Paradise Falls (Paradise Falls #1-5)(23)

He dragged himself down to the basement. What was he thinking? He was hideous. His chest and stomach were an alien landscape, and his back was just as bad. It was only luck that he had a single scar on his face. His captors had not yet begun to work on that when the bombs fell.

He loaded up the bars himself, and choked the steel until his hands burned. It was easy to fall into routine, squats and presses and dips and pull-ups, until he fell on the mat in utter exhaustion and laid there in a pool of his own sweat, trying desperately to think about something else.

His back ached. His shoulder worried at him while his left hand throbbed. Pain was an anchor.

Pain proves that we are real. He thought about Master Kittinger. The owner and head instructor of Paradise Fall’s only martial arts school was probably dead by now. He was never more than an average teacher, but his lessons were the foundations of Jacob’s real education.

The pain in his shoulder, back, and hand was simply information, his body warning him that it was damaged. Everything passed through him; pain, heat, cold, and discomfort until he became a figure of wood that felt no pain. The figure of wood can’t be hurt.

The fluorescent lights overhead stung his eyes. His muscles burned, and he stretched. Finally he pulled his legs under himself and folded into the lotus position and closed his eyes. Focus.

It was for the best, he realized now. Jennifer suffered enough. The best thing he could do was find a way to get her to move out of town, but that was a dead end and he knew it. If everything she endured so far wouldn’t push her out of that decrepit house, then nothing would.

The next best thing would be to see she was taken care of. Watched. He would simply leave her alone.

Jacob always had a gift for meditation. Emptying his mind was usually easy, but not now. The look of raw terror in her eyes was like a knife slipping into his chest.

The idea of frightening her hurt. Not just emotionally, physically. It made him want to die.

I am a monster.

He called Faisal.

“Sir? Did you need something? How is your date going?”

“Date’s over,” Jacob said, flatly. “New orders. I want a tail on Jennifer twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Reports every two hours. Make sure they have my direct line. If there’s an emergency I want to be notified immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” said Faisal. “I’ll have two of our people begin the observation at once. What else?”

“I want a wake up call in…” he glanced at the clock on his screen saver. “Six hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is the car ready?”

“The Aston Martin?”

“No. The other car.”

“Not yet. The modifications should be finished within the week, at the latest.”

Jacob sighed. “Alright. The Dodge, then. Don’t forget my wakeup call.”

He hung up the phone, wearily walked up the grand staircase to the bedroom. The richly appointed upper part of the house was unused and kept like a museum. After a shower and a soak in the tub, he collapsed into the bed.

One ring sprang him awake immediately. Another skill he acquired, Jacob could go from a stone sleep to fully awake in seconds. The wake up call was early. He put the phone to his ear.

“Sir,” said Faisal. “There’s been a problem at Miss Katzenberg’s house.”

“A problem?” said Jacob. “What problem?”

“Her brother-in-law.”

“Is here there now?”

“He left. Miss Katzenberg left with another woman a few minutes later. Her sister, we think. I have a tail on them.”

Jacob leapt out of bed and rushed to the basement.

“Sir,” Faisal said. “Don’t do anything rash. Remember the plan.”

“I remember the plan,” he said. Jacob pulled on his undershirt before slipping into his lightweight vest. He checked the ceramic plates, then pulled the Kevlar sleeves over his arms. Gloves lined with a Kevlar-Nomex weave, a nylon web harness with gear.

Jacob gathered up the last thing he needed: a black balaclava. After taking the stairs two at a time, he ran to the carriage house. Faisal pulled up in his hatchback as Jacob stepped in through the side door and threw the switch to open the main one. He walked past the Aston Marin to a 1989 Dodge Reliant K with Georgia plates, snatched the key from the locker, and dropped inside. From the outside the car looked like any old junker from wilds of Pennsylvania. The anemic four cylinder the car was born with had been pulled and replaced with a more efficient six cylinder, along with a few other modifications.

He slipped his bluetooth in his ear and pulled the mask down over his face. “Give me a twenty on Elliot.”

“Heading over the bridge now. Same car, the black Charger.”

“Noted,” Jacob said before ending the call. He pulled out of the carriage house.

He would need a better place to store the extra vehicles and other equipment, but the work down there wasn’t finished. His hands choked the wheel as he coasted down the hill.

High pressure sodium lamps came on when the sun went behind the clouds, and the red beacons on top of the towers never stopped flashing. The bridge disappeared from sight as he neared the bottom of Hill Road.

Jacob waited until Elliot’s car passed. Jacob pulled out and tromped on the pedal.

Elliot blasted through a stop sign while cradling his cell phone to his ear.