How about that, huh? Shawn's brother drives in out of the night and old Paul Miller was married once. Wild. I can't wait to see what comes next, can you? I hope you enjoy it.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: Stolen Love The third and final installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
20
Getting to Work
I entered the dining room to several reactions. The hysterical man, who was cleaned up and healed from the injuries I'd inflicted on him, started to get hysterical again. Bem stepped in front of me to block my progress into the room, and Vulp moved to support Bem.
I stuck my hands up and opened with an apology. "I lost my head and I'm sorry. I know that doesn't fix what I did, but I've got my head on straight now and I want to help. Please let me help."
No one moved or spoke. The hysterical man seemed to relax a fraction, but he still cowered at my presence. Bem didn't take his eyes off me, but he called to my nephew who was on the opposite side of the room with his father. "Andy, does he mean it?" Bem asked.
"Yeah, he means it." Andy replied after adding his own scrutiny. "It's taking a lot of effort for him to stay focused, but he's in the right place to help now."
"Any objections?" Bem asked the room. The audience was Bem, Vulp, Cy, Andy, Joe, Neb, Lenis, Cass, the hysterical man, and Ars. Met had apparently been there to take care of the hysterical man and had already gone. Andy's boyfriend wasn't there. I thought that odd, but not enough to comment on.
No one objected to my being there. Bem stepped forward to give me some ground rules. "You're welcome to listen. If you have something to add, please add it at the appropriate time. If you stay, you stay only as long as I say you can stay. If I tell you to leave, you leave. Agreed?"
My first impulse was to object to Bem for treating me like a child. I reminded myself that I'd been acting like a child and deserved to be treated that way. Even though I had good reason to be unhinged, I couldn't be unhinged and also be an active part of the process. I swallowed my pride and agreed with Bem. He stepped aside to let me pass further into the room.
I gave the hysterical man a wide berth and crossed to the opposite side of the dining room table to give him a greater illusion of safety. He was completely safe from me. That wasn't the illusion. The illusion was any perception of safety the man felt because of the distance or number of objects between him and me. I could have jerked him into arm's reach with my magic or crushed him inside that same power at any time. I don't think he knew that, and I had no motivation to make it known.
I took an empty seat and waited for the meeting to get started again. The room settled down and everyone returned to their seats. Lenis urged the hysterical man out of his seat and around to my side of the table to meet me. "Son, this is your brother's husband, Church." She said with her arm tightly around the shoulders of the much shorter hysterical man. "Church, this is my son, Primis."
I stood to offer my hand to him, but the sight of me rising to my full height only served to unnerve the hysterical man. He struggled against his mother's arm, but she held him firmly in place. I lowered myself back down, and the man seemed to calm. I understood his discomfort around me. Sitting, I was almost as tall as the hysterical man was standing, and his only encounter with me that night had been when I'd chased him down in a strange vehicle, held him in my magic, and slapped the shit out of him. If I was him, I'd be nervous around me to.
"I'm sorry." I offered and tried to look sincere. I was sincere, but I made an extra effort to look that way and offered the man my hand from the seated position. I realized too late that the hand I held out to him was still stained with his blood. I almost jerked it away but didn't want to make any sudden moves that would alarm him more. "I won't ask you to forgive me, but I hope...I don't know...I hope we're not enemies."
Primis took my hand to shake and screamed a little when I closed my hand around his. His hand felt very small in mine, like shaking hands with a petite woman. "NOT ENEMIES!" He blurted in a sharp voice that sounded like it came from way up in his head instead of out of his chest.
"I'm glad." I said and tried to smile a bit. Primis met my gaze for a spilt second and I noticed he had the Summas eyes. Everything else about him was his father, but his eyes were the same frozen blue as his mother's, just like Shawn's were. Seeing that made me want to hug the hysterical man. I resisted the impulse though, because it probably would have terrified him.
Lenis added her calming influence to what was rapidly becoming a surreal scene. "That is fine, son." She soothed, like Primis was a very small child. "Let us go sit down now. We have told you everything that has happened here since your brother was taken. I think you have something to tell us, and we very much want to hear it."
She guided her son back to the opposite side of the table and sat him down. He seemed to relax a little more when the table was again between him and me. Lenis prompted him to tell what he had to tell. "Go ahead son."
