Autumn (Four Seasons Book 1)

by Robert Sullivan

  Jared did not like to hunt in a blind, preferring to stalk his prey. He could be quiet when he wanted, though he preferred not to. He wanted his enemies to know that he was coming, because he wanted to know that it was him coming to kill them. Granted, it had been a while since he had gone to attack people out in the field himself, but he still carried that trait with him. He had already decided to do it whenever the opportunity presented itself to take out the Continentals.

  After hours of hunting the deer, Jared was sitting by a stream by himself, listening to the cool water trickle by. Most of the leaves had already fallen from the trees and the cold was already beginning to settle in. It would probably snow in the next few weeks from what Jared could tell. “I hate winter,” he muttered to himself.

  Jared’s phone suddenly rang. A flash of fury coursed through him; he had explicitly told his subordinates not to bother him while he was upstate. “What the fuck do you want?” he demanded.

  “Jared, it’s Stan. I’ve got Bob Pates and Juanita.”

  Jared practically jumped up in the air. “When did you get them?”

  “Earlier today,” Stan explained. “I finally was able to identify them and I picked them up. They’re waiting for you when you get here.”

  “Good,” Jared said. “I need to have words with them.”

  Several hours later, Jared was back in New York City, going to the warehouse that the Black Hand had taken over as a base their activities in the months since the restaurant had been shut down. Stan was waiting for him when he got there and said, “I’m glad you were able to get out here so quickly.”

  “I’m not going to miss this opportunity,” Jared said. “I need to see Juanita first.”

  “What about the two boys?” Stan asked.

  Jared paused. “I should just kill them…but…keep them hostage.”

  “What do you mean?” Stan asked.

  “I could send them along to the Globalists…make them work for us,” Jared said. “I think that would be a fitting punishment for Juanita.”

  “You’re going to let her live?” Stan asked.

  “No,” Jared said. “But I am going to tell her what I’m going to do first before I kill her.”

  “As you will then,” Stan said. “I’ll show you where she is.”

  A quick trot across the warehouse later and Jared was in the room where Juanita was waiting for him. She was tied to a chair, but not gagged. Her eyes were wide with fear as she watched Jared enter the room and sat down in front of her.

  Jared did not say anything for a moment. “Juanita, I want to understand something first. You knew what I was capable of. You saw what I could do. Why did you think that you could get away with this?”

  “I…I wasn’t thinking about that,” Juanita said. “I just knew that you were doing terrible things and I couldn’t be around that anymore.”

  “That would’ve been fine,” Jared said. “I could’ve given you a home with your sons away from what we did. But you didn’t ask me,” he added, his voice rising. “Instead, you went out to the Conspiracy and told them what I was doing and you got thousands of my people killed and the gold stolen!”

  “Thousands…what?” Juanita asked, confused.

  “Because you blabbed and got the gold taken away, one of my borough leaders went rogue and I had to teach the traitors a lesson!” Jared lied, knowing full well that John was going to break from the Black Hand before the gold was taken away. “Thousands of people died because of your betrayal!”

  Juanita looked utterly terrified. Knowing that she was doomed, she screamed “Please don’t do anything to my boys, they haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “What kind of monster do you take me for?” Jared asked. “I’m going to let your boys live. I’m going to bring them up in the Black Hand though. They’re going to spend the rest of their lives working for me because of what you did. It’s going to be a more lasting punishment for you than your imminent death.”

  Juanita was blinking tears out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jared.”

  “I am too,” Jared said. He pulled out his gun, saying, “For what it’s worth, I’m going to make it quick. After all we’ve been through together…you don’t deserve what Stan would have done to you.”

  Jared lifted the gun and put a single bullet through Juanita’s head. “You were one of the good ones,” he said, leaving the room.

  Stan was waiting outside the room for him. “I don’t suppose you’ll be so generous with Pates?”

  “Juanita was a friend,” Jared said. “Bob Pates is an enemy. I’m going to need you on this one and you better bring your best tools.”

  Jared went to the room that Bob was being kept in. Stan disappeared to go fetch his interrogation tools, but Jared was not about to wait around for him to arrive. He entered the room and saw Bob sitting there, tied to the chair, but ungagged like Juanita.

  “You made me kill a close friend,” Jared said caustically. “You’re going to pay dearly for it.”

  “So kill me already,” Bob shot back.

  “Now why would I do something like that when you’ve got all kinds of information on the Continental Army that I can use,” Jared said.

  “The what?” Bob asked.

  “Did you not know they changed their name?” Jared asked.

  “I did,” Bob said. “I just didn’t know what they changed it too.”

  “Who’s they?” Jared demanded.

  “Fuck you!” Bob said.

  “Oh, so that’s how we’re going to do this?” Jared said impatiently. “Well that’s fine. I’ve got an associate of mine that I have been waiting to see in action, so I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Jared leaned up against the wall of the room and began to look at news stories on his phone. Bob began to squirm uncomfortably as Jared let him sink in the tension he was letting build up. “Oh, look at this,” Jared said. “Apparently there’s some kind of controversy with Felicia Hall. Some kind of financial scandal…bribing people to vote for her during the primaries? Oh, that’s clever.”

