The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 21

“Of course.”

  “So they knew, Tanner knew, and you knew. None of the others?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever intend on telling me the truth?”

  His gaze dropped. “Why would I? We made you a better person.”

  Lockman pointed at him. “See? That’s it right there. The power trip. That artifact made you think you were God. That you were fixing me.”

  “You’re going to have to drop that yin-yang view of things if you want to keep fighting against the likes of Dolan. We can’t let the terrorists have all the power.”

  “Who died?”

  Creed cheek twitched. “What are you talking about?”

  “To power that artifact. I know how this shit works. Who had to die to make it work?”

  “Nobody died.”

  “That’s bullshit. Human sacrifice is the only way to make mojo work.”

  “Not with an artifact. They have inherent power of their own. What we did with it did not require a life.”

  Lockman crossed the distance between them and gripped Creed’s arm. “There’s more to it. Tell me.”

  “We had to use…extreme interrogation techniques.”

  “Only you weren’t interrogating. So call it what it is. You tortured someone. Made them bleed. Used the blood to fuel the artifact.”

  Creed wouldn’t look Lockman in the eye. He nodded.

  “Who?”

  A deep breath. A shudder Lockman felt in the old man’s arm. “You.”

  Lockman released Creed’s arm and shuffled away. He felt like someone had clubbed him on top of his head, even saw starbursts across his vision. He tried to say something. Couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t fathom a single phrase that expressed the acidic mix of emotions eating away at his insides. He looked at Creed. He looked at Tanner.

  “Wake him up.” He barely recognized his own voice. Maybe this voice, with its frayed edge, belonged to the man he used to be.

  “I had no idea at the time how this would all turn out. You’ve got to believe me. I thought we were doing the best to serve our country.”

  “Wake him up, or I’ll do to you what I’m planning to do to him.”

  “All right.” Creed retrieved a vial and a syringe from a tackle box on the edge of the worktable. He filled the syringe with the fluid from the vial and injected it into Tanner’s leg. A second later, Tanner gasped. His eyes opened wide.

  Lockman came around and crouched by the table so Tanner could see his face.

  Tanner jerked, trying to get up, but the straps held him to the table. Lockman saw the realization dawn in Tanner’s face an instant before he started shouting.

  Jessie was following Rand out to his car when she heard the shouting from the barn. She turned toward the sound, the skin on the backs of her arms and neck prickling.

  Rand shuffled to a halt himself and backtracked to Jessie’s side. “Let’s go, honey.”

  “My dad is torturing Tanner, isn’t he?”

  “Tanner’s probably just in pain from his injuries.”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Never said you were.”

  She took a couple steps toward the barn. “That’s why the sudden urge for ice cream.”

  “Hey, I like ice cream. Don’t need no excuse to get me a banana split.”

  Her stomach jittered as if she’d eaten too much sugar. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “I’m not letting you stick around here right now. This is no place for you.”

  She turned to him. “You’re okay with it?”

  “It ain’t that simple.”

  “Sure it is. Torturing people is wrong.”

  “Don’t you want your mom back?”

  That was it, wasn’t it? She wanted Mom safe. She wanted back to her normal life. And part of her was okay with letting Craig do whatever he needed to make that happen. Which made her more than a little disgusted with herself. Her eyes watered.

  Rand’s huge arm circled her shoulders. “Come on.”

  Jessie let him guide her away from the barn and to his car. As they pulled out of the long driveway, gravel crunching under the tires, windows closed, and the whir of the air conditioning from the vents, she still thought she heard another scream. Had to be her imagination, right? No one could scream that loudly.

  Right?

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “You want me to leave?” Creed asked after Lockman finally gagged Tanner to keep him from shouting.

  Lockman rubbed his hands together, worked a kink out of his shoulder. “No. Seeing your face will motivate me to hurt him more when I need to.”

  Tanner shook his head and mumbled into the gag—a dirty rag Lockman found among some tools on a bench along one wall of the barn.

  “You have something to contribute?” Lockman asked.

  More frantic grunting through the rag.

  “I take it out, I want a calm tone. No more of that shouting. We’re on twenty or more acres of farmland. No one will hear you.”

  Tanner nodded and rested his cheek on the table.

  Lockman yanked the rag out of his mouth. “Speak.”

  Tanner hacked up some bloody phlegm and spit it onto the table. “You don’t have to torture me. I’ll talk. Dolan isn’t paying me enough to hold out for him.”

  “I will believe that the second you give me some useful information.”

  “The woman and her husband. They’re free. Dolan let them go.”

  Lockman’s bullshit detector pinched at the base of his skull. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because they didn’t know anything useful.”

  “Dolan would keep her as bait to draw me in. He’s already tried that with Jessie. He wouldn’t just let her go.”

  “Dolan’s a psychotic. Who knows why he does anything?”

  Lockman paced along the length of the table. “You’re setting us up.”

  “I swear to you. You can check for yourself. Give them a call. They’re home.”

  “Right. Kate answers the phone, says everything’s fine, then we go to pick her up and Dolan’s men, or vamps, or who-the-fuck knows what is waiting to take us down.”

