What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Two

 

Chapter Two: Rendition

 

The van’s engine cut with a low, grinding halt, leaving a hush over the driveway. For a moment, the estate seemed suspended in the late summer air. I felt Marcus stiffen beside me, tail lowered, ears swivelling toward the sound of shifting tires. The dog’s unease made my own pulse quicken, though I could not yet name why.

 

The doors of the van opened slowly, each one releasing a measured, deliberate hiss. Then they emerged. One by one, men in black sweaters and worn jeans, dressed alike enough to be mistaken for one another at a distance, stepped onto the gravel, moving with a precision that seemed almost rehearsed. Their faces were sharp, severe, and unreadable, as if sculpted for the sole purpose of intimidation.

 

I froze, my stomach twisting. Who were they? Government inspectors? Police? Something worse? The air thickened around me, and even the warm sunlight felt wrong, too bright, too exposing.

 

Marcus growled low and shifted closer, but I held him by the leash, trying to ground myself. The men formed a loose line, flanking the van, their presence impossible to ignore. They did not speak, but each movement carried authority - the sort of authority that brooked no argument.

 

One of the men - taller than the others, with thin, sharp features - glanced in my direction. His eyes lingered a fraction too long. Then he smiled. Not a friendly smile, not even polite. Something about it was slow, deliberate, and cold. My stomach sank, and I felt a shiver run down my spine.

 

The other men shifted in unison, subtly adjusting their positions, their hands resting lightly at their sides, ready. Time seemed to stretch, the gravel underfoot too loud, my own breaths too sharp. 

 

I wanted to run, to call out, but my legs refused to obey. My fingers tightened on Marcus’s leash. Every instinct in me screamed that these men were no ordinary visitors, that their purpose was not polite or ceremonial. The hush around the house deepened. Even the wind seemed to wait.

 

Then the tallest man stepped forward, the grin fading from his face, and the rest moved with him. The inevitable had begun.

 

“Who are you? What are you doing here? This is private property,” I said, with the self-assurance of a young woman who knew her precious and privileged world was inviolate. I believed it as deeply as I believed in gravity.

 

“You the daughter?” asked the tall man. He pointedly hadn’t answered my question.

 

“Evan Palmer is my father.” When that statement failed to elicit much of a response, I quickly added, “he’s an important man.” Marcus stiffened by my side, a low, warning growl vibrating in his chest. The sound was not playful, not the excited bark of a dog at the edge of the garden. It was a warning, deep and deliberate, aimed straight at the men who had emerged from the van. My heart thudded.

 

“Marcus,” I whispered sharply, tightening my grip on the leash. His muscles rippled under my hand, powerful and taut. “Down.”

 

The growl didn’t stop. He moved forward a step, ears flattened, eyes fixed on the tallest man who had grinned at me moments before. I felt the dog’s tension as if it were my own - coiled, ready to act.

 

The tall man noticed. His eyes narrowed, and the faint curve of that cold, deliberate smile returned. He stepped closer, deliberately slow, his shoes crunching on the gravel.

“Your dog,” he said, voice calm, almost conversational, “is a liability. Keep him under control.”

 

I tightened my grip again, swallowing hard. “He - he won’t…”

 

“Oh, he will,” the man interrupted smoothly, tilting his head slightly. His eyes glinted with something I could not name. “Or… he won’t.”

 

The words were simple, yet heavy with unspoken meaning. A warning, not a threat, but worse than either: the kind of statement that makes obedience feel like survival.

 

Marcus growled again, louder this time, a deep, resonant sound that made my chest tighten. I could feel the heat of his body against my hand, the raw energy of a creature trained to defend. But the leash was a tether, the only thing keeping him from striking out. He was not looking at their hands or their faces, but at their hips.

 

The tall man’s smile widened faintly, his tone light but edged with menace: “I suggest you restrain him. For both your sakes.”

 

I swallowed, knuckles white on the leather. The summer sun, the lawns, the previous laughter of Julia - it all felt impossibly far away. Marcus’s growl trembled against my chest, and I realized, with a sinking certainty, that nothing here was going to be easy.

 

One of the men produced a long baton with a metal tip and pointed it at Marcus. “Control your dog.”

 

I backed away, and as I did, Julia came running up from the Summer House, concern etched on her face. “’Becca? What’s going on? Who are they?”

 

“I don’t know.” It occurred to me now that their van had just passed straight through the iron gates that protected our property. Those gates weren’t supposed to unlock unless they were buzzed open from the control panel in the house. 

 

“My father is very important,” I said again, as Marcus pulled hard at the leash and growled again.

 

“So you said.” The tall man took a step back, a faint signal, and the other two moved in unison, sliding across the gravel with the precise, mechanical rhythm of trained soldiers. Marcus growled again, low and threatening, his body rigid, every muscle coiled as if ready to spring. I tightened my grip on the leash, arms trembling slightly under the strain.

 

“Stay,” I murmured, voice barely audible. The Dobermann’s ears flicked toward me, and for a heartbeat he paused, tension radiating from every line of his body.

 

The men stopped a few paces from the summer house, forming a careful line between me and the terrace. Their eyes swept over the lawn, the hedges, the white-painted columns, cataloguing, calculating. Every movement was deliberate, controlled, and utterly without hesitation.

