Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (17 page)

He wrapped one of his hands around the stranger’s neck and slammed him backwards
into the wall of the hallway, the impact sending several framed pictures falling
to the floor in unison. Shattered glass sprayed in a dozen directions.

The man was of average height and weight, which made him considerably smaller than
Sean and unable to mount an effective offense. He had short brown hair and wore glasses
with thick black frames. The thick lenses made his frantic eyes look abnormally large.
They grew even wider from the pressure now around his neck. He clearly wasn’t Norman
Booth, but the man’s identity was the last thing on Sean’s mind at that moment.

The man’s hand rose, and when it did, Sean saw a black, shiny object gripped tightly
in his fingers. He grabbed the man’s wrist and pinned it to the wall where the rest
of the man’s body was constrained. A blue flame of light suddenly emitted from the
object and reflected off of the man’s glasses. It was accompanied by the loud sound
of an electric charge. A taser; he was trying to shock Sean.

Repeatedly Sean slammed the back of the man’s wrist against the wall, trying to jar
the device loose, but the man had a death-grip on it. Sean arched his back and delivered
a colossal head butt, just above the bridge of the man’s nose. The back of the man’s
head slammed into the wall behind him so hard that it left a cracked depression in
the drywall. His glasses snapped at their center. Half of the frame fell to the floor
while the other half dangled from his ear.

Sean sent his thigh into the man’s prone stomach, knocking the air from his lungs.
He lunged backwards a couple of steps and took the man with him, yanking him from
the wall. Sean quickly planted his feet and swung his body as if he were about to
throw a discus. Only instead of a hurling a metal plate, he launched a human being
through the air. His foot caught the phone on Sean’s desk mid-flight and sent it
to the floor.

The stranger landed in a heap, just in front of the stove. Seemingly fueled only
by adrenaline, the man quickly but clumsily climbed to his feet. He was dazed, and
without his glasses, having some trouble seeing. Sean launched forward and sent a
wicked right cross directly into the man’s nose and mouth.

The man’s head snapped back sickly and his body flailed backwards on random footing
until it collided with the cast iron stove. The stove tipped over, loudly stripping
itself free of the cylinder-shaped ventilation flue that led up to the ceiling, and
then crashed into the brick base below. The man landed on top of the stove, screaming
out in pain as blistering hot metal and the flames from its open door tortured his
body. Within two seconds, he rolled to his side.

Sean scanned the floor for the man’s dropped taser. Suddenly a small object pressed
against his lower back and a paralyzing electric shock ripped through his body. Every
muscle in his body clenched tight and burned in agony. His eyes bulged and his mouth
clutched shut. The pulsation continued for several seconds. When it ended, Sean fell
to his knees, gasping for breath.

“Hit him again!” groaned the man who lay shriveled up on the floor not far from him.
His mouth was full of blood, his nose appeared broken, and he was reaching into his
jacket pocket for something. “Hit him again and hold it there!”

Before Sean could rebound, the pressure was against his back
again, and this time
the jolt sent him straight down to the floor on his chest. His body shook wildly,
out of his control. He was virtually helpless. The agonizing pulsing didn’t let up.
He snarled, trying to pull himself forward on the floor by digging his elbows into
it. The corner of his eye caught the man in black crawling over to him with something
in his hand. Sean tried to get his arm up to fend off whatever was coming, but he
could barely move. When the man reached him, Sean saw him lean forward. A thin, sharp
object pierced the side of Sean’s neck.

Almost immediately, his head felt light. His vision went blurry and he winced at
the hazy sight of bright, abstract flames that abruptly lunged into the air from
the floor just feet in front of him. A breath of intense heat blew against his face
and he knew that the blazing stove had rolled off its base and had somehow ignited
the hardwood floor.

He could hear the loud busy signal of the unhooked phone, and he felt the urge to
vomit as multiple, tortuous sensations ripped through his body at the same time.

The thought of getting his hands back around the man’s neck, and this time not letting
go, was the last image that jerked through Sean’s mind before his world went dark.

Saturday

Chapter 12

I
t was nearly 5:45 in the morning when Ron Oldhorse saw the signal: the illumination
of the narrow bathroom window along the north side of the small house, followed by
a quick pulse from a lamp in the master bedroom. Though filtered through thin curtains,
the brightness lit up the nearby snow-covered trees whose limbs were still drooping
from the weight accumulated during the night.

Lumbergh was awake. Oldhorse wondered if the chief had managed to catch any sleep
at all.

From under the concealed white tarp that served as his shelter, Oldhorse carefully
removed the dark, hand-woven scarf from the bottom half of his face. It didn’t come
off easy. The overnight frost and wind had secured it to his unshaven jaw like opposing
pieces of Velcro.

His fingerless wool gloves released the stalk of the long hunting rifle that lay
beside his frigid body. He cupped his hands to his mouth and blew warm air along
them to the envy of his tingling feet inside his moccasin boots. His breath lingered
visibly in the air for several seconds.

The lower half of his body was covered by a small snowdrift that had formed through
the night, camouflaging him well, but ultimately without purpose. The devil’s kin
hadn’t arrived that night.

Oldhorse poked his head out from under the tarp and carefully surveyed the area before
climbing from his makeshift shelter. He folded up the tarp, his legs feeling strained
from the change in body position as he knelt. He then strapped on a pair of wooden
snowshoes
that he had made years ago from hardwood and rawhide. They were designed
to leave very little of a footprint behind in the snow.

With the tarp secured under his arm and the rifle in his other hand, he made his
way through the thick forest that inched up to the house where the chief of police
and his family lived.

