In the Shadows of Fate

by Rick Jurewicz

  "That's very James Bond of you," said Miranda with a crooked grin. She didn't know if she was supposed to take what he was saying seriously or not, at least until the point where the window came down and he tossed her phone and the battery into the trash can near the gas pump.

  "Hey!" exclaimed Miranda. She pulled the handle to open the passenger side door, and Jake grabbed her by the arm.

  "Miranda, I am serious. When this is all over, I will buy you a new phone. I promise. Right now, until we know what we are dealing with, we use these new phones, and whatever we buy, we pay for in cash. No credit or debit cards. No electronic trails. Okay?"

  Miranda pulled the door shut. She knew that he was right. They didn't know what they were dealing with, and this was the safer route to take.

  "That's fine," she said, "but we are fairly limited on cash you realize?"

  "It'll take us as far as it can. We'll try and figure out something else before it runs out completely."

  Miranda had told Jake on the road to Detroit, before she had nodded off to sleep, what she had learned about the Gale family from the newspaper articles she had researched, and what she had been told in Galestone about the fire and the family's effect on Galestone. She also told him that they were going to find a professor at a university outside of the city, but as to why, she still hadn't said. For now, he was allowing her to let him in on things as they went along, but that would only go so far. Jake knew there was a lot weighing on her, and there was far more that she was not telling him. But if it came to her putting herself in any immediate danger, regardless of how she felt about the situation, he knew he would have to take control and go to the police, despite any protests from her. But for now, they would do things her way.

  They drove two miles further up the road to a small motel off the main highway. The sign at the road said 'ROOMS - $39 NIGHTLY WEEKDAY RATE'.

  Jake went to the office to see what was available while Miranda waited in the car. She opened the glove box and removed the leather registration wallet that her father had left the cash in a few days before. She held it tightly in her hands, remembering how many times he had done little things like that for her as long as she could remember. Beneath the wallet was a silver folding Spyderco Delica pocket knife. She removed the knife and closed the glove box. The knife was about four inches closed, with a round hole in the blade for one handed opening. She held it in her hand and smoothly moved her thumb around the edge of the thumb hole. She heard Jake come from the office on his way back to the car, and placed the knife in her right jacket pocket.

  "We have the room on the end," he said, and got back into the car to pull it to the front of the room with the number '15' on the door. Miranda got out and helped Jake grab their belongings from the car, and they went inside.

  The room was about as basic as you can get for a tiny roadside motel. One double bed, a small bathroom and shower, and a small table beside the bed with a single lamp on it. There wasn't even a television; only a radio alarm clock on the nightstand next to the bed, and a single wooden chair in the corner of the room next to the window.

  All they needed was a place to crash for the night, and this would do just fine for that. This was the kind of place that would attract a traveling salesperson looking to stay for days on end as they pushed their wares on people and businesses in a local area. They would operate the room as their office and headquarters while they went out by day on the hunt and returned by night to fill order forms and process sales sheets. Miranda was surprised to find that even though there was no TV, there was in fact Wi-Fi available in the rooms.

  Jake went back out to the car for a minute and came back with a folded blanket that Miranda had in her back seat. It was an item of convenience to carry in the car, and according to her father, an item of necessity to have at all times when traveling the roads in a northern Michigan winter.

  Jake locked the door behind him, and chained it as well, before spreading the blanket on the floor next to the bed.

  "What are you doing?" Miranda asked him.

  "I'm giving you the bed. It's small, and I have no problem sleeping on the floor," Jake told her.

  "You don't have to sleep on the floor. We can share the bed," she told him. He looked at her apprehensively.

  "Jake, I think we are beyond the awkwardness of this," said Miranda, pulling back the sheets. "It's just sleep. You need your rest as well as I do, and I don't think you are going to get it down there. You stay on your side, I will stay on mine. We don't have to make it weird. Okay?"

  Jake grabbed the blanket from the floor and laid it out on the bed. "We'll probably both need this anyway. It's supposed to get cold tonight."

  "Shit!" exclaimed Miranda. "My phone...it was the only place that I had Aimsley's number!"

  "Did she have a number for the business as well as her cell phone number?" Jake asked her.

  "No. They were the same number. She only had one phone, at least as far as I know, and used it both as a personal phone and a business phone," said Miranda, angry at herself for not getting the number from the phone before she let Jake get rid of it. She wasn't blaming Jake, only herself for not keeping her head more together with all that had happened.

  "Miranda, if it's her business phone number, it's probably listed. Just look it up on the laptop and put it in the new phone. But you can't call it from the new phone. If these guys are after you because of a connection to your past, and she is a part of that past, if they know that you've gone to see her, they could be watching her as well to see if you contact her," Jake said.

  "I know that!" Miranda snapped, unintentionally. "I'm sorry. I have been thinking about that since I tried to call her earlier. I am terrified that they know that. That is why I want to warn her - so she can get out of town and hide somewhere. I just need to let her know."

