SURVIVORS: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 2) (31 page)

EPILOGUE / Tuesday 6:31 AM

About twenty minutes later, Brendan stepped up to the open toilet to relieve himself.

A man Brendan recognized came closer in the gloom. It was the guy with the star tattoo on his neck.

“Smart to come out against the New World Order, the fourth Reich,” he said. “Go on record. Smart.”

Brendan found it hard to urinate with the star man standing beside him. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” the star man said. He leaned on the wobbly, chest-high partition on the side of the toilet area. He looked out through the bars. In the corridor beyond the holding cell, high barred windows allowed a glimpse of the breaking dawn, salmon-pink with hints of yellow.

“It ain’t Jews in camps,” the star man went on. “Know what I mean? It ain’t Jews in camps, but that’s exactly what it is. Prison camps right here in our own country – people talk about how much money it takes to feed a convict like me. Man, I been jumping out since I was a kid. Been bitched. You know? They don’t talk about how much white money is made. They don’t talk about the camps built to put the Mexicans. To put terrorists. American terrorists. You don’t get your shot, boom, they lock you up. You don’t play ball, you say boo, man, they on the Erie Canal, and boom, they lock you up. Smart to come out against that shit.”

Brendan flushed. The gurgle of the toilet and clanging of the pipes seemed to vibrate through the whole building. “Why is it smart?”

The man, who had been looking out of the cell, or at anywhere but Brendan, now turned his gleaming eyes on him.

“Judgment Day, man.”

Brendan was silent.

“It’s right here, right on Earth, man, when there’s a new day. When we start over, it will be remembered, what you did. That’s why I say it’s smart.”

Brendan didn’t know whether to get away from this man or not. He stood where he was, waiting to see if star man had any more to say. People who dragged the mops and worked the tolls and lived in tenements, had holes in their socks, did time, they had real perspective. This guy had said he was bitched – a habitual offender.

“It’s economic slavery now,” star man said. He had tight cornrows of ropy, blond hair. A pinkish scar cut across below his jaw, and along his neck, as if someone had once tried to cut his throat. “We reach in anywhere in the world we want and we take what they got. We put ‘em in debt, see what I’m saying, and then they work off that debt by giving us all they got.” He shrugged. “We don’t gas ‘em, but they kill themselves working – they commit suicide, see what I mean, or they get disease, or if their leaders resist, we send in the boys and
pop
, then we put someone else there who is . . . what’s the word.”

“Amenable,” Brendan said.

“Yeah, yeah. Amendable.” Star man shrugged, and stuck out his lower lip in an endearing,
what do I know
expression.

“People be waking up to this shit, man, bet. And them motherfuckers don’t like that. They don’t like it. That waddn’t the first time the shit happened.”

“What shit?”

“Nine-eleven. That waddn’t the first time. And it won’t be last. That shit is happening again. And it’s gonna come right here, right on American soil, right in our backyards, just like the Revolutionary War.”

The whole conversation had caused Brendan’s thoughts to drift back to Argon, and Argon’s sister, Mena, and their parents.

Then the star man turned and wandered away, mumbling to himself as he went.

* * *

Jennifer Aiken spent the night in the hospital. As day broke, she came out of a drug-induced haze and into a bright, terrifying moment of lucidity. This moment followed on the heels of whatever half-conscious dream she had been having, one she could only recall a few snapshots from, impressions left in the spongy matter of her brain, like footsteps on brand new plush carpeting, already starting to fade as the fibers righted themselves again.

In the dream she had been high in some tower – not surprising, but not a city high-rise or skyscraper either, but something much older, with massive alabaster-white columns atop tremendous plinth slabs. She had been looking down on the city far below, watching as a battalion of soldiers marched up the avenue. A voice had drifted through her dozing mind – she thought now that it might have been C. Northcote Parkinson, or someone like him who she’d studied in school.

Parkinson was saying that democracy tended towards socialism, which tended towards chaos, which created dictatorships.

Which created revolutions.

