Chapter 13

Veni woke up slowly.

She didn’t think she had been asleep for very long, but, with Reid still sound asleep beside her, she shifted gently out of bed and crept into the living room, pulling the robe tighter around her. As she got closer to the bedroom door, she heard voices. Stepping into the living room, she saw one of the government men who had been here earlier, now talking with Anders.

Anders looked over at her and smiled. “Hey, they brought you some clothes.” He pointed to a bag on the floor, right beside her door.

She beamed at the clean-cut agent, standing beside Anders. “Thank you.” She quickly grabbed it and returned to her bedroom. Opening it quietly, so as not to wake up Reid, she found a couple outfits of casual clothing. She took them into the bathroom and checked them out—leggings, T-shirts, and a big oversized sweatshirt, some underpants, and even a bra. She looked at it hesitantly but put it on, surprised to find that it fit.

Amazed at that, and a little daunted to think that somebody could have known her bra size, she felt violated. How the hell did that work? Yet, putting it out of her thoughts, she immediately got dressed. Finding a hairbrush in her bag, she brushed her hair and quickly pulled it into a braid. She almost squealed when she found a toothbrush and toothpaste. She happily brushed her teeth for the first time in days. Feeling almost normal now, she stepped out into the living room to see Anders looking at her critically, and then he laughed.

“Dressed like that, with your hair pulled back, you look like a teenager.”

She shook her head. “It’s been a while since I saw those years,” she admitted, still beaming. “However, you can’t even upset me because I’m dressed in clean clothes, and I feel pretty special right now.” She looked around and asked, “Where did the agent go?”

“He’s gone,” Anders noted, “and I just ordered fresh coffee, if you’re up for a cup.”

“Oh, I am so ready for coffee,” she said. “When’s it coming?”

He pointed at the carafe, and she murmured, “Wow. You guys are pretty efficient at getting what you want.”

“Sometimes we have to be,” he replied, with a smile. “Come get some coffee.”

She walked over and poured herself a cup, smiling at the joy of doing something normal again. “Just even getting dressed in clean clothes is… a simple thing, but…”

“It’s simple, but it’s also psychologically very significant,” Anders stated. “It’s all good.”

She nodded. “Have you talked to the hospital at all?” she asked hesitantly. “Does anybody know how my mom is?”

“I spoke with the agent about it, when he was here. Your mom is starting to wake up, and it seems, in another couple hours, we can talk to her.”

Her heart was overwhelmed with relief. “Thank God for that,” she said happily, as she sank down with the hot cup of coffee, smiling at the world. “Now it sounds as if we’re getting back to normal.”

At that, he just smiled and walked over to the laptop, something coming over his face.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, slowly getting up, fear on her face.

“We have visitors,” he replied, “and it’s not anyone who’s acting like they belong here.”

She raced to his side, spilling the coffee in the process. When she stared down at the face on the camera, she let out a hoarse cry. “I saw that one guy before. He was with the kidnappers.”

“That’s the message I’m getting too,” he said, as he stared at the man’s actions.

“Oh my God.” She looked around in a panic. “What will we do?”

He raised his eyebrows. “We won’t do anything. They are trying to find us. I have no intention of their getting in that door.”

“Yes, but look,” she whispered in horror, and, sure enough, he’d pulled out a handgun and was aiming it at the door.

He spoke in a calm whisper, “Get into the bedroom. Go to Reid.”

As she raced to Reid, he was already bolting to his feet, almost with an inner sense, staring at her. “What happened?” he asked harshly.

“Two gunmen are here, one who I saw with my kidnappers. I think he was in the first safe house they stashed us in. He’s at the door.”

Reid nodded, pointing deeper into the bedroom. “Stay here. Better yet, hunker down in the bathtub.”

As he raced past her, she asked, “Where are you going?”

He just repeated, “Stay in this room,” then disappeared from sight.

She heard gunfire but had no idea what had happened. When no further sounds came, she slowly crept to the bedroom door, opened it a bit, and looked out. She couldn’t see anything from that angle. She heard no voices; she saw nothing. She shifted to see better and saw both Reid and Anders standing, waiting at either side of the door, both with handguns—handguns she hadn’t even seen before.

