by T. K. Chapin
She smiled and looked over at me. Her face was relaxed, void of stress. All the fear and tension had gone from her, left her body and took her somewhere else. The mist is doing this to us, I thought.
She began to walk away from me, and then she went around a tree out of sight. Panic overtook me seeing she was gone, and I hurried my steps over to follow her. When I came around the tree, there was a large nature landscape leading down to a valley and off into a distance. Then, far on the horizon, there was a sunrise. This didn’t make any sense, but I didn’t care. I stopped, not choosing to take the path down into the valley, and stood in awe at the sunrise. The sky was painted with vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds.
"Hello, Mr. Fields." A familiar voice carried from behind me.
It was Henry.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
APPROACHING HENRY, I GLANCED BEHIND him, trying to find the exit with my eyes, but I couldn’t. All I could see was trees and bushes and a lush forest.
"What brings you here?" he asked with an inquisitive look.
Smiling, I shrugged. I tried to think, but my mind felt heavy, then I remembered the thumb drive, the swap, the plan.
"Wait. I have something that's important to you."
He raised an eyebrow. "And what's that?"
"A thumb drive full of information about your special little donors and some off-shore transfers."
His eyes ignited and his jaw clenched. Suddenly, the earpiece I had tucked away in my ear turned on. "It's Mikey. You there? If you can hear me, try to pinch yourself and it'll help get rid of the drug’s side effects."
I pinched myself, and quickly, I came out of the haze that the mist had brought over me. Glancing behind him again, I could see the handle on the door. My eyes fell back on him. "Give me Emily, and I'll give you the drive, Henry."
He laughed and shook his head. "Don't you get it? She doesn't want to leave, Ron. We hold nobody against their will here at Lighthouse. Nobody."
I took a step toward him, but he took two steps back. "Thumb drive for my daughter, or else it's time to start exposing what's really going on here at Lighthouse."
Henry's face grimaced. "Fine. Give me the drive."
A whisper through the earpiece sounded. "He has a gun behind his back. I see on the camera."
My fingers trembled as I dug in my pocket, trying to buy time. Then, I saw her.
Teresa.
There in the corner of my eye. She was moving carefully toward Henry’s back. I did my best not to look at her and draw attention.
Henry's head began to turn toward her direction. I pulled the thumb drive out.
"Here it is!" I shouted, making sure he didn’t catch Teresa.
Smiling, he walked over to me. Teresa pounced just then and grabbed the gun from his hand, quickly pointing it at his head.
Henry cursed. He shouted, "I made you, Makaya! You were nothing but a druggie when I found you! I gave you a life! I gave you purpose! I demand you shoot this man."
Her fingers and hands trembled as sweat poured off her forehead. The gun swung in my direction, pausing as she pointed it at my chest. Really? My eyes begged her not to do it.
Then, she shook her head and pointed the gun back at Henry. "Make the call, Henry! Have Emily released!"
He sighed and pushed back his gray suit jacket and pulled his walkie talkie from his hip. Bringing it up to his lips, he glared at me and said, "Release Mya."
"Are you sure, sir?" a woman’s voice questioned on the other end.
Shouting, he replied on the radio. "Who's the leader here? Huh? I said who's the leader?”
A quiet response sounded back. “You are.”
He spat as he said, “Then release her! Now!"
CHAPTER EIGHTY
"NOW HONOR YOUR PART of the deal," Henry said, eyes squinting as he eyed my hand with the thumb drive. "Or do you Christians just not care about what you promise? Oh, and there had better not be any copies of the drive or I’ll kill every person who’s ever known you."
“There aren’t copies.” With great displeasure, I took the thumb drive over to him. Sighing, I handed it over. Our eyes connected. Overwhelmed with compassion, I said, "You know you still have a choice, Henry."
"What?" he responded with a bewildered look in his eyes.
