Gabriel: A thriller (Standalone within the Divinus Pueri series)

by Tracie Podger

  I stood from the porch and walked to my truck, waiting on him to answer. When he did, it sounded like he was eating dinner.

  “Hey, sorry, am I interrupting dinner?” I said.

  “Yeah, but what’s up?”

  “I have Sierra’s sister, Lily.”

  “What?”

  “I have Lily, Sierra’s sister, holed up in the loft above the barn at Mom’s.”

  “That’s what I thought you said. Shit, Gabe, I’m on my way.”

  I heard a muffled conversation, as if he’d covered the speaker with his hand.

  “Wait up, I don’t think you should come here. I’ll meet you at mine,” I said.

  I had two concerns about Thomas visiting Mom and Dad. First, turning up in a cop car would freak Lily out and second, maybe I was being a little paranoid, but I didn’t want him to lead anyone there either. It was time to start being careful.

  “Okay,” he said before cutting off the phone.

  “I need to go and meet Thomas, I didn’t think it a good idea to let him come here. I’m sorry to leave her and Taylor with you,” I said as I walked back to my parents.

  “You go and no apologizing. We’re a family, Gabe, we do this together,” Dad replied.

  I kissed my mom on her cheek and Dad walked me back to the truck.

  “You have a gun, Son?” he asked.

  “In the door pocket, loaded and ready.”

  “Okay, take care,” he said, while I climbed into the truck and backed from the yard.

  As I drove, a thought hit me. How safe were my parents and Taylor? Once I’d spoken to Thomas I’d think about moving Lily someplace else. As much as I sympathized with her situation, I didn’t want the rest of my family at risk.

  “Gabe,” Thomas said as I climbed from the truck.

  “Let’s get inside, quick.”

  “No, hello? How are you?” he said with a smirk.

  “Hello, how are you? Now, let’s get inside.”

  He followed me into the house; I disarmed the alarm and made a point not to look at him as I did. I didn’t want to see a further smirk.

  “Beer?” I asked.

  “Am I going to need it?”

  “Yep, maybe two or three.”

  I grabbed two bottles from the fridge and set them down on the table. I slumped into a chair and sighed. The scrape of the chair legs against the tiled floor grated on me as Thomas sat.

  “I don’t know where to fucking start,” I said, as I scrubbed my hand over my two-day-old stubble.

  “What’s happened?”

  I told him everything I’d learned that day. I watched his eyes widen and his jaw fall open with every word. He patted his chest as if looking for his pad and pencil, since he wasn’t in uniform, they weren’t at hand. I leaned back on the chair and reached over to the counter where I’d left mine. I handed them to him and he started frantically scribbling.

  I fell silent while he wrote, letting him catch up.

  “So, she really is Sierra’s sister?” he asked.

  “Yes. Well, I guess so. She’s the fucking image of her. And that’s something I’m finding hard to deal with right now.”

  “I can imagine. But are you sure, Gabe?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. There’s no way she could look the way she does and not be related. And her story stacks up.”

  “Trouble is, we don’t have Sierra’s or Sister Anna’s account, for that matter. I need you to be real careful here. And I need you to get her out of your parent’s house.”

  “I thought that on the way over. It was a dumb move, taking her home.”

  “Anything from Sister Anna?”

  “No, and to be honest, I’m not sure I want to use my phone to contact her. What if someone is checking?”

  “I’ll chase up the guys tomorrow to see if they have any information on the owner of the phone. I also think it might be time to call in the state police. If that happens, I might be shoved to one side, though.”

  “How do we keep Lily from them?”

  “We can’t, Gabe. She has information on a serious fucking crime here. She needs to come in and give a proper, recorded statement. I need to verify what’s she saying. For example, how did Sierra find her?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”

  “This is beyond us solving it, you know that, don’t you? I’m just a small town sheriff; I don’t have the resources to deal with this. I made a mistake, Gabe; I’ll admit that now. We should have called in help in the beginning.”

