Shadowed Ground

by Vicki Keire

  Callista Burke had burned to death, too.

  He found that fact rather sobering indeed.

  “I feel obligated to point out, Mr. Gray, that I no longer work for Goldman and Sibley. I was… let go… this morning, after raising so-called inappropriate questions about your very case.”

  Cass digested this. He seemed unconcerned with the sudden air of violence Hieronymus felt descend upon the place. “No you weren’t,” Cass Gray said after a very long, considering pause in which Heironymous felt himself minutely examined. He wondered how he measured up to the expectations he saw in the deadly man’s eyes. The former bodyguard leaned forward expectantly. “Are you still a practicing lawyer, Mr. Tuttle? Have you been stripped of your bar card?”

  “Certainly not!” he said indignantly. “I am licensed to practice law before the Supreme Court, if need be. Nothing my former employers can do will change that.” Then he sank a little further into his chair, dejected. “At least, not yet they can’t.”

  Cass nodded shortly. “All right, then. Here’s what’s happening. The Burke family is transferring their business from Goldman and Sibley to your newly formed private practice. We are now your sole clients, Mr. Tuttle. Any objections?”

  Heironymous felt his jaw drop. The curly-haired woman with him said nothing, merely watched him with her dark brown eyes, expressionless. He sensed an edge coming from her, though, almost as violent as the one coming off the former bodyguard. Like lightning before the rain, he could almost imagine he smelled the ozone.

  The lawyer in him forced speech from his frozen tongue. “Well, actually, I do have an objection, of a sort.” He cleared his throat and realized, to his dismay, that he was getting more sober by the minute. Something about this man made him long to have his full wits about him. “As you know, Callista Burke passed away leaving a minor niece as sole heir. Without a member of the Burke family present, I am afraid I can’t discuss the matter, and without the niece present, I can’t really proceed with the will.” He slumped down in his chair. “That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? The missing heir?”

  A slim hand holding a packet of papers deposited them into his own. “I think you’ll find everything in order,” said the woman. “I’m Miranda, Chloe Burke’s mother and guardian of the Burke trust.” She smiled a little, and he wondered suddenly what it would be like to feel the full force of her smile. He bet it was glorious. There was a deep sadness there now. “We need your help. We don’t have much time.” Then she frowned. “I’m afraid you may not have much time either.”

  Heironymous thought about it some more. Even when he hadn’t been drinking on the worst day of his life, he was a slow and careful thinker. It was what made him an almost undefeated trial attorney. “”Well,” he hedged.

  “If it’s money…” she began.

  Of course money was a factor, but not against him taking their business. The Burkes had always been one of the firm’s most generous clients. Why his former employers would do anything to jeopardize their business, even with a missing heir, baffled him. Of course, his boss had been acting bizarrely out of character lately, having developed the sudden ability to speak with their foreign visitors in their home language, and an odd sort of shuffling affliction when he walked. Heironymous had almost asked if the man had suffered a stroke, but something made him hold back every time. “No, it’s not the money,” he said, reluctantly opening the packet and shuffling through papers. They all seemed to be there: birth certificate, marriage certificate, and the death certificate of Aran, Callista’s only sibling. “This would be Mr. Aran Burke’s daughter, then, and you his wife?”

  He was stalling, and he knew they could tell. What was it, then, that made him not want to take the case? Something deep and foreboding rose within. He knew this wasn’t just an ordinary transfer of business. And it was more than the desperate way they’d sought him out, drinking at his favorite bar. No, something rotten was going on. He’d suspected as much since events began to unfold at his job. Something beyond his understanding, something dark and terrible, was at work here, and he would just as soon get back to feeling sorry for himself and let it pass him by.

  “I’m afraid that this is just not the best idea,” he said, sighing. “Believe me, I would hate to lose your business. I’m highly cognizant of the magnitude of what you’re offering. But you have to understand, this has been a personally trying week for me.” He found himself choking up a little, so he rushed through his little impromptu speech. “Let’s just say I may not be the best choice for this situation. Let me recommend some colleagues…”

  “Mr. Tuttle,” the ice-eyed bodyguard interrupted. “You are the only choice.”

