Rescuing Liberty: Perseverance Book 1 (9 page)

She rolled her eyes. “I’m twelve,” she
said, like that meant she couldn’t play with stuffed animals or
something.

I shrugged and pulled open the flap of
my bag, dramatically preparing to stuff him back in. “Alright,
Frog, back in the pack you go. Might want to plug your
nose.”

Her soft, small hand grabbed mine,
stopping it in mid air. “It wouldn’t hurt to hang out with him for
a little bit. You know, see if we’re compatible.”

I fought to hide my smile.

She studied the bear’s tattered
appearance and asked, “Who did he belong to?” Her delicate fingers
explored the Band-Aid on his arm and the empty spot where his
missing eye should be. Frog was flawed and rough-looking, but he
was exactly what Ashley needed. She’d love him regardless of his
imperfections.

“
My niece, Megan.” As if summoned,
Megan’s laughter once again invaded my thoughts, slicing through
the imaginary band-aid I’d patched that wound with.

“
What was she like?”

“
Stubborn,” I replied, trying to
redirect my memories on the brat she could be. It didn’t work
though. In my mind, Megan’s pout turned into a game of tickles. We
chased each other around the house until she begged me to, ‘Stop,
Aunt Wibby.’ “And sweet, adorable, funny. Loved to perform. To
dance. She tried to make people laugh. She drove everyone crazy
with knock-knock jokes, but could only remember the punch lines.
Just a baby. She wasn’t even three.”

“
Wow.” Ashley hugged Frog. “Not even
three?”

I nodded. “I wonder if she would have
grown up to be a comedian. Her twin brother, Martin, was always so
serious. And quite the tattle-tale. He probably would have made a
good cop.” In my last memory of Martin, he was saying grace over
Thanksgiving dinner. The kid prayed for the silverware, the turkey,
the glasses, the television and everything else he could see. Our
meal had gone cold by the time Anna nudged him to finish. I savored
that prayer now, thankful for the Sunday school teachers who had
taught the twins so well.

“
He was right.” Ashley took a deep
breath.

“
Hmm?” I asked.

“
I left the safe and went home,” she
continued. “I was worried about my parents. I heard the shots, and
when I ran into the room he grabbed me and threw me over his
shoulder. I kicked and punched him, but he wouldn’t put me down. He
shoved a shirt in my mouth and carried me back to the safe. Then he
changed the code on the lock so I couldn’t get out
anymore.”

I brushed back a hair from her
face.

“
I couldn’t get out … couldn’t get
back to them. Didn’t even get to say goodbye.” She
hiccupped.

The stars came out and I held Ashley
until she started to fade. Then we unrolled our sleeping bags and
huddled close.

She turned to face me with Frog tucked
securely under her arm and asked, “What really
happened?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Well, one day I was in school and the
next I was in the safe. All Mom and Dad would tell me was that
people were angry and we had to lock ourselves away from
them.”

“
Well,” I pondered
how much of recent events were okay to reveal to a twelve year old.
“
About four months ago, our country ran out of
money.”

Her brow furrowed. “How does a whole country
run out of money?”

“
The government gets money from taxes.
And they spend money on programs, employees, military, defense and
all sorts of things. For a long time they’ve been spending more
money than the taxes have been bringing in. So we’ve had to borrow
enough to make up the difference.”

She nodded.

“
I’m not sure what changed. I don’t
know if our lenders cut us off, or if we upset someone. All I know
is that on the first of March the government stopped putting money
into people’s accounts. Grocery stores were full of confused and
angry customers who had nothing but empty benefit cards to fill
their family’s growling stomachs with.”

“
No one had any money?” she
asked.

“
Some did,” I replied. “But we had
become way too dependent on Uncle Sam. Lots of people were on
unemployment, social security or welfare. And look at how many
people the government employs.”

“
Like teachers?” She looked
thoughtful.

