E.L.F. - White Leaves Read online

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  Chapter 1

  Screened away from unwanted eyes by northwest country ferns bedazzled by fat droplets from the rains never far from recent, Shannon Hunter crouched in the dark. But not as some cowering whelp. Hiding wasn’t a product of fear. Tonight it was the tool of a hunter.

  With sights set on her prey, huge lumbering juggernauts, she thought perhaps they should be the ones in hiding rather than bedded down in neatly ordered rows on open ground.

  “Shan? Are you ready?” Jason asked at her side, breaking the spell of her reminiscing. He’d been watching her as she let her imagination wander. Shannon blinked away imaginings of her childhood, images that had prompted this very evening from some eleven years earlier. Visions of lumber yards and demolished earth, workers, and even her father -they all collapsed and disappeared beneath Jason’s intrusion.

  “Are you?!” She shot back vibrantly. She was so excited, so alive in her challenge, Jason looked taken aback. His clumpy sandy dreadlocks were battened down by an inadequate black knit cap, but they stuck out at odd angles all around the base. He looked like a burglar, a poor one at that, dusted with forest debris and dampened by the previous rainfall, but he grinned his slim, handsome smile in their playful words. Shannon admired him, if not for his appearances, then for that confidence. His youth and lifestyle belied it, but he resembled her father with his certainty –one of the few things she still admired in her dad.

  In many ways Jason was unquestionably her father’s opposite. Rather, she amended, in the ways that mattered. Fiery and brash, Jason Brooke wasn’t what anyone would have expected her to end up with. She wouldn’t have believed it herself had she been confronted with the fact before it became reality, but his determination and free-wheeling air faired him better and more appealing to her than he likely was to anyone else. She tried to picture him being unattractive if she removed her connections to him, and failed.

  Shannon briefly considered telling him how her father would be turning over in his grave, if he was dead, to know who she’d chosen to be with. But that would lead to a humorous discussion about shotguns and daughters since David Hunter was not dead. She envisioned how he wouldn’t only turn in his coffin, but rise and walk the earth as a zombie if he found out she’d become a member of the elusive Earth Liberation Front because of Jason.

  Her father would kill the young man, she knew. But she didn’t care what her father thought. She was on the right path in life. After all, she had Native American roots in the bloodline her dad had chosen to not only disregard, but betray outright.

  Among the most noble and beautiful people she’d ever heard of, read about, or met, she was proud to be gifted her blood, and it was only proper that she should do what they could not –what her father would not. She would defend the natural world they had once worshipped. The world her dad would destroy. The E.L.F. had given her that opportunity. Jason Brooke had given her the E.L.F.

  Jason reached up and touched her cheek as his eyes traced the beauty of her ethnicity, studying her dark almond eyes and smoothly defined cheeks. When his eyes wandered down to her bosom and whip thin curves, she looked away carelessly. He loved her more than she did him, and that gave her all the confidence in the world to trump his own. She was the one in control of all the power between them, despite the fact that he’d brought her to E.L.F.

  That meant she was in control tonight.

  She felt his touch settle upon her shoulder, drawing her out of her thoughts again. The night was chill, and his hand felt hot on her exposed skin. Excited as she was, however, she wanted the air to cool her. She felt stifled by his closeness, and she shriveled her nose against the sensation. After all, soon enough things were going to heat up –way up.

  Their hiding spot was very close to the bulky shadows of hard-edged unused machine parts at the fringe of a ruinous scar within the land where Murton and Norton Industrial had decided to settle and rested its fleet on a nightly basis. Rocky earth lay exposed everywhere the night crew’s flood lights touched, a sawmill industriously sang its brutal tune somewhere beyond their sight. The trees there cried out as they were split asunder, and it made her furious to remember both, all that she’d once been and all she’d been through in her early life. She despised that she’d once reveled in such places as this, and hated her father for what he’d willfully become. Shannon wondered how he could live with himself for being part of it all.

  The forests of the world hadn’t done anything to deserve the suffering humanity brought upon them. She wanted to spare them by tearing it all down tonight, but her little group’s target wasn’t the mill. It was too well lit to so much as get close. Instead, they aimed for the trucks and powerful earthmoving machines that lay in rest at this time of night -just as she’d seen done once before. In fact it was her plan.

  “Shannon Hunter? Is that you?” Jason asked. She knew he was toying with her, mocking surprise at her resolve, it was written all over his tone.

  “What’s taking them? They should be back by now.” Shannon ignored him, eyes scanning the uneven lumpy lay of the yard. Shadows and more shadows, uneven shifts in bands and rays of faint light as work continued somewhere far beyond. That’s all there was to see, irregular shapes in the forest night.

  “You’re right.” Jason agreed. Their rudimentary incendiary devices each took but a moment to set in place with fuses ignited, and they’d only brought twelve of them. Enough to do serious damage, but few enough to carry on foot through the Cascade foothills, making their team highly mobile and elusive as any respectable E.L.F. cell should be.

