Vengeance (A Samantha Tyler Thriller Book 1)

by Rachael Rawlings

  “Then you’ve shared our plans with Abraham?” I asked Sister Eva. I didn’t tell him much on our date, but then, we spent much more time fighting and running than schmoozing.

  Sister Evangeline said nothing. She showed her enigmatic smile, and I realized asking any more questions would be pointless.

  Alex came up next to me. Her lopsided smile was still charming.

  “This is Alex. Alex, meet Abraham.”

  I observed them shake hands, Alex smiling, but her eyes were appraising.

  “And we better get going. We won’t be long. We only need to get a look around the place. See if this guy is the one we’re after.”

  “Then why are you taking a sword?” Alex was regarding me sharply.

  “Katana,” I answered without thinking. “I’m taking the katana and the throwing knife,” I looked at her thoughtfully. “Should I take the .22?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Don’t worry,” Abe said from behind me, and I turned to consider him more intently. In his jeans and tee shirt with a jacket, he might have a weapon on him, but I couldn’t tell. I suspected he was armed. I knew he could fight and I knew how well he moved.

  “I’m also bringing some backup,” I told Abe, and smiled when his eyes widened slightly.

  Sister Eva let out a piercing whistle, and I heard the backdoor bang as the two Dobermans exploded through the doorway and galloped into the living room. In tandem they skidded to a stop in front of the nun and sat obediently. I was dumbfounded at how quickly she got them trained to her call.

  “We’re bringing your pets?” Abe’s tone was dripping with skepticism.

  “These are trained guard dogs. They also happen to have a fun side,” I answered briskly. I scooped the leashes from the hooks by the door and clipped one on each collar.

  Abe nodded, making no further remarks. I tossed a wave as we left. I knew for sure Sister Evangeline would be praying for me. I was hoping my luck held out.

  Abe was driving. He kept close to the speed limit, merging onto I-64 East and traveling out of town, the route a gentle curving streak of grey through the green of the landscape. Shelbyville wasn’t a long drive, and I didn’t offer to give directions. He seemed to know where he was going.

  The dogs reclined in furry contentment in the back seat, rising occasionally to press wet noses against the side windows, leaving parallel streaks across the glass. They looked unthreatening in their canine contentment, but I knew well how efficiently they could become the guard dogs they were bred to be.

  When Abe turned down a side street, I recognized the name from the address Rob gave me. I scanned our surroundings, unconsciously noting alternate exits, alert to any possible ways we might escape the bucolic scene.

  Shelbyville was a rich mix of horse farms and open fields. The center of town, a charming old-fashioned city scape with glassed in storefronts filled with antiques and other wares, was to the east. I remembered being there before, but today, we weren’t touring. We were hunting, with an address to locate.

  As was typical of the area, we followed a long snaking driveway stitched on each side by greying wooden fences. The drive disappeared among mature oaks whose limbs hung heavy with leaves. I didn’t like the lack of a clear vantage point to our target. I would have much preferred an open field to this suffocating abundance of green.

  I shrugged, trying to drag myself out of my somber reflections. There was a good chance the trip would be for nothing. All we had was a single paper with a name. The name led to an address, but we didn’t know if either were legitimate. It would be easy enough to get false identification to rent a car. But the name seemed to scrape at my consciousness, pushing me with an urgency which made no sense, but moved me nonetheless.

  Around the curve of the drive, we were stopped by a gate sagging across our way, its silvered wood splintered and weathered. It appeared many years had passed since this place had been occupied by horses.

  When Abe put the car in park, I hopped out before he could unbuckle, and swiftly strolled toward the gate. My eyes were alert to any movement among the leaves, my hands hovering close to the dagger by my hip. I resolved then I would have the katana in the sheath with me as soon as we stopped. I didn’t feel right without it.

  With the gate pulled wide, Abe drove through. I wavered but left the gate open. If we needed a rapid get away, I didn’t want to break through the gate with the Chevy. The old car wasn’t built for impact, after all, and it might not be able to take the hit and still travel.