  “Sure. Dolan’s probably got people on the house. You mean to tell me you’d let something like that keep you from trying to get her?”

  “What’s he got for us? More vamps? Mortals? What?”

  Tanner lifted his head as best he could while bound facedown to the table. “I don’t know. That’s the straight truth. Dolan doesn’t share with me. I’m just another source to him.”

  Lockman looked to Creed. “You got a hacksaw or something?”

  “Yeah.” He went to the bench where Lockman had found the rag. The tool bench had wooden drawers built in. The bench itself looked handmade, possibly even Amish. From a drawer, Creed withdrew a hacksaw with its signature thin blade.

  Tanner tried to look over his shoulder to see Creed. “What? What are you doing?”

  Creed came over and handed the saw to Lockman. Lockman showed the saw to Tanner. “I can do a finger. A hand. A whole arm. I could take out your knee caps. Even sever your spine and paralyze you.”

  “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “Are you telling me if the tables were turned, you wouldn’t do the same?”

  “I had you. I never tortured you.”

  “Because I didn’t know anything you didn’t already know yourself. In fact, you gave me one hell of an education. You liked talking so much before, why not go with it? Tell me what Dolan’s got waiting for us at Kate’s house?”

  Tanner blinked frantically as if trying to clear his vision of some horrific scene. Lockman figured he was seeing all the variations of pain coming his way if he didn’t talk. “You won’t believe the truth.”

  “Try.”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “You have no idea what the trap is you’re trying to send us into?” Lockman turned the saw so the blade caught the sterile light from the fluorescents suspended above the
m.

  Tanner’s gaze locked on the blade. His breathing became ragged. “It’s not a trap. Nothing formal. Just a detail put there in case you return.”

  “What kind of detail?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lockman sighed, going for the dramatic. “Take deep breaths, Tanner. Last thing I need is you passing out on me.” He gently waved the hacksaw. “I thought you’d be a little tougher in an interrogation.”

  “It’s like I said. Dolan isn’t worth covering for. It was always about the money for me, not the ideology.”

  “That still doesn’t mean you aren’t lying. Because you know damn well we’re going to put you in a hole, no trial, no due process. Aiding a terrorist in supernatural warfare? Big time offence.”

  “The Agency doesn’t exist anymore, Craig. There aren’t laws on the books for this kind of thing. You think Washington or the Pentagon is going to back you?”

  “I didn’t say anything about Federal prison, did I? Maybe I’ll dig the hole we put you in myself.”

  Tanner rested his cheek on the table and groaned. “You cut me up, the answers will be the same. I don’t have a handle on Dolan’s operation beyond the small part I played providing intel and assisting in your apprehension. I have no place in his hierarchy.”

  Lockman stepped around the table and gripped Tanner’s right arm above the elbow. He rested the saw blade against the arm on the other side of the elbow. “Only one way to prove that.”

  “You won’t cut off my arm. You’re not like that. You never were.”

  “What do you mean, never? I was a lot worse before the Agency scrambled my brain. This kind of thing looks like cheating at Candyland compared to the shit I did as Dolan’s man.”

  “But you’re not him anymore.”

  “I don’t know who I am anymore,” Lockman said and started sawing.

  The muscles in Lockman’s abs cramped as he heaved a fourth time, his stomach already emptied into the toilet and nothing but bile coming out now. He rested his forehead on the cold porcelain edge of the bowl, tried to focus on his breathing without seeing the torn flesh, feeling the grate of the saw blade against bone, or smell the iron of Tanner’s blood.

  No good.

  He heaved again and broke into a coughing fit.

  What had he done? Tanner’s screams still vibrated in his ears. The begging cries. The whimpering defeat.

  His eyes watered and his nose ran. Once he got control of the coughing, he stood and staggered to the bathroom sink. He put his face under the faucet and turned on the cold water. The icy blast on his skin shocked his mind clear for a moment. He rubbed his nose and eyes clean with his hands, rinsed out his mouth, and turned off the faucet. His reflection stared at him, sunken-eyed, from the mirror above the sink. Lockman stared back as the water dripped down his face.

  Who are you?

  At one time, he had been so sure. Even during the decade and a half he lived under an assumed name in Los Angeles, he had known who he really was. Or thought he had. Nothing remained to separate him from the likes of Creed, or even Dolan. He hadn’t just tortured a man, he had brutalized him. Surely, Lockman could have spun some serious mojo out of Tanner’s agony.

  He turned away from his reflection and patted his face dry with a towel on the counter. Then he closed his eyes and let the full experience of what he’d done to Tanner play through his mind. His gorge rose. He concentrated on pushing it down. He took two deep breaths and left the bathroom.

  He caught up with Creed in the kitchen. He had gathered up Tanner’s file into a neat pile and sat at the table with his elbows resting on either side of the stack of pages. A cordless phone lay on the table to his left. His gaze flicked up when Lockman entered.

  “You all right?”

  “Fine. Had to wash the blood out from under my fingernails.”

  “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Craig.”

  Lockman waved him off and took a seat at the table. “Doesn’t matter. We did what needed doing. He stabilized now?”

  “He’ll live. Wish I had hogs on this farm. Would be easier getting rid of the limb.”

