After the Fall Ch. 05

This Chapter is dedicated to the reader who sent me anonymous feedback through the site on Chapter 4. Your kind comment came at exactly the right time.

Thank you to YukonNights for suggestions on scene selection, and to DeathMarch4 for the good advice on the problematic scene.

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Author's Note: As a rule, I avoid prefatory notes about the content of a chapter because I don't want to try to influence the way you read it. I'm making an exception this time because I don't want you to feel like this chapter leads you on with the promise of things that aren't in it. There are no sexual encounters involving anyone other than Michael and Mariah. I'm sure many readers will see the opportunities for girl-on-girl, threesomes, foursomes, etc. I didn't want you to think those things were coming and be disappointed when they never arrived. I hope Michael and Mariah's encounter will leave you satisfied. ;-)

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It was about four in the afternoon on one of the most exhausting days in either of their lives. That morning, four of "mayor" Hawley's men attempted to abduct Mariah, using a ruse to coerce her to climb over the wall of the compound. Michael's entire security team had scrambled and intercepted them before they got far. During the standoff, one of Hawley's men drew a gun and was shot in the shoulder. He had already been questioned and released to the town doctor. Two other men ran away just as Michael arrived on the scene, and the fourth man remained locked in a holding room in the basement complex, awaiting questioning.

After Michael brought Mariah safely back to the compound, he was determined to get it through her head that he would not tolerate her endangering herself. He had driven his point home with a very real spanking before he fucked her with a possessive fury that left her aching. In the midst of delivering the spanking, he inadvertently referred to her as "the woman I love," and it made her angrier than he'd ever seen her. They hadn't talked about it, yet. If it was up to Mariah, they never would.

The day was still far from over, and they were sharing a shower in a temporary state of truce when it suddenly occurred to Mariah that Hawley must have Sarah.

"Michael, they have Sarah!"

Michael reacted to the fear in Mariah's voice without having any idea what she was talking about. "Who is Sarah?"

"Sarah Jenkins. My friend. You must have seen her on the feeds. She's the little tiny black girl with big natural hair. Michael, I have to get her away from them!" Her voice rose as panic crept in.

He held her by the shoulders and backed her slowly against the wall of the shower. "Look at me, Mariah." He had to give her shoulders a little shake before she focused on him.

"Take a deep breath. We're going to get her back. And by "we," I mean the security team. Not you. You are not leaving this house."

Michael quickly rinsed off and left Mariah in the shower to finish rinsing herself. He grabbed his radio and some clothes from his room and came back to her bedroom to dress. He had no intention of leaving her alone long enough to go running off on some harebrained rescue attempt. When she walked out of the bathroom, he was pulling his clothes on while he talked to Ezra over the radio.

"I don't know how she knows. I don't want to waste any time. She can tell all of us at once. Just have everyone meet us in the conference room."

Michael finished dressing, but Mariah was still struggling. She had been in too much of a hurry to dry off properly, and now her damp skin was sticking to the fabric of the bra and panties she was trying to pull on. He stopped her.

"We're going to get to the conference room before the rest of them. Slow down."

He brought her a towel from the bathroom. She did a better job drying off while he squeezed the water from her dripping hair and towel-dried it. He knew she wouldn't cooperate with blow drying it right now. As soon as she got her clothes on, she dashed down the hall. He caught up to her and took her hand.

"Mariah, you've got to calm down."

"You don't know what they'll do to her!"

His stomach churned. These were the same men she had gone with voluntarily after they threatened Henry.

"Baby, I promise we will get her back just as fast as we can, but I need you to focus."

By the time they got to the conference room, Mariah had collected herself. She was glad to see Yvonne was already there. She had some questions that were bothering her.

"Yvonne, do you know how those guys knew where I was this morning?"

