by Amie Gibbons
She scratched at the floor as she closed her eyes.
Her skin looked stretched and frail and her knuckles and fingers were broken and bloody.
The door and walls had streaks of red and scratches, saying what had happened to her hands.
It smelled like rot and human waste.
Truck walked in, wrinklin’ his nose, and checked her pulse.
He frowned, dissatisfaction obvious in his aura.
Watching her struggle had been informative, and certainly had its entertaining points.
But he’d thought it would be more.
He picked up her body and carried her out and up a set of stairs, out of pushed up doors.
Ohhhh, it was a root cellar someone probably used as a tornado shelter at some point. It sat next to a rundown barn in a field.
The field and woods around didn’t give much clue as to where they were.
Truck put her in the trunk of a black luxury vehicle parked just outside.
He drove through the field and up a harsh slope I was pretty sure the car wouldn’t make it up if there was the least bit of mud.
He pulled out onto a hard packed dirt road and drove down a ways, pulling over next to more trees.
He pulled her body outta the trunk and slung it over his shoulder, walking through the trees.
No wonder he liked small girls, easier to cart away.
It was hard to tell cuz one patch of woods looks like another, but it looked like he ended up at the same tree as before, where he’d hung the little boy.
Truck started digging, whistling as he went.
I pulled back, shaking.
It felt like I was in the vision for nearly an hour, but in reality, it was all of a second.
I gasped for air and ran outta the room.
I slammed the door and Grant was right there, pullin’ me close.
“I was wrong, General,” I said. “I can’t do this. He’s a monster.”
He held me tightly, making comforting shushing noises.
“He took a girl, he drugged her, and he locked her in a cellar, and left a tape just telling her how long the body can go without water, and that she had that long to find the way out. And then he watched her die, fighting every moment to get out.”
Tears poured out and my nose stung.
“I felt her blood turn to sludge, Grant,” I said. “I felt her terror. She pounded and scratched at the door and walls until her hands were caked in blood and she still couldn’t get out. She screamed until she couldn’t anymore cuz her throat was so dry. He left her in there and just watched her die.”
I shook my head. There was more to it than that.
“He watched, remembered every detail, it was like he was takin’ notes. Like she was an experiment, a rat in a maze.”
Grant pulled out a tissue from his pocket and handed it to me. I blew my nose.
“I think I saw her cuz she was his first kill like that, with a puzzle, but I don’t know. I did see him bury her. It was in the woods. I’m not sure if I can find it though. He went from this cellar next to a rundown barn in a field, and into the woods. I have to find it. I can’t have had that vision for nothing. That couldn’t have been for nothing.”
He handed me another tissue and I wiped my eyes, takin’ a deep breath.
I hugged him, restin’ on his broad chest, my head comfortably right around his heart, its strong, steady rhythm soothing me.
“If it’s his old family farm, about an hour east. We know where the barn is,” Grant said in a low, comforting growl.
Energy shot through me and I bounced back. “You do!”
“Volume, Ryder,” he said. “Yes, if we go out there, can you take us from there?”
I nodded. “I can’t go into that room though, Grant.”
“It was processed years ago, when it was first found; you won’t need to.”
Oh right. I should’ve remembered that.
“Do I…” I licked my lips.
“No, you don’t have to go back in right now,” Grant said. “We have a body to find anyway.”
“But…”
He put his hands on my shoulders. “There are agents investigating up in New York as we speak. They are far more likely to find the murderer up there than you are. Even if you see something about an accomplice, they would still have to find him. It’s okay, Ariana.”
I nodded.
We went back down to the main room and grabbed our stuff.
“You need us, sir?” Jet asked, looking up from his computer.
“Director fill you in?”
“Truck, accomplice, missing records, lots of money with no trace, yeah.”
“You on it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s Bridges?”
“Doctor’s appointment, to check his leg.”
“Right.”
I looked at Grant. He forgot the doctors were following up on Dan’s broken leg after his surgery? He never forgot anything.
Man, this whole Truck thing must’ve been throwin’ him off more than he let on.
We got in the van, Grant driving of course.
“I hope you paid attention to the path he took, Ariana,” Grant said as he started it up. “You’re the bloodhound on this one.”
“Pretty sure I can remember it, sir.” I gulped, forcing a smile. “Do I get applause if I find where he buried the bodies?”
“Yes,” Grant said with a chuckle. “When we find the bodies, you will get a standing ovation and a gold star. When you figure out where he got the money and how he’s made records as extensive as real estate disappear, I’ll buy you and Quil a weekend getaway.”
I smiled for real.
He said when.
There was that confidence I was looking for.
How is it Grant can say something so small and make me feel like everything will be all right? Even when the everything is all on me? I guess that’s what being a good leader is, making your people feel like they can do things they don’t believe of themselves.
The world would be a much better place if more people like Grant ran things.
Grant drove, the radio so low I could barely make out the song. He doesn’t feel the need to fill silence.
I do.
Like nature, I abhor a vacuum.
“Everyone’s busy tonight, and I don’t really have anything to do,” I said.
