The Promisor: A Suspense Thriller

by Dustin Stevens

  “At least,” Jacobs echoed. “Should make for easy tracking.”

  A statement that turned out to be true, Reed waiting just long enough to make sure everything was accounted for and more help en route before turning his focus back to the man who had just vaulted the rear fence and escaped.

  The one responsible for the scene in the Wilde’s backyard, all three members of the family extremely lucky to be alive, even if their outer appearance didn’t convey as much.

  The presence of his blood on the concrete around the pool meant Reed didn’t need to go back to the trunk of his sedan for the scrap of cloth they’d used a couple of times already. A much stronger scent than anything that could be found on the bit of camouflage material, he’d used a rubber glove to dab a few droplets from the ground, Billie grabbing up the signature with ease.

  One of the strongest scents found in nature, she had no trouble picking it up on the outside of the fence, snatching it within seconds of being told to search. A clean hit leading them straight shot across the backyards of the two neighboring homes, the path so obvious there were several points Reed himself could clearly pick it up.

  A staggering gait through the thick grass, the man’s injuries barely allowing him to lift his feet as he fled, the trail ending abruptly along a curb less than a block from the Wilde home. A location just around the corner where Reese must have had a vehicle waiting, the final signs of his passing being a few blood droplets on the sidewalk and a smear of crimson on the pavement of the street, indicators so recent they had not yet even dried.

  A quick ending to the search that seemed to frustrate Billie as much as her partner, a small whine escaping her as she circled three times, hoping to pick up some new offshoot, before finally accepting that the trail was complete and lowering herself to the ground.

  A definitive finish, her reaction perfectly matching the assortment of thoughts and feelings Reed felt as well. Hopes for the outcome of the trail that were so quickly dashed, leaving them standing in the street by the curb.

  A spot he made no effort to move from as he swept his gaze across the neighborhood, hoping to spot the flash of a taillight in the distance. The sound of an errant honk or screeching tire.

  Wishful thinking that turned up absolutely nothing, just one more disappointment in a week that had already been rife with them.

  A realization that caused Reed to point his face toward the sky, his hands rolling up into fists. Paying no mind to the assorted injuries marring his body, he squeezed tight, wanting nothing more than to open his lips and scream into the evening air. Bellow with everything he had, letting out the assorted wrath and frustrations he was feeling.

  Scream until his throat was stripped bare and pops of light flashed across his vision, his lungs depleted of all oxygen.

  Standing and holding the clenched pose, he pushed the various images from the previous days through his mind. A flipbook published by Hell itself, ranging from the front walk of Cara Salem’s house to Avery Lawson’s bathroom to the lane to Reese’s cabin.

  Snapshots that slid by one after another, each with increasing speed, before culminating with the scene just moments before. The encounter that got him close enough to share the same air as Reese. Put a face to the name he’d first heard earlier in the day. Even squeeze off a handful of rounds that could very possibly be the cause of the blood dappling the ground around them.

  A confrontation that Reed refused to believe was as far as the night was taking them. Not knowing that Reese was so close.

  And damned sure not after what he had done to the Salems. And the Lawsons. The Benedicts. The Wildes.

  Reed and Billie themselves earlier in the day.

  Drawing in deep pulls of air through his nose, Reed slowly unfurled his fists. Working to tamp down the simmering animosity within, he willed his heart rate to slow. His breathing to even out. Still damp from the unexpected dive into the Wilde’s pool, he allowed himself to feel the evening air against his skin.

  A conscious return to stasis that took nearly two full minutes before finally he was able to shift past what just took place. A way to set aside some of the anger coursing through him so he could transition away from what happened toward what still remained ahead.

  The next steps that would bring an end to whatever crusade Reese seemed to believe he was carrying out.

  Lowering his gaze to meet Billie’s, Reed stayed rooted in place. Pushing every disparate fact and image he could through his mind, he did his best to force it into something resembling a working framework.

  A mechanism for aligning everything he already knew and that which he just found out.

  A process that took an unknown amount of time, Reed standing transfixed in the road, until an incontrovertible truth occurred to him. A host of facts and statements from a multitude of different places over the last several hours all coming together at once.

  A lightning bolt from the clear blue sky that snapped him back into motion, causing him to reach for the damp denim of his rear pocket. Thankful to find his phone still operational, he thumbed it to life. Going straight to the recent call log, he found what he wanted and hit send.

  Slapping at the thigh of his jeans, he called Billie up from the ground beside him. With nothing left to be gleaned from the spot along the curb, he was already heading back toward the Wilde’s home as a familiar voice picked up.

  “You get him?” Deke asked in greeting.

  “No,” Reed replied. “But I know where he’s going.”

  Chapter Eighty-One

  The Wildes looked like a family that was lucky to be alive. People who had encountered something truly heinous and just barely made it through. An exposed nerve, the slightest provocation all that was needed to set them ablaze.

  A state Reed had very nearly let himself descend to a few minutes earlier. One he would no doubt succumb to once the adrenaline and anticipation coursing through him receded, but not a moment sooner.

