The Scarlet Plan

by Rick W. Warren

  Anger seethed with every step. His pride had been doubly bruised. Not only had they got away, but they had seen him fall. This was unforgivable. He would find them somehow. He knew he had other things to do, but he knew that they would eventually come face to face with him again. That thought gave him a little bit of strength. He thought of the looks on their faces when he someday appeared before them. The shock of fear and the dread knowing that they didn’t actually escape gave him a small bit of solace. He would find them and he was going to finish what he started.

  The next step he took didn’t feel as bad as the others had. He was still limping and was sure he would for a while, but the building rage also took a little bit of the pain away too. He continued to make his way down the path until he reached the part where he came to the edge of the trees and the path turned left towards the field. It wouldn’t be long until he reached the barn and could get to his motorcycle, which had been stored in the back. He wouldn’t have a problem driving that with his bad knee. Either way he was going to need some ice and other supplies if he wanted get better quickly.

  He had finally passed the trees and the barn came into view. He made his way towards it when suddenly he heard something. His senses kicked into full alert as he was able to determine that he was hearing a song being played. The weird thing about it was that it wasn’t a full song but rather a few seconds being played as if it was on a loop. It sounded as if it was coming from a… “Phone!” The Cleaner growled.

  From the weeds he could hear the sound running in a continuous loop as he hobbled over to see it. He looked down and saw what looked like an iPhone lit up and moving slightly from vibration. He realized to much delight that this phone must have been dropped by one of the kids. He had seen the one with glasses taking pictures with it so it must have been his. In the commotion to leave he either had dropped it or it had fallen out of his pocket. Now it was in the Cleaner’s hand. He looked and saw that “Mom” was calling. Eventually the call stopped and a text message was subsequently sent: “You need to come home soon. We need you to watch your sister while Dad and I run some errands”

  The Cleaner couldn’t help but grin. They thought they got away, but instead they had left a map that would lead him straight to where they were.

  16

  Aaron sat in a corner booth in the back of Steak n’ Shake and waited for Emma to arrive. From his viewpoint he could see the glass doors that provided the only entrance to the building and these would be the same doors that she would come through. The phone call had been brief as he could tell that Emma was shaken to the core by the death of Jack and at the same time she was already on the case to finding his killer. Emma had always been what Aaron would call a “spitfire.” Her focus on tasks at hand matched her beauty. She had always been a passionate person and he had been attracted to that, but for some reason they were never in a situation where they could have dated. He knew he liked her, but he was never really sure if the feeling was mutual. She definitely seemed happy to see him at the football game, but now everything had been clouded by Jack’s death.

  He had asked her on the phone how she was doing and she seemed genuinely pleased to hear from him. He knew she would want to find Jack’s killer and he wanted the same thing. He had suggested that they could meet up for lunch at a place that they used to hang out together many times after youth group and she said she would be happy to. It was nice that she was willing to meet him and it was good to find something they could be happy about in this horrible day. She said she had to swing by home to clean up and then she would be over. Half an hour later he was sitting in a booth waiting for her to arrive. Aaron couldn’t remember another day in his life with such a range of emotion. Extreme sadness for Jack’s death, genuine fear from the knowledge that it was a murder, confusion from the thoughts he had heard earlier telling him that Jack had died, excitement for getting to meet Emma for lunch, and guilt for feeling that way on a day like this.

  About five minutes later, the door opened and he saw Emma enter the restaurant. To say she went home to clean up was an understatement. She didn’t look disheveled like he did by a long shot. Instead, she looked stunning. Immediately, Aaron felt self conscious as he stood up and waved to her while she walked in. This is some first date, if you could call it that, He thought. She’s looking beautiful and I’m almost straight out of bed before inviting her to a burger joint. He immediately felt embarrassed. Emma turned and saw him and gave him a sweet smile with the characteristic gleam in her eye. His heart instantly jumped and he got up to meet her halfway. He may have looked sloppy, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be chivalrous.

  As Aaron approached her she immediately closed in and hugged him tightly. He could see the tears in her eyes, but he also could see her strength as she fought to keep her composure.

  “I’m really sorry, Emma,” Aaron said gently.

  “I am too,” she replied. “We both loved him and he loved both of us.” With that a lone tear escaped her eye and went down her cheek. Instinctively, Aaron used his thumb to wipe it off and this time it was Emma’s heart that leaped. With his arm around her shoulder, he escorted her to the booth he had been at.

  “I’m sorry that the first time I called you had to be under these circumstances,” Aaron said. “I was hoping for a happier conversation.”

  Emma smiled as she sat down. “I’m glad you called anyway. With all the confusion going on today, I’m glad I could talk to you about it. I don’t know about you, but I felt like our conversation last night was as if we had never been apart for six years.”

  Aaron gave her his characteristic grin that she had always loved. “I felt the same way too. I think its pretty cool actually.”

  At that moment a waitress appeared and took their drink order as they looked over the menus. “This is my treat by the way,” Aaron said to Emma.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “That’s very sweet of you.”