Primis took visible comfort in his mother's presence. He scooted up in his seat until his chest was hard against the edge of the table. His hands gripped the table edge on either side of his chest with just the four fingers of each visible on top. He took a breath and shrieked it out when Paul opened the door and entered the room.
Lenis came to the rescue again. "Everything is alright, son." She stroked his head, and he leaned into her touch. "That is Mister Paul. He is a nice man. You will like him. Now, go ahead."
I wondered if there might be something a little wrong with Primis, or if he was just very highly strung. The man seemed as tight as an over-tuned piano wire. He waited for Paul to take a seat next to me then took another loud breath to start his story. This time, words came out instead of a shriek.
"Father's business has not been doing well. It hasn't been since mother left, but recently, it's worse. He's had...reversals. Recently...maybe in the last year...he's started to...do things. Things that aren't good. His friend...the man who says he's father's friend...he's gotten father to invest in his businesses, but his businesses haven't performed.
"Father has been losing money...a lot of money. His clients are starting to notice. They want answers. They want their money. Father is desperate, or he was. He was so desperate, he even reached out to Church." Primis raised nervous eyes to me for just a second, then averted them. "I didn't see the letters, but I know he sent them. As his junior partner in the business, I see most of what goes on. What did they say?" Primis asked me.
Lenis stared at me, her face full of surprise when I admitted to having received the letters. I was forced to say I never read them. I felt like I had to justify my actions to the room. "I assumed he wanted something, and I wasn't in a rush to give it to him.
"He fucked up Shawn's childhood and alienated his wife and the one time I met him he treated me like something he scraped off his shoe. I let his letters pile up. Cellarius put them on the docket to review at our monthly household meeting next Thursday." I pulled Bem into the discussion by tossing some words his way. "You read them."
Bem agreed that he had. "I did. In light of what Primis just told us, they make more sense." Bem explained for the benefit of the room. "They were letters about investments that Verpa wanted to let Church in on. He said the opportunities were so good, he would feel bad for not telling Church about them over something as silly as what he called a trifling disagreement long forgotten about.' It seems that all that talk of opportunity' was just a clumsy attempt at getting his hands on Church's money."
"How bad is it?" Lenis asked her son like the two of them were having a private conversation. "Bad." He admitted. "You know father. He's too proud to take advice. I've tried to help him, but he thinks he knows best. His business barely exists except on paper. That's why he got involved with that friend...the man who says he's father's friend...he..."
Lenis cut Primis off and asked the question I'd wanted to ask, except I didn't want to interrupt. "Who is this friend?"
"His name is Mendax Domus and he's in real estate."
"That gangster!" Lenis spat.
"WHAT? GANGTER?" I demanded. I'd been holding my tongue but couldn't hold it any more given Lenis' reaction to the man in her son's story.
Lenis got up from her seat. She moved to stand behind it and grip the back of the chair. "He is a major figure in organized crime. He has been for almost two centuries. He is very careful to protect himself with legitimate businesses to funnel his dirty money through. That is why he has never been prosecuted.
"Primis is right when he says that Domus is in real estate. He owns buildings and properties all over the country, maybe all over the world. He rents the properties out to his other `enterprises,' and charges exorbitant rents. That is how he launders the money from the illegitimate side of his enterprises to the legitimate.
"When the police come for his tenants, he acts like the innocent landlord and says he cannot be held responsible for the actions of his renters. Which is true, except he is the one behind the tenant's actions as well." She directed a question to her son. "Verpa is involved with him?"
"Yes mother." Primis admitted. "He's heavily involved. Mister Domus is the one who convinced him...he talked father into...I don't know whose idea it was...it couldn't have been father...but it might have been..."
Primis was rambling again, obviously dancing around something he didn't want to say. Lenis intervened again. She sat back down and leaned close to Primis. "Please son, you are among friends here. No one will judge you for something your father did. Take a deep breath and try to tell us what happened. Remember, we are all here to help Shawn."
Primis took the deep breath he'd been directed to take and let it out slowly, then he took another. "My father likes conducting negotiations in person." Primis said to premise his story. "It's his way. He always thinks he can get a better deal that way. He pretends he trusts people to keep their end, but father doesn't trust anyone. He has listening devices all over the house to record everything that happens. That way, if someone lets him down on a deal, he can use the recordings against them. Two days ago, not this morning, or I guess yesterday morning but the one before..."