  All three splayed out on the patio furniture lining the side of the pool, Jonathan was reclined with his head tilted toward the sky. Despite the drying blood painting much of his face, his skin tone had been reduced to a ghostly pallor. His chest rose and fell with short, shallow breaths. More towels were balanced on the left side of his torso, held in place by a kneeling McMichaels.

  Opposite him, Sandra sat clutching his hand. A second towel wrapped around her shoulders, she was bent forward with lank hair hanging down on either side of her face, her features shiny and puffy with tears.

  Crying Reed hoped stemmed more from concern for her husband than any damage he had done while knocking her into the pool.

  Even if it did probably save her life and that of her daughter.

  Behind her on the same lounger rested Lizzy. Seated with her legs pulled up before her, she hugged her knees to her chest, her features almost catatonic as she stared at the surface of the pool.

  The sensor for the submerged light having kicked on, it cast a pale glow throughout the water, illuminating the last few wisps of Reed’s blood still resting atop it.

  “How’s he doing?” Reed whispered to Jacobs. Standing under the partial enclosure of the patio right outside the back door, they stood so they could see through the house. Billie between them, they alternated glances between the front door and the Wildes nearby.

  “Pulse is there, but fading,” Jacobs replied. “Ambulance is on the way, should be here any second now. Additional units as well.”

  “And the others?”

  “Okay, but shook all to hell,” Jacobs replied.

  Considering the events of the last quarter hour, Reed would be stunned if they weren’t. A law enforcement veteran of well over a decade, the instances he’d been involved in something like that could be counted on a couple of hands. Events rising to a level that they still popped into his mind from time to time.

  Vivid images conjured while trying to sleep, his subconscious pulling something far better forgotten to the surface.

&nbs
p; This bound to be another such memory.

  “I take it you didn’t find anything?” Jacobs asked.

  Making it only as far as opening his mouth to respond, Reed was interrupted by a loud knock on the front door. Three successive taps that pulled all sound from his lips as he jerked to the side, a hand reflexively going to his thigh holster.

  A move matched by Jacobs and Billie beside him, all three snapping their attention over to see Detective McKeon standing fifty feet away.

  Recognition setting in, Reed allowed himself to unclench. Lifting a hand, he motioned McKeon inside, waiting until he had passed through the house before making quick introductions.

  A handshake between the detective and Jacobs, followed by a nod between him and McMichaels.

  “I take it Reese was here?” McKeon asked, peering past Reed and Jacobs to the Wildes and McMichaels huddled together by the pool.

  “He was,” Reed replied. “Tried to take out the family, ended up shooting the superintendent instead to distract us so he could get away.”

  “You and Billie able to find anything?” Jacobs asked, drawing them back to the question he’d posed before McKeon’s arrival.

  “Lot of blood,” Reed said. “Almost certain he took multiple rounds, but both the trail and his scent disappeared just up around the corner. Must have had a vehicle parked there waiting for him.”

  “Shit,” Jacobs muttered.

  Beside him, McKeon went with his preferred expletive from earlier, spitting out, “Dammit.”

  Two things that Reed would have echoed as much a few minutes earlier, the sting of the bastard somehow slipping away once more lessened by the fact that this time, the man’s own words had done him in.

  “I know where he’s going, though,” Reed said.

  Snapping both of the men’s attention back to him, Jacobs was the first to speak. “You do?”

  “I do. Something he said earlier, right before you guys came out.”

  Knowing what the next questions in order were going to be, Reed headed them off. Inquiries he would be glad to answer later, but for now they had somewhere else to be.

  “You guys good here a little longer?” Reed asked, directing the question to Jacobs.

  Shifting his gaze between Reed and McKeon, Jacobs nodded. “Sure. We got this.”

  Nodding in acceptance, Reed turned his focus toward McKeon.

  “How about you? Up for taking my car on a little drive?”

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  “Hey honey,” The Promisor gasped. Words that were just barely audible, sounding a bit slurred from the blood rising up the back of his throat. The taste of impending death he’d been fighting off for the last couple of miles of his drive, determined to make it to this spot.

  One final thing he needed to do, letting them know that his promise had been kept.

  “Love you. Miss you.”

  Staggering sideways through the small cemetery, barely could The Promisor pick his feet up. So much worse than even getting across the backyards after flinging himself over the fence earlier, he could feel the last bits of his strength waning.

  A certain sign of the life fleeing him. An outcome he was okay with, that very thing having more or less occurred for him three months before. A realization he had come to while standing in the rain that day, staring down at the twin headstones. The two most important people in his world reduced to nothing more than slabs of rock.

  Any purpose he had taken away, replaced for just a short while by that final promise.

  A pledge that, now complete, left him without any further need to keep on.

  For all the planning that went into the last couple of months, precious little thought was given to what came next. No concern for the fact that he had quit his job. No future travel plans or ideas on how he would enjoy his time once this was all complete.

  This being the unspoken ending he always suspected was waiting for him. An outcome he refused to acknowledge, his total focus on merely getting to this moment.

  Which, at last, he had.

