The Secret (Book 1 of the Secret Series)

Chapter 56.

CORDEL

Cordel watched as Kyle wrote down every assassin headquarter that he could think of.

Science, medical, sectioned into deadliest assassins, deadly, and training. There was the burial for the loyal assassins to the death. There was the sectioned lower level assassins, under the command of one from the headquarter. That's what they were, except Kyle. Kyle had been the head of the assassins in that group and only played under for Katara's sake.

There were places all around the world that Cordel hadn't even heard of, and he knew a lot about them.

"So there is no way we are going to narrow it down to one for sure place that they are at." Roberts said. "What do we do?"

"Well," said Jonathan. "We start with what we know. Kyle, what do we know?"

"We know that they aren't going to China or Italy. It's too far. They wouldn't go to France, because out of all the places that need one, they don't have a medical facility. That is the first place that they would go, so that they could patch up any wounds. There was a lot of blood, so we know that someone was hit. Depending on the person, they may not even go to the medical center. They won't be there long and I'm sure they moved throughout the night." he sighed. "I don't know what they want with her, so I don't know where they would be specifically. I just know that it won't be there."

"Okay. We have those out of the way." said Jarrod. "What can we think of that might be good?"

"Do you think that they would want to train her to become an assassin?" asked Caleb.

"She'd just turn on them." Cordel shook his head. "I know her. Unless something is tying her down, making her stay, she won't give it a second thought. She will just turn." he looked at Kyle and Kyle nodded. He knew. He'd done it to keep her at their headquarters. She'd stayed to protect her family that she knew, while he kept her there, to protect her. It was how it was.

"Could they have taken her to another set of assassins, to be tried?" asked Roberts. They were quiet.

"So, I guess that all we have left is the science lab and some units." Kyle sighed and Cordel looked at him.

"Some, there are hundreds out there."

"Not in the states." he answered. "There are twenty in the states and ten in a five hundred mile radius. They wouldn't go far. They don't have time to go far." Cordel sighed. He looked down. "She's sick Dell." Cordel ran a hand over his face, and then looked at him. "She has been for a while. They know that, I mean you saw her, it wasn't stress that you saw. That was pain and sickness. I heard Max and Sam talking about it a couple of days ago. She hasn't been eating and she keeps feeling sick. She almost passed out the other day, when she came to me-"

"It's not the first time." Cordel whispered. "She doesn't say anything, but I've seen it. She has been sick pretty bad before. Justin said that she was throwing up for days, she couldn't hold anything down. He said that there was blood mixed into it sometimes." Kyle grew pail. "What? What does that mean?"

"T-the last time I saw that... was when she was five." he whispered. "When we moved... just before, she started getting really sick, it was after the guy came and got her, a guy that came and got her every six months. I asked her what it was once, that they took her to... because she always came back different, something always changed, but all she said, was that she was going to get better..." he trailed off. He turned and looked at the paper, then stood and walked over to the dresser that was in the corner of the room and opened it. He pulled out some clothes and threw them to the floor, then pulled out a box. He quickly brought it back to the desk that he had been sitting at.

"What is that?" Cordel questioned as Kyle opened it and produced a syringe filled with a clear liquid. "Kyle?" slowly, Kyle looked at him.

"This was given to me, two months ago." he said. "A guy named Grayson. Tyler, I think was his first name. He said that I would need it soon, but it wasn't for me, it was for Baby... for Katara." Cordel took the syringe and looked at it.

"Why?" he asked. Kyle shrugged and took it again.

"All I know is that he said I was supposed to use it to help her, but I can't do that if she isn't here." he sighed and put it away. "He told me that when I used it, it was to go in her neck, where the scars of previous injections have been."

"What?" Cordel laughed roughly. "She doesn't have-"

"She actually does." Kyle interrupted. "She always has. They aren't hard to miss, if you know what you are looking for, but when you watch someone like her grow up the way we did, you notice things that others won't. When she would come home from wherever she was, she would always have new pink dots on her neck. That was why I asked her what they were. She's had them all her life." he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He looked exhausted and Cordel felt what he saw on him. They were all tired, but until they figured this out, they wouldn't get much sleep.

"So what do we do?" Cordel asked. "You think they could be at the medical center after all?" Cordel didn't think so, but where else could they be. They were running out of options, which normally would be a good thing, but in this case, when you didn't know what they wanted with her in the first place, it wasn't too good.

"I honestly don't know. "Kyle said. "This would normally be where Sam comes in with his tracker friends from the gangs he controls. There are some advantages to having a brother with those kinds of connections. Others, when he's trying to hunt you down, because he thinks that you would really kill the only sister you have, because you are trying to protect her, it's not too fun."

"The thing with that," Cordel pointed at him. "You could have done it a different way. You didn't have to... you didn't have to do that." he nodded, pain in his face. He had hated doing it, Cordel could see, but he could have done it another way. He hadn't had to do the things to her that he did, to make them think he was ready to kill her.

"I regret everything that I have done to her." he whispered. "But I really had no choice in what I was doing. I wanted to protect her and the way to do that was by keeping her there and making sure that I was still good with the higher ups. They are not easy to please and when they saw what I was doing, they made it clear that I was to keep doing it."

"They would have come and got her eventually though, wouldn't they have?" Roberts asked.

"Eventually." nodded Kyle. "Who knows when exactly, but they would have. Just me turning rouge got them to move quicker than they had planned. What they are doing to her now, I have no idea, but I intend on figuring it out. My sister means too much to me, to let her die in some place she doesn't know, some place that she is scared of. I want my sister... I want her to die peacefully and happy... as happy as she can be. I want her... I want her to live, but I know that it's too far. She's been fighting it for so long and it's finally winning. I just hope we get her back before it's time."

"We can still help her." Caleb said. He was so quiet. It was obvious, that he loved her. It was the way that he looked and spoke her name, the way he spoke of her. "We can't give up on her just yet. She's losing strength, yeah, but we can still help her. Maybe... maybe that is what that stuff is for. Maybe that stuff will save her."

They were all quiet as they looked at Caleb, then each other. Could he be right? Could that liquid be some miracle serum that could save Katara? Could she be saved?

They were all quiet as they thought about this.