  “They’ve been too long. I’m going to check on them.” He said, starting to rise, but Shannon wasn’t about to be put off this test. This was her night, not his.

  “No.” She snared his lean arm. “I’m going. I’m faster and quieter than you’ll ever be.” She chided him like the no-good hippy-punk he was, shaking her head, sending her own dreadlocks bouncing. Random hair ornaments and beads clicked together quietly with the gesture.

  “Okay.” He said after a moment’s hesitation. “But be careful and be fast.” He pushed a kiss to her cheek. She delighted in it, but took her feet immediately. There was no room in her to dawdle in lover’s games –not when she had a higher purpose to execute. Instead, she used pleasure to fuel her actions, and with a deep breath that smelled of freshly turned earth and raw life pungent with the perfumes of the forest, Shannon was prepared.

  She slipped away quickly, preferring not to think about what she was doing. Adrenaline was already pumping, and it left no room to dither. She skimmed her way through the shadows of the trees and undergrowth, veering to her right whilst staying in the woods to cover her approach. There rested the nearest of the behemoths she was going to smite this night, and the jog across open ground was shortest.

  She saw no signs of movement and encountered no one. She’d done the leg work on planning this attack. She knew there would be none to stop them, which is why it was so troubling they hadn’t yet completed the task. Fearless, she quietly dashed a short bit of moonlit open gravel and arrived within reach of the first truck in seconds. Ducking down beside its massive wheels, she let out a hiss, but kept her eyes roving to be safe.

  “Devin!” She waited. No sound. It was ha
rd to hear over the thunder in her chest, and she strained to listen and breathe calm. The acrid tinge of the truck’s diesel fuel and the gritty rubber of its wheels made her nose cringe.

  “Devin, where are you?” She hissed anew. When nothing came back, she scurried beneath the truck’s fair ground clearance to spot the incendiary device. It was there, but not lit. Shannon grew worried, but calmed herself, knowing there were numerous such bombs being placed. This should have been the first one set, and the last to be lit on the way back out.

  She scrambled free of the underbelly of the metal giant as the moon was enveloped by clouds, and slipped along a silent dark expanse to a second dumper. Repeating her scramble underneath, she found another placed bomb. She scanned thoroughly this time, using drowned plots of moonlight and work lights in search of silhouetted movement. Nothing. Not a soul and not a single out of place sound.

  “Willie!” She tried a different hiss for operative number two. Once more, nothing came back. Confidence shaken, she slipped ahead more swiftly, rounding at length, a small gravel mountain beneath the high skeletal workings of a turn-belt tower. More trucks lie ahead than behind. Perhaps Devin and Willie were only taking their time -being safe. But she couldn’t shake the feeling something had gone wrong.

  When she reached the next truck, she crouched down to calm herself, forcing her resolve to wait and see. Her wild imagination wouldn’t help her here. Of course, within moments her impatience got the better of her. She should have known it would. She’d never had the patience for much of anything since she was twelve and started to mature beneath her father’s ignorance and inability to understand her.

  She rose, moving immediately, but after taking only a few strides a shadow detached itself from her left, emerging from almost nowhere and roughly from whence she’d come before her circuitous move around the gravel mountain.

  Although it startled her into motionlessness, her first thought was Jason. She grinned fiercely, thinking he’d come to ensure her safety, but then that changed. This figure came darkly as Jason would, but it was larger, strode like a businessman, and had a lacing of whiteness in his professional, collared shirt. His broad shoulders and height were too foreboding to be anyone she knew or trusted. His finely shod feet crunched in the gravel at an even, purposeful pace.

  Panic rose up the back of her neck in a prickling wave. This man was not alone. There was another just like him, smaller and rounder, but nonetheless, the same. Before she knew it, there others. Running whilst crouched, they emerged from every available shadow like cockroaches to a fallen feast at a midnight hour. Shannon remained frozen, breathless at the unexpected turn her night had taken, but her mind raced to solve the problem. She was still within moderate cover, so for the moment she presumed she might not be seen even if they were looking for her.

  She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “That’s far enough!” Came a voice, old and…Hispanic? Confused, she stayed exactly as she was. He sounded weary, as a man playing a game now decades long in the making. He was immediately overthrown by other voices, vehement forceful ones from the swarm arriving all around her. Their cries were echoed by the sounds of gun safeties being thrown off.

  “FBI! Freeze!” Someone shouted. Her eyes exploded wide. The words startled her into bolting like a deer, spooked breakneck into the dark.

  “Freeze!” They called after her, but she was small, agile, lean –and gone. Her feet pounded, blazing a trail through the maze of machinery.

  She had only one thought, find Devin and Willie in the dark. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she found them, but there was still a chance to get out in the confusing lay of these grounds. It was dark after all.

