Eve’s POV
In order to clear my head, I went for a run. Typically, I would wake Andy and he would run with me but seeing as it was three o’clock in the morning, I decided against it. I put on a pair of leggings, a skin-tight tank top, a lightweight jacket, and my running shoes. I quickly and quietly made a water bottle before sneaking out of the apartment. Honey was still asleep so I let her be.
About an hour into my run I came across a park a few miles from the apartment. I sat on one of the picnic table benches and took a big swig of my water. I’m not sure how long I sat there but I watched the sun creep up over the horizon. It was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a long time.
~Ring~Ring~Ring~
I jumped before pulling my phone out of my pocket. “Hello,” I said, not checking the caller ID.
“Eve,” Agent Christopher said, “Flynn’s taken out the Mothership.”
“I’m on my way.” I hung up the phone before running back to the apartment.
I opened the door to find Honey at my feet and Andy staring at me with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Where were you?” He asked.
“I went for a run,” I said, walking towards my bedroom to get changed. I got dressed in a pair of jeans and an old band t-shirt. It didn’t really matter what I put on seeing as I was going to have to change when I get to Mason Industries.
“I can see that. What has been up with you lately? You’ve been coming and going at all hours, ignoring the bar? I’m worried.”
“You know how I have a ton of Ph.D.’s and that I speak a ton of different languages?” I asked, putting on a pair of boots.
“Yeah?”
“I was recruited by the government. They have a problem that only I can solve and it’s proving to be very difficult. I can’t tell you any more than that.”
“I’m still going to worry but I thought something had happened and you were starting to slip.”
“Still straight as an arrow. I’ve got to go but when I get back pizza and movies. You can ask anything and I promise that I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Deal.”
I leaned down to scratch Honey’s head before grabbing my car keys and locking the front door. I walked down to the parking lot and got in my 1970 Dodge charger. It was a sixteenth birthday gift. Dad bought it from Universal Pictures and had an actual engine put in. One very fast drive later and I pulled into Mason Industries.
I was ushered to the giant closet and practically pushed to the 1970’s section. I put on a very ugly brown dress with a dark blue sweater to match. I also put on brown platform heels and grabbed a pair of tiny sunglasses. My hair was slightly curled before a gallon of hairspray was put on so it would stay in place. Wyatt and Lucy were talking about how Lucy sat outside her biological father’s address for a few hours this morning. He called her a stalker while she defended that she was just curious. We were given press credentials to get into the white house so we could find the missing Watergate tapes. June 20, 1972, was the day that Nixon recorded the missing 18 and a half minutes. Lucy was excited at the prospect that she could hear the missing minutes while Rufus looked green. He was being cagey and not looking at anyone or anything.
One bumpy ride later and we opened the Lifeboat door to a green marsh a few miles outside of DC. We were able to catch a bus ride into the city. Only Rufus had to sit at the back. After we got off the bus we were greeted with people protesting Vietnam, hippies dancing in the park, and couples walking hand in hand.
“These colors just don’t exist anymore,” Rufus commented. “Like, not even in nature. Burnt orange, that puke tint between green and yellow.”
Lucy complained about the marsh we landed in and Rufus quipped that it was more private than the south lawn. A little way in front of us a hippy yelled at a soldier which started a fight. Wyatt tried to break it up but it just got more intense. A man came up behind me and roughly grabbed my arm. I slammed my foot against his and he let go of my arm. I tried to run away but Flynn stood in my way. He raised his hand and pointed behind me. I turned around to see an unconscious Wyatt and a handcuffed Rufus and Lucy being loaded into a hippy van. Flynn stood next to me and extended his hand once again. I knew that I couldn’t escape from him so I took his hand and let him walk me to the van. One of his goons tried to grab my wrists and I jammed the heel of my hand into his nose. Flynn gave me a warning look before telling his men to leave me alone.
The van drove for about ten minutes before we stopped. I was manhandled through an old, abandoned, hotel until we finally reached a room. I recognized it as the same room we stayed in when we tried to save Lincoln. Wyatt was carted in next and he was tied to a chair to my left. Rufus and Lucy were brought in next taking a place in the two remaining chairs next to Wyatt and me.
