Veil of Civility

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Who do you think it was?" Constance asked. "Do you think there are more of them?"

She had asked the same questions at least twice in the last several minutes and the same quiver was still present in her voice when she talked. The look on her face spoke volumes about her frame of mind. She was afraid and she had every reason to be.

"Oh, there's definitely more of them," Declan said, as he looked at the cell phone he'd taken from the heavily-damaged SUV that had attacked him on his way home. He and his wife had been parked at a gas station on the corner of West Virginia State Routes 60 and 92 for half an hour, ever since the phone had rang, a male caller on the other end. "Those guys weren't acting alone. The ones who came after me talked about someone paying them to be there."

"Paying them to be there? You mean they were hired to kill us? By who?"

He could tell by her voice that his wife was nearly at the point of hysterics.

"I don't know, but I suspect that was one of them that just called."

He picked up the phone and flipped it open. Hitting the green "send" button again, he lifted the phone to his ear. An electronic voice immediately picked up the line and repeated the same message he had heard when he'd tried to call the number back three previous times. The TelPay Wireless user you have dialed is not available and has not setup a voicemail account. Please try your call again later.

He closed the phone and tossed it onto the dashboard. The first time he had called it the number had rung busy, but each time after the electronic message had picked up. He wasn't familiar with the company, TelPay, but he suspected it was one of the many prepaid wireless services that could be found in just about every convenience store or grocery chain in the United States. The only clue he had was the number's area code, 434, and that meant the phone had likely been purchased somewhere in Central Virginia and that the person using it was located there as well.

"Do you have any service on your phone?" he asked, as Constance sniffed away new tears.

She reached down to the tan leather handbag that sat on the floorboard between her feet and pulled out a dark red Samsung smartphone. "Two bars," she said.

He reached out and took hold of the phone, allowing his hand to touch hers softly for a moment.

"Hey," he said with a quick smile and a comforting look. "I'm not going to let anything happen to us, okay?"

She wiped her face and nodded as he took the phone from her hand and thumbed the display. Opening the android phone's web browser to the Google home page, he flipped it sideways and typed “TelPay” into the search engine. Moments later the search engine returned the page of a prepaid wireless provider based in Chula Vista, California, confirming his suspicions.

"Damn."

"What? What is it?" Constance asked, her head snapping up to look at him.

"Nothing," he said, raising his hands slowly, hoping to calm her startled movements. "The phone is from a prepaid wireless service, that's all."

"What does that mean?"

He shrugged. "It just means that the caller didn't sign a contract when they bought the phone. The service was paid for in advance which usually means the buyer either has bad credit or wants to remain anonymous for some reason."

"So there's no way the police can find out who it is that's after us?" she asked rhetorically.

Declan nodded. "Aye, that's what it means."

"There's got to be someone we can call, someone that can help."

Declan nodded. "Yeah, maybe. But if we call them we have to explain all of this, and we don't have time for that right now."

"Why don't you want to explain it, Declan? Tell me! Someone tried to kill you! People go to the police when that happens, they don't run away and hide!"

"So you've said."

"Stop saying that!" She stomped her foot hard against the floorboard.

"Look, we've covered this. I'm not going to anyone until I know you're safe. We don't know who these people are and we don't know who's involved."

Running directly to the police was a typical civilian response and in most cases it made sense. Most of the murders in the United States were committed by jealous lovers or enraged spouses and going straight to the authorities was the right thing to do, but not in this situation. It wasn't a coincidence that Abaddon Kafni had been killed the night before and that now someone was trying to kill the only people who had been within a few hundred yards of where he'd died. Declan was certain there was more to what was happening than could be plainly seen. What he needed to do was to get his wife to a safe place where he wouldn't have to worry about protecting her if someone came at him again. She may not agree with what he was doing, but she didn't have to — as long as she was alive.

"Look, I already know these phones can't be tracked down very easily. That's why people use them. I'm not trying to hide from the police; I just want to make sure you're safe. You have to believe me when I say this… I've never experienced a worse feeling than I did tonight, driving home knowing there were people that could be hurting you at that very moment. I won't risk that again."

Constance's expression softened.

"I just want you to be safe," he said, continuing to drive the point home that what he was doing was for her own good, "and then I'll go to the police and start trying to figure this whole thing out. You didn't see anything so there's no reason for them to talk to you anyways. There's no reason that you can't be holed up somewhere for a few days." In actuality, he had no intention of going to the police. While he hadn't told his wife, he'd recognized the voice on the phone. Picking up on the croaky sounding Creole accent, he knew the caller had been ASAC Seth Castellano; the police, for all intents and purposes.

"If these people can find our house and can find you when you're driving along a road then why can't they find a cabin in the woods?"

"Because it doesn't belong to us and no one knows we're going there," Declan said, although he knew the statement wasn't entirely accurate. In fact the cabin they were going to, which was still another thirty miles away, did belong to him. He'd bought it several years ago shortly after they'd been married, and had been preparing it over the last few years as an emergency shelter. He had, however, been very careful as to how the cabin was owned and his name didn't appear on any of the paperwork. Instead, it was owned by what was commonly called a dummy corporation, this one based in the Grand Cayman Islands. Without some serious international investigation backed up by legal proceedings, its ownership would be impossible to determine.

“Without powerful connections,” he continued, as he shifted the sports car into gear and left the gas station's parking lot, “it would take a very long time for someone to trace us to this location."