Shadow People

by Bevill, C. L.

  After taking Will’s wallet, again, she had walked down to the nearest house, ascertained a spare key was hidden in the ashtray of the decade-old Ford Bronco, and driven away with minimal effort. Several miles down the mountain she found a major highway. A few miles after that she found a little town that had a convenience store and a map.

  On account of heightened security, she knew that taking a plane was out of the question, so Penelope would be driving the two thousand miles. She stopped in Boise and found a busy shopping mall. With a screwdriver she had found in a rusting tool box in the back of the Bronco, she changed license plates with another Bronco. It was the same duel shade of white and brown but a few years older. It would work well if the highway patrol weren’t particularly eagle-eyed.

  So much for trust issues, came the inevitable cutting inner voice after her escape.

  “Shut up,” Penelope commanded. “I don’t want to hear it. He wouldn’t have let me walk away. He’s not interested in my problems. He wants me to save the world.”

  Maybe they’re his problems, too, suggested the voice not helpfully. Will hasn’t hurt you. Well, not really. He saved your butt.

  “I saved his, too,” she snarled.

  Yeah, well, there’s that. Mutual butt saving. But this guy Anthony isn’t going to let you walk in, trade for your mother, and then let you walk out. Ain’t a gonna happen, chickie-poo.

  “I know that,” she said after a while. “But you know, he could trust me, for a change.”

  Trust you? Why would he do that? You’re a professional thief. You stole a million dollar gemstone and hauled ass for the border. What have you done to make him trust you?

  “I’m not planning on giving it to Anthony,” she gritted forcefully. “How can I give it to him when I left it in Oregon? I’m going to do what I have to do in order to survive.”

  Thursday at midnight at the Durfrene Row house, the voice berated her. Pul-lease. He’s going to have his witch jump down your throat and pull your intestines out your nostrils. He’s going to nail your head to a board and call it a trophy. Right next to your mother’s.

  “Shut…up,” she said. “God, I hate that voice. She’s always right.”

  Hours and endless hours later, she was driving into Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a nice enough city. She goggled briefly at the Great Salt Lake. Then she could plainly see the Mormon Temple with its six giant spires sitting on the lower slopes of the Wasatch Mountains. Not far away was the Utah State Capitol building with a dominating copper-covered dome.

  The short-lived diversion was a welcome respite from her dark thoughts, but it lasted only moments. Jeremy’s cell phone rang about that time, and while Penelope negotiated the freeway, she picked it up to look at the display. It had an area code and a number she didn’t recognize. The name was listed as unknown. After a moment, she pushed the connect button.

  “Penelope,” Will’s angry voice said before she uttered a word. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Interstate 15 just outside of Salt Lake City,” she said promptly. “It’s really pretty here. Do you think your neighbors are very pissed off at me?”

  “My neighbors?” he repeated with astonishment. “Not half as pissed off as I am.”

  Holding the cell phone between her cheek and her shoulder, Penelope was abruptly reminded of aches and pains she didn’t realize that she had. After nearly ten hours of driving with only the bare minimum of stops, for gas and to use the bathroom, she was mentally and physically exhausted. But there was a time limit.

  72 hours. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The inner voice was ever so obligingly.

  “I got the message,” she said. “Lord, did I get the message. We have to stop Anthony because Anthony is going to kill the world. I believe it now.” And the strange part was that Penelope didn’t have a doubt in her head. It was all true. It was bizarre, but it was really true. “So I’m going to stop him.”

  Will made a noise that sounded like he was choking. “You can’t do it alone,” he said finally. “Don’t you get what Nahkeeta was trying to tell you?”

  “Trust,” she said impatiently. The phone was starting to go dead and beeped imperiously at her. “Phone’s power is starting to go, Will. Oh, and I borrowed your wallet this time.”

  “I noticed, dammit.”

  “Well, I’ll pay you back,” she said and the phone abruptly died. She pulled it away from her cheek and looked at it. She didn’t have a way of charging it.

  Penelope pulled the Bronco into a rest stop. Traffic headed south on the interstate was heavy even on a Monday evening, and her eyes burned with fatigue. Her body felt as though she had gone several rounds with wrestlers from the WWE Smackdown. There was a set of vending machines behind chain mesh to one side of the bathrooms, and she used several of the one dollar bills from Will’s wallet to get something to drink and eat.

  After she ate, Penelope went inside the restroom and washed her hands and her face. When she returned to the scruffy SUV she was sagging with exhaustion. She didn’t know how long she had to go, but it was a long way. She was due in the Durfrene Row house at the end of the 72 hours, or Anthony said he was going to give Jessica to the witch to play with. “If anything’s left,” Anthony had added wickedly, “then I’ll give it to the seatco.”

  Penelope had known immediately that it wasn’t a bluff. She looked down at the center console and saw the length of blackened bone sitting there. If she reached her hand up to her neck she could touch the little medicine bag that Joseph John had put there. Her fingers went over the decorated leather. It felt lumpy as if rocks were inside.

  “Rocks?” she said. Penelope looked down and took a moment to untie an elaborate knot with shaking fingers. She dipped inside and found…The Tears of the Spirit.

