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

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Hours passed with little happening. I listened to my recorder, trying to scour information while looking down the road. I hydrated and ate a snack I bought at the corner store while looking down the road. I smoked half a box of cigarettes, near filling my ashtray while looking down the road.

The sheer mundanity of it was getting to me. The first day was the easiest, with a glimmer of hope that something might come from this. But the more time spent out here, the more I realized that I was chasing a pipe dream. The thought crossed my mind that whoever was doing this recognized my car and waited for me to leave before delivering another letter.

If that was the case, I was glad to be there—a threatening force, ever-watching.

But as I closed in on late afternoon, when I was just about ready to call it a day, a blue Chevy Impala pulled up to Jane Dench’s driveway. It stopped at the side of the road and a man dressed in a cheap mailman’s outfit got out. The car caught my attention because of its lack of number plates, and when the man emerged, I knew it was my man.

He was short, fat, and had a patchy beard that barely covered any of his face at all. He wore a pair of John Lennon glasses and held nothing but a single letter. He walked over to the mailbox, sliding it in, and without delivering another scrap of mail to anyone else down the street, returned to his car.

I considered getting out and speaking with him, but he was out and in his car within seconds. If he caught wind of me, that would’ve been even shorter. The best approach was to chase behind and catch him off guard. He couldn’t have known there was an open case against him, so I still had the element of surprise.

The car made a U-turn in the street and drove back in the direction it came. I followed close behind at first, from the suburban areas of the outer city, back into New York. Had he managed to spot me? I don’t know, but his driving became more erratic in the city. He took sporadic turns and flew over every amber light possible. He dodged in and out of the late afternoon traffic as if it wasn’t there at all.

I followed at first, keeping a good distance, but as we hit the main roads, it became unsafe to keep chasing.

And when I finally lost him somewhere between one street and the next, I couldn’t believe it. I was so close to the man who threatened Jane Dench, and then I lost him. And without number plates on his car and nothing else to go by apart from the Impala, it was pointless.

I’d never been so close but so far to something in my life. And I had no one to blame but myself.

Chapter 6

Gwen

“Look, Jack, we all make mistakes. You can’t beat yourself up about this one,” I heard Lauren Becket’s familiar voice say. Soft and sweet, as always.

Having entered through the Mercer Detective Agency’s front door, I was unsurprisingly met by no one. Not Lauren at her station, nor Aaron at his. Just an empty office filled with a cloud of smoke. I snickered at the thought of Jack Mercer quitting smoking.

Everyone knew he had it in him, the stubborn old mule, but he enjoyed those Lucky Strikes far too much to give them up.

“I was so close to him. How did I let this happen?” Jack replied.

“It doesn’t matter. You can’t live in the past and let this eat away at you. There were no plates—you said it yourself. Everyone and their grandmother drives a Chevy Impala. To follow that thing through a city would be near-impossible,” Lauren replied, trying to calm him down.

I walked through the office quietly, making my way towards the door. Jack was sitting in his chair, facing the cabinet behind him with Lauren’s back turned to me. I leaned against the doorframe and listened in—more out of curiosity than anything else, waiting to see how long it would take them to notice me.

“All I had to do was follow,” Jack threw a wild fist into the armrest of his chair.

“But you said he was driving crazy, right? Maybe he did spot you and wanted to get away. It’s easier for him to have no regard for anyone else’s life when he’s facing life in prison,” Lauren replied.

“Is little Jacky feeling sorry for himself again?” I asked with a little giggle.

Both he and Lauren spun around to look at me.

“Gwen?” Jack asked, looking at me with squinted eyes as though I was an apparition.

“In the flesh, babe,” I said, stepping deeper into his office.

Looking at Jack, there was little change from when I last saw him. Tall, dark, handsome. His light brown hair always forced back neatly as if cut straight from the 1950s. The strong jawline, scars, and scrapes across his face, broad shoulders and dashing smile never changing.

He was like a fine wine, getting better looking with every year that passed.

“Nice to see you again, Gwen,” Lauren said, giving me a smile.

“What’s nice to see is this old grump hasn’t had any effect on your radiant smile, Lauren,” I replied.

Jack scoffed, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. Whatever put him in a lousy mood seemingly disappeared at the sight of me.

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Lauren chuckled. “You’ve just got to work around the rough edges and get to the softer side.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve seen all the hard and soft parts Jack has to offer.”

Lauren laughed, knowing the history Jack and I shared. Being one of the very few privy to Jack’s personal