Shrouded in Darkness

by H. D. Thomson

  Jake froze. “Don’t do something stupid.”

  “This isn’t over,” Malcolm said between long, shallow gasps. Semi-automatic thrust forward, Malcolm bumped his back up against the door. “That formula’s mine. I’ve got too much money and time riding on it. One way or the other, I’m going to end up with it.” He opened the door. Thick rays of moonlight rushed the room, highlighting everything in its path and the savageness of Malcolm’s face. “You will find the answer.”

  Chin raised, jaw clenched, Jake bit out, “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “True, if you want to stay the way you are—some sick freak.”

  Jake flinched. “Don’t.”

  Having Malcolm say aloud what he’d come to think of himself was far more painful and self-effacing than Jake wanted to admit.

  “Don’t, ‘what’? Tell it like it is?” Malcolm pressed on. “How happy can you be in the state you’re in? Granted, you can do things you’ve always dreamed of, travel anywhere or any place you’ve ever wanted to go. But you can’t be anyone. Not really. Maybe at night you can get away with it. But for all intents and purposes, you’re dead. A freak of science. You don’t exist.”

  Malcolm slammed out of the building.

  Chest heaving, fists balled at his sides, Jake stared at the closed door. For several, long, agonizing moments as his heart pounded against his ribs, he stood transfixed. Malcolm’s words reverberated inside his head. The truth in them ravaged him. A wave of impotence and frustration crashed over and around him. Only when his ragged breathing subsided, did he turn and shut down John’s computer.

  Then the thought rushed out at him and hit him full force. Malcolm. Margot. Malcolm was going up to the house to find out what she knew.

  ###

  Margot sat slouched over the computer terminal in her den. Extending the right fingers of her hand, she stretched muscles stiff and cramped from inputting book descriptions into her database. She’d been at it all afternoon and evening. She picked up the last book, which she’d found in a little shop outside of Flagstaff, and trailed a finger across its spine. It was a first edition of Nostromo by Joseph Conrad in beautiful condition. The find had made her week.

  With gentle hands, she placed it beside the stack of books by the keyboard. Books were her saviors, her escape. Within their pages she could be the hero, invincible, able to slay dragons and fly to the outer limits of space. They’d helped her get through an awkward and troubling teenage period, a divorce and the loss of her job.

  Now there was Johnny to cope with. Everyone had loved her brother. Even with only five years separating them, he’d been the one she’d run to as a child, the one she’d strove for approval while going through college, studying for the bar. Not her parents, never her parents. By the time she’d hit her teen years, she’d long since given up on proving herself to her mother and father. She wasn’t the boy, the brilliant child, but a gangly, awkward, very average girl. Then she’d turned eighteen, it didn’t really matter what her parents thought. They’d died in a boating accident off the coast of Baja, California that year.

  Strange that she’d never been jealous, but Johnny was just that type of person. One could never stay angry with Johnny for long. And he’d always been there for her, championing her at every turn in her life.

  To her deep regret, the one point of advice she’d never taken from her brother was Malcolm. Johnny had never liked him, but her brother, one to always have explanations grounded in fact, couldn’t explain why, other than a gut reaction.

  She fought back the sudden ache in her throat. She’d cried far too much already.

  Sighing, she rose from her chair, all the while rubbing at the crick in the nape of her neck. The sun had long since slipped over the horizon, leaving the house in complete darkness.

  She reached over to turn the desk lamp on when a light from outside flashed between the curtains and disappeared. Frowning, Margot turned away from the untouched light and walked over to the large window. With some caution, she pulled the thick velvet drapes aside.

  Someone was driving down the road, which wound through her property to highway 46. The car was unfamiliar, some type of recreational vehicle, but it had a longer, bulkier frame than Joyce’s Land Cruiser. It couldn’t be Jake. His vehicle was a small pickup, nothing like the one crawling over the snow-incrusted road. Headlights blinked through the trees, then vanished as the car turned onto the main road to the highway.

