Chapter 1

I walked into the triage station and asked, “What seems to be the problem ma’am?’ I glanced at the symptoms described; stomachache, bloody diarrhea, and a note from the triage nurse indicating she may be drug seeking as she’d asked for me specifically.

“Jimmy...” Fuck. I looked at the name and saw Jenny Addams ... my younger sister. I looked at her. Her hair was still golden, the long strands having been chopped into a pixie cut. She was thin, too thin and had dark circles under her eyes.

“Sorry, Ma’am. What are your symptoms?”

“Jimmy, you need to come home ... they’re dead Jimmy.”

“Ma’am, I don’t know you. That’s not my name. I’m here to determine how best to help you, but if you don’t cooperate and tell me your symptoms, I can’t help you.”

“Jimmy, please. It taken me years to find you.’

‘I’ll put you down for a psych referral.”

I exited the triage space and directed the er tech to keep in there as long as possible and put in for a psych referral. I finished the hour and went home. Doing my absolute best to ensure that I wasn’t followed. I parked in the garage and went in and sat at my pc and started looking for open positions at hospitals. “What are you doing Adam?”

“I need to find a new job and move, darling. Are you coming with me?”

“What?”

“I need to find a new job and move ... far, far away from here. Are you coming with me?”We’d been together for almost three years. I hadn’t told her the truth. I hadn’t told anyone. It had been over a decade since I’d seen my family. I turned and looked at my girlfriend. She was tall,
perfect ebon skin, her hair in shoulder length curls. “What are you running from?”

“My sister found me.”

“Okay?”

“My family ... my family ... you’ve seen my scars, but that was just the beginning. I ... If she found me, they’ll try and drag me back. I need to find a new job and move ... maybe a new name again.”

“Again? How many times have you done this?”

“Adam is the fourth. I was Michael in med school. Peter during undergrad and they called me Jimmy, James Addams. Maybe I’ll be a Sam next or a William. Every time one of them gets close I change my name and disappear. This is the closest they’ve ever gotten to me since I escaped, Cherie, you need to decide if you’re coming. If you are you’ll have to change to and I’ll tell you everything, but if the answer is, “no” you’ll never see me again. I love you, but I have to get away from them.”

“You can’t live like this ... changing your name every few years. Moving. Is this why you didn’t want to date me?”

“Yeah, no attachment means ... it means it’s easier to run.”

“Can you face them? End whatever this is?”

“No. Not unless I want drugged and tied up in the dungeon ... again. They’ll do the same to you. They’ve done it before to people I’ve been with. And they have the money to get away with it. That’s why I never got taken away when I showed up to school bleeding or with a broken bone, cause CPS workers were all too happy to take a year’s salary to end an investigation ... a cop is more than willing to squash an investigation for 50 grand.”

“Addams? Like the ones from New York? The ones with the reward for their missing son?”

“If you’re wanting to turn me in, Please, if I meant anything to you at all let me get a head start.”

“I ... you ran away from a family of billionaires. How bad was it? And won’t they be able to track you from the computer?”

“The hard drive is loaded with thermite. I activate a countermeasure and the computer and the house burn. And they can’t track my search history without going through about 8000 misdirects.”

“Tell me the story. Then I’ll decide?”

“Ok...”

I winced and felt the images cloud my brain;

Amber, my high school girlfriend was screaming, ‘YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND I did it for us!”