Caught Unaware

Chapter 36

UNDERGROUND LAB

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

SEQUENCE INCOMPLETE

The lights flashed red and the words blinked across the screen. Flores and the scientist beside him looked at each other.

"Damn it!" Flores pounded the table.

"Try a different machine! If we lose a missile, it won't mean the end of the mission," Flores ran a hand through his hair, straightening up loose jet-black strands of hair that had shaken from his greased coif.

The scientist scurried to a machine at the other side of the walkway and retrieved another flask of Amelia's drawn blood. Amelia watched, her face expressionless.

Flores' fingers flew over the keyboard as he typed in the sequence and waited.

SEQUENCE INCOMPLETE

"How is this happening?!" Flores shouted. "The numbers are correct, it only goes in the red when..."

Flores turned slowly to see Amelia's now smiling face. He began to walk slowly, dangerously slowly, toward her.

"What did you do, little one? What did you do?"

Amelia's silence earned her a hard glare, but she kept right on smiling.

"Tell me, girl. You tell me what is going on, why your blood isn't working like it should. If you do not.." he withdrew a very large, very shiny blade from his belt loop sheath and showed it to her. "I will keep getting more and more of your blood from you, one way or another, until it finally works. Unless there's something you'd like to share with me to speed up this process and get this whole thing underway?"

"You'd drain me for your missiles?" Amelia asked him, incredulously. This was the man who killed another for hitting her, and here he was threatening to cut her to pieces.

"Sweetheart," Flores took her gently by the chin and kissed her forehead. "I'd tear you to pieces and throw you in a blender if it meant I had enough DNA to set off just one of my missiles. You are unimportant, just a means to an end, my dear."

The whispered words shook Amelia, more than the knife, more than him killing someone in front of her. The callous way he talked to her now gave her a glimpse of the true murderer behind the mask.

"Tell me, then we can fix this and continue on with my plan, and at the end of it all I can make sure you end up richer than the Queen of England," Flores promised her.

"What makes you think I know anything about your complicated machines?"

Flores spun in frustration, almost roaring and turned back to her after he caught a breath. His face was red with fury but his voice was calm once more.

"Your smile gave you away, child. It gave away everything. You know something, you KNEW this wouldn't work. So tell me why. And tell me how it will be made all right again," Flores demanded. The entire lab was quiet. A collective holding of breaths made the air as still as all could be, the only sound the small generator that ran all the machines humming in the background.

"I don't want money for the murder you're going to do with my help," Amelia said to him, her voice wavering with fear but determined to get her point across.

"Then I refer to my previous threat," Flores reached beside him to withdraw his knife once more.

"All right!" Amelia cried. She believed him, he really would do anything to her for his plan to work, she thought.

"You need my father's DNA, not mine," Amelia said, looking Flores dead in the eye.

Confusion spread across his face and the scientist beside him leaned in to speak softly with her.

"Miss, DNA is passed down, half from the father, half from the mother. It's basic biology."

Amelia nodded her head in understanding.

"I know," she said, her eyes not leaving Flores' as she spoke. Flores looked at her with impatient exasperation.

"What does your explanation mean, then?" Flores asked her.

"You need my father's blood. Not mine," she repeated.

"And why not yours, girl?" asked the scientist, finally hitting upon the right question to ask.

"Because my blood is not my father's," Amelia answered quietly. Flores' eyes darkened dangerously, murder flashed before them and he leaned in further until his nose was almost grazing hers.

"Say that again," he growled.

"Test it. You. Have. The. Wrong. Girl," Amelia's voice rose with every punctuated word and she rose up to push against the revolutionary.

"You were found, photographed with your parents on the night they were killed. You were tracked to America where one of my men, paid handsomely, by the way, kidnapped you from your keeper and you haven't left our sight since then. So tell me, clever child, how do you not have your father's blood?"

"Because," Amelia said evenly, still looking Flores in the eye. "He was not my father. Because," she continued quickly.

"I am not Amelia Cershaw. But for a very large fee, I can take you to where they were hiding her from you," she concluded.

"Assuming I believe you, how do I know you know where she is hidden then?" Flores asked cautiously.

"They held us together, only one of us being seen at a time. But at the risk of my own safety, I won't tell you her location. I will only show you. Which means you take me back to America, you take me back to Echo Park and I will deliver her into your hands. They have no idea I would ever betray them. Obviously with the money you'd give me I would be able to start my own life without anyone on my tail, you OR them."

Flores walked away from her slowly while she watched his every move. Loudly, he called to one of the militia standing guard at the far door:

"Tranq her. We're headed back to America."