Both Ends Burning (Whistleblower Trilogy Book 3)

by Jim Heskett

  “There we go. Don’t you feel better now? Let’s go see what’s in that diaper.”

  I carried him to the changing table and laid him down. He cackled, grinning, kicking his legs. He loved the changing table. Maybe because of the soft cover Grace had put on it, or maybe he was getting old enough to know that wearing pee and poop is no fun.

  I unzipped his sleep sack and undid the three buttons on his onesie, then pushed it up onto his chest, away from the blast zone. Gave his diaper a big sniff. I undid both sides, then folded it back. No poo, only a little pee.

  “Did he poop?” Grace said from downstairs.

  “No, just more pee,” I said.

  Slapped on a new diaper, then I leaned down close to his face, which made him grin wider.

  “Hey, smiley. You stay here for just a second, okay? Dad needs to wash his hands.”

  He cooed, and I patted his tubby milk-pot belly before heading to the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror while I waited for the water to warm.

  My dad’s last words echoed in my brain.

  There’s something I never told you. Something about your mother.

  I hadn’t found out what those words meant. Over the last several months, I’d had plenty of time to develop various theories. It had something to do with why IntelliCraft had never killed me, that much I knew. They’d threatened me, injured me, made me think I was in mortal danger, but they’d never gone all the way. It would have been so easy for them to take me out, but I was always a little out of reach. Protected.

  Something about my mother. Maybe Dad was trying to tell me that she’d somehow made a deal that I was never to be harmed. But that seemed odd because she’d passed away many years ago. Why would they still honor that agreement? And, that would imply that she was involved in IntelliCraft.

  I also considered that it was somehow related to the safe deposit box in Stockholm where my dad had secretly kept evidence of the company’s dealings. Maybe they thought I knew the location, and were going to force me to tell them where it was. But, they’d had plenty of opportunities to ask me about it, and hadn’t ever said a word.

  My newest theory was that Heath Candle was not actually my father. I suppose it could have been Edgar Hartford, or Frank Thomason, or maybe even Wyatt Green, although he seemed a little too young. If one of them were my dad, it would explain why they were so keen to recruit me into IntelliCraft. Keep me close.

  Sometimes, I considered the possibility that Kareem was my father, but that didn’t seem reasonable. I’m no geneticist, but my skin seemed too fair for that to be true. Unless I’d received all of my mother’s genes.

  I tested the water and pumped a glob of soap into my hands, then held them under the sink for a few seconds. Toweled off, then rubbed some hand lotion into my skin.

  I went back into the baby’s room, and he grinned when he saw me. I finished putting his clothes back on, hoisted him over my shoulder, then carried him down the stairs, where Grace was sitting on the couch, hooked up to the breast pump machine.

  The little box sat to her left, with tubes running into her shirt into the cups that made her boobs look enormous and boxy. The machine hissed its wrick-churr, wrick-churr sound as it milked her.

  She smiled at me. “How is our boy now? Happy with a full tummy?”

  Dog looked up at me from his spot, nestled next to my wife. I poked him in the side, and he scooted over. I sat next to her and gripped the baby under his armpits, then held him out so he could see both of us at once. He cackled and made that ahh-goo sound that was almost like a word but not quite.

  “You okay?” she said.

  Must have been my staring-off-into-space look. I snapped out of it. “Yeah. Just thinking about my mom lately.”

  She nodded. “Getting close to that time of year again, isn’t it?”

  I set the baby on my lap, laced my fingers through hers, and squeezed. “I’m okay, really.”

  “Thank you for changing his diaper. I appreciate it.”

  “You do?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “How much do you appreciate it? A little, or a lot?”

  “We’ll see,” she said as she adjusted the knobs on the breast pump.

  My eyes drifted over the baby’s head to the area opposite the couch, where a chair used to be, the last chair Kareem had ever sat in. Where he’d taken a bullet and breathed his last breath, and I’d been spurred on to find the truth about the company.

  I didn’t think about that nearly as much as I used to, but it did come to mind sometimes, whenever I said my son’s name out loud.

  <<<>>>

  A NOTE TO READERS

  Thank you for reading my book. Seriously, thank you. I hope you loved it and it helped you escape for a little while.

  Next, please consider leaving reviews on Amazon / Kobo / iTunes and Goodreads. I know it’s a pain, but you have no idea how much it will help the success of this book and my ability to write future books. That, sharing it on social media, and telling other people to read it. Please help support my star wars figurine collection obsession. Lando isn’t cheap, know what I mean?

  I have a website where you can learn more about me and my other projects. Check me out at www.jimheskett.com and sign up for my mailing list so you can stay informed on the latest news. You’ll even get some freebies for signing up. You like free stuff, right?

  Books by Jim Heskett

  For a full list of all my publications, please visit www.RoyalArchBooks.com

  For anyone who has ever appeared as a tiny avatar in the corner of a Powerpoint presentation, blabbing about adding value while leveraging sales verticals and nurturing organic growth potential. You know who you are. Just don’t forget to put people ahead of products.

