Blood Trade E-Book

John A. Daly

• Herausgeber: BQB Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Sometimes blood is thicker than life.

"Some writers are thoughtful. Some have style. John Daly has both. When I read his work, it's time well spent." - Bernard Goldberg, New York Times #1 bestselling author of 'Bias'

"This book has so many twists, turns, mis-directions, and layers of plot that I even forgot to eat where I was so involved. The characters are larger than life and when you think you know them there is another surprise just around the corner." - Best Selling Crime Thrillers

Sean Coleman is back in the latest thriller from John A. Daly, set in the mountains of Winston, Colorado.

Six months after the murder of his uncle, Sean is trying to get his life together. He's stopped drinking, he's taking better care of himself, and he's working hard to keep a fledgling security business afloat. At a blood plasma bank, Sean frequents to earn extra income, he meets the distraught relative of Andrew Carson, a man who went missing weeks earlier on the other side of the state, with a pool of blood in the snowy driveway of his home as the only clue to the man's fate.

Sean decides to help in the search for Carson and quickly finds himself immersed in a world of deception, desperation, and danger---a world in which nothing is what it seems, and few can get out of with their lives.

Leseprobe

Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller© 2015 John A. Daly. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published in the United States by BQB Publishing Companywww.bqbpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-939371-69-0 (p)ISBN 978-1-939371-70-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937918

Book design by Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.comCover design by Dave Grauel, www.davidgrauel.com

Also in the Sean Coleman Thriller series from John A. Daly

From a Dead Sleep

Praise for John A. Dalyand From a Dead Sleep

Some writers are thoughtful. Some have style. John Daly has both. When I read his work, it’s time well spent.

—Bernard Goldberg,New York Times bestselling author of Bias

An epic thriller with a memorable, unorthodox main character . . . a riveting read . . .

—Colorado Country Life Magazine

A fast-reading suspense book that surprised me so much, I had to finish it in one sitting.

—Alice de Sturlerof the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases

A thriller that packs a punch! This was a very exciting debut novel from John A. Daly. This novel packs a lot of jaw-dropping action into its well-structured narrative—a narrative that gives life to the myriad of characters that inhabit its pages and provides plenty of plot twists and turns to keep you glued to the pages.

—Reading, Writing, and Riesling book blog

I loved this book. The suspense had me sitting on the edge of my seat . . . The author did a fabulous job with the setting details—I could picture every touch, smell, sight that the characters went through . . .

—Yawatta Hosby, author of the novel One by One

From a Dead Sleep is a page-turner, an exciting, well-written thriller with a solid back story and more than enough plot twists to keep you guessing.

—Marilyn Armstrong, Serendipity book blog

I totally enjoyed reading John A. Daly’s From a Dead Sleep. The author used creative writing techniques that make this a mystery/suspense that is very different from other books in this genre . . . The author also does a wonderful job of creating characters and scenes that are quirky, yet believable . . . I highly recommend this entertaining story.

—Paige Lovitt, Reader Views

John pens From a Dead Sleep in a well-written plot filled with mystery, suspense and drama. Between his well-developed characters and all the twists and turns within the story line, you will find yourself having a really hard time putting the book down . . . I know I did! Highly recommended for all mystery and suspense fans. I give From a Dead Sleep a five-star rating.

—Susan Peck, My Cozie Corner book blog

[An] exciting murder mystery that keeps the reader wanting more. A well-written novel that shows one man’s flaws and how he redeems himself to the town and ultimately himself. I love a good mystery and this one is one that definitely deserves a read by the mystery lover.

—Kathleen Kelly, Celticlady’s Reviews

I love mysteries and I love thrillers. This book was both of those things for me . . . I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves suspense, thriller, action novels . . . and yes, there is a little bit of romance in it. I am giving it five stars because, honestly, I couldn’t put it down once I picked it up . . . it deserves FIVE STARS.

—Becca Wilson, Manic Mama of 2 book blog

John Daly’s From a Dead Sleep is an engaging page-turner with likable characters . . . Daly delivers a twist and the famous words of Sir Walter Scott will be playing in the background, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!” . . . If you’re looking for a good mystery or are trying to break out of a reading slump, I highly recommend John Daly’s From a Dead Sleep. Just a bit of warning: don’t start this right before you go to bed, you won’t be able to put it down.

—Literary, etc. book blog

An unconventional hero that readers come to like if not love. Plenty of twists and turns will keep readers glued to their seats.

—Cayocosta72 book reviews

Wow, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat . . . The story takes twists and turns that you just simply won’t see coming. This is a very exciting mystery and you won’t want to put it down . . . John Daly’s writing style is a refreshing one. And I must say that when I finished reading this book I wanted to read more by this author. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a well-written mystery, full of suspense and drama.

—Chris Condy, Recent Reads book blog

Dedication

To my wife, Sarah, who’s always been my biggest supporter.

