by Jonas Saul
“There’s been enough violence for today,” she said. “I need rest. Then I need to figure out a way I can,” she turned to face Parkman, “make it right with you.”
She reached her hand out. He took it and stood to meet her eye to eye.
“Ever since you were snatched from the hospital in Toronto,” Parkman said, “we have come across the country looking for you and now we found you. There is nothing you need to make right. We’re good. Hell, we’re all alive.”
As the authorities arrived and the flashlights found them, Sarah pulled Parkman in and hugged him fiercely, crying on his chest.
“I’m so sorry, Parkman. I actually believed what I saw.”
“We all believe what we see.”
He held her until something tugged on her pants. A weight lifted off her back.
The guns!
She pushed Parkman away and spun around. The flashlight brilliance from the men who had arrived fell on Tam’s face.
Tam placed the gun she had grabbed under her chin and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She pulled it again. Then again.
Sarah swatted the gun out of Tam’s hand.
“No bullets. You think I would pull a loaded weapon on a friend? This one is loaded.” She pulled the second gun out and placed it on the grass as the men behind her shouted and moved in.
Two men subdued Tam while Parkman grabbed Sarah and pulled her back. Aaron stepped up and put a hand on her shoulder. Their eyes met and he smiled.
“I’m sorry, Sarah, but there’s more bad news.”
He gestured with a slight nod of his head at Sarah’s parents’ house.
“Oh shit,” Sarah said as she took off running, Aaron clearing a path, pummeling the men who tried to stop her.
Chapter 43
Violeta Payne died that night on the edge of the vineyard behind Caleb Roberts’ house from a blunt force trauma to the throat. Tam’s downward thrust of the claw end of the hammer cut through Violeta’s neck, severing her carotid artery, and she bled out in under a minute.
Sarah marveled at how a woman could die in front of four people and no one seemed to notice or care at the time.
Tam Rood lost the eye her mother had hit with the knife end of her cane. Forever she would wear a patch in remembrance of the night she mortally wounded her mother. The weight of what happened to Tam would be on her shoulders longer than Sarah could imagine. Tam had entered a state of shock hours after they took her to the hospital and only recently started talking to investigators.
If only I had listened to Vivian and talked to Tam in the beginning. None of this would’ve happened.
She rolled over in her hospital bed and stared at her father as he slept. It had been three days since the incident at their house. He was to be released from the hospital today on the condition he took it easy. The cast on his broken hand had been signed by Parkman, Aaron and a few of the nurses. The bullet wound had been superficial. It entered at the tip of his hip bone and exited through the fleshy other side at the top of the buttocks, missing everything vital. He would have a scar to match several of his daughter’s.
Sarah’s mother, with a cast on her broken wrist, had left earlier to prepare the house for Caleb’s return home. Oliver Payne had arranged for a private room for Caleb during his stay and a bed was brought in for Sarah to continue resting from her head trauma. She planned on heading home with her father today where she would rest and talk to her sister who had been mysteriously absent the past few days.
Sarah had woken to a small message from Vivian explaining that this was the way Sarah had wanted it. She had wanted to quit. Once Sarah had deviated from Vivian’s warning to not meet Parkman, Vivian had seen what was coming and knew Sarah to be on the right path so she let her navigate her course without interruption. But if Sarah decided to continue working with her, Vivian had a full agenda.
Aaron opened the door and stepped quietly inside the room, startling Sarah from her thoughts. She sat up in bed and took his hand as he sat in the chair beside her.
“Tam Rood admitted everything,” he said.
“What’s everything?”
“I understand they just finalized her statement. Violeta had orchestrated the attack on you. Oliver, Tam’s father, came in and added his version of events. Together, they told parallel stories of what Violeta had been up to.”
“The police took my statement as well,” Sarah said. “I was shot in Toronto and came to Parkman’s apartment for help. Violeta sent two men to rape and torture me—”
“And then sent her own daughter to kill you,” Aaron added.
“I did what I had to do to stay on this side of the grass.”
“They believe you because they found Derek alive. You could’ve killed him, but didn’t.”
“Did they get that other guy, Violeta’s driver?”
“Martin?”
“Wasn’t there someone who was supposed to pick Violeta up after her visit at my parents’ house?”
Aaron squeezed her hand. “Yes. They don’t have much on him, but they did pick him up.”
She met his gaze. “How’s Parkman handling everything?”
“You mean with you?”
She nodded and looked away. The horror of mistakenly hating someone who had been so loyal hadn’t left her. There would be a mark tattooed on her soul for a very long time for holding a gun on Parkman.
