The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  I’m going to kill you.

  I don’t want to get blood on my clothes.

  When she heard the violent thumping against the walls and floor, and the detective’s cries for mercy, Jessie simply couldn’t take anymore.

  She had run out the door.

  Now, tears hot on her face, she continued to run, thankful that at least she was on familiar ground. No vampires or shape-shifting men in business suits, or torturous biological fathers to contend with here. Just an uptight mother and a douchebag step-father. Normal stuff.

  Who are you kidding? Normal just took a flying leap off Mount Kilimanjaro. There is no getting back to normal.

  Winded, gasping, she stopped running. She stood on the sidewalk in front of a twenty-four-hour grocery. One of the nearby street lights blinked in a struggle to stay lit. Jessie’s eyes felt raw from all the tears. Her cheeks hurt.

  She wanted to forget the last twelve hours. Even if for a little while. Give herself a chance to come down from the madness. To come to grips with the fact that vampires were real. Vampires and who the hell knew what else?

  Going home wouldn’t do. Having her mom ream her while Alec stood smugly by with his arms crossed? Screw that.

  After catching her breath, she headed for Ryan’s house. They could hang in his basement, gank beers out of the downstairs fridge, play Xbox. Maybe make out. Maybe even let him feel her up like he’d been begging to do for weeks. She wondered what Mom would think about that.

  She picked up her pace. Anxious to see Ryan now. And maybe she was wrong. Maybe she could bring normal back from the dead.

  Yeah, like a zombie.

  Which were probably real, too.

  Lockman set Walkowitz’s gun on the desk between them, but kept his hand on it. “I want you to trust me.”

  The PI had picked up the handkerchief again and had his nose pinched in it, distorting his voice. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I take my hand off this revolver, you have two choices. Point it at me and chase me out of here—”

  “Or shoot you.”

  “—or put it back in the drawer and forget about it.” Lockman lifted his hand.

  Walkowitz dropped the handkerchief on the desk and picked up the gun. He thumbed back the hammer and aimed at Lockman’s chest. “I should.”

  “Maybe. But that isn’t going to help you. There are people after me, dangerous people, who want me alive. I don’t think they would appreciate you interfering with that.”

  “Who’s after you? What’s this all about?”

  “I answer those questions and you’re involved. You want that?”

  The PI chewed on his lip. He gently un-cocked the revolver and put it away. “I can describe the guy who gave me your info. That’s the best I can do. After that, I never want to see you again.”

  “Deal.”

  Walkowitz drew a yellow legal pad from a stack of files and flipped to a blank page. From a coffee mug crammed with pencils and pens of various colors he chose a pen and clicked it. He slid the pen and pad across the desk. “You want to take notes?”

  An unbidden memory rippled up from the deeper end of Lockman’s mental pool. Kate, teaching him to draw, and Lockman realizing he could take the skill into his own life, using it on a few occasions to draw faces from witness descriptions.

  “I can do one better than that.” He traded the pen for a mechanical pencil from the mug. “Start with the shape of his face.”

  Walkowitz described while Lockman prompted him with questions to get more detail. And he drew. It didn’t take long. But it turned out Lockman could have skipped the drawing. He recognized Walkowitz’s description almost instantly. He only kept on with the sketching in hope that the PI would mention a feature or mark that proved Lockman’s suspicion wrong.

  Instead, he ended up with a perfect portrait of his old boss, Victor Creed.

  Lockman dropped the pencil and tossed the pad of paper onto the desk. Something shuddered inside of him as if he’d swallowed an earthquake.

  Walkowitz turned the pad around and stared at the face staring back. “That’s him. Fucking bastard.”

  Bastard? No. That had been Lockman, the bastard child, and Victor had been like his adoptive father. A role model. A teacher. A friend.

  A traitor.

  “What’s the matter?” Walkowitz asked, but his voice came from some other universe. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Lockman stood. He ripped the sketch out of the pad, crumpled it, and shoved it in his pocket. “Thanks for your help. You’ll never see me—or him—again.”

  He rushed from the office and lost his breath when the humid air struck him after all that time in the cold.

  Of all the people to betray him.

  He took a few controlled breaths and tucked his rage down, saving it for the right time. Now he had to get Jessie home and make sure she was safe. Then he could finish this.

  He got all the way to the car and in behind the wheel before he realized she wasn’t sitting in the passenger seat where he expected her.

  He checked the back seat. Got out of the car and walked a circle around the car, looking in all directions. No sign of her anywhere.

  Had Dolan tracked them down? Taken her?

  But if they had come for him, why didn’t they ambush him in the office? Had they learned the direct approach did not work so well against him?

  A stupid move, sending her out alone.

  “No, no, no.” He punched the rental’s quarter panel and dented it. Pain sparked across his knuckles.

  Now what? If Dolan had Jessie, all Lockman could do was wait for Dolan’s next move. Waiting did not agree with him.

  There was the chance Jessie had decided not to wait for him. Hadn’t she said the detective’s office was within walking distance from her house?

