Eyes Of Danger (2 page)

The group also had a great time squeezing in at the tall tables that had tall stools. They proceeded to make fools of themselves while they really got plastered. I just clung to the table, ignoring the requests to dance. Finally, one of the girls got sick. I helped her out of the bathroom, then rounded up Connie and the rest of the group to get everyone headed out to the car. At last, the excuse I needed to get us all home.

I got the keys out and used the remote to unlock the doors with the sick girl wrapped around my shoulder. Connie was dancing around the car, but her other friend leaned over the trunk. She seemed to have passed out since she just did not move. I was sure glad I came along because I really needed this whole picture. I got the sick girl loaded into the back seat and went around to get Connie. I gathered the sleeping one from the trunk into the car. There was a guy getting into his car on that side, so, of course, Connie began dancing with him. He wasn’t drunk, but it was obvious he had no problem taking advantage of a drunken woman. He easily slipped his arms around Connie, as they were moving together to the back of the cars.

As I got the other girl into the back seat, he had Connie up against his car, dropping kisses on her as he pushed his hand up under her blouse. The worst part was Connie wasn’t fighting but giggling and kissing back. She was into him as much as he was into the easy time. I walked over to pull them apart, but the guy wasn’t happy to have a sure thing taken away.

“Go on. I will see she gets home later.” This was from the guy who was trying to move Connie away from me.

“I don’t think so.” I pulled at his shoulder, but he swung his arm back, throwing me away against the car. I hit the car so hard it knocked the breath out of me for a second. Then I felt a hand on me, pulling me upright. I looked up, and even in the darkness of the parking lot, I knew I was looking into a pair of very black eyes surrounded by heavy lashes. I had seen those eyes somewhere.

I stood up, but he had already turned away. Within a split second, he had grabbed the arm of the other man, twisting it up behind him. The man let out a couple of yells as he was hustled forward between the cars, then out of sight. I stood up, but the drunken Connie giggled, starting after the men. I grabbed her so I could wrestle her into the car, snapped her seat belt, and ran around to the driver’s side. I took a moment to look over the top of the car, but I couldn’t see anyone near us in the parking lot. Time to get out of here.

I was sure, though, the help had come from the same guy who had looked at my jeep a couple of days earlier. Then, I shrugged and started the car. I went ahead to drive away. Just a coincidence, though a lucky coincidence, I thought.

F. J. Franklin sat at the plain metal desk looking out the window at the military base. He took the time to contemplate his life at this stage of his plans. He had a great deal of power and support. It had taken him years to get the power, but even longer to get the support. Most of it gotten legally. Then, when a Senator was stupid enough to be elected by the public as a nice clean Christian and then paid his staff to bring him ten-year-old boys from the back allies of slums, they deserved whatever pressure he brought against them.

He was aware of so much, but knowledge was how he controlled things. He was even aware of himself, of his strength and his weaknesses. He constantly worked on his weaknesses, trying to overcome them, trying to eliminate them. His anger was one area that he couldn’t eliminate. For years, he had found it harder and harder to tamp down or to remove it. It was harder now to keep it hidden from others.

Right now, he had teams all over the world, but he wasn’t getting the results he needed. This was making him angry. He was looking out of the tiny window at the corner of the next metal building, doing everything he could think of to arrest that anger. Otherwise, he couldn’t act with the right motivation, the cool decision, the calm thought.

He had the best hard troops taking part in hidden operations, but lately, he had to be content with a smaller working team. He once had visions of grandeur, of heading up the nucleus of the top of the pyramid for the largest and richest country in the world with the trained army below him. Then, real life hit him in the face.

The troops were the best trained, but somewhere in their training, they developed loyalty to the wrong purpose. So only a very few, less than one out of thousands, could be turned to understandthat sometimes, it was necessary to do something that wasn’t covered by laws or so called morals.

