Blood Trade

CHAPTER 1-3

He had no intention of helping the man out of this predicament. He didn’t even have a rope in his car. He wasn’t sure exactly what kind of situation he had come upon there on that exit ramp in the middle of the night, but he was certain that if he didn’t cut things loose right now, he’d undoubtedly end up paying some kind of price.

As he put more distance from the man, he started to feel more at ease. His mind flew through his drill again.

The faint shift of gravel and the intermittent scuffing of wet pavement behind him caught his ear.

Andrew’s heart sank.

As nonchalantly as possible, he bent his head over his shoulder for a glimpse. The man was walking after him—quickly.

Andrew’s head snapped back around to face his Lexus, holding the lingering image of the pursuing man in his mind. Obviously, the stranger suspected he was being deceived or had made up his mind that he wasn’t going to accept the proposal. The Lexus wasn’t far away, but to Andrew it seemed frighteningly distant.

He crossed the street, stealing another glance at the stranger under the motion of checking for oncoming traffic. The large man was moving in faster now, displaying sternness and aggression with each lunge forward. A metallic rattle reached Andrew’s ears, something like keys in the man’s pocket or a wallet chain riding his hip. Andrew considered demanding that the man stay put and wait for him to back his car up, but he doubted the suggestion would be heeded.

He held out the small remote on his keychain and pressed a button to pop the trunk, hoping that seeing the trunk lid spring open would convince his pursuer that he was retrieving a tow rope. The move didn’t faze the stranger.

Andrew concentrated on the steadiness of his footing; he couldn’t afford to trip or lose his balance along the sloped pavement. He wouldn’t stand a chance of getting away.

By the time he reached his car and tucked his fingers under the handle of the driver’s side door, his arms were trembling.

The stranger’s footsteps erupted into a near sprint. The metal rattling sound turned wild.

Andrew’s eyes bulged and his chest stiffened. He yanked his door open. The man was bearing in fast, too fast for Andrew to slide inside his car, close his door, and lock it before he was reached.

He gripped the brass handle of his walking cane and quickly raised it hand over hand until his fingers clasped it around its base.

“Hey!” the man shouted from just a few feet away.

Andrew felt the wisp of the man’s hand slide along his shoulder. He clenched his teeth, choked back on the cane, and swung it into the large man like a lumberjack axing down a tree. The sickening thud of metal landing on flesh and the crack of splitting wood echoed, drowning out Andrew’s strenuous grunt. The cane connected with the man’s forehead. The streetlamp added new visibility, highlighting the man’s face as it contorted in shock. The man went down.

Andrew knew he’d gotten a clean, wicked shot in, but wasn’t in any less of a hurry to get away. He dropped what was left of his shattered cane and slid inside his car. His rapid heartbeat nearly tore a hole through his chest. He yanked the door shut and snapped the lock. His hand shook uncontrollably as he managed to slide the right key into the ignition, twisting it so hard it nearly broke off. He popped the gearshift into drive and mashed his gas pedal to the floor. His tires spun madly along the road before gripping, sending him rocketing forward onto the off-ramp.

He roared in adrenaline-fueled triumph. He looked back and forth from the road in front of him to his rearview mirror, searching for the man sprawled out along the road behind him. He didn’t find him. The night was too dark.

Air funneled up from his lungs and out his mouth as he worked to calm down. He flipped on his headlights. As his eyes went back to the road where the ramp met the interstate, he noticed the white van parked on the shoulder. The stranger from the hill who had abandoned him hadn’t gone all that far.

A brief temptation to pull over and give the man a tongue-lashing for leaving him on his own entered Andrew’s mind, but he ignored the taunt. He was done. The police would be there soon. They’d sort it all out.

The way Andrew saw it, he had tried to perform a good deed, and his reward was that he had nearly gotten attacked and his car stolen.

“Never again,” he muttered.

Andrew’s headlights lit up the overhanging branches of a long row of Nannyberry trees as he rounded a bend. Just a few months earlier, those branches had been dense with small white flowers. Now, they were completely bare other than with the thin blanket of accumulating snow that lined them.

Through a mesh of steady, large flakes, the Lexus glided up the short, wet drive to the entrance of the long, illuminated sign framed by a decorative concrete wall. It read “Hunter’s Cove.” Andrew had lived in the Greeley, Colorado, subdivision for years.

He slowed the car down to coast between a pair of oversized pine trees on either side of the subdivision entrance and then sped back up. He passed by several large, upper-scale homes with tall, arching facades lurching high above. In summertime, the residents’ wide, well-kept yards were all cast in the same deep and attractive shade of green, their lush landscaping having evolved from an unspoken ongoing competition among homeowners. Concrete fountains, koi ponds, artistically trimmed hedges and shrubs—all were purposefully exuberant in their nature. Under the even sheet of snow, they now all looked the same.

The lengthy arch of Andrew’s garage came into view from behind an eight-foot-tall hedge that divided his property from his neighbor’s lot. With the press of a button, he commanded the steady rise of the garage door. As he waited in the driveway of his home, it suddenly occurred to him that he had never stopped at the store for supplies. He shook his head in frustration; his thoughts had been solidly preoccupied with the scene back at the off-ramp. He’d have to get up a little earlier than planned in the morning and make the stop on his way down to Colorado Springs. He pulled the Lexus inside the garage.

The interior was nearly bare. No tools draped along pegboards and no rakes or shovels hung from prongs. Not even a lawn mower. Andrew always hired out whatever yard and maintenance work that needed to be done around the house. He had never been much of a handyman and had little interest in learning such skills. He was a numbers guy.