  AFTERWORD

  Among writers, there are two camps. Plotters and Pantsers. Plotters are the people who, before they begin writing, take pains to make outlines and plans for what’s going to happen throughout the story. They write copious notes on characters, events, and plot arcs, so the entire basic structure of the story is there before they ever put pen to page.

  Pantsers—also known as discovery writers—don’t do any of that stuff. They start with an idea, or an intersection of ideas, and they just write without foreknowledge of what’s going to happen next. They let the story take them wherever it takes them.

  Despite what you may hear from some writers who are firmly in one camp or the other, neither of the methods is superior. They’re just two different ways to make art. Stephen King is a noted pantser, because he likes to throw characters into dangerous situations and then watch them struggle to get out. New York Times bestselling fantasy author Brandon Sanderson is a strict plotter, and it seems to work out well for him. Because he sells a crap-ton of books, is what I’m saying.

  The point of all this is to explain how I came about this story you’ve just read. I had always been a plotter. I left myself room to change, add, and delete later, but I always started with a firm knowledge of the beginning, middle, and end of my stories. Where the plot twists would happen. Exactly when and how the characters would grow and change as a result of the story.

  Before writing WOUNDED ANIMALS, I’d had a story idea about a young man who infiltrates a religious cult to save his sister, and I plotted it all out. Spent weeks doing research on religious cults, making outlines, writing character sketches. But there was no magic to the story… I couldn’t get excited about it. Couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it.

  Then, one night, while at a comedy club, the comedian onstage made a joke about a guy turning water into wine. The idea hit me… what would you do if you saw a random stranger turn water into wine at a bar?

  And thus, WOUNDED ANIMALS was born.

  I went home that night and furiously wrote out the first chapter of Whistleblower Book 1, with no notion of where it would go next. So I dipped into the idea folder I keep, and found one I liked: a guy comes home from a business trip to find his wife missing, and a dead man in his living roo
m.

  Finally, at that time, I had a day job as a software trainer, so it seemed a natural choice to give Candle the same occupation. I combined all of these concepts into a rough, two-paragraph long story idea. Then I went about writing, having mostly no idea what was going to come next. For a lifelong plotter, the freedom of letting the characters act for themselves was exhilarating.

  When I finished the first draft of WOUNDED ANIMALS, I had no idea it would become a trilogy. I’d left the ending vague, and my beta readers kept asking, so what happens next?

  And I said, “well, I don’t know, but I’d like to find out, just as much as you do.”

  Like most of my ideas, what to do next came to me when I was walking my dog Kemba. And that idea was what IntelliCraft is really up to.

  Just like that, I had the idea for my series. I had to go back and make changes to the first book in order to make it work, of course, but the seed of the idea took hold, and I got excited to write it.

  The Whistleblower Trilogy has been a lot of firsts for me. I’d never written anything besides short stories entirely in the first person. I’ve always liked using multiple points of view to create suspense… letting the reader in on secrets via one character’s POV that another character knows nothing about. But writing in first-person POV seemed like a great challenge. Plus, Candle was so much fun to write, I had to try it.

  It’s also my first genuine series. Sure, I’ve written The Five Suns Saga, but that isn’t so much a series as it is a collection of stories told in the same universe. The Whistleblower Trilogy is my first attempt to write a complete, three-story volume of a single character arc.

  But… is it complete? The ending may have a left some lingering and unresolved issues. What did Heath mean about Candle’s mom? Who was Roman Carter and why did Heath have a safe deposit box in his name?

  Someday, I’ll write a prequel that fills in some of these gaps.

  Thank you for reading this far. I hope my little experiment worked, and I also hope I can continue to tell stories such as this one.

  Jim Heskett

  March 2015

  Broomfield, Colorado

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jim Heskett was born in the wilds of Oklahoma, raised by a pack of wolves with a station wagon and a membership card to the local public swimming pool. Just like the man in the John Denver song, he moved to Colorado in the summer of his 27th year, and never looked back. Aside from an extended break traveling the world, he hasn't let the Flatirons mountains out of his sight.

  He fell in love with writing at the age of fourteen with a copy of Stephen King's The Shining. Poetry became his first outlet for teen angst, then later some terrible screenplays, and eventually short and long fiction. In between, he worked a few careers that never quite tickled his creative toes successfully, and hasn't ever forgotten about Stephen King. You can find him currently huddled over a laptop in an undisclosed location in Colorado, dreaming up ways to kill beloved characters.

  He blogs at his own site and hosts the Indie Authors Podcast. You can also scour the internet to find the occasional guest post for various writing websites such as Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Quips and Tips for Writers, the Blood-Red Pencil, and a few others scattered here and there. He believes the huckleberry is the king of berries and refuses to be persuaded in any other direction.

  If you’d like to ask a question, get a free digital copy of any of his books in exchange for a review, or just to say hi, stop by the About page and fill out the contact form.