by JJ Jones
“Well I haven’t seen him in awhile, but he’s just like a regular guy. He looks a lot like you, Tanisha. He’s tall and has the same eyes as you. He’s a shifter, so he looks like a gym rat, even though he’s not or doesn’t need to be. I think he likes going to the gym though, so he might go every now and then to be social. He likes to play ball, so he goes to play ball with some of the locals. I don’t know if he still does that though, because they were becoming a little suspicious about his age and abilities.” Logan seems to be talking to himself.
“My Dad is a ball player. That’s great. I want to play with him sometime. I bet he’s really good. I wonder if that is where I got my skills from. Probably. I sure didn’t get them from my mom. She was terrible. Oh, I used to beg my mom to come and play with me. Bless her heart, she would try, but she could not shoot a ball to save her life,” I laughed remembering the days when I was a kid.
“What’s your mom up to now?” Logan asked.
“Oh, my mom died a few years ago,” I explained. “Lung cancer. She was a smoker. She picked it up after my father left. Helped her deal with the pain and loss I think. At least that’s what she told me, or told herself. It’ll be four years this next May.”
“Oh I’m sorry,” Logan replied. “That’s terrible.”
“Yeah, it was sad, but it’s the choice she made when she started smoking. I can only blame her, ya know? I tried to get her to stop at least a dozen times. We’ve known that cigarettes were bad for you for a long time. I gave up years ago and just accepted the fact that she’d die young and die of lung cancer. It made it much easier when the time came.” I explained.
“Wow,” Logan said. “Oh, here’s the street. Your Dad’s house is the last one on the corner.”
All of a sudden I felt nervous. What would I say? How would I react? Should I give him a hug? I felt lots of emotions all at once. I knew that I was still angry, but after everything that Logan had told me, I knew I shouldn’t be anymore. But I still felt a twinge of jealousy that Logan had got to spend so much time with my father, when I hadn’t.
But I knew that was ridiculous. I was acting childish and needed to let that go. We were pulling into the driveway.
“Something isn’t right here,” Logan said. He quickly jumped out the car and ran to the steps. I tried to follow just as fast, but couldn’t keep up. He rang the doorbell before I had time to even check my hair to see if I looked okay. I was about to see my father, whom I hadn’t seen since I was born, and Logan didn’t even have the courtesy to let me get myself ready.
I looked over to see him peeping through the windows and glancing around the side of the house. “What are you doing?” I hissed.
“I told you,” he hissed back, “something isn’t right here.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he replied.
He moved around the house sniffing. When he came back to the front, I suggested, “Maybe he’s just not home?”
“Nope, I can smell blood,” Logan kicked down the front door and we both rushed inside looking for my father.
In the back room, my father lay in a pool of blood barely breathing.
Logan immediately started to try and heal him. I watched in horror as the man I loved tried in vain to save the dad I never knew.
“Tanisha,” my father called to me, “my dear Tanisha.” Lionel reached out a hand to me. I knelt next to him and held his hand while he spoke to me. “I wish I never had to leave you and your mother. Your mother was the world to me,” he coughed and blood spewed from his mouth. “And when we found out we were pregnant with you…we were so excited. You were our angel, our world, our everything. I should never have taken the job with the agency in the first place.” His eyes became dark and hatred shown through them. “It ruined our lives. It ruined everything,” he coughed again. “I made many mistakes, did many things wrong in this life, but you, my sweet daughter, you are the one thing that I did right in this world. You are the one things that I made that I am proud of. But I am so sorry. I was a terrible father. Everything I did, leaving you, and your mother, I had to do in order to protect you.” He coughed again, this time longer and there was more blood.
“It’s okay Father, Logan told me everything. I forgive you.”
A calm look washed over him as I told him those three little words.
He turned to Logan.
“Why can’t I heal you?” Logan asked. “Why can’t you heal yourself?”
“Logan you need to listen to me,” my father seemed not to hear his question, and instead began talking to him about other things.
Logan ignored him and turned to me. “Tanisha, go and look for a first aid kit. Try the kitchen and the bathroom. There has to be something somewhere.”
I left the room frantically looking for something that might help. I had failed to notice what type of wounds my father had. All I noticed was the blood. Whatever had caused his wounds had done a lot of damage. I pulled open drawer after drawer and found nothing – a true bachelor pad. I ran to the bathroom. I could hear my father and Logan talking in hushed raspy voices in the back room. Under the sink was a small first aid kit that he probably had purchased years ago at the local drugstore. It seemed useless, but at least it was something.
I ran back to them and handed the kit to Logan. “It’s all I could find.”
