Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller

by John A. Daly

  “So you’re a genius now?” Sean asked with a forced chuckle. “Dr. Phil is the next Einstein?”

  The doctor glared at him coldly. “No, Mr. Coleman. I don’t presume to be one of the historical greats, but I do aspire—at the very least—to acquire the recognition of James Harrison.”

  “James Harrison? The president?” asked Sean.

  “You bloody moron!” the doctor sputtered. “You’re a Yank and you don’t even know your own bloody history! William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison! They were your bloody presidents!”

  “Thanks for the history lesson. I’ll remember that next time I’m on Jeopardy.”

  Something outside caught Sean’s attention, something just around the edge of the broken door. It was a streak of light that lit up the blowing snow for the briefest of moments. It went unnoticed by the doctor who still had his back to the door. The light didn’t seem to have come from the snowmobile. The beam was too thin and the direction was wrong.

  “James Harrison is an Australian bloke,” continued the doctor. The comment drew Sean’s eyes back to him. “He’s the most famous plasma donor in the history of the world. The man with the golden arm, they call him. Harrison has an unusual plasma composition. So unusual that it is used to treat Rhesus disease. He’s been donating regularly for years, and it’s estimated that his plasma alone has saved around two million unborn babies from the condition.”

  The light flashed through the air outside again. This time it was broader in scope. Someone was approaching the shed. Sean shifted his focus back to the doctor. “How can you compare yourself to Harrison?” he asked. “If Norman Booth’s the one with the super-plasma—the plasma that’s gonna save lives—isn’t he the next James Harrison?”

  “He could have been,” the doctor answered quickly. “And that’s what Jessica and Adam told him when they met with him. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be a part of history. So I’m afraid he won’t be sharing the spotlight now. His sacrifice, however, will be preserved in the work that I’m doing. Just as Anna’s will.”

  Sean’s heart skipped a beat. His eyebrows shot up in shock. “What do you mean by that? Anna’s sacrifice? What sacrifice?”

  The doctor hesitated before continuing. “I’m afraid it’s too late for the girl. If I had gotten to her sooner . . . if Booth would have agreed months ago to work with us . . . I possibly could have saved her.”

  Sean’s mouth hung open. He couldn’t form the words to speak.

  The doctor continued. “Her organs . . . her heart . . . Her body’s going to shut down regardless of what I do. It’s too weak, too damaged. She’s on a transplant list, but she won’t reach the top of it in time. People with amyloidosis aren’t prioritized due to the systemic nature of the disease. The postoperative mortality is high as well. Many doctors believe a transplant is a waste of time.” He took a breath before continuing. “What I learn from her before she dies is going to save many others who suffer from amyloidosis, or will suffer from amyloid heart disease in the future. How her body reacts to what I pull from Booth’s super-plasma, as you call it, will provide every answer I need. The others will live because of her, and I will never forget that she gave me the tools I needed to make that happen.”

  “That’s what all this is about, you son of a bitch?” Sean shouted. “Your legacy? That girl’s family thinks you can save her! They think that every single thing they’ve done has been to keep Anna alive!”

  The doctor remained silent.

  “You lied to them! You told them that she was going to live!”

  “Yes, I lied!” shouted the doctor, his body shaking with anger. “Because this work is more important than them. It’s more important than Norman Booth. It’s more important than Andrew Carson. And it’s sure as hell more important than Sean Coleman.”

  Sean watched over the shoulder of the enraged doctor as the door directly behind him was slowly pulled open—not by the wind—but by someone.

  “I was meant to do this!” screamed the doctor in a tantrum. “Do you understand that? I was meant to! Just weeks after I explained my theories over the phone to Jessica, she miraculously found the very type of donor I needed! Do you have any idea what the odds were of that? Do you have the foggiest notion of how rare and valuable a man like Norman Booth is?”

  Sean said nothing. He held his eyes on the doctor.

  “Anna’s death won’t be in vain, I assure you. Others will live because of her. And before you die, Sean, you should know that your sacrifice will be equally appreciated as well.”

  “Phillip!” a man’s voice rang out from the dark.

  Sean’s forearm instinctively covered his own face.

  The doctor lunged against the wall beside him and spun around, keeping his gun pointed at Sean while he directed the flashlight in the opposite direction from where the voice had come.

  Adam’s wet glasses and swollen face were suddenly lit up like that of a monster from a climactic scene in a horror movie. Blood from the beating Sean had given him earlier stained his upper lip. He wore a thick jacket and strands of his otherwise matted hair were swaying in the wind. He held a flashlight, pointed at the floor. He held something else in his other hand. His intense eyes scorched a hole right through the doctor.

  “Adam!” the doctor said nervously, flipping his head back and forth between him and Sean. “I got him. He didn’t get away!”

  With no beams now directed at him, Sean carefully lowered his right hand, inching it toward the swell of his back.

