Rapture Falls (2 page)

             
Two men
and a woman
exited the car as Gerald came into
view;
they
stood
rock still exuding an icy calm
demeanor
. T
hey wore identical dark suits with matching navy
overcoats;
none
of the
figures
spoke as they carefully observed the approaching man.
The
woman
assumed the
front;
she tilted her
head
at
an almost
imperceptible
angle
, giving the narrowest of move
ment to her left. The man to her
left felt the inclination and casually unbuttoned his coat and slipped his hand smoothly
inside;
he held it there and wa
ited.
At this point she
took two paces backward and opened the Fiesta passenger
door;
the interior light cast its warmth into the cold night pushing back the dark tunnels sh
adows illuminating the
m
. All of these movements were committed without a word being spoken or a look thrown, communication was intuitive and instant.

             
Gerald had now reached the figures
, his heart was pounding hard, threatening to burst through his ribcage and shower the pavement in a crimson tide. He knew that the second he spoke, his voice would betray his fear and put him in
danger;
he had to contain his emotions for the sake of everything
that he was and hoped to become. The small package nestled in his inside pocket was straining now to be freed, his entire future was now achingly close and dangerously near. The
wom
an in blue stepped forward and suddenly it was all too much for Gerald, he sank to his knees and shuddered before the
wo
man, the
fervor
poured through him and he sobbed before his destiny. The
woman
placed a large smooth hand on the kneeling man
’
s
head;
her
cool touch soothed
the burning brow beneath h
er
.
Her
acc
ent was clipped and strange, her
voice radiated through the man’s head, warming and comforting as it flowed
through
his ears.

“Peace, my son”, the wo
man whispered.

The man stepped around
to
the
rear of
Gerald’s weeping form, carefully avoiding even the briefest of touches,
his distain for the man was palpable, he steeled himself for the action, determined to make the contact as concise as possible. He drew the small
bejeweled
handled knife from his coat in one swift movement, the blade slid
across the man’s throat severing his
Carotid Artery in
a smooth and
rapid motion.

Gerald’s realization was slow to dawn, one minute he was raised and filled with a blinding white radiance that filled his soul and the
next
he was drifting downwards
,
spiraling
into darkness. He was struggling to breathe, his throat was wet and drowning
,
his lungs
filled and flooded, he sank to the floor.
He tried to speak but his voice no l
onger worked and merely rasped, spluttering
a fine r
ed mist into the cold air.

             
The wo
man knelt beside the dying man,
she closed her
eyes briefly and
a small smile etched across her lips, it hung on her
face looking unnatural and out of place.
She opened her
eyes and reached inside the dead man’s
coat, her
fingers
touched the
envelope
, her
hand jerked at the electric contact
as she found the prize. The power surged up her
arm as
s
he pulled the item encased in tedious bro
wn paper out into the night, her companions stood over her
, their faces showing a complica
ted attempt at excitement. The wo
man stood,
she cast his eyes once to her left
at the ma
n on her
shoulder, the communication was clear, the search was
almost over.

INTRODUCTIONS

“D
o not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.

I did not co
me to bring peace, but a sword.”

Matthew 10:34

The
car boot was dark,
claustrophobic
and stank to high
heaven;
every time the car went over the smallest of potholes or bumps
found on the Cardiff streets,
the impact jarred the trapped
occupant’s
broken arm. The man was around six foot one fourteen stone and curled into the small dank
space;
a difficult and
awkward
search had already confirmed that there were no items of any usefulness to be found.

Baine
retreated into his mind in an attempt to separate the pain from his arm, as the broken bone ends jarred and scrapped together with every
involuntary
movement. He recounted the events that had led to his incarceration, there were three men sitting in blissful comfort amongst the cars plush seating. All three were large and heavy set with faces that told a hard tale through scars and imperfections
stemming
from
badly healing dangerous wounds. They had approached him in
a
manner denoting some competence
,
but without displaying any formal training, thugs not soldiers, they were obviously under orders for retrieval not elimination. He knew where they were all now heading
,
and he knew who wo
uld be waiting
for him
at the other end, undoubtedly eager to meet him
, but unlikely to be extending any
h
and of friendship.

             
Jon
Sinclair was a
villain,
and
not
the kind that you would see on a weekly basis
being
portrayed on any soap opera, th
e stereotype with a dark suit and a cockney swagge
r, the product of a middle aged,
middle class writer without
so
much
as a toe dipped in
to
real life. Trouble was,
that this actually was real life,
where
the blood is dark and warm and the only person calling
“Cut”
does so in the blinding reflection of a sharp blade
. Sinclair’s medium sized Cardiff empire incorporated the foundations of the
enviable
drug trade on which the business was built, a small protection racket, a very profitable money lending
arm which will always find a home in cities with a poor underclass and various other schemes of varying degrees of illegality. Most recently, as a lot of criminals seem to gravitate toward, Sinclair had begun to find that the legitimate arms of his income were beginning to bear far more fruits than the illegal ones; his branches into the property market had made him more money in the last five years than everything else combined. The regeneration of the Cardiff Bay area had
made
his squalid low rent houses
incredibly valuable
as the Welsh Assembly began pumping millions of the
taxpayer’s
money into the regeneration project. Sinclair began selling the falling down rat invested buildings at an unbelievable profit to the very authorities who had been for many years ineffectually attempting to put him behind bars.