In the Presence of Mine Enemies

by Debbie Viguié

  “So, let’s find it,” Geanie said.

  “There’s nothing we can’t figure out when we put our minds together,” Traci said, her face and voice showing determination. “So, let’s figure out who else Keenan might have been talking to. Someone who wants to hurt Cindy by destroying Jeremiah.”

  ~

  Jeremiah was literally running on empty. He had very little blood and no energy left. He knew he couldn’t stop, though. His focus kept drifting which was a bad sign. Over and over again he kept talking to himself. Actually, in truth, he was imagining that he was talking to Cindy.

  He had gotten lucky back at the car. Only the one man had been standing behind the car when the trunk was opened. He’d been able to shoot him in the heart and the man had died instantly.

  Jeremiah had rolled out of the trunk just in time to see the other man jump out of the car and start to run. Jeremiah had shot, but only managed to get him in the arm as he turned down an alley.

  Fortunately, he had left his cell phone behind in the car. It looked like he’d been in the middle of sending a text. Jeremiah had pocketed his phone and pursued. That pursuit was painfully slow, though, and his quarry was fast.

  He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t risk the man being able to warn the others of what had happened. He did make a brief call to Martin letting him know about the weapons deal that was likely going down that night and inquiring if he knew what hotel the men were referencing. Martin had admitted that he did not know, but that they did have eyes on the seller. He tried to get Jeremiah to go to a hospital and let them handle it from there.

  He couldn’t risk something going wrong, though, and the men surviving. He needed them dead so there was no chance they’d tell anyone else who he was or where to find him.

  Martin had also let him know that Cindy had escaped. He was furious, but not entirely surprised. She always surprised him with her resourcefulness. It made it that much more crucial that he find these guys before they could find her.

  So, he kept walking, following the drops of blood left behind by Hazim. He knew he should be stalking his prey silently, but his feet were dragging as he shuffled along. And he had to keep muttering to keep himself focused, moving, and conscious. It was a terrible trade-off, but one that had to be made.

  “I’m sorry to put you through all this, Cindy,” he said, imagining her in his head. He pretended she was walking beside him. He could almost see her, hear her voice. It made him feel less alone.

  He hesitated as he approached a corner, worried that Hazim could be just around it, waiting to attack. It’s what he would have done. He tried to crouch low, to present a smaller target and to appear below where the man would be looking. He got woozy, though, and almost fell over.

  He couldn’t let that happen because he was dealing with the very real possibility at this point that if he fell down he’d never get up again. He took a breath and peeked around the corner.

  He couldn’t see anyone, so he moved as quickly as he could, gun at the ready.

  The alleyway he was looking at appeared empty except for assorted dumpsters, any of which his enemy could be using to hide behind.

  “Nothing we can do about it, Cindy, we’re going to have to run the gauntlet,” he said.

  Only problem was his delusion of her wouldn’t answer him back, just smile and nod at him.

  “Stay behind me,” he told her, even though he knew she wasn’t really there. It was silly, but he had to do everything he could to stay focused, stay alive. And if that meant hallucinating that she was there, well, he was just fine with that.

  “Once we kill him, there’s just three more,” Jeremiah said, trying to reassure himself as well as his hallucination. He stepped forward, but after three strides he could swear he felt her hand on his shoulder.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. His mind was trying to tell him something, warn him somehow. He was just steps from the first dumpster. “Careful,” he heard Cindy whisper in his ear.

  He wanted to reassure her that he would be, but he dared not speak in that moment. He stood for a few moments, trying to listen, trying to be ready for the moment there was any sign of movement.

  It was a waiting game. Normally he was very good at those. He had once waited eighteen hours for an enemy to make the first move. He’d worn them down, they’d tried to shift position slightly, that was all. And Jeremiah had killed him.

  But he didn’t have time to wait now. Not when he was swaying on his feet and his mind was conjuring images of his fiancée to keep him sane and awake. Depending what all was in the dumpster his bullets may or not make it through to the man hiding on the other side.

  Ordinarily he would have gone low, shooting underneath the dumpster in an attempt to hit Hazim in the ankles. He couldn’t get low enough to take those shots. Even if he could his hand was starting to shake and there was no guarantee that he could actually hit his target.

  He could try a warning shot, see if he could successfully spook Hazim and get the man to run or at least expose himself enough to shoot back. It wasn’t a great idea, but it was all he had at the moment. He lifted his gun and sent one bullet through the dumpster and another just over it.

  It worked. Hazim exploded out from behind the dumpster, firing off a shot that went wild, then raced down the alley. Jeremiah aimed and fired. The bullet hit Hazim in the back of the shoulder, sending him crashing face down onto the ground. He had wanted to shoot him in the back of the head, but had had to settle for going for a body shot that he was less likely to miss with the tremors he was having.

  He walked forward as fast as he could. “We’re going to get him, Cindy,” he muttered.

  He turned around and his beautiful hallucination wasn’t there. He frowned. He needed her. Maybe in the depths of his subconscious he didn’t want her to have to see him kill someone, even if she was just a figment of his imagination.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t witnessed it before. Still, he guessed he wasn’t comfortable with it. He always wanted to protect her, not just from the bad guys in the world but also from the darkness he had deep within himself.

