by J K Ellem
They ordered another round, enjoying each other’s company.
“So what about you?” Beth asked. “What’s your plan now?”
“I need to get myself a man!” Ryder declared, slamming her hand on the table. “Real fast. Break this drought I’m in.”
For the first time in a long time Beth laughed. Not a timid, polite laugh, but a loud, tear-jerking laugh. It felt good. “I know,” Beth replied. “The hours, the commitment, it drains you.”
Ryder nodded. “Yep.” She gazed out of the window as though the man she was looking for might walk right by. But all she saw were a few cars crawling along the street in the dark, the ground wet and slick with rain, and streetlights yellow with a drizzly haze. A group of young men were walking along the opposite sidewalk, laughing and cajoling. Suddenly Ryder felt very lonely. Her life wasn’t dissimilar to Beth’s: long hours, stress, sleepless nights, and no possibility of holding onto a meaningful relationship.
“Seriously, Carolyn,” Beth said. “What’s next for you?”
Ryder explained about her mother in the nursing home. She wanted to take some time off and spend more time with her. There would be some fallout, given that her uncle was Senator Adam Tanner. Questions would be asked about her relationship with him, but Ryder knew it would amount to nothing. She was the one who had discovered the link between her uncle and Prometheus Mining. She was the one who had decided to follow her intuition and investigate Square Mountain Mine.
“After spending some time with my mom, I’ll go back to work and continue with my normal life,” Ryder said, making a face.
Beth laughed again. This was the start of a long friendship between them. “Still no sign of Ben Shaw?” Beth asked.
Ryder shook her head, “Nothing, he just vanished. Jessie Rae gave Miller a full statement, told us everything, including Pritchard kidnapping her and his setup in the mine. But she hasn’t seen Shaw since the mine.”
The two women sat for a while, thinking about the enigma that was Ben Shaw.
Ryder could only vaguely remember him being there in the tunnel with her, helping staunch the blood. She had fluttered in and out of consciousness but she distinctly remembered his voice. Soothing, comforting, reassuring, telling her everything was going to be all right. Tears welled up in Ryder’s eyes as she thought back.
“Shaw’s done nothing wrong,” Beth said, thinking about the man who had walked into the gas station a few days ago, and set in motion this entire turn of events. The same man who had miraculously walked out of the cavern alive while everyone else inside had died. Beth and Miller had cornered Shaw afterwards, outside, but as soon as they turned their backs, he had gone.
“I thought he was part of it at first,” Beth continued.
“Like I said, Beth, he’s one of the good guys.”
In the aftermath the FBI investigators had discovered a small side tunnel located near what was left of the school bus after the bomb had detonated. It was a dead-end with the remnants of an old coal elevator at the bottom of a waterlogged shaft. Miller believed that was where Shaw had sought refuge just before the bomb blast tore everything else to shreds.
Officer Kyle Davis was on the mend and was discharged from the hospital a few days ago.
Officer Vince Taylor was another story altogether. Miller and his team combed through Taylor’s financial records. They discovered Taylor was on the Tanner payroll, and had been supplying police information to Pieter Hoost, the head of security for Tanner’s operation. Taylor was paid to keep an eye on the goings-on in the town while Tanner slowly built his operation up at Square Mountain.
While laid up in a hospital bed, Ryder received updates from Miller on the on-going investigation. They found the body of Hoost at the bottom of a massive concrete drainage sink. No one questioned how he ended up there. Ballistics showed that the gun used to kill Taylor belonged to Hoost. More tying up of loose ends.
Only Tanner and Hoost knew that the real Abasi Rasul had been safely living in the elaborate setup Tanner had built in the mine, away from prying eyes, while he worked on the cellphone bomb and then on the much larger variant in the school bus. Rasul’s skills were too precious to allow him to be in the public eye, and Miller suggested it was Tanner who came up with the idea of using Rasul’s twin brother, Ashidi. It would then draw the police and the FBI away from the trail of the real bomb maker, Abasi.
When Ashidi was killed by the bikers in the motel room, it saved Hoost the trouble of killing him himself. Ashidi would have been a dead man as soon as Hoost recovered his cell phone.
But then Ashidi ran into Ben Shaw.
“More loose ends tied up”, Miller had put it. The FBI thought it was Abasi Rasul who was dead and the trail went cold, until Miller dug up details about Prometheus Mining and Ryder linked the clues back to her uncle.
“If anything, Shaw helped us.” Beth broke the silence and reflection. “I didn’t get a chance to really talk to him before he disappeared.”
“That’s so much like Shaw,” Ryder said. “He’s very much a linear person. Once he is done, he moves on to the next problem and never looks back.” Ryder wished she could have spoken to Shaw, actually seen him again. All she had now was a ghostly memory of the man who had saved her life.
“Good, honest men like him are hard to find,” Ryder added, “He just doesn’t want the limelight, doesn’t want the attention. He is kind of shy.”
