Sarah's Story: Segment #5

Dear readers,

I apologize for the delay in this post. I was very ill last week and simply didn't have the energy to write. I hope this next segment was worth the wait.

In the last vote, we had our first ever tie! You selected both Special Teams (Henry enlists help from a friend) and Offense (the group sets a trap to lure out the law student). To honor your votes, I incorporated both options into this week's segment.

Here is Segment #5 with a brief lead-in from Segment #4 (or read from the beginning):

“Alright,” Henry closed his old flip phone with a snap as he walked up behind them. The sound made Sarah jump, and she realized she’d leaned embarrassingly close to Benny. She pulled back, face hot, and rose quickly to her feet. “We’re ready to roll, kids. Let’s move on out.”

“Wait,” Sarah said. “What are we going to do?”

“First, we’re gonna figure out what the hell it is that they want. And then,” Henry added with a dangerous glint in his eyes, “We decide if we’re gonna let ‘em have it.”

*          *          *

There was something almost reassuring about walking down the dark, deserted road in the middle of nowhere, especially with Henry walking protectively several feet ahead. It was the dairy farms that did it. For miles now, nothing had been on either side of them but wide open spreads of grazing land. The space and the quiet made it seem as if nothing could sneak up on them, and it was the first time Sarah had felt such since she’d discovered Venquist’s unbelievable secret.

As if he knew the direction of her thoughts, Benny asked, “How did you find out about all this? It’s nowhere near your area of study. Why were you even looking into who was in what war?”

“I wasn’t. I was just minding my own business, trying to honor our no-dissertation pact.” She bumped his shoulder with hers, trying to elicit a smile, but he was still too worried to oblige. When he instead took her hand in his, her heart did a little flip in her chest. Suddenly warm, even in the harsh wind, she continued, “I got a package in the mail yesterday morning. Well,” she corrected as she checked her watch, “the day before yesterday.”

He felt a chill at the thought of her receiving something that had brought her into this kind of danger, and his unclaimed hand clenched into a fist in response. “What was in it?”

“That picture I showed your dad. Four more of the same man, but at first I thought they couldn’t possibly be real. Standing over the body of Franz Ferdinand, dining with Hitler in 1934. With Khrushchev in ’62, and then three weeks later with JFK.” At his questioning look, she added, “Cuban Missile Crisis. He was there, and that time he was fueling both sides. Probably not the first time he’d done that,” she mused. “Anyway, there was a note with them that just said ‘Venquist.’ It was bizarre enough to catch my interest, so I started looking into it. And the same name kept popping up. In every major conflict I could find in the last three centuries, he was there. And then the fire happened, and that’s when I called you.”

“Wait a minute. What fire?”

She shook her head when she realized she hadn’t told him about that, either. How bizarre was it that an electrical fire was the least strange thing that had happened to her that night? So much so that she’d forgotten to even mention it to her best friend.

“It was the bedroom outlet again, but I wasn’t in there when it started. My desk was too small to hold everything I was finding. I was in the process of moving stuff to the kitchen when I smelled smoke. By the time I got in there with the extinguisher, everything on my desk was ruined. The laptop, my notes, the other photos. All I had left was what I’d already moved.”

He frowned. “I thought you had that outlet replaced last month. Don’t you think it’s strange that it would crap out on you like that?”

“Well…” She remembered what she’d thought she’d seen. At the time, she’d convinced herself she was being paranoid. But now… “Maybe it’s not so strange. I thought I saw Venquist, Benny. I’m not sure, because I was too busy trying to get that little clip off of the fire extinguisher to look closely, but…it looked like him. Just for a second, and then he was gone.”

“Jesus.” He stopped and just stood for a moment, as the rage began to build within him. When he looked at Sarah, his eyes were ice in the moonlight. “That’s two attempts on your life. Two times he’s tried to kill you. I swear to you right now, Sarah. He’s not going to get away with it.”

Her heart rate picked up speed at the look in his eyes, but any response she might have made was cut short by the sound of a distant engine. They looked down the road in time to see a pair of headlights rounding a curve toward them.

“Shit,” Benny said, even as Sarah was pulling him toward the shallow ditch lining the side of the road. But before they’d made it to the shadows, they realized Henry wasn’t moving.

He was just standing in the center of the road, arms outstretched, with a wide smile on his face.

“Henry, come on!” Sarah shout-whispered, even as Benny said, “Dad!”

“It’s ok, kids,” Henry reassured and patted his chest with a loud thump. “This one’s with me.”

The truck pulled close, an old red and white pick-up with a deep, dented scratch running along one side of it. When it came to a stop, a man with a grizzled white beard stepped out and gave Henry a grin of his own.

“Henry, you old bastard.”

“Jack.” Henry stepped forward and clasped the other man in one of those man-hugs that seemed to consist more of loud slaps on the back than anything else. Then he stepped back and gestured toward Benny. “My boy.”

If anything, Jack’s grin widened. “Benny,” he said and took Benny’s hand in a grip that was surely designed to maim. “And this must be your lady friend.”