“
Yep.” I nodded. “And postal workers,
politicians, IRS employees, the FBI, police, road construction
crews, surveyors, military, and so many more.”

“
Wow.” She rolled over on her back and
stared at the sky. “That’s like as many as the stars.”

“
Yeah.” I nodded. “And that’s a lot of
people to be really upset when their paychecks weren’t deposited.
Tens of thousands showed up at the capitol building and fought
their way inside; looking for answers.”

She turned back toward me and raised herself
up on one elbow. “What did they find?”

I sighed. “Nothing. The building was empty.
The senators had abandoned us.”

“
But—” Her brow furrowed. “That was
only a few months ago.”

“
Yeah. But the nation was already in
trouble. Too many had been out of work for too long. My own
unemployment was about to run out. People were starving before this
even happened. They kept telling us the worst of it was over. That
the recession was ending. We never saw it coming.”

I had always respected our laws and
the authority of our country’s leaders. Raised in church, I’d
memorized Hebrews 13:25 as a child.
“Obey
your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over
you as men who must give an account.”
I will not envy
our leaders when they are called to give an account to their
Creator as to why they forsook the people whose lives He had
entrusted them to lead.

Shaking my head I attempted to eradicate
such condemnatory thoughts. My mother’s voice sounded in my head,
reminding me that I was in no position to throw stones. “Judge not,
lest ye be judged.” My own judgment day already loomed before me
like an oncoming storm, growing in power and menace as it drifted
ever closer. I could only pray God’s grace was greater than my
sins.

* * *

THUD

The faint sound pulled me
from my sleep. I grabbed my dagger from the nightstand and held my
breath, waiting for confirmation that something was amiss. Minutes
passed, and nothing could be heard over the pounding of my heart. I
stared at my bedroom doorway, but no boogeyman appeared.

‘
Just a dream, dummy,’ I
said, creeping out of bed and into the living room.

But it hadn’t been a
dream—there was someone in my apartment. I stared at the slightly
ajar door that led to the common hallway. My sanctuary had been
breached. Before I even had time to properly freak out about the
situation, hard, cold metal pressed against my temple. I closed my
eyes and silently prayed for intervention.

“
Hello, beautiful. Drop the
knife.”

The voice belonged to my
neighbor, Rodney. Like the rest of the people in my building, he
was little more than a stranger. I only knew his first name because
he’d asked me out on numerous occasions, and I’d always
declined.

I slowly lowered my dagger to the floor.
“What do you want?”

“
I was worried about you,
Babe.” With his spare hand he played with one of my
curls.

“
How thoughtful.” I
shuffled my feet nervously. “So you decided to … what? Break into
my apartment and put a gun to my head?”

It took him entirely too
long to ponder my question, but he’d never seemed overly
intelligent. Then again, men who lean out their apartment window
yelling things like ‘Hot momma, shake it for daddy,’ rarely are. It
was more than that though. Rodney was carney-caliber creepy. The
type of guy people would swear they saw on ‘America’s Most Wanted,’
or one of those registered sex offender flyers. Dishwater-brown
hair brushed his shoulders in a mullet, framing a gaunt face not
even a mother could love. His whiskey colored eyes constantly
seemed unfocused. His cologne was always the same; eau de’ cheap
booze and cigarettes. He was currently sporting a shirt that boldly
advertised Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Absolutely charming.

“
I had to make sure you
weren’t dangerous.” He stepped forward and picked up my knife.
After he examined it, he slid it into the back of his
jeans.

“
Right,
because
I’m
the one who broke into
your
apartment.” I gritted my teeth.

He laughed and held up a key. “I didn’t
break in, I had this.”

“
Where did you get that?” I
stared at the key he held up as my stomach filled with
lead.

“
I asked that old wind-bag
all nice-like and she just handed it over to me.”

