Hidden Justice

by J K Ellem

  Shaw held his position until the sound moved away.

  He slid out of the rock, his eyes still searching the skies. Something had passed overhead, had paused above where he stood hidden in the rock. It was searching for something, looking for him.

  It was gone now.

  Shaw moved on, his eyes glancing up every so often. He could feel it there, somewhere above, hiding, watching.

  There was something here on the island other than the rocks, the forest and the lighthouse. Something that others didn’t want found.

  41

  Maybe he should turn back? Find the hatch and return to the tunnel and continue his search underground.

  Shaw tilted his head again to listen. He could just barely hear the din of the ocean behind him. He swiveled the map of the island in his mind, dropped a mental pin of where he thought he might be on it. The ocean side was at his rear, and he guessed that the channel was in front. If he could make it to the beach, to the jetty, maybe he could swim across the channel back to the mainland. He was a fairly competent swimmer in a 50-meter pool. But navigating the dark waters with a strong current was a different matter entirely. He could easily get disoriented, swept out to sea. Not a good outcome.

  He didn't want to go back to the hatch. There was nothing useful down there and certainly not Abby. He decided to make for the jetty, maybe find something, a lose piece of driftwood or a buoy tied to the dock, use it as a floatation device and paddle across. It would be quicker. He would then resume his search. Force his way into the Hanson Estate and beat the living crap out of Teddy Hanson until he told him where Abby was. Shaw didn’t care anymore.

  Shaw looked up. The sound of angry wasps returned. It hovered above the canopy above, searching for an opening, prodding, angling, spying.

  How the hell did it find me? There was no point in hiding, if he couldn't see it then it—whatever "it" was—couldn't see him. It had to be a drone, heavily modified, a type you couldn’t easily buy off the shelf.

  Shaw stood his ground, his eyes searching skywards. The sound shifted, moved slowly over the tree tops. Leaves rustled. The swarm stopped, the incessant buzzing switched to the squeal of a distressed hog.

  Thermal imagery. Heat signatures. Infrared. Words suddenly popped into Shaw's brain. Now he understood. His body was radiating heat at a higher temperature than the surrounding environment. The thing following him was equipped with an infrared camera. It was looking down at him right now, seeing him as a bright blob of white heat against a colder palette of blacks and charcoals.

  The squeal fell towards Shaw, fast, dropping like a stone, right towards his head.

  He had to ignore the natural tendency for his eyes to focus independently. Instead they had to focus as one, binocular vision. Then he saw it, his stalker, his hidden nemesis, the thing that Annie Haywood had seen up at the Ballard mansion that night.

  The drone, large, spider-like, eight arms, eight powerful blades, zeroed in on where Shaw stood. It had pierced the canopy above, found an opening in the branches and slid through.

  It came at Shaw, swooped in fast then tilted into a hover a few feet away, out of reach.

  Then a sound, an expulsion of air, like a nail gun.

  The trunk of a nearby tree exploded, a thick part of its woody flesh gouged out.

  Shaw ducked and ran sideways.

  Another suppressed shot hissed through the air at him, the drone following him as he ran. It was armed, with a gun, rigged to kill. He dived into the thicket, rolled in deeper, his hands clawing, digging into the dirt and damp mush of rotten leaves and forest mulch, covering himself, plowing in, burrowing his body, smothering himself.

  Then another shot. Branches burst apart near his head, showering him with wood pulp. Deeper Shaw crawled and burrowed, ripping at the earth with his bare fingers, pushing dirt and muck aside with his elbows and knees, angling himself downwards not across the surface, trying to dampen his thermal signature, to blend in with the foliage around him, desperate to make himself invisible from the evil eye in the sky that was pursuing him, that wanted to kill him. A flying killing machine with murderous intent, operated by someone hidden far away, taking pleasure in watching their screen. A virtual game of death with Shaw fixed firmly in the cross-hairs.

