C6 Chapter Six

The next morning found Cade at the commandery trapped in a series of planning meetings with the other senior force commanders. He was by nature a man of few words, one who preferred to be doing things rather than sitting around talking about them, but a highly specialized organization like the Templars didn’t run itself on action alone and so several times a week, when he wasn’t out on a mission, he was required to sit through organizational briefings like this one. An officer from Planning and Logistics was currently at the front of the room, outlining the new method for requisitioning additional office supplies that would be put in place for the coming quarter and Cade quickly tuned him out before the man’s nasal voice could set his nerves further on edge than they already were. Instead, his thoughts turned inward, pondering recent events, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that made some kind of sense.

For seven long years he believed that his wife, Gabrielle, had escaped the pain and suffering of this world and had moved on to another, better place. He’d taken comfort in that belief, had found safety and solace in the fact that something good, something pure, had emerged from that horrific July afternoon when the supernatural entity that he called the Adversary had invaded their home and stolen her life away, that her death had not been the last and final act in the beautiful performance that had been her life.

Then had come that night seven months ago, when she’d first appeared to him in the darkness of an aircraft cabin high above the eastern seaboard, and his hard won equilibrium had been shattered like so much stained glass. She’d returned to him several times since, both here and in the Beyond, and he’d gradually begun to understand that she wasn’t at rest, wasn’t at rest at all, that she was trapped in some sort of limbo existence, neither here nor there, unable to return to the living and incapable of moving into the gentle peace of the dead.

It was a horrifying realization.

To think that she had been trapped in that hellish existence, alone, for all of those years made him want to rail at the heavens and hang his head in shame. He’d failed her, when he was unable to prevent the Adversary from taking her away from him, and he’d apparently failed her again, leaving her to languish in that strange half-life on the other side of the Veil.

But last night’s events had been the final blow to whatever equilibrium he had managed to maintain over the years. The discovery of Gabrielle’s body, perfectly preserved after seven years in the grave, struck Cade with all the delicate finesse of a sledgehammer. It made it unmistakably clear that Gabrielle was an important part of whatever plan the Adversary had set in motion, just as Cade himself was.

The question was why.

What had the two of them done to deserve being targeted in such a fashion? What made them special? Out of all the billions of people in the world, why had the Adversary chosen them?

Cade’s musings were interrupted by a commotion at the door. He glanced up, startled back to the present, to find Riley standing with his head just inside the entrance, gesturing to him. Excusing himself, Cade joined his senior non-com outside the door.

“Tell me you’ve come to rescue me,” Cade said with a relieved smile on his face.

But Riley only wearily shook his head. “We’ve got a problem.”

The package sat opposite him, just on the other side of the gate, right in the center of the drive where it couldn’t be missed. Looking down at it, Cade could see the big black letters covering the white address label, the handwriting little better than a scrawl but still legible nonetheless.

Cade Williams.

He glanced over at Riley, who said, “The guard on duty is named Samuels. Claims he was at his post in the guard house the entire time. Swears no one could have come down that road without him knowing about it, never mind leave a package right under his nose.”

“Yet there it is,” Cade said pointedly, looking down at the parcel. It wasn’t much bigger than a hardcover book, maybe eight-by-twelve or so, wrapped in a plain brown paper wrapper like hundreds of other parcels a person sees over the years.

But this one was addressed to him personally.

And it had been delivered to a place that was, as far as the general public knew, nothing more than a private residence. One that was in someone else’s name to boot.

Something was very wrong here.

“Does he think it just dropped out of the open sky?” Cade asked beneath his breath.

There was no answer from Riley, who either hadn’t heard him or simply chose to pretend that he hadn’t.

The explosives team showed up then and so he moved back a respectful distance, Riley at his side, and the two of them watched the specialists get to work.

The gates were carefully opened, giving the team access to the package, but without disturbing it in any way. A pair of dogs was then brought up, one to check for explosive residue, the other for drugs. Neither of them alerted, so the team leader ordered a pair of bomb techs to approach the package and give it a closer look.

The men were dressed in standard bomb suits that were made from an inner layer of ballistic cloth and an outer layer of fire retardant fabric and were composed of a sleeved coat and trousers, a chest plate and groin protector, and a helmet with a face shield. Protective spats were also worn over the feet. The suits made them bulky and slow, but for what they were doing that was just fine. Bomb technicians who were in a hurry usually didn’t live very long.

They laid a large piece of ballistic cloth, a bomb blanket, out on the ground next to the package. Checking first for an anti-lift device and not finding one, the tech used a pair of large metal tongs to gently lift the package and place it in the center of the blanket. Moving carefully, the two men then wrapped the package with the rest of the blanket. The material was designed to help contain the blast if something went wrong. That in turn went inside a heavily shielded transport crate and to Cade it seemed like everyone present breathed a sigh of relief as the door of the crate was closed.

He knew the team would take the package inside their vehicle where they would first x-ray it from every possible angle before running it through a barrage of additional tests including a full chemical and biological weapons scan and then, and only then, would they attempt to open it to see what it contained.

As they watched the team move off, the crate carried carefully between them, Riley finally gave voice to what they both were thinking. “How did anyone know where to find you?”

Cade couldn’t answer and that made him nervous, far more so than he cared to admit.