“I need to go too,” Emily’s mom said. “I’ll follow at a distance and keep my head down.”
Too dangerous to be seen together. How many times had her mother’s and grandmother’s faces been shown on the news?
Grand allowed herself to be led. “Did you know Bad People are following us?” She fluttered her hand in the air. “We have to get to Raleigh. It’s very tiring.”
“Yes, Grand. I know.”
Emily’s gaze cut left and right as they crossed the parking lot. Was anyone following? Was her mom all right? Everything within Emily pulled to look over her shoulder, check on her mother. But she didn’t dare.
As they entered the hospital, her pulse skipped.
She asked for directions to the nearest bathroom, then hustled her grandmother along. Once they entered the restroom, panic clawed at Emily’s throat. What was her mom doing? Had anyone recognized her?
“Hurry, okay?” she whispered to Grand.
As they left the restroom, from her side vision Emily spotted her mom ready to go inside. Grand saw her too. “Hannah, what—?”
“Shh!” Emily squeezed her fingers.
“Ow!”
In the hallway, heads turned.
“Come on, Grand, let’s go.” Emily pulled her grandmother away, heartbeat in her throat. If anyone had heard the name Hannah . . .
They crossed the parking lot as fast as Grand could go, Emily praying for her mother. At the car she noticed it unlocked, keys still in the ignition. Her mom’s purse sat in the backseat. Woman wasn’t thinking very straight. Emily helped Grand into the front passenger seat, then slipped behind the wheel. She started the car.
“Where’s Hannah?” Grand sounded so scared. How had she made it through all this?
“She’s coming. We’ll go up and get her.”
“We can’t leave Hannah!”
“It’s okay, Grand. It’s okay.”
She drove toward the entrance and put the car in Park. Come on, where are you? Long seconds stretched by.
Her mother came out of the building. Emily could have cried. Her mom reached the car, opened the back door—
From nowhere a gray van surged in front of them and jerked to a stop. Its side door gaped open. A man jumped out, gun in hand. Emily gasped. The man grabbed her mother and dragged her toward the truck.
“No!” Emily leapt from the car.
A second man appeared in the van and pulled her mother inside. The first man flung open the Camry’s front passenger door and yanked out Grand.
“Ahhhh!”
He clamped a hand over her mouth. In no time she disappeared into the van. Emily ran toward her. “Nno—!”
An arm gripped around her neck. Then shoved her—hard. Other strong arms caught her at the van’s door and pulled her inside to dimness, a hard floor. A man climbed in after her.
Her knee hurt.
Was she dreaming? It happened so fast.
Someone slammed the door, plunging them into darkness.
The van took off.
Chapter 46
SPECIAL HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION INTO FREENOW TERRORIST ACTIVITY OF FEBRUARY 25, 2013
SEPTEMBER 16, 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Representative ELKIN MORSE (Chairman, Homeland Security Committee): Am I correct in assuming that, once you saw the messages on the video, you finally believed Hannah Shire?
Sergeant CHARLES WADE (Sheriff’s Department Coastside): I believed her words about the video. I still had four homicides to investigate, and her role in those deaths remained unclear.
MORSE: Did you not rethink your theories at this point? Those homicides could be linked to the video. Hannah Shire and her mother could be on the run from the people responsible, who were now trying to kill her.
WADE: All of that went through my mind. We still had many pieces of the puzzle to fit together. At that point things were happening so fast my theories could change from one minute to the next. However, if Hannah Shire believed she was in serious danger, why didn’t she call law enforcement? As I’ve mentioned before, she had my direct number. And even if she didn’t trust me, at any time she could have gone to the nearest police station. She could have called the FBI. Her refusal to reach out to any law enforcement did not fit with the theory that she was a mere victim.
MORSE: She clearly did not trust you.
WADE: So she claimed. Which was pure insanity. She’d made a very serious accusation against me to Homeland Security—that I, a veteran of law enforcement for twenty-eight years, was a terrorist plotting against the government. You say she didn’t trust me, Chairman Morse. At the time, I could not trust her.
MORSE: So once you saw the messages on the video, what did you do?
WADE: The FBI was now involved, as well as Homeland Security. We all needed to work together. First everyone needed to be brought up to speed on what had transpired. Homeland Security needed to tell the FBI task force what Hannah Shire had said on the phone. I needed to brief both parties regarding Mrs. Shire’s interview and the homicides.