  “Why haven’t you killed me already?” Bob asked.

  “I told you, you have information I want and since you won’t talk, I’ve got to have you tortured for it,” Jared said impatiently. “Ha! People are calling on Hall to quit the race. She won’t do that with ten days left, but there’s almost no way she can win now. That’s…that’s clever, I’ve got to give Liam props for that.”

  “What?” Bob said.

  “Oh, we’re working for the Globalists,” Jared said. “It doesn’t matter that you know that now.”

  “No…NO!” Bob shouted. “YOU’RE LYING!!”

  “Nope,” Jared said, putting his phone away. “Everything I do is for them. They’re going to let me terrorize the country when they win.”

  Bob was blinking tears of fury from his eyes. There was a knock on the door and Jared let Stan in. Stan looked around and said, “I need a desk in here for this to work.”

  “Get a desk!” Jared roared to no one in particular.

  After a few minutes, one of Jared’s subordinates brought in a desk. He put it in front of Bob and left the room to Jared and Stan. Stan untied Bob slightly, just enough to be able to free his arms and tape them down to the desk with his palms facing up.

  Stan observed Bob’s hands and suddenly drove a knife through one of his wrists. Bob screamed in pain as Stan twisted the knife around his wrist. After a minute, Stan pulled the knife out of Bob’s wrist, letting some blood leak out as Stan began to speak, “That particular spot has many nerves running through it, making it particularly painful to injure. The Romans used to nail people to the cross through that hole in the wrist, because of the pain it would cause and because the bones surrounding the area would make sure that the nail stayed in place and didn’t tear through the hand.”

  Bob was still moaning in pain. “Now, we can continue with that,” Stan said, “Or I could use of one my other tools.”

  Jared looked on, intrigued
, as Bob did not say anything, but remained panting. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “The leaders of the Continentals,” Jared said. “Give up the game and we’ll kill you sooner and you won’t have to suffer needlessly.”

  Bob spat on the desk. “Sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t at you, I just had a nasty taste in my mouth.”

  “I hope that means you’ll tell me what I need to know,” Jared said impatiently.

  “I don’t think I will,” Bob said. “They may have betrayed me, but I won’t betray them so easily.”

  “Fine,” Jared said. “Stan, I think you’re being too gentle with him.”

  Stan shrugged. “Okay,” he said, pulling out a different tool out of his bag. “I don’t get to use this often anyway.”

  Stan stabbed the instrument into Bob’s arm and drew it slowly towards his hand. The instrument cut Bob’s arm, but immediately cauterized it shut while also injecting a serum into the cut. Bob’s screams were nothing like the ones earlier, as he bucked and howled and tried to get away from the pain, though he could not.

  “Goddamn, what the hell is that?” Jared asked.

  “It’s a special tool,” Stan said. “It’s probably the most painful thing I can do to someone because of the serum it injects into the victim. Anyway, that serum will move throughout your body for the next hour and cause severe pain throughout your person. I say we come back after that time has passed and see if his tongue has loosened.”

  Jared and Stan obliged as Bob rocked back and forth, trying to get away from the pain wracking his body. “Do you want to watch a show while we wait?” Stan asked airily as they exited the room.

  Jared shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  Stan led Jared to a different room with a TV. He ironically turned on a crime drama and said, “He’ll probably have broken when we get back in there.”

  “How are you so sure?” Jared asked.

  “That instrument hasn’t failed me yet,” Stan said.

  “Really?” Jared asked. “How come you just don’t use it all the time then?”

  “That shit’s expensive. Do you know how much trouble I have to go through to get it? It’s not from the United States, so I have to get it snuck into the country. There’s a lot of risk, so there’s a lot of cost,” Stan explained.

  Jared muttered, “Hm. I could probably front the cost for it to help you get more of it if you needed.”

  “I have enough,” Stan said. “I don’t need to use it all of the time because most people break before I use that particular tool. I would’ve waited longer to use it now, but I figured you wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Jared said.

  After the show was over, Jared got up and headed back to the room where Bob was being held. Stan followed him and they entered the room together. The smell was horrible; Bob had thrown up due to the pain.

  “So, who’s in charge of the Continentals?” Jared asked.

  “Greg Carlton. Eric Swanson. Christine Armstrong. Ashley Bell. Charles Davis. Zach Gates,” Bob said hoarsely.

  “Is Greg the leader of them all?” Jared asked.

  “Yes. He stole the Conspiracy from me and made a farce of it,” Bob said bitterly.

  “Very well then,” Jared said, pulling out his gun.

  Jared shot Bob in the head and the latter slumped in his chair, lifeless. “Now the question is how do we use that information.”

  “Why don’t you ask the Globalists?” Stan suggested.

  “Liam won’t know anything…but his boss might,” Jared said, pulling out his special messenger.

  Jared stepped out of the room and put the phone to his ear. The call connected as the computerized female voice said, “What do you want, Jared?”

  “I know who the leader of the Continentals is,” Jared said. “It’s some guy named Greg Carlton.”

  The voice did not respond for a moment, which prompted Jared to say, “Hello?”

