Wounded Animals (Whistleblower Series Book 1) (8 page)

Despite the panting, I made myself press on. Took me another ten minutes to get back down to the car, and I jumped in, and stole someone’s vehicle for the first time in my life.

I had no answers, but plenty of new questions.

I raced back through Eldorado Springs and along I-70 to the police station in Denver, and when I got out, I debated whether I should go in and report all of this to Detective Shelton. The whole story seemed so unbelievable, where would I even begin?

Then a terrible thought occurred to me: what if, instead of them bugging my phone, Shelton had told these people that I was coming. That was just as likely as them listening in on my phone calls. Maybe that
good
comment back at my house was a reference to the fact that I didn’t say I knew the dead trainee. Maybe that was a test, to prove I could keep my mouth shut.

No way could I trust the detective. My best option would be to get home and regroup.

I hopped in my car and hit the highway. Turns out I missed the lunch rush traffic, so that was a small bonus amid all this chaos. Couldn’t believe these kinds of thoughts were even occurring to me at a time like this.

I pulled into my neighborhood as a light snow began to fall. I had to slow down going down the street, resisting the urge to floor it. Panic and confusion motivated me above all other forces.

Then when I could see my house, my jaw dropped. My wife’s car was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I stumbled out of the car and into the house.

“Grace!”

My lungs felt raw and used. I could barely breathe. Don’t know why I expected to find her inside, especially now that her car was gone. Maybe I was clinging to change as something that could contain some hope, but that was about as likely as getting the house key in the door on the first try after a drunken evening out. Hope had deserted me, or at least that’s what the evidence suggested.

In reply to my house-wide yelling, nothing but the gentle hum of the fridge came back. Silence, and then the padding of tiny cat feet down the stairs, and the vicious glare of a cat that I’d forgotten to feed that morning before I ran out to confront my wife’s boss for seemingly no good reason.

“Aw, shit, Kitty, I’m so sorry. It’s been a really long day and it just slipped my mind.”

My eyes misted as I opened the fridge and pulled out the aluminum foil-wrapped can of cat food. Went to the cupboard to get a bowl, then mixed a little water into the food and set it out for her. The mechanical movements calmed me a little, and I had prevented a round of tears, at least.

Then as I bent to put the cat food back in the fridge, I felt the injury on my back. A searing burn just above my tailbone, like a massive paper cut.

I lumbered upstairs into the bathroom to check it. Dead Paul’s burgundy blood had dried in splotches along the wall. They had cleaned most of it but left me some as a reminder that I had a part to play in this too. Or maybe I was acting paranoid by suspecting the hazmat cleanup crew of trying to teach me a sick lesson.

Maybe not, though, because everyone else seemed to be against me.

I unbuttoned my shirt and felt my skin tear. The blood had clotted and glued the shirt to my skin like a second layer. When I pulled it free, I twisted to catch the sight of a six-inch gash across my lower back, like a crooked smile. A semi-circle of angry red skin surrounded the wound. Possibly infected.

Apply hydrogen peroxide. Bandage. Tape. Again, the movement of something ordinary brought me a small measure of peace. I found some antibiotics left over from the last time Grace had been sick, took one and shoved the bottle into my pocket. I might forget to take them if I didn’t keep them on me.

There was a knock at the door, and I sauntered down the stairs, feeling a little woozy after the wound cleaning ritual.

Alan was peering through the window into the living room, so I unlocked the front door and let him in.

“Hey neighbor,” he said. Gripping a bag of potato chips in one hand, with glazed eyes. Stoned. “Were you yelling just now? I may be crazy, but I could have sworn I heard you cutting loose over here and I wanted to make sure you were cool.”

“You’re working from home today, right?” It was a safe guess based on the potato chips and the bathrobe hanging on his frame.

“Sure, if you can call it working. They give me way too much freedom.”

“So you’ve been home all day.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, what’s on your mind?”

“Did you see Grace come home at some point today and take her car? Or maybe not her, maybe someone else came and took it?”

