He stopped at midnight, pulling off a narrow exit that looped over the highway and back east for a half mile before it curved right and came to a stop sign. After that, he made a left climbing a hill with a second passing lane that led to a gas station and a Stewart’s, pulled up to the totally empty parking lot and shut off the car.
Waking the passenger, he told the Marshal to go use the restroom and scout out the place. As he came back, I heard the sound of the BMW break the country silence---mostly spring peepers and bullfrogs.
Delaney pulled up next to us and Anson lowered the electric window. “No one following you,” he said quietly. “No overhead eyes, either. I made a call from the ice cream place on 38 and they called Ray at the bowling alley. He said that all agents were called in three hours ago by some bigshot out of D.C. Wanted to know where we were.”
“Did they tell these ‘bigshots’ we went fishing?” the AD asked.
“Chase Lake,” Delaney grinned. I knew where that was; one of the places that I had originally planned to camp at on my trek home. Delaney looked in my window. “How are you?”
“Just peachy. I need to pee.” I opened the door in front of him and gently pushed him out of my way. All three of them followed me into the station. I was happy to see the Dunkin Donuts stand inside but waited until after I used the restroom. The Marshal went back outside to the parking lot to watch for trouble.
The Stewart’s had six sit-down booths, Anson and Delaney slid in and picked up the menu. They ordered burgers with fries and coffee. I told them the same for me but to make mine a cheeseburger. I slid in on the side where neither man sat and stared at my hands in my lap. No one said anything until the waitress came over. She was an older woman, barely over five feet with gray hair tucked in a bun, wrinkles, and a tired smile. She already carried a carafe of coffee and filled our turned upright mugs.
“Cream and sugar?”
I nodded, both agents asked for Splenda. “You ready to order?”
They asked for the burger special with the works---lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions and were told that ketchup was on the table.
“Ten minutes,” she promised and retreated to the kitchen. Presently, we heard the sizzle of cooking beef and the aroma drifted towards our noses.
I added cream and sugar to my cup and took a tentative sip. Surprisingly, it was good, fresh not sitting all night on the burner getting ranker by the minute.
“So, anyway,” Delaney said suddenly and made me jump. “What can you do? Predict the future? Read my mind? Raise the dead?”
I looked him in the eye. “Still don’t believe me?” Picking up my fork, I bared my forearm and dragged all four tines down the length of my skin tearing the flesh. Blood instantly beaded up and it felt like a burn more than a cut. Delaney grabbed my hand and tore the fork out of my grasp.
“Are you nuts or stupid?!” he hissed. He snatched several napkins and blotted up the blood. As he wiped, the wound gaped but the bleeding was already stopping, the skin closing behind. In five minutes, the only sign of the deep scratches were four thin red welts which faded to nothing by the time our meals were on the table.
I ate, suddenly ravenous and finished everything on my plate, eyeballing theirs for leftovers. I ordered another two, one for me and another to go for the agent still guarding the parking lot. Anson didn’t say anything as I got up and brought the Marshal his dinner. He told me thanks as he regarded me from under his sleepy eyes that missed nothing.
“How old are you?” He lifted the lid and picked at the fries. He ate them without using any of the ketchup packages. It was un-American to eat fries without ketchup.
“Sixteen.”
“Why does Chase want you? And Houston’s goons?”
“Because I’m an experiment that they thought failed and escaped,” I answered.
“What kind of experiment?” I noticed that he didn’t say ‘failed’.
“I’m a genetically modified and enhanced human. My mother was part of a study by Dr. Cameron on genetic modifications to a normal human embryo. I was one of 25 pregnancies he tampered with on the reservation. He used Native Americans, alcoholic pregnant Indian mothers trying to fix fetal alcohol syndrome babies. I was his only success.”
“You were a FAS baby?”
“No. My mother didn’t drink. He used her for his control study. She was an FBI agent who had an affair with Director Hamilton’s married son Michael.”
“Michael Hamilton? Holy---does President Hamilton know you’re his grandson?”
“I suppose he does and doesn’t care. Mrs. Hamilton knew and kept it from him. She didn’t care that I was her grandson,” I said. “She kept me locked up for two years.”
“Locked up? What do you mean?”
“I was brain-wiped and raised on her estate for two years thinking I was her son, Blake Hamilton.”
“Brain-wiped?” Anson questioned in disbelief.
“Yeah. Programmed all my memories so that I thought I was someone else, her son. She had her techs remove all my childhood memories and implanted the ones she wanted me to have. It didn’t last and I broke out.”
“You must have had them come back if you found your way home,” Delaney pointed out. “I read your files, there were reports of sightings of you in Colorado, Idaho, Oklahoma and Montana. The news has photos of you in the hospital at Red Lodge where you disappeared under suspicious circumstances. How’d you escape from there?”
“Some friends helped me to get out. I won’t turn them in so don’t ask about them,” I answered briefly.
“You saved a fellow Marshal, TG Muir.”
“You know him?”
“Of him. He handles cases mostly on the east coast. I met him a couple times on a tracking conference for law enforcement. Tracking isn’t something you need much of in the city.”
“Works the same anywhere, just the sign is different in the concrete jungle.”
“You track? Being Native American and all?” He seemed really interested so I showed him a few of my tricks and skills.