  Strange that they hadn’t come to the house. Unless, they were up to some mischief on her property, but Margot quickly discounted that. She wasn’t living in a large metropolis anymore but a small town in the mountains with a fraction of the population. They were probably lost, she finally decided as she smoothed back the drape.

  A noise, a metallic click of some sort, echoed faintly from the front of the house.

  “Jake?”

  She walked into the hall and found the front door closed along with the one to Jake’s bedroom. He was still gone for the day.

  “Johnny? Is that you?”

  Silence.

  “Are you trying to tell me something? Is that it? Are you here for a reason?” Slowly, she turned in a circle. No ghostly appearance made itself known. “I wish I knew what you wanted. Or why you’re here.”

  She sighed in frustration before going into the kitchen and getting a glass of wine and something to eat. When she finished dinner, Jake still hadn’t come back for the day.

  She both dreaded and anticipated seeing him again. These last few days, she’d begun to look forward to his company, until, that is, she had slammed into his very male and very naked body last night. The feel of his skin against her hands still burned through her memory.

  It had been so very long since she’d been held, kissed or caressed by a man. Her reaction could well be because she’d been celibate since Malcolm, and Jake had been that one match needed to set her system aflame. Then again, she was afraid it might be more than physical. She didn’t like this sudden thirst for someone else’s company. She’d finally become completely self-sufficient. She wasn’t about to turn back now.

  Jake’s door remained shut. Curiosity tunneled into her system and pulled her down the hall to his room. After a moment of listening to her own breathing, she bit her lip, snapped on the hall light, then put her hand on the knob. The door opened silently inward. Light from the hall arrowed into the room.

  She stepped inside, and, of course, found the place empty. The bed was neatly made. There were only a few signs of his occupancy. A comb on the dresser, a pair of jeans folded across the back of the cushioned chair. And his scent. A rich, masculine, wholesome aroma that curled around her.

  On top of the low slung, bedroom dresser, a laptop computer further illuminated the room in a light blue, artificial glow. A screen saver of ocean wildlife shielded the monitor from view. She touched the mouse and row upon row of numbers and formulas lined the screen. Leaning forward, she peered at it but couldn’t make any sense of it. She would have been better off trying to decipher a foreign language.

  With a frustrated sigh, she backed away from the dresser and the computer. Her heel hit something hard. She glanced down and saw a dark object protruding from under the bed. Jake must have dropped it. She knelt down and reached out—

  “Can I help you?"

  She jerked up from her semi-crouched position and choked back the scream in her throat. Arms crossed, Jake stood with a shoulder pressed up against the doorjamb of the adjoining bathroom.

  She slapped a palm against her chest. “God, you scared me. I didn’t hear you.”

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  He didn’t move away from his relaxed pose, but she sensed a tension, an energy animating from him. His sunglasses hid his gaze and any expression she might have gauged. Alone in the house with him, standing in the shadows of the same room with him, she found Jake suddenly threatening. His whipcord body beneath the dark jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt was hard
, muscled and much stronger than her own. The black gloves over his hands made him appear even more sinister. What did she really know of him, other than what he’d told her?

  She’d been caught red-handed, snooping where she didn’t belong. “I thought you might need some fresh towels.”

  “I’m fine, but thanks.”

  He stood unmoving, not giving anything away.

  Her explanation sounded far too lame. She gave up any pretense and nodded to his computer. “I was just curious. Is it something you’ve been working on from your old job at Miltronics?

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind me asking what?” She was growing more awkward by the second, and his non-committal answers weren’t helping.

  "Yes."

  "Talking to you about Miltronics is like pulling teeth.” She sighed. “You sound just like—"

  "John?"

  She rubbed her upper arms. "Yes.”

  His tone gentled. “Well, Miltronics has a way of keeping their employee’s mouths shut.”

  “What do you mean by that?” She’d always wondered about Johnny’s work, and maybe now was the time to find out.

