AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What are you trying to tell me, Jesse? I have been out on this mission for about a week. I’m on the way home now. Did you say that Craig is dead?”
He agreed that’s what he said, and I sighed. I thought it was a bad connection. I had figured out that our crew was being targeted. I knew that Amber was right when she had worried about the wreck and who was behind it. I didn’t want her to worry, but I didn’t realize that she would be so worked up over it.
I’d left, knowing that I could have worked things out. I didn’t want to though, not when the truth was that someone was after my old crew from the military, and they were killing families and whoever was around the soldier when they came for him. In Jerome’s case, they went out of their way to kill his family. Amber had been right, and I wanted her as far away from me as she could possibly get. She wasn’t safe with me, even though I would have done anything to keep her safe. It wasn’t enough. I was looking for a guarantee and nothing shy of that would have been enough.
I just wished that I could have told her that everything between us was fine, it was the outside world that worried me. Now, another one of the crew was dead, and I was still feeling pulled in multiple directions. I was glad that she wasn’t with me, and something didn’t happen. I also missed her though. I couldn’t forget about her, didn’t want to, so it made things rather lonely.
“How did he die, Jesse?” I asked the question, even though I really didn’t want to find out the answer. I wished that there was some other time that Jesse called. Lately it was only to tell me when something bad had happened.
“Do you really have to ask?”
“Gunshot.” I asked if there was a possibility for it to have been suicide. I knew that it was unlikely, but this was not ending well. I needed to know what was going to happen next. There had been three to die in a couple of weeks. Ever since I agreed to go see Amber, I swear everything had popped off. For all these years, we’d never had any trouble, but now it was like there was someone taking us out. Was I next, was Jesse? I didn’t have an answer, and I really wanted there to be another reason for all of this. I wanted to be wrong.
“You may need to think about getting out of there, Jesse. The way things are going, why don’t you take a run for it and leave it at that?”
He scoffed and asked me what it was I was worried about. I really didn’t have one answer, but many. “I just have a bad feeling, Jesse. You know that there is someone taking us out. Take off for a while, take a nice long break until they figure out who is doing this.”
Jesse said that he would go if I was going to go. “Nah, I want to find out who it is. I am coming back home and I’m going to make sure that we figure it out. I just wish that you were out of the picture. There is only a few of us left.”
“Well, you are going to need someone to help you find out who this is that is doing it. Between the two of us, we will find out what is going on in no time.”
I hoped he was right. I didn’t know what was going on with me, but I was sure that if we could get to the bottom of who did what, find the killer and find justice for our friends, maybe it wouldn’t be such a huge hole that was where they once were. I was tired of losing friends and family, part of the reason that the military was always painful. I lost a lot, and it was too much at times. Now, I debated if it was worth it. What sin were we being punished for, when most of what we were tasked with to do wasn’t something that we had a say in? We went in with orders, we followed them, and that was that.
* * *
Later that evening,I was getting off the plane and that bad feeling I had that had been plaguing me was back. I knew that something was wrong, I could feel it, but that did not matter. The feeling that I had would not be that hard to focus on, it was overwhelming. It made me call Amber from a payphone, just so that I could hear her voice and make sure that it wasn’t her that was in trouble. It wasn’t, she sounded fine, but I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t. I just hung up after a few moments and breathed a sigh of relief.
That left me to see who it was that was in trouble. I was on my way home to figure it out. I would call the people that were left alive in our crew and check on all of them. My old book of numbers that I hadn’t put on my phone was at my place, in my room. I would go home, find the numbers, and have Jesse help me call them all. I was happy to have some help. I thought I was going to have to do it on my own. It was good to know that Jesse would be there to help me. We would get to the bottom of it.
I pulled into the house we split, and nothing was out of the ordinary yet. I felt like everything was going as planned, even if there was that feeling in my gut. I knew that it had to be one of the other members of the crew, one that I didn’t see daily or live with. Everything was still fine up until the moment I got to the door and saw that it wasn’t locked. Jesse was paranoid for many reasons and always locked the door, always. It didn’t matter if he was there or not, the door was locked, and when the knob turned, the sinking feeling became more than I could handle. I had to stop and steady myself on the door frame.
“Jesse?” I called out his name, but I already knew that I wasn’t going to get an answer. I already knew what was obvious. He was the latest victim. Going in slowly, I kept praying that I wouldn’t find what I knew would be there. I wanted nothing more than to be wrong, but I wasn’t. My friend and roommate was lying on his bedroom floor, and he had been shot in the head. He didn’t have any live-in family, but I still called his sister to make sure that she was okay. He didn’t have any kids, nor a wife. I was his closest friend, and I didn’t know what to do.
I called the cops and waited for them to arrive. There was someone else that I wanted to check in, so I called the number back and Amber answered. She was fine, so I hung up, trying to figure out what I was going to do now. This was not going to end the way I wanted it to.
I sat down and when the cops came, I put my hands up and tried to explain it all. I didn’t know what happened to Jesse, didn’t know who had done it, but it was time for the cops to know that the murders were all connected. I was going to figure it out by myself. I didn’t have Jesse anymore to help me. I was on my own.
* * *
“If you are goingto call, you might as well answer,” Amber said. I had called her again, not because I needed to check on her or anything, I just wanted to talk to her. I missed talking to Amber and with everything going on, the attacks getting closer and closer to home, I had to be assured that she was fine.
“Sorry, I guess I don’t know what to say,” I finally said.
Amber was quiet for a time; I could hear the gasp that she made when she heard my voice. “It’s you? I have been trying to figure out who is calling me ten times a day and breathing into the phone, and I didn’t really think it would be you. Is that what you do when you’re bored now?”
I wasn’t ready for Amber’s immediate attitude. It was clear that she was not happy to hear from me and I almost wanted to hang up. I would have if I could have. Amber was clearly a bit irate, and it was directed at me for the moment.
“I have only called three times since I left your place, and I don’t think that I have breathed too hard.”
“Just three times? I have someone calling ten times a day, easy. It’s been going on since you left.”
She piqued my interest and I wanted to know if she had tracked the number. Amber didn’t want to share it all with me and asked if I needed to be reminded that there was a reason we hadn’t talked in a while. Mainly, I was a jerk to her, and I had to say something about it. She wasn’t going to just let it slide.
“I’m sorry about how it went the last time we saw each other, Amber.”
“It’s fine. Is there something that you wanted, Frank?”
She spit out the words and I told her that I missed her. I wanted to have this long speech said that I had written down halfway. I should have known that it wasn’t going to do me any good. Amber was simple and she just wanted me to be honest.
