To Kill a Ghost

Linox couldn’t sleep. The mysterious Sam evaded every camera he had, and it frustrated him. Instead of focusing on Sam, he decided to focus on someone else. Dedra. She wanted to say so much, he could tell when they were in the car, but she was afraid. Maybe she just liked her privacy, but it seemed like more than that.

He had his fair share of knowing when to keep his nose out of other peoples’ memories. Linox remembered the way his mother cried. His father’s voice shook the walls. Goosebumps ravaged his arms as the memories floated to him. He shoved them down.

“Sam,” he said, “stay focused on Sam Jennings.”

He found nothing in the darker parts of town that Kirkland suggested. Although, he didn’t think there was anything to find, Linox ran the search the way his boss wanted. The moment the older gentleman entered his mind, Linox knew that was a bucket of questions he didn’t want answered. Kirk was too calm, too precise, and too close to Dedra. The last of his questions had been answered though. Kirkland raised his killer, and Linox had a feeling Dedra was made in Kirkland’s image.

“Sam Jennings born July 19th, 1984.” He watched the screen scroll through facts. There was nothing about this guy that made any sense. Then one word made it obvious why. Hacker. This guy wasn’t recruited for his gun specialties. He knew how to cover his cyber tracks too well.

“No…no, I can’t take ten million years to find a computer guy.” Linox hissed at the computer screen as something flashed on the lenses of his glasses. Gray slacks and a long sleeved black shirt. A glass of whiskey and coke on the rocks graced the man’s calloused hands while he laughed. He took a sip of his drink as a woman leaned into him, and Linox knew. Those blue eyes gleamed at the camera in the corner. The hacker messed up.

Linox quickly scanned the room for a name, for anything, and then he realized the room was familiar. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” He laughed as he read the title on the paper napkin next to the woman’s colorful cocktail. Marquis Grand Hotel Bar.

“If you saw us through your intelligence training, Sammy-Boy, then why the hell would you stop for a drink downstairs?” Linox studied the man for another long moment. The woman’s hands lingering on him as his smile grew. “Whatever!”

Linox took the glasses off and move to the hotel website, quickly hacking into its guest contents. It took ten minutes top to break through the firewall, do the search and find Jennings under the name, Bruce Wayne, in room 1504. “You are not ever going to be Batman.” Linox mused before he grabbed his jacket and headed out toward Kirkland’s office.

He saw the older man, sitting in the wide lobby with a glass in hand. The glass appeared to be holding water, but Linox didn’t think it was. He’d seen the posture of a man with a glass like that before. Hunched shoulders, disheveled hair, and wrinkled clothing. He waited for a moment with baited breath, but Kirkland never noticed him. Linox shut the door softly and slide down the wall next to hit. He couldn’t fight his mind any longer.

“Not in front of our son!” His mother yelled. Her fingers were curled into her palms at her sides. She had a black eye forming already, and blood dripped from her nose.

“I don’t get a damn about the boy! He ain’t mine anyway!” The tall man he often called ‘Dad’ growled at her. “You know better than to piss me off.” The photo on the wall seemed to quiver in the fear Linox felt.

“You will not hit me in front of my son.” His mother’s voice was low and dangerous. He only heard her use that voice once, but it didn’t stop the man towering over her. His fist swung out, striking her stomach. She cried out in pain.

“I’ll do what I damn well want. If you don’t stop telling me I won’t, I’ll start beating him too.”

Linox moved shifted underneath the table where he hid, drawing his knees to his chest. The man picked up his tall glass of water and took a huge gulp. He only acted like this when he drank the water. “You wouldn’t…”

Before his mother could finish her sentence, the man grabbed the boy from beneath the table, dragging him out by one leg. “He ain’t mine, what do I care?”

Linox sat with his knees drawn to his chest. His chin rested on his knees, but he could almost feel scratchy fingers against his leg. Drinking wasn’t something he liked to do, nor was it something he liked to be around. He won the war, but that didn’t make the memories less frightening.



Dedra stared at the newly cleaned floor. She could still feel grains of sand beneath her fingernails. The bag was harder to replace than she thought, mostly because of her short height. Kirkland’s haunted her mind as she tried to forget them. He’d made her promises before, and he kept a good deal more than he broke, but this time…this time was different. She didn’t like being lied to, especially when she knew about it.

“Everything is fine. She’s not mad at you, Sweetheart.” Kirkland said, trying desperately to sooth her tears.

