by Tom Abrahams
“Are you going to answer it?” Bella asks.
I pick up the phone, pulling it to my ear. “Richard Denning,” I say.
There’s silence, but I can tell that someone’s on the line.
“Hello? You’ve reached Richard. Can I help you?”
“Richard is it?” the voice snarls. “Is that your name these days?”
“I’m sorry, I —”
“Don’t belittle me with your games, Jackson,” the caller spits. “I know who you are. And I’m coming for you.” The voice is familiar, but I can’t place it.
“Who is this?” I look at Bella, her reaction likely a reflection of mine. Her eyes are wide, mouth pursed.
“I’m going to find you and the rest of the process,” he warns. “It’s just a matter of time.”
“I don’t —”
“You do know,” the caller says. “I’m the man who visited your home when you were young. I’m the man in the man in the photo with your father. I’m the one whose body you watched drift down the Neckar River.” The line goes dead.
Liho Blogis.
He’s alive. And he’s coming for us.
THE END
EXCERPT FROM THE FORTHCOMING FINAL INSTALLMENT OF THE ALLEGIANCE TRILOGY: HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE
The sand squeaked underneath Liho Blogis’ feet. The sun was barely a distorted reflection on the waves crashing against the coral outcrops dotting the inlet.
Blogis was aware of the noise and made efforts to more lightly tread as he moved up the beach on Oahu’s North Shore. The crash of the waves, he thought, was enough to mask his approach.
They would never hear him coming.
Blogis thumbed the safety on the left side of his suppressed Makarov pistol. The so-called PM was Blogis’ weapon of choice. He’d retrieved it from the cold, dead hand of a Soviet police officer in 1988 and it was as much a trophy as it was an effective bloodletter. It was heavy in his hand by modern standards, at twenty six ounces, and its blowback design was more accurate than pistols using a recoiling or articulated barrel.
A man’s gun.
He’d surveilled the house on the inlet for three weeks; acting as a surfer, a tourist, a bum. The plastic surgery he’d undergone after having the bullet removed from his body provided ample cover from his targets. They would not recognize his new nose, enhanced cheeks, or his longer, blond hair.
The small bungalow was fifty meters up a tangled hill, covered in palms and underbrush. There a was a single window lit from a lamp on the second floor. It was a hallway outside of the bedroom. He knew the targets typically arose in forty-five minutes.
Blogis, a student of many disciplines, was an amateur somnologist. Knowing the human sleep cycle was a valuable tool in his arsenal of intelligence and violence.
He knew that roughly ninety minutes after the couple fell asleep, they’d enter REM. Otherwise known as Stage Five, REM was dream sleep. If he timed it right, and he had so many times before on similar missions, he’d surprise the pair at their most vulnerable; during a long period of REM right before they awoke. With their voluntary muscles momentarily paralyzed, they’d be unable to quickly respond. By the time they knew what hit them, what hit them would kill them.
Blogis checked his watch before glancing over his shoulder. Nobody was on the beach, but there were the silhouetted bodies of a half dozen neoprene-suited surfers straddling their boards, bobbing rhythmically as they awaited a swell just beyond the mouth of the inlet.
There were so many parallels between surfing and his chosen line of work, Blogis thought. Both required unique skills, unmitigated patience, the love of control, and the urge to bridle powers much greater than oneself. Both required a tradecraft that was counterculture, a subset of rules and laws which were grossly misunderstood by anyone beyond the boundaries.
Blogis crouched in the palms, his feet digging into the dirt, and he momentarily lost himself in the surf, eyeing a lone warrior who braved a large wave gathering momentum behind him. The surfer popped from his chest onto his feet, crouched at first much as Blogis was, until he slipped into the brief curl of the water as it broke against the coral.
The surfer crashed against the loss of the wave’s energy, and Blogis refocused on the bungalow. He checked his watch again and inhaled deeply, ready to initiate the task, when he heard a man’s voice behind him.
“Howzit?” The man was smiling, his bright eyes contrasting his deeply tanned native skin. “I don’t mean a bodda you, Brah.” He was speaking Da Kine Pidgin, Hawaiian slang.
Blogis glanced back at the bungalow’s lone lit window before spinning on the balls of his feet to face the interloper. He caught the surfer glimpse the Makarov and raised his finger to his pursed lips and stared down the dripping wet local.
“You cock-a-roach this hana?” the surfer whispered, a smile snaking across his face, revealing a toothy grin. His right shoulder bore a large, black patterned tattoo that stretched from his neck to his bicep, sloping across the top of his chest.
“Stealing?” Blogis tilted his head, keeping the Russian handgun at his side. For the moment. “You’re wondering if I am here to break in and steal things?” His eyes narrowed.
“Fo’real,” the surfer nodded, the smile disappearing. “I got a mo bettah way to do it.”
“Do you?” Blogis looked past the local at the longboard stuck into the sand halfway to the tideline on the shore.
The surfer nodded again and Blogis nodded him up the hill, toward the back door.
