6
“Yes and no,” Fuentes said, and I could imagine him rocking his hand in a comme ci, comme ça movement as he did so. “It is more a function of might I rather than do I.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m not following you.”
Fuentes laughed and behind me Rivera did the same. The fact that I’d all but forgotten he was there somewhere showed how uncomfortable Fuentes was making me.
“No, I suspect that you do not. So let me try and explain.”
His voice had taken on a decidedly patronizing tone, and I knew I was finally starting to see his true personality. All this polite banter had just been window dressing; now we were getting to the heart of the situation.
“Los Angeles is my town, Mr. Hunt. I control the entire city as well as the surrounding area for a good fifty miles in every direction. Nothing happens here without my knowing about it. No one enters my city without my knowing about it. Within ten minutes of your frenzied arrival my phone was ringing off the hook with people warning me that one of the opposition’s heavy hitters had just arrived in my territory and wanting to know just what I intended to do about it.”
One of the opposition’s heavy hitters?
“You entered my city without permission, which is something I take personal exception to, Mr. Hunt. Now, I’m a reasonable man and I understand circumstances can sometimes prevent us from observing the usual social niceties. I would have been happy to forgive your transgression if you had come to me shortly after arrival and asked for forgiveness. A small bit of remuneration for the trouble you caused, a bit of personal groveling to show you understood just who is in charge in this fair city, and I would have been content.
“But you didn’t do that, did you, Mr. Hunt?”
Math might not be a strong suit of mine, but I understood the art of language rather well and easily spied the trap Fuentes was clearly hoping I’d fall into with such a remark. Saying anything in my own defense was the equivalent of admitting that his recitation of the events in question was an accurate one, thereby making me liable through my own words for whatever judgment he was working his way toward.
There would be no admission of guilt from this ex-Harvard prof; I kept my mouth shut.
“So here’s the deal I’m offering, Mr. Hunt. In exchange for my considerable mercy on this issue, you will remain in Los Angeles as part of my staff until I say otherwise. When I have need of your particular services, which I am certain I will at some point in the near future, you will provide those services without question or argument.”
He paused and I spoke into the gap. “And then I’m done? We’re square?”
“Square? What a curious notion. Of course we’re not square. You will simply be free to do as you wish, aside from leaving the city, until I have need of your particular talents again. Should you prove both useful and ambitious, you can rise toward the top of my organization, just as Mr. Rivera there has done.”
Yeah, that was just the future I was hoping for too.
“And if I choose not to accept your offer?”
Fuentes let out an exaggerated sigh. “Then I would have no choice but to make a particular phone call that would have rather unpleasant consequences for you.”
It took all of my effort not to laugh in his face. Compared to the things that I had come up against over the last few months—Eldredge, the fetch, the Angeu—Fuentes barely measured on my personal bugaboo scale. If he thought I was going to give up my freedom, and my chance to see Denise and Dmitri again, because he was demanding that I do so, he was delusional.
“Looks like you’ll be making another long-distance call then. And so soon too.”
Rivera rapped me on the back of the head with the gun barrel again in response to my sarcasm, but it was going to take a lot more than that to curtail my snark.
Unfortunately for me, Fuentes had done his homework.
I heard a phone being dialed on speaker, but this time a male voice answered.
“Yeah?”
Fuentes didn’t bother identifying himself, just barked out a single command.
“Report.”
“The subject was moved to a private nursing facility four days ago. She continues to recover, albeit slowly. Something to do with an infection, most likely carried on the blade of the knife with which she was stabbed. There is some concern about her emotional state, but that is taking a backseat to the physical issues at the moment.”
My blood ran cold at the word she and by the time the speaker had finished, I knew just who they were talking about.
Denise.
“And the shifter?” Fuentes asked.
I could feel his gaze upon me as he waited for the answer.
“Hasn’t left her side since she arrived here.”
“You have reasonable access?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” Fuentes replied, and I could hear the cruel anticipation in his voice as he followed that with, “Please terminate both subjects.”
Terminate.
The word seemed to reverberate around and around inside my skull for what felt like an eternity. Terminate. Terminate. Terminate …
I had no idea if Fuentes had a man in New Orleans or not. Nor did I have any way of figuring that out in the next few seconds. For all I knew the guy on the other end of the line could really just be in the next room, coached with what to say when the time came.
But that was just the thing.
I didn’t know.
Which was why where I thought he was really didn’t matter; I had no choice but to comply with what Fuentes wanted. I couldn’t risk it; if there was even a possibility that some asshole with a rifle was sitting outside her hospital ward waiting for an order like the one that had just been given …
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t take that chance.
“Yes, sir,” said the voice on the phone. “Terminate order rece…”
“Wait!” I cried, and then without waiting for a response, I said, “I’ll do it. You win.”
“Sir?” asked the killer. “Is someone there with you, sir?”
Fuentes ignored the question. “I’m rescinding that order for now, Jackson. Stay with her and keep me apprised of any changes.”
