I helped hide him for a time. He was little
more than a boy at the time, but even then he was much too serious. Only
occasionally his true nature would peek out and you'd see the
prankster that lived deep inside of him. The first time I saw him
laugh was in response to a commercial on the television."

I
found myself smiling, not at the kind of childhood that would take
someone like that and turn them into a serious adult well before
their time, but at the way that Ash had never completely let them
destroy his sense of humor. Anya smiled back at me and then shook
her head and continued her story.

"I don't remember the commercial any more, but I remember
there was a line where someone said 'what the helicopter' and another
where someone said 'shut the front door.' I was so relieved when he
laughed at the expressions that I've never forgotten the moment. Over
the years it's come to signify, to me at least, everything that is
wrong with Ash's circumstances and right within him."

I
nodded, not quite sure I completely understood what she meant, but it
didn't take a rocket scientist to agree that our circumstances were
pretty bad.

"Now
then, I think that there is very little time left if we're to get you
out of here before this Anton person comes looking for you. Let's go
see to Ash."

Somehow
in all the craziness of the flight into Vegas I'd forgotten that
Anton would still be trying to hunt us down. The walk from Anya's
office to the medical wing took only a couple of minutes, but I felt
like I could feel Anton getting closer the entire time.

Ash
was being attended to by a surgeon as we arrived. I thought for a second
that he was going to try and throw us out, but apparently Anya was
the one who signed his paychecks because after a second he returned
to his work without saying anything.

"Good
doctor, what is the prognosis?"

"I've never seen anything like this. By rights he should be
dead, should have been dead before you even got him here. Instead it
almost seems like he didn't even need my help. We transfused another
unit of blood into him, and I've been going in and trying to stitch
up the worst of the rips in the vascular system, but over and over
I'm finding that the worst of the damage already looks at least a day
old."

Anya
smiled and I sighed in relief.

"Very
good, he'll be OK then? Is there anything remaining to be done?"

"Yes,
he'll be fine, but you're missing the key point. The regenerative
properties he's displaying are nothing short of miraculous. I need to
run tests. If I can get this into a paper it's going to make my
career."

"No,
doctor, you're missing the key point. You won't be publishing
anything about this operation. You won't even talk about it to your
friends and family. Should you choose to do otherwise, you'll find
that your career comes to a very abrupt halt."

"Are
you threatening me?"

"No,
doctor. I'm simply giving you a friendly warning. You've been in my
employ for less than a month now, but you've shown great promise. I'd
hate to miss a chance to prevent you from making a very big mistake.
Please step away from your patient."

I
hadn't realized that anyone else had entered the room, but at a
motion from Anya, a stocky young man stepped around us, took the
surgeon by the arm, and escorted him out of the room. Anya pulled a
phone out of her pocket and dialed a number.

"Dear
Erik. Yes, the doctor has done his job, but we need Ash to be
conscious. What should we do next? Yes, I know there are risks, there
unfortunately are always risks to this type of thing, but we'll just
have to trust in his innate vitality and hope for the best."

Anya
walked over to the cabinet and thumbed through vials until finding
what she wanted. She filled a syringe like a pro and then injected
him via the IV that the surgeon had run. Sixty seconds later Ash's
eyes flickered open.

Ash
looked around the room and then worked his jaw a couple of times
before managing to speak.

"Kristin
was able to get me to you. Excellent. How long have we been here?"

"Dear
Ash. Never one to waste time on pleasantries. No more than half an
hour. Given that we brought the helicopter here we should still have
a short time before we have to worry about your rogue cat."

Ash
nodded and then reached for the glass of water on the table next to
his bed, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at his wounds. He
absently returned my smile, but his attention was primarily focused
on Anya. She waited until he finished drinking and then sighed.

"What
will you do?"

"To
be honest I'm not sure. It's been mostly sheer dumb luck that's kept
us alive this long. He can track and he's one of the really old,
really powerful ones, the kind we don't see up here more than once
every couple of centuries."