  The drone tilted back and forth angrily, the wall of thicket in front of it. Not deterred, it shot upwards, looking for a way through from above, a gap where it could get a better shot off and kill its prey. Its camera eye swiveled back and forth on a gimbal on its belly, searching for Shaw's heat signature. It saw a faint thermal outline of yellow below, slow, laborious, like a big fat slug crawling along the ground through the branches and scrub.

  The drone stabilized, took aim, and then fired.

  A large branch snapped to Shaw's right as a bullet whipped past, the shot going astray. Shaw changed tactics. The forest around him would provide cover. He ditched his idea of burrowing, and frantically scuttled deeper into the forest, hands and knees like steam train pistons.

  His face was covered in mud, his mouth gritty with the taste of rotten leaves, dirt and dead bugs. Onwards he sped, over logs, under drooping ferns, around rocks, until a line of worn and flattened ground cut across his progress.

  The path. He had found the path he and Annie had come across.

  Shaw stood and ran.

  The drone's eye swiveled. Heat motion on the left. It rose fast and slid back through the hole in the canopy above before tracking the warm blur with its eye as it flew a parallel course, trying to head off the escaping blur of white, closing the angle as it sped towards it.

  Shaw bolted along the path, ignoring the sound above him. The drone was closing fast, he was more exposed. It was a risk he was willing to take for the sake of running for his life, not crawling towards his death.

  The forest around him was cold, and he wasn’t cold enough. He only had one option. He ran on, stumbled, gathered himself again then sprinted harder. No damn machine was going to take his life, he was certain of that.

  The forest parted then fell away.

  The drone was close, right behind him now, angling in for a kill shot, back of the head. Shaw pictured his skull bursting apart like a ripe watermelon. The ghastly premonition spurred him on faster.

  He ran harder, legs and arms pumping. Leaves and mud became rock and stone.

  The roar of the ocean louder now, drowning out the angry scream in the sky behind him. Don't look back! Don't look back! Shaw’s brain screamed. To look back is to slow down. To slow down is to die. Shaw resisted the urge to turn and stare his killer in the eye.

  The edge of the world came into view, Shaw running headlong at it. A flat line of black where the land ended in a torn edge of earth. Massive rocks, hard as iron lay below, cold and wet, ready to smash his bones. The moon, swollen and huge, lit him from above, bright as the sun with silver rays that blanched everything blue-gray.

  Another shot whistled past Shaw’s head.

  The earth ended. Emptiness beyond.

  Shaw leapt outwards, his arms swinging, his back arching, trying to do all the things his track and field coach had once told him to do when he did long jump back in college. Shaw needed to jump further and longer than he ever had before.

  He arced outwards over the rocks, aiming for the moon, almost made it, too, until gravity took him and pulled him downwards.

  Another sound, a snap. Pain tore at the top of Shaw's shoulder, searing heat, flesh ripped and burned.

  The sea, a huge boiling cauldron of anger opened up below him as he fell. Shaw breathed out hard, expelling all the air from his lungs. He plummeted downwards, hit a solid plane, and then punched through. Feet, ankles, shins, knees, hips, all shuddered in a painful spiral that coursed up his body.

  It was like hitting a frozen lake, shattering the icy surface before plunging into the frigid waters beneath. Shaw arrowed downwards, a vertical shaft of bubbles and escaping gas trailing behind him.

  No time to gasp at the sudden jolt of
coldness. He opened his eyes, letting the blackness seep in. Spreading his arms he slowed his descent then kicked hard towards the surface.

  A pencil-thin line of bubbles speared past his body. Then another, and another. The drone was shooting from above into the cold frothy waters below, trying to kill him.

  Being shot or drowning in the cold, dark emptiness. What option did he have?

  42

  It took the third slap across the face to finally awaken Annie. One side of her head throbbed, her jaw ached like her wisdom teeth had been removed without an anesthetic.

