Chapter 27 Smoke and Trouble by. Society of Villains & Sam Tinnesz
Will
Missing for Two Hours
The idea of death had never scared me. In fact, I had long since accepted that death was simply a part of daily life. I knew it was inevitable to experience the death of loved ones, friends, acquaintances, even enemies. It didn’t scare me.
Past tense. It didn’t scare me until I had to face the idea that she was dead.
Jackie may be dead.
Her presence near me made it easier to take a breath. The idea of facing a hard day was no longer debilitating with her by my side. Loving Jackie was as easy as breathing. Losing Jackie was akin to my own death.
“We’re going to find her.”
I turned to face the old man that Jackie loved so dearly. That was just who she was. She didn’t half ass anything in her life. That included the love she showed to those she cared deeply about.
“We need to find her, Stan,” I choked out. “We have to. I have to.”
The Fibonacci Files office felt empty without her laughter, dull without her smile. It was as though she was the life of the office and without her, the office was dead. I knew I would do anything to bring that life back.
I had spent my entire life trying to show that I was different from the cruel man my father was.
I purposely studied degrees in university that differed from my father’s view of success.
I had moved to the other side of the country to escape his sphere of control.
Hell, I had never formed any serious attachments outside of friendships because it was easier to avoid even the idea of having someone I care about near him.
My father was the devil, and I had lived my life trying to stand in the light.
That was then. Now Jackie was missing, and I knew I would gladly become just as cruel, just as evil, just as dangerous as him to get her back.
I would do anything for her.
“Come on, Will, we need to talk about this with the team,” Fai stated as he walked past me into the heart of the office and sat at the main conference table.
I could feel myself vibrating with anger. The thin level of control I have maintained my whole life was beginning to snap the longer Jackie was gone.
“What is there to talk about, Fai? She is gone. Missing. Sitting around and talking isn’t going to bring her back,” I spit at the man in front of me.
I knew it wasn’t his fault that she was gone.
But he didn’t believe her. Not when she was having her nightmares, not when Griffin was alluding to this very moment, and not even now that she was missing.
“Calm down, Will. We are all stressed and worried about her. Lashing out at me is not going to help.”
I scoffed. “You haven’t done anything to help her since she took on this case.
You claim that you are all one happy family who will always support her.
But you didn’t,” I yelled as I stalked towards the table and slammed my hands down.
“You fucking abandoned her. Less than a day ago. Why? Because you didn’t believe her stories?
Because you were mad she was with me? Or was it because you don’t and have never fucking respected her! ”
Fai stood and looked me dead in the eyes. “Don’t you dare insinuate I don’t respect her. She is my world, my family, my goddamn sister.”
“But do you look at her as an equal? Or is she right that when you see her, you still see that broken girl you found years ago?”
With that, I could see I struck a chord. Fai practically fell back into his chair as I could see him contemplating my words, which were, from the look in his eyes, the unfortunate truth.
“William. Stop.” I turned to face Sarah as she placed a hand on my arm. “Now is not the time for this. We need to talk about where she could be. If she was taken, who did it. Not throw insults back and forth at each other.”
“I am not going to sit here and do this with you. We all know who took her.” I turned to face Fai.
“You may not believe it, but this is exactly what Griffin and even Joey stated was going to happen. It was the Cult. That’s why she is gone.
We all know it, even if some of us are unable to accept it. ”
I stalked past the group into Jackie's office, hoping that I could find any sort of revelation within these four walls of where she could be.
Missing for Twelve Hours
“Will! Where are you?” Theo yelled as she ran into the foyer of the office. I had taken up residence in Jackie’s office and was pouring over her notes about the case. I didn’t know if this information would hold the key to finding Jackie when I began, but I knew I needed to do something. Anything.
Just as I began to turn to the next page of Jackie’s notes, which were barely legible due to her handwriting, the office door flew open.
“Oh thank god! What’s going on? Jackie’s missing?” Theo asked in a rush.
