Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (31 page)

Carson shook his head. “They didn’t kidnap me, Sean. They saved my life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There was a man. A very bad, dangerous man who attacked me at my house. He plunged
a knife into my gut and stared into my eyes as I suffered and struggled to breathe—all
because he wanted to elude the police by stealing my car.” There was clear bitterness
in Carson’s eyes as he told the story. “He would have killed me if it wasn’t for
them. They brought me here and stabilized me. They kept me alive so I’ll be able
to see my daughter again.”

“Who are
they
? And why didn’t
they
just take you to a hospital?”

“They couldn’t! I had seen their faces!” Carson blurted out in frustration, his voice
raised.

“Keep your voice down!” Sean threatened.

Carson controlled his breathing and let out a muffled cough
before he continued.
“They couldn’t because they needed the man. The one who stabbed me. They had been
following him for some time. He’s important to them.”

“Why?”

“He’s got something in his blood, something that most people don’t have. Something
that can save this little girl’s life.”

The cylinders in Sean’s head began to fire up. His eyes drifted to the wall and his
mouth gaped open as he silently lipped some of the thoughts that were rushing through
his mind. He turned his attention back to Carson. “There’s a man strapped to a bed
somewhere in this building. Is that him? The one who stabbed you?”

Carson nodded. “He’s not in this building, but he’s close by.”

Sean recalled seeing the smaller building on the other side of the alley when he
looked out the window—likely where the man was being held. “They’re drawing blood
plasma from him. Plasma isn’t rare at all.
Everyone
has it!”

“Not the kind he has,” Carson answered quickly. “Very few have the kind he has. One
in a million, they said.”

“How do they know?” asked Sean. “How do they know this guy’s got bionic plasma or
whatever it is?”

Carson hesitated for a moment before answering. “At Jessica’s work, they do tests
when someone becomes a donor. They draw blood, and run tests, and they look for certain
things.”

Sean understood exactly to what Carson was referring. He’d been through the same
process himself. “He was a donor? At GSL?”

“Almost. He came in one night, several months ago. I think it was back in the summer.
He was turned away because drugs showed up in his system. However, he also tested
positive for what Jessica and the others had been looking for. Some antibody.”

Sean listened on.

“They approached him—privately. They told him about Anna, and they asked him to help.
All he’d have to do is stay clean for a few weeks while they put him through a series
of injections. The
injections were supposed to enrich his platelets; I think that’s
the term they used. Then they’d draw out his plasma the same way they did at Jessica’s
work. He told them to go fuck themselves.”

“Why?” Sean asked.

“He thought they were nuts. Accused them of being part of some cult. He called them
vampires. When they showed him a picture of her, and he saw that she was Hispanic,
he got angry. Told them there was no way in hell.”

“Why would he care if she’s Hispanic?”

“He’s got a swastika tattoo on his arm. You figure it out. Even after they offered
to pay him every last cent they had, he laughed them off. He lost his job at a casino
and moved out of Lakeland soon after.”

“He’s Norman Booth, isn’t he?” Sean broke in. “The police’s prime suspect in your
disappearance.” He hadn’t needed to ask the question. He knew the answer was yes.
It explained why the man in the freezer became so alarmed when Sean brought up Booth’s
name. Until that moment, the captor had no way of knowing that the police even had
Booth on their radar. It wasn’t until Sean suggested that Booth was an active participant
in Carson’s disappearance that the man relaxed, realizing that Booth was viewed by
the police as a suspect and not as another kidnap victim. “So Booth’s the
real
prisoner.
They’ve got him doped up and tied down, and they’re sucking him dry. I saw the full
containers in a fridge down the hallway.”

“And they need more time to finish doing it,” said Carson with coldness in his eyes.
“They’re out of other options. Give them that time.”

Sean stared a hole through him, judging him with a black look that made him swallow
and look away. “Time to do what? Kill him? When donors give plasma, they do it twice
a week, for safety reasons. They’re pulling at least four containers out of him per
day.”

“They tell me he’ll live,” said Carson as if the line had been rehearsed in his head.

