If You'll Believe In Me

I have an itch that something is wrong, but before I can say anything, someone toward the front of the semi throws something in front of the van. I recognize them immediately as spike strips.

"Hold on!" I say and crush the accelerator. Swerving to avoid it or slowing down could cause a peel out. I hear the pop and hiss from the tires being torn apart, and the repeated thud from the rubber spinning around the rim barely attached. I manage to control the vehicle, but a truck drives out of concealment and rams the back right of the van. The back fishtails into the grassy median, and I feel the entire front of the van snap back to compensate. We're going to flip.

"Roll over!" Nathan shouts, as we all brace.

For the next twenty seconds I feel like a sock in a drier. Everything around me sounds like metal in a blender. My body rams the door, and my seatbelt stops me from pinballing. The world comes to stop in a final, slow drop. I can see through the disorientation that we landed upright. Through my right eye at least, blood has already enveloped my left eye from a gash on my forehead.

Grunts of pain echo from within the van, and I try to get a sense of who is where.

"Nate?" I ask, looking next to me. He is clutching his right forearm and hissing through his teeth so hard spittle slimes down his chin. His hair is glistening from glass particles. "How bad?"

"My arm's broken," Nathan says, then look out his broken window. "Fuck!"

I hear gunshots and the remaining glass shatter. The rounds punch the side of the van, but they do not penetrate. I see indentations where Alice is. They're not trying to rescue her. Her face suggests she knows that. This isn't a jail break; she's the target.

"Father is angry. Father is angry. Father is angry," Alice says repeatedly while clenching herself into a ball with her hands over her ears.

"We're sitting ducks, we need to move," Nathan says. "Get that gun up, get out!"

"Moving," I say, then try my door. It is jammed shut, so I ram my shoulder against it, and pain radiates down my side. My shoulder is dislocated. I roll my back onto the center and give it a hard kick it with both feet. Not the best way to find out your lower left leg is broken. My entire left side is damaged.

"Get that door open!" Nathan shouts, then leans over in his seat to pop a few rounds out his window. The fourth kick knocks the door open. I grab the handle above the door and swing out. I try to land on my right foot, but the slope of the median forces a reflexive compensation on my left foot and I fall to my left side. It felt like getting struck by lightning.

I scramble to my good foot and hobble to the back of the van. When I poke my head around to lay down suppressing fire, I dodge back behind the van as The Kaiser pulls up the SUV.

"Chase!" The Kaiser shouts, keeping low as he gets out of the vehicle.

"Get the others, I'll lay down fire," I say, and finally start shooting.

"Nate, grab my hand!" The Kaiser says, and I see him start to drag out Nathan. Right before Nathan is fully out, I watch The Kaiser catch a round in the shoulder, then fall backwards into the median.

"Goddammit!" Nathan shouts, as he unloads half a magazine. "I'm good for now. Get Shelby!"

I turn to open the side door of the van, and immediately feel a sledgehammer into my back. The force throws me to face first to the ground. More bullets hit around me, but I roll off my good shoulder and fire in the direction it came from. I adjust when I see the shooter and land a neck shot. Another goon comes around the other side, but Will recovers and takes him out. He staggers to his feet, ignoring the pain bleeding down his sleeve and dripping off his hand.

The sliding door to the van is slightly ajar, and it takes all my strength with my right arm to tug it open. Shelby is unconscious, and Alice is still helpless. I unbuckle Shelby, and pull him out of the van, falling with him onto the grass. Suddenly there is a lull in gunfire.

"We just want to the girl," a voice says from the other side of the van.

"Not a fucking chance!" Nathan shouts, then negotiates with gunfire. I hear a body thud to the ground, and the bullets resume.

"Father is angry. Father is angry. Father is angry," Alice says from the cage.

I open the door to the SUV and return for Shelby while The Kaiser keeps Nathan secure. As I drag him back, I put pressure on my left leg and hear a sickening crack. At this point I'm just using the pain to stay awake. Thankfully, Shelby wakes up somewhere in between and can half understand basic instructions like 'get in the fucking car'. He is functionally useless right now, but he gets in the SUV finally. I take his gun in case I need it.

"Father is angry. Father is angry!" Alice screams as I go for Nathan next.

