Chapter 29: Not Safe Quite Yet
The shot didn't come from Mickey though. In the corner of my eye I could see Sai slump to the floor, the last look on his face was fear. Someone had been walking towards him with a gun and shot him and he had no weapons of his own to protect him, nothing but a plastic device.
The control panel fell out of his hands.
I could hear the footsteps and so could Mick. She took the last two steps on the staircase and stepped around me where she had a clearer view of the curtain trying to see who it was without taking her gaze or gun off of me. I was still a threat to her even though I was pointing the gun at nothing since she moved.
Relief swelled over me as I saw none other than Bex Baxter walking over to Sai, a blank expression on her own face. She picked up the panel looked over at me and then walked from behind the curtain and into clear view for Mickey who also looked relieved and then puzzled by what Bex held in her hand.
With a look of concentration on her face Bex pulled a lever.
My body went into convulsions. She flipped it back the other way almost immediately.
Cautiously she pushed another button.
I was able to open my mouth and I took in a deep, free breath before shouting, "The switch on the far left corner. Pull that switch."
Bex complied and my body was now my own once again. The gun fell out of my hand hitting the floor with a hollow echo that followed me as I ran towards Zach.
I was falling towards him when the gun finally settled on the ground.
"ZACH!" I shouted, tears in my eyes as I ungracefully flung myself onto the floor next to him. "Zach!" I clung to his shoulders pulling him closer to me.
My head fell against his shoulder as the tears started to pour out of my eyes.
"Zach, I'm so sorry. For everything, all of this. I…you know I didn't want this to happen. I never wanted to shoot you. I could never shoot you." I sobbed into his shirt feeling even more helpless in that moment than in the prior months—I almost didn't think that was possible. "Why did you get in the way! You should have let me take it. Why were you so…so stupid?" Another sob racked across my body. "I…I love you." The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could think them through.
It was followed quickly behind by a gasp that came from my throat as I felt two arms wrap around my waist. I didn't pull myself up not wanting this feeling to be a dream, a hallucination. I didn't want to snap out of this if it wasn't reality, if I was only imagining it, if I was only imagining all of this.
"At least I know how you feel now. Besides, I'm not that stupid." His voice was teasing me in more ways than one.
I looked up tears still falling down my cheeks and stared down at Zach who was smiling up at me with no pain in his eyes. "But…how?" Then I was the one who felt stupid. I never checked his pulse. I never checked his wound. I just assumed he was dead when I saw him lying there motionless.
Now that I looked I saw there was no blood. All I could see was a bullet hole.
I ripped the front of Zach's shirt and saw the bullet proof vest.
"You didn't think I would come unprepared, now did you?" I stared down at the vest trying to piece everything together. "It's not like the base would let Mick and me come back here after you, vulnerable. It was hard enough for them to agree with letting me come back at all, injured as I was. But I wasn't going to stay behind…neither was Bex when she found out what happened."
My head met his shoulder once again with fresh new tears falling onto it. His arms wrapped around me tighter as he said soothing words and it stayed like that until I feel asleep right there in his warm, comforting arms finally in complete, utter control of myself.
My eyes slowly opened. I looked around unsure of where I was for a minute. I sat up and a smile came across my face as I took in the familiar bedroom of my apartment. My familiar apartment.
There was movement to the left of me and I looked over to see Zach sitting in a chair, watching me.
He looked absolutely the same as before with the only difference being that his right hand was also bandaged.
Grinning I jumped out of the bed and ran over to him flinging myself into his lap, my arms wrapping around his neck. There was no doubt that I surprised him as he drew out a stunned breath. I knew his eyes had widened even though I couldn't see them.
Then I felt his own arms wrapping around me as he chuckled. "Well, I see someone's still in a good mood. Hopefully the drugs have worn off so you aren't as loopy as before."
Now it was my turn to be stunned.
"Drugs? Loopy?" I asked pulling back. "What are you talking about?"