My eyes surveyed the room and then came back to him. "You can give all this up and give your life to Christ. Jesus loves you and wants a relationship with you, Henry. He died on the cross, was buried, and then rose three days later, all for you. If you believe that and repent from the wickedness in your life right now, you can have everlasting life, Henry. It’s a gift you can’t earn, no matter how many people you take care of in the community or in Spokane."
Henry began laughing. The laughter went from a normal laugh to a full-on demented one. "You're trying to save me? After all I put you through? I was going to kill your daughter, Ron! Your daughter! I did kill your little detective friend, thanks to your dumb ex-wife, and yet you still don't get it. You are still interested in getting me saved and in Heaven? You're such a fool." He shook his head and looked at the thumb drive in his hands. "Thanks for the thumb drive." He turned around and walked by Teresa. He stopped and looked back once at the door. "You can meet your daughter outside the front gate."
He left, the door shutting behind him.
"Let's go." I walked up to Teresa and took the gun from her hands, tossing it off into the shrubs nearby. No longer did I wonder if Teresa was on my side.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
SEEING MY DAUGHTER WRAPPED IN nothing but a towel outside the gate, my heart felt a crushing weight press upon it. She had been through only God knew what inside those walls of Lighthouse. My sweet little angel whom I had watched grow from a tiny little baby in my arms at the hospital all the way to a fully-grown adult had been hurt in a way that could not compare to anything else on earth. As her father, I wished I could have stopped it, prevented it, got her out of it sooner, but that was all in the past now.
"Ems?" I said, brushing a light touch against her cheek after I held her close for a while in the van and sobbed, happy to have her back.
Her eyes looked like a hollow blue-gray, void of any thought process. Such a different look, even from when I saw her last. It was confusing. Turning to Teresa, I asked, "What's wrong with her?"
"She was iced. That means she was put into a stage of hibernation so she doesn't squirm during the sacrifice tonight. She’s just thawing out now."
"You were part of this?" I asked, shaking my head.
Teresa dipped her chin, ashamed.
I shook my head, not in disapproval of her, but disbelief of what she must have gone through to get to that point.
"He's already on it," Mikey said, tapping a few keystrokes of his keyboard. "Look in the top right."
I turned and stood, coming close to the monitor. There he was, Henry on his computer on the camera feed that Mikey was tapped into. "Zoom in on the computer screen."
Mikey zoomed, and there it was, everything on the thumb drive.
Turning to Mikey, I asked, "Are we streaming?"
"Yep. Live and to the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security."
"Beautiful," I said. The plan had worked flawlessly. Within the hour, Henry would be picked up and the entire Lighthouse community would be shut down.
Turning, I saw Emily as her eyes lifted and met mine. Some of the color was already returning to her cheeks now. She smiled, and I did too. Then, she suddenly panicked, her eyebrows pushed together, quickly meeting in the middle of her forehead, and she scrambled, trying to free herself from the blankets. It took Teresa and me to restrain her.
"What's wrong, Emily?" I asked.
She started crying, then groaning as she rolled to her side on the floor of the van. "Catlynn . . ."
Teresa came closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. "What did you say?"
"Catlynn. We have to get her out of Slam's."
"Who's Catlynn? What’s Slams?" I asked, then I looke
d over at Teresa. She looked pale, a ghostly white.
She turned to me and said, "I think she means my daughter."
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
ARRIVING AT THE ADDRESS ON the slip of paper, the man gave the grungy blue door a knock. The pavement in the parking lot had more cracks and potholes than the entire city of Chicago after the big thaw in the spring. With boards on the windows and shady looking people up and down the road, the man made sure to be packing his ’38 Special in his belt.
The door, still chained, opened a fraction.
"Who are you?" a shadow of a man asked. The rancid smell of bad breath escaped through the opening of the door.
The man's patience grew tired and weaned down to the nub. He took a step back from the door, then with one focused kick, he unhinged the door, sending it flying. The guy on the other side of the door went toppling onto his back, the door slamming on top of him.
