Page 20 of Empowereds

20

T he first thing that intruded into Enzo’s consciousness was the hum of an engine and the jostle that came from riding in a vehicle. The second thing he noticed was a dull sensation of pain in his chin, chest, and knee. He tried to move and found that his arms were cuffed behind him.

That’s when he realized something was very wrong. His eyes flew open.

He sat in the middle row of a van, leaning against the window. The dim light outside indicated either morning or dusk. Woods surrounded a cracked and bumpy road. Ben Huntington drove the van, and Maretta sat next to him.

Memory rushed back—kissing Charity, fighting with Milo, and being shot with a tranquilizer dart. Enzo lifted his head and tried to clear his mind.

Not only were his hands cuffed, his feet had been tied together with a scarf. The Huntingtons were taking him somewhere. They had also—ridiculously—secured his seatbelt around him. They wanted him to be safe during the ride before they shot him and dumped his body in the countryside.

No, that wasn’t it. The seatbelt kept him from lunging at the front of the van and disrupting Ben’s driving.

Enzo wore new clothes, and his watch was gone. The Huntingtons suspected, and rightly so, that those items had trackers on them. A slight throbbing in his armpit told him they’d found the one there and removed it too. They must have kept him unconscious for a while. That meant the low light was probably morning, not dusk.

Maretta turned toward him. “Officer Smith is finally awake.” Her voice had a forced cheerfulness. “Although I suppose that’s not actually your name. Perhaps now you can tell us what it really is.”

She held a gun in her lap, loosely pointed at him. Most likely they would wait to shoot him outside somewhere so as not to leave any incriminating bloodstains in their van.

He struggled to sit more upright. A dull ache filled his head, a leftover from his fight with Milo. “If I disappear, the government will know you killed me. They’ll obliterate your whole group. Is that what you want?”

Ben glanced over his shoulder. “We don’t have to kill you. The choice is up to you.”

Enzo tugged at the cuffs around his wrists. “Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice since you’re the ones holding the gun.”

“In order to bargain with the government,” Maretta interjected, “we need to know your real name. We can’t say we have an Officer Smith. They won’t know who we’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Enzo said. “When they don’t hear from me, they’ll contact you.”

Maretta sighed like he was being a difficult child. The gun in her lap seemed so out of place there. She had such a motherly disposition, and somehow, even though she was threatening to kill him, that hadn’t changed.

“They won’t find us,” Ben said. “We’ve already packed up and moved on. We know how to disappear quickly.”

Enzo should’ve expected that. “They have more information on you this time. You won’t get away.”

Maretta looked at him patiently. “We’ve sent your picture to someone and asked them to look into the Kansas City police employment database. We’ll know your real name soon. You might as well tell us.”

Enzo glared at her. “You asked Callum, didn’t you?”

Maretta didn’t answer, just waited.

Of course they’d asked Callum. And he would find out the information for them. The Huntingtons had saved the kid’s life, so he felt he owed them something. “He’s only seventeen,” Enzo said. “Didn’t it bother you to ask him to break the law and risk imprisonment?”

“He doesn’t have to go to the trouble,” she said. “You could tell us instead.”

Enzo considered giving them a fake name. That way they wouldn’t be able to find his mother and threaten her with retribution. But they would get Enzo’s real name from Callum anyway, and besides, a psychic had ways to locate a person’s family. Perhaps if Ben and Maretta thought he was being compliant, they’d let their guard down. “Lorenzo Vasquez,” he said.

Maretta nodded, pulled a medium-sized piece of paper off the dashboard, and wrote something on it.

Someone in the backseat huffed. He turned to see Charity and Reverend Russell sitting there. Charity’s arms were folded, and her eyes icy.

“He probably isn’t telling the truth.”

She was here? The reverend might make sense. Religious people believed in offering last rights to dying people. But why had Charity come?

Perhaps she hadn’t been given a choice. The tight press of her lips said she would rather be anywhere else. Maybe her parents would make her watch his execution as punishment for being foolish enough to kiss him.

The thought made him feel sick—her watching him die. Well, this was one more way this whole mission had gone horribly wrong. If he’d just shot her when she refused to move, he could’ve dispatched Ben, called headquarters, and he’d be on his way back to his old life right now.

But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to shoot her, not even in the knee, disabling her instead of killing her. He was too soft, and he’d gotten attached to her despite knowing better.

“I’m telling the truth,” Enzo said. “I’m a special ops officer sent to investigate an Empowered that the government suspected of hiding in your harvesting group. And now they know. I texted them while I ran after Charity.”

Her eyes narrowed into slits. If she could’ve, she would’ve incinerated him with her gaze.

