Ransom for Hire: Shadows of His Past: Ransom for Hire, #3

This book, its characters, and its settings, are works of fiction.  Except for the very real places and streets of the great city of Memphis, Tennessee.  Memphis is an amazing place, and I can only hope I’ve done it justice by placing the world of Jack Ransom smack in the middle of it all.

Any resemblance to persons either living or dead, or to any places (except those that really do exist in Memphis), to any events, or anything else, is purely coincidental.  The characters and situations presented in this story are products of the author’s somewhat overactive imagination and are meant solely for the entertainment of you, the reader.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form either by print or electronic means without the express written consent of the author.  Please do not participate in or encourage the pirating of copyrighted material in violation of the author’s rights.  However, if you enjoyed this book, feel free to lend it to your friends and encourage them to buy it as well.

Dedicated to my family and the creative chaos of our lives.

1.

The bright morning sunlight woke Jack Ransom as it tried to spear its way through his eyelids.  He was sure he’d closed those curtains last night.  Maybe he should just paint his windows black.

He didn’t know what time it was.  Whatever hour the clock might say, it was still too early for him.  He hadn’t slept well at all.  As slowly as he could, he sat up in the tangled mess of the blankets, putting a hand to the back of his skull. He had a headache there the size of Graceland, and it had that damned Troll Mortok’s name written all over it.  The same with the bruises that covered his chest and arms and legs.  Mortok wasn’t a great one for words.  But what he lacked in conversation skills he had made up for with sheer physical brutality.

The memory of the Troll’s dying screams brought a fleeting smile.  It wasn’t that Ransom had enjoyed killing Mortok last night.  He certainly hadn’t enjoyed the long and pretty much one-sided fight that preceded the creature’s death.  But sometimes killing was necessary.  Especially when it did the world some good.

The smile faded away again as he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and pain grabbed at his mind.  He raised his arm to shield his eyes, hoping that would help.  His apartment in downtown Memphis faced to the East.  The sun always managed to find him in the mornings.  Once upon a time, it wouldn’t have bothered him.  Back when Julia and he had shared this bed, waking up to the morning sun had been something to look forward to. 

He could have moved the bed, or moved over to Julia’s side to escape the sun’s cruelty.  Could have, but didn’t.  He couldn’t bring himself to sleep on her side.  And he wasn’t about to rearrange the furniture just because Julia had left him.  She’d be back.

Someday.

It had been seven months now since he’d been pulled back into his old life, and she had gone from acting distant to not speaking with him at all.  E-mails went unanswered.  Phone calls weren’t returned.  Text messages were the only thing she responded to and even then they were one and two word replies.  He ran a hand through his shoulder length dark hair, staring down at the floor.  Of all the things he had to regret in his life—and there were a lot of those things—bringing the pain and troubles of his old life into Julia’s was the biggest.

But it’s not your old life anymore Jack, is it? he corrected himself.  Doing things like hunting Mortok the Troll, that was part of his daily routine again.  He’d tried to walk away from stuff like that when he married Julia.  He had thought he could just pretend it never happened.  But here he was.  Back in the game.

Al’Gamesh had said to bring Mortok the Troll in.  That was the job this time.  Alive hadn’t been specified.  Ransom’s demon boss and Mortok had done some deal together.  Somehow Mortok hadn’t believed that Al’Gamesh only wanted to talk.

In Ransom’s experience, Mortok had probably been right.  But that didn’t excuse him from trying to squish Ransom’s head like a grape.  So bringing Mortok in dead had been the only option that Ransom could...well, live with. 

Al’Gamesh didn’t seem to mind.

But he was paying the price for it this morning.  He stretched down to his toes and felt something pop in his back.  He was in better shape than most thirty-eight year olds, with the body of a linebacker, but this kind of work would take its toll on anyone.  Another task completed, another day served out in the three year contract Ransom had bargained with Al’Gamesh.  Making deals with demons was never smart, especially when that demon was as powerful as Al’Gamesh.  At the time it had seemed like a good deal.  Especially with what he got in return.