The other agents joined us and Delaney sat on the bike while the marshal finished his burger. “How’s she handle?”
He grinned. “Like a finely tuned Quarter Horse. She’s been modified to go faster.”
“Up to 260 mph,” I said and he whistled.
“You expecting the Flash to run you down?”
“No, Black Ops helicopters. Once Chase figures out where I ran to, he’ll send everything after me. He had me tagged once---in three separate ways.”
“ID chips?”
“That and radioisotope blood tags, bone marrow chip implants and a RFID chip.”
“Lakan, you ready to go?” Anson asked from the passenger seat. He had switched places with the Marshal who was now driving.
“I’m coming.” I went for the back seat and slid in.
“Del, you good to go or do you want to switch out the car for the bike?” Anson asked. Delaney told him he could handle another 100 miles.
The Marshal drove faster, hovering around 85 mph consistently even as the speed limit on these back stretches of flat lines was 70 mph. I pitied the agent on the bike, even with the windshield and leather clothing, the wind chill would have been brutal.
I fell asleep waking only as the car slowed drastically and Anson gave the Marshal directions. I saw signs of an off ramp that descended into a valley covered with heavy tree growth. Mostly firs, second growth that would be harvested soon by the size and height of them.
We followed the markers for State Forest snowmobile trails heading deep into the valley and onto unpaved seasonal roads. I watched with trepidation as the Marshal pulled into a small cove cut out of the woods, the place was a 10x14 square foot building, board and batten with a corrugated steel roof. An outhouse sat behind and to the left, there was a four-stall tie shed and a smaller outbuilding that housed a generator.
His headlights illuminated a screened-in porch and a hand-carved sign that read “Annie’s Cabin.’
“So this is the place? Who’s Annie? Cause if this belongs to one of you dudes, there’ll be records and Chase will find us,” I protested as I pulled on the door. Delaney was already there with the bike and unlocking the place. The lights came on one at a time. I guessed that they were kerosene or propane but definitely not electrical. None of the others let me carry anything inside, not even my own stuff. It took me all of 15 seconds to look the place over.
Neat, one room with pine tongue and grooved walls and plank floors, red gingham curtains but clearly a man’s retreat without any of the feminine touches. Two twin beds, a pull-out couch, gas heater on the back wall, table with four mismatched chairs and a sink in the granite counter. A gas stove and oven. The microwave sat on a butcher’s block next to a 12-volt battery and a converter that changed the juice from DC to AC to run the microwave.
There were heavy Hudson Bay blankets on the beds and a quilt laying on the couch but no food or weapons stashed. It looked as if it had been closed up for the season and just now re-opened. I waited to see if anyone was going to cook or had even brought food. They answered my unspoken question when Delaney carried in a cardboard box with bottles of water and pre-made sandwiches, chips, and Oreo cookies. Greedy hands reached in and snatched before I could say ‘wait.’ I was left with cheese loaf on rye. Not my favorite, I looked at it, and then up at Anson. “How long are we gonna be here?”
“No more than overnight. Why?”
“Did you bring more food?”
“Some. We’re not planning on camping out here.”
“What’s your plan to get me back to D.C.? Or to releasing George Little Bear and Leon DeCarlos?”
“The Director of the FBI has asked for a warrant by Grand Jury to release both men into our custody,” Anson said defensively. “A second team will meet us here tomorrow afternoon and take you on to the next safe house.”
“This is a safe house?” I looked around in derision before I dropped the sandwich and went outside. My bow and quiver had been stashed on the porch. I grabbed both and swiped one of the kitchen filet knives disappearing into the woods before they had any inkling of my intentions.
I hadn’t gone ten feet in before I was out of their sight but I could still hear them up till twenty minutes later. By then, I’d slipped on my fletcher’s cuff, fitted the quiver across my shoulder and found the nearest stream. Following the narrow band of water for a hundred yards, I came to a crossing where many animals had used the easy access to cross and to water.
The trees whispered in the night air. A soft breeze wafted through with a hint of tomorrow’s weather, a promise of warmth but no moisture. Even here, there were still traces of snow on the dark side of the mountain. I could feel the weight of a sleeping giant behind me as the earth slumbered.
The deer came out of the brush with a whisper of a hoof in the leaves. I didn’t hear it as much as I saw its eyes glow in the faint moonlight. It wasn’t a doe but a button buck; this early a doe wouldn’t have dropped her fawn yet and I wouldn’t take a pregnant deer. Luckily, this one was a young male that weighed around a hundred twenty and the perfect size for me to manage. After all, I had to lift and drag it back to camp.
I sighted and waited for him to turn sideways; a front-on sight could lead to an arrow bouncing off his chest bone and a wounded deer suffering lost in the forest.
He came out, nose twitching as he scented the air but I was downwind as I let the string go and the broadhead hit him in the heart. He leaped forward, ran a few strides and dropped nearly at my feet.
I raised my head to the sky and sang a song of thanks praising the buck’s spirit and gift before I cut his throat to bleed him.
The gall bladder I set aside along with the glands in his rear legs before I gutted the carcass. Using the tendons in his back legs, I tied a branch between his hocks and dragged the kill back to the cabin. It was a messy, tiring job hauling a hundred pounds of dead animal on my own. I left the guts for the wolves, foxes and bears whose tracks I had seen by the water.