The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set

by Ernest Dempsey

  Dak snorted. "Dad always said that there was way more corruption in the small towns and cities than in the big ones."

  "Good old boy mindset, huh?"

  "Exactly." Dak continued scanning through the images for another minute and then returned to the search bar, entered Browns Ferry Kentucky, and waited for the results to populate.

  Several news articles appeared at the top. The most recent was from three days before.

  Two brothers had gone camping with their parents on a family excursion into the Daniel Boone National Forest. According to the report, the boys went off on a hike while their parents cooked lunch. The older boy was fifteen and in good health. That explained why the parents were okay with the two wandering off on their own. Dak recalled playing on his own when he was younger, traipsing all over the neighborhood and the adjoining forests and parks with the other kids. They never had parental supervision, and there was no telling what manner of trouble they could have gotten into.

  Times were different then. The world had changed, and in the case of letting kids play outside and run wild, it wasn't for the better. More and more parents turned into helicopters, constantly hovering over their children, watching them every second of the day.

  Dak didn't blame them. With human trafficking on the rise all over the planet, and much of it happening in the United States, it was better to be safe than sorry. He wasn't sure he wouldn't keep constant watch on a child if he had one of his own.

  Still, out in the forest where this family had been… it seemed pretty random.

  "Will, how many people go missing in national forests each year?"

  His friend huffed through the speaker. "You have a search engine the same as me, right?"

  "Yes," Dak said, elongating the word. "Just thought maybe you'd already checked on it, being the thorough guy that you are."

  Will sighed. "Well, you'd be right about that. I did check, actually."

  Dak waited for a second, then pressed his friend. "You going to tell me or do I have to coax it out of you?"

  "There isn't a clear answer, Dak. It's really strange. I've found a few resources that suggest there are around sixteen hundred missing persons in the United States who disappeared in a national park."

  "Sounds like a lot." Dak struggled to fathom how that number could be so high.

  "It is. And it's probably much higher. Then there are the total number of disappearances. Did you know that there are between eighty and ninety thousand active missing persons filed at any given time?"

  The staggering number echoed in Dak's mind. "Ninety thousand people?"

  "Yeah. Crazy, right? How do that many people just vanish? And why isn't there more news about that? I know I don't live in the States anymore, but I don't recall ever seeing anything about those numbers. It's called America's silent disaster. I pulled up some other areas where suspicious disappearances like this have been happening. I stuck to Kentucky, though, since that's where your boy Luis said this guy was hiding."

  Since the double murder in Cuchara, Colorado, Dak hadn't been certain whether Nate really was in Kentucky—for the time being, at least. The more he thought about it, though, the more Dak believed someone else must have taken out Billy and the sheriff.

  As the days waned on, he reinforced that belief with logic and reason. Nate had no reason to take out Billy or the sheriff. Those two must have ticked off a local, possibly someone who'd been in the military before. The execution, though, stunk of something dirtier. Dak found himself wondering what Billy had gotten into, how deep he'd burrowed into a seedy underworld.

  Then again, Cuchara was a small place. How much corruption could there be?

  The question returned his focus to the circle on the map. "This has to be the place," Dak said, referring to the monitor. "The rest of the disappearances in Kentucky are one offs. Not more than two occur in the same place. We have eight here, though, in Browns Ferry." He realized he'd gotten off track earlier and redirected the conversation. "Sorry, Will. You said you got in touch with the locals?"

  "Yeah," Will said. "Like I was saying, tough nut to crack, but I finally got one of the real estate agents to give me what I wanted. They looked it up in the records and found that a guy came into town sometime last year and bought a huge patch of land on the edge of the national forest."

  "What's this guy's name?"

  "The purchase was made by a Vernon Stratford."

  "I don't suppose you were able to dig up where Mr. Vernon Stratford is from, were you? Maybe some additional info?"

  "Not from the real estate agent. That information, unfortunately, wasn't available to him. I was, however, able to learn that Stratford has a pretty interesting background."

  "Background? I thought you said you couldn't get anything."

  "I said the real estate agent isn't privy to that kind of stuff. Pay attention, Dak. After all, who do you think you're talking to?" Will pretended to be hurt, then chuckled.

  "You're right. Sorry. Go on."

  "Vernon Stratford has a sketchy record. I was able to dig up a birth certificate, but it was from Panama. Let's just say that some of the record keeping in certain places down there isn't accurate. The certificate claims he was born to ex-pats from Texas, Gene and Sarah Stratford. Those people are real, as far as I can tell. And they did move to Panama more than thirty years ago."

  "Wonder why they did that?"

  "Some places in that country are pretty nice. And they make some real good coffee. A lot of Americans move down there near the canal. Some start their own little businesses. Most probably go just to enjoy a tropical climate and do some fishing."

  "I've been to Panama," Dak confessed. "Wasn't bad, except for the humidity. That was brutal."

  "So I've heard."

  "I'm guessing Gene and Sarah didn't have any kids."

