Getting to his feet, he cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and started to move downstairs.
One more thing Ben… If you succeed in this, I can make it so you never have another worry for the rest of your minuscule life. If you should mess this up, I will no longer be there, because I will no longer have any use for you. Now, start looking.
With that, Benjamin McGrath did as he was told.
******
Nicole groaned when she got out of bed. Mornings had been getting harder and harder for her. She wasn’t sleeping well. Either the babies were active during the night or she couldn’t find a comfortable position. With either scenario, she wasn’t getting the sleep she needed to make it a whole day.
She tossed around the idea of lightening her workload and giving a few cases to coworkers. They all offered to help, but she just can’t see the point. She was only a little over half way through with her pregnancy. There were still many weeks before she left for maternity leave. Everyone was already bogged down with cases of their own; she would hate to give them more work so early.
Grudgingly, she got ready for work, stopping a few times to grab her back hip when she moved in a way that aggravated her sciatic nerve. Out of all the bathroom trips, bloating, and achy muscles, the nerve pain was the worst. She couldn’t get up from a chair too fast or keep moving when the pain shot across her backside.
When she grabbed her keys and walked outside, she felt a small amount of disappointment to find that no one was there.
It had been five weeks since that ugly morning with Gemariah. She wasn’t ready to forgive him, and she wasn’t sure if she ever would, but there were still things that she missed. He still called once in a while to check on her and see how the babies were doing, but other than that, they hadn’t had any contact.
For all she knew, he had gone back to his former life and easy living. It wouldn’t surprise her, if he had. She wouldn’t even blame him. That’s just who he was. At one time, she could have sworn that there was more to him, but she just didn’t know anymore.
Now if only she could train her heart to think like her mind. Her mind was ready to let go, but her heart still hoped that he would be waiting outside for her when she left the house. It was as if it broke a little more every time she opened the door to an empty porch.
Shaking off the feeling once again, she got in her car and started driving to her office. When she was only a couple blocks away, her cell phone began to ring, so she fumbled in her purse with one hand to find it. When she finally got it out, she held it up but didn’t recognize the number. Frowning, she hit the screen, and held the phone up to her ear. “Hello,” she answered.”
“Ms. Summers. Is that you?” The voice on the other end was small and definitely panicked.”
“Yes,” she said in her most calming voice. There was a crash in the background, and she heard something shatter. She still kept her voice even, but added a hint of urgency. “Hey sweetie. Tell me what’s going on.” When she heard a deep male voice yell in the background, she added, “Are you somewhere safe?”
The kid on the other end of the line started breathing harder and by the static, she knew that he had the receiver close to his mouth when he whispered. “Dad’s gone crazy. I’m not even sure what set him off this time, but it’s not good.”
She finally put a face to the voice. “Shane? Is that you?
“Yes,” he said on a sob.
“Are you somewhere safe?”
“I’m hiding downstairs in the laundry room, behind the dryer. He’s upstairs, but I don’t know for how long.”
“Have you called the police?”
“Are you kidding me?” he silently shrieked. “He’d kill me if I called the cops. You have to promise not to. He’ll think I did it.”
Nicole had already turned around her car and was headed in the direction of Shane’s house. She took a deep breath to calm herself. Her heart was racing, but she didn’t want Shane to panic. “I can’t promise that. You know I have to call them. I’ll tell your dad that it was me, okay?”
“No, that’s not okay.” Nicole heard a shuffling noise and pictured Shane adjusting his position behind the dryer. “He would still blame me because I called you.”
She didn’t want him to panic, so she asked something else. “We need to think about getting you safe. You’re right by the garage, is there any way that you can make it safely outside?”
“No,” he choked. The garage door’s locked and Mom’s lying in front of the front door.”
She didn’t want to, but she had to ask. “Shane, what’s your mom doing by the front door?”
That’s when he started to cry. “She’s… hurt,” he said between sobs. “Her eyes are open, but she’s not moving. Dad pushed her down the stairs.”
By the sound of it, Nicole didn’t have a positive feeling about Evelyn’s well-being. “Okay. I need you to stay exactly where you are. Do you understand?”
When there was no answer, she felt herself start to worry. “Shane? I need you to answer me.”
“I understand.” His voice was small and sounded so fragile. What she wouldn’t have done just then to take him away from all of it.
“Okay, now I’m going to add the police on the other line. Do not hang up! I want to be able to hear everything that’s going on.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” she repeated. With that, she proceeded to add the 911 operator on the line.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“This is Nicole Summers, Department of Family Services. There is a boy on the line with me. He’s hiding in his basement, while his father is on a destructive rampage. His mother is unmoving after going down the stairs, and I need officers over there now to defuse the situation.” After that, the operator proceeded to ask questions to Shane and her as well.
Nicole arrived at the house just as she heard the sirens. The operator had instructed her not to enter the house, but it was hard when she could hear everything going on.
