Explosive Dreams

by Hadena James

  “It fits my mood.” Set was the Egyptian God of Plague and War. It definitely fit my mood.

  “He’s downstairs,” Trevor told me. “I just came to make sure you got dressed.”

  “I did,” I gave him a small smile. He hugged me. I didn’t pull away, a sign that he had become family.

  “That looks good on you,” Malachi said as I came down the stairs. “You look like you’re ready for a night on the town.”

  “We’re not going for a night on the town,” I reminded him.

  “I know,” he answered. Malachi was attending as my friend and as a professional courtesy. Tomorrow, we would be attending a funeral for the VCU agent whose name I had never learned. However, we’d be using the Marshals jet for it, as the agent had been returned to his home town in Florida.

  Michael had a sister, but he hadn’t spoken to her in years. Nyleena and Trevor had made all the funeral arrangements. The sister’s attendance was questionable.

  I climbed into the truck with Malachi. It was fitting that Malachi drove a black one-ton dual-wheeled vehicle with a full sized bed and crew cab. For me, getting in was always difficult. My legs didn’t have his length and it was nearly impossible for me to reach the handle from the ground. Sometime in the last year, he’d had side runners installed, making it much easier, especially in a dress. I wondered if this had been done for me or his many lady friends. I decided not to ask as we drove in silence to Michael’s funeral.

  The funeral home was packed. Another well-kept secret, Michael had friends, lots of them. A woman stood near the coffin. Her hair was a dirty blond, her eyes were bloodshot, and she wore no make-up.

  Malachi and I made our way towards her. She was the only person standing near the coffin. The men of the SCTU sat in the front row. Gabriel caught the skirt of my dress and shook his head at me. Malachi shot her a look, then looked back at me.

  “Here,” Lucas moved over enough for me to slide in next to him. Malachi and the men of the SCTU were all pall-bearers, I was not. In some ways, this made me stand out even more than normal. I squeezed in next to the large man.

  “I’m not a casket carrier,” I whispered to him.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Lucas whispered back. “You belong with us. When we go up to get the casket, you walk with us, then you stand with us as we carry him out.”

  “Is that his sister?” I asked.

  “No, that was his girlfriend,” Lucas told me. “She and Gabriel got into it before the funeral because she tried to have us all removed.”

  “I didn’t know Michael had a girlfriend,” I admitted.

  “None of us did. They’d never met in person. They’ve been dating online for six years though. She found out through the news,” Lucas told me.

  “Did his sister not come?”

  “She’s here, she’s in the back. She collapsed when she first arrived. That’s why we’re still here. Gina wanted us gone, but Alice wanted us to stay.”

  “Who’s Gina and Alice?” I asked.

  “Gina is the girlfriend, Alice is the sister. Alice and Gina got into a fight earlier too. We thought Michael and Alice weren’t talking, it turns out they reconnected after our case in Alaska. She was planning on visiting him for Thanksgiving this year and meeting all of us. Alice was grateful that Nyleena and Trevor did all this. After the funeral, the Marshals Service is giving them our plane to take Michael back to North Carolina for burial. Alice wants to meet you.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  Instead of answering, Lucas stood up. I followed suit, and walked a half step behind him into a back room.

  The back room was pleasantly furnished. Plush furniture with wood accents and large, antique looking legs were the primary decor. A woman and a man were in the room. The woman had long hair, swept up in a French braid. The man was holding her hand.

  “Aislinn?” The woman said my name as I entered the room.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “I’m Alice Brine, I’m Michael’s sister.”

  “It’s a pleasure,” I shook hands with the woman who pulled me into her for a hug. I felt myself stiffen and tried to relax. It didn’t work. I put my arms around her as best as I could and let her hug me.

  “Michael said you weren’t comfortable with touching,” she smiled at me.

  “I have quirks,” I admitted, swallowing and stepping away from her.

  “He was very anxious for me to come meet all of you.”

  “Sorry it is under these circumstances.” I said.