  "You'd guess right," Will confirmed. "No children, which makes the appearance of their son in Kentucky all the more suspicious."

  "Sounds like whoever this guy is, he did some serious work to get his papers in line."

  "Full American citizenship and all. The guy even pays his taxes and doesn't try to max out his deductions for a refund."

  Everything lined up. The circle of missing persons, the file on this Vernon Stratford, all of it pointed to Dak's next target: Nate.

  A chill shot across his skin at the thought, and he recalled the things Nate had said after he'd massacred all those people. He had to shake the thoughts away. The visions were too graphic, and the idea that Nate could be abducting young boys and torturing them was too much.

  He had to find out more about this Vernon Stratford. The sooner the better. A mounting pressure swelled in Dak's chest and he felt a blanket of anxiety wrap around him.

  Eight missing people in the last few months. Could he save any of them? Or was he already too late?

  "Thanks, Will. I appreciate all the information. I'll let you know what I find."

  "Do that. And Dak?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Be careful. I still haven't been able to find anything on Bo Taylor, which is concerning. He's still out there and if he thinks you might be a threat, it's possible he could come after you."

  "He knows I'm a threat," Dak growled. "If I was in his shoes, I'd come after me, too. The last thing I'd do is sit around and wait in some bunker waiting for Armageddon to come to me."

  "Yeah, I don't think I would do it that way either. Good luck. And I'll keep looking."

  Dak ended the call and stared at the computer monitor. "Browns Ferry," he said. He diverted his gaze to the window and looked toward the east.

  What was meant to be a payback mission had turned into a potential rescue.

  Three

  Brown’s Ferry

  Jamie sat on the cold, hard floor with his back against the wall. His brother sat with his legs crossed a few feet away. Oliver's sniffles echoed in the dark room. The only light glowed dimly from somewhere outside the door and radiated through the cracks at the top and bottom.
It was better than utter darkness, but not much.

  Oliver wasn't a helpless kid. His instincts had been to scream and to fight off their captor with every ounce of strength he could summon. Those fanciful notions evaporated when the man produced a gun and threatened to kill them both if they so much as uttered a single word.

  Then the man shoved pillowcases over their heads and marched them through the forest. They had no idea where they were being taken, with only the trail at their feet as a point of reference. After five minutes of hiking at gunpoint, they were steered off the trail and forced to continue up a hill until they reached a spot where sunshine warmed their clothes.

  Jamie had spent enough time outside to know they'd probably walked into a meadow or small clearing. That knowledge did him no good. Without a way to leave a message—some kind of sign that he and Oliver had been there and were being taken—knowing where they’d been was of no consequence.

  He considered pretending to trip and fall, perhaps dig into the earth with his shoes to leave prints. That desperate plan would have only angered their captor, a tall, grim-looking man with a head shaped like a brick and his dark brown hair cut to match.

  Within minutes of arriving in the meadow, the boys were removed from the tall brown grass and placed in the back of a pickup truck with their hands bound behind them. The kidnapper hadn't been gentle, tightening the zip ties to the point the circulation in Jamie's fingers began to tingle. It took a good amount of wiggling his wrists on the bumpy ride to get the blood flowing correctly again.

  He'd told Oliver at least ten times during the journey that everything was going to be okay, that their mom and dad would find them and the cops would arrest this guy and put him in prison for a long time.

  Jamie wished he believed it.

  Maybe a small part of him did—the part that still wanted to believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

  He didn't know how long they'd been down in this basement or dungeon or whatever it was, but he felt like it hadn't been more than a couple of days. The oppressive darkness was broken three times a day for the boys to be fed, but that didn't do much for helping either of them get a grasp on where they were being kept.

  The cinder block walls surrounding them were barricaded by a wooden door. The cell took up around sixty to eighty square feet. They'd been given a bucket and told that was their toilet, and to set it at the door each day when their food was brought.

  The dim yellow light that came through the cracks temporarily brightened whenever a slot at the bottom of the door slid open for them to shove the slop bucket through or for the food plates to be given.

  Jamie wasn't stupid. He knew they were being kept for something, but he didn't want to consider what that could be. And there was no way he'd share any such theories with his little brother.

  There'd been stories that Jamie had heard when he was younger than Oliver—about kids who disappeared. Some tales were just that, urban legends passed down in the kid circle to scare others. Then there were others, told by his parents as a warning.

  These were the ones that haunted Jamie's thoughts as he sat in the dim, musty cell.

  His entire life, his parents had warned him not to talk to strangers and used examples of other missing children as examples, real-life cautionary tales. They never mentioned human trafficking by name, but Jamie knew it was something that happened. Was that what was going on here? Was this sicko keeping them down here until their slave trader came to pick them up?

  Jamie would never have thought anything like this could happen to him or his brother. They lived a normal, suburban life with good, hard-working parents. Now all of that was gone.

  He felt a tear lurking in the corner of his eye, threatening to break loose and dive down his cheek. He rubbed the back of his wrist against his eyelids to keep the tear from escaping. Jamie felt like he had to be strong for his brother. Crying would only make things worse.

