Read Online Away by Teri Hall - Free Book Online

for a power-pack/handle, and three smaller ones for attachments. The handle was covered with what looked to Vivian like real black leather. It must have been fake, but it was a high quality fake. The attachments were steel, highly polished so that they gleamed. Vivian saw that two were cutters and the third was a cauterizer. They stopped the bleeding so you lived longer.
    The man took a digitab from his pocket—the smallest one Vivian had ever seen. He tapped the screen a few times, read whatever he saw there.
    â€œSo.” He didn’t look up. “The facts: Peter Hill, collaborator. Jolie Hill, his wife, female child, presumably his daughter, both Identified not long ago in Bensen. Where”—he raised his eyebrows—“you happen to live.”
    Vivian didn’t correct him. He knew she didn’t live in town. He was just trying to get her started. She remembered her training again—once you started talking, it was easier to keep talking. Best to remain mute until you were compelled to speak. Vivian tried not to think about what that long-ago trainer had meant when he said “compelled.”
    â€œMother and daughter confined. Or at least, that was the last report.”
    Meaning that Jolie and her daughter could be dead. Vivian kept her face neutral.
    â€œYour own husband was Called to Serve years ago, correct? He helped out in that last big skirmish with Samarik, was killed in action, correct?”
    Vivian nodded. She hoped her face hadn’t changed, hadn’t revealed the pain she still felt, like her heart was being tugged from her chest—Daniel, dead. Killed in action, certainly, but not the kind of action this man cited. Vivian knew the Call to Serve had been a sham, just as Daniel had known. But he had to go; he had no choice.
    â€œPeter Hill was a friend of your late husband’s.” It wasn’t a question. “And of yours. And now he’s disappeared.” The man tilted his head at Vivian. “Did you know that?”
    Vivian shook her head.
    â€œYes. His house is quite deserted. So strange that he would just . . . disappear, so soon after he visited you at your employer’s home.” The man reached into the case and plucked a tiny piece of lint from the velvet lining.
    â€œThat night, the night Peter visited you, that was the very same night your daughter ran away, wasn’t it?”
    Vivian nodded, and tried not to look at the case.
    â€œSo upsetting, I’m sure.” The man waited. He reached into the case again, and stroked one of the cutter attachments. He leaned forward to look at it, picked it up to examine a smudge. He rubbed his thumb over the smudge until it was gone.
    Vivian kept seeing flashes of a memory, so long ago now. A young woman, a collaborator, being carried into the safe house by two men, one of them Daniel. They’d found her dumped by the side of the road. She was still making some noise, but not much. There was so little blood, but everywhere—her arms, her legs, her face, her abdomen where it showed through her ripped clothing—there were cauterized wounds; angry red lines or wider, circular areas, burned closed with a laser. Vivian started to go for the medical student they counted among their ranks, but Daniel shook his head. He went to the chest they kept in a cupboard, a chest none of the trainees liked to think about. Daniel took it out and removed a tiny paper envelope from it, one of several. He was careful to touch only the corner. He carried the envelope to the girl, who was lying on a cot, being tended to by three other trainees.
    â€œTessa.” Daniel spoke the girl’s name. She was in the same upper-level philosophy course he and Vivian were taking that semester at college. She opened her eyes and saw what he held. Her whimpering stopped. Slowly, she reached out toward him, her hand shaking.
    â€œNo, Daniel.” One of the other trainees reached for Tessa’s hand,