  Back in the car, I pulled my blade from the case, and slid it into the sheath. I saw Abe cast a glance at me, but his expression didn’t alter. If he thought the katana was extreme, I didn’t know, and frankly, I didn’t care. I was bracing to defend myself and Abe if required.

  A brick farmhouse was at the end of the drive, a curve of gravel circling the front. There were bowed steps up to the wooden front porch. Wild weeds tangled in tough bunches along the drive. Abe stopped the car and switched off the engine. I observed him pocket the keys, making note of where he carried them in case the worst happened, and I needed to get us out of here. We slid out of the car, and I picked up the leashes, patting my leg to signal the dogs to my side. They seemed to sense we weren’t playing and maintained a perfect heel position by my side.

  Together, we walked up to the porch. I could sense the boards give beneath our weight. This was not a house preserved in proper repair, and it caused me to wonder if anyone had lived here recently. In contrast, some industrious person managed to hack at the grass in the front, so perhaps whoever lived here was not much of a handyman.

  My hand was on the katana’s handle, my breath tight in my chest. Abe approached the door as though he were a vacuum salesman, quick and confident, and knocked.

  A moment of silence passed before Abe knocked again. The stillness was complete apart from the natural sounds emitted from the woodlands surrounding us, the trill of birds and the rustle of small furry creatures. Abe glanced at me, signaling he was going to the window. I edged closer to him, hand still close to my weapon, observing as he leaned closer to the glass.

  “No one’s home,” Abe declared, his voice low. “The lights are off.”

  “Want to go in?”

  His look told me the answer was obvious. He went back to the front door and paused. “Let’s go around back,” he suggested.

  I nodded and moved in front of him, leading off the porch and into the weeds that surrounded the house, the dogs close. On the side of the building, bushes rose in unfettered heights, reaching almost to the steep roofline, totally obscuring the windows. I hoped the back was in better condition. Abe was behind me as we rounded the corner, still staying close to the structure in case there was anyone home and lingering in the backyard.

  “Looks like someone is living here,” Abe observed. I gazed around the yard, seeing the same evidence as he did. There was a full garbage can pushed against the back wall of the house, the lid tipped slightly open to reveal pizza boxes and beer cans. The back door was a plain wooden affair with a generic doorknob, neither of which went with the age of the dwelling. These were recent additions. The thought the house might be in use made my nerves tighten. Abe placed his hand on the knob, and I stood to the side, ready to intercede. He swung the door open in one fluid movement and stepped clear of the doorway, shifting to edge his way around the corner. I stepped in next to him, the blade in front of us both. Fluffy and Bart, like twin soldiers, continued next to me, their muscles taut beneath gleaming black coats.

  The interior wore the tired feeling which came with age and neglect. The floor was a grungy linoleum, in urgent need of a good scrubbing. There was a table and chairs set circa 1980’s and peeling flowered wallpaper. The appliances were all an unfortunate avocado green. One of the cabinet doors was hanging open, exposing an extensive inventory of canned foods; vegetables, meats, pasta, and fruit. Enough for a doomsayer to live on contentedly for quite a while.

  I stepped further into th
e space, my feet silent. Abe was off to the side, the pair of dogs between us. We wandered together into the next chamber, a dining area converted into a poor office, forced to move in single file through the short hallway. The owners used this as their workplace and their main eating area as well, evidenced by the surplus of rubbish scattered on the floor and several empty red solo cups stacked on the card table in the middle of the room. The rickety table held papers but no computer, showing it was acting as a makeshift desk as well.

  We passed through the area rapidly, traveling through the living room, peering into the little bathroom, and stopping at the foot of the stairs. It was still unusually silent. My senses were not alerting me to anyone else’s presence, but we checked the rest of the house. Three bedrooms on the second floor were largely bare; only one equipped with a metal bed frame, an old dresser with clothes bursting out of open drawers, and a little table next to the bed to hold an old alarm clock radio. The second bath was between the bedrooms, and the stink emanating from it, old urine and unwashed clothes, caused me to gag a little. Beyond being a generally miserable and abused house with very few belongings remaining from the previous homeowner, there was little to show any information about whoever was occupying of the house.