“He hasn’t mentioned anything. I think he considers it a non-event. Although,” Aaron offered a crooked smile, “I don’t think he wants to be in that position again.”
Sarah took her hand away and lay back on the bed.
“I didn’t remember a lot of things when I woke up. It really scared me and I don’t frighten easily. But the image of Parkman and that gun was quite vivid.” She stared up at the ceiling. “Crazy how things work out, eh?”
“Crazy.”
The door opened slowly. Detective Joffrey, who Sarah had met a couple of times since the night in the vineyard, entered, a cell phone in his hand. He gestured at her sleeping father and asked if it was okay.
Sarah nodded.
Joffrey walked up and handed her the cell phone.
“You have a call,” he whispered.
“Who is it?”
“A Florida cop named Carson Dodge.”
Sarah frowned. Florida? She had never heard of a man named Carson Dodge.
She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Can anyone else hear me?” the male voice asked.
She recognized the voice but couldn’t put a name to it.
“No.”
“Confident? We’re alone?”
“Yes.”
“Sarah, it’s Darwin.”
“One sec,” she said. She put the phone on her chest and looked at Aaron and Joffrey. “Guys, I’m going to need a minute here.”
Joffrey stepped away. “I’ll be just outside the door.”
Aaron nodded and got up from the chair. “I’ll go wait for your mother. I understand she’s coming back before Caleb is released.”
Sarah waited until the door closed.
“Darwin,” she whispered. “How did you find me?”
“I’ve known where you were since the moment you got shot in Toronto just off Keele Street.”
“How?”
“Remember how I told you I monitor cell phones. I listen in for chatter, to make sure my family’s name doesn’t come out of the wrong mouths?”
“Yes. You have an impressive setup in Italy.”
“When you were here, I got Parkman’s cell number and was able to hack into it. When he called to meet you at midnight, I thought nothing of it. That was nine in the morning over here. I was wide awake in my office, already on my third coffee when I heard him call for an ambulance saying that you had been shot.”
Everything fell into place.
“I asked you when you were here,” he continued, “if we were ever in need of help, would you look out for my family and you said you would. T
hat goes both ways. Since I didn’t know who your enemy was or who I could trust, I called my handler, Carson Dodge down in Florida, a man who can be trusted, and had him arrange the modified ambulance and the pickup at the hospital. I told him to make sure you made it out of that hospital alive and to have proper care until they delivered you to your parents. If he wouldn’t do it, I made sure he knew that I would fly back to North America and do it myself which is the last thing he wants. No one needs another Mafia war.”
“Wow, I had no idea that was you.”
“No one does. Carson’s connected to this, but that’s where it stops. I thought you should know that I was behind Carson’s motivation.”
“I’m glad you called.”
“You might want to smooth things over for Parkman, Aaron and whoever else waited for you at the hospital in Toronto the night you got shot.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
“In order to delay everyone that night and get you secured away in my ambulance, I had my doctor come out and tell them that you were in bad condition and it looked like you weren’t going to make it. My guy gave you a twenty percent chance to live or worse. The other reason I did that was I didn’t know who your enemy was. He could’ve been waiting in the hospital to hear news of your condition.”
“Parkman and Aaron are fine. I don’t have to explain anything to them. They’re just happy I made it out of the hospital safe. Now that I think about it, no one cleared up the ambulance connection.”
“But, hey, Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time I help, can you go nicer on the men that show up? They were just doing their jobs. A simple thank you would’ve worked. Drugging them and locking them in the back of the ambulance wasn’t cool.”
She heard the smile in his voice.
“I know how you are,” Darwin continued. “I understand that they were at risk, but when people are doing nice things for you, maybe it’s okay to let them sometimes.”
“That’s a tough one, but I’ll definitely take it into consideration.”
She felt lighter hearing Darwin’s laugh.
The door opened and her mother walked in.
“Listen, I have to go. Maybe we can talk again soon.”
“Not unless you need me or I need you. Remember, I’m The Ghost now. They never found his body so I’ve taken on his moniker. Carson has even taken up calling me that.”
“Okay, Ghost, we will be in touch.”
“Count on it.”
“And thanks.”
The phone line clicked. Darwin was gone.
Chapter 44
Sarah slid the motorcycle helmet over her head, careful to limit the rubbing on her wound. They had taken the bandage off last week, leaving a scar that was slightly hidden behind new hair growth. Most of her memories had returned in the month she stayed in Santa Rosa with her parents.
Aaron had gone back to Toronto and shipped her motorcycle to her. He hadn’t understood her decision to stay but didn’t fight her over it. He recognized those moments when there would be no changing her mind.
