Curt lifted his aching body and stumbled outside back into the intense summer heat, ever-wary of the ground underneath his feet.
CHAPTER 46
Tolen drove Fawn toward town. He had opted not to take the Camaro so as not to draw attention to them.
The dying words that Elsie Jackson had uttered in Jaspar Tolen’s voice played in Tolen’s thoughts yet again.
Fawn must have noticed something weighing on his mind, because she said, “You look like a man lost in thought.”
Tolen turned briefly to look out the driver’s side window. He had no intention of imparting the bizarre experience to Fawn. Yet as the car remained quiet, the thought of sharing it with someone else had an unexpected appeal.
“Do you consider yourself open-minded, Mrs. Cortez-Roberson?”
“Please, call me Fawn. And yes, I think I am.”
Tolen paused. Again he had reservations.
“What is it?” Fawn asked.
Tolen had always been impressed with the feminine intuition. He exhaled. He hadn’t even mentioned the event to Jade Mollur, and he was close to her. Why did he feel an overwhelming urge to discuss it with Fawn? He decided to go with his gut. “Four months ago,” he began, “I was in Nebraska to meet with a man and his wife. They had an artifact, a tablet, with ancient writing, which may be related to what’s going on now. When I arrived, someone else had gotten there first. The couple had been attacked. The man was dead, and the wife was barely clinging to life.” Tolen stopped. He focused ahead on the road, unsure if he should continue.
Fawn spoke, “I recall you mentioned earlier that you thought Lawton Sawyer was killed with the same large knife used to kill a couple. The Jacksons, I believe you said.”
Tolen continued, “That’s right. Mrs. Jackson had injuries that were fatal, but somehow, she was alive, which was baffling enough, but then she said something to me...” He turned to Fawn. “She said something that I’ll never forget.” He paused. “She said, ‘Don’t let them meet.’ And then she was gone.”
“Don’t let them meet?” Fawn repeated. “Don’t let who meet?”
Tolen shook his head.
“Did you know this Mrs. Jackson?”
“We’d never met, but, as strange as it sounds, I can’t help but believe she was conveyeing a message that I should heed.”
“Tolen,” Fawn said sincerely, “I’ve read stories of people near death saying and doing things with no rhyme or reason. I wouldn’t put too much weight into it.”
“I have 100% auditory recall. I can remember with perfect clarity anything someone says to me.”
“It was a short message, Tolen. Perfect auditory recall wasn’t exactly required.”
“You don’t understand. It wasn’t just what she said; it’s that Mrs. Jackson spoke in my father’s voice. He passed away last year.”
Fawn was momentarily speechless. “Wow,” she said.
“I think now you understand my concern about the message.”
Fawn Cortez-Roberson and Samuel Tolen reached the northern end of Green Cove Springs and pulled into the Leisure Lodge Motel where Fawn had a room. The parking lot was empty save for a 1980s-era, beat up Lincoln Continental and a Ford pickup truck parked in front of Fawn’s room. Tolen parked the rental car beside it.
The moment he parked, Samuel Tolen went on alert. The door to Fawn’s motel room was slightly ajar. “Any chance you left your door open?”
“No,” Fawn responded, “but it could be the maid service.”
“They usually leave the cart outside,” Tolen said, pulling his Springfield from the holster under his arm. Tolen backed the car away, and pulled into a spot a dozen slots away. “Stay here,” he said.
Fawn nodded as Tolen left the car. He carried the pistol pressed against his leg and out of sight from traffic passing by on Orange Street. It probably was just the maid cleaning the room, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He eased toward the door, listening intently to any sounds coming from inside.
He heard a male voice.
Tolen kicked the door open and raised his gun simultaneously. Two men were inside. One was searching through the desk drawer while the other stood before the open suitcase sitting on a low shelf near the bathroom. Both men froze when they saw Tolen brandishing his weapon.
