Nurse Blood (The Organ Harvester Series Book 1)

by Rebecca Besser

  “Mom!” she screamed. “Dad, Tim needs you!”

  Instantly the yelling downstairs stopped.

  She smiled at Tim and tugged on one of his wrists. He removed his hands, letting his arms fall to his sides again.

  Together they continued to his room.

  The pounding of their parents’ feet on the stairs seemed extremely loud as it echoed through the quiet upstairs of their home. They came through the door of Tim’s room just as she was sitting her brother down on his bed.

  Her dad reached them first and pulled her away—his hands were large and strong on her small arms.

  “Go back to bed, sweetheart,” he said gently, but urgently. “We’ll take care of Tim.”

  She looked up into his face; the shadows cast by the low watt bulb in Tim’s bedside lamp made him look like a scary monster. She shivered, and the fear that had vanished a few minutes ago returned with full force. She knew something was wrong, something was off. In her young, innocent heart, she knew something bad was going to happen.

  “Come on, honey,” her mom said from the doorway. “I’ll tuck you in.” She smiled, but looked worried as she glanced at Dad and Tim.

  She made it halfway to her mom when Tim started to choke and cough.

  Mom cried out and shoved her aside, rushing toward the bed where Tim was vomiting.

  She stood watching as her parents focused on Tim, trying their best to calm him down, and to keep him from making too much of a mess on himself.

  Dad glanced around and spotted her standing there.

  “Go to bed,” he said. “We’ll take care of him. Everything is going to be okay.”

  She nodded, took one last look at her little brother—who was heaving and struggling to breathe—and headed for the door.

  “Oh, God,” Mom cried behind her as she stepped out into the hall. “He’s not breathing! He’s not breathing!”

  She turned and looked back into Tim’s room; his face was turning blue and he was shaking while her parents tried frantically to save him…

  “Sonya!” a male voice yelled.

  She bolted upright in bed and her panicked eyes darted around in the darkness, trying to figure out where she was.

  Blinking rapidly, she tried to dispel the vision of her dying brother. She forced herself to wake up.

  “Sonya, where are you?” the voice called again, closer.

  A dark figure stood in the doorway to her bedroom and she whimpered.

  “Tim?” she whispered in a scared voice.

  “Sonya!” the man exclaimed and ran into the room, to her side. “Are you okay?” he asked, cupping her face in his hands. “Fuck, you’re cold.” He withdrew one hand and reached over to turn on the lamp sitting on the nightstand.

  She cried out and blinked, trying to pull back from his touch.

  “It’s me, Roger,” he said. “It’s okay, it was just a dream. Look at me, damn it.”

  Her wandering, unfocused eyes finally settled on his face and she instantly relaxed. “Roger?” she asked shakily.

  He nodded. “Are you okay? What were you dreaming about?”

  She shook her head, choked back tears, and closed her eyes.

  He withdrew his hands, grabbed a blanket off the bed, and wrapped it, and his arms, around her before climbing onto the bed to sit beside her. He rocked her and let her cry. When she finally quieted, he again encouraged her to share her dream with him.

  “Please tell me what upset you?” he whispered against her hair. “You’ll feel better if you let it out.”

  “I’ve only ever told Lloyd…” she said and stopped, unsure.

  “You can tell me,” he said. “You can trust me.”

  Some of the tension left her body.

  “I know,” she sighed.

  “Then tell me,” he encouraged gently.

  Slowly, she told him about her little brother, who’d died when she was eight years old. He’d only been six when his life had ended. She explained how he’d been born with heart defects and, as he’d aged, his other organs failed to work as well. She went on to tell Roger her dream about the night Tim had died.

  “Oh, God,” Roger breathed. “That’s terrible. Why didn’t they have him in a hospital?”

  “He was in a hospital,” she said, sniffling and wiping tears from her face, “but they’d sent him home earlier in the week, saying he’d get better.” She paused, pulled back, and looked up at Roger. “He was on the transplant list for two years, needing three different things—I can’t remember what they were. My parents had finally gotten a call from the hospital that morning, saying they had some organs that matched him. But because my family didn’t have decent health insurance, and didn’t have the money to pay for the surgery, we were turned away. They went to the next patient on the list. Tim didn’t get what he needed and…he died.”

  Roger sighed and hugged her close again. “I’m so sorry.” He thought for a moment, unsure if he should ask what he really wanted to know. He gave in.

  “That’s why you do this, isn’t it? Because of your brother and his unmet need, you harvest people’s parts?”

  She nodded against his chest. “I want every person on that list to get what they need,” she whispered.

  “But don’t you feel bad killing innocent people?” he asked. “I mean, you were hurt because you lost someone in your family…don’t you think other people miss the people we kill?”

  She froze, pulled away from him, and stood. She turned back to face him, looking him directly in the eyes.

  “If I harvest one person, many live,” she snapped with tears still running down her cheeks. “I’m not killing people. I’m saving lives.”

  He took a deep breath and held her gaze.

  “You are killing people—we all are,” he said. “Now we’re talking about killing children. Children like Tim.”

