The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “I’m not going to ask.”

  Jessie puffed her cheeks and blew out a long breath. She sat up, swung her legs off the edge of the bed. Lockman noticed even her toenails were painted black.

  “I think I’d rather stay here,” she said.

  Lockman held back a smile. He didn’t want to give her any reason to change her mind. “It’s your choice.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but that’s the choice you want anyway.”

  He stood and padded to the phone. “Let me call the front desk and tell them we’re staying an extra day.”

  Since Creed’s property sat off a rural dirt road with a driveway long enough to qualify as a road all its own, Lockman did not have many surveillance options. He thought about parking down a ways and hiking around the back of the property, but based on the satellite map, most of the acreage was open land. The moment he approached the house on foot, Creed would spot him.

  So he decided on the direct approach and pulled into the driveway. About a quarter of a mile long, the driveway snaked through a line of trees that blocked the property from sight of the main road. Once through the trees Lockman spotted the old farmhouse on a hill, its arched windows like hooded eyes keeping sentry on the surrounding landscape.

  The driveway led to a restored pole barn with the original door replaced by a retracting metal one like you would find on a garage. A muddy pickup truck sat parked in front of the door. A wild turkey stood on the side of the driveway opposite the house and watched, like a disinterested bouncer, as Lockman approached.

  He parked behind the truck and got out. The turkey flapped its wings and wriggled its waddle, but did not give up its post.

  “Hey fella. You waiting for Thanksgiving?”

  The bird cocked its head first to one side, then the other, studying Lockman.

  “His name’s Able.”

  Lockman spun toward the voice and found Victor Creed standing on the porch of the farmhouse. He wore a short sleeved plaid button-up with a pair of dusty coveralls. His ruddy face and tousled gray hair only added to the farmer look and Lockman wondered for the first time if his former boss actually worked the land on this farm. When he glanced toward the acreage behind the house, sure enough he saw a seemingly endless stretch of soybean plants that rolled out to the far tree line at the back of the property.

  “I wondered how long it would take you,” Creed said. “Longer than I expected.”

  Lockman pulled the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle from the back of his waistband—one of several items courtesy of Marty. He trained the weapon on Creed. “You gave me up.”

  Creed calmly raised his hands. “You think it’s worth shooting me over?”

  “You’re god damned right.”

  Creed narrowed his eyes. “I did what I thought was best.”

  “For who? Sure as hell not the interests of national security.”

  “Aren’t you blowing this out of proportion?”

  Lockman’s skin prickled. Out in the open, a breeze cut the humidity, but not enough to cool the heat boiling within him. “You sent Dolan’s vamps right to my door. You betrayed me.”

  Creed staggered. His face creased with new lines formed by old age. “You’re mistaken.”

  “You deny you gave that PI my location? You’re the only one who had that information.”

  Creed rubbed a hand over his mouth. His eyes looked shallow and haunted. “Put the gun down, Craig. Let’s talk this through.”

  “I can talk just fine like this.”

  “Well I can’t. I’m too damn old to have my heart beating this hard.”

  Lockman tilted his head toward the soybean fields. “But you can farm all that land without trouble?”

  Creed’s face cracked open with a grin. “You think I work that field? That’s all rented out to a local down the road. Most I do is work on my tomato garden around the house. I guess the coveralls are a bit disingenuous, but everybody wears them in these parts.”

  Lockman’s ears burned. How could Creed stand there so smug, making jokes? He pulled the hammer back on his pistol.

  Creed lifted his hands a little higher. “Whoa. Honestly, there’s some mix up. Dolan is old news. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “Then those were your vamps?”

  “What vamps?”

  “The ones that followed my daughter to my home and vented it with automatic fire, nearly killing us both in the process.”

  The old man’s face turned ashen. “Is Jessie with you now?”

  “So it was you.”

  “Did I tell that PI how to find you? Yes. But only so Jessie could find you, too.”

  Lockman’s arms started to ache from holding the gun out and tensing his muscles. He relaxed his grip on the weapon and bent his elbows slightly. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “I don’t know anything about any vampires or Otto Dolan. I’ve been keeping an eye on Kate and Jessie ever since you left.”

  “How did you know about Kate?”

  “Craig, I had to keep tabs on all my people. I knew about your relationship with her from the beginning. I also know you were engaged the night Dolan ambushed you.”

  “You’d been spying on me while I worked for you?”

  “Like I said, I kept a close watch on all my people. How do you think we got to your place that night in time?”

  That had always nagged at Lockman, but he never got the chance to ask, and didn’t think it important anyway. What was important was that Tanner and Creed had saved his life that night.

  He felt a jolt shoot down his spine.

  “It was Tanner you had watching me.”

  Creed looked off at the wall of trees blocking the frontage from the road. “He’d kill me for telling you. He never felt right about it after the way you two bonded. But that was his assignment. He didn’t have a choice. If you want to blame anyone, blame me.”