To top the cake, there were really mentally gifted humans out there. Everyone wanted to use those talents. Of course, everyone played the game, pretending to claim that those with a sixth sense weren’t to be taken seriously. Many thought that the talent couldn’t be intertwined with physical actions, but he had found that there was some reality to some of these talents. If he couldn’t take over the military, he could take a different route. He could take a place behind the scenes. Take some men who would follow his orders to do whatever needed to be done. He would hunt for the talents he needed to gather a force that would provide him the power, even if it was to be behind the throne and not on it. Still, turning and using these people was harder than turning the normal troops. He needed them, but when one got away, like Tim Myers, it triggered his anger.

Myers was everything he needed. The warrior had been unbelievable in the service. He had moved up to become what the service looked for. Not only did he finish in the top of all the training thrown at him—Seals, Special Forces, Special Ops and any other military special behind the scenes that took both stamina and mind control training thrown at young Americans. Then again, it didn’t take long for the science wise guys to see the talent. He out performed some whistles and tricks that worried all the smart people.

Put him in the dark, surrounded by a lot of bad guys, and he would walk out without a scratch and very little dirt on him. Most of the bad guys could hardly walk at all. Ask him to retrieve something from anywhere, inside a safe in a residence, a mountain top abbey, once even a Russian prison, and he was like a shadow. The most he left behind was a body or two, but he always got the item.

Then, he triggered a blowup on leaving an odd military encampment in Egypt, but it was next to a hospital set up by volunteers from the United Nations. Franklin and his people knew about the hospital, but for them, the cost of these people was nothing for getting rid of the insurgents. They considered it just collateral damage. When Myers found out the details, he told Franklin he was quits. Franklin explained that it didn’t matter that his service term was over.
No one quit Frankin’s group
. Tim walked anyway.

Ever since, Franklin had been looking for bait, the contract, the threat or whatever it would take to get Myers back in.

* * * *

Michelle

The next morning, I drove Connie’s sedan over to her house. Actually, it was closer to noon. I had talked to her on the phone, but she had a hangover the size of the sedan. To get even for being bored from the evening out, I enjoyed blowing the horn several times and watching her hold her head as she came running out.

“Jesus, Michelle, stop the noise. Oh, my God, what is with this sun?” Connie had on huge, round sunglasses and placed her hand to one side of her temple.

I got Connie into the passenger seat and drove back to my house so that she could drop me off and take her car home. This all happened because she was sound asleep when I dropped her off last night.

Connie finally spoke in a sad little girl voice. “Michelle, I am sorry. I meant to take you out to show you a good time. Instead, we
all
had a good time. Somewhere along the way you became the designated driver.”

I looked over at my friend and smiled. I couldn’t stay mad at Connie. She had a warm heart that always got her in trouble, especially with men. “Connie, I have told you over and over, I don’t drink much. It’s a metabolism problem. I drink too much and I will have black outs.”

Connie finally let go of her head. She twisted in her seat belt so that she could look at me as we came to a red light. “All the years I have known you and you never explained this?”

You never got a chance to explain much to Connie as she was always doing the talking. I drummed the steering wheel, then took off slow when the light changed. “I have this weird metabolism. It has always done strange things. I can’t take certain medicines. If I drink too much, I draw a blackout, but still have a good time. I only let it happen two times, but it scared the hell out of me when everyone told me what a good time I had. I called it quits when I woke up in my car parked in the woods all by myself, too close to a couple of trees.” I changed lanes, glancing over at her and decided to continue. “Sometimes, I can tell when someone is lying.”

“You’re kidding me.” Connie raised her eyebrows. “You mean when I told you that purple bridesmaid dress looked good on you, you knew I was lying?” She actually looked worried.

I had to laugh. I really loved Connie. See, there is that word again,
love.
“Silly, not on little things. However, on important things, I get a tingle on the back my neck and sometimes a tight feeling in my stomach. I get the same feeling about danger.” Actually, it was much stronger than that, but I didn’t think it was smart to go into details, even with Connie.

Connie sat there and looked at me. “I know you are one of the most honest people I ever met and that is one of the things I admire about you. Gosh, you mean you get a danger signal?”

