With my heart still clanging my chest, I headed toward the interstate, to an unknown destination. Then a thought hit me. GPS! My cell phone. It had GPS. Could I be tracked? I couldn’t remember. I would dump it anyway, just to be on the safe side. But I had to delete everything on it, as in my contacts or they could find me through my friends. Shit, shit, shit!
“Calm down! Think, think, think, Jules.”
I wasn’t cut out for this. I was twenty-two years old and had just graduated from college with a degree in computer science for crying out loud. Coming up with a safe house wasn’t in my repertoire. So I did the only thing I could think of. I drove to the most obvious place—the police station. I even thought about walking inside and reporting what I’d found, but a voice in the back of my brain advised me against it. Again, call it intuition. As I sat in the parking lot, I quickly did a mass delete on all my contacts, and texts. Then I drove to a dumpster, where I ran over my phone several times, effectively crushing it, before tossing it inside.
Not much later I was on I-10 headed west to an unknown destination. In less than an hour, my life had taken a one hundred and eighty degree turn. I had just driven this way as I came home from LSU, in tears because I was leaving my friends behind. Now I was in tears for a much more compelling reason. My family had been slaughtered in our own home and the carnage left behind would haunt my waking and sleeping hours until the day I died. Forcing back the tears that threatened to overcome me, I drove on. I needed to push it all aside and figure out a plan. If I didn’t, I feared I would be in the same situation as they were. I had to pull off the road a few times when my sobs and tears made it impossible to see or drive. But later, my vision blurred for a different reason—exhaustion. It was right before midnight when I checked into a Days Inn outside of Houston, Texas. I paid for the room in cash and took the duffle bag I filled in the storage unit, along with my overnight bag in the room. I was thirsty and should’ve been hungry, but the contortions in my guts were so damned awful, I knew I’d never be able to swallow a bite.
Once settled, I dug out the contents of the duffle bag. As expected, there was a lot of cash. I counted over fifty thousand. That was good and bad. Good, because I would need the money to survive on for who knew how long. Bad, because I would have to be very careful. Carrying that much cash was dangerous. There was also a metal box that contained loose diamonds. What I would do with those, I had no clue. I would hide them somewhere and figure that out at a later time. Then I found an unusual necklace. It was a black metal chain and some kind of odd-looking gemstone—one I had never seen before. With it was a folded up note in a strange script. I couldn’t read it, but there were also notes in my father’s handwriting. His notes read:
Necklace brought in by customer and left with me. Unknown substance. Never before seen. Checked all data entries to date and could not identify. Customer also gave me the untranslatable note. Took to linguistics professor at Tulane and he was unfamiliar with the language. Predates anything he’d ever seen. My best guess—some ancient tribal torque. Stone seems to pick up unusual traits when exposed to heat, cold, darkness and light.
And that was it. There was also a Bible with it and a few passages marked. That wasn’t surprising since my dad was a very spiritual man.
But then as I was putting everything away, a small slip of thick paper fell out of the Bible. All it said was:
To the keeper: wear at all times. Let not it fall into false hands lest ye face universal destruction.
The handwriting was odd and not my father’s. What did this mean? Why was it so important to wear this all the time? And if it were so important to be worn, what was it doing in my father’s safe, obviously not being worn by anyone? What did it mean by false hands? And where did Dad get this? And why wasn’t he able to identify the stone? He was a gemologist, for crying out loud. He should’ve been able to identify any kind of stone. So many damn unanswered questions. I looked at the paper again. It was yellowed and thick, like old parchment. The letters were drawn and looked more like symbols, now that I inspected it more closely. What did this mean? As my fingers brushed across the surface of the paper, I found that it wasn’t really paper at all, but a type of stiff cloth. I lifted it up to the light, not quite sure what I was searching for. As I stared at it, something seemed to go in and out of focus. I blamed it on my sleep-deprived state. I’d been up late the night before, partying with my friends. And now dealing with this, my brain was not functioning properly. I knew I needed to crash, but I doubted I could actually sleep. I decided to turn on the TV and see if a movie might lull me into a calm enough state.
