The Blood Keepers: A Helia Crane Supernatural Thriller (The Salem Penitentiary Book 1)

by L. A. Cruz

  It was right where he had left it a decade ago.

  She checked the magazine. Still loaded. She leaned against the fridge, trying to settle her brain, and focused through the mild buzz from the beer.

  There were footsteps on the porch. The creaking ran all the way through the house, right under her bare toes.

  She slipped her finger onto the trigger.

  CHAPTER 9

  Helia pressed her back to the refrigerator. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through her teeth. Her heart echoed in her ears, her training kicking into gear, her system flooding with adrenaline.

  There came a hard knock on the front door, one that seemed to shake the entire house and the downspouts rattled.

  “Corporal Crane?“

  It was not a voice that she recognized. She had expected a Russian accent maybe or maybe even the higher pitched femininity of Fanning's voice, the voice that had been stuck in her head ever since the kidnapping. But instead the accent was flat, as normal a North American accent could be.

  “Unless you decided to toss your cell phone into someone else's house, we know you're in there, Corporal Crane. No need to come out with your guns blazing. We’re friendlies. Go ahead and put down the weapon and come out and talk.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m from the DIA. The Defense Intelligence Agency.”

  “I know what it stands for. Speaking of acronyms, do you know what CD stands for these days? The castle doctrine. Identify yourself or else I’m putting another hole in your face.”

  “Relax. No condescension intended. You’d be surprised how many have never heard of us. The CIA guys get all the recognition and we get all the guns in our faces. I’m Special Agent Joe Connor. Please put your gun down and come to the door. I’d like to have a quick chat. Nothing more than a chat. Scout’s honor.”

  “My dad was in the scouts once. Didn’t do shit for his honor.”

  “If I had a Bible here, I’d swear on that. Better?”

  “Only if its a signed copy,” Helia said.

  “You want me to leave, I’ll leave. It’s your future.”

  Helia lowered the Glock. It could be a trick. But unless Fanning had hacked his way back into the government systems en route to Russia, there was little way that he would have been able to find out where she lived in so short a time.

  “How about you talk from there?”

  “It’s a private matter.”

  “Tita Annabelle doesn’t speak English,” she said. Which was mostly true. She knew four words. Yes. No. Couch. Food.

  “Very well. Corporal Crane, I’m here because we were impressed with the way you handled yourself during the abduction at Leavenworth. The Department of Defense is interested in your skills, your poise in a stressful situation.”

  “That’s not what the Army thinks. They think I’m a delicate flower.”

  “I assure you we do not. Please, put down your weapon and come and talk with me in private. I prefer not to broadcast this news across the entire neighborhood.”

  “The closest neighbor is a mile a way. And even then, he’s a crocodile.”

  Connor lowered his voice. “Corporal Crane, as I said, we are interested in your skills. I’ll give you sixty seconds to come and meet me at the door and have a conversation like two patriots interested in maintaining the national security of this country, or else I’m stepping off this porch and you’ll never hear from me again. You can enjoy the rest of your leave and the nice fat black mark on your permanent record.”

  “A black mark? They said I performed admirably.”

  “Which you did, but they think you’re damaged goods now. They’re worried about your mental health. When you go back, they’ll give you a boring desk job. You’ll work the gate at best. You and I both know that doesn’t suit you.”

  Helia squeezed the Glock and flipped off the safety. She stepped forward, carefully planting each toe as if the tile were littered with broken glass.

  A foot from the dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room, she pressed her back to the drywall. On the opposite wall hung a large, framed portrait of Jesus. A golden halo hovered above his curly locks, and he wore his thorny crown, little trickles of blood running down his cheeks and collecting in his beard. But more importantly, the last gasp of evening had sent enough light through the front windows to make the glass in the picture flame reflective and she could see a clear picture of the man framed by the front door.

  He was dressed in a charcoal gray suit. It was patternless except for the weave of the screen door. His suit jacket was undone, and his slacks were pressed smooth with a sharp crease running up the length of his legs. He stood at about six feet and was handsome, with a strong jaw, a straight nose, and broad features, but his eyes were tiny, like two little slits, and despite the overall fit body and the chiseled features, he could never be a leading man. Eyes that small were creepy, not sexy.

  His hair was buzzed tight on the sides, a little longer on top, and was mostly gray, but there a bald patch above his left ear, but not from the buzz. It looked more like a spot in the lawn were the nutrients in the soil were all wrong or where the dog kept pissing and the hair simply would not grow.

  He was holding a badge up to the screen, and although it was impossible to read in the reflection, the brass was shiny in the last ribbon of evening sneaking through the mangroves.

  Helia ran the options. She could spin away from the wall, fire off two quick rounds and probably land them center mass.

  But, given her lack of a silencer, that was probably not the best choice, seeing how her Tita was a heavy sleeper, but not so heavy that she could sleep through the blast from her Glock—and although she could probably find a cheap attorney to get her an acquittal—judging by the bulge in Connor’s jacket, Florida’s castle law would undoubtedly take her side, the very thought of spending a single night in a jail cell, side by side with the same folks she had spent the last six months training how to subdue, made her skin prickle.

