In Case of Death (The Adventures of Gabriel Celtic Book 3) (20 page)

I nodded, remembering that Calvin Forester’s family holdings included about a thousand acres. Hidden away like it was, I was relatively certain that Raven’s house would remain a sanctuary. Just in case however, I had hired the Jasper brothers to patrol the woods behind the house.

Hank and Bill Jasper were old friends from high school. Good old boys in every way, they were nonetheless straight arrows and very dependable. Deft hunters, they would jump at any opportunity they could get to go hunting or camping.

I had offered them a thousand dollars each to guard the house, and they had both quickly taken a week off from their jobs, planning on spending the whole week camping on and patrolling the property.

“Boring is good!” I said finally, “I’ve had enough excitement for one week.”

Preacher nodded in agreement, flipping a page of his Bible without thinking.

I glanced in the window, trying to get a good look at his mysterious book. It seemed that he was always pulling something out of it, and I had yet to fathom how he did it. Looking at it now, I could see nothing that would indicate that it was anything other than a regular old Bible.

A noise down the road caught my attention… a motor. By the sound of it, something had just turned off the main road and was heading our way.

“Company coming,” Preacher stated nonchalantly as he picked up his gun off of the seat beside him.

I was jumpy, but was hoping it was just somebody driving by on their way to someplace else.

We could see about a quarter mile ahead of us, and soon spotted a van rounding the corner. I relaxed a little when I recognized the color and logos of a major delivery service.

The van was flying, but quickly slowed as it approached our position, the turn signal indicating that he intended to turn up Raven’s drive.

“Should we stop him?” Preacher asked, not taking his eyes off of the approaching van.

“Let it go,” I answered quickly, “I’d hate to take old James’ work from him. Why don’t you text Abby that it is coming.”

Picking up his phone, Preacher deftly worked the keypad for several seconds before setting it back down on the seat beside him.

“Abby will probably go retrieve the package herself,” I said with a smile, “By now, she’s probably bored stiff dealing with the legal mumbo-jumbo in that book.”

Preacher’s phone beeped then as he picked it up, using several seconds to retrieve Abby’s return message.

The color drained from his face as he looked at me with fear in his eye.

“She says they
never
get deliveries here!”

Chapter 52

September 23, 1999

The Road Runner’s engine was screaming as the tires spun around the corner and entered the driveway.

“Raven has a safe room!” I yelled into the phone at Abby, “Get everyone in there NOW! We’ll be there in a minute!”

Throwing my cell onto the floor of the Road Runner, I pulled out my weapon and chambered a round. The burning on my neck had suddenly started again, but I was determined to ignore it for now.

“Shit!” was all I could think to say as Preacher deftly slid around one curve and then the next. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid!

Rounding the last curve, we could see the van just stopping on the large circular driveway directly in front of the house. Preacher let off the gas slightly and the engine started cackling loudly as we approached the van.

The driver was exiting the truck in a hurry, taking only a cursory notice of our approach before moving off at a run down the hill and away from the house.

“We got a runner!” Preacher shouted as he entered the circular part of the driveway. Sticking my arm out the window, I got off a couple of quick shots at the man, missing him completely from the moving car.

Suddenly, it hit me as I watched the thin delivery man run down the hill.

He wasn’t running from us…he was running from the van!

“Preacher!” I shouted, “It’s the van! He’s running from the van!”

Understanding immediately, Preacher let off the accelerator and hit the brakes hard.

Born for speed, the Road Runner rebelled at being forcibly slowed, swerving severely before skidding sideways directly toward the van.

Although still a hundred feet away, I watched in fear as the van continued to move toward the window.

My window!

***

There was a moment…just a short moment when I was cognizant of the burning on the back of my neck once more.

I felt like I was on fire!

Then there was a loud “
TICK
” as all the air was quickly sucked out of the car, followed by an energy force hitting us full on. I had never experienced anything like it before!

The shock wave that hit at the speed of light was followed quickly by the brightest flash I had ever witnessed. I felt the car being tossed into the air like a toy, barrel rolling at a dizzying revolution as we were unceremoniously thrown back down the hill like a discarded cigarette.

Already blinded, I could feel my head being thrown against the side of the car as we tumbled through the air. It seemed like we spun there forever, both of us knowing that we were surely taking our last breaths on this earth.

In that split-second of realization, I used the last bit of the air in my lungs to whisper my last thought.

Betty…

Chapter 53

September 23, 1999

Blackness…

It surrounded me in a comforting warmness, kinda soft and cushy like a blanket.

