Agent out of Time (The Agents for Good) (8 page)

My hand slipped down to my waist and slipped free a six-inch hunting knife that I was rarely without. Quietly I slipped into the dark cabin keeping care to stay low and not backdrop myself against an outside window. I had thought it odd not to see any lights on as I had ridden up.

Grimly I knelt down and reached a hand out to the darker shadow laying on the floor. The feeling of death was heavy in the atmosphere of the room. Ted was dead. From the feel of it his skull had been cracked wide open. I canvassed the rest of the cabin slowly, but I was alone. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number.

The line was instantly active, “Yes, I need to report a murder.” I gave them the particulars and agreed to wait until someone arrived.

I called Trent and told him. He took it quietly, as I knew you would. He and Deshavi had been out on a date. I didn’t turn any lights on, but I could tell the place had been rifled through, as if it had been a robbery gone wrong. I doubted that however, because the skull was gone. That was what was behind all of this I was more than willing to bet.

I had expected the fall back from Ted’s discovery to be bad, but not like this. One of my people had likely killed Ted or someone on the outside had killed him and stolen the skull to shift probable blame onto my people and make us look bad. I didn’t know which it was, but either way I was going to make them pay for this!

I stood along the sidelines as uniformed officers made their way about the scene, as photographs were taken and fingerprints were dusted for. Deshavi stood near me looking very pale. Trent was being questioned by an officer, “I know about your grandfather’s recent discovery, but do you have any idea as to who would do this?”

Trent shrugged shaking his head no, “No one in particular that I know of.”

Deshavi’s voice quivered, as it broke into the conversation, “I think I might know of who could have done it.”

All eyes turned to her. The officer walked up to her and Deshavi told him of being accosted by the three men in the store and them wanting her to steal the skull. It was the first that I had heard of the incident and glancing at Trent I could see it was for him to.

His demeanor up till now had been one of masterful control, but now the muscles of his jaw were bunching and ticking in barely leashed fury. He spoke up roughly, “Why didn’t you tell me? Tell anyone, someone about the incident?”

Her eyes were pain itself, “I didn’t want to mess anything up.” She said softly in a small voice.

Trent looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but he walked out instead into the night. Tears fell down Deshavi’s face as she glanced at me. I didn’t want to bury the spear point any deeper than it already was, but the reality of it was what it was.

“You should’ve told me Deshavi.”

She nodded as more tears came cascading down her face.

Despite my anger with her I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in close as she cried. If she’d only told me or Trent, one of us could’ve stayed with Ted, until the skull was safely out of his immediate possession. It had been a costly mistake.

The coming week the investigation dragged out and then finally culminated, as I led a group of sheriffs in the tracked down capture of the three suspects on reservation land, who admitted their guilt in search of a plea bargain. The skull wasn’t found. The three men claimed to have pulverized it and thrown the pieces of it into the river. I was inclined to believe that was the truth.

The worst part of the week was the ill fruit that came out of one bad choice. Trent called the wedding off and after the suspects were in custody he had simply left town without saying anything to anyone. In my opinion he was making, as big a mistake, as Deshavi had. She may have been late, but at least she had come forward with the truth, when it would have been easier not to say anything and just let the killers get away.

I could partly understand that he had felt hurt and betrayed by someone he’d exposed so much of his heart to and thus the need to get away and let the wound heal, but what he had done was wrong. In a time like this communication was everything, with forgiveness being a close partner to it. He had acted selfishly, as had Deshavi before him, and as a result they were both now paying the penalty.

Deshavi hadn’t left her room once in the three days since Trent had left. I lay awake at night listening to her cry, until I had been on the verge of hopping on a plane and stalking down Trent myself. Tie the two of them together and let them fight and work this thing out together. That would’ve been bloody no doubt, but far more preferable to this hopeless dirge that Deshavi was going through with full emotion.

The morning of the fourth day Deshavi emerged from her room. She looked like hell and she was carrying her suitcase. Her other suitcases rested packed on the floor behind her. I immediately started shaking my head no, as I stood up and move toward her.

I hugged her to me, “I don’t want you going anywhere, not just yet.”

“I have to grandpa! It’s living torment to be here! I need to get away and figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”

I started to say something I had been dreading, but her hand closed over my lips as her eyes met mine earnestly. “I’m not going to live wild and start stealing stuff again grandpa I promise! If this whole ordeal has taught me anything it is that I want to at least have more self-respect for myself than I did before this summer. I also want your respect for me. I’m going back to the city. I’m going to sell my stuff and try to find a position of some kind somewhere and start being a contributing member of society, instead of a self spoiled brat. I need to do this and it will help to be busy so I don’t think so much over what could have been.”

It was the most mature statement of grown-up intent I had ever heard from her before. I hugged her again and whispered into her ear, “Please just one more day for my sake. Spend one more day with me.”

“Okay.” She responded squeezing me back in response to my plea.

Chapter Eight

Agent Shalako

Deshavi stepped back into the world she had left behind for the summer. Looking around at the glitzy apartment and her things she couldn’t but help notice how much she had changed since she was here last. She’d found love and suffered heartbreak all in the course of a single summer and she was forever changed and in some ways scared by it. This place and the entertainments it held had no charm to her anymore.

She wanted something fresher and wiser than the selfish existence for self she had been living. It was late, but she started packing up her stuff. She was determined to be out of here in the morning and embarked on a new life.

It was going well, when suddenly the door of her apartment shattered, as it was busted inward. On a gasp of alarm she watched as several masked men stormed in. She started for the bedroom, where she kept a gun under the mattress, but there was a sharp sting at her neck. Numbly her fingers reached up to feel the small dart, even as her feet gave out on her and she crumpled headlong to the floor already unconscious.