He turned to face Ben. “My supervisors have already started a search by now.” Technically, this wasn’t true. Enzo had told Schmitt that Ben was a psychic, but he hadn’t asked for backup during that text. When a backup team showed up, they often shot first and ask questions later. They wouldn’t try to spare Ben’s family.

Enzo had hoped he could convince Ben to come with him peacefully. “You need to take me to a public place and free me so I can contact them. Otherwise, you’ll bring down the brunt of the entire federal force on yourselves.”

“I’m willing to make a deal,” Ben said, sounding completely unworried by Enzo’s threat. “My daughter has taken a fancy to you. If you marry her, I’ll let you live.”

What? Enzo waited for Ben to say he was joking about that. He didn’t.

“Marry her?” Enzo glanced in the back seat to see Charity’s reaction to this pronouncement. She turned away sharply, staring out the window and refusing to meet his eyes.

None of this made sense. A closer look at her revealed that her eyes were puffy. She’d been crying. Had that been because he’d betrayed her or because she’d betrayed her father by kissing him? Was this part of her father’s punishment? Was the man crazy?

“You want me to marry your daughter?” Enzo repeated.

“You don’t have to,” Ben said. “I’d be just as happy shooting you.”

Still not making any sense. “So if I marry Charity, you’ll let me go?”

Ben shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I said you had a choice to make. Best make it soon. We’re almost there.”

“Almost where?” Enzo asked.

“Either a wedding or a funeral,” Ben said.

Ok, so not really a choice. These people were crazy, and Enzo would have to go through some sort of wedding ritual in order to buy himself time.

He hadn’t pegged the Huntingtons for being part of a cult, but clearly, they were. “In that case, I’ll marry your daughter.” Hopefully, the ritual didn’t involve something bizarre like snakes or exchanging blood.

“Well then,” Maretta said, still cheerful, “I guess this means we’re going to have a shotgun wedding.”

The woman was joking while holding a gun at him. All these people were unhinged. Surprising, since Charity seemed so normal.

Maretta leaned over her seat to hand the paper and pen to Reverend Russell. “The marriage license,” she told Enzo. “I signed your name on your behalf. That’s legal when a person can’t physically sign a document.”

Was that why she’d really wanted his name—not to make any bargains with the government but to write it on the marriage license? The fact that they had a marriage license and a reverend in the van meant they’d planned this before they put Enzo into the vehicle.

Reverend Russell handed the pen and paper to Charity somberly. “If you’re sure about this, you’ll need to sign as well.” His words were gentle, telling her he wouldn’t blame her for refusing.

Enzo expected her to refuse. She would point out that forcing an enemy to marry you was insane.

Instead, she pressed her lips together, gulped, and signed the document.

Reverend Russell took it from her hand. “Very well.” He sent her one last pitying look and intoned the words, “We are gathered here today in the sight of God and these witnesses to join Charity Huntington and Lorenzo Vazquez in holy matrimony.”

“Right now?” Enzo interrupted. “You’re marrying us in the van?”

“It’s why I came along for the ride.” Reverend Russell leveled Enzo with a look. “Lorenzo, you need to repeat after me. I, Lorenzo, take you, Charity, to be my lawful wife.”

Reverend Russell paused, waiting for Enzo to say the words.

Well, at least there were no snakes so far. Enzo repeated the preacher’s words and the ones he spoke next. “To have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish all the days of my life.”

So surreal. So bizarre. He’d told his mother more than once that he’d never get married. Now he’d have to tell her he’d been wrong about that. She would laugh if he lived to tell her the story.

Charity looked down at her lap and still wouldn’t meet his eye. Had she insisted on this marriage as a way to save his life with her unhinged parents? It was a possibility.

When Enzo finished his vows, Reverend Russell guided Charity through her part. She spoke with the grimness of a eulogy.

“Usually when I marry a couple,” Reverend Russell said, “I give them a few words of advice during the ceremony. This time I’ll only say one thing. I’m a peaceful man, Enzo, but if you ever hurt Charity, I will come after you myself.” He nodded in Enzo’s direction. “By the power invested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Right. This meant that Enzo would have a new item to add to his to-do list when he got back to Kansas City. Get an annulment. And the next time the officers got together at the Christmas party and told stories about their cases, he would have one that topped all of theirs.

Reverend Russell signed the document, folded it, and slid it into his pocket. “This will make it to the recorder’s office eventually.”

Charity’s mother had teared up during the ceremony. Sad tears? Enzo couldn’t imagine they were happy ones. She drew in several breaths, and her too-bright voice wavered, “I guess we’ll be dropping the honeymooners off at the cabin for two weeks.”

Charity shut her eyes as though the words caused her pain. But relief washed over Enzo. The cabin would be a prison, he had no doubt of that, still, the announcement meant they planned on keeping him alive for at least two weeks.

He had that long to figure out how to escape.