  “We didn’t talk when he became a Marshal, I wasn’t happy with his sudden decision to join the federal government tracking down hard-core criminals.”

  “It is a hard job for a family to understand.”

  “I understand it now, why he did it.” Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. I wiped at my own face, the first tears shed since seeing him lying on the floor of the restaurant. The entire world had been consumed by the darkness and my need to catch his killer.

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” I told her. “Or talk about this.”

  “Michael told me I’d like you. He was right. I do like you. He talked about you every time we spoke. Talked about how big and bad you were and how you always put your team first,” she paused. “I know you couldn’t stop what happened. I don’t blame you for his death. I don’t blame anyone except the man that shot him. Michael was doing his job.”

  I didn’t refute this, despite my brain telling me that no, Michael had been having dinner. It wasn’t his job to die while having dinner. It wasn’t his job to die at all. He was our geek, not our hired gun. Somehow, this conversation was making me feel worse about what had happened.

  “So, I don’t have any family left except my husband, Joe. I’d like for us to become friends. Michael would have wanted that,” she said to me.

  “You can call me anytime,” I told her. “However, if I’m on a case, I don’t always answer and if I do, I may not be real...”

  “I know,” she said. “Michael told me that you were a bad ass for a reason. That’s what he called you, ‘a bad ass.’ Michael wanted me to get to know you and the rest of the SCTU team because he called you his family.” She broke down, tears poured from her eyes, running from her face in streams.

  “We take care of our own and their families,” Lucas handed her a tissue. “You are as much a part of the family as Michael was.”

  “Thank you,” the husband, Joe, spoke for the first time.

  “We’ll leave you to your grief for a few minutes,” Lucas nodded. I gave the husband a fake smile. I touched the shoulder of the sobbing sister.

  We returned to our seats. I sat next to Lucas. Gina glared at me. I ignored her. A slideshow from Michael’s life was still being shown. There was a picture of Michael with his hand swollen and wrapped in gauze. Xavier was next to him, tongue out, laughing. They both looked happy. I hadn’t been at the hospital after Michael had touched the Teddy-bear Cactus. However, I remembered the injury aftermath and the T-shirts they were both wearing at the time. It had been taken in Las Vegas, the two smiling despite the pain of the cactus or the fact that we had been hunting a serial killer.

  Alice and Joe Brine emerged from the back room. They headed to their seats. When they had sat down, Gina moved away from the coffin. She stopped and glared at me, inches from my face.

  “You need to take your seat,” Gina’s tone was harsh. “These are reserved for the pall-bearers and you are not one.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice stand up. She walked with purpose towards us.

  “Is there a problem?” Alice asked.

  “She’s not a pall-bearer,” Gina hooked her thumb at me.

  “No, she’s not,” Alice agreed. “But if the men weren’t freakishly tall, she would be. She’s in her rightful place, Gina. She will walk out with the casket. She will stand by it while they give their salute to a fallen Marshal. She will go through all the ceremony that Mi
chael earned, because she is one of them.”

  That effectively shut up the girlfriend. Alice squeezed my hand and returned to her seat. Gina sort of slunk to another one, a row behind us. She wasn’t actually angry at me, she was angry that I had a better spot at the funeral than her. I disliked her, intensely. Alice on the other hand, I liked. She was a strong woman.

  Prison

  Nicky, this isn’t bad, isn’t bad at all.

  “I can live with this,” Nick answered. He’d been in The Fortress for just over two weeks. There was very little interaction among the inmates. Once a month, they had a movie night with the inmates on their block, but other than that, the only time they interacted was at meals. Meal time was heavily guarded. The inmates were allowed out in groups of thirty. There were about fifteen US Marshals in the cafeteria with others watching. The Marshals weren’t bad either. They treated him with respect. They even let him have science books that were obscure. There really wasn’t much on TV and he couldn’t have a beer, but that was fine. His mind had been wilting in recent years.