And she felt something press against her heart like an icy knife blade. Someone had appeared beside her, and she turned and saw Brendan Healy. He bled from wounds she couldn’t locate, just a pool of blood at his feet, and she had screamed, and then she had found herself looking out the window of the hospital room, suddenly assured with startling clarity that everything she cherished, everything she knew and loved in the world, was in danger.

She pressed the call button for the nurse. A moment later, one arrived, asking what she could do for Jennifer and how she was feeling. Jennifer interrupted her and asked to speak to the FBI man sitting outside of the door, sure that one was posted there. The nurse looked her over and checked her vitals and then brought the agent into the room. It was not Petrino, but some kid from Quantico who looked all of twenty-four years old, someone they posted to keep an eye on her so he wouldn’t get in the way of whatever other important shit they were doing.

“I need my phone,” she told him.

He looked at her, speechless for a moment. She realized he might have been posted outside her door in the night and not had a look at her yet. She imagined how bad she looked.

“Um,” he said. “Yeah, yeah.” He gaped around the room; looking like he couldn’t find a clue in a detective store.

“It’s probably with my things,” she said. “Right there, that little dresser there. Bag on top.”

He went over to the plain white dresser and started rummaging in the bag. This went on for a while and she could feel her blood rising. She wasn’t usually someone with a quick temper, but the dream had left her unsettled, to say the least. Awaking with a feeling that everything you knew and loved and took on faith was in the worst kind of jeopardy did not exactly put you in a good mood.

Finally he found the phone, holding it up a little and barely able to contain his sense of accomplishment. He was a handsome kid, and came back across the room wearing a wide grin on his square face, eyes shining. He handed her the phone as if it were some precious artifact he’d recovered. She might have even dated someone like him, she thought, back in the day, before John Rascher. Now she was a frail, half-poisoned wreck of a woman on a hospital bed in one of those flappy little gowns.

She realized her head was getting all swimmy; these random thoughts and bursts of anger weren’t happening for no reason. She hadn’t asked the nurse but she was sure they had her on some sort of sedative as the Prussian blue worked through her system.

She looked at her phone and saw she had a ridiculous thirty-three voice messages. She scrolled through her missed call list. Most of them came from people she knew. Of those that didn’t, one number showed up repeatedly.

Brendan Healy. She was sure of it.

She poked at the screen and then put the phone to her ear. The agent in the room was watching her – she’d almost forgotten he was there. When she looked at him he grew sheepish and didn’t know where to direct his gaze.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

“Yes, absolutely,” he said. He started backing away, performing a little unconscious half-bow as he went. It would almost have been charming if it hadn’t, for some reason, thrown her full-force back into the realm of her dream, where she had stood between those massive pillars, looking down at the marching army, hearing the sound of its million leather boots slap the pavement, like some machine with its pistons pumping.

She turned away from the agent and looked out the window, not wanting him to see her stricken with this horrific feeling, to see her face turn grey, her eyes fill with terror. As she stared out the window, she worried for a split second that the feeling would never go away, that she would be stuck in this mental state forever, and then a voice broke the spell.

She listened to Brendan Healy’s message.

“Ms. Aiken. It’s Brendan Healy.” He paused, and she could hear voices in the background, and the clank of metal. “I haven’t called anyone from jail since I was twenty-two and I called my dad. I was a cop for three years, a detective for about a minute, and a P.I. with no cases, after that. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.” He paused again. She heard muffled voices. “So I’m at the 11
th
precinct jail, but I don’t think for long. A lot’s happened. I don’t know what you know, what you don’t. I don’t know if you got out; I can only hope they came for you. I hope you’re safe.”

Jennifer felt a tear track down her face. She wiped it away, but another one followed, and she left it, and watched the daylight continue to spread in the sky.

“I need your help.” Another pause. “I keep thinking about this stupid shit. About bad guys and good guys. And that it’s all mixed up now. Everybody blames everybody else. But there are no good guys and no bad guys – and there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re all good. You know? I’ve listened to everyone’s lies – in the last five years I’ve heard everything. If someone was talking, they were lying. They were cheating. But that’s not them. That’s this world. That’s this system we’ve got right now; what we’ve created.”

