by Jim Heskett
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s my car. Do I know you?”
“My name is Susan. You called me, remember?”
I remembered pieces, but it was all so foggy. I had a vague notion of shooting a man in the head in a house somewhere, then snapping another man’s neck while I knelt over him. But that couldn’t have been me, could it?
And a friendly Mexican wearing overalls, but he was a wicked man. I think.
She helped me into the car and we drove through South Point. Grace. I needed to call Grace. I slipped the cell phone out of my pocket and stared at it, unsure what to do next.
“What are you doing?” Susan said.
“I need to call her. I need to let her know I’m okay.”
“Tucker, please, don’t do anything right now. Just wait until we get to my house. It’ll only be a couple minutes, okay? Everything will make sense when we get there, I promise you.”
I put the phone away and suddenly felt fatigued. My eyes were too heavy, and the next thing I knew, Susan was tugging on my arm, and we were parked.
I let her help me out of the car. “Where are we?”
“We’re at a safe place. I can explain everything once we’re inside, but we shouldn’t be out here in the open. Hurry, now.”
With her holding me by the arm, I walked to the front door of some kind of business. Too dark to see the sign. Susan unlocked the front door, then we weaved through a room filled with desks and rows of file cabinets. At the back of the room, she opened three different locks on a large door.
On the other side of that door, we walked into a small apartment. Smelled of soup. She sat me down on the couch.
I heard a familiar voice come from a back room. “Susan?”
Where did I know that voice?
“Yeah, it’s me. I’ve got him. He’s a little beat up and he might have a concussion, but he’s okay. You can come on out.”
A man walked into the living room. He smiled at me. My vision was blurry, but something familiar about him penetrated my haze. I knew this man.
“Hello, son,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
My eyes adjusted as the face of my father, Heath Candle, became clear. Same blue eyes, same bald head.
Maybe it had been too long since I’d seen him, but his nose looked different. Thinner and less bulbous at the end. And I didn’t ever remember him having a cleft chin.
I pointed to my own chin, which did not have a cleft.
“You probably don’t recognize me,” he said. “I had some surgery.”
“Dad?”
He nodded.
“No, you’re dead. Aunt Judy left me all those voicemails about it. She told me I missed the funeral.”
Susan slinked away and disappeared into the kitchen.
He took a few steps toward me and knelt next to the coffee table, then looked me straight in the eye. “I’m so sorry I had to do that. I didn’t have any other choice. Things with the company escalated sharply over the last couple months, and this was the only way to keep me and Susan safe.”
I noted that he didn’t say anything about keeping me safe. Even though my head still throbbed and a dim sense of confusion muddled my brain, that old fierce anger at this man resurfaced.
I wanted to lash out. I wanted to hurt him. “I didn’t care when Judy told me you’d died. I haven’t seen you in twenty years, so why should I care? You’re not my father. You’re just some guy.”
He frowned, and maybe there was a hint of moisture at the corners of his eyes. If he thought crying was going to win him points, he was mistaken.
“I can’t argue with that,” he said, “and I wouldn’t want to. I was always a terrible father, and there’s no way I can make it up to you. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Do you know how long I waited for you to come back? I wasn’t even thirteen years old.”
He didn’t have a comment for that one.
Susan returned from the kitchen and handed me a mug, something warm. Smelled like herbal tea.
“If you’re in hiding here, why was Susan’s phone number on a Post-It note on the fridge at your house?”
“It’s an untraceable sat phone,” she said. “We had a feeling you’d stop by that house, and you did.”
I sipped the tea, which warmed my throat and sent a rush down into my stomach. “You started IntelliCraft. You founded the company.”
He nodded. “There were four of us, in the beginning. That was a long time ago, in another life. Anything else you want to know?”
I felt a little woozy, so I leaned back on the couch. “Why make me executor?”
“I needed you and Susan to meet. I thought if she reached out to you first, you might be wary.”
He was right about that. “Okay, now that I’m here and we’ve all met, what do you want from me?”
“The truck,” Heath said. “Do you still have it?”
“The what?”
“It was left with my attorney. The toy truck I willed to Susan. Do you still have it?”
I couldn’t remember. I checked my pocket and found something cold and metal. Had a vague memory of transferring it into these pants when I’d changed at my dad’s house.
I placed it in the palm of his waiting hand.
He let out a massive sigh as he twisted the little toy in his fingers. Tossing a glance at me, he pushed against the bottom and it separated into two pieces. He threw the top half to the side, then lifted a tiny piece of plastic from the lower half. No bigger than a thumb. He held it up to the light. A memory card.
“What is that?” I said.
“This is something that could ruin dozens of lives.”
He set the memory card on the coffee table and picked up a glass ashtray, then he stamped on the card until it broke into a dozen pieces.
He breathed a sigh. “I feel better already.” He looked at Susan, and they smiled at each other.
This didn’t feel right. Bugs were crawling all over my exposed skin and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Who were these people? Who was I letting protect me?
