Immortal Secrets (16 page)

Jeff gave her a smile. “No one is disputing that. Besides, I’m gonna want her Aunt Jenny around. You’re the closest thing she has to family at the moment. So, you’ll need to be around when I come to ask for her hand.”

My jaw dropped. I was pretty sure that Jeff just announced his intention to marry me. I wanted to ask him about it but he took me by the hand and rushed me out to his pickup. The five of us piled in. Jeff and Dr. Greene sat up front while Jenny sat between Allison and I in the backseat. There were already people peeking out of their windows as we drove away. There was no doubt that they could give the cops a good description of us.

Jenny must have had similar thoughts. “I don’t mean to tell you your business, but the cops will be all over this vehicle within the next fifteen minutes.”

“I know, we’re going to switch you girls to a different vehicle
,”
Jeff
replied.

“What are you and Dr. Greene
going to do
?” I asked.

Allison answered for him. “I’m going to take you and Jenny with me in my Mustang. It will be a while before the cops link me to what happened at your house. In another hour it won’t matter.”

Jenny leaned forward so she could see Allison. “Why won’t it matter in another hour?”

“By then, we will be at the safe house and the guys will have disposed of this truck. We’re never going back to the places that the police think we live. Our cover is blown, we’re aba
ndoning these identities,” Allison
said.

Within five minutes of leaving my house, we pulled up in front of Allison house. The three of us got out and casually got into Allison
’s
Mustang. We were in a hurry, but didn’t want to appear to be. Jenny got into the backseat, while I sat in the front next to Allison.  She headed straight for Interstate twenty-seven and we headed north out of Lubbock.

We drove for about thirty minutes. Allison headed down the interstate for about ten minutes and then turned off. She headed down several country roads. It was dark and I had no idea where we were. I was pretty sure that we were somewhere Northeast of Lubbock, but I had no idea how far from town we were. We finally pulled into a long driveway with a good sized farm house at the end of it. Allison pulled the Mustang into the two car garage. I was a little surprised to see a blue Chevy Tahoe sitting in the other side of the garage.

I got out of the car and tried to get my bearings. “Whose SUV is this?”

Allison shrugged. “I guess you could say it’s all of ours for the moment. Jeff bought it about the same time as he got this house. They are both for this type of eventuality. Jeff is a big believer in exit strategies.”

“So this is your safe house?” Jenny asked.

“Yes, Jeff bought it under an assumed name. He came out and checked on it every once in a while. It’s fully stocked with food and weapons,” Allison said.

“Where exactly are we?” I asked.

“Right now we are about twenty two miles northeast of the city of Lubbock. We are in far north Lubbock County,” Allison said. “C’mon, let’s get inside the house and get settled in before the guys get back.”

Allison led us into the house, which had three bedrooms. It was decided that Jenny and I would share a bedroom, as would Dr. Greene and Jeff. Allison would sleep in the remaining bedroom. I would have suggested that Jeff and I share a bedroom but I already knew what he would say. Actually that was one the things that I really admired about
him, Jeff was a man of principle
. He was also turning out to be a man of action and violence. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him and Allison killing people without it seeming to bother them. I understood that they had saved my life. There had been no hesitation, no remorse. I didn’t understand how you could put a bullet through a man’s brain and then act like nothing had happened.

Jenny and I quickly realized that we didn’t have any other clothes but the ones we had on, and those had Jenny’s blood all over them. It turns out that Allison had a pretty complete wardrobe stashed away in one of the closets. She gave both us some sweats that we could wear until it was safe for someone to go shopping. Of course, I had to get the ridiculous looking black shoe polish off my face. Jenny helped me with that. It turned out to be quite a chore.

The two of us went to what was going to be our bedroom to change. Jenny and I had not been able to speak privately since I had jumped through the window. Now, it seemed like that one desperate act had changed everything. My head still hurt, my shoulder still hurt, and my lip was still bleeding off and on. I was really hoping that Jeff could fix that when he got here.

“So, can we talk?” Jenny asked.

“Sure
,
we can talk,” I replied.

“Does that mean you’ll tell me truth if I ask you a question?”

“Jenny, I think we are to a point where we both know these people aren’t normal and that we are in a peck of trouble.”

“Yeah, we pretty much left a bloody mess in our house.”

“So what is it you want to know?”

“Do you trust them?”

“Yeah, Jeff’s the one that saved Brenda in the hospital.”

“After what he did for my leg, I believe it. I can’t even tell I was shot. Give me the cliff notes version of their story.”

“Okay, they each have a special ability. Only Jeff can heal people. They are practically immortal. You can hurt them with a knife or gun, but it won’t kill them like it would a normal person. They have been here for a long time, maybe as long as two thousand years or so. I know, you don’t believe me.”

“I believe that you believe that. The truth is, that after what has happened tonight, I can’t say that any of that is false. Have you actually seen one of them get hurt?”

“The night that I spent the night at Allison’s house, I went over there because I had blood all over my clothes. I saw Allison get stabbed in the gut with a butcher knife, all the way to the handle. Five minutes later, she was completely healed. Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

Jenny was speechless.

Before Jenny had a chance to say anything else, I heard a vehicle pull up outside. It had to be Jeff and Dr. Greene. “Well, I guess it’s time for some answers, from everyone.”

Chapter Fourteen

We were all sitting around the dining room table. This appeared to be everyone’s new home. It seemed like everyone at the table had been keeping secrets from some of the other people at the table. I was no exception. Each of us was a liar in our own way. At least I felt better now. Once Jeff got home he simply touched with his glowi
ng hands and everything got better
. My head stop hurting, my shoulder felt normal, and my busted lip was good as new.

