Grim Judgment

by Jennifer Reinfried

  I let them take my DNA.

  Chapter Thirteen

  NOW

  2016

  Grant leaned back in his office chair, eyes trained out the window on two birds flapping in circles. His cell was pressed to his ear, ringing three times before Vance’s accented voice cut through the airwaves.

  “Grant, my friend, how is your life on the outside going?”

  “Could be worse,” Grant replied. “About to leave early for the day. It’s been hell at the office since the roof. Needed a little R and R.”

  “Good for you,” his boss said. “Unfortunately, I might need you to take a bit more than a day.”

  Grant sat forward once more and rubbed his face. “Do tell.”

  “I’ve lost contact with our Head of Narcotics. Have not heard from him in over a week, since he left for Chicago. He missed his regular call with me two days ago.”

  “And you want me to find him.”

  “I want you to find him, yes.”

  “Sir, I’ll put in a vacation request now.”

  “No time for that. Just leave. I will make sure you still have your job when you return. Until Jaxon and Shawn are found and exterminated, and so soon after Elena’s murder, I would like to get this taken care of right away.”

  “Why not ask someone in Chicago to check on him? Why me?”

  “Because you are also the best man to find Isaac.”

  Grant’s stomach sank. He had sent a few messages to the kid since he’d tracked Emma’s location to a small apartment complex in Boston, Massachusetts, but never get a reply. He’d chalked it up to the two finally reuniting, and hadn’t thought much of it. Isaac will contact me when ready. When he and Emma have met up. Then I’ll take my family and get the fuck out of this city, meet up with them. Finally enjoy life.

  “You last pinged the car when he was arriving in Colorado,” Vance said.

  “Yeah. He was on the outskirts of some town.”

  “So go find them. I do not care how you do it, just that you do it, and now.”

  “I will, sir. I’ll get my ass to the airport right away.” Look for the narcotics Head first. Give Isaac time. Only a few more days before I can be free of this shit.

  “No. We have to take care of Bruce, first. Come back to the bunker. Now.” The Russian’s voice grew menacing. “I am sick of hiding, and I have a business to run that is slowly falling apart. If you see Jaxon on your way, kill him on sight. Put a bullet in his head.”

  “It would be my pleasure, sir.”

  —-

  Isaac lay on his back on a mediocre cot. He’d been locked in a small room for nearly a week. He wasn’t able to accurately guess the time that had truly passed, as his phone had been confiscated, and there were no windows where he was held. The first few days found him pacing, bashing into the reinforced locked door, pummeling the walls with the sides of his fists until they were raw and bleeding. His voice had left him after only a few hours of yelling at the top of his lungs, hoping someone, anyone, would be passing by, discover he was being held against his will. Although he knew from the moment Shawn had nabbed him off the street, escape was not believable.

  He didn’t understand how it happened. One moment he was filling the Mercedes with gas in a small nondescript station in Colorado. He had just spoken with Grant, informed the cop that Emma was in Boston, and to wait for Isaac to get to her so he could send Grant their location and meet up. The elated high he was on had made him unaware of the danger approaching until it was too late, and he was confronted by the man he and Emma had been trying to infiltrate in Redborough, along with two strangers. He’d turned to run, and they’d given chase. Shawn easily caught up to him and took him down before he managed to even get out of the parking area of the gas station. It was nowhere close to a fair fight.

  The man, whose hair was now cut short and who was not blind after all, tackled him to the pavement with a strength that baffled Isaac. No matter what he did, Shawn easily held him down with a single palm on his chest. Isaac’s fists and feet barely fazed the man as he waited for the others to run up to them.

  The girl, blonde with freckles, had jogged up first. “Lucas,” she’d said to Shawn. “Nice work.”

  Confused, Isaac remembered thinking that, much to his anger and frustration, Shawn had truly played them, and wasn’t the tame, easily culled man he and Emma had thought him to be.