"Ready?" I ask, and he nods. I start dragging him out, but when his head crests the door, The Kaiser shoves me away with one arm and shoots someone trying to flank us. They hit each other, both wobbling back, but Kaiser keeps his balance until he is hit from the other side and falls forward on his face. Nathan returns fire, but is peppered by another shooter, who manages a headshot.

"Nathan!" I crawl back to the van as The Kaiser shoots a set of feet from underneath. When the guy falls, The Kaiser ends him with a clean headshot. As I crawl, I see more feet coming at us.

This is not how I'm going to die. Alice can help if I can only get her out of her funk. It's a big risk, but we are running out of options.

"Cover me Will," I say, and Will trains his pistol under the van. I can tell he's on reserves as well. I pull the keys from Nathan's body.

"We just want the girl. Last chance," a Russian accent says from the other side.

I open the cage, and release Alice from her restrains. She is still chanting to herself. I tug her hand away from her face and she recoils like a child trying to avoid a beating.

"Do you want to die? Because I don't," I say, and Alice looks at me. I need the killer I know she is. "Get your shit together."

"Father is angry," she says.

"Let him be angry. Fight back," I say, and extend her the gun. "You don't have to let them control you. You decide what happens to you, not them." None of what I said is impacting her at all. "What did the unicorn say to Alice?"

"If you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you," she mumbles, and takes the gun from me.

"I believe in you. You're real," I say, then touch her cheek with the back of my fingers. She grabs my hand and presses it to her face like I was the first person to show her compassion in her entire life.

"Ready?" I ask, and after a brief hesitation, she nods.

"Give us the girl. Last warning!" the voice shouts.

"Will, get to the car, you'll know when," I say, and Will says he's ready. "You can have her!" I shout as Alice opens the door and guns down two of them immediately. Will jumps to his feet and makes his escape.

"Get in the car," Alice says, while I start dragging Nathan's body out. "What are you doing?"

"Not leaving him behind," I say. He is heavy, and I scream in pain because of my leg. I drag him and my leg to the back of the SUV.

"He's dead!" Alice shouts. She just doesn't understand this. I'm not leaving an officer behind.

I open the hatch and put Nathan's body in the back. I climb over him and then press the button to close the hatch, and crawl over Shelby and The Kaiser to the driver's seat. I pull up to the side door and Alice jumps into the SUV through the passenger window. I drive the vehicle along the grass, then punch it once I reach pavement again. Several rounds hit the side, but I keep my foot down and drive through it.

--

They either paid off local police or painted vehicles to look like police vehicles. Either way, it was a ballsy move.

Alice sits next to me quietly, looking down at her lap and the gun in her hand. I start to feel my injuries fully and slap myself in the face to stay awake. Shelby is concussed, and fades in and out of consciousness, but is never lucid. He probably needs a hospital more than I do. The Kaiser is packing his shoulder wound but is also bleeding from his side. He's keeping pressure on the worse one, but he's not looking so hot either.

"We clear?" Alice asks without looking up.

"As clear as we're going to get," I say. She then pulls the gun on me. I knew it would be a short-lived alliance. I also don't think she'll kill me.

"Pull over," she says.

"Shoot me," I say, and speed up on purpose. "Do it. See what happens."

"What happens is, you lose another friend," Alice says, and then shoots Shelby in the leg. I didn't count on that. The Kaiser aims his gun up, but Alice grabs it on the slider, then pulls him toward her. She uses his momentum to pistol whip him backwards, taking his gun in the process. I grab her arm, but she rotates her arm underneath mine and slides it under her back, and nearly breaks my arm when she flexes it. My left arm is useless to defend and she knows it.

"Maybe I got his femoral, maybe I didn't. Either way, stop me, or save him. Your choice," she says with the gun to my temple.

"I'll find you," I say, and she smiles.

"No, you won't," Alice says. I pull over. Alice keeps the gun trained on me as she exits the vehicle. "Give me your phone." I stare at her, but eventually I hand it over. "Open it." I do, and she types something into it, then hands it back. "Eighteen-Ninety-Eight Dodgson street. That's where the girls are." She then slams the door shut and disappears into the brush.

--

Saturday -- October 17, 2026

-Jennifer Ito-

Chase, Will, and Special Agent Shelby were airlifted to the hospital a few hours after Chase managed to stay awake long enough to get them to a populated area. He apparently passed out not too long later, slowly driving into the bumper of a car waiting for a light. SWAT Sergeant Nathan White was found dead in the vehicle while everyone else was severely injured.

