Puppy Kicker
First Post
“Tears in Hell” – Bearly Involved
11:45 PM Monday, July 12th
Yorktown, Virginia
Armani and Quin crouched over Devin’s body while Meadow applied pressure and bandages to his head. “He might make it,” she said. “He might not.”
Quin glanced at Armani’s wounds. “Not looking too good there, pal. Might want to have a seat. I’m sure the briefcases aren’t going anywhere.
Armani scowled at him and hugged the metal and leather briefcases to his chest harder. He almost passed out. “I’ll have a seat if I want to, man.” Then he sat down. “You ain’t looking too good neither.”
“Please remain calm.” The voice droned through the earpiece of Rebecca’s cell phone. “We are sending help. Just stay calm. Stay on the line and remain calm.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. She set the cell phone down on the trash can. The droning voice continued. “Help will be there any minute. Just remain…” The voice faded as Rebecca walked over to the body of Mr. Louisville Slugger and checked his pulse.
“This guy’s dead.” Rebecca thought she sounded remarkably calm while she said it. He was poorly dressed. The clothes still had that new-clothes-from-a-cheap-store smell to them.
“Good! Swing a bat at me, motherf***er.” Armani coughed in agony from the strain of his sudden outburst.
The emergency vehicles arrived a few minutes later. Almost everyone rode an ambulance to the hospital. An armed police escort rode shotgun. Quinton objected at first.
“I’m alright. I think I’ll just go home.”
“You’ll go to the hospital with us or you’ll go downtown with us.”
“Hospital it is.”
Rebecca followed in her Grand Am. She fixed her makeup at the stoplights.
After checking in on Devin to make sure he was alive, Armani left the hospital and checked in to a Motel 6 a few miles away. Checking the caller ID feature of his cell phone, Armani dialed in the digits for Sammy Nickels. The deal had gone bad and Armani wanted to clear the air as soon as possible.
Busy signal. He’d try again later. But for now…
In the peace and quiet of the air conditioned hotel room, Armani finally sat down and took a long relaxing breath. On the floor near his feet rested the leather briefcase he’d brought from New York. In front of him on the desk was the metal briefcase he’d collected from McDonalds. He’d killed a man to make sure he got at least one of them.
He rolled the dials to the proper combination. 5 – 3 – 5 - 2. The lock clicked. The case creaked as the young thug opened it. “Ohhellyeah. OH… HELL… YEAH!”
Armani fell asleep an hour later, as visions of thirty THOUSAND dollars in cash danced through his head.
The clock blinked 4:12 AM at him when he awoke to the pounding on his hotel room door.
02:30 AM Tuesday, July 13th
Riverside Hospital
Rebecca sat in an uncomfortable chair in Meadow’s hospital room. The ugly looking man (he’d introduced himself as Armani, and Rebecca thought THAT was an amazingly inappropriate name) had checked himself out a couple of hours ago. The nice-looking man with the bullet wound in the head was still at the hospital, still unconscious. Quin was in this room too. A curtain separated his quiet snoring from the girls. Meadow was awake.
“All that for nothing. The professor got shot. Innocent people got shot. I got shot. They stole the bear. They stole the professor.” Meadow looked shell-shocked, like a woman who had lost everything – and then been shot.
“Well, I have the little bear statue.”
Meadow looked at Rebecca, eyes wide. “You stole the bear?”
“Well I didn’t STEAL it. It was in my backpack. I guess Martin put it in there before he got shot.” Rebecca smiled. “Unless it crawled in there by itself!”
Meadow suddenly looked a bit pale. Rebecca leaned away. SHE certainly didn’t want to catch whatever seemed to be making Meadow queasy all the time.
04:12 AM Tuesday, July 13th
Newport News, Motel 6
Armani fumbled with the sheets as the pounding on the door continued. He fell out of bed, kicked the briefcase full of cash into a corner, peaked through the peephole. A huge man’s fist came in and out of view as he pounded on the door. He was dressed professionally in a tailored suit. The jacket almost-but-not-quite hid the bulge of a pistol.
“Who is it?”
“We’re looking for Armani Determan. We’re here from Mr. Nickels.”
