The Lover: The Luke Titan Chronicles #3

by David Beers

  “That’s nothing, Luke. Even in your crazy fucking scheme, that’s not disorder on the scale of a Hitler or Stalin.”

  Luke spit on the floor. “Hitler? Stalin? They served themselves or country or whatever other delusions they held. My disorder is a direct assault on God, with purpose. He knows it and he’s fighting it, thus why you understood what I had done before I was ready for you to know.”

  “You think God influenced this?” Christian shook his head, unable to believe anything coming from Luke.

  “You’re here, aren’t you? Just in the nick of time.”

  Christian couldn’t take anymore. Luke was crazy, and his intelligence had masked it for far too long. It was time to end this. Christian raised his weapon. “You’re under arrest. Turn around and interlace your fingers behind your head.”

  Luke smiled. “Christian, this is your last chance. Kill me now.”

  “Turn around. Interlace your fingers behind your head.”

  “As you wish.” Luke turned and looked out the window. He raised his hands to the back of his head and then put them together.

  “Get on your knees,” Christian said.

  Luke complied, elegantly lowering himself to the floor.

  Christian pulled the cuffs from the small holding pouch on his belt. He clicked the buttons with his left hand, allowing them to fall open. He walked across the kitchen toward Luke. “My gun is aimed directly at your head. Don’t move.”

  “Why not kill me, Christian?”

  “We’ll see how much disorder you sow in prison. Or in the electric chair.”

  Christian stood behind his former partner, who knelt on the ground, surrendering after killing so many people. Christian held the weapon in his right hand and reached for Luke’s left. He grabbed it firmly, the shaking banished. He twisted Luke’s arm, bringing it down behind his back. He went for the right hand next …

  Did you ever think you were in control? his mind wondered as Luke spun. Did you actually believe that you could beat him? The words flashed through his mind, reading everything around him as calm it always had. His body couldn’t react quickly enough, though—not even to pull the gun’s trigger.

  Luke’s right hand grabbed onto Christian’s left—his body turning as well, everything moving nearly too fast for the eye to see. One second, Luke was on the floor, and the next, Christian’s face was being slammed against the glass window.

  He fired the gun and a bullet blasted through the ceiling. Small white specks floated down around them, and then pain burst in Christian’s wrist—a hot explosion that rippled up his arm. The pistol fell to the floor.

  He felt Luke’s breath in his ear. He could smell the blood on Luke’s suit, all of it so close. One of Christian’s arms was twisted painfully behind him, his broken wrist trapped against the window. Christian looked out at the sunny afternoon.

  “Never forget that I gave you a chance to kill me. Multiple chances,” Luke whispered, his breath brushing against Christian’s face. “Disorder, Christian. You and I, we’re going to create a lot of it.”

  The pain in Christian’s wrist subsided significantly when the knife entered his side. Luke stuck it deep and then dragged it upward, from the top of his hip to the bottom of his rib cage.

  Christian felt Luke pull the knife out, and then his face seemed to burst. Pain indescribable ripped through his head, and he felt hot blood running down his cheek.

  “See you soon, Christian.”

  Gray preceded black, and then Christian didn’t even know pain.

  Chapter 29

  The dead were removed from the house one by one. Of course, they took the living first. Waverly stood over it all, watching everything and asking questions of himself for which there were no answers.

  He watched the stretcher wheel Tommy to the ambulance. Tommy didn’t even look at him as he passed. Waverly watched the medics attend to Christian in the kitchen, trying their best to close the wounds and stabilize him. A knife handle stuck out from his face, the blade dug deep inside his head. Finally, Waverly watched them wheel his second FBI agent out on a stretcher.

  Christian was unconscious, and Waverly stared in silence.

  He went back into the house and gazed at the living room. Four bodies. There was no need to search for the perpetrator.

  Luke Titan had called it in himself. Called Waverly, in fact.

  “Director, it’s Luke Titan.”

  “I was just about to call you. I tried Tommy, but got nothing. Same with Christian.”

  “That’s understandable. They’re both tremendously injured. I don’t think Tommy will die, but Christian might.”

  “What are you talking about?” Waverly had asked.