The bodies had been removed from Parkman’s apartment and Oliver Payne had hired a team to scour it clean after the police had finished with it. Oliver also refurnished Parkman’s apartment and gave him a lump sum of money for his pain and suffering. Sarah’s parents received a payment, too.
Since Oliver had recently lost his wife, he was left with the entire business, which he had begun to dissolve, selling off stores and reinvesting the money in mutual funds, bonds and stocks.
Everyone was moving on, but Sarah would never be the same. A bullet to the head had changed something in her. She had wanted to hurt Parkman. The desire to kill him had consumed her. How she could forgive herself for that was a question she had no answer for.
Over the past few weeks, she had cooked for Parkman, brought him lunch to work and considered how she could make it up to him.
“Sarah,” he had said one day in his office about a week ago. “You have nothing to make amends for. You were acting on the information you had, which at the time, wasn’t wrong in your mind.”
She had been staring out his office window at the pretty lights of Santa Rosa at night.
She turned to him. “You’re wrong. The feelings I felt. The thoughts I had. They were terrible. Faint wisps of those feelings are still evident in the back of my mind. I feel like I betrayed your name, your memory. If I had been a hothead, maybe a couple of years younger, I wouldn’t have taken the time to listen to you. I would’ve just shot you.” She shook her head and walked to the office door. “Sometimes there are things that are unforgivable.” She opened the door and waited. “Sometimes there are things that you pay for eternally.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“Is there any other way to be?”
She had walked out and closed the door behind her.
She loved Parkman like a brother, a father. The debt would be paid one day. She would save his life, or she would take a bullet for him. It would be something to make her feel better about what she had become in those moments of despair.
Until then, she needed to be away from Santa Rosa, away from the vineyard behind her parents’ house, and away from Parkman.
Aaron didn’t understand it when she said she wasn’t coming back to Toronto for a while. She would eventually because the feelings she had for Aaron were intense and wonderful, but right now she needed time on her own to figure out her direction in life.
Most of all though, she didn’t deserve to be held, to be loved, to be in love. Not after what she had almost done to someone so close to her.
The pains of loneliness, sorrow and misery were dangerous and could lead her back to a life of depression, a place she did not want to return to. But what had helped her out of that depression years ago was Vivian and the purpose Vivian gave her. It was Vivian who gave her a life in the first place.
That life had been violent and filled with turmoil, but she always made it out with Vivian by her side. Telling Vivian to leave her alone and disregarding her final message about meeting Parkman almost changed the course of her life forever.
She had almost murdered someone dear to her.
The life Vivian had offered Sarah not only had purpose, but it gave her Aaron, it gave her love, and it gave her peace.
Yet Sarah had chosen to turn her back on that and quit. In doing so, her life had broken down.
That meant only one thing. She could never quit working with Vivian. She could never stop what she was. Sarah Roberts was a vigilante with a secret weapon: a dead sister.
No one else had that ability. Unequaled, unparalleled, Sarah could do wondrous things for people in need, and she had attempted to turn her back on that. She had grown selfish, wanting a life of her own, a borrowed life that offered her Aaron, domesticity and comfort. A man she would have never met had she not been working with Vivian in the first place, doing what she was supposed to be doing.
She started her bike, merged into traffic on Olivet Road, and headed out of town. She was needed in a city called Kelowna in British Columbia, Canada.
Kelowna had the highest crime rate per capita of any city in Canada, so it was fitting she would be needed there.
Vivian’s recent message talked about a huge bridge spanning the waters of Okanagan Lake where a woman would jump to her death during the first week of August. This woman wouldn’t die as an RCMP officer would jump in and save her. Sarah needed to learn why this woman wanted to jump and Vivian told her that the officer who saves the woman had to be antagonized. There was something about this man that needed to come out and as The Antagonist, Sarah was the one who could do it.
On the open highway, she thought about her manuscripts. The books she had started writing about her life and the horrors she’d been through, from the day these dark visions had started to the warning Vivian had given her about the FLDS compound in the southern U.S. She recalled the crypts in Hungary and Ita
ly that led her to the lunatic who kept women in cages in his basement in Toronto. The men from the Sophia Project had hunted her, the Rapturites, and her crazy time in Vegas. She had been the hostage, the victim, and the vigilante.
Recently, with all the mental and physical pain she had endured, it felt like everything was about killing Sarah.
They had succeeded, even just a little bit. A part of her had died. The part that was flowering, opening up, allowing possibilities of love and marriage. Maybe one day that would come back, but until then, she had a mission, a path. Until then, she would work with Vivian, she would deal with this woman from the bridge in Kelowna and she would never deviate from her path again.
