Retribution

RETRIBUTION

  by Jasmine White

  Copyright 2015 Jasmine White

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Connect With Jasmine White

  South America

  January 1940

  Prologue

  The sudden light which flooded the room burned into Johnny Morgan's eyes, jerking him painfully awake. “What’s going on?” He grumbled crankily as he sat up rubbing his eyes, trying to let them adjust to the brightness and Jerry Weinman's silhouette as he looked at his coworker standing by the light switch. “I thought you were working on a project for Torres?”

  Jerry's voice was harsh from excitement. “We need to get out to the job site now!”

  Johnny robotically leapt out of bed and hastily pulled the nearest pair of black pants on over his long johns. “What’s going on?” he asked for the second time.

  “There’s a storm coming in . . . looks bad.” Jerry flung the words over his shoulder as he opened the room's one tiny closet and plopped to the ground to pull on a pair of tall rubber boots, thrusting his feet into them as he explained, “Grab your boots. We need to get the rest of the structural joints into place before it hits or the entire structure could come down.”

  Johnny reached over Jerry, who was still fumbling with his boots, and pulled out his own work boots, hurriedly lacing them up around his ankles. “What about all our tools? Do we have time to get them from the shop?”

  Jerry gave a vicious tug on his last knot, hopped to his feet, kicked open the door, and jerked his head motioning for Johnny. “Get a move on it, will you? No. Sam or whatever that intern's name was—Philip—is meeting us there with some.”

  Johnny nodded and staggered after Weinman through the open door, not bothering to shut it as he shoved his arms into a black raincoat. “I’m ready.”

  The dark, pouring rain almost obscured the steel structure from view when they arrived at the site. It cascaded and bounced off the sides of the metal skeleton, drenching Johnny's hatless head and running down his hair in rivulets. I needn't have bothered pulling on that jacket, he thought with irony—it only took a few minutes before he was soaked to the bone. His feet sank several inches into the deep mud and stuck with each step. He grimaced and squinted to see through the rising wind that blew the rain at a slant into his eyes.

  “Damn this wind!” Jerry swore through clenched teeth.

  It seemed like an age had passed before they'd reached the other car that sat waiting with its motor running, its headlights failing to penetrate more than a few feet of the thick darkness.

  The two men huddled against the huge car as Jerry knocked on the driver's window.

  It rolled down a mere two inches to reveal the senior architect's white, drawn face. Sam Everhart. Beside him sat Philip Drake, Everhart's intern who did most of Sam's work.

  “Where’s the tools?" Jerry demanded. "You going to get out and help, or just sit in there like an idiot?”

  “They’re in the trunk,” Sam replied, his eyes panicky as they rested on the looming black structure and all its scaffolding. “I’ll open it for you.”

  “Why, thank you,” Johnny said sarcastically as Sam got out of the car and winced when his shiny black dress shoes sank into the mud. The passenger door opened next, and a figure in a long yellow rubber raincoat stepped out.

  Then all four figures were at the trunk of the car waiting as Sam fumbled with his keys in the lock. Jerry let out another curse under his breath as he reached in and grabbed a box of clamping bolts and fasteners. “This all you could bring?" Apprehension surfaced in his voice, and he said slowly, "You'd better pray to God that those hold the load."

  Fear gripped Sam's voice making it almost a whine. “That’s all there was left! We were expecting another order, remember?” he supplied uselessly. “Philip, you can be their assistant and hand them tools.”

  Phillip nodded silently. “You going to wait in the car?”

  “Of course. I’m not getting any wetter in this damn storm,” Sam muttered as he got back into the driver’s seat.

  Johnny took an awkward backward step as he and Jerry lugged the heavy box over to the bare bones of the construction structure. Phillip followed close behind, silent as he looked up at the framework, which had begun to flex in the heavy wind.

  “The sheer force of that wind has got to be strong up there.” Jerry’s eyes were directed at the top of the skeleton. "We need to hurry.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” Phillip asked in a small voice when they reached the concrete foundation.

  “It sure as hell won’t be if we don’t get up there quick.” Johnny turned to the intern. “Phillip, you’re going to have to wait until we reach the catwalk, then come up behind us and hand us bolts, fasteners, anything we need, when we need it. Okay?”

  Phillip gave a nervous nod and cast a quick glance back at the car where his boss was waiting. “I’m a little scared of heights,” he said weakly.