Logan took the kit and took one quick look through it, but then tossed it to the side knowing as I had that it was useless against the severity of injuries my father was facing. I stood behind Logan and listened to the remainder of their conversation. Logan intently listened while my father spoke to him.
“It was the Lone Wolf,” his breaths were becoming short and raspy. “It is out there, Logan. He came for me. They finally unleashed him.” Lionel struggled to breathe.
Logan moved closer to him holding his head in his lap.
“Logan,” he stopped to take a painful breath, “you are next. You need to go and take care of my daughter.”
My father’s eyes widened and then rolled into the back of his head and his breathing completely stopped.
Logan became desperate for a moment screaming back at him, “Next for what? Next for what?”
I moved past Logan and knelt next to my father. I placed my fingers along his neck searching for a pulse. My fingers were shaking frantically and I wasn’t sure I would be able to check for anything. I pulled my hand away and held my hands together trying to calm myself. After a few deep breaths, I tried again. Nothing. I put my hand next to his nose and mouth, I felt no movement or heat from breathing either.
Logan was still desperately asking my father about what he had meant with his final warning about Logan being “next.”
“Logan, he’s dead,” I pulled him away from my father.
Again I pulled Logan away from my father telling him that he’s already dead. Logan’s body was collapsed on the floor next to my father’s. I couldn’t move him, so I sat next him and ran my fingers through his hair noticing that silent tears were running down his cheeks.
I didn’t know my dad, but I do feel sorry for this man that is now dead. For years he loved my mom and me. It will take time for me to let go of all the ill feelings I have felt for him, but now that I know the truth, I will be able to let all those feelings go, and truly feel only love and admiration for this man. As I sat there and watched him die, it was an injustice and a wrong and no one deserves to die that way. It made me sad.
Logan must have really been close with my dad though. The emotion that he was showing after my dad died said a lot about their relationship and friendship. I sat for a long time with Logan’s head in my lap running my fingers through his hair and helping him calm down after the loss of a dear friend.
Chapter3
We sat quietly for a moment. I continued stroking Logan’s hair unsure of what to say or how best to comfort him. I wasn’t sure if he was crying or just mourning the loss of my father, but either way I wanted to find the r
ight words to let him know that I felt loss too, just in a different way.
I watched the clock on the wall tick the seconds into minutes as I waited for Logan to say something. Finally, I decided to speak.
“Logan,” I said cautiously, “what happens now?”
He didn’t respond at first, but I knew he had heard me, so I waited. It was as if he was lost in a dream or a trance. Finally, I shifted my weight, lifting his head from my lap and looking into his eyes. “Logan,” I repeated again.
“Tanisha,” he said to me. He shook his head as if coming out of a dream. “We need to keep moving,” he spoke suddenly and somewhat forcibly.
I was shocked at his sudden movements and felt frozen. Logan pulled me to my feet and started for the door.
“What about his body? We can’t just leave him here?” I turned around and looked back at my father lifeless and laying in a pool of his own blood.
“Tanisha,” Logan started, “we can’t stay here, it’s not safe.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t have time to explain, you just need to trust me,” he paused before looking back at Lionel one last time.
I could see the pain in his eyes as he looked at the body. It wasn’t the kind of pain I had never seen before. This was different. It weighed on my heart and made me want to embrace him and tell him everything was going to be okay, only I didn’t know if everything was going to be okay. I actually really did not know what was going on at all.
I reached out and interlaced my fingers with his. I squeezed his hand trying to let him know that I was there for him. He turned and our eyes met, the corners of his mouth turned upward giving me a small reassuring smile. The best I could have hoped for given the situation.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” Logan turned toward the front door, but then turned around and scanned the house. “I’m sure Lionel had some weapons that may come in handy for us. Let’s do a quick search and see if we can find anything useful.” You look in the back of the house, I’ll look around the front and outside, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed and moved to the back of the house to start looking for anything I thought that looked like a weapon. In the kitchen I found a set of kitchen knives and in the bedroom I found a loaded handgun.
As I walked back to the front of the house, I had to walk by Lionel’s body again. I realized that it may have been on purpose that Logan had asked me to search the back of house in order to keep himself from seeing Lionel again. It may have been too hard for him to see Lionel this way. I’m not sure that death was easy for me, I’d never really been around it except for my mother, and this was different than her.
Murder and death were two very different things. As I stood over Lionel’s body, the thought occurred to me that I now had no living relatives. My parents were both dead, I had no siblings, and I had no children of my own. Something inside me died in that moment, knowing that the blood in my veins was the last of my line. Ancestry and bloodlines aren’t something that is very important in our generation, but there is still something about having someone, anyone that is related to you that means something. And now, I have no one.