  “I stabbed Tommy in the neck, paralyzing him. Then I gutted Christian’s side before shoving the knife in his face. He’s bleeding quite heavily.”

  Waverly was stunned, unable to speak.

  “They’re all at Christy Mackenrow’s house. You should have the address, or one of your underlings will. I’m heading out, Director Waverly. I do think we’ll meet again, though. There’s that to look forward to, at least.”

  The phone line had gone dead. Waverly usually acted quickly on new information, but not then. He didn’t pull the phone from his ear, but only sat on the FBI’s private jet, staring at the area before him.

  It took Waverly a solid minute to realize he still hadn’t put down his phone.

  When he came to his senses, he issued an all points bulletin for Luke Titan. He landed in Atlanta and came first to the house, wanting to see the truth for himself. A press conference was scheduled within the hour, and it would run on every news network for the next two days, hopefully longer.

  More information was coming in. Ten minutes ago agents broke down a locked door in Ted Hinson’s house. Two women were alive, chained to a wall. Others were chained as well, but they were dead. The women were in shock, unable to talk, but that was very distant on Waverly’s mind. He was looking at the person who committed those crimes, slumped dead against the fireplace.

  No, coldly, he wasn’t as concerned about those victims.

  There was much to do, but Waverly couldn’t pull himself from the house—the disaster—surrounding him. He didn’t understand what he saw, how any of it happened, or why.

  The dead are everywhere, he thought, and it occurred under your watch.

  He looked away from the bloody living room and walked out onto the stoop. Agents passed by him, saying nothing, both his presence and the body count keeping them silent.

  Luke Titan did this. Luke Titan paralyzed one partner, and may have killed another. The medics said Christian was in critical condition, and when Waverly pressed, they put his survival at fifty percent.

  He had to find Luke before the man left the country.

  Chapter 30

  Christian was in a coma for a week and a half, before finally regaining consciousness. The doctors let his mother and Veronica visit, but only for a few minutes.

  “We haven’t left and we’re not going to,” Veronica had said. His mother couldn’t talk, but only cried and touched him gently.

  Nurses rushed them out and Christian had fallen asleep.

  He had dreamed then. Christian and Luke were in a car, a convertible. The top was down and they were rolling along an empty stretch of highway somewhere out west. The desert surrounded them, with tan rock mountains in the distance. The wind filled the car, tossing their hair constantly.

  Luke was smiling and he looked over at Christian. His eyes were alive, full of excitement. Christian glanced at the speedometer and saw they were close to 150.

  “We’re going to have fun, Christian. So very much fun.”

  Christian only turned his head and looked forward.

  If he dreamed anything else, he didn’t remember. When he woke, his doctor was in front of him.

  “We’re loosening the wires on your face. You’ll be able to open your jaw just enough to form words, but only if you agree to us doin
g this. We don’t think it’s in your best interest, but ….” The doctor shook his head and looked at his feet. “Your boss is insisting that he be able to interview you. The man is … persistent, to say the least.”

  Christian agreed to loosen the wiring. Christian wanted to speak with his mother and Veronica first, before Waverly.

  “I keep ending up here,” Christian mumbled. It was the first time he’d spoken in two weeks, though he came out of his coma a few days ago.

  His mother stood to the side of Christian’s hospital bed, tears streaming down her face. Veronica was on the other side, crying as well. Happiness and sadness filled both of them. Christian hadn’t requested a mirror to see his face since waking; he didn’t need one. The sympathy and pain in his mother’s eyes showed him everything.

  He’d been given no information since awakening, and when he tried to motion for paper, his nurses told him to rest. Then, they gave him more sedatives. So while not in a coma, he hadn’t exactly been conscious.

  “Tommy?” he whispered to the two women, hoping he didn’t have to say more. His head felt as if all its flesh and bone had been rubbed for hours with sandpaper. Speaking made it feel like the sandpaper was back, and spunky.

  “He’s alive,” Veronica said.

  His mother squeezed his hand. Christian pushed her away, and twirled two fingers in a forward circular motion. Go on.

  “He’s paralyzed. He was cleared for visitors two days ago but he won’t see anyone.”

