Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (28 page)

“Andrew Carson?” Redick answered with his face twisted in puzzlement. “How the hell
would Sean know anything about that?”

“It’s a long story. Just believe me that Sean’s in danger, and Martinez knows where
he is!”

The gears in Redick’s skull seemed to spin for a moment, but
only
a moment. He shook
his head and repeated his insistence that things be done by the law.

Lumbergh could barely contain his fury. When he felt the deputy’s hand latch onto
his arm to guide him away from the vehicle, he clenched his teeth and drove a sharp
elbow directly into the man’s face. The deputy’s head snapped back, a bark escaping
him. He lumbered backwards on unsteady footing, holding a hand to his eye. Lumbergh
snatched the firearm from the deputy’s side-holster and quickly trained it on him.

“Gary!” yelled Redick.

Lumbergh took the deputy down to the frozen pavement with a leg-trip and a shoulder-block,
then turned on the sheriff.

Redick found the gun suddenly pointed at him.

“Get your hands up and get over here, Richard!” Lumbergh growled, his face stern.

Redick’s complexion turned sick. With his hands slowly rising into the air, he crept
out from the other side of the car. His footing was cautious due to the strong gusts
of wind that intensified around them.

Lumbergh traced his aim back and forth from the fallen deputy to Redick.

“What the hell are you doing, Gary?” Redick shouted. “This is no good. Think about
your career!”

“I’m thinking about my
family
! You don’t give a shit about that! I get it. Now get
your fat ass over here.”

Once Redick grew near, Gary told him to slowly remove his pistol from its holster
and toss it over the guardrail.

“You wouldn’t shoot me, Gary!” Redick shouted. “You’re not that kind of man!”

“
I
don’t even know what kind of man I am anymore, Richard. Don’t presume that
you
do. Now toss your gun!”

Redick did.

Lumbergh ordered both men to stand at the front of the car with their hands spread
out along the hood. They complied, looking as if they were being placed under arrest.

Lumbergh reached inside the sheriff ’s car and unlocked the rear door.

“No, Gary!” yelled Redick.

“Shut up!” yelled Lumbergh, taking a few steps backwards to the door.

A couple of slow moving cars passed by them in the right lane, seemingly unfazed
by the scene playing out just feet from them. Keeping his firearm aimed at the lawmen,
Lumbergh opened the door and lowered his head just enough so that Martinez could
hear his voice.

The intern’s now alert, examining eyes belied that he wasn’t sure what was coming
next.

Lumbergh’s gaze moved to the lawmen. “Your mother was right about me,” he said to
Martinez. “She knew what kind of man I am. She knew what I was capable of. If you
want to see what I do to people who fuck with my family, you’ll come with me now.
I’ll show you why murals of me decorate towns in Mexico. I’ll show you why
your people
celebrate me. I don’t need Ron Oldhorse or anyone else to put a bullet between someone’s
eyes when my family gets hurt. Come with me now and give me my target.”

His attention slid to Martinez. It was greeted by the trademark toothy grin and the
electric, eager-to-learn look that Lumbergh had come to know well.

Chapter 24

S
ean carefully made his way up the wooden staircase, one step at a time. An inactive
light bulb hovered above him. He spotted a switch on the wall, but stayed in the
dark. With his arms out in front of him and his hands gripping the revolver, he aimed
the gun at the open door at the top of the stairs. A strand of sweat slowly slid
down the side of his face. When it reached the corner of his mouth, he tasted its
salt.

About halfway up the staircase, a loud creak came from the pressure of his weight
on one of the steps. His face tightened and he took a breath before quickly hustling
up the remaining steps. When he reached the top, he nearly hugged the linoleum floor
with his chest, swinging his arm around the corner of the doorframe, watching for
movement. All he found was a tiny, barely lit room that housed several stacked, medium-sized
cardboard boxes and an old white refrigerator that emitted a tepid hum. The sound
of fierce, whistling wind could be heard from outside. Sporadic gusts drew groans
from the walls.