Now he knew better.

Standing up carefully he walked heavily across the carpeted floor in just his socks and white cotton boxers.  He went to his bathroom down the hall and out of long habit closed the door behind him, even though he was alone in the apartment.

In the medicine cabinet above the sink he found three bottles of Ibuprofen, all of them open and half used.  The little over-the-counter wonder drug had gotten him through any number of mornings just like this one.  He had some harder stuff too, for when he needed it.  Corticosteroids and Lidocaine patches.  But pain was good, or so he’d read.  Pain let you know you were alive. 

At the moment, he would have been okay with not knowing one way or the other.

In the mirror, his blue-grey eyes stared back at him.  You look like Hell, he told his reflection, then chuckled at the bad joke.

Holding one of the Ibuprofen bottles in his right hand, he took the cap in his thumb and first two fingers, pulled down against his palm to engage the childproof seal, and then twisted it open. 

He stopped, and looked down at his right hand.  Then he looked at his left.

Back when he’d made that deal with Al’Gamesh, events had unfolded and ended with him losing his left arm below the elbow.  He still had nightmares about his charred bones being snapped off his body by Al’Gamesh’s hand.  Those dreams didn’t haunt him as often as they used to, the first few weeks, but still.  For months he had learned to adapt to doing things one handed.  He’d relearned how to do things like open bottles, make lunch, even dress himself.  It was incredible the number of things a person used two hands for without even thinking about it.

But now he had two hands again.  He didn’t have to use his coping skills.

The left hand wasn’t his, technically speaking.  He wasn’t even sure it was a real hand.  It looked real enough.  Holding it up to his face now, examining it for probably the five hundredth time, even he couldn’t tell it wasn’t his own.  It had fingerprints and nails and even those little lines across the palm that were supposed to tell your future.  He wondered if it meant anything that the life line intersected the fate line.

Al’Gamesh had given the arm to him as a gift.  Demons with that much power could do things like that.  It had come in a gift box, wrapped and presented like the miracle it was.  When he’d opened the box, the arm had attached itself to his severed limb with a sickening and squishy melding of seeping flesh.  Definitely the weirdest thing he’d ever felt in his life.  Not exactly painful, but in its own way it had been worse than having his real arm burned away in the first place.

His brain had fairly burned with the return of sensory sensation from having those fingers and skin and muscles again.  He felt everything that happened to the new arm.  Heat, cold, pain, pressure.  Everything.  Where his own arm had been severed, there was just a faint, irregular line now, a circle of lighter skin that he could only see if he was looking for it.

His blood beat in the pulse at the wrist.

Shaking his head, he reminded himself that he had given up trying to figure out the nature of demons a long time ago.  They did what they did for their own reasons and God help the mortals who got in their way.  Like him.

He shook two tiny white pills from the medicine bottle into his new left palm and popped them into his mouth.  Then he used both hands to close the bottle up again.  Simple pleasures.

He swallowed the pills without water and started the shower.  That’s when the phone rang.

Since Julia had left him, the phone in their apartment had become more of a work of art than anything else, collecting dust where it sat.  No one called him much.  Most of the people he counted as friends had been friends of Julia’s as well, and they were all keeping a respectful distance.  Al’Gamesh had other ways of contacting him.  So it took him a moment to realize that, yes, the phone actually was ringing.

Maybe it was Julia.  The thought occurred to him in a flash, and he raced down to the kitchen where the portable phone sat in its charger, the little red light blinking in time to the digital ringer.  He picked it up and read the number from the display and his heart sank back down in his chest.  He didn’t recognize the number.  It wasn’t his wife.

Disappointed in a way that was hard for him to describe he thumbed the green answer button.  Hello?

Is this Jack Ransom?

The voice was vaguely familiar, the clear tenor of a strong, confident young man.  Who is this?

An old friend.  I don’t expect you to remember me.  It’s been a while, and you’ve been, well, otherwise occupied.

