The Shepherd by ETHAN CROSS

Author:ETHAN CROSS
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-936558-06-3
Publisher: The Fiction Studio

CHAPTER 33

The dusty, green El Camino pulled into the truck stop parking lot. Ackerman saw the lights of the interstate to his right and a sign next to the road on the left that read, Asherton: 13 Miles.

He had some decisions to make. Several possible paths stretched out before him, but he was uncertain of which road to take. His mind was a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts and emotions—rage, hope, pain, redemption. He needed to seek guidance, and only one person in the world could give it to him. He lifted the payphone’s receiver, inserted his money, and dialed.

“Hello,” Father Joseph said.

“I let them go.”

The man on the other end of the line was silent.

“Did you hear me, Father? I let them go. The family…the mother and the two kids. I spared them.”

“That’s…that’s wonderful. It’s incredible. You have no idea how proud I am of you. This could be the first step.”

“Let’s not get too carried away, but I have been thinking a lot about our last conversation.”

“What about it?”

A trucker moved up behind him, apparently wanting to use the phone. The man hung back at a respectful distance and leaned against the hood of one of the cars. He gave the man a hateful look and then continued in a much lower voice. “About good and evil. About everything having an opposite and things happening for a reason. You see, I’ve come to realize that maybe I was born to be the villain.”

“Francis, that’s not—”

“Just let me finish. If things happen for a reason, then that would mean that everything I’ve endured was meant to serve a specific purpose. So I tried to think of what that purpose could be. I reasoned that if I’m the villain, then my purpose must involve a hero. That’s when I realized that, on some level, I’ve been searching for my opposite for quite a while now. I thought that I was just looking for someone to make the game interesting, but now I believe that it was my soul searching out my other half. It was the natural order of the universe, trying to balance the equation.”

“Can we hurry this up a bit, buddy?” the truck driver said.

Ackerman’s hand shook, and his knuckles turned white around the phone’s receiver. But he fought down the rage. “Wait your turn…buddy,” he said through clenched teeth.

He turned his back on the man and continued. “Earlier this evening, I met a man named Marcus. There was something about him that I can’t describe. A strange familiarity. Like being home. It was as if…I had known this man my whole life. But when I looked into his eyes, I felt overwhelmed with fear. It was like looking into the future and seeing my own death. His eyes reminded me of my father’s eyes. I’m afraid, Padre. I think that if I continue down this path, he’ll kill me. It’s his destiny, and the truly strange part is that, for the first time in my life, I don’t wanna die.

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