B00IZ66CZ8 EBOK

by Unknown

  She was far from D.C. She was far from her friends and colleagues. Shane felt regret that he could never tell her family about their daughter. He felt bad that her mother would never know what had happened to her.

  Most of all Shane regretted that she had died because of him.

  Shane blamed himself.

  Even though Shane felt this guilt, he still seemed more at peace now than he had before. I knew that the road to forgive himself was hard and long, but he would endure.

  “You were a good cop, a good friend, and a good person. I am sorry,” Shane said. He looked out over the lake and then toward the sky.

  Then he said, “Now you know my secret. Now you know me. I hope that wherever you are, you also know that I loved you.”

  That was all he said. He stood over her grave in silence. I remained coiled in his head. I was silent.

  |||||

  Across from Shane sat a man named Grant Carter.

  Mr. Carter was a South African who was living in the U.S. and searching for work.

  He had a very special skill set. He was a man of fifty-five years, but he could have passed for late forties. He was relatively healthy.

  Although he had always been a meat and potatoes guy, it didn’t show.

  Shane had done a background check on him.

  He’d found that Carter was former military. He had started out as an idealist, but later he’d become a mercenary for hire. He’d worked with black ops outfits all across Africa.

  Mr. Carter was the kind of man who had a dark past, the kind of past that he ran from.

  Shane looked into his eyes. He assessed Carter. Mr. Carter was the right man for the job. The black ops background could come in handy one day. And the fact that he had secrets of his own meant that he knew better than to ask questions.

  “Mr. Carter, I don’t really have any other questions. You have told me enough. You were honest with me. And I appreciate that. The job is yours,” Shane said.

  The man looked at Shane with surprise.

  “Sir, I have been on several interviews in this country. And I have been turned down. I was almost on the verge of lying to you,” Grant said. He sucked in his lips as if he wanted to taste the tip of his mustache.

  “Mr. Carter, I need a caretaker with a certain level of discretion, someone who can handle the job, and also is capable of protecting my family estate.

  “Where most people might see your unique past as dangerous, I see it as an asset.

  “Plus, I can look into your eyes and see that you are trying to start over. I can appreciate a man with a past. I can appreciate a man who has committed dark acts, maybe even done things that he’s regretted. And now you want a fresh start,” Shane said.

  “You won’t regret this,” Mr. Carter said.

  Shane stood up from the cloth-covered couch. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

  He tossed them to Carter.

  Then he said, “Mr. Carter, you are the new caretaker for my home. Move your things in and get started.”

  Shane smiled. In his heart he was happy that there was going to be a little life breathed back into his family home.

  |||||

  Unusual, violent ice storms had swept across the Northeast over the last few weeks. The roads were icy and the terrain was covered in snow.

  Deep inside a hospital north of D.C., a man slept in a warm, mechanical bed.

  The world had once known him as Special Agent Kirk Cutter. Now he was a vegetable.

  The doctors declared him brain dead.

  He was found at the emergency entrance to the hospital in the freezing cold. He was in bad shape.

  A local sheriff’s deputy had been dispatched to check him out.

  The deputy had checked with hospital staff and security. No one had reported witnessing anything or anyone.

  One of the nurses had gone outside to smoke and found the man laid out across the bench.

  Upon further investigation, the deputy saw that the outside security cameras had captured a small person in a hooded coat, the hood pulled down.

  It looked like a woman because of the stranger’s stature and build, but there was no way of being certain.

  The unidentified man’s fingerprints didn’t match any database because he was not the real Kirk Cutter. His photograph was released to the local news station, but no one claimed to know him.

  The FBI was never notified.

  Last year in D.C., one hundred twenty-one murder victims were never identified. Last month fourteen weren’t identified. All of these cases remained unsolved.

  The man who had called himself Kirk Cutter was not Kirk Cutter, so none of his identifying features matched any records that were searched. Nothing was found on him.

  The doctors believed that the patient had suffered from a traumatic electrical shock to the brain. They suspected that he had been in some kind of accident working with high voltage.

  Maybe he worked for the power company. Maybe he had wondered off the job site after severely electrocuting himself and someone had found him. That someone may have wanted to remain anonymous and dumped him on the bench.

  Another theory was that he had been struck by lightning, but the sheriffs dismissed this theory, as there were no burn signs on his body.

