Registry's Secrets (The Mengliad Series Book 2) Page 10

  Emerging from the haze he was in, Shea was back to defiant. “Why?”

  “There was no strategic reason for it,” Wade answered. “The location was available.”

  “Not why Montauk,” Shea snapped in exasperation. “Why do this? Why did they imprison them?”

  “They knew once the two of you had disappeared, as far as your old lives were concerned, that your parents would’ve never let it go till they had answers,” Wade explained, with far more patience than he was actually feeling. “They were looking to avoid unwanted attention being brought to the situation. Preemptive strike.” He then muttered just loud enough to be heard, “That, and the leverage thing.”

  “How could they use our parents as leverage, if we didn’t even know they were alive?” Shea’s pitch climbed three times by the end of the question, causing Wade’s tone to match it when he answered.

  “I told you, Shea! They’ve been planning for this since the beginning! Keeping Jessica under their control is top priority to them, and they’ll use whatever means necessary to get it back!”

  Though he sighed in irritation, Shea recognized the need to take the intensity of their exchange down a notch. “So then our parents are in danger, more so now than before.” When Wade didn’t respond, he asked, “What’s the plan?”

  “We get out of this God-forsaken city. Too many eyes.”

  Shea heaved another heavy sigh. “Fine. And after we do?”

  “We get to the safe house. We’ll figure out anything further from there.”

  “And when do we rescue our parents?” Shea asked, assuming that would be next on the agenda.

  “We don’t.” Wade’s tone held a firm note of finality. “There’s no way we can.”

  Shea’s anger rose again. “Says who? You? Who are you to decide who’s worth saving? I don’t remember voting you as in charge!”

  “You want to be in charge?” Wade’s tone mirrored Shea’s. “Then by all means, take over!”

  “Wade…” Bibi reached out to him, but her touch wasn’t enough to reel in his temper.

  “I don’t need this aggravation!”

  What followed was a din of noise, as Wade vented his frustration towards Bibi, and Shea did his towards Stacy. The women did their best to smooth things over, as Craddock, Jessica, and Josiah stayed out of it, but the effort was futile. If anything, tension and rage escalated as the men gleaned different comments said by the other.

  Reaching the brink of any kind of tolerance, Shea announced, “That’s it! I’ve had it! Pull over! I’m getting out!”

  “Fine!” Wade did a cursory check over his shoulder of the traffic behind him before merging.

  Panicking, Jessica cried, “Shea, no! Wade, please!” ‘Craddock!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do something!’

  ‘What? I’m not exactly qualified to mediate this level of dysfunction.’

  Panic remained, despite his attempt at a joke. ‘Please! They won’t make it on their own!’

  ‘Jessica, calm down. They’re not going anywhere, okay? Your brother has a big mouth, but he isn’t stupid.’

  ‘You don’t know him as well as I do. He has book smarts…’

  ‘But no common sense. Yeah. I see your point.’

  As soon as the van made it to the curb, Wade threw it in park, engine still running, and barked, “Go ahead! Leave!”

  With a defiant huff, Shea undid his seatbelt and moved to exit, only to be physically pulled back into his seat.

  “Shea! Knock it off!” Stacy’s demand was stern but quiet, as if she was trying to keep the others from hearing her.

  “He’s being unreasonable!” Shea complained, but it wasn’t Stacy who responded.

  “You both are!” Craddock exclaimed, then ordered, “Wade, drive. Shea isn’t going anywhere!” Wade grumbled something unintelligible and merged back into traffic. “Sticking together is the only way we’re going to get through this! Wade is in charge because he knows more about the Registry than all of us put together! And Wade, Shea has just been thrown a shocking piece of news! Of course he’s going to be upset! Try cutting him some slack, okay?”

  Both men offered a belligerent ‘fine’, Wade before Shea, and then the van fell silent. It was too much to ask that it remain that way for long, however.

  ‘He’s not going to let this go, is he?’

