BURDEN OF AN ANCIENT OATH by Joshua Brown (early reader books TXT) 📕

after Jane Dench; they’re after a woman that’s long been dead to the world. The only question is, why?” I eyed the cigarette in my hand. The smoke trailed off in long strands before dissipating into the air around us.

“Are there any other secrets you’ve been holding onto in hopes we could recover mysteries from your past?” the words left my lips without thinking. An accusation like that could’ve upset the weaker willed. But Jane shrugged it off without much thought.

“No, I don’t believe I do. I know nothing about that time in my life. I wasn’t even a year old when the Dench family took me in. So, I’ve lived my life as one of them, in the outskirts of New York, blissfully ignorant to what I could have been,” she responded.

“And your parents, they don’t know—”

“No, they don’t know anything about what happened there. And if they did, they’ve not given me anything more, either,” Jane cut me off before I could finish my question.

“Miss Dench, thank you for your time and hospitality,” I handed the empty cup back to her. “And don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this, one way or another. If anything else comes up, you’ve got my details.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Jane said, giving a brief smile. Behind it, I could see the pain in her eyes that we’d made no movement forward on the case.

But that was the nature of the game, I supposed. Sometimes things didn’t work out as they were meant to, and toiling on for a better tomorrow was the only option.

Chapter 4

Jack

“How was your meeting with miss Crossley?” Lauren asked the second I stepped through the door. She was on her feet, a sweet smile on her face, ready for any news.

Aaron Hart sat at his desk, spinning on his chair to drop into the conversation.

“It went… well,” I replied, pausing briefly while contemplating my words. “Turns out, miss Crossley is actually a woman named Jane Dench.”

“What?” Aaron cocked a brow.

“She was adopted by a well-to-do family somewhere in her youth. That’s why the name Marianne Crossley doesn’t come up anywhere. No one knows about her birth parents and no one knows why she could be targeted by whoever’s after her. So, it was a dead-end, apart from what we learned, I guess,” I shrugged my shoulders, dropping my coat off them.

Throwing it onto the coat rack, accompanied by my black fedora, I started for the kitchenette behind Lauren’s desk.

“And why didn’t she tell us this before?” Lauren asked, tucking a few stray strands of her red hair behind one ear.

“I can’t help but think she was hoping we’d be able to find something about her parents. If we could find anything on the Crossley name, there’d be something to look for, right? She didn’t want to muddy the water.”

“But she wasted time,” Aaron replied. “A whole night wasted because we weren’t looking in the right places.”

“Weren’t we? Whoever’s going after Jane knows that her parents were named Crossley, right? What stones could we have uncovered by having a name tethered…” I stopped, realizing the answer. “You could have looked up who adopted her and from where.”

“Exactly,” Aaron spun around in his chair, immediately typing away at his keyboard. “Now, it’ll take time, but if I followed this avenue last night instead of today, I could have found something by now.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the hand we were dealt. Jane Dench is afraid and knows just as much as we do about her family. We can’t really hold anything against her for not telling us,” I said, looking over to Lauren.

She shrugged her shoulders as if to say I don’t know, before dropping back into her chair.

“The real question is, why is someone threatening her to begin with?” I continued, pouring myself a glass of orange juice. “Marilyn Crossley barely existed in this world before she was adopted, so it can’t be anything directed at her. So, it’s gotta have something to do with her parents. But how bad could they have screwed up to put their daughter in a life or death situation?”

“You never know, maybe they didn’t screw up before, but they’re still screwing up and pissing people off,” Aaron replied.

He had a point. Pulling my box of cigarettes from my pants pocket, slotting one between my lips, I made my way over to the visitor’s seating area, close enough for both Lauren and Aaron to continue chatting about it all. After a lengthy sip of orange juice, nearly cleaning the thin glass out and lighting my smoke, I continued on.

“If we follow that path, it leads nowhere, though.”

“How do you figure?” Aaron asked, turning back to face me.

“Let’s say it’s drugs… they got into something with some real bad people, a cartel even… what reason would they have to threaten Jane Dench with these letters? The family didn’t care enough to keep her, so why would they save her life now? It’s an easy out both ways,” I said, kicking my feet up on the coffee table.

Aaron didn’t speak, but the look of understanding in his eyes was enough.

“A man’s got to believe it’s much worse than we initially expected. This isn’t just some random encounter with a stranger looking for trouble or kids pulling a prank on new homeowners, either. Whoever’s chasing after Jane Dench knows more about her than we do, and that’s a problem.”

“I’ll get in touch with Jane and find out more about where she was adopted from. The sooner we get ahead of this thing, the better chance we have of saving Jane from whoever’s chasing her,” Aaron replied, spinning around again.

Chapter 5

Jack

While I waited for any news back from Aaron, I found myself in a slump. There was nothing to go by but a