He turned to look at my driveway as if he had to verify that her car wasn’t there. “Sorry, I haven’t seen anything today. I’ve mostly been working on my train sets in the garage. Music on, you know, zoning out and putting the rest of the world on mute.”

I nodded. Of course, Alan had missed Grace coming home. Whenever any of our neighbors had public fights or something else strange happened, he was the first to text me with the newest neighborhood gossip. But with the one thing I needed him to pay attention to, he was totally oblivious and zero help.

“Hey, what was up with all those cops out here last night? They weren’t at your house, were they?”

I gestured him back onto the porch and swung the door shut. “We’ll talk about it later. See you,” I said as it closed.

Maybe she hadn’t been kidnapped at all. When I’d questioned Thomason and the driver about it, he’d seemed genuine when he had no idea where she was. As strange as it seemed, maybe her disappearing had nothing to do with my kidnapping or the dead trainee.

Maybe she ran away. Maybe she had left earlier in some kind of rush, and then come to her senses and realized she needed the car. If she’d intended to leave me for some hidden reason, doing so while I was out of town would be the perfect time.

That would explain a lot. Maybe the fact that Grace was gone and a dead man had appeared in the bathroom at the same time truly was a coincidence, as implausible as that seemed.

I grunted my way back up the stairs and checked in her closet for her suitcases. Still there. That didn’t mean she hadn’t run, but it would be strange for her to go somewhere without the suitcases, wouldn’t it?

I called her, didn’t leave a voicemail. Sent her a text.

Whatever it is, we can talk about it.

I didn’t expect a reply, and nothing came back during the next two minutes as I stared at my phone. I waited for the little checkmark to indicate that she’d read the text message, but it didn’t materialize.

I had been gone for only three hours or so. If she’d decided to leave, maybe for the airport to fly to Michigan to see her parents, there was still a chance I could catch her before she boarded a plane.

I grabbed my keys and checked to make sure I still had Grace’s spare key, dry-swallowed another antibiotic pill, then jumped in my car.

***

The Denver International airport, so far from the city of Denver they might as well call it the Eastern Colorado Airport, appeared like white needles piercing the sky in the distance as I turned onto Peña Boulevard. The needles were from the massive lighted cloth towers on top, which I assumed were supposed to look like mountains.

As I neared the airport, I tried not to look at the horrendous statue of the electric blue horse with its glowing red eyes and hanging dong. The piece of “art” had always unnerved me, but I didn’t need that extra stress today. I threw up a hand to block it from my view as I passed, then I breathed a sigh of relief once it was in my rearview.

Parking lots. I could choose between the east parking lot or west, and then choose between the economy lot and the garage in each. Grace would never park in the garage, as it cost twice as much. When I traveled for work, I always parked in the garage, because as long as they were paying, I appreciated the five minutes of time savings to get to the terminal. Life is better on someone else’s dime.

So that left the economy lots, either east or west. I had a gut feeling I might find her car in the east one since Frontier was on that side, and she usually flew Frontier back to Michigan. I had to acknowledge that I was making a huge number of assumptions, most of them based on whims that passed through my head like wisps of cat hair in the breeze. But I had to start somewhere.

So I pulled into the east economy lot, took my ticket at the gate, then found a place to park, near the middle outer section. The lot was always close to full. A flashing sign near the road through the lot blinked that sections 1 and 2 were full, and section 3 was near capacity.

Out of the car, I surveyed the vast east parking lot before me. The prospect of searching all these cars seemed almost too daunting. Three major sections, with rows A through Z in each. I was currently in section 2 row F, so I made my way outward to section 3 row A, pressing the lock button on Grace’s key every few seconds, hoping I would hear that familiar
chirp-chirp
of her Subaru’s lock mechanism.

Section 2, rows F back to A gave me no joy. I worked my way back toward section 1, thinking I needed a better game plan to tackle this massive lot.

Clicking the remote. No sound. People around me, pulling rolling bags and carrying small children crabby and crying from travel. Businessmen squawking on Bluetooth devices, loosening their ties and clacking their wing-tipped shoes against the parking lot surface.