  “I heard you,” said Adam in a hoarse, bleak voice. His head shook ever so slightly. “I heard it all.”

  The doctor said, “I don’t know what you think you heard, Adam, but—”

  “You used us, you son of a bitch!” Adam howled. “She’s going to die. Anna’s going to die and you used us! You told us she would be all right!”

  Thick tears rolled down Adam’s cheeks from under his glasses as the expression on his face leapt between despair and rage.

  Sean’s hand gripped the large wrench wedged in his jeans.

  “Take it easy, mate,” said the doctor. “Listen, there are things I can do for her. Things to make her more comfortable.”

  At those words, Adam’s face recoiled, twisting into something that nearly didn’t look human. A mask of pure fury. His arm rose quickly, and in his hand was the gun Sean had lost back in Anna’s room. The laser sight left Sean’s chest. Sean gripped the wrench tight and lunged at the doctor.

  Two deafening gunshots rang out in the small building, each lighting up the entire room for a fraction of a second. The flickers of light granted Sean a flash of visibility just long enough to deliver a stiff shot into the side of the doctor’s neck. Both sets of flashlights fell to the floor, as did all three men.

  The crackle of broken glass and plastic left only one flashlight operable. It rolled across the floor and came to a hard stop against something. Its beam projected the haunting shadow of an equipment blade across the wall opposite the men.

  Among a pile of moving limbs and loud moans, Sean saw the reddened sight of the doctor’s handgun he’d dropped. Sean grabbed the weapon, then went for the flashlight. Once it was in his hands, it fel
t like a Ruger 9mm. He swung it toward the men just in time to see the doctor stumbling out the door with his arm favoring the back of his neck. Sean squeezed the trigger of the gun, but all the bullets caught were the door quickly swinging shut from the wind.

  Sean quickly climbed to his feet. He was about to take off in pursuit of the doctor when the beam of his flashlight exposed a pool of blood swiftly spreading across the floor. Sean found Adam. He was alive at the moment, but his face was already turning pale as his wide, scared eyes scoured the ceiling.

  Sean fell to his knees, setting the gun on the floor as he held the flashlight between his legs. He unzipped Adam’s jacket and peeled it from his body. His shirt was saturated with blood. A fountain of it poured up through a hole in his chest. Sean placed his hand over the wound, trying to control its flow with hard pressure. He knew it wouldn’t do much good.

  The loudening buzz of the snowmobile engine cut through the wind. The doctor was escaping. Blood streamed from between Sean’s fingers as Adam breathed his last, shallow breaths. Sean lifted Adam’s head with the cup of his hand. In Adam’s eyes, Sean saw defeat.

  “It’s okay,” he said out of instinct, hoping his words brought a little bit of peace to the man who had gone to such great lengths to save the life of his precious little niece.

  Sean didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t know what else a man could possibly want to hear on his way out, even though he’d imagined a thousand times what last words he might have uttered to his uncle had he been there with him the day he was killed.

  In the end, it seemed to make sense that just not being alone would likely be the final wish of a man about to leave this world. So Sean held Adam’s hand, even as the snowmobile sped off into the night. He nodded at the man who lay on the floor, hoping that the realization that he’d see his niece again soon, healthy and in a better place, might be of some last possible comfort to him.

  Chapter 33

  I crawl out into the hallway, dragging my weak legs behind me as my tears fall to the floor. I can’t take it anymore. All the blood. The shouting. God, please let them save Andy.

  I love Andy. He’s so kind to me. He’s like a daddy. Just before I fell asleep in his arms as he read me that story of the fish that wouldn’t stop growing, I heard him whisper that he loved me, too. Please, God. Keep him alive to read to me again someday. He can’t die.

  I can’t breathe well without my oxygen, but I hate wearing the mask. It makes me feel like a kitten wound up with a ball of yarn. It also makes me feel closer to the end of the journey, the one that will put me in God’s arms.

  The farther down the hallway I crawl, the less I can hear them. There’s my Barbie nightlight plugged into the wall. Barbie’s smile is always so warm and fresh. Mommy calls her an optimist because she doesn’t have a single care in the world. I wish I could be like her.

  Uncle Adam’s office door is open. He must have left it open when he ran outside after the big man who swore so many times, the first one who had held the gun in his hands. Uncle Adam was in a big hurry. He didn’t even say goodbye to me.

  I’m not supposed to go into his office, not without knocking first. But since the door’s open, and he isn’t here, it’s probably okay. I slide along the floor until I’m through the doorway. I see the coffee mug I gave Uncle Adam is broken on the floor. I’m sad that it’s broken. I pull the wet pieces of the mug together and look at them closely. I can fix it. I know I can. I’ll use glue. Maybe Uncle Adam and I can do it together. A project. A fun project.

  When I look up, I see that all of the little television sets are turned on. I smile. They’ve always been shut off when I’ve been in here before. Uncle Adam never wants me to know what he’s watching on them, for some reason.

