Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (35 page)

The walls of the shed continually creaked from the strong winds outside. There was
a decent draft pouring in between the wooden boards and the flapping door where he’d
broken off the latch. It wasn’t strong enough to put out the fire, and he hunched
over it, greeting the warmth that brushed against his face.

With the inside of the shed now almost entirely illuminated, he raised his head and
took stock of the items around him. He found some farming equipment sprawled along
the floor, including a walk-behind tractor and a sickle bar mower. They didn’t appear
to be there for storage, but rather to be worked on. Both were turned on their sides
amidst loose parts. There was thick, coiled rope hanging by a nail in the wall, as
well as an old, rusted bow-rake hanging from two nails. A couple of gas cans sat
in a corner. A lot of clutter lined a second set of shelves, including random cuts
of wood, boxes of nails and screws, and more paint cans.

When Sean saw what appeared to be a blanket or a thick tablecloth hanging off the
corner of a shelf, he climbed to his feet. Cringing with each movement, he pulled
the cover down and wrapped it around his shoulders before returning to the fire.
He added a few more rags to the can and fueled the flames again with more WD-40.

After ten minutes or so, his body stopped shaking and he eyed the large wrench lying
on the floor. He climbed to his feet and snagged a bungee cord from the wall. He
laced it through his belt loops and hooked the ends together in front of the top
button of his jeans. With his pants now snug, he slid the wrench into the back waistline,
and this time it stayed in place.

He understood that there was no way he was going to make it back up the hill to the
road—not at night in the middle of a snowstorm anyway.

With the meadow outside likely some type of farmland, he wondered if the property’s
owner might live somewhere nearby. He had seen no other buildings around, but that
didn’t mean one didn’t exist somewhere, hidden among the trees. There at least had
to be another road, some way of getting to the meadow and the shed from the outside
world.

His thoughts scattered when he heard a distant buzzing sound trickle in from the
gusts of wind that howled outside of the shed. He gasped, and then made his way to
the door, still wearing the blanket, and poked his head outside. He saw the single
headlight of a snowmobile blistering though the snow along the meadow.

“Shit!” he barked.

He plodded back inside, letting the blanket fall from his shoulders as he grabbed
the bow-rake from the wall. He kicked over the coffee can, knocking the rags inside
it to the floor, and stomped out their flames with his feet. If the doctor hadn’t
already seen the light from inside the shed, he wasn’t going to let him.

He looked outside again and saw that the snowmobile hadn’t
grown much closer. It
was advancing in the general direction of the shed, but it was moving extremely slowly,
possibly even at idle speed. The doctor was being very cautious in his approach.

Sean realized that staying inside a small building with thin walls would make him
easy pickings for a man with a gun. He choked up on the rake and exited through the
door, slipping around to the opposite side of the shed. Suddenly the front of the
building lit up from the vehicle’s headlight.

Shuffling backwards on his feet, Sean gripped the rake as if it was a lifeline. The
engine of the vehicle steadily purred without deviation as it grew closer. He watched
in confusion as the beam of the light moved on past the shed and began exposing the
landscape at the bottom of the hill he’d fallen down. The vehicle came into view,
and to Sean’s shock, no one was riding it.

A second beam of light suddenly flared up from directly behind him. He spun around
in terror. The dot of a small red laser was pinned directly on his chest.

“Bang!” a man’s voice shouted out from the night, his silhouette unclear from behind
the center of the blinding light.

Sean recoiled, anticipating the next sound he heard to be the blast of a gun as a
bullet pierced his sternum.

Instead it was the man’s voice again. “Back inside the shack, mate. It’s fucking
cold out here.”

Chapter 31

L
umbergh carried the shotgun low as he slowly crept his way up the side of the road.
He kept constant surveillance of the land around him as he did. The freezing wind
forced fresh tears from his eyes when he faced it. He wiped them away with his shoulder.
A Mag light dangled at his side, switched to the off position to avoid detection.
The radio in his pocket was powered on, but the volume was set at zero.