  Together, Shawn - or Lucas, as these people called him - the girl, and a blond man with a long scar along the left side of his face, had taken Isaac captive in a large white van with no windows. Before they threw him in the back along with Lucas, who continued to easily restrain him, Isaac had gotten a good look at his surroundings.

  The entire world was frozen in place.

  With frantic eyes, Isaac stared around at people halted in the middle of taking bites of food, swiping their credit cards at gas pumps, arriving or leaving the station, and talking on their cell phones. Not a thing moved, not a sound was issued. Isaac’s heart pounded, but he couldn’t help ignoring it as his mind tried and failed to come up with a logical explanation to what he was witnessing. Then he’d been thrown in the van, which roared to life in a loud burst.

  They’d taken him to a lonely white house in the middle of the woods, its green shutters bright against the white snow and dull brown, bare trees. He’d tried to fight, tried to run, but it had been impossible, and they had thrown him roughly into the room he was still in.

  Then everything started to get even stranger.

  They fed him once a day and only let him out to use the bathroom. When they did, he was restrained, and forced to relieve himself with Lucas guarding him. The first time he’d been let out, he’d tried to overpower the man, who had simply laughed and shoved him, with one arm, nearly ten feet along the basement until Isaac had slammed into the back wall. His breath had left him, and it had taken him several minutes to recover enough to get to his feet again. He glowered at Lucas, hate in his heart and eyes. He urinated on the floor of the small basement bathroom, purposely missing the toilet. Lucas had just stared back, then locked him in the room once more. Other than that moment, Isaac hadn’t tried to escape, and the strangers never once harmed him again.

  Isaac groaned and pressed his palms into his eyes. Suddenly, there was a rustling noise, then a slam, and the two blonds who had helped capture him appeared out of thin air next to the cot.

  “You know,” he said, “I’m really getting sick of that.” The pair had arrived in the same fashion more than once through Isaac’s time as their captive, to question him and to feed him, freaking him out by their sudden appearance each time. They refused to explain how it was done, and Isaac had given up trying to understand it.

  “Brought you some food,” the man, Aaron, said. They had both given their names the first time they’d come into the room, but Isaac never used them. He half believed they were false.

  “Not hungry,” Isaac said. Aaron shrugged and put the large red apple and two chunks of string cheese on the folding table next to his cot.

  “You ready to tell us what we need to know?” Mari asked, her arms crossed over her chest, eyes hard.

  “Well, you can apparently read my mind, so have at it. I’ve got nothing new for you, since I’ve spent the last however long in this fucking room.” Isaac sat back down on his cot.

  “Tell us where Vance is hiding.”

  “Like I said the last time you asked, I don’t know. I was at his safe house, but was released days before you found me. He himself told me he was moving locations the moment I was gone.”

  Aaron was silent, his gaze trained on Isaac.

  It hadn’t taken him long to realize they could pick inside his brain. Between the frozen world and his capture, the chaos from the rooftop in Redborough, and Shawn/Lucas’ unreal strength and speed, Isaac realized there were things out there he just wouldn’t be able to explain. Aaron hadn’t hidden his ability, had in fact used it to try to scare Isaac into telling the truth, sin
ce he, of course, would know if he was lying. The first interrogation had been made up of the man reading his thoughts and relaying them to Mari out loud, shocking and angering Isaac. Since then, he’d made sure to control what came to his mind, although it was easier said than done. Much had slipped before he’d been able to contain it, but so far, he’d still hidden the general location of Vance’s hideout, the fact that Grant knew where Emma was, and her being in Boston. Everything else, from his past jobs to the infiltration of Shawn, Jax, and Cassie, had been discovered, including what had happened on the roof. Every questioning consisted of the same few questions, which Isaac answered the same, every time.

  “Who killed Cassie?” Mari asked.

  “Alex.”

  “Who instructed you to infiltrate in Redborough?”

  “Alex.”

  “Where were you taken once you escaped the roof?”

  “An ambulance. After that I was drugged and have no memory of where I went from there.”

  “Where is Vance hiding?”

  “I don’t fucking know! Stop asking the same shit! I’ve given you what I have, and you know it.” He glared at Mari, whose gaze didn’t waver.