Sean saw a pair of dark curtains covering the wall beside him and discreetly tugged
on the fabric, hoping to find a window waiting behind it. Instead, he found thick
wooden planks nailed securely into the wall, blocking whatever possible escape route
existed behind them.

It took him a moment to figure out where the room’s dim light source was coming from,
but his adjusting eyes finally homed in on a
child’s nightlight plugged into a low
electrical outlet. It read “Barbie” in pink, cursive lettering below an image of
the classic toy doll.

He looked at the boxes and strained to read their labels. He made out terms like
“cast tape,” “electrodes foam,” and “vacutainer tubes.” Some of the terms felt familiar
to him, as if he’d seen them in writing before. He cautiously climbed to his feet,
pointing the gun toward an open doorway at the opposite end of the room. It looked
like it led out into a hallway.

Something inside of him urged him to bolt down the corridor with his gun drawn, needling
his way through the building, taking aim, and pulling the trigger on anyone who got
in his way. He felt justified in doing whatever it took to get outside and away from
danger.

Yet, there was also a nagging voice in his head calling for a more cautious approach.
There were many unanswered questions peppering his head like spitballs from an annoying
school kid. Whatever moral dilemma Jessica was struggling with (as he had gathered
from her comments behind the freezer door) had relevance. The fact that the people
who abducted him had something to do with Andrew Carson’s death, yet chose not to
kill Sean, meant something. That same voice in his head told him that he should open
up some of the boxes beside him and see what was inside.

Switching his attention back and forth from the hallway to the boxes, he reached
his left arm over his right and tugged at the top flaps of one of the boxes that
had already had its packaging tape stripped off. He opened it up without much noise
and tilted it at an angle until the glow of the nightlight exposed its contents.

Plastic containers, very large ones. He was familiar with the type. Two days a week,
he watched others just like them fill up with brown fluid from tubes in people’s
arms, including his own.

They were blood plasma supplies, just like the ones used at GSL.

At first, it seemed likely that Jessica had taken them from work, but when he stared
intently at the nearly detached large mailing label
secured to the box, he saw neither
the name “GSL” nor “Plasma.” The name appeared to belong to an individual at a post
office box in Leadville, Colorado, a former silver-mining town nearly twenty-five
miles south of Winston.
Is that where I am? Leadville?

The last name on the label looked like “Robinson.” Sean had trouble making out the
first name.

He gently tore the rest of the label from the box and took it to the refrigerator.
He guardedly opened the refrigerator door a crack, just enough to trigger the bulb
inside to turn on. Through the sliver of light that crept out from behind the door,
he could read the first name. Phillip Robinson.

He wedged the label into his pocket and had nearly closed the door when something
from inside the refrigerator caught his eye—a unique color that he recognized—glowing
from the bright bulb behind it. A very distinctive shade of pale yellow.

He opened the door wider and saw a few dozen of the same containers he’d just seen
in the box, only these ones were filled nearly to their tops with a liquid that appeared
to be plasma.

It was the kind of display he had seen many times at GSL. Whenever a donor’s sitting
was finished, the container their plasma was collected in was removed from a centrifuge
machine and placed in a large metallic refrigerator along the back wall. The only
notable difference between those containers and the ones he now saw before him was
their labels. At GSL they were digitally printed with a good deal of information,
including a donor identification number. All these had were patches of masking tape
with handwritten dates. The ones in the front displayed the current date while the
ones toward the back were marked “1/18.” A week ago. There appeared to be at least
four containers filled per day.

Sean carefully closed the door, letting his eyes drift to the floor as he struggled
to make sense of his finding. No explanation immediately presented itself.

He shook his head and peered around the corner of the room
out into the hallway.
The darkened corridor went on for a couple hundred feet. He was inside a much larger
building than he had realized. Several closed doors lined one side of the hallway,
while only one lined the left halfway down. The floor shared the same linoleum he
stood on, suggesting he was not inside a residence, but a place of business.