When he heard the soft snap of a twig, he quickly swung his body behind a nearby
boulder. The movement was so fast that anyone watching would have half-believed he
disappeared into thin air. He peered up from behind the large rock. Though it was
still dark out, he spotted a young mule deer with its head buried in the thick of
a pine branch. A fresh dusting of snow spotted its back, likely fallen from the branch.

With multiple layers of coats and flannel wrapped around his body, Oldhorse made
his way down a steep hill to a dirt service road. There, a white and gray police
cruiser was parked discreetly between a pair of warped spruces whose upper branches
were intertwined. He pried open the driver’s side door, shoving tree limbs aside
as he did, and climbed in.

The car started hard from the freezing temperatures overnight, but it did start.
He fired up the CB radio mounted under the dashboard, checked its channel, and worked
the press-to-talk switch a couple of times on the handheld transmitter in a predetermined
pattern. A few moments later, he received acknowledgment in the form of a similar
series of breaks among the channel’s background static.

He popped the transmission into drive, pulled off the road, and slowly made his way
across an open meadow driving over what was left of the cruiser’s tracks from the
evening before.

Those unfamiliar with the area wouldn’t know of the meadow north of Lumbergh’s place.
Thick woods surrounded it and the service road that ran parallel wasn’t on any maps.
The rarely used road was never plowed in the wintertime and thus was largely inaccessible
during those months. The meadow it edged up to,
however, received a lot of direct
sunlight, and the previous day’s unhindered rays left much of it only about two inches
deep in snow.

When Oldhorse reached the north end of the meadow, he carefully navigated the cruiser
through a collection of trees. He took his time, and a few minutes later crossed
onto a wider dirt road that would have eventually branched off into Lumbergh’s driveway
had he turned left.

He turned right, scraping the undercarriage of the car a bit on frozen terrain after
the front tires dropped off the shoulder of the road. There were no fresh tire tracks
in the snow now blanketing the road. No one had come through that way during the
night.

When Oldhorse reached town, he pulled into the police station and went inside. He
found that Jefferson’s night had been every bit as uneventful as his, though clearly
more cushy. The toasty building was seventy-degrees warm and the smell of coffee
wafted through the air. Indulgences never mattered much to Oldhorse. He preferred
the outdoors, even at times when the elements were harsh. He relished testing his
grit whenever the occasion presented itself.

Jefferson greeted him with a quick hello and offer of coffee and a ride home, but
Oldhorse declined. He returned the borrowed rifle to the officer, grabbed his pack,
and made his way back out the front door. He knew it was a long trek back to his
cabin on foot, but he saw it as an opportunity to stretch his legs after a long night
of being immobile.

He didn’t own a car. He’d sold his years ago after deciding to make the mountains
outside of Winston his home. He had become as much a part of the forest as the hills,
trees, and rivers that carved their way along the terrain. His home was a small cabin
along a slope near Red Cliff—a remote area about five miles from the town square—where
he killed or raised the food he ate. The decades-old dwelling was devoid of most
modern-day luxuries. No electricity. No
gas. No indoor plumbing. Just access to well
water a few hundred yards away.

For many years, Oldhorse’s lifestyle adhered to reclusiveness. He relied solely on
himself, leaving no room for others. That changed six months earlier, however, shortly
after he found himself chaotically racing down a narrow mountain road behind the
car belonging to the lifeless corpse of Alvar Montoya.

Oldhorse was a man who avoided attention, but with Chief Lumbergh shot up by Montoya,
the Indian stepped up and came between life and death. Once Lumbergh was at the hospital,
however, Oldhorse watched from afar as doctors and nurses scrambled to save the chief
’s life. Lumbergh’s vital organs had been spared injury, but he’d lost a lot of blood.
It was touch and go for much of the night.

When the chief ’s wife arrived, Oldhorse watched in silence as she fought her way
past orderlies, frantic to get to her husband’s side. And when she did, he saw her
place her trembling hands along Lumbergh’s face as tears streamed down her cheeks
and onto his body. Her husband was her life—her reason for living. Oldhorse could
see that.

Days later, after Lumbergh was released from the ICU, Oldhorse would slip into the
hospital at night, after visitation hours, to check on him. He always came late to
avoid the swarm of reporters that were stationed outside prior to the evening newscasts.

Before entering the chief ’s room, Oldhorse would sometimes stand in the dim hallway
just outside and watch the glow in Lumbergh’s eyes whenever he’d look at his wife’s
face. She rarely left his side, spending the nights beside him on an awkwardly shaped
chair. The chair was probably designed that way to be purposely uncomfortable, discouraging
family members from staying for long periods of time. It didn’t discourage Diana
Lumbergh, however.

Witnessing their unbridled love and the way each of their lives depended on the other,
Oldhorse felt something change inside him. He came to realize that the cell of isolation
he had confined his heart
to wasn’t a necessary trade-off for independence, but rather
a chosen path of emptiness that ultimately led nowhere. And when he finally opened
his heart to the outside world, it found the unexpected love of Joan Parker, Toby
Parker’s mother.

Since then, Oldhorse had felt an unspoken affection toward Chief Lumbergh and his
wife, Diana—a sense of gratitude neither of them had any clue they had earned.

It was one of the reasons why Oldhorse agreed to help when he was approached by the
chief twenty-four hours earlier. Lumbergh believed that Alvar Montoya’s death had
spawned a new, dire threat to him and his family. The chief had shared with Oldhorse
some of the alarming details of Lautaro Montoya’s prison escape. Oldhorse had given
the matter careful thought during his vigil.