  ‘They’re our parents, Craddock. Do you blame him?’

  ‘No. I don’t. But baby, you know there’s nothing we can do, right? This isn’t like the Shea and Stacy rescue. There were only two agents. They were on public transit. Your parents are heavily guarded, in a house that is, for all intents and purposes, a prison. Impenetrable.’

  ‘I’m not talking about storming the place, guns blazing.’

  ‘Then what are you talking about?’

  ‘Not exactly sure, but off the top of my head… blackmail?’

  ‘Using what as the trump card?’

  She shrugged one shoulder. ‘I don’t know. Maybe we could threaten to out their organization? Tell them we’ll let all of Mengliad kind know just how horrible they really are?’

  ‘It is not a good idea to piss these people off, Jess. And threatening them will piss them off.’

  ‘It’s past the point of that! They’re already pissed at us!’

  ‘Yes, true, and I don’t think we should be adding to their anger.’

  She sighed in exasperation. ‘Fine! Do you have a better idea, then?’

  He could feel her tension and sense her frustration, but there was no way to ease her back from either with words alone. ‘I don’t. I have no ideas at all, because I don’t think it can be done. Right now, my only plan is to keep you and my unborn son safe from harm.’

  His right hand dropped to her abdomen while his left hand snaked around her; she snuggled up against him in response. ‘I just feel so helpless. Useless.’

  ‘You’re not useless,’ he insisted, ‘and I feel helpless, too. I would fix this if I could, you know I would. I just… don’t think there’s any way to fix it. I’m sorry.’

  There was no point in arguing with him – his mind was obviously made up – so she didn’t. Instead, she pushed all thoughts of rescuing her parents out of her head and focused on the baby growing inside her, beneath where his hand gently caressed. This was a much better topic of thought; she could feel and sense him relax.

  ‘Why are you so sure it’s a boy?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not. Wishful thinking, I guess. Why, did you not want a boy?’

  ‘I want this baby so much, whatever the gender.’

  ‘I know you’re only about six weeks along, but maybe we should start thinking about names?’

  She fought to keep a grin from exploding across her face; the atmosphere in the car was still tense, and would not be at all accepting of the happier expression.

  ‘Anything but Nina.’

  As soon as she thought it, he burst out laughing, bringing unwanted attention to them in the form of curious and angry stares.

  “What in the hell is so funny?” Shea asked, and Craddock groaned in response.

  ‘Sorry. How do I answer that?’

  ‘Tell him I tickled you,’ she suggested.

  ‘Why? I’m not even ticklish.’

  ‘It’ll take the heat off of you, and he doesn’t know that.’ She then took the decision away and upon herself. “I tickled him.”

  Shea scoffed. “It’s hardly an appropriate time to be horse-playing around, don’tcha think?”

  She scoffed right back at him. “But it is a good time to be snippy and start fights?”

  “I didn’t start it!” Shea snapped. “He did! And you should be pissed, too! Or don’t you care that our parents are being held prisoner?”

  Jessica settled her rising anger by taking a deep, cleansing breath before replying. “Don’t start, Shea, okay? Just don’t start.”

  Surprisingly, the next comment to be made didn’t come from Shea, but from Josiah, and i
n Jessica’s defense.

  “You shouldn’t be bitching at your sister! She fought for the plan to go and rescue you and Stacy! You should be thanking us for risking our lives for you! I know you’re going through shit here, but you’re not the only one who is! These people are pissed now! My family is in danger now, too, because they are! So is Craddock’s mom! And Wade’s family! You’re not the only one involved in this, so stop being so damn selfish!”

  The car fell silent after his rant. The only response that followed, and it was uttered almost a minute later, came from Shea.

  “Sorry.”

  ‘He doesn’t mean to be an ass. He just doesn’t handle stress well.’

  ‘Not to be insensitive, but he better get good at it, fast. This is far from over, and if he gears up every time something happens, or is discussed, he’s going to eventually get his ass kicked. Or get us all killed.’