  As they waited for their cherry cola’s they talked about the events of the morning. Emma explained how she had heard the news from her boss and how she spent the morning down at the office already making phone calls to everyone trying to find out as many details as possible. Aaron listened to her and offered what he knew since he had actually visited Convert and Marie and had even seen Jack’s body.

  “How did he look?” Emma asked with her eyes beginning to water. She knew that this was going to be her condition for a while.

  “I think the best way to describe it was peaceful,” Aaron replied. “He took one knife wound directly to the heart. A deep wound with great precision that killed him almost instantly. At least, that’s what they are saying.”

  “Why would anyone do this to him?” Emma asked in exasperation. “How did Jack end up at Lake Storey so late at night in the first place?”

  “That’s the weird part, among many,” Aaron replied. “His car was in the garage and Marie never saw him leave. She said he kissed her goodnight while she was in bed and went back downstairs. She woke up in the morning and he wasn’t there.”

  “Was there any forced entry?” Emma asked as she got her notebook out and started writing rapidly.

  “Nothing. The doors were locked. Nothing was damaged and nothing was taken.”

  “So do they think he was kidnapped then and dumped at the lake or did he go there himself?”

  “Well, how would he have got there on his own? His car was still in the garage?”

  Emma thought for a second. “Maybe he got a ride or even called a cab. As a matter of fact, a cab makes sense more than a friend taking him anywhere simply because of the time of night.”

  Aaron’s eyes brightened. “If he did call a cab, then surely there would be a record of it right?”

  “Exactly!” Emma responded smiling. “This could be a solid lead. At the very least it would help us narrow down how he got there.”

  The waitress came back with thei
r drinks and took their food order. The events of the day didn’t lead to much of an appetite, but they ordered a couple of burgers and fries anyway.

  “Did they know an approximate time of death?” Emma continued. “That would be really important when it came to correlating any sort of cab ride.”

  “It was 11:38,” Aaron said instinctively before he realized what he was even saying.

  “What?” Emma said surprised.

  “I mean, they believe sometime between 10 and midnight.” Aaron said nervously. He knew the thought popped into his mind, which told him Jack was dead, exactly at 11:38, but there was no way anyone else would understand this and there was certainly no way he could adequately explain it.

  Emma looked at him with a sense of both bewilderment and fascination. “Why did you say 11:38 at first, though?”

  “For some reason that time was stuck in my mind and it just came out. No one knows the exact time.”

  Emma leaned in slightly and looked straight in his eyes. “What if I told you that that time was exactly what I was thinking too?”

  It was now Aaron’s turn to be confused. “Why were you thinking that?”

  Emma opened her mouth to reply and then quickly sat back and said nothing. “I don’t know how to say it without sounding crazy.”

  “It came into your mind at the same time, didn’t it? It was almost as loud as a voice,” Aaron replied. “The same thing happened to me.”

  “It did? How? Where were you when it happened?”

  “I was at the church taking out trash after our youth group event. I was alone and out of nowhere I thought: ‘Jack McKenzie is dead.’”

  Emma’s eyes widened as she looked at him. “That is exactly what happened to me in my apartment! It was so jarring; I thought someone was there. It really scared me. Also, I did notice that my clock had said 11:38 when I felt it.”

  “A clock at my church said the same thing,” Aaron replied.

  “What is going on?”

  “I don’t know, but what I do know is that the thought turned out to be true.”

  Aaron and Emma sat there for a moment in silence pondering the fact that both of them had thought the same thing at the same time. How was it possible? Aaron glanced down and saw Emma’s keys on the table. Besides what had to have been her car key, house key, and possibly some office keys, he noticed that her keychain also had a Superman symbol attached to it. “I like your keychain. I see you are still a Superman fan. That’s pretty cool.”

  Emma snapped out of her thoughts, looked down at the Superman “S” and back up to Aaron’s smiling face. “You better believe it,” Emma replied. “I’m still fascinated by the ‘Man of Steel.’”

  “I always knew you were a fan, but you were kind of obsessed with him when we were younger. More than anyone else I knew. I don’t think I ever asked you why you liked him so much?”

  For an instant Emma grew a bit shy, but then her fandom took over. “It started when I was a little girl,” Emma replied with perfect recall. “It was late at night and I had woke up from a bad dream so I walked out of my room to go see my parents as I usually did. As I was walking down the hallway, I had heard the TV on in the living room so I went out there and saw my dad was lying on the couch. I walked over to him and climbed up with him. He knew I had had a bad dream and his hugs were always the solution. While I laid there I saw that he was watching the original 1978 Superman with Christopher Reeve and it was fascinating to me. It was at that part in the movie where Lois Lane was in the helicopter as it began to fall off the top of the building. Lois lost her grip of the seatbelt as she was hanging and began to fall, but suddenly Superman flew in and caught her. It was the most thrilling thing I had ever seen! With perfect control of the situation, he said to her: ‘Easy, miss. I’ve got you.’ And in reply, Lois looked around and said: ‘You’ve got me! Who’s got you?’ I remember my dad laughing at that line and I did too. Then, the helicopter started to fall and while holding Lois in one arm he caught the helicopter in the other and put it back on the rooftop. I was enthralled.”

