Chapter 32

Back to the Start

Cammie's POV

I step out from the shadows near the door and notice Solomon stiffen before he quickly turned to face me, his hand reaching to grab the butt of his gun at his hip.

"I wondered how long it would be before I found you here." I murmured, my face still half shadowed. "I've been sneaking out here every night I could, waiting for the night that you would get the guts to go and find my friends."

"How did you get out of the hospital wing?" He asked, his face morphing from shock to a harsh blankness. "You should have been guarded."

"You know how well I get around guards when I want to Mr Solomon." I chuckle despite the situation. "You should know by now there is no stopping me from doing something that I want to do."

His mouth twitches like he wants to smile but it is immediately morphed into a frown.

"You shouldn't be here." He says sternly. "You aren't even healthy right now. You have a concussion. Go back to the hospital wing now."

"No." I state firmly.

Solomon goes to talk but I quickly interrupt him.

"If you want to go before you are caught. It has been ten minutes since I left my room. I'd say you have about two minutes before I am checked on. Maybe it is even happening right now. Either way, we are about to get caught and we are wasting precious time. Let's go."

"Fine. But you are to stay in the helicopter and do surveillance from the air. You are not to leave do you hear me?"

I nod grimly, knowing there is no point arguing right at this moment and grab Solomons hand so he can help me into the cab of the helicopter under the spinning blades.

We take off and head off towards my girls.

Rachel's POV

I am reading the files that we have stockpiled about the Circle of Cavan trying to sort out what we could possibly do about our situation when the alarm sounds. I know instantly that it is about Cammie and I take off towards the hospital wing, my heels clacking loudly against the stone floors of the corridors.

I arrive at the hospital wing to see the stunned guards standing in the doorway of my daughters room. I push passed them to see the empty bed that awaits me. I stop immediately and spin quickly to look at the guards.

"Where the hell is she?" I growl at them. "You were supposed to be watching her!"

"We were Headmistress Morgan," The guard called Stephen tells me. "There was no noise or disturbance in the room. We assumed she was asleep. There was no evidence to say any different."

"Where is Joe?" I ask, a frown on my face.

"Ah…" Stephen mutters, "He left."

I stopped at that, turning again to look at the empty bed. I knew he had come to visit her. He said he would be back to discuss things with me as soon as he left her.

If he wasn't here then…

"Damnit!" I yell, "Call the hangar, I bet we have a helicopter missing!"

The guards snapped to attention and took off to their stations.

"If there is a helicopter missing, tell them to send another one up for me!" I shout after them.

I begin racing towards the roof and make it out the door just in time to see the helicopter holding my daughter and Joe Solomon fly over the town of Rosewood.

My heart sinks slightly, I have such a bad feeling that something is going to go incredibly wrong.

Solomon's POV

We land in an over grown paddock a couple of km from the buildings where the girls are being held. I get out and immediately turn to the pilot and tell him to take off again. For him to fly the perimeter and tell me about any heat signatures he finds on the infra-red cameras.

And most of all to not let Cammie out of the helicopter.

I stand still as I watch the helicopter take off with Cammie glaring out the side at me. I shake my head and turn to start walking towards the buildings.

I know that the likelihood of them being alive is small but I push that thought to the back of my head at the aching pain I get in my chest at the thought of them being dead.

I know that it is a limited time before they know I am here, and also before everyone back home knows I'm gone.

I have to be quick.

Cammie's POV

I am watching the red blur of a person that I know is Solomon on the monitor as he races towards the building, when I notice two more bright red blurs of people moving towards him. The heat signatures show that they are two lightly built people. They are both moving with what appears to be great difficulty.

"Mr Solomon," I call, "You have two heat signatures moving towards you from the west. Their movement appears as if they are both injured. Do… do you think it could be…"

I trail off and wait for Solomon to answer me.

"I don't know Cammie but god do I hope so, they will make my job so much easier." His voice is panting slightly with exertion.

Just as he said that, a flood of new heat signatures moved from the underground buildings into the open and began moving in both the two signatures and Solomon.