  She stumbled back like he’d slapped her.

  “No,” she snarled, and slammed one of her fists into the palm of her other hand. “I’m saving children like Tim, by ending the selfish lives of those who are wasting theirs. Besides, the men I pick up aren’t innocent. Most of them have wives and children at home and are looking for a quick fuck. Don’t act like I have no morals because they’re cheating, fucking bastards.”

  Roger stood and walked toward her. He didn’t understand how her mind worked, but somewhere in there she thought she was doing the right thing to save others. He sighed.

  “Look,” he said, gripping and rubbing her shoulders, “I know it’s all a jumbled mess, but I kinda understand why you’re doing this. I have my own past and it haunts me too.”

  She nodded and wiped furiously at her runny nose. “I know,” she said with a little laugh. “That’s why you’re here.”

  He grinned crookedly. “Let’s go eat the pizza you ordered me to bring before it gets cold―if it isn’t already. I’ll even tell you my story while we eat, if you want,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, sniffling.

  “You go wash your face and blow your nose,” he said, and laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “I’ll have the pizza set out on your finest paper plates when you get to the kitchen.”

  “Okay,” she said, and left the room, heading to the bathroom.

  He sighed as he watched her leave. Nothing about her was what it had seemed. Her story had thrown him a curve ball and he knew his wouldn’t even compare. He supposed if she could harvest children after what she’d been through, he could too.

  He shook his head, left the bedroom, and headed toward the kitchen.

  ***

  When Sonya arrived in the kitchen she saw that Roger was true to his word. He had pizza waiting on paper plates, and to her surprise, he also had a glass of wine sitting beside each plate.

  “Wine, huh?” she teased. “How did you know I would need that?”

  Roger laughed. “When doesn’t a hardworking woman need wine? Besides, I could use some alcohol to help me relax too, if I plan on sleeping at all tonight
.”

  Sonya raised an eyebrow in question as she slid into a seat and picked up her glass to take a sip.

  Roger sat down at the other place he’d set and sighed. “I guess it’s my turn to spill my guts, huh?”

  Sonya couldn’t help but snicker at the “guts” comment. Roger made a game of thinking up as much innuendo about what they did as he could. He slipped them into everyday conversations as often as he could to try to keep a light tone in their lives. Their work was dark, but he still tried to make them all smile whenever possible.

  “I guess I’ll just cut to the chase,” Roger said, picking up a piece of pizza and taking a large bite. He chewed for a moment before he continued. “I’m a father.”

  Sonya paused with her piece halfway to her mouth.

  “What?” she asked, letting the slice fall back to her plate. “Why am I only now hearing about this?”

  Roger shrugged and swallowed the food he’d chewed. “I don’t talk about it. I was young. I got tangled up with a young woman who wasn’t as in to me as I was to her.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Sonya said, lifting and taking a bite of the pizza she’d dropped a moment before. “You’re quite a catch.”

  Roger laughed and handed her a napkin. “You’ll need this if you’re going to talk with food in your mouth.” He paused to wink at her. “Well, she apparently wanted a man with money. So, once she found out she was pregnant, she dumped me, slept with some rich boy, and claimed it was his—they ended up getting married.”

  “Didn’t you try to get the baby or anything?” Sonya asked, holding the napkin he’d given her in front of her mouth while she spoke. “I can’t see you just walking away from your child.”

  “I did try,” Roger said, frowning. “But the guy she’d latched her hooks into believed her when she said he was the only one she’d ever been with, and his dad was the rich man in town who ran everything…” He stopped and shrugged. “So when I persisted, they had me arrested for some made up charges. I was pretty much told that if I didn’t leave town and let things go, I wouldn’t see the outside of a prison for twenty to thirty years.”

  “Damn,” Sonya said. “That’s messed up. Have you ever gone back to see your child?”

  “I made it halfway there once,” Roger said quietly, “but I turned back. Now, if I went back, I would kill them all and take my kid—I know I would. And I can’t see the kid even remotely liking me after I’ve killed the only family they’d ever known.”

  “Let me know if you ever change your mind,” Sonya said and opened the box to get more pizza. “We can part those bitches out no problem. Or set them on fire if you want.”

  Roger smiled for the first time since they’d started the conversation. “I’ll let you know, but I doubt it will ever happen.”

  “So, why don’t you want to harvest the children then?” Sonya asked. “It’s not like any of the children we’ll be taking will be yours.”

  “No, they won’t be mine,” Roger said, “but every time I see a kid, I wonder about mine…if the kid was a boy or girl, what the kid looked like, what the kid’s name is…” He shrugged, picked up his glass, and downed the rest of the liquid.

  “I guess that makes sense,” Sonya said, nodding. “I could see how that would mess with you. But you do realize you won’t be handling the children a bunch, right?”

  “I know,” Roger said, refilling both their wine glasses. “I’ll have to watch the house and watch them move around, and I’ll have to handle them when we’re moving them. It may not seem like a lot, but add it all together and I know it will get to me.”

  “Are you gonna do it then?” Sonya asked. “Are you gonna help us?”