"You know that hill on the other side of the road from the compound? There was a rough platform, built way up in a group of trees. There were two men up there and they had a telescope. They radioed the four guys outside the walls and told them where to throw the rock and where to throw the ladder over. Today was the third morning we saw people out on the road. Until now, they never did anything suspicious, besides just being all the way out here for no apparent reason. We think they just got lucky that you happened to go near the wall while they were out there waiting."

By the time Yvonne finished explaining, the rest of the security team was arriving. When everyone sat down, Michael prompted Mariah to start.

"Hawley's guys have my friend, Sarah Jenkins. Remember how you guys never figured out where I lived? Only a few people knew, and only Sarah knew Henry. She checked in on Henry, Julia and Duncan if I had to be gone for more than a day. She is the only person who knew Henry's name, or even that I had a dog."

"What about his original owner?" Michael asked. "He would know his name."

Mariah didn't waste time trying to figure out how he knew she wasn't Henry's original owner. "Henry is the name I gave him. I never told anyone but Sarah. That note they threw over the wall identified him by name, so they had to have gotten that information from her. She wouldn't have given it to them voluntarily."

Ezra nodded. "Okay, let's operate on the assumption that they got the information from Sarah. Why do you think they still have her?"

"If they had let her go, she would have tried to warn me. You would have seen her at the gate. Besides, they'd keep her because tomorrow is the fifteenth. They have a party on the fifteenth of every month. Most of the time, Hawley's guys pay women to come to their parties. There are always women who need the tokens badly enough to do it. But, everyone knows that if they happen to have their hands on any woman when the fifteenth is getting close, they'll hang onto her for the party. It's happened at least a handful of times that I know of. They gave the women tokens afterwards, as if that made it okay, but the women were there against their will.

"Sarah's exactly the type of person they target. She's single and doesn't have family. They know nobody's going to come looking for her and there won't be anybody in town raising hell about it. She's not likely to fight them, and she wouldn't be a physical threat to them even if she tried. Sarah's tiny. I don't think she's more than five feet tall, and probably doesn't even weigh a hundred pounds. She's everything these jackals see as prey, and we HAVE to get her right away." Mariah's voice broke. "Please."

Michael reached for her hand when he heard the agitation creep back into her voice. It was vaguely embarrassing, but also reassuring. If it were up to her, she would forgo the reassurance in favor of dignity, but this was not the time to fight him over something of only symbolic importance. She allowed herself to draw comfort from the warmth of his hand around hers.

Ezra nodded. "We won't waste any time, Mariah. I promise. I'm going to question Carruthers about this, but I need you to give me some background information. To have any kind of an idea whether Carruthers is being truthful, I need to ask him for information I already have, to see whether he lies to me. Right now, I have practically no information to work with."

Mariah nodded. "What do you want to know?"

"Let's start with where they have their parties. If she's being held for that reason, she's either already there or will be brought there. I know they like to hang out at the lake house off of Three Notch Road. Is that where they have their parties?"

"Yes. They use the cabins around it, too, but I think they would have her in the Lakehouse itself. The cabins would be easy to check, though. There's not normally anyone in them. The cabin windows are all blacked out, but each one has the same layout. There's a front room, a back room, and a bathroom."

Ezra glanced at Michael to see if he was noticing how much Mariah seemed to know about Hawley's setup. From the way Michael's jaw was tightening, Ezra guessed that he had.

"What about the lake house?"

"There are two stories above ground, but there's also a full basement. The basement is all one big room. They keep it locked up because it's where they make their drugs and keep their valuables. There's a cellar door, the kind that's sort of like a hatch, on the side of the house. If you open the hatch and somebody's in the cellar, they'll see you right away. I think the other way to get to the basement is better.

"There's a door in the back of the house that opens on a very small landing. There are a few steps going up to a door that opens on the ground floor, and then there are steps going down to the basement. About halfway down, the stairs turn again at another landing. It would be easier to avoid being seen going that way. The stairs creak, though."

Michael's hand tightened hard around Mariah's, and she pulled her hand away. Ezra thought it was probably a good thing that Mariah wasn't facing Michael, because he was livid.

