All children old enough to walk were sent to the play room that had been set up in the house after the Draiman parents left. The older kids were in charge of keeping an eye on their younger siblings and cousins. The adults all sat in the living room and talked about what had happened. “Someone seriously tried to shoot you today, Jordan?” Maddie asked.
“Yeah, Maddie. Someone tried to end me today. I had just gotten Jazzi out of the cart and was moving toward the door to help her into her seat before something hit the side of my Rover. Davi and I fucking freaked and hit the pavement. She made Levi hit the dirt next to her.”
Jeremiah shook his head as he walked in the room from getting his pregnant wife a bottle of water from the fridge. “What the hell is going on?”
Jake walked in and sighed. “We don’t know yet, ‘Miah. I called Uncle John to see if he could find out for me. He’s looking into it. I’m waiting on him to call me back.” He set his briefcase down on the coffee table and sat down on the couch, setting his cell phone on the coffee table next to his briefcase. “Something is rotten here. I can feel it.” His eyes traveled from Maddie to Jeremiah and Jona. “Have any of you gotten any kind of clues from dreams?” They all shook their heads. Skyler had followed Jake in from outside. “Skyler, have you seen anything?”
Skyler shook his head. “I’d tell you if I had, Jake.” The Draiman kids had found about Skyler’s gift a few years before when Delilah was pregnant with Seth and Samantha. He just looked at her and his eyes glazed over for a few moments. When he came back to reality, he looked at Delilah. ‘You’re having twins’, he’d told her. From that point on, all of the Draiman kids that lived in Colorado Springs knew about Skyler Mason’s gift.
Jake scratched his head and sighed. “Damn it. Can’t catch a break here.” Miri, now 9 almost 10, came into the living room. “Dad, I’m thirsty. Can I get a water from the fridge?”
“Yes, Miriam. Get one for your brothers and sister too”, he said. He sounded tired. It wasn’t very late in the day and he was already tired.
Malachai looked at his younger siblings after Miri walked into the kitchen. “If they want Jordan, then they probably want me too.”
Jordan looked Malachai. “And Logan and Caleb. We should warn them”, she said.
Jake nodded. “Do that. And tell Logan to get his bottle blonde ass over here. Another rifle never hurts.” Miri had just walked back up the stairs before he opened his mouth. Jordan and Malachai were on it. Jordan called Logan and Malachai called Caleb. They were being warned. As soon as they hung up the phone, Jake’s rang. He sat forward and answered it. He knew the tone that sounded and he didn’t want to talk to the person calling until he had the answers he needed, but he did so anyway. “Hello? Yeah, Dad?” he said after putting his phone on speaker.
“Jacob, do you have the rest of the kids that live in the Springs there with you?”
“Yeah, Dad. Why?”
“I’m going to let your mother ask the next question.” And then his mother’s voice came over the phone.
“Jacob, did someone get shot today?”
Jordan spoke up. “Not shot, but shot at. Why?”
They heard both of their parent heave a sigh of relief. “Thank God”, they said together. “You had all better stay close together. Call your brothers and sisters there in the state and have them come home. You’re going to need to be close by so that you can fight the coming threat. I don’t know what it is yet but once I do, I’ll let you know. If you find out before I do, you will call us immediately”, their mother continued.
“Yes, ma’am”, Jacob said. He knew that an order from their mother was as good as an order from their father and was to be obeyed. There was no room for questioning anything.
“Jacob, I suggest you call your Uncle John about intelligence information. He can find a needle in a haystack”, their father said.
“I’m one step ahead of you there, Dad. I’ve already called Uncle John and he’s digging for me.”
“Good. You kids be careful and I mean it. I don’t want to get a phone call from another sibling telling me that we have to come home to bury any of you. Do I make myself perfectly understood?”
Jake nodded. “Crystal clear, Dad. We’ll be careful.”
“Those who know how to use a weapon need to be armed at all times and I mean that”, their mother said.
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be armed at all times.”
“Go about things as though it were any other day. You go to your office; Maddie, Delilah- you go to the clinic. Jeremiah, you go to class. Nothing’s different until you know what’s going on.”
“Aye, ma’am”, they all responded.
“If you need us, call us and we’ll be on the first flight back”, their father said.
“Aye, aye, sir”, they all responded.
“Now, we’re going to let you go. Jessi and Dave are standing here very patiently waiting on us to go home so that Jessi can lie down. She’s going to pop soon.”
