by Sydney Addae
Thomas Mason answered. “Yes?”
“Thomas this is General Strait. I know you asked not to be contacted by the Joint Chiefs, but I need a personal favor. My cousin, Nathaniel Green was murdered. Stoned to death. He’s the sixth disabled person, across six states to be killed in that manner. Someone’s singling out our disabled for death, I need you and your team to stop them.”
“No.” His tone was flat, without emotion.
General Strait expected that. The only reason McNeill mentioned this group to him was to help him gain access to highly confidential files the military acquired from their time collaborating with the Liege. It was the only thing this group bartered with back then and hopefully now.
“I would offer you a deal. You’ve got five days to catch the killer, turn him or them over to the authorities and I’ll release copies of the remaining Liege files to you. You’ve been after those for a while. Of course, we’ll pay your normal fee.” Strait had no idea why this group was interested in the Liege and at the moment didn’t care. They were ghosts and based on Jim’s cryptic email letting him know they were safe, these guys delivered.
“What shield would we use?” Thomas asked a few moments later
The General released a pleased, quiet sigh. “Special agents for a special assignment. The agency has given us five days before they step in and take over. If that happens the deal is null.”
Thomas grunted. “Send me what you have on this murder and the others, as well as the payment. Send half the Liege files now, the rest when we’re done.”
“Within the hour,” the General said and disconnected. He picked up the photo and stared at Nathaniel. “Whoever did that to you will be found and pay. I promise you that.”
<<<>>>
Thomas stared down at the bed where Lizzy, a good friend who had been in the Liege compound with him a century ago, lay immobile, sweating and barely breathing. Unable to move or function she occasionally shuddered as beads of sweat dotted her brow.
He wiped away the blood from her nose and hoped the pain from the killer headache she was experiencing subsided soon. It had been six hours since she fell and seized, two hours longer than before. Like Kenny and Beatrice, she was dying and would join them soon unless he found answers. Damn Liege and their experiments, he wanted those files. Needed them desperately before they all fell to the same end.
“Hang on, Lizzy,” he whispered, hoping for a miracle. The message from Strait came through, the fee was in their account and the files, as well as the FBI files, had been sent as well.
Their group was already stretched. If it hadn’t been for the chance to get the files, he wouldn’t have accepted the job. Now, he needed time to go through the files to search for something to help Lizzy. He had no choice but to send Mia to check out the area until he could join her. Sending her alone didn’t sit right with him either but they were running out of options and time.
CHAPTER 4
SPECIAL AGENT MIA HADDON stepped into the Littleton morgue and showed the attendant her badge. Dressed in black dress pants, button-down white oxford shirt, and a lightweight blazer, she believed she looked the part of a competent government employee.
“I’d like to see the body of —” She looked at her phone to consult her notes. “Nathaniel Green.”
“Yes, of course. This way.” The short, gray-haired man stared at her, his gaze flicked over her short hair and eyes before glancing at her badge. He walked past two bodies lying on tables into a much cooler room. He pulled out a drawer and stepped back.
Mia’s stomach clenched as she looked at the draped body. She hated this part of the assignment. Aware of a mental backlash, she stuffed her emotions into that dark box in the corner of her mind and locked them away for now. She pulled the cover down past his waist. With clinical precision, she stared at his face, took note of the smashed skull, broken neck, arms broken in several places, and ended with his shriveled legs.
Without looking at the examiner, she waved her hand, freezing him in place, disarmed any cameras and locked the door with a thought.
“Let me get a really good look at you, Nathaniel Greene,” she murmured pulling up her sleeves. Hands extended, she placed them a few inches above the body. As her palms heated she moved her hands above his smashed skull and then slowly down his body searching for more information of his death. If the victim had been stabbed, shot or poisoned, she would pick up different vibrations. But there was nothing other than the obvious method of death, stoning.
Inhaling deeply, she scanned the body again, searching for the killer’s scent or lingering emotions. Considering the death was relatively new, there was a chance she could pick up something to help in the investigation.
Nothing. Another dead end.
She pulled out her phone and videoed the remains to send to the others later. Next, she pulled up all the data in the Medical Examiner’s computer regarding the case, downloaded the notes to a flash drive and returned the screen to its previous place.
After gathering all the information, she released the examiner, camera and unlocked the door. “Did you discover any particles in his wounds?” she asked continuing their conversation as if the pause had never been.
“Yes. Red clay. I’ve got it over here, sent most of it to the lab.” He handed her a small vial with small pieces of red clay from the bricks used to kill the victim.
“When are you expecting the test result?” She took pictures of the vial contents before returning it to him.
“Any day now, but it’ll go to Detective Gordon, this is his case.”
Mia frowned. “Gordon? What’s his first name?”
The coroner frowned. “Frank, I think, not sure. An asshole but good at his job.”
Mia asked a few more basic questions regarding the time of death, drugs, the amount of blood in the victim’s body and stomach contents. Mr. Green hadn’t eaten much.
