Society Rules (45 page)

Chapter 26

Cassandra alternated her stare between the road in front of her, and the rearview mirror, watching her little captives closely for any sign that they were going to begin sobbing or some other annoyingly audible sign that they were afraid. So far, they had been completely silent, only their faces conveying wide-eyed fear.

This was fine, as far as she was concerned. She just hoped they kept it that way. She briefly took note of the fact that the boy was clutching his sister’s hand tightly, and she would stare at him pointedly now and then.

Weird kids.

She was chain-smoking, on an exuberant high from the near-altercation and eventual victory over the old woman. The windows in her little car were up, save for the thin crack at the top of her driver’s side, to allow a small amount of cigarette smoke to pull its way through.

Cassandra enjoyed the feeling of the unreasonably hot March sun baking the entire left side of her body through the glass. She didn’t mind the heat, and always wondered cynically what the big deal was, with everyone bitching about the winters getting milder, and the summers getting hotter. These were good things, as far as she could tell. She enjoyed her mental picture of all of the old people down in Florida roasting to a crisp.
Vermont
could
just
become
the
place
to
be
, she smirked to herself.

She blew through the back roads leading her toward the interstate, wondering if she should call Baker now or wait until she reached a safe destination. She decided a little bragging was in order, about just how effectively she had done her part of the job, and that it didn’t need to wait until later. Cassandra pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed. It rang until it went to voice mail.

“What the hell, Baker!” She was disappointed. He should be expecting her call, shouldn’t he? What kind of unprofessionalism was this? She dialed again, with the same result. The phone was thrown into the passenger seat with exasperated flip of her wrist, and she pulled another cigarette from her pack.

She heard a small sigh from the back seat, and her eyes snapped back to the mirror.

“You got something to say, missy?” Cassidy hesitated, and then spoke in a quavering voice. “It’s just that the smoke is kind of choking us. Can you open your window a little more, please?”

“Aw, I’m sorry the smoke bothers you. Of course I’ll fix the window.” Cassandra pressed the automatic window button, and the small crack in the driver’s side window disappeared altogether.

“Is that better, honey?” Cassandra laughed hysterically at her own cleverness, and lit up. Jake’s eyes filled with silent tears, as Cassidy stroked his hair, fighting back tears of her own.

Naturally, Will’s kids would be all wimpy, Cassandra thought caustically, as she watched the scene through the rear view.

Probably never had a moment’s hardship in their lives. They looked like the kind of kids that had always been worshipped by their parents. Always to bed by eight, teeth brushed, bellies full of a nutritious supper, followed by a nice dessert of some kind. Typical spoiled upper-middle class snot noses. She had convinced herself that she was glad of her harsh upbringing.

Abandoned at age two, left in a bus station in Michigan, she had endured abuse at the hands of the first people who had found her. A couple of teenage boys had tormented her for hours before finally being discovered by the security officer. He had taken her to the police station and from there, it had turned into the nightmare of a series of foster homes, each seemingly worse than the last.

Cassandra had long ago stopped crying. She knew it didn’t help. No one ever came for you, and no one cared if you suffered. In her opinion, the world sucked, and the only recourse you had was to seek out your own pleasure and to hell with the rest. In fact, causing as much trouble and unhappiness for the others you met along the way, simply enhanced the journey. No one deserved happiness just handed over to them. You should have to work to make your own, and screw everyone else.

She was lucky enough to find herself an opportunity to join the police force, and took some classes to obtain the required Bachelor’s degree to land her first federal job. They required a B.S. in any subject. She chose philosophy, because, after all, can one actually fail philosophy when there
are
no wrong answers?

This would be, she’d decided, a philosophical conundrum.

At any rate, she passed, and worked her way up the ranks with a vicious diligence. She knew she could never have made a better career choice. What would she do without the official ability to provide government-sanctioned bullying to the masses?

She stole a look back again, as the two children tried to comfort one another, and sniffed disdainfully. In Cassandra’s warped and twisted mind, these kids represented everything that was wrong with the world, today.

