by Mayer, Dale
Groaning under the unexpected weight, he lifted the six-foot male onto his shoulder and stumbled through the brush. Sweat rolled down his forehead and collected in puddles under his arm. Christ, this bastard was heavy. He had a slim idea of where to take him, but he needed to work faster.
He had to hurry.
Kali could be here any minute.
He wanted to be ready for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Kali gasped, "Grant. Oh, no. Please, no." Kali couldn't contain the plea floating through the interior of the car. She grabbed for her cell phone and dialed quickly. Cars honked. Kali hit the gas and sped home. The ringing in the phone continued. Grant didn't answer.
Kali scrabbled in the front cubbyhole for Grant's card. She hit the brakes at the next stoplight. Christ. Where was it? Panic set in when she couldn't find it. There. Under several pens. She snatched it up. Good, there were the more formal channels on the card. Kali dialed the first number, wracking her brain for the name of Grant's friend who worked with him.
Thomas, that was it. She asked the person on the other end to speak with him - explaining it was an emergency concerning agent Grant summers. It took what seemed like forever, but finally she had Thomas on the line.
Kali quickly filled him in.
Thomas wasted no time. "Where are you?"
"Almost home. I'm turning into my driveway now." She drove in and parked.
Grant's car was there. Kali sighed with relief. "His car is here. Maybe I'm wrong."
Kali raced up to the front door and opened it. "Grant? Hello? Are you here?"
Silence. "Thomas, he's not answering and there's no sign of him. He's got him."
"We're almost there. Don't go inside. Get back into your car and leave the property. Do you hear me?"
"Too late, I'm already here. Where's Grant's back-up team?" She walked through the house checking for signs Grant had been here. There were none. She headed into the kitchen, lingering aromas of her spaghetti sauce reminded her of long forgotten plans. Kali walked onto the deck and searched the back yard. She returned to the kitchen. Surely there should be men still here. "The bastard must have circled and snuck up on Grant."
"The team is out looking, but without you or Grant there when they arrived, they didn't have a place to start,” said Thomas.
Kali surveyed the room. There were papers on the kitchen table. She walked over to check. On the top of the pile, a short ripped off piece said, "Who's going to help you now, witch?"
"Shit! The bastard left a note on the kitchen table."
"God damn it, stop," roared Thomas. "We're almost there. Let us take care of this."
"As you've taken care of everything else?" Kali snorted. "I don't think so. I happen to care for Grant, and I'm sure as hell not going to leave his fate up to you."
"Kali, don't do anything stupid. I know you want to help. So do we. We're only minutes away. Stay there until we arrive, so we can at least assist you. This guy wants you to do something foolish. But unless he's huge, he's not going to move Grant too far."
"Not likely." Kali closed her eyes. Grim reality had hit home. "That's why he shot Shiloh, so I wouldn't be able to find the victims. Giving him yet another advantage. Taking Grant was akin to taking my assistant. He's determined to have me show my true self."
Kali turned as she heard several vehicles roar into the yard. She raced to the front door and opened it. Thomas still had his cell phone talking to her. "True self? What do you mean? By taking out the dog, he makes it harder for you - or next to impossible, because without the dog, you can't find anyone."
Kali walked up to him. They exchanged grim smiles at each other as they put their cell phones away. The other men collected in a group around them.
"He thinks I'm using black magic, evil," she said. "He called me a witch in his note."
"Why is that?" Several men stood listening in on the conversation. She didn't think Grant would have told them about her. Except maybe Thomas.
Kali was beyond caring. "Some of you saw Shiloh and me in action earlier. But it's not always Shiloh who does the finding. I do too."
The men stared at her.
"Shiloh isn't a rescue dog?"
"Yes, she is and a damn good one. But I usually pick up on the victims before her. She does well when Mother Nature causes chaos. My specialty is when men are responsible for the damage."
"Because you're psychic?" Doubt and a lingering skepticism were evident.
"I'm not really psychic. More a barometer for violence." Kali shrugged. "Shiloh and I work well together as a team. But I have and will work without her, if I have to. Like now," she added grimly. "So if you don't mind, park your doubts and leave your questions for later. Let's find Grant before he's buried alive."
The men winced at her words, but they all spread out, ready to go.
Thomas stood beside her. "Any idea where to start looking?"
Kali turned to search the area. She was Grant's only chance. If she could just find it. That faint trail of violent energy. A faint sprinkle, like sunlight on dust, only much darker colored, floated to the right of the house. "Yeah, he's headed to the beach."
"Let's go then."
Kali summoned The Sight, easily picking up the scattered energy. She pointed the way and took off at a dead run. She could see the trail flattened through the woods in her mind's eye but hadn't caught sight of the actual trail in the woods yet. She didn't need to. A few hundred yards took her to the steep stairs. Energy fluttered at the top, then continued along the top of the cliff. The stairs had been considered but had eventually been tossed. No. She opened her eyes and turned left. "This way. Hurry."
