Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) (25 page)

55

Sarah sat in the passenger seat as Giovanni took a curb too fast and nearly clipped a mailbox.
Several police units, as well as some other agents, were already speeding to the airport, but Sarah needed to be there herself. She wanted to be there when Daniel Wolfgram was put into handcuffs.

The Philadelphia International Airport was the only major airport nearby. It was true Wolfgram could’ve tried to leave from another airport, but Sarah didn’t think so. He had to have known his face was plastered everywhere and a drive to Boston or New York might’ve seemed to
o risky. But the fact was she didn’t know. And, if she were in his shoes, she’d drive all the way to some rural airport like in Kansas or Wyoming and leave from there. But, if he were traveling with other people, it might seem suspicious to them if he wanted to leave from another state.

“I don’t know if he’s gonna be here,” she said. “I just want to make sure you know that.”

“This is all just a guess anyway. But it’s a good place to start.”

As the
y entered toward the first terminal, Sarah looked inside the airport from the car. Rubbing her head from a dull ache in the back of her skull, she said, “This isn’t it.”

“You sure? It’s the closest airport.”

“No, he’s not here. I saw him. He was walking past a dinosaur fossil. Like a T-rex, but not quite.”

“In the airport?”

“I think so. People had bags when they were walking past him.”

“I don’t know any airports that have dinosaur fossils. Lemme call the Bureau and get a clerk to run a search.”

She shook her head and pulled out a phone. “You G-men need to think more practically.” She ran a search for dinosaur fossils in airports on Google and came back with one name: Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. “This is it,” she said. “This is where he’s going.”

“That would make sense. It’s the busiest airport in the country. Easy to slip through unnoticed.”

Giovanni raced up a ramp and found parking near the terminal. He got out, and she followed as he placed a quick call. Sarah paced around the car, trying to drum up… something. Anything. A number on a flight ticket, a type of plane, anything. But nothing was coming to her.

“Okay, we’re on the next flight to Atlanta. Leaves in forty-five minutes. You don’t have to come for this
, you know.”

Sarah shook her head. “I need to be there.”

Giovanni put his hands on his hips and looked at her. “Let’s not keep Mr. Wolfgram waiting, then.”

56

The flight was short, and no one else seemed bothered with it. But Sarah was gripping the armrests so hard her fingers were turning white. Giovanni noticed and said, “Have you never been on a plane before?”

She shook her head. He reached down and interlaced her fingers with his.
It comforted her… a little. But she still had to close the blind on the window and pretend she was on a bus. Luckily, the flight was only a little over an hour.

When they landed, Giovanni rushed off the plane, holding on to her hand, weaving between the other passengers who were trying to recover their bags. The stewardess was about to say something when he flashed his badge. She wasn’t quite sure what to say after that
, so she just said, “Have a nice day.”

The airport was massive. Trains zipped around, taking passengers between the different terminals. Crowds of people hovered around the entrances and exits, the baggage claims
, and the ticket counters. Sarah had never been to a concert or sporting event, so this was the most people she had ever seen in one place. It gave her butterflies in her stomach and general uneasiness.

“That’s the dinosaur,” Giovanni said, pointing to a fossilized dinosaur that stood on its hind legs. “Do you know when he’s supposed to be here?”

“No. I didn’t see anything like that. He could’ve already left or not even thought to leave from here yet.”

Giovanni scanned the crowds around them. “I’m going to have a look and see if I can find the other units here. Will you stay here and text me if you see him?”

“Sure.”

“I’m serious, Sarah. You cannot do anything but text me. There
are TSA people twenty feet away, so I don’t think he’s gonna do anything, but I don’t want you acting like a hero.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

He turned and walked off, leaving her staring at his back. She rubbed her bicep and then folded her arms, casually walking around the fossilized dinosaur as though she were just here on a stroll. Now that she was actually here, she realized this may not have been the best use of their time. When she saw this place, time wasn’t something she detected. For all she knew, it could’ve been months or even years in the future.

As she came around the dinosaur, she glanced up into one of the shops and saw something that caught her attention. A white male in a fedora. It wasn’t something that normally caught her attention, but the man was surrounded b
y what she thought were other people.

But they weren’t.

The dead enclosed the man as though he drew them in like a black hole and they couldn’t escape. At least forty people were packed into the shop. But when a person walked in and went to the candy bar section, he just slipped through the others like they weren’t even there. Sarah recognized several of the apparitions around him… including Star, who was staring absently at the floor.

The dead were following Daniel Wolfgram around.

Sarah looked for Giovanni but didn’t see him anywhere. She took out her phone and texted him,
HE’S HERE!

Then she slipped the phone into her pocket. What Wolfgram appeared to her and what he appeared to others must’ve been vastly different. To her, he was a wound of dark energy. A tear in the normal
ity of existence that blackened everything it touched. He didn’t look human. But to others, he must’ve appeared perfectly normal, as though nothing were wrong with him at all.

Sarah began walking toward him. She wanted to look him in the face and make sure. She had to make sure that the person
who killed her mother and her sister was really right there in front of her, that this wasn’t in her head.

