The Clearing - DSA Season One, Book One

by Lou Paduano

  He left the narrow hall for the moment, Morgan covering him the entire way. A sound broke through the silence. Ben’s shoes squealed to a halt. Ruth glared at him from the row of freezers at the end of the shop. He shrugged, then crept toward a series of three doors along the wall across from the windows.

  “Where?” he whispered.

  Ruth pointed to the first door, next to the twin restrooms. The word OFFICE was written in red marker on a piece of lined paper and tacked to the hollow door. The humming sound grew louder with each step. Sweat beaded along Ben’s palms.

  Ruth joined him at the door, ready as he gripped the knob. He twisted hard to open it. The sound of a computer fan past its prime greeted them. It was not the source of the humming sound, though.

  That came from a rotund woman collapsed on the floor.

  Morgan was there before they could call for assistance. Her sidearm was tucked away and the med-kit was in her hand before she entered the cramped quarters of the office. Ben backed off, though Ruth continued to train her weapon on the woman, the first sign of life found in the vacant town.

  “Ma’am?” Morgan asked, her voice rising over the pained moans. She crouched at her side and her hands eased the woman to her back for a better view. “Ma’am, can you tell me—?”

  “Can’t you hear it?” the woman yelled, eyes wide and faded to white. “Can’t you hear that god-awful noise?”

  “What noise?” Morgan pressed. She tried to pry the woman’s hands from her ears. The nametag pinned to her chest read JUNE. “What noise are you hearing, June?”

  The woman shook her head and pushed Morgan away.

  “June? I want to help,” she said. “We want to help. What can we—?”

  The woman screamed, lashing out. She backhanded Morgan to the floor of the office. The lanky agent’s head slammed soundly against the desk along the back wall.

  The woman in her fifties was on her feet. She rushed for the door before they could react. Her scream forced them to hesitate. Ruth raised her gun but not fast enough. June slashed at her, leaping from the office like a rabid animal.

  The lead agent cried out. She dropped her sidearm and clutched her sleeve.

  Ben rushed toward her. “Ruth!”

  The rotund woman shoulder-checked Ben, blasting him into a nearby shelving unit. Packages of chips spread along the aisle as he fell atop them. June reached the end of the store and turned for the front. She stopped at the sight of Lincoln circling the perimeter.

  Before Ben could stagger to his feet she was already backtracking for the rear hall and the secondary exit. Ben hesitated to pursue. Instead, he turned to the cursing agent on the ground.

  “Ruth?” he asked as he tried to help her up. “Are you—?”

  Morgan shuffled between them, rubbing her head. “Let me take a look.”

  “Morgan, I—”

  “Go!” she shouted at him. “Get her!”

  Ben nodded and was gone, racing off after June. The back door to the store slammed against the building and bounced back, forcing him to elbow it away before he cleared the frame. June was barely in sight. She had cut through a neighboring alley across the street.

  His feet screamed with each step, but he refused to halt as he charged against the wind into the alley. Garbage bags piled from the week lay on both sides, and he skirted them, leaping over the ones pulled down by the raging breeze cutting through the thin path.

  He was two blocks over when he returned to the street. June was in the distance, picking up speed instead of slowing down. The stocky clerk carried twice his weight and half his stride, yet she increased her distance with each block traveled.

  “How the hell is she moving so fast?” It mirrored his own thoughts and he turned in surprise at Ruth having caught up with him. Her hand clamped against the wound along her arm, but it did little to deter her.

  “I’ve got this,” Ben said, the pair side-by-side. “Morgan should be looking at that cut.”

  “She’s checking out the office. This was more important.” They rounded another corner. “Now where’s—”

  “There.”

  June cut down another alley almost three blocks out and they followed. It curved around the back of an office complex and turned into a shallow parking lot. When they rounded the corner they were on the next street over.

  They found only emptiness waiting for them.

  “Wait,” Ben huffed. “What?”

  “She’s gone? How?”