“You didn’t hear what she said to me. I’m not supposed to be here.” Dedra couldn’t stop the tears, nor could she stop the trembling that moved from her head to her toes. She had felt true fear once, but this wasn’t that kind of fear. This was concern. If Tanya talked him into sending her back to that place… Dedra couldn’t go back to the home, not again.

“She is all talk. I promise you, everything will be all right.” He held out his arms. She knew he expected her to let him hug her, but she couldn’t. The trembling grew stronger. Kirkland sighed as he pulled her chin gently until her eyes met his. “I promise you, Dedra, I won’t let her hurt you.”

She shook the memory from her mind as she idly ran her fingers over the scars on her wrist. Tanya was never a mother to her, she had a mother once, but she never had a father. Not until Kirkland saved her, and now he shrugged his shoulders when she asked him not to lie.

He lied a lot more than he did after the incident. She wondered why he let that get under his skin so much when it came to her. She didn’t pull the trigger then, but he acted as if she might as well have. Dedra told herself over and over that it wasn’t her fault, but it was her fault. Kirkland showed her how it was her fault every day; she brought death and loss to everyone she came in contact with. However, he never told her how his family was her fault. She asked. Dedra never stopped asking, and he always refused to tell her.

“You wouldn’t tell me the truth about this if I was dying,” she said to herself before wrapping her sore knuckles. “Would you care if I didn’t come back next time?” Blood oozed out of a few scratches and raw spots from her bare fisted match earlier. She needed more. Pain made the memories go away; it drowned the anger too. Dedra needed air in her flooding emotions, and if pain was the only way to get that air, the she would suffer.



“What the hell is wrong with you, Tanya? She’s a child!” Kirkland watched his wife as she paced through the kitchen area. Her hair flounced around her shoulders while her hands rubbed her cheeks.

“She’s not just a child and you know it!” Tanya stopped pacing and turned to face him. “You don’t think I know exactly who that girl is?”

“She is a little girl named Dedra. There’s nothing more to her than that.” His eyes hardened as he stared at the dark haired woman before him. Her eyes filled with tears. “Who do you think she is?”

“She is the daughter of that monster, isn’t she? You can’t find him, so you’re bringing him here.” Tanya growled. “He’s going to kill us, and he’s going to kill your son!”

Kirkland paused. “My son?”

She glared at him as she stepped forward, biting her lip. “I was going to tell you after you sent her back, but yes, your son. I’m pregnant, Kirk. Now get rid of that girl before I do.”

The mystery woman had the same fear in her eyes as Tanya did when she looked at Dedra for the first time. Fear would drive a person to insanity faster than anything else in the world, but he knew what happened to his family. Sometimes it was still hard to look at her, but she was all he had left too.

He took a long, slow drink from the glass in his hand. The liquid burned his throat. It numbed his mind just enough to slow down the pain. He couldn’t afford to numb it all, not now. Sam Jennings was important, somehow, and he needed to know why. Even Kirkland had to admit it.

“Sam looks just like I did when I was around twenty-seven. The dark hair, the vibrant eyes, even the quirky grin in the photo matches mine.” Kirkland whispered to himself. “It’s impossible though.”

“Tanya!” He screamed for the last time. Tears poured down his cheeks as he buried his face in her hair. “Please, don’t do this.” He touched her swollen stomach gently, and felt nothing.

A brick with paper wrapped around it flew through the broken window. Glass scattered beneath its weight, as the curtains fluttered, casting shadows over it. “No…” he whispered.

“Kirkland,” Dedra whispered as she moved from the closet. “I saw him again. You wouldn’t believe me, but I did.” Tears filled her eyes, but she never cried.

“Tanya,” Kirkland whispered, ignoring Dedra altogether. She moved carefully over the glass and touched the brick. The paper covering it matched the bandages over her small wrists.

Dedra unwrapped the brick as she glanced out of the window. “You tried to kill my daughter,” she whispered. “She’s mine to take, not yours.”

Dedra pushed a strand of hair behind her ear as she turned to Kirkland. “What does this mean?”

He turned to her and shook his head as he thought about her words. ‘Mine to take…’ He realized at once, where she stood. “Get down, D.” He growled at her.

“Not until you tell me…”

Kirkland took another long sip from his glass as he remembered the blood. She still had a scar on her left shoulder. “Doctors can’t fix everything,” he whispered to himself. He stared out of the bay window, waiting for whatever was supposed to happen next.