I felt good about this… thinking that if I was going to hell it probably
wouldn’t
be on the soft and cushy side of things.

But where was I?

I seemed to be floating, not feeling the pressure of my own weight. 

I could not feel any movement though, and for some reason this concerned me.

“Hello?” I queried out loud, listening intently in the blackness for an answer.

Silence…

“Hey…guys!” I started talking again, feeling kind of stupid yelling into the comfortable nothingness. “I’m ready! I’ve accepted my fate!”

Silence…

“Look, I know I did something stupid, and it cost me my life. I’m willing to admit that! I also put my friends and family in danger, which I hope you can fix by the way. They all have so much to live for…”

The volume of silence increased to deafening…is that even possible? It was as if complete silence…intensified!

I tried to talk, but nothing came out of my mouth. I wanted to tell
them
about Betty, how she was surely waiting on me. She was probably just around the corner…waiting for my indoctrination to be over so that we could be together once more!

Maybe they had changed their mind…?

After all, I was responsible for whatever befell Preacher for sure, and maybe Abby, May and Raven. Even grumpy old James hadn’t deserved to be caught up in all of this.

I had the sudden need to beg for their salvation, to offer myself up as the one responsible for the deadly madness that had cost all of us so much…

Someone flicked on the lights!

I was suddenly surrounded by a light so intense as to make the light of the blast earlier seem like that of a mere flashlight.

I could feel the brightness shining
through
my body as its power invaded every cell in my body.

Yet it didn’t hurt!

In fact, I realized that the back of my neck was once again burning with an intense heat. I was aware of the extreme hotness…yet I felt no pain.

Through the veil of intense light, a blurry vision suddenly materialized in front of me, slowly moving forward as I squinted to make it out.

Two orbs finally came into focus…the most beautiful blue light emanating from them as they approached.

The hint of a pale yellow brightness now came into focus, surrounding the floating orbs in a mist.

Something touched my face!

The gentle touch of what felt like a hand caressed my cheek tenderly. The love and affection the touch imparted overwhelmed my emotions as a tear of joy made its way down my face.

A sparkle caught my eye. Looking lovingly at the orbs, I noticed what looked like a diamond leaving one of the orbs…making its way down the yellow mist.

Was the beautiful vision shedding a tear also?

Wait,
I heard then, the sound but a whisper in my mind.

Not yet…there is more…
the voice continued, resonating like sweet honey inside my being.

Slowly at first, the blueness receded away from me as my surroundings were quickly replaced once more by the comforting blackness.

I felt a gentle bump as a pressure on my back replaced the floating feeling. Suddenly tired beyond belief, I let my eyelids close as the comforting cushiness enveloped me once more.

I smiled as the dulling numbness of sleep overtook me, the realization of the loving encounter of moments before making my heart skip a beat as I whispered her name.

Betty…

Chapter 54

September 23, 1999

Betty…

“Gabe?”

Betty! I knew it was you!

“Gabe, wake up!”

It took my groggy mind a few moments to realize that I wasn’t actually dreaming. Feeling my shoulder being shaken, I finally managed to pry my eyes open.

“Abby?”

A big grin met my response before she bent down and pulled me into a hug.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Abby whispered into my shoulder, a catch in her voice letting me know she had been on the verge of sobbing.

I wrapped my arms around her as I realized that until a few moments before, I had also thought I was lost.

I pulled away from her suddenly, “Preacher?”

“I think I’m here,” I heard behind me, turning to find him lying on his back next to me, confusion ripe on his face.

“How…?” he started, looking around at where he lay.

Abby giggled at his confusion. “You’ll get used to it after awhile Preacher. Gabe’s a little blessed to say the least.”

Something she said seemed to ring a bell in Preacher’s mind, as he quickly looked over at my neck.

“Holy…Gabe, your mark…it’s grown…and it’s now a fluorescent blue!”

“Let me see!” Abby said quickly, unceremoniously pushing down my head and looking over it to my neck.

“It has! Gabe…what does this mean?”

“It means we’ve been through hell, that’s all,” I stated bluntly, aggravated at the attention once again being focused on my birthmark. “Is everyone else ok?”

Abby nodded. “We got into the safe room just in time. You should see the house though; the whole front of it has been blown away.”

“What about my car?” Preacher asked hopefully.

A sad look crossed Abby’s face before she pointed to a spot behind us.