Grant’s only reaction were his hands slightly tightening on the wheel.
“I was wondering what you’re doing tonight, General?” I asked.
“Cora’s boyfriend is coming for dinner,” he said, hands tightening more.
“I’m guessing you don’t like him.”
“She’s thirteen. She shouldn’t have a boyfriend.”
“I’m also guessing the ex-wife has no problem with it?”
“Yes.”
“Sooooo, you said no boys this young, ex said it was fine, and…?”
“And Cora went off and did what she wanted. She doesn’t call him her boyfriend around me, but…”
“You know he is.”
“Yeah.”
“Sir, she’s thirteen. Boyfriends at that age mean holdin’ hands and kisses between classes. And she is your daughter. No boy’s gonna go makin’ her do anything she doesn’t wanna do. I mean, she kicks butt, she can knife fight, and she shoots better than I do.”
“I’m more worried about what she thinks she wants to do. She’s thirteen. She doesn’t know what she wants.”
“Don’t say that to her, sir. No teenager wants to hear that.”
He sighed and turned up the radio. “Go ahead and pick what you want. I need to think.”
Right.
###
“Alright, y’all, show me the bodies,” I said to the trees as we trekked through the woods.
Grant ducked under a branch as we walked around a giant bush blocking the almost path trailing through the trees.
I tripped over a root that jumped up outta the ground to grab my f
oot and stumbled into Grant.
“Sorry, sir.”
He shook his head but a grin tugged at his lips as he led us to a clearing large enough for my blanket.
Most people like the woods when they’re bright and pretty and summer warm, but I am not an outdoor kitty.
My idea of roughing it is lying on a beach and walking half a mile to get to real toilets.
My nose itched and I rubbed it, wishin’ I’d brought some tissues. Like he heard me thinking, Grant pulled the little pack out of his pocket and tossed it to me.
“Thanks, sir.” I sniffed and wiped my nose.
Grant stared down at the screen of the portable x-ray machine, that kind of looked like one of those metal detectors old guys putter around beaches with, and frowned, sweeping the machine around in a grid pattern while I pulled out my blanket and incense.
I sat down on the blanket and pulled out my lighter, lighting the incense. I put the sticks down, dizzies makin’ me sway.
Flash.
The girl in that room again, near death. I felt the blood in her body crawling through her veins, too thick to trudge on.
I looked into her eyes like I was lying on the floor, my face inches from her.
And for a moment, just a moment, before death took her in its warm arms, she looked back at me.
“What the?” I said.
I fell over, my braid sweeping the dirt as my shoulder hit the edge of the blanket.
“Ariana!” Grant appeared at my side and grabbed my shoulders and lifted me up to sitting. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, pulling my hair over my shoulder.
Dirt, twigs and leaves decorated the braid.
“What was it? What did you see?”
“It was the end of the same vision, but it was closer, and I knew a bit more. She looked at me. I swear she saw me as she died.”
Grant rubbed my arms. “She didn’t see you, Ryder. It was a vision.”
I looked him in the eyes. “I swear she did, sir. I don’t know how, but she looked right at me, like I am with you now.”
He took a deep breath. “What do you know now?”
“Her name was Elizabeth Trudy. She met him in a bar. And this was at least fifteen years ago. And her body is like right below my blanket, maybe a little further up.” I pointed.
Grant pulled out his phone. “Bridges, you’re off the trail for now. I want everything there is to know about an Elizabeth Trudy who went missing from this area around fifteen years ago.”
Dan said something I couldn’t hear and Grant’s lips perked up on one side.
“That’s what you’re going to find out, Bridges.” Grant nodded. “Yes.”
He clicked off without a goodbye. He’s Grant so he doesn’t need to bother with those silly little things called manners.
“What did he want to know?” I asked as Grant dialed up someone else.
“When she disappeared and where from,” Grant said, turnin’ his attention back to the phone. “This is Grant. I need you guys down here. We’ve found one of the bodies.”
Since it wasn’t our case technically, it wasn’t our job to process the new scene.
Grant told the teams who were on Truck’s case where it was by coordinates, what my blanket looked like, and we went off on a treasure hunt.
Ya know, if you think buried bodies are treasure.
We stalked through the woods, Grant with his nifty x-ray machine, and me with my incense.
I waved the smoking stick in front of me, hoping for something, anything.
“She can’t be it. Cuz if they’re all buried in different places, we’ll never find them all,” I said.
Bugs buzzed around us, the sound coating the air, and my nose itched with every breath. Nashville’s basically a pollen bowl so my allergies are bad in the city, but being smack in the woods was makin’ them even worse.
“We’re almost back to the road,” Grant said.
“Sir?” I asked as he turned.
“I had us go in a c...” His face froze, features locking down as he lowered the x-ray to the ground. “Agent Ryder, I am ordering you not to move.”
Huh?
My eyebrows shot up and I froze solid as a statue. If Grant was ordering me not to move, he was ordering me for a reason. His eyes went down and I followed their trail to my feet.
