Part 3 - Drained

A continued preview of Westville Book 2...

1

Casey pulled down the drive of the Allwell factory, into the parking lot, and cut the engine.

It had been months since he’d been paged out of the blue like this. He meant what he said to Aly earlier. That maybe they really were in the clear. That just maybe Reeves and the whole operation here had done what they needed to and would be leaving town.

Casey realized that was wishful thinking and had decided to give up on the expectation that things were going back to normal anytime soon. He also rationalized that normalcy was relative. After all, for so many years he’d been the one calling out Westville for being stuck in its own time capsule. Now that it wasn’t, that things were changing, he realized maybe he didn’t mind it so much.

He tore himself away from the sticky red leather seat of his Monte and shut the heavy silver door behind him, the big thud further fraying his nerves. Casey walked through the parking lot and called out to the big man leaning forward in his chair at the security booth. He hit the buzzer.

“Evenin’ Benson.”

“Doing alright Fred?”

“Fine as a man can be cooped up in here,” he grunted, not looking up from his magazine of choice, either ‘Guns and Ammo’ or ‘Field and Stream’.

“So how long does a security consulting company need to do their job anyway?” Fred asked.

That was the cover Reeves had told Casey to adhere to, the same one she’d provided the Allwell staff with. It was passable enough, given that Allwell had been given several government contracts to manufacture marine parts—and Casey had a sneaking suspicion they’d been given those expressly to make it easier for the Bureau to nest themselves here under the guise of government security consulting. Apparently they’d had a couple of agents posted here undercover for the better part of two years, suspecting the very activity on the behalf of Janus and Prince that eventually led to everything last year. Some good it did.

Casey was simply acting as a ‘local security consultant’ to cut down on some suspected theft from Allwell factory trucks and loading docks. Casey rolled with it, though his patience wore the more he toyed with the idea and daydreamed about ‘accidentally’ disclosing the real reasons he was coming here—to meet with an agent belonging to a clandestine government bureau whose job it was to ensure that dimensional boundaries stayed intact, and that entities borne of human thought and collective belief wouldn’t manifest and wreak havoc.

No one would believe him if he said it, anyway. So why didn’t he?

Three big fat letters, he thought as he paced through the main glass doors which clicked open for him at Fred’s command.

N.D.A.

And the terms of violating said agreement were steep enough that Casey didn’t feel like messing with it, or the relatively fragile sense of getting back to normal Westville seemed to be settling into. The blood drained cows did nothing to fortify his confidence that said normalcy had much of a lifespan left.

Casey stepped down the hallway, and saw Reeves stepping out of the elevator.

“Took you long enough,” she said, lips spread in a wry grin below sharp hazel eyes, copper sheen hair pulled taut in a bun above.

“Fair food slowed me down,” Casey quipped.

As they descended the elevator, Casey leaned against the back rail.

He could tell Reeves was eyeing him, in that appraising way she did.

“What?”

“You seem grumpier than usual.”

“Was hoping things were on the out. Maybe you’d be packing up shop sooner than later.”

“You wouldn’t miss me, huh?” Reeves sniffed.

Casey cocked his head. “Wouldn’t miss the beck and call routine.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned doing this job, it’s that things don’t go according to plan, and go wrong precisely at the worst moment possible. So, I’d apologize for disrupting your small town summer plans, but I’m not the CEO of the corporation that started stirring things up in the first place.”

“Fair enough,” Casey said, the elevator coming to a jolting stop.

He followed Reeves out, into the empty part of the warehouse the D.C.B had repurposed. An array of computers lines the walls and the middle of the room, many of the monitors displaying a brighter, sharper image than he’s been accustomed to seeing. But there were also some that were oddly outdated, which displayed numbers in green on black, just like the monitors at the station.

He really did get it, he thought, watching Reeves stride ahead of him. This was her job just like it was his as an officer to keep a town safe. The D.C.B. was trying to do that too in their own way, and Casey could appreciate it. Maybe he even did appreciate it. But it still didn’t change the fact that they were here under false pretense, and all of this cloak and dagger made him think that there was something, and probably a lot of somethings, that he wasn’t being told. Underlying motivations that maybe Reeves wasn’t even privy to.

For now all he could do was cooperate, like he’d agreed to, and hopefully one day sooner than later, get the federal secret operation roadshow moved out of Westville.

“Have a seat,” Reeves said, gesturing to a chair near an array of more computer monitors. She glanced over at a fidgety man—more like kid, who was scrawny and couldn’t have been older than mid-20s.

“I think you’ve met Adam,” Reeves said.

Adam, whom Casey had seen around the building before on his ‘security sweeps’, stepped forward, stumbling over a cord and knocking down a keyboard, then scrambled to pick it up, pushed up his thick glasses and reached out a hand. Casey shook it.

“Not officially,” Casey said.

“Mr. Benson, it’s a pleasure. I’ve heard a lot about you though, from Dr. Heiser.”

“Oh good. Probably all about my brain waves,” Casey said.

“Actually mostly just about—well you. He admires you a lot. Which I guess makes me admire you too. Dr. Heiser is a mentor of mine.”

For most of last year, Heiser had felt like a scientist playing god in someone else’s sandbox, more obsessed with data than the people in it. But lately, he’d been asking about Millie. About Olivia. About Aly. Even about Casey’s parents.

He cared. That mattered.

More than Casey could say for Lochlear, who always seemed to be vanishing into some other classified nightmare, and thankfully didn’t call often.

And then there was Reeves. A cipher wrapped in Bureau stoicism. He couldn’t pin her down, didn’t want to. She didn’t reveal much, but she asked the right questions. She seemed to give a shit—though it always came second to her obsession with

The Company. Janus.

The thing they all circled around but never touched directly.

Casey had his own reasons to hate them. But that door—once opened—never shut clean. Better to keep it sealed.

Reeves slapped a file folder on the table, out of which spilled photos of the scene at Morgan’s Dairy, the flattened, mutilated cattle. “Let’s brief him so we can take next steps.”

Casey glanced over at Reeves, still not feeling like taking a seat. Figuring if he didn’t they could get out of here quicker.

“How’d you even get these?” Casey asked. “Didn’t see any of your people there.”

“That would be the point,” Reeves said. “Had an agent coordinate with the DNR.”

Casey read that as someone posed as DNR. He pictured the truck that had pulled up, and the kid carrying the briefcase and camera.

“Guilty.” Adam said. “Sorry about the misrepresentation.”

Casey sighed. “Guess I should be used to it.”

“We picked up some strange readings overnight in the same area the cattle were in,” Adam said, pointing to a monitor nearby, which showed a blob of green static overlaid on top of what seemed to be a topographical map. “All of that represents a particularly strong spike in geomagnetic energy.”

“A leyline?” Casey said.