"Solomon you have incoming!" I shout in warning.

I hear a muttered shit before his signature begins to move quickly towards the bushes in the area.

Just as I am about to tell him where to go to avoid the people from the buildings but to hopefully make it to the first two a new voice comes over the headset.

"Cameron Ann Morgan!" My mothers' voice sounds. "You turn yourself around and head back to the mansion now!"

"Rachel there is no time to argue this!" Solomon voice sounds. "Someone tell me where these people are!"

"Cammie," My mum yells through my headset, "You stay exactly where you are, I am landing to help Joe. Keep us updated on the movements."

"Well they are still about a km away, the other two people are half way in the middle." I answer as I see my mother's helicopter land near where we landed.

Rachel's POV

I climb from the helicopter and duck under the spinning blades before running out towards where I know Joe was.

I hear the chatter between the helicopter driver and Cammie as I make my way stealthily through the trees. Just as I reach him I hear Cammie say, "Incoming to your right."

I whip to my right just in time to see a man spring towards me, a knife raised in his left hand.

I kick him quickly towards Joe who grabs him in a headlock and holds tightly until the hand gripping the knife slackens and his head drops to rest on Joe's forearm.

"Sorry he came out of nowhere!" Cammie apologizes hastily.

"Don't let it happen again!" Joe growls as he kicks the man and rolls him under a bush.

"They are closing in on you now, the first two have moved past you to the south west and the group is coming from due west." She answers in a businesslike manner.

We don't answer her and begin to move as a team towards the group of people. Both armed with guns, tasers and napotine patches.

Before we can say anything to one another we are surrounded. And the sounds of fighting reverberate around the trees.

I knock one out just as another dives at me from behind and Joe is taking on two at once.

We continue like that for a few minutes before they are all down. Not a single shot taken.

I gasp a little to catch my breath that had been knocked out of me. Joe is wiping the blood from his eyes that is falling from a cut above his right eyebrow.

"Cammie," I huff, "Any more?"

I wait for a few moments before realizing she isn't answering me.

"Cammie?!" I shout.

"Ah, about that Rachel," the pilot says, "She got out to follow the other two heat signatures a minute ago. I'm sorry but she was very insistent that I stop. May have even pulled a knife on me."

"God damnit!" I mutter.

Just as the words leave my mouth a gunshot sounds…

Cammie's POV

I make the pilot land the helicopter in the middle of the paddock as my mother and Joe are fighting. If I wait until they are finished then Macey and Bex will be too far away. I feel guilty about pulling the knife on someone who is on my own side but it had to be done.

I take off in the direction that they were travelling listening to the voice of the pilot on a separate channel as to where he is going.

They have been moving fairly slowly but steadily the whole time. And have made it several km since we first spotted them.

I am closing in on them and just see a glimpse of Bex's chocolate skin and I call out to them. Both Bex and Macey whip around to look at me, their faces confused before breaking into grins when they realize it is me.

They are just starting to move towards me when I hear the sound that stops my heart.

A gunshot.

I skid to a stop and change directions moving back towards my mother and Solomon.

No one uses guns unless… unless they have snuck up on someone and they have the advantage of not being caught first.

Another shot sounds before I hear a heart breaking yell.

"Rachel!"

I run as fast as I can back to my mother, my heart pounding in my chest.

I skid to a stop and slide to my mother in the mud, pushing Solomon out of the way and putting my hands over the wound in the upper left quadrant of her abdomen. Her hot blood slick between my fingers.

This wasn't supposed to go like this.

If I knew this was going to happen when I signed up I would never have accepted.

I wish I could go back and change all of this.

I wouldn't have stopped the mission from going ahead, they just would have sent someone else but at least then my friends wouldn't have been involved.

But now as I watch that pool of blood grow bigger, despite my attempts to stop the flow, I realised that I can never get back from this.

What has happened wont change.

Even if I can kid myself into thinking it is just a crazy dream, a nightmare, I have to realise that this time I won't wake up.