"Is the basement where you think they would have her?"

Mariah hesitated. "No, but I'm not sure. It's where it would make the most sense to keep her, but I don't think they would want her near their loot. They've got tokens, drugs, and valuables for trade down there."

"Okay, what about the ground floor?"

"There's a front door and a side door, but they both open onto the living room. It would probably be easier if I draw the layout for you so you can see where the lines of sight are. I doubt they have her on the ground floor. The bathroom and the closet are the only places on the ground floor where it would be easy to lock someone up."

"So, you think she's on the top floor?"

"Yes, but it really is just a guess. There are two ways to get to the top floor. There's a staircase opposite the front door, and there's a deck on the back of the house. The deck has a sliding glass door that can be lifted out of the track. The deck is off the master bedroom. The whole top floor is just bedrooms and a bathroom. There's a long hall straight down the middle that connects with the main staircase, and the bedrooms are on either side of the hall."

"What about locks and alarms?"

"There's an old alarm system, but I don't think it works. They only get electricity when the rest of the town gets it, usually between eight and nine in the evening this time of year. I've never seen any exterior lights on after dark.

"The sliding glass door on the second story has one of the standard locks that deck doors usually have -- the kind where there's a plastic slide that you move up or down. Last time I saw it, there was a sawed-off broomstick in the inside track to keep the door from sliding while the broomstick was down. The front door and side doors have keyed deadbolts and locks in the doorknobs, but I don't know if they have any additional locks. They aren't locked all the time. The first-floor windows have nails driven partway into the window sashes to keep them from opening.

"The cellar door is locked with a chain through the handles and a padlock on the chain. The door I was saying is the best way to the basement has a hasp with a combination lock through it. The combination is 9-9-9-9-9, or at least, it was recently. The contact points for the alarm system are disconnected on that door, so it wouldn't go off even if there was electricity."

Ezra tried to keep his face neutral, but everyone else at the table was looking skeptical or leery. Everyone except Michael, that is. Michael looked like steam might come billowing out of his ears at any moment.

"Mariah, you know I've got to ask. How do you know all this and how recent is your information?"

She had known this was coming, and she had felt the looks on her as she explained the layout. "The information about the cabins is at least a year old. I rarely check them. My information about the main floor is also about a year old, and my information about the top floor is a couple of years old. My information about the back door and basement is a few weeks old."

Michael exploded. "What the hell, Mariah! What were you doing there, and why?"

Mariah went on without acknowledging the interruption. Michael wasn't going to calm down anytime soon no matter what she said, and she had no intention of participating in a public argument.

"I've checked the lake house once a month for the past few years. The combination on the lock has stayed the same in all that time. The combination on the safe is 10-right, 20-left, 30-right, 40-left, 50-right, in case you need it. They keep things simple - very simple. They wrote the combination of the safe and the exterior combination lock in a ledger they keep in the safe."

She saw Ezra frown and held up a hand, "I know. Why did they lock the safe combination inside the safe? These guys weren't Ashland's best and brightest even before they were cooked on blaze all the time. I adjust their ledger and take some tokens from their drug sales off their hands once a month. I just make a phony entry in the ledger to account for it and as far as I can tell, they've never noticed. I go early on the morning of the sixteenth of the month when I know they're all incapacitated. I usually only go to the basement. I check the rest of the house and the cabins about once a year just to see if anything's changed, and it's always been the same."

"So how did you get in the first time, if the combination was in the ledger in the safe?" Ezra asked.

"They left their doors open and their safe unlocked after their party. I just walked in. It's practically impossible to underestimate these guys. That's why what happened earlier today bothers me."

"That's the reason?" Michael asked incredulously.

"What I mean to say is that it was completely inconsistent with Hawley's group. They don't plan like that. As far as I know, they didn't have radios, either, or batteries for them. I think they're getting help from someone. I don't know who could be helping them, or why anyone would want to help them, but I just can't believe these guys turned competent overnight."