About thirty minutes later Wyatt woke up and Flynn came back into the room. Flynn asked if anyone remembered the room. I knew I did but he didn’t wait for an answer.
“You stayed here the night Abraham Lincoln was shot,” Flynn said, taking off his suit jacket. “A few weeks for us. A century for them. Remarkable, huh?”
“Oh, God,” Wyatt groaned. “You’re gonna talk us to death, aren’t you?”
“Had a hunch I’d find you on the way to the White House, Eve. I need you to do something for me.”
“If you want the Nixon tape, get it yourself,” I said.
“Already got it.”
“You broke into the White House basement,” Lucy said.
“You think you’re the only ones who can forge a 1970s ID? I do own a color printer and a laminator. The only problem was I had to shoot a White House guard on the way out. Well, two, actually. And now I can’t really move around the city freely. Authorities are looking for me. So I need you to find something.”
“What?” I asked.
“Let’s have a listen.”
Flynn walked over to a cassette player and put the recording in.
“Have to give the press another story, because the real truth is this doc is more important than anyone knows. If Rittenhouse–” Nixon said over the recording.
“–Mr. President, we can’t discuss Rittenhouse in here,” an assistant interrupted.
“We need to get the doc back. We need to get the doc back now.”
“And if we can’t?”
“I’m done. They’ll see to that. Not just with the presidency, but with my wife, with my girls. Rittenhouse plays by different rules. Do you understand who they are? How deep I’m in with Rit–”
Flynn turned off the player. “Did you hear what President Nixon just said, Eve?” Flynn asked. I looked at him with a blank look on my face. He wasn’t going to intimidate me into doing or saying anything. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.”
“I told you when we first met that I didn’t think you were crazy or that you killed your family,” I said, standing my ground.
“What do you mean when you first met?” Wyatt asked.
“What is it you want Flynn?” I asked, ignoring Wyatt. “The doc that was mentioned, I know nothing about.”
“I believe you. I even looked in here,” Flynn said, pulling my journal from his back pocket. “I couldn’t find anything about this document.”
“What’s that?” Rufus asked.
“It’s mine,” I said so Flynn wouldn’t be the one to tell them. “Supposedly I will write all of our adventures down in this journal and that one day we will work together to destroy Rittenhouse. I haven’t started it yet.”
“Yet?” Wyatt questioned. “What do you mean yet? You believe him.”
“No. I don’t believe everything that comes out of his mouth. And who’s to say that I will even write it one day?”
“Do you believe this? What he’s saying about the journal?”
“Yes. One day I will write a journal and I will give it to Flynn. I have to believe that future me knows something that I have yet to discover.” I turned to look at Flynn. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Do you want us to fight so I’ll have no choice but to join you in your crusade to save your family?”
“I don’t have to do anything. One day you will be by my side and we will destroy Rittenhouse. But for now, if Rittenhouse wants this document so badly, whatever it is, I want it first.”
“How are we supposed to find it?” Lucy asked.
“If there’s one thing you’ve proven, it’s your resourcefulness.” Flynn got out a pocket knife and he cut Lucy, Rufus, and me free. “If you don’t bring me the document in five hours–”
“You’ll kill me?” Wyatt questioned. “Why don’t you do it now, save everyone some time?”
Flynn tried to threaten us into doing his bidding but Wyatt told us to get out of the 1970s and never come back. Lucy promised Flynn that we would be back in five hours, and Wyatt yelled at her. She and Rufus walked out the door and I gave Wyatt one last look before following after them.
We made our way back to the protestors outside the White House gates. “This is bad. This is very bad,” Rufus said panicking. “How could you not tell us about the journal?” Rufus asked me.
“I am never going to write it,” I said.
“You don’t know that. Not with all the mind-trippy crap going on around here.”
“Rufus–”
“Eve, if you will, who knows what Flynn knows about us. Maybe we’re playing into his hands right now. You don’t think we deserve to know that?”