  ‘I know. I’ll talk to him… as soon as we get to wherever.’

  She yawned mid-thought, her focus drifting and jumping. Craddock could tell she was exhausted. He could also tell she was trying to fight it off.

  ‘Don’t fight it. Sleep, while it’s still quiet. ‘Cause God knows if it’ll stay that way for long.’

  The battle was lost within seconds. Snuggled up against him, her head resting on his shoulder, her legs draped over his, she closed her eyes and surrendered.

  ****

  “Baby, we’re here.”

  “What?” Jessica struggled to open her eyes, to try and grasp what had been said, but she felt fuzzy and unable to due to being so deeply asleep.

  Her hazy sense of consciousness brought a grin to Craddock’s face, even with his elevated anxieties. “We’re here,” he repeated, kissing her hair. “At the safe house.”

  Bolting upright, confused, her eyes flew open, searching Craddock’s. “How the hell long was I asleep for?”

  “Only for about two hours. We’re in Connecticut now.” He smiled back at her as she fought to wrap her brain around that.

  ‘I thought we were driving back to California.’

  ‘Wade decided it would be better to get off the road as quick as possible. We stopped shortly after you nodded off, so that he could use a payphone to get this address from the people in Idyllwild.’

  As she attuned herself to him, her heart began to race. He was nervous. ‘What’s wrong? What happened while I was asleep? Why are you so anxious?’

  He started shaking his head to downplay the seriousness before she had even asked the first question. ‘Everything is fine, and nothing happened.’

  The wall was back up – the wall that impeded her view into his mind and soul.

  ‘Don’t, Craddock, please. Just tell me. Let me feel you.’

  Even though he was reluctant, he did as she asked, his thoughts narrowing in on one in particular.

  Gasping, she asked, ‘How? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I talked to them briefly, but they went back inside with everyone else when I told them to give us a few minutes alone.’

  ‘You don’t trust them?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know what kind of screening process this Pardaze Ahme group has for new members. What if they’re infiltrators for the Registry?’

  That was her immediate concern as well. “We’re fucked if they are.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So,” she asked after a few moments, “what do we do now?”

  “Now, we go inside. You need to eat.”

  “So that while we are, we can get ambushed?”

  “Wade didn’t seem too concerned.” He hoped that would help alleviate her anxieties, but she only threw him an incredulous glare.

  ‘What did Bibi and Josiah do when they saw them?’

  ‘Nothing. They seemed shocked, but pleasantly.’

  ‘So we just go in there and pretend everything is hunky-dory?’

  ‘For now. I’ll keep on guard, okay, baby? I’ll talk to Wade as soon as I can, and I’ll watch closely for anything suspicious.’

  Resigned to his plan, she snuggled up to him once again. “Why does shit keep happening to us?”

  As he shushed her and kissed her hair consolingly, he focused his thoughts on their unborn baby. It was a diversion tactic, and they both knew it, but it worked.

  ‘I hope he has your red hair and amazing green eyes.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m kinda partial to your amazing blue eyes.’

  ‘Okay,’ he amended, ‘your red hair and my blue eyes. But with your smile.’

  Her smile grew, but then a melancholy expression started taking its place. ‘I hope he can smile at all. His life is going to be so hard! He won’t be able to go to school, or make friends, or join Little League…’

  ‘We don’t know what the future holds. By then, maybe all of this will be behind us.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘At the moment, neither do I. But I think we owe it to ourselves to try and be at least a little bit optimistic.’

  ‘Optimism does no good in the long run. It just makes the reality crash that much harsher.’

  She was drowning in despair, and he was desperate to throw her a lifeline.

  ‘Please don’t think like that.’

  ‘I can’t help but think like that! How can you not be worried?’

  ‘Because it’s not time to be worried. It’s not time to worry about enrolling him in school, because he’s not even born yet. There’s a reason life happens one day at a time. Worry about today, today, and we’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Okay?’