  She held it in her hand like a sacred icon. The yellow street lamps of the rest stop showed the perfection of the stone’s lines and the vibrant refractions that made it so very extraordinary. Well, what are you going to do about that? came the unavoidable acerbic inner voice. Either Joseph John put it in there on purpose, or the gem has magical powers to follow you around like a lovesick puppy. Doesn’t really matter which one. Guess you’re stuck with it.

  “My blood mixed with the stone,” Penelope whispered. “I really am connected with it. Anthony can’t take one without taking the other.” The innermost meaning of her words dawned on her with sickening calm. This time the meddlesome inner voice didn’t say anything.

  Penelope twisted the stone through her fingers like she were flipping and turning a gold coin. It was a pickpocket’s trick for keeping the fingers limber. The gem walked across her fingers as if by itself and caught the outside lights brilliantly. If she had the gemstone with her when she confronted Anthony, then he might be aware of it. Furthermore, he might be able to place his hands on the jewel, and that was the last thing that everyone seemed to want.

  When she went to put the Tears of the Spirit back into the medicine pouch she found something else there. Penelope made an interested noise and looked inside, craning her neck to see. It was immediately obvious what Joseph John had done. As a matter of fact, Penelope thought that he might have been planning this for years. She blinked, and the item didn’t disappear. Then she put the stone back into the bag and carefully refastened the knot.

  Like an enormous light bulb bursting into existence over her head, it was instantaneously clear to Penelope what she was going to do with the second item in the medicine bag. It would give her an edge. So how had Joseph John had known?

  Penelope checked the doors to see if they were locked, leaving the windows down an inch for circulation. The evening air in Utah wasn’t as hot as Dallas, but it was much warmer than the mountains of Oregon. The last thing she thought of was that she was awfully tired.

  *

  Penelope blinked sleepily and looked over at the man sitting in the passenger seat of the Bronco. She blinked again and then her entire body shot up straight as an arrow. She started to say somet
hing but closed her mouth just as quickly.

  Will sipped a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks.

  “I like a frappucino sometimes,” she said lamely, trying to wake up. On some level Penelope wasn’t sure if she weren’t still asleep. It was kind of a creepy dream, however. Will was somewhere in Oregon, not sitting in the passenger seat of the Bronco, calmly drinking his specialty coffee.

  Will didn’t respond. She looked around tiredly and saw that the rest stop was mostly empty. She asked, “You have the time?”

  Will glanced at a watch on his wrist. “Just before midnight. The witching hour.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said.

  “You awake now?” he said, ignoring her words.

  “Enough that I’ve just become sure about the situation,” she uttered carefully. If she reached a hand out to poke Will she was certain she would encounter flesh and blood. Somehow he had tracked her down to the point of being able to get into a locked car with her.

  Will held up a keychain. It had a purple Barney figure on it. Several keys rattled. “My neighbor gave me his spare keys for the Bronco,” he said. “He said not to grind the gears.”

  Okay, that’s the locked door part, said the wickedly persistent inner voice. “And how did you actually find me?”

  “Reservation police put a special APB out on the Bronco. Although you swapped license plates, there aren’t all that many Broncos of this color and year on the freeways. A Utah state police officer followed you from the border. Smart fella, that one.” Will cracked a reluctant smile. “That was courtesy of one of my friends. His name is Jim Swann. Of course, I was already waiting in Salt Lake City. We had an idea about where you were headed, and there aren’t a whole lot of direct routes back to Dallas. Then I called you to be sure.”

  “Okay,” Penelope said warily. “You’ve got me. What are you going to do now?”

  “There’s a hotel about five miles down the road. We’re checking in. You’re sleeping the rest of the night.” He tapped the lid of the coffee. “You look like hell. Then we’ll talk.”

  “That’s it?” Penelope was vaguely surprised. “No fire and brimstone? No yelling?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good now. Besides you really do look like hell,” he said. “Start the engine, Penelope.”

  Twenty minutes later Penelope was lying down on one of two queen-sized beds in a nice room at a La Quinta Inn. There was even a place and a cord to charge Jeremy’s cell phone. Will watched broodingly from a desk chair. She brushed her teeth, took the quickest shower on record and put clothing on that Will had brought with him.

  “You going to sit there all night, Will?” she asked tentatively.

  Will sat with his fingers laced across his stomach. One lamp remained lit and shrouded his face in shadows. “Do I need to?”

  Penelope sighed. “I told you on the phone, when I didn’t have to, mind you, that I was going to stop Anthony. Either you believe that or you don’t. I didn’t see how I had a choice. And I don’t think you or Joseph John is aware of it, but the clock is running down.”

  Will’s darkened face didn’t move. He said, “I think that’s what Joseph John was trying to tell me. But you should have come to me.”

  “You wouldn’t have understood,” she said firmly.

  “Maybe not. But don’t worry now. We’re going to Dallas. You and I. We’ll find Anthony and take care of this.”

  Penelope almost giggled at the seriousness of his voice. “Because we’re on a mission?”

  “You watch way too many movies,” he said less seriously. “Go to sleep.”

  So she did. And thankfully she didn’t even dream.