Contents

DEDICATION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

January 16th, 2002Wednesday

Chapter 1

He kept his distance from her car, letting up on the gas pedal just long enough to release her rear bumper from the imposing beams of his headlights. The evening had already been awkward enough. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was following her back to her apartment to begin a new round of arguing.

If the traffic weren’t so sparse, it wouldn’t have been a worry. He would have just faded into a sea of other beams and she never would have even known he was still there. It would have spared him the mental torment of worrying about what might be bouncing off the walls of his twenty-year-old daughter’s head as she glanced into her rearview mirror. He’d already caught her doing it twice.

Andrew Carson didn’t have an appetite for more drama. He had no interest in further badgering Katelyn about wasting her time and energy on a loser boyfriend who had no ambition and didn’t treat her right. He certainly hadn’t the stomach to listen to more details of how blissful his ex-wife’s life was with her new husband, either. Katelyn clearly liked her new stepfather, which made the repeated mention of him even harder to swallow.

All Andrew wanted right then was to clear his head and get over to the 24-hour Walmart to pick up some supplies for an accounting conference down in Colorado Springs the next morning: last minute items, like printer paper and binders for his presentation of a new software line. The late night detour to the store had been planned in advance, but he’d failed to mention the side-trip to Katelyn during dinner.

He sat in gratuitous silence that soon grew cumbersome under the intermittent glare of overhead street lamps. The muteness let his mind race with odd thoughts and regret. He leaned forward and twisted an illuminated radio knob, then went for the tuner. He found an unfamiliar song that was winding its way through a long, lonely guitar solo. It seemed to fit his mood, so he returned his hand to the steering wheel.

A light drizzle that had been sprinkling down across his windshield began shaping into fine flakes of snow, much like what he’d observed the night before from the upstairs bedroom window of his bare house as he laid awake in bed, unable to sleep.

He lifted his hypnotic gaze from the back of Katelyn’s car and met his own dim reflection in the rearview mirror. He looked as tired as he felt. Above his brows dangled the bangs of his long and wavy dishwater-blond hair. He knew that most men his age would kill for such a dense mane. He mused that it was one of the few things beyond his job that he now had going for him in life.

Quickly approaching the adulthood milestone of a half century, his appearance often led others to speculate that he was younger than he was—perhaps not even a day over forty. He kept himself fairly trim, too, which added to the perception.

He certainly didn’t feel young, however. For the most part, he had physically recovered from the automobile accident that had crushed his leg two years ago, so it wasn’t his health that weighed on him. It was the emotional toll. Though his body was nearly mended, his marriage couldn’t be. For someone once so content with every aspect of his life, the strange new world of solitude and self-doubt felt like a persistent opponent intent on keeping him off a game he had forgotten how to play.

Brake lights flared brightly in front of him, and his attention swept back into focus on the road. Katelyn’s right blinker began pulsating. He smirked at the sight, knowing he needed to make the same turn.

He sighed. “Just another mile or so, sweetie, and then you’ll be rid of me for the evening.”

A years-old memory of how he used to read stories to his daughter before putting her to bed at night flickered through his head. It brought the slightest of curl to his lips, but the expression soon returned to one of sadness. It was good that they drove separate cars to the restaurant. He couldn’t imagine riding back with her in close quarters after how they’d left things. Who knows what else would have been said?

He watched her veer onto the side exit, which led down a mild slope to the waiting interstate below. He was following her maneuver with his gaze when an unexpected sight grabbed his attention. A cloudy cloak of what appeared to be fog suddenly engulfed her automobile.

His eyes absorbed the transformation of her taillights from clearly defined rectangles to a pair of red blurs inside the fog. He found himself pressing his foot down heavier on the brake pedal that he had already been pumping to make the turn.

As best he could tell, Katelyn wasn’t at all fazed by the billow that surrounded her. She even seemed to be picking up speed, prompting Andrew to speculate that she may have decided to use the opportunity as a proverbial smoke screen to put some distance between them.

His car entered the swell, and once inside, an odor of thick exhaust and burnt rubber poured in through his slightly cracked window. He quickly realized that he wasn’t inside a dense fog but rather the product of some form of combustion. The cloud was thicker to his left where plumes of it rose up from the bottom of a steep gully off the shoulder of the road. He sat up in his seat and peered out his window over the edge of the slope to try and determine its source. What he saw was another set of taillights. They pointed upward toward the top of the hill. An automobile had gone over the embankment and crashed front first at its bottom.

“Christ,” he muttered.

He quickly checked his mirrors before veering over to the opposite shoulder of the road, away from the ledge. He came to a stop about thirty yards past where the car had most likely gone over, skidding the last couple of feet along gravelly dirt. He flipped the transmission into park and twisted the ignition off.

Katelyn was already far off in the distance, speeding down the interstate, and most likely feeling relieved that he was no longer trailing her. It seemed that she hadn’t noticed it was a car accident that had caused the cloud.