  “And what would have been the outcome? No different to what was initially thought. There was no break-in, no evidence left at the scene, the case would have gone the exact same way, except I’d know even less because nothing would have been shared with me.”

  I had mixed feelings on what Thomas had said. At the time, I’d screamed from the hilltops that I wanted the FBI, or anyone, called in. Would we have gotten any further forward then? Probably not.

  “Tom, we only know what we do now because I found that cell number for Sister Anna. Let’s say the state police came in, traipsed all over town, would they have come to any different conclusion to you?”

  “I’d hope not, because that would make me a shit sheriff, but now? I just don’t know, Gabe.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Without Lily coming in for a formal interview, there’s nothing here I can officially work with. However…” He raised his hand to stop my immediate protest.

  “However, we need Sister Anna. We need Lily to make a statement and only you can persuade her to do that. I can come to your folks’ and sit down with her, gain her trust before she does that. And we need the statements Sierra gained from those victims.”

  “What if I bring Lily here? She’s away from Taylor and my parents then.”

  “That might not be a bad idea.”

  We fell silent for a while, drinking our beers. My head was a mass of confusion, of conflicting feelings and thoughts. I wanted to shake the information out of Lily; I wanted Sister Anna to make contact. I felt powerless and that was something alien to me. I was a ‘doer,’ I was used to having a problem thrown at me and solving it. I was used to stripping a mechanical engine down to the smallest pieces, and analyzing each individual piece, before putting it all back together, then watching it work. I could do none of that. I couldn’t break down all the information that swam around my mind, until I could put it all together and solve the one question I had.

  “Why didn’t I know any of this?” I whispered.

  I heard Thomas sigh. “I can’t answer that, Gabe. I wish I could. I wish I could give you answers, but I won’t rest until we have worked this through. I’ll give everything I’ve got to this.”

  “So let’s go over everything we know,” I said, rubbing the soreness from my eyes.

  We spent another two hours listing and detailing everything we knew. We made a list of questions. Some were so obvious I could have kicked myself for not thinking of them. The list I’d made earlier was incorporated. We needed to know the answer to where Sierra’s mother had lived; that might give us a clue as to where it had all taken place.

  I watched Tom’s cell light up; he glanced down at it and replied to a text message.

  “Mom,” he said by way of an explanation.

  In the past few days I hadn’t thought once about his elderly mother, although in a nursing home, he visited every evening.

  “Shit, Tom, I’m sorry. You need to go home, it’s late.”

  “It’s okay, she understands. But I am calling it a night. I want to get an early start tomorrow. How about you bring Lily here and I’ll ‘pop on by’?”

  “Sounds good, I’ll send you a message when we’re here. Do you think I should try again to contact Sister Anna?”

  “No, wait until I have some details on that cell number. You try too hard, you might spook her.”

  I walked him out to his car. He’d swapped his neat Mustang for a sensible Ford whe
n he’d been promoted to sheriff. “You’ll be in slippers with a pipe soon,” I said.

  “Some of us were born sensible and some of us…” he looked at me with a smile.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as I walked back into the house.

  I sat for ages, drinking coffee to keep me alert, and read through the notes I’d copied from Thomas. So much information but not a lot of it leading anywhere.

  “Break it down,” I said to myself.

  Sister Anna had helped foster out Lily, maybe she’d done that to some of the other kids, but why not Sierra? Was she considered too valuable? The more I knew, the more questions I had.

  I woke to the ringing of my cell. I had fallen asleep at the table. A cold cup of coffee sat to one side, and the papers I’d been writing on were strewn across the table. I reached for my phone and looked at the call display.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said as I answered.

  “She’s gone. I went to see if she wanted breakfast and she wasn’t there.”

  “Who’s gone?” My brain wasn’t quite alert.

  “Lily. The bed is made, in fact, I’m not sure she slept in it at all.”

  “Shit. Okay, give me a half hour to shower and change and then I’ll be over.”

  “Oh, and one of your dad’s trucks is gone, too.”