Everyone had it too easy. A little suffering, or in her case, a lot of suffering, makes you stronger. Worrying about everyone else made you weak and vulnerable. If you care about anything or anyone, it can always be turned around and used against you.

Take kids, for instance.

If she herself ever found herself tied to a bed, pregnant and forced to give birth, (she shuddered at the horror), she was one hundred percent positive that she would be concerned only with Numero Uno, still. Let them take her kid, if she had one.

See if she cared.

She was glad that she had no such weaknesses.

But these children were treasured and valued, and such was the reason for the brilliance of Shawn’s plan. Both parents would move mountains to save their precious little offspring. No sacrifice by themselves would be too great, if it just saved the poor, poor children. The innocents.

Cassandra hated the term, and people used it all the time to describe children.

Please
. No one is innocent. Everyone is born guilty, and everyone should have to pay. She had. Now, she made it her business to share the experience with everyone she could.

After all, it was only fair.

She looked at the phone on the seat and snatched it up again. Patience was not one of Cassandra’s strengths. She dialed Baker’s number once more, received the same generic voice mail prompt, and decided that she would have to make do with a text message, and then wait for his response.

As she began typing into the phone with her thumb, while still speeding down the two-lane road, she heard the small sound of a child’s voice clearing.

“What now?” Cassandra snapped, irritably.

“You shouldn’t text while you’re driving. It’s not safe.” Cassidy spoke miserably—afraid, but obviously more afraid of the car careening off the side of the mountain. Cassandra stared at the child through the rear view, incredulous.

“Thanks for the public service announcement. I’ve never heard that one.” She then returned to her task, which was to send an alternately crowing, and irritated message to Shawn Baker.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

Cassandra had only enough time to make out a blinding white flash coming from the left-hand side, before she felt the impact that shoved the car off its course and into a deep ditch on the side of the road.

After a stunned silence, she looked around, unable to find the source of her near death experience from her nearly nose-deep position in the ditch.

Both children had already scrambled from the car, and were climbing up the steep bank that held the car prisoner.

“Don’t either one of you kids try to take off, you hear me?” Cassandra screeched from the front seat, finding that she was unable to open either of the front doors. She climbed deftly to the back seat, and out.

When her head reached the level of the road, she could see the culprit. A large, snow-white deer lay in the middle of the road, bleeding copiously from an obviously fatal wound. It was writhing in pain; its back leg twisted at an unnatural angle.

As she pulled herself up the embankment, she pointed at Cassidy who was standing by the road, looking at the deer.

“Not one word, kid, if you know what’s good for you, understand?” She turned her attention to Jake, who was now kneeling in the middle of the road next to the animal. His small hands were stroking the bleeding creature, which was obviously in the throes of death.

“Out of the way, boy!” Cassandra barked, and pulled her pistol from its holster. Jake gasped with terror, but stayed where he was.

“What are you
doing
?” cried Cassidy, horrified. Cassandra looked back at her impassively. “I’m putting that damn thing out of its misery. Besides, look what it did to my car!” Her fingers tightened on the handle of the pistol as she raised it and took aim.

“Stop!” screamed Cassidy. “Please don’t
kill
it!” Cassandra looked back and narrowed her eyes at the small girl standing on the side of the road, both hands covering her face.

Fine
, she decided.
Let
it
suffer
. Its movements were slowing and it would probably be dead in a minute or two anyway.

Yeah. It deserved to suffer for hurting her beloved vehicle.

“Whatever, kid. Who cares? If you want it to suffer, far be it from me to deny you the pleasure of watching!” She shrugged, and turned her back on the deer. She had bigger problems right now, because her car was most definitely stuck, whether or not the impact had caused a lot of damage.

“And you, kid. Get away from that damned deer!” She turned to yell back at the boy. “Don’t you know enough not to sit in the middle of the freakin’ . . .” The rest of what Cassandra had to say trailed off to nothing. The deer was no longer in the road, and was just disappearing into the woods.