  I made a gesture to leave, and we went down the stairs together. I was glancing out the windows as we passed, but I saw little from the dusty panes. The sun was still high, but afternoon was waning.

  “Do you think he lives here?” I asked Abe, pondering of all the evidence of habitation.

  “This Gerrard guy?”

  “Yeah,” I responded thoughtfully. “I don’t know who else it might be.”

  “From the look of the place, it could be some homeless drunk,” Abe said with a slight grimace of distaste.

  “Rob said this guy was still part of the Church of the Light Reclaimed. Basically, Gerrard holds a distinguished position, and has run services out in this area. It seems a guy like that would want to live better.”

  “And he works in Shelbyville, you mean?”

  “Yeah,” We stopped at the foot of the steps. “This is his home turf. I don’t know how he could live this way and still maintain an ordinary lifestyle.” I hesitated for a minute. “If leading a sect of a Satanic church could be called normal.”

  “Then if he returns, we might be able to get some additional information from him,” Abe declared, quirking his eyebrows. “That is, assuming he does live here in this filth.”

  I nodded. Rob traced Gerrard to the church through some banking documents he dug up online. Gerrard signed for a few shipments of some basics which I assumed were used in the day to day maintenance of the buildings the church habitually used. Gerrard was generous enough to provide all the toilet paper and bath soap the church required. Ironic the Satanists were so anxious to be clean. Doubly so now that we managed to visit the home and saw the filth the man apparently resided in.

  We slipped out the back door of the house, and Abe closed it behind us. In the middle distance, we could see an ancient barn.

  “Do you want to head over there?” I asked Abe.

  “Okay,” Abe said genially. Without seeing other people here, he relaxed and appeared to be enjoying himself. I suppressed a sigh.

  “Let’s go,” I announced. I sheathed my weapon after our initial search of the house but kept my hands free in case I would need to be prepared. Just because someone wasn’t in the house didn’t mean no one was here. Now that we were out in the open, I unclipped the dogs. I knew they would stay with us, and it didn’t appear as though the residents were here. Besides, if things did get sticky, I wanted the animals to have free reign.

  The barn was built of the same silvered wood as the fence and looked faintly unhealthy in the dappled sunlight. The front was dominated by wide double doors, secured by the traditional bolt, but added to it was a padlock and loop of chain.

  “Weird,” I observed.

  “Not a problem.”

  I watched as Abe took a slender leather case from the breast pocket of his jacket and flipped it open. He took out two silver tools and bent over the lock, taking it in his hand and manipulating the tools and lock with practiced ease. The lock fell open as if by magic.

  “Don’t tell Sister Evangeline,” Abe said, a smile quirking his lips. With a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead, he looked attractive and slightly like trouble.

  I shook my head. I dealt with trouble before. Vic was trouble in spades. I didn’t need any more. I also didn’t bother to tell him how adept I was at picking locks. It wasn’t a common talent, but apparently it was something we shared.

  Abe opened the door latch and pulled the door open. A scent, of coppery metal sweetness, emerged from the depths of the barn.

  I stepped back. I glanced at Abe, and he looked back at me. “This is not good,” I whispered. I heard Fluffy let out a low hum as if in agreement.

  The interior of the barn was dim, but as my eyes adjusted to the diminished light, I could see shapes within. This apparently wasn’t a traditional barn. It was renovated at some point because the stalls were cleared away, and the loft dragged down, leaving the high ceiling bare except for florescent lights. What remained was a vast open space retrofitted with long metal shelves which spanned almost the length of the barn.

  At the far end, a square section of floor was left vacant with a long bench and a couple of chairs. One group of the flickering cold lights remained lit. It was not a good thing.

