The Legend of Kareem (19 page)

“I’m sorry about that. I really am. But we need to get on our feet and you need to come with me. It’s not safe here. Police will be coming any minute, and we need to get you out of sight.”

She gripped my hand, and she felt warm. I liked that. But I didn’t understand why this woman was here, trying to take me away from the soft grass.

“Where are you going to take me?”

“To a safe place in Brownsville.”

I let her help me to my feet, and a wave of nausea passed through me. Jaw throbbed. She walked me back across the cornfields, not speaking at all during that time. The walk felt like it took hours. My head pounded. My whole body ached, and there was a distinct pain in my shoulder. Had a watery memory of looking at my shoulder in a mirror somewhere, at traces of birdshot wounds across my flesh. Or had I seen that on TV?

When we finally got to the road, she pointed at a small hatchback parked underneath a tree. “Do you need anything from your car?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s my car. Do I know you?”

“My name is Susan. You called me, remember?”

I remembered pieces, but it was all so foggy. I had a vague notion of shooting a man in the head in a house somewhere, then snapping another man’s neck while I knelt over him. But that couldn’t have been me, could it?

And a friendly Mexican wearing overalls, but he was a wicked man. I think.

She helped me into the car and we drove through South Point. Grace. I needed to call Grace. I slipped the cell phone out of my pocket and stared at it, unsure what to do next.

“What are you doing?” Susan said.

“I need to call her. I need to let her know I’m okay.”

“Tucker, please, don’t do anything right now. Just wait until we get to my house. It’ll only be a couple minutes, okay? Everything will make sense when we get there, I promise you.”

I put the phone away and suddenly felt fatigued. My eyes were too heavy, and the next thing I knew, Susan was tugging on my arm, and we were parked.

I let her help me out of the car. “Where are we?”

“We’re at a safe place. I can explain everything once we’re inside, but we shouldn’t be out here in the open. Hurry, now.”

With her holding me by the arm, I walked to the front door of some kind of business. Too dark to see the sign. Susan unlocked the front door, then we weaved through a room filled with desks and rows of file cabinets. At the back of the room, she opened three different locks on a large door.

On the other side of that door, we walked into a small apartment. Smelled of soup. She sat me down on the couch.

I heard a familiar voice come from a back room. “Susan?”

Where did I know that voice?

“Yeah, it’s me. I’ve got him. He’s a little beat up and he might have a concussion, but he’s okay. You can come on out.”

A man walked into the living room. He smiled at me. My vision was blurry, but something familiar about him penetrated my haze. I knew this man.

“Hello, son,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

My eyes adjusted as the face of my father, Heath Candle, became clear. Same blue eyes, same bald head.

Maybe it had been too long since I’d seen him, but his nose looked different. Thinner and less bulbous at the end. And I didn’t ever remember him having a cleft chin.

I pointed to my own chin, which did not have a cleft.

“You probably don’t recognize me,” he said. “I had some surgery.”

“Dad?”

He nodded.

“No, you’re dead. Aunt Judy left me all those voicemails about it. She told me I missed the funeral.”

Susan slinked away and disappeared into the kitchen.

He took a few steps toward me and knelt next to the coffee table, then looked me straight in the eye. “I’m so sorry I had to do that. I didn’t have any other choice. Things with the company escalated sharply over the last couple months, and this was the only way to keep me and Susan safe.”

I noted that he didn’t say anything about keeping me safe. Even though my head still throbbed and a dim sense of confusion muddled my brain, that old fierce anger at this man resurfaced.

I wanted to lash out. I wanted to hurt him. “I didn’t care when Judy told me you’d died. I haven’t seen you in twenty years, so why should I care? You’re not my father. You’re just some guy.”

He frowned, and maybe there was a hint of moisture at the corners of his eyes. If he thought crying was going to win him points, he was mistaken.

“I can’t argue with that,” he said, “and I wouldn’t want to. I was always a terrible father, and there’s no way I can make it up to you. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Do you know how long I waited for you to come back? I wasn’t even thirteen years old.”

He didn’t have a comment for that one.

Susan returned from the kitchen and handed me a mug, something warm. Smelled like herbal tea.

“If you’re in hiding here, why was Susan’s phone number on a Post-It note on the fridge at your house?”

“It’s an untraceable sat phone,” she said. “We had a feeling you’d stop by that house, and you did.”

I sipped the tea, which warmed my throat and sent a rush down into my stomach. “You started IntelliCraft. You founded the company.”

He nodded. “There were four of us, in the beginning. That was a long time ago, in another life. Anything else you want to know?”

I felt a little woozy, so I leaned back on the couch. “Why make me executor?”

“I needed you and Susan to meet. I thought if she reached out to you first, you might be wary.”

He was right about that. “Okay, now that I’m here and we’ve all met, what do you want from me?”

“The truck,” Heath said. “Do you still have it?”

“The what?”

“It was left with my attorney. The toy truck I willed to Susan. Do you still have it?”

I couldn’t remember. I checked my pocket and found something cold and metal. Had a vague memory of transferring it into these pants when I’d changed at my dad’s house.

I placed it in the palm of his waiting hand.

He let out a massive sigh as he twisted the little toy in his fingers. Tossing a glance at me, he pushed against the bottom and it separated into two pieces. He threw the top half to the side, then lifted a tiny piece of plastic from the lower half. No bigger than a thumb. He held it up to the light. A memory card.

“What is that?” I said.

“This is something that could ruin dozens of lives.”