Jake was still crouched in the road, next to a huge puddle of the animal’s blood.

There was no way that deer had been able to get up. Its leg had been nearly severed by the impact, and yet, there it was, now bounding through the trees. She lowered her eyes back down to the boy, who was watching the deer run away with a small smile on his face.

Her own face become stone cold.

“You two, over to this log, NOW!” She spoke in a whisper, but sounded all the more malicious in her lowered tone. The children obeyed, and she stared at them with new interest. “Do not move, do you understand me?” The children nodded in unison.

Cassandra made her way back down and retrieved her cell phone, to attempt once more to reach Baker. No answer.

She pondered the circumstances for a moment. There was no one else she could call. She sat down on a large rock jutting out from the side of the woods, very close to the children, and proceeded to send a text message to Shawn, with a slightly different tone.

He needed to call her at once.

Cassandra crossed her arms and prepared to wait. Baker was going to feel the wrath when she did reach him. She looked over at the kids once more as they huddled together on the fallen tree, and repeated her warning.

“Not one word, and do not move so much as an inch. Got it?”

The children nodded their heads once more, and clung to one another.

The sun burned brightly, high in the midmorning sky.

Chapter 27

Shawn Baker was much too preoccupied at the moment, to notice his cell phone vibrating madly in his coat pocket. His mind began clearing in seconds, even as he felt himself dragged violently to a standing position. Will’s fists were clutching the front of Shawn’s shirt and jacket in a painfully tight grip.

It seemed just a little obvious that William had become aware of the plot in progress, and that Lockhart had taken his children, but more than that, Will could not possibly know.

Shawn himself didn’t know much more than this.

In the span of a millisecond, Shawn’s mind began to race. He wanted to stall Will for as long as possible, to allow Lockhart to get to her destination unencumbered. Taking a deep breath, he decided on his tactic.

It required him to swallow down his fury that Will had deliberately wrecked his car. It would also require him to feel a little pain, which he was not looking forward to, but hey, he could take one for the team if he had to.

Go
team
Baker
and
Lockhart
, he thought, wearily.

Here
we
go
. Shawn stifled a sigh, and then carefully relaxed his facial features into a well-contrived look of innocent confusion.

“What the hell, Taylor? Why did you smash up my car, dude?” Will swung Shawn around, and into the side of the bent Nissan.

“I asked you a question, Baker. Where are my kids?”

“Hey, I don’t know
what
you’re talking . . .”

The rest of Shawn’s sentence was lost, as Will’s fist connected with the left side of Shawn’s face with a force that snapped his head back onto the roof of the car.

“Jesus, man, not so hard! You nearly broke my neck!” He continued his maddening game of passive evasion.

Will, still gripping Baker tightly, dropped his head and closed his eyes. He breathed out slowly as he recognized the tool that Baker was implementing. He was very good at it too, he knew, having seen him put it in action many times.

It was used to either infuriate a person into blurting out details that he might not want to reveal, or to stall action for whatever purpose, and to put your adversary on the defensive by mocking and provoking. It was very effective, and usually caused the person on the receiving end of this treatment to completely lose all reason as their fury is stoked.

The trouble was, Will wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t accidentally kill Baker if he didn’t tell him what was happening with his children, and very quickly.

“Baker, I take the safety of my kids somewhat seriously. Are you sure you want to go down this path with me?”

“Honestly, Taylor, I
don’t
know where your kids are.” Shawn struggled to sit up, still pinned to the hood of his car by a coldly furious Will.

A young man wearing a bulging backpack and filthy clothing appeared suddenly from the dense woods, momentarily distracting both men. “Um, everything okay here?” the hiker asked nervously, looking back and forth between Will and Shawn. He was definitely concerned, but the modern-day fear of getting involved in something he shouldn’t was clearly etched upon his face.

“Yeah we’re fine.” Shawn spoke up first. “Do you mind? We’re kind of having an intimate moment, here!”