"Truly,
he's that powerful?"

"Yes.
At least he's seemed so up to this point. We got more than one shot
into him with some pretty high-caliber rounds, but all it did was
just slow him down."

Anya
looked like she didn't want to say what she was about to say, which
struck me as odd. I had the definite impression that she was the kind
of woman who didn't let the fact that she was uncomfortable with
something stop her from going ahead.

"If
this Anton really has fixated on
someone
then there is no
choice but to fight or run…"

Ash
shot her a look of warning that I didn't understand, but it shut
Anya up instantly.

"You
have rather bluntly summed up our options. Stand and fight or flee
and hope that he eventually loses interest. Whatever our choice
long-term, right now all we can do is flee, which is what we should
be doing right now."

Anya
sighed and then nodded. "Very well, dear Ash. Josef, another of
my nephews, by now will have transferred your things to a suitable
vehicle. Let's get you into this wheelchair and down to the garage."

"I
can make it on my own."

I
slugged Ash on the shoulder. Hard enough to get his attention, but I
hoped not hard enough to open up the stitches a few inches away from
my point of impact.

"Ash,
don't be stupid. You being in a wheelchair isn't going to slow us
down, in fact it will probably speed things up. Even more important,
it will help keep you from bleeding out between here and the car. You
heal fast, but you don't heal that fast."

I
thought for a second that he was going to argue with me, but after a
slight pause he nodded and let Anya and I help him out of the bed
and into a wheelchair. Anya clucked slightly at the bloody state of
Ash's jeans and then grabbed a blanket for him to wrap around
his upper body. The elevator was only a short distance away, and once
we arrived, Anya pushed the first and second floor buttons
simultaneously and then repeated the action twice more.

"I
fill as many of my staffing needs as possible with family, but even
my family isn't large enough to provide all of the manpower needed.
There are two additional floors below the bottom one listed on the
elevator. It will now take us to the one furthest down."

Josef
was waiting for us when the elevator opened up to reveal a kind of
large underground parking garage. He raised an eyebrow when he saw my
shoulder holster and then took over pushing Ash's wheelchair.

"What
kind of round do you shoot?"

Ash
smiled and looked over at me.

"She's
carrying a five-seven, but she shot herself dry chasing Anton down a
cliff. It's not a round I usually use so I didn't have any in
the bug-out kit. I'll have to see if one of the nines will fit her
hand."

Josef
shook his head. "We can spare you a couple of boxes. Do you want
the military-grade stuff or are you trying to keep a lower profile?"

"Best
to go with the penetrators. She's not licensed or anything so if we
get enough attention from the authorities for them to be checking
what kind of rounds she's carrying we're already in over our heads."

Josef
nodded and relinquished the wheelchair to me so he could retrieve the
ammunition. Twenty feet later we came around a corner and I was able
to see the vehicle that had been prepared for us. It was another
black SUV. Less ostentatious than the Hummer, but still very late
model.

As
I reached the SUV I realized that Ash had passed back out, and it was
like my whole world came crashing down on itself. The sane response
would have just been to ask for help getting him into the car, but
instead I found myself shaking, nearly on the point of tears.

I
hadn't slept in nearly twenty hours and now I was going to need
to keep us in motion for days until Ash recovered enough to take a
turn driving. Anya looked up from her smartphone and saw how close I
was to the edge of despair.

"Dear
Kristin. How long has it been since you slept?"

"I…it's
been a while. I'll be OK though. There isn't any other
answer."

Once
again it seemed almost like Anya was on the point of saying
something else, but she instead shook her head.

"There
are always other answers. If there aren't, then you aren't
thinking hard enough. We could put you on a chartered helicopter or a
plane, but either of those would leave too many fingerprints. We need
to protect you and Ash, but we also need to keep the family's
involvement in all of this as quiet as possible."

Josef
was back with two boxes of ammunition extended towards me.

"I
noticed that you were two magazines short as well. You'll want
to get them loaded up sooner than later. Always a bad idea to run
around on empty."