No Escape by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-17T18:30:00+00:00

***

Jackson Weller stared at the computer screen as the call ended. He clicked the power button and waited for it to switch off. As the screen turned to black, all he could see was the outline his face caught poorly in the matte black.

It was like looking at a shadow. A grim approximation of the man he had once been.

Jackson stood up and walked through his apartment. He hadn’t cleaned it properly in weeks. A thin layer of dust could be spotted here and there, covering furniture and places he hadn’t touched for some time.

He hated it. Hated his situation. Hated what he’d become.

He moved over to his brown leather couch and switched on the television. A blue hue covered the room, briefly lighting the rows of leather-bound books that lined the walls.

Jackson lived alone, having always preferred the bachelor’s life. But during all his years as an FBI agent and then department head, he had found that a hole inside had slowly opened.

A darkness that could never quite be filled.

He flicked through the TV channels, searching for something that might take his mind off things. His days had largely been punctuated by that, a searching for escapism. Something to pass the time and deaden his mind.

He stopped on a news channel and his eyes widened. A female reporter was standing in the street outside a convenience store with a huge crowd of people gathered around her.

Her voice boomed over the speakers, reporting on the police search for a dangerous fugitive who had escaped from a psychiatric facility.

Then images flashed before him. One of John Murphy, then two more of Valerie and her sister.

“Valerie Law’s whereabouts are not currently known,” the reporter said. “But she was last seen in this neighborhood, fighting with a man some believe to be John Murphy. The question on everyone’s lips is: Is she trying to catch him or help him? Is she a hero or an FBI agent hellbent on helping a killer finish what he started?”

Jackson switched the television off. He felt his blood boiling.

He had indeed always had an emptiness inside of him. But the only thing that had ever come close to filling that void was the friendships he had made in life.

Valerie, Charlie, and Will were three such friends. And while Jackson often maintained a distance from them due to his difficulties with intimacy, their friendship was not something he could easily abandon.

With determination in his eyes, he walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. He was unshaven, wearing old jeans and a crumpled shirt. His face was gaunt and somewhat unfamiliar.

Nobody would recognize him as the well-respected former FBI department head they used to know. Months of poor sleep, poor eating, and even poorer self-control with alcohol had whittled him down into something else; someone else.

But this didn’t matter to Jackson anymore. All that mattered to him was protecting his friends from harm, no matter what it took.

He grabbed a razor and shaving cream from one of the cabinets and began shaving away his stubble.

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