  “You have a visitor,” the guard announced. Nick looked at him strangely. He didn’t put anyone on his visitor’s list, how could he have a visitor? Nick stood, placed his hands through a small hole in the glass. Cold steel slipped over his wrists. He knew the drill, everyone did. They made you practice it your first day there. There were two other US Marshals standing nearby. One had a stun baton, the other had an unholstered gun. This was routine, he was expecting it far more than he was expecting a visitor.

  The US Marshals led him past a row of cells. A few of the inmates snickered. A few others gave him a strange look.

  “You’re in trouble,” one whispered. He didn’t know the name of this particular inmate, but the words were ominous, as were the giggles and looks. Who could be here that would inspire such behavior from the rather civilized group of killers on his block? His stomach flopped.

  The cells ended, replaced by solid cinderblock walls. The walls were painted grey. The floor was painted grey with some strange glitter in it. The ceiling was grey. The cells were also grey. It was the primary color scheme of the prison. It wasn’t just a flat grey either, it was a bluish-grey that seemed cool and devoid of emotion.

  The Marshals took him into a room that was bigger than his cell. There was a table, a couple of chairs, and two hook rings. The Marshal escorting him unlocked the cuffs and replaced them with full shackles. The shackles were then fed through a hook ring on the table and one on the floor. Nick tried to move closer to the table, but the chair wouldn’t budge. The other two Marshals left. The remaining one stood in a corner, face impassable.

  “Why am I here?” Nick asked him.

  “You have a visitor,” the Marshal repeated.

  “I can’t have a visitor.”

  “Yes, you can,” the Marshal stated as the door opened.

  The tall, gaunt figure that reminded Nick of Death walked through the door. He nodded at the Marshal, the Marshal nodded back. The tall figure sat. Nick couldn’t remember his name, he wasn’t with the SCTU though.

  “Nick,” the figure spoke his name and it gave him chills. “I’m Special Agent Malachi Blake, do you remember me?”

  “Yes,” Nick’s fear increased. This was the guy he’d shot several times. Why was he visiting?

  “Good,” Special Agent Blake’s voice still had that cultured sound with the unidentifiable accent. “I like to be remembered, especially by people that have shot me. Just ask around, some of the others in here will tell you about it.”

  “Why are you here?” Nick asked.

  “To give you a friendly warning,” Blake said. “For now, you have a nice, comfortable position here and you will, possibly for a long time. However, there’s a guest in here that has it out for you, bad. He’s memorized your picture and he’s just biding his time. The Marshals will try to keep you apart as much as possible, they know it’s going to be a problem, but at some point, they will fail. When they do, they’ll try to save your life. There’s a good chance they’ll fail at that too. Not on purpose, but because this particular guest hates you so much, it’s all he can think about and he has a lot of time to think. More than most of the guests in this place even, because he only thinks about revenge. It’s consumed him so much, he’s barely recognizable as a human anymore.”

  Blake stood up. Nick made the attempt, but the shackles prevented it. He made a racket and fell back into his chair.

  “You could at least tell me his name!” Nick protested, yanking at the hook ring in the table.

  “Oh, that won’t mean much to you,” Blake told him.

  “It should if this guy wants to kill me for revenge,” Nick was almost pleading.

  “His last name is Clachan,” Blake started towards the door. “However, I think it’s his younger sister that might ring a bell.”

  “Who’s his sister?” Nick was frantic now. Blake turned to look at him. His gaze was unsettling. The elevator didn’t go all the way to the top, in Nick’s opinion. The guy had the same stare as half the inmates in the place.

  “US Marshal Aislinn Cain,” Blake said.

  “She’s put away half the people in my cell, why would her brother focus in on me?” Nick was confused.

  “Because stabbings, shootings, even being set on fire, she is tough enough to deal with, it’s a life choice. You were adequately punished for the skin graft, which by the way, is terribly painful. But when your brother is a mass murderer who likes to kill killers, well...” Blake spread his arms wide.

  Nick just stared at Blake. Blake smiled and walked out of the room. Nick turned to the Marshal in the corner.