  The woman leaned forward and rested a gentle hand on his own. “We know about your partner. His disappearance was untimely, at best. We think he may be involved in this as well, but we’re not sure of the extent. Come with us and we’ll do our best to find out.”

  Heironymous frowned. Jackson, involved in this mess with his firm and their strange new partners? He wasn’t sure if the feeling that rocked him was anger or fear. But what they wanted was impossible; Goldman and Sibley was locked up like a fortress these days. The firm would never let him through the doors again; they’d made that much clear. He had to make them see. “The Burke papers are back at the law offices. I no longer have the key,” he tried to object, but he could already tell he was playing a losing side.

  “Cass doesn’t need keys,” the lady assured him soothingly. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “But…” he started to flat-out refuse.

  That’s when he heard shouts coming from the kitchen. “Fire!” One of the patrons, nearest the doors, yelled. The two opposite him at the table locked glances. He smelled peculiar acrid smoke. Then, two figures walked right out of the smoking kitchen, seemingly unfazed by the fire or the now panicking crowd. They walked with a peculiar, jerky kind of movement and smiled when they saw him.

  His blood ran cold, because he recognized them, and they him. He’d seen them with Mr. Ravenwood at the law offices.

  “I know them,” he hissed softly at Miranda Burke. She hastily gathered the documents and tucked them securely into her messenger bag. “I saw them around the firm, right before they fired me for asking nosy questions.”

  “Is that so, Mr. Tuttle?” the bodyguard asked. He was already standing, his hand underneath his jacket, fingering something. Heironymous got the feeling it had to be some kind of weapon. “Then you would be really stupid not to come with us. And I get the distinct impression you are not a stupid man.”

  Heironymous was not, in fact, a stupid man. So he didn’t know quite what to think when the two strange men headed straight for him in the sea of panicking drinkers and diners. They grinned at him, and he shuddered. He’d seen echoes of that horrible, jack o’ lantern type grin in the law office, but here it was so personal. He felt marked. “I think,” he started to say, but Miranda Burke stumbled away from the death grip her protector had on her arm to lean into him, her huge brown eyes pleading. Cass swore the second she let go. Out came a gun.

  Heironymous could only stare at the pleading Miranda Burke. “You must come with us. We need you. But more importantly, if you do not, Mr. Tuttle, those men will kill you, just as surely as they did my husband and sister-in-law. As they probably killed or co-opted your boyfriend.”

  Heiro noticed she had said “creatures,” and not “men.”

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Cass flashed his gun. The advancing men held out their palms, which danced with a low-burning greenish flame. Cass shoved Miranda Burke so hard she crashed right into his lap, sending the both of them sprawling backwards to the floor. The table followed next, landing perpendicular to the floor just inches from his head. Miranda straddled him, the both of them sheltered by the table as gunfire and flames erupted across the room.

  “We have to get out,” she whispered, terrified eyes wide. “Do you know a back entrance?”


  Of course he did. He used to work at this bar while he was in law school. He nodded and choked out, through the smoke-filled, scream-laced air, “Follow me.”

  “Cass,” she yelled, not even looking behind her to see if he was following. “We’re moving. Now.”

  Heironymous grabbed her hand and ran for the bar, staying low. The gunfire followed; he could only assume the bodyguard was covering their escape. He pulled them, walking low, to the exit to the alley behind the bar and pushed through the heavy steel delivery door. Once outside, he stayed low, Miranda Burke close beside him. “Now what?” he demanded, utterly at a loss as to what to do.

  Fired. Broken up with. Drunk. And now, confronted with the mother of the missing girl, a deadly bodyguard, gunfire and flames. Things were just… absurd, he decided.

