Page 2 of All Saints Day
“He’s late,” Caz grumbles from his place slumped in an ornate metal patio chair, a pair of mirrored bug-eye sunglasses obscuring his icy gaze.
None of us had slept well, especially not after seeing Louise across the bond in our dreams.
“The city’s a shitshow today; it would have taken him forever to get anywhere, even if he weren’t hobbling around.” Sébastien did his best to talk Caz down—even though he was adjusting every untouched item on the table that he’d set out for high tea for the sixth or seventh time in the last ten minutes.
Poor Sébastien has had to shoulder the brunt of the emotional labour in the pack since Caz and I have increasingly gone to pieces in the wake of our separation from Louise, our pack lead. While I’ve been increasingly fragile, Caz has been all but undone. Never in my life have I seen him so withdrawn—a mere shell of himself.
“Using the marathon as a racer wasn’t a bad choice of cover. Compton’s been sniffing around Dennis since the Windmill captured Louie, but everyone knows that McBride’s been an insufferable marathoner and tri-athlete type since he joined the bureau. Like you said, Cazzy, one look at his online footprint would seal the deal for anyone in terms of alibi—but I’d imagine Seb’s right. Athletic though he may be, he did just run almost 30 miles. He’s probably making his way here as expeditiously as possible through the crowds and his own exhaustion.”
Caz obviously finds our reasoning insufficient, pushing back from the table with a loud scratch of metal chair legs on stone. He crosses his arms over his chest and moves to the metal railing of the penthouse terrace; the fanciful landscaping of plants and early-blooming spring flowers dancing in the breeze around him as he glowers down at the streets below teeming with people.
“What happens if he gets here and doesn’t want to cooperate?” Caz blurts out, gnawing anxiously on his nails and cuticles as he scans the crowd for Dennis’ strawberry blond coif.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Caz,” I sigh, exasperated. We’ve had some version of this conversation so many times in the last few hours, let alone in the months since Louise’s capture. Apparently, we’re going to go through the motions again.
“If we just tell him outright that he’s one of our fated mates—there’s no possible way he can say no.” Caz whirls on us—pacing back to the bistro table laid with all the goodies Sébastien has prepared, the cloudless blue sky overhead at odds with our gloomy moods.
“For the last time,” I grumble, pinching the bridge of my nose in a vain attempt to keep my patience. “We know that he’s already committed to helping Louise. Even if he doesn’t know that he’s one of her fated mates—he’s in love with her. It will be enough to get him on board. We don’t know what else he’s been getting up to; we don’t want to bite him in until we have the full picture…” I trail off, unable to put words to the rest.
Both Caz and Seb understand without my having to say anything. All of us had been hoping that Louise would bite Frank into our pack that fateful morning we left her on the yacht—thinking we’d make our escape.
How wrong we were.
It’s been a long road just to get to this point. We narrowly escaped our own capture by the Windmill back in December of last year.
That first night in that shitty Oklahoma motel was like hell on earth. None of us could quite believe what we were seeing down the bond, but were quickly forced to accept the painful truth: Frank was working for the Windmill all along.
Those initial days on the run, I could blot out everything else and focus on my immediate survival, the survival of my pack.
None of us quite understood why Frank let us go that day at the docks, why he didn’t just let us walk straight into our deaths—neat and tidy, loose ends all tied up. In foolish hope, I had thought Frank might have been biding time—waiting to turn the tables on the Windmill and escape with Louise, bringing her back to us; everything some big misunderstanding.
Oh, if we could be so lucky.
Instead, every day and every night for the last one hundred and thirty days—we have experienced shades of Louise’s tortureat Frank’s hands—somewhere deep within one of the Windmill’s secret, secure locations.
It didn’t take long into those hellish 18 weeks for me to start to pick at the realization; from the very first minute I met him, everything I knew about Francis Stone was a lie. For Christ’s sake, I’m not even sure if Francis Stone is his real name.
I had caught glimpses of a darkness in Frank, but had always fancied that I knew the ‘real’ Francis Stone—that the stranger I caught flashes of in those dark blue eyes had been a fleeting visitor that sometimes eclipsed the genuine article. Now I know that I was only seeing shards and shreds of what monster might be harbored in the shadow of that man.
My hubris.
Quickly, Seb, Caz and I agreed that we’d have to bring in Dennis if we had any hope of success. Through care and diligence and an inhuman amount of self-control, he had managed to retain his cover at the FBI. Without question, having a man on the inside would be of value—especially if we are planning on using Compton to get access to wherever Louise is being held.
While we all assumed that the search and capture efforts to bring the three of us in would have spared no expense—no resource untapped—it ended up being quite the opposite. The Feds seemed to almost forget about us once the Windmill had Louise in custody.
Considering the fact that Compton, who had already declared Louise legally dead, was a higher-up in the Windmill—and Frank, also supposedly ‘dead,’ had been in cahoots with Compton and Lowry all along—it seemed that no one was in a particular hurry to ferret us out if we planned on staying out of the public eye.
Of course, we hadn’t made a bid for any international travel, nor had any of us made any plans to publish our findings on the Zeitnot virus; even though we did still have the Penny’s secret laptop.
For both the Feds and the Windmill, it had come down tocalculated risk. They had decided that we were probably a bunch of cowards who had gone to ground to save their own skins—leaving their fated mate to suffer at the hands of the US Government and a dangerous, shadowy cabal. Obviously, they were confident enough that if any of us got the bright idea or the balls to go public, they’d squash us like bugs before we ever saw our day in court.
They were only half right.
While we hadn’t yet infiltrated the secret facility where Louise was being held, it hadn’t been for lack of want or trying. As for breaking any kind of news about the Zeitnot virus and any sort of involvement the Penny’s had in its development—it felt outright irresponsible to do so without first finding out our capabilities for developing a cure or preventative vaccine first.
Following up on the virus has proved somewhat easier, considering we have the contact information for the small group of scientists and researchers that collaborated with Margot and Landon in the conception and development of the original Zeitnot virus back in the nineties.
Doctor Azzura Perla had responded to our outreach almost immediately. She and Sébastien began an active correspondence. While their collaboration has yet to bear fruit, there is an in-person meeting of the minds on the horizon. Hopefully, once we’ve got Louise back in tow—Seb and Azzura will be able to make a true breakthrough.