"The morning before Shawn was taken." I clarified.
Primis nodded and went on with his story. "Men came to the house. They said they were from Mister Domus, and they wanted to talk to father in private. They didn't seem like businessmen, but that isn't unusual for Mister Domus' people. They stayed at the house all day and when the night came, father gave them rooms to sleep in. Father seemed different, but I know he's been worried lately, and I assumed the men were there to press him for more money for Mister Domus. When they stayed the night and into the next morning, this morning, or I suppose yesterday morning now, I got curious and listened to the recordings from the day before."
"They kept talking around something." Primis explained. "Father said something like, I know it was my idea, but I didn't think you'd actually do it.' One of the men said, it's already set up and you can't stop it. That's why we're here, to make sure you don't have second thoughts.' They didn't say much more about whatever it' was, so I listened to the recordings from that morning. That's when father said out loud what they'd done. He was alone and talking to himself the way he does sometimes. He said, I can't believe I let them kidnap my son for money.'"
Rage flared inside me, rage that now had something to be angry at. "I'll kill him." I growled without thinking. Paul put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. I looked into his face, and he shook his head at me. I was trying to understand the head shake when I felt other eyes on me. I scanned the room for them and saw that they were Bem's. He glared his disapproval at me. I put my hands up in a quick version of `surrender,' clamped my mouth shut, and lowered my eyes to the table.
Bem interrupted Primis story to make an announcement. "This is good news. This is excellent news. I want everyone to understand that. If what Primis says is true, this is the best news we could have gotten."
I stared at Bem and waited for the punchline of what I thought was a very unfunny joke. It turned out he wasn't joking. "Think about it," Bem pressed us, "Verpa is Shawn's father. If he is involved with the kidnapping, it is far less likely that Shawn will come to harm. Shawn is still at risk, extreme risk, but if he was going to be kidnapped, I'd much rather he be kidnapped by people involved with his father than by ruthless strangers. This is good news."
Bem looked around the room like he was waiting for someone to argue with him. I was tempted to take issue with his words. I was tempted to shout at him for saying that there could be anything `good' about my husband being kidnapped. I reminded myself that Bem was doing his best, that he was using his professional experience to analyze the situation and to provide the results of that running analysis. I left my objections unuttered and waited for the meeting to progress.
Bem told Primis to keep going with his story. He did exactly that, picking up like he hadn't been interrupted. "When I heard father say that, I left immediately. I thought about going to the police, but since I hadn't heard anything on the news, I assumed the kidnapping wasn't reported. I tried to call mother, but she didn't answer the phone and I didn't want to leave what I had to say on a voice mail. I...I took a chance. I decided to come here.
"I took a commercial flight as far as I could and had to charter a plane to go the rest of the way. The charter pilot wouldn't come out here, so I only made it to Oppidum. I tried to get someone to fly me out from town, but I couldn't find a pilot that wasn't already booked. I rented a car and drove the rest of the way. I kept driving west until I saw the runway lights. I suppose Mister Church saw me and thought I was bringing Shawn back and that's why you...did what you did."
Primis' reference to my actions against him shamed me. I lowered my head to him and apologized again. "I am sorry."
Primis flicked his eyes at me. "I suppose I understand." He said graciously.
Bem reentered the conversation. "How did you get away from the house? Why weren't they watching you?"
"Father likes to keep me behind the scenes of his business. Mister Domus' men probably thought I didn't know anything about anything." Primis reasoned aloud. "I don't know what they'll do now that I've been gone all day."
"They'll come after you." Bem said to himself, but loud enough for the room to hear.
Primis cringed and his eyes widened as he considered Bem's words. "You think they'll...come after me?"
Bem nodded and his left hand rose to his right shoulder to knead the meat between his shoulder and neck. His right hand disappeared beneath the table, presumably finding its way into his pocket. "They'll have to. They'll assume you found something out, and when they trace your path, they'll know you came here. That could be a problem. If they realize we know they kidnapped Shawn," Bem glanced at me with a scrunched up worried look on his face, "that could be a problem." He said and was deliberately non-specific.