Kali crashed through the bush, knowing that sneaking was better than charging like an elephant, but she couldn't stop herself. Urgency rode her hard.
The men crashed equally noisily behind her.
She came to an abrupt stop. Clouds of energy billowed atop of the bushes. She spun around and held up a hand to stop the charge behind her. Thomas walked quietly to her. "What's up?"
She bent to his ear, whispering, "He's just up past the bend. I recognize the place. The cliff is very unstable here."
Thomas stared in the direction she mentioned. "So how do you know he's up there?"
Kali shot him a withering look. "I can see the energy."
He stared at her, a quizzical look on his face, then he said, "We'll fan out and come in from several directions."
"Quietly," she cautioned. Kali moved forward ten feet, twenty feet and then thirty feet. She stopped. A voice could be heard accompanying digging sounds.
"Stupid bastard. Do you think I hadn't noticed how she looks at you or you at her? Huh? Do you know how long I've been trying to get her myself? God damn it. I let my marriage disintegrate for her. Did she care? Hell, no."
Kali sat back. A pain she knew would be worse than anything she'd ever experienced unfurled in her heart. Her soul was already splintering with the horror of recognition. "It can't be. Please not." Pain and grief clogged her throat as the killer's voice roiled through her.
"Stupid bitches. Her and that dog. Witches, both of them. She had me cuckolded for years, caught up in her spell. Believing in her. I was an idiot. Not now. Not anymore. I've finally seen through her trickery."
Kali peered through the brush. The killer had stopped shoveling, to catch his breath. She gazed on the face of the man she'd considered her best friend for the last decade. His words, each a fresh stab into her soul.
"I guess I'm not the brightest star around, but I prayed to God for help. I'd been upset because it seemed like nothing I did ever changed anything. Not with Kali, not with the disasters. If anything, it seemed like the more people we rescued, the more that needed rescuing."
He leaned over the hollow, his breath raspy and loud. "I didn't get it. Then finally I figured it out in Mexico." The shovel, full of dirt, lifted again. "I had a light bulb moment. The reason things never changed is that I wasn't doing the right work. God crea
ted these disasters to call his people home. Natural disasters - that's because they are naturally occurring - as in God's will. I wasn't supposed to rescue the buried victims. I was supposed to help God and finish the job on those people God missed."
There was no longer any doubt.
The crazed killer...the one who'd kidnapped and killed so many people, was her best friend...her dead best friend. Oh God, the same person who'd killed little Melanie and almost killed Julie, was a friend to them all.
Brad.
Kali burrowed her head in her hands. Had Brad killed other people, people he was called to save? Brad's monologue continued. Kali strained to hear.
"The final light bulb moment came when I realized life was supposed to be good - fun. I was supposed to enjoy my life. I hated to go home to my bitch of a wife. I was suffering in silence with unrequited love for the witch, and working my ass off to boot. That's no life for one of God's special workers. Not anymore of that. Life is fun now. This work is a joy." He laughed, pausing to wipe the sweat from his brow. "This is great. I'm dead to the world and you'll be...just dead."
Kali groaned softly.
"And that bitch will get to know my old world. A sense of failure. Knowing that nothing she does ever changes anything."
Kali's heart shattered. Brad's mind had broken. He'd morphed into this bizarre killer. She couldn't even begin to imagine who lay in the morgue wearing Brad's toe tag. His words reverberated in her soul. So much emptiness, so much pain, so much evil.
And he had Grant.
Creeping closer, Kali wished for the first time in her life that she had a weapon of her own. She was relieved to see men working their way around the area. She hoped they killed him. She needed to know that he could never hurt anyone ever again.
Rising up slightly, she tried to locate Grant, but there was no sign of him. There were too many trees in the way. Enough. She had to help Grant.
She stood up, calling out, "It's me you want. So why do you keep attacking everyone else? Brad, why are you hurting all these people?"
All the while talking, she searched the area for any sign of Grant. Again nothing. Except a gun tossed off to one side. Her heart sank. He'd already been buried. Without air, he had only minutes. Who knew if Grant rated an oxygen tank this time? Billowing clouds of grey energy engulfed the area. Signs of violence in progress. Kali couldn't see through it to pinpoint Grant's location.
Brad stepped back, his chest heaving, shock evident on his face. "No, you can't be here. Not yet."
Approaching warily, Kali sought the right words. "Of course it's possible. I'm better than you."
She watched warily as his face turned purple and red, the veins on his temple bulging.
"No. I'm better. I've proved it."
"Proved what? That you're weak and useless and you like attacking innocent people?"
Anger speared his voice. "Innocent? They are not. You don't understand, but then how could you? You don't know I'm doing God's work. But you think these people deserve to be saved. They were supposed to die in the first place." His voice rose until he practically screamed the last words.