When the broad glare of headlights vanished as he turned the knob, he was left alone in the dark. The bulb in the garage-opener above had burned out months earlier and he hadn’t cared enough to replace it. The only assisting light came from a streetlight a couple of doors down and what little glow stemmed from his car interior light as he stepped out of the vehicle. He took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the night, losing himself for a second at the sight of faint flakes falling gently to the earth. Their delicate landing was a display of poetic profoundness.

He felt alone, fighting an adolescent urge to call someone—anyone—and tell them of the strange, harrowing event that had taken place that night. He somberly accepted that there wasn’t a single person left in his life who would even care. It was as if he was one of the flakes falling from grace outside, and upon impact, disappearing into nothingness.

He breathed in the cold air and stood with glazed eyes for a few moments longer before a broad, unexpected gust of wind brought him back to his senses. He turned toward the inside garage door, but as he did, he heard a muffled thump. It was quickly followed by a creaky groan of unsettlement that seemed to emit from his car.

He turned back to the Lexus and listened carefully. All that was heard now was some intermittent ticking from the engine. With his eyes narrowed, he took a breath and was about to unlock the door when he was halted by another noise. This time, it sounded like tapping metal.

He carefully walked to the rear of the car where the faint tapping continued and grew a bit louder. There in the dull light from the streetlamp he noticed the trunk wasn’t completely closed. The gusting wind caused it to bob slightly up and down.

A smirk slowly curled along his face at the thought of his last-ditch attempt back at the off-ramp to convince his deranged pursuer that he was trying to help him and not escape from him.

“Tow rope,” he whispered.

He had popped the trunk with his remote key before things got physical and it had remained unsecured the rest of the trip home. He slid his fingers under the edge of the trunk door and lifted it up in order to give it a good slam back down. He felt the sudden force of a sharp object plunged viciously into him just below his ribcage even before the trunk light exposed the large figure inside.

Andrew’s eyes swiftly swelled and his mouth gaped in shock, but he couldn’t breathe. He dropped the trunk and his hands instinctively went to his gut. He felt warm blood ooze freely between his fingers from the brutal stab. His face felt numb. A second thrust from the trunk sent another jolt through his body. This time he felt the object pierce just under his chest.

He staggered backwards, wobbly legs trembling. Wide-eyed, he watched in horror as a man’s large arm pushed open the trunk from inside. The light exposed a menagerie of tattoos along the arm—most recognizable was one of a large swastika.

The man he’d clubbed at the bypass now climbed out of the trunk. Clasped in his hand was a large switchblade. Blood dripped from it.

Andrew wanted to run, but he couldn’t breathe and his legs weren’t responding. He didn’t remember falling backwards, but he suddenly found himself sprawled out on his back along the frozen driveway. His fluttering eyes gazed up through the surreally peaceful white flakes that fell from the sky to his face. Among those snowflakes, he found himself gazing into the eyes of his tattooed attacker.

“You should have given me a ride, shitberg!” the man grunted out. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

Unable to find his breath, Andrew’s body felt frozen as the man slowly and methodically approached him. To Andrew, he looked eight feet tall. Cloaked in relative darkness, his presence was sinister, almost mythical—a grim soul cast in the mold of an angel of death.

The man flicked his wrist so that his fingers were clasped over the top of the knife instead of under it.

Andrew saw him grip the handle, readying to plunge it down into his chest to finish the job.

Andrew’s lips moved in a silent plea for help, but he heard no sound escape his mouth. He thought of his daughter and all of the things he wished he had told her—the pride he had in her and all that she meant to him, the love that would last beyond the grave.

The evil hovering above him seemed to glare down into the trenches of his very soul, as if recognizing his every thought. Andrew knew that this sadistic man would be the last image he would see before he left this earth.

But as his vision grew blurry and his pulse winded down, he sensed another presence close by. He hoped it was an angel watching over him, ready to guide him to the afterlife. He mouthed a garbled prayer. The presence, however, wasn’t that of a spirit.

A bright flash of blue light and the juiced sound of something electric sizzled nearby and then Andrew’s attacker’s body buckled under a crippling force. He barked out an incoherent sound that was higher in tone than expected from someone his size. He staggered to the side before dropping to a knee. The blue light lit up the driveway a second time and the man’s body contorted into an unnatural pose and then collapsed face first to the cement.

Andrew wasn’t sure what had happened; his mind rushed back to the life draining quickly from his body. His lower lip quivered uncontrollably. He could no longer turn his head at all. His limbs were cold, nearly numb. He could see his left arm rise in the air as if it were reaching for something that wasn’t there.

He realized it wasn’t he who was holding his arm up, but someone else. A man. The man’s hand was wrapped around it, supporting it.

A face came into view over Andrew, hovering just inches above. The night kept it mostly unseen, but Andrew was sure he could read concern and compassion etched across it through the thick lenses of the man’s glasses. The man’s mouth was moving, but all Andrew could hear was a buzzing noise that no one other than the dying could hear.

“Poor bugger,” a voice with an accent spoke.

The comment didn’t come from the man who held Andrew. It came from a shadowy figure that he now noticed standing a few yards away with his hands hugging his hips. There were two men hovering above, not one.

Andrew felt a wild, impulsive urge to grab onto whatever life he could manage to cling to and his fingers went to the face of the man who held him. They ran along his glasses and then found a mustache, a thick one. Only, it wasn’t real. He tore half of it from the man’s face. It dangled in the air, swaying in the wind above the man’s lips.

It was the last thing Andrew Carson saw.