Justice Keepers Saga - Books 4-6

Chapter 5

A black asphalt driveway cut through a lush green lawn to a small house with blue aluminum siding and black shingles on the roof. Sheltered in the shade of a tall oak tree, it was a quaint little residence.

A man in blue jeans and a gray flannel shirt stood at the foot of the driveway with his head poked into the back door of his car. From this angle, it was impossible to see his face, but Anna sensed tension.

She walked along the roadside in jeans and a white shirt with a frilly neckline, her hair done up in its customary ponytail. “Trevor Harmon!” she called out. “Mr. Harmon! I was hoping I could speak with you!”

The man stood up straight.

When he turned to face her, she saw that he was a handsome fellow in his middle years with a dark complexion and black hair that was only starting to turn gray. “And who might you be?”

Anna grinned, bowing her head to him. “Special Agent Lenai,” she said, stepping onto the driveway. “I"m with the Justice Keepers, and I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about your son.”

She used her multi-tool to project a hologram of her badge, a four-pointed silver star on a field of blue. It rippled in the air before her, and by the expression on his face, she could tell that Trevor Harmon was impressed. “We need to talk about your son, Mr. Harmon,” she said. “He"s in trouble.”

The man lifted his chin to squint at her. “Is that a fact?” he asked, coming closer. “I don"t know where the boy went. He didn"t come home last night, but when he does, the word grounded won"t begin to cover it.”

“You"re aware that he skipped school yesterday?”

“I am.”

Anna closed her eyes, sweat prickling on her forehead. The days here got very hot very quickly. “Are you also aware that he"s in possession of one very dangerous piece of alien technology?”

The man pursed his lips, staring at her. “No, I wasn"t aware of that,” he muttered, leaning his shoulder against the side of his car. “What exactly can this thing do? Is Kevin going to be all right?”

Crossing her arms with a heavy sigh, Anna frowned down at herself. “We honestly don"t know,” she admitted. “Overseer technology is highly volatile. It could be harmless, or it could be killing him right now.”

Trevor Harmon shut his eyes, fat tears rolling over his cheeks. “God Almighty…” He trembled as sobs ripped through his body. “Can you do anything? Can you help him?”

“We"ll try. I promise.”

She tapped at her multi-tool, opening the app that forwarded contact information. Then she sent out a pulse. A soft buzz from the man"s pocket indicated that his phone had received the data. “If he comes home, contact me right away,” she said. “We"re going to want to run some tests to make sure he"s all right.”

“I will,” Harmon replied. “And thank you.”

Her attempts to find Kevin were less than fruitful. After talking to his father, Anna went back to the school with some faint hope that maybe, just maybe, she would find him in his first-period science class. Reality had a frustrating propensity for crushing dreams. Kevin hadn"t come back to school, and worse yet, Amanda Simmons – the only person who might have caught a glimpse of whatever he had unearthed – was still absent.

Something felt off there.

School officials insisted that Amanda"s father had kept the girl home to help her get over the ordeal, but did anyone really need two days to get past the sight of a hole in the ground? Maybe some people really were that fragile, but four years as Jack Hunter"s best friend had trained Anna to assume there was more going on beneath the surface.

twoShe went back to the skate park, hoping to find Kevin or his friends. Sadly, there was no sign of them. That left her with only one option, and she was pretty damn sure that pursuing it would make waves.

Amanda Simmons lived in a small house with white aluminum siding and black shingles on its slanted roof. A large porch with a rocking chair and a love-seat completed the picturesque setting.

Knocking on the blue front door with her fist, Anna waited patiently for someone to answer. Nothing about this house raised any red flags, but she reminded herself that she wasn"t all that familiar with Earth culture.

The door swung open.

A tall man in gray pants and a blue polo shirt loomed over her. He had a stern face with wrinkles in his forehead and curly gray hair. “Who are you?” he asked in tones that conveyed his hostility.

Anna stood upon the porch with hands clasped behind her back, bowing her head respectfully. “Mr. Vic Simmons, I presume,” she said. “I"m Special Agent Anna Lenai with the Justice Keepers. I was hoping I could talk to your daughter.”

The man"s face hardened until it seemed like he could stop bullets with his skull. “We"ve got nothing to say to you,” he muttered, backing away. “Amanda wasn"t involved with whatever that delinquent dug up.”

Anna looked up at him. “I wasn"t accusing her of anything.” The teachers she had spoken to were right; this man was going to make himself an obstacle in her path. “I want to know what she saw.”

Mr. Simmons thrust his chin out and studied her with hard gray eyes. “I won"t have you filling her head with nonsense,” he barked. “She gets enough of that from the school. Sinful ideas breed sinful behaviour.”

“What exactly do you think I"ll tell her?”

In response, he spun around and turned his back on her. “Follow me,” he growled, moving deeper into the house. “Keep your questions short and to the point, and we can get this over with.”

The front hallway led to a kitchen with a sliding glass door that looked out on the patio. A yard with lush green grass stretched on to a wooden fence, and she could see a bed of dirt that would no doubt be used to grow flowers.

Simmons opened the door.

Anna stepped through with arms folded, pausing to inspect her surroundings. “You have a lovely home,” she said, trying to sound cordial. “My mother keeps a garden in our backyard. I"ve got no talent for it myself.”

In her mind"s eye, she saw the man standing in the doorway behind her, watching her like a hawk. “The garden was my wife"s,” he grumbled. “She died several years ago, and we haven"t used it since.”

“Why"s that?”