I'm not his family, so I'm not afforded information when I ask for it. I've never wanted to be his family more. For half a day I anxiously paced in the waiting room, to concerned to nap or sleep. Sergeant Tor came in with her daughter Helena, and Will's daughter Ursula. She is in the same boat as me. The stress causes her to enter early labor, and she is escorted to a room of her own. Chief Whitaker arrives at the fourteenth hour when this thing carried over into Sunday.

"Lieutenant," he says, extending a cup of coffee to me. "Bryan is working the aftermath. My wife is consoling her best friend."

"Who ambushed them?" I ask.

"Bodies left at the scene says Russian. They killed four, and there is evidence they wounded a few others. No Alice though," he says. He was right to kick this case to the FBI. It was too big for us. "Has anyone told you their status?" I shake my head. "Shelby has a concussion and a minor leg wound, but he's expected to make a full recovery. Kaiser looks worse than he is; his wounds are mostly superficial with a few broken ribs. Chase has a dislocated shoulder and likely irreparable damage to his left leg. That's not even factoring in the bruising to his T-four and T-five vertebra from a gunshot his vest absorbed."

Chase escaped with those injuries. His leg is likely irreparable because he aggravated it during the fight. Nathan by all logic didn't die in the SUV, so Chase would have had to carry him. He did that with a concussion and half his body destroyed. The pain must have been excruciating.

"Before he lost consciousness, he sent Detective Appletree this," Chief says, and shows me his phone. It's an address for a seemingly random building. "A few officers went to check it out. They found nine girls being trafficked. Including the daughter of the Georgian Ambassador."

"Alice might have told him something before the Russians got her," I say. I'm assuming the Russians got her.

"With the girl safe Anton Mamedova gave up the whole game. All the girls were under Georgian passports rubberstamped by the ambassador, that's how it worked," Chief says. A murder on the courthouse steps led us to busting a complex human trafficking ring.

"Every fed in the state is after these guys, and apparently the State Department is conducting its own investigation now," Chief says.

"Kramner?" a voice from behind me says. I face the swinging doors and face a doctor who with her hands in her coat pockets.

"Not family, but...girlfriend," I say, looking at the Chief from the corner of my eye. He seems indifferent. "How is he?"

"The more we worked, the worse he looked, but he's out of surgery," she says, and looks at Derek, then at me again. "He fucked his leg." That was blunt for a doctor.

"How bad?" I ask.

"When he's of sound mind, he needs to make a decision between manageable lifelong pain or amputation," she explains. Oh my God. "It's family at this point."

I want to punch my way through her. The only thing keeping me back right now, is that I'd have this meltdown in front of the Chief of Police.

"Penny," Chief says, and the doctor turns to him. "I've been in touch with Sergeant Kramner's family. His father said fellow officers could visit him, and that his brother and sister would be here with the next few hours, depending layovers."

"Don't bullshit me Derek," Penny says, then looks at him without saying anything. They appear to have a psychic conversation before she sighs and looks back to me. "Fine. If anyone but me asks, you're his wife. Got it?"

"Cover your ass, I got it," I say, and she lets me know which room before leaving. "You two know each other?"

"She's my sister in-law," Chief says, and gestures for me to go in. Chief doesn't join me because he has more fires to put out and a campaign to run.

Chase looks like he just came back from a war. His left shin is held together with metallic rods and pins and is grotesquely swollen from being carved up. The left side of his face is stitched from multiple lacerations, but his eye was spared. His shoulder is bandaged from the dislocation.

I grab his right hand and rub the top of it with my thumb. After a few quiet moments, I have a seat and close my eyes. I don't know when I fell asleep, but I am awoken by Penny checking on his condition.

Groaning myself awake, I look around the room to see we acquired company. A dark-haired woman is now sitting on the other side of him, reading a book. I can't tell if she is reading it aloud on purpose or not. In a horrible accent too. Leaning over to look at the cover, I see she is reading Through the Looking-Glass.

"It's new, I tell you -- I bought it yesterday -- my new RATTLE!" and his voice rose to a perfect scream.

"At this time..." the woman read, then noticed I was awake. "Oh, hey," she says politely.

