The Fugitive

The Aftermath

The first thing I felt was the cold, slick floor against my cheek. As the black around the edges of my vision receded, I sat up and winced. Gingerly, I brought a hand up to the side of my neck. What had happened?

"Nick," a voice said. It sounded as if they were underwater, far away and yet oddly close at the same time. I muttered something in response, but it was unintelligible even to me.

My eyes landed on the floor around me. Sweat and blood and....a pair of sunglasses?

Sunglasses. Why were sunglasses on the floor? Why was there blood and sweat? I touched my face, where my glasses should have been.

Where they weren't.

My lungs began to constrict. I was exposed. My eyes were exposed.

A figure knelt down in front of me, picking up the sunglasses. "Here." A very familiar voice.

Suddenly, the glasses were in front of me. I took them from the waiting hand and slipped them on, then looked at the person knelt beside me.

Brook.

"Brook?" I asked.

The soft expression visibly changed. She winced and suddenly became much more withdrawn. "Sievers."

Aldridge, not Brook. Brook had disappeared a long time ago. The fight came flooding back to me, and I jumped to my feet. Aldridge got up, too, and moved to stand by Maisie.

I curled and uncurled my fists, looking around the room. "What....what happened?"

Maisie opened her mouth to speak, and her eyes darted toward Aldridge.

"You lost," someone interrupted. I turned to see Finn approaching, followed by Derek holding a bloody towel to his nose.

A low growl emitted from my throat. "How?" I demanded. "I....I was winning."

Aldridge shrugged, almost sympathetic. Almost. "Finn did say you had to beat everyone."

She had knocked me out. She had stolen the victory from my grasp. I groaned. "This isn't fair!" Taking a step back, I searched for the words. "Surely you can't count that. It was obvious I was going to beat Maisie."

"Don't be a sore loser," Derek warned.

Frustration welled up inside me. My hands were clenched so tightly, my knuckles turned white. I had been cheated.

I needed to be alone. I needed fresh air.

I ran from the room, desperate to reach the outside again. I was done with this ridiculous bunker.

And no one tried to stop me.

Emily Anderson's POV

The room I stood in was filled with high-ranking officials of the FBI. They all sat at rapt attention, watching me intently. After all, I had called this meeting. A mass murderer was on the loose, and he clearly had help on the inside.

"We've exhausted every possible resource," I explained. "Voice recognition, skeletal structure, birth registry, even eyewitness accounts." I pointed at the enlarged, grainy photo beside me. "The man who calls himself Derek is our only link to Nick Sievers, and it hasn't turned up anything. It's as if he never existed."

One person in the room, an aging man with a receding hairline, steepled his fingers and spoke. "The connection you have drawn between Mr. Sievers and our mystery person is based on far too many assumptions for my liking."

Then give me a better lead. But I bit my tongue. This meeting was supposed to help, not further divide me from the other officials. My "wild goose chase" for a dead man hiding in Canada had many people thinking I should be replaced. They didn't think my priorities were in order.

If only they knew Nick Sievers like I did.

"You're right," I said. "I wish we had more solid evidence, but unfortunately no one has been able to uncover any yet."

The disapproving looks the officials gave me did nothing to help my temperament.

"Does anyone have a suggestion?"

A woman in the back of the room in her mid-forties spoke up. "Maybe you just aren't searching the right records."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Surely he forgot to scrub one of the registries, right? Maybe he bought a firearm. That would have put him on the gun registry."

I nodded. Maybe. Just maybe.

I did know one thing, though.

Our lead hadn't gone cold yet.