A final pause, and a muffled voice that was louder, closer. “I got to go. But, it’s like . . . it’s like this really is the end, you know? After all the bullshit, this really is the end.”

She could hear the pain in his voice, and the resignation, and her tears came faster.

“This is the end, but we don’t die. We don’t die from it. Whatever it is, whatever is wrong in the world, wherever we’re headed with all of this, we don’t die. We live through it.”

There was an unpleasant beep and the message ended. She pulled the phone away from her ear and checked the screen to verify it. He’d run out of time.

Jennifer dropped the phone on the bed beside her. She stayed on her side, looking out the window.

She felt nauseous in her stomach, sore in her joints. Dear God, she had lost some of her hair. She would have to cut it all off. Screw it. Just cut it off. Soon as she got out of here. Change of clothes, a goddamn buzz cut, and she would go and find him.

But first, she slept.

THE END

TJB

1 November 2013 –

20 June 2014

Etown

USA

For Gianna, and all of the survivors.

“DAYBREAK” THE STUNNING CONCLUSION TO THE TITAN TRILOGY IS AVAILABE NOW!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0104S0DD6

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0104S0DD6

Find out the truth in this intense and gripping conclusion to the best-selling thriller series. Will former Detective Brendan Healy survive, and can Agent Jennifer Aiken finally expose the conspiracy which is exploiting young women and goes to the heart of government?

CHARACTER LIST

Warning: contains some spoilers if you haven’t read HABIT (Book one of the Titan Trilogy) SURVIVORS is book two of the trilogy. Book three, DAYBREAK, is available now.

Brendan Healy
– trained as a neuroscientist, spent three years as a cop in Hawthorne, NY, and a few months as a detective for the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department where he had one case – the murder of Rebecca Heilshorn – he is a widower, and a recovering addict

Olivia Jane
– Mental Health Therapist, works as a grief counselor on the Rebecca Heilshorn case for her brother, Kevin

Rebecca Heilshorn
– a young woman from an affluent background who wound up working for a high-end escort service known as XList where she sometimes used the alias “Danice”

Kevin Heilshorn
– Rebecca’s brother

Alexander Heilshorn
(aka “Bops”) – Rebecca and Kevin’s father, a wealthy Obstetrician from New York City and a partner in a global private equity firm

Greta Heilshorn
(aka “Ma’am”) – Alexander Heilshorn’s wife

Leah Heilshorn
– Rebecca’s illegitimate child, who lives with Alexander and Greta

Seamus Argon
– partner to Brendan Healy when working in Hawthorne, for the Mount Pleasant Police; Argon has saved Brendan from self-destruction more than once

Lawrence Taber
– Sheriff of Oneida County and long-time friend to Seamus Argon

Ambrose Delaney
– Lead Detective on the Rebecca Heilshorn murder

Deputy Mark Bostrom
– first on-scene at the site of the RH murder

Russell Gide
– a friend of Seamus Argon’s from AA

Santos
– also a friend of Seamus Argon’s from AA

Officer Leonard Dutko
– Argon’s fellow police officer at Mount Pleasant PD

Jennifer Aiken
– a lawyer, special prosecutor for the Department of Justice, Jennifer gets involved when her Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit (HTPU) takes an interest in the Rebecca Heilshorn murder

John Rascher
– a man Jennifer dated in law school and also a special prosecutor with the DOJ

Sloane Dewan
– a young woman Brendan meets at an AA meeting who has a unique past and relationship to Seamus Argon

Dustin Brown
– a low-brow sort who does certain work for Alexander Heilshorn

Gerard Healy
– Brendan’s late father, a former thoracic surgeon in NYC who sat on several boards with Alexander Heilshorn, including The Foundation, an advisory committee on medical and technological considerations for the government

Kim Edward Stemp
– a lover of Rebecca’s who was also her driver and bodyguard, later becoming a Born-again Christian when Rebecca left him

Donald Kettering
– another lover of Rebecca’s who owns a hardware store in Boonville, NY