"Hey," I reply, then look for a clock. I then check my phone. It's nearly ten in the morning. I must have been more exhausted than I realized.

"Sorry if I woke you," she says.

"Don't worry," I say, and we both watch Penny leave. "I'm Jennifer."

"I figured," she says, then folds over the corner of the page she was on and closes the book. "I'm Nicole. His sister." My expression gave away he had told me about her. "I take it he's told you something about me."

"All I know is, you two are trying to work it out. You're here, and that matters." I say, and she slowly smiles at me.

"I didn't know you two got married," she says, and I flinch like I was dodging a punch. Then I remember for the time being, I am his wife. "Not telling people because of work or something?" she asks, like she's trying to rationalize my reaction.

"We're not married," I admit. "The doctor said if anyone asks, we are, so I can stay with him."

"Oh, okay. I know communication is new to us, but I figured he would have brought that up," she says with a giggle I return. "If he asks for real?"

"It's only been a few months," I say. Bullshit. If he asks, I say yes. We're already working on the baby.

"So, no?" she asks. Why is she so nosy? "Sorry. I've barely been his sister and I'm already interrogating the girlfriend."

"I'm the youngest of five. I get it," I say.

Chase regains consciousness an hour later. Penny starts checking mental faculties immediately because of his concussion. He passes that test and is told about his leg. That he will have to choose between keeping it or amputating it. When he is left with us to decide, the first thing he asks about is the transport team. I tell him Shelby is already walking, Will had a baby, but Nathan didn't make it.

"Has someone told his family?" he asks, and I say yes. He holds it back, but it doesn't matter. He cries, and I hold his hand and let him grieve. The tears are brief, but the emotional impact of losing one of his friends lingers.

When Penny comes back to ask if he has decided regarding his leg, he says amputation. To him it is a matter of performance. You get to keep a leg that barely works with constant pain from it; or you can learn to operate a new leg with only a minor change in overall lifestyle. Penny says they'll start prepping the surgeons, and we wait again.

I stay with him until the doctors roll his bed down the hall and through the two-way doors, where I can't follow.

--

Sunday -- October 18, 2026

-Zillah Calvin-

It is time to execute my escape plan. The FBI and the State Department are sniffing around the Russian's properties. It is only a matter of time before they start linking those to me. As much as I believe they'd have a hell of a time rolling me up in a RICO, I must remember these jackasses murdered a police officer in a failed ambush on American soil. They will be out for blood.

The man who makes people vanish said someone will pick me up outside of my building at exactly noon. Not a minute before or after.

I pull my bag out of the top of my closet, and quickly double check everything. My phone reads ten till noon, so I prepare to go downstairs and wait in the lobby. The bag is slung over my shoulder and I open my door to leave. I freeze when Alecia is there waiting for me.

"My bag," she says, holding a gun up to me.

"It's here. Under my bed," I say, and she lowers the weapon and walks around me. I try to move out the door, but something is holding me here. I drop my bag to the floor and walk to my bedroom. Alecia has the bag open on the bed and checking its contents. I see the rifle used at the courthouse, but she also removes a disc from the bag as well.

"What's that?" I ask, accidently startling her enough to aim at me again. "Stop fucking aiming at me!"

"Proof of what the bad man did," she says. "He hurt me. Father helped me. He made it stop," she says, lowering the gun and crying like a baby. "Father is angry at me. Where do I go when father is angry?"

What the hell did they do to this woman? She the most lethal infant on the planet. They will find her and finish the job. Unless she disappears. Both Hugh and I paid in advance, and his seat in now vacant. Will they take her?

"Come with me," I say, and she looks at me with a face drowned in tears. "We take our bags, and we disappear."

"Will they find us?" she asks.

"No sweetie. The bad men will not find us," I say.

Before we leave, I take the disc and place it on my kitchen table next to a note for the police. I know they will come here eventually. Alecia takes her bag to the lobby with me, and I keep her somewhat concealed until I see the van pull up to the curb. I quickly exit the building holding her hand, but the driver stops us at the curb.

"You only paid for one," he says.

"Hugh Willard had a seat as well. He's dead, she's taking it," I say firmly, and the man makes a call. I look at her while we wait, and the man hands me the phone. "Hugh paid in advance. She's taking his spot."

"Not how this works," the man says.