Chapter 21 - Clover

CHAPTER 21 - CLOVER

I wake up tied to a chair in front of a metal table in some kind of concrete block room with one door and no windows. My head is pounding and my ribs are screaming, but I manage to look up and around and note the cameras. It's some kind of interrogation room.

When I look down, I'm wearing gray surgical scrubs and my feet are bare.

At first, I'm confused. Unable to recall how I got here and why I am wearing these hideous clothes. But then the face of Hattie Miller fills my mind and I replay what happened in the embassy penthouse.

They found us. I was right. I knew it. The broken trains were a ploy, not so Ike could spend the day with me, but so Hattie could catch up with us.

Of course, I wasn't really expecting it to be her. But I felt it. I knew our plan was failing and someone was coming to get us.

I gasp, then look around for Riggs.

But I'm alone. He's not here.

The moment I think this, the door comes bursting open, scaring me so bad, I squeak.

Hattie Miller comes in with two very big men. I can't tell if they're the same ones who were accosting me back in the room, but it seems likely. Which means they saw me naked. Someone put these clothes on me because Riggs and I were in the middle of?—

"Good. You're awake." Hattie's voice is loud and commanding as she slams a folder down on the metal table. All this noise echoes off the walls of the nearly empty room and my body begins to shake the way it did the other night. There's a chair across the table from me and she pulls it out, dragging the legs along the floor with an earsplitting screech.

She takes a seat, opens the folder, and starts flipping through pages.

I don't say anything. Neither does she. She just keeps flipping pages. Then she abruptly grunts and closes the folder as she looks me in the eyes. "You're Lowyn McBride's best friend."

It doesn't feel like a question, so I don't say anything back.

Hattie sucks in a breath between her teeth like she's getting ready to deliver bad news.

As a child growing up in the town of Disciple, West Virginia, I learned a thing or two about non-verbal cues and gestures. Specifically, how to use them to convey emotion while performing in the Revival. Everyone in fourth through sixth grade attended acting classes over the winter break. This was about the age when some of us were getting too old to sing in the children's choir and were moving on to other roles—newsie boys and girls, or dancers, or sometimes, if you were particularly adept at the acting side of things, we got to be cripples in wheelchairs who were healed in the tent.

I was a cripple once. But just the once because I kept laughing when the people started crying over me. An actor, I am not. But I certainly recognize this teeth-sucking thing Hattie just did as an act.

She's about to lie to me.

"It really sucks to be you," Hattie says.

Which is sorta confusing, because it's not a lie. I'm in a very unfortunate situation at the present. Again, this is not a question, so I decide to say nothing.

"I think I owe it to you to tell the truth here."

I can't help it, I scoff. It's just a tiny one, but more than enough for Hattie to take notice.

"I know," she says, putting up a hand, palm towards me. "I get it. I don't know how much Riggs told you about me, but I will assume it's enough to understand how I operate. So I don't expect you to trust me. But I'm gonna tell you anyway. Riggs has accepted an offer to save himself."

My eyebrows go all crinkly trying to decipher what this might mean.

"Yes," Hattie says. "Unfortunately, saving himself involved throwing you to the wolves. Or the wolf, as it stands. Which is me. I'm the wolf."

I sigh, tired of this whole thing—the kidnapping, the emotional turmoil that came with falling for my captor, and now this. "Can you just get to the point?"

Hattie leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. "I thought I just did."

"Try again," I say. "And use more words this time."

"All right. I'll be blunt. I like to be blunt." I bet she does. "He sold you out, Clover. I made him an offer. In his defense, it was a good offer. Hell"—she laughs—"who am I kidding? It was a great offer. He gets to pass his little test—because that's what this assignment was—and go home with me. He'll never see the inside of those dark tunnels again. He'll never know that feeling of hopelessness. He'll get promoted, I'll retire, we'll get married, make ourselves a little home, throw parties for his comrades, and live out our happily ever after, just as we both imagined it as kids."

I'm not sure when, exactly, I started laughing during her little speech, but by the time she finishes, it's a full-on incredulous chuckle. "Come on, Hattie. You don't really expect me to believe that? I mean, he hates you. He told me."

Her face doesn't change. Not even a twitch.

But her eyes—bright blue as they are—go dark.

It only lasts for a moment, though. And in the next one, they're shining again. "Yeah. He hates me. Always has. Because I remind him of all his shortcomings. I was the child his father wished he had. Riggs was… well, to call him a disappointment would be an understatement."

"What do you want?"

"Calm down, I'm getting there. I painted a rosy picture of a fictitious future between the two of us. To make you jealous. Oh, let me be very clear here, though. Everything I just said will happen. He might not be in love with me, but we're getting married."

"I thought you were getting to the point?" I hiss these words out through clenched teeth.

"Don't be offended, Clover, because it was either kill you or be sent back to those tunnels. So I wouldn't take it personally." When I don't respond or move, she adds, "His killing you, I mean."

I roll my eyes. "Well, where is he then? If he agreed to this, why isn't he in here killing me?"

"Oh, I can't let him do that. You're Lowyn McBride's best friend. And Lowyn is Collin Creed's love interest. Killing Colin Creed's love interest's best friend would cause all sorts of problems between the factions. It was just a ploy on my part to see how committed he was to the idea of you ."

It takes me a few seconds to parse all these words. But even when I'm done doing that, I still don't understand what she's really trying to say.

Hattie raises her eyebrows at me. "You're not following, I take it?"

I shrug. "OK. So he decided to kill me and you're saying no. What am I supposed to do with this information?"

"You're supposed to use it to make your next decision, Clover. That's what you're supposed to do with it."

"Is there some kind of question in there? Because if so, I'm not hearing it."

"Would you like to walk out of here a free woman?"

I scoff. "Is that a real offer?"

"‘If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'!' Isn't that one of those folksy expressions you hill people like to say?"

I'm so over her. "What's the catch?"

"The catch?" Hattie smiles. "The catch is, you leave Riggs behind, of course."

"That's it? I renounce him and walk out of here, free and clear?"

"That's it."

She's not lying about this part. I can tell. It's a real offer and after what Riggs told me about Collin and what he was doing all those years he was missing, it makes sense that they would not want to piss him off, even if it was in some kind of second-cousin way via Lowyn.

"What's gonna happen to Riggs?" I ask.

"I just told you. We're getting married."

"That's a lie."

Hattie scoffs. "Yeah, it is. He hates me. And that's fine." She shrugs, then nods her head to the two men standing on either side of the room. "But I've got my share of what I need."

"OK. You're really not making sense."

"The offer is real. What happens to Riggs has nothing to do with it. And why would you care, anyway? I mean, he really did accept the offer I gave him."

"To kill me in exchange for his own freedom."

"That's right. So it should be an easy decision. And I would take this offer and run if I were you. Because once his father gets here, there will be no deal. If you stay, you die. If you leave, and keep your mouth shut, and forget all about Riggs Russell and the few days you spent together, then you get to live. So." She leans back in her chair, satisfied. "What's it gonna be, Clover? Live? Or die?"