The further he walked without finding anything resembling a building, the stronger
the nagging feeling stewed in his gut that Martinez had steered him wrong. He prayed
that what the intern had told him wasn’t simply part of another game, another deception.
When Lumbergh finally heard the eerie groans of metal swaying in the wind, his doubts
subsided.

There was a wide sign mounted to a tall pole eight feet high just a few yards away
from him, wobbling from the weather. It was worn down and some of its panes had fallen
or been blown off. He struggled to read it without any light. The only word he could
make out with any confidence was “Grill.”

It appeared to belong to a restaurant. He shuffled passed it, raising his shotgun
and cringing when his tender arm felt the weight of the forestock. He told himself
that he was a fool for proceeding on his own, especially in the shape he was in,
but he was convinced that he couldn’t afford to relinquish command of the situation
to Redick. The stakes were too high.

He heard the wind whipping up against a solid object somewhere
in front of him, and
mere seconds later, the outline of a large building presented itself. It was a long,
single-story building. He jogged to the side of it, ducking. When he reached what
he believed to be the front of the building, he pressed his back to the wall. As
far as he could tell, the windows had all been boarded up, as were the doors a little
further down. The doors appeared to be the main entrance to the building. There had
to be another way inside.

He was about to swing around to the back when he noticed what appeared to be a faint
light spread out across the east end of the building. He carefully made his way along
the front side, keeping low and trying to listen for movement or voices inside the
building—an impossible task with the rough wind.

The closer he got, the more it became apparent that the light was from an open garage
or service door. By the time he reached the spot, his heart was pounding through
his chest.

The light exposed a driveway that led up to the open garage. The snow along the driveway
showed signs of a lot of activity; multiple trails of footprints spread out into
the night. Among them were what appeared to be snowmobile tracks.

Lumbergh wondered if whoever was inside had somehow seen him coming and had taken
off. He deemed that unlikely. When his eyes found crimson-colored splatter in the
snow, he swallowed hard. Whatever lingering doubts he’d had about being in the right
place quickly scurried off in the wind.

He clenched his teeth and swung inside the garage with his shotgun pointing in front
of him. He held it close to eye level, controlling his breathing while he cased the
inside of the room. He saw a Chevy Cavalier parked inside and a bare area where the
snowmobile had likely been parked under a tarp (now wadded up in a heap to the side).
The light from above was coming from an automatic door opener. That meant either
the door had just been opened or that someone had very recently tripped the sensor
line along its base.

He spotted a door at the back of the garage and made his way to it. He twisted the
knob and found it unlocked. Cautiously, he pressed open the door and slid inside.

He found himself in a small landing area where the fluctuating sound of running water
came from behind a near corner. He moved forward, twisting himself around the corner
with his finger hugging the shotgun trigger.

Water poured from a faucet into a large, unattended sink. Lumbergh negotiated his
way around it, his adrenaline pumping. When he reached the end of a bright hallway,
the frantic sound of a woman screaming suddenly echoed through the interior of the
building. It came from very close by.

“I’m sorry!” the woman wailed repeatedly, amidst what sounded like a child crying.

The urgency in the woman’s voice and the subsequent sound of a man moaning brought
Lumbergh down the hallway quickly.
Could the man be Sean?
He glanced back over his
shoulder twice as he made his way toward an open door where all of the action seemed
to be coming. Anxiety tore through his veins at the sight of the many doors that
lined the hallway of the unfamiliar building. There were lots of hiding spots for
someone to get the jump on him. He was a sitting duck.

When the painfully loud creak of a floorboard gave away his presence, he bit his
lip.

“Adam!” the woman’s voice called out. “Did you find Phillip?”

Lumbergh darted forward and swung inside the entryway of the room with his gun drawn.
He was greeted by an unexpected blast of wind that tore through the room from a large
shattered window at the opposite end.