“Oh yeah? That’s what they
tell
you? Carson, I don’t know what kind of sick bond
you’ve formed with these assholes, but
I
don’t owe them a damn thing. I saw Booth’s
rap sheet. I saw the blood he took from you. I know he’s the
bad, bad
man, but no
one can do what these people are doing to him. It’s wrong.”

“You’re wrong!” Carson snapped back, wincing afterwards from the obvious pain the
sudden movement caused to his body. “Booth had a choice to make something with his
life and he chose a life of drugs, crime, and violence. The prick’s a skinhead, for
Christ’s sake! This little girl was never given the choices he was. Don’t take the
rest of her life away from her.”

“Keep your voice down, Carson!” Sean glared at him until he calmed. “This girl should
be in a hospital if she needs help, not in some condemned building. Tell me you understand
that.”

Carson exhaled and his shoulders deflated. The girl’s body drooped into his chest
as he did. He looked down at her head. “There’s nothing more that the hospitals are
going to do for her, Sean,” he said. “Rules, regulations, liabilities; they’ve handcuffed
too many doctors. There are risks they can’t take. They can’t do what needs to be
done, but I bet if it was their own daughter whose life was on the line, they’d figure
out a way. That’s all this family is guilty of: figuring out another way.”

“Family?” Sean asked.

Carson glared at him. “Yes, Sean. Family. Why don’t you try looking them in their
eyes and telling them that what they’re doing is
wrong
?”

Sean’s eyes narrowed.

“He’s in here!” Carson abruptly shouted out, his voice straining from the volume.
“In Anna’s room!”

Eyes bulging, Sean lunged forward and placed his hand over
Carson’s mouth. The girl
on his lap stirred again, starting to wake. Adrenaline pumped through Sean’s body
in rhythm with his racing heart as he frantically slid around to the side of Carson’s
chair, knocking the lamp to the floor as he did. It crashed loudly and its bulb exploded.
The room went dark.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Sean growled.

With Carson’s chair positioned between him and the door, he went down to a knee and
kept his hand pressed tightly to Carson’s face. Carson was too frail to put up much
of a fight. Thunderous footsteps from down the hallway sprinted toward the room.
Sean aimed his gun toward the door as the wind outside howled wickedly.

“Andy?” the little girl asked from the dark in a dainty, confused voice. “What’s
happening?”

Sean felt Carson’s teeth sink into the flesh of his fingers. He absorbed the pain
and kept his gun on the door, waiting for the quickly approaching moment when it
would spring open.

Chapter 27

L
umbergh made his way across the off-ramp leaving the highway. He could barely see
ten feet in front of him as he slowed down to about fifteen miles per hour. The mesmerizing,
dizzying snow lit up by his headlights came down in sheets. Driving any faster would
have surely sent the cruiser skidding off the shoulder and into a ditch. He carefully
straightened out the wheel once he pulled onto a much narrower road, proceeding slowly
and cautiously.

He switched back and forth between his high and low beams, hoping one setting would
give him an advantage. Neither did. He was dealing with a virtual whiteout.

In the backseat, Martinez whistled a long, meandering tune that Lumbergh didn’t recognize.
The intern seemed to be enjoying himself, eager to witness what he had come to see.

A single set of tire tracks was the only blemish on the snow-covered road. Someone
had come through not much earlier, likely driving a truck or a van, based on the
width of the tracks. The driver looked to have been in hurry with some of the wide,
reckless corners it had taken.

“How much farther?” asked Lumbergh.

“Not much, Chief. Maybe another mile or two.”

The incline of the road grew progressively steeper and the cruiser’s tires began
to struggle to find traction. They spun helplessly a couple of times, but some shifting
of gears and some second attempts kept the cruiser moving in the right direction.
The painfully slow
pace Lumbergh was forced to travel frustrated him, but not half
as much as the increasing volume of Martinez’s whistling.

Martinez abruptly stopped and began stomping his feet on the floorboard like an excited
child on a school bus. “What are you going to do to them, Chief? Come on! Tell me!”

