Frontline (25 page)

“Miss Peters, that is hardly necessary,” Randall says with a stern edge.

“Sara!” My voice sounds like a rusty fork scraped across a glass plate. “My name is Sara! Not Miss Peters! How many fucking times do I have to repeat something to you people before it takes root in your tiny brains?”

Chris and Sean sit glued to the back of the couch. Trenton seems distracted and unfocused, as if he barely recognizes me.

“People tried to kill us yesterday, Trenton! Why? Up until a week ago, I was just a nurse at Manhattan General, working my shifts, living my life. Then you showed up. You changed my lock. You tried to make my apartment more secure than the fucking White House. You complained about me taking the subway. Now I’m getting shot at! It seems for all your effort, you’ve only made things more dangerous for me.”

Randall steps forward. “Which is exactly why, Miss Pete—Sara, we need to—”

“Which is exactly why you people need to stay the fuck away from me!”

The fire pops and crackles, sucking the air from the room and filling it with a heat so intense that my skin feels like it’s melting beneath the bathrobe.

“I want to go home right now,” I say, focusing solely on Trenton. “I don’t care who does it. Phone one of your other employees to pick me up if you have to. I just have to get the fuck out of here and away from you.”

Trenton’s eyes darken. He leans forward, elbows balanced on his knees.

“It’s not safe for you to return home, Sara.”

“It’s not safe for me here, either.” I cross my arms over my chest. “When I’m with you, people try to kill me.”

“I said no.”

I glare back at him. “Fine. Then I’ll leave by myself.”

To hell with the miles of forest surrounding us.

I move toward what I assume is the front door. The door handle is a simple brass loop curving from a large plate set inside thick, dark oak. I wrap both hands around it and tug. It doesn’t budge. I scan the door, but don’t see a lock or keypad.

“Let me out of here!”

I push my right foot against the doorframe and pull harder, tugging with all the strength in my body, which fades in seconds and leaves me panting for breath. Tears well up again at the corners of my eyes, but I catch them with the bathrobe sleeve.

There’s no damn way I’m crying in front of them.

“I said let me out!” Calling upon any remaining gusto, I kick the door repeatedly with my sock-covered foot. Pain bursts up my leg.

A firm hand presses against my left shoulder. With a speed I didn’t know I possessed, I swat it back. I turn and see Randall with both of his arms held in the air, surrendering.

“Calm down, Sara,” Trenton says from behind him.

I blow past Randall and march over to Trenton on the couch. The shadow of stubble sprouting from his jaw and upper lip accentuates his haggard face.

“I was almost killed yesterday and you want me to calm down? I’m being held prisoner in some godforsaken forest by a billionaire playing secret agent, and you want me to calm down?”

I reach into the pocket of the bathrobe, seize the second earring, and hurl it at Trenton. It whistles past his head and slams against the couch cushion. He doesn’t flinch.

“You should eat something, Sara. You’re hysterical.” He leans back on the couch as if my freak
-out means nothing to him.

Even screaming at this man, with the words amplified in a giant room beneath a vaulted ceiling, he still doesn’t hear me. I walk back to the stairs and climb a few steps, knowing what little strength and breath I have left are wasted here.

“Well, it’s good to know you guys are so on top of things.” I motion to Chris and Sean who haven’t moved from their chairs, eyes glued to their laptop screens, probably hoping I’ll disappear in a puff of smoke. “I’m sure you’ll find out everything you need to know by looking into the men I’ve dated—money-laundering, embezzling, assassinations. Maybe you should phone my dad. He kept a close eye on me, too, and could probably give you a few leads.”

Trenton’s eyes seem locked on something distant, coated in a glaze of exhaustion. Suddenly, he blinks. The glaze clears and he bolts up straight, grabbing a pen and a pad of paper from the coffee table.

“What?” I say, gripping the railing. “What is it?”

Trenton guides the pen across the page, producing a jumbled scrawl I can’t read from my perch on the stairs. He tears the page from the pad and slides it over the coffee table to Chris, who leans forward and picks it up.

“Nothing.” Trenton waves me away.

“Fuck you, Mr. Merrick.” And with those words I finally get his undivided attention.

“Sara.” My name is said in an agonizing whisper.

I draw myself up to full height, on the verge of tears because I wish more than anything that his concern and care for me are real.

“Fuck you and your bullshit declarations of always putting me first, for pretending you have feelings for me. Your so-called gifts. Your wretched Tin Men. Your insincere vows of wanting to protect me. As soon as I get out of here, we’re done. You hear me? Done! I can’t believe I spread my legs for you in your fucking Bugatti!”

“That’s enough!” Trenton’s roar shakes the room. He stands to deliver the rest of his lecture and lists back and forth as if he’s about to faint. His dress shirt and the towel covering his shoulder are saturated with blood.

“You listen to me, Sara.” The veins in his neck and forehead bulge, and his face floods a ferocious red. “You will go upstairs and eat some goddamn food and that’s final!” He points to the second floor using his good arm, his blue eyes unrelenting.

Like a ten-year-old told to clean her room, I stomp up the rest of the stairs, trudge into my temporary bedroom, and slam the door as hard as I can. The vibrations rumble through the walls, then fade, as a cold, thick silence regains control of the cabin.

A thin beam of moonlight streams through a crack in the curtains. I draw them back, bathing the whole room in a soft, silver glow. My ducts must have recuperated because the tears come hard and fast, mixing with agonizing sobs that I muffle with the bathrobe sleeve.

In the city, I’m lucky to see one or two stars from my apartment window. Tonight, in the Adirondacks, millions of them blink across the sky, random as paint speckles scattered over canvas from the tip of a thrown brush.