  “Who isn’t?” Johnny said, his eyes full of water from trying to look up at the catwalk swaying precariously in the wind. He looked back at Jerry. Then he and Weinman began climbing sideways up the ladder, each having one hand on a rung, the other on the container of bolts they held between them. The ladder shifted and grunted each time one of them carefully set one foot after another on the slippery steel rungs. "This thing’s acting like it wants nothing better than to dump us back on that concrete down there." Johnny laughed grimly to Jerry, feeling the ladder beginning to sway and a knot of nervousness forming in his stomach.

  "Yep," was the only response he got.

  It seemed like an eternity before they reached the slim catwalk, before Jerry carefully placed his foot on the slippery surface, testing his weight, then gingerly stepped onto it. At last Johnny gave a shove to the tools and Jerry hauled them up beside him and it was Johnny's turn to step onto the catwalk.

  He held his breath as the rickety board took his weight. He looked down briefly at Philip, who swallowed nervously and began to climb up after them. Phillip was right; it wasn’t safe to be out here. But he couldn’t just leave Jerry alone; he knew Jerry would never abandon the structure until it was firmly secured. No, Johnny was staying as long as Jerry was.

  Jerry had begun groping the structure as reached a spot a few feet beyond him. “This is where we began skimping on the bolts in our rush to get the basic skeleton up. Of course this damn storm had to hit before we could come back and put the rest in.”

  Johnny uselessly wiped his sleeve against his face in a vain effort to see through the water that ran liberally down his face. “There’s no way we can get all these in in time! Are you kidding me?! This is several days’ worth of work. And you want to do it in a few hours?”

  Jerry wordlessly pulled a bolt from his pocket, adjusted the nut height, and began fastening it into the hold.

  Johnny responded by silently moving over to locate the next hole at an adjacent post, where the workers had only put in every other bolt.

  His fingers fumbled with wet grease as he placed the washer and bolt in the gap and began tightening the nut onto it. It had only
gone in a few threads before the catwalk jerked, forcing him to drop the bolt and grab the scaffold for balance.

  “Jerry!” he yelled. “We have to get down. It’s not worth killing ourselves over a building!”

  Jerry was gloomily silent in thought for a moment as he clung tightly onto the board for balance. “Okay!” He twisted his neck to yell back at Phillip, who was nearing the top of the ladder. “Go back down Phillip! Only one at a time on the ladder!”

  Phillip's yellow shrouded head nodded once and the blob of his body began backing slowly down the ladder. Another gust of wind came up and the whole structure shuddered. Johnny felt more than heard the steel collapsing.

  “Go now!” Johnny shrieked at Jerry. “It’s coming down!”

  Jerry crawled carefully over to the ladder and began descending as fast as he could after Phillip.

  Johnny crawled after him towards the ladder; one of the steel members underneath the catwalk groaned and collapsed in slow motion. A scream escaped his throat as the catwalk board tilted ninety degrees and he slid down to the edge of it. One of his hands caught at a nail that stuck up, the fingers of the other turning red and dripping blood from the splintered wood that bit into them as they fiercely gripped the end of the board.

  “Johnny!” He heard Jerry’s hoarse voice yell from below. “The ladder’s only a foot away! Get to the ladder! You have to reach the ladder!”

  He didn’t waste the energy to answer. Instead, Johnny paused for a moment, his mind churning. The world stopped around him. Suddenly he felt every raindrop, heard a prison door shut from the clang as another support snapped. His mind rejected the last fiercely. He sank his teeth hard into his lower lip and held both hands tighter for an instant. Then he moved his hips, released his left hand, which had been gripping the nail, and swung his body over farther to the left, replanting his hand on the top rung of the ladder. He missed and his hand landed square on a sharp piece of protruding steel that cut deep into his palm. A thin river of blood quickly washed clean by the rain drained down his arm.

  He forced his gaze away from his bleeding hand and ignored the pain as he braced himself and again swung his legs with enough momentum to stick one onto the third rung of the ladder. Stretching, he was able to shift enough weight onto his foot so that he could inch his hands closer to the top of the ladder. The catwalk gave a large crack and crumbled; Johnny thrust all his energy into one last thrust and gripped the ladder with both hands. His hands were sliding down it, his foot catching on every third rung.

  “You’re almost there!” Jerry’s voice rang through his living nightmare as he began to slide down the last story. Another crack of steel told him the whole structure was collapsing around him. Panic gripped him and his hands slipped from the ladder; he fell the last five feet and landed on the hard concrete.

  He lay there clutching his rib where he fell, a dark mass from above hurtling down through the air towards him. Then suddenly he was being roughly pulled away by Jerry. Another sharp pain shot through his senses, and the world surged and went black around him as the scaffolding crushed and bit into his leg.

  California

  September 1950