Dimly Deshavi became aware of color and then the texture of carpet beneath her fingers. She sat up slowly. She was lying on the floor of an extravagant looking room that had far too much of the color red throughout its design. Several armed men stood about in suits and she knew she was in big trouble. The door opened and in walked an older man. All the men were Russian and she had a pretty good idea why she was here. She had to look up from her position on the floor, as the man came close to her. His eyes held nothing but cruelty in there depths and a deep fear blossomed within her.

“So the thieving whore has returned home at long last.”

Picking her words carefully Deshavi said, “I can return the necklace to you and I can pay.”

The man shook his head, as a smile played about his lips in a false sign of joviality. “I already have the necklace and as for the money, I don’t need it. I wonder however, how are you going to return my son’s life to me?”

Cold dread filled Deshavi’s blood with ice. She wanted to scream out for help, but she had no friends here. Trent was gone from her and grandfather was far away in the mountains. She was alone and without help.

“You would have been wise to heed the maxim of ‘never steal from a thief’. If that had been the extent of your crime I would’ve simply killed you and spared you the ordeal of what is to come. After all there must be respect among thieves should there not?”

His eyes flickered over her like a viper’s, “But you did more than just steal a possession of mine. You stole a son of my blood! Death will be long in the coming for you and you will embrace it long before it comes.”

Deshavi shook her head as tears of fear dripped down her face, “Please don’t do this!” But tears were wasted on a man such as him, who had left a vital part of himself escape years before, which was his soul.

“I think we should start your education into how bad it is to cross me with a little rape, followed by a lot more rape. Rip her clothes off and hold her down. No point in not getting started with her education is there?”

The man’s minions obeyed willingly enough, as they knew that they would be next in line to take their pleasure. Deshavi’s screams rent the air, but there was no one to hear that cared.

Something wasn’t right. Deshavi had promised to call me the day after she had gotten back to the city and this was now the third day since she had left. I had tried calling her, but the call had gone straight to voicemail. I knew the alias the Deshavi went by and the city and I began to call around.

It took several hours to locate a hotel with someone on record with that name. I was transferred by the receptionist to another line. A woman’s voice came on the phone.

“Sir might I ask what your interest in this person may be?”

“She’s my granddaughter. She was supposed to call me when she got in, but it’s been a few days and she hasn’t called me yet. I was wondering if you could check for me whether she arrived safely?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line before the woman’s voice slowly responded with a note of bad news to her tone that had me gripping the phone hard before even her words came through clearly, “Sir I regret to have to inform you of this, but the door of your granddaughters room was broken open. We have surveillance footage of your granddaughter arriving, but not departing. We also have footage of three men leaving the area with a large suitcase. We’ve turned over our surveillance data to the police and are cooperating with them fully on the investigation, as to your granddaughter’s disappearance. Are you still there Sir?”

I heard her last words, but the phone was already falling from my listless grasp to shatter on the floor. I stumbled my way out onto my front porch that overlooked my mountain valley home. First it had been my wife, then my son, then my good friend, and now all that I had dear left to me was gone into the unknown. A shout of war filled rage swept out of me in a cry that echoed down the valley temporarily silencing the sounds of nature for a long moment. Such a cry hadn’t been heard in these mountains for many generations.

I caught myself against the railing from falling, as my heart thundered away inside of me. My hands shook, as they supported me on the wooden railing of the porch, as grief swept through me.

“No!” My hands clenched into fists. Deshavi might yet still be alive. I owed her enough to find out.

A voice whispered, “You’re too old.”

“That may well be, but you’re going to pay to find that out!” I gritted out in denunciation of the disparaging spirit that was assailing me in my moment of despair and grief.

I turned back toward the house. The sudden resolve that I felt course through me helped to still the fluttering of my heart. Now was no time to be weak or old. It was a time to be strong and I willed my body to be so accordingly.

Strength returned to my fingers and with the rising fury that I felt at the near hopelessness of my situation I grabbed an ax from off the hearth that I used for chopping kindling. I jerked an ornately woven area rug away from the middle of the living room floor and lifting the axe high with two hands I brought it crashing down towards the polished wood plank floor.

The axe’s blade bit deeply into the wood and I worked away savagely at the floor. Chunks of wood splintered off to the side, as the floor grudgingly gave way to the sharpened steel and the trauma wrecked by the axe.

I had hoped that this day would never come again, but trouble had a way of finding me. The way made clear I lifted the heavy case out from beneath the floor. I undid the locks and the case opened. There was money in several currencies. Several passports, but they were all hopelessly outdated now. I’d have to get them redone if I needed them. The top side of the case held a collection of odd looking knives, two 40 caliber automatic pistols, and a small derringer. There were also a couple of grenades.

I looked at the evidence of the bloody and brutal past laid out before me. It was time to be Agent Shalako once again. I had sworn to the death of the agent character from ever rising again. Once my agent status had cost me the life of my son, now I only hoped that it could save the life of my granddaughter. That is, if there was still a life to be saved.

The evening sounds were in full rigor of effort this evening, mused Chantry to himself, as he sipped from his wine glass. He always came to visit his Virginia estate in the early autumn. This was his favorite time of the day to just enjoy the peace of the countryside. There was not a single sound amiss in the nightly array of insect chirping, but suddenly Chantry felt himself on the edge, at the presence of some unknown danger.

Surreptitiously under the guise of sipping his wine he scanned the grounds around the expansive patio. His guards were all in place, as well as the blinking indicator lights of his security feeds. He set the glass of wine down before glancing at his watch. There were no security updates. His breathing stilled and ever so slowly he let his gaze rise to trace the outline of the man that now sat across from him in the evening gloom at the table. There had only ever been one man Chantry had known so gifted with this level of silent stealth. His first recruit to the program, Agent Shalako.