Chapter 3

I awoke to the slap of a cold hand on my cheek and the splash of a glass of water on my face. It took me a moment to collect my senses. My body and mind felt sluggish and out of sync, but I couldn’t detect any damage.

I did find out, though, that I was tied to a chair. My hands tied to the back of the chair and my feet to the legs, not tight enough to cut off the circulation, but tight enough that I knew I wasn’t going to get out of them any time soon.

Another slap and I regained full consciousness. I opened my eyes and realized that I was in a warehouse, apparently empty except for this chair to which I was tied and a table that was about five feet away and at which the two men who had drugged me were now sitting.

Standing in front of me was a woman, a very beautiful, fit, and dangerous looking woman. She was dressed very simply, in a pair of jeans and a black turtle neck sweater, both of which fit rather well.

When she realized I was awake, she slapped me one more time, just to get my attention and remind me that she was a ‘Grade A’ bitch.

“Josh Wilson,” she said my name with an utter contempt that made it sound like a nun speaking some curse word, “welcome to our little retreat. So nice that you could join us.”

“Well, thanks so much for inviting me. I’ve always wanted to get away to hell for a few days.” If she were going to be a smart ass, I could match her step for step, well at least if I weren’t tied down.

Another slap, these were starting to hurt, “Leave the comedy to me,” she said with a look in her eye that said that this lady basically had no sense of humor.

“Tell us what you were doing in the library accessing the Library of Congress computer.”

“I was just doing some research on ancient Egyptian healing practices and some of their beliefs.” I thought I would try and keep my lie consistent with the lie I had told Lyssa.

Yet another slap. She was starting to tick me off with these slaps.

“One more time for the truth before I let my two friends over there try and extract it from you. What were you doing on the Library of Congress computer?”

“You seem to know more about what I was doing than I do so why don’t you tell me.” I was just a little pissed off and had decided that I wasn’t going to tell this bitch anything until she laid off the physical abuse.

That was until she pulled a gun and placed a grazing wound on my right arm. Then she pointed the gun at my balls.

“Alright, alright, just cool it with the gun and I will tell you everything. About a week ago a patient died on my front door step. He was an older gentleman and that was what first caught my attention.” I proceeded to tell her the complete story, in scrutinizing detail, right up to the part about when I found the leather bag. Here is where I began to fictionalize, and by this time they were sore bored they didn’t even seem to care.

“When I started to search him, I found this little leather bag that was tucked into his pocket. It was empty but it had this strange design imprinted on it and I thought that maybe some crazy old man might have poisoned himself with some drug, so I was in the library trying to figure out what might have been in the bag and could it have caused this man’s death.”

As I finished, silence just hung in the air and the two men and the woman just sat there and stared at me as if they were expecting something more. I heard a noise behind me, like a door slamming, and then the woman stood and walked towards me, caressed my face, and disappeared behind me.

Just then I heard another sound, this one much louder, and it seemed to shake the large door which I was facing. The two men looked at each other nervously, and then pulled two large, and evil looking, automatic rifles from beneath the table, kicked the table over, and used it as a shield between them and the door.

Lucky for me that they did, for just about then the door exploded inward, propelling the table and them towards me, while the force of the blast knocked me over backwards.

In the midst of all the commotion that followed I’m not sure what happened. From somewhere behind me erupted gunfire but I couldn’t twist around to see where it was coming from. The two men behind the table were also firing their weapons, but in a matter of seconds they became bloody, headless, masses.

Two more men appeared then, dressed in all black, with fashion matching ski masks. They fired a few bursts over my head and then one motioned towards the other and disappeared behind me while the other drew a very large, and wicked looking, knife and proceeded to cut me free. He then disappeared behind me to the sound of more rapid gunfire.

I laid there on the ground, rubbing my wrists and ankles, trying to restore circulation before trying to stand. Well, at least that was the partial truth. Actually, I was just trying to take advantage of the cover of the table and the chair with all the gunfire going on around me.