“Thank you very much.” She gave him her card. “I’d like to know what that red dust is once you hear from the lab.”
“Okay, but you might need to go through Gordon. I’ll find out and let him know you were here.” He stuffed her card into his lab coat pocket and returned to one of the bodies lying on the table.
The first part of her assignment complete, she left the god-awful smelling place and headed for fresh air. Outside, she slid into the driver’s seat of her rental and took several breaths to cleanse the smell of death and blood from her sinuses.
Her stomach growled. She ignored it. There wasn’t enough time to go to the police station to speak to the detective but she’d call just in case he could see her today after-hours. She’d been lucky to reach the morgue before the medical examiner left.
While she still had sunlight she needed to record the town to send to the team. She set up her voice-activated recording equipment on the rearview mirror. It was important to have an idea of what appeared to be a sleepy southern town with a stoning victim in the morgue.
Pulling onto Main Street, she drove slowly through the area, noticing a diverse group of people which was always good. There weren’t any big-name stores or restaurants which suited her fine. Government offices, library, bank, park and small shops were spread over 10 blocks.
A beep for an incoming text message. She looked at the screen on her phone. “Got it.”
Thomas’ messages were always succinct, he was miserly with words. After several decades, she was used to it. The hotel where she’d be staying was just outside of town. She pulled into a parking space near one of the small restaurants she’d passed and gone inside.
People at the counter stopped and stared. Rude but not unusual. On the day she chose to celebrate her birthday, she wanted to do something different and cut off her long hair as well as changed its color to a shimmering light brown to match her eyes. She stood to the side and scanned the room.
Mixed bags of emotions buffeted her, it was all she could do not to roll her eyes. This place was a seething hotbed of lusting, hurting, angry,
happy, twisted people. She dialed the volume down a notch. All she wanted was food and a hot shower. It had been a long day with Thomas rushing her to get on a flight an hour and a half after taking this job. She hadn’t had time to mentally prepare which was why her control was jacked-up right now, the small box in the corner of her mind was overwhelmed.
Eager to get out of here and check in, she pushed the sunglasses up her nose as she moved toward the counter. “May I see a menu please?” she asked the waitress.
“Sure hon,” she passed Mia a long, laminated card.
She wasn’t picky about food, it had a job to do and she allowed it to do her job. “Two chicken sandwich baskets to go, please.”
“Be done in a bit,” the over-worked woman said.
Mia stood to the side and listened to the chatter in the room, maybe she would hear something that would help the case. Without looking behind her she cocked her ear to the side to filter through conversations. If they were talking about family or loved ones, she kept moving. She ignored complaints about work or weight or politics or religion. Midway through her search two women were talking in low whispers. Their hearts were heavy, and voices sad.
“Ms. Murphy found him. All day she’d been worried about him at work. He always called if he was going to be late or anything,” a soft voice said. “She’s really messed up over this.”
“Nathaniel was such a nice guy, who would do that to him?”
“I don’t know, Twanna. But I’m not walking alone at night anymore. It’s not safe.”
“Poor Nathaniel, I’m going to miss him.”
“Me too,” the other voice said.
Mia glanced over her shoulder, noticed two young women, one with long dreads pulled back in a ponytail. The other a slender blond wiping her cheek.
“Here you are, that’ll be $9.95.” The waitress placed a large bag on the counter and smiled at Mia as she placed $15 in her hand.
“Keep the change,” Mia said taking the bag and her drink. She glanced at the two women in the back again and left. On the sidewalk, she looked around. The streetlights were on and few cars traveled the road.
Was this a dangerous town? She didn’t get a sense of danger or evil. Not here in town. Maybe nearby, she wasn’t sure but planned to check the surrounding area tomorrow. It was time to refuel and bring Thomas current.
CHAPTER 5
MIA CHECKED IN AND took her things upstairs to her room. If she was staying longer, she would have gotten a suite. But for the few days Thomas planned for her to be in Littleton, this small, basic room with a queen-sized bed, chair, desk with chair, TV, mini-fridge, and microwave, would work.
“Eat first,” she murmured as she placed her backpack on the table along with her bag of food. Eager to refuel, she didn’t waste time and ate everything quickly. As the food hit her belly, she waited a few moments for it to strengthen her system. It didn’t take long, it never did. People often marveled at the amount of food her petite frame required to function at peak performance. It became a joke back at the complex in Wyoming where she lived with the others.
Rejuvenated, she pulled out her laptop, turned it on to upload the video and photos of the remains of Nathaniel Green and sent it to Thomas. He would contact her in a few minutes. Eyes closed, arms above her head she stretched and read the room. Was the last occupant dirty? Clean? Nasty? Her energy spiked as she hoped for a bright-white glow signifying an ultra-clean space. Instead, the room gave off a dim-white glow, not the best or the worst, but typical for this chain of hotels.
“Typical,” she said opening her bag to grab the items she needed to prepare for bed. They had all been really lucky. Whatever the Liege injected them with preserved them, she still had the majority of her teeth and wanted to keep them for a long time.