  Roger sighed and swallowed the bite he had in his mouth. “Yeah, I guess I will. I mean, if you can do it after what happened to your brother, I’m sure I can handle being haunted by the maybes of my own child that I’ve never even seen.”

  Sonya dropped her crust on her plate and smiled. “Okay. I’m glad. It would feel weird working without you.” She yawned. “I need to get some sleep but I don’t want to have that dream again.”

  “If it will make you feel better I can sleep on the couch and wake you if I hear you screaming or anything,” Roger said, standing and clearing their plates from the table.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Sonya said. “I’m sure you’d rather be at home in your own bed.”

  Roger smiled, throwing the plates and box away. “I don’t mind. I don’t think either of us should be alone tonight.”

  “Well, if it will help you too…” Sonya said, and yawned again. “I won’t argue.” She stood. “I’ll get you a pillow and some blankets.”

  Roger nodded and Sonya headed out of the kitchen and down the hall to get him what he would need.

  Less than a half hour later, they were both lying awake in their sleeping places thinking about their pasts and how they would affect their future until they fell asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Agent McCoy’s boss had been impressed with what he’d found; they now had possible cases from the last nine months. This meant the case wasn’t dead. Whoever was kidnapping people was still active and they could be anywhere. The last known case from Cleveland was a few months old. There was a possibility they were still in Ohio, but it was also possible they’d moved on.

  Agent Harmon, while pleased with the progress on the case, needed more convincing before he’d give David the go ahead to travel and investigate…he point-blank told David as much.

  So, to get what his boss required, and to be thorough and make sure he knew he was in the right area of the country, David started to do his refined searches on cases for all major cities on the east coast. There were many and he knew he couldn’t get them done in one day, but he tried anyway. It was after midnight before he finally called it quits and headed home.

  As always, when he was awake late at night, he had the urge to go to a bar to see if whoever had taken his brother would try to take him too. He’d been going to all kinds of bars in a one hundred mile radius at various times hoping for this scenario. But now he knew the kidnappers were on the other side of the country—he had proof.

  He was filled with nervous excitement and had picked up his cell phone to call his mother multiple times, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He had the hope that he would find out what had happened to Daniel, but he didn’t want to tell her too soon in case he was wrong.

  The more he read the case files, the more he was sure there was a team of kidnappers and not just one person. Everything moved too fast; too many people were taken in a short span of time. Even with the amassment of new cases, there were still no bodies. No single person could take care of that many bodies in the timespans. The lack of bodies puzzled him…there was no way that many people were going missing and no parts of the victims were turning up. He wondered if they were involved in human trafficking—he couldn’t think of anything else that might make sense. If that was the case, then there was a possibility his brother might still be alive. But if Daniel was still alive, he couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t tried to make contact with him or their mother. It could be possible that Daniel was in a different country and had no way to contact anyone, but considering the ages of the victims, it wasn’t logical to think that no one would have gotten in contact in some way with their family at some point. Usually human traffickers targeted young, immature victims that would be easy to control through fear. He couldn’t see Daniel being in that kind of situation without putting up a fight. The more he thought about the possibilities and factors of such a situation the more things didn’t make sense, but until he thought up a different theory that’s what he was stuck with.

  At this point in the investigation he was completely sure a woman picked up the victims from bars. No questions there, since that was what had happened to his brother. He also knew she took multiple people in a couple weeks…according to the files he’d had and the new ones he’d found. This
made him at least eighty percent sure she wasn’t working alone—he didn’t see how she could be.

  If what he knew to be true and what he suspected to be true were correct, he was looking for a team of highly trained professionals who moved a lot to keep their illegal activities from being noticed. He hoped this would make them easier to find once he’d done a complete search on all the cities on the east coast.

  Just to make his life easier, he’d put an active alert in the system for any cases that matched the cases he’d been looking for. This would let him know if a missing person was reported with the same profile. He’d done so right after he’d talked to Agent Harmon about the files he’d found in Cleveland. It was made clear to him that he needed to track down the team he thought existed before he would be allowed to pursue the case full time like he wanted.

  Everything was riding on his research being correct, on his theories being correct. He knew he was a good agent and he knew the passion behind his search for his brother could cause him to make mistakes. He had to be careful. He had to weave all the threads into a nice little package for his boss so he wouldn’t let Daniel down…so he wouldn’t let their mother down once again. So he wouldn’t let himself down. He owed it to everyone, including himself, to get this one right and to heal the wounds in his family that had been left open to bleed for far too long.

  Chapter Twelve

  The following morning Jack and Roger sat comfortably in the team’s van, parked by the curb on the opposite side of the street, three houses down from Bill’s former home. They watched the house, waiting for the dead man’s family to come out. The predawn hour didn’t provide much light, but they’d wanted to arrive before anyone was awake so they could chart the family’s routine.

  “Are ya gonna tell me why I had to pick ya up at Sonya’s?” Jack asked, glancing sideways at Roger. “Ya fuckin’ her?”

  Roger clenched his jaw and said nothing—Jack’s coarse, assuming rudeness was getting on his nerves.