Lumbergh said nothing, trying to ignore the growing sense of sickness in his gut.

Martinez snickered. “
Mi madre.
She would be so pleased right now. The two of us working
together. Me learning from the best. Once we get there, Chief, I’ll stay behind you.
I won’t get in your way. I’ll just watch and learn. Right?”

Lumbergh forced himself to nod.

Chapter 28

“W
hat is it? What’s wrong?” a woman’s panicked voice darted out from the corridor
a half-second before the door flew open and the flip of a light switch chased away
the darkness.

The imposing brightness nearly blinded Sean, but through the narrow slits of his
eyelids, he recognized Jessica’s loose red hair whip inside the room.

Sean yanked his hand from Carson’s teeth and placed both hands on his gun to steady
it as he stood. “Let me see your hands!” he barked out like a police officer.

“Mommy!” the little girl shouted in terror. Her confused eyes looked up in horror
at the large stranger hovering over her with a drawn pistol. She slipped from Carson’s
lap. He tried to latch onto her arm, but he was too weak. She fell to the floor with
a thud.

“Anna!” Jessica screamed.

“Your hands!” Sean yelled. “Let’s see them!”

Jessica wore a mask of sheer terror. Her empty hands shot to the ceiling and she
spread her fingers. Sean ordered her to turn around. When she did, his eyes examined
her for weapons. No bulges. She was dressed in jeans and a loose t-shirt. The jeans
were wet at their ankles, suggesting that she had been walking around outside. Her
feet were bare.

Sean told her to close the door and she did. “Who else is here, inside this building?”
he roared.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the frightened little girl crawling across
the floor toward Jessica. She moved in an awkward
motion along the carpet in her
pink nightgown, only using her hands and arms. It was as if she was partially paralyzed
from the waist down, though she did manage to tuck a knee into the floor a couple
of times.

“Tell her to stay where she is!” Sean demanded, nodding the gun at Jessica.

“Let her go to her mother, for God’s sake!” Carson snapped angrily. “You aren’t going
to shoot anyone!”

“Shut up!” warned Sean. He backhanded Carson across the scalp, drawing from him a
sharp wince.

Jessica lowered her head to meet the girl’s wide, fearful eyes. She forced a calming
smile and said, “Stay where you are, Peanut, okay?”

The girl stopped and nodded. Her eyes were wide with fear and they quickly filled
with tears. Her body shook as she cried.

In no logical world should Sean have felt guilty for how he was handling the situation;
still, the child’s tears drew remorse from him. He had never known that Jessica had
a daughter, let alone a sick one. Yet, the revelation made strange sense. While watching
her at GSL all those weeks, he’d seen a nurturing, maternal side to her. It cut through
her otherwise cold exterior whenever she attended to donors. Her gentle, warm touch
served as a ray of comfort, the way it would to an anxious child. It was one of the
things that attracted him to her.

What also became quickly apparent was the source of her emptiness and detachment
over that time. He had noticed it from the first day he had met her. The standoffishness;
the expressionless gazes; the apparent absence of happiness or even a stray moment
of contentment. They were all driven by the hopelessness of a mother who was living
with the agonizing trauma of watching the health of her young, precious daughter
deteriorate. Her daughter was dying. There was no room for joy in Jessica’s life.

It was her daughter, Anna, that Jessica had referred to from the other side of that
freezer door in the basement.

“Have you ever had anyone in your life that you would do anything for?”
she had asked
him.
“Someone who you cared about and loved so much that you would stop heaven and
earth for them?”

She wasn’t talking about covering up a crime for some boyfriend, as he had believed
at the time. She was talking about crossing the moral and legal boundaries of kidnapping—a
kidnapping in which the hostage’s body was his own ransom. Her rationale was her
daughter’s life.

Sean forced himself to breathe and again asked Jessica if anyone else was inside
the building.

The request triggered the expression on her face to suddenly melt back into panic.

“Oh my God,” she said in an appalled whisper. “Where’s Adam? What did you do to Adam?”
Her head shook as she spoke.

“Who the hell is Adam?”

“My brother!”