Before he could answer, a young woman in a blue dress with short sleeves came around the side of the house. She was taller than Anna – not that there was much chance of her being shorter – with dark curls that fell to her shoulders.

“Amanda?” Simmons barked.

The girl jumped at the sound of his voice, placing a hand over her heart. She froze in place, then turned her head to look at him. “I"m sorry. Timmy was here, and I tried to shoo him off before he made a mess.”

“Timmy?”

“Mrs. Hammond"s cat.”

An icy lump settled into the pit of Anna"s stomach. The girl"s reaction…Amanda was genuinely afraid of her father, and that was never a good sign. Very few things could elicit that kind of response in a child, and none of them were pleasant.

“Amanda, this is-”

“A Justice Keeper.” The girl stood with a hand pressed to her chest, refusing to look up. “She probably wants to talk to me about what I saw yesterday. I"m guessing they still haven"t found Kevin.”

Tilting her head to one side, Anna replied with the warmest grin she could manage. “Hey, look at you go!” she said, her eyebrows rising. “With deductive skills like that, you might want to consider a career in law enforcement.”

“She"ll do no such thing.” The silhouette of Mr. Simmons stepped through the door with a harsh growl, directing most of his anger her way. “Amanda will grow up to find a good husband, and take her place at his side as God intended.”

Anna glanced over her shoulder, squinting at the man. “Silly me,” she said. “Here I am trying to corrupt her with my evil feminist ways. I should have realized that you have divine intervention on her side.”

“You won"t influence my daughter.”

Grinning ferociously, Anna let her head hang. She brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “I don"t know. Have you seen our pamphlets? Two or three of those and she"ll be a full-fledged lesbian socialist who can"t wait to swear herself to the goddess Athena.”

Only then did she notice the expression on Amanda"s face. The girl was very obviously upset. “I"m sorry, Amanda.”

“It"s okay.”

“What can you tell me about Kevin? Did you see whatever it was he dug up?

“No,” Anna said, shaking her head. “I only saw the hole. He told me to get help, and I ran inside.”

“Any guess as to where he went?”

“No.”

The misogynistic piece of s**t who dared to call himself this girl"s father was now standing on the patio and watching them intently. “She answered your questions, Agent Lenai,” he said. “I think it"s time for you to go.”

“There"s a lot of ground we could cover.”

He stiffened, shaking his head in disgust. “I"m asking you to leave my property,” he said, coming up behind her. “My daughter didn"t have anything to do with what that boy did, and there"s nothing she can tell you.”

For half a moment, Anna considered protesting, but it dawned on her that Amanda might suffer the consequences for anything she did to piss off the girl"s father. Abusive pigs like him tended to channel their frustration into a weapon they used to keep their victims in line. “All right,” she said. “Thank you for your time.”

When she pushed open the door to her small motel room, Anna found that the staff had done their jobs. The blankets on the single bed were pulled up and tucked in neatly with pillows arranged for that perfect aesthetic charm.

Jena stood in the wan light that came in through the blind-covered window, dressed in jeans and her long brown coat. The woman had her arms folded, her posture stiff and tense like a riled cat.

Anna closed her eyes, hissing softly to herself. “Come to check up on me?” she asked, slamming the door shut. “I haven"t had much luck finding the kid.”

A frown compressed Jena"s mouth into a thin line, and she grunted as she peered through the window. “Yeah, I figured as much,” she said. “But I"ll take any excuse to get some fresh air. What can you report?”

“I just spoke with Amanda Simmons.”

“And?”

“The poor girl is being abused,” Anna said. “I"m making it a priority to get her out of that situation.”

Jena glanced over her shoulder with an expression as cold as ice. “Are you now?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Do I need to remind you that isn"t even remotely related to your assignment?”

“Witness my lack of caring.”

“Anna…”

Crossing her arms, Anna leaned against the wall with a deep breath. “We"re Justice Keepers,” she said, ignoring the bile churning in her stomach. “See evil, punch evil? I"m pretty sure there"s a whole chapter about it in the handbook.”

The other woman spun to face her, bracing one hand against the window pane. “That"s true, but at the moment you have much larger concerns to deal with.”

“I"ll deal with both.”

“Oh? And have you thought about how you plan to accomplish this? You don"t have the authority to remove a child from her home; so you"re going to have to work within the system. That means you"ll have to produce solid evidence of the a***e taking place. Do you have that? Or is it just a hunch?”

“I can tell.”

“The courts won"t accept that.”

Anna felt her face heat up. “I don"t care!” she spat. “If I have to, I"ll tear this wretched little town apart, but I am not leaving that child in the hands of that monster.”

not“I see,” Jena replied. “And if rescuing this girl costs you your career?”

In that brief moment of tense silence, the only thing Anna could do was stare into the other woman"s pleading brown eyes. This wasn"t the sort of argument she would have expected from Jena; in truth, it sounded more like the kind of slimy politicking that put people like Slade into positions of power.

These past few months, she had often chastised Jack for his tendency to buck the system, but here she was doing the exact same thing. Her best friend"s defiance suddenly made all kinds of sense. “If that"s what it takes,” she said. “So be it.”

Jena"s smile was positively beatific, the kind of smile a mother wore when her child won first prize in a contest. “I knew taking you on was a good idea,” she replied. “You"re right; we"re not gonna leave that girl to suffer.”

“Then what-”

Jena paced back to the wall. “Focus on locating Kevin,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder. “I"ll start the paperwork to have Child Services look into Amanda"s situation.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh don"t thank me,” Jena said.