“Okay, I have the laptop. What about these CDs and files?”
“Don’t touch them. Forget you ever saw them.”
“Right, boss.”
The lead Indian cleared his throat. “How long is this going to take?”
“Just a couple of minutes, and then you can shoot me.”
“What did you say?” Carrie said.
“Nothing. Stay focused.”
“It’s booting up. It’s asking me for a password.”
“Sheryl.”
“Uh-huh. Okay, something is happening. It says, ‘Tower International—Building Better Life.’ That’s kind of creepy, huh? ‘Tower makes monsters,’ right?”
“There’s a search window. Key in Avadiim. That’s A-v-a-d-i-i-m.”
The Indians turned their heads to each other in apparent surprise.
That’s got their attention, Jake thought.
“A file opened,” Carrie said. “Only it’s spelled differently here: A-v-a-d-e-m-e.”
Interesting. “All right, listen. There are blank CDs in the drawer. I want you to burn this file—just this file—to a disc. Then I want you to stick the laptop back in the safe and lock all three locks again. Understand?”
“I am a college grad, remember? What do you want me to do with the CD after I burn the file?”
“Just take it with you. Don’t read it. If I can, I’ll call you back. If you don’t hear from me in twelve hours, give it to Maria Vasquez and tell her to discuss its contents with that psychic who works downstairs.”
“Boss, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“I can’t talk anymore. Just do what I said and maybe I’ll see you soon.” Jake pocketed his phone.
The leader of the men maintained his rifle’s aim. “What do you know about Avadiim? And who did that head belong to once upon a time?”
Sensing the worm had turned, Jake lowered his hands. “I only know what Daniel Whitefish told me about Avadiim, and I saw the cave painting out by the lake. This man worked for White River Security. You’ve heard of them?”
The man nodded. “I read newspapers.”
“Earlier today, this man killed a woman in Lily Dale. He was trying to kill me. He tried again in my hotel room, which is why he’s in his current state. I have my reasons for not wanting the police to know about any of this. Most of them have to do with a group of very powerful men who are behind a lot of very bad shit.”
“White men?”
“To the one.”
“What do they have to do with Avadiim?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
The man lowered his rifle. “Avadiim’s nothing but a monster in a children’s bedtime story. You’re wasting your time.”
Jake relaxed. “Maybe, but it’s the only lead I have.”
The man grunted. Whether in approval or disapproval, Jake couldn’t tell. The other men lowered their guns.
“We didn’t see you here,” the man said. “And you didn’t see us. Finish burying your body, get the hell out of here, and don’t ever come back.”
“Deal.”
“One more thing: you’re missing an eye. I must have knocked it out. Sorry about that.”
Feeling himself turning red, Jake touched the edge of his empty eye socket. The pain on that side of his face had prevented him from sensing the glass eye’s absence. All six men aimed their flashlights at his feet, and he searched the ground for the orb.
“Here it is,” said the man with the Mohawk. He bent down behind the dirt and held up Jake’s eye, which he tossed to him.
Jake caught the eye. “Thanks.”
Chuckling, the men returned to the darkness from which they’d come.
CHAPTER
12
Driving back to his hotel with his eye in one pocket, Jake pressed autodial on his cell phone.
“Good, you’re alive,” Carrie said.
“Thanks to your call. Where are you now?”
“We’re in a taxi heading home. I’m charging it to petty cash.”
Smart girl. “When you get there, upload the document on that CD to your computer and e-mail it to me at this address: [email protected].”
“Anything else?”
“Delete the e-mail from your sent folder, remove the file from your hard drive, and destroy that CD. I mean, break it, burn it, and bury its ashes at sea.”
“You realize I’m on overtime?”
“There will be a bonus for you on top of that.”
“You’re the best boss in the world when you’re desperate.”