  “Nice.”

  Creed held out his hands. “If we’re playing hardasses, we’ve got to talk the talk, right?”

  “What’s your take?”

  “He doesn’t know anything else than what he’s told us or he doesn’t care about having to go lefty from now on.”

  Lockman ran his hands through his hair. His throat burned from the bile he’d purged, and his head ached from the pressure of the dry heaves. An old-fashioned cuckoo clock tocked on one wall. “We’re missing something. There’s some blind spot in all of this.”

  “If Kate and her husband are free, you feel comfortable leaving them in the open?”

  Lockman bounced a fist on the table. “No. We have to extract them before Dolan realizes we got to Tanner. Otherwise, he might step up whatever he’s got on them, or grab them again and make this even harder.”

  “Then what?”

  “Once everyone is safe, I go after Dolan and finally end this. No more running. No more hiding. No more pretend lives.”

  “Bad idea. If Dolan gets you alive, he could get to that ghost artifact, not to mention whatever else his number two had access to.”

  “You mean what I had access to.”

  Creed held up a hand. “I’m not having this argument with you again. In my mind, you and him are two different people. End of story.”

  If only it were that simple. But it served no purpose chasing Creed in circles on the topic. Lockman stood. “When Rand gets back with Jessie we meet back here.” He pressed a fingertip to the kitchen table. “What’s Rodriquez’s ETA?”

  “His flight landed at Metro thirty minutes ago. Knowing the way Rod drives, he’ll be here within the hour.”

  “Me, Rodriguez, and Rand will extract Kate and her husband. I’m leaving you with Jessie. But so help me, Victor, don’t let her get anywhere near Tanner.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And don’t think I’ve forgotten what you’ve done to me. I have more important things to deal with now, but when this is over, I’ll deal with you.”

  Creed visibly swallowed. “Deal with me how?”

  “That all depends on how helpful you are between now and then.” He pointed at the phone. “Hand me that. I need to call Marty.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Let’s do another sweep,” Lockman said into the Bluetooth earpiece that came with the phone Marty had supplied. He sat behind the wheel of a black cargo van he had also procured from Marty’s supply of goods.

  Rodriguez answered through his own matching earpiece. “We’ve done four sweeps already. There’s nothing to see, bro.”

  Rand threw in his two cents. “I’m looking at the spectrometer. No irregularities that would indicate supernatural presence.”

  Lockman gritted his teeth and looked out his windshield toward Kate’s house. He was parked more than half a block down. They had waited until full darkness before heading out. Most of the houses on the street stood dark and quiet. Kate’s had the porch lights on and a light in the front room that illuminated the curtains in the picture window.

  “That science shit isn’t reliable when it comes to mojo and you know it.”

  “Sure,” Rand said. “But we’ve each circled the perimeter at various distances and haven’t seen any sign that anyone or anything is on this house.”

  “Which makes me all the more nervous. No one on the house? Either Dolan’s stupid, or we’ve missed something.”

  “We ain’t missed shit,” Rodriguez said. “Look, I know I came to the party late, but I’m also the only one who’s still been in the game since the Agency tanked.” When he finally arrived at the farm, Rodriquez had given the group a quick update on his life since the Agency. He worked freelance tracking supernaturals brought over to the mortal plane and then set loose. Apparently it happened more and more these days. “The area is clear. The only wa
y any supernaturals are watching this couple is if they are in the house.”

  Possible. Tanner had said Dolan set them free, but that could have been bull. Maybe they had someone holding them inside their own home. “Give me a second.” He reached into the duffel on the passenger seat and pulled out a pair of thermal goggles. He started the van and rolled down the street by letting it idle. When he came to Kate’s house, he pulled the goggles and tapped the brake. A lot of interference from the lights, but he could make out two distinct heat signatures that looked like people. Nothing else. Even a vamp, which typically ran cold when at rest, would give off a recognizable signature.

  Could Dolan really have let them go and left them alone?

  He pulled off the goggles and gently accelerated. He circled the block until he reached his original position and parked. “I don’t understand it, but I think we’re clear.”

  “Like I said,” Rodriguez quipped.

  “We’re still going to play this safe. I’ll approach the front. I want the two of you to cover me. Rand, you pull your vehicle across the street from the house. Rodriguez, you get on foot and plant yourself somewhere dark. Make sure you bring Ms. Betty.”

  “I don’t go anywhere without Ms. Betty.”

  “You have the photos memorized of our objectives, I assume?”

  They both came back with affirmatives.

  “Then let’s do this and do it clean.”

  “Just like old times,” Rand said.

  Lockman could hear the big grin in Rand’s voice. Felt a little charge himself. No denying it. He remembered working with these men, enjoying the thrill as they charged into some unknown, often to face things most mortals didn’t even know existed in their world outside fairytales and horror flicks. He had trusted these men with his life, and they had trusted him with theirs in turn. Back then, that kind of trust meant everything. But these guys hadn’t known who they were putting their lives on the line for. They had trusted a lie. Which made their trust, something he had taken pride in, a hollow thing.

  “Yeah,” Lockman said. “Just like old times.”