The Enemy Inside (The Captive Series Book 1) Read online

  THE ENEMY INSIDE

  The Captive Series, Book One

  By Penelope Marshall

  THE ENEMY INSIDE

  Copyright © 2016 by Penelope Marshall.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: November 2016

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-905-4

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-905-9

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To my husband who serves his country and his family every day. Who puts up with the long nights of a bright computer screen, and the long days filled with endless typing and phone calls to fix story holes. Lastly, to my children who never cease to amaze me with their unfettered kindness and positive outlook on life.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Winslow Park

  The Dream

  Voyeur

  Call Me Kenzi

  The Trunk

  Two Suitors

  The Hunt

  Politics

  Mrs. Harvish

  Day Two

  Cheater, Cheater

  Stay With Me

  Girlish Whims

  The Enemy Inside

  Premonition

  Epilogue

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  The gullibility to think that the worst of human nature could not possibly have a place here, in my small and affluent bubble, was simply the naivety of a sheltered girl’s fantasy. The demons of the world are not as far as you may think. Not only in the fairytale books of ghost and goblins. Not only on the big screen at the local movie theater. Sometimes they live next to you. Sometimes—even inside of you.

  Winslow Park

  “Ma’am, you can’t pass the yellow tape,” the officer raised his voice as he pushed me back from the edge of the crime scene.

  “Let me go!” I screamed, jumping over the yellow do not cross tape into the arms of the burly police officer. “Those are my parents!”

  “I understand, ma’am, and that is why you can’t see what happened. Trust me, you don’t want to see,” he grunted as he struggled with my writhing body, my legs kicking out in every direction and my fingers clawing at his exposed arms in an effort to get him to loosen his grip on me.

  My world was in a devastating tailspin, teetering between panic and terror.

  It was no use; he was too strong, and I was too weak. I jostled against his polyester blend uniform, feeling the Kevlar vest tucked securely beneath it. His muscular arms wrapped around me, tightening with every erratic move I made. It was all too much. I must have looked like a raving lunatic to him and all the onlookers standing behind the tape. My body went limp as I collapsed in his arms, tears running down my face. The bear hug loosened as soon as I calmed down. Turning to him, I buried my face in the chafing black fabric, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “I know, ma’am. I know,” he consoled me through soft words and a tight bear hug, causing some of the air to be squeezed from my lungs.

  The incessant crying made me lightheaded, and as I looked over to the left to see the black tarp covering my parents’ bodies, my eyelids began to creep shut. I wanted nothing more than to hold them in my arms and shake them awake. If I could just get my hands on them, I knew I would be able to resuscitate their lifeless bodies, but the burly officer wouldn’t let me go, so there was no point in even trying.

  My lids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds at this point, and time seemed to stop as I stayed nestled in the officer’s arms for what seemed like hours. Through the small crack left between my eyelids, the blur of red and blue strobing lights, black body bags, and a large white coroner’s van whisking away the only people who ever truly loved me, blurred together in a sea of color, and then it all went black. No lights, no sounds, no voices, and no blood—just black.

  A few moments later, or what seemed to me as such―I wasn’t quite sure, to tell you the truth―my lids fluttered open to a large imposing man, wearing a long brown trench coat and black slacks, standing in front of me. His shaggy black hair whipped past his face, battered by the wind. Lodging some of the shag behind his ears, he revealed the puffiness around his eyes. It looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week.

  The aroma of coffee permeated from his skin and clothes like he had bathed in it right before he had arrived. I pulled off the oxygen mask strapped to my face and panned the scene for the officer who had been cradling me in his arms.

  I was pulled from my frantic search when the man introduced himself. “Hello, ma’am, I’m Detective Cliff Bidwell, but you can call me Cliff. I’m so sorry for your loss. Do you have time to speak?”

  “Yes—I—of course,” I said, taking off the mask as I sat up on the gurney, kicking my legs over the side.

  “Ma’am, you should really lie down,” the paramedic urged as she tried to force my shoulders back down.

  I shrugged her off. “I’m fine.”

  “What’s your name, ma’am? Do you live around here?” he asked, looking around.

  Through tears and a wobbly voice, I responded, “I’m…Kenzi St. Claire, and yes, I live just down the street.”

  “May we speak there? I’d like to get you out of this crowd of onlookers, and somewhere you can have a seat,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder.

  I nodded and led him down the skinny sidewalk which bordered mansion after mansion in the affluent neighborhood of Winslow Park. After passing five imposing houses on Kensington Street, we rounded the corner to our right and stopped in front of a seven thousand square foot brick home.

  “This is me,” I said quietly.

  “Thank you, Ms. St. Claire,” he said, pushing the gate open, and allowing me to walk by him.