“Understood, sir,” said the other man, and then they hung up.
Leaving me all but a slave to whatever it was that Fuentes wanted from me.
This was really turning out not to be my day.
7
Fuentes had my balls in a vise. He knew it and I knew it, so when he told Rivera that I was going to be staying there on the property with them and to find me a room, I didn’t protest.
I wasn’t going to find a way out of this mess by trying to avoid it. Instead, I intended to embrace it to the fullest, so when the opportunity came along to take care of this son-of-a-bitch without the chance of there being repercussions against Denise and Dmitri, I’d be ready to take it.
Having gotten what he’d wanted, Fuentes dismissed us. I fumbled my way out of the study behind Rivera. He couldn’t be bothered to help lead me to the door and, truth be told, I wouldn’t have accepted his help even if it had been offered, so it took me a few moments of trial and error before I managed it.
Rivera led me out of the room and, to my surprise, out of the house. We followed a path around to one side of the building to where, about a hundred yards later, we came to a stop. I heard a key being pushed into a lock and then the sound of a door opening.
“After you,” Rivera said. “Watch yourself, there’s one step before the door.”
I followed his instructions and entered what I later learned was one in a series of little bungalow-like guest houses. As I stepped inside, I felt the door pulled closed behind me and heard the snick of the key in the lock.
The bastard locked me in!
In truth, I couldn’t say I was surprised. I clearly wasn’t here of my own accord and no matter how much it appeared that I was sufficiently cowed to do their biddin
g, that didn’t mean I wasn’t plotting escape or how I could throw a wrench into what was increasingly appearing to be a well-oiled machine. If they were betting that my actions in the car ride or at the motel, or even my demeanor at our little tête-à-tête, was typical of my behavior, they would be correct in that assumption.
Fuentes and, by extension, Rivera were apparently smart enough to realize that and weren’t taking any chances with me at the moment.
The shades had been drawn over the windows in the front room, which was the first thing I had to be happy about in the past few hours. It is an interesting side effect of the ritual that I underwent to “see the unseen” during the search for my daughter that I can actually see better in complete darkness than most people can in broad daylight. I can no longer see colors—everything comes out in a thousand varying shades of gray—but at least I can see. The minute you put me in the light, however, everything goes dark. Direct sunlight is the equivalent of a complete whiteout for me; I can’t even see the outline of my hand if I hold it directly in front of my face. All I see is white.
Electrical lights are almost as bad, though the use of a pair of strong UV sunglasses lets me see the vague shapes and outlines of things around me. Details are lost, of course; I wouldn’t know the face of my own mother from that of a stranger, even up close, but I can tell the difference between a horse and a house.
Enough to make my way about with the help of a cane, at least. If I have to have light, then candlelight is best. The weaker the better.
The guest house wasn’t all that big. Three rooms, really: a combination living area–kitchen–dining room that you stepped into as soon as you entered, followed by a bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower stall, and then a bedroom at the back. The entire structure couldn’t have been more than twenty, maybe twenty-five feet in length, and about twelve feet wide. In the bedroom I found a single bed, a chair to sit in, and a television cabinet, that was all. I walked across the room and discovered that the cabinet doubled as a dresser, for there were three drawers of men’s clothing inside. The clothes smelled musty and didn’t appear to have been moved in some time, as there was a fine layer of dust over all of them. Seeing them there made me wonder about their owner and what might have happened to him. My mind started coming up with all sorts of possibilities, none of them pleasant.
I walked over to the bed and sat down, trying to figure out what to do next.
Nothing all that enlightening occurred to me.
After a few minutes of enduring the silence, I decided it might be a good idea if I had some company. I raised my face to the ceiling and extended my arms out to either side, palms up. Closing my eyes, I called out softly.
“Come to me, Whisper. Come to me.”
I had a lot of questions I wanted answers to. Questions about what it was that Fuentes really wanted and just how far he would go to get it. Questions about what kind of threat he was to Denise and what she might do to protect herself from any retaliation that Fuentes might try to send her way.
And last but certainly not forgotten, a bit more clarity on just what the hell she’d been talking about that morning.
Who was coming? And when?
I repeated my request out into the ether, over and over again, until the room was suddenly filled with the sense that I was no longer alone.
In the darkness I turned to my left, expecting to see a cute dark-haired girl that reminded me so much of my daughter, only to discover that I was nose to nose with a big, hulking brute with a scarred face.
Scream.
His real name was Thomas Matthews, but I called him Scream because that’s what he made you want to do: scream. Just looking at him could bring out that feeling in you. Imagine a face that is all harsh planes and sharp angles. Now, hollow out the cheeks and sink the eyes deep into their sockets. Add the gaping hole of a gunshot wound above the left eye and a shock of white hair atop the head and you’ll have a close approximation of what Scream looks like to me when he graces me with his presence.