“What do you need?”
“Let us in.”
Armani double-checked the security chain. Locked. He maintained his view through the peephole as he unlocked the deadbolt and cracked the door open … just a little. The large man tensed and propelled himself towards the door. Armani was ready for this and slammed it shut. The huge man’s shoulder slammed against the door, but it held.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT, A**HOLE?!”
“Better let us in, kid.” The big man reached under his tailored jacket and produced a large pistol, silenced.
Armani thought quickly. He was in no shape to take on armed thugs. His gunshot wounds had been treated at the hospital, but they were by no means healed. There was no escape path. No window in the bathroom. Armani did the only thing he could think to do.
He politely opened the door. “Come in. Uh, have a seat.”
The man filled the doorway when he entered. “Thank you. I will.” Another man followed. He was slightly smaller, but still intimidating. He also held a silenced pistol. He closed the door and stood in front of the doorway.
“You had a deal with Sammy,” said the bigger man. He leaned against the TV stand and scanned the room. “Sammy never got his merchandise.”
“It wasn’t my fault, man!” Armani argued. “We were attacked! Man, I tried to call.”
“We’re not here to listen to excuses, Mr. Determan. Where’s the merchandise?”
Armani pointed at the leather briefcase on the other side of the room. The man reached it in two steps, picked it up, opened it. “This is it.”
The other man opened the door and stepped out. The large man glanced at the metal briefcase, then at Armani. “Anyone know you’re here?”
Armani nodded. “I told the cops where I was gonna stay.”
The big man nodded. “Don’t tell anyone we were here tonight.”
Armani assured him that nobody would know and locked the door behind the men as they left.
Armani’s heart returned to its normal pace within a few minutes and his frenzied mind began to relax and assess the situation.
How did they know I was here?
Tuesday morning Armani deposited thirty thousand dollars in two separate bank accounts.
12:30 PM Friday, July 16th
Riverside Hospital
It was Friday when Devin finally awoke. The pain in his head was intense and his vision swam as he tried to focus on the neatly suited figure sitting in his hospital room.
“Glad to see you’re finally awake, Mr. Cole.” The voice sounded familiar.
“Glad to be awake.” Devin managed to get his eyes focused on the man. One of Sammy’s cronies. “What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“What do you want?”
“Mr. Nickels was wondering what happened to his property.”
“I got shot in the head. I sort of lost track of it about then.”
The man nodded. “Sorry to hear that. I’ll go let Mr. Nickels know.” He stood to leave. “Oh, your little sister is in good hands.”
Devin tried to sit up, swooned, collapsed to the bed. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LISA?!?” The world swam around him.
“Oh, she’s safe. We’ll just take care of her while you’re busy looking for Mr. Nickels’ property.”
“WHERE IS SHE!?!”
“I hope you feel better soon, Mr. Cole.” The man walked out.
Rebecca, Quin, and Meadow had returned to the hospital to check on the stranger with the head wound. Some quick words with the nurse and Meadow found out his new status. “Cole’s awake.”
“Well let’s go see him. I’ve got some questions,” said Quin.
The three students had spent the better part of the week healing and researching the artifact they had been mysteriously left with. They recapped their findings as the wound their way through the hospital passageways and elevators.
“He found this thing in Mexico…”
“Southern Mexico, near Chiapas. Darn near in Guatamala,” specified Rebecca.
Quin continued. “Right. So southern Mexico, some Mayan village or something. But he found a bunch of other things too. Like, tons of little tourist toys.”
“We call them artifacts, Quin.”
“Right, Meadow. Artifacts. So why was this one so important?”
“The notes didn’t really say how he decided it was more important than the others. But he is REALLY smart. And he found out its name... Uh... Mentos... Mannequin...”
"Mensajero de la Muerte," said Meadow. "Spanish. It means Messenger of Death. The notes MIGHT have said why, if they hadn’t been soaked by the rain.” Meadow glared at Quin.
The elevator dinged at the third floor and the doors opened.
“Hey, I did the best I could. And who knows what we missed out on because you couldn’t keep your hands on that satchel.”