Not only was there the smell of old cigarettes, pot, and alcohol in the apartment, but there was something lacking—Catlynn. Pushing the door off the guy underneath, the man bent down and grabbed the greasy guy's face. Squeezing it tightly between his hands, he asked the barely conscious man, "Where's Catlynn?"
"She's down the road at Slam's. The girls just stay here at night. I wouldn't go there unless you have a death wish."
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
AS FAR AS TERESA KNEW, the baby she had inside the community was given away years ago to a family in Texas who was looking to adopt. After speaking to Emily, who had met Catlynn when Catlynn was brought back to the community for reconditioning six months ago, we learned the truth about Teresa’s daughter.
Catlynn found out at the age of thirteen that her real parents were Henry and Teresa. Henry had told her in his first email to her years ago. They began writing each other back and forth. He wanted her to come live up in Spokane at the community. He said he’d made mistake sending her away when she was born. One thing led to another, and when Catlynn was only fourteen years old, she ran away from home.
“She thought you were dead. That’s what Henry had told her,” Emily said as she looked at Teresa. Turning her attention to Mikey, Emily leaned up between the front seats and gave him the address to Slam’s diner, where Catlynn worked.
Covering her mouth, Teresa’s eyes watered. “That’s probably why he sent me out of the community. She was coming up here to live. How could he do that her, to me?”
“I don’t know. Something isn’t right with that guy,” Emily said.
“How’d she seem? When you saw her?” Teresa asked.
Emily shook her head, chin dipped. Finally lifting her eyes to Teresa, she grabbed her hands. “Catlynn was already clean for a week by the time she came to Lighthouse the first time. She said she had enjoyed being sober . . . but Henry didn’t like that. He pumped her full of drugs and put her to work down at Slam's. Each worker there at the diner is on some kind of drug to keep them from running. Catlynn had enough and skipped her doses and tried to escape. That’s why she was brought back to the community for reconditioning.”
"So all these girls, they just work at the diner and then come back to the community at night?" I asked, trying to hold onto the side of the van as Mikey drove us to Slam’s diner.
"No. They have a special apartment down the road. A supervisor known as The Boss comes by in the evening to lock up and pick up the nightly deposit."
"Did you ever work there?" Teresa asked.
She shook her head. "No, I didn't."
My heart twisted in my chest and it felt as if someone were cutting into the fabric of my soul. Everything felt overwhelming as it all came out and was explained.
"No more!" I finally said. "Enough. The rest can be for the police. I'm sorry, Ems, but this is making me sick."
Emily scooted over in her blanket closer to me and leaned her head against my shoulder and began to cry. "I'm so sorry, Dad. I know you tried to stop me. I should've listened to you."
Wrapping my arms around her, I cried as I kissed the side of her head. "I love you, Emily, and I should've tried harder to stop you. I should have laid it all out to you, but I was scared. I shouldn't have just let you go on thinking it was all okay in the beginning. I could've done more."
“No, Dad. It was my fault.”
I kissed the side of her head and set my head atop hers.
Glancing over at Teresa, I saw her eyes well with tears as she looked on. I could tell she was hoping for a similar reunion with her own daughter in a few minutes.
The wheels of the van came to a stop, and Mikey looked over his shoulder at all three of us.
"We're here."
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
GETTING TO THE DOOR, IT was just me and Teresa. We were able to talk Emily into staying in the van with Mikey.
Teresa refused to stay behind in the van. She used the line that she heard me say over and over again. "It's my daughter in there." I couldn't help but smile and laugh a little as I gave up on trying to keep her from going inside.
As I held open the diner door, I looked Teresa in the eyes. I could see the hope in the bloodshot whites of them. Giving her kid away was something we had talked about several times during our relationship. She had struggled with her decision from her youth, and now it was time to reconcile it.
Walking in, I saw a full crew in the diner, but no sign that anybody in there filled the role of a boss. Spotting a man through the kitchen server window, I hurried to the diner's counter and leaned in. "Sir?"