Jeff got things going. “I know that we all have our secrets. We all had good reasons for not being completely honest with each other. That time has passed. We face threats on two fronts. I think everyone would like to see everyone else’s cards, so to speak.”

“Then why don’t we start with you, Jeff?” Jenny asked.

Jeff nodded his head. “Does that mean that you are willing to accept that anything I tell you is the truth?”

“Until I have some pro
of
to the contrary, yes. I have seen enough tonight to know that whoever, or whatever you are, you’re not a normal human being,” Jenny said.

“Okay, fair enough,” Jeff said. “I was a Roman soldier that became a Christian in what we now know as A.D. 38. I was given immortality by God. The person that actually laid his hands on me is a man that the Bible refers to as Simon, the Canaanite. He was one of the original twelve apostles and apparently, he was the only apostle to show this ability to give immortality.”

I had so many questions. “So, you knew Jesus?”

Jeff smiled. “No, I didn’t. I knew of him and I did meet his mother, Mary, after Jesus had already left the earth.”

“Okay, before we get too far off track, I know you can heal people like you did me. What else can you do?” Jenny asked.

“Each
one of us have
a secondary ability. Mine is to heal people. Allison can plant suggestions in your head,” Jeff said.

I interrupted. “Like telling everyone in the living room at our house that someone should go check out the noise in my bedroom. And speaking of that, what happened to that guy anyway?”

Allison glanced over at me. “He’s dead.”

“What did you do to him, anyway? I mean we didn’t hear a thing. Of course, I was pretty much in and out of consciousness at that point,” Jenny said.

Allison sighed. “I broke his neck by snapping his head around. I didn’t enjoy it. They would have killed the two of you without giving it a second thought.”

I gulped. The girl who I thought of as a friend could kill a man with just her hands. Not just some regular guy either. The guy she killed was an actual gangster. She was one tough chick! “Allison, I know you did what you had to do. I mean they had already shot Jenny by that point. There was no way they were going to let either one of us live.”

“So what does Dr. Greene do?” Jenny asked.

“You know, I keep wondering that. Every time I want to ask, it seems like something else comes up,” I said.

Dr. Greene looked around the table. “I’m afraid my gift is rather boring, compared to Jeff and Allison. I have the gift of tongues. I can speak, read, and write any language. In fact, I have never even studied English. I just know that when I decide I want everyone to hear me in English, they do. When I want to write in English I can. I understand every word someone says, regardless of what language they are speaking in.”

“Actually, that’s quite amazing. So
,
that’s it? Can you do anything else?” Jenny asked.

“We do one other minor ability. We can appear to be slightly younger or older. We can also alter the color of our skin slightly. That’s why we all appear to be white, for the most part. It’s not actually the natural skin color for any of us,” Jeff said.

Jenny smiled. “So, when I thought you were a spook, I wasn’t wrong. You’re all big time spooks to have lived for this long, virtually undetected.”

“Actually, I have worked for the CIA, NSA, and few other covert organizations over the years. So, you were right, I’m
a
spook or a spy or whatever you want to call it,” Jeff said.

“I have one last question for you. What were the three of you doing in Lubbock to begin with?” Jenny asked.

“Look, as the years have gone by, we have tried to find reasons to continue our mission. Originally, we were supposed to insure that the Bible was put together properly. In the first century there was no collective book of works. There were just individual manuscripts. Some were real, some were fakes. In modern times, the Bible has been put together for quite some time. So, we have been telling ourselves that we still needed to be on guard against anyone changing the Bible. There were some professors here in Lubbock who wanted to reconsider some of the way the Bible was translated. They are working with other academic types across the country. We just wanted to keep an eye on them. Really, it’s much to do about nothing.”

“Okay, those are my cards. Now, it’s your turn Jenny. What’s really going on with Lisa?” Jeff asked.

“Well, Lisa came to us with some information about the Demarco family and she wanted immunity for her testimony. Don’t get me wrong, she had some pretty good stuff to say about them. But, the Justice Department wasn’t sure it was a slam dunk,” Jenny said.

What did they mean it wasn’t a slam dunk? “I gave them Tommy Demarco on a platter. They should have been able to put him away for at least twenty years.”

“Well, they wanted more and they believed that Lisa hadn’t given up everything she had. That’s the real reason there were so many people following her. We were looking for that evidence that we thought she had. It’s now my opinion that either Lisa doesn’t know where it is or doesn’t know she has it somehow,” Jenny said.

“What is this evidence that you keep talking about?” I asked.

Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “We don’t know exactly. The government has a low level agent inside the Demarco family. This agent says that the Demarco family is adamant that Lisa has this evidence. They didn’t tell the agent how she got it, who gave it to her, or exactly what it is. We just know that whatever it is, they are terrified of it getting out.”

“I really don’t know what they are talking about. No one gave me anything like that,” I said.

Jeff strummed his fingers on the table. “Well, do you have any theories about who would have given it to her? I mean if they ever did?”

“We only had two working theories. Either she got it from Tommy or she got it from her mother,” Jenny said.

I jumped up from the table. “How dare you try to bring my mother into this!”

“Lisa, it’s plausible. I mean she did do some work for the Demarco family,” Jenny said.

I really wanted to slap someone. “Whoever told you that is a liar. My mother was an accountant but she wouldn’t have anything to do with the Demarco family. If fact, she almost disowned me for even dating Tommy Demarco.”

Allison got up and walked over to me. “Hey, it’s okay. They just got it all wrong. Where’s your mom now?”