He set the memory card on the coffee table and picked up a glass ashtray, then he stamped on the card until it broke into a dozen pieces.

He breathed a sigh. “I feel better already.” He looked at Susan, and they smiled at each other.

This didn’t feel right. Bugs were crawling all over my exposed skin and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Who were these people? Who was I letting protect me?

A dawning realization spread through my mind as I felt a chill touch my bones. Memories flashed by. The night I’d first met Kareem, when he warned me about a bad man in Texas. Grace, at the hospital, questioning whether or not bushy-eyebrowed trainee Darren was, in fact, this bad man.

My chest thumped and the world dimmed.

I had the answer.

“How could I have missed it? It’s you. It was always you.”

“Me what?” my dad said.

“You’re the man Kareem warned me about. You’re the man that, he said if I met, would cause terrible things to happen.”

Heath Candle let the ashtray fall to the floor, sat on the edge of the coffee table, then folded his hands across his lap.

“Well, let’s talk about that, son.”

<<<>>>

NOTE TO READERS

Okay, right now you’re probably annoyed because this book ends on a cliffhanger. I get it. We want all our stories to be tied up with neat little bows. But I hope that you’ll see, just as
WOUNDED ANIMALS
was a book about
hope
, and this book is about
trust
, that
book three
in the series is about… well, you’ll find out what it’s about when you get there.

Your questions will be answered in the conclusion to the trilogy. You can get
BOTH ENDS BURNING on Amazon here
. You can also skip ahead a few pages to read a sample of it. Don’t leave Candle hanging…

Now that you’ve calmed down a bit, please consider leaving reviews for this book on
Amazon
and
Goodreads
. I know it’s a pain, but you have no idea how much it will help the success of this book and my ability to write future books. That, sharing it on social media, and telling other people to read it. Please help keep my dog stocked with filler-free low-ingredient dog food. He’s a good boy, and he deserves the good stuff.

I have a website where you can learn more about me and my other projects. Check me out at
www.jimheskett.com
and sign up for my mailing list so you can stay informed on the latest news. You’ll even get some freebies for signing up. You like free stuff, right?

Books by Jim Heskett

See the full list of publications at
www.RoyalArchBooks.com

For Iggy, because when I made the impulsive and ill-advised decision to go gallivanting across the country to chase after a girl, you made the equally crazy decision to come with me to be my road trip buddy. And a good time was had by all.

And now, please enjoy this preview of the conclusion of The Whistleblower Series, BOTH ENDS BURNING, which is
available for purchase on Amazon
.

The water burst from the shower head, at first icy cold, then blindingly hot. I had a feeling it was going to be one of
those
showers; never at the right temperature, always one notch too far in either direction. I’d have to make the best of it, because I was in a strange shower in a strange fabricated apartment in the back of some strange building in Brownsville, Texas. It was an office or some place of business.

I remembered only pieces of how I got here and the events that led to it.

I knew there had been death.

An inch away from Mexico. An inch away from freedom for Omar Qureshi, except he’d been granted no freedom. He’d died because of my failings, and now his death and his brother Kareem’s deaths were both on my hands.

I lathered while the too-hot water steamed the tiny plastic enclosure and blurred my eyes. Cream walls tainted beige with soap scum and rust. Little cutouts in the plastic walls formed cubbies for soap and shampoo bottles.

My head throbbed, probably because IntelliCraft’s thug Glenning had kicked me in the temple. Twice. I could move my jaw, so it wasn’t broken, but the dull thudding revolution of pain cycled through each time I blinked.

The birdshot peppering my shoulder ached as the water ran over it and a diluted stream of blood cascaded down my arm. I’d have to get some bandages. At least the cut on my lower back had healed. How long had it been since Glenning and Thomason had forced me into that car and taken me to the top of Eldorado Canyon? Three weeks? Four?

I finished my shower as my head was starting to shed the cloud, and memories blinked into existence. Running through the cornfield in South Point, trying to escape the redneck Jed and Glenning and failing. Glenning circling Jed and then killing him. Madly running for the border. Omar floating in the Rio Grande. Snapping Glenning’s neck. My half-sister Susan coming to rescue me and bring me to this strange hidden place.

And most of all, my dad, a man who was supposed to have died from a stroke, appearing out of a back room. Making me think he’d been dead for two weeks and then materializing from around the corner.

I slipped out of the shower and left the water running. Dipped into my pants and stole the prepaid cell phone out of a pocket. The first part of Grace’s phone number was still typed into the keypad, since I hadn’t been able to complete the call because of the thug who’d barged into the shack Omar and I were trying to use as shelter.

I finished typing the number into the sticky plastic keys and she picked up on the second ring.

“Baby, it’s me.”

She sighed on the other end of the line. “I’ve been so worried about you. Is everything okay?”

“Yes and no. I’m safe. I have so much to tell you and I don’t even know where to start. I’m sorry I haven’t checked in for so long.”

“Did you get him across the border?”

My lips curled into a frown. “I can’t… maybe I shouldn’t talk about things on the phone. But nothing went as I planned. I can tell you that much.”

Her breath caught. “If you’re safe, that’s all that matters to me. When are you coming home?”

“Now. Everything else that’s going on here, I don’t care about it anymore. I just want to see you and be done with it all. I’ll be on the next flight I can possibly get.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

I didn’t want to hang up. I wanted to stay on the phone with her forever, listen to her breathe and talk and tell me I wasn’t worthless. To lie to me that all these failures were somehow not my fault.