Angels Mark (The Serena Wilcox Mysteries Dystopian Thriller Trilogy) Read online

  The kids immediately voted for the Cities, and Serena had no objection. They set off down their long gravel driveway. The kids plugged in their iPods while Tom and Serena chatted. The forty-five mile road trip was comfortable, even though the skies weren’t any cheerier than they’d been earlier in the day.

  About half an hour into the trip, Tom interrupted Serena’s passenger-side conversation with him mid-sentence. “I think we’re being followed.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I know you haven’t been Serena Wilcox, private detective, for over a decade, but haven’t you noticed?” Tom glanced at the rearview mirror.

  “No? You really think someone is following us?”

  “Yeah. He was on our road. I figured he’d be turning off eventually, but he’s still with us and we’re already in Apple Valley.”

  “What are the odds someone would be on our road and still behind us? You must be right. Maybe someone saw us on those YouTube videos and recognized us. I knew we shouldn’t have put those up there.” Serena looked in the side-view mirror, wondering which car was tailing them.

  “Why would anyone care about us?”

  “I don’t know. Following up on the arson? Which car is following us? The SUV right behind us?”

  “No, he’s three cars back now. I don’t think it’s about the arson. Could be someone we know?”

  “Here in Minnesota? I don’t think so. Everyone we’ve met here knows us as the Meadows. Besides, why would they follow us all the way to Apple Valley without signaling to us in some way?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  The kids by now had taken interest in what their parents were talking about and all three were eavesdropping. Serena turned around in her seat to face them. “It’ll be okay, don’t worry.” She looked at Tom and said, “Pull over in the next populated parking lot you see, pick a restaurant.”

  Tom came up on a restaurant quickly, as they were in the heart of Apple Valley. He parked the van in the first parking spot available. “What now?”

  “Just wait. He’ll come to the van.”

  A “gecko green” metallic VW beetle pulled into the parking lot and parked one space over.

  “Is that him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How could I have missed that?” Serena laughed.

  “Because you’re you.”

  The driver of the VW unfolded himself from the tiny car quickly and easily, with the agility of a teenager. He strode purposely over to the mini-van.

  “But I never forget a face. I know that guy,” Serena said quietly.

  The young man approached the driver’s side of the van and stood patiently waiting for Tom to open the window. Tom glanced at Serena.

  “I’ll explain later, go ahead and open the window,” she said.

  Tom pressed the button to let down the driver’s side window, the only window control that was still operational on the mini-van. He looked expectantly at the blonde twenty-something man who was smiling at him.

  “Hey, Tom, isn’t it?” he began.

  “I’m sorry, you are?”

  “Otto. You probably noticed me following you back there.”

  “Yes. Your car stands out.”

  Otto grinned wider, looking like he’d been crowned Homecoming King. “Can we talk? Want to go in?” He nodded toward the Broadway Pizza entrance.

  Tom looked at Serena, who nodded. “Sure,” he said.

  Otto didn’t wait, but headed straight for the door. Tom closed the window and said, “How do you know him? Who is he?”

  “Well, he’s not Otto. He’s Bryce. Or maybe he was lying the first time around. Or maybe he’s not Bryce or Otto.”

  “You’re sure you’ve seen this guy before?”

  “Yes, sure. He was my server at the restaurant the night I was driving back from the fire. So maybe this is about the arson. Should we just go? Keep on driving and not come back?”

  “No, let’s hear what he has to say. He can find us again if we run.”

  “He doesn’t look like somebody to be afraid of. We better go in, he’ll wonder what’s taking us so long.”

  The Bridge-Meadows family joined Bryce-Otto in the empty reception area of Broadway Pizza. After a few pleasantries were exchanged with the hostess, the group was seated. Serena initiated conversation as soon as the hostess left them alone.

  “I recognize you, from about a year ago. You were at a Perkins, not too far from here. It was near Christmas. You were wearing a name tag that said Bryce, you were my server.” Serena said this calmly, as smoothly as if she was talking about the weather.