“Over by the wall,” Tolen directed the two men, waving them with his gun.
One man looked at the other. A third man suddenly burst from the bathroom and wildly fired a succession of shots at Tolen. Tolen lunged to the side, crashing into a small table and landing on the floor. The bullets zipped past him. The other two men dashed out the motel room door. The third man with the gun never stopped as he raced to the exit, but Tolen wheeled and got off a single shot, catching the man in the leg. Tolen tried to rise, but the breath had been knocked from his lungs by the impact with the table. He rose, then fell back to the floor, gasping for air. It took several seconds for his breathing to stabilize. Outside, he heard the sound of car doors slamming and a vehicle peeling away from the asphalt parking lot.
Tolen wobbled upright and dragged himself to the doorway. The pickup truck in the parking lot was gone. He walked outside just as Fawn ran up to him.
“Oh God, are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes, but whoever they were, they went through your things.”
“Do you think these men are with that Cult of the End?” Fawn asked, placing an arm around Tolen to support him. “You look woozy.”
“The evidence is mounting. Check your room and see what’s missing,” Tolen said, wiping perspiration from his brow. “I’ll be ok.”
Tolen followed Fawn back inside. She moved to her suitcase, where the contents had mostly been spilled onto the floor. In disgust, she flipped through the remaining clothes inside it. Fawn went to the end table by the bed, opened the drawer, and removed the Bible. She thumbed through the pages once, then twice. She looked up at Tolen. “I hid Lindsey’s notes here. They’re gone.”
CHAPTER 47
Tiffany Bar sat in her office at CIA headquarters at Langley staring at her computer screen. Ed Leedskalnin’s A Book in Every Home was opened to the first page. She had read the book—really just a long pamphlet—in its entirety and had already run the text through numerous decryption programs, which had failed to yield any code. She didn’t expect them to come up with anything. The enigmatic man and his feats, including this published work, had been studied, critiqued, and analyzed for more than 60 years since his death. Leedskalnin had acquired an almost cult-like following, with some people even convinced he had superhuman powers and extraordinary knowledge that no one else possessed. Discovering a hidden code or message in a document that had been so thoroughly scrutinized over the years was a tall task. Yet Tiffany realized this might be the first time someone had combed the text using the keywords that Samuel Tolen had suggested. At least she was able to approach it with a starting point, but, so far, she had come up with nothing.
A knock on her open door startled her. “Ms. Bar? I was hoping to see you in the class this morning.” It was Miranda Moncow. The only thing more grating than her whiny voice was her propensity for addressing the younger employees with a dismissive attitude, and, at her age, most everyone was younger than Mrs. Moncow.
“I cancelled several days ago. Work has piled up,” Bar said with a false smile as she waved a hand over the stacks of folders on her desk. The fact was, the stacks were always there. Tiffany had been pressured by higher ups to enroll in Mrs. Moncow’s analytics seminar, not because she needed the training, but because of an internal quality initiative on continuous training. In reality, Tiffany Bar could have taught the class and made it much more interesting than that curmudgeon, Miranda Moncow.
Moncow checked her clipboard, perusing through several pages intently, then allowed them to fall back. “No. No, I don’t think so. Here’s your name on the roster.
I printed it out just this morning,” she said with a smug glare, as if wallowing in delight that she had caught Tiffany in a lie.
Tiffany looked at Moncow, biting her tongue. The woman was her superior and could make life uncomfortable, but, darn it all, she was so freakin’ annoying. Her training class was a waste of time. Tiffany wiped away a strand of long blonde hair which had fallen over her eyes, pushing it over one ear. “I’ll make the next one, Mrs. Moncow, you have my word.”
“You’d better. I’d hate to have to report you to your superiors.” The older woman left in an exaggerated huff.