Just when she went to say something, another short burst of gunfire came, and the door flew open, as two men barreled inside.

She slapped a hand over her mouth and jumped back into the bedroom. She didn’t want to watch, yet she wanted to do something to help. These gunmen were armed, and fear gripped her.

Hearing Reid’s voice in her head, she came to her senses.

Lock yourself in the bathroom and remain there. Get down in the bathtub and stay low.

She bolted into the small bathroom attached to the bedroom and locked the door. And, with that done, she laid flat in the bathtub, her hands clapped over her ears, so she couldn’t hear the fight going on outside. With tears running down her face, screaming for Reid in her head, she waited.

Then all of a sudden there was nothing but silence.

*

Reid moved swiftly,as he quickly disarmed his attacker, only to have the man turn on him and use martial arts against his own skills. The fight was hard, fast, and Reid took several ugly blows. However, by the time he stood—heaving, his chest in agony from a kick that he’d taken directly—he turned to help Anders, now standing and breathing just as hard, both dizzy. Still, they were better off than their adversaries, who were both out cold at their feet.

“Good God,” Anders muttered.

“Yeah, we need to deal with this and fast. Then we have to get her the hell out of here. It’ll be known fairly quickly that this job didn’t work out.”

With that, Anders nodded, then bent down, checked both men, relieved them of their weapons, and gave them each a hard right to the jaw to keep them down. “Let’s go.”

Reid raced into the bedroom, calling out, “Veni, are you there?” She peered around the corner of the bedroom. “Grab your stuff. You’ve got less than a minute. Let’s go.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment, and he noted she was still in shock. He raced into the bedroom, quickly gathering up the little bit they had, even as Anders collected the laptop and anything else personal in the living room. They were out the door and in the hallway within seconds.

As they headed to the stairs, she asked, “Are we going up or down?”

“Down,” Reid stated immediately.

At that, Anders nodded. “No place to go, if we get cornered on the rooftop.”

“Ouch,” she muttered, as she struggled to keep up with them. “What happened to the gunmen?”

“We disarmed them,” Reid stated in a succinct tone.

She winced at that. “Are they dead?”

“No, but they’ll probably wish they were when they wake up. They won’t feel very well.”

“Good,” she declared. “A part of me wishes they were dead. I’ve been to hell and back, and this needs to stop.”

“I agree. It does need to stop, but we’re not there yet.”

“What about my mother?” she cried out, freezing in her tracks.

“We’ll find out when we get to safety,” Reid told her, pulling her close behind him. “We’ll get out a message.”

“I’m on it,” Anders said, from behind him. They quickly raced to the ground floor, took the back exit, and ended up in a loading zone.

“This will do,” Reid muttered, as he turned to Anders. “Do you want to pick out a vehicle?”

“Yeah,” he said, with a smirk. “We’ve got one coming in right now.” He pointed to what looked like a government rig.

“Did you call them?” Reid asked.

“Nope,” he snapped, his tone terse. “So either it may be a coincidence, or they’re not here for us.”

They watched as two men got out of the vehicle. Not liking the look of anything about this, Reid immediately backed up a bit. “I don’t trust it.”

“No, I don’t either,” Anders muttered, “but, hey, we can always take their vehicle.”

As the two men raced into the stairwell, heading upstairs, the three of them headed for the vacant government vehicle. Reid handed Veni off to Anders, while he quickly opened the back door to the vehicle.

Moments later, the other doors were unlocked, and Veni and Anders climbed in, while Reid hot-wired the vehicle and disengaged the GPS and started it up.

“That’s what an ill-spent youth does for you,” Anders quipped.

She snorted from the back. “You were always good at this kind of stuff. I think it’s that whole energy thing again.”

“Maybe. I used to play with that a lot, didn’t I?”

“You sure did,” she muttered.

Anders looked from one to the other. “Wait, are you saying that, with energy, you can open this kind of shit?”

“Yes,” Reid confirmed. “Well, it makes it easier anyway.” With that, Reid quickly pulled out of the underground parking area. “We have to get the hell away from here to somewhere safe,” he said. “You want to find me a place?”

“Yeah, I’m on it,” Anders replied. “Rather, Terk is.”

“Okay, good, then we need to figure out who the hell those gunmen were and identify the government men as well.”