Vulp's rarely used voice entered the discussion. "They don't have to know that we know."
Every eye in the room turned to the quiet muscle man. He was sitting as still as a statue, with his beefy forearms on the table, parallel to its edge, his elbows out wide and his fingertips just touching in front of him. He took the silence as a prompt to elaborate on his initial statement.
"We can use him. If they catch him...when they catch him, they'll read him to see what he told us. I assume they have an empath that can read thoughts, they're common enough. I doubt they have someone like me. I can compel him...temporarily block his memory of being here, of talking with us. We tell him what we want him to know and what we want him to do, then I compel him to forget it.
"We'll take him out on the plains and leave him. We'll put him in his car and make him sleep and when he wakes up, he'll think he got lost and slept in the car. He'll give up trying to come here and drive back to town. If Domus' people are any good at all, they'll be waiting for him at Oppidum. They'll take him into their custody and interrogate him, but he won't have anything to tell them. Then they'll take him home."
I didn't understand how that helped us and I said as much.
"I think I understand." Neb announced and stood from her chair. She moved to the head of the table and stood with her feet apart. She unbuttoned the sleeves of her Andy Philips reef collection shirt to roll them up. Andy winced as he watched her.
This kind of thing usually amused the hell out of me. I knew that Neb's shirt had to be an Andy Philips because Andy supplied all the clothes for the members of Divided Light, both on stage and off. I also knew that Neb always insisted on long sleeves. Andy was happy to provide long sleeves, but when Neb rolled them up, it drove Andy to distraction.
He'd literally begged her, on multiple occasions, not to roll the sleeves of the clothes he provided to her. He said it ruined the look of any shirt. The trouble for Andy was that rolling sleeves was just Neb's way. She was unlikely to change, just as much as it was unlikely that Andy would ever be able to watch her roll those sleeves up without a grimace on his face.
That night, or early morning, the sleeve thing was just a delay I had to wait through before Neb would share her thoughts with the group. She rolled the sleeves half-way up her forearms then shoved the cuffs passed her elbows in preparation to speak. Her right sleeve stayed above her elbow, but the left immediately slipped half-way down her forearm like it usually did.
"Primis' presence here creates a few problems. We now know that the enemy is a team made up of Verpa Summas," Neb lowered her voice to add an after-thought to labeling my father-in-law `the enemy,' "he may be unwilling but he's still on their side," then she raised her voice back to its normal level and continued, "and Mendax Domus.
"Once the enemy finds out that Primis has been here, they will assume he told us what he knows. That jeopardizes Primis' safety and Shawn's safety. We could keep Primis here. That would protect him, but from a strategic standpoint, that would be worse than letting him go home. If we kept him here, that would force the enemy to assume what Primis knew and what he may have told us. Letting them use their collective imagination would put Shawn at greater risk because they will have no choice but to assume the worst."
Primis dropped his chin to his chest and ground the heels of his hands into his head at his hairline. "I didn't mean to," he moaned, "I only wanted to help."
"Ssssshhhhhhh, son," Lenis interrupted Primis' self-pity, "listen to Miss Neb. She has more to say."
Primis lowered his hands to the table, and he stilled to listen, but his chin remained on his chest in a posture of defeat. Neb paused just long enough to give the interruption time to pass, then she continued like it hadn't happened.
"Vulp can compel Primis to forget he was here, as he said, but he can also make that compulsion expire. We used this same strategy during a hostage situation in Severn many years ago. That was the first time I worked with the Dux brothers. Once the compulsion expires, Primis becomes our agent on the inside. We just have to figure out how to communicate with him."
A noise from across the table drew my attention away from Neb. It was Primis as he slid his chair back. He shook his head violently back and forth. "NO! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" He shrieked. "Agent? Me? NO! CAN'T! SCARED!"
Lenis jumped up and went to him, but Primis blocked her out. He covered his ears with the flats of his hands, shut his eyes tight, and chanted, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!"
I felt the impulse to intervene but fought it off. I wanted to jump up and beg the terrified man, or slap the fear out of him, or threaten him, but I did none of those things. I tightened my right hand over the bracelet on my left wrist and held onto it like a suicide jumper with second thoughts would cling to the ledge of a high-rise building. I watched the scene unfold because it wasn't my place to do anything else.