I drifted off and woke up about five-thirty. As I lay there, I thought I heard someone sneaking around in my room. I quickly turned the light on and didn’t breathe easy until I made sure I was safe. Since I was awake, I grabbed my computer and got on the hotel’s internet. I immediately checked the New Orleans news and saw there were no murders reported. Since it was still early, no one had probably realized my family had even been killed. The idea that they were gone brought another round of body-racking sobs, but I forced them back. I couldn’t let myself grieve for them, as much as I wanted to. I couldn’t let myself curl up in that tiny ball and wither away, even though that’s what I wanted. They wouldn’t want that. They would want me to push on and survive. So that’s what I did. I came up a plan. I would drive to Oklahoma City. It seemed like an obscure enough of a town, and no one I knew would ever think to look for me there because I didn’t know a soul in Oklahoma. I stopped in Dallas for a couple of hours and made it to Oklahoma City by mid afternoon, where I got a room at a Hampton Inn.
After I checked in, I took a badly needed shower. Luckily enough, I had organized and packed my bags for vacation, so all my stuff was in one suitcase. After my shower, I got on the hotel internet again to check the New Orleans news. I was shocked to see there were no reports of my family’s murder. What was going on? Why wouldn’t someone have called it in? My dad owned a jewelry store and my mom worked there with him. Surely someone had noticed they hadn’t opened in the last day. What was going on? I came up with all sorts of weird explanations, but none of them were solid. And then there were my sister’s friends. Why hadn’t they come around and reported it? None of this added up. Maybe I was wrong to have run the way I did. Maybe I should’ve stayed and called the police. But Dad’s note was clearly meant for me. He wouldn’t have written it in his own blood as he died, if he didn’t think I was in danger.
I needed a reality check. Was my mind lucid? I went back and ticked through the facts as I remembered them. Left school and all was fine. Talked to my mom that morning and texted her in the afternoon as I was leaving. Got home to a macabre scene. Found Dad’s note next to his body, telling me to hide. Left home and went to the storage unit to retrieve the contents of his safe. Then I hit the road. How could I not be lucid? I was as sane as ever.
Then something nagged at me. I grabbed my computer and Googled Dad’s jewelry store. Nothing came up. That was odd. He’d had a website forever. I revamped it two years ago and would help him whenever he had issues with it. I just did maintenance on the thing a month ago. His business should’ve come up in a Google search. Next I entered his website’s address, which was only his business’ name. That directed me to a search page, as if the website didn’t exist. I knew the website existed, damn it. What the hell was going on here? So I tried it again and the same thing happened. I entered “Bressan’s Gems” into Google again. Nothing showed up. It was as if the store had never existed. I went to Yellow Pages to look them up. There was no listing. Okay, this was really weirding me out. How could that be? How could all this be wiped out in a matter of a couple of days? A business can’t just disappear. That’s not possible.
Or is it? Whoever killed my parents must have ties to the government or someone really powerful to be able to do something like that. You can’t erase stuff from the internet like that. Not unless you know people. Powerful people. Shit. I’m in deep
ass trouble. What the hell did my dad do? Who was he mixed up with? Was he involved in diamond smuggling or something? I couldn’t believe my dad would do anything like that. Dad was as honest as the day is long. He and Mom emphasized that no matter what, never ever lie. No, Dad wouldn’t do anything illegal. This was something else. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
I slammed my computer shut, packed up my stuff, and left. I needed to get the hell out of there. If they were tracking anyone Googling the store, they could track the IP address where I Googled it from. I had no time to spare.
Nine hours later, I pulled into Albuquerque, New Mexico. There would be no hotel for me this time. Instead, I headed to an outdoor and camping store and purchased a tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad. I also bought a bunch of other equipment, such as a lantern, cooler, and items one would need for camping. Dad used to take us camping when we were young, so I was familiar with the basics of it. Then I asked the sales clerk where a good campground was. He gave me several options and off I went. That tent became my temporary home. During the evening, I also devised a new a plan. I didn’t know if I could pull it off, but if I knew if I didn’t, I would most likely die because I had no doubt the people who killed my family would find and kill me too. It was a huge risk, and I would have to be as convincing as I’d ever been, but if it worked, it would be the key to saving my life.
Sabin, A Seven Novel Page 34
