The man was tied bound with his hands in front of him and his feet together. He was on his knees and he was naked. His face was covered in a burlap sack. He had no idea where he was, but he knew that he was in trouble.
Suddenly, his face was immersed in a tub of water and her struggled to breathe and get away. It was useless. He was bound and he’d been beaten. There was no escape.
“YOU BUMBLEING BUFFOON!!!” his boss yelled.
When he was brought up out of the water, he coughed. “What did I do this time?” he cried out, gasping.
He was shoved under the water again, and he struggled some more. “It gave your team a simple task. Burn the bodies to nothing. Now the COLORADO STATE POLICE HAVE THE ASHES?!” his employer shouted. His head was brought out of the water long enough to get a deep gasping breath before he was shoved under again. “You fool. Now the police are going to know that I killed those kids. Do you know who their father is?”
His face was brought out of the water again. This time he was allowed to catch his breath. “If the Colorado State police make the connection to the ashes of those kids and me, you are a dead man, do you understand me? A DEAD MAN!”
He heard the clicking of his boss’s loafers across the floor and the sack was removed from his face. He coughed water out of his lungs as he recovered from nearly being drowned several times. Carter, you need to get out of this shit. You know this bastard is crazy. Why continue to allow this psycho son of a bitch to own you? Get your ass out, he thought to himself as he considered what had just happened. Then, he remembered his family. He had a wife and three young children at home. Grissom knew that. How could he leave this hell on earth and keep his family safe?
---------------
Jake had decided to do a little research of his own while he was at the office the next day. There was no telling what it was that he was going to find, but he needed answers. He needed to know why the PSUS was after Jordan so that they could develop a plan to keep her safe. He knew that his twin wouldn’t go for having company every time she left homestead for very long. Stubborn like their father, his twin sister was.
His first order of business was to research the group itself. The People in Support of a Utopian Society were a group that held that the United States needed to be a country to be rid of the “natural evils” like pain and fear in order to lead the world into the new century. He looked over their website in disgust. If there was anything he knew for a fact it was that there was no such thing as a perfect world. People suffered and died all the time. To think that there could be any other way was ludicrous. He knew it. These idiots should have known it too. Science had yet to perfect an elixir for eternal life and they probably never would. People weren't meant to life forever. It just wasn’t possible. The higher powers hadn’t meant for it to be that way. Human beings were mortal for a reason.
He stumbled across a familiar name; Porter Grissom. He was the corporate head of York Industries- the nations leading importer and exporter of textiles on the West Coast. He was situated in the heart of Los Angeles. Jake had to do a criminal search. Something about the content of that box he’d receive the day before didn’t feel right. He went to the Los Angeles County Sherriff’s department website and did a criminal search on Porter Grissom. There wasn’t much; a few drunken disorderly charges that stuck. But what caught his eye were the investigations that went nowhere that looked at Mr. Grissom for rape, molestation, and murder. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
He turned on some music that was ancient by modern standard; an old song by a group of his father’s friends. They were five men that had called themselves Avenged Sevenfold. Jake had gotten to see two of the five original members perform live the day his father retired. M. Shadows and Synyster Gates were both dynamic on with his sister and older brother. The song was called ‘Afterlife’. It had helped him move past the death of a dear friend when he was a teenager because he could imagine her saying the exact same thing that the lyrics were saying. “I don’t belong here; I’ve gotta move on dear escape from this afterlife cause this time I’m right to move on and on, far away from here!” He just nodded his head as he listened and read over the information in the page. It made sense. But, in order to get any real information, he needed to hack into the PSUS’s financials and that wasn’t something he knew how to do. That was something that was more up baby brother’s alley. He’d call Marc on lunch break to see if he could do it and set all of the house’s computers to scramble their ISP before logging into any website. He didn’t want there to be any chance of the family being in danger because of one of them logging in to the wrong site.
The things that Jacob was seeing put him ill at ease. The more he read the less he liked it. Something caught his eyes in the literature that the PSUS and the Utopian party were publishing. It was literature that stated that Reckless Disregard, much like Disturbed before them, were satanic and evil. He couldn’t help but laugh out loud. His sister was far from evil. She was more like naïve. He saved the page to his bookmarks as he headed out to see his next patient. He couldn’t wait to see what else these retards had to say about his brother and sister’s band as well as his father’s.