I think about a camping expedition my mom, dad, and I took to Mount Shasta when I was seven. Two days before our trip, I watched a movie about a whole family uprooting itself from the city to settle in a remote wilderness. The premise fascinated me. Our first night at the campsite, with my parents sound asleep in our tent, I snuck into the nearby woods, thinking I would embark on an adventure of my own. Millions of stars twinkled in the sky that night, too. The trees surrounding me shone silver in the moonlight and the forest sounded louder than a crowded city. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked, and the first hoot of an owl I ever heard in my life echoed from a tree branch high above.

But when a twig snapped close by and something shuffled in the dried leaves, I screamed so loud
ly, the entire campground lit up. I remember a chorus of running feet, my father and two other men I recognized from the tents next to us crashing through the underbrush, the look of terror on my father’s face when he found me standing there, screaming myself hoarse while a small rattlesnake slithered into the hollow of a nearby log.

I remember the helplessness that froze me where I stood, and my father’s powerful hands shattering that fear when he picked me up and hoisted me over his shoulder. I remember the warm kisses from my mom that greeted me when my dad set me back down at the campsite, assuring all the bystanders I was fine. I never felt safer than in those moments with my family, and any time trouble reared its head after that, I always knew I could count on them to come running.

But that was years ago, without an entire country separating us. Now I’m trapped again, frozen in one place, the rattlesnake fully grown now and circling.

I wonder how long it’ll take before Denim files a missing persons report.

Oh, God, my only hope of getting out of here relies on Denim.

Now I wish I told Kelly about my date, too.

“Miss Peters? Uh, Sara?” Randall calls through the closed bedroom door. His knuckles tap softly against it.

“What?” I sniffle and wipe my eyes, though my trembling voice betrays my crying anyway.

“May I come in?”

The rattlesnake circling . . .

“Why?”

“I brought you some more food.”

Eat poisoned food or starve to death. Whichever one, let’s just get it over with.

The door creaks open and Randall peeks through the crack. He pushes the rest of the way in with another tray when he sees me sitting at the end of the bed.

“Let’s try again with some food, shall we? Trenton is still very concerned that you refused to eat breakfast.”

At the mention of Trenton’s name, my anger resurfaces. He’s worried about me not eating, but he expects me to take getting shot at in stride?

Randall turns on the desk lamp and a soft orange light floods the corner of the room. He removes the foggy dome to reveal grilled steak beside a pile of mashed potatoes and corn. The aroma awakens my stomach from its hibernation. I move toward the tray slowly, trying not to look too ravenous.

A small pile of grilled vegetables garnishes the steak. I turn them over with my fork for a closer look.

“Those are sliced morels. They grow wild in the Adirondacks at this time of year.” Randall beams like a proud chef waiting for a Michelin critic to try his signature dish. “You might notice they have a slightly nutty flavor.”

I fling them to the side of the plate with my knife and cut the steak instead. Randall clears his throat and continues, this time with a fraction of his previous enthusiasm.

“I dehydrate and jar them to use throughout the year. They’re especially good in spaghetti sauce, which I make in the winter. It’s a favorite of Trenton’s.”

“You don’t say,” I reply between mouthfuls.

“Listen, Miss Pete—Sara,” he says, his hands slapping together in front of him with a finality that promises he will never get the two names mixed up again. “I understand you’re frustrated. Your life was in danger yesterday. I say
was
because that’s in the past. Trenton will never allow anything to happen to you. It took us all by surprise, but the matter is being dealt with.”

“Investigating my ex-boyfriend suggests you’re still quite a way off from
dealing with it
, Randall.”

My piercing sarcasm deflates him. He sighs.

“Your frustration is understandable, Sara. Had I experienced what you did yesterday, I would no doubt feel the same. But when I assure you that this matter has Trenton’s full attention, I’m sure you’ve come to know him well enough by now to understand that truly means something.”

I set my fork and knife down on the plate out of fear I’m about to lose my shit again and bury them both in Randall’s chest.

“Come to know him . . .” I say, swallowing another mouthful of steak. “Yes, I have come to know Trenton Merrick, Randall. And though it’s only been a short time, I’m confident enough to safely say that he’s manipulative. He’s scheming. He’s controlling. He’s cold. But more than any of those things, Randall, Trenton Merrick is a liar.”

I spew the words with enough acidity to peel the paint from the walls, but Randall is unmoved.

“I’ve known Trenton since he was born, Sara. He’s a very private person who takes the safety of his loved ones very seriously. He can certainly be aloof—perhaps a tad defensive. And he is a cunning young man. There is no doubt about it. But one thing I’ve never known Trenton to be is dishonest.”

“Then it seems we know two different Trentons, Randall.”

“The Trenton I know is currently taking a break while Christopher and Sean follow up on a very promising lead. His physician cannot come here to treat him until this threat has been taken care of. He has refused pain medication, though we only have Tylenol here. May I ask that you at least find it in yourself to visit him and check his shoulder wound? I fear it’s getting worse. He’s in the third room down the hall on the left.”

Randall turns and exits, but leaves the bedroom door ajar this time.

The display on the digital clock beside the bed is nothing but a blood red smear through my blurry eyesight. My mind fights against the pressing weight of fatigue, prying my eyes open every time I try to drift off, reminding me of the injured man down the hallway.

Trenton is in pain.

So what? So am I.

Trenton needs me.

And I need to go home.

The night seems to slow the faster my thoughts race through my head. I know my needs are justified, especially given what I went through since yesterday. But standing higher above my own complaints is an oath I took during a summer internship at the Bay Area chapter of the Red Cross two years ago.

To bring comfort to those who are in trouble, to alleviate suffering, and to conserve life is my mission. Wherever disaster calls, there I shall go. I ask not for whom, but only where I am needed.