  Bryce-Otto looked surprised, but quickly recovered. “I didn’t expect you to remember me. Yes, I was waiting tables there.”

  Tom said, “Why were you following us?”

  “I was watching you before you torched your own house. Why did you do that, by the way?”

  Tom and Serena didn’t bother to disguise their horror. They didn’t know what to say. What could they say?

  Bryce-Otto laughed and clapped Tom on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. I’m not after you or anything.”

  “What is this about?” Serena asked. She looked at her three kids- all three were noticeably frightened. None of them had spoken a word since they overheard that someone was following them.

  “How did you know something was about to happen? We assume you faked your death because you thought someone would come after you? Why did you think that? What did you know, and how did you know it?” Otto-Bryce was suddenly serious now; his Homecoming King vibe had disappeared. In its place was an expression that transformed his features into a person who seemed both cunning and powerful.

  “Who are you, really?” Serena asked.

  “I work for someone important, let’s leave it at that. Now, you obviously feel nervous right about now. You know- that I know- that you lit your house on fire and skipped out, created a new identity for yourselves and are hiding under Paul’s mega-church, which is a fraud, by the way. He’s a con man.”

  “We thought so,” Tom said.

  “They helped us hide. We haven’t been to any of their meetings since that first month,” Serena said defensively.

  “We want you to go back.”

  “To the meetings?” asked Tom.

  “Yes. We’re watching Paul and his fugly brother Clyde. We need eyes and ears on him.” Bryce-Otto halted his interrogation while their server took down their order. Serena ordered a deep dish Chicago style pizza, planning to eat very little of it. The last thing her stomach needed right now was pizza.

  After the server had left, Bryce-Otto continued, “Let’s go back to what you were doing when you torched your house. I was watching you then, you’d triggered off a few alarm bells in my organization.”

  “What organization is that?” asked Tom, knowing he was unlikely to get an honest answer.

  “I’m not at liberty to say. But we were watching, looking for anyone showing signs of prior knowledge of the bombings. And you obviously knew something.”

  “And so did you. You couldn’t do anything to stop it?” Serena countered.

  “You didn’t report anything. You lit your house on fire and ran.” Bryce-Otto squinted up his eyes and fixed them into a stare that was intended to intimidate Serena, but failed to do so.

  “What could I say that anyone would believe? I was watching the news; I had a really bad feeling. I had a vivid nightmare that I felt was prophetic, but I’m no psychic, at least not proven to be. I had a couple dreams that relatives died, and then they did, but, they were sick at the time so it was kind of a logical conclusion. I dreamed that the United States was going to be hit with nuclear bombs, and I believed the dream was real. We took a leap of faith that my dream was a real warning, and we did what we could to keep our family safe.”

  “And your husband went along with this? You burned down your own house based on a dream? And safe from what? You were already in a safe area of the country. Why move? Why
hide?” Bryce-Otto shook his head. “I don’t believe you. You knew something. What did you know, and how did you know it?”

  “Safe from the government,” said Tom.

  “I had a bad feeling that the government was going to fall apart after the nuclear bombings, and that we’d be better off if we were not in the system. I can’t explain why, just a bad feeling,” Serena insisted.

  Bryce-Otto looked from Tom to Serena; and back again. “I can’t tell if you people are crazy and delusional, or if you’re lying. If you’re crazy, you got it right – bombs happened. WWIII, everything hit the fan. So you’re not crazy. Which means you must be lying, because I don’t believe in that psychic dream crap you’re giving me.”

  “My mom isn’t lying. She had a dream. And we left because something bad was going to happen,” Carrie spoke up, causing everyone at the table to look at her. She stared back at all the faces. “Well, it’s true. My parents are not crazy, and they are not lying.”

  Bryce-Otto leaned across the table and said in a raspy whisper, “Tell me about your mother’s friend. The one she e-mails in Iran. Her friend have a dream too?”