He looked at me seeing my puzzled looked and sighed. His smile was gone as he said, "You went into surgery a week ago to remove the chip in your head." He touched the back of my neck, which was when I felt the thin, rough material of the bandage. "What was the last thing you remember?"
I thought back. A blush came across my cheeks. "It was when I thought you were dead. When I discovered the bullet proof vest was what I last remembered."
The smile came back slightly. "Do you remember everything you told me?"
I nodded my head and then to reinsure before he could ask a question I placed my lips on his.
His hand gently wrapped around the back of my head, above the bandage, as his other arm held my waist tighter, pulling me closer to him. We kept on kissing completely in synch. Electricity was shooting up my body as I pressed myself even closer to him. Hoping and waiting for every memory we shared to come flooding back through the kiss, through the closeness.
Nothing did.
We broke apart engulfing air in large breaths as our foreheads rested together. I didn't realize I was crying, or that a tear slipped away from my eyes, until Zach wiped it away. His finger remained on my cheek.
"Cammie—?"
"I still don't remember," I told him. "I still don't remember what happened before."
His smile didn't fade but there was no dismissing the sadness that was held in his eyes. "That's okay," he said and I wanted to call him a liar right then but he continued. "You might never remember Cammie that's what Kelsie told me and I'm okay with that." He sighed. "Just because you can't remember doesn't mean the end of the world Cam. Life goes on and…and sometimes the process sucks."
A laugh escaped from my throat. I couldn't help it. I leaned away from Zach. "Yeah, I guess so," I said as I tried to break out of Zach's grasp.
He didn't budge an inch.
"Where do you think you're going?" he asked an eyebrow raised and a smirk planted on his face.
I placed my hands on his arms ready to pull them apart if I had to. "You're not going to let me go easy, are you," I said in a playful tone.
He shook his head his eyes not leaving mine. "Not when I finally have you back," he said in a voice so dead on serious a chill ran down my spine.
"Oh," was I could say back.
I'm not exactly sure what would have happened next if the doorbell hadn't rung breaking the tense atmosphere. It was all up in the air now.
We broke apart, Zach reluctantly, but he grasped my hand as we walked towards the front door. And I…I let him.
When we opened the door there were several people standing there, but the one who I dropped Zach's hand for so I could wrap them in a hug was Bex.
"I'm sorry Cammie," she said into my shoulder. We pulled apart. "I'm sorry for not believing you. It's just…complicated." Her voice trailed off and by the look in her eyes I didn't press her on the subject. Whatever her reasons were her secrets to bear. Right now all that mattered was she was here.
She stepped aside and into the apartment letting the way for everyone else. My mom's arms wrapped around me as Macey, Liz, Anna, and Eva walked inside. Anna and Eva looked the same as they did in school, only older and taller. Macey was shooting me a glare as she passed by and I realized she was probably mad at me for escaping her house that night and getting myself captured. Internally I rolled my eyes. That was not my brightest moment.
When my mom's arms loosened around me Aunt Abby came beside her. She was shaking her head at me. "What are we going to do with you squirt?" she asked with lifted eyebrows.
I just smiled sheepishly at her.
They both stepped further into the apartment and Aunt Abby squeezed my shoulder for a second as she passed by.
I looked to see one lonely figure still in the doorway. It was…Grant?
He had the biggest grin on his face shinning underneath his light gray eyes which may have been what gave him away. He seemed to change the most of all of us as strange as it was considering he looked most like an adult the last time I remember seeing him. His hair had grown out and now it was long, and I mean long, almost past his shoulders. He was even taller than before by several inches and his muscles were thicker which may have been due to the tight-fitting sweater he was wearing. Honestly it made me think of him as the hulk with his sweater about to rip open. It was painfully obvious it was too small for him. Was anyone going to tell him that?
"Grant?" I asked the figure, uncertainty filling my voice.