“I wasn’t trying to keep anything from–”
“Our jobs are dangerous enough.”
“I’m sorry,” I yelled. “I should have told all of you. But, God, Rufus, it can’t be real, because, I mean, if it is, the things that it says that I’m going to do… have you ever had a secret that just… scared the living hell out of you? So can we, please, just save Wyatt and figure all the other crap out when we get back home?”
Lucy started walking towards the White House with Rufus and me in tow. “What about the documents? How do we even start?” Rufus asked.
“We know they’re connected to Watergate,” Lucy said. “I have an idea. You remember how to use a payphone?” We followed her to a phone booth. “We’ll call every William M. Felt in the D.C. area until we find Mark Felt.”
“Mark Felt? Who’s that?” Rufus asked.
“Mark Felt. Deep Throat. Secret informant. ‘Follow the money’? Deep Throat?”
“I know the porn one.”
“Seriously?” I said, slightly disgusted. “He was Associate Director of the FBI, and Deep Throat was his cover name.”
Lucy was flipping through pages of an old, I guess it would be a new, phone book. “He tips off two reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, about Watergate, breaks open the entire case,” she said, continuing her flipping. “If anybody knows about this document, it’ll be him.”
“If he’s such a secret informant, what makes you think he’s gonna talk to us?” Rufus asked.
“Because except for Woodward and Bernstein, nobody knows his identity for thirty years. But we do.” Lucy handed over some change to Rufus and me. “Go!”
We went to the next payphones and began our search. The Felts that I called were mostly peeved at me for disturbing them. A few short calls later Lucy knocked on the glass, and I hung up on the Felt that I was talking with. Rufus and I followed Lucy to an underground parking facility. We met up with Felt but he was being very cagey with the details of Watergate. He did, however, give us a lead. He told us that the amateurs that broke into the DNC Headquarters also broke into a hotel room one floor up. Someone called off the investigators before they could get the whole picture but before that happened they found a crumpled piece of paper with a symbol of a fist with two horns. Rufus drew the symbol, and what he drew matched what Felt told us. We thanked him for his time and promised to keep his secret before leaving the facility.
As we were walking, Rufus told us that the symbol was an obscure calling card for the Black Liberation Army. We showed up at a building that Rufus claimed to be the unofficial D.C. chapter headquarters. He went inside while Lucy and I waited outside. About forty minutes later Rufus came outside with Gregory Hayes. Hayes walked us to his car before driving us to a run-down, white, two-story house. As we got out of the car I could hear Rufus and Hayes talking about Lucy and me. Rufus called Lucy his side piece and me a little sister. I could tell that Lucy was slightly offended but I was laughing on the inside.
Hayes walked inside and pulled open a set of pocket doors. He told someone to get their stuff together, that someone was here to pick them up. The three of us walked closer to find the doc was a young girl. She looked pretty shaken, her fingers were twitching and her mouth was drawn in a hard line. Her eyes were what got me. They looked scared but I could see a fighter’s soul.
“You weren’t supposed to be here till next weekend,” she said, moving to collect her belongings.
“Change of plans,” Rufus said.
“But you are a Panther, right?” Lucy tried to support Rufus but I nudged her and shook my head, signaling for her to let Rufus handle this one. “And you are gonna drive me to San Diego?” The girl asked.
“Yes, we are going to drive you,” Lucy said, ignoring my warning.
“Where’d you pick up Laurie Partridge?” The girl asked Rufus before moving back into the room she came from and closing the doors.
After the doors were shut Lucy and Rufus were having a tiny panic attack. Both of them were freaking out. Originally this was just supposed to be a retrieval, maybe a theft, but it was not supposed to be a murder. Lucy knocked on the door and went inside with the girl and I went with her. We found out that the Doc was born into Rittenhouse and they were trying to kill her because she left. We also found out that the Doc knows every single member of Rittenhouse past and present. Nothing was ever written down, it was all in her head.