When Andrew opened his door, the cold and crisp January night air quickly flooded in along the open chest of his leather jacket. Guided only by a dim dome light, his hand found the brass handle of the wooden walking cane he occasionally used where it was wedged between the passenger seat and the center console. The slope of the road had a more than moderate angle to it, so the cane could be useful.

He knew from the lingering fume in the air that the accident had to have just happened. From the glance he had stolen, the drop-off was steep, but was probably no more than forty feet in depth. It didn’t appear that the car had rolled. It possibly wasn’t even totaled. No flames were present, which made him question if the thinning cloud was even actual smoke or a combination of exhaust, scorned pavement, and possibly steam from under the hood. There was definitely a stench of antifreeze in the air.

Even if the car was spared major damage, there was a decent chance that the driver was injured. Andrew felt obligated to help.

He stepped out of his silver Lexus LS and into the brisk darkness. He clearly remembered the night that he and his family had been in that accident two years ago on a remote road in the mountains where help hadn’t arrived for thirty minutes. It had felt more like an eternity. It was a horrifying experience, especially for his teary-eyed, then teenage daughter, whose inability to pry her father free from the wreckage or wake her mother added to the chaos of the quandary. It was a night none of them would ever forget.

He wouldn’t wish such torment on his worst enemy. If there was a chance he could spare someone else from such suffering and a sense of helplessness, he was at least going to try.

Feeling the tingle of cold moisture brushing across his face, he whisked his way out from under the dull light of a street lamp and walked across the road. Once on the other side, he began making his way back to the incline to the spot where he believed the car had gone over. He could hear no moans or cries for help, only some distant, oblivious traffic from the interstate below and the crinkle of patches of frozen grass that strayed up from cracks in the pavement beneath his feet.

The brake lights of the car below were no longer on, nor were the headlights. The darkness wouldn’t let him make out the outline of the automobile or the shape of anyone who might have exited it.

“Don’t go down there!” commanded a loud, unexpected voice from the night.

The abrupt order nearly caused Andrew to drop his cane. It hadn’t come from below, but from above—further up the hill. He halted in his tracks. His head twisted back and forth as he struggled to pinpoint the voice’s source.

A pair of headlights quickly flicked on and off about twenty yards up the road from him. There was another car, a van, hidden in what was left of the diminishing cloud. It was parked along the ledge of the embankment. The flash of the lights acted as a homing beacon, sent to Andrew from the van’s driver.

He glanced down at what he could make out of the wreckage below before turning his gaze back to the parked van. He walked toward the vehicle, intermittently planting the tip of his cane into the gravel-laced shoulder as he did.

The van was a full-sized Chevy, a few years old. It looked to be white, and was possibly a work-van, though there was no company name visible on its side. As Andrew approached the vehicle, he could make out the driver’s hand draped outside of the open window, motioning him to step in closer.

“The guy’s crazy!” said the same voice, now nervous. “He was driving like a madman. The police are on their way.”

Andrew reached the driver’s side door and leaned forward to greet the man inside. Dim, blue light from the dashboard gauges offered little clarity, but enough for him to distinguish the contour of the man’s face and body. He had curly hair under a dark baseball cap and a mustache with a crowded thickness that seemed a bit outdated for the current styles. He wore thick-framed glasses with even thicker lenses and looked to be of average weight and height. He was dressed in a dark sweatshirt and jeans.

“What’s going on?” asked Andrew.

“I think he’s drunk. He was all over the road up there,” replied the man, nudging his head in the direction of the highway. “He took the turn way too fast and went over the edge.” He held what looked to be a cell phone up for Andrew to see and explained that he had already been talking on it with a dispatcher to report the erratic driving when he witnessed the crash.

Andrew nodded. “You keep saying he. Are you sure it’s a man?”

There was some hesitation. “I’m just assuming,” the man finally said. “I guess I don’t know.”

“Okay. How long has the driver been down there?” Andrew asked. He twisted his head again toward the wreckage.

“Just a few minutes. Not long.”

“You haven’t gone down there to check on him? Or her?”

“No!” The response was impulsively defensive. The man took a deep breath before continuing. “Listen, he was driving like a lunatic. He didn’t care one bit about anyone else on the road, so I say we should just let him sit down there in his car until the police come. Let them deal with him. He doesn’t deserve our help.”

“But what if he’s injured?” asked Andrew.

The man said nothing at first, and then shrugged his shoulders. “Better him than us.”

Air left Andrew’s lungs. He considered the man’s attitude, but couldn’t bring himself to share it. “Well, maybe he’s crazy or drunk, or whatever,” he said, “but he might also be injured.”

The man blew a chilly exhale from his mouth in frustration. He shook his head. The lights from the dashboard danced across his glasses.

“I’m going to check it out,” said Andrew. He turned his back to the driver, gripped his cane firmly in his hand, and readied to begin a careful descent down the hill. He had only made it a couple of steps across some snow-blanketed earth when he heard the man behind him sternly shout.

“Wait!”

Andrew’s head snapped back in annoyance. “What?”