  I remained still, seeing at a distance the heavy hang of the body, mirrored in the gloom against the rear wall of the barn. The stink of blood ran hot on the still air. I struggled to breathe lightly.

  “Is it?”

  “It looks like Gerrard. I have a picture on my cell phone.” I thought of the dark-haired man, middle-aged, wiry and small. His picture was taken when he was renewing his driver’s license. He looked like a car salesman in the picture. He looked nothing like it now.

  His death had been awful. The meat hook dangling from the ceiling might well have been brought there for that purpose, but I didn’t choose to think about it. There was no way to tell when he died: when the hook punched through the roof of his mouth, when it broke through the fragile bone of his hard palate, when it jammed upwards toward his brain, when he was lifted from the floor? Now as he hung suspended from the hook and chain, I could see the splatter of blood dripping down his torso, over his gleaming shoes, and dropping like ink blots to the floor. I spotted a long line of what appeared to be pale rubbery rope which seemed to start at his midsection and tumble to the floor in an untidy heap. It took me a moment to realize it was his intestines, torn from his abdomen, and spread beneath him to the concrete.

  I turned away from the scene, struggling not to flinch, my eyes skimming the surrounding area. It reminded me of the warehouse where I found the paperwork on Gerrard. There were still papers and debris on the floor. I could see some cartons on the shelves. It occurred to me what I was seeing. This was like the warehouse. It was another repository for whatever the Church of the Light Reclaimed was attempting to collect.

  “They were holding more of it here,” I said.

  “More?”

  I held up a hand. “I’ll have to explain later. The question is, who did this?” I gestured to the body, “And where are they now?”

  Abe nodded and started walking. I followed, scanning the aisles as we passed, searching for anyone left behind. Anyone alive. The dogs hung at my side, shadows in a deeper dark, but I could hear their panting and see the line of fur raised from tails to the scruff of their necks.

  I stopped by the body. The blood wasn’t congealing, not yet. The slaughter was recent. The dogs stopped with me, noses in the air catching scents, but making no move to get closer to the dead thing.

  “No one’s here,” Abe confirmed. “Do we call the police?”

  “I’ll take care of it later,” Abe said shortly. “For now, we need to figure out what went wrong?”

  “Wrong?�
��

  Abe gestured to Gerrard.

  “Yes, I see,” I replied. I went over to the table and started paging through the papers. Abe strolled to one of the boxes, swiftly moving down the aisles, grabbing boxes to peer within.

  “Nothing,” he said. “These are all empty.”

  “There’s not much to this either,” I said, setting aside a few sheets. “We can take what’s here, but I think they were more thorough than they were on the original cleanup. There isn’t anything here that’s going to help us pin them down.”

  Abe stood at the center of the room, hands on his hips. “I think you’re right,” he admitted.

  I took a last look around and headed for the door still ajar from our entrance. The dogs froze, ears cocked, and I heard the noise a second before I saw the shadow. I slipped the blade out as the door slammed all the way open.

  The man standing in the front of the barn wasn’t familiar. He was tan with a vivid blue shirt tucked into khaki trousers, pants splattered with dark crimson blood. His stance was casual but alert. In one hand he held a gun, his blood smeared fingers leaving sticky fingerprints on the weapon. In his other hand was a long-bladed knife. His eyes were almost gleeful when he discovered me, a savage smile spreading over his face.

  “Looks like we’re about to have some fun,” he exclaimed to someone unseen.

  I took a half step backward, hearing the low rumble of the animals beside me. “Only if your idea of fun is me ramming my sword through your throat,” I replied, my voice mild. I eased the blade up between us.

  “Pretty, pretty,” he chanted, and I wondered if he was out of his mind or just plain evil.

  “Thanks for the compliment, but you need to stop walking right there.”

  The man raised the gun, and the geometry, velocity versus speed, filled my mind. In the battle of gun and katana, I wasn’t sure I would win.

  A shot from behind me, intense and ringing, had me crouching down as the man in front of me went from smiling to faceless in a split second.