Calculated Risk. Janie Crouch

seen in over ten years.

      It took every ounce of self control she had not to scurry away or whimper.

      Everyone had called him Smith, although that certainly wasn’t his real name. He’d been in charge of discipline. He’d been old even then. He looked ancient now.

      “You know who I am?” he asked.

      “Yes.” How could she possibly forget the man who had broken more than one of her bones? “What I don’t know is why I’m alive and still conscious.”

      Smith shook his head. “As I said, I’m not here to harm you. Melissa needed me to deliver important...items that are required in order for her to escape the Organization.”

      “You’re helping her?”

      “They’ve gone too far, even for me.” He gave the smallest shrug with his shoulder. “And maybe what I’m doing here today will help make up for the sins of my past. But we don’t have much time. I’ll lead them away from your direction, but that’s all I can do.”

      He pushed an old flip phone into her hand. “You hold the future now. Melissa will be in touch as soon as she can. I placed the items in the back seat of your car. Be careful. They are everything.”

      Bree turned toward her car. They were everything? She turned back toward the caretaker. “What are you talking about—”

      He was gone, disappeared into the darkness.

      She shook her head and turned back toward her car—a nondescript late-model Honda most people wouldn’t pay attention to—cautiously, even knowing she could’ve been killed multiple times over by now if that was someone’s intent.

      She heard yelling on the other side of the parking lot and picked up her pace. Maybe it was just the normal type of trouble that could be found in an empty downtown parking lot in the middle of the night, but maybe it was trouble coming specifically for her. She paused again as she came up on her car, seeing two large, odd-shaped boxes in the back seat.

      She’d been expecting some files, but electronic ones on a hard drive. Definitely not anything that size.

      After another couple steps, Bree realized those weren’t file boxes at all. She ran the last few feet to her car, pushing her face up against the window.

      “Oh, my God, Mel, what have you done?”

       Chapter Two

      Bree stared, rubbed her eyes just to make sure she hadn’t been affected by some sort of airborne hallucinogen, then stared some more.

      Not file boxes at all. Strapped into the back seat of her car were two separate baby carriers. Inside each of them was a tiny sleeping infant. Bree didn’t know anything about babies, but those were definitely fresh ones. New. Couldn’t be more than five minutes old, right?

      A note was taped to the top of one of the carriers, so she carefully opened the door and grabbed it.

      I couldn’t get out. But you see now why I have to. Their names are Christian and Beth, and they’re two months old. The Organization doesn’t know about them. I will keep it that way and hope you will keep them safe until I can escape.

      Crisscross, applesauce, Bree. You hold my heart in your hands every time you pull the twins close. I never knew what true family was until I had them.

      Bree removed the small hard drive attached to the paper then crumpled it, bringing her fist down softly on the roof of the car. She didn’t know the first thing about babies. Had never held one in her life. What was she going to do now?

      She quietly shut the back door—heaven forbid she wake one of them up—and got into the driver’s side. Staying here wasn’t safe. Her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel in a death grip as she pulled the car out of the parking lot.

      She’d known it was going to be hard. But this was so much worse than she thought.

      There were babies in the back seat.

      Not just one. Two. Babies. One of them even named after her. Oh, Mellie.

      This changed every possible plan that had been stirring around in Bree’s head since Melissa showed up this afternoon. All the routes she and Melissa could choose, modes of transportation they could take. She’d had multiple possible plans.

      Prepare for the unexpected and you’re much more likely to get out of a situation alive. She could almost hear her mother’s voice.

      But of all the scenarios Bree had run in her head, none of them had involved the particular variables she was dealing with right now. All her options were now defunct.

      Because babies.

      She glanced down at the phone Smith had given her. It wasn’t a high-tech smartphone; it was a low-tech flip phone that could barely be used to make a call.

      A safe phone, so low-tech that it would be difficult for the Organization to use it to find someone.

      She quickly scrolled through the call history to see if she could find any information, a way to get in touch with Melissa, let her know what a terrible plan this was, but there was nothing. Until Melissa called Bree, the phone was basically useless.

      How long before Melissa could get away from the Organization? Hours? Days?

      Years?

      When one of the babies let out a soft gurgle from the back seat, Bree put the phone down and focused on figuring out where to go. Maybe the best plan was to go back to her apartment. Obviously, Melissa didn’t intend her any harm, so Bree’s home was probably safe.

      At least it would allow her a chance to regroup. Figure out what she was going to do.

      She knew something was wrong as soon as she drove up to her block. Her apartment was in a busy, but not dangerous, part of the city, something she’d been specifically looking for when she’d chosen the place. She’d wanted to be able to slip in and out, day or night, without people paying much attention to her. To be able to blend into a crowd instantly if needed.

      There were enough units in the building that people were constantly coming and going, and it was urban enough that nobody thought much of it if you didn’t stop and talk to them.

      But right now it looked like every single person in the building was out on the street surrounding it. At one o’clock in the morning.

      Bree parked the car on a side street. She left the twins sleeping inside, tucked most of her long brown hair up into a ball cap so it looked much shorter and then jogged over to the people at the edge of the crowd. She kept an eye on the car as she spoke to an older couple she’d seen around but had never talked to.

      “Hi, I live in 4A. I just got home. What’s going on? Is it a fire?”

      The old man kept his arm around his wife while he shook his head at Bree. “Gas leak. They came door to door about an hour ago. Told us it would be at least five or six hours before we could get back in.”

      “Where’s the fire department?”

      The older woman shrugged. “I guess the rest of them are on their way. We only saw one. It was the gas company employees knocking on doors and checking people off their list.”

      Bree knew if it was dangerous enough to be taking people out of their homes in the middle of the night, it was dangerous enough to have a full firefighting crew here. This definitely wasn’t right.

      “So everyone just has to stand out here for five or six more hours?”

      “No,” the man said. “They said they’d provide rooms at a local hotel down the block for free. All you needed to do was show them your ID and let them run a credit card for any incidentals.”

      Bree grimaced. More