  Jamie heard a moan from somewhere else in the basement, and it shook him from his thoughts. He'd heard the sound before, but he didn't dare say anything. The man who'd taken them warned them about talking while in captivity. They were to remain quiet.

  For what?

  It's not like they could find a way out of this place, and even if they could, where would they go? They had no point of reference, no way of even knowing where they were. For all Jamie knew, they could be minutes away from his parents' campsite or several miles.

  That was the one thing he could determine: distance.

  Their kidnapper hadn't driven far. It took less than ten minutes for them to arrive here—wherever here was—once they'd been stuffed into the back of the truck. That meant they were close to the park, to their parents' camper.

  The cliché throbbed in his mind. So close, yet so far away.

  Jamie heard the groan of a young person's voice again. It didn't make him feel better, but he took a small measure of comfort in knowing that he and Oliver weren't the only kids down in this hole. But why, and for how long?

  "I'm tired, Jamie," Oliver breathed. "I want to go home."

  The words cut through the silence and stabbed straight through Jamie's heart. He turned and looked at his brother with empathy. "I know, bud. I do too. We'll get out of here. I promise."

  "Are you sure?"

  Jamie had never been more uncertain of anything in his life. And for the first time he could remember, he lied to his little brother. "I'm sure."

  Four

  Brown’s Ferry

  Nathaniel Collier stood erect in front of the stove, watching the sirloin steak sizzle in the frying pan. The morning sun hung over the horizon through the kitchen window to his right. Rays of light poured through and glistened over dust motes floating in the air.

  Nate worked his hands deliberately back and forth in a methodical rhythm, running a kitchen knife across the honing steel. The shallow grinding sound of the blade against the rod echoed through the kitchen with only the intermittent songs of birds interrupting from the giant oak tree outside.

  He took pleasure in the act, the knife soliciting a grim smile as he continued to hone it to a razor's edge.

  Systems, Nate believed, were the only thing that separated civilization from chaos. He reveled in systems, fed off them. He'd approached everything he did in the military with the same precision he used with the knife in his hands.

  The men on his team had called him reckless on occasion. They'd seen him cut down countless enemies with his machine gun as if he merely utilized it like a scythe. To him, it was a precision instrument more like a scalpel. He'd never argued the point with the others. They preferred their rifles, eliminating targets with a single shot or a short burst.

  When it came to clearing out a room, though, they didn't complain when he took out potential threats by the dozens.

  His mind wandered to the group of young terrorist recruits he'd wiped out while deployed in the Middle East. The others thought Nate didn't hear their comments or notice their disgust at the act.

  The fact was, those boys were a threat. They were extremists in training. To let them live would have been a danger.

  But something else awakened in him that day, a slow burning fire that had been smoldering in the depths of his soul since he was a boy.

  Nate looked over at the steak. He set down the knife on a bamboo cutting board, picked up a pair of tongs next to it, and flipped the steak over onto the uncooked side. The meat sizzled louder as the flesh touched the hot skillet. Juices bubbled all around it in the olive oil he'd sprinkled in earlier.

  The smell drifted through the air and trickled through his nostrils, filling them with the intoxicating aroma.

  He glanced out the window at the field beyond the gravel driveway. Rows of corn filled ten acres. Beyond, forests surrounded the entire property—a natural barrier from the outside world. He owned more than one hundred acres, much of which he'd used as his private hunting grounds.

  His mind returned to the grand scheme he'd laid out, t
he one rooted in something he'd always been denied—except by the military.

  Even as a young man, Nate was consumed by the act of taking a life. It started when he was only thirteen, when a neighbor's dogs continued to wander into their yard—barking incessantly.

  His father—a drunk and a gambler—was too inept to handle the problem. And Nate's mother had left the two of them when he was only seven.

  Nate found one of his father's guns, a 9mm Ruger P89, and took care of the issue on a dark night when thunderstorms rolled through town. The thunder, he rationalized, would mute the sound of the gun's discharge.

  He'd been right. The neighbors never suspected a thing, though they came by once and asked if Nate had seen the animal. He lied, of course, having disposed of the evidence in a dumpster behind a local watering hole up the street.

  After killing the animal, Nate felt something, something that had never graced him before. It was a strange sense of joy, but more than that, he felt powerful. He could determine the fate of a living thing. And he wanted more of that feeling.

  At first, he turned to hunting as the outlet for his newfound passion. His father's old hunting rifle had been collecting dust for years while the old man sat on the couch in a drunken haze, earning money with a government paycheck for as long as Nate could remember.

  With his dad plastered to the sofa, Nate started taking the pickup truck out into the hills where he could hunt small game. He was a large boy for his age and knew the local cops wouldn't pull him over if he didn't break any laws—other than driving without a license.

  He'd take out squirrels and rabbits in the early days, but later he moved up to larger game. Wild turkey, deer, and hogs were among those animals he sought most, though the turkeys didn't do much for him. They were dumb animals, easy to kill. Too easy, in his mind.