  My boss and my best friend both spying on me. Creed might have called it keeping tabs, but the truth was plain enough—the Agency did not trust its own agents.

  “This is all probably a lot to process,” Creed said.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. If you burned me now, there’s no reason to think you hadn’t done it before.”

  “I never burned you. Whatever happened out in LA had nothing to do with me. If I wanted to send vamps to kill you—which is ridiculous—why bother sending along Jessie, or tipping off that PI? I could have sent them right to you.”

  “I figured we could go inside and you could tell me all about it.”

  Creed’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “You’re pissing on the wrong fire hydrant. Jessie desperately wanted to find her father and I figured I could give her that chance.”

  “You did it all for my daughter, who you apparently have known about and never thought maybe you should tell me.”

  “It went against protocol to contact you unless it was an emergency.”

  “Bullshit. Using a PI to feed a thirteen year-old classified information sure as hell ain’t protocol.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Even if what you are saying is true, Dolan couldn’t have known about Kate or Jessie.”

  “You’re sure it was Dolan’s work?”

  “The last supernatural I tangled with confirmed it.”

  Creed’s arms wavered. “Can I at least put my hands down without you shooting?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Creed eased his arms down until his hands hung at his sides. “Somehow Dolan must have known about Kate and Jessie, too.”

  “How?”

  A cloud rolled into the path of the sun, drawing a shadow across the farmhouse and all the surrounding land. A breeze ruffled the soybeans and carried the scent of manure with it.

  “Only I knew where to find you. I made sure of that. But I wasn’t the only one who knew about Kate.”

  An acidic fire rose in Lockman’s chest, like refluxing battery acid. “You mean Tanner.”

  “An impos
sible thought. But I know I didn’t give you up, Craig. You have to believe that.”

  “Instead, I should believe my best friend is the person responsible for giving me up to the same person he saved me from fifteen years ago.”

  “I can’t make you believe anything. I sure as hell don’t have the answers.”

  Lockman stared into Creed’s eyes. He tried to see any sign of deception. But the man was a pro. Lockman doubted neither age nor time out in the sticks had softened Creed’s edge.

  “I don’t know how I can trust you.”

  “You know I always had your back.”

  “So did Tanner. You want me to choose between a father figure and a man I thought of as a brother.”

  “If I had known leaking your location would have led here, I never would have done it. I honestly thought it was for the best.”

  The gun had started to tremble in Lockman’s hands. He steadied himself. He couldn’t just take Creed’s word for it. There was too much at stake.

  “Let’s go inside, Victor.”

  “You’re still pointing the gun at me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess that means we aren’t going inside to talk things out.”

  “You’ll talk. I’ll listen.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Craig.”

  The image of Ryan, possessed by that specter, holding Jessie around the neck, flashed across Lockman’s inner eye. A knot twisted low in his gut.

  “Yes I do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The thing with Jessie, she just couldn’t sit by and wait. Despite knowing damn well what she was doing was the worst idea of the decade, the thought of sitting in a cheap motel room trying to stomach daytime television sounded worse than death.

  That’s why, right before Craig left, Jessie told him she was off to raid the snack machine in the lobby and not to bother waiting for her. Then she went right to the car and put herself in the trunk, right next to the oversized duffel with all the weapons he got from Marty.

  The ride proved rougher than she had expected. Between feeling every bump in the road and constantly thumping up against the hard edges of the things inside the duffel, the heat nearly made her pass out. She decided then and there never to put a scene in one of her movies where someone hides in a trunk without portraying it realistically. Sometimes Hollywood had no freaking clue.

  Now she sat, sweat soaked, listening to the car tick as it cooled. Craig’s muffled voice had moved away. She couldn’t hear anything but her own breathing.

  She pulled the trunk release—at least she had been smart enough to check this car had one of those—and pushed the lid open. The air that rushed in felt so good she shivered, taking a moment just to breathe.

  She climbed out of the trunk and surveyed her surroundings. Looked like something out of Amityville Horror. Creepy old farmhouse. No sign of life or civilization. The chuckling leaves of whatever the crop was that covered the land behind the house.

  She eased the trunk lid down but left it unlatched. Then she crept up the porch and into the house.

  A smell filled the house, something spicy and earthy at the same time. The front room was empty. Voices trailed out from the direction of the kitchen. She recognized Craig’s. The other voice sounded strained, scared.

  She strode right to the kitchen’s entrance and found her father standing at a dining table with one the chairs turned out and an older man strapped to it with what looked like bungee cords. On the table close at Craig’s hand sat a pair of pliers, a large metal file, a box of nails, and a staple gun. He looked ready to start building something, but Jessie knew better. Those tools wouldn’t put something together; they were meant to take the older man apart.

  “Looks like it’s a good thing I came.”