“Uh…” Face warm, Benny suddenly realized he was still holding Sarah’s hand. He dropped it as if it burned and said, “Friend. Uh, this is my friend Sarah.”

Sarah flexed her hand in the sudden chill of the air, her palm still warm from Benny’s. And for some unidentifiable reason, she felt almost giddy at his sudden and obvious discomfort. The welcome lightness of heart shone in her eyes as she smiled at Jack.

He took her hand in a grip that was only slightly gentler than he’d used with Benny, and then he turned to Henry. “We gonna get this show on the road?”

*          *          *

Somehow, the night seemed darker in the truck. The headlights rendered anything beyond their beam unknowable, and the unknown, Sarah realized, was what frightened her most about this night. Then something Jack had said suddenly struck her as strange, and she frowned.

“What show?”

“Huh?” Henry asked absently, his mind still working on what lay ahead.

“Jack said we should get this show on the road. What show?”

“Oh. Well.” Henry glanced around as if to make sure they were alone, though the headlights had demolished his night vision. He wouldn’t have seen anyone in the bed of the truck if they’d been at eye level. “It seemed to me that we have two options here: go on the run, or stand and fight. It doesn’t make sense to take a stand until we know what we’re dealin’ with, so that left go on the run. Except they seem to find you wherever you go. And that’s when I realized what we need to do.”

Baffled, Sarah looked at Benny. He said, “We’re not following you, Dad.”

Henry asked Sarah, “How did you get my boy to meet you at the library?”

“I called him.” And as soon as the words left her mouth, she understood his train of thought.

“And you,” Henry said to Benny. “What did you do when you came looking for me?”

“I called the bar to see if you were there.” As understanding dawned, he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “You think they’re tracking our phones?”

Henry shrugged. “Don’t know. Figured there was one way to find out.”

“But…” Sarah had been about to suggest they destroy the phones when she realized what Henry had done. “You made a call from Benny’s phone. You wanted them to track us here.”

“But Dad, you just said we don’t know what we’re up against. Why draw them out before we’re ready?”

“The way I see it, we won’t know what we’re up against until we talk to them. And the only way to get them to talk is to use leverage. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

*          *          *

Thirty minutes later, Sarah stood in the center of the hanger, cell phone in hand and her bag nowhere in sight. It had begun to rain, a slow, steady fall that pinged against the tin roof in a rhythm that would have soothed on any other night. Tonight, it only made her more nervous.

Tonight, it seemed that the rain’s sole purpose was to mask the sounds of approach.

She held her phone in a vice-like grip, terrified that she’d prematurely press the screen and cost them whatever leverage they might have. A light slap sounded behind her, and she jerked around with her heart in her throat. But it was only a cat coming in through a pet door. Beautiful, sleekly black, and utterly indifferent to Sarah, it circled the wheels of the Cessna twice before sauntering toward the back office to find a place to sleep. She turned back to the wide hanger doors.

And he was there.

The law student who couldn’t possibly be a law student. His sleeve was pushed up to reveal the silver cuff, and the look in his eyes was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Absolute calm, as if nothing in this world could hurt him.

And perhaps nothing could.

“What are you?” she asked. When he lifted his arm, she shot up the hand holding her cell. “Don’t! It might not look like much, but I promise you it’s a weapon you don’t want me to use.”

He lifted both hands slowly, a universal gesture of peace, and he tilted his head. At the movement, his eyes seemed to shift from grey to green, and a chill ran down her spine. “I am not here to hurt you, Sarah.”

His voice was soft, smooth, and strangely neutral. Not too high, not too deep. It was an any-voice, the kind of sound she wouldn’t have been able to describe for its singular lack of unusual characteristics.

When fear lumped in her throat, she swallowed. “How do you know my name?”

He smiled, an expression meant to reassure that was somehow only that much more chilling for its success. Distrustful of that smile, Sarah frowned and took a step back.

“I will tell you that,” he promised, “if you tell me what you intend to do with that phone.”

She took a shuddering breath and allowed herself one desperate wish for Benny. “This is insurance. I know about your friend. About Venquist. I’ve drafted an e-mail explaining everything. All I have to do is press one button, and it goes to all kinds of people you don’t want knowing about your secret. People in the government, in the press. This e-mail goes out, and your little game is over.”

“Is it?” He lifted a brow, and she thought he almost looked impressed. His eyes skipped around the hanger, and his hair – which she’d been so sure was brown – suddenly looked darkly gold. “And where are your friends? Did they leave you here alone?”

“They’re safe. They have a copy of this e-mail. If anything happens to me, they send it. But they haven’t read it,” she added quickly. “They don’t know what I know. You can leave them out of this.”

He smiled faintly, and though she was sure it was a mocking smile, it didn’t quite seem like one. His head moved to the other side, and green eyes shifted to blue.

“It is noble of you to try to protect them. Of course, they are already in this. There is nothing I can do about that. But I swear to you, I do not intend to harm them. I do not intend to harm any of you.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I am here,” he responded simply, “to protect you. My name is Lassett. I am a paladin of the Twelve Realms.”