Lucas and Evie: A Farpointe Initiative Origin Story Read online

  "Serves you right," she said as she laid her head on his chest. "I know you do it for Samantha, but your sister is strong, just like you, and we'll get her out." Evie pulled back and looked at Lucas. "But you must promise me no more unnecessary risks. I seriously don't know what would happen to me if you were gone."

  "You'd worry less."

  "I'd rather have you to worry about."

  "Well, I'm not going anywhere." He placed a gentle kiss on her lips. "That's not exactly true. I'm actually going over to the freezer for a bag of ice and several beers."

  "If nothing else, you make life interesting, Mr. Kreg."

  He limped toward the refrigerator. "That's my goal in life, Mrs. Kreg."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lucas' reflection stared back at him from the cracked mirror behind the bar. After a week the color around his eye had changed from purple to a puke green-brown. The cracked ribs were another matter. They still hurt, almost all the time. He reached up to touch his eye, the man in the mirror doing the same. Evie was right: it was amazing he'd escaped that fiasco with only a black eye and cracked ribs. He should be in prison.

  Or a hole in the ground.

  He'd felt pretty useless the last few days, as Evie had forbade him to go out on any more jobs until he was fully healed. Paul and Bobby had easily breezed through the two small heists that had come their way since the fun in the warehouse. Cabin fever had set in from being cooped up in the shop for too long. Luckily, Evie had kicked him out today, saying he was 'underfoot'. He'd gone for a walk and ended up in the bar.

  Lucas tipped the glass up and swallowed the last of the beer. He was about to push himself away from the bar when someone sat down on the stool next to him. The smell of cheap cologne was overpowering.

  "Don't go, Lukey-boy. You're just the man I've been looking for."

  The oily voice grated against Lucas' nerves. "I thought someone was trying a new cologne called Scum of the Earth, but then you sat down, Griggs, and it all made sense."

  Lucas marveled at how such a large man could balance on such a small stool. The man's over-abundant backside hung over the edges. Griggs shifted his rather ample weight, the stool groaning in protest. He took off his white fedora and set it on the bar. The bartender pushed a glass of whiskey toward him.

  "You wound me to my very heart, Lukey-boy. And after all we've been through together, all I've done to help you."

  Lucas smirked. "Griggs, if I for one second believed you had a heart, I might feel sorry for you, but as it is I'm just waiting for the day when whatever is in your chest explodes from trying to push blood through your cholesterol-clogged arteries. When that day comes, I will be the first to toast over your grave, because there'll be thousands of people who'll be free from the hold you have on their lives."

  "Ah, but will they truly be free? I may be gone, but they'll still be looking for their next fix. See, my boy, the difference between you and me is a matter of perspective."

  "Perspective and three hundred pounds."

  Griggs flashed a sugary smile, "Always with the witty comment." Griggs paused, sipping his drink. "Yes, perspective. Those poor souls are lost in this new world. They've seen and gone through experiences that no human should ever go through. I merely provide them with a service. You see, Lukey-boy, I am a lot like a doctor. My products provide relief to people who are very sick, sick of reality and the so-called prosperous life the benevolent Continental Peace Federation has promised us."

  "It always amazes me how the mind can justify taking advantage of other people when money is involved." Lucas backed off his stool. "Griggs, I wish I could say it's been a pleasure, but my mother taught me never to lie. Shoveling a path through all the bullcrap you just laid down is going to take me a while."

  Lucas turned on his heel and began walking toward the door. He felt dirty for just talking to Griggs. He was an awful human being...if you could even call him human.

  "Suit yourself, but Samantha would want you to hear me out."

  The name brought Lucas up short, his hand hovering over the handle of the door. He quickly turned and traveled back across the bar in long, determined strides, stopping behind Griggs, whose white-coated back was turned to him.

  "If you value your worthless life, you will never speak her name again."

  Griggs took a drink. "I wouldn't speak of your dear sister unless you could help her." Griggs gestured to the bartender, who poured another drink and set it before the stool Lucas had recently vacated.