“He’s trying to drive out of the ditch. Look!”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed at the faint sound of tires skidding on grass and slush. He turned his attention back to the car below and noticed its white reverse lights now illuminated brightly. The hum of its engine could barely be heard. The wheels didn’t sound as if they were gaining any traction as the back of the car only bobbed up and down slightly from the motion.

“He’s not hurt,” said the man in the van. He craned his neck to grab a better view around Andrew of the trapped motorist.

The car below suddenly jerked up the hill a foot or two. It didn’t get far, but it was enough for the person inside it to step on the brakes to lock in the progress. After a few seconds, however, the car slid begrudgingly back to its original position. A muffled snarl of frustration came from below. It sounded like a man’s voice.

“You see? He’s fine,” insisted the man in the van.

Andrew sighed in relief. “I guess you’re right,” he conceded. “He sounds pissed, not hurt.” He felt some tension leave his body. He would have made his way down the steep hill with his cane, but he was now glad he wouldn’t have to.

“I suppose you’re a better man than me for wanting to help,” said the man. He seemed more at ease now, too. “That’s good. The world needs more Boy Scouts.”

Andrew drifted back over to the window and smiled. “I was kicked out of the Scouts when I was twelve.”

Both men laughed.

“So what brings you out on a school night?” asked the driver in a gamesome tone.

“Just a late dinner in town.”

“By yourself?”

Andrew sighed. “That probably would have worked out better.”

An uncomfortable muteness fell between the two, and Andrew silently scoffed at the strangeness of the conversation.

The flakes of snow that fell from the sky seemed as if they were growing in size. The frosty air made Andrew raise his cupped hands to his mouth and blow into them. He eyed his own car parked along the exit ramp as the whine of spinning tires again ascended from the bottom of the gully.

“There’s no sense in you hanging out here man,” said the driver. “He’s okay. And like I said, the police are on their way. I’ll catch them up to speed.”

Andrew took a moment to digest the man’s offer, and then nodded. “Yeah, I suppose there’s no point in me sticking around out here in the cold.”

No sooner did he finish his remark than he heard the unmistakable thud of a car door closing from down at the bottom of the hill. He turned his head and saw a dark, male figure in what appeared to be a snug white t-shirt climbing up the hill toward them. The climber looked to be a large man with broad shoulders. Deep grunts of effort bellowed from his mouth.

“Ah, shit!” The van driver suddenly appeared nervous again behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He leaned forward and began fiddling with something below his steering wheel. A second later, the engine cranked.

“Go!” Andrew thought he heard someone say from inside the van. It didn’t sound like the driver’s voice.

Andrew’s eyes widened in curiosity. “What are you doing?” he asked loudly over the roar of the van engine.

The driver kept facing forward on the road, ignoring Andrew’s query and his questioning gaze. A grimace etched across the man’s teeth as he popped the transmission. Wheels spun for just a moment on the wet ground before the van lurched forward and took off quickly down the exit ramp.

Andrew felt the spray from the tires slap his face. His chest tightened as he struggled to comprehend the driver’s bizarre reaction. Though largely concealed in the darkness, he knew that his reaction was clearly prompted by fear—fear of a confrontation with the large man who was now nearly at the top of the hill behind him—the man who Andrew was about to be standing with . . . alone.

The loudening racket of hands and feet digging into frosty earth suddenly stopped. Andrew could feel warm breath bearing down on the back of his tense neck as the rest of his body turned ice cold. He swallowed before slowly turning his head to meet the eyes of the person standing behind him.

It wasn’t the man’s darkened eyes, however, that greeted Andrew’s line of sight. It was his neck. The man was huge. He towered above Andrew, who had to lift his head to meet the man’s opaque stare.

Andrew stumbled backwards a step, digging the tip of his cane into the ground after carving out some marginal distance between himself and the imposing stranger who hovered much too close for comfort.

The man didn’t say a word, which made Andrew nervous. He wasn’t sure if the man was just trying to catch his breath or if he was evaluating Andrew’s reason for being there. He had short, dark hair and appeared to be Caucasian and somewhere in his mid- to late-twenties. His large biceps looked like upside-down tree trunks rooting out from his receding shirtsleeves. Half a dozen earrings snaked up the sides of each of his ears and a slightly larger ring looped through the bottom of his nose. The man should have been freezing with his bare arms and thin shirt providing no insulation from the brisk temperature, yet he didn’t seem too affected by the elements. The strong, repellent stench of alcohol skimming the air perhaps explained why.

Andrew forced himself to speak, hoping to assess whether the paralyzing anxiety that rushed through his skin was truly warranted. “Are you okay?” he timidly asked.

There was no reply. Only heavy breathing.

Andrew opened his mouth, searching for something else to say when the man suddenly spoke.

“Yeah. . . I’m fine.” His voice was eerily deep and somewhat hoarse.

Andrew didn’t feel any less on edge. “I saw the exhaust from your car,” he sputtered out in a single breath. “From the road. I was worried you were hurt.”