  A baseball diamond stretched before them. Chain-link fences rattled along the dugouts on the first and third baselines. The outfield extended to another fence in the distance, the forest marking the western border of Bellbrook beyond it. No one was in sight. There was no sign of June’s departure, no clue as to where she could have gone, especially with no cover close enough to reach in the time it took to close the distance.

  Ben wiped the sweat from his brow. His other hand rested along the trunk of a tall oak tree positioned behind the backstop at home plate, the lone shade in the entire park.

  “Where the hell did she go?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A closed malt shop welcomed them back to the main road. Boarded windows and spray-paint decorated the front. The milkshake-shaped sign leaned precariously over the street from a wind storm. Across the street two collections agencies vied for office space, blocked in the center by a private investigator that should have reconsidered using the word dick in bold letters on the window.

  Bellbrook’s story was unknown and remained so for Ben and the rest of the DSA field team. It was a history yet to be revealed, circumstances left to little more than circumspect guesses and theories rather than tales told over campfires at the abandoned drive-in theater at the end of the lane or in the modest kitchens vacant in all homes they’d passed.

  What had happened here? Their one lead since arriving had vanished, the mysterious Olympic-level track star locked in the body of an overweight citizen named June. Her disappearance was yet another mystery in a town rapidly filling with them.

  Ben blamed himself. Had he tried hard enough? Had he run as fast as possible? Doubts were understandable. They were all he carried with him ever since his arrest. He’d accepted Metcalf’s offer to learn who framed him and why, but also to figure out what life he truly desired. Not defined by family or circumstance, but to make the choice on his own and see where the chips fell. Only, he was the one falling, leaping in the deepest, darkest well imaginable. He wondered if he would ever view the light again.

  He wondered if the DSA had been the right choice or if it had simply been the only one.

  Ruth wavered beside him. Her left hand was locked on her right arm, covering the scrape gifted by their missing lead. Her skin was pale and her feet shuffled along the loose pieces of concrete.

  “You all right?” Ben asked. He tucked away his doubts. There were other concerns, including his new colleagues.

  “Yeah,” Ruth said breathlessly. Her knees wobbled beneath her. Before she could fall, Ben’s arms outstretched to catch her. She shook her head, wiping tiny beads of sweat from her brow. The cut on her arm pulsed red, deep and dark. A bruise started to form around it.

  “You want to try that again?”

  She stood and pushed away from him. “I said I’m fine, Riley.”

  Lincoln stared from the parking lot of Mainly Convenience. Catching his growing glare, Ruth shuffled faster toward the rest of the team. Ben held back, his feet aching inside his much-too-small loafers.

  “Right. Nice chat,” he grumbled before following in silence.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised. They didn’t know him any more than they knew the situation surrounding the small town in Ohio. No history tied them together, no story connected them. They were mysteries as well, closed books unwilling to share the past or embrace their future together.

  Hell, did he even want them to? Did he want to open up to these people? What the hell
was the DSA anyway?

  Morgan stepped out of the store behind them. She tore off a set of plastic gloves and dropped them in her med-kit. A small blood sample joined them in the case before she closed it up. Halfway through, she paused, noticing Ruth’s arrival. A bandage was in her hand before a greeting could pass, though Lincoln was beyond that point.

  “Seriously?” he said to the new recruit. “She’s gone?”

  “Lincoln…” Morgan started.

  Ruth pushed through him for the SUV. Lincoln reached for her. “Ruth, what’s—?”

  She knocked his hand away and continued to the back of the rental, where she slammed her fist against the panel.

  Lincoln looked on, hands to his hips. “What the hell?”

  “Let it go,” Morgan snapped. She rounded the vehicle with a bandage prepped. Ruth waved her off, refusing treatment.

  “Whatever,” Lincoln muttered. His eyes, once sharp and cold, turned soft. The moment didn’t last. “That’s fine. I want to hear how rookie of the year over here got outrun by a woman twice his age and weight.”

  Ben shrugged. “One second she’s in front of me and the next? Poof.”

