arbitrate (daynight) (10 page)

He screams, but I’m able to muffle the sound with a pillow. Joshua keeps the nurse busy. However, a loud scream would still bring her into the room quickly.

Once he’s done protesting, I glance at his charts. John Doe. Yeah, right. “Good evening, Doctor Doe.” I use a perfectly practiced British accent to emulate Dr. Parker.

“What’s going on Dr. Parker? Why am I restrained?”

I put my hand atop his wound again, ready to apply pressure. “Let’s get to the heart of the matter. You stole a baby. I want to know where the child is and who your employer is. Otherwise, I’ll make sure that even the best of surgeons can’t make your hand function again.”

All the color drains from his face. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

I grab a small towel, shove it in his mouth, and then jab the center of his wound. His entire body quivers and he moans into the gag.

“We can keep this up for quite some time. The nurse is otherwise disposed and there’s no one else around.” I remove the gag and await an answer.

“I fear my employer more than I fear you.”
 

I pull a small scalpel out of my pocket and show it to him.

Then I yank up his hospital gown to expose his stomach and chuckle. I didn’t even know anyone wore tighty-whities anymore.
 

I find a bottle of iodine and start to clean off his stomach. The man is whimpering, his heart rate’s out of control and he’s oozing sweat.

“You can speak any time. Or…I can disembowel you.”

“I don’t believe you will do it.”

Actions speak louder than words. I pick the scalpel back up and begin to press into his skin, blood pooling into the cut. The smell and sight of the blood reminds me of what he did to Kira, fueling my desire to keep going until he talks.

“I dropped the baby off to my employer here at the clinic. I don’t know what happened to the child after that.”

I continue my incision, slowly pulling the scalpel towards me in a straight line. So far the cut’s pretty superficial, but that can be changed quickly. To make my point, I press the knife in a little deeper. “Who. Hired. You?”

He gasps. “Okay. Okay. Darryl Bradford.”

Doesn’t ring a bell. “Where can I find this Darryl Bradford? Quick, before I pull out your intestines and see if I can string them from one end of the room to the other.”

When he doesn’t immediately answer, I continue my cut.
This is going to be a gnarly scar.

“The address is in my phone. In the drawer. Code’s 9119.”

The phone’s where he says it is and the information’s there. I copy down the address and then return the phone to its original spot. “Excellent.”
 

Before I clean up my mess, I ask another question that has been bugging me. “How’d you get out of Heart?”

He looks like he’s going to refuse to answer again, but I press the knife into his stomach and let him watch the blood pool and drip down onto the hospital bed. “I held an Arbiter at gunpoint and made her bring me to LA.”

Could the Arbiters be involved? What if she was
willingly
helping him? I hold up the knife above his head and let drops of his blood fall onto his face. “Did. You. Know. Her?”

“No. I just ran into the first house I found. I swear it.” I make a mental note to have Jax check out the story.

I proceed to mop up the blood and apply some butterfly bandages. Then I give him another couple drips of morphine—not enough to kill him but enough to send him off to la-la land for a while.

Once out of the room, I stop by Joshua’s examination room and pop my head in. “I left my phone in my car. Be right back.”
 

I return Dr. Parker’s identification card, slip the extra key under the car seat for him to find at a much later date, and then return to the motel to remove and dispose of my disguise.

After I’ve scrubbed off the makeup, I rinse out the silver streaks from my hair in the shower. Joshua promised the blond color would gradually wash out over the next week or so. I dress in a nondescript long-sleeved blue shirt and jeans. I switch to blue contacts and throw on a baseball cap.

Joshua walks in the door at the same time I exit the bathroom. He is already peeling off his smelly homeless garb. “I’ve had a miraculous recovery.” He bows, and I clap for his award-winning performance at the clinic. “Snuck out with a decent supply of Oxy, so they’ll think I was looking to score. Did your patient sing?”

“Indeed he did. I’ve got a name and an address.”

Joshua looks me in the eye. “How much damage?”

I smirk. “He’ll live.”

“Let me grab a shower. And then I’ve got just the thing for you.”