Jake pulled into the inn’s parking lot and got into Morton’s rented SUV, which he drove one mile along the strip to the Best Western. He locked the doors, took the keys with him, and walked back in the direction of his hotel. Since the highway exit wasn’t far, there was more traffic on the street than he would have liked, and he walked with his head down. Outside the inn, he chucked the keys into a storm drain and popped the glass eye back into his socket.
When he entered the lobby, Beth looked up from behind the counter with a quizzical expression.
“Forgot my toothbrush in my car,” Jake said, patting his jacket pocket.
Outside his room, he removed the Do Not Disturb sign from the door and confirmed the hair from his head he had stuck across the doorframe remained there.
Once inside, he checked the room for visitors anyway. Odors from the cleaning chemicals he had doused the bathtub and bathroom with assailed his senses. The bedside clock displayed 1:17 a.m. He needed sleep but had other priorities.
First, he washed his glass eye and reinserted it into his socket, then he brewed coffee using the “gourmet blend” in the bathroom. Next, he powered up his laptop, accessed his e-mail account, and found the attachment he wanted from Carrie. He regretted having given her the combinations to the safe and making her burn the CD. Although he trusted her, he did not wish to endanger her, and Marla’s disappearance and Abby’s murder confirmed just how dangerous his enemies were. He couldn’t wait to get back to Manhattan to check Afterlife himself. Time was critical.
He opened the attachment, and the familiar typography of the file appeared before him. The heading The Order of Avademe appeared at the top of the page, with the Indian spelling below it in parentheses. A list of seven numbered names appeared next.
So much for my “eight men equal eight tentacles” theory.
He did a double take when he came to the last name.
1.Karlin Reichard
2.Norman Weiskopf
3.Silas Coffer
4.Bruce Schlatter
5.Richard Browning
6.Simon Taggert
7.Benjamin Bradley
The founder of Sky Cloud Dreams. Jake sat back in his chair. Benjamin Bradley, Sky Cloud Dreams, and the Imago movement were connected to Karlin Reichard, the Reichard Foundation, White River Security, and an ancient Indian monster named either Avadiim or Avademe.
Martin’s in deeper trouble than I realized.
He did a search on each name, matching the faces in the images with those he recalled seeing in Reichard’s party room when Myron Madigan murdered the drugged woman. Norman Weiskopf headed the largest defense contractor in the US. Silas Coffer owned the largest independent oil company. Bruce Schlatter was the CEO of the top ranked health insurance company in the nation. Richard Browning ran the leading bank. Simon Taggert owned White River Security. Except for Benjamin Bradley, all of the men served on the board of directors of the Reichard Foundation.
Myron Madigan makes eight.
Industry. War profiteering. Health care insurance. How the hell did the head of a wacky space cult fit in with these power brokers?
Religion. Money.
And Myron Madigan provided politics.
Poor Marla.
Jake checked out of the hotel four hours later after an abbreviated sleep cycle.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Beth said.
“I’m fine. I just got so
me bad news and need to catch an early flight back to New York.”
“I hope you had a nice trip,” she said.
Jake drove past Buffalo and its airport. Two hours later, he had breakfast at a roadside diner. As he listened to two New York State troopers discuss sports over coffee, he wondered how much time would pass before the car rental agency Morton used reported his SUV missing, or before the hotel where the man had stayed connected the vehicle in the parking lot with the man who had failed to check out. Jake had wanted to snoop around the killer’s room but considered the risk too great.
His soul was dark, he told himself. I killed him in self-defense.
How many more times could Jake place himself in these situations before he killed an innocent man or his own luck ran out? If he did kill an innocent, he would taint his soul, and he knew a certain demon that looked forward to getting his fiery hands on it. If Jake got killed, at this point, he believed he might ascend to the Realm of Light. The same fear and hope he had lived with for seventeen months, ever since the nightmare at the Tower when Sheryl’s soul had saved him from Cain. He sighed, and the server refilled his coffee cup.