He feigned hurt. "Ah, Cammie, how could you forget me?" Well, his voice hadn't changed. It was still as deep and gruff as it was before.
He walked inside, pulled me into a hug,—making me feel even smaller than before—and ruffled my hair before walking away.
We all managed to gather around the kitchen table, designed to hold six that now held ten—well, nine I guess since Grant stood leaning against the wall.
So many questions filled my mind that I needed to know the answers. The first question I asked was, "Where is Mr. Jacobson?"
Macey answered while Bex looked off somewhere in the distance. "He disappeared. No one knows where to. It was weeks before you, Zach, Mick, Bex, and the others came back. He just vanished, obviously knowing people we're catching onto what he had been doing. He couldn't hide behind his high status forever. A lot of people are on the case right now in trying to find him including Mr. Solomon and Mick."
I nodded with a blank face. The information didn't calm me in the least. Mr. Jacobson—my former boss who erased my memory causing me to be in this vulnerable, crippling position—was still out in the world. Maybe he was plotting some new attack, a new strategy while we all sat around the table.
The words, my unintentional thoughts, slipped out of my mouth, "What was the point of all this?" I didn't expect anyone to answer me, but to my surprise someone spoke.
"Exactly what we wondering." I looked over at Aunt Abby whose hands were folded in front of her and she was wearing a straight, grim smile.
Eva spoke up, feeling compelled to explain Abby's words. "Cameron it was one thing when these…'experiments' were being performed on normal girls. It was about power, that's understandable, even Mr. Jacobson's part. But adding you into the mix that's where lines and agendas start to become a little unclear." Apparently I was giving her a blank, confused gaze because she quickly added, "You're a spy, a known spy. You weren't an easy target for them. They went through a lot of prep work, as we have discovered, to obtain you and then to erase your memories with it. I…I guess, maybe it would make capturing you easier but either way it was a lot of work for a simple 'experiment' on a spy who many people would go searching for. It doesn't fit."
I narrowed my eyes. "Wait, I thought I lost my memory because I knew too much? Wasn't this whole control chips what I knew too much about, what they were afraid of?"
"It's what we thought in the beginning, but I don't think that's all you knew," Aunt Abby replied. "Joe, Rachel, and I have been going through the files and nothing connects Simon, your director, to this operation, not directly at least. You could have told the agency what was happening and no matter what you said they would never have pinned Simon to this. Heck, we already had been keeping a close eye over that general area and especially on Sai Pastrana. This wasn't exactly news for us. We had a clue of what was happening there, we had for awhile before they sent Zach and Mick to infiltrate which obviously went horribly wrong as Simon probably had planned." Aunt Abby shook her head and looked like she was desperately trying to fit the pieces of the story together, but it wasn't fitting quite right.
"Then what is it I knew that was so dangerous to them?"
"We don't know Cammie." Anna spoke this time. Her voice was still as timid as I remembered and yet it was able to grab everyone's attention. "But there is something bigger going on that we aren't seeing, something that has to deal with you, specifically with you."
It was silent for several minutes as I processed the information. What could I possibly know to have caused all this?
I wasn't sure I was going to get the answer to that question anytime soon.
Breaking the silence I asked, "What are they going to do with Jonas?"
Aunt Abby shrugged. "He did create the chip no matter what his intention for it was originally. He'll have to go on trial next week for his actions."
We didn't talk much about the dire events that had occurred or the hazy future. I don't think we could really take much more of it or at least I knew I couldn't.
Zach and I were alone, once again. My mom was the last one to leave the apartment and the most unwilling. She seemed to be taking this whole ordeal the hardest (maybe even harder than me) and didn't want to let me out of her sight especially with Mr. Jacobson still out there, on the run, and with so many more questions left unanswered. All of which were burning holes into the back of our minds. Answers to why this was happening, and why me?
Still somehow Zach convinced her that I was safe here tonight and that she had no reason to fret because he wasn't going to allow anything to happen.