  Serena froze for half a second, and then she began to sing, “Just a few more weary days and then, I’ll fly away…”

  Her singing caught Bryce-Otto off guard and he sat stunned, as the girls’ voices joined in.

  “To a land where joys shall never end, I’ll fly away…”

  And on that note, the family did what they always did after singing that song. They left the room with great haste. The surprise factor gave them only a few seconds lead, but it was enough time to get into the van and lock the doors before Bryce-Otto reached them. He put his face two inches from Tom’s window and yelled, “I know where you live!”

  “Just go, go!” urged Serena.

  Tom drove, and drove. They looked over their shoulders every few minutes. No VW beetle, of any color. “Where do we go? Our safe house is not safe anymore.”

  “Let’s take Karyn up on her offer to visit.”

  “You have her address?”

  “She lives up North, a cabin in Deer River, near Bowstring Lake.”

  “We won’t get there until after midnight. Will she be okay with that?”

  “She’ll have to be.”

  8

  After driving for about five hours, the Bridge-Meadows family arrived at the lakeside cabin where Karyn lived with her husband Dan and four children. “Cabin” was a misleading description. Their home was impressive – large and rambling with many levels. There was a family room, living room, sitting area, large open kitchen, and enough space to sleep about a dozen people. Serena thought the cabin looked like a bed and breakfast hotel, generously roomy for a single family home.

  “Wow, this is really nice,” said Carrie. She squinted at the fully lit front entrance. Even the landscaping was illuminated, with soft solar lighting along the pathway to the door.

  Serena glanced at her three children, who all looked a little rough around the edges after their harrowing exit from the restaurant the day before, traveling into the wee hours of the night, and sleeping on and off with their heads mashed against whatever they could find to lean on. Well, this wasn’t a reunion, and besides, Karyn was not a pretentious person, or at least not the Karyn she remembered.

  Serena reached out to ring the doorbell, but before she could press the button, Karyn flung the door open wide. “Serena! You made it!” She ushered the family in.

  “Is that coffee I smell?” asked Tom.

  “Karyn, you do realize we’ve imposed upon you at 2:30 in the morning?” Serena laughed. She couldn’t believe the feast she saw for them on the table. Artfully arranged on a country checked tablecloth was a bowl of fruit containing perfectly ripened bananas, deep purple grapes, and red apples worthy of Snow White’s temptation, a basket of assorted breads with a side dish of butter pats and jellies, a tier of three different varieties of breakfast muffins, a pitcher of what appeared to be fresh-squeezed orange juice in a bucket of ice, serving dishes, cloth napkins, and elegant long stemmed glassware – all waiting for Serena and her family to consume it.

  “I’ll take you any time, day or night. It’s been too long, dear friend!” Karyn threw her arms around Serena for a quick power hug, a tight squeeze that projected puppy-like affection. “Sit, sit,” she said to the rag-tag group. “Dig in, whatever you want. Tom, you wanted coffee? I did make some. How about you, Serena?”

  “Yes, I’ll take a coffee, thanks,” she said. Tom and Serena chose to remain standing, after having been cramped in the car for too many hours. The three kids sat and shyly helped themselves to the buffet. The adults stood quietly for several minutes, content to bask in the relief of having reached their destination.

  “Hey, you made it!” Dan’s booming voice preceded his appearance in the kitchen. “So, what’s going on? Why are you here at two-something in the middle of the night?”

  “Dan!” Karyn admonished him as she returned from getting the coffee, but she waited expectantly for an answer.

  “Well, it’s about you, actually,” said Serena, as she received a mug of hot coffee from Karyn.

  “About me? But it’s been forever since I was your partner, and your cases weren’t anything that would come back to haunt me.”

  “No, it’s not about our private detective work.”