  The front door was unlocked. After all, who needed a lock in a neighborhood like this? Crime was almost an urban legend. Something that happened in other neighborhoods, in other cities, in other states, but not here; not where doctors, lawyers, and other influential socialites resided in multimillion dollar homes with security coded gates to keep the world at bay.

  How did this happen?

  I felt as though I was floating as I passed through the foyer into the living room. The smell of my mother’s distinctive perfume was still wafting through the empty corridors of the house, and I wondered how long the smell would take to dissipate, or if it ever would. After taking a seat on my mother’s tweed sofa, my teary gaze shifted to the dining room where my father’s slice of Dutch apple pie was still sitting on the table, awaiting his return from their nightly walk.

  “Ma’am, do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your parents?” the detective asked.

  Did anyone want to hurt my parents? Of course not.

  My father was the most generous man in the world, and my mother was a saint who wore Prada and Gucci, but never at the same time. “No, sir—I can’t think of anyone.”

  “Is there anyone you could stay with for the next few days, until we can ascertain what happened?” he asked. “You know—just to make sure this was random and not targeted, sin
ce your parents obviously had money.”

  “No,” I replied, looking down at my clasped hands as I jostled my thumbs against one another.

  “I don’t think you should be alone tonight,” he said as he laid his hand back on my shoulder.

  My eyes narrowed as I shifted my stare from the dining room. “Tonight? I think I’m pretty much gonna be alone every night. Don’t you think, Detective?”

  I didn’t mean to take it out on him. After all, it wasn’t his fault my parents were dead and lying naked on a cold steel table in a morgue somewhere.

  “I can’t even begin to fathom where one might be in a city like this,” I muttered to myself.

  Probably somewhere these sorts of things were a usual occurrence. Obviously, I had romanticized this city to the point where I thought it was above reproach. The gullibility to think that the worst of human nature could not possibly have a place here, in my small and affluent bubble, was simply the naivety of a sheltered girl’s fantasy. A girl that no longer existed, having died alongside her parents on that dirty patch of grass. Surely my mother would be mortified at the fact some stranger was poking and prodding at her naked body, getting ready to slice her open to investigate her insides.

  “I’m sorry, Detective Bidwell—I’m just not in my right mind.”

  “Don’t apologize, Ms. St. Claire―”

  “Oh, please call me Kenzi.”

  He nodded. “Kenzi. Well, it’s completely understandable.”

  In all of my twenty-seven years on this earth, I had never lashed out at anyone as I had just done with this detective. My mother had taught me better than that, and my father would have been humiliated. It hadn’t even been two hours since their dead bodies had been discovered bloody and strewn about the park, and I was already shaming them.

  “Would you like some coffee, Mr. Bidwell?” I asked, trying to remain as normal as possible, but who tries to remain normal in traumatic situations like these?

  Maybe I’m in shock?

  “No thank you—you rest,” he said as he walked around the living room, picking up frame after frame, every one holding a memory I would need to cherish since that was all I had left of them. “You are a ballerina?” he asked, holding up a small glass frame which held a picture of my very last ballet performance.

  I was wearing a light pink leotard with matching ballet slippers, which my mother had made especially for my performance since she loved the color pink next to my light olive-toned skin. She was so excited I was performing for the mayor and wanted everything to be perfect. My mother always wanted everything to be perfect—because she was perfect.

  I got up from the couch and walked toward him. “Not anymore. I quit last year.”

  “That’s too bad, it looks like you enjoyed it,” he said, setting down the frame down.

  It was my mother’s dream I become a professional ballerina. It broke her heart when I told her I wanted to quit and take a break from the hustle and bustle of the everyday madness of the ballet circuit. I wanted to find myself outside of what it meant to be Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire’s daughter.

  “I was okay,” I replied, walking up behind him, moving the frame back into the exact spot my mother had it last.

  “I think that’s all we need for right now. If there’s anything else you can think of, please let me know,” he said as he handed me his card. “I will contact you if there are any developments.”

  The white card was crumpled on all sides, like he’d had it for years, and I was the first person he was able to give it to. It was very simple in its design, just his name in Times New Roman font and a number underneath that had an unfamiliar area code. Fanning the cardstock across my palm, I followed him to the front door as I placed it in my back pocket.

  “I will let you know if I can think of anything,” I assured him as we approached the door.

  A cold wind wafted in from outside, swirling around me, hugging me like my mother did when she didn’t approve of where I was going. My stomach started to churn, and beads of sweat began to trickle down the back of my neck.