  “This is my fault. I should’ve killed him when I had the chance,” the voice said.

  “What do you mean?” Jared asked.

  “Never mind that,” the voice replied. “But I have a way that you can lure Greg Carlton out into the open. But I need you to do exactly as I say for the plan to work.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  October Surprise

  “That son of a bitch did this!” Felicia roared in outrage. “That Hensen! He couldn’t beat me at the debate, so he fabricated this crock about me bribing my way through the primary!”

  “We can’t prove that,” Chris said miserably.

  “Then what do we do then?” Felicia demanded. “We’ve already been damned in the court of public opinion, despite the lack of real proof other than this dossier.”

  “Are…are we going to lose then?” Chris asked.

  “What do you think?” Felicia barked.

  “So what do we do then?” her Vice-Presidential candidate asked.

  “With less than a week until the election, there isn’t anything that we can do,” Felicia said miserably. “There’s only one thing I can think to do.”

  “A press conference?” Chris asked.

  “I’ll explain to everyone that this is a false claim,” Felicia said. “It might be enough to at least stop the bleeding long enough to salvage this.”

  Liam was on the campaign bus towards Florida, relishing in the news of Felicia’s horrible slide in the polls. The dossier was more convincing than he had originally thought; he had leaked it to the press through several people so as to cover his connection to the leak. It would probably be proven that he was behind it, but not soon enough to affect the election that was now a mere six days away.

  “You know, you cut it a bit close on this,” Ryan said, looking at a news story about the dossier.

  “What do you mean?” Liam asked.

  “If you had waited any longer to get this out there, then it probably wouldn’t have made enough of a difference to swing the election more firmly towards us,” Ryan said.

  “I actually sent the document out when I got it,” Liam said. “I just did it in such a way that it would have to wind through a lot of people before it went fully public and that kind of thing take time.”

  “Well…fair enough,” Ryan said. “The good news is that it is out now. In the few days since it has come out, Felicia has dropped five points in the national polls and more importantly, we’re finally, and I do mean finally ahead of her in Florida.”

  “Is that why we’re going there?” Liam asked. “To make sure it stays that way?”

  “Yes,” Ryan said. “Plus, there’s a Halloween party down there you need to be a part of.”

  “What? Do we have time for that?” Liam asked.

  “You can take one night off,” Ryan reassured him. “It looks good to the voters that you know how to unwind and not let yourself get stressed out by the job. Have you seen what the Presidency does to people? You need to show you can stay cool and calm.”

  “And a party is your idea of how to show that?” Liam asked incredulously.

  “There’s no better way than a party,” Ryan said. “You get to socialize, you can be at ease…you can have alcohol,”

  “Now you’re talking,” Liam said. “As long as I don’t get completely wasted and embarrass myself, I can do this.”

  After a rally in Miami, Liam found himself further down the coast at the Halloween party that Ryan had mentioned. Liam had contented himself to show up in a tux, saying, “I’m going as someone who doesn’t make a fool of himself.”

  “It’s Halloween, no one would have cared,” Ryan had idly replied.

  Liam walked into the party, flanked by the Secret Service agents that the Fed had finally granted him. There was loud applause as he walked in and he waved at them, smiling wryly. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope that you give me this kind of support on Tuesday.”

  There was some guffawing among the crowd as they went back
to socializing with each other. Liam walked amongst the crowd, talking cordially with the people there. It was a bit distracting with everyone in costume, some ranging from simple masquerade masks to someone in a gorilla suit.

  “May I dance with you?” a woman said.

  “By all means,” Liam said. “What brings you to this party?”

  “My boss sent me,” the woman said. “My name is Julia Turner.”

  “Ah,” Liam said, realizing who her boss was. “How is your boss these days?”

  “Busy,” Julia said. “We found the Continental leaders and we’re going to take them out on Sunday.”

  Liam nodded. “Things will be easier for us if they weren’t an issue in January. Are you sure this will work?”

  “Your master seems to think so,” Julia said.

  “The master?” Liam said. “She didn’t tell my anything about it.”

  “You’ve got enough on your plate I guess,” Julia said. “We’ll handle it quietly. Jared figured that you should know so it’s one less thing you have to worry about after you win next week.”

  “I, uh, appreciate the gesture,” Liam said.

  “The dossier was brilliant by the way,” Julia said breathlessly.

  “I’m sure whoever leaked it thought so too,” Liam said evasively.

  Julia gave him a knowing look. “Jared said that you were cooking something up and that it needed more precision than gratuitous violence.”

  “I did tell him that, didn’t I?” Liam said. “Tell me, Julia, how did you end up working for someone like Jared anyway? You seem to be level-headed enough for someone in your line of work.”

  “It’s a long story,” Julia said. “Suffice it to say, I did not expect to end up working for someone like that, doing the kind of things that I do.”

  “Maybe it’s time for a change of scenery then,” Liam said. “Why don’t you come by my victory party in New York on Tuesday. We can talk more about it then.”

  “You mean…leave Jared?” Julia asked. “I don’t know if he’ll let me do that. I’ve done a lot of good work for him recently and he is really starting to rely on me.”