Turning, we saw what was left of Preacher’s perfectly restored classic. Wrapped around a tree and engulfed in flames, there looked to be not a single piece of metal that had retained its former shape. Where the front seats used to be, it looked like the two side windows were now barely a foot apart, pushed together by the force of the blast.

“I’m sorry Preacher,” I whispered, almost speechless at the devastation.

He sat there, staring at what was left of his car for long moments while Abby and I waited. Finally, he turned around, a smile gracing his face.

“Praise the Lord! He saw fit to pull us out of the car before it was destroyed.”

Shrugging then, he continued. “The car was just a thing, something I worked on because my life was too boring to find anything else to do.”

“I do believe that working with you two has definitely fixed that problem!” he added with a grin.

“And…” he added, reaching down beside his leg and pulling up a familiar book, “He even saved my Bible!”

Abby offered her hand then to help me up. I was surprised that nothing hurt after our ordeal. I then held out my hand to Preacher, who also expressed surprise at coming through the explosion unscathed.

As we started walking back up the hill towards the house, I said a silent prayer of thanksgiving that no one got hurt in the explosion.

The Lord certainly works in mysterious ways!
 

Chapter 55

September 23, 1999

Hector ran for all he was worth as he tried to put distance between himself and the van. Even the approaching car now speeding to his location was of little concern to him now…he had to make the crest of the hill!

So intent was he on his escape, that he barely noticed when bullets started zinging around him, a couple of them felt on his face and arm as they narrowly brushed past his skin.

Massive amounts of adrenalin were pumping through his veins at that moment, even overriding the pain in his leg as he continued toward the break in the hill that would shield him from danger.

The sneer that formed on his lips was involuntary as he spied the edge ahead of him. Bill’s final solution would finish
everybody
that was involved in this cluster-fuck once and for all…
especially
the damned girl!

Not realizing that he was pushing off with his damaged leg, it nonetheless performed like that of an Olympic long jumper as he hurled himself though the air effortlessly. His grin of relief lasted only seconds however as he felt rather than heard the detonation behind him.

Oh shit!

***

The day before, Hector had revenge in his heart as he arrived back at his apartment. The physical taste of it was like that of bile in his throat.

Having traveled several hundred miles in the last few days, he also had an overwhelming exhaustion.

But he had done it!

He had found people that knew people that sent him to others that could help him…for a price.

Rubbing through the eye patch without thinking, he applied pressure to the glass eye that he had been fitted with.

Damn thing itches constantly,
he thought with aggravation.

He would be stuck with the eye patch for a couple of weeks until his eye socket adjusted to holding in the fake prosthesis.

Flopping on the couch tiredly, he nonetheless took up his cell, texting just one word before hitting send.

Back

Only seconds passed before he received his reply.

Finish this!

Hector smiled and laid his head back to await what he knew was coming next.

It had cost him close to $100,000 to get himself discreetly fixed up and medicated, and he knew there would be a bonus in his next payment from Bill.

At least there had better be!

His employer knew that Hector didn’t threaten unless he meant it, and his threat to Bill had been plain enough.

Closing his good eye, he thought about taking a vacation, something he had not done in a long time. After finishing this assignment, he thought he might like to go someplace to recuperate…someplace he could throw around some of his money without arousing any suspicions. 

A knock on the door an hour later jerked Hector out of a sound sleep. Wiping the drool off of his chin, he slowly worked himself off of the couch and limped to the front door. Looking through the peephole, he saw the messenger standing there wearing a ball cap and sunglasses.

Opening the door, the man on the stoop plastered on a fake smile.

“Delivery sir, sign here please.”

“Are you sure? Most of my deliveries don’t require a signature.” Hector was suddenly nervous, reaching into his back pocket behind the door and extracting the switchblade he had there. Neither he nor his employer wanted to leave a trail for anyone to follow, and he had never been asked for a signature from one of Bill’s deliveries.

He fingered the button on the knife while the man looked at his clipboard, hearing the familiar click as the blade flicked into position.

“My bad!” the man said, handing over the 3’ cardboard shipping tube, “Says no signature needed, sorry.”

With that the man turned and made his way back to his bike at the end of the sidewalk.

Hector closed the door, closing the blade as he took the heavy tube to the table and opened it. Sliding out the contents, he found a thick roll of blueprints with a post-it note on the outside of the roll that said:
Notes on the project.

Sliding the rubber bands off of the roll, he spread the prints out on the table and started paging through the engineering documents.

A grin appeared as he got to the fifth page.