  Annie looked around. She was in her own kitchen, seated in her own chair, hands tied behind her back. Olga Abramovich stood leaning against the archway, her hands folded casually across her chest and a look of mild curiosity in her eyes. Most of the people she had hunted down were men. Annie Haywood was just her second woman. It didn’t make the job any easier or any worse. It was all the same to Olga because she enjoyed what she did, thrived on it, in fact.

  Seeing that Annie was now fully conscious, Olga pushed off the arch, picked up her handgun from the kitchen counter and stood in front of Annie, the gun held casually at her side. “Jennifer Ryan is your name correct?” Olga looked at Annie as a bug collector would look at a recently caught insect. Annie Haywood was just another living specimen to add to Olga’s collection of the dead.

  Annie, moved her jaw, grimaced, but said nothing, just stared at Olga.

  Olga let out a troublesome sigh, her interest waning in the young woman. She would try a different tack. “Look, I understand what you did, really I do,” Olga said. If Annie was a man, Olga would have skipped the questioning altogether and progressed straight to torture to get the answers she and her employer wanted. Olga didn’t want to resort to that, just yet. She would if she had to. The Matera family had given her free rein to locate the woman, extract where the money was hidden and then dispose of her. No residue. “You stole the money. I want to know where it is." Olga would give her just one more chance.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Annie finally spoke. “I’ll trade the money for my life.”

  Olga’s eyes narrowed. There would be no trade. “I’m not going to kill you. I’ve just been sent to find you and recover the money. That is all.”

  "You will kill me anyway. I know your face now."

  Olga smiled. She had a thousand faces. She pressed the barrel of the gun against Annie's forehead. "I will find out where you've hidden it. But I'd much rather ask first. My instructions are not to kill you. But if you don’t tell me then I will kill you. Do not doubt me."

  Annie thought for a moment. She had no choice. "The money is held in various offshore bank accounts. I can transfer it back."

  “All of it?” Olga asked. “Surely you must have spent some on…” Olga paused trying to find the exact word. “How you say…charade?”

  “The total funds are short by around $100,000.”

  Olga lowered her gun and considered this. Her commission was 20% of what she recovered. Being $100,000 short wasn’t going to affect her that much. That is if the woman wasn’t lying to her face. Yet as far as Olga could determine the woman didn't live an extravagant lifestyle. There were none of the usual purchases she had expected to see. Olga had followed Annie to the outlet mall one day only to find that she'd spent most of her time in Marshalls rather than Michael Kors. The woman was wise not to flaunt her new-found wealth.

  It was a pity she was going to have to kill her after all. Olga brought the gun up and aimed it at Annie’s forehead again. “If you are lying, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  Annie nodded.

  Olga left the room, came back a few moments later carrying Annie’s laptop. She placed it down on the kitchen counter and swiveled it so the screen faced Annie. “Get into it and transfer the money back now.” Olga took out a blade, cut Annie’s bonds then sat down at the kitchen counter, the gun aimed at Annie. Olga slid out her cell phone and placed it on the bench next to her. She would call Lorenzo Matera to confirm that the money had been deposited into the family bank account.

  Annie rubbed her wrists, stood up and sat down at the bench opposite Olga and powered up her laptop. She knew as soon as the transfer was confirmed that she would be dead moments later. She had to figure out a way to survive, to live through this mess she had created for herself. She had to save herself because no one else was going to do it for her.

  The laptop screen came alive and Annie entered her password.

  “Did Teddy put you up to this?” Abby asked.

  Cobb began to pace around the room. Three empty cages sat against one wall. There was a long work bench above which various tools and instruments hung from plastic-coated hooks. His eyes slowly and lovingly went from item to item. Too many choices were a good thing. With his back turned, he replied to Abby. “Teddy has no idea.”

  Cobb’s eyes settled briefly on a speculum. Too soon.

  His eyes moved on and found a ball gag. Perhaps, but I want to hear her screams.

  His fingers reached out and touched a choking leash made of thick leather with a heavy steel buckle. Getting warmer.

  “What did you say about my mother?” Abby asked. As she watched him at the workbench, a cold fear stabbed her stomach.