He spent two more hours driving, then pulled over to a rest stop, reclined his seat, and took a two-hour nap. After grabbing lunch, he got back on the highway and drove for another hour, formulating a shopping list in his mind.
“Hi, Joyce. How’s Martin?” Jake enjoyed the view of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, an hour away from New York City.
“Sullen.”
“Has anyone attempted to contact him?”
“Not that I can tell. Even with his grandmother helping, it’s impossible to keep an eye on him every minute.”
“You have to try. Call in another relative if necessary, just for one more week or two.”
“What’s got you worried?”
“Benjamin Bradley, the head of Sky Cloud Dreams, is involved with some very unsavory gentlemen.”
“Is Martin in danger?”
“I don’t think so, but we can’t take a chance. Maybe Bradley’s all about fleecing the Dreamers out of money, or maybe everyone in that wacky cult is at risk. I’m not saying this to make you worry needlessly. I just want to make sure nothing happens to your son.”
“I’ll do whatever you say.”
Jake reached the road that ran parallel to Reichard’s estate just before 3:00 p.m. Marla had told him that Mayor Madigan always stayed for lunch on Sunday when he went away on his retreats before returning to Manhattan. Although Marla’s disappearance had forced Myron to return ahead of schedule, Jake hoped Reichard’s other guests had not left early as well. He pulled into the access road opposite the estate, turned around, and backed up with the trees providing cover. He stopped short of the security gate, just in case the men assigned to it had been ordered to pay closer attention to the woods across the street. At least he was driving a different vehicle. Getting out, he located the same spot where he had sat before and trained his binoculars on the mansion.
Nothing to see yet. Sunlight gleamed on the bricks.
Lowering the binoculars, he observed that two men now occupied the booth. Half an hour later, a black stretch limousine stopped at the gates, which swung open. The limo pulled up to the booth, and the chauffeur presented the uniformed guards with his ID. A moment later, they waved him through.
As the gates closed, Jake raised his binoculars again and watched the limo climb the hill, navigating the winding turns with great care. At the top, the limo parked in front of the mansion, and the chauffeur got out and stood at attention.
A few minutes later, the mansion’s double doors opened, and an old man Jake recognized as Silas Coffer stepped past the butler. The chauffeur opened the back limo door for Coffer and helped him into the luxury vehicle. A steward carried the man’s suitcase to the trunk, which the chauffeur opened. With Coffer and his luggage secure, the chauffeur slid behind the wheel and drove the limo downhill.
Jake tapped his foot on a stump. Twenty minutes later, the second limo—white, this time—came for Richard Browning.
But the third limo, a long black vehicle, came for the man Jake wished to see. His target, Simon Taggert, exited the mansion with greater speed than his cohorts had before him. Jake remembered seeing the man’s cold eyes and widow’s peak on the night when Madigan had killed the girl. He believed it was Taggert who had drawn his gun, intending to shoot him in the back. Reichard had made the mistake of stopping him. Taggert walked with the confidence of a man ten years younger than his sixty-two years. When his muscular chauffeur opened the door for him, the old man ducked inside.
Cocky bastard, Jake thought as he jogged back to his SUV and got in. He remained on the service road but pulled up another two hundred and fifty yards, parking behind a thick oak tree and dense bushes. He popped the hatch, climbed out, and drew Morton’s rifle from the hatch, which he closed. Kneeling between the SUV and the bushes, he positioned the rifle and waited.
The limo came around the bend, as Jake knew it would, heading in the direction of the nearest highway ramp. Lowering his aim, he calculated the vehicle’s speed. He knew he had only one shot. As the limo neared him, he trained the rifle’s mounted scope on the front left wheel, followed the wheel until it was directly ahead of him, then held still, waiting for the rear wheel to replace the front wheel in the scope’s crosshairs. He squeezed the trigger.
The sound of the wheel’s tire blowing out obscured the suppressed gunshot, and the limo swerved like a shark before pulling over to the side of the road. Killing one hundred zonbies had made Jake an expert shot. Tossing the rifle through the window he had left open in the SUV, he darted around the bushes so they hid him but offered a clear path to the road.