  *

  The cell phone’s ringing woke Penelope up. She sat up in the bed and looked around her with shock. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was. The room was lit because of sunlight pouring in through the cracks of the closed curtains, and the distant sound of traffic moving about was audible. Then she saw Will lying on the other bed, his feet still in tennis shoes hanging off the end and the cover half over his head. He moved restlessly with the jarring ringing as if on the cusp of consciousness. She abruptly remembered.

  Then she went for the phone. Her hand touched Jeremy’s cell phone and stopped. She could clearly see the readout on the little window. It read the familiar number and on top of it, Frederick Clark. It was Freddy’s phone that was calling Jeremy’s, but it wasn’t Freddy.

  Will sat up in the other bed and stared at her. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  Penelope was struck dumb. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.

  Will’s eyes almost immediately took on a suspicious cast. He got up from the bed and took two rapid steps to the phone. His hand stopped just short of pulling it from Penelope’s fingers when she said weakly, “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  Then she answered it. “Hello,” she said.

  Anthony said, “Good morning, sunshine. Do we miss our mommy?”

  Penelope’s eyes met Will’s, and she could see a lone muscle twitching spasmodically in his cheek as he longed to bend over and listen in on the conversation. But he remained motionless. “You know I do,” she said in response to Anthony’s cynical question.

  “Good. I think she misses you as well.” He paused for effect. “She’s an interesting woman. Full of strength and vigor. I can see where you got your looks. But wait, she’s been telling me that it’s your father who’s the one who taught you how to steal.”

  “Just as you stole,” she said, immediately wishing she had held her tongue.

  Anthony didn’t say anything for a moment, digesting the comment. “You saw much in your vision. A pity I wasn’t able to interrupt the process. I think that a vision is much like a dream. If you die in it, you’ll die in real life. My eyes still burn from where you attempted to gouge them out, and there’s a great hole in my chest. You barely missed my heart.”

  Penelope stared helplessly at Will. Terrifying actuality had blended into extreme surrealism. It hadn’t been some kind of vision quest as implied by the medicine man, Joseph John, but something far worse, and Anthony had been able to tap into it. Her free hand reached up to touch her shoulder and felt the bandage under the T-shirt. The wounds still ached.

  “I assume Will didn’t want to let you out of his sight,” Anthony said after a moment.

  “No, he didn’t,” she said starkly. Will blinked. “I stole a car from one of his neighbors. I’ll be there in time.”

  “You stole a car,” Anthony repeated thoughtfully.

  “I don’t have any identification to take a plane,” she said forcibly. “Figure it out. Ever since 9/11 you know what security’s like at airports. I know it’s kind of a downer for your plans, but I can’t change the terroristic whims of Muslim fanatics.”

  Anthony chuckled. “Boring you’re not. But neither is Jessica.”

  “I want to talk to her,” she said baldly.

  “I think not,” he answered. “Just remember where you need to be.”

  She heard a clicking noise, and Anthony was gone. Penelope’s eyes were fixed on Will, but she wasn’t really looking at him. He took the phone from her fingers and held it to his ear. Then he pushed the disconnect button and checked the records on the phone. When he got to the last call, he said, “Frederick Clark. Who’s that?”

  “A nice man who’s probably dead right now,” she muttered and turned away.

  Will yanked her back around. He stuck his face down into hers and repeated grimly, “Who is Frederick Clark?”

  “He is…was…a friend of my father’s,” she said, giving the fingers fixed on her good shoulder a quick glare. Will unexpectedly let her go. He put the cell phone down on the desk and tiredly wiped his hand over his face.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “You know my father’s name was Jacob?”

  Will shook his head. “I don’t much of anything about you. You don’t have a record. Jim wasn’t able to dig up a lot of infor
mation about you.”

  “Jim? Oh, your reservation policeman. Well, you don’t get a record if you’ve never been caught. That’s the trick,” she said. Penelope went to the window and brushed aside the heavy curtain to look out at a parking lot that had emptied out. “Well, back in the day my father and his crew used to steal. They went all over the United States and stole their little hearts out. They were pretty good at creeping. Some got caught and served time. A nickel here and there.” She didn’t look around to know that he didn’t know what she meant. “That’s a five year stretch in the pokey. Anyway, Jacob commanded loyalty. When a man went down, my father took care of the man’s family until the man got out. And he also got a legitimate job when he got out. Jacob had a lot of connections.”

  “Creeping,” Will repeated.

  “It means stealing. A sneak thief who specializes in not getting noticed. Not by the police and especially not by the owners.” Penelope sighed. “Way back when, Freddy Clark was one of my father’s crew.”

  “And your father is dead now?”

  “Cancer,” she said sadly. “After he died, Freddy helped us out.”

  “Us?” Will’s voice was full of sudden apprehension. “Back at the cabin, you wanted to call someone. You said it was your mother, and I didn’t really believe you were serious.”

  Penelope looked over her shoulder. Will was standing by the desk. His face was starkly grim as if he were giving serious weight to her words. “Yes, Dr. Littlesoldier, I was serious. That thing that your brother is siccing on me seems to smell me out. Likewise, it smelled out my mother. And unlike me, she couldn’t see it coming.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight