by Ty Patterson
The bat descended. Amy Kittrell flinched.
Meghan hurled herself over the table, across it, and came between the bat and the mother.
The bat landed on her right shoulder like a sledgehammer. She screamed in agony and crashed back into Amy.
They fell to the floor, Meghan on top of her.
Kittrell advanced, the bat rising over his head.
Evade, thought Meghan dimly, trying to think over the burning in her shoulder.
The bat started falling.
No room.
She curled tight and braced herself for the blow.
It never came.
Beth attacked Kittrell from behind with a feral cry. She pounced on his back and grabbed his bat.
Kittrell stumbled. Lost the weapon. He whirled and yanked Beth by her hair and backhanded her.
She crashed into a wall.
That’s my sister!
Meghan saw Beth’s head slam against the wall as she slid down to the floor.
Rage flooded her. Brought her to her feet.
She grabbed Kittrell by a shoulder and swung him around.
Later, much later, Beth would say she was snarling.
Meghan wasn’t conscious of that. She had eyes only for Kittrell’s red face.
Her right fist sank into his belly; a cry escaped her when fire radiated from her shoulder and spread through her body.
Ignore. Compartmentalize.
Her left fist curled and its fleshy base hammered the husband’s chin.
More effective than knuckles, Zeb had coached them.
Kittrell flailed out wildly.
She ducked under his arms and brought her knee up.
He doubled over with a grunt of pain.
She floored him with an elbow to his back, twisted his right hand behind him, and held him immobile with a knee on top of him.
‘Josh Kittrell,’ she panted.
‘This is a citizen’s arrest.’
Eight months later
It was a glorious autumn day in New York when Beth came into the office and found Meghan standing against the picture windows, staring out from their private bubble.
Leaves littered the sidewalk and turned burnished copper and gold as they caught rays of sunshine.
She joined her sister and studied her profile. Her green eyes were unblinking and were lost in thought.
Beth knew what her Meghan was thinking.
The Kittrell case was behind them; in the months that followed, a couple of Agency missions had cropped up.
Both of them had been successfully concluded and yet Meghan hadn’t stopped thinking of Amy and Josh Kittrell.
Josh Kittrell had confessed to domestic abuse and was serving a two-year sentence; a term that Darien Kile had skilfully negotiated.
Maddie had taken the breakup surprisingly well; perhaps she knew it was coming.
She spent a lot of time at Gramma’s home, with her besties, and their love helped her tide the separation.
Amy Kittrell took longer to bounce back. Her self-esteem, her confidence, had taken a battering, but they returned. The whirlwind that was Carey Landsman, stepped in, took charge, and helped Amy get her bearings back.
Meghan likes everything to be neat and tidy. She sees the world in black and white, Beth thought.
Kittrell brought down Dividing Zero despite the personal danger to himself and his family. He was also a wife beater. She can’t reconcile the two sides of him.
People aren’t black and white. They’re all shades in between. Meghan finds that hard to accept, sometimes.
‘Hey,’ she called out.
Meghan didn’t respond.
‘Sis? Meghan?’
The green eyes, so similar to her own, turned to regard her. A small smile appeared on Meghan’s face.
‘Maddie is happy, remember?’ Beth told her softly. ‘It all started because of her. Her mom is in a much better place now.’
Meghan nodded after a long while and her smile became a sunburst.
It was afternoon when Maddie marched into their office, Lizzie, Peaches, and Gramma in tow.
She was holding another girl’s hand; a dark-haired, doe-eyed, slim girl who seemed to be the same age as Lizzie.
She dragged the girl past a couch on which a brown-haired man was lounging. He rose at their approach and kept an impassive face when Maddie’s loud whisper filled the office.
‘He’s their driver. Ignore him.’
Maddie introduced the girl to the twins. ‘Percy, my bestie,’ she declared and then looked at Lizzie and Peaches and giggled. ‘One of my besties.’
‘Percy?’ Beth arched an eyebrow.
‘Persephone Minter, ma’am,’ the girl replied shyly.
Maddie nudged her in the ribs when Percy fell silent. ‘Tell them.’
The doe eyes turned dark when she looked at the twins.
‘My sister is missing.’
* * *
Acknowledgments
No book is a single person’s product. I am privileged that Defending Cain has benefited from the inputs of several great people.
Pete Bennett, Eric Blackburn, Margaret Harvey, David Hay, Jim Lambert, Terry Pellman, Jimmy Smith, Theresa, who are my beta readers and who helped shape my book, my launch team for supporting me, and Donna Rich for her proofreading.
Dedications
To my parents, who taught me the value of a good education. My wife for her patience, and my son for listening to my jokes. To all my beta readers, my launch team, and well-wishers.
To all the men and women in uniform who make it possible for us to enjoy our freedoms.
Chapter One
The blade slipped between Cain’s third and fourth rib. Effortlessly, like a knife cutting through butter. It punctured his heart and slid out again.
The piercing took just a few seconds. So smooth, so fast, that Cain didn’t know he had been knifed.
By the time his body told him, the assailant was gone.
All Cain saw was a departing back that got swallowed in the crowd.
He knew calling out was futile. He knew he was dying.
Cain looked down at himself. Blood was turning his black shirt wet and sticky.
They got me, finally.
His breath was coming short. His knees were starting to buckle. His pulse was racing.
No. I can’t die like this. I have to meet her.
She was standing at the other end of the crosswalk, waiting for the signal to change.
She was blissfully oblivious of Cain dying. She didn’t even know he was there.
No one knew. No one yet had spotted the blood on his clothing, his faltering steps.
He took a step forward. His knees collapsed. Blood emerged from his mouth.
Noise started to fade. Just as his vision started to blur, the signal changed and she started forward.
Towards him.
He reached out with his arms.
He had set out from his hideout early in the morning. He knew they would be looking for him. Everyone would be, not just them.
He was lucky he had one of those unrecognizable faces. You saw it, you didn’t remember it. Dark eyes. Dark hair. Healthy tan. No conspicuous hair styling. Ordinary body.
He dressed in black. His usual uniform when he was at his job. The job that he loved.
He emerged from the depths of Building Twenty Six. Made his way through the ruins, skirted discarded furniture and pigeon droppings and blinked in the sudden sunlight.
He turned back and looked at the building when he was away from it. Maybe it would be his last glance.
Building Twenty Six was part of an abandoned asylum in Queens Village, New York city.
It had once, almost a hundred years back, treated the mentally ill. The asylum had been deeded to the city by a descendant of one of the country’s robber barons. In its heyday, it had witnessed hundreds of patients being treated.
Changes occurred during the twentieth century. Medicines improved. Attitudes to
ward asylums changed. Budgets were slashed.
The descendants of the descendant mounted a legal challenge to claim back the land. A legal battle that moved very slowly.
The result was ruins.
In the busiest city in the world, amidst the bustle of the fastest moving metropolis, stood the abandoned asylum.
No human lived in it. No person ventured in it. Pigeons nested in it. Rats ruled it.
Cain discovered it when he was searching for a home for his hobby.
He had stumbled on the building quite accidentally. One moment he was in the Queens Village, exploring, the next, it was as if he was in a war zone.
Building Twenty Six became his abode. It was there that he practiced his hobby.
No one saw him. No one heard him. The pigeons swallowed any sounds from the building.
It was perfect.
It was during one of his experiments that he came to know of the conspiracy. She babbled initially, like the others. Cain paid no attention.
It was when he saw the desperation in her eyes, that he paid attention and listened.
What he heard, turned him cold.
Cain didn’t know fear. It wasn’t an emotion he had ever experienced. However, what he felt on hearing her, came close to it.
He questioned her. She was incoherent. Dying did that to a person. He leaned over her and shouted. With her last breath, she answered him.
Cain left the asylum early the next day, when dark hadn’t yet turned to dawn.
He went to Manhattan and lounged in doorways till the city stirred. He kept his face lowered always, knowing he was hunted.
He went to an internet café, paid in cash, and researched briefly. He left when he got a name and an address.
He went to Columbus Avenue and there he waited at the crosswalk. For her.
The revolving door on the glass fronted building turned at eleven am and she emerged. Cain hesitated for a moment. He knew there were two of them.
Yes, it was her. He stepped forward, joined the crossing throng.
It was then that the knife slid into him.
Meghan Petersen saw the man falling, on the other side of the crosswalk. She heard screaming.
She hurried over, pushed through the crowd, and knelt beside the man. She had paramedical training. She could help.
His shirt was wet with blood. His breath was labored. Blood pooled in the corners of his mouth. She took in everything in a swift glance. Carefully eased open his shirt.
He’s dying. Too late to be saved.
‘I’ve called 911,’ someone shouted.
The man’s eyes seemed to recognize her. A scrabbling hand caught her wrist.
‘I…didn’t…’ the man squeezed out the words.
Meghan’s breath caught when she saw his hand held a photograph.
The planet stopped rotating when she recognized the face on it.
It was Percy Minter’s sister.
Chapter Two
Meghan reeled in shock; her hand trembled as she took the photograph from the dying man’s hand.
It was Calliope Minter. Cali. That was what everyone called her. There was no mistaking the features. The man reached out to her and tried to say something.
She leaned forward, dimly aware of shouts and screams and the sounds of traffic around her. In the distance sirens rose and fell and grew louder. The man’s breathing grew shallower.
His eyes stared straight into Meghan’s. A hand clawed at her hair. It fell down and grabbed her hand in a tight grip.
‘What’s it? Do you know her? Where is she?’ she asked him urgently.
His lips moved, but no words came as his eyes glazed.
The crowd was shoved apart and paramedics came rushing to the scene. Meghan rose and stepped back, making room for them.
Her hands still trembled.
Control, babe. Get your stuff together.
She breathed deeply as she looked around. The onlookers were still gathered around. Still chattering excitedly. Many of them were snapping pictures on their phones, proof that they saw a killing, or at the least a dying man.