  He let himself relax a little. She probably walked home. The simple explanation was always the better one. Couldn’t assume, though. He had to know for sure. Which meant tracking down Kate’s new home address.

  He headed back into Walkowitz’s office and found him still behind his desk, on the phone.

  Walkowitz glared at Lockman when he entered. “Yes, dear. I’ll be home soon. I have to go now. Love you, too.” He hung up the phone. “I thought I wasn’t going to see you again.”

  “I need a favor.”

  “You’ve got some fucking nerve.”

  “I need to track someone down. I hear you’re pretty good at that.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Finding someone who isn’t hiding is one of the easiest things to do, given the right tools. These days an internet connection could provide all you needed. With Walkowitz’s help, Lockman not only found Kate’s address, but her married name—Kate Cohen.

  He sat in the rental car, parked across the street from her two-story colonial style house with attached two-car garage. The lawn looked as square and the shrubs as trimmed as he expected. Hanging flower pots. Vinyl siding. Everything but the white picket fence.

  “Good for her,” he said and could smell the bullshit on his breath. But what could he expect? That she would remain single and pining for him even after all these years? If anything, she probably hated him.

  He tried to compartmentalize again. The walls he built in his mind crumbled to sand as soon as he put them in place. This close to Kate, this close to the life he’d abandoned, he couldn’t contain the churning in his chest.

  He put his hand on the keys still in the ignition, ready to start the engine and drive away, forget about Jessie and Kate.

  Coward.

  I have more important things to worry about.

  More important than your daughter?

  He gritted his teeth, pissed at himself. He could run toward a group of vampires armed with automatic weapons to save Jessie, but he couldn’t face the woman he’d left fifteen years ago.

  He pulled the keys from the ignition and got out of the car.

  The porch light was on. A swarm of mosquitoes danced
around the light joined by a pair of moths that tapped against the clear cover over and over in a suicidal attempt to get at the glowing bulb inside.

  He rang the bell. His palms sweat.

  When the door opened he felt something catch in his throat, as if his breath had turned solid. She both looked nothing like she used to and exactly how he remembered. In her eyes he saw the same surreal recognition. The doorway between them had turned into a window with a view to their past.

  He tried to say something, but found his brain had short-circuited on him. Tears of sweat rolled down the back of his neck at the same time shivers ran up it.

  The silent staring went on for what felt like years.

  Kate spoke first. “You.”

  “Me.”

  “You son of a bitch.” She stepped through the doorway, onto the porch, forcing Lockman to retreat. She pulled the door shut behind her, then slapped him. “Where’s Jessie?”

  Stunned for a moment, he couldn’t think how to answer her. “You’re mad.”

  “Mad? My daughter took off looking for her father, God knows where, and you show up here after fifteen years, for what? A family reunion?”

  “No. I had no intention of coming here.”

  “Nice. Then why bother, Craig? Because you found out you have a daughter?” She rubbed at her temples. “We don’t need you, if that’s what you think. Don’t feel like you have some responsibility to us. I gave up on you a long time ago.”

  His stomach clenched. “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Then why are…” She peered around him. Her face hardened. “Where is she?”

  “I hoped she’d come back here.”

  “You hoped? She’s thirteen. She can’t be trusted to run around on her own.”

  “Then how did she manage to get all the way to California to find me?”

  Her eyes widened. Her frown put an accent on the lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there before. But the lines did nothing to diminish her beauty. Even now, in the midst of the clusterfuck he’d found himself, he noticed that beauty.

  “She was safe with me until about fifty minutes ago. Then she disappeared.”

  “Don’t feel bad. She does it to me all the time.” She shook her head. “Craig, what are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to make sure Jessie got home safe.”

  “That’s it? She finds you on the other side of the country and you escort her home?”

  “There’s more to everything.”

  “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “I missed you.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “I don’t want to hear that crap. Not now. I’ve moved on.”

  He reached out, touched her cheek, fully expecting her to knock his hand away.

  She didn’t.

  “There’s so much I want to tell you. Kate, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s too late.” She stepped back, out of his reach.

  He let his hand drift back to his side. “Are you going to invite me in?”

  “My husband’s home.”

  “Then introduce me.”

  “Right. Hey, hon, this is the guy who knocked me up and disappeared without a word. He’ll likely shoot you.”

  “He owns a gun?”

  She crossed her arms. “Three of them. Lord knows why.”

  “You still don’t like guns.” He remembered her finding one of his pistols at his place when they were seeing each other. He had to make up an excuse about it being a gift from an uncle. He knew she didn’t like guns and he didn’t want her to suspect how familiar with their use he truly was. One of several white lies to keep his secret profession from interfering with their relationship. At the time, he’d thought nothing of it. Now it all felt underhanded. No way to build a relationship.

  “I might need to borrow one of your husband’s guns.”

  Her brow creased. She leaned away from him even with the several feet already between them. “For what?”

  “Jessie could be in danger.”

  Her voice shook. “What are you talking about?”