Tiffany considered the woman for a moment, shaking her head. Having read Ed Leedskalnin’s writing, she figured Mrs. Moncow and Ed would have been good for each other. Ed’s pamphlet embraced old fashioned ideas, specifically with regard to his personal dating situation with his “Sweet 16,” who left him at the altar in his homeland of Latvia, and his philosophy, morals, and values as they pertained to such topics as politics and the proper way for men and women to behave. Although from different times, Moncow and Leedskalnin were both somewhat self-centered individuals who found it necessary to push their opinions and rules of etiquette on others. Yet, unlike Moncow, Leedskalnin welcomed contrasting views. He even left every other page blank in his pamphlet for the reader to document his/her own opinion on the given topic.
Another oddity about Ed’s work Tolen had mentioned, a trait she couldn’t attach to Mrs. Moncow, were his typos. She had noticed no less than a dozen errors in the short, 25-page document. As Tolen had noted, Ed didn’t publish A Book in Every Home until 1936. By this time, he had lived in America for two decades, more than enough time to master the language, and, indeed, his writing contained sentences that were structured and well organized, even if the content was based on odd reasoning. Ed didn’t strike Tiffany as the type of man who presented anything to the public until it was a finished product. His architectural feats at Coral Castle exemplified this point. Ed wasn’t prone to exposing flaws in his work. Why, then, would he publish a short document littered with so many grammatical errors?
A curious thought occurred to her: Maybe the errors were on purpose.
CHAPTER 48
Scott drove around the neighborhood, checking the local grocery store where they shopped and a myriad of other places in the area where he thought Kay might have taken the kids. He called Kay’s phone continuously. His anxiety was building. Having no luck, he returned to the house, hoping they had arrived back there.
Scott’s concern peaked when the driveway was empty. He crossed the street to the neighbor’s house. The Reynolds had collected their mail while they were out of town. He knew they both worked, and the odds of either one being home were slim. He rang the doorbell repeatedly, but it went unanswered.
He couldn’t remember where he had a phone number for Mike Reynolds. He knew Kay had logged it in her phone, but a check of his cell phone confirmed his fear. He didn’t have it.
Damn.
Scott heard a vehicle pull into the cul-de-sac and turned to see it stop before his house. His hopes dimmed when he saw it was only the postal carrier van. The driver climbed out carrying mail and walked toward his front door.
Scott jogged across the road. “Hey, I’ll take that. That’s my house.”
The driver turned and must have recognized Scott. He handed the mail over. “Good, because this one package wouldn’t fit in your box.”
Scott took the mail, briefly looking at the oversized envelope the mailman had referenced. As the mailman pulled away, he considered going back inside. There was no point. He would continue checking the area nearby. Kay and the kids had to be somewhere close.
At least that’s what he tried to convince himself.
He climbed back in his SUV and threw the mail on the seat beside him.
CHAPTER 49
The heat inside the tent was starting to become unbearable. Cody and Tina had once again sobbed themselves into a restless sleep after the ordeal with the hunting knife to Cody’s neck. When Tina had screamed, Kay had nearly swallowed her tongue, sure her son’s carotid artery was about to be severed. The larger man had withdrawn the knife a split second before Cody jerked awake. Kay had been so terrified, so flustered, she blurted out where they had been staying at Taylor Barton’s house on the St. Johns River. The moment she did, a sickening feeling settled over her. She knew she might have sealed her husband’s fate. As frustrating as anything was that she still didn’t know who these people were or what they wanted with Scott.
Kay heard voices outside. Someone was approaching the tent.
The same two men entered: the bald man followed by the giant.
The bald man spoke hurriedly, even before he took a seat, “Lawton Sawyer told me that he sent a package to your husband. Where is it?”
Kay had no idea what he was talking about. “Lawton Sawyer?” Kay frantically searched her memory. Wasn’t that the man who Scott had spoken to on Saturday who had been a business partner of Scott’s grandfather? The same man who, as a child, met the guy who built the weird structure out of coral in the 1920s and 1930s downstate?