I heard footsteps coming into the house, and I was jolted out of my little world. I moved away from my father’s body, realizing that my last image of him; my only image of him would be his dead body on the ground. It saddened me.
“Anything?” Logan asked.
“Knives and a handgun,” I hold up my finds.
“Those won’t really do us any good against what we’re going to be facing,” he sighed.
“The Lone Wolf?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Which is?” I asked.
“Hopefully you’ll never have to see him,” Logan replied and he motioned for me to follow him out the front door.
I was still extremely curious about this “Lone Wolf,” but I figured I would ask more about him in the car where we would be safe, since the house probably wasn’t as safe. I was also worried about what my father had meant when he had said, “you are next” to Logan when he was dying. I was sure it had something to do with the Lone Wolf, too.
Regardless, I followed Logan out to the car and prepared to leave.
“Will you drive?” Logan asked tossing me the keys.
“Uh, sure,” I replied barely catching them.
“Thanks,” Logan clamored into the backseat and started rummaging through his bag as I started the engine and backed away from the house.
“Where are we going?” I asked wondering if he had some place in mind.
“A mall, like an outdoor one,” Logan suggested like he was thinking out loud.
“Okay,” I said a little confused. “Care to elaborate on why we going shopping right now?”
“Alright, so here’s the deal. The Lone Wolf is a shifter, but not just any shifter. He is government trained and enhanced. They have had him in training and been preparing him for years to do this sort of job. He won’t attack in public, out in the open. Hence the mall. If we stick to public places, we will probably be okay. He will track us, so we will be able to spot him, but he won’t attack. Not until he gets us alone.”
“Okay, so how do I find an outdoor mall? We aren’t exactly locals here in Florida?” I asked.
“I’m sure the GPS has some feature that will allow us to search for something like that,” Logan called from the back as he continued to rummage through his bag.
I continued driving away from my father’s house while fidgeting with the GPS device and trying to locate the closest outdoor mall. Finally, I had an address to a mall that we were only ten miles away from. I got the direction plugged into the GPS and started driving as quickly as I dared.
From the back of the car an odor wafted in my direction as Logan started spraying himself from head to toe with something from an aerosol can.
“Oh God, Logan, what are you spraying on yourself?” I asked rolling down the window.
“Roll up the window, Tanisha so the smell stays on me,” Logan ordered rather forcefully.
I reluctantly rolled up my window, but glared at him through the rear view mirror.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted like that, but this stuff is important. It helps to mask my smell, which is how I am tracked. The Lone Wolf is able to smell me as a werebear. The stuff in this can masks my scent, so he can’t smell me, and therefore, can’t track me.”
“Okay, sorry,” I replied understanding now why he reacted, but still feeling like he could have been nicer about it. But his aggressiveness and willingness to take charge is one of the things I love about him, although I’d never admit it openly.
“Tanisha, have you noticed that black town car following us?” Logan asked me.
Honestly, I hadn’t been paying too much attention to the driving. I was paying more attention to him and our argument than to the road and the other drivers. It wasn’t smart of me, but it was true.
“I think we’re being followed,” Logan answered he own question, looked behind us again.
“Really?” I replied feeling my heart start to pound within my chest. Just when things had settled down for us, now things were going to heat up again. I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed the car he was referring to. The windows were all tinted. There was no way of seeing the driver very well.
“Tanisha, up ahead there is an underground car park I want you to pull into the car park and we will see if they follow us. Don’t use your signal, make the turn quickly and last minute. I will watch to see if they follow us. Then drive quickly all the way to the back and park the car, understand?” Logan waited for me to respond.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Okay.”
Silence spread between us as the car park approached. You could have heard a pin drop in the car. I felt the Florida heat bearing down on me as I waited until the very last second to make the turn into the underground car park The tires squealed unforgivably as we made the turn drawing attention from by
standers and other cars. I cranked the wheel and slammed on the brakes bringing the car into the car park with a jolt. Then once we were on our way down the ramp, I floored the gas and drove our way to end of the first row, parked the car in the first available spot, and shut off the car.
We both turned to watch and see if another car will come down the ramp. Minutes passed and nothing. Logan climbed up to the front seat. My heart is still pounding so loudly in my chest that I am sure he can hear it every time it thumps.
“That was some stellar driving,” he laughed.
“Thanks,” I smiled.
“Maybe I’m just paranoid,” he rubbed his temples back and forth gingerly with his fingers.
“Hey, Logan,” I reached over and put my hands on his, “you have every right to feel paranoid. “You’ve been running your whole life. You’ve always been looking over your shoulder for one reason or another.”