A woman with a baby in some kind of sling around her belly started walking toward me. “Having trouble? I always get lost whenever I come here.”

She stopped a few feet short of me, big worry on her face. Her baby pivoted in its sling, then looked up at me with wide brown eyes and a toothless grin on its little face.

The woman stroked her baby’s thin hair as it cooed at me. “He likes you,” she said.

I spread out a flat smile, unsure what to do next. Was I supposed to thank her, or ask to hold it, or say nothing? I was going to have one of these little creatures myself in less than three months, but I realized then that I hadn’t actually held one since my cousin had his kid, and that was almost a decade before.

I stared at the baby, mesmerized. How alien these little humans looked. Like furless cats, only helpless and entirely dependent on other humans for survival. The infant shoved a hand in his tiny mouth and started sucking away at his fingers, a few strings of drool dribbling down his fat little chin.

The woman shifted her weight away from me. “Well, good luck finding your car.”

“Yeah, thank you,” I said, feeling like a creepy uncle.

She disappeared between a truck and a smart car, and I went back to pressing the remote button and wandering up and down the rows of cars.

By the time I’d returned to section 1 near the terminal, I had exhausted my optimism. I hadn’t pressed the button for a full minute, so I gave it one last try. Nothing.

I sat down, head in my hands. Seemed like it was time to admit defeat, but what was I supposed to do next? Where the hell was my wife?

“No way,” said a nearby familiar voice. “Is that you, Mr. Candle?”

I squinted, the fading sun reflecting off a car window to obscure my vision. All I could see was the outline of a man. I held up my hand to block out the glare, then the figure in front of me came into focus. Darren, my bushy-eyebrowed trainee, the one that Kareem Haddadi had probably warned me about. The destroyer of worlds.

“Of all the luck,” he said, a big grin on his face. “I’d say it’s a small world, but that doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“Darren?”

I’d last seen him the day before in Dallas, and now here he was, in Denver, standing before me in khakis and a pea coat, white earbuds dangling from his ears, dragging a rolling bag behind him. Maybe I should have been more surprised, but with all the crazy stuff going on over the last few days, I barely registered an increase in my heartbeat.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

He frowned, which made his eyebrows join together to form a massive structure across his forehead. He bent to one knee and took the earbuds out. “You don’t look so good, Mr. Candle. Are you okay?”

I felt my face pull down again. “No, Darren, I’ve had a rough couple of days. I’m pretty far from okay, to tell you the truth.”

He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. The empathy in his look had made me forget for a moment how much this kid creeped me out. When he touched me, it all came back.

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said. “I don’t always understand the universe’s plan, either.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked again.

“I just got off an airplane.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. “Okay, fair enough, but what are you doing in Denver?”

“Oh, I see. I have a meeting with one of your TSE’s tomorrow morning. They’re considering me for a Technical Account Manager position already. Can you believe that? I just finished Design training yesterday, and they’re already talking about moving me to another team. I just hope I don’t screw up the interview.”

No surprises there. The kid had corporate climber written all over him. Despite his humility, I’m sure he knew they’d smelled it on him during his initial interview. Still, it was strange that they would send him out here because there were TSE’s in the Dallas office too.

Difficult to believe that any of this was a fortunate accident. There had been too many of them this week.

“Maybe this isn’t the best time, seeing as how you’re having such a bad day, but I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated the training you gave us on the software. You’re excellent at what you do, Mr. Candle.”

His words barely registered, but the ‘mister’ still irked me. “Candle, please. Call me Candle.”

“Right, I forgot you told me that already. Well, I have to catch up with the shuttle and get my rental car and all that, but, before I forget, there’s just one more thing.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a card. “I was going to come find you at the Denver office and give this to you, but I’ll just do it now. Wyatt wanted me to make sure you had a copy of his business card. You know, in case you change your mind about the offer. He said it would be terrible to let you go, what with all the great things you’ve done for the company.”