The Origin (17 page)

“It is.”

“Does she know?”

“No.”

Smith let out a judgmental gust of breath.

King glared, leaning over the table. “You would have done the same to your only daughter.”

Smith shook his head. “
Nuh
-uh, mate. I don’t think so. Not without her consent.”

King looked back down at the device in Smith’s hand, at that tiny blinking light, his indignation watered down slightly by the guilt. Sure, he hadn’t asked his daughter outright, but she belonged to him. And he would do whatever it took, whatever at all, to ensure her safety. Surely she would understand that.

“In any case, this is the thing that will save her,” he said with a warning in his tone. “So her approval is not my highest priority at this moment.”

Smith raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“I’m assuming you know how to use it?”

Smith nodded and looked down at the object that was no larger than a cell phone, his obvious disdain for the device so pungent, King could almost smell it. Still, the man was nothing if not a professional and would get the job done regardless. Of this, King could count on.

“Get a move on, Smith,” King said, pointing towards the door as he held the landline phone up to his ear. “Put your moral distaste aside and find my daughter. ASAP.”

* * * * *

“Yes, he was… different,” Coral said into the phone, rolling her eyes at her dinner companion. “I only know his first name. Can we talk about this later? My food is about to arrive.”

After promising to call later for a detailed report, Coral hung up and turned her attention back to her friend and fellow abuse survivor. “I’m sorry, Lisa. My boss doesn’t get the concept of
after
work hours.”

One side of Lisa’s mouth quirked up. “What exactly is it that you do?”

“I used to be a clerical assistant but I’ve recently been promoted to acquisitions agent,” she said casually and turned her head in time to watch the waitress arriving with their food. Thankfully, Lisa took the cue and allowed the waitress to distract her from the question that had popped up in her thoughts. The subject of her new line of work was just not on the menu that night.

Coral was drinking her beer and contemplating the benefits of her recently developed telepathy, when she detected an odd tingling down her neck.

Well, this is new,
she thought, looking off into space and allowing the invisible hands to pull at her spine, as if the universe was telling her to ditch her cheese enchilada platter at
Chavella’s
and head in to the city, to a store on 14
^th
Street.

She took one last swig of her Corona and stood up. A vision this compelling, this urgent, simply could not be ignored.
 
“I’m sorry, Lisa, but I have to go.”

“What’s wrong? Have I done something?”

“No, no! It’s nothing you did. I just… I just have an emergency.” Coral regarded her friend, who had called her during a suicide attempt only two weeks prior, wondering if leaving her now would prove detrimental to the frail woman’s recovery. “Do you want to come with?”

Lisa eyed their steaming plates of untouched Mexican food. “What about dinner?”

“We’ll get dinner later.”

After a tense second, Lisa finally stood up and began to gather her things. Coral threw down two twenty-dollar bills on the table, wishing Lisa could move with a tad more urgency. She had never experienced a conscious premonition before – everything prior had all appeared to her in a dream – and wasn’t sure if there was a window of time in which she had to work. As it was, they had to take the subway into the city, which would cost her even more time.

As they hurried out of the crowded restaurant, Coral hoped that she would not be too late to bear witness to whatever destiny was about to unfold.

* * * * *

Olivia’s captor exhaled through his teeth as she listened to him pacing around the room. “King, you bastard,” he muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Olivia asked, alarmed. “What happened?”

“Your father’s time is up and there is still no money in the account.” She heard a frightening metallic click before he spoke again. “Which is surprising, even for a man of his moral integrity.”

Overcome with renewed anxiety, she said, “Maybe it was just held up by technical problems. Maybe the bank server went down?”

“The bank server did not go down!” His voice exploded in the room, causing Olivia to cower despite herself. He was a massive mountain of a man; he could hurt her without even straining a muscle, a fact that hadn’t escaped her mind. “It wasn’t the bank’s fault and it sure as hell wasn’t the server’s. Your father just didn’t send the payment. Plain and simple.”

The gravity of the situation suddenly bore down on Olivia and her eyes began to water as she fought for breath.

My dad didn’t come through for me. I’m his only remaining family and I’m not even worth five million dollars to him.

She bowed her head so that her captor could not see the war raging inside. She could not, would not, cry in the face of adversity. And despite the irrefutable proof that her father had abandoned her in her time of need, she would not show one ounce of emotion lest it be used against her.

She had to remain calm. Her life depended on it.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” she said in a near-whisper.

Three months before Olivia King walked into his life, long before he was shot and thrown into a river, and certainly before his life had completely spun out of control, Daniel Johnson was living in a modest
fourplex
with a balcony in a quiet Chicago suburb. Every day he commuted to the city in his car, working as a bouncer for Vain Nightclub, a job he enjoyed for not only could he ogle beautiful women at a safe distance, he could also put his strength to good use without repercussions. Nobody ever questioned why the scowling bouncer was incredibly fast or strong, nobody cared so long as the human trash was taken out night after night.

During his time at Vain, he bore witness – and quickly put an end, if he was able – to the multitude of sins the Chicago nightlife had to offer. From the girl who had been drugged with
roofies
who was about to be taken home by a would-be rapist, to the greasy drug dealer who sold LSD from his jacket pocket, Daniel had seen them all.

Chicago was an immense city, and in the anonymity of its two million plus inhabitants, he had finally found a place to assimilate and hide while also performing a bit of public service.

One very early Sunday morning, after Vain had spit out all of its remaining patrons, Daniel was driving home in his ’83 Subaru GL (the
Chevette
had died a fiery death on the drive up from Kansas) when he heard his neighborhood mentioned on the radio.

