This is going to be my first long work, so I hope you like it.
Thanks to my beta, KayValo87, who has helped point out any issues in the plot.
Chapter One
She had been staring up at the ceiling for hours. Every time she closed her eyes, a bomb exploded, a sniper added another notch to their belt, or another amateur assassin took the fall for their employer. Every time she closed her eyes, there was a knife at her throat, a gun to her head, a needle to her vein, or a pillow to her face.
Any other time of her life, they would have said she was paranoid. She wished that it was only paranoia.
She burrowed deeper under the blankets, trying to force out the chill that had settled in her bones. The paradoxically giddy feeling of exhaustion was keeping her as awake as the visions behind her eyelids. She just hoped that the nightmare would be over soon so that she could go back to her life before—all this.
"Meredith? Are you awake?" A wide ribbon of light appeared on the ceiling, creeping in from the hallway. "We need to leave soon for the courthouse. You can rest a little more when we get there, but we have to go."
"I'm awake." Meredith Keegan pushed back the covers, wincing as the cool air of the room brushed against her exposed skin.
She dressed quickly, trying to get that jittery, shaky tiredness out of her body with action and activity. Even the hot shower only made the cold in her bones seem dull. Dress pants, blouse, sweater, jacket… She might as well look nice if she was going to deal with the court today. Today, these clothes were her armor.
"Do you want anything to eat before we leave?" Marshal Valdez asked. "There's cereal. And a couple bagels."
Meredith could see that the woman had a bagel—already half gone—as well as a glass of orange juice, a small bowl of yogurt and nectarine peels sitting beside her plate. Her stomach spun in an unpleasant way, and Meredith had to grip the door frame and take deep breaths to keep from collapsing.
Marshal O'Neill, the one who had come to wake her up, had only a cup of coffee which paired nicely with the dark circles under his eyes. She sat beside him because, although she didn't drink coffee, the smell of it reminded her of better, simpler times before her world went to Hell.
To keep up appearances, Meredith grabbed a plain bagel and started picking it apart, putting a few crumbs in her mouth every so often. 3:53AM... The minutes crawled by, measured by the clink of Valdez's spoon in her bowl and every sip of O'Neill's coffee... 3:54... Why did the time go so slowly when you were waiting for everyone else? Sip, clink, sip, clink, sitting in that uncomfortable silence.
"We should get going," Marshal O'Neill finally said, putting the coffee cup in the sink. "The sooner we get the courthouse, the better."
It was odd to be out on the street before dawn had broken. New York had a thriving night-life, but even that had died down by 4AM. The only people left out on the streets were stoners and drunks, stumbling home to their cold, empty beds.
Meredith breathed in the frigid February air, breathing out a cloud of steam a moment later. It had been so long since she had been outside. Because it had been declared unsafe, she had entered the apartment in the dead of night, spent days and weeks watching movies, reading books and generally being bored to death. Of course it was unsafe for the key witness in a murder trial to wander the streets on her own, but the fear they had instilled in her robbed her of sleep.
There could be a bomb attached to the undercarriage or wired into the engine. We could die as soon as he turns the key in the ignition…
The large SUV roared to life, thankfully without an explosion. There were no murderers in the back seat. There was no eerie red or green laser point trained on her chest. Deep breath... buckle the seat belt…deep breath...routine will keep you alive…deep breath... I am calm...What was that click?! Oh, they're buckled…It's fine, we're all fine…
She blamed the movies for her fear, but she knew that it could happen. She had a friend who had seen the murder, too. His apartment exploded two days later.
No, think about the end of the day. The murderer will go to jail and I can disappear.
The streets were empty along their route. Far away sirens were muted by the bullet-resistant windows and the cold dark streets disappeared into fog in the distance. A sudden chill slithered up and down Meredith's spine and she pulled tighter the thin sweater she had selected from the meager wardrobe the federal marshals had provided her with. They had decided it wasn't safe for her to return to her apartment, a decision that was justified when the marshals who had been sent to get some essentials for her triggered an explosion. Marshal Valdez—Maya, as she insisted on being called—had mentioned that the man she was testifying against had apparently hired several known hitmen after Meredith had gone to the police. This was an incentive to stay inside, lock all windows and doors, and stay out of the field of view. The Bureau didn't think that any of them had gotten their hands on the location of the safe house, but neither she nor they were willing to take any chances.
Marshal O'Neill turned down a street before a bridge that spanned the East River, a road that Meredith had walked down before her world had turned upside down. There had been times she spent her whole Saturday afternoon on that river. It was darker and sinister now. Who knew what might happen if she walked along its bank now? What about after the trial, after her face had been plastered across news screens and websites? Could she walk the streets in safety when Meredith Reine Keegan had ceased to exist?
"You okay back there?" Maya asked, twisting to look at the younger woman in the back seat. "Everything's going to be alright. You just need to testify before the grand jury, and they will take care of the rest. You know we're here for you, right?"
"Yeah." The water was like ink just beyond that guardrail and reflected the light in strange ways.
"Frank, look out!" Marshal Valdez screamed, hand going for her gun.
The world tilted in an instant, and Meredith saw the next few moments in agonizing freeze-frame. The sides of the SUV crumpled in at her, part of it crushing her left foot. The federal marshals in the front seat jerked like rag-dolls, and she with them. Her head cracked painfully against the unbroken window, and she felt the blood trickle down past her ear. Then, for a moment, she hovered in the air, tethered only by the seatbelt which dug into her neck. Then the car jolted to a stop as it hit the murky waters of the East River.
Meredith had seen enough crime dramas and PSA to know that this period was crucial if she was to get out of the car alive, but she couldn't move her leg. The water was gushing in through the gaps in the twisted frame, and she was stuck upside down, hanging by her seat belt and her wounded leg. Her heart pumped precious blood to that leg and to the gash on the side of her head—blood that was lost to the dark water.
No! I can't die like this! Meredith choked on a lungful of the river. He'll get away. The murderer will get away without paying for what he did. Where's the justice in that?
Up above, four men stood looking down into the water.
"Oni ushli?" One of the men asked. ("Are they gone?")
Another man kicked a small rock into the water after the car. "Gotovo." ("It's done.")
A third man swept his arm to include all of them as he said, "Poydem. Oni na dne reki v nastoyashcheye vremya. Pozvonite Mikhail i skazat' yemu, chto obvineniya budut snyaty." ("Let's go. They're on the bottom of the river by now. Call Mikhail and tell him the charges will be dropped.")
He herded them back into the damaged truck that had just sent the SUV over the guardrail and skulked off into the night, leaving only broken glass and skid marks behind.