  Lucas hesitated, his hands clenching. Griggs was using his sister to manipulate him. It was working.

  Grudgingly, he sat and wrapped his trembling hands around the glass.

  Griggs set his drink on the worn wood bar, the ice clinking in the glass. Turning slightly, he smiled at Lucas and paused before speaking.

  "Lukey-boy..."

  "Don't call me that."

  "Lukey, you and I used to have a good relationship. We worked together so well."

  Lucas snorted. "I tolerated you. Our former working relationship never even remotely resembled a friendship. When you decided to move into drugs, I was done with you."

  "And that saddened me, because you were so...useful. My decision was purely financial, and now I want for nothing while you, on the other hand, cling to your 'morality' and live hand-to-mouth, never able to get what you really want: your sister. Come on, Lukey. You're a thief. You break the law for a living. What moral high ground do you have to stand on?"

  He wanted to hit Griggs. Hit him so hard that he would topple off the stool and lie flailing on the bar floor like a turtle in its shell, but he restrained himself. He needed to hear what Griggs knew about Samantha.

  "The point is, Lukey," Griggs continued, leaning forward, "I like you even if you don't think highly of me. I want us to work together at least one more time, to do a good work. Recently, a colleague of mine alerted me to a new experimental program the CPF has started. It involves giving the workers in the ag camps a new, high potency stimulant that will make them work faster, virtually around the clock. Workers literally work until they drop dead. They'll burn through a lot of people, but there's no shortage of street wretches they can round up as new workers when they encounter a shortage. You and I know the ag camps break people before their time, but this way they can wear them out quicker instead of dealing with the steady decline of a worker who becomes a burden. They may be cruel and heartless, but the CPF is nothing if not efficient."

  Griggs pulled a neatly folded piece of paper from his breast pocket. "This is a list of the ag workers from camp seventeen. They're slated to be part of the first drug trials." He slid the paper across the bar. Lucas eyed the square of paper, afraid of what was written there. Hesitantly, he unfolded it and scanned the list of names. In the middle he saw the name that made his stomach turn in knots: Samantha Kreg. His older sister, who had sacrificed so much for him and was now destined to be a lab rat and die an awful death.

  Griggs took another drink. "Despite what you think of me, I do care about people, especially people I've known for a long time. Lucas, I want to help you."

  "The problem, Griggs, is that your help comes at a price. What is it this time?"

  Griggs swirled his glass, watching the liquid tumble over what was left of his ice cubes in a chaotic, circular dance. "The convoy carrying your sister from the camp to the medical facility will also be carrying the raw materials for making the stimulant. It just so happens the raw material is the same one I use to make my product. I thought since you'll be trying to rescue your sister, you might as well help out an old friend and his business by procuring that raw material for me."

  "So you can destroy lives out here?"

  "Lukey, your vision is so limited. Think about the good we'll be doing. We stop the CPF from starting a detestable program, you get your beloved sister back, and I continue providing a valuable service to my clients. Everybody wins in this game."

  Lucas gently traced his finger over Samantha's name. How long had she been gone? Ten years? Lord, had it really been that long ago when she took the blame for the loaf of bread he'd stolen? The heartache of missing Samantha and the guilt for sending her to the ag camps was almost overwhelming, but here was an opportunity to make it all right. All he had to do was make a deal with the devil in order to get the information.

  After he'd refolded the paper, Lucas tucked it into his palm. He took a long drink and stared at Griggs. "After I do this, I never want to see or hear from you again. Is that understood?"

  Griggs smiled. "I'll miss you, Lukey-boy. You're such an interesting man." He swallowed the last of his drink, donned his hat, and laboriously eased himself off his stool. "Expect the delivery of information tonight. And, Lucas..."

  Lucas looked at the fat man before him.