When we walked out Rufus was talking to someone on a red phone attached to the wall. Rufus told us to be quiet before he walked to the sink, turned on the tap, and dropped a recording device in the sink. Then he started panicking, mumbling to himself different ways to lie to someone. The device shorting out, or it being destroyed.
“Rufus, what are you going on about?” I asked. “Who is ‘they’?”
“Is it Rittenhouse?” Lucy asked. “You’ve been taping us for them?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Rufus said. “They were at my brother’s basketball game.”
“What?”
“Trust me. It is bad.”
“Rufus, what do you know about them?” I asked.
“I don’t know anything. They just told me to record our trips. That’s all I did. I swear.”
“What? And you were jumping down my throat because I didn’t tell you about Flynn?!” I whisper-yelled. “Who knows what they heard us say on those recordings, Rufus. Do you understand the danger that we are all in?”
“I’ve barely been able to sleep, barely been able to eat. They have been messing with my car while I am driving it. They threatened my family. You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” Lucy questioned. “I lost my sister!”
“Look. If I don’t turn her into Rittenhouse, they are going to kill me or my family.”
“If we don’t give her to Flynn, he’ll kill Wyatt,” I said.
“Look. We just have to trust each other, okay? We’ll figure it out.”
“Rufus, how can we ever trust each other again?” Lucy asked, looking between Rufus and me.
It took a few minutes but we finally came up with a decent plan to keep everyone alive. Rufus called Rittenhouse while Lucy called Flynn. We were going to have them both meet us at a neutral location, show them Doc, and let them fight it out amongst themselves while I grabbed Wyatt and Rufus to get Doc to safety.
We grabbed all of Doc’s things and fled the house after giving the address to both warring parties. We doubled back to the abandoned hotel. Lucy and I climbed the fire escape, opened the side window, and crawled inside. Wyatt told us that there was a pin in the trash can so Lucy went to go get it. Wyatt told her to give the pin to him but it was taking far too long. I took the pin from him and picked the lock of his handcuffs.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Wyatt asked.
“There are so many things that you have yet to know about me,” I answered just as the final lock clicked into place and he was released.
Just as Wyatt got out of the chair the door opened and one of Flynn’s goons walked in. Wyatt rushed him and slammed half of the goon in between the door and the frame. A gunshot rang throughout the room and the goon fell to the floor. I looked at Lucy to see her holding a very ugly brown lamp. Wyatt stood up and Lucy put the lamp down and the three of us exited using the front door.
We ran to the meet up with Rufus and Doc. Rufus and Wyatt walked away while Doc and Lucy talked. Doc was running from Rittenhouse because she wanted her son to be free from Rittenhouse. Her husband and son went to Hong Kong and traveled North a year ago. We walked around the corner to see Hayes pulling up to take Doc into hiding.
We watched the two of them drive off when Lucy asked, “now what?”
We walked to the nearest payphone and had Rufus make one last report to Rittenhouse. He told them that we had a scuffle with Flynn and that we lost Doc. Wyatt was angry. That was expected. Rufus tried to get him to see things his way but I knew that Wyatt wasn’t going to just let this go. Wyatt was still angry but he told Rufus that he was going to keep spying on the three of us. Rufus was going to become a double agent. Wyatt made some remarks about not being able to trust any of us and I couldn’t blame him. Rufus and I lied to him and that was a wound that would take an awful lot of time to heal.
We went back to the Lifeboat and traveled back home. Everyone was quiet. I knew that Agent Christopher and Mason could tell that something happened to all of us but neither of us would fess up. After we got changed we all went home our separate ways. I drove back to the apartment and made a pit stop to pick up a pizza.
Andy could tell that I was off but thankfully he chose not to comment. He asked questions but he stayed away from the sensitive topic. And for that I was grateful. After dinner I called all the contact I could to see if there was any information on Doc. Very little was ever heard about her. She disappeared in 1972 and the last photograph was of her in San Diego, getting on her ship. I went to bed knowing that Flynn was still out there. It also gave me pause to know that Rittenhouse has me under surveillance. Just how far was Rittenhouse’s reach? And how far was Flynn willing to go to take them down?