  “Now what?”

  “We look for June,” Morgan replied.

  No one spoke, letting Morgan’s answer hang between them. Lincoln rolled his eyes, then scanned the neighborhood for other signs of life. Ben rubbed at his neck. Tired of the silence, Morgan let her medical bag slam against the ground.

  “She might need our help.”

  “We offered it to her, remember?” Ruth said, her words bitter and pained. “Besides, we have a whole town playing hide-and-seek with us.”

  “Ruth’s right,” Lincoln continued. “We can’t focus on one mental patient.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t, Lincoln,” Morgan said, arms crossing her chest.

  “What do you mean?” Ruth held back Lincoln’s retort with the wave of her hand.

  “She complained of a sound only she could hear.”

  Lincoln held up a finger. “I said mental patient already, for the record.”

  Morgan shook her head, ignoring the man. “What if there was a sound?”

  “The signal.” As she said it, Ruth’s eyes ran back into her head and she reached for the safety of the SUV to keep her upright. Her breath caught in her throat and Morgan rushed to her side.

  “Ruth,” Ben called, attempting to help.

  Lincoln stopped him, hand to Ben’s chest. “Back off, Riley.”

  Ben knocked him away. “Lincoln, I have had about enough of your—”

  “Not surprised,” Lincoln relayed. “You didn’t seem like the type to stick it out.”

  “You sanctimonious…” Ben cocked his fist back.

  Lincoln egged him on further with a deep laugh, forcing Morgan to jump between them. “Guys! Enough!”

  “No,” Lincoln cackled. “Let him. I’m not about to let this newb get us killed. We have to go from Grissom to this guy? No training? No experience in the field and I’m supposed to trust him to watch my back?”

  Ben rebuked, “And you’re such a staunch soldier, is that it?”

  “You have no idea who I am or what I’ve been through, you piece of—“

  A hand fell on Lincoln’s shoulder. Ruth trapped the angry agent’s eyes and locked them in place. “He’s doing the job, Linc. Same as us. Same as Grissom did.”

  Lincoln let it settle over him, not only her words but her presence. She fought to smile and he accepted it graciously. Pulling back, he leaned heavy against the side of the SUV.

  “Okay,” Lincoln said. “So tell me what we’ve got, because near as I can tell we have no damn clue about what happened here or where to even look. What the hell job we working here, Ruth?”

  “The one Metcalf gave us, Lincoln,” she said. “So shut the hell up.”

  This wasn’t the norm for them. The questioning and the doubts were more than those Ben held for an unknown organization and a stranger situation. This was a new situation for the rest of them as well—a new chain of command. No one was used to the idea of Ruth giving orders. That included the strawberry-blond with the bad attitude.

  Morgan intervened, their shared question on her lips. “So how do we stop this, Ruth?”

  “We find the source.”

  “We can do that?” Ben asked.

  Ruth mulled the question over for a moment before springing to the rear of the rental. She opened the trunk and rummaged through the requisitioned equipment. Bags shuffled on top of bags, others tossed into the back seat to make room. Ruth opened each in turn to take inventory. Her eyes danced around the contents of the vehicle, assessing and understanding their situation as best as they could.

  She closed the trunk and sat along the bumper. “We’ll need more tech than I packed. But we can do it, yes.”

  “I saw an electronics store a couple blocks back,” Morgan said.

  For the first time that day the group appeared together, truly together for the next move. It was in Lincoln’s stance, in Morgan’s smile, and burning bright in Ruth’s eyes. She held the keys before her.

  “Let’s move, people.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gadgets and More stood in the middle of a deserted plaza. Shuttered stores occupied the ends. A grocery store took the vast majority of space offered by the complex. They circled the back, the entrance barred by a locked gate and combination padlock. When they reached the front, the foursome exited their vehicle.