The man just glared. A moment agonized by before he nodded. He slowly turned to gaze at the sight of his disabled automobile below. A couple of cars quickly sliced along the interstate beyond it, with their headlights casting brief shadows along the overpass. The man’s head twisted back to Andrew.

“Who was that guy who drove off?”

Andrew hadn’t been sure that the man had even seen the fleeing driver, but he apparently had. Based on the driver’s abrupt departure, Andrew considered that the two men might have been engaged in some kind of late night road rage. “Just some guy who also saw your car,” he answered, thinking it to be the most harmless response. He took a second before continuing. “He called the police to report the accident. Help should be here soon.”

The man’s body tensed at the word police. Andrew questioned whether he should have offered up that information. He had done so as a way of incapacitating any hostile intentions the man may have been weighing in his mind.

The man’s stoic presence suddenly shifted to one of worry, even though he tried to conceal the change.

Andrew watched him clench his fists until his large arms trembled slightly.

“Can you give me a ride to Denver?” he asked. “I need to get to Denver.”

Andrew bit his lip and swallowed. Denver was over an hour’s drive south. The man was trying to leave the scene. Andrew suspected, based on the alcohol he could smell, that he was trying to avoid a DUI charge. He seemed more glazed than drunk; his footing was solid and his speech wasn’t slurred. Regardless, he clearly wasn’t interested in waiting around for the police to arrive.

Feeling the weight of the situation pressing down across his shoulders, Andrew searched for an excuse to decline the request—one that wouldn’t provoke a physical confrontation with the large man.

“Listen, I’m not headed to Denver, and besides, I’m just about out of gas.”

“I’ll pay you for the gas,” said the man. “We’ll stop at the next gas station.”

Andrew’s pulse picked up. He felt the situation quickly spiraling out of his grasp. He speculated that the man was not going to take no for an answer. In the developing tension, he strained to hear the hopeful sound of faint police sirens. There was none.

“Come on,” urged the man. “Do me this favor, all right?”

Anxious indecision jetted through Andrew’s veins like electricity through a wire. He weighed different tactics in his mind, but none felt promising. If he said no, the man might get angry, toss him down the hill, and take his car from him. Maybe the car stuck at the bottom of the hill was stolen and that was why the man didn’t have any qualms about leaving it behind. If he said yes, he was trapping himself in a situation that he might not be able to get out of. The guy could be an axe murderer for all Andrew knew.

He repeatedly glanced up at the highway above, yearning to find the headlights of another car making its way down the ramp toward them. It would give him a chance to wave down some help and inject a buffer into the situation. Not a single automobile had passed down the road since the driver in the van had abandoned him. Andrew was on his own.

His mind raced, desperate to avoid a physical confrontation with the giant man. An idea filtered into his head. “I have a tow rope in my car!” he spewed. “I can pull you out of that ditch with it.”

Though he was sure that the man’s first priority was leaving the scene, Andrew banked on his preference to do so in his own car. If he’d stolen the car, however, that might change things. Andrew prayed that wasn’t the case. It was best not to give the man too much time to dwell on the proposal. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back with my car.”

Andrew spun away from the man and began walking briskly down the shoulder of the road. He had begun his career in software sales. Taking away the luxury of choice was a classic professional maneuver from a seasoned salesman, and he used that now. Andrew kept his stride even over the cold ground, with only a hint of his typically more pronounced limp. He was wary of advertising any sign of weakness to the more physically endowed man. It made him feel like a small, injured animal fearful of distinguishing itself to a stalking predator.

Even with his back to the man, he could sense the stranger’s imperialistic eyes scrutinizing his every step and movement. He discreetly brushed his hand along his front pants pocket, panicking for a moment when he didn’t feel the bulge of his car keys inside. He breathed again when he found them in the other pocket. He rehearsed a drill in his mind—quickly hop in the driver’s seat of his car, crank the engine, and leave the confused stranger behind in a cloud of exhaust as he tore down the interstate alone.

He had no intention of helping the man out of this predicament. He didn’t even have a rope in his car. He wasn’t sure exactly what kind of situation he had come upon there on that exit ramp in the middle of the night, but he was certain that if he didn’t cut things loose right now, he’d undoubtedly end up paying some kind of price.

As he put more distance from the man, he started to feel more at ease. His mind flew through his drill again.

The faint shift of gravel and the intermittent scuffing of wet pavement behind him caught his ear.

Andrew’s heart sank.

As nonchalantly as possible, he bent his head over his shoulder for a glimpse. The man was walking after him—quickly.

Andrew’s head snapped back around to face his Lexus, holding the lingering image of the pursuing man in his mind. Obviously, the stranger suspected he was being deceived or had made up his mind that he wasn’t going to accept the proposal. The Lexus wasn’t far away, but to Andrew it seemed frighteningly distant.

He crossed the street, stealing another glance at the stranger under the motion of checking for oncoming traffic. The large man was moving in faster now, displaying sternness and aggression with each lunge forward. A metallic rattle reached Andrew’s ears, something like keys in the man’s pocket or a wallet chain riding his hip. Andrew considered demanding that the man stay put and wait for him to back his car up, but he doubted the suggestion would be heeded.

