The Blood In Between Read online

  After “be carefuls” were exchanged, John moved quickly to the woods and disappeared. Persephone and Millie continued their search. Each following the information they were reading. John trailed behind those who had taken his daughter, learning the stories their tracks and brushes with the vegetation could tell. They were carrying equipment and also dealing with Misty so the speed of their travel was hampered. Even in the darkness he could follow their course; he was gaining. In the great freshwater sea Millie and Persephone quickly returned to their search, listening for a call for help unvoiced, looking for Misty and feeling her and their own desperation.

  3

  Hunter Williams felt the tension relax on the rope which let him know the anchor had come to rest on the lake bottom. He viewed the open tackle box before him and began searching through the weights and bobbers for that special combination to land the big ones. The lake was like glass and when the sun cleared the horizon and traveled a bit, it was going to be a scorcher. He’d clear off when it began to get uncomfortable. For now though it was the lake, the birds, the ducks and a few other early rising anglers out and about. The others on the lake were going to their tried and true spots but he had come to where he was to watch the world wake up. There was a boat nearby which rankled him a little. Why was it that out of the whole body of water to choose from, this guy had to settle in just a stone’s throw away? The reason was beyond him and it looked as though the man was ill prepared if he was going to do some fishing. It was either that or he was a slow mover to set things up. It looked as though the boat was just drifting. No anchor has been lowered. If the drift continued they’d be sitting in each other’s lap.

  “Hey buddy,” Williams said. “Back off a little and give us some breathing room?”

  The person in the other boat looked up. “I’m sorry to scare away your lunch Hunter but drifting over here is no accident.”

  Williams was immediately wary that his name was used, and the overtone at the finish of the boater’s sentence. “Do I know you?”

  “No. …probably haven’t heard of me either but we’re a part of the same family.

  “Black sheep, are you?”

  “Nah, you have to be acknowledged to be black sheep. I’m more from the- (“secretary will disavow any knowledge or your actions”) branch of the family.” The man had reached into his jacket and produced a badge and held it aloft as a token that he was who he was.

  “Kinda hard to have an ID badge if you don’t exist.” Williams said.

  “You have no idea.”

  Williams took the badge and looked it over. “Frank Lucas. Let’s say you are who you say you are. What do you want with me? I’m retired.”

  “Turns out that is exactly what I’m looking for; someone who is family but isn’t active in the family business anymore.”

  “Look Frank, I’m retired. I’m done with all that crazy stuff. Get yourself an active agent and leave us retired family members out of whatever this week’s emergency is.”

  “If I could use active agents I wouldn’t be here interrupting your busy schedule. Now, I know you gave at the office and deserve your time and pension. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t desperate. There is no one I can trust on the inside.

  “No one? Really? Out of the whole bureau? That seems a little…far-fetched.”

  “Hunter, I come from the land of farfetched. Before we go down that road though, I have to tell you that evidence from the evidence room is being tampered with and I was being electronically watched…bugged. Something ahead of our technology was planted on me. It’s been removed but not without loss of life. I have a feeling someone’s waiting for me back at my office.”

  “Don’t return to the office. Get a hold of your section chief.”

  “Look, I can’t. I can’t because the FBI has been infiltrated….”

  “…And you need someone from outside but how do you know I’m trustworthy?”

  “The fact is I don’t. But if you were one of them you wouldn’t be out here fishing. No, you’ve left the bureau behind you. You’re safe enough for me.”

  There was silence as Williams considered the real possibility of helping out. Frank let that silence work for him and then played out a little more line.

  “Keep in mind my branch of the family, but the bureau was investigating the murder of an ophthalmologist by the name of Daniel Gekkle. His final moments were spent sitting in a chair with a list of names, a shopping list we call it. Turns out our doctor liked to be an assassin for hire in his off hours. We found a hollowed-out book full of human eyeballs as trophies. So we had a crime scene investigation and documented the evidence we took back to the office for cues and discussion. But someone has played with the documentation; taken the original picture of what we brought and replaced it with an exact duplicate without the shopping list. The original picture was in the trash can, un-crumpled and un- torn. You’d think whoever took the chance to alter that picture would have been more careful…it’s almost a taunt.”

  Frank waited for a reply or if there wasn’t one at least time for his story to be considered before going on. There was only a studied stare-back awaiting more.

  “Look, the kind of shit we get into is a little overwhelming and wacko to those not immersed in it. Conspiracy theories, paranormal happenings, mostly it’s my job to investigate, close the book or cover up. Anyway, most of what I would love to tell you is classified. What I need from you is back-up, be an unexpected gun because last night I was tailed and then shot at. I had a Kevlar on but here are the bruises.”

  Frank lifted his shirt.

  “There is another of the team in on this but he has gone underground. Turns out he knew more about this than I did, and has been trying to warn me.”

  “Why don’t you run?” Williams asked.

  “…because the best way to survive this is to do the unexpected. They surely don’t expect me to turn up today at the office.”

  “What is your plan?”