  The storefront window had been shattered, immediately raising their awareness. Sidearms were drawn and flashlights replaced the faded sun as clouds rolled in from the west. Ruth took the lead once more, Ben at her side. He did his best to ignore her unsteady steps and the way her hand reached to her temple more often than his own to his tie. He didn’t need the argument, but more than that, his focus was lost on the status of the shop.

  Glass littered the inside, not the walkway outside. “Someone might still be in there.”

  Ruth nodded, cautiously entering. Her leg arched over the window display, cheap toys and games used to draw in the family crowd. Morgan and Lincoln covered her entrance. Ben followed the trail of glass, catching sight of small flickers of blood along the remnants.

  “We’ll take the right, Riley.”

  “Got it.” Ben caught a thin glare from Lincoln.

  “Definitely not staying back this time,” the gun-toting agent said.

  “Wouldn’t ask you to,” Ruth said.

  He shifted left. Morgan scanned the lot for more than the empty cars scattered throughout. Then she followed, glass cracking beneath her feet.

  “Anything?” Ben asked, moments later. Ruth surveyed the nearby displays; the newcomer assisted as well as he could with his flashlight.

  “Not yet.”

  “Couldn’t Zac get a fix on the signal?”

  Ruth stopped. “Not outside the zone. Being in the epicenter of whatever signal is cutting off communication with the outside world allows us to piggyback and therefore figure out its location.”

  “Then why isn’t he here with us?”

  “Listen,” Ruth whispered sharply. “This isn’t your beat, and this isn’t some game. Metcalf might have sold you on that unique perspective crap back in Bethesda, but what it really boils down to is the fact that we are here because we are the ones willing to take the risk. Without question. Without hesitation. That’s the job.”

  “Good to know.”

  “We need to move for the back,” Ruth said, looking past Ben for the others inching down the left-hand side of the store. “I thought I caught a glimpse of some—”

  “Wait,” Ben interrupted. His flashlight beam glinted against something to the rear of the electronics store. It shifted into shadow. “Is that—”

  Shots rang out. With each one, the firing pin lit up a figure behind the gun.

  “Down!” Ben yelled as he collapsed against a shocked Ruth. They slammed
into a display of radio-controlled helicopters, then squirmed for cover along an endcap.

  “Lincoln!” Morgan screamed from across the way. “Get down before—!”

  “Dammit!” Lincoln cursed, blood spattering from his bicep before he fell. Morgan pulled him to cover along another display.

  “Lincoln?” Ruth bellowed over more gunfire keeping them pinned into position. She pushed Ben aside and his back slammed along the metal shelving. He clutched tight to her wrist, locking her with him as a bullet whizzed down the aisle.

  “Ruth, don’t!”

  “Talk to me, Linc,” she continued, unafraid, unaware of the nutcase’s position. Her only concern seemed to be for the man across the store.

  “He’s fine, Ruth,” Morgan answered. “I’ve got him. Take care of this clown!”

  “It’s just my damn arm,” Lincoln seethed. “I’m good.”

  “Ruth…” Ben said, trying to pull her attention back. More shots echoed, sporadic reminders of the threat.

  “He’s—”

  “Morgan has him, Ruth. He’s going to be okay. We’re all okay.” Her eyes wavered. Dusty brown pupils faded to gray in the beam of the scattered flashlights. She shook them awake and Ben turned for the right wall. “Cover me?”

  She nodded, letting out a breath. When the shots died down from the back she stood to fire high and away from the shooter. It was just enough for Ben to scurry down the three aisles for the end of the store.

  Keeping close to the ground, Ben crept farther. Ruth’s cover fire gave him breathing room, and he took it, using the tall display of bargain DVDs to block the shooter’s view of his presence.

  Peering between the racks, Ben found the man causing their current predicament—if man was the correct label. Mess was more appropriate. He shuffled along the open flooring in the back, a tattered white robe swirling around him as he frantically scanned each aisle. Slippers skidded along the tile, and his dark gray sweatpants were stained in various degrees along his thighs and knees. A thin beard covered his cheeks, his hair overgrown and tangled atop his sweating brow.