Ezra was silent for a few moments. "If you're right about somebody providing them assistance, it's possible that the security at the lake house has been upgraded. That's the sort of thing I can ask Carruthers about. I'm going to go talk to him now. Is there anything you can tell me about him that might be useful?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything you don't already know from seeing him in action. He's motivated by fear and ego, but that's nothing unique. If I had to guess what's going through his mind right now, it's trying to avoid punishment by Hawley once he gets out of here. I'm generalizing based on what I know of these guys as a group. I don't know Jim Carruthers personally."

"Fair enough." Ezra stood to go. "I'll see what I can get out of him. Go ahead and sketch the floorplans while I'm busy with that."

Mariah sketched the layout of each floor of the lake house, the layout of the cabins, and a rough map showing the way the lake house and cabins were grouped. Ezra still wasn't back when she was done. Jack had gone down with Ezra. Andy, Yvonne and Nate were talking amongst themselves. Michael pulled Mariah out of the conference room and down the hall to one of the empty offices. He closed the door behind him.

She spoke first. "Michael, you're angry about things that happened before you even met me."

His fists clenched. She always insisted on acting like she didn't exist to him before she met him in person. It seemed to mean nothing to her that he had been watching and worrying over her for years.

When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. "Why did you go to the lake house in the first place, and why did you keep going back?"

"The first time was partly out of curiosity and partly to look for opportunities. I wanted to see what was going on there. A lot of things were being stolen, and I thought that might be where they ended up. I knew they gathered there, so I wanted to know why."

"You went because you were curious? Mariah, what is wrong with you?"

She didn't bother answering him, because her answer wouldn't have mattered.

"Why did you keep going back?"

"Tokens, like I said."

"What did you need tokens for? You had an unlimited line of credit at Lois's shop."

She shook her head. "You aren't making any sense. First of all, I needed tokens to buy medicine. How do you think Dr. Becker gets medicine? It's certainly not because his patients can pay him. I'm not made of tokens, Michael. In case you hadn't noticed, I didn't have a real job. I spent nearly all my time gathering food and scavenging. I do a little treasure hunting in old buildings to find things to sell to the couriers when there's time for that, but that's not exactly a reliable source of income. Second, I don't know where you got the idea that I had unlimited credit at Lois's shop. I never even used credit. Even if I did, she doesn't sell medicine. Unless you're Michael Kincaid, the only way to get medicine is to buy it from couriers."

"So you stole tokens from a dangerous gang of hoodlums."

"Barely dangerous."

"If they're barely dangerous, why are you so frantic to get your friend away from them?"

"Sarah isn't me, Michael. She can't defend herself and she's a very sensitive person. I only went there when I knew they would be incapacitated and I wouldn't get caught. She is already caught."

"Yes, I know, I know. Sarah's tiny. Just how big do you think you are, Mariah?"

"Bigger than Sarah."

"By what, a few inches and a couple of dress sizes?"

"I'm a lot stronger than she is, but what's your point? I was evading them, not trying to arm wrestle them."

Michael closed the space between them in a blink. Before she knew what he was doing, he had picked her up by the waist and was holding her above him off the ground. "All anyone needs to do is pick you up, and you're done. You are not invincible."

He couldn't see her rolling her eyes. "Okay, Michael. I'll play your little game. I'll even refrain from kicking you in the face. How long do you think you can hold me like this?"

He put her down on a nearby desk. "My point is that you aren't King Kong."

"And I wasn't climbing skyscrapers in Manhattan. I was sneaking around a building with doped out blaze-heads in it. I wasn't even on the same floor as they were."

Michael pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're smart enough to know the risk you were taking, yet stupid enough to take it anyway. Why?"

"I already told you why. I needed the tokens."

"Right. For medicine. Because you're the self-appointed town savior."

Her face froze. She turned and walked to the door, intending to return to the conference room. He caught her before she got to the door.

"Mariah, I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that."

"Well, I do know why you said it. Now stop manhandling me."