She stepped back a few more paces, going almost to the edge of the pavement and observed people more carefully.
I saw him from the other end of the crosswalk. He was part of the crowd, waiting to cross.
She looked carefully at the bystanders. Most of them were still looking at the fallen man, at the paramedics around him. Some of them were on their phones. A few of them were talking to one another.
A few met her eyes. No one looked away. No one drifted away casually.
No one looks like he could have knifed him. Appearances can be deceptive, though. A killer wouldn’t wear a billboard around his neck.
She searched further, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She brushed her hair back absentmindedly and felt wetness on her hand.
Blood. How did it get there? Was I knifed?
She shook her head impatiently, remembering. The man held my hand. It’s his blood. You’re still not thinking properly.
The spectators moved as if by an invisible force. Cops. Several cruisers squealed to a halt and officers leapt out. Some went over to the scene, others began questioning the onlookers.
Meghan moved towards them when she felt the hand on her shoulder.
‘You witnessed it?’
She turned to meet a pair of sleepy eyes which concealed a sharp mind. Detective Chang smiled and waved a hand in the direction of the scene. ‘We were driving past when we heard. It was so close to your office, Zak suggested we swing by.’
He looked past her at a tall man who looked like he had stepped out from a magazine cover.
Pizaka and Chang, First-Grade Detectives who headed a Major Case Squad in the NYPD, were an unlikely pairing. Pizaka was always immaculately turned out and had a very visible public profile. He had written several bestselling books and actively courted the media. Chang, on the other hand, with his rumpled suit and perennially sleepy look, gave the air of an absent minded professor.
Meghan and her twin, Beth, had known the two cops for years.
The sisters worked in a deep black U.S. agency that closed down threats to national security. Terrorists. Stolen weapons of mass destruction. International drug and people running gangs. The covert unit took on all of them.
The Agency, as it was known by the handful who were aware of its existence, was headed by a grey-eyed, ice-cool woman, Clare, in Washington DC, who reported only to the president. The president gave her the freedom to shape The Agency the way she wanted. He had only one demand; he wanted results. She had never let him down.
The agency’s lead agent was Zeb Carter, an ex-Special Forces operative who was responsible for its unique structure.
The agency’s eight agents, including Zeb and the twins, were based in New York and worked in a security consulting firm on Columbus Avenue. The firm advised corporations on personnel and premise security, undertook hostage negotiations, and investigated corporate spying.
The firm was their cover; they did undertake the corporate work as advertised, but only when they weren’t on Agency missions. This structure gave the Agency a near-zero admin footprint and had helped it stay clandestine.
All the agency’s operatives, but for the twins, were ex-Army; most of them ex-Special Forces. Several of them had freelanced as private military contractors, before Zeb had brought them together to form the Agency.
Zeb had rescued the twins in a previous mission; in turn, they had pestered him to join the Agency.
They had initially handled the logistics for the missions, but after working closely with Broker, the Agency’s intelligence analyst, had taken over running the intel too.
The eight of them were a close-knit team. They were family.
Zeb and the twins had first come across Pizaka and Chang when bringing down serial killers and terrorists in the city. The cops, who were leads on the cases, got the credit and their careers took off.
Piza
ka and Chang didn’t know of the Agency’s existence. They knew that Zeb, the twins, and the other agents, worked in some firm that for some reason exerted tremendous clout.
They are smart enough to not ask many questions, Meghan thought and waited for Pizaka to join them.
‘Yeah,’ she answered Chang and gave the two a quick rundown of what she had seen. Chang waved at a couple of cops when she had finished, and summoned them.
‘He’s dead,’ one of them answered his question. ‘Nope, no identification. Nothing on his body.’
Chang thanked him and turned back to Meghan. ‘You know him?’
She shook her head. ‘First time I saw him.’ She showed them the photograph. ‘He was carrying this.’
Pizaka examined it at length and shrugged when he didn’t recognize the woman. ‘Recognize her?’ he asked his partner.
Meghan cut Chang off before he could answer. ‘That’s Calliope Minter. Cali.’
‘She’s been missing for nearly three years,’ a voice said breathlessly, from behind. Beth came from behind the cops and flashed a questioning are you okay look at her sister.
‘Her sister, Percy Minter, came to us about ten months back,’ Beth continued when Meghan nodded at her. ‘She wanted us to find her sister.’
Three hours later, Meghan and Beth Petersen were at One PP, where Chang and Pizaka had their offices. The on-the-scene cops had taken Meghan’s statement and Cali’s photograph. It would be dusted for prints, DNA traces, and anything else detectable on it.
The process of identifying the dead body would begin. Witness statements had been taken from the onlookers, but no one had seen or heard anything relevant.
‘Dude was walking one moment. The next, he was falling and there was blood all over,’ seemed to be the common refrain.
Security camera footages would be checked for any identity of the killer. The NYPD’s investigative machinery would kick in.
‘This case’s yours?’ Meghan asked Chang when all formalities had been completed.