  “Sometimes good guys have to do things that most people wouldn’t understand,” he muttered. “Cindy gets that, don’t you?”

  The hallucination still didn’t return.

  He turned back to Hazim to see the man had regained his feet and was trying to make it to the end of the alley. Jeremiah walked after him, gun at the ready. It was better at this point to get closer so that he didn’t waste another bullet on another non-killing shot.

  He shuffled forward as quickly as he could, worried that he’d have to take another shot anyway to prevent Hazim from turning at the corner and disappearing from his sight.

  “We’ll get him, Cindy, don’t worry,” he said.

  There was no doubt of it in his mind. Killing the other three men might prove difficult or even impossible, but this one was his, and there was no way that Jeremiah was going to let him escape.

  “He should just give up,” he muttered.

  The man had reached the end of the alley. Jeremiah readied himself to shoot. Before he could do that, or the man could even choose which way to turn, Jeremiah’s Cindy hallucination came back.

  This time she was turning the corner.

  “We’ve got him surrounded now,” Jeremiah said, his words starting to really slur.

  Then Hazim grabbed Cindy and locked an arm around her throat as he turned her, using her as a human shield. He put a knife to her throat.

  “Stay back!” Hazim shouted.

  Jeremiah smiled and kept walking forward. “Good job, Cindy, now he thinks you’re real, too. We’ve got an advantage.”

  “Not another step!” Hazim screeched.

  “Jeremiah!” Cindy shouted.

  “Don’t worry, honey, we’ve got him,” Jeremiah said, still approaching, and taking careful aim with his gun.

  Then he noticed that there was a thin trickl
e of blood rolling down her throat from where the tip of the knife was piercing her skin.

  He gaped in horror as the truth dawned on him. This wasn’t his hallucination. That was the real flesh-and-blood Cindy. And Hazim was about to kill her.

  18

  Cindy was terrified as a man held a knife to her throat. The blade was cutting into her skin and she could feel blood beginning to trickle out. That wasn’t what was frightening her, though. Jeremiah was standing twenty feet away and he looked like a walking corpse.

  His clothes were singed and tattered. His skin where she could see it was bright red, as though he had been burnt badly. The exception was the area around his eyes which instead was bone white, as if there was no blood in him. His left shoulder was jutting out at an odd angle and the arm was dangling uselessly at his side. His left hand was wrapped in bloody gauze. He held his right arm out straight, a gun gripped in his hand. But it was shaking badly, as though he couldn’t bear the physical weight of keeping his arm raised.

  “Jeremiah! What happened to you?” she burst out.

  “I’ve been blown up,” he said shortly.

  She wanted to run to him, but the man holding her had a grip of steel and the prick of the knife reminded her that he could end her life at any moment. She wished she and Jeremiah had been able to do something about the self-defense lessons they’d discussed the week before.

  “Let her go, Hazim, and come and face me,” Jeremiah said, his words slightly slurred.

  The man holding her rattled something off in a language she didn’t recognize. She kept her eyes laser focused on Jeremiah. He had managed to kill the Passion Week Killer in a similar situation but this time he was wounded and couldn’t even hold his gun still. Instinctually she knew he wasn’t going to shoot in his current state and risk hitting her.

  Which meant she had to get clear of Hazim in order to give Jeremiah a fighting chance to take him down. Because of the angle at which Hazim was holding the knife she couldn’t just let herself go limp and fall without risking driving the knife into her throat.

  Jeremiah dropped his head slightly backward for a second. Then he took a tiny step backward with his right foot. Then he bent his right elbow and moved it backward ever so slightly before straightening it again. To Hazim it probably looked like he was getting weaker. Cindy knew better. It was a message to her.

  She snapped her head back as hard as she could, slamming it into Hazim’s chin. Then she stomped down on his instep with her right foot and elbowed him hard in the stomach. He dropped the knife and she sprang to the side, hitting the ground hard and skinning her good arm in the process.

  Jeremiah fired twice and Hazim fell beside her, his blood running onto the ground in rivulets. She jumped up and ran to Jeremiah who was weaving on his feet.

  She wanted to throw her arms around him, but realized doing so would hurt him more. She came to a stop right in front of him and as much as it killed her, she didn’t touch him.

  “You’re alive!” she burst out.

  “And you’re really here,” he said, his eyes clearly struggling to focus on her.

  “We have to get you to the hospital.”

  “Not until this is done,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll be running for the rest of our lives.”

  “At least we’ll have lives,” she urged.

  “I need you to go back and be safe,” he said.

  “I’m not leaving your side until this is done, one way or the other,” she told him.

  “Stubborn,” he muttered.

  “And don’t you forget it. So, what’s our next move?” she asked.

  ~

  Something had been bothering Mark for a while about everything that was happening. Now that he was thinking along a different line, though, namely who might have it in for Cindy, then he felt like he almost had his finger on it.