  “Run!” Cass yelled, slamming through the door seconds behind them. He pulled Miranda up in front of him and grabbed her hand, pulling her along as he ran. “I suggest you follow,” the man yelled without looking back. Heironymous could hear screams through the restaurant, could hear the distant wail of sirens and see flames rising above the building. He blinked rapidly, unsure if the smoke was making him see things. No fire spread that fast.

  “Uh, coming,” he shouted, following in a stumbling run.

  Heironymous Tuttle, Esquire, had just made a life-altering decision. He’d decided to go into private practice, and take on as his first clients the people who seemed best able to save his ass.

  Chapter Nine: Strategize

  “I don’t understand why we can’t just steal another one,” Chloe complained in a low hiss, her arms a twined cage across her chest as she looked at row after row of used cars. She perched awkwardly in tennis shoes that were a size too big. Each step she took was measured, careful; Eliot hid a smile. The cracked black asphalt parking lot, strewn with pebbles and loose chunks of concrete, forced her to move carefully in her too-large shoes. It was a good exercise in balance and awareness of terrain. He didn’t do it on purpose, of course. There simply hadn’t been any shoes that fit.

  Her beloved boots had seen better days but were still wearable. “Why don’t you wear these?” he’d asked her after breakfast, pleased that he’d not only kept up with them, but had also cleaned as much street alley fighting muck off as he could.

  She looked at him as if he’d just announced he’d murdered a litter of newborn kittens. “But I cut off your jeans into shorts. They didn’t fit.” As he stood there, patiently holding her boots, she stared from them to his face with growing incredulity. “I have nothing to wear but out-of-style cut offs and t-shirts I’ve stolen from you. Do you understand? Cut-offs!” He studied her rising ire, fascinated, and watched her struggle to master it. She took a deep breath and tried again, as if explaining something very simple to a small, stupid and annoying child. “Eliot. I know you’re from another world, literally, so listen. This is important. You do not wear boots with cut-offs. Ever. Do you understand?”

  He refrained from pointing out that she, also, was from another world, and that she was the one being stupid and annoying. Also, he wanted his t-shirts back. She had a knack for stealing his favorites. Breakfast ended with his solemn vow to take her shopping as soon as possible.

  “I thought you wanted to shop,” he said mildly, tracing a window frame with his fingertips. He examined the sticker on the driver’s side and dropped to look at the tires, forcing her to follow. “I only steal cars if the only other option is slow, painful death.” He straightened so quickly she stumbled keeping up with him. “This is important, Chloe. I imagine we’ll be switching vehicles more than once. I want your input, ok? Is anything slightly less horrible than everything else?”

  In the end, they settled for an older, less flashy version of their stolen vehicle. “Roomy. I could nap in it,” Chloe sighed, leaning her seat back as far as it would go. “And good sound system.”

  “Decent,” Eliot allowed as they drove away from the mid-sized used car lot. His fake id had gone off without a hitch. He made sure to produce it after he laid out the price of a good used car in cash. Cash blinded people.

  It had certainly seemed to blind Chloe. As he sat in the too-warm office, filling out the bill of sale as James Thatcher, age twenty one, he could just tell she was biting back questions. He spared her a quick, piercing look that he hoped was both reassuring and cautioning when the salesman swung around to do something on his computer.

  “Later,” he mouthed, when she started bouncing in her seat. Literally.

  He had an entire set of falsified papers for both of them; she would need hers now, along with money. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been carrying money since they’d left Atlanta. And he had promised her shopping. He sighed. To be fair, she really did need some clothes.

  She managed to hold her questions back until they sat in the food court of a sprawling outdoor shopping mall. He watched, amused, as she chose their seating.

  “Are you a fan of large plants, or is this supposed to be camoflage?” he asked, only partly teasing as he slid the tray piled up with pizza slices in between them. Even though the large plant in its white ceramic pot, easily as tall as she was, screened them from most of their fellow diners, his eyes kept scanning the open space almost of their own free will.

