Free Agent out of Time (The Agents for Good) by Guy Stanton III Page B

soul.
    “I think we should start your education into how bad it is to cross me with a little rape, followed by a lot more rape. Rip her clothes off and hold her down. No point in not getting started with her education is there?”
    The man’s minions obeyed willingly enough, as they knew that they would be next in line to take their pleasure. Deshavi’s screams rent the air, but there was no one to hear that cared.
     
    Something wasn’t right. Deshavi had promised to call me the day after she had gotten back to the city and this was now the third day since she had left. I had tried calling her, but the call had gone straight to voicemail. I knew the alias the Deshavi went by and the city and I began to call around.
    It took several hours to locate a hotel with someone on record with that name. I was transferred by the receptionist to another line. A woman’s voice came on the phone.
    “Sir might I ask what your interest in this person may be?”
    “She’s my granddaughter. She was supposed to call me when she got in, but it’s been a few days and she hasn’t called me yet. I was wondering if you could check for me whether she arrived safely?”
    There was a long pause on the other end of the line before the woman’s voice slowly responded with a note of bad news to her tone that had me gripping the phone hard before even her words came through clearly, “Sir I regret to have to inform you of this, but the door of your granddaughters room was broken open. We have surveillance footage of your granddaughter arriving, but not departing. We also have footage of three men leaving the area with a large suitcase. We’ve turned over our surveillance data to the police and are cooperating with them fully on the investigation, as to your granddaughter’s disappearance. Are you still there Sir?”
    I heard her last words, but the phone was already falling from my listless grasp to shatter on the floor. I stumbled my way out onto my front porch that overlooked my mountain valley home. First it had been my wife, then my son, then my good friend, and now all that I had dear left to me was gone into the unknown. A shout of war filled rage swept out of me in a cry that echoed down the valley temporarily silencing the sounds of nature for a long moment. Such a cry hadn’t been heard in these mountains for many generations.
    I caught myself against the railing from falling, as my heart thundered away inside of me. My hands shook, as they supported me on the wooden railing of the porch, as grief swept through me.
    “No!” My hands clenched into fists. Deshavi might yet still be alive. I owed her enough to find out.
    A voice whispered, “You’re too old.”
    “That may well be, but you’re going to pay to find that out!” I gritted out in denunciation of the disparaging spirit that was assailing me in my moment of despair and grief.
    I turned back toward the house. The sudden resolve that I felt course through me helped to still the fluttering of my heart. Now was no time to be weak or old. It was a time to be strong and I willed my body to be so accordingly.
    Strength returned to my fingers and with the rising fury that I felt at the near hopelessness of my situation I grabbed an ax from off the hearth that I used for chopping kindling. I jerked an ornately woven area rug away from the middle of the living room floor and lifting the axe high with two hands I brought it crashing down towards the polished wood plank floor.
    The axe’s blade bit deeply into the wood and I worked away savagely at the floor. Chunks of wood splintered off to the side, as the floor grudgingly gave way to the sharpened steel and the trauma wrecked by the axe.
    I had hoped that this day would never come again, but trouble had a way of finding me. The way made clear I lifted the heavy case out from beneath the floor. I undid the locks and the case opened. There was money in several currencies. Several passports, but they were all hopelessly outdated