  “What the fuck? She stole a truck?”

  “Seems that way. You know your father, he always leaves the keys in the ignition.”

  Once I’d finished the call, I headed upstairs with the cell to my ear, calling Thomas.

  “Lily ran, took one of Dad’s trucks,” I said before he’d managed a ‘hello.’

  “I’ll put an APB out, see if we can locate the truck. What’s the license plate number?”

  “I don’t know, I’ll have to call you back. I’m having a shower, then heading over there.”

  “Okay, I’ll call your dad myself. I’ll meet you there, I have an idea.”

  Without a goodbye we disconnected the call. I threw the cell on the bed and stripped as I walked to the en-suite shower.

  “Fucking woman,” I mumbled, as I stepped under the warm jets of water.

  I was pulling my t-shirt over my head when I heard my cell ringing. Thomas was calling me back.

  “Hey, any news?” I asked.

  “She’s back. She got up early to go fetch her things, so she told your dad. She’s upset at causing a drama, she didn’t think anyone would mind nor notice.”

  “Seriously? She takes his truck and she didn’t think anyone would notice?”

  “Exactly what I said, anyway, I’m heading over there, but I think it might be better if I arrive after you. So get your ass in gear.”

  “I’m out the door soon as I grab a cup of coffee.”

  The fact that she went to retrieve her things gave me comfort yet unsettled me slightly. It meant she was planning on hanging around, but why not ask for a ride? Why sneak off during the night without asking to borrow the truck?

  As I sat at the kitchen table, I remembered the broken window. Shit, I’d forgotten to call someone out to fix it. The temporary covering would do for another couple of days, but Thomas and I still hadn’t figured out who had broken it. I looked at the bolts on the pantry door. I decided, as soon as I could, I’d get a locksmith in and add a proper lock and key.

  I sipped on my coffee, wincing as the hot liquid burnt my lip. I should have really added a splash of cold water to it. Sierra used to laugh every time I burnt my lip; then she’d straddle my lap and kiss it better. My stomach tightened at the thought of her. No matter how hard I tried not to, the image of Sierra naked as she rode me, as she lay beneath me, caused a myriad of sensations. I was both aroused and repulsed. The knowledge I’d gained had tarnished a memory of something so beautiful.

  Dad’s missing truck was in the driveway when I arrived. I pulled up alongside it. Through my open window I heard laughter, Taylor’s laughter. The sound of Lily talking followed it. I wasn’t sure I’d wanted them to meet. I followed the sounds to the barn and to the stable the foal was housed in.

  “See, Lily, I’m grooming her,” I heard Taylor say as I approached.

  “You’re doing a wonderful job,” Lily replied.

  “Daddy!” Taylor said, dropping the brush when she spotted me.

  “Hey, baby girl, what are you doing in there without your grandpa?” I asked.

  Taylor wasn’t old, or confident enough, to be around the foal and her dam without her grandpa. I wasn’t happy about it, not that I’d let Taylor know that.

  “Lily was showing me what to do, look, Daddy, watch me,” she said.

  “I think we should leave the foal with her mom for a while. Grandpa can teach you all you need to know when the foal is a little older.”

  “Aw, Daddy. We were having fun,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Gabriel, I didn’t realize I was doing wrong,” Lily said. She looked nervous.

  “It’s okay, but that foal is just a few days old. Taylor needs to learn how to be around her. I don’t want either of you to get hurt,” I said.

  “Lily won’t hurt me, she loves me,” Taylor said.

  I was unsure which Lily she meant at first. Human Lily smiled over at her, foal Lily was oblivious as she suckled on her mother.

  “Come on out now,” I said.

  Lily rose from the crouched position she had been in. I noticed she wore clean clothes, a white shirt and jeans. Something knotted in my stomach as I watched Taylor take hold of Lily’s hand and smile up at her. It was an image I’d seen many times before but with a different person. I held open the stable door, bolting it closed once they’d walked through.