It was when the first police cruiser pulled up, that her blood ran cold. Through the phone, she heard Shane yell, “He found me! He found me!” There was a loud crack, and the line went dead.
Instinctively, her feet started to run toward the door, but her arm was snagged before she could make it inside.
“You can’t go in there.”
“You don’t understand. I was on the phone with the boy, but the line went dead. The last thing he said was that Benjamin had found him.”
“Benjamin is...?”
Sighing in exasperation, she gestured wildly to the door. “His father! Now are you going to go help him, or not?” she yelled.
“Ma’am, I need you to calm down.” He gestured to his partner. “We’ll go check it out, but you have to stay right here.”
When he still didn’t move, she raised her eyebrows impatiently.
Turning around, they walked cautiously up to the front door. After knocking once the officer that stopped her yelled who they were. When there was no answer, they tried again. There was still no answer, no sound at all came from inside.
She was about to rush the house when a loud crash sounded from inside. The officers drew their weapons and held them low. One shot the lock while the other pushed the door open. When they hurried inside, all was silent.
Tears started to form in her eyes. She always tried to stay detached from the children she worked with, but always failed. Therefore, each time something bad happened to them, she couldn’t help but share their pain. Many scenarios were running through her head about what had happened. Why can’t I hear anything, she thought?
While she waited, another cruiser and an ambulance pulled up. The two new police officers ran inside the house, but she still didn’t know what was happening. The silence was eerie.
She finally heard what sounded like footsteps pounding on stairs and looked up just in time to see Shane burst through the doorway. She knew what he had been through had to have been awful, but she couldn’t ke
ep the smile from her face. He was alright!
He was running toward her, and she opened her arms for him to run into. Together they held onto each other, both crying, and both gripping each other tightly. It was Nicole that broke away first, and she leaned down to look at his face. She tilted his cheek to the side, and frowned. There was some definite bruising, but some were a few days old. Deciding not to bring it up at the moment, she stood and put her arm around him to direct him toward the ambulance.
That was when she heard it. It was a sound that she had learned at too young of an age, and one that she wouldn’t soon forget. It was the unmistakable sound of a very angry human being, an almost inhuman roar.
She turned toward the sound and instinctively shoved Shane behind her. It might not be much, but she would shield him from as much as possible.
Benjamin looked at her and spat, “You!” She watched in horror as he lunged to the right then the left, successfully knocking loose the hold that the officers had on his arms. Then, as if they were a toy set, the cuffs holding his wrists broke and he started to run after her. “You meddling bitch! I’m going to kill you!”
“Shane, run!” She tried to push him out of the way, but he was too busy trying to get in front of her to block his father’s attack.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Shane wasn’t his intended target, she was. The blow to her face was no surprise. It was the pain that she had forgotten. She fell to the ground and for a moment, everything went blurry, but soon came back when he gripped her by the throat and stood her back up. Thinking of her babies, she started to thrash around and kick where she could.
“You couldn’t have left well enough alone, could you?” he asked before letting go of her with one hand and drawing it back into a fist.
She knew another punch was coming and she increased her struggles. Already on the edge of consciousness, she knew that one more hit would knock her out cold. She would lose what little control she had if that happened. When his fist started to move, she shut her eyes.
The punch never landed and instead she suddenly dropped. She vaguely heard struggling off to the side, but couldn’t gather enough strength to look over. Shutting her eyes, her head lolled on her shoulders and she quickly jerked them back open. Shane’s face was in front of hers, but was soon replaced by a paramedic’s.
She once again shut her eyes, but it was too hard to open them back up. Instead of trying, she kept them closed and just listened. There were a lot of different noises around; machines, arguing, and even more yelling. Finally, she heard her name, not “Ms. Summers” not Ma’am… her name. She liked the way it sounded and just listened as she finally relaxed and let sleep overtake her.
******
What the hell was she doing there, Gemariah though? His team and he had just gotten to the neighborhood not five minutes ago. When they pulled up to the house, the last thing that he expected to find was Nicole outside of it.
Another 911 call had been placed involving a domestic dispute in the neighborhood that he had been watching for months. By the information that was given, it sounded as if it was pretty bad. Terah and Gideon happened to be in the office at the time, and decided to tag along when he was going to check it out.
It wasn’t good. Not only did he not want Nicole in this sort of situation, but he also couldn’t use compulsion on her. Just the sight of them would raise red flags in her mind.
With the new information, they had to pull back and see how everything played out.
“This is ridiculous,” Gideon complained. “Women will be the downfall of this organization. First, Malachi goes soft because his piece of ass, and now you. You need to go tell her to get lost so we can do our job.”
“Right. I’m sorry. Have you ever met Nic? No one tells her what to do.”
“You probably could have before you fucked everything up.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, so shut it.” Gemariah felt his temper start to rise.
“Did things just get too good for you? Too good for the man that everything comes so easily to? Let me ask you something… was it worth it?”
That was it! Gemariah only got two steps in Gideon’s direction before Terah got between them. When he saw the other man’s laughing face, he pushed harder against the hand that was restraining him.