The bald man rose quickly and walked over to Kay with a look of disdain.
Kay felt her stomach turn. She was shaking in fear. “I...think I’ve heard the name, but I...don’t know of any package,” she said tentatively, fearing retaliation for her vague response.
The bald man cracked a smile as he stood over Kay. It was the kind of smile that only elevated her tension. “I’ll ask once more. Please respond properly to my question,” he said, gritting his teeth in anger. His face looked as if it might erupt.
Kay couldn’t hold back. The tears burst forth. “I swear to God, I don’t know about any package,” she whimpered.
Kay braced herself as the man lifted his hand. Instead of striking her, he held it out to the side toward the larger man. Without a word, the large man withdrew his hunting knife and placed it handle-first in the bald man’s hand.
“No, please,” Kay shouted through a veil of tears.
The bald man dropped to his knees, but instead of going for Kay, he reached down and grabbed Cody’s arm. He drew the large edge longways on the little boy’s arm, slicing the skin open from the top of his wrist to his elbow. Cody awoke screaming in pain.
Kay’s fear morphed into uncontrollable anger. “Stop it, you bastard!”
CHAPTER 50
Scott could no longer quell the feeling that something bad had happened to Kay, Cody, and Tina. As he continued to drive the streets and subdivisions in the area, his phone rang. He checked the display. It was Curt.
“Curt, I can’t find her,” he answered.
“You checked the house?”
“I’ve checked everywhere. I’m driving around searching for them now.”
There was a momentary silence. “Scott, I’m back at Tolen’s place. We’re with Fawn Cortez-Roberson.”
“Who?”
“She has information that seems to corroborate what’s been happening.” Curt went on to explain what had transpired since Scott had left: finding Lawton Sawyer murdered, meeting up with Fawn, Fawn’s notes from her reporter friend that were stolen, Lawton’s presence at the church during the supposed sinkhole on Friday, the others there at the time who were disappearing or dying. He continued, describing Ed Leedskalnin’s letter to Cora Sawyer which mentioned a stone, and which wasn’t in the envelope, and that they now believed the Cult of the End, a doomsday cult, had stolen the stone from Lawton Sawyer before killing him.
“But there’s more,” Curt continued, “I went to visit one of the last two people alive who were confirmed to be in the sanctuary when the Turners fell through the floor. Barton Rifold was a volunteer at the Northeast Florida Military Museum. Scott, I know this is going to sound impossible, but a creature came up through the cement floor and ate the poor man. I barely got out of there alive.”<
br />
“Oh, my God, are you serious? What kind of creature?”
“It doesn’t even seem real to me now. One minute I was talking to the man, the next, he was swallowed whole by this black thing that I can only describe as a massive snake.”
“I’m speechless,” Scott said. “Is there any way this Cult of the End has something to do with the snake?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine. There seems to be a link, but I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.”
“Curt, I’ve got to stay here in town and find Kay and the kids.”
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
“Regardless, until I know that for sure, I have to keep looking. Be careful. We’re wrapped up in something once again that’s not good.”
Curt’s laugh was muted. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
CHAPTER 51
The elderly robed man moved nimbly through the marsh on Bayard Point. The bottom of his cassock was turning black from mud and ground debris. Farther and farther he went, trying to block out the heat and humidity that had him dripping with perspiration. He could sense the presence. It was drawing him away from the swell of earth that formed a plateau above. He moved through the thickets, braving the stench of the swampland, and eventually reached a clearing.
He saw the wreckage of a small airplane, but his focus was on the long, black tail which extended out from the downed craft where the creature had taken refuge. The old man darted back into the underbrush as quietly as he could. Slowly, meticulously, he circled to the side of the plane and the beast. He moved to the edge of the glade, a mere half dozen feet from where the beast rested. Now in position, he wasted no time. He burst from the foliage and charged the creature.
Evil in the Beginning (The God Tools Book 2) Page 24