If Whisper was my angel, then Scream was my devil incarnate, all rage and mayhem bound up in human form. He was a giant of a man, even in death, towering over everything at just a hair above seven feet. His fists were like sledgehammers, his legs as thick as oaks, and he had the disposition of a junkyard bulldog that had been kicked one too many times and who now intends to take the leg off the next person that comes too close.
Scream has his own unique way of letting you know he is present, filling the space around him with a sense of fear, doubt, and apprehension that follows him like a cloud. Being in his general vicinity makes most people uncomfortable; being right beside him can make you literally sick with fear. I’ve never experienced it for myself, being one of the few who seem to be utterly immune, but I’ve been told that it is like living through all of your very worst fears at exactly the same moment, all the things that haunt your psyche in the deepest dark of the dead of night, the things that no matter how hard you try you can never seem to get away from.
The idea of introducing him to Fuentes made me smile.
It also made me wonder why he was here. I’d been calling Whisper, not Scream.
During the days that he’d been alive, Scream had been an auto mechanic in greater Chicago. He’d been found dead in his shop one night, a victim of an apparent robbery that occurred several months after his daughter, Abigail, had disappeared. The case was still officially open, with no suspects and with less than a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting solved the conventional way. But I knew the truth. Scream had been killed by Eldredge’s doppelganger when he’d discovered the fetch’s involvement in a string of murders spanning multiple states and more than a decade of time.
The very same murders, in fact, that the FBI had been trying to pin on me for several months now.
Whisper had shown up for the first time just a few days after I’d lost the ability to see in the sunlight. I still don’t know what it was that had called her to me that first time, but I suspect I’ll be forever grateful that she came in response to that call. She had been invaluable in helping me learn what had happened to my daughter, Elizabeth. Her father, Scream, had joined us a few days later, and they’d been by my side ever since, through thick and thin.
Along the way the ghosts and I had discovered that we were bound together. When I need to, I can borrow Whisper’s sight or Scream’s strength. If my need is great enough, I can even borrow both at the same time. But, like my ghostsight, I don’t use that ability too often. Linking with one of them leaves me exhausted. Linking with both usually ends with me lying unconscious on the floor.
I wondered what Scream was doing here.
There was only one way to find out, I supposed.
“Hello, Thomas,” I said.
Scream didn’t reply, just stared at me with his usual dour expression.
I’ll admit it, I was disappointed. Discovering Whisper could talk had gotten me hopeful that maybe Scream could do the same. In a way, he and I have far more in common than Whisper and I do. If there was ghost out there that I should understand and have an affinity for, it was Scream. We’d both lost our daughters to the machinations of the same evil sorcerer and its murderous imp. We’d both pursued them to the ends of the earth—and in Scream’s case, beyond into death—in order to seek justice for our loved ones. We’d both faced our failures, each in our own ways due to our unique circumstances, and striven to go on despite them.
“Not going to talk to me, huh?” I asked gently, not really expecting a reply, just talking to hear myself at that point.
Scream didn’t say anything, but he did point solemnly over my shoulder.
I turned to face the door just in time to hear a key slide into the lock outside. I managed to look away and cover my eyes just in time.
The door opened, flooding the room with light from the hallway outside.
“What are you doing in the dark?” Grady asked, and then, right on the heels of that, “Are you alon
e?”
I tried to look innocent, not an easy feat I know, as I said, “Am I alone? Are you kidding me? Of course I’m alone.”
“Then who the hell were you talking to just now?”
I shrugged, studiously ignoring Scream though I could still feel him standing there watching us.
I was waiting for Scream to start doing his thing, waiting for Grady to start feeling uncomfortable, but after a few minutes it was obvious that, like me, Grady didn’t seem affected by his presence at all.
I was still pondering just why that was when Grady walked over and said, “Here.” I felt him push a paper bag into my hands. The smell of food wafted out of it, and I realized that it had been some time since I’d eaten anything.
“Nothing special, a burger and fries, but I thought you might be hungry,” he said.
I honestly didn’t know what to say. Was this the same asshole who’d knocked me on my ass earlier?
Apparently, he wasn’t finished.
“Rivera says that we’re going to be working together for a time, so I figured it might be best if we called a truce.”
I gave it a moment’s consideration and then stuck out my hand.
“Sure. Truce.”
We shook on it.
He turned and head for the door. “We have to hurry or we’ll be late.”
“Late for what?”
“Your first briefing as part of the crew.”
I pulled my sunglasses out of my pocket and slipped them on my face. I moved cautiously because I didn’t know the area yet, but it seemed to me that we retraced our steps and returned to the main building through the same door we’d exited from earlier. Instead of going to Fuentes’s study, however, Grady explained that we would be meeting in a conference room on the second floor instead.
A glance behind and a quick switch to my ghostsight showed me that Scream was still with us; he’d dropped his corporeal form and was drifting along behind us on the other side of the Veil, there if I needed him but much less likely to be seen by any of Fuentes’s human retainers this way. It was nice to know that I wasn’t completely alone.
Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) Page 4