Protector's Claim

by Airicka Phoenix

  I was saved from making such a useless decision when Lindsey returned, minus several degrees of her earlier pep.

  “Hello? Mr. Kincaid?”

  “I’m here. Where are they?”

  She wasn’t nearly quick enough to conceal the split second hesitation.

  “As I said, I’m sure everything is fine. Jeremy seems to have his phone off, but we are currently tracing his location and we—”

  “Find her!” I snarled, the last thread holding my calm snapping at the roots. “I don’t care what you have to do, find Gabby.”

  “Yes sir. Of course, sir. Would you like us to contact the police—?”

  I pitched the phone. It struck the passenger side window with a crack that left a white cobweb in the glass. The device itself bounced off the dashboard and landed harmlessly into the seat.

  “Fuck!”

  David.

  Every fiber of my soul screamed his name before any questions could even formulate.

  He’d taken her. The irrefutable certainty left no room for doubt. Gabby wouldn’t simply leave. Jeremy wouldn’t simply vanish. The man had children, a family. He wouldn’t abandon them. There were no other explanations. He had her

  David had her.

  Nerves too rigid to continue driving safely, I pulled over alongside a series of shops and killed the engine. My heart thumped between my ears, a rapid patter off rage and fear. The latter propelled questions I couldn’t bring myself to face, things like what if I never find her? What if she’s hurt, or worse?

  They were thoughts that helped no one. I couldn’t do my job and secure her safety if I let myself fall apart.

  I drew in a breath I could have sworn held traces of her. It may have been in my imagination, wishful thinking on my part, but it only made me all the more desperate to find her.

  I dragged my phone back to me and punched Del’s number.

  The man hadn’t returned my call since we last talked. I hadn’t heard anything from him in days, days that should have given me ample time to organize my plan.

  It rang with an insistence I knew was only in my head. It matched the impatient rapping of my fingers on the wheel.

  He picked up just when I was ready to pitch the phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where the hell is the information I asked you for?” The snarl tore from the very root of my oesophagus, a vicious and shredded growl puncturing through my clenched teeth.

  There was a pause where I imagined the man eyeing his phone and wondering who I was. After all, it wasn’t as if he had my cellphone number, and I wasn’t under the impression I was his only client.

  “I have nothing new to report, Mr. Kincaid.”

  I blinked, taken aback by, not only the use of my name, but the absolute conviction in his statement.

  “New?” I repeated. “You haven’t given me anything.”

  There was another stretch of silence, the kind that came from being completely alone in an isolated place, and I wondered — not for the first time — who Del was.

  “Everything I had on David Thornton, I already gave your father. There has been no change since.”

  My father.

  The folders.

  I knew there were dockets for everyone my father had ever come into contact with, professionally and personally, but there was none for David. I hadn’t thought about it before, never had a reason to, but now I wondered.

  “Do you have copies?”

  “Maybe.”

  I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose. “I don’t give a shit about money, if that’s what you’re after. This is literally a matter of life or death.”

  Something clicked on the other end, a subtle rap of a pen on the table.

  “I don’t need money, Mr. Kincaid. I don’t dabble in money. It’s too risky. It can be traced.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Then what?”

  “Information.” Another click. This one held the vibrations of barely suppressed excitement. “Your father had an extensive collection of information. I only want one page.”

  What the Christ?

  “Are you serious?”

  “Quite.”

  I blew out a breath. “Fine. Bring me everything you have on the Thornton family, and the page is yours. I’ll be home in—”

  “No, I will send you an address. You will go there with the page.”

  Every bone in my body wanted to protest, to scream at him that I didn’t have time for this shit. Gabby’s life was in danger and the longer this asshole played cloaks and daggers, the further she could be slipping from my fingers. But he held all the cards. I needed him more than he needed me. I had no choice but to do whatever he asked.

  “Fine, but don’t be late.”

  “Mr. Kincaid.” His smooth interruption stopped me from stabbing the end-call button. “Don’t you want to know which page I’d like?”

  I gritted my jaw. “What page?”

  The name he gave me rang a distant bell. I vaguely recalled seeing it when flipping through the box. I’d never met the person attached to it so it hadn’t properly registered, but I knew where to find it.

  Upon receiving the box, I had spent an entire night dividing the folders, separating business holdings from personal. I divided the business properties from the people, and the family from the friends. In total, there were six piles in six different locations. The one I needed was tucked away in a vault at a bank I had opened an account at for the sole purpose of using their safety deposit boxes.

  The bank manager, a hulk of a man with a Colonel Sanders’s mustache and a heavy, baritone voice escorted me to the vault. To his credit, he didn’t ask me why I needed to visit my box, nor did he attempt idle chit chat. I liked him for that. My attention wasn’t in a place for polite conversation.

  He helped me remove the metal case from the wall and placed it on the slab of counter erected from the center of the room.

  “Will there be anything else, Mr. Kincaid?”

  I assured him there wasn’t and waited until he’d left before opening the box.