And to the ten foot rattlesnake not half a foot away.
“Eep!” I squeaked.
It took everything in me not to move as adrenaline spiked through my body. My head swam and I gulped.
I like snakes fine, just not poisonous ones.
Grant inched his hand to the side, so slow I couldn’t tell he was movin’ at first.
The rattler slid towards me, movin’ slow and careful as Grant.
Grant clicked off the safety and trained the gun on the creepy-crawly.
The snake slithered behind me, and I turned my head just enough to track his motions.
Maybe he’d just go on by?
He paused by my foot and curled around my cute brown boot.
A high whine pierced the air and it took a second for me to realize the sound was comin’ from me.
The snake twined around my ankle, workin’ his way up till he was half up my leg.
The entire time, his tail didn’t even twitch the warning that gave the snake its name.
Was that normal!
“Grant?” I asked in a hiss of a whisper.
“Yessss,” he said, soft as a cloud.
“I’m not an expert, but I don’t think this is normal snake behavior.”
“It’s not.”
He met my eyes and calm settled down to my bones.
“Sir?”
“Shush, I’m going to see if it works on snakes.”
“Any reason your powers would?”
“No reason they wouldn’t.”
Grant kneeled down, fixin’ his eyes on the rattler. The rattler flicked his tongue out, tasting air as it looked back at Grant.
Grant jerked, surprise naked on his face for a full second before it locked down into his normal poker face.
“Sir?” I asked.
“The snake just winked at me,” he said.
“Oh.”
He took a deep breath and looked at the snake again.
“So what do I do?” I asked.
“Stay calm, Ariana,” he said in that same gentle, ‘talking to skittish ponies’ tone.
“Calm?” I asked, limbs startin’ to shake.
The snake tightened around my leg and another whine escaped me.
“If it bites you,” Grant said, “we’ll get you to the hospital and they’ll give you anti-venom. You’ll be fine.”
“If he bites me, you, um, can suck it out, right?” I asked.
“That doesn’t actually work for snakebites.”
“I swear I always read that.”
“Old wives’ tale.”
“So we’ll have to hike back?”
“I can carry you.”
“Oh, okay. How fast does venom work again?”
“Shhhhush. I’m going to lift it off. Stay calm.” He inched towards us and the snake fixed his gaze on him, rattle going off.
Grant froze.
“I don’t think he likes you, General,” I said.
The snake switched its slick, scaled head up to look at me the moment I started talking and his grip relaxed.
I looked at Grant again. “Aren’t snakes deaf?”
He nodded. “They can feel vibrations, but I think this one can hear. It’s no normal snake.”
“What’s with all the things having magic today?”
Grant shrugged and mouthed, “Keep talking.”
“About what?” I asked out loud.
Grant gave me a hard look, mouthing, “It’s you.”
I grinned. “Right. So this is really weird.”
The snake focused on me again and Grant inched forward oh so slowly.
“I was thinking maybe he’s some kind of were-s
nake or something. But I think if he was a human, he would’ve tried to communicate, not just wrap around my leg and risk getting shot.”
“He curled around you after I pulled my gun,” Grant said. “I think he did it to avoid getting shot.”
Grant pulled gloves out of his kit and put them on.
“Maybe he’s some kind of cursed animal. Or he’s possessed, like in Harry Potter. In that, he could actually talk to snakes, which I thought was really stupid cuz animals aren’t sentient, they don’t have any kind of language, even with each other.”
Grant slid up to me, holdin’ his hand a hair’s breadth away from the snake’s neck and it didn’t even shrug a scale.
“That’s the problem I had with the movie Dr. Dolittle. And it never explained how he was able to talk to animals. What made him so special?”
Grant reached forward and took the neck with one hand, movin’ almost fast as a vamp in the last second to get him.
“Which really started to bug me after I got my visions, cuz I still have no clue what makes me so special. No one in my family sees anything extra. I asked, remember me tellin’ you that?”
Grant inched the snake around my knee and made a twirling motion with his finger. I slowly rotated so he could maneuver the snake off.
“Mama believed me right away. No clue why. Daddy thought I needed meds ag… and it took a few visions off him to get him to believe me. My siblings too.”
The snake was almost undone.
“So what’s so special about me? Like, even with this little guy? Why did he crawl up to me? Why does he like my voice? What are we going to do with him?”
Grant pulled him off, catching his middle with his other hand.
I sighed, slumping.
“X-ray. Van,” Grant said.
I grabbed the x-ray machine and the snake twitched.
“Ariana.” Grant nodded at the snake.
“Huh? You want me to keep talkin’? Yeah, okay.”
We walked through the woods, me followin’ cuz Grant seemed to know exactly where we were going.
“I’m drawing a blank, General,” I said. “How ‘bout I sing?”
“Sure,” he said. “Call Kelim’s team first. Tell him to stop and get a cage for a snake.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Lead on the Truck case. His team’s the one coming for the body.”
“Number?” I asked as I pulled out my phone.
Grant rattled it off.
God, I’d kill for his memory.