  Sighing, she muttered, “I’ll try.”

  After whispering ‘thank you’, he inched away from her just enough to take her face in his hands. “I love you. Okay? I love you.” He then leaned in and settled his lips gently against hers.

  ‘I love you, too. So much.’

  When his thoughts shifted to slightly impure, she laughed, causing the kiss to end and their lips to part.

  “We can’t. What if they come out here looking for us?”

  Smirking, he answered, “You worry about that way too much.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t worry about it enough,” she shot back playfully, smirking as well. She then grew serious, and the smile dropped from their faces. ‘I need a minute, before I can face them.’

  ‘Can I please help you relax? We won’t take it all the way, if you don’t want to.’

  She took in a shaky breath, mostly in anticipation. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  He didn’t answer her directly, but he knew he didn’t have to. Slowly, he inched his hand under her shirt, his destination obvious. When he finally arrived, cupping her, she moaned in appreciation.

  ‘Your body is already changing.’

  ‘I know. I’m so sensitive right now. And what you’re doing feels so good.’

  ‘Tell me now how far you want to go. I won’t be able to stop if we wing it.’

  ‘I want to be with you, I’m just not so sure we should.’

  ‘We’re adults. We’re married. Who’s to say we shouldn’t?’

  ‘It seems, I don’t know, inappropriate, at a time like this.’

  ‘And who decides what is and isn’t appropriate, at this or that time?’

  ‘Shea, for one.’

  ‘Shea’s not here. He’s in the house.’

  ‘He could come out. Any of them could.’

  ‘Do you want me to go ask Josiah to stand guard?’

  ‘Then they would absolutely know what we’re doing out here!’

  ‘So what if they know? Jess, baby, I know you’re shy, and I love that about you, but it shouldn’t matter who knows that we’re intimate with each other, or when.’

  ‘I wish it didn’t bother me, but it does. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to be sorry. I understand. I really do, but I also want to help you through this. This… shyness you have about it.’

  After several moments, she finally relented. ‘Tell Josiah not to t
ell anyone why they can’t come out. Tell him the punishment will be death. I’ll meet you in the back.’

  Grinning, he kissed her lips quickly before moving to leave the van by way of the sliding door. ‘Be naked by the time I come back.’

  She laughed, watching as he approached and then entered the house through the door at the back of the garage they seemed to be parked in. As soon as he disappeared inside, she climbed over her seat, and then the other bench seat behind it, to the futon mattress in the back.

  Feeling self-conscious, which she knew he could sense, she slowly slumped down, beginning to undress by first removing her skirt and underwear. By the time she was rid of her shirt and bra, he was on his way back.

  ‘I kept it vague, but he’s not stupid. He knows.’

  ‘Did you threaten his life?’

  He laughed. ‘I did, but I really don’t think he’d say anything, anyway.’

  He climbed over the two seats after slamming the door and locking it, immediately starting to strip as he joined her. ‘Slow or fast?’

  ‘Slow, then fast, then slow again,’ she answered, and his slight grin grew wide.

  ‘Cool! A triple-hitter!’

  She admonished him mentally, but her annoyance didn’t last long. As soon as he gathered her to him and pressed his lips to hers, she dissolved.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tension filled her previously relaxed body as she stared at the door. On the other side, Jessica knew she would be bombarded with questions, odd stares, and information that would just cement how messed up their lives had become, and would continue to be. The precipice she felt she was standing at made her heart race.

  ‘What if she pulls me aside and asks me a bunch of questions?’

  ‘If she does, I’ll follow and stand nearby, out of sight, and help you through it.’

  ‘You know what I really want to do right now?’

  He did, but he asked her to tell him anyway. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I want to just jump in the van and run away.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Canada, maybe?’

  ‘What’s in Canada?’

  ‘Canadians?’

  He chuckled, but then told her seriously, ‘Our problems won’t disappear, just because we’re in another country. The Registry is there, too.’