The young man, who Blogis estimated no more than eighteen or nineteen years old, started toward the stranger. He’d climbed two or three steps when Blogis stopped him with a pair of suppressed slugs; one to the center of the boy’s chest, the other in the small space between his thick eyebrows. That shot thumped the smile from the surfer’s face and he crumpled to the sandy dirt, landing partly on a clump of silvery Hinahina.
Blogis scanned the beach and the surf. Nobody was close enough to see anything, so he returned to the mission at hand and inched quietly up a short set of wooden steps to the rear door. It was twelve-paneled door with a simple lock that Blogis handled with ease. He slipped inside, quietly pulling closed the door behind him.
He was in the small kitchen, the smell of pineapple and soap filling his nostrils while he got a better sense of his surroundings. Across from him was a granite counter and to his left a washing machine. He walked to the counter and saw a half-empty twenty ounce bottle of Dr. Pepper, a pair of cellphones plugged into an outlet, both of them blinking to indicate they were fully charged. Next to the sink, on the other side of the counter against the wall, was a wire basket full of mangos. An uncut pineapple sat next the basket. There was a juicer, taken apart with its plastic parts flipped upside down on a stack of paper towels.
They tried to make this a home. How naive.
Blogis moved to his right and around the floral-pattered love seat that separated the kitchenette from the small living area. An old steamer trunk served as a coffee table between the love seat and a wall mounted flat panel television. A laptop sat open on the trunk, its screen black and in sleep mode. Blogis walked past the television and into a narrow hallway. At the end of the hall was the door to the lone bedroom. He stepped quietly, Makarov primed, past the lit wall sconce to his left, a window at shoulder height to his right.
As he neared the bedroom door, he heard the soft rhythm of jazz, an alto saxophone chirping a riff against the backdrop of trombones, a double bass guitar, and drums. Blogis paused at the door, listening to the refrain before gripping the handle and turning it. His left shoulder pushed into the door and it opened into the room.
Underneath a thin yellow sheet was the shirtless man, on his back, left arm hanging off of the full-sized bed. Draped across him was the woman, sleeping in shorts and a loose tank top. Her long, tanned leg was wrapped around his thighs, her right hand on his chest, her face nuzzled into his neck. Her long, dark hair covered her face, but he knew who she was.
H
e slide alongside the bed, leaned over her, placed the barrel of the Makarov in the small of her back and whispered into her ear, “Bella.” He trailed the gun up her back and along her spine. “It’s time to get reacquainted with your daddy.”
Bella winced, her eyes still closed. But she didn’t move. Neither did the man next to her, the one who’d saved her life too many times to count. Blogis had timed this perfectly.
He pushed the barrel into the back of her neck and pulled the trigger.
Acknowledgments
First, foremost, and always I thank my wife, Courtney, for her support, guidance, and love. She is my muse. I also couldn’t spend the hours and months it takes to craft these stories if it weren’t for my children, Samantha and Luke. They give me hope that tomorrow will be better than today.
Thanks also to the wonderful team at Post Hill Press. It’s a pleasure to work with such dedicated people. Michael Wilson and Anthony Ziccardi are saints for kindly responding to each of my emailed missives. I’m a reporter. I ask a lot of questions. Their belief in my work is both flattering and so appreciated.
To my editor, Felicia A. Sullivan…you rock. Please don’t fix the ellipses. It’s a convenient way to avoid using a semi-colon incorrectly.
A heartfelt thank you to my trusty beta-readers. Steven Konkoly, Curt Sullivant, Mike Harnage, Gina Graff, and Tim Heller read early drafts of my work, see through the mess, and guide me to a better book. Your comments, critiques, and hi-fives are invaluable.
Thanks to the great people at Murder By The Book in Houston for your unwavering support an promotion of my work. And to Tabatha Perry, you are too kind for your efforts to help the world discover Jackson Quick.
To my mom and dad, Sanders and Jeanne, my siblings Penny and Steven, and my in-laws Don and Linda, your love and viral marketing are better than any advertising campaign.
Lastly, to you the reader, I am indebted. Without you, Jackson Quick would have nobody with whom to share his adventures. I hope you’ll be as excited to read the third installment of the ALLEGIANCE trilogy when HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE hits the shelves later this year.
About the Author
Tom is a veteran television journalist and author who’s spent the last 20-plus years covering the biggest stories of our time.
He’s interviewed Presidents, cabinet members, and leaders in congress.
He’s reported live from the White House and Capitol Hill, Chernobyl, The Canadian Badlands, the barrios of Mexico City, Central America, and the Amazon Jungle.
Tom’s covered five national political conventions. He has flown with presidential candidates, gone backstage at their rallies, and broken stories about them on television and online.
He was at the Pentagon while smoke still rose in the hours after 9/11 and was in the room when Secretary Colin Powell made his case to the U.N. Security Council for war against Iraq.
Tom lives in the Houston suburbs with his wife, Courtney, and their two children.
Other works by Tom Abrahams:
Sedition
Allegiance
www.tomabrahamsbooks.com