  “Baby, Daddy needs to speak to Lily, you run on in and help your grandma, okay?” I said.

  Her face displayed the sulk that was coming and she reluctantly let go of Lily’s hand. She stomped off, leaving me smiling at her retreating back. She had spirit, my daughter did.

  “I’m so sorry, Gabriel. I’ve been around horses; Taylor was perfectly safe. But I’ll check with you before I do anything with her again,” Lily said.

  “Your foster parents had horses then?” I asked, as we slowly walked toward the house.

  “No, I worked on a farm for a while, a few years back.”

  “I think it would be safer for you to come to my house. If someone is after you, I don’t want that here, not with my daughter around,” I said, filing away her mention of working on a farm for a later date.

  “I understand. I’ll move on, Gabe, I feel like I’m intruding. I’m a burden here. I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked her shortening my name, it felt a little too intimate, then inwardly cursed myself for being grumpy.

  “You’re not intruding, I brought you here, remember? I just think you’ll be safer at my house, that’s all. Whoever is looking for you is expecting you to be in hiding, so why not hide in plain sight?” I offered her a smile.

  “I can’t believe how kind you are, Sierra was a very lucky woman to have had you,” she said, her face colored slightly as if embarrassed by her words.

  “I’m the lucky one,” I replied, not sure I liked what she said.

  We walked toward the house in silence. Was I being overcautious? I guessed it was the way she looked, how closely she resembled Sierra that still had me freaked. Their voices were similar, the laugh I’d heard earlier, could have been from my wife. I held open the front door for her and she walked in. As her arm, accidently I imagined, brushed against my stomach, my skin tingled.

  Mom had set out a tray of pancakes; Taylor had already loaded her plate when Lily and I took a seat. I caught the glance from my father when Taylor asked Lily to help her cut her food, when she asked Lily to pass her the syrup, when she asked her to retie her hair. It was at that moment, I believed having Lily in Taylor’s life, for however short it was likely to be, wasn’t healthy for her. She was treating her as if she were her mom.

  I wasn’t hungry but acce
pted the cup of coffee Mom held out for me. She was another one stilted in her movements, tense. I guessed the morning’s activities had disturbed her as well.

  “Can I smell Mrs. M’s famous pancakes?” I heard.

  Thomas, out of uniform, strode into the kitchen.

  “Thomas! This is Lily, she’s my…” Taylor said when she saw him; she then turned to Lily. “What are you?” she asked.

  “Aunty,” Lily replied, her voice was slightly quieter than normal.

  “This is my Aunty Lily, Thomas,” Taylor said, waving her fork around as she spoke.

  “Young lady, sit still while you’re eating. You’ll have someone’s eye out with that fork,” Dad said, reprimanding her.

  I caught the look that went between Taylor and Lily; I also saw the slight conspiratorial smile, I didn’t like it.

  “Hi there, Lily. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Thomas said.

  He showed no outward signs of awkwardness or hesitation. He was a good actor when he needed to be. Only I saw the slight twitch to the side of one eye that was often his display of anxiety. He’d never been a good poker player; that twitch, although so subtle, always gave him away.

  Lily hadn’t responded to Thomas, however she did give him a smile. She turned back to the table to resume her breakfast and Taylor filled the room with her chatter.

  “I’ll be outside with Thomas,” I said, as I rose from the table.

  “Fuck, Gabe. No wonder you’re all over the place. It’s like seeing a ghost,” Tom said, once we’d taken a seat on the porch.

  “I know. I’ve got to tell you though, there’s something in my gut making me cautious. I don’t know if it’s because of how she looks or something else. I think I made a big mistake bringing her here. Mom is on edge around her. I want her at my house as soon as they’re done with breakfast. I have this urge to keep her away from Taylor.”

  I explained what had happened that morning.

  “Go with your gut until you know different. I was hoping she’d still be out in the truck; we could have pulled her in on an automobile theft charge. That way we’d have her safe and hopefully be able to interview her.”