 

I felt my pulse hammering in my throat, a wild, helpless beat that matched Marcus’s suppressed growls. Who were these men, really? What right did they have to appear here, on our estate, like shadows of a law I had always assumed protected us?

 

And then I watched as the men entered the house; the house in which my mother was preparing the table for dinner, and where my father was no doubt seated in his study, possibly smoking a cigar, as he went through some paperwork that had been delivered by courier earlier in the afternoon. 

 

I felt Julia take hold of my empty hand and squeeze it for support. “They’re Inner Security,” she whispered. “They have that look.”

 

This was insane. My father was Inner Party! If anything, he was the man who sent men like this to an address somewhere. He didn’t talk about it, but I had overhead snatches of conversation. I understood the power he wielded.

 

“You need to tell me who you are, and what you are doing here?” I demanded.

 

“And you need to shut the fuck up, Lady.” The man towered above me. I sensed he was a man accustomed to violence. I could scent it in the air. 

 

“And who are you?” The man turned his gaze to Julia.

 

“Julia Fairchild,” she stammered. She tried to meet the man’s gaze but could only hold it for a couple of seconds before she looked away.

 

“Fairchild.” The man smiled again, revealing a glimpse of a broken tooth within his craggy face. “Good news, girl, you’re not on the list.”

 

“List?” I said. 

 

The man’s eyes turned back now to regard me. “She’s not a Palmer.”

 

I grew suddenly very scared.

 

There was suddenly a scream from inside the house. It was my mother.

 

“What are you doing?!” I cried. Now Marcus began barking. He recognised my mother’s voice and I could barely hold him back. Marcus was very powerful, and I had never felt his full strength before. Despite my best efforts he began to drag me along the lawn as I called his name and tried to restrain him. I wrapped the end of the leash three times about my wrist, fearing what might happen if I let Marcus loose.

 

Beside me, Julia tried to appeal to the men. “There must be some mistake. If you let us make some phone calls…”

 

My mother screamed again, and this time she emerged from the house in the custody of one of the two men who had entered. To my horror I saw that her wrists had been secured behind her back in handcuffs. I saw her being pushed forward through the doorway and onto the terrace. Now Marcus began to grow wild, barking with a fury and rage I had never seen in him before. Again, I felt my fleet sliding forward, and it seemed I was in danger of being pulled to the ground. I couldn’t control him! I wasn’t strong enough.

 

The sound came suddenly, impossibly loud – too loud for a garden, too final for a warning - a crack that split the air, rattled the walls, and made my very bones vibrate.

 

Marcus yelped, a sound that tore through me, high and sharp, unlike anything a dog had ever made. My fingers tightened on the leash, but it was useless - my hands shook violently, and the leash slipped through my grip.

 

I stumbled forward, heart hammering so hard I thought it might burst through my chest. The world slowed and condensed to one horrific point: Marcus, collapsing, eyes wide, muscles going slack, the warmth of him draining into the gravel beneath him.

 

“No!” I screamed, though my voice sounded small and fragile, swallowed instantly by the echoing crack of the gun in the hands of the tall man. I fell to my knees beside him, hands trembling as I tried to touch him, to push him up, to make him move - but he did not.

 

The man who had fired the pistol stood still, gloved hand relaxed, expression unreadable. 

 

Marcus whined once, a broken, pitiful sound, and I felt it in my chest, a cold, jagged panic cutting through me. I wanted to cry, to fight, to scream, but the grip of fear - of inevitability - held me still.

 

The air smelled of gunpowder and grass. My knees were pressed into the gravel, sharp stones biting at my flesh, but I did not feel them. I only felt the absence of Marcus’s warmth, the sudden hollowness where his loyalty, his protection, had always been. 

 

“My dog…” I wept as I cradled his head.

 

“I fucking warned you, Lady,” said the first man. “I fucking warned you.” There wasn’t the remotest sign of compassion in his eyes. Beside me, Julia was screaming. The tall man stepped froward and slapped her until her screaming became just tears and she backed away. 

 

“Shot fired – single round,” said the man into a small wireless microphone beside his ear, as if he was accounting for the use of a bullet. “Target, dog. Dog neutralised.” The other man bundled my mother into the back of the van where she disappeared from view.

 

I felt my heart pounding and my eyesight seemed to narrow to tunnel vision. I looked wildly about, trying to decide what I could do, if anything. Run? I couldn’t leave my mother. I couldn’t leave my father. I was paralysed by indecision. 

 

And then my father appeared at the doorway. He was bloodied and his right hand hung at an unnatural angle as if it had been struck by a baton and broken. Had he reached for a gun? I knew my father owned some guns. He was Inner Party, after all. His eyes looked red and puffy, as if he had been sprayed in the face with mace. He staggered as he was pushed, and I could see his swollen eyes looking round desperately as he took in the situation.

 

“Evan Palmer, you are being remanded into custody,” said the tall man. “As is your wife, by direct order of the Security Council of North America. You are to be taken to a secure detention facility, pending interrogation.”

 

“My daughter,” said father.

 

“She is no longer your concern.”