  Christian twirled his fingers again. There was more, and she was holding it from him. “Recovery?” he managed to say.

  “The doctors told us there would be some, but he’ll never walk again.” Tears filled Veronica’s eyes and she choked out the next sentence, though she didn’t look away. “He’ll be a quadriplegic, Christian. He may never speak again.”

  Christian closed his eyes and let his head fall deeper into the pillow.

  “Waverly,” he whispered.

  Both kissed his unbroken hand, Veronica moving around the bed to do so. They left and the Director walked in a few minutes later.

  The two stared at each other for half a minute, and Christian saw no sympathy or sadness in the man. He saw rage. Determination.

  “The doctors don’t want you speaking. There’s a risk you won’t fully heal, and I want you to understand that up front, though I’m sure they’ve told you. I pushed them until they agreed to ask, and the fact that I’m here shows you allowed them to loosen the contraption on your head. If you want to wait, tell me, and I’ll leave. I won’t be responsible for more damage to you.”

  “Do you … want … to wait?” Christian asked. Tears formed in his eyes at the pain from speaking.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Let’s … talk, then,” Christian said.

  Waverly pulled a chair up to the bed and took out a spiral notebook. He opened it to the first page, then grabbed a pen from his shirt pocket. “Take your time. I’ll go as long you can, then you rest. I’ll wait in the lobby. I’m not leaving the hospital, though, until you tell me you’re done. If that takes a month, so be it. I want the whole story.”

  Christian nodded and slowly started talking.

  For Christian Windsor

  Address:

  Emory University Hospital

  Atlanta, GA 30322

  Recipient:

  Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christian Windsor

  Dear Christian,

  I’ve read that you survived, and I must admit, that surprised me. To me, you were always a boy. Never a man. Perhaps your survival earns you that honor. I will no longer think of you as a boy, but as a man. Do you find some solace in that?

  I wonder if Tommy is happy with what I did for him? Sure, his fiancée is dead (unfortunately, I couldn’t attend her funeral), but he is still alive. That should certainly be considered a blessing. Do you think he’ll ever speak again? I must say, the insertion into his neck was very good; I don’t take pride in many of my accomplishments (to whom much is given, much is expected), but I do in that bit of work. A millimeter difference and he would have died. Instead, he has his life.

  Waverly is doing his best to make things hard for me. That is a man possessed. I haven’t spoken to him again, nor written him, but I imagine he wants to look me in the eye before he kills me. Or jails me. Please send him my regards, and tell him I will one day grant him that opportunity.

  I wonder, Christian, is it winter where you are? I cannot imagine that you’re seeing spring flowers bloom. I don’t imagine you’ll ever see them again, though, you might think killing me will birth a single rose. I promise, it won’t.

  Will you come for me, Christian? Will you come to do what you should have done in the kitchen?

  I sacrificed a lot to create you. Think of it—multiple careers, all landing me in the upper echelon of my colleagues. I would, without doubt, have landed there at the FBI, too. I gave it all up, though. For you. To ensure that you reached an endless winter.

  I’m not done, Christian. In fact, I think I may just be starting. With sacrifice comes reward, and mine shall be great. Purpose drives me and it always has. Now that you know my purpose, you may be able to anticipate some of my coming actions. Or, perhaps you’re right, and I’m insane. In that case, lunatics are notoriously unpredictable. If I were you, I would hope my purpose isn’t crazy, but rational. It’ll make catching me much easier.

  Like I told you in the house, I’ll see you soon.

  I’ll see all of you soon.

  Yours,

  Luke Titan, MD, PhD, Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Top Ten of America’s Most Wanted

  To be continued…

  On Purpose and Other Things

  Thanks for reading, and I mean that wholeheartedly. I love telling stories and without you, that wouldn’t be possible.

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  I don’t want to do that.

  I think having a purpose in life is important. It adds clarity and meaning to what you do. I’m lucky to know mine and that purpose dictates my life: I’m here to tell stories. Nothing else even comes close to the happiness this job gives me.

  With that said, if you like reading my novels and want to know when the next book comes out, sign-up below. No tricks. No buying your address. Just me telling stories and you enjoying them.

  The way these relationships should work.

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