  “And we’re back to Emma again,” Aaron said with a sigh.

  “Get the fuck out of my head,” Isaac growled. He had found that thinking about Emma, not where she was or that she’d left him, but about her smile, her eyes, her laugh, how her lips felt on his the night of the roof, the way she’d always pout slightly if she lost to him in a game, the way his love for her burned so deep that it was enough for him to track her across the country to protect her—thinking about that kept his mind focused and sharp, kept his thoughts on nothing else.

  “If you tell us what we need to know, we’ll let you go, and you can see her again,” Mari said softly.

  “Ah, this old ploy.” Isaac barked a laugh. “That doesn’t even work in the movies anymore, you know.”

  “We aren’t lying. We haven’t hurt you, we’ve kept you fed. We just need answers.”

  “Right, and once I give you anything worthwhile, I’m dead.”

  “We’re not you. We aren’t criminals, and we’re not monsters.”

  “Shawn kills people but you’re on his side. Jaxon went cuckoo. I assume he’s here if Shawn is, so that tells me you’re not being entirely truthful.”

  “That isn’t Shawn, it’s Lucas. They’re...twins.”

  “Right. Okay.” Isaac shrugged.

  “My point is, we have the power to kill you nice and slow, and we also have the ability to torture you for information, but we haven’t.”

  “Gee, thanks. I’ll be sure to send a nice card when I get out of here.”

  “‘When’?” Aaron asked.

  “Positive thinking. Helps in times I’m held against my will.”

  Mari uncrossed her arms and sat next to Isaac on the bed; his back stiffened. He still hadn’t been told what she could do, and without that knowledge, she scared him more than the rest of them. The fact that she’d get so close to him, with the risk of Isaac being able to attack her at any moment, meant whatever she could do, it was no doubt quick and powerful.

  “Look,” she said. “Your people are the bad guys, not us. Vance is a crime boss, who has hurt and killed a lot of people. You’ve killed many for him, which makes you just as bad as he is. But you’ve also left his side. Aaron tells me of your plans to get out from Vance’s rule, to hole up somewhere with Emma together.”

  Isaac looked away from her, down at his hands in his lap.

  “The amount of remorse you feel for the deaths you caused makes me sure that, even though you’re still one of the bad guys, you’re not evil. Honestly, knowing you truly want to leave the life of crime you’ve been in, we’re more interested in finding those that are still hunting down Jaxon and Shawn. You have no interest in them, so we have no reason to hurt you or to hold you here if you give us what we need to know to find our real threats.”

  He looked at Aaron, who actually smiled, and Isaac snorted.

  “Nice speech. But I still have no idea where Vance went.”

  Mari stared at him, an odd look of sadness in her eyes. Then she simply vanished. Isaac glanced around to discover Aaron was gone as well.

  “That’s fucking rude, you know!” Isaac yelled at the top of his voice, ignoring the soreness his words brought to his throat.

  —-

  Shawn slowly opened his eyes. A familiar blur flooded his vision, and he blinked once, then twice, harder. He tried to sit up with a grunt.

  “Whoa, buddy, not so fast.” Duncan’s voice startled him, and he hesitated until he felt a firm grip on his right shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” Shawn asked, though his words came out slightly slurred. He closed his eyes and let the older man gently push him back until he once again rested on a soft mattress.

  “You’re coming out of your surgery. How do you feel? Is there any pain? Can you...Shawn?”

  He had drifted slightly at the comfort of the bed, but Duncan’s insistent words brought him back again. “Yeah, I’m here.” He opened his eyes again as his memory reminded him of the procedure he’d allowed this near-stranger to perform on him. “How long has it been?”

  “A couple hours. You’ve woken up here and there since, but you might not remember. You were pretty out of it.” Duncan’s voice was close to the bed. “How do you feel?”

  Shawn turned his gaze over to the man and his heart nearly leapt out of his body. The blur that was Duncan was rapidly focusing. Edges hardened, curves stood out, colors separated until he could see everything with perfect clarity. His first instinct was to reach up and touch his own face, feeling for first his mask, then his goggles. He looked at the man next to his bed and said, “Holy fuck yes!”