Ransom strained his memory until his temples ached but couldn’t come up with a name to go with that voice.  He knew this person, though, and in the circles he travelled that was rarely a good thing.

Uh, okay, old friend.  Ransom took the phone with him to the connecting living room couch and flopped down on his back with his feet up on the padded arm.  The Ibuprofen hadn’t kicked in yet and his patience was thin.  What is it I can do for you?

I want to hire you.

Whoa.  Those were words he hadn’t heard in a long time.  Back in the prime of his freelance years, he would pick up two or three contracts a week, easy.  Sometimes more.  Hunting down baddies, doing bodyguard work, finding people who didn’t want to be found.  Coming face to face with Trolls and Ogres and things that go bump in the night.  Back in those days he had been out for hire, available for most any kind of work that came his way.  He hadn’t been choosy, and he’d made good money at it.  But he’d closed out all those old contracts and gone straight.  All for Julia.

Until he got pulled back in.

Uh, right.  Not sure I can help you, he said, realizing he’d been just laying there with his mouth open.  I’m kind of exclusive to one guy now.  Even as he said it, he had to admit his interest was piqued.

Oh, I’m really very sure you’ll want to help me with this.  The guy’s voice sounded amused, almost.  I can pay you well, and what I need done really won’t take more than a few days.  Besides, I’m of the understanding that your schedule is rather light at the moment.  No assignments.  And, no commitments really, what with your wife gone.

Ransom sat up in an angry rush, and paid for it when the pounding throb in his head intensified to hammer blows.  How do you know about Julia?

Mister Ransom.  Really.  The story of you bringing your wife out of Hell is near legend in my circles.  Our circles, I should say.  For her to have abandoned you after that...  Well.  Not what one was expecting, was it?

Now you listen to me!  My wife is off limits.  Got it?  You stay away from her!  Anything happens to her, believe me, Hell might be the only place you can hide from me.  And you know what I did there.  If you so much as—!

Calm yourself, Mister Ransom.  Calm yourself.  The voice had that edge of humor to it again.  Whoever this was on the phone with him, he was enjoying this little game immensely.

You wouldn’t be so damned ‘calm yourself’ about this if I was within arm’s reach of you right now.  Ransom held up his left arm and flexed his fist, like he was choking the life out of something.  Or, more accurately, some one.

Within arm’s reach?  Excellent idea!  I will meet you at the Bourbon Dancer in, say, an hour?

The call disconnected before Ransom could say anything more.

He sat there, staring at the phone.  Who was that guy?  What could he possibly want Ransom for?

Why had he mentioned Julia?

It had been intentional.  Ransom had caught that easily enough.  The guy had used Julia to get a rise out of him.

It had worked.

Ransom tossed the phone away, listening to it clatter across the living room floor.  There would only be one way to find out the answers to his questions.  He had to go meet this guy.  Like it or not, he was about to get sucked a few steps further into his old life.  He could feel it.

Standing up to go back to the shower he stumbled to a halt instead.  Ow.

He looked down at his left arm.  It was still clenched into a tight fist, the muscles corded, the tendons straining white against his skin.

He couldn’t feel his fingers.

2.

The Bourbon Dancer was in the Overton Square area of the Midtown District, not far from the sprawling green lawns of the Overton Park Golf Course.  It was an open air café-style restaurant, and on this warm day in the beginning of spring, several people were taking advantage of the outdoor seating. Men in breezy white shirts and women in print dresses were sitting at small tables of painted white metal with beige umbrellas for shade, sipping at cool drinks or having early lunches.  Ransom felt overdressed in his long black coat.

It was just after eleven now, but already the café was full.  An ornate black metal gate sectioned off the area of round tables from the rest of the sidewalk here on Madison Avenue.  Ransom stood on the opposite sidewalk for better than ten minutes, in the shadow of a tobacco shop awning, watching the people at the café, watching the waiters flitting here and there like bees in black pants and white tops, and watching the buildings around the Bourbon Dancer as well.  As near as he could figure, there were no hidden dangers waiting for him.

This was one of the things he definitely did not