I'd started to feel that it was going to be impossible to get any help from Primis the terrified man when something in the room shifted. I scanned all those present to see if I could find the source. As my eyes passed over the group, I noticed most of the people present were looking toward Primis with pity for his hysterics. I noticed Cass and Ars conferring in low tones. They were the only pair who seemed to completely ignore the terrified man.
I thought that particular twosome was an odd one and I wondered what they could be talking about. At first, I thought that Cass was filling Ars' ear with praise for `his Bem' or something equally trivial, but then I realized that Ars seemed to be doing the talking. If I hadn't been scanning the room for something else, I would have lingered on the two mis-matched men to try to figure out if they were merely making small talk, or if they could possibly be scheming something, as unlikely as that seemed.
I tore my eyes away from Cass and Ars and looked around some more until I noticed Neb. She was intensely focused on the terrified Primis. As she watched him, his hysterics calmed. He lowered his hands from his head and used them to scoot his chair back to the table. It occurred to me, as I looked between Neb and Primis, that Neb was using her magic to influence his emotions. Having once benefited from her magic a bunch of times, I knew firsthand how powerful it could be.
Primis settled down. He hugged his mother and thanked her for comforting him, then he folded his hands in front of him and set them on the table. He seemed calmer and more centered than he had been at any point since I first saw him on the plains. "I don't know what came over me." He said with a voice that came from his chest and throat instead of out of his head. "I think you were saying something about how I can help." Primis addressed his words to Neb.
Neb opened her mouth to continue, but Joe cut her off. "What just happened?" He demanded with suspicion dripping from his tone.
Neb raked my brother with a disdainful scowl that didn't seem to affect him at all. "I made him calm down."
"With magic?" Joe asked in the same suspicious tone.
"Yes."
"You can't." Joe insisted and rose from his spot at the table to glare down at Neb from his height advantage. "Getting his help like that, it's no different than signing a contract while intoxicated. He doesn't want to help. You're making him do it."
Several people started to argue with Joe, including Lenis, Neb, and me. Primis, the formerly hysterical man...his voice sounded above all. "YOU'RE WRONG!" He boomed. All eyes in the room tracked to him and all mouths closed. He went on. "I do want to help. I'm scared. I'm really scared. I know that I am. Right now, I can't feel it, but I know it's there. I want to help Chordus...Shawn as you call him."
Primis dropped his eyes to the table for a beat, then raised them to the crowd with hot defiance radiating from the frozen blue. He looked like Shawn does when he's made up his mind about something serious.
"We've never been close," Primis admitted, "I guess I wasn't much of a big brother to him when we were growing up. That's not the point...or maybe, maybe it is. I came here because I wanted to help. When I left this morning, I knew there were risks, but I came anyway. I know there will be risks going back, but if I can help him, and maybe help father at the same time, I want to do it. I have to do it."
Joe was undaunted by Primis' logic and his altruism. He'd made up his mind about the situation and was relentless in pursuing his line of reasoning. "But you're not yourself. You don't know what you're saying."
"You're wrong." The very un-hysterical Primis said in direct refusal of Joe's logic. "I'm a timid man. I know it. I'm afraid of everything. I don't like being that way, but I don't know how to change it. That doesn't mean I don't very much want to help.
"Neb's magic is making it so I can think clearly and make a reasonable, considered decision. This feeling is very much the opposite of intoxication. I want to help, and I have decided to help, and...and it's really none of your business." Primis snapped the last word of his sentence off with a crisp nod, like that was the absolute last word he planned to say on the matter.
Joe shut his mouth and sat down without saying more. He wasn't satisfied, but I think he realized he was very unlikely to be. I was glad Primis was the one that shut him down. I wouldn't have wanted to do it. My relationship with my brother was strained enough.
Primis directed his next words between Neb and Vulp. "You seem to have an idea of how I can help. Would you tell it to me please?"
Neb and Vulp explained. They seemed to develop the plan as they went. Bem jumped in from time to time, but mostly he let the other two have the floor. The idea that blossomed from the discussion between the two former cops and military special forces members was genius. They based their plan on a very simple problem, lack of information.
We needed to know where Shawn was, and how he was being held, in order to rescue him. We assumed, since the kidnappers didn't send Shawn back to us after Lenis issued the first ransom payment, that they planned to hold him for more money.