  "You need to be prepared for the possibility that they already know, Miranda. Listen, I get where you are coming from, but you aren't going to be any good to her if you get yourself caught or killed while trying to protect her. We will go to this professor so you can talk to him about whatever you need to, and then you are going to let me know everything that is going on. If we can't come up with an answer together as for what we do next, then we contact Detective Rice and tell him everything we know."

  Miranda was not used to Jake being the take charge, responsible, level headed voice of reason that he was being now. He had always been tough, but more along the lines of the 'act by the seat of your pants' type of way. Throw caution to the wind, and let it ride. Either he'd become that much more focused and directed in the few years she had been away from him...or it was something more. Maybe he was truly scared, and after all that had happened that day, she couldn't blame him one bit. Whatever it was, and even though it did nothing for her fears for Aimsley, she was letting Jake be her voice of reason while she tried to get her head back on straight.

  She agreed with him, and pulled her laptop from its bag while Jake started to activate and set up the new phones. As the computer slid out of the bag, it pulled the manila folder out with it and the contents of the folder fell to the floor in front of Jake. He leaned over to pick them up, and Miranda quickly knelt to the floor as well to collect them.

  "What are these?" asked Jake, looking curiously at the fragile sheets as he picked them up from the floor. Miranda sighed as she gathered the rest, and returned them all to the folder, with the exception of the ones in Jake's hands.

  "Miranda," he asked her again, looking at her as her eyes lowered to the bed. "What are these?"

  "They are pages...old parchments that Aimsley gave to me. They belonged to the Gales," she told him. "I don't know yet what they are."

  "Do you think this is what those men are after?" he asked her.

  "I don't know," she said bleakly.

  "Are these authentic? They look old...very old. If this is what they want, we should find a way to give it to them and be done with this! Hundred-year-old pieces of paper are not worth your
life, my life, or anyone else's," said Jake.

  "They might be even older than that. Thousands of years, maybe. And apparently to somebody out there, they are worth someone's life. Four people’s lives, so far. I don't care what they are worth to anyone else, Jake. I need them so I can find out what they are. If I just give up and turn them over to these assholes, I may never know what it was that my parents and brother died for. I can't live with that! I need to know what this is all about, and why this is happening. I knew that if I went to Detective Rice with this story, these would have been taken from me and put into an evidence locker, and I may have never seen them again, and never be able to find out what any of this is all about. I'm sorry I wasn't straight with you. I didn't think you would understand."

  Jake looked to the floor for a moment, and then handed Miranda back the two parchment pieces he held in his hands.

  "Miranda, I am trusting you. You asked me to trust you, and I made a choice to do that, because of who I know you are. But this...this isn't the Miranda that I knew before. Even when we would do some of the crazy-ass shit that we used to do, you were always the one that could temper a wild night with a somewhat level head. You're acting without thinking things through. I know you are hurting. But you need to slow down and think about what is happening here. And, at the very least, you need to trust me as I am trusting you. Stop keeping things from me. You need to let me in," Jake pleaded with her.

  Miranda put her laptop back into the case, and placed it on her side of the bed. She pulled off her jeans and slid her legs under the covers, and Jake realized when she did this that he forgot to look away, not that Miranda noticed. She reached over and turned the lamp light off next to the bed, so the only light in the room was coming from the streetlight at the corner of the parking lot. Jake said nothing as he removed his jeans as well and slipped into the bed. They laid there silent and unmoving for several minutes, tired, but so far unable to fall asleep.

  "Jake," said Miranda, in the darkness.

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm sorry. I do trust you. There are just things that I am trying to put together. Things that make no sense right now, that I am hoping will make more sense after I talk to Dr. Vikhrov. I am just asking you to be patient with me, please. You being here with me...it means so much more than you know. Thank you."

  Jake closed his eyes for a moment and just breathed.

  "I would do anything you needed, Miranda."

  Those were the words that came from his lips, but the feelings he had - the feelings that he swore he would not allow to come back to the surface - held a much deeper meaning as to what he would do for the girl lying beside him. Miranda's hand slid to his under the sheet, and he held it gently as she drifted into sleep. Sleep would be that much harder for him to find now, but he would give it the best effort he could. He needed real rest so that he could stay sharp. Keeping her safe was all that mattered to him now.

  CHAPTER 11

  The sun shone brightly on that Wednesday morning, and vehicles of all makes and models flooded the campus of Sentry Technological University.