  “Is that true? Does the US Marshal have a brother in here?”

  “I can’t release that kind of information,” the Marshal answered.

  As Nick was unhooked from the floor and table, he felt sick. His knees had turned into rubber. The FBI Agent Malachi Blake was creepy enough, Nick couldn’t believe he was going to have to watch out for a murderer that might be related to the strange US Marshal.

  “A visit from Blake will do that to a man,” the man in the cell next to him said.

  “How’d you know?” Nick asked.

  “We all know when Special Agent Malachi Blake of the Violent Crimes Unit arrives. He’s a psychopath with a badge. He looks like Death and rightfully so. The guy can kill without a problem, but can’t seem to be killed. I slipped a sword through his ribs and he got up, pulled it out and beat me with the hilt.”

  “I shot him and he still nearly strangled me. If it hadn’t been for Henders with the SCTU, I think he would have.”

  “You dealt with SCTU and VCU?” The man sounded slightly amazed. Nick was dying to see his face.

  “Yeah, I dealt with them both.”

  “You the guy that bombed the carnivals?”

  “Yes,” Nick said.

  “Well done, you have no idea what you got yourself into,” the guy said.

  “What do you mean?” Nick asked.

  “The only person that gets more buzz when they enter is US Marshal Aislinn Cain. She even has a fan club that meets once a month. The Marshals allow it because it’s a very calm gathering.”

  “Why does she have a fan club?” Nick was even more confused now.

  “Because she’s more nuts than Blake, she just hides it better. They’re best friends in the real world and rumor has it that she can control his reins. She’s killed more than he has, even more than the rest of the SCTU and VCU put together.”

  Nick wasn’t sure what to say. He sat quietly, thinking about this new information. His mind found the memory of Blake stalking into the bomb shelter. He’d been there to kill him and Henders had stopped him.

  “Yeah,” the guy said. “Those aren’t your only problems though. See, her father and sister were killed when she was in school. The guy skated on the charge. So, her brother took matters into his own hands, climbed a building and started taking out prisoners in a prison yard. He’s now i
nside. Pretty docile guy, easy to get along with, unless you piss him off.”

  “What pisses him off?”

  “Oh, not much,” the guy said. “He’s never retaliated against anyone that Cain has put in here, even when she’s been maimed in the process. He says it’s just part of her job and she can take care of herself.”

  “But?” Nick felt his stomach sink.

  “But we heard that Reece had died and then been resurrected because of a clerical error. We also heard that Cain took it pretty hard. That might be enough to get on Eric’s bad side. I’d do my best to avoid him for the first year or so.”

  “Eric Clachan?”

  “That’s him,” the guy said. “Did you know before...” The guy stopped talking and made a sound. “That’s why Blake was here, to instill the fear of Clachan in you. It’s probably a mind game with Blake, I wouldn’t worry about it too much, unless Eric marches towards you. Just be prepared if that happens.”

  “You guys make weapons?” Nick asked.

  “Hell no,” the guy responded. “Do you have any idea what the punishment for that is inside here? No, there are a few rules that never get broken. Eric would do it with his bare hands.”

  “Thanks,” Nick no longer felt so safe in The Fortress. “Who are you?”

  “Brent Timmons, better known as the Tallahassee Terror and president of the Aislinn Cain fan club,” Brent told him.

  Nick rushed to the toilet. His breakfast came back up. He’d put the Marshal in the hospital for weeks and he was in the same cell block as the fan club president.

  The buzzer sounded for lunch. His cell door opened. He didn’t feel like having lunch. He felt like staying in his cell for eternity. He wanted to call his lawyer, but phone privileges weren’t until later in the day.

  Shuffling feet filled the hallway. Nick stood and joined the line of inmates. At least they didn’t have weapons.

  His tray was filled. He found a seat at an empty table. A tall bald guy sat down next to him. He smiled at Nick. Nick didn’t smile back.

  “I’m Brent,” the man said. “The guy next to you.”

  “Hello,” Nick said.