  He lifted his hand as if he wanted to rub his face but dropped it back to his side. “Maybe that didn’t come out right. Much of their work is experimental and highly classified. The competition is fierce. They pay their people damn good, and because of that, they expect absolute loyalty and absolute silence.”

  “Are they associated with the government? Johnny wouldn’t even tell me that.”

  “No. It’s privately owned. They have a number of contributors. People with too much money and too much power.” He pulled away from the doorjamb and walked into the room. “Enough about Miltronics. I don’t work there anymore.”

  She took the hint and shut her mouth. He had every right to his privacy, but even knowing that, it didn’t help her from feeling rebuffed. Turning to leave, she bumped her hip and knocked a section of newspaper off the dresser. She caught the folded newsprint in midair. About to put it back, she paused when the glow from the screen caught the word Miltronics in bold print across the newspaper. Frowning, she opened the paper and saw the caption on the front page of the Boston Globe.

  “Twelve Dead in Explosion.” Unable to read more because of the room’s darkness, she reached over for the light switch.

  “Don’t!”

  She jumped at the harsh urgency in his voice. She’d completely forgotten about his problem with bright light. The shock of seeing Johnny’s company in the papers had blinded her to anything else around her.

  “What is this? When did it happen? I have to know..."

  Pivoting, Margot hurried from the room, gripping the newspaper tightly with one hand. She rushed down the hall. She was only half-conscious of Jake behind her as she entered the den and turned on the lamp. After sitting down in one of the high-backed chairs, she read the first several paragraphs in disbelief. When finished, she looked up at Jake.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” Jake asked softly.

  “I—” She stared at him standing along the edge of the room’s shadows. “Johnny, he...” She hesitated, then shook her head. “I feel terrible. I never knew.” She reread the date. “It happened a couple of days after Johnny was killed. These people worked with my brother. And here I thought no one showed up at his funeral because they were too damned busy. I didn’t know they were all dead!”

  She tightened her grip on the newspaper, mangling it between her fingers. “They say it was arson. One of the employees. A janitor. They found evidence at his home.”

  “That’s what they want everyone to believe,” Jake muttered to himself, knowing damn well who the real arsonist was.

  “What did you say?” Her gaze narrowed. “Are you telling me that they don’t have the right person?”

  Damn. That was stupid. He needed to learn to keep his opinions to himself. One wrong move from him, and Margot would get suspicious. Then sooner more than later, she’d be asking Malcolm and anyone associated with Miltronics questions. If she did that, she wouldn’t live long. Not with Malcolm.

  And that scared Jake. In far too short a time, he’d come to like this woman. He’d realized that the second he thought Malcolm was going up to the house to confront her. Jake had raced out of the barn, thinking to head him off. Instead, he’d found the bastard leaving the place. God, the relief had almost brought him to his knees.

  Jake folded his arms and shrugged. “I never said they had the wrong person. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  She stared back. It looked like she wasn’t completely convinced. But hell, it was damn hard to act convincing when the idea of someone else taking the fall for Malcolm’s criminal activity tasted like crow. Granted, the guy they caught hadn’t exactly been a model citizen with two prior arrests and an outstanding warrant for burglary.

  “I need a drink.”

  Jake bit back a retort. If she wanted to drink herself under the table, that was her business. After all, that’s what she, herself, pointed out so eloquently the other day. Frustrated, he watched her fling the newspaper on her desk and stride from the room.

  Times like now, he questioned her relationship with John. Granted, they could both be obstinate, but he’d always considered her brother mild-mannered—so far off the scale from Margot. At work, John had been the cool, collected, calm one. He’d been dubbed Clark Kent, the alter ego of Superman.

  From day one, the name had stuck. The resemblance had been uncanny between the character and John. John had found the idea amusing, and played along, by exchanging his old wire rimmed eyeglasses for a pair of ugly, thick black framed ones. The joke had gone so far, that on his birthday, Jake and the others had a fake, but very authentic looking drivers license made for John under the name of Clark Kent.