“If they even were government men,” she added, from behind Reid. “Just because they were driving this rig doesn’t make them MI6.”

“No, it sure doesn’t, and I don’t trust anybody right now. So we’ll go with the idea that they were not there for the good of us, and leave it up to MI6 to track them down.”

He drove around the city for ten minutes to ensure nobody was behind him and then pulled into a large shopping center and parked. “No point in driving around in a stolen vehicle until we have a location of a safe house,” he explained, then turned to her. “Do you need anything?”

She stared at him blankly, then started to come out of it.

He smiled and tried again. “Food, coffee, something?”

She nodded. “Coffee would be lovely. And there’s a drive-through right over there.” She pointed.

“Let’s change vehicles first,” Reid suggested, glancing at Anders, who just nodded and jumped out. Once settled into their new ride, Reid followed Anders, as he drove the government vehicle and hid it as best he could in the nearby brush. Even with the GPS disengaged, maybe there was a second unit onboard. Either way they didn’t want this rig found too quickly.

Now all in their newest stolen vehicle, Reid headed in the direction of the drive-through.

As they pulled out of the drive-through with hot coffee in their hands, Anders said, “Okay, I’m entering an address that Terk sent.” After that, it took them twenty minutes to drive to the location. As they reached their target address, Reid drove on past it, then came back around and studied it. He looked over at Anders, who nodded.

“It looks fine to me. For the moment anyway,” he muttered.

While Reid parked their vehicle around back, Anders took care of accessing keys to the unit. Then Reid and Veni joined Anders, as he unlocked a door on the main floor, but at the back of the building.

“So what’s this?” she asked Reid in a low tone. “An easy access out?”

“Absolutely. Wouldn’t you want that?” Reid asked her, as Anders unlocked the door and let them in.

She didn’t say anything to that, but Reid knew, once the shock wore off, she would have plenty to say. Hell, he had plenty to say himself. As they got inside, and everybody slowly sank down into a chair, they stared at each other, wordless.

She was the first to say it. “How did they find us?”

Reid looked over at Anders. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

“It always is. We have to figure that out before we know how to get safe again.”

“Obviously still some people are after you and potentially after your mother.”

She paled at that, and Reid held up a hand. “I’ve already alerted everybody, and there’s been no attack on your mother. They are prepared for it, if it comes,” he added, “and they’ve already got more security onsite.”

“I thought we were safe where we were too,” Veni muttered. “That didn’t seem to do anything for us.”

“Not true,” Reid clarified, with a ghost of a smile. “It gave us a breather, and now we know that we’re still not out of danger, and that’s what we need to focus on next.”

Resigned, she sipped her coffee.

The fatigue on her face from the adrenaline rush hurt him more than anything else. “It will be okay, you know?”

She looked over at him blankly and nodded.

He winced because it was the nod of someone who didn’t really understand the repercussions of everything that had gone on, and shock could be like that. He glanced back at Anders to find him on the phone. When he ended the call, Reid asked, “Anything?”

“They’re running through facial recognition right now,” Anders shared. “I uploaded photos of the two gunmen, while you were driving, so hopefully we’ll figure out who they are. I didn’t get photos of the people who drove the government vehicle. However, maybe they were coming to help us,” Anders conceded.

“No,” she snapped. “They didn’t look like that at all.”

“Unless the first two triggered some sort of early alert system that MI6 had set up that we didn’t know about,” Reid reminded her. “They could have been coming to our assistance.”

She sank back and stared at him. “It’s really hard to sort out who are the good guys in these scenarios, isn’t it?”

“We had hoped it wouldn’t be such a hardship over here,” Reid admitted. “I mean, we’ve got you back to your homeland. So you would think that, at some point in time, the Russians would give it up.”

She shuddered. “What if they don’t?” she cried out. “Dear God, is this what my life will be like? Flying bullets and car chases? Damn.”

“No, it won’t be,” Reid argued. “At some point it all has to go away. I just don’t know what it’ll take to make that happen.”

She didn’t say anything and just sipped her coffee.

He walked over and sat down beside her, then reached out a hand. She immediately took it and whispered, “It really will end one day, won’t it?”

“It will,” he promised. “It really will.”

He didn’t know if she believed him.