A dawning realization spread through my mind as I felt a chill touch my bones. Memories flashed by. The night I’d first met Kareem, when he warned me about a bad man in Texas. Grace, at the hospital, questioning whether or not bushy-eyebrowed trainee Darren was, in fact, this bad man.
My chest thumped and the world dimmed.
I had the answer.
“How could I have missed it? It’s you. It was always you.”
“Me what?” my dad said.
“You’re the man Kareem warned me about. You’re the man that, he said if I met, would cause terrible things to happen.”
Heath Candle let the ashtray fall to the floor, sat on the edge of the coffee table, then folded his hands across his lap.
“Well, let’s talk about that, son.”
<<<>>>
NOTE TO READERS
Okay, right now you’re probably annoyed because this book ends on a cliffhanger. I get it. We want all our stories to be tied up with neat little bows. But I hope that you’ll see, just as WOUNDED ANIMALS was a book about hope, and this book is about trust, that book three in the series is about… well, you’ll find out what it’s about when you get there.
Your questions will be answered in the conclusion to the trilogy. You can get BOTH ENDS BURNING on Amazon here. You can also skip ahead a few pages to read a sample of it. Don’t leave Candle hanging…
Now that you’ve calmed down a bit, please consider leaving reviews for this book on Amazon and Goodreads. I know it’s a pain, but you have no idea how much it will help the success of this book and my ability to write future books. That, sharing it on social media, and telling other people to read it. Please help keep my dog stocked with filler-free low-ingredient dog food. He’s a good boy, and he deserves the good stuff.
I have a website where you can learn more about me and my other projects. Check me out at www.jimh
eskett.com and sign up for my mailing list so you can stay informed on the latest news. You’ll even get some freebies for signing up. You like free stuff, right?
Books by Jim Heskett
See the full list of publications at www.RoyalArchBooks.com
For Iggy, because when I made the impulsive and ill-advised decision to go gallivanting across the country to chase after a girl, you made the equally crazy decision to come with me to be my road trip buddy. And a good time was had by all.
And now, please enjoy this preview of the conclusion of The Whistleblower Series, BOTH ENDS BURNING, which is available for purchase on Amazon.
The water burst from the shower head, at first icy cold, then blindingly hot. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those showers; never at the right temperature, always one notch too far in either direction. I’d have to make the best of it, because I was in a strange shower in a strange fabricated apartment in the back of some strange building in Brownsville, Texas. It was an office or some place of business.
I remembered only pieces of how I got here and the events that led to it.
I knew there had been death.
An inch away from Mexico. An inch away from freedom for Omar Qureshi, except he’d been granted no freedom. He’d died because of my failings, and now his death and his brother Kareem’s deaths were both on my hands.
I lathered while the too-hot water steamed the tiny plastic enclosure and blurred my eyes. Cream walls tainted beige with soap scum and rust. Little cutouts in the plastic walls formed cubbies for soap and shampoo bottles.
My head throbbed, probably because IntelliCraft’s thug Glenning had kicked me in the temple. Twice. I could move my jaw, so it wasn’t broken, but the dull thudding revolution of pain cycled through each time I blinked.
The birdshot peppering my shoulder ached as the water ran over it and a diluted stream of blood cascaded down my arm. I’d have to get some bandages. At least the cut on my lower back had healed. How long had it been since Glenning and Thomason had forced me into that car and taken me to the top of Eldorado Canyon? Three weeks? Four?
I finished my shower as my head was starting to shed the cloud, and memories blinked into existence. Running through the cornfield in South Point, trying to escape the redneck Jed and Glenning and failing. Glenning circling Jed and then killing him. Madly running for the border. Omar floating in the Rio Grande. Snapping Glenning’s neck. My half-sister Susan coming to rescue me and bring me to this strange hidden place.
And most of all, my dad, a man who was supposed to have died from a stroke, appearing out of a back room. Making me think he’d been dead for two weeks and then materializing from around the corner.
I slipped out of the shower and left the water running. Dipped into my pants and stole the prepaid cell phone out of a pocket. The first part of Grace’s phone number was still typed into the keypad, since I hadn’t been able to complete the call because of the thug who’d barged into the shack Omar and I were trying to use as shelter.
I finished typing the number into the sticky plastic keys and she picked up on the second ring.
“Baby, it’s me.”
She sighed on the other end of the line. “I’ve been so worried about you. Is everything okay?”
“Yes and no. I’m safe. I have so much to tell you and I don’t even know where to start. I’m sorry I haven’t checked in for so long.”
“Did you get him across the border?”
My lips curled into a frown. “I can’t… maybe I shouldn’t talk about things on the phone. But nothing went as I planned. I can tell you that much.”
Her breath caught. “If you’re safe, that’s all that matters to me. When are you coming home?”
“Now. Everything else that’s going on here, I don’t care about it anymore. I just want to see you and be done with it all. I’ll be on the next flight I can possibly get.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. I’ll be home in a few hours.”