  "Tell your sister I said hi." With a grin, Griggs strolled out of the bar and into the sunset.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A smile lit Evie's face as she scanned the message on the screen. The medication the boys had stolen was now being put to good use in Australia, of all places. Most of the continent was an R3 stronghold, so the medication would be helping those actively fighting the CPF which, she admitted, gave her great joy. They had flirted with the idea of finding a transport bound for Australia and joining the fight, but with Samantha still in the ag camp there was no way Lucas could leave. Leaving might mean life to them, but it was death for Samantha.

  Evie swiped quickly at the screen, deleting the message. While vague and veiled, a message possibly sent from someone in the resistance was dangerous no matter what it said.

  Someday, the three of them would join the resistance. Evie, Lucas, and Samantha, freedom fighters for the betterment of humanity.

  She smiled at the thought. She had neve
r met Samantha, but Lucas talked of her so often that she felt she already knew the woman who'd raised her husband after their parents had died in the plague. Freeing Samantha might be the easy part. Keeping her husband alive was proving to be the greater challenge. For a man with such a great tactical mind, he had a hard time sticking to his great tactical plans. The risks he took were so unnecessary.

  Evie could feel worry creeping into her mind. She needed to head it off before it turned into something worse. In her mind, worry was like a single termite that found its way into the wooden floor joists of a house and then invited its termite buddies over for drinks. All of a sudden there was a whole termite community hidden under your feet, eating away at the very floor you walked on. Eventually, that floor would collapse into the basement in one gigantic, chaotic mess.

  For Evie, that was worry. It was one little thought that wiggled its way into her mind and contained the power to send her nice, ordered, everyday life collapsing into debilitating depression.

  Kneeling before a simple wooden trunk, she pulled out a leather-bound notebook and lovingly caressed the intricate cross pattern carved into the rich brown leather. The cross took her back to a much simpler time when her mother and father had packed her and her two brothers into the back of a minivan and drove to church. Evie had loved church: loved the music, loved the stories from the Bible, loved the warmth that seemed to flow from the people in the building.

  That was all gone now.

  Her family, the church, Bibles; the CPF had made sure of that. They'd done a bang-up job of taking away any hope people might still hold on to.

  Evie quickly rose and closed the trunk as the worries began to assault her mind like mortars lobbed from an enemy camp. She crossed the small, one-room apartment, settled into her favorite chair, and unwound the leather lace that held the notebook closed. It was more efficient to use the verbal writing system installed on the computer, but going the old route of paper and pen seemed to calm her, take her back to that simpler time, and shored up the defensive walls of her mind. She wondered what Lucas had paid for this notebook; paper wasn't cheap, and real leather was scarce.

  Taking a deep breath, she began to write. Evie never had a plan for the times she wrote; it just came out from the places in her mind that held her deepest emotions and her greatest longings. The words flowed freely out of her pen just as the pent-up tears flowed from her eyes.

  She heard the metallic clink of the exterior door sliding shut and looked up to see that an hour had passed since she sat down to write. She quickly dried the lingering tears, then hastily stuffed the notebook back in the trunk and moved to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. There was no need to worry Lucas. She caught a glimpse of him moving through the shop on the security monitor and heard the familiar whoosh of the door sliding open.

  She dried her face on the hand towel and walked out into the living area. The sight of him cleared any remaining clouds of depression and seemed to bring the warm sun into the room once again. Evie wrapped her slender arms around him and melted into his embrace.

  Puzzled, Lucas pulled back from the hug, "Hey, are you all right?"

  Evie looked deep into his light gray eyes, "Yeah...yeah, just missing you. I'm glad you're home."

  "Well, I'm glad to be here too. Are you sure you're all right?"

  "I'm sure. I wrote most of it out of my system, and then seeing you got the rest out."

  Lucas grinned. "I do have that affect on the ladies."

  She pushed him away and put her hands on her hips. "Lucas Kreg, you're horrible."

  "And that's why you love me."

  His smile faded and he gestured toward the sofa. "Can we talk?"