“Holy mother of sweetness.”
I run my fingertips along the light silver Ducati. “Can’t exactly bring a baby back on it, though.” Not that I’d have the slightest clue as to how to transport a baby. I do, however, know how to ride a bike. Most of my experience has been riding dirt bikes out to remote locations to train with my father, but we had a street bike for a short while as well.

Joshua hands me a helmet. “I’ve got a tracker in your boots, your watch, and on the bike. This button on your watch—” He points to the upper left button. “—is the equivalent of a panic button. The one below it will record your conversation.”

“Sure thing Q.”

Joshua rolls his eyes. “You are
not
living out a James Bond fantasy here. Don’t crash the bike. No high-speed chases. I had to pull in some serious favors to get one that wasn’t traceable.”

“I got it. No parting song for me?”

“Blake and Kira sitting in the canyon. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes competition, then the baby’s sliced right outta Kira’s abdomen.”

I grimace at the memory. “Gads, I never should have told you my deal. You are one sick son of a psychopath.”

“Right back at you.” He grins and takes off, fading into the night.

The bike rides as nice as it looks. I lean and let the air rush over me and hope flood into me. There’s a chance I find my son today. My phone gives me directions to Darryl Bradford’s address, which is in a nondescript neighborhood in Downey not far from Juvenile Hall. I park down the street, replace the helmet with a baseball cap, and take a stroll past the house. There’s a car in the driveway and lights on inside despite the early morning hour. I circle the block so as to not draw attention to myself. It’s approaching the commuter hour, so I risk having a neighbor call the police if I get too close to the house.
 

All I can do is wait. And as sweet as the Ducati is, I’m wishing I had a car. I pretend to be on a phone call with Kira. We finish the conversation that Bailey interrupted back on Thera. I apologize profusely for leaving her. For not protecting her. For losing our child. The conversation’s pretty much perfect because I’m able to explain what a complete dirt bag I am without having to hear her agree.

A good hour later, I see movement. A tall, thin man with a slight limp hobbles out to the car. He’s dressed similarly to me—in a dark, long-sleeved shirt and jeans with a baseball cap.

I follow Mr. Bradford at a safe distance, which is harder than it seems. I’m forced to go slow, for one. And two, when traffic hits, it’s much harder to keep track of his bland vehicle with so many similar ones on the road. After a full half hour driving northwest, he finally gets off the freeway and heads into Hollywood Hills.

Bradford winds up the hill and eventually turns into a gated driveway, punching a code in to enter. I park my bike behind a large van and then walk the rest of the way on foot. I peek through a couple trees to see him ringing the doorbell. A young woman holding a baby in the crook of her arm answers the door. The man kisses the child on the head and then enters the house.

How do I proceed? Climb the wall and ring the doorbell? Break into the house? As much as I want to return our son to Kira, I don’t know if
that
child is ours. There has to be a way to get confirmation.

A deep voice behind me says, “May I help you?” I turn to see the living incarnation of Thor. Dude’s burly and has a good six inches on me. He’s wearing a white wife beater and basketball shorts. His thick blond mane’s greased back by sweat and falls to his shoulders. “This is private property.”

“The sidewalk’s private property?” I ask. What will fly and get this guy off my back? “I was just taking a walk and heard a baby cry. My sister just gave birth and I haven’t had a chance to see the baby yet, so it caught my attention.”

He laughs. Sure, perhaps it’s not the most believable story, but it’s not particularly funny. “Sister’s name?”

“Leila.”

“Baby’s name?”

That gives me pause. I don’t know if Leila has a child yet, and I have no idea if Kira named our child or not. Finally, I remember to speak. “Sarah.”

“Baby’s birth date?”

What was the date we were in Heart? Apparently I take too long to think about it.

His fist comes out of nowhere connecting with my gut and sending me flying against the fence.
 

Hurts like hell, but at least he didn’t break one of my ribs or collapse a lung.

I see his next punch coming. His fist hits iron as I jet to my right at the last moment. Doesn’t even seem to faze him.

My adrenaline’s pumping.

Size isn’t always an advantage. It can make a person slow. That’s my only hope.

We circle each other and he has his fists up. Since we’re not in a ring, I’m not playing by boxing rules.

He moves in for a jab to my jaw and I jump, kicking his unprotected nuts. Heavy motorcycle boot versus soft tissue.

Don’t judge me for going for a girly move. The guy may look like Thor, but his body is all Iron Man.
 