  She ran without a breath, hearing the men racing after her, and she gulped down a healthy drink of guilt, pushing herself hard. If she was caught, she knew she’d be looking at prison time. Terrorists rarely got a second chance, even if they were young pretty women.

  She rounded a corner provided by a final dump truck, spotted a massive front-end loader and bolted across open ground for it. She skidded to a halt like a ball-player, a true tomboy of perfect form, slipping between machine parts and ducking down all in one motion. Heat surged on her leg where her tough camouflage pants had certainly been shredded by the jagged gravel, but she ignored it in favor of hoping to lose the feds by tucking away in the workings of the massive yellow beast. However, even as she did, the yard’s flood lights were thrown on.

  Standing all about the perimeter of Murton and Norton Industrial on huge totems like sentinels, they sent shadows screeching for cover.

  The federal agents with assault rifles of some sort or another, went rushing past despite the freshly turned track of her slide. Her heart locked in her throat and she froze again. She needed a moment to think, to calm the panic. Still and breathless, she watched after the agents, and impatiently waited for them to go on their way.

  Abruptly, Devin and Willie were on their own. She had to get out while there was still a chance. This was no game. All the parameters and plans of this night had gone out the window. In their stead was placed a very real sense of dread.

  Emerging and heading the opposite direction from the federal swat forces, Shannon set herself to fly. At once she was dashing, but was forced to skid to another halt. The two men in dark suits and even darker trench coats stood waiting for her reappearance, guns and badges exposed, framed by the mountain of gravel and a neighboring dump truck’s silver bed.

  “I warned you, that’s far enough, Ms. Hunter.” The first agent said in the same manner as he had before, but the second and larger one wasn’t so complacent.

  “You’re under arrest! Down on your knees!” The younger man commanded with a peculiarly thick tongue that made his accent and origins indeterminable. He could have been from New York as easily as England for all the good his voice did him. He wore a shaved head that shone in the lights, but her eyes locked on his firearm instead of his intense hawkish features. She’d only seen such large handguns in movies, and confronted by one now, she couldn’t look away.

  The other, a Hispanic older fellow with dark but graying hair worn greased back, looked nigh unprepared, but the weight of his brow suggested he was well in control of the situation. He was the agent in charge. The other was his lackey or partner.

  “You’re under arrest for attempted use of incendiary devices with intent to cause monetary damages to corporate property, Ms. Hunter.” The lead agent spoke up more calmly than his counterpart. “You’re also in violation by aiding and abetting terrorists, as well as being one yourself, if you prefer.”

  The bigger one tilted his handgun to the earth at her tensed feet, his approach swift.

  “Get on your knees, and place your hands behind your head!” He forcefully instructed. Shannon couldn’t do anything but comply. She looked desperately for any quarter, but there would be none. She knew Jason. If he was still free, he wouldn’t be bold enough to assault a federal agent. He didn’t have it in him to assault anyone. He would maliciously attack a faceless corporation in defense of the earth, but it was E.L.F. policy to not harm anyone -by which they insisted their acts were entirely non-hostile resistance. So no. Jason wouldn’t take a life. Leastways, she hoped he wouldn’t.

  Slowly, she dropped to her knees, dazedly placing her hands behind her head as the gunman came forward, producing cuffs but keeping his aim keen. Shannon couldn’t even bring herself to match his solid gaze. She wore her thick lips defeated, and all but lowered her exotic eyes in futile submission. But at that last glimmer of her glance, a blinding silver flash erupted beyond the nearing agents.

  The floodlights went out, as if on cue, plunging all into the crimson light of a growling mushroom so ferocious the earth and little stones shuddered underfoot.

  In a single dramatic pulse the dumper that lay sleeping behind the agents vanished, replaced entirely by an earth-rocking boom. The agents instinctively sprawled in shock. Shannon toppled back just the
same. Her bottom struck hard, and she rolled until her head bounced off the rocky earth. Lights instantly danced before her eyes at the jarring impact, the wind left her lungs, and she gasped and coughed.

  Time seemed to stand still as she fought to right herself. But she only reeled as the fire slowly grew and faded away. She could run, she knew, if she could manage to get up. But her limbs failed her, wobbling like a babe, and they already knew her name. They therefore knew where she worked part time in Seattle’s beloved Pioneer Square at a simple summer-time craft stand run by an elderly hippy lady. They also knew where she lived. They likely knew everything there was to know about her, and even some things that she didn’t -like where her mother had gone off to in her own pursuit of the activist way.

  Hell. They probably knew her damned cycle. Damned pigs, she cursed them as she fought to regain her wits. She hated the government. She hated money. She hated all the control such things represented. She wanted to change it all forever, but if she was caught here tonight, she knew she would never have the chance to change anything ever again. Living a life as a fugitive from the highest departments of the government’s control wasn’t something she relished. It wasn’t even something she was sure she could do, but it was better than living in prison.