The young man seemed confused, and then shook his head, looking at Will for confirmation.

“It’s okay, man. Just a little disagreement between friends. Nothing to worry about.”

With one last uncertain glance, the hiker plodded back into the woods on the other side of the road. After a moment of hesitation to make sure the backpacker was out of earshot, Will swung Shawn around again, and gave him a violent shake.

“Start talking, Baker, God Damn it! I want to know what you and your psycho-bitch girlfriend are plotting, using my children!”

“Ok, first, let me run the disclaimer that Lockhart is
not
my girlfriend. I just enlisted her help so that we can catch your wife’s boyfriend. That’s what you wanted,
right
?” Shawn was wide-eyed and innocent.

“So help me God, Baker, I am going to blow your brains out, right here and now, if you don’t tell me the truth!” Will hissed through clenched teeth.

Shawn wrenched himself free with a quick backwards motion, and stepped a safe distance away before answering. “Now, you wouldn’t want to go and do that, old buddy, would you? How would you ever find out what’s going on that way!” His voice was mocking, now.

Will lunged forward, driving Shawn backwards against an old sugar maple tree, knocking loose a bucket someone had secured to its side, and began battering him with blows to the face.

Baker responded with a kick to the gut, knocking the wind out of Will for an instant. Will leaned forward, hands on his knees as he struggled to recover his breath.

Shawn laughed.

“Sucks gettin’ old, doesn’t it bro’? Kinda hard to keep up, sometimes!”

His eyes widened as his legs were briskly knocked from beneath him and he went over backwards, landing hard on his back. Will stood over him.

“Yeah, it can suck at times.”

He reached down and snatched Baker’s weapon from its custom shoulder holster. “But that’s ok. I’m glad I’m not still a stupid kid who thinks he’s invincible. The trouble with punks like you is that you think you have the world by the tail. Maybe you do, but you don’t realize that things with tails also have teeth, and it can turn around in an instant and bite you in the ass. It takes a little growing up to figure that out, I suppose.”

“Aw, hell Taylor, I feel less cool just hearing you say that!” Shawn eyed his precious gun worriedly, as Will tucked it into his waistband. A sharp kick brought his attention back to the issue at hand.

“Where are my kids?”

Shawn hesitated, wondering if he had given Cassandra enough leeway. This brought about several more sharp blows, courtesy of Will’s Desert Storm boots. “Once again, what is happening with my kids?” He delivered another nicely aimed kick to Baker’s ribs as he repeated the question.

“Well, maybe when you’re through kicking my ass, we can talk like mature adults, huh?” Shawn gasped. “Isn’t that what you old folks like to do? Maybe we can reach some kind of common ground.”

Baker held up his hand as he said this, as if requesting assistance in sitting up.

Will frowned, and stepped back. Yeah, right.
Sure
he was going to give him his hand. He was pretty damn positive the guy could sit up on his own, and was immediately proven correct, as Shawn abruptly sat up, resting his arms on his now crossed legs.

Will was amazed; aside from his crumpled and muddy clothes, Baker showed no sign of having participated in any kind of physical confrontation, with the exception of the rapidly swelling area under his left eye, which he noted with satisfaction.

“Ok,” he spoke gruffly. “Start talking!”

“Well, ok, how about we start with you thanking me!” Shawn spit out at him.

“
Thanking
you? Are you
kidding
me, fool? I trusted you and you double crossed me!”

“Oh, really, Taylor? You trusted me? No, you lied from the start. I am
saving
your ass. How about the fact that you are required by your job description as the task force leader, to report, and or capture these Society Members? You did neither. You just wanted
ME
to catch your wife’s boyfriend for you! How do you think the bosses would feel finding out that their golden boy has been harboring one of them right in his own house, for what is it, ten years or so?”

Will’s stomach contracted. Yep, Baker had figured it out all right.

“I didn’t know about Indie. Not until that day that I showed you the tapes. Not until I realized what the other guy was.”