He held out the small remote on his keychain and pressed a button to pop the trunk, hoping that seeing the trunk lid spring open would convince his pursuer that he was retrieving a tow rope. The move didn’t faze the stranger.

Andrew concentrated on the steadiness of his footing; he couldn’t afford to trip or lose his balance along the sloped pavement. He wouldn’t stand a chance of getting away.

By the time he reached his car and tucked his fingers under the handle of the driver’s side door, his arms were trembling.

The stranger’s footsteps erupted into a near sprint. The metal rattling sound turned wild.

Andrew’s eyes bulged and his chest stiffened. He yanked his door open. The man was bearing in fast, too fast for Andrew to slide inside his car, close his door, and lock it before he was reached.

He gripped the brass handle of his walking cane and quickly raised it hand over hand until his fingers clasped it around its base.

“Hey!” the man shouted from just a few feet away.

Andrew felt the wisp of the man’s hand slide along his shoulder. He clenched his teeth, choked back on the cane, and swung it into the large man like a lumberjack axing down a tree. The sickening thud of metal landing on flesh and the crack of splitting wood echoed, drowning out Andrew’s strenuous grunt. The cane connected with the man’s forehead. The streetlamp added new visibility, highlighting the man’s face as it contorted in shock. The man went down.

Andrew knew he’d gotten a clean, wicked shot in, but wasn’t in any less of a hurry to get away. He dropped what was left of his shattered cane and slid inside his car. His rapid heartbeat nearly tore a hole through his chest. He yanked the door shut and snapped the lock. His hand shook uncontrollably as he managed to slide the right key into the ignition, twisting it so hard it nearly broke off. He popped the gearshift into drive and mashed his gas pedal to the floor. His tires spun madly along the road before gripping, sending him rocketing forward onto the off-ramp.

He roared in adrenaline-fueled triumph. He looked back and forth from the road in front of him to his rearview mirror, searching for the man sprawled out along the road behind him. He didn’t find him. The night was too dark.

Air funneled up from his lungs and out his mouth as he worked to calm down. He flipped on his headlights. As his eyes went back to the road where the ramp met the interstate, he noticed the white van parked on the shoulder. The stranger from the hill who had abandoned him hadn’t gone all that far.

A brief temptation to pull over and give the man a tongue-lashing for leaving him on his own entered Andrew’s mind, but he ignored the taunt. He was done. The police would be there soon. They’d sort it all out.

The way Andrew saw it, he had tried to perform a good deed, and his reward was that he had nearly gotten attacked and his car stolen.

“Never again,” he muttered.

Andrew’s headlights lit up the overhanging branches of a long row of Nannyberry trees as he rounded a bend. Just a few months earlier, those branches had been dense with small white flowers. Now, they were completely bare other than with the thin blanket of accumulating snow that lined them.

Through a mesh of steady, large flakes, the Lexus glided up the short, wet drive to the entrance of the long, illuminated sign framed by a decorative concrete wall. It read “Hunter’s Cove.” Andrew had lived in the Greeley, Colorado, subdivision for years.

He slowed the car down to coast between a pair of oversized pine trees on either side of the subdivision entrance and then sped back up. He passed by several large, upper-scale homes with tall, arching facades lurching high above. In summertime, the residents’ wide, well-kept yards were all cast in the same deep and attractive shade of green, their lush landscaping having evolved from an unspoken ongoing competition among homeowners. Concrete fountains, koi ponds, artistically trimmed hedges and shrubs—all were purposefully exuberant in their nature. Under the even sheet of snow, they now all looked the same.

The lengthy arch of Andrew’s garage came into view from behind an eight-foot-tall hedge that divided his property from his neighbor’s lot. With the press of a button, he commanded the steady rise of the garage door. As he waited in the driveway of his home, it suddenly occurred to him that he had never stopped at the store for supplies. He shook his head in frustration; his thoughts had been solidly preoccupied with the scene back at the off-ramp. He’d have to get up a little earlier than planned in the morning and make the stop on his way down to Colorado Springs. He pulled the Lexus inside the garage.

The interior was nearly bare. No tools draped along pegboards and no rakes or shovels hung from prongs. Not even a lawn mower. Andrew always hired out whatever yard and maintenance work that needed to be done around the house. He had never been much of a handyman and had little interest in learning such skills. He was a numbers guy.

When the broad glare of headlights vanished as he turned the knob, he was left alone in the dark. The bulb in the garage-opener above had burned out months earlier and he hadn’t cared enough to replace it. The only assisting light came from a streetlight a couple of doors down and what little glow stemmed from his car interior light as he stepped out of the vehicle. He took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the night, losing himself for a second at the sight of faint flakes falling gently to the earth. Their delicate landing was a display of poetic profoundness.