We discussed the distinct possibility that the kidnappers would demand greater and greater amounts until they had exhausted my fortune. Once they had everything that I could give them, there was still no guarantee they would give Shawn back. The safest thing for us to do, was to rescue him. To do that, we needed an agent in the enemy camp. The only member of that camp we had some kind of access to was Verpa.
It sounded like, from what Primis had told us, that Domus' people were holding Verpa a hostage in his own home. It seemed that he had been at least somewhat reluctant to go along with the kidnapping scheme even though it had presumably been his idea. If he was reluctant, and we could offer him a way out of trouble, we assumed he would take it. Lenis confirmed that Verpa's leading characteristic was his dedication to his own self-interest. That was something in our favor.
The plan, in its final format, was to get Primis back home with his memory suppressed. As long as the timing worked out perfectly, the enemy empath would read Primis and confirm to the rest of the enemy camp that he hadn't reached us. They would likely guard him more closely after that, but they would be unlikely to read him again.
After they read him and accepted him into the house, his compulsion could expire, and he could talk to his father to find out what Verpa knew about Shawn. That left us with two problems. The first was how to trigger the expiration of the compulsion and the second was how Primis could communicate to us without being detected.
These problems prompted Bem to participate more actively. "Maybe we could use the twins." He said and directed a question to Vulp. "Could you set your compulsion to last until it was released by a third party telepathically?"
The muscle man nodded his shaved head.
Without another word of discussion, Bem took out his phone and selected a contact to call. He pressed the phone to his ear and waited for the connection to establish. "Hannah," he said to the black rectangle, "please come to the dining room. Bring your sister and Altus."
Having said his piece and apparently received a response that satisfied him, Bem ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket. "They'll be right over." He announced.
"Why do we need Altus?" I asked, probably a little sourly.
Bem held his hand up to me to silence any objection to the inclusion of the twins' boyfriend. "I know you don't like him much. He's an insolent little fuck that needs to be taken down a peg or two, but he's a powerful empath and a strong telepath and we need him. Wait until he helps us get Shawn back, then, if you still think he needs it, you can make him eat his own dick."
Bem smirked at me, and I chuckled back at him. "Who told you?" I asked.
"He did." Bem admitted through his smirk. "He asked me if you'd really do it. I told him I wasn't certain, but that you had threatened me with something similar once, and at the time, I believed you'd have done it."
I had to think way back, but I eventually remembered the incident. I'd threatened to emasculate Bem if he spied on Shawn and me while we were bathing behind the waterfall in the box canyon during our training for the first mission. I laughed out loud at the memory from so early in my relationship with Bem. We'd learned a lot about each other on that trip. That was when I first told Bem that I was attracted to him. "I probably wouldn't have." I admitted unnecessarily.
"I know that, but he doesn't."
"Isn't that a violation of," I thought hard to the memories of my long-abandoned catechism lessons for the numbers of the commandments, "number nine?"
Bem shook his head. "I don't covet Altus' wife. How can I? He's not married."
I'd gotten the wrong number and Bem was teasing me for it. I took another stab. "Number eight, then. You know what I mean."
"It's not false witness if I tell him that I believed you might,' have done it at the time." Bem used air quotes around the word, might.'
"Uh huh." I conceded. "A lie of omission isn't a lie, is that what you're saying?"
"It's about priorities." Bem explained as he warmed to his topic. He managed to sound silly and didactic at the same time. "Young Altus needs to respect his elders. He needs to `honor his father and mother.'" Bem said and used more air quotes around the words. "Since that is number four, it takes precedent over number eight. Therefore, the fact that my small sin, the lie of omission, stops Altus from committing the numerically greater sin of not respecting his elders, means my sin isn't really a sin at all."
I shot a glance toward Paul to see if he'd followed Bem's logic. "You buying any of that?" I asked the priest.
Paul's eyes twinkled with amusement as he answered. "I admit, the theology as Bem describes it doesn't follow accepted dogma, but he makes a compelling argument."
"See?" Bem demanded like a child who'd been granted his way after a protracted battle.
I was going to issue another objection but was interrupted by the dining room door as it swung inward to admit the three telepaths.