  Cobb worked his way along the bench in silent contemplation. “Your step mother…” Cobb remarked. He stopped and reached for something on the wall. This will do for starters. He turned and faced Abby, a large studded dog collar in one hand. “Margaret,” he said. He walked back to the cage, pulled up a chair and sat down opposite Abby. “She’s my mother.” He twirled the dog collar casually in one hand as he spoke. “You see, she had me when she was young, very young. You were too young to remember."

  Abby couldn’t remember much. She had been told that her mother had died from an overdose when she was little. That she had severe depression.

  “My stepmother said she didn’t have any children of her own,” Abby replied. “Unless…”

  Cobb smiled. “Yes, your father knew but he kept that hidden from you. Then I went away and was forgotten about, out of the picture, so to speak.”

  “But you’re her son? Surely she wanted to see you. Why didn’t you come back?”

  The dog collar stopped twirling. “Because she had no use for me. Once your mother died, and my mother married your father, she didn’t want me around.” Dylan knew this was a lie.

  “I was told she had a nephew that she looked after once, at the house but not a son.” Abby could vaguely recall a young boy when she was little. However, she had no idea it was Dylan, her stepmother’s son.

  Abby frowned trying to remember. But her past seemed hazy at best. “You came into my room, I think,” she said. “I was just a child.”

  Cobb gave a little wicked smile. He remembered the incident like it was just yesterday even if Abby was too young to fully recall it now.

  “You touched me…” Abby’s voice tailed off. There was a splinter of memory there, buried deep in her mind, yet she couldn’t quite reach it.

  Edward Brenner had walked in to his daughter’s bedroom only to find Dylan there as well, naked. When Dylan turned to face him, it was then that Edward Brenner realized that something evil was lurking behind the young boy’s eyes. Dylan at such a young age had developed a certain malice, a dark side that he had kept well hidden from his mother and from everyone else.

  Standing in the room looking at the boy made Edward think that this wasn’t the first time this had happened.

  Cobb nodded, enjoying the slow look of realization on Abby’s face. “You are my sister, not by blood though.”

  “Where’s my father?” Abby hissed, her anger rising. “What have you done to him?” She had worked it out. The pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. Her stepmother and her son were in partnership, working together.

  “Yes,” he said as he stood up. “So you can see, my mother brought me back to do her dirty work for her.”

  “Dirty work?”
Abby shook the bars of the cage violently as she screamed, “Did you kill my father?”

  Cobb shook his head. "No, I didn't. Nor did my mother."

  "So where is he?"

  Cobb didn't answer.

  Then it dawned on Abby. "My mother…"

  Cobb nodded. "Yes."

  "She didn't die of an overdose."

  "Oh, she did. But it wasn't suicide."

  Abby looked at Cobb in horror. He was too young. It was someone else who had killed her mother.

  “That's right. My mother did. Made it look like suicide. She told me when I was old enough. It was all part of the plan. Her plan. But then there was you, little Abigail Brenner. She got me back to deal with you and your father.” Cobb squatted down, admiring the bars of the cage. Abby’s hands, white-knuckled around them. The cage could hold a 200 lb Rottweiler in full anger. A pissed off, waif-like woman wasn’t going to be a problem. “You see, she didn’t have the stomach for it. For disposing of your father and of you.”

  “She murdered my mother,” Abby snarled. “She’s a killer.”

  Cobb smirked. “Your mother was almost gone anyway. She was taking sedatives, painkillers, antidepressants I was told. My mother just helped her on her way.” Cobb shrugged. “You know, like road kill. That’s how my mother described it. You see it on the side of the road but it’s not quite dead. So you pull over and finish off the job that someone else, in this case your mother, had started.”

  Abby couldn't believe it. A mother and son duo had killed her mother and then her father. Cobb was lying. Her father was dead. Cobb had killed him.

  Abby screamed and thrust one arm through the bars, desperately trying to reach Cobb’s face with her fingers, her nails, anything she could to gouge out his eyes if she could.