The patient had beginning stage MS. There wasn’t a lot that could be done for Multiple Sclerosis, even with the advances in medicine that they had. I think that’s going to be my next big project, he thought with a chuckle as he knocked on the door and headed into the room to talk to his patient.
---------------
Jordan, Malachai, Logan and Caleb all sat in the basement studio in the Draiman homestead and tried to figure out ways to entertain themselves. Jordan was having trouble with the idea of confinement; with staying in one place. She was frustrated enough that she planted her fist in one of the sound proofed walls and growled. “I CAN’T TAKE THIS SHIT!” she shouted.
“Jordan, calm down”, Caleb said as he sat and twirled his drumsticks.
“No, God damn it!” she yelled. “I can’t do this confinement bull shit! We have a huge tour coming up to promote our new record and Jake wants everyone here at homestead.”
“Because you’re in danger, Jordan”, Logan said. He sounded bored.
“Oh please! Like it’s as bad as he’s making it seem.”
“Jordan, be rational for a moment. You asked him first thing this morning if he’d had a dream about the situation. He said no, but Mom had. Then, he wouldn’t discuss it. It’s worse than you want to believe it is if he didn’t share what Mom saw. Think about it Jordan”, Malachai retorted.
“How do you know, Malachai?”
“If you’ll recall, little sister, I am five- almost six- years older than you and Jake. I was there when she was having the dreams about Dad getting shot and dying while she was pregnant with you and Jake. If Mom’s not saying, and if Jake’s not saying, then shit is a little more serious than Jordan wants to believe.”
“Maybe for the kids. Hell, maybe for his kids. Miri’s the one that brought home the mysterious box. What was in that, anyway?”
“Ashes.”
“Of what?”
“Jake’s waiting to hear back from the police on that. And, like it or not, Jordan Hannah, Jake talked to Dad and he’s doing what Dad would do were he home. And who was the one that kept pushing Jake to call Dad, Jordan?” She stared at him. “You know the answer, Jordan. Say it. Own it.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. I was the one that kept pushing him to call Dad.”
“And now you have to live with the consequences. Look, Jord; Dad trusts Jake. You should too. He’s making the best decisions for the family. Let him do so and we’ll all be safe.”Malachai’s voice was soft when he finished speaking. “We all need to put a little faith Jake right now and trust him. He’s filling the mantle of patriarch of the family for a reason.”
“Yeah, because you didn’t want it.”
“It’s not that, Jordan. Jake is a lot better suited to lead the entire Draiman clan than I am. I recognize that and Dad did too. That’s why he didn’t throw a fit when I said no thank you. Trust that your twin knows that he’s doing. He could stand to have us all behind him right now. He feels lost, I can tell. Stand behind him and show him some support Jordan. He needs it so that he can make the right decisions for everyone.”
She sighed. “I hate this shit Malachai. It’s like the Utopians trying to kill Dad.”
“That didn’t happen and they’re not going to get us either. Don’t worry, Jordan. We’ll be fine.”
---------------
Ira, Miri, Levi, Hunter, and Asher had a little meeting amongst themselves. The boys were all curious as to how Miri felt having to talk to the cops. “What was it like to talk to the police in an investigation?” Levi asked.
“It wasn’t scary or anything, Levi. All I had to do was tell them what happened when I went to get the box in detail. It wasn’t that hard.”
“Did they shine a light in your face and make you talk?” Asher asked.
“No, Ash. I just sat next to my Dad and I told the cops what happened when I was called to the office. That’s it. It wasn’t anything huge or special.”
“It wasn’t like on TV?” Hunter asked.
“I think Uncle James lets you watch too many cop shows”, Miri said with a laugh.
“Well, it’s not like I have a lot better stuff to do, though football is fun.”
“What are Nikki and Josie doing?”
“They’re both in gymnastics and tumbling.”
“Fun. But, yeah, it wasn’t like those corny cop shows you watch in Chicago.”
“Oh. Well, that sucks.”
Miri rolled her eyes. “Why are you so disappointed?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s just being a baby”, Ira laughed.
Miri couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t see why. It’s not that big a damn deal.”
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