“That’s the last thing you need, another grandchild. Don’t you have enough already?” Jake chuckled.
“No such thing as enough grandchildren. Malachai, how’s the great- grandchild thing coming along?”
“I hope you not in any hurry for great- grandkids, Dad, because I’m in no hurry for Isaiah or Miranda to give me grandchildren.”
Their father laughed. “That’s great news, because your mother and I are in no hurry to be great- grandparents. Now, we’ll talk to you later. Follow our instructions to the letter. Dot all ‘I’s and cross all ‘T’s. Take care of yourselves and each other.”
“Yes, sir. We will. We’ll talk to you soon, Dad”, Jake said. They hung up and Jake sighed for what felt like the millionth time that day. “This just keeps getting better and better”, he said sardonically.
“No kidding”, Jordan added. “I don’t know who these kooks are that want to kill me, but when I find out they’ll regret fucking with me.”
---------------
As Maddie and Delilah made dinner Jake, Malachai, Jordan and Jeremiah made the necessary phone calls to get the rest of their siblings to come home. They each took one. Jake was the lucky one that got to interrupt a date between Marc and Mercedes. When Marc answered his phone, he was none too happy. “This had better be good, big brother, or I will make Thanksgiving a living hell for you.”
“Is the fact that someone tried to shoot Jordan today good enough?” Jake asked.
“Do what? Who tried to shoot Jordan?”
“Would you accept ‘We don’t know yet, but Mom and Dad said rally the troops’ as an answer?”
“I guess so, if that’s the best you’ve got”, Marc said. “Can I get it from the top?”
“You know everything I know, Christopher. If I had more information, you know I’d give it to you.”
“So this is really, ‘We don’t know yet’, huh?”
“Yeah, and not long ago Mom and Dad called, having just gotten off of their plane in Jerusalem from Chile, asking if someone had been shot. We told them what we knew, they said rally the troops. Are you in the middle of a project at the moment?”
“Nope. Just finished one. Do I need to pack up the family and come home until we know what’s going on?”
“Yes, maybe longer. We have no idea what’s going on, but Mom said that there’s some threat coming and that we all need to be together to fight it.”
Marc took a deep breath. “We’ll finish dinner, get the kids from JJ’s place, and come back out there.”
“Thank you, Marc. Give Josh and Pilar Uncle Jake’s best.”
“You’ll be seeing them tomorrow, Jake.”
“I know, but tell them I said hi, you tard”, Jake said with a laugh. It was the first time he’d really laughed all day. Everything was just that hectic.
“Ok, I will. See you tomorrow.”
They hung up. “Ok. Marc’s going to be here tomorrow.” He looked at Malachai. “How far did you get with Meagan?”
“She’s in between research projects at the moment and will be here as soon as she can. She has to find someone to watch her apartment.”
“She’s still not dating?”
“I didn’t ask to be honest.”
Jake nodded. “Jeremiah, what happened with Jay?”
“He was on his way back here anyway. And Justin’s coming with him. That’s yet another rifle”, ‘Miah answered.
“And last time I saw Justin shoot, he was a damn good shot”, Malachai added.
“When’s the last time you saw him shoot, ‘Chai?”
“The last time I was in Chicago we went to the range. That was maybe a month or so ago.”
Jake nodded and looked to Jordan. “And Makayla?”
“Will be here tomorrow as well. She’s as scared as I am that someone tried to shoot me and we don’t know anything other than get everyone home and if we need Mom and Dad we’re to call. The entire situation has her worried.”
“We’re all worried”, Malachai said. “My hope is that Uncle John or Mom comes up with something for us soon because this is going to be difficult as it is.”
Jake nodded. “I agree, Malachai. I don’t want to have to do this shit either, especially with the political current being as turbulent as it is right now.”
“Yeah, your buddy McAllister hasn’t been in office in four years, there’s a re- election coming up and there seems to be a new party trying to join the race.”
“A new party?” Jordan asked. “Who?”
“If Dad were here, he’d flip from hearing this, but they call themselves Utopians. Their biggest supporters are the PSUS, the People in Support of a Utopian Society.”
Jordan’s jaw nearly fell off her face. She looked at her twin. “Call Dad NOW! I don’t know if he knows this, but he needs to hear it.”
---------------
It was two in the morning and neither David nor Brie could sleep. The dream she’d had on the plane on the way back was keeping them both awake. The call that they had just received from their children back in the states was even more unsettling. They lay out on the back deck of their house and watched the stars. “Something’s up”, David said. “I know it. I can feel it. Our children are in danger and we need to be there.”