The chauffeur got out of the limo and walked its length to the flattened tire. Chunks of rubber marked the limo’s trail like skull fragments.
Jake waited for the broad-shouldered man to get down on one knee to inspect the rupture or go to the trunk.
He went to the trunk, turning his back to Jake, who bolted from his hiding place and sprinted across the road. The chauffeur popped the trunk, and Jake closed in on his quarry. When the chauffeur turned his head at the sound of approaching footsteps, Jake clamped a rag drenched in chloroform over the man’s mouth.
The chauffeur tried to turn his head away, but Jake’s body smashed into him, knocking him into the trunk. The man groped inside his jacket with a hand that turned limp and flopped down as he lost consciousness.
Jake tucked the man’s legs inside the trunk in case a car passed. He opened the man’s jacket, revealing a Beretta in a shoulder holster. Plucking the weapon free, Jake closed the trunk and circled the limo’s rear, then jerked the passenger door open. Taggert gasped as Jake slid beside him and trained the Beretta on him.
“Who the hell are you?” the old man said, reaching inside his suit jacket.
“I’m the guy who’s going to blow out the back of your skull if you don’t get your fingers off” that gun.”
Taggert raised his hands. “I have money—”
Jake clamped the rag over Taggert’s mouth and pressed the Beretta against his chest.
The old man’s eyes widened with panic, then fluttered and closed.
Mission accomplished, Jake thought.
CHAPTER
13
“You can open your eyes now,” Jake said. “That chloroform should have worn off ten minutes ago.”
Taggert opened his eyes and raised his head. Jake had bound his wrists, waist, and ankles to various parts of a heavy office chair with metal legs. A shaft of sunlight cut through a gash in a sagging ceiling. The barn reeked of damp, rotting wood.
“Where are we?” The old man looked around.
“You don’t need to know that,” Jake said, circling the shaft of light from the shadows. “I get that all the time. It’s nice to be the one playing things close to the vest for a change.”
“Who are you?”
“You sent a man to ki
ll me last night. Does that narrow down the list of possibilities?”
Taggert said nothing.
“Ashby Morton killed a psychic named Abby Fay in a village called Lily Dale, with a bullet meant for me. It was sloppy. Maybe you need to conduct better background checks when you hire people to do your dirty work.”
Taggert seemed to regulate his breathing.
Meditation, Jake thought. “Are you planning to give me the silent treatment?”
Silence.
“I know you served in the marines before you joined a private contracting company that did wet work for the CIA and started your own company, so I bet you’ve been trained not to talk.” He stood before his captive. “But you were younger then.”
One side of Taggert’s upper lip curled. “I could kick your ass right now if I wasn’t tied up.”
Jake looked him over. The old man had a tight body, all right. “You probably could. Too bad you are tied up.”
“What happened to Morton?”
“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you, too.”
“What about my driver?”
“He’s fine. At least he was the last time I saw him.” Jake had driven the limo deep into the woods, along the service road near Reichard’s estate, then hauled the chauffeur out of the trunk and set him in the front seat. He kept the man’s Beretta in case he needed it. “I’d think twice about giving him a Christmas bonus, though.”
“You’re guilty of kidnapping.”
Jake shrugged. “Who’s going to know? I doubt your man will call the police. He’s either gone straight to Reichard or called your company, in which case they’ve called Reichard. And if Reichard calls the police, it will be someone very high up, who will deal with this in a very quiet, very unofficial manner.”
“You’re acting like a lunatic.”
“What choice do I have? I can’t return to my office. I’m sure I can’t use a credit card without your people knowing about it. I can’t pull money out of the bank. If I lie low, you and your cronies have the resources to find me. I had to strike back fast and hard.”
Cosmic Forces: Book Three in The Jake Helman Files Series Page 13