He felt alone, fighting an adolescent urge to call someone—anyone—and tell them of the strange, harrowing event that had taken place that night. He somberly accepted that there wasn’t a single person left in his life who would even care. It was as if he was one of the flakes falling from grace outside, and upon impact, disappearing into nothingness.

He breathed in the cold air and stood with glazed eyes for a few moments longer before a broad, unexpected gust of wind brought him back to his senses. He turned toward the inside garage door, but as he did, he heard a muffled thump. It was quickly followed by a creaky groan of unsettlement that seemed to emit from his car.

He turned back to the Lexus and listened carefully. All that was heard now was some intermittent ticking from the engine. With his eyes narrowed, he took a breath and was about to unlock the door when he was halted by another noise. This time, it sounded like tapping metal.

He carefully walked to the rear of the car where the faint tapping continued and grew a bit louder. There in the dull light from the streetlamp he noticed the trunk wasn’t completely closed. The gusting wind caused it to bob slightly up and down.

A smirk slowly curled along his face at the thought of his last-ditch attempt back at the off-ramp to convince his deranged pursuer that he was trying to help him and not escape from him.

“Tow rope,” he whispered.

He had popped the trunk with his remote key before things got physical and it had remained unsecured the rest of the trip home. He slid his fingers under the edge of the trunk door and lifted it up in order to give it a good slam back down. He felt the sudden force of a sharp object plunged viciously into him just below his ribcage even before the trunk light exposed the large figure inside.

Andrew’s eyes swiftly swelled and his mouth gaped in shock, but he couldn’t breathe. He dropped the trunk and his hands instinctively went to his gut. He felt warm blood ooze freely between his fingers from the brutal stab. His face felt numb. A second thrust from the trunk sent another jolt through his body. This time he felt the object pierce just under his chest.

He staggered backwards, wobbly legs trembling. Wide-eyed, he watched in horror as a man’s large arm pushed open the trunk from inside. The light exposed a menagerie of tattoos along the arm—most recognizable was one of a large swastika.

The man he’d clubbed at the bypass now climbed out of the trunk. Clasped in his hand was a large switchblade. Blood dripped from it.

Andrew wanted to run, but he couldn’t breathe and his legs weren’t responding. He didn’t remember falling backwards, but he suddenly found himself sprawled out on his back along the frozen driveway. His fluttering eyes gazed up through the surreally peaceful white flakes that fell from the sky to his face. Among those snowflakes, he found himself gazing into the eyes of his tattooed attacker.

“You should have given me a ride, shitberg!” the man grunted out. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

Unable to find his breath, Andrew’s body felt frozen as the man slowly and methodically approached him. To Andrew, he looked eight feet tall. Cloaked in relative darkness, his presence was sinister, almost mythical—a grim soul cast in the mold of an angel of death.

The man flicked his wrist so that his fingers were clasped over the top of the knife instead of under it.

Andrew saw him grip the handle, readying to plunge it down into his chest to finish the job.

Andrew’s lips moved in a silent plea for help, but he heard no sound escape his mouth. He thought of his daughter and all of the things he wished he had told her—the pride he had in her and all that she meant to him, the love that would last beyond the grave.

The evil hovering above him seemed to glare down into the trenches of his very soul, as if recognizing his every thought. Andrew knew that this sadistic man would be the last image he would see before he left this earth.

But as his vision grew blurry and his pulse winded down, he sensed another presence close by. He hoped it was an angel watching over him, ready to guide him to the afterlife. He mouthed a garbled prayer. The presence, however, wasn’t that of a spirit.

A bright flash of blue light and the juiced sound of something electric sizzled nearby and then Andrew’s attacker’s body buckled under a crippling force. He barked out an incoherent sound that was higher in tone than expected from someone his size. He staggered to the side before dropping to a knee. The blue light lit up the driveway a second time and the man’s body contorted into an unnatural pose and then collapsed face first to the cement.

Andrew wasn’t sure what had happened; his mind rushed back to the life draining quickly from his body. His lower lip quivered uncontrollably. He could no longer turn his head at all. His limbs were cold, nearly numb. He could see his left arm rise in the air as if it were reaching for something that wasn’t there.

He realized it wasn’t he who was holding his arm up, but someone else. A man. The man’s hand was wrapped around it, supporting it.

A face came into view over Andrew, hovering just inches above. The night kept it mostly unseen, but Andrew was sure he could read concern and compassion etched across it through the thick lenses of the man’s glasses. The man’s mouth was moving, but all Andrew could hear was a buzzing noise that no one other than the dying could hear.

“Poor bugger,” a voice with an accent spoke.

The comment didn’t come from the man who held Andrew. It came from a shadowy figure that he now noticed standing a few yards away with his hands hugging his hips. There were two men hovering above, not one.

Andrew felt a wild, impulsive urge to grab onto whatever life he could manage to cling to and his fingers went to the face of the man who held him. They ran along his glasses and then found a mustache, a thick one. Only, it wasn’t real. He tore half of it from the man’s face. It dangled in the air, swaying in the wind above the man’s lips.