  “Then what is it about?” asked Dan, without waiting for an answer. “I made a fire in the living room. We can talk in there.” He looked at the three kids sitting at his table, as if it was the first he noticed their presence. “Kids, there’s a TV if you want to find something to watch. We have a game system too. Whatever you want.”

  “Dan, it’s the middle of the night. I made up beds for them. They probably want to sleep,” said Karyn.

  “Thank you. They’ll be fine, we can talk in the other room,” said Serena. “But we can’t stay long, they’ll be looking for us.”

  “What?” Dan was startled. “Who’s looking for you?”

  The four adults left the kids to their buffet and sank their bodies into the pair of matching overstuffed suede sofas facing the fire. “We don’t know for sure that they’ll come here,” said Tom.

  “Yes we do. They know who you are,” said Serena. She stirred her coffee to mix the sugar and cream, and took a few sips.

  “Start at the beginning, how is this about me?” asked Karyn.

  “It’s about your adventure in Kish,” Serena said.

  “Oh no, why?” said Karyn. She avoided looking at Dan.

  “Kish, the gorgeous island in Iran, where the snorkeling is the best in the world? And you went there because Kish doesn’t require a visa, right?” asked Serena.

  “We didn’t have time for visas, it was a spur of the moment thing,” said Karyn. “If I’d known how dangerous it was to go there, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “And if I’d known that Karyn wasn’t going to be allowed at the beach, I wouldn’t have gone snorkeling. I had no idea she was going to be shuttled off to the ‘women’s beach’. I shouldn’t have gone off without her, especially after they gave her a scarf to cover her head. I should have known better than to leave her there.” said Dan.

  “I was the one who wanted to linger in the shops. It wasn’t your fault,” said Karyn. “The women’s beach was lovely. There was nothing about it that sounded off any alarm bells.”

  “I’m not blaming either of you for what happened,” said Serena. “I’m just giving a recap: Karyn ended up taken to Tehran, to a safe house. How she got there is not your fault. Kish is a hotbed of smuggling and terrorist activity. You didn’t expect her to be taken, but she was.”

  “Nothing was ever done about it. They released her, brought her back to Kish, dropped her off at the hotel we were registered with, and we never knew why they took her, or who they were. Our government made some empty promises to look into it, and that was it,” said Dan.

  “But I was safe, and that’s all that really matters. Why
is this coming up?” asked Karyn, still avoiding looking directly at her husband.

  “Yes, I know, not your fault. But, you might remember that when Karyn got back to the island, she went to the Kish Cyber Café at Shayan Hotel, where she sent me several e-mails,” Serena continued. “These e-mails were apparently read by more people than just me.”

  “They probably read everything in that Café,” said Tom.

  “Who’s ‘they’?” asked Dan.

  “I don’t know. Our government is involved, either directly or indirectly,” said Serena.

  “Which one? The Williams camp or the Kinji camp?” asked Dan.

  “My guess would be the Williams camp, but I don’t know,” said Serena.

  “I don’t understand any of this. The only person I e-mailed was you. I don’t remember my exact words, do you?” asked Karyn. “Why are they interested in this now? That was over ten years ago.”

  “They think I knew something about Iran before the bombings,” said Serena. She locked into Karyn’s eyes and held steady eye contact for a few long seconds until Karyn squirmed and looked away.

  “Oh.” Karyn’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Honey? What is this about?” asked Dan. “Karyn? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “Should we leave the room while you two talk about this?” asked Serena, hoping to escape the awkwardness that was sure to follow.

  “No, no, you can stay,” said Karyn. “Dan, I didn’t want to say anything because you felt bad enough about me being abducted.”

  “What happened?” asked Dan.

  “The head scarf they gave me at the island was slipping and getting in my face, so while I was at the safe house I took it off,” said Karyn. “That made the guards mad. One of them yanked my head back by grabbing the hair on the back of my head, and the other one spit in my face. That’s all that –“

  “He spit in your face! When were you going to tell me this?” Dan yelled. He was up now, pacing the room.