Kali stared at him. So that's what a broken mind looked like. Horrible.
"They deserved to die like this? Suffering for days? What disaster did Grant survive? You're only killing him because of me. How many other people have you killed?" She paused, whispering softly, "You're crazy."
But not softly enough.
"I am not crazy," he screamed. "I'm sending these people home my way. Sending them back to the way they were supposed to have died - like all the others. I don't know how many I helped God to take home. I didn't kill them, God did. I'm just putting them to the same situation they shouldn't have gotten out of. God's will must be done." He yelled at her.
Then suddenly, he stopped talking.
He'd seen the men. "You're too late. You'll always be too late."
Kali stiffened. "What have you done?" She ran at him, screaming in fury.
He took one look at her, at the men, then turned and ran. Kali gave chase as men crashed past her. Kali stopped in her tracks as a horrible scream filled the air. Her world had collapsed. She knew she'd need to deal with Brad's betrayal, but right now the only feeling rushing through her was relief. She had to find Grant. Kali raced into the small clearing in a panic.
"Hurry," she yelled at the top of her lungs. "He doesn't have much time."
She studied the area where Brad had delivered his monologue. Her pulse slammed against her veins, urging her to action. But what to do? Where? The area was scuffed, the bank intact. She'd assumed he'd been digging a hole or burying Grant. Purple pulsing energy filled the air. Brush covered the area. There was no bare ground, no freshly turned dirt. Nothing.
Kali frowned. The twisted threads lifted higher, showing her one point more concentrated. Close to the bank but even closer to the edge of the bushes. She brushed past a thick clump of bushes only to have them sway and shift as she moved. Shit, he'd pulled that trick again. The large willow tumbleweed thing was tossed to the side. Kali collapsed to her knees and started to dig.
"Oh, God. Thomas," she called out. "Over here."
Men joined her. Frantic hands dug into the loose sand. There could only be a light layer. He hadn't had time to do more than that. Kali felt cloth, panic giving her strength; she grabbed tight and stood up, using her legs to pull him free.
Grant's chest lifted, his head flopped back.
"Kali, move back. Let the medical team look after him."
Kali shook her head, but found herself lifted out of the way. Medical team? A stretcher and medical equipment arrived as more men poured in from all areas.
Within minutes Grant was loaded up and being carted off.
Kali followed behind. The path was not wide enough to walk at his side, but she was close enough to hear his voice as he spoke with his team. She shook with relief. Tears, the seemingly ever-present tears, burned the corners of her eyes.
It was over. Kali stood in shock, the world she knew splintered. It wasn't the time to break down, she knew that. She had to follow Grant, make sure he was safe. From the bits of conversation going on around her, she'd understood Brad was gone. Having gone over the cliff to the rocks below. The hillside had sent enough dirt and rock on top to require equipment and men to recover his body. Fitting in a way.
The real Brad, her best friend Brad, had disappeared months ago. Somehow during the Mexico disaster, when she'd internalized her emotions to deal with that loss, the Brad she'd known had fractured, becoming someone else.
She'd mourn the loss of her friend. She could only be grateful for the death of the madman he'd become. Maybe in this way she could find closure.
She followed the path back to her house, blind to the other men. She tripped and almost fell twice, except for Thomas who grabbed her. "Come on, Kali, let's get you up to the house to rest. Grant's alive and he'll pull through."
"Will he?"
"Definitely. Let's get you to the ambulance so you can see for yourself. They'll take him in and check him over, but he looks good." Thomas grinned down at her. "You did good."
He led her to the ambulance, where the paramedics were opening the back doors.
Relief lightened her heart. "I'm just glad it's all over.”
"So are we. So are we."
She worked her way up the group of men clustered around Grant. Grant, who didn't seem to think he should be strapped on a gurney and definitely not amiable to being loaded into the ambulance.
She grinned. His anger and frustration was music to her ears.
"Good to know the knock on your head didn't dent your temper."
The men opened up a pathway for her. Grant caught sight of her and immediately calmed down. Well, almost. The narrow gaze swept her from her head to her toes and back again. "About time you showed up."
She laughed. "I've been here all along. Just waiting for you to wake up from your nap."
"Nap?" his gaze lit with humor.
"Is that what you think I've been doing all afternoon?"
"Well, I know I've been working hard. Look at you." She motioned to the stretcher. "Doesn't look like work at all."
"And that's why they should let me get up and get back to it."
She shook her head, a fat grin on her face. "Not happening. Go to the hospital and get checked over. I'll meet you there."
"I'm fine. I don't-"
Kali sliced the air with her hand. "Not going there. Just like you were pissed at me for leaving, I'm going to get pissed at you if you don't get checked out." She leaned forward and whispered gently into his ear, "And when you get home...we'll play a little doctor and nurse."