As she crossed to the shop, a crowd drifted by in front of her. She tried to keep her sights on Wolfgram, but she lost him
for a moment. Instead of barreling through the crowd, she hurried around them. When she looked into the shop, Wolfgram was gone.

She looked
in every direction. He wasn’t here. She ran into the shop and searched the aisles. A few people were there, but Wolfgram, and her sister, were gone.

When she turn
ed around to see if she could find Giovanni, she bumped into Wolfgram and felt the needle plunge into her belly. The pain took her breath away, and she couldn’t even scream. Wolfgram leaned in close, close enough that she could smell his breath. But all she could do was let out little puffs of air. And she realized he punctured her lung.

“This syringe is filled
with industrial bleach. Shot into your bloodstream, it will kill you in a matter of minutes. And there’s nothing anyone can do to save you. All I have to do is depress the plunger. Do you understand? Just nod if you do.”

Sarah, pain shooting through her, making her want to scream and vomit, blinked her eyes, lowering her head slightly.

“Good,” he hissed. He leaned closer, smelling her, letting her hair run over his face. “You’ve cost me quite a bit of trouble. I should’ve killed you immediately. But I was curious to see if the phenomenon you claim is actually true. Even though you’ve found me, it’s still hard to believe. So how about a little demonstration? Hm?” His tongue, warm and sticky, ran over her ear. “Show me something,” he whispered.

Sarah closed her eyes and
then opened them, calm washing over her, even though she could hardly breathe. She gazed into his eyes. “I know about your father. I know what he did to you and Nathan. No one deserves that, Daniel.”

“Don’t sympathize with me
, you fucking cunt, because I will gut you.”

“Okay, okay… there’s something else, too
.”

Wolf
gram seemed genuinely interested. He backed away half a foot, never breaking eye contact with her.

“I see,” she gasped, “blood
.”

“Hmm, now
that is intriguing. Is it your blood? Because, not to frighten you, but you will be vomiting blood after I push this down. Or, perhaps it’s the blood of the woman and child whose throats I’m going to slit when we land on foreign soil?”

“No,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, “it’s your blood.”

Both of them were silent a moment, staring into each other’s eyes. And Wolfgram knew what she had said was true because his eyes grew wider and they were filled with something they hadn’t been a moment ago: fear.

Sarah
jerked away, the needle pulling out of her just as Giovanni shouted, “Get down!”

She hit the floor as the shots rang out. Wolfgram
raised the syringe to pummel into her as the first round tore into him. The impact knocked him off his feet, onto his back. Giovanni sprinted over as several officers ran to him to pin him down. One stepped on his wrist and pulled the syringe away as he gasped for breath, a gaping hole in his chest.

Sarah rose, holding her hand over the
puncture wound. She watched as Daniel Wolfgram took his last breath, rage in his eyes as he stared at her. When he was gone, she was scared she would see him, have to talk to him. But he wasn’t there. And the darkness she had felt was gone, too, as though it had sucked in on itself.

“
Lemme see,” Giovanni said, running over to her. He moved her hand away and was examining the puncture wound when she looked up and saw her sister.

Star smiled
at her. She appeared youthful again, without the blood and wounds she had been covered in when Sarah saw her. Every wrinkle in her face had completely relaxed. All the tension and stress was gone, and she was, finally, at peace. And she waved goodbye.

Sarah blinked, and her sister was gone. 

57

Sarah stepped off the towel and looked out at the ocean. Cape Cod during the summer was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. It was an interesting mixture of beach, town, and sand dunes. But today, the water was a shimmering green, and she thought she would never want to leave.

Before coming here, she had made a quick stop
at Veronica Anand’s home, Michelle’s mother. Sarah had told her that Michelle wanted her to know that she was there, watching over her. Veronica had broken down in tears and held Sarah for a long time, as though she were holding Michelle.

Giovanni lay next to her
in the sand, staring out at the water as he sipped a Heineken. The way his hair fell over his face, his sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead, he looked more like a beach bum than a special agent with the FBI.

“You know what Kyle told me?” he said. “He said that he’d like to test you some more.”

She grinned. “I think I’m done being his lab rat for a while.”

“I think he wants to verify your… well, abilities
, I guess. But if he’s not convinced yet, I don’t think anything’s going to convince him. He has an eye to bringing you on as an agent. You’d have to go through Quantico, but that’s the fun part. You’d still have to apply, but I think Kyle would personally walk your application through. If you wanted it.”

“Why would I possibly want that?”

“Because you have something that can help other people. People that might not have anyone else to help them.” He took a sip of beer. “Or, we can start a one-eight-hundred number reading people’s futures and retire. Up to you.”

She laughed. “You want me telling people their love lives are going to improve or they’re going to have a
business opportunity presented to them? Things like that?”

“
Well, you’d have to fake an accent and wear weird scarves and stuff. Not sure you could pull it off.” He finished the beer and put the bottle down next to the cooler. “I’m serious, though. I think you’d be good at the Bureau.”

She shook her head. “Maybe
. I’ll think about it.” Exhaling, she lay back in the sand and let the warm sun soak into her body. “But not today.”

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