“Oh, children. Enough!” Rebecca walked off the elevator. The others followed. “It doesn’t matter HOW he knew it was different. But there was definitely something different. His notes talked about some ritual that made the bear talk to dead things.”
“The bear sees dead people!” Quin grinned.
“Yeah, sounds silly to me too. But so what if it’s all bogus? Somebody thought it was important enough to kidnap and kill for. Martin didn’t know the specifics of the ritual anyway. Plus I’m sure he’s smart enough to realize that that’s all hokey anyway.”
“We shouldn’t just assume it is fake, Rebecca. We should, perhaps, assume it is real and then see where that leads us.”
“Whatever, Meadow.” Rebecca stopped at an open door. “This is his room.”
Devin Cole was pulling on a pair of pants with one hand and removing various IV needles with the other. Armani was in the room with him, but there was no conversation going on.
“Hi. Devin Cole I presume?” Devin didn’t answer. Quin extended his right hand “Quinton Stark III. Nice to meet you.”
Devin continued to get dressed.
“Listen. I don’t care what kind of attitude you’ve got going on here, Mister. We’re all in this together.”
Devin looked up then. “I’m not in this with anyone. I was shot because of your old friend. I just need to get home.”
“Well… I… he’s not that old.”
They all followed as Devin hurried out of the room. He still wore his hospital gown. It was partially tucked into his jeans.
Quinton grabbed Devin by the shoulder and spun him around. “Listen. Like it or not, you’re involved in this. Those people were after all of us, for one reason or another. The least you can do is talk to us.”
“I’ve got other things to worry about.”
Devin was silent as they rode the elevator to the ground floor.
“Well let us help you. Do you need…”
Devin spun around and shouted at Rebecca. “I DON’T NEED YOUR CHARITY!”
“Um, Mr. Cole. There’s a problem with your insurance.” The nurse looked nervous as she tried to intercept Devin. He walked around her and continued towards the door.
They arrived on the sidewalk outside the hospital. The group watched as Devin searched the parking lot. He scratched his head. "Umm..."
“No charity, then." Rebecca dangled the Mary Kay keychain in Devin’s face. "Would you like a ride?”
11:45 PM Monday, July 12th
Yorktown, Virginia
Armani and Quin crouched over Devin’s body while Meadow applied pressure and bandages to his head. “He might make it,” she said. “He might not.”
Quin glanced at Armani’s wounds. “Not looking too good there, pal. Might want to have a seat. I’m sure the briefcases aren’t going anywhere.
Armani scowled at him and hugged the metal and leather briefcases to his chest harder. He almost passed out. “I’ll have a seat if I want to, man.” Then he sat down. “You ain’t looking too good neither.”
“Please remain calm.” The voice droned through the earpiece of Rebecca’s cell phone. “We are sending help. Just stay calm. Stay on the line and remain calm.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. She set the cell phone down on the trash can. The droning voice continued. “Help will be there any minute. Just remain…” The voice faded as Rebecca walked over to the body of Mr. Louisville Slugger and checked his pulse.
“This guy’s dead.” Rebecca thought she sounded remarkably calm while she said it. He was poorly dressed. The clothes still had that new-clothes-from-a-cheap-store smell to them.
“Good! Swing a bat at me, motherf***er.” Armani coughed in agony from the strain of his sudden outburst.
The emergency vehicles arrived a few minutes later. Almost everyone rode an ambulance to the hospital. An armed police escort rode shotgun. Quinton objected at first.
“I’m alright. I think I’ll just go home.”
“You’ll go to the hospital with us or you’ll go downtown with us.”
“Hospital it is.”
Rebecca followed in her Grand Am. She fixed her makeup at the stoplights.
---
After checking in on Devin to make sure he was alive, Armani left the hospital and checked in to a Motel 6 a few miles away. Checking the caller ID feature of his cell phone, Armani dialed in the digits for Sammy Nickels. The deal had gone bad and Armani wanted to clear the air as soon as possible.
Busy signal. He’d try again later. But for now…
In the peace and quiet of the air conditioned hotel room, Armani finally sat down and took a long relaxing breath. On the floor near his feet rested the leather briefcase he’d brought from New York. In front of him on the desk was the metal briefcase he’d collected from McDonalds. He’d killed a man to make sure he got at least one of them.