  I look at the different screens, and my grin goes away. These shows are boring. Blowing snow. No sound. There’s something happening in one of the pictures, though; it’s on the TV that’s farther away than the others. I climb up on my uncle’s desk chair to take a closer look. It’s hard. My arms are weak, but they work better than my legs. It’s so hard to breathe now. Maybe I should have my oxygen after all.

  I push aside a glass jar of white liquid that’s sitting on the desk. It’s in my way. A sticky note is underneath it. I like sticky notes. I like the way they wrap around my fingers when I play with them.

  I stick the note on my pointer finger and look at the television again. On the screen is a man sitting up in his bed, looking around the room he’s in. I’ve never seen the actor or the show before. He seems angry and confused. He pulls some tubes from his arms and chest. He must not like tubes around his body, either. He’s acting like they are tying him down, like an angry puppet who doesn’t like his strings. The man suddenly slides off the side of the bed and crashes down to the floor.

  I smile. I always think it’s funny when people fall down.

  Now the man is crawling to his feet and pulling himself up on his bed. He looks weak and wobbly. I wonder if he has amyloidosis, too. He’s wearing the same kind of gown that I wear when I’m in the hospital.

  I play some more with the sticky note and notice that there’s some writing on it. My lips move as I try to read it.

  Hook up propofol before 10:30 or he’ll wake up!

  Chapter 34

  Alex Martinez screamed and snarled in lunacy, repeatedly tucking his knees to his chest and then launching both feet into the car door that faced the forest. With the front of his shirt sopping wet from the slobber that poured from his mouth, he dropped to his back and dealt out the same punishment to the door’s window. As hard as he connected with each blow, the glass would neither break nor even grant him the sympathy of a crack.

  He needed to see what Lumbergh was doing. It consumed him to his very core. He needed to watch the chief kill those people who’d gone after his family. It’s what his mother demanded from the grave.

  He let out a piercing howl when he heard something crack in his ankle and felt crippling pain jet up his calf. What started out as desperate crying transformed slowly into hideous laughter as he succumbed to the binds that kept him trapped in his cage.

  “Lumbergh!” he wailed with all of his might. His body arched like a bridge with his pelvis pointed toward the ceiling.

  When he collapsed back to the upholstery, he lay there for a moment, sniveling and mumbling to himself. He choked a little on his own phlegm as his warm breath lingered in the air. He soon found himself glaring at the dome light that hovered above him. Though it wasn’t on, it seemed to cast a peculiar radiance.

  Martinez tilted his head, examining the glow and wondering what it was trying to tell him. Lights spoke to him every so often. Sometimes they were a beacon of hope and comfort when he felt lost and afraid. Sometimes they scorned him, mocking him for his weaknesses and torturing him for his incompetence.

  This light was something different. Its luminosity was inviting and forgiving. It was calling on him to do something. It was a red light—a dancing red light that became more pronounced as the seconds ticked by. Its glow widened beyond the plastic cover and began spreading its way along the entire ceiling of the car.

  Martinez lifted up his head and twisted his neck, and saw that the light had somehow moved outside of the win
dow. It lit up the falling snow, making the flakes look like hot, glowing lava dropping to the earth from the mouth of a volcano.

  A wide grin spread across Martinez’s face. “You’re beautiful,” he breathlessly told the light. It was drawing him to it.

  He spun on his butt and faced the opposite door. Like the other, he had tried several times to force it open to no avail. But it looked different now—flared up in the almost neon blanket cast by the red light. The light was begging him to try the door just once more. He was sure of it.

  He cocked his uninjured leg and heaved it into the center of the door. When it connected, the sound of a loud snap and the clatter of metal pieces dropping to the bottom of the door panel bought new life to Martinez’s eyes. He kicked the door again and it flew open, helped by the strong wind that then held it wide.

  The entire area outside was aglow in red, fluctuating with passion while the wind reached inside the car and pulled at him. Unbounded exuberance bubbled up from his legs to his neck and he lunged for the door. With his arms still bound behind his back by cuffs, he scrambled to get outside. When he did, he understood that the light wanted him to follow Lumbergh and bask in the fury of his vengeance.

  He bolted across the road, limping as he did. “I’m coming!”

  A half a second later, nearly two tons of metal moving over thirty miles per hour smashed into his body. He felt his spine snap before he was pulled to the frozen ground and dragged underneath the monster he had not seen. Through the immeasurable pain of crushed limbs and flattened organs, he heard the monster’s victorious roar, and then heard nothing else.

  Chapter 35

  Booth snarled as he crashed down to the cold cement floor for the third time. It was as if the large man couldn’t remember how to walk, and the small room he knelt in seemed to taunt him over the deadness he felt in his limbs as its spinning walls and bright lights whirled. His hands went to his face and he felt a straggly beard he didn’t remember growing.