The door closest to him, about ten feet away, was the only one open. A dull, quivering
light from inside the doorway lit up the opposite wall of the hallway, creating a
dancing projection like what would come from a television screen.
Was someone inside
watching TV?
There was no sound.

Each step Sean took forward was careful and deliberate. He straightened his arms
and pointed the gun in front of him, controlling his breath. When he reached the
doorway, he tensed every nerve and swung inside, ready to put down anyone that jumped
out at him.

There was no one there. It was a mostly empty, windowless room with a half-dozen
black and white monitors mounted along the wall. All were on and each displayed a
separate view. A small wooden desk was positioned below them, its chair lying on
its side on the floor, as if it had been knocked over. A nearby suspended shelf with
a file cabinet under it overflowed with large textbooks. Several of the book bindings
displayed a red cross along their spines. On top of the shelf was a small desk lamp
shining down at a sharp angle, exposing the good amount of clutter on top of the
desk. It included a frosted medical jar made of glass that had what looked like milk
inside it. The rest of the room was virtually bare.

Beside the fallen chair on the floor was a shattered ceramic beverage mug. It sat
in a dark pool of liquid that smelled like coffee. About half of the rubble was still
together in a single piece. On its face was what looked to be a hand-painted pink
heart. Within its outline read the phrase “Best Uncle Ever!”

Sean guessed that the man who now lay in the basement must have inadvertently knocked
the mug and chair to the floor when
he saw Sean’s mock suicide attempt on the monitor.
He probably frantically dashed down the staircase at that point. Sure enough, he
recognized the interior of the freezer displayed across one of the monitors. The
man he’d knocked cold was still lying motionless on the floor, just as he’d left
him, partially tucked underneath the mattress.

Four of the monitors displayed outside shots. The pictures on them confirmed to Sean
that it was nighttime and also that the storm he’d been hearing about on the radio
over the past couple of days had hit. A near whiteout of fast-moving waves of blowing
snow overwhelmed each view. Because the snow seemed to be moving at a different angle
in each of them, Sean estimated that every camera was stationed on a different side
of the building.

In one of the shots, he thought he could make out a small, empty parking lot. At
the corner of the screen there appeared to stand a tall business sign. It was unlit
and unreadable. Another shot gave coverage to the back side of the building. At least,
that’s what Sean guessed from the sight of a large dumpster that sat in front of
a short wire fence. He moved his face closer to the monitor when he noticed another
object in the picture along the right edge of the screen. It looked like a car bumper
and part of a taillight, but he wasn’t sure. It really could have been anything.

Still, his lips curled into a grin. He slid his fingers into his pants pocket and
pulled out the ring of keys he had taken from the freezer door. Though not labeled,
one of them had teeth that looked like ones made for a car ignition. He knew he wasn’t
going to make it far on foot in the middle of a snowstorm. Having access to a car
brightened his hopes for a successful escape. He had nearly exited the room to look
for a back door when his gaze was captured by the image broadcast across the last
monitor.

At first, the long object on the screen appeared to be a light-colored tarp with
large lettering across it, tossed over some large boxes. Upon a closer look, however,
he realized that what he was
seeing was a twin-sized bed. The
lettering
across its
top cover wasn’t lettering at all, but rather arms—bare, human arms that overlapped
a sheet or blanket.

The shape of a body hadn’t been immediately decipherable below the cover because
the head was concealed by what looked to be an angled tube jetting out from it.

The longer Sean stared into the screen, the more defined the image became. Beside
the bed was a tall, vertical metal rod. From it hung a couple of IV containers with
thin tubes running into the person’s arm. On the other side of the bed stood a short
table with what looked to be medical equipment. Some of it seemed to be for monitoring
purposes. Most notable was what appeared to be a centrifuge machine like the ones
commonly used at GSL Plasma. Whoever was lying in that bed seemed to have something
seriously wrong, he decided.