  Craig had started reaching for the pliers and froze at the sound of her voice. He looked up and his cheeks turned red at the sight of her.

  The old man lifted an eyebrow. “Jessie.”

  That took her off guard. “You know my name?”

  “I know more than that.”

  Craig picked up the pliers. “He’s been keeping an eye on you and your mom for a while now.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep you safe,” the old man said.

  “You’re the one who told that PI how to find Craig?”

  The old man nodded.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Lockman said. “You’ll have to wait in the car.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “You’re seriously telling me to watch my language when you’re about to torture a dude?”

  “Do you want your mother back or not?”

  The old guy snapped his gaze to Craig. “Something’s happened to Kate?”

  “Like you don’t know,” Lockman said.

  “I already told you I had nothing to do with the people after you.”

  “And I can’t afford to take your word for it.”

  “So what?” Something slick and wet turned in Jessie’s stomach. “You put nails through his hands or staple gun his face and you think that’s going to change his story?”

  “You don’t understand how these things work.”

  “I want Mom back. I do. But this isn’t right.”

  “Go outside, Jess.”

  She crossed her arms. “You want to torture him, you’ll have to do it in front of me.”

  “You think I want to do this?”

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking. What did you do to that poor PI to get him to talk? You can’t go around beating on people for your greater good.”

  “I’m not doing this for the greater good.” His face turned a deep red. “I’m doing this to protect you.”

  She sucked a deep breath through her nose. Her insides vibrated. “I’m not leaving.”

  Lockman grabbed the old man by the chin and bent down into his face. “What does Dolan want?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you tell the PI where I was?”

  “So Jessie could find you.”

  Dust motes infested the shard of light coming through the window above the kitchen sink. Jessie stared at the floating swarm as the old man’s words sunk in. “Why would you do that?”

  The old man’s eyes turned to her while Craig kept his chin gripped firmly. He had to speak through his teeth. “Because it was time.”

  “Time for what?” she and Craig asked at the same time.

  “You deserved to know who your father was, and Craig deserved to know he had a daughter.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Victor?”

  Victor Creed looked at Craig for a long while. A screen door led from the kitchen to the back porch. Jessie heard a set of wind chimes clink in the breeze outside.

  “I trained you to be suspicious. I don’t blame you for not trusting me. But you have to believe I did not want any harm to come to you or Jessie.”

  A knot tightened in Jessie’s chest. She did not know this man that talked about her as if he knew her. That didn’t mean she wanted him hurt. She thought about Ryan and felt buried by the knowledge if she ever saw him again, he wouldn’t be the same. Whoever this Dolan person was, he was as much a monster as the things he’d sent after them. She would not stand to see her father act like one of the monsters himself.

  “I believe him.”

  Craig gave her that look that made her feel stupid and young. “You’re the one who wants to make friends with an ogre.”

  “Stop that. Stop treating me like—”

  “A naive thirteen year-old.”

  “—like I’m stupid. I know what’s at stake. I get it, okay? But hurting him isn’t right. And I believe him. His story makes more sense than anything else.”

  “Occam’s razor.”

  For a second she thought he had said something in a foreign language. “What?”

  “The simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

  She star
ed at him, afraid to speak and derail his train of thought.

  His eyes softened. He dropped the pliers on the table and let go of Creed. “You win.”

  She let loose a shaky breath.

  Craig went to removing the bungees from around Creed. When he was free, Creed grabbed at Craig’s shirt. Craig tensed and Jessie could see his fist clench, ready to swing.

  Creed stood, pulled Craig toward him, and embraced him. “Jesus Christ, Craig, it’s good to see you again.”

  And even though Craig had been about to torture the man a moment before, Jessie saw tears in her father’s eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “No, you’re not.” Alec stood in the doorway, blocking Kate from getting out of the house.

  She clenched a fist around the keys in her hand. “Give me one good reason.”

  “Those people could be out there, watching us. If you piss them off, who knows what they’ll do?”

  “How would visiting Jessie’s boyfriend piss them off? Is there something you know you aren’t telling me?”

  He jerked his head back. “What? No. That’s just it. I don’t know what they’re thinking, what they’re planning.”

  “I will not sit cooped up in this house waiting for my daughter to show up. This isn’t like all the other times, Alec. Surely you can see that now.”

  “What if they’ve already been to Ryan’s?”

  A chill dripped through her. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She straightened, inhaled slowly, then let the breath ease between her parted lips. “Then I have to know. She’s my daughter. I would die trying to protect her.”

  He stared at her hard. Looking back into his eyes, feeling their intensity, made her dizzy.

  “I don’t want you to die,” he said.

  “Then grab one of your guns and come with me.”

  He stared at her for a silent moment. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m going, with or without you.”

  He reached out and touched her cheek. “Family is important to me, too.”

  “I know it is. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m the only one who cares.”

  “Let me go get my gun.” He stepped around her and headed upstairs.