Tesser: A Dragon Among Us (A Reemergence Novel) (25 page)

"I've already sent a team. They should be there momentarily."

"A team? Is it just me or are we at that point of no return here Mr. Host? We're about to kidnap a pregnant woman because she's carrying the baby of a rogue dragon. If this gets out, Fitzgerald Industries is done. You realize that, right?"

"Your father did things far more risqué than this, Mr. Fitzgerald. The bold control the future. The bold change the world. Are you bold, Mr. Fitzgerald?"

Alec thought of his father. He wanted to build the company to be ten times what his father had left him. His unending ambition constantly burned in his chest. Never satisfied. It was the curse of being a Fitzgerald. A Fitzgerald could never be satisfied, not fully. "Grab her. Please be careful though. We can figure it out later, I suppose."

"Agreed. Once the woman is safely in a secure room, we will consider going after Tesser."

"You know where he lives?"

"My associate Mr. Follower was able to… follow Tesser to a home in the Back Bay. He's currently under observation."

"Mr. Tracker? Mr. Follower? Names regardless, you really have your shit together, Mr. Host. I'm halfway between horrified and impressed."

"An accurate assessment of the impact we frequently inspire, Mr. Fitzgerald," Mr. Host said as Mr. Tracker shut the briefcase and removed it from the desk. The strange younger man had still not said a word.

"We?"

"‘We,’ indeed. I will advise you when Miss Rindahl is in our custody. We will then move on the Tesser. Get some rest in the meantime. You will be very busy once we have her and the dragon in our possession. The leaps in science that will be at your fingertips will make all this unpleasantness seem idle. I would contact your human resources department and tell them to begin interviewing for more staff." Mr. Host and Mr. Tracker didn't wait for Alec's response. They simply walked away and left the office with a quiet click of the door lock.

What am I doing?
Alec turned and grabbed a crystal decanter filled with very expensive scotch and poured a tall drink.
Mr. Host and his men aren't covered by my human resources department. Weird that they are all contractors. Why does that thought frighten me so goddamn much?

His hand shook as he drank.

Chapter Thirty-One

Matty

Matty sat alone in her apartment at the kitchen table. It was late in the evening after her tragic meeting at the coffee shop with Tesser, the father of her freshly conceived child. Her chair was pulled out on nearly the very spot where her underwear had hit the floor the night she'd conceived the tiny baby growing inside her. One of Matty's hands drifted down into her lap to press against her still flat belly. There was no movement to feel yet. No evidence of the wondrous and unexpected life inside her. The impossible life.

An open bottle of vodka sat on the table in front of her. Next to it, a glass of tap water beside a bottle of prenatal vitamins. The items represented the ultimate choice, placed directly in her path by her own volition. Drink the vodka and commit to visiting the abortion clinic as soon as she possibly could. She would leave behind the risk of abandonment by Tesser and the enormous mountain of responsibility of not only being a mother, but also potentially being a single mother. Years of soccer practice, PTA meetings, dance recitals, Christmas concerts, wrapping unending amounts of thankless birthday presents, scraped knees, bad first dates, and broken hearts would all be avoided. It was in truth, the bottle of vodka, the easier way out. The great goodbye.

The glass of water and the taking of a single pink pill filled with precious nutrients meant instead of turning away from the storm of all those scary thoughts, she would turn into it. It meant potentially being a mother without support. It meant years of basketball practice, a first step, a first word, the wonder of whether or not the baby's eyes would be green like hers or gold like Tesser's. It meant buying fun wrapping paper, going to the park, and sitting in the front row at a wedding she couldn't stop crying at. It was the ultimate hello.

Both decisions were horrifying. Should she decide to walk away from the baby, she'd be abandoning a second chance to be a mother. Her first chance at creating life with Max had failed so miserably, so painfully. Poor, little Aiden. He never had a birthday. This could be her opportunity to make things right. Give someone to the world.

Matty felt a growing warmth inside her, and she knew it was confidence. It was the feeling of commitment. The primal sense of doing what was right. It grew right beside her baby. Tesser's baby. Matty unscrewed the colored cap to the vitamins and tipped the bottle until a pill fell out into the palm of her hand. Bottle down, she popped the nurturing medicine into her mouth and downed the pill with the entire glass of water. She picked up the cap to the vodka and screwed it tight.

Tesser or not, this baby will be born. This is a second chance I can't give away.

There was a knock at the door of her apartment.

Who the hell is that?
Matty stood up and pushed her chair in, just as her mother had always asked her to do. Some habits last. Her Beacon Hill neighbors didn't knock this late. It also struck her as strange that the lobby concierge would come upstairs instead of just calling her place directly. With a shrug, she walked over to the tiny peephole in the door. She put her eye to the hole and looked into the hall.

Her heart stuttered when she recognized the head of security for Fitzgerald Industries. Her mouth dried up, and filled with the acidic taste of chalky bile. There was no good reason for him to be here. His purpose couldn't be good.

Matty checked the chain on the door and turned the deadbolt. She let the door open inwards a few inches, and she leaned over into the space between the door and the door jam. "Hello, Mr. Host. Very peculiar to have you here at my home at this hour. Can I help you?"

Mr. Host tried to smile, but all it did was chill Matty to the bone.

"Good evening, Miss Rindahl; Sorry to bother you. I came here at the request of Mr. Fitzgerald. Apparently time is a factor. The doctor discovered something amiss with your pregnancy, and they'd like you to come in immediately for testing and observation."