Beth explained to Ryder more about the two bodies of the two teenagers Shaw had found, Matt and Roy Chandler. Once outside the mine, Shaw had asked Beth if Ryder was okay, and Beth had told him she would live. He then pulled out of his pocket a wristwatch and a Saint Christopher pendant and chain. He told Beth about the two other bodies he had found in the mine and gave her a best estimate of their location. Forensic and ballistic tests later were matched to Hoost’s gun as well. The bodies of the two brothers were recovered and given a proper funeral. Their grieving parents now had some closure on what had happened to their boys. Shaw tended to avoid Miller and the other FBI agents outside the mine, preferring to tell Beth what he knew before he vanished.
A thought entered Ryder’s head as she gazed out the window again, wondering where Shaw was. But she soon dismissed it as a ridiculous idea. She turned back to Beth. “Come on,” Ryder said cheerily, breaking out of her sullen mood. “Let’s celebrate; no time to be sad or have regrets.” Ryder waved the waitress over and ordered a round of tequila shots. Beth protested but Ryder cut her off. “Come on, Beth. We both have a few days off. If you want to be my friend you have to learn to drink tequila.”
Beth finally relented. The shots arrived and were quickly downed, Ryder showing Beth how it was done.
Beth sat back and began to relax. She liked Ryder, liked her a lot.
Ryder caught Beth’s look. “I mean it, Beth,” she said pointing to the empty shot glasses and discarded slices of lime. “We’re now officially friends. Anything you need, just call me. I’ll be there for you.”
Beth nodded, and felt a warm rush. Maybe it was the tequila. Maybe it was having someone like Ryder in her corner. She had spent most of her whole life helping others. It was time now for someone to give her a helping hand.
Another round of shots arrived, and this time, Beth didn’t protest.
Ryder raised her glass. “A few more of these and we’re getting up to dance,” she said jokingly. “Crutches and all!”
Beth rolled her eyes, raising her shot glass. “Oh, shit no.”
Glasses clinked and they laughed some more. “To new friends and new beginnings,” Ryder toasted.
“No,” Beth corrected her. “To lifelong friends and new beginnings.”
THE END.
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Prologue
The transmission was sent the same time each evening, just before midnight, a burst of high resolution video footage. Professionally shot and edited it was usually five minutes in duration. Five minutes of totally harrowing, but compulsive viewing—that is if watching it was your thing.
She had lasted longer than he had thought. For five days he had imprisoned her. The cage was purchased unassembled from an online veterinarian supply company in Maine that shipped overnight. The frame was sixty inches long, thirty inches wide, and thirty-two inches high made from 20-gauge steel reinforced with half-inch diameter steel tubing. It had removable castors and a floor grate with tray to make cleaning easy and simple.
The website proclaimed that the cage would “stand up to the toughest abuse from the largest dog.” He agreed, even for the unintended use he had purchased the cage for, being to confine an adult human to crouching or kneeling. But leaving a positive five-star review to this effect on the website would have been inappropriate.
Her movement was limited and standing was impossible.
Good. He wanted her to feel like an animal, caged, restricted, no chance of escape.
He had provided no food, just a little water. Mind you the thought of placing some dog biscuits in a bowl and sliding it into the cage had crossed his mind on more than one occasion.
A mild sedative numbed her ability to resist or fight back. But she was no good to him in a comatose state, otherwise in the video footage she would look like a rag-doll rather than a lucid human being.
Even fully conscious, he doubted she could fend him off. He would crush her in an instant.
Yesterday he had let the sedative wear off just a little after he let her out of the cage for a short while. After she came to her senses of where she was and what he was doing to her, she had fought back.
The number of hits on the live-stream immediately spiked, had flown off the charts. The audience approved and their approval was important to him, critical. People wanted to see a good fight, that the woman had spirit. It made for more entertaining viewing, more shares, more likes. It was validation. What he was doing was right, correct, in demand. They understood, the audience. They were liked-minded and there were plenty of like-mind people out there, if you knew where to look. Millions of them all around the world, hiding, watching, enjoying, approving the live-stream then eagerly waiting for the next transmission. It was addictive for them, The Bold and the Beautiful for The Demented and the Deranged.
If God didn’t want women to suffer on this earth he wouldn’t have created Man.
He dutifully hosed out and cleaned the cage, taking extra care to scrub the stains on the concrete floor with a strong dose of commercial driveway cleaner. That was important, cleanliness. What he did took discipline, care, attention to detail.
He unrolled a sheet of heavy duty plastic then placed her body in the center. Her limbs and head flopped, a dead thing, the empty vessel of something that once held life, now drained of all things living. He rolled the plastic tight, securing it around the neck, shoulders and feet with thick rope. The preparation was for transporting her only. Once she had reached her final destination he would unravel her and she would slip silently below the surface deep to her final resting place.
About the Author
JK Ellem was born in London and spent his formative childhood years reading infamous British comics like Action and 2000 AD.
He is a fan of classic science fiction movies and these have influenced his writing style and the themes of his books. Strangely enough he reads a wide range of fiction books outside his own genre including crime, psychological thrillers, historical fiction and even romance as he firmly believes it will make him a better author.
He is obsessed with improving his craft and loves honest feedback from his fans. His idea of success is to be stopped in the street by a supermodel in a remote European village where no one speaks English and asked to autograph one of his books and to take a quick selfie.
He has a fantastic dry sense of humor that tends to get him into trouble a lot with his wife and three children. He splits his time between the US, the UK and Australia.
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