It seems so foreign to me. So surreal. This strange idea that I am being hunted. Tracked like a dog. It is the truth, though. I am trapped within this perimeter like a dog behind a fence that is too high. My heart aches to be free, but I know that is impossible right now.

I push my long, black hair out of my face. Phoenix is looking at me, expectantly. It takes me a minute to realize that he is waiting for me to talk first. As though I have any idea what we should be planning. I don't even understand what is happening, let alone how to change anything.

"So, what is the plan?" Phoenix asks me.

"I don't know. I thought that you did."

"All I know is that your father must have been on to something big for them to go after all of us in this way." It comes back to me then what Nathan from the black site said.

"When I was in the prison, something weird happened."

"What happened?"

"It was like this one guard was trying to help me the whole time."

"How? What do you mean?"

"Well," I begin, telling him how my time at the prison went down.

"He did what to you?" Asks Phoenix, clearly very angry at the thought of this grown man attacking a teenage girl, despite the fact we both suffered injuries.

"Let me see it," he demands. It is not a question. I lift the baby into my arms, standing up. He gestures for me to hand him the baby. I do. She is still asleep, and it would be hard to lift the shirt with her in my hands.

"Take it off. I want to see." When he says this, I hesitate. I do not want to bare my body in front of this stranger. I meet his eyes once more though, accidentally. In them, I can see only pure concern for me. This is not some elaborate scheme to see my body. No, he is really concerned for me.

With no further delay, i lift my arms up, taking the shirt off. The motion itself sets waves of pain through my body, but I say nothing. I take it all the way off and look down at my body as he inspects me too. My thin, but muscular frame. My average sized breasts in a plain nude colored bra. The ugly bruises that cover most of my stomach area and up higher too, where my ribs are.

His face convulses in pain for me. He is imagining how much pain I must be in. I do not know what he is thinking, only that his face changes from pain to a fiery anger that flares up in his eyes.

"How could you let this happen to yourself?" he asks angrily.

"I fought back," I say defensively.

"That is not what I mean. Why did you agree to this in the first place?"

"You know why. It was the only way that did not put both of us at a greater risk. He did not come out of it unscathed."

"Look at you. I thought that face was bad enough. Now I see this." He hands me back the baby, huffing as he walks off. He leaves me standing there, utterly bewildered. What the heck just happened?

"We still need to figure out a plan!" I yell after him. He ignores me, slamming my brother's bedroom door. I look down at my bruised, but not broken body. It will heal. I will be fine. I do not understand what his problem is. I did what had to be done in the circumstances I had to work with. I had no time to plan another, better way.

It is later that afternoon when Phoenix finally reappears from his temper tantrum.

"Hey," he says. "I'm sorry about before. I just wasn't thinking straight when I saw ah—your bruises.

"Yeah," I say. "It's fine." It really isn't, but what else could I say?

"Hey," I say, moving on. "We should go through my father's files together and see if we can figure anything out."

He nods. I guess he doesn't have a better plan at the moment. He turns around, presumably heading upstairs to get the files. When he comes back down, he has an armful of files and folders. He puts half of them onto the table next to me and the baby and he takes the other half to go through.

For hours and hours, we both carefully page through the documents, scouring them for any abnormalities. I had to take a few breaks to feed Addison. A few hours ago, I took her upstairs to bed. It nearly midnight and I am about to take another break to feed the baby when I find something. It is a phone number scrawled in my father's sloppy handwriting at the bottom of an inconspicuous page.

"Hey, take a look at this," I say. Phoenix looks up, startled at my voice. I can see the dark circles under his eyes and I know that he has not gotten much sleep in the last few days, but that doesn't matter right now. Not when I think I finally have something after hours and hours of this.

I hold the paper out for him to look at. He raises one of his eyebrows, unsure what to make of it. To him, it is just a phone number, but he doesn't know my father like I do. My father would never write the number down on the bottom of a page. He would enter it into his cellphone. He knows how easily he loses things, so he doesn't risk writing things down on random scraps of paper. Unless, I think, that was exactly why he did it. Nobody would ever think to page through every single one of these pages, and even if they did, they wouldn't think twice about some random phone number. I have a feeling deep down that this is exactly why he did it. He didn't want to loose the number, but he also didn't want any real record of it.

I am still thinking this theory through when Phoenix lifts up a small envelope. Out of it, he pulls a burner phone.

"Want to bet this is the phone he was using with that number you have," he says. He is starting to get the picture. I can see the spark of realization in his eyes.

"What do you want to do," I ask. He raises an eyebrow, silently asking if it is even a question at all.

"We are going to call the number with the burner, of course." I smile. For the first time, we might actually be close to figuring out what the hell is going on. He reaches out for the paper I have clenched tightly in my hand.

I give it to him. My eyes are wide and my whole body is shaking with anticipation as he punches in the numbers. As the phone rings once and then twice, I start chewing on my thumb nail. I hear the sound of the call being accepted and a voice says, "hello" through the speaker.

Phoenix looks up at me and our eyes lock.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Please vote and comment! I really appreciate your support!

1223 words

Sorry for the cliffhanger! I hope you enjoyed!