Taped to the page were rows of $100 bills, twenty per row, four rows on the page. Leafing through the remainder of the prints, he counted 25 pages like that…$200,000.

He shook his head and smiled at the amount of work Bill always went through to get him his payments. Many times, he would send him a nice journal, the already thick pages each glued to another, a $100 bill or a money order enclosed between them. Most of the pages would have a jumble of writing or sketches on them to camouflage their true use.

At other times, he would receive a delivery from a pharmacy, the bag full of pill bottles. Inside each of the bottles he would find rolled stacks of $100 bills.

In each case, Bill had seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in preparation to conceal his ingenious payment methods.

On the last page, Hector found another post-it note, this one reading:
See revisions below.

On the page was a site map of an expansive property, an X made on the circular driveway in front of the structure. Next to it was the nonsensical word MOOB. Hector giggled at the meaning with glee. Always using a simple code to “hide” information that he didn’t want other’s reading, Bill’s simplistic answer was to write the words backwards.

“Boom!” Hector shouted, excitement building in his chest…as well as in his pants. He fingered the erection as he studied the plan, his mind swirling as he went through the details needed to accomplish his new mission.

***

  His overriding joy of the day before flashed through his mind as the force of the blast hit him like a freight train, pulverizing most of his major bones and organs as it threw him forward with the velocity of a bullet.

Flipping through the air head over heels, he never saw the tree as his body approached it, the power of the blast skewering him onto a broken limb unceremoniously.

There was not enough left of him to support life, and yet Hector was still conscious, the lack of pain giving him the false sense of hope for a future.

Movement in his periphery caught his attention suddenly and he had to concentrate to follow it with his eye as it flitted from one branch to the next like a small monkey. Thinking he was grinning when in reality his jaw hung against his chest, hector nonetheless took great joy in watching the apparition.

Suddenly, the blackness was before him and looking into his eye through red slits as tentacles of smoky blackness made their way into his body. Rotted yellow teeth suddenly appeared from within the inky blackness, the putrid stench of death encircling Hector like a cloud.

“Hector!” The blackness spat out, grinning. “We have been expecting you!”

The tentacles then unceremoniously ripped Hector’s soul out of his mangled body, his sudden screaming joining the chorus of thousands in their concerto of infinite death.   

Chapter 56

Sept 23, 1999

“Ewww,” Abby exclaimed suddenly.

I followed her eyes, quickly finding the cause of her reaction.

We had been walking up the hill toward Raven’s house, having only gotten halfway up when Abby had spotted the body.

Twenty feet in the air with a limb sticking through its stomach, the sight was not pretty.

“The driver I take it?” Preacher asked with little emotion.

“I would guess that,” I started, “Although it’s kind of hard to determine from what’s left of him.”

The grizzled apparition had hit the tree with such force that it looked as if he had been melded into the bark. An eye patch was draped across the cheek below a single eye that seemed to be staring at us, adding to the already creepy look of the body.

“I hope it’s him,” Abby said as she started walking again, “Serves him right.”

The Jasper brothers were the only other people that were supposed to be in the area, but they should not have been close enough to suffer any damage. I would need to check on them soon though, after I checked out everybody else.

“May and Raven were ok when you left?” I questioned Abby as we approached what was left of the house.

“Shaken up some, but they seemed fine. James reacted quickly when he found out what was happening, herding May and Raven quickly into the safe room like a sheepdog.  He was really the only one that appeared unfazed by the whole thing. You’d think it was just another day for him.”

I smiled at her assessment of the aloof butler. I realized that he had jumped up a notch or two on my respect meter after his actions during the emergency. Could it be he had some kind of military or police training to remain so cool in the moment?

I suddenly stopped in my tracks as the house came into view. The front wall of the house was no more, with only the ends of the various levels of floor visible from where I was standing. Memories of Oklahoma City popped into my head as I took in the devastation before me.

“Lord, help us,” Preacher mumbled beside me, more sadness than fear showing on his face.

Although Abby had glanced at the house on her way to check on us, her present appearance left little doubt in my mind that she was just now realizing the enormity of what had happened.

Visibly shaken, I moved next to her and hugged her tight as my own emotions kicked in. There were probably only seconds differentiating what had happened today versus what could have occurred. A chill ran down my spine at the realization.

Hearing voices, we all looked to our right, our eyes focusing on a sight to behold.

There was Raven and May, hand in hand, being led through the rubble by the Jasper brothers.

Giving Abby another quick hug and a peck on the cheek before releasing her, we all started making our way over toward the approaching group.