  Duncan chuckled, his eyes squinting slightly, wrinkles at the corners. Shawn could see how his beard parted, could see the white of his teeth as he smiled, took in the brown of his irises, of his hair.

  “So, you’re Duncan, huh?” Shawn’s world tilted ever so slightly. He reached out and squeezed the man’s bearded cheeks in his fingers. Duncan looked at him with a shocked expression, then burst into laughter.

  “What the hell did I just walk into?” Jaxon appeared in the room’s doorway.

  Shawn turned and saw his brother for the first time with his own eyes. He watched him walk toward the bed, a smile on his thin lips, and Shawn started to cry. He’d seen Jaxon before, plenty of times, with the enhanced lenses, but at that moment he was unable to suppress the surge of intense happiness and gratitude that bubbled through him.

  “Someone’s still a bit loopy,” Duncan said softly.

  Jaxon neared the bed, then bent over to embrace Shawn in a tight hug. “How you feeling, man?”

  Shawn squeezed him harder, and said, “Good. So, so good.” He held onto his brother for a long moment, shaking with emotion.

  Duncan cleared his throat, and they finally parted, both with ridiculous grins on their faces.

  “You look good, man.” Jaxon sat in a chair next to Duncan.

  “I already knew that.” Shawn grinned.

  “Do you still see the dark spots around me?” Both Jaxon and Duncan leaned forward slightly.

  “Nope, you just look like a normal douchebag to me.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Hey, I just got out of surgery. So rude.”

  “Not gonna lie,” Jaxon said. “It’s weird to see you looking right at me. Weird in a good way.” He grinned.

  Shawn focused his eyes over his brother’s shoulder. “Better?”

  “Much, thanks.”

  He laughed and looked around the room, taking in as much as he possibly could. The tiny blue flowers printed on the comforter draped over his legs. The crisp glare of the room’s light bulb. The dark sky through the open window, speckled with little white stars that he could barely make out through a multitude of bare tree branches. He stared at individual slats of the wooden floor, the bumps in the pain
t along each wall, the smooth surface of a small mirror near a closed door. Shawn turned and noticed another bed just like his behind Duncan and Jaxon.

  “Are we roommates?” he said, excitement crashing into him again.

  Jaxon laughed. “Yeah.”

  He grinned. “Aw, man, I bet you fart in your sleep.”

  Duncan cracked up again. “Okay, you two. Shawn, lie back down. You need more rest. Doctor’s orders.” He stood. “Jax, you should get some sleep, too.”

  “I will.”

  “Let any of us know if you need anything at all. Mari is going to check on you in an hour or so, and I’ll be back later on.”

  “Okay,” both men replied in unison.

  “I’m serious,” Duncan replied, now by the open door. “Anything at all.”

  “We got it, Mom,” Jaxon said, but with a smile.

  “Duncan,” Shawn said suddenly. “Wait.” He flung the covers off of his body and tried to stand, only furthering the dizziness he’d been experiencing.

  “Not again,” the older man said, and hurried to the bed.

  Before he could be pushed back again, Shawn wrapped his arms around Duncan and squeezed gently. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you so, so much.”

  The man hugged him back. “Of course.” He pulled back, smiled at Shawn, then turned and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  “Holy fuck, I can see,” Shawn said, elation returning. He looked at Jaxon, who grinned.

  “What are you going to do with your newfound vision? Start painting? See the world? Take out some criminals?”

  “Sleep. Duh.”

  “Lame.”

  Shawn grinned. “I can do all of that later. Plus, I still need to heal.”

  “Oh, please, you’re probably already halfway there.”

  “I don’t feel any pain, so, yeah.”

  “You’re drugged, dummy. Of course you don’t.”

  “So? So what? Ten bucks says I’m fine by morning.”

  Jaxon rolled his eyes and stood. “Well then, good. We can head out sooner than I thought.”