He rolled the dials to the proper combination. 5 – 3 – 5 - 2. The lock clicked. The case creaked as the young thug opened it. “Ohhellyeah. OH… HELL… YEAH!”
Armani fell asleep an hour later, as visions of thirty THOUSAND dollars in cash danced through his head.
The clock blinked 4:12 AM at him when he awoke to the pounding on his hotel room door.
---
02:30 AM Tuesday, July 13th
Riverside Hospital
Rebecca sat in an uncomfortable chair in Meadow’s hospital room. The ugly looking man (he’d introduced himself as Armani, and Rebecca thought THAT was an amazingly inappropriate name) had checked himself out a couple of hours ago. The nice-looking man with the bullet wound in the head was still at the hospital, still unconscious. Quin was in this room too. A curtain separated his quiet snoring from the girls. Meadow was awake.
“All that for nothing. The professor got shot. Innocent people got shot. I got shot. They stole the bear. They stole the professor.” Meadow looked shell-shocked, like a woman who had lost everything – and then been shot.
“Well, I have the little bear statue.”
Meadow looked at Rebecca, eyes wide. “You stole the bear?”
“Well I didn’t STEAL it. It was in my backpack. I guess Martin put it in there before he got shot.” Rebecca smiled. “Unless it crawled in there by itself!”
Meadow suddenly looked a bit pale. Rebecca leaned away. SHE certainly didn’t want to catch whatever seemed to be making Meadow queasy all the time.
---
04:12 AM Tuesday, July 13th
Newport News, Motel 6
Armani fumbled with the sheets as the pounding on the door continued. He fell out of bed, kicked the briefcase full of cash into a corner, peaked through the peephole. A huge man’s fist came in and out of view as he pounded on the door. He was dressed professionally in a tailored suit. The jacket almost-but-not-quite hid the bulge of a pistol.
“Who is it?”
“We’re looking for Armani Determan. We’re here from Mr. Nickels.”
“What do you need?”
“Let us in.”
Armani double-checked the security chain. Locked. He maintained his view through the peephole as he unlocked the deadbolt and cracked the door open … just a little. The large man tensed and propelled himself towards the door. Armani was ready for this and slammed it shut. The huge man’s shoulder slammed against the door, but it held.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT, A**HOLE?!”
“Better let us in, kid.” The big man reached under his tailored jacket and produced a large pistol, silenced.
Armani thought quickly. He was in no shape to take on armed thugs. His gunshot wounds had been treated at the hospital, but they were by no means healed. There was no escape path. No window in the bathroom. Armani did the only thing he could think to do.
He politely opened the door. “Come in. Uh, have a seat.”
The man filled the doorway when he entered. “Thank you. I will.” Another man followed. He was slightly smaller, but still intimidating. He also held a silenced pistol. He closed the door and stood in front of the doorway.
“You had a deal with Sammy,” said the bigger man. He leaned against the TV stand and scanned the room. “Sammy never got his merchandise.”
“It wasn’t my fault, man!” Armani argued. “We were attacked! Man, I tried to call.”
“We’re not here to listen to excuses, Mr. Determan. Where’s the merchandise?”
Armani pointed at the leather briefcase on the other side of the room. The man reached it in two steps, picked it up, opened it. “This is it.”
The other man opened the door and stepped out. The large man glanced at the metal briefcase, then at Armani. “Anyone know you’re here?”
Armani nodded. “I told the cops where I was gonna stay.”
The big man nodded. “Don’t tell anyone we were here tonight.”
Armani assured him that nobody would know and locked the door behind the men as they left.
Armani’s heart returned to its normal pace within a few minutes and his frenzied mind began to relax and assess the situation.
How did they know I was here?
Tuesday morning Armani deposited thirty thousand dollars in two separate bank accounts.
---
12:30 PM Friday, July 16th
Riverside Hospital
It was Friday when Devin finally awoke. The pain in his head was intense and his vision swam as he tried to focus on the neatly suited figure sitting in his hospital room.
“Glad to see you’re finally awake, Mr. Cole.” The voice sounded familiar.