The first person he saw under the light of a single table lamp on a small nightstand
was a young girl. She was huddled in a corner of the room in a nightgown, her hands
pressed against her ears, and
she had no hair. Her wet eyes met Lumbergh’s, then
the gun in his hands. She screamed in horror.

His eye caught movement at the other end of the small room, and he immediately swung
his gun toward it. There he saw a woman with long red hair that twisted in the wind.

The red fox.

She knelt on the floor beside an overturned rocking chair. She spun to meet his unexpected
glare and the barrels of his shotgun, and shrieked.

“Police! Let me see your hands!” Lumbergh yelled.

With her eyes already red and filled with tears, she quickly whipped her hands into
the air. The blood that laced them was nearly as bright as her hair.

He gasped. His gaze dropped to a man’s pair of legs that sprouted out from behind
the toppled chair.

Lumbergh felt the floor beneath him bend and twist. Lightheadedness sank in and his
stomach dropped to his ankles. The shotgun nearly fell from his trembling hand.

“Sean,” he whispered, fearing he had arrived too late.

Just as a building rage began to boil from under his skin, the woman’s voice pierced
through it.

“Let me keep helping him!” she pled with desperation in her voice. “I have a medical
background, and he’s in bad shape!”

He was still alive.

Lumbergh lunged forward. He kicked the fallen chair and a smashed floor lamp out
of the way before dropping to his knees, letting his gun fall beside him. He reached
for the bloodied man whose shirt was partially peeled from his chest. The frightened,
conquered eyes that he found staring up at him took Lumbergh’s breath away, but they
didn’t belong to his brother-in-law.

Lumbergh glanced at the blood that streamed from a hole in the man’s neck just above
his left trapezius. Some had pooled beside him on the floor. He then looked up at
the woman before him. The
two acknowledged a mutual understanding with their eyes,
and Lumbergh instructed her to continue helping the man.

Lumbergh edged backwards on his knees, pulling the shotgun along the floor with him.
Broken glass crackled below his body.

The woman pressed a bloody, wadded up towel against the wound and held it firmly
in place.

“The bullet’s still in there,” she said.

“You’re Jessica, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice shaky.

Though she kept her focus on her work, the increased tension in her body signaled
to him that she was stunned that he knew who she was. She nodded.

“Who else is here inside the building?” he asked, pulling his radio from his side.
“Who’s Adam? Who’s Phillip?”

Before she could answer, the man on the floor spoke. Lumbergh was unsure until that
moment that he even could, due to his injury.

“They went after Sean,” he weakly gurgled out. His mouth was the only part of his
body that moved. “They’re going to kill him.”

“What?” Lumbergh barked, sitting up on his knees.

“They’re not!” lashed out Jessica, keeping her eyes focused on her work. “I let Adam
out to stop Phillip. To bring him back here. He’s a doctor; a surgeon. He can better
help you, Andy.”

Lumbergh squinted at the sound of the name. He traced the contour of the wounded
man’s face. His eyes widened upon recognition. “Are you Andrew Carson?”

“Yes,” Jessica answered before Carson could.

“Listen to me,” muttered Carson, his eyes floating in disarray. “Phillip’s going
to kill Sean. He tried to kill me.”

“No,” she moaned, shaking her head in denial. “He shot you by accident.” Her defensiveness
suggested she was trying unsuccessfully to convince herself that what she was saying
was true.

“No accident,” muttered Carson, a tear rolling down his cheek. “He set his sight
on me right after he shot at Sean. No accident. Sean was right. Two liabilities.
Flies in the ointment.”

Jessica didn’t react to his words, seemingly fighting back her emotions from spinning
further out of control.

“Which direction did they head in?” asked Lumbergh.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Please,” groaned Carson. “Don’t leave me alone with her.”

Jessica lifted her confused eyes to meet his.

“I don’t trust her anymore,” he said as more tears poured from his eyes.

Hearing those words, Jessica pursed her lips and her own tears began sliding like
rivers down each side of her face. She kept the pressure on his neck and begged understanding
from Carson with her dreary gaze. He looked away from her.