“Yeah, she has been for nearly twelve hours now,” I stated as I continued through my current section of notes that focused on Joey and the shadow in the pictures.
I had hoped that the answer would present itself but I was there when Jackie took most of the notes.
I knew what had happened to Joey, I had talked to him.
It was the notes about her thoughts that nearly killed me to read.
It was as if she was here telling me how she thought Joey’s father knew more than what he was letting on.
Or how Joey seemed more lively this time meeting him than the first time she had. “How did you get here so quickly?”
“The second Sarah called, I packed up mine and Vi’s stuff and drove here. Flying may have been faster but honestly I don’t think I was in the right mind, you know shock and it…. Will?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you please look at me?” At her command, my head rose slowly to see her. It was difficult to look at the women who so closely resembled Jackie. Her face was nearly identical, but lacked the light that Jackie always had, which I missed more than I could admit.
Jackie was my sunshine.
Theo looked to have not slept at all throughout the night and there was a mysterious stain on her shirt. She looks much like I assume I did at that point. It had been a grueling twelve hours.
Twelve hours.
Jackie had been gone for twelve hours. It still didn’t feel real. With every passing second I hoped I would wake up from this nightmare and roll over in bed to find Jackie asleep… and safe.
“Will, are you okay?”
“No.”
Missing for Twenty-Four Hours
“Has he eaten anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He hasn’t gotten up from that chair since he sat down.”
“He hasn’t even slept yet.”
The voices I heard seemed a million miles away as I continued to pore through the documents.
The only lead we had was the case. It had to be connected somehow.
Griffin had stated she would go missing.
He believed her to be what they called an Advocate.
An Advocate? It was said in passing, but as I pondered the word it struck me as familiar.
However, I couldn’t place the familiarity.
“Advocate. Advocate. Advocate,” I muttered to myself, hoping the repetition would remind me of where I heard it before.
“Did you say Advocate?”
I looked up to see Oliver staring at me in the office doorway, perplexed.
“Yeah, it’s something Griffin called Jackie when we were in New York.
I never thought too deeply about it. But it reminds me of something and I can’t figure it out,” I stated as I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my eyes.
“Maybe I just need sleep or food or something. I think I am just grasping at straws at this point.”
“Are you sure he said the word Advocate?”
I looked back to Jackie’s best friend. What was he thinking? I had never seen him so… perturbed before.
“Yeah, it was when we were leaving he said she was an Advocate. The guards then made us leave because he was basically screaming at this point.”
“It could all be connected. It must be,” Oliver muttered to himself as he turned and entered his office across the way from Jackie’s. I immediately stood up and followed, confused by the sudden change of behavior by Oliver. Up until this point he was calm and collected.
“Oliver, what’s going on?”
“I’ve been studying this case. I got it around the same time Jackie got her case.
It was about a young man who was on some research expedition and when he came back almost two years later he was…
well… insane.” Oliver continued as he picked through the papers on his desk.
“He kept rambling on about the four Advocates. They are essentially the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the way he explained them. He was also drawing this on everything he could.” Oliver handed me a picture.
As I studied it, my breath was taken from me once again.
It was the drawing. The same drawing they saw in Joey’s closet, the pictures from Carter, on the bodies of Griffin’s victims, and on the wall of the asylum.
It was the emblem of the Cult of Creatio.
“He said there were four Advocates? Why four?” I asked.
“He wasn’t clear. He really was so out of it, but kept saying there were four stages and with each stage an Advocate was born.
” Oliver slowly sank into his chair as he continued to explain the strange man to me.
“He was scared because, and I quote, ‘The first Advocate was prepared.’ This was only a few weeks ago.”
“You think Jackie is this so-called Advocate?”
“I don’t know what to think, but Griffin clearly thinks this. Can you call him at the asylum, see if he can provide any more information?”
“Yeah.” I looked at the clock on Oliver’s office wall. It was just after eight o’clock, meaning it was eleven at night in New York. “I’ll have to wait until the morning, they’re closed right now. Do you know what this drawing is?”
“Yeah. Jackie showed it to me.”