  How could he explain a whole world of secrets to her without sounding insane? Should he start with the vampires and work his way to parallel dimensions? Or begin with the top secret government agency tasked with making sure those dark forces weren’t used by terrorists?

  “You have to trust me.”

  “Tell me where you last saw her and I’ll go looking for her.”

  The initial spell of seeing her for the first time in years began to wear off enough for him to notice the differences. The hard set of her jaw. The tight corners of her eyes. The severe slant to her brow. She had lost the softness he always admired. Time had calcified her and Lockman wondered if he had contributed to most of that change.

  “You will need my help finding her.”

  “What I need from you is to go back to California and stay out of our lives.”

  “Kate, you aren’t listening to me. Jessie didn’t just take off. She could have been taken.”

  The color in her face drained. “Is this some sick way of trying to burrow your way back into my life?”

  “I don’t have time to explain, and if I did you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

  “After all this time, I’m just supposed to take you at your word.”

  “For Jessie’s sake.” He took a step forward. “Let me talk to your husband.”

  “He isn’t going to like this. He isn’t going to like you.”

  “I doubt I’ll like him much either.”

  “Wow. So you’re him.”

  Alec Cohen had a greasy look to him. At least, that was Lockman’s first impression. But he didn’t trust his own judgment considering his obvious bias. Alec’s hair was thick with hair gel and combed with a neat part. Sideburns neatly trimmed. A thin mouth and dark eyes. He had a model look about him. Not much of a leap to see what attracted Kate to him.

  Lockman still didn’t like him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m him.”

  “Have to admit, I expected something different. Something that … I don’t know … explained things.”

  “You mean Jessie? She might have my eyes and my jaw line, but her personality is all her mother’s.”

  Kate cleared her throat and busied herself with putting dinner dishes into the dishwasher.

  Alec smiled. “You sure about that?”

  They stood in the kitchen. Lockman looked around at the décor. A country theme. Blue and white checkered wallpaper provided the backdrop. A rusty colander sat on a shelf like an artifact on display. A red-painted milk can was tucked in a corner. Plaques with sayings like “Home is Where You Hang Your Heart” and “God Bless This Kitchen” adorned the walls. It looked nothing like what he imagined Kate would have. And Alec didn’t strike Lockman as the down-home country type. Maybe she had hired a decorator. If so, Lockman hoped she’d asked for a refund.

  “Not one-hundred percent.”

  The smile remained on Alec’s face, but his eyes grew dim and studied Lockman up and down. “So Jessie flew all the way to California to find you. That girl is unbelievable.”

  “She’s got heart.”

  “You talk like you’ve known her longer than what? Fifteen hours at the most, not counting the time after she slipped away from you.”

  “What I saw of her today? I probably know her better than you now.”

  Something shattered.

  Lockman and Alec both turned toward the sound. Kate stood at the dishwasher, her hands out as if still holding the plate that now lay in pieces on the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Lockman and Alec asked together.

  She closed her eyes and heaved a large sigh. “Fine.”

  Alec went to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and massaged. “Easy, babe. She’ll come back. She always does. At least we know she’s close by and safe.”

  She met Lockman’s eyes. He stared back. Looking at
her made his chest ache.

  “Alec, Craig thinks …”

  “What?” Alec looked at Lockman.

  “I believe Jessie’s in danger.”

  Alec held up a dismissive hand. “You can stop right there. Obviously, you don’t know Jess as well as you think. See, she has this tendency to take off and make people worry about her.”

  “I know she’s difficult. But that doesn’t mean she’s any less at risk. Without taking too much time to explain, there are people after me. People who followed Jessie to my home in California and nearly killed us both in an effort to capture me.”

  Kate’s face creased with such agony, she looked like someone had stabbed her. Seeing her like that made him feel a similar stab in his stomach.

  “What have you done?” she asked.

  Alec put an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t listen to him. He’s crazy.” He pointed at Lockman. “You are crazy.”

  He should have known this wouldn’t work, should have walked away the moment he learned Jessie had not returned home like he had hoped. “I’m sorry for your trouble.” He turned and headed out of the kitchen toward the front door.

  “Craig,” Kate called from behind him.

  “Forget it,” Alec said. “Let him go.”

  Lockman felt her hand on his shoulder as he reached the door. He turned. The pain he saw in her face before still marred her expression. But he noticed something more. A fire in her eyes. “Is that why you left? Did you get in trouble with someone?”

  “It’s almost impossible to explain.”

  “I don’t want an explanation. I want an answer. Yes or no. Is that why you left?”

  “It’s not that simple. I—”

  “I just made it simple.”

  He wanted to reach out and touch her again. Alec stood behind her, glaring at Lockman, probably wishing he had one of his three guns in hand.

  “I left because it was best for everybody. And as soon as I know Jessie is safe, I’ll leave again. You don’t have to worry about me burrowing back into your life.”

  Her eyes narrowed when he repeated her words back at her.

  “Can you think of anything that might help me find her? If she’s still on her own, where would she go if not here?”