Authors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Tracking Evil: The Web Pt. 04
Chapter One:
"All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope."
- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
The cursor blinked steadily on Erica's laptop, a beating electronic reminder of a sentence half written, an email partially completed. It seemed to sync with a throbbing between her eyes, a headache that seemed to come and go these past few weeks. Stress, exhaustion, sadness, all conspiring to squeeze her brain with fleeting but intense headaches.
She pushed back from the small desk, the harsh glare of her computer screen being of no help to the growing migraine. Rising from the chair she walked to the small refrigerator in the corner, helping herself to a cold bottle of beer. It was her third of the day and it still wasn't noon.
Lowering herself into a more comfortable chair, one of two padded armchairs in the humbly scaled room, Erica took a sip of her beer, looking at the low coffee table in front of her. A jigsaw lay in scattered pieces, covering about half the tables surface. A five-hundred-piece puzzle that once assembled should show her the New York city skyline. Only it didn't, because she'd finally figured out that about a dozen pieces were missing, replaced by some others from a different jigsaw. It had led to a long day of frustration for her that had ended with her demolishing what she'd completed, losing still more pieces beneath the furniture.
This place she was currently renting had been cluttered with junk from previous tenants, Erica depositing most of it on the landing for the landlord to deal with. The only item she'd retained, the infuriating jigsaw puzzle, would soon find itself in the trash as well, as soon as she could be bothered to do it.
From where she sat, she could see out the window of the apartment, the sky bright blue over the buildings of Dayton, Ohio. It had been her home now for the last five weeks. Home... some home. A refuge from those hunting for her, a hole to hide in while she strove to level the playing field, a cage to sit in while her family and friends were scattered about like the jigsaw on the table.
Beside the scattered puzzle pieces, her gun lay on a sheet of newspaper, the beretta 92 stripped down to its component parts that Erica had started cleaning before her thoughts had distracted her from that task as well. She picked up a single 9mm round, rubbing her thumb over the brass casing, snorting then in depreciative humor.
The Spider who ran The Web, that organization of killers, had sent two of his acolytes to put a bullet very like this one into Erica's child. She wondered if that evil old man had counted on the destruction this act would precipitate? Not just the loss of life from the exchange of gunfire, but the impact on the lives of Erica and those she loved. She recalled, with a small shudder that prompted yet another drink of beer, the blood pooling on the floor of her home. Theo, Arlene's boyfriend, his chest wounds seeping, the blood seeming black in her memory rather than the deep red from other violent episodes she'd been involved in. Beside him, his accomplice, a man Erica was later to identify as Daneek Mealy, still twitching though life had been ripped from him by Denisa's bullets. Most of the blood had seemed to come from Denisa, Erica still marveling that the small woman had managed to be drenched in her own gore and yet still, miraculously, clinging faintly to life.
The Romanian had survived the two bullets Theo had sent through her at twelve hundred and fifty feet per second. Survived so that she could return the favor, slaying both Theo and Daneek with five precise shots. Denisa had hung on to life as Erica called for the ambulance, only releasing a low whimper of pain from beneath the oxygen mask as the paramedics had stretchered her from the scene. The paramedic's had looked grim as they'd loaded her into the rear of the ambulance, Erica's last glimpse of the brave young woman, her small hand that seemed to rise briefly in a shadow of a wave as the doors closed on her. That was the last Erica had seen of her.
She'd survived of course, too stubborn and tough to succumb to something as trivial as gunshot wounds to her chest and abdomen. Erica hadn't seen her since because Denisa's father had whisked her from the hospital to a safehouse as soon as Denisa was stable enough to be moved. Gregor, Denisa's father, wasn't a man to hold a grudge or settle blame on those undeserving of it, bearing Erica no ill will for what had happened to his only child. He was however, dead set on keeping Denisa from harms way and that meant keeping her from the side of Erica or Arlene.
The damage from the bullets continued.
Arlene had seemed to handle her boyfriend's betrayal better than she'd a right to. Once she'd arrived to join Erica at the house, reaching it just as the crime scene was being wrapped up, the bodies of the slain bagged and in the process of being lifted into the coroner's van. The former Deputy Sheriff had just enveloped Erica into an embrace that she didn't release even when the detectives tried to question Erica alone. Arlene had refused to move, the embrace now a protective shield. Arlene learned the sequence of events as Erica related them, only omitting the phone call she'd had with the head of The Web. It should have floored her but Arlene McGuigan was made of sterner stuff than that. She supported Erica through the interview, calling time on the questions when she saw how deeply shocked Erica was, the retelling of the ordeal seeming to ratchet up the trauma.
Finally alone, the detectives having accepted Erica's account and leaving with a promise to check in with her later, Arlene had taken Erica and her baby to a motel to wait for Shondra and Trent to arrive. During those next few hours, Arlene had taken the last few weeks of her own life apart. She had analyzed every encounter she'd had with Theo, every conversation, every moment she might have left him alone with her phone or computer. If Theo had been simply an assassin, he'd have made his move long before that night. Arlene had little doubt he'd been a spy first, an assassin second. She'd needed to understand how badly they'd been compromised, how many of their allies might now be known to The Spider and his people.
Only when she was sure that she hadn't put anyone else in danger did Arlene succumb to the blame game. Why hadn't she realized Theo was playing her false? Why hadn't she dug into his background before letting him get so close? Why, why, why? For someone like her, the fault of Theo's betrayal lay at her door and no-one else's and no amount of common sense or denials by Erica could make the redhead set aside that particular cross. Erica knew that trust would come slow to Arlene from that moment on.
And the damage from the bullets continued.
Shondra and Trent had been horrified at the news, both ready to load for bear and go seeking a measure of retribution as soon as Erica revealed The Spider's plans for her baby. It had taken Erica twenty minutes and the act of physically sitting on Shondra, before the buxom black woman had become composed enough to listen to sense and to understand that a frontal assault on the home's and offices of the man they suspected to be the mastermind behind The Web was simply suicidal. Over the long night that followed, the three women were faced with a hard question. What now?