  “To show up, look unperturbed, ruffle some feathers, draw them out. Are you any good with a gun?” Frank asked.

  “I can hit what I aim at.”

  “So not field tested.”

  “Not like I didn’t try. Almost like a conspiracy I kept being aimed at investigative work.”

  “Be careful of that conspiracy talk. Now you’re getting into my area of expertise.”

  Their chat continued and both grew in trust and confidence with the other. Frank followed Hunter back to his lake home, feeling badly about involving this man and bringing him momentarily out of retirement. Sometime in his recent past Frank had begun to feel the need to involve outsiders and this led him to believe that at some level he had known there were those around him he could not trust. State trooper Enos Lancaster was one of those he’d picked from outside the family to trust with family secrets. Frank wished he could talk with Enos now and fill him in on the last thirty-six hours. He had a nagging thought that he needed to warn Enos about the possibility of his being tagged the same as he had been. Who knew the trouble he might be into?

  --------

  Enos Lancaster peered out the window after hearing a disturbance. “You didn’t hear anything?” He looked back over his shoulder, further into the room.

  Constance Kemper was still in bed, looking beautifully mussed. Though it was at the day’s closing they were new lovers and eager participants in the exploration of that love. They had met through Enos being hired as security for one night which was a moonlighting job for him. His main employment was transitioning from Michigan State Police to specialist consultant with the FBI. This would seem like a dream job but things had gotten weird with the murder investigation of Dr. Daniel Gekkle, an ophthalmologist who also moonlighted. His second job was as an eraser- rubbing out people for money which the bureau discovered as the investigation of his murder unfolded. But who had hired him? There was a shopping list of names on the table beside him as he sat in the living room chair, dead with an elbowed straw protru
ding from his neck. The case had gotten deeper of course. Such was the way of it.

  Enos discovered he was being followed, as was Constance; the woman now deliciously looking at him through sleepy eyes in the bed behind him. Together they had gone on the run. The rest of the story had so many components. Back at the office, evidence that was brought there for further contemplation was slyly being altered. Years back when he worked with the Cleveland Police Department, he had encountered a woman named Myrna, who came to him for help and whom he ultimately failed to protect because he had been unable to believe in her killers until he’d met them firsthand. Sadly, he was forced to watch her last seconds of life burn away in a cremation furnace. After the emotional devastation of being prisoner and forced to view poor Myrna’s end, his captors, members of the police department also, let him go. They were so smug, so sure they would never be caught, and beyond the reach of being accountable to laws they felt didn’t apply to them, they released him saying he wasn’t their target and if he didn’t interfere with their plans he could live out his life. They were after all members of the same department.

  Enos felt fortunate to be alive and tried to move on but just couldn’t let it go. It mounted inside him and one day he put himself back on the killers’ trail. It was a move he felt was suicidal because these murderous beings’ capabilities were formidable and no matter how careful he was, they would eventually find out and make good on their threat. In some ways, that would be okay because Enos felt responsible for Myrna’s death and had tried a self-destructive path to numb his guilt but then he crossed paths with two people: Frank Lucas and Constance Kemper. Frank made him believe again that there might be an actual chance to catch those he’d been aware of since Myrna’s misfortune. Constance had turned his head and warmed his heart. She’d done a thing or two to him downstairs as well. And though all of this was very complicated, this was the price of admission into where he was now; looking out a window of a mansion in a track of land mostly hidden in the great northwest forest. He was housed now with people he didn’t understand but they too, gave him hope that all was not lost.

  He went to the nightstand and drew open the drawer.

  “Is it there this now?” Constance asked. “This is the fourth time you’ve looked this afternoon, sweetums. Do you expect your gun to magically re-appear?”

  “Well, under most circumstances I’d feel foolish in saying that I did, but there are two reasons I feel less embarrassed. One; is that my pistol magically disappeared earlier today. If it can disappear it stands to reason that it could also reappear. Usually I’m not given to such childish behaviors but today I’ll make an exception.

  “Oh? And what is it about this day that makes you so generous?” Constance was in love and knew Enos was too, so she expected some cute reference to their budding relationship but ended up as surprised as he was.

  “…because the other reason is my gun has magically reappeared.” Enos held up his shoulder holster and within it once again was his pistol.

  4

  Psychotherapist Cinnamon Starr no longer possessed quite the confidence in the world of logic and the scientific method she might have had before a certain client came to her with a claim of being a vampire. But the assuredness she may have lost as a clinician in those particular realms were offset by what she had gained in intuition, open mindedness and trusting her feelings a bit more. She was in the Great House, the mansion that was the center of the commons. The commons was a landscaped yard of near football field size, which from the eye of a bird might look like a square-ish or rectangular island in the sea of trees. There were trees dotting the commons as well as small cottages and homes, but the designed beauty of the yard was a small clearing as opposed to the tangled jungle of the forest. This surrounded the estate like an ocean and held its own wild beauty.