“I agree, but we can’t jump and run right now, babe. One, we just got back from Chile. Two, Jessi’s about the have that baby any minute and she wants us here when little Abby Sariah is born. And three, our children are adults. We can’t run to the rescue all the time”, Brie responded.
“I know, but something is unsettling about the political state of things back home in the States. I mean, there’s a Utopian party in the race to the Oval office? Something’s not right.”
“I agree. Something is rotten, love. That’s for sure.”
“But, what can we do about it from half way across the globe?”
“Right now, nothing. We need to just hang on and wait it out. They’ll keep us abreast of things. Jake’s really good about reporting any new changes. I’m sure he was going to call once he had information.”
“That’s just Jake. He likes to have facts to report.”
“I know. But there’s nothing we can do right now. I’m afraid for them too. But, they listen when we say rally. No doubt by now, the first of the kids that lives outside of Colorado is arriving at the house and being brought up to speed on what’s going on.”
“I just hope you’re right about what you saw. If something happens to our children, grown or not, the Utopians will pay all over again.”
She smiled. “Hell hath no fury like David Draiman scorned.”
---------------
Porter Grissom had always had a soft spot for young, tender flesh. The young hookers that walked the streets of LA were his usual victims and it didn’t matter what sex they were. Boys and girls alike were what caught his eye. As long as they were young and seemed helpless, he didn’t really care.
His car drove through the ghetto and he scanned the streets for his prize- or prizes- for the night. After the failure of the day’s mission he needed to hurt someone. He needed to see the pain in his victim’s eyes and delude himself into thinking he was seeing the pain of his targets.
He spotted a young Hawaiian girl and a boy with dark curls standing practically side by side. He knew that one of his targets had children around the age of the young man and young woman he’d spotted. They would be perfect. He told his driver to pull over as he rolled down the window. He pointed to the two of them and beckoned them to come over with a finger. The girl did all the talking. “What can we do for you, baby?”
“What’s the rate?” he asked.
“Depends on what you want”, the boy responded.
“A little violent role play, perhaps?”
“How violent?” the girl asked. Her eyes lit up a little bit. He could tell that she would enjoy what he had in mind.
He faked embarrassment as he responded. “It’s a bit of a rape fantasy”, he said as he ducked his head.
“Nothing to be ashamed of”, the boy replied. “You wouldn’t be the first guy we play roles like that for.”
“What are the names?” the girl asked.
“You’ll be Miranda and he’ll be Isaiah.”
They exchanged a look. “For rape role play it five grand each per hour. We’re not cheap. Daddy is very, very proud of the work we do, and he likes that we got a lot of return clientele”, the girl said.
“Really? I’d think that your Daddy would put you on call rather than on the streets?”
“We requested the street tonight for a change of pace”, the boy replied. “Now are we going to do this or are we just stand here looking like dumb asses?”
Grissom pulled out a couple thousand dollars for the both of them and handed them a card. “Get cleaned up and dress like the children of rock stars. Be at the location on the back of the card in two hours. I have to go play hubby and papa myself before I can have my fun for the night.”
“You’re going to have to talk to Daddy about your plan. He doesn’t like things like this usually”, the girl said.
“If it weren’t a rape fantasy, I’d go about this differently. But, this has to go a certain way… I’ll keep you all night. You’ll make good money, I promise. And if you do a good job, I’ll come back for you again.”
The boy stepped away to go talk to ‘Daddy’ about what the Grissom had in mind. He watched the man think about it and nod. “We’ll be there. We’re going to go some new clothes that fit want you want and we’ll be where you want us”, he said and grabbed the girl’s hand. As they walked away, the girl looked over her shoulder at Grissom with hungry eyes. She was anticipating the night. She licked her lips wantonly and fondled her breasts as she watched Grissom’s car pull away. “Rodrigo, take me home for now. I’ll need you to pick me up in about three hours so that I can keep my date.”
“You told the children two hours, Senor Grissom”, Rodrigo said with a thick Mexican accent.
“I have men who are going to take care of them for the first hour. They’re going to put them in the frame of mind that I need them in.”
Little did anyone but Grissom really know, but the boy and girl that he had just commissioned a night with wouldn’t live to see the dawn. He had no intention of letting it out that he wanted to do these terrible things to the people that these children were pretending to be. And if he had his way… he would eventually.
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