“Glad to be awake.” Devin managed to get his eyes focused on the man. One of Sammy’s cronies. “What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“What do you want?”
“Mr. Nickels was wondering what happened to his property.”
“I got shot in the head. I sort of lost track of it about then.”
The man nodded. “Sorry to hear that. I’ll go let Mr. Nickels know.” He stood to leave. “Oh, your little sister is in good hands.”
Devin tried to sit up, swooned, collapsed to the bed. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LISA?!?” The world swam around him.
“Oh, she’s safe. We’ll just take care of her while you’re busy looking for Mr. Nickels’ property.”
“WHERE IS SHE!?!”
“I hope you feel better soon, Mr. Cole.” The man walked out.
---
Rebecca, Quin, and Meadow had returned to the hospital to check on the stranger with the head wound. Some quick words with the nurse and Meadow found out his new status. “Cole’s awake.”
“Well let’s go see him. I’ve got some questions,” said Quin.
The three students had spent the better part of the week healing and researching the artifact they had been mysteriously left with. They recapped their findings as the wound their way through the hospital passageways and elevators.
“He found this thing in Mexico…”
“Southern Mexico, near Chiapas. Darn near in Guatamala,” specified Rebecca.
Quin continued. “Right. So southern Mexico, some Mayan village or something. But he found a bunch of other things too. Like, tons of little tourist toys.”
“We call them artifacts, Quin.”
“Right, Meadow. Artifacts. So why was this one so important?”
“The notes didn’t really say how he decided it was more important than the others. But he is REALLY smart. And he found out its name... Uh... Mentos... Mannequin...”
"Mensajero de la Muerte," said Meadow. "Spanish. It means Messenger of Death. The notes MIGHT have said why, if they hadn’t been soaked by the rain.” Meadow glared at Quin.
The elevator dinged at the third floor and the doors opened.
“Hey, I did the best I could. And who knows what we missed out on because you couldn’t keep your hands on that satchel.”
“Oh, children. Enough!” Rebecca walked off the elevator. The others followed. “It doesn’t matter HOW he knew it was different. But there was definitely something different. His notes talked about some ritual that made the bear talk to dead things.”
“The bear sees dead people!” Quin grinned.
“Yeah, sounds silly to me too. But so what if it’s all bogus? Somebody thought it was important enough to kidnap and kill for. Martin didn’t know the specifics of the ritual anyway. Plus I’m sure he’s smart enough to realize that that’s all hokey anyway.”
“We shouldn’t just assume it is fake, Rebecca. We should, perhaps, assume it is real and then see where that leads us.”
“Whatever, Meadow.” Rebecca stopped at an open door. “This is his room.”
Devin Cole was pulling on a pair of pants with one hand and removing various IV needles with the other. Armani was in the room with him, but there was no conversation going on.
“Hi. Devin Cole I presume?” Devin didn’t answer. Quin extended his right hand “Quinton Stark III. Nice to meet you.”
Devin continued to get dressed.
“Listen. I don’t care what kind of attitude you’ve got going on here, Mister. We’re all in this together.”
Devin looked up then. “I’m not in this with anyone. I was shot because of your old friend. I just need to get home.”
“Well… I… he’s not that old.”
They all followed as Devin hurried out of the room. He still wore his hospital gown. It was partially tucked into his jeans.
Quinton grabbed Devin by the shoulder and spun him around. “Listen. Like it or not, you’re involved in this. Those people were after all of us, for one reason or another. The least you can do is talk to us.”
“I’ve got other things to worry about.”
Devin was silent as they rode the elevator to the ground floor.
“Well let us help you. Do you need…”
Devin spun around and shouted at Rebecca. “I DON’T NEED YOUR CHARITY!”
“Um, Mr. Cole. There’s a problem with your insurance.” The nurse looked nervous as she tried to intercept Devin. He walked around her and continued towards the door.
They arrived on the sidewalk outside the hospital. The group watched as Devin searched the parking lot. He scratched his head. "Umm..."
“No charity, then." Rebecca dangled the Mary Kay keychain in Devin’s face. "Would you like a ride?”
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There were, however, a couple taken straight from their mouths... 