He caught my eyes and came out, his hands held behind his back. "Yes? How can I help you?"
"Are you the boss around here?"
He shrugged and said, "Sure."
I stuck out a hand to shake his.
He laughed nervously and looked at my hands. "Germaphobe, no offense."
"Okay. You and I need to talk."
"Oh . . . okay." His eyes hit a table off in the corner of the diner. "Have a seat and I'll join you in just a minute, and we can do all the talking you want to do."
He looked nervous, a bit uneasy. Teresa chimed in as I hadn't said anything in response to him, only studied him. "We'll be waiting for you."
She grabbed my arm, and we walked over to the table. The whole-time, Teresa chastened me. "What were you doing? Just standing there staring and off in La-La Land. Keep it together, Ron! We need to find Catlynn and get out of here." Her eyes surveyed the diner over and over as she hoped to see Catlynn, hoping to recognize her too.
We took our seats and waited.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
HURRYING BACK THROUGH THE DOORS and into the kitchen, the man hurried over to the sink and rinsed the blood off his hands. He’d done it this time. He had killed his client with a steak knife. As he scrubbed his hands clean, he laughed and cried frantically. Hire me to kill your ex-husband all while you string me along on a dead end for my sister? Then have the nerve to try to kill me? Stupid woman. Then, he thought how strange it was that the man asking to talk looked to be the guy he had sent over a cliff.
Walking over to the walk-in freezer, he peered inside the little window to see if she was still dead—she wasn’t. She was gone. Nothing but a blood stain on the floor. He felt his heart dip into his waist, and he frantically unlocked the freezer’s door.
Walking inside, he took a few steps and laughed. "We can talk about this, maybe work something out?" Though the freezer was below zero, he felt sweat forming on his brow.
The door to the freezer swung shut, trapping him inside.
Hurrying back over to the window, he slipped and hit his head against the cement floor, knocking himself out colder than the freezer he was trapped in.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
TWENTY MINUTES CAME AND WENT before I became impatient to the point of action.
“Hang tight.”
Slipping out from the booth, I went to the guy I spoke to when we first arrived. Coming to the diner's counter, near the cash register, I tried to get the attention of a girl pulling out
a slice of apple pie from the display case.
"Miss."
She looked at me and smiled. "Hey."
"Could I speak to the boss? He said he was coming out in a minute, but it's been like twenty."
She furrowed her eyebrows and shook her head. "That wasn't the boss." She looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen swinging doors and said, "He went back there a few minutes ago. I don’t know what he’s doing."
I took it as permission and went behind the counter and through the kitchen swinging doors. Peering around, I saw a walk-in freezer to my right and then another doorway that led into a cooking area to my left. Walking over to the door, I glanced in and saw the man I had spoken to lying on the floor in a puddle of dark blood. I took a step back.
Turning around, air caught in my throat as I couldn't breathe. "Maria."
"Ronald."
"What are you doing here?" I asked, confusion littering my mind.
"I thought you were dead, Ron."
"Sorry?" Thinking about how she’d left me in the mountains to die on that hiking trip, I laughed. "You just can’t seem to kill me, can you?"
"What?"
"The hiking trip. You left me to die. Didn't you?"
She smiled. "What are you doing here, Ron? You already rescued that pathetic excuse of a daughter."
"You’re a sick woman."
She shrugged. "I might be a little sick, but I'm wealthy now. Henry showed me all that he could give me if I just kept an eye on these girls and took over for the slimeball Slam who was ripping him off. All I had to do was get you out of the way, which seemed harder than I realized. Then that stupid Charles and his digging.” She sighed. “You screwed everything up. At least with the cops scrambling to figure out everybody’s involvement, I have a good head start to get out of town."
My heart split open hearing of her betrayal. She wasn’t a crazy ex-wife. She was a monster. "Just let me have Catlynn and I'll leave."