A few minutes later, the sound of gunfire seemed to recede into the distance and soon disappeared altogether. I laid there for a few more minutes, and when I was sure that I could hear nothing, I cautiously peered around the room and stood up.

In the back of the warehouse there was an observation room with all the glass shot out. There were, what appeared to be blood stains, on the back wall of the observation room, but I could see no bodies. The two men whom I had saw die right in front of me were still there, but otherwise, there was no trace of anyone.

Besides the hole that was blasted in the warehouse door, there appeared to be one other door in the building, the one that everyone seemed to have disappeared through. Wanting to find out if there was possibly someone up in the observation room who needed help, and to see if I could find any answers to the ever-growing mystery, I ran up the stairs only to find an empty room and the open door.

The door led to a metal balcony on the fire escape from where I could see an entire shipyard. The strange thing was, it was completely vacant and amazingly quiet, for the site of a major shootout just a few minutes before.

Then the next surprise of the day was to see my car parked below the fire escape apparently unscathed and in mint condition, the keys were laying on the roof in plain view.

I decided that the last thing I wanted to do was to stick around and try and answer a whole bunch of questions for the police, questions to which I would have few to no answers, questions to which I would probably like to ask someone else. And if someone were nice enough to leave my car with the keys just sitting there, I wasn’t going to be stupid and just stand there looking guilty.

I took a quick look for the gate, spotted it, and headed down for the car, which cranked on the first try, and headed for the gate, letting no dust settle under my car. When I hit the road, I took an arbitrary right turn. If I was still on the east coast I would now be heading north.

I began to think about where I might be and how I was going to get home. If this were the east coast and within driving distance of State, then this shipyard would probably be either in Charleston or Virginia Beach. If this were Virginia, by heading north I would hit the bay, and if this were Charleston, I would hit North Carolina and be close to being home.

I was so wrapped up in thought that I almost missed, or should I say hit, the four Highway Patrol cars that were heading down the road towards me. For a moment I panicked, I watched the cars in the rear-view mirror, and only when they disappeared into the distance, did I relax and realize that now I knew where I was, for those cars were South Carolina Highway Patrol cars.

In a few miles I hit the interstate, and after a quick call to my partner to be sure that he would cover my patients in the hospital, I popped in a CD, plugged in my radar detector, and set about setting a few time records between Charleston and home.

It was five hours later when I pulled into the beginning of my driveway. After outrunning two county cops, and playing tag with a beautiful woman in a black Porsche, I decided not to push my luck and instead I drove down the drive rather slowly, enjoying the trees and the stream, over which I had built a nice little bridge, that was banked to handle the curve in the road at high speeds.

The lads greeted me about halfway down the drive, a sure sign that my house keeper was here. She swore that she couldn’t work with the lads in the house, so she always turned them out, but they always stuck around the house for the scraps she always broke down and gave them.

I too broke down and let them ride the rest of the way in the back seat, but only after giving each of them a hug and receiving, in turn, a wet sloppy kiss. From the smell of their breaths, Alma had surely been feeding them some scraps today as well.

Sure enough, as I rounded the last corner, I saw Alma’s car parked in the drive and she poked her head out to wave as I pulled into the garage. It was just as if nothing had changed here at home. That was why I loved this place. It was why it was so peaceful here. Surrounded by my woods and my land, it was almost as if I had a nice insulating layer surrounding me here, like a security blanket.

Petting the lads one last time, and sending them on patrol, I walked into the house to the familiar wonderful smells of Alma’s cooking. Though I paid her only for cleaning the house and for doing the shopping, she always took it upon herself to fix me dinner as well, or at least to bring some of her fantastic leftovers from home.

After arguing had proven to fail miserably with Alma, we had reached a compromise where I enjoyed her wonderful meals without complaint and she always found a nice little bonus in her pay check.

I checked the machine and saw that Alma had already written down the messages and numbers for me. She always laughed when I tried to do it, listening to the machine, and trying to write down a number, was never a skill I had mastered.