  Lacking the ability to lift his feet high enough to clear the uneven grass beneath him, the toe of The Promisor’s boot caught against an errant tuft. A stumbling block that caused his legs to buckle beneath him, unceremoniously dumping him flat on the ground.

  A tumble for a body too weak to even reach out and catch himself, his elbow cracking against a stone tablet balanced atop the soil. A violent collision that split the skin, sending warm blood the length of his forearm.

  One more injury added to the tally, The Promisor barely noticing as he rested face down on the ground. A pose it would be so easy to maintain, every part of his body wanting nothing more than to stay exactly where he was. Let the assorted pains overtake him, the darkness starting to ebb in from the corners of his vision pull him under.

  An outcome he knew would arrive soon enough, but not just yet.

  Not until he had performed the final thing he came here for. The thing that made him summon whatever he had remaining to draw his elbows up beneath him. Raising his pelvis from the ground, he forced his knees to bend, lifting his torso off the soft grass.

  A flattened crawl that he’d first been taught decades before in basic training, needing it to take him the last few yards. A handful of precious feet back to the same spot he had stood in that day in the rain.

  The place where he had made the final promise, so he could tell them – both of them - that he had made good on it. Things were at last complete.

  Dragging his broken body forward, he crawled a few inches at a time. A slow and pained journey, his arm smearing fresh blood across the grass, every part of his body screaming in protest.

  Lifting his chin, he fixed his waning vision on the pair of headstones before him. His wife’s – and soon to be his own – that he had stood before thousands of times before.

  And his son’s, the freshly carved marble a monument he had not allowed himself to look at for so long. A decision borne of shame, a right he was not worthy of, not after his failure to fulfill his third promise.

  The vow to watch over the young man that had gone unfulfilled. A shortcoming that had put all this into motion months before.

  The taste of copper passing over his tongue, it dripped out over his parted lips. Sliding down his chin, droplets hung from the whiskers lining his jaw.

  Using every last bit of energy he could muster, he crept on an inch at a time, fighting to get to the only place he could think of when fleeing the neighborhood in Gahanna earlier. The destination he’d been fixed on as he drove through the gathering darkness, the trip already forgotten from his fading mind.

  A task he was still in the midst of as a bright light appeared behind him, spotlighting him in the center of the small cemetery.

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Two things had jumped out in Reed’s mind while standing along the curb near the Wilde house. Twin pieces of data that, when brought together, made it quite apparent where to find Brooks Reese.

  The first of those was what the investigation had uncovered earlier that morning. The realization after Harrison Salem said he knew Gillian Lawson but not Avery that the victims thus far were not those directly involved, but people one step removed. The loved ones of the people Reese held responsible.

  Targets meant to render those left behind much like Reese himself, forever cursed to a life without the people they held most dear.

  A line of thinking supplemented later on by Reese firing on Cynthia Benedict’s husband.

  The second item that Reed had seized on was a comment made by Reese himself. Words flung at Jonathan Wilde just moments before Reed and Billie revealed themselves from around the corner of the house, Reese demanding to know if Wilde knew why he’d been doing the things he had the last couple of days.

  Confirmation that this was indeed about his son, meaning there was only a single place he would retreat to after what happened by the pool. A lone location he would seek after sustaining multiple gunshot wound
s, especially after his home had already been breached.

  A site that it took Deke but a few minutes of digging to uncover, that being the small country cemetery fifteen minutes north of his cabin in the woods. A tiny carveout from the corner of a cornfield almost equidistant between the home and the Newark Police Department.

  A drive that was a near reversal of the one Reed and Jacobs made just a half hour earlier. A short trip pushing east alongside I-70 before turning to the southeast, the time cut down considerably with McKeon behind the wheel, treating the drive like a tryout for the NASCAR circuit.

  A sense of urgency Reed appreciated, the time spent with barely any conversation between the two. Both of them staring straight ahead into the darkness, willing the drivers before them to peel to the side so they could proceed. Long minutes with Billie pacing in the backseat, her movement continuing to subsist on the events of earlier and the concentrated anticipation inside the vehicle.

  A journey that lasted just north of fifteen minutes, ending with McKeon pulling up alongside the only vehicle present. A battered pickup truck that didn’t match any of the automobiles registered in Reese’s name, without question bought in cash and kept completely off the books for this purpose.

  A way for him to get around the southeastern quadrant of the state without detection, likely aided by frequent exchanges of license plates.

  Something Reed considered for only an instant, his gaze tracing down the side of the truck pockmarked with rust, before moving to the cemetery ahead of them.

  “There he is,” Reed muttered.

  A ripple of sensation passed through his chest as Reed focused on the lone figure in the small burial ground before them. A solitary man resting on his hands and knees, crawling his way over the patch of uneven grass, framed within the glare of the front headlamps.

  A one-man play under bright stage lights, pretending not to notice the crowd behind him as he fought to act out whatever he still needed to. A final act that Reed had no intention of letting him finish, barely waiting for the sedan to come sliding to a stop across the loose gravel before flinging the passenger door open.