  The other option, of course, was to tell him to hit the pike. She could tell him she wasn’t interested without even listening to what he had to say—but that might lead to regret-induced insomnia for the next fourteen nights until she met with the Army psychologist. She’d spend her evenings drinking beer on the porch and making sure the blanket didn’t fall off her mother’s knees. Had she wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a nurse, she never would have left Zephyrhills in the first place.

  Helia pointed the Glock at the man and stepped into the living room. If Connor wanted to pull his weapon and fire, he had a clean shot now. It all came down to who was the quicker drawn.

  “Do you always point your gun at people who knock on your door?” the man said.

  “Only the suits,” she said.

  “Maybe there’s something to that PTSD stuff after all.”

  She stepped closer, the gun pointed.

  He lowered his badge. “I’m going to slip this into my pocket. I am not reaching for a weapon. Don’t shoot.”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  With one hand up to demonstrate his innocence, he slowly slipped the badge into his jacket pocket.

  “Both hands up where I can see them,” Helia said.

  Connor raised both hands. “Can we talk now?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Will you put down the gun?”

  “No.”

  “As I alluded to a moment ago, we liked your performance during the ‘incident.’ Your commander gave us access to the surveillance videos.”

  “Wonderful,” Helia said. As if Connor had x-ray vision, her free hand unconsciously moved to cover her crotch. He had already seen everything.

  “You handled yourself quite well. I’ve seen men twice your size with twice as much experience break down and bawl in similar situations. But you were a rock.”

  “So what if they’re men? Are men supposed to be the pinnacle of bravery?”

  He s
miled. “I’m here because I’d like to offer you a job. We’ve taken the liberty of doing a background check and we will give you priority for security clearance if you are interested in joining us.”

  “At the DIA?”

  “Not quite.”

  “You want me caged in a cubicle?”

  “No. We want you in the field. We need someone like you. Most of your confinement specialist peers have never actually seen combat. Sergeant Erickson broke down and sobbed after you left. We watched the video three times. It was pathetic.”

  “I’m interested in working in rehabilitation. Always have been. I don’t belong in the field.”

  “We’re aware of your background, Corporal, as well as the events that might have prompted you to pursue such a career. Rest assured, this is not a traditional job. You’d be stationed at a prison. Maximum security. Ultra max, actually.”

  She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t impressed. She couldn’t stand it when people outside the field tried to use that lingo. “There’s no such thing as an ultra-max prison. Super max is the top.”

  Connor nodded, still smiling. “It would be a pay raise. We’ll bump you up to E5.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I can’t give you any more information. Not at this moment. Not unless you commit.”

  Behind her, Tita Annabelle turned over on the couch and snored.

  “I need to think about it.”

  “Then think.”

  They were both quiet. A long, awkward pause.

  “I need to think alone. In private. I need some time. My mother’s sick. My brother’s supposed to be here looking after her, but apparently he’s fled to Arizona.”

  “We’ve heard.”

  “You know my brother?”

  “We know lots of things, Corporal.”

  “Is he okay? Did he pass the Academy?”

  “He’s fine,” Connor said. “Is it a yes or a no?”

  “If I have to tell you right this moment, I promise you it’s a no.”

  Connor reached in his jacket pocket.

  She raised the Glock.

  “Relax. Business card,” he said and pulled out a card the color of boiled bone and stuck it through a torn gap between the screen and the frame.

  She took it and looked it over. There was no name, just a phone number.

  “We need an answer by tomorrow evening. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll assume it’s a no and you’ll never hear from us again.”

  He turned on his heels and went to step off the porch, but retracted his foot midair, somehow defying gravity.

  “While I’ve got you here, a quick question.”

  Helia said nothing.

  “You were in the SUV with Fanning for over an hour. Did he say anything?”

  “About what?”

  “Anything. Anything at all.”

  “He said lots of things. Care to be more specific?”

  Connor shook his head. “No not now. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Six p.m.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “Not me, the country,” he said and then he stepped off the porch for real.

  CHAPTER 10

  After dark, a brief shower pattered the roof and the shelter over the back porch leaked and Helia wheeled her mother inside and put on the wheelchair brakes in front of the television. Wheel of Fortune was on. Vanna was really getting up there, Helia thought. After all these years, she was still doing’s Pat’s dirty work. But at least he let her say a few words here and there.

  Tita Annabelle awoke and sat up on the couch and ruffled her hair. Helia half expected to see a bunch of cockroaches run for the dark.

  In Tagalog, Tita Annabelle said something about a mumó (ghost) whom she had seen in her dreams at the front door. It was a very white ghost, a well-dressed one, she said. The little bit of Filipino that Helia spoke was broken, but she understood more than she could say, having heard her mother speak scant English throughout her childhood. Her mother often used the word mumó in reference to Helia’s father, both because he had pale skin—it turned bright red after only five minutes in the sun—and because he often disappeared for days at a time, only to eventually call from the county jail. For the duration of Helia’s childhood, Rodney Crane was in and out of their lives—until one day he never came back.