“Yep, once I was driving and was sitting at a light in a line of traffic and I had the feeling. For no reason, I jammed my foot on the gas and pulled out onto the side grass. Then, there was this loud noise and several cars in front of a large truck plowed into the line and pushed each car into the other. They piled up like toys, one on top of the other. The space I had vacated was full of twisted metal.” That was a mild happening so I didn’t mind telling her about that issue.

Connie shuddered and said, “Wow.”

“Connie, how much do you remember about the parking lot last night?”

I watched the road, but did look at Connie out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t worried about her lies, but I was worried about something else.

“Oh, that.”

Connie did have the good grace to look embarrassed.

“I had a problem with somebody. Sorry.”

“Do you remember someone coming up and helping, because your admirer was being a little too persistent?”

She closed her eyes, then opened them and looked over at me. “Yes, I do remember. We did have a hero, didn’t we? I have to admit it is all a little hazy.”

“Hey, do you remember the guy who was looking at my jeep outside of
Kohls
when we were buying clothes? He was the one who came up and quick-marched your masher away.”

A big smile came over Connie’s face. Just like that, she forgot her hangover.

“Really, gosh, I must have a secret admirer. I told you he was a hunk. Gosh, what are the chances of running into him twice, and he was able to help me out.” Connie turned around and pushed her sunglasses back up on her nose. She pulled the visor down to check out her hair in the mirror.

Life was so simple for Connie. On the other hand, maybe I was making it too complicated. Connie and I parted company.

The rest of the weekend went without any excitement. As usual, I went to my job on Monday. I researched history on line for a small company that sent out brochures for travel agencies, countries and museums that needed the correct information to draw in tourists.

Around ten in the morning each day, I took a bundle of mail to a local mail drop. It was one of those privately owned stores. The owners were a nice couple that liked to chat. They had the usual mailboxes in front with a counter half way back. They offered all the usual boxes, envelopes, and packing material hanging conveniently along the walls.

I always had several
FedEx
envelopes along with a half dozen large envelopes. Today’s load included some regular mail. I chatted for a short time and handed over everything, then started for the door. Nevertheless, I had one of those strange warnings. I felt the hair on my neck curl in alert. The closer I got to the door, the more the muscles in my stomach started to cramp. By the time I had my hand on the door bar, it was almost painful.

I had parked my jeep illegally against the curb right in front of the strip of stores. Most people using the mail drop did this and no one got a ticket. My jeep was only about fifteen feet away so I had my keys in one hand. I had the other hand on the door bar, but I froze, looking through the glass.

Because of the feeling, I guess I was expecting to see a fire, or a car coming towards the building, or something blowing up. Instead, there was a man leaning against the fender of my jeep. I stood frozen inside the glass door as he looked at me. Now, I did know that his eyes were dark, black, as if his irises were expanded. He had heavy lashes with his skin colored by a deep natural tan, his hair streaked by the sun. With his arms crossed over his chest, I could see the muscles in his arms and shoulders.

He looked at me and shook his head. He stepped away from the jeep, moved around in front of it, and took off in a slow jog through the parking lot. It was obvious he had been leaning against the jeep for a while, but he had waited for me to see him. Why?

I stood for another moment until he was out of sight, then I went out and approached my jeep carefully. It looked okay. I got in, finding the seat was hot from the sun. I looked around and couldn’t see anything missing. I lifted up the center console and it looked the same usual mess. I sat for another moment, then looked at the glove box. I leaned over to pop the door, reached in and pulled out the owner’s manual and the box of tissues, then I realized what was missing.

The envelope that had the copy of the license and the copy of my insurance was gone. I looked up and around once more, but other than a couple of people going into the Chinese carry out, I couldn’t see any trace of him. Yet, he knew a lot about me if he indeed had taken that envelope. Why would he want it? More important, why did I have the
Michelle warning signal
? Even more perplexing, he had let me see him. He had stood there until I came out, well frozen inside the glass door. Was he telling me something?