  Each folder rested exactly how I’d left them, face down, hiding the labeled tabs along the top. They slipped easily from their metal coffin and onto the table.

  They seemed so innocent, so frighteningly normal. How often had I had to sit at my desk with a mountain of folders to wade through? Never had I felt such an infinite surge of dread simply by being in the same room as a stack of papers. I certainly had never felt an ominous, almost toxic pulse coming off an inanimate object before.

  Yet, standing there before the embodiment of evil, I could barely restrain the shuddering chill that swept over me.

  I hadn’t gone through them all. I’d avoided the folders for friends and family entirely, not interested in marring my view of people I’d known my whole life based on the obsessions of a twisted narcissist with control issues. Aside from the brief skim of the labels, they’d been stuffed into the safety deposit box and essentially forgotten.

  Still, there I was, gathering them all up and turning them over.

  My mom’s folder was straight on top. It wasn’t nearly as thick as some of the others, but the sight of it still had my back molars creaking with the force of my annoyance.

  It was stuffed beneath the others.

  The next four were sitting senators. There was a judge, two presidents, and a duke, of all things. As an afterthought, I kept my eyes open for the possible chance I might have missed David’s. I was practically holding my breath.

  But I reached the end with zero results. Its absence made me wonder where my father might have put it. There was no way David didn’t have a folder. Aside from Del flat out telling me he’d given my father the thing, I didn’t believe for a minute Walter would skip over David.

  The man had a file on his wife, for Christ sakes. David would definitely have had one.

  If the thing existed, it wasn’t in the friends or family pile. It wasn’t in the box at all. I made a
mental note to search the other stacks, but I didn’t have time for that now.

  I skimmed back through a second time, no longer searching for David but the name Del had given me, Lincoln Van Doren.

  I’d never met the man, but I’d heard father mentioning him in passing. There hadn’t seemed to be any deep connection between them, outside of business. I vaguely remembered Father buying a company off Van Doren. I hadn’t read the whole file, but that was the start and end of their dealings as far as I could tell. Yet, somehow, Van Doren had made the family and friends pile. Not the business.

  The folder was average size, weightier than Mother’s, but not nearly so much as some of the others. I almost didn’t want to open it, but the page Del had asked for was somewhere inside and the only way to get it was to step into Pandora’s box.

  Pulling in a breath, I snapped the manila folder open.

  Pages ruffled as if in fright. A handful of snapshots scattered across the steel countertop before I caught them and stuffed them back in with the papers. Then there was nothing to do but stare into the private life of a man I couldn’t even pick out of a line up.

  Six pages deep and I was no longer a stranger to Van Doren’s connection with my father. The two shared an interest in business, which was what had brought them together. Their love of torturing young girls was what kept them friends. Van Doren had a fetish for steel work, garish contraptions that were wielded to flesh, bending limbs, crushing bones. I couldn’t look at any of the photos without feeling my stomach roil. I briefly paused at a distant snapshot of a middle-aged man in a crisp, Italian suit, standing between two identical men roughly my age. The trio shared the same arrogant features, the shred eyes and just a hint of a grin that boarded on mocking. They were on the verge of crossing an intersection, each head turned in a different direction, watching the traffic. It was bright out, summer, judging from the brilliant spray of flowers behind them, but they each wore a suit in various shades of blue, black and gray.

  I still didn’t recognize any of them, not even the twins and I knew newly all of the sons of my father’s friends.

  The photos were placed aside and I reached for the papers once more. I flipped idly through them, examining the row of words without really reading them. While intrigued, I didn’t have the time.

  I checked my watch to be sure I wouldn’t miss my meeting with Del. There was still just enough time to find the page and get to the location.

  The page was a small piece of paper neatly cut into a square and marked with nine, neatly scribbled numbers, and nothing else. Just as Del had described it. It was the only one like it, solidifying my confidence that I had the right one.

  I turned it over, searching for their purpose, but whatever they were for, no one had thought to write it down.

  I started to fold it up and tuck it into my pocket, when something stopped me. I placed the paper down on the table and pulled out my phone. I took a quick picture before returning the phone to my pocket. The piece of paper was stuffed back into the folder and the folder was shut with all it’s pages.

  The next stage of my plan took me to a nearby Staples. I printed the numbers out and cut the page to the proper dimension. The ink on the page was a duller, more faded blue compared to the original, but was otherwise interchangeable.

  I was counting on Del not noticing the difference. Whatever the numbers are for, it was clearly worth something to someone and I was enough of my father’s son to recognize potential. Not money. I had plenty of that, but a possible bargaining chip, should I need ever need one.

  The coffee shop, a Bohemian façade draped in throws and plump pillows. The air smelled of coffee and pot, and sandalwood. The sound of tinkling wind chimes accompanied the rattle of plastic beads as waitresses in long skirts and tiny tops shoved them aside to get through the doorways. A bell jangled over my head when I stepped into the smoky shop. It seemed lost in all the other noises, but not enough not to catch the attention of a pretty blonde a few feet away.

