her side this time. Or else her father would already be going through it.
“Can you stop analyzing me? I’m not data, you know,” she said, grinning. While Deacon owned a hardware store, Kate still insisted on cheesy jokes from her field of work. He usually laughed at them. Not now. The fake mirth didn’t dissuade Deacon’s determination. He crossed his arms over his chest and used the voice reserved only to scold his daughter. Never mind that she was twenty-nine, had a mortgage and had just completed a five-year project that could save countless lives.
“Kathryn Gaye Spears, I don’t know why you’re lying to me, but I do know you better cut the crap now.”
Kate physically shied away from the accusation by moving down the hallway and into the kitchen. Her hand clung to the strap of her purse as if the contact would somehow help it magically know it needed to hide until lunch was over.
“Dad, do you want some coffee?” she hedged. “I really need some.” Deacon followed silently and stood like a statue next to the refrigerator. From growing up with him, Kate knew it was a matter of minutes before his steely resolve broke hers, but Kate was also stubborn. She met her father’s blue-eyed stare with her own brown-eyed one and was reminded in full how the two of them looked nothing alike.
Short yet solid, Deacon had been blessed with a hereditary tan from his half-Hispanic mother, but had his father’s once blond-white hair—even though it was sparse at the crown around an almost shiny bald spot. Besides his overall look that just cried “retiring in Florida,” the fifty-six-year-old had a young, slightly rounded face. One that was partially hidden by another sun-bleached mustache he said his wife Donna thought made him look regal.
Kate, on the other hand, was the spitting image of her mother. Before her death, Cassandra Spears had been taller than her husband when she wore high heels—though she never did—and much leaner. In the same respect that was true for Kate. At five-nine, she could see over Deacon’s head with heels—though she also wasn’t a fan—and was lean but without the muscles that had been a necessary part of Cassandra’s job in law enforcement. Kate also shared the rich brown hair her mother had once sported, waving to her shoulders with thick bangs across her forehead, and her mother’s teardrop face and full lips. The only way she differed from either parent was the less than active tan that graced her skin. In the last five years Kate had resided in labs or over her computer screen during almost all waking hours. There