Something felt very wrong to Matty. "Dr. Wooster told you about the pregnancy? Doesn't that violate some kind of right of mine? Patient-client privilege?"

Mr. Host licked his lips searching for a response. It took only a flash of a second, but it told Matty everything she needed to know.
He's lying.
 

"Miss Rindahl, I can't speak to your rights, but I do know they were very insistent. I'm here to help. They need to see you immediately."

"If I need to go to a hospital, I'll head to one of my choosing. Thank you for the information Mr. Host. I'll see you soon." Matty smiled at the creeper outside the door and went to shut it. But the door caught on something. She looked down and saw Mr. Host's foot stooping it from closing. Her heart stopped and a lump of fear formed in her throat.

"I'm sorry, Miss Rindahl. Your wishes will need to take a backseat to the needs of your child," he said without emotion.
 

Matty looked up sharply, feeling her body flood with adrenaline and fear for her life, and the life inside her belly. Standing behind Mr. Host were two new arrivals. She recognized them as other security men from the Project Amethyst building. One was the same man who gave her the blue envelope that contained her job offer.

"Fuck off!" She screamed.

I have to get to a phone. My phone.

"Think of the baby, Miss Rindahl," Mr. Host said emotionlessly.

I'm going to die here. They're going to shoot me in the head and scrape my baby out of me. They don't even care about me. I know it. I know it.
Matty abandoned the door and scampered over to the kitchen counter where her phone was. She turned it on with addled fingers and started to dial 911. She grabbed a long kitchen knife from her cutting block and held it in shaking fingers. Matty held the phone to her ear, awaiting the 911 operator's calm voice. She watched as Mr. Host's long and fluid fingers reached into the gap between the door and around it, searching for the end of the chain so he could undo it.

"Fuck off, asshole! I'm calling 911! The cops will be here in no time!" It was a hollow threat, but it was all she had.

Mr. Host's fingers stopped moving. For a second Matty thought her threat worked. Instead, the trio of men in the hallway laughed in an unearthly unison that drained her of hope.
 

Mr. Host's voice came again and caused her to shudder in fear. "Miss Rindahl, we're employing a signal jammer downstairs. There is no cell service available to you. Your ruse is clever, but will only delay the inevitable. Once again, I ask you to
think
of your baby
." The man's white hand went back to its work on the chain. He'd have it open in just a few seconds.

On instinct, on impulse, she scampered forward and slashed at the knuckles and fingers with her knife. The sharp carving knife did as it should have, and cleanly lopped off two of the fingers and half severed a third. A tiny squirt of blood (one much smaller than Matty would've expected) shot across the interior side of her door, leaving stark evidence of the violence. Alarmingly, Mr. Host didn't yank his hand away fast. Instead he pulled it around the edge of the door slowly and under control. His foot and hand out of the way, Matty slammed the broad white door with the blood spatter on it shut. She twisted the deadbolt closed.

From the other side of the door she heard Mr. Host again, "Think of the baby, Miss Rindahl."

"Think of the baby," another soulless voice said

Matty screamed. She turned and ran towards the three large windows that framed the wall of her living room. If she were to open one, she could get outside to the fire escape and freedom on the street below.

I need to tell Tesser somehow. I need to get him a message. He'd know what to do. He'd come to help me. He'd have to.

Matty crossed the room as the phantoms in the hallway knocked on her front door. She could still hear them telling her to, "Think of the baby." She screamed again as she sat the knife down on the windowsill. Her fingers clumsily twisted the window latch and lifted the heavy wooden frame and large window. She grabbed the knife and started through the escape as the front door exploded inward. As she dived through the window onto the cold and hard iron fire escape, she saw Mr. Host and his two goons over her shoulder enter the apartment. They moved slowly with patient intent. They already knew how this would end. They merely needed to suffer through this waste of their time she had visited upon them.

Matty's shoulder popped out of joint with an eruption of agony as she hit the iron grate of the escape. Darkness brought on by the pain nearly overtook her, but she clawed out of it and got to her feet. Her left arm felt numb below the excruciating pain of the dislocation. Matty fought it and ran to the end of the steel platform where the stairs looped around and headed downward towards the safety of the public street. Then from the street below, she heard an impossible voice, a voice from an impossible place.

"Think of the baby, Miss Rindahl."

How?

It was another voice, but the same. "Think of the baby, Miss Rindahl." Then the two voices became four. Then the four became ten. It was an evil chorus. Matty stopped moving down the steel stairs and looked over the railing down into the small back alley she'd hoped meant her escape. Parked directly below her was a large black SUV with tinted windows. It reminded her of the large trucks the Secret Service used to protect the President. For some reason, this vehicle felt sinister. More black. It absorbed the light and gave back no reflections. The vehicle had a unit of Mr. Host's men standing around it, and even though she knew they were all different men, her mind muddled their faces into a single image of Mr. Host himself.
 
They all looked like him. They all
sounded
like him. It couldn't be.

Matty looked up at the window of her apartment and saw Mr. Host leaning out of the window she'd leapt through. He looked upon her as if she were a petulant child. He was absent of malice and that worried her more than if he'd shown anger. She could understand anger or madness. This was worse.

"Miss Rindahl, please think of your baby and come with us peacefully," Mr. Host said a final time.

Matty's mind fractured in that moment as her eyes connected to her mind and she saw Mr. Host's true faces.

His legion of faces.

A kindness came to her as she blacked out.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Tesser