  “Of course being a little kid, I thought it was all real and even at that age I just knew that I wanted to marry Superman. I remember running around dressed up like Supergirl and pretending to be a superhero, but deep down I knew that it was Lois who married Superman and Lois was a reporter, not Supergirl. So on my eighth birthday my Mom and Dad got me one of the greatest gifts I ever received: my own reporter kit. It had a bag that held my notepad, pencils, a working voice recorder, and camera. Even though I was writing stories about my family, friends, and neighborhood, I was ultimately training to marry Superman.”

  Aaron laughed. “Wow, I never knew that about you. So when did things change for you and you finally realized Superman wasn’t real?”

  “Who said things ever changed?” Emma replied with a grin as she took a sip of her Coke.

  This place is about to be robbed.

  Aaron’s head shot up as he looked around to see if someone had said something to him. No one was looking at him and no one was near him except for Emma who was staring at him alarmed.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asked.

  “Did you just hear someone say something?” Aaron replied.

  “No. What did you hear?”

  “‘This place is about to be robbed.’ Just popped into my mind,” he whispered. “It was such a clear thought that it felt like I heard it.”

  Emma stared at him wide-eyed. “Just like the thought we had last night?”

  “I think so,” Aaron replied. “It was so abrupt, however, that I really didn’t pay attention.”

  They both looked around the restaurant trying to understand what was going on. By a quick count there were about fifty people of different ages eating. There were various couples sitting in booths and a few families scattered at different tables. A baby in a high chair was refusing to eat no matter how much her mom was trying to convince her, a couple of guys were busy going over what they had to do at the worksite this afternoon, and a group of older ladies were talking about the different ways they kept rodents out of their gardens. However, no one looked threatening or was acting suspicious.

  “Do you see anything weird?” Emma asked.

  “No, is it possible my imagination has gotten the better of me?” Aaron asked.

  “No,” Emma replied. “I believe you. Something is going to happen. We both knew something last night and it was true. You just thought of something now and we have no reason to believe it’s a coincidence. I may not have thought the same thing, but I don’t believe you just made it up.”

  Aaron was fascinated by her trust she had in him. She didn’t even question it and she was willing to explore it further. It was easy for him to understand why she was a reporter. She had a driven desire to find out the truth. He often felt the same way too.

  At that moment, the glass doors at the front of the restaurant opened up and a disheveled man with a handgun extended out in front of him came in.

  Adrenaline surged into Aaron as the shock and surprise of this reality sunk in. This place was really getting robbed and he knew it was going to happen. “It’s happening,” Aaron whispered to Emma.

  She looked at the front of the restaurant and saw the man approaching the counter. “What do we do?” She asked with what seemed to be a little more fascination than fear.

  “Whatever we’re told to do,” Aaron replied.

  The robber was a tall lanky man whose clothes seemed to hang off him. His face was set as if he was a hardened, angry person, but Aaron could tell there was an air of fear as well. The man walked up to the counter and shouted loudly to the workers, “This is a robbery! I want these registers opened now! If they aren’t opened in ten seconds, I’m going to shoot someone! Don’t mess with me! I’m not afraid to kill! Give me the money now!”

  Immediately the restaurant fell into
a deadly hush. Everyone froze in disbelief as they watched a man with a gun threaten their lives. The only sound that could be heard were the burgers left frying on the grill and a crying baby who still refused to eat, but was now being desperately quieted by her shocked mother.

  “Shut that kid up or I’ll shut it up!” The robber screamed.

  This is his first robbery.

  The new thought raced into Aaron’s mind and this time he went from surprise to acceptance. He knew things out of nowhere. It was real and it was true. “What do I do?” Aaron whispered in reply.

  Go pay your bill.

  Aaron paused for a moment. Is that what he should really do? ‘Go pay your bill.’ Was this literally what he should do or was it some sort of riddle? Aaron reasoned that nothing had been a riddle yet so he grabbed the bill and started to get up.

  Emma immediately grabbed his hand. “What are you doing?” She said with that same combination of excitement and fear.

  A peace came over Aaron at that moment. He didn’t just feel it, he knew that everything was going to be all right if he just obeyed. He looked Emma straight in the eyes and with a grin that she always loved he said, “I’m going to pay our bill.”

  “Just doing what you’re told?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Pray for me.”

  The manager had managed to open the registers despite his shaking hands and he was emptying the cash into the thief’s bag as the barrel of the gun was two inches from his face. Aaron stood up and began walking toward the register. People looked at him shocked as he passed by. Some were huddled down below the backs of their booths while others sat there silent, paralyzed by fear. One man looked at him and mouthed the word “Stop” to him, but Aaron kept on walking. He knew this looked crazy, but he also knew that this was what he was supposed to do.