  A week had passed. Since no one claimed to know him and there was little likelihood that this man would ever wake up, the sheriff’s office placed the case on low priority.

  |||||

  Washington D.C. was cold and very windy the next day. Shane had to wear his beanie over his head. It was not something that he wore often. It was a gray beanie with a blue stripe. He had purchased it in his early twenties. Beanies were the fad then. Holding onto things like that helped remind Shane of his humanity.

  Ally Embers hugged him the moment that he walked off the elevator.

  “I missed you,” she said.

  It was an awkward moment, but it happened.

  Shane said nothing.

  He left her standing there and went into his old office. He had missed it.

  He collapsed down in his chair. His briefcase was still by the door. He didn’t care. He hadn’t planned on doing any real work today.

  He still mourned Sun Good’s death. So the only thing that he had planned on doing today was hanging out in his office. Maybe he would read the paper. Maybe he would do the crossword. He remembered that the daily crossword was one of her morning traditions. Sun was an early riser. That was probably one of the reasons that she was such a good cop.

  “I do them whenever I can,” she had said.

  He had only seen her do them once. But that one memory had stuck with him. So, the crossword reminded him of her.

  Shane tried to focus on the crossword. Sixteen down read:

  Smokescreen

  Shane stared at it. He looked down at his hands. He looked at his skin. He thought about me.

  Then he wrote “Camouflage.”

  Instead of going on to the next clue, he puzzled over the last one.

  Then he pulled Cutter’s phone from the desk and turned it on. He looked at it. There were missed messages from Hanna. Who was she?

  Shane flipped the newspaper over and read an article a couple of pages deep about a mysterious man who had been dropped off at a hospital outside of D.C.

  No picture.

  It was Cutter. Shane hadn’t dropped him there. He had left him in front of his house. No reason to worry about him. His brains were fried.

  But someone had to lift him, take his wallet, and drop him off at some obscure hospital outside the city.

  Someone wanted to deliver him to a medical center, but didn’t want him to be recognized. Who?

  Shane thought back. One more thing bothered him.

  Who was the woman that Cutter had spoken to on the phone when Shane escaped from the Potomac River?

  Was that Hanna?

  Shane opened Cutter’s phone. He sifted through the text messages. He searched for anything
about Hanna that might help him discover who she was.

  That was when Shane’s jaw dropped.

  This Hanna person had sent Cutter pictures of Shane in her texts, like surveillance. He was going to court in some. Then Shane went on a jog in another.

  There was one special one. It was a video file. Shane played it.

  He watched as he saw himself break into Townsend Dry’s penthouse. It was the surveillance video feed from that memory stick that Townsend had.

  Shane had forgotten all about it.

  Shane went into the picture files on Cutter’s phone. He found a video. He played it.

  The video clip played. The background looked like Cutter’s house. The drapes were closed. The light in the room was dim.

  Candles lit the background.

  Then an image of a man entered. He lay down on the bed. He was naked.

  Self-inflicted scars were all over his body.

  It was Kirk Cutter. But he was not alone. There was someone else in the room. It was a woman.

  A beautiful woman entered the scene. She jumped on top of him. She was also naked.

  They kissed and embraced.

  Shane saw that she too was covered in self-inflicted cuts.

  Accomplice! I thought.

  Kirk Cutter was not alone. He had a lover, an accomplice. Then Shane saw the wedding rings. They were married. Cutter had remarried.

  Hanna Cutter was his wife and accomplice. There were two ID Killers.

  And she was out there somewhere. And she had the memory stick that proved that he was in Townsend Dry’s apartment the night that Sandy Parks was murdered.

  Shane looked through more photos, but he couldn’t find one of any faces that he recognized.

  |||||

  Suddenly, Ally blurted out over the intercom. She said, “Shane, the FBI is here to see you.”

  It’s her, Shane thought.

  “Send her in,” Shane said. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a retractable knife with a three-inch blade.

  The door opened and a slender woman walked in. She wore a pair of jeans and a dark blue blazer.

  She had on a white button-down shirt underneath the blazer and a pair of glasses on her face.

  Shane could see her eyes. They were amazingly blue. Her ears were disproportionate. One was higher than the other.

  That was when he recognized her. Immediately, he knew who she was.