  Started in the early 1930s, the much smaller Sentry Tech in Macomb County served as an alternative educational facility in southeastern Michigan to the larger Wayne State University in the Detroit area. Not nearly as well known as Wayne State, Sentry originally functioned as an upper class, more exclusive university catering to the suburban families north of the city. Jonathon Michael Sentry, an engineer from a well-to-do family in the Detroit area that made a fortune in the meat industry, found himself deeply involved in the quickly rising automotive boom in the early part of the 20th century. After he inherited the family fortune and business empire, of which he had no interest in continuing, he sold off all of the pieces of the business. After seeing the great potential of the growing auto empires, he invested the monies made from the sale of the meat business into the creation of an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of greater technologies in this new industry. And while the great potential of the university never peaked to the notoriety of other great state and national universities, the campus of around 25,000 students annually did flourish, and maintained itself rather well.

  In its effort to have a well-rounded curriculum, the university originally offered few options for students that were not geared towards the technological professions. However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the university was suffering from a decrease in enrollment as students took preference to the popular University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Wayne State in Detroit, as well as a spike in the student body of Michigan State University in East Lansing. The reaction from Sentry Tech was to expand in many areas to the curriculum, offering more course studies in the areas of psychology, philosophy and theological studies. Sentry became a more affordable school to the student body, and the enrollment numbers began to turn around in the early 1980s, and has remained strong and steady since.

  It was in the later years of the 1970s that Dr. Alexey Vikhrov first defected from Russia and came to teach at Sentry Tech. The Cold War was going strong and fierce, and the United States, although accepting of Dr. Vikhrov's defection, watched defectors with great scrutiny for fear of spying, especially when it came to someone working in education and technologies. Initially, Vikhrov was hired to teach the Russian language at Sentry Tech, but it became quite clear that his true interest and passion was in languages far removed from the Russian language, as well as from technologies. Vikhrov was obsessed with the studies of religious language and documentation, and had master's degrees in theology and language studies, as well as extensive eastern cultural and historical education.

  Vikhrov wasn't anything near the typical professor at a school like Sentry Tech, but to those students who took his elective classes as a diversion from the standard course of studies, he was a popular professor for his great enthusiasm and knowledge of the subjects he taught. In these days though, the classes he taught had significantly dwindled through the late 1990s and suffered even more through the early years of the 21st century. As more and more computer programming and application courses became of greater requirement, less time and interest was available for the types of classes Dr. Vikhrov could offer. He eventually went into a state of semi-retirement, only taking on one or two classes a semester and maintaining a small office space in the basement of the J.M. Sentry Administrative Building. The administrative building is the oldest and original building on campus that now serves not as a classroom building, but holds the office space for the president of the university and several other administrative offices, as well as the university registration and financial service’s offices.

  With tighter budgets and the increased need for computer labs and robotic technology workshops, the basement was the best that an old professor like Dr. Vikhrov could hope for. But he took it all in good humor, recognizing the changes in the world around him, he conceded there was far less interest in the old world beliefs regarding religion, even in a time when jihad was everywhere, in all directions. Religion was the driving force behind the biggest events that appeared almost daily in national and international news, but it seemed that the everyday person had little or no interest in learning about where it all came from, and why.

  He cherished the classes he still got to teach, even when it was apparent that most of the students ended up in his classes to fill a required elective and not really know what they were getting themselves into. But the rest of the time he spent writing, sometimes in the quiet of his home, but most often in the solitude of his lonely basement office surrounded by the multitudes of books and documents that he had collected over the years since he first escaped to this brave new world.

  Jake and Miranda pulled into the parking lot of the J.M. Sentry Building around 10:45 a.m. that morning. Both said very little after they awoke. Jake was up first, and got in and out of the shower and dressed quickly. When Miranda went to take her turn, Jake went across the street to a gas station that served hot breakfast sandwiches an
d grabbed a couple for both himself and Miranda, the whole time keeping an eye on the motel door to make sure no one had tracked the two of them down. No time was wasted in getting on the road after they had eaten. There was only about $230 cash left between them, and even less after they gassed up before continuing on into the more congested city.

  They had no more than the names of Dr. Alexey Vikhrov and Sentry Tech University to go on in their search for the professor, so the main administrative building seemed like a good place to start. The first office inside the front entrance to the building was the student registration office. A young blonde girl, slightly younger looking than the two of them, who was no doubt a student working at the school, sat behind the first desk in the registration office. There was no one else in the office at the time, and a radio was playing low in the background "The Edge of Glory" by Lady Gaga.

  Miranda was the first into the office as the girl looked up from the paperback novel she was reading, and a friendly smile came to her face, which got increasingly wider as Jake appeared in the doorway behind her. Miranda repressed the urge to roll her eyes when she noticed this; instead, she smiled back at the girl.

  "Good morning," said the girl, sitting in the chair behind the desk and sliding her book, some flashy romance rag, out of Miranda's view. "What can I assist you with today?"

  "We were wondering if you could help us locate a professor on campus?" asked Miranda.

  "Alright," said the girl, who turned towards the screen of the computer at her desk and started tapping the keys. "Are you a student here?"

  Miranda looked the girl straight in the eyes sternly.

  "Does that matter?" Miranda asked.

  The girl looked startled for a moment by the look Miranda had given her.