I didn’t want to hang up. I wanted to stay on the phone with her forever, listen to her breathe and talk and tell me I wasn’t worthless. To lie to me that all these failures were somehow not my fault.
I turned off the shower and dressed quickly. My body felt battered and bruised again, and the ache in my head had centralized where my jaw met my temple. Opening and closing my mouth felt like moving an unhinged joint.
When I rejoined Dad and Susan in the living room, they hushed their conversation. My father, with his surgically altered face, the man I hadn’t seen in two decades, was still sitting on the coffee table.
“Are you ready to talk now?” Dad said.
“No, I’m not. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure if I care about you, or IntelliCraft, or any of this anymore. I feel like I used to be able to trust people, but all of you have ruined that forever. I don’t give a shit about this anymore. I’m tired of failing and everything I do ending in ruin.”
Dad shook his head. “Not everything is in ruin. I’m sorry about Omar, but you’re still alive. That’s what counts.”
“I just want to go home and be with my wife, because I’m going to be a dad soon. I can’t put myself in danger like this anymore.”
He looked me up and down. “Is that my shirt you’re wearing?”
I nodded. “I lost all my clothes. Since you were dead, I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Am I really about to become a grandfather?” he said. “I’ve always wondered what that would feel like.”
“It’s none of your business, that’s what it’s going to feel like. I’m guessing that with the whole faking-your-death and erasing-your-past business, you’re not going to be popping by anytime soon to babysit.”
“I understand,” Dad said. “But you should know this: everything I did, I did to keep all of us safe. Kareem was not the pure man you think he was. Neither was his brother. What they wanted to do… it would have ruined many lives. Trusting them almost got you killed, and what do you have to show for it?”
Given the choice between trusting my dad, and trusting in the things magical mystery man Kareem had told me, the path seemed obvious.
“I don’t know if I believe you. About anything,” I said. Then I asked Susan, “can you take me to the nearest airport, please?”
***
Susan pulled into the short-term parking at Brownsville/South Padre airport. As I reached out to grab the door handle, she put a hand on my arm.
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said. “I know you’ve been through a lot. You should never have been involved in the first place.”
I looked her straight in the eye. “What was on the memory card Dad smashed?”
She pursed her lips. “If you knew the truth, it would only get worse for you.”
“Fine. What happens next?”
“Go home and be with your wife. Maybe think about taking her on a long vacation, the kind where you don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Forget about us, and let us deal with it. We’re taking steps here, and it’s best if you stay out of it.”
“I can do that. I didn’t ask for any of this, and I don’t know why I keep involving myself in it.”
She patted my arm, and I left her there. Left her and Heath Candle in Brownsville, where I hoped I’d never see or hear from either of them ever again.
After buying my plane ticket, I had no choice but to sit and wait for the red-eye with no internet to entertain me, since my laptop and my phone were left behind at the house in Three Rivers, where the bodies of Vanessa and Carl were probably still bleeding. Maybe it wouldn’t look so good for my possessions to be found there when the cops eventually came looking for them. Or would they even come?
When I was hiding out in the shack, Jed had told Glenning that he was a sheriff. If he’d told the truth about that, then my laptop and cell phone being at the scene of two murders could land me in a serious amount of trouble.
I had an urge to get a rental car and drive back up the
re, but what if the place was already crawling with cops? A little late for second-guessing now.
I had two hours to kill before my flight, so I tried to nap. Didn’t work. Instead, I let my brain run wild for a bit, attempting to process everything that had happened. My dad and Kareem had founded IntelliCraft over twenty years ago, and then they’d had a falling out. A war between them, for some reason. Kareem had wanted to do something that my dad had been trying to stop him from doing. Dad had said there were four people who’d founded the company. Who were the other two?
I reminded myself that I didn’t care about this stuff anymore. I just wanted to go home. But, if that were true, why couldn’t I stop thinking about it? Maybe I should have taken the chance to get answers from my dad while I still could.
But, then again, how could I trust anything that man told me?
No. Not my problem. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
When I was finally able to board the flight, I’d been hovering on the edge of sleep, my eyelids as weighty as garage doors. I went through the boarding process in a half-dream state, showing ID, scanning my ticket, waiting in one line, then another, then finally getting the window seat above the wing of the plane. Picked up the in-flight magazine and flipped a couple pages, started to read something about the best sushi restaurants in Jacksonville.
I blinked, fell in and out of sleep as the plane started to fill around me. A parade of teenagers in identical soccer uniforms made up about half the passengers. Then a woman with thick glasses sat in the aisle in my row, but the middle seat next to me stayed unoccupied as the rest of the seats went from empty to occupied.
Would I get a little extra legroom? Hope welled up inside me at the idea of such a small victory. Seemed like something I deserved after everything I’d been through.
My head felt heavy and my eyes rolled back in my head. I slipped on my seatbelt, then let my eyes close as my head lolled forward, then to the side. Passenger conversations around me blurred into background noise.