  “Tita, for the last time, there is no such thing as ghosts,” Helia said.

  She muttered something in Tagalog.

  “Mom, what did she say?” Helia asked.

  “She said, what about the Holy Ghost?”

  Helia didn’t have an answer for that one.

  Her mother turned away from the television. “You watch your tongue, Bell.”

  Bell was Helia’s nickname, one she couldn’t stand. Technically, it was Bell Bell, the sound her mother heard coming from the church steeple across the street from the delivery room when Helia first stuck her head into the world. Filipinos always went by double nicknames, many of which didn’t make much sense.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Helia said.

  “But you were thinking it.”

  “Are you inside my head now?”

  “I am always inside your head,” her mother said.

  “Where’s your son?” Helia said to change the subject. “Why isn’t he home?”

  “He is working,” she said. “He is a big boy.”

  “Big boy is exactly what they call the little boys,” Helia said. She went to the fridge and grabbed the last beer. She sunk down on the couch next to Tita Annabelle and cracked it open.

  “Drinking is bad for you,” her mother said.

  Helia nodded. “Very bad.” Then she drank long and deep. She couldn’t stop thinking about Connor. Did he really know something about her brother? Was the job offer legit? Once at a bar, she had met a guy from the CIA—or at least that’s what he had told her. From what she understood, the intelligence community was not supposed to talk about their jobs, so either the guy was hitting on her, or he was a really bad spy. Either was a problem.

  “Those are your father’s beers,” her mother said. “He’ll want them when he gets home.”

  Helia paused midchug and looked at the beer can. Had it really been the same beer that was in there when she left? No wonder it had skunked.

  “You don’t really think he’s coming back, do you?” Helia said.

  “Yes.”

  “Wake up, Mom. I work all day long with scumbags like Dad. If he could keep himself out of trouble, he would have done it years ago.”

  Wheel of Fortune went to an ad and her mother stared lazily at their curved reflection in the pause before one of Zephyrhills’s local car salesmen assaulted their senses.

  “Go to your room,” her mother said lazily.

  Gladly, Helia thought. Her mother, the last Puritan. Home for an hour, and nothing had changed.

  She got up, rounded the partition, and walked down the hall toward her bedroom. On the way, she poured the rest of the beer on the floor. The place smelled bad enough that it would never be noticed. If she was lucky, the alcohol might get the cockroaches drunk and send them like lemmings out to the marsh.

  SHE HAD TO HIGH JUMP, a Fosberry flop, onto her bed. She had gotten used to sleeping in the barracks in basic training and the bed of her childhood was mushier than she remembered it. The bedspread was a giant fleece, a pink flower. The walls were pink. Even the desk, a plastic one her father had found on the side of the road so she didn’t have to do her homework on the couch while he was drinking and watching Cops—looking for pointers, no doubt—was pink.

  God, she had been so girly as a kid.

  The room, she realized now, was no bigger than one of the cells at Leavenworth. It was exactly the way she had left it when she enlisted six months ago. A stack of high school year books sat on the floor. A little pink container full of movie stubs sat on the dresser. Haphazard collages of cute boys from gossip mags decorated the walls.

  Most of her clothing was stored in Tupperware contain
ers under the bed. One of the drawers was open, a pink camisole sneaking out. She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Dusk had fallen outside and the swirls on the ceiling glowed. Amazingly, they hadn’t lost their phosphorescence. It was the Milky Way, her father had said one time when he had come home and wasn’t drunk. But when she had pasted the glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling, she hadn’t meant to make the Milky Way. Instead, it was the pattern of jimmies on the last ice cream cone she had eaten. Three years prior.

  She pulled out her phone and rolled onto her stomach, her ankles crossed behind her. She flipped it open and looked at the business card from Connor. The room had darkened enough to make the stars glow bright and the card had turned green.

  She felt like she was back in high school, getting up the courage to call some stupid boy.

  She took a deep breath and thumbed the buttons.

  It rang four times. Then the line went dead.

  She stared at the screen. She had dialed the right number. Why hadn’t he answered? She hovered a finger over the glowing digits.

  Should she call back? Or take it as a sign?

  Maybe this was God telling her to stay home and watch her mother. It was like calling a boy’s house, getting a dial tone, and quickly hanging up. Not meant to be.

  Like that CIA faker in the bar, Connor was bullshit.

  Suddenly, the phone rang and jumped out of her hands. Startled, she bobbled it, and then got it under control, and looked at the number. Unidentified.

  “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end was garbled. “Corporal Crane?”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “What is your answer?”

  Helia listened for a moment. In the other room, her mother was scolding Tita Annabelle for changing the channel to a fictional program, the devil’s work. Most else in the house was quiet, save for the rattling downspouts in the wind and a flock of gulls caught in a current of warm air over the marsh. Most likely, something dead had floated up to the surface and the gulls were trying to keep themselves from getting blown out to sea long enough to take a nibble.