  She abandoned her conversation with the couple sitting cross-legged around a small, low table. The various chains linking across her body twinkled and jingled with every step. There were so many, I had no idea where they started our ended. A thin, silver chain hung in a single loop from the ring in her nose to the hoops in her ears. Down her bare arms were more layers to the elbows. I could just make out where those chains were connected to the bands around her throat and across her shoulders. A solitary chain draped around her naked waist, joined to the piercing at her navel. More were at her wrists and ankles with lines connecting to the chunky rings along each finger and toe.

  All I could think was how she was one wrong snag away from a visit to the emergency room.

  I kept the thought to myself as she reached me, smiling early.

  “Hello, can I help you find a seat?”

  Del hadn’t given me instructions beyond getting the page and meeting him at the coffee shop. I doubted Del was a name the girl would recognize. I doubted it was even real.

  “I’m meeting someone,” I said instead, not answering her question, but figuring it was the best way to determine if she knew anything.

  The murky gray of her eyes shimmered under the dull light.

  “Del?”

  It surprised me that I wasn’t surprised at all that she knew.

  “Yes, has he arrived?”

  Rather than answer, she motioned me to follow with a nod of her had. We passed through a curtain of beads and delved deeper into the heavy fumes of too many incense sticks, weed, and coffee. Tables lit with a single candle each served as the only illumination. Figures moved and shifted in the shadows without faces. I caught the movements as we journeyed deeper into the back.

  The table was wedged into a corner, kept away from the rest. The flames in the Mason jar shifted and swayed in the oppressive darkness.

  I put myself with my back to the wall and a clear view of the room.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  I started to shake my head, but realized I couldn’t risk getting booted for taking up a table and not ordering.

  “Coffee, please. Black.”

  With an inclination of her head, she hurried back to the front.

  I sat and dug out my phone.

  “The please was a nice touch.”

  The phone nearly slipped from my fingers. I barely managed to catch it with the very tips of my fingers before it hit the table.

  I hadn’t noticed him at first. The corner he lurked in was an absolute darkness that begged to be filled by horny lovers, or serial killers. It was an absolute nothing that pooled in an entire area from ceiling to floor. I only caught glimpses of a table where I imagined the candle had been deliberately extinguished, and only if I squinted hard enough.

  “Del?”

  Something creaked — a chair, I imagined. Fabric rustled.

  “Did you bring what I asked for?”

  He sounded younger then he had on the phone, less gruff and raspy. There was an adolescence in his words that made me think I was dealing with a child.

  Not a child, exactly. Definitely older than a teen, but not yet out of his twenties. I dealt with enough people to separate the tone of authority from those who only played at being adult.

  “Maybe,” I answered, adjusting my weight just enough in the seat to properly face the figure behind the curtain of shadows. “Depends on if you’re the guy I’m here to see.”

  My answer came in the form of a loud smack and the tinkle of glasses rattling. I caught just the hint of something white hitting the table, then the hiss of something heavy getting shoved across wood. A second later, I spotted the corner of a folder.

  I instinctively reached for it.

  “Not so fast.” The file was swallowed by the darkness with the sharp tug back. “Where’s what I asked for?”

  I reached into my pocket and unearthed the square of paper I’d folded up small and tucked away. I held it up between my fingers for him to see.


  “Switch at the same time?”

  I didn’t see a nod, but he must given one, because the folder corner poked out again. I reached over with the bit of paper, and with an almost practiced move, I dropped my offering on the table and grabbed the folder ... and nearly dropped it.

  The thing was massive, a tightly bound booklet as thick as my arm. The sheer weight of it surprised me, giving me hardly any chance to react when pages began to slip free.

  From the corner of my eye, I just caught two dark fingers slip out and scissor the scrap of paper. It disappeared with it into the dark folds while I was still struggling.

  Somehow, I managed to haul the folder over to my side. The force of it hitting the tabletop rattled the candle, making the flame dance.

  “This is everything?”

  I flipped it open, and the flame jumped with the motion as if startled.

  “Everything I gave your father.” Came the response with a distractedness that changed in the same breath. “This isn’t the original.”

  “No,” I mumbled, not looking up from the textbook outlining David’s entire life. “You didn’t say the original.” I snapped the folder shut and pushed to my feet. “But it’s what you asked for.”

  “It’s implied!” The chair in the shadows shrieked as he too leaped up. “I need—”

  “You have the numbers,” I interrupted. “I don’t know what they’re for, nor do I care. If you’re worried about me selling or using the information, don’t, because I plan on destroying it all. The only reason you got that much was because it was literally a matter of life or death, and this,” I held up the folder, “is the only way I can save her. Otherwise, none of this means anything to me.”

  Not waiting for a response, I gathered up the folder, dropped a bill down on the table for the coffee I never got and walked out.

  I didn’t go home. The distance felt too far, and the absence of Gabby would only distract me from what I needed to focus on. Instead, I found myself at a hotel a block from the café, renting a room with a queen bed encased with over starched sheets. I passed the dresser with its built in TV cubby and deposited myself into one of the three chairs surrounding a single, round table.