  “Well,” she said, folding her pizza slice in half down the middle, “Isn’t it? I mean, shouldn’t we be hiding?” She took rapid bites and was almost halfway through by the time he got his straw in his cup.

  “Sometimes, the best place to hide is in plain sight.” He imitated her, folding his slice in half and eating just as rapidly. The cottage had been well stocked with food, of course, but it was all shelf-stable, fairly healthy stuff. He’d really missed greasy junk food.

  She pursed her lips around her straw, eyes slightly out of focus and narrowed as she drank. “Hide in plain sight,” she repeated thoughtfully when she was done. She took a breath, held it, let it go. Her index fingers made circles on the condensation clinging to the cheap plastic cup. “Eliot. I’ve been wondering. On the night you, um, found me?” She looked at her finger, at the stream of wet rapidly pooling in a circle at the bottom of her cup. “If that’s what you can call it.” She looked up at him, searching, unsure.

  He leaned back in the metal chair with thin vinyl padding. “Sure. I mean, we’d already met, so I guess ‘found’ works as well as anything.”

  “I was just wondering. Looking back, knowing now what she must have known was out there, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my mother.”

  “Mmm,” he murmured as attentively as possible, a string of hot cheese rippling off onto his hand.

  “When she let me go, she was so upset. I couldn’t believe she let me. I was even upset about it. But then I remembered.” She leaned forward, whispering. “She told me if anything strange happened to go to the nearest public place and call her.” She frowned in concentration. “The most well-lit public place, I think. Is that what she meant? To hide in plain sight?”

  “Probably,” he affirmed, scraping up errant cheese.

  “They’re not strong enough yet,” she murmured thoughtfully, toying with pepperoni. She rearranged them into a line on a rapidly cooling piece of pizza. “When they come at us in plain sight, in a crowd without holding back, then we’ll really be in trouble,” she said decisively. “We’ll know they’re not afraid to show themselves anymore.”

  “That’s what we’re guessing.” He started on his third piece. She looked pensive. She rearranged the pepperoni again, into a smiley face this time. “Eat, Chloe. Please?” She took a single, resigned bite. “Cheer up. You wanted to go shopping.”

  “It’s so open. There’s so much space. I feel…exposed.” She shuddered.

  “All the better to see them coming. Besides,” he cracked a smile. “It’s not exactly hopping, at one o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Ah, yes. I should be in school. James Thatcher, twenty one, flush with cash, I assume you have some identification in t
here that absolves me from truancy?” Her smile had reached her eyes again. He was relieved.

  “That, and more.” He fished out a driver’s license and a zippered wallet, the kind that didn’t fold. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you this sooner,” he said when he slid the wallet across the table to her. “It was the last thing on my mind, what with the running and the fighting and the almost dying stuff.”

  Her eyes rested on the driver’s license. She didn’t seem to have heard him at all. “Anna Townsend. Nineteen years old. Charleston, South Carolina.” She tilted her head sideways, studying the card. “It could be worse. At least I’ve been to Charleston. We all went, Mom and Dad and me, for some conference of his. Four years ago? Hmm. I could probably handle some very light small talk about the town.”

  He nodded around his straw. “A lot of effort went into these documents. Your parents kept us informed.” He grimaced. “Somewhat. Enough to do some decent forgeries.”

  Her eyes flicked back to him. “Forgeries? Plural? There’s more than one?”

  “I’ve got two complete sets with me. Birth certificates, license, social security card, everything. And cash. We each have a debit card and two major credit cards to go with each identity, but those are just for legitimacy. Do not, and I mean do not ever, use them, if you can help it. Cards can be traced. Cash can’t.”

  She fingered the wallet finally. A small vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows. “I don’t want to take your money,” she said finally, toying with the zipper.

  He couldn’t help it. He laughed, short and loud. When she frowned at him, he hurried to explain. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting. You are your aunt’s only heir. It’s not my money. It’s yours.” She unzipped it and ran her fingers across the edges of uncounted bills. He leaned back on two chair legs, enjoying the play of emotions across her face.