“Inside his Palos Hills home, neighbors found 73-year-old Clay Wilkinson’s body on the floor, a bullet wound on his temple. His wife, Diane, was in the other room, also dead from a gunshot wound. A massive manhunt for Sam Wilkinson, the couple’s 45-year-old son, who suffers from an acute case of schizophrenia, is underway. Neighbors are being warned to remain vigilant as the younger Wilkinson is considered armed and extremely dangerous…”

A buzzing filled Daniel’s ears as he recalled seeing a man of medium build who jogged around the neighborhood at around three o’clock every day. Daniel had had a brief exchange with him once, something inane about the weather or the Cubs, but could not recall anything out of the ordinary about the man. For all anyone could see, Sam was a perfectly normal forty-something guy who still lived with his parents.

Daniel drove around the neighborhood for a time, and several streets away from his own, he found the Wilkinson’s brick house, easily identifiable from the yellow crime tape stretched across the lawn. He parked at the end of the street, contemplating his next move. He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d find inside the house, or if he could even be of any help, but at the very least, he was compelled to look at the crime scene to satisfy his curiosity.

He twisted around and reached into the backseat, rummaging through the various articles of winter clothing piled haphazardly in the backseat until he found a pair of wool gloves. He was no genius, but knew better than to leave fingerprints at a crime scene, lest he become a suspect himself and spoil the comfortable life he’d established in Chicago. He would rather have a vasectomy than uproot again. Even for someone like him, moving was a bitch.

Traveling fast so as not to be seen by the naked eye, he raced down the street, leapt over the plastic tape, and crept into the relative darkness of the Wilkinson backyard. He tried the doors and the windows but was not surprised to find them all locked, and even though he could have easily forced them open, he didn’t think it smart to tamper with evidence.

Moving as close to the perimeter of the house as possible, he ran around to the front, crouched behind the box bushes, and tried to peer into the large windows. After his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw nothing in the dark living room but silhouettes of furniture and crime scene tapes draped across doorways.

All of a sudden, he heard something that sounded very much like a muffled gunshot. His head snapped around to the noise, to the yellow house next door. With a pounding heart, Daniel crept to the neighbor’s house, berating himself for not wearing a mask or a stocking over his face, something that would distort his features enough that he wouldn’t be recognized as that bachelor on 103rd St. Apartments.

His thoughts were interrupted by another muffled report, and this time Daniel knew without a doubt that it originated from a gun. Not wasting another second, he flattened his body against the siding and shuffled until he was close enough to peek into the back door. When he saw only darkness, he forced the door open and entered. With measured steps, he moved through the kitchen and towards the front of the house. Immediately, he noticed the undeniable coppery smell of blood which seemed to hang thicker in the air the closer he moved to the center of the house.

When he reached the arched entrance to the living room, Daniel’s entire body froze and his teeth bit into his cheek involuntarily. Before him lay the body of a woman, her blouse in tatters, and beside her lay a lifeless young boy with one skinny arm slung across the woman’s stomach. Daniel doubled over and dry heaved as he caught sight of the bullet entry wound on woman’s forehead and the ever-growing pool of dark liquid beneath the two bodies.

“Who are you?” came a voice from the corner of the room. From the shadows emerged Sam Wilkinson, clad in khaki pants and a turtleneck speckled with blood. He lifted his hand and pointed the revolver, which had been outfitted with a silencer, into Daniel’s face.

Daniel did not dare blink. “Why?”

Sam’s left eye twitched as he glanced at the bodies on the floor. “Because she was a frigid tease. She told me I was welcome to come over anytime to talk, even while her husband was out of town, then told me I was insane when I tried to make a move on her.” His crazed brown eyes returned to Daniel. “I assure you, I was of sound mind when I killed her.”

“Why the boy?” Daniel’s fists ached to let fly, but he held still, fearing the slight tremble in Sam’s hand. One sudden move from either man could mean a big, fat hole in Daniel’s face. He was fast, true, but he seriously doubted his ability to outmaneuver a bullet fired three inches from his nose.

He shrugged. “The little twerp came running out of his room and got in the way.” The complete indifference in his voice chilled Daniel to the marrow as he looked into the eyes of a cold-blooded murderer.

“He was just a kid,” Daniel whispered. For as long as he lived, he vowed to use his powers to rid the world of evil, beginning with this man. “And your parents?”

At this, Sam sighed. “They tried to get me committed. They pretended to support me, said that they wanted me to get help, but in the end, all they wanted was to be rid of me.” He shook his head sadly.

Taking advantage of Sam’s momentary distraction, Daniel shot a mock-surprised glance at the doorway. “Who the…” he said, and the moment Sam’s eyes left his face, he crouched down and slapped the gun from Sam’s hand, which sailed across the dark room. Before Sam could even blink in surprise, Daniel crushed his hand against the man’s throat and lifted him up in the air.

“He was just a kid!” Daniel shouted, pinching Sam’s windpipe a little more.

Sam struggled for a few minutes, kicking and clawing, until eventually, the fight in him began to ebb. Daniel closed his eyes, waiting eagerly for the moment when the heart of this wicked person pumped for the last time, until the lives of the innocent had been avenged.

“Mom…”

Daniel’s eyes flew open as his head snapped around to the source of the voice. The boy’s eyes were wide, his little face awash with horror as he looked up at his lifeless mother.

A loud gurgle escaped from Sam’s throat and the boy turned his pained gaze towards Daniel and the man whose life he literally held in his hand. Daniel dropped the unconscious Sam as reality dawned on him, realizing how he must look to the eyes of a frightened child. Without even blinking, he had almost taken a life, in front of an innocent no less. Another minute and he would have turned into the very thing he vowed to rid the world of.