  Jake smiled at the memory. John had kept that thing in his wallet and would breeze into their department and flash it around when someone would get stumped in reading X-ray results or a glaring error would show itself in the Miracell model. “Not to worry,” he’d say, “I’ll get to the bottom of this. I have super powers.”

  According to Johnny there’d been a deep bond between him and his sister, closer than most siblings. He had often confided to Jake about Margot. Nothing in any great detail. More of his hopes and worries. He’d been very proud of her accomplishment with the tough time she’d had with her parents. Jake knew, though, when she’d left her husband and lost her job at her law firm that same year, John had worried. But he’d never explained, and Jake had never learned the reasons why. Maybe now, in hindsight, he should have.

  Jake moved over to one wall lined with books, where he was deeper in shadow. He glanced over at the shelves and realized he was in the paranormal section. The Encyclopedia of Death caught his attention. Not exactly reading material he wanted to get into. It came too close to home. The book beside it wasn’t much better. The Vampire Book: An Encyclopedia of the Undead. He slipped it from the shelf and quickly leafed through the pages.

  Topics ranged from movies and books to mythology, psychological perspectives and sexuality of vampires. He re-shelved it, and pulled out another alongside it. This was far more interesting. Vampire Myths. Opening the book, he glanced at the index. Case studies of people claiming to be vampires, historically on up to the present day. These were individuals from across the globe, India, Japan, the United States and Canada. According to the introduction, it was a scientific study, conducted by several reputable and renowned doctors. He didn’t recognize any of the names. How accurate or authentic was anyone’s guess.

  “What do you have there?”

  He snapped the book closed and shoved it back in the shelf. He cleared his throat. “Nothing. Just looking at what you have here.” Glancing over, he saw the half-empty glass of red wine in her hand. Again, he told himself forcibly, it wasn’t his business. “It looks like you have an extensive collection.”

  She smiled, a gentle curve of her full lips. The first smile he’d see
n of genuine pleasure. “It’s taken me almost two years to get this far. Compared to many, it’s pretty modest.”

  “How did you get into something like this?”

  “By accident. I was looking for an out-of-print book I’d loved as a child, because I wanted to give it as a gift to a friend’s daughter. I stumbled across it on the Internet. Pretty soon, people where asking me to find this book and that. It just snowballed from there, and now it’s starting to take a different turn. The whole book industry is drastically changing, and I’m scrambling into the future of electronic formats.”

  “Why such a drastic change from being a corporate lawyer?”

  Her smile didn’t look so genuine now.

  “I’d like to know.” He trailed a finger along the edge of a shelf. “Johnny said you’d lost your job. I know he’d been real worried about you for a time. It takes guts to dive in and try your hand at something completely different.”

  ###

  He wasn’t just being polite, Margot realized. He did want to know. She took a large swallow of wine and sank down in a chair. Why not tell him? She didn’t like the memories, but if she talked enough about them, maybe, just maybe, they might fade in time.

  “I lost my job right after the divorce. I’d been the one that filed. I think—no, I know—it really hit Malcolm’s ego. He fought me all the way—until the end. Then he got real nasty. He even claimed battery. Tried to have me arrested. I guess you might say that I had problems coping with it all.”

  The truth was she’d had a complete breakdown. Margot glanced down at the glass in her hand. She’d tried not to sound bitter, but, damn, she was. She tipped the glass and emptied it down her throat. Briefly, she closed her eyes, savoring the taste, full-bodied with just a hint of smoke and spice. “I missed too much work. They considered me unreliable. They needed someone they could count on. I can’t blame them really. If I’d been them, I’d probably have fired myself long before they ever did.”

  Henry, her direct boss and a die-hard chauvinist, had actually called her flighty, too emotional for the image they needed to portray. That had stung. She’d never thought of herself as that.