By ‘old wind-bag,’ I
assumed he was talking about the landlady, Mrs. Triton. She was a
sweet little lady in her early sixties that made wonderful hot
chocolate. I closed my eyes and remembered how she’d looked the
last time I’d seen her.

Dread worked its way up my
spine. “Please don’t tell me you did something to Ms.
Triton.”

Rodney didn’t answer. Instead, he got
defensive. “You wouldn’t be so uptight if you just got laid once in
a while.”

I was planning a real
zinger of a reply when something bizarre happened. My body went on
autopilot in answer to the
call
.

‘
Duck, knee, hit, kick, grab, aim,
pull.’

My limbs responded on their
own, and suddenly I was standing over Rodney with his smoking gun
in my trembling hands.

So I did what any brave, in
control woman would do …

* * *

My eyes popped open just in time to
aim away from Ashley as I retched until my stomach muscles were
sore. The dream ended just like it always did: with me in the fetal
position, sick to my stomach, and feeling like I was about to pass
out. Tears streamed down my face, but they couldn’t erase what I’d
done.

Rodney had been my first kill.

I begged to forget, but I never could.

I remembered everything.

The first month, it was too risky to leave my
apartment for any reason. I ate what I had in the house, rationing
out my meals. Then Rodney made his guest appearance. After I killed
him, I stuffed everything I couldn’t live without into my
ten-year-old Honda Civic. Abandoning my apartment in Vancouver, I
drove north on Highway 30, away from civilization. When my fuel
light came on, I veered off on a gravel side street and found a
safe spot to park.

Mother Nature welcomed me to her bosom
for the better part of two months. I lived off the land and slept
in my car. It was lonely, but I never felt completely alone in the
woods. I stayed until I felt the
call
tell me to leave again.

I’ve never had any delusions about my
mental and physical capabilities. Only flesh and blood; fallible
and mortal. These
calls
, they
were not from me. Though I’d never told anyone, God had always been
in my head, leading me, warning me, and keeping me sane. So when He
tugged on me to go north, I went, concluding that He was
calling
me to Canada, where I could
find sanctuary and Michelle.

CHAPTER NINE

CONNOR AWAKENED BEFORE the girls. He rolled
up his sleeping bag and stretched. The morning was brisk, so he
slid on his jacket and sat down, waiting for Liberty and Ashley to
wake. The girls were so peaceful in their sleep that it gave him
time to reflect on the previous evening. There had been tears and
change and Connor wasn’t anxious to step into a brave new morning
where Liberty looked at him with pity and Ashley cried. Deciding he
needed some time alone, he scribbled out a note that he’d catch up
to them and took off for a jog.

His mind was heavy, but at least his
feet were still light. He jumped over a bush and remembered
Ashley’s scowl.
Well, at least she’s not
ignoring me anymore.
And more important than that,
she’d finally heard him out. In less than a week Liberty had
accomplished what Connor had been attempting for two months. He was
thankful, but at the same time annoyed by her success.

He pushed away his irritation and
focused on the scenery. A layer of dew covered the ground and his
shoes were not waterproof. Dampness seeped into his toes, cooling
him as he ran. The morning felt crisp and clean; fresh and pure. A
more optimistic man would use some cliché metaphor about a new
beginning, but Connor was not that man. So instead of trying to
compare his life to a Hallmark card, he relaxed and enjoyed the
beauty around him.

The girls were already awake and on
the move when he circled back around. Staying to the south of them,
he followed as they crossed the highway, railroad tracks, and made
it to White River before noon. Looking around, Connor marveled at
the Washington scenery. Nestled between two small hills packed with
evergreens, White River flowed, bringing life to the green
countryside. Mount Rainier to the southeast, and the Cascades to
the east, shaped a breathtaking skyline. The cool, glacier water
flowed quickly, enchanting the air with its melodies. He inhaled
deeply, intending to savor the moment, but smelled smoke coming
from the direction the girls had gone. Shaking his head in
disbelief, he went to investigate.