  She approached his desk. Then he saw that her left hand was in a cast. It covered her forearm and wrapped around between her index finger and thumb.

  “Shane Lasher,” she said.

  He smiled and said nothing back.

  He stood up and they shook hands. They acted like this was their first time meeting.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. They released each other’s hands.

  Shane looked in disbelief at the FBI agent who stood in front of his desk. It was Sandy Parks, only she was not Sandy Parks. She was Hanna Cutter.

  The Woodsman had killed someone else. Sandy Parks had vanished.

  “So it is you?” Shane said.

  “It’s me,” Hanna said.

  “You both killed the Woodsman,” Shane said.

  “We both worked on it,” she said.

  Then there was silence between them.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “I assume that you have a good knowledge of firearms?” she asked.

  “I do,” he said.

  “Good. Ever heard of a Guardian Pistol?”

  Shane shook his head. I began to seep into him. Slowly, I took over.

  “The Guardian Pistol is manufactured by the North American Arms Company. It is a discrete weapon and fires a .32 caliber bullet. It’s small, but I can kill you with the one that I’m holding underneath this cast,” she said.

  She paused and then said, “The cast is to prevent it from getting out of my hand.”

  Shane didn’t speak.

  “Do you understand?”

  “I do. Are you here to kill me?” Shane asked.

  “No,” she said.

  She shifted to the other foot and reached into her purse with her right hand.

  She kept her cast pointed at him.

  After a moment, she pulled out a small memory stick. She tossed it onto the desk.

  “I’m here to trade,” she said.

  “What do you want?” Shane asked.

  “There is the memory stick that proves that you are more than you say you are. It is the original. There are no copies. I swear.

  “It also has all of the files that we had created on you.”

  Shane nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off hers.

  Then she said, “You killed my husband. But he killed the woman that you loved. I’m willing to let that go.”

  “Why?”

  “Kirk was more than my lover. He was my teacher. We worked together. I watched Townsend Dry. And then I watched you. All for my husband. All for his need to steal identities.

  “He was obsessed with you. He wanted to become you. I didn’t see a life in that. I also didn’t see a way out,” she said.

  “I couldn’t do anything without his permission. Now he’s gone. I want to move on. But I can’t do that if you’re looking for me,” she said.

  “You helped him to murder people. I have never let anyone go,” I said.

  She stepped back in horror as she laid her gaze upon the darkness in my eyes.

  I saw fear sweep over her.

  “But they were all bad. I never killed anyone who was innocent. I didn’t kill your woman. That was only Kirk,” she said.

  I was silent.

  I looked down at the crossword. Seventeen across read:

  The Answer to Suffering

  I picked up the pen and wrote the word:

  Forgiveness

  Then I said, “It doesn’t fit.”

  She leaned in closer and looked at the clue. She mouthed something. Looked like she was counting the number of spaces for the answer. She saw that the word forgiveness has eleven letters, but the answer required only nine.

  The she said, “Try remission.”

  I wrote the word in. It was right.

  I sat back in Shane’s chair. I looked at her.

  Then I said, “I’d better never see you again.”

  She smiled.

  Hanna Cutter looked down at her husband’s phone. I followed her eyes to it.

  Then I picked it up and handed it to her.

  She grabbed one end of it, but I didn’t let go.

  I said, “Don’t add any new cuts to your body. If you do, I will see you again. Understand?”

  She nodded.

  I released the phone.

  She refused to turn her back to me. So she backed away to the door.

  I followed her.

  She opened it and stepped out into the hall.

  To keep up appearances in front of Ally and a few office workers who stood in the hallway, she said, “Thank you for your time. And Mr. Lasher you really should start to get out more. There is more to life than your clients.

  “Read the paper. It’s right there on your desk. Look through other sections. I’m sure you’ll find something to do around town. Newspapers are good for more than just the crosswords.”

  Then she vanished into the hallway.

  Ally stood up, walked to Shane’s door, and closed it for him.

  Shane returned to his chair. He folded the newspaper away from the crossword section and returned to the front page.

  On the front page the headline read:

  ManEater

  Eats Man’s Heart Out!

  Shane stared at the headline in fascination. And like two old friends, we both began to read the story of a very interesting new killer.

  It felt so good to be back to normal.

  Shane Lasher Will Return!!!!

  www.scottblade.com

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