Waiting to hear from Thomas she recalled her earlier feelings when he received the Liege files from Strait. She had refused to leave until he checked for information regarding her or the child taken from her decades ago at the Liege Compound.
There had been nothing.
Disappointed once again, she had prepared to leave for this job in silent agony. Through the years she wondered if the child had survived either childbirth or beneath the heavy-handedness of the Liege. Had it been a boy or girl? Or if the child was happy. The absence of answers ate at her soul like putrid cancer.
Vague memories of her early childhood flitted through her mind from time to time. Her family had been large, lots of adults, smiling faces, good food and fun times. It had been brief, over before she was five summers and woke up in the Liege compound. Boris Lancaster, a skinny, evil bastard and one of the Liege Lords, had teased and told her she came from royal blood. Once he bragged she was related to the Queen of Sheba but later claimed to have lied.
None of that mattered, and even though it would be nice to know her family, she desperately needed to know about her child.
Her phone beeped.
“What did you see?” Thomas’ brusque voice demanded.
“Broken bones, definitely a stoning. Wasn’t done in anger, definitely deliberate.” Mentally, she recalled the vision of him on the steel drawer table.
“No anger? Someone calmly stoned the old man?”
Mia shrugged. “No residual anger, I would’ve felt it. I didn’t. It seems clean, no emotions attached but this is a stoning. They would’ve stood a distance away which could explain why I’m not picking up anything.” That was one of her quirks, Thomas called her oddities gifts.
“Good point,” he said. “The Detective any good? Give you any problems?”
“Haven’t met him yet.” When she reached out to Detective Gordon she’d been told he was unavailable.
“Got the feed you sent of the town, tell me your personal take on Littleton, Texas,” he said.
“Not quite farmland rural, a step above maybe. Small town feel. Everybody knows everybody. Low crime rate. Family oriented.”
“He should’ve been safe,” Thomas said. “Should’ve been able to live the rest of his natural life safe. Hmm, what happened?”
“That’s what inquiring minds want to find out,” she said toeing off her shoes and wiggling her toes.
“Get the feeling this is because of his relationship to the General?”
She thought about it. “No, because it happened five other times with unrelated victims. Whoever’s doing this hate disabled people, if not hate, then simply wants to take them out for some reason.”
“Yeah, I see that. It fits,” he murmured.
Thomas would eventually develop some plan of action and send in whoever he thought would work best to finish the mission. Her abilities to hear the truth, pick up emotions and a few other things made her a good scout for them.
“Lab and toxicology reports?”
“Asked the coroner to inform me when they arrive. Detective Frank Gordon is in charge of this case. Do you know him?”
“No. Should I?”
“It would help if you did. The coroner said he was an asshole.” She had no idea if or how Gordon would impact their investigation at all. The team preferred not to use their gifts on law enforcement officials but they only had five days to complete the mission.
“You don’t have to work with him, you’re authorized to do a separate investigation. If he gives you any problems, call me. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this. We’ve got other things to do.”
“Learn anything interesting from the Liege files?” She hoped he learned something that might help Lizzy. The thought of losing another member of their already shrinking team depressed her.
“Yes, more names, tests, we’ll start verifying information soon now that she’s stable.”
Mia closed her eyes, sent up another prayer that information regarding her child would be in the next installment. “Good. Shouldn’t be much longer, right?”
“Hopefully. You know the drill, get more information, send it to the lockbox, I’ll review it and decide what to do next. The clock starts ticking tom
orrow.”
“Day one is tomorrow?” That was a bonus.
“Yeah.” He paused. “Take care and don’t hurt anyone, keep a low profile, just gather information,” he said. Reminding her of the one time she lost it and attacked a crooked cop in Silver Springs. Standing 5’4” and weighing a little under 125 lbs, she shouldn’t have been able to lift the 250 plus pound cop over her head and thrown him against the wall. She had blown their cover and it had taken Thomas a couple months to bleach the data that exposed them to the public.
“I’m not going to respond to that. Good night.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“You okay?”
She was the youngest by 15 years in their small group and sometimes they treated her like a kid. “Yes dad,” she teased. “I’m fine. Got the FBI thing down solid. I’ve done preliminary before.”
“Not alone,” he reminded her that this was new territory and that their numbers had shrunk. They didn’t have enough people to work the jobs they had.
“I know. I’m just getting information for you and the guys. Don’t worry.” Some days she felt like a cheerleader for a team who knew it was losing.
“Yeah. See you soon, kid.”
She disconnected and headed to the shower. Yawning, she grabbed her supplies, stripped and stepped into the steamy shower.
<<<>>>
The next morning, Mia eyed the darkening sky and bit back a curse. “Not today, please not today,” she murmured, quickening her pace wishing she had worn her work boots instead of her comfortable brown loafers. The soft leather wouldn’t hold up well in the rain. It was days like today she really missed Kenny. His gift or ability to interrupt the weather for periods of time would have been appreciated right now.