Even with the extra pressure, Terah never budged. “Boys,” she snapped. “We’re on a mission now, or have you forgotten?” Her gaze swung between them both.
“You are filled with so much self-loathing that you think everyone is better than you or has it easier than you. Here’s a newsflash. You don’t know shit, and you need to stop talking about things that you know nothing about.” Gemariah was angry, and the words poured out of his mouth.
Both men glared at each other and said nothing. It was Terah that finally broke the silence. She laughed and said to Gideon, “You are going to be in so much trouble when I tell Trinity that you called her a piece of ass.”
All faces grimaced at the thought and then they started to laugh. Trinity was a forced to be reckoned with, especially if Malachi was backing her.
It was the inhuman roar that caught their full attention. All three nephilim reached for their weapons and swung their gazes toward the house.
First Gemariah saw the man that they were dragging outside. When that same man turned his sights to where Nicole was standing, so did he. The sight of her shielding a young boy by pulling him behind her was unsettling. It was not the first time he had seen her put herself in front of a child, but there was one major difference… She had put his children in front of her.
He started to move out from the shadow of the house they were next to when a hand stopped him. Terah leaned over and whispered, “Let the police handle this one. There’s no use drawing attention to ourselves if we don’t have to. It will be okay. He’s restr—”
That was as far as she got before he took off. The man had broken loose and started to charge towards Nicole. His ears were ringing from the adrenaline running through him, but he could have sworn that the man threatened to kill her.
Gemariah was fast, but he wasn’t fast enough. He knew that the only one dying that night was the man that had just punched his woman. Blood. That’s all he saw, all he could smell; rivers and rivers of blood, that man’s blood.
He watched as the man picked her back up. The idiot really thought that he would hit her again? Not if he had anything to do about it.
Gemariah barreled into him, and they both fell to the ground. When the other man tried to take time and assess the situation, Gemariah already knew where he was at, what he was doing, and what his end game was. Don’t stop until the man had breathed his last breath. That was his end game.
Gemariah was on top of him, delivering punches, right, left, then right again. He was coherent enough to pull his punches. Not because he wanted the man to live, but because he wanted to draw it out as long as possible.
Once people realized what was happening, there were shouts, and people were tugging on him. Obviously, they wanted him to stop, but he kept seeing Nicole fall to the ground as blood splattered from her face. Even when he felt the bolts of electricity go through him from the Taser guns, he didn’t let up.
Gemariah eventually stopped punching, and moved his hands so they were wrapped around the man’s neck. He squeezed, and it wasn’t until the guy started to struggle, that he let up. He let the man get one good deep breath in before he smiled and squeezed again. The darkness was so near; it was as if he could reach out and touch it.
All of a sudden, something barged into him and knocked him to the side, effectively breaking his hold. When he moved to get back up, he was held in place by an unmovable force. Gemariah was blind to anything but rage, and was unaware that it was Gideon holding him down until he whispered roughly in his ear. “You can’t go there, man. Once you go there, you can never come back from it. Trust me. You need to be here for Nicci, for your children, for us. Now snap out of it!
” Gemariah was shaken hard to emphasize the last words, and he slowly blinked away the red.
Gemariah moved to get up, but was still held down. “I’m okay. Let me up,” he said without looking at Gideon. He could tell that it was done cautious, but Gideon still let him rise.
There was a flurry of activity going on around them, but it seemed as if all the officers were keeping their distance. I've got my work cut out for me later, he thought. It would take a lot of energy to make all those people think what he did was right and justified.
The EMTs were frantically working on the badly beaten man while he tried to squirm to get away.
“Hold him down! Somebody,” one yelled.
There was no way in hell Gemariah was going to touch him again. He couldn’t be held responsible if his hands accidentally slipped and snapped the man’s fragile little neck.
“Help me,” the man moaned.
What a little shit, he thought. The man beat on everything smaller than him, and now he’s pissing and moaning when the tables got turned. It was people like him that made Gemariah sick.
“I know you’re there. Please, help me.”
“We’re right here, sir. Just hold still for us.”
An EMT answered, but Gemariah didn’t think that he was talking to them. Looking out into the crowd, he examined everyone. Looking deeper, he pulled out there emotions to see if there could be anyone working with him.
When the man started to weep, Gemariah’s attention was brought back to him.
“He left me,” he wailed. “I failed and he left me.”
“Who,” Gemariah asked.
For the first time, the man’s eyes looked up at him. “The voice—” He stopped talking and tapped his head. “He told me to do everything.”
It was as if ice started to flow through Gemariah’s veins. He finally knew who was behind the rush of violence. He just wanted to hear his name, to know for a fact that it was him.
“Does this voice have a name?” he spat.
Before the man could say anything, there was a loud gun shot and blood started to flow from a wound on his head. Quickly, Gemariah looked up and saw a police officer looking down at the weapon he held, with a look of astonishment.
The Divine Whisper Page 22