Page 4

Mirage

When Matthew came out of his daze, the therapist of false promises was still sitting in the chair in his room. A thigh-length brown coat was now draped across the footboard of his bed.

Fuck. Did I black out?

“Your life doesn’t have to end here. You can have justice for your parents’ murder. The justice you need to move on.”

Matthew squeezed his eyes shut at the tears welling in the corners.

“Sadness will never touch you again, Doctor. I swear it.”

As far as Matthew was concerned, there was no fixing this. He was broken inside, maybe forever.

“Leave!”

Matthew yanked the metal cup he never filled with water and hurled it at the stranger’s head.

But the asshole caught it with his right hand, as if he’d once played catcher for the Dodgers, and flicked it onto the mattress beside the dinner tray, then had the audacity to smirk before he eased his hand back into his pocket.

Now Matthew was really pissed. But also a bit more curious. This guy wasn’t a therapist. Not with lightning-fast reflexes like that.

Who is this fucker?

The man opened a laptop unlike one he’d ever seen.

“Revenge is the justice you want, Dr. Adams. Not answers or details.”

Matthew sure as hell wasn’t going to throw anything else and embarrass himself. He walked over to the bedside table on shaky legs and stared at the blank laptop screen.

Maybe once he complied, this jerk would finally leave.

Matthew first heard the crackling of a static radio coming through the laptop speaker, then a male voice before images began to appear.

“We’re holding position. Targets confirmed.”

Matthew eased closer.

A small compound with clay walls was being filmed from what looked to be a satellite feed.

Two individuals in head-to-toe black, with their faces obscured by low hoods, crouched outside the compound’s entrance.

The bird’s-eye view showed about fifteen to twenty men unloading crates of cargo and military-grade weapons from old pickup trucks.

There were several hostages, some male but primarily female, huddled in a corner of the compound, guarded by men with automatic rifles.

Matthew began to sweat, dampness covering his brow and moisture dampening his hands.

“What am I looking at?” he whispered, more to himself.

“Karabo Ziri Ani-Marekani, the radical militia group responsible for the bombing of your parents’ clinic in South Africa on September seventeenth.”

The stranger stared at him as if he could read his thoughts.

“This information was retrieved from the DOD records and confirmed with the Pentagon records database.”