  “Look,” he spoke up suddenly, interrupting whatever the others were talking about at that moment. “I’m sure this is all about Cindy and not Jeremiah.”

  “So you said, but how do you figure?” Don asked.

  “Paul was suspicious about Peter’s death and then Paul gets killed. Okay, I can see how reading through Paul’s notes could make Keenan suspicious, but there’s just nothing more he can point to on either one. If he kept digging through all the files that had to deal with Cindy and Jeremiah he could have come across the fact that there was no absolute proof that the man Jeremiah killed at the wedding was related to Joseph’s stalker. So, now he’s grasping at straws.”

  “We’ve established all that already,” Geanie said with a frown.

  “Ah! But I’m not done,” Mark said, feeling excitement really starting to take hold. “Then Ben gets killed. And no one on this earth has any inkling that anyone might have a grudge against him except for-”

  “Jeremiah,” Joseph piped up.

  “Wrong!” Mark said.

  They were all taken aback by that.

  “Cindy. Cindy is the one that had a very intense fight with him leading to her very publicly quitting her job. Jeremiah might not have liked him, but Cindy was the real loser in that scenario. Then the church members get on the bandwagon and make him hire Cindy back. That still doesn’t mean that she likes him and that he’s not trying to make her life miserable, threatening her and Jeremiah’s relationship.”

  “But, that’s ludicrous. No one would ever think of Cindy as a killer,” Traci said.

  “Exactly! So, when they kill the pastor they have to frame Jeremiah instead of her. It turns out to be easier than they would have thought because Detective Keenan already thinks he’s a murderer. He just can’t prove it. So, someone comes into contact with Keenan and manages to figure out that he already has suspicions about Jeremiah. With a little creative digging they discover that there is a piece of evidence they can plant at Jeremiah’s house to implicate him in at least one murder, Paul’s. They probably even leave the crumpled-up piece of paper at Ben’s to make it look like he had a late-night meeting with Jeremiah. Unfortunately for them, Keenan and his people missed it.”

  “But who could possibly hate Cindy enough to want to hurt her or discredit Jeremiah?” Don asked.

  Mark began to grin from ear-to-ear. “Someone who blames her directly for ruining their life. Someone who can justify having a pastor killed because he inadvertently assisted Cindy in ruining someone’s life when he pushed her to quit her job at the church. Because after she quit her job-”

  “She went to work for the Rayburn company!” Geanie blurted out.

  Mark nodded. “Where she-”

  “Exposed her boss as a killer,” Joseph added excitedly.

  “Thereby ruining-”

  “It’s Nita Rayburn!” Geanie screamed. “She hates Cindy. She wants her dead and she blames her for what happened to her fiancé because she’s too much of an idiot to realize he is a killer.”

  “So, she takes away Cindy’s fiancé,” Traci said. “An eye for an eye.”

  “And, since Cindy is the best witness the prosecution has against Cartwright, if Nita could discredit her or drive her crazy then there’s a chance her man won’t be convicted of killing his secretary!” Mark finished triumphantly.

  “It’s diabolical,” Don said.

  “Twisted genius,” Geanie muttered.

  “And she might’ve gotten away with it,” Joseph said.

  “If it weren’t for my amazing husband,” Traci said proudly. She jumped up and gave him a huge kiss.

  “But she couldn’t have done this all alone,” Geanie said.

  “Agreed. I’ve met the woman. I’m inclined to believe she hired someone else to do the actual dirty work for her. So, we’ll have to prove a paper trail there somewhere unless we can get a confession out of her,” Mark said.

  “That wasn’t entirely what I was thinking,” Geanie said.

  Mark nodded. “You’re wondering just how complicit Detective Keenan is in all this?”

 
The others nodded.

  “Well, best case scenario is that he flapped his lips too much during the last couple weeks’ investigations. The worst-case scenario is that she seduced him into helping her plant the evidence. He didn’t like Jeremiah and was so convinced of his guilt that I could see him doing something stupid like that. I don’t see him killing the pastor, though.”

  “This is all well and good, but we need to get out of here so we can start to prove this,” Don said.

  “I agree,” Mark told him. “After Cindy’s escape, though, I don’t think we’ll have any success trying another one.”

  “And they’re not going to let us go until the danger is over,” Geanie said.

  “So, we’ll just have to think of a compelling reason why it would be better if they did,” Mark said.

  ~

  As wonderful as it was to look at Cindy, Jeremiah was upset that she was in harm’s way. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to happen. That’s why he’d asked Martin to watch out for her, for all of them. Now that she was here, though, he didn’t dare let her out of his sight for even a minute.

  “We need to get out of here before someone comes,” he said.

  The shots he had fired would be heard and they could be discovered at any time.

  “Do you have a car?” he asked.

  “No.”

  That was unfortunate, but they’d make do. He started walking, hating that he was so unsteady on his feet and hating even more that she had to see him this way.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Away.”

  That was about the level of thought he was capable of at the moment which was a very bad thing. He needed rest and medical treatment and the situation was growing even more dire. He couldn’t stop until the remaining three terrorists were killed, though.