  But Cinnamon was not out there in the wild. She was in the tangle of thoughts and emotional responses that raced with heartbeats and breaths. This was her situation within her. Without her was the cause for her tension. Cinnamon had encountered Persephone on the stairs and was told about the mounting concern regarding Misty who was late from her evening run. Persephone had asked Cinnamon to remain and oversee the new guests, Enos and Constance if and when they emerged from their room. Cinnamon was asked to go to the suite where John, Misty and Persephone Skye resided, to keep an eye on things there, and also prevent Enos and Constance from wandering around. This is where Cinnamon was now, but it was nerve wracking to be in their living quarters. Their suite was mysterious and frightening and now her fright was increased tenfold. Cinnamon had been pacing back and forth with an eye toward the opened door to the hallway. From there she could watch the door to Enos and Constance’s room, when she became lost in thought as the twilight outside darkened. Alarmingly, she had become aware that her sight to the door to the hallway was blocked and that was frightening enough. But it became worse as within the suite on the opposite side of the room, a door that she had closed was open and a chair that she had been sitting in had been drawn into the darkening shadows. And it got worse, someone sat in that chair.

  She was startled by his stealthy arrival, and heard a hiss from the shadows where this new arrival sat. Within a nervous breath or two, Cinnamon resolved not to remain cowering but to take action before she became completely unglued.

  “Your arrival frightened me. I suppose that was intended.”

  No response came from the darkness. Rather than draw closer, she moved toward the door opening to the hallway, but not to use the door but rather to turn on a light. When she flipped the switch some table lamps went on in a sitting area by the windows. This did little to brighten the room. It seemed as if the darkness resisted the light and only allowed meager improvement, but there was a man sitting in the chair that had been hers. Though he still sat in the shadows they were brightened by the lamps she had just illuminated. This was the third time she had seen him. Once she had glanced up to an upstairs window as she had been coming inside the house, and seen him watching her. Another time as Michael had walked further into this very suite, she had looked beyond him and seen this man sitting in a chair.

  Whispering came from the doorway that she was sure he had come out of but Cinnamon was unable to understand any of it. The murmuring was not some background filler, but rather conversational between unseen others and where at first it seemed to come from further back in the large suite of rooms. Eerily the whispers, sometimes barely heard and other times as if she were being talked to, came from near and far places in the room.

  “Can I help you?” Cinnamon asked, trying to sound braver than she was. She was pretty good at it though. She was after all, a psychotherapist. The room’s layout wasn’t familiar enough to know where to turn on other light sources in the room. She had gone to the entry door of the suite because it was nearer to an escape and also where the most predictable switch was. But now came a moment of truth because she was within reach of the door. With a step and a gesture, she could be out of the room and potentially out of harm’s way. The smart thing to do was to escape the room but Cinnamon had been feeling like she was one step behind ever since she had met Michael Ro`dan. She had been off balance and on the run. She was not going to flee from the scene this time.

  “We haven’t met.” Cinnamon said. “I‘ve seen you a couple of times but only through hallways and windows. My name is Cinnamon Starr.” She considered leaving the relative safety of being next to the door opening to the hall and crossing the room to approach the man sitting in the shadows. “I’d like to know who you are.”

  On the other side of the room from where she stood, Cinnamon could see the dark rectangle of the opened door leading back to other rooms in deeper darkness. She could hear rustling like wings flapping or the sound a dog makes when rolling its head back and forth rapidly with ears flopping. Though this was unnerving it grew quiet which was more unnerving. Again she heard a hiss and then there was a knocking, rapping on wood. At first, it came from the
darkness beyond the door but soon enough it traveled throughout the room, yet Cinnamon could not see what was making the noise. Then, the knocking came from the door next to her, the one to the hallway. She wavered whether to open it or not but that debate inside her ended suddenly, because the door opened without her touch.

  As the door revealed the outside corridor, Enos and Constance stood there with inquisitive expressions on their faces, peering first at Cinnamon and then over her shoulder into the room. Down the hall behind them, Cinnamon sighted Sanford just clearing the landing, and he called out to them.

  “We have trespassers, dangerous people on their way to the commons.” Sanford continued toward them as he spoke. “There are a lot of lights on in the house. We need to turn off every single one of them.”

  He turned to Enos. “We’ll need your gun.”

  “How can I be sure I have it?”

  “You do. You’ve always had it. You just didn’t always know it. Would you bring it downstairs and station yourself by the front door?”

  Cinnamon said, “I can catch the lights in….” She cocked her head toward the apartment belonging to John, Persephone and Misty, but noticed it was now dark where she had just been so she finished with, “my room.”

  Constance moved down the hall, turning off lights as she went. Enos went back to their room not quite certain he would find his gun still present in the holster, but soon enough he was downstairs by the front entry as requested. As an officer of the law, this was a situation where he was drawn to take a leadership role. But his personal history from his days with the Cleveland Police department, Myrna Ransom, and his experiences with Frank Lucas and the FBI, didn’t add up to really clarify the enemy against whom they were defending. His history with this was nothing compared to most of the others he was surrounded by. It’s difficult to lead when you are the Johnny-come-lately.