We were safe.
For now.
I watched from the doorway of the kitchen as Zach was unfolding the blanket and placing it on the couch. He was going back to our original arrangement, where one of us slept on the couch and the other on the bed.
I bit my lip and placed my head against the white panel in thought. Then without letting myself ponder too much over it I walked over to Zach and slipped my hand into his and instantly twining my fingers around his.
Pulling him away from his work he dropped the blanket on the couch and asked, "What is it Cammie?"
I didn't answer him, but just kept pulling him towards the bedroom. If I could just do this before my nerves really started to get to me. He seemed to quickly realize where we were headed and he fell silent, his hand tensed and then relaxed again in mine. I wasn't sure what to make of that.
I pushed the door open and flipped on the light switch releasing his hand in the process.
The room flooded with light and it seemed so much brighter and cooler than before and the bed so much larger and emptier. I could feel my cheeks burning with heat just at the thought of it with Zach standing right behind me watching me with an intense stare, no doubt.
I didn't turn around. I don't think I could have faced him in that moment.
Instead I walked towards the bed and slipped under the covers, tucked away, even though it was far from cold that night. It was hotter than most.
My eyes were closed and I could hear Zach hesitating at the door. I wish I had the strength to tell him to just join me, but I didn't. If I had my memories back it wouldn't have to be this way, it wouldn't have to be so hard.
Closing my eyes tighter I listened. I could hear Zach's footsteps, only they were walking farther away. I rolled to my side, my back to the door, and closed my eyes even tighter to keep tears from spilling over.
Did he even realize how hard it was for me to guide him here? How vulnerable I just let myself become?
My breathing hitched on the edge of becoming erratic. I didn't think I could take much more of this life anymore.
Only I could hear Zach's footsteps coming back down the hall, closer and closer to the door. Soon I could hear something light fall to the ground by the door. A blanket, maybe? Darkness fell across the room as the switch was turned off. All followed by ever closer steps and then a sudden shift in the bed.
I kept my eyes closed and my back turned. I was too afraid to open my eyes at this point. For fear of not just finding myself alone because none of this was real, and a result of too much caffeine but also for the tears that were more threatening at this point.
It was silent and dark.
And really hot with all the blankets, I think I might have been sweating at this point.
"Gallagher Girl," I heard Zach whisper in the dark. "Isn't it a little warm for you to be under all those covers?" There seemed to be an undertone in that statement along with something I couldn't put a name to.
I opened my eyes and blinked. I had been holding them closed too tightly.
Rolling over I could see Zach looking at me, watching me, really. I shrugged. "I like being warm," was all I could think of to say.
Giving me a strange look Zach shook his head before falling deeper into his pillow. His eyes closed and his breathing became more even. I watched, unable to look away.
Slowly I slipped from under the covers, unable to take the heat anymore, and then laid on top of the blankets. I scooted closer to Zach and continued to watch him as I couldn't fall asleep.
Zach mumbled and for a second I thought he was awake and was talking to me, telling me to sleep, probably. But no, his eyes were still closed, his breathing steady, and a smile was spreading on his face as he mumbled my name.
I wondered what it was he was dreaming. But then I probably already had a good hunch. It was most likely about his wife who had all her memories, wasn't quite so shy around him, and wasn't in fear of attacks. Because in reality we weren't out of the woods quite yet. But for now we were safe as long as I stayed low, which was another, nicer way of saying I couldn't leave the apartment for any reason. I was under lock down house arrest. I would be stuck here while everybody else was risking their necks to figure out what mess I had gotten myself wound up in.
I sure would like to know. If only there was some way to ask myself, but that feat was impossible, at least for now.
A/N: Only one more chapter left guys. Can you believe it! I'm so excited to finally have one story on this site be done. But, anyway, review and tell me what you think of the chapter and what you expect is going to happen next in the final chapter.