  Evie timidly sat. "Okay...is everything alright?"

  "Yes, but I had an interesting conversation with Griggs today at the bar."

  "Griggs? Nothing good comes from talking with Griggs."

  Lucas nodded. "I know, and I wouldn't have listened to him if he hadn't shown me this." He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Evie. She carefully unfolded the paper and scanned the lists of names, stopping near the middle.

  "Samantha? Lucas, what does this mean?"

  Lucas released a frustrated breath. "It means that our all-benevolent government is now using human subjects to test a new drug engineered to increase productivity at the ag camps. It'll destroy those who receive it. Samantha is in the first trial group." Lucas took the paper out of her hand and folded it again. Then he grasped her hands and stared into her eyes. His own eyes were intense. Frighteningly so.

  "Honey, it means they'll wreck her in order to squeeze out a few more weeks or months of work from her. If these stimulants go live, not only will Samantha die a horrible death, but tens of thousands will suffer and die because they're overworked and not allowed to rest. We can't let that happen."

  Evie squeezed his hand. "What can we do?"

  "She'll be on a convoy next week headed to the medical facility where the CPF will conduct the medical trials. We hit the convoy, rescue her, and bug out as quickly as we can. Then we find a transport to Australia and join R3 like we've talked about."

  "Yeah, okay. I'm with you about rescuing Samantha, but I just have one question. What does Griggs want for this information? There's nothing free with him."

  Lucas rose and began pacing the floor, "The second truck in the convoy is carrying raw material used to make the stimulant. It's the same material Griggs uses in his drug manufacturing operation. He wants the raw material, says it will set him up for a long time."

  Evie recoiled. "Lucas, baby, we've never been in the drug business. Griggs profits by turning people into slaves. How can we help him destroy lives?"

  Lucas stopped pacing, and his voice rose in volume, "Because if we don't, Samantha dies."

  Evie stood and crossed to him and put her hand on his arm. "I know. Believe me, I get that, but there must be another way. Can't we hit the convoy, rescue Samantha and just leave?"

  "The stimulant still gets made and people still die horribly. If we destroy the raw material, Griggs places an anonymous call to the CPF and we're found in no time." Lucas resumed pacing.

  "Maybe we can get to her at the facility. Break her out."

  Lucas snorted. "The only way she's getting out of the facility is in a body bag. We don't have the capabilities to break into a facility like that one. Look, I know we'd be letting Griggs put more drugs on the street, but at least the people who buy from him are doing it willingly and with their own money. The people in the ag camps would be strapped down and jammed with needles until they simply fall over dead." He fixed Evie with another intense stare. "We need to do this. If we don't, we're turning our backs on Samantha and condemning her to death. It'll be on us, and I don't think I can live with that for the rest of my life."

  Evie stared back at the man she loved, and her heart ached for him. He was facing the toughest decision of his life, and it was tearing apart all the moral rules he had imposed upon himself. The strain and the turmoil were etched into his face, and she knew he desperately wanted her to take it away from him and make this all better.

  She reached out and embraced him. The rigid tension that had built up in his body began to loosen, and this time it was Lucas' turn to let the silent tears flow. She wiped them away from his eyes.

  "If we do this, we do this together. I'm on the ground with you, because when it comes to Samantha, you cannot make a rational decision."

  "Absolutely not. You can't come into the field. I'd just worry about you."

  "And I'd worry about you here. There's no discussion. I can fight, I can drive a getaway vehicle, I can do whatever needs to be done. I just need to do it by your side this time."

  Lucas let out another exasperated breath and kissed her lips gently. "As I can see you won't be persuaded to stay behind, I yield. However, you have to promise me that you'll keep yourself far away from any trouble if it breaks out."

  "I'll make that promise...with my fingers crossed," she said with a playful grin.

  "Oh, Mrs. Kreg, how you vex me." He bent his head and kissed her more passionately this time. Evie willingly yielded to the kiss and prayed this wouldn't be one of the last she shared with her husband.