It was the last thing Andrew Carson saw.

January 24th, 2002Thursday

Chapter 2

“Were you born or have you ever lived in or received medical attention in any of the following countries since 1977: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, or Nigeria?”

Sean Coleman glared in irritation over the narrow, neatly kept desk at the woman who had asked him the awkward question. She was a large, top-heavy individual in her sixties. Her hair was short and nearly as white as the short-sleeved shirt she wore. Thick, black, wing-tipped glasses rested upon the edge of her round nose and her deadpan eyes suggested that she was in no mood for whatever guff she predicted from the man now silently judging her.

“Jesus. Are you kidding me?” asked Sean. His big body shuffled around uncomfortably in the orange fiberglass chair that would have been too small for even an average-sized adult. “I was just in here two days ago. You asked me these exact same questions then. Do you really think that sometime in the past two days I visited a witch doctor in some half-assed, bamboo hut in Africa?”

The woman’s eyes rose to the ceiling and she folded her thick, flabby arms in front of her chest. His rant wasn’t the first agitated outburst she’d had to contend with in her line of work. She sank back into a heap in her towering metal swivel chair. It let out a painful growl from the movement. Though she was short, her chair let her hover about six inches above Sean.

She replied in a restrained, seemingly rehearsed tone. “Mr. Coleman, it’s our policy. We have to ask the same questions every single time you donate. I don’t like it. You’ve made it clear that you don’t like it. But that’s the policy, and you should know that by now.”

He slowly gave a curt shake of his head, a grunt escaping his lips. He scoffed at what he considered nothing more than a waste of time inside a building he would have rather not been in in the first place. He lowered his gaze to his right hand as he peeled a cotton ball from the tip of his index finger. The inside of it was stained crimson from where his skin had been pricked to draw a blood sample. He’d passed his test for an adequate protein level.

“Fine,” he said abruptly. “Next question.”

“I still need you to answer the last one.”

“No! I’ve never been to any of those places!”

His raised tone stole the glance of a young man in a lab coat who negotiated his way through a tight hallway behind the woman. The man eyed Sean’s appearance, taking note of the large, silver badge that hung proudly on Sean’s gray uniform shirt.

“Hi. How are you?” Sean said loudly with wide, mocking eyes.

The man looked away and continued on by.

The woman behind the desk took a breath, leaned forward in her chair again, adjusted herself, and tapped a single button on the keyboard in front of her. The reflection in her glasses let Sean see a line of green text change on the small computer monitor that fed her questions. He could also see his own face in the reflection. It revealed that he needed a shave.

She proceeded with the questioning. “Have you ever had sex with another man, even once, since 1977?”

Sean’s eyes narrowed and his face twisted into a sneer so sharp that it could have been mistaken for a symptom of physical pain. “Why the hell would you even ask me that? Do I come across as gay to you?”

Her shoulders dropped as if she were a puppet whose strings had just been cut. An exhausted sigh spewed from her, followed by a low mutter of something to herself. She removed her glasses, planted her elbows firmly on her desk, and eclipsed her face with the palms of her hands.

Minutes later, Sean was back in the building’s intensely lit lobby, seated among a motley crew of men and women that ran the spectrum of age, ethnicities, and hygiene practices. His large body was positioned tightly between a short Hispanic woman who was knitting and a thin boy dressed in a raggedy t-shirt and jeans who couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Sean looked like a giant beside them. His six-foot-five-inch frame and broad shoulders towered above the others, forcing both the woman and the boy to tilt their bodies away from him at unnatural angles.

Sean was largely oblivious to the sporadic conversations that carried on around him as he contemplated the significance of the year 1977 from the scripted interview he had just endured. That specific year was used in a number of the questions, which left him to ponder what kind of global epidemic must have went down back then. He filed that mystery away in a mental cabinet of the things he’d one day look up on the World Wide Web—if he ever scraped up enough money to pay for an Internet service.

After selling his blood plasma at the bank for several weeks, he still hadn’t quite gotten used to the stench in the air—a mix of iodine and bleach. The smell emitted from all corners of every room.

He noticed a new donor being processed at the front desk. She was an older Arabic-looking woman with a younger woman, apparently a daughter, who was translating instructions from the receptionist into whatever foreign tongue they spoke. Both women wore burkas that covered their hair and bodies.

Sean felt some tension in the air from a few people in the waiting room. Cautious stares. Whispering. Only a few months had passed since the September 11 attacks, so the sight of a couple of individuals clad in Muslim attire in a public area didn’t go unnoticed. He wasn’t sure if the blank expression the mother’s face wore came from the inability to understand what she was being told or from despondency over a misfortune in life that brought her to where she was now.

He understood such misfortune. Less than a year ago, he would have never envisioned himself sitting in such a place—a purgatory-like holding dock where people were forced to contemplate their financial failings before being strapped to a bed and drained of a liquid component in their blood for cash. A lot had happened in a year. A sober year, at that.