  The detective stepped through the door and dropped his pen. I reached out to grab it, but an overwhelming fear kept my hand from moving past the threshold of the door. I paused, letting the detective pick the pen up on his own. My fingers curled in as I pulled my hand away, hiding it behind my back. He shot me half a smile, which I returned before promptly closing the heavy wooden door. It clicked quietly shut as the sounds of the sirens blared from up the street. It was the last time I would have a healthy exchange with another person.

  This was where my new life began—if you could call it a life. A life where my overwhelming fear kept me from leaving the four walls my parents worked so hard to build; the four walls which now doubled as my prison. It was stifling and halted any sort of future I wished to have. For the life of me, I couldn’t get my foot to pass through the door frame, no matter how many times I tried. It was as though there was an invisible force field keeping me in.

  The Dream

  The detective called me a few days after the murders. The phone echoed loudly through the empty rooms of the house, but I was so tired of fielding phone calls from friends and family offering their condolences, I took my time to get to it.

  Although I was appreciative of the support, every call reminded me I would never see my parents again. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the phone and looked at a number I didn’t recognize. The 619 area code was different, and the location under the number said the call was coming from California.

  “Hello,” I answered.

  “Yes, Ms. St. Claire, please.”

  “This is Ms. St. Claire.”

  “This is Detective Bidwell, from the major crimes unit, ma’am,” he introduced himself.

  “Yes, I remember you from the other night. Do you have any more information about my parents?” I queried, hopeful for some closure.

  “I do have some information, but unfortunately probably not the kind of news you may have been hoping for. We still don’t have any leads. I was calling to let you know the coroner has finished your parents’ autopsies and determined they were ultimately killed by a slash to their throats. I apologize I have to be so graphic, but I thought you should know.”

  “A slash to their throats,” I echoed, using the wall for support as I pressed my palm to my throat.

  “Yes, ma’am. Again, I want you to know how sorry I am, but I will keep you apprised of any new developments,” he promised.

  “Thank you, Detective Bidwell.”

  I never heard from the good detective about new developments after that, but that didn’t stop the relentless nightmare that still haunted me night after night. I dreaded the hours after the sun went down, knowing the time to go to bed drew closer.

  The dream was always the same and consistently ended in the same way—with me face down on the floor. The instant I drifted off to sleep, I would be walking through the park where my parents were murdered on a warm summer day. The birds would be chirping as the warm breeze hugged me so softly—much like dancing the waltz with an experienced lover. The warm summer breezes in Hawaii, where we used to take summer vacations, would hug me in much the same way.

  Suddenly, the clouds would quickly block out the sun and turn the skies a dark, ominous gray. The darkness would seep in, and suddenly I would be looking down at the heavy black plastic tarp that covered my parents’ bloody bodies. The birds that chirped so lovely a few moments before turned into ravenous crows squawking at me as the wind swirled violently, kicking up dead leaves that seemed to number in the hundreds.

  Peeking out from underneath the tarp was my mother’s hand lying across the damp green grass. Her wedding ring, so poised and perfect, still hugged her finger amongst the streams of blood that covered her hand. Then for a moment calm would fall over the scene. The sky would turn blue, the birds would chirp, and the breeze would hug me like a soft lover once again. Then suddenly the corpse of my dead mother’s body would lunge towar
d me, screeching my name like a banshee as she yanked me underneath the tarp to lie side by side with her and my father.

  The velocity of the pull would make my heart sink into my stomach, a feeling so real it would jar me out of bed and onto the floor every night. Sweat would drip down my forehead and heaving chest, and for a few moments, I would be unable to catch my breath. Tears used to come at this point, but as the weeks and months ticked by, those have all but dried up. Now it’s just the sweating and the heavy breathing. Maybe in a few months that too would dissipate and I could get a good night’s sleep, but honestly, I couldn’t even remember what one of those felt like anymore. I’m sure if it were to happen, I wouldn’t even know it.

  ***

  Two Years Later…

  I had yet to step foot outside the opulent door. It might as well have been a plastered up wall, painted gray like the rest of the foyer, as it served no other purpose than to keep out the cold winter air or the hot summer heat. The anxiety that was brought on by the mere thought of stepping outside of the bricks and mortar that worked together to make up the mansion overwhelmed me to the point I would break out into a cold sweat, and my stomach would twist in knots.

  Fortunately for me, living as a recluse in this day in age, with the advent of the internet, getting anything I needed was as easy as a point and click of the mouse.

  A few months ago, after a few run-ins with strange shadows standing outside my windows and creaking floorboards in the middle of the night, I decided to add personal security to my list of online purchases. I found a company called Stryke Force, a security firm owned by Clay Carter, a former SEAL, who only employed other former SEALs. If these men were good enough for the government to trust, then they were good enough for me. After speaking with him extensively about my unique situation, he sent over a burly, red-headed man named Adam.