A grunt is all I get. Guess he has iron balls too.

The prick barrels towards me and knocks me to the ground. He pins one arm, but I use the other to yank his hair from its roots.

In turn, he tugs my pinned arm until the elbow dislocates.

I’m not going to lie. On a scale of one to ten, the pain’s off the freaking charts.

Thor yanks me to my feet, and I try seeing if heavy motorcycle boots can beat running shoes as I stomp on his foot.

Boots win that round. He lets go for a moment.

In the split second that I contemplate my ability to win a round of chase wearing motorcycle boots, I hear, “Checkmate.”

Thor has superhero friends. And they’re armed.
 

I surrender.

Three burly men escort me through the gate and onto the premises. We don’t go in through the front door but around the side of the house. The property backs up to a canyon that looks only slightly greener than the Theran canyons at this time of the year. Some steps jut down into the canyon itself, and I’m dragged down them. When we’ve reached the bottom, Thor moves some camouflaged netting away to reveal a door with a small, rebar-reinforced window in it. He unlocks it with a key and I’m shoved in.

And just like that, I’m back in a freaking cave. Dirt floor, stone walls and low, jagged ceiling. Ten by twelve feet at best.

I think about pressing the “panic” button on my watch, but I want answers. So after I pop my elbow back into place, I sit down, press my back against the hard stone wall, and wait.

Eleven months prior: Exiler camp outside Garden City, Thera

Bailey and I sat
near the back wall of the cave as far from the fire as we could get, yet sweat still streamed from every pore. Theran heat waves were brutal, and this was the worst one I could remember. It was smack dead in the middle of the night, and I’d bet the temperature was 115°F in the cave and over 150°F outside. The light of the fire was eerily dancing off the walls making Bailey look like a fallen angel.

“I’m over the whole Exiler thing.” I joked as I sucked on dry oats. Due to the high temperatures, water was being rationed and cooking with it was out. “Electricity is so
not
overrated.”

Bailey giggled as she slicked her blonde hair back away from her face. “Neither are ponytail holders. Which is why we need a more aggressive plan. There’s enough room on this overgrown, overheated rock to have an Exiler Nation coexist with the SCI. But we’re going to need leverage.”

I sighed. We’d probably discussed this a thousand times since I reached the Exiler camp. “We’re crippled to act on the information we have.” Kira had given me the equivalent of the SCI’s Achilles heel—their mega-portal which was behind about eight billion layers of security in Garden City. And Bailey remembered her journey post-death from Earth through a place called Heart. I could probably get us back into Garden City; my mother was eager to have me back. But getting access to the mega-portal would be near impossible. And we were short a map of Thera, any clue where Heart was for sure, or a reliable and fast method of transportation to get us there. Rumor had Heart far to the Northeast—islands in the middle of the ocean.

Bailey kissed me on the forehead. “The Second Chancers are the key. If the Second Chancers back the Exilers, then the SCI will have to back down and recognize us. The key to the Second Chancers is in Heart. And if the SCI chooses not to recognize the Exiler Nation? The Second Chancers can join us in a full-scale rebellion.”

I looked Bailey in the eyes. “From what we’ve heard, Heart’s a little too far to walk. Can’t get there by horseback. And we don’t have a ship. What are you suggesting? We could try to hijack one of the boats coming into Garden City. Or find a portal there. Short of that, I’m out of ideas.”

“There has got to be a way. We need to find Dr. Christo or his son, Jackson Christo.” Bailey was nothing if not determined.

Doc Daryn, head of the Survivalists faction of the Exilers, popped his head up. “I know a Dr. Christo. He’s a prominent doctor in Garden City.”

“Weird. Think it’s the same guy?”

“Surely worth finding out. I know you’re not excited about going back there, but I think it has to be done.”

I thought about it for a while. “Well, I’m not going back in over the Eco barrier again. That means the only way in is by official routes.” It would have been nice if my mother had dropped off a two-way radio or even a courier pigeon when she arranged to have a whole host of other supplies delivered. I’d have to get back in the hard way. Which meant making a trip to Earth, finding Ethan at school, and having him bring me back. I cringed thinking of Kira and Ethan together. The sting hadn’t worn off with time.