Shawn’s sarcasm was thick. “Oh sure, dude. They’ll believe that, no problem. Their most skilled profiler had no idea he was married to an alien, living in the same house with her for all those years!”

“But it’s true!” Will was fierce, but confused himself at how this had escaped him. “I can’t explain that myself, but it’s a fact.”

“Not even during your most intimate moments?” Shawn was working the provocation angle thoroughly. “You noticed nothing, even while you were busy fathering children with a Martian? Or maybe she’s from Venus. She
is
kind of hot!”

With a howl of rage, Will hurled himself at the seated man, flattening him, and spoke inches from Baker’s face.

“She isn’t an
alien
, God damn it!”

“No? Then what is she, Taylor? Do you even know? Or maybe you don’t care. Maybe you knew all along, and things were great, but apparently, you couldn’t keep your little woman satisfied, so she hooked up with one of her own kind. Maybe they have some kind of special freaky outer-space sex, huh?”

“Shut your mouth, you little shit!” Will was reaching the breaking point. He consciously pushed back against his natural instinct to react to Baker’s intentional baiting.

“She was gonna run away and leave you, wasn’t she? And you got your feelings all hurt, so you got drunk, and decided to call up your partner, hoping I would do your job for you! Only you thought you were so clever, and could keep your wife’s status from me, but guess what Taylor, I noticed right away!”

Will cringed as he thought about the fact that he had been so stupid, as well as again trying to absorb the idea that he had blithely lived in the same house as one of the beings that he was well trained to recognize, without ever having the slightest idea. He couldn’t begin to fathom how this could be.

Baker was right. No one would believe that for a minute.

Shawn used this opportunity to wrench himself from beneath Will, and again move a good distance away. “You’re lucky I don’t have you arrested as a traitor. You totally blew off the security of your country, and over a woman! How classic.”

Will narrowed his eyes at him.

“Maybe you’re right, Baker. But I swear to you, I didn’t know, and when I found out, sure, I was stunned; but I loved her. I still love her, and I don’t want her hurt.

“But
you
!” Will growled now. “Don’t you know there’s an extra-special, dark corner in Hell for people who fuck with
children
!”

Shawn barked a laugh. “Oh yeah?
Well,
follow
me
down,
buddy!
How many people have
you
terrorized with the threat of violence towards their kids? Are you immune to this rule, partner?” He kicked at the pile of leaves at his feet in disgust. “Maybe we can carpool to Hades.”

Will shook his head desperately. “But I would never . . . .” He was having a very hard time not gagging at the memories. His voice tightened and dropped. “I would never,
ever
have done it!”

“Oh. So I guess that makes it okay. Except for the fact that the subjects definitely believed that you would.” Shawn crossed his arms and stared coldly at Will, who suddenly wasn’t looking so well.

“Baker . . . .” Will could barely breathe from the weight of his guilt.

And his fear.

“I just want to take my kids and go home. And I want Indie to go her own way, and have the happiness she deserves. She is not evil, and definitely not a threat to anyone!”

Shawn shook his head in disbelief. He really couldn’t understand, because he had never had very deep feelings for anyone in particular, and felt sure that he would always put his duty first.

As he stared down at Will for a moment, another realization hit him. Will truly
was
clueless. Yet, Shawn
knew
that Will was one of the most observant, clever people he knew.

It was simply incongruous.

“You really
don’t
know, do you?” Shawn’s voice was soft . . . thoughtful.

“Don’t know
what
, Baker? Please, are we through wasting time here? I
need
my kids, man. Tell me they’re not in danger from that . . .” Shawn came forward and knelt down in front of Will.

“Dude, did you even
live
in the same house as your family, or what? You truly have no idea, do you? I’m thinking that even if anyone in the agency believes that you didn’t intentionally harbor these fugitives in your home, you’d probably be fired at the very least, for being the most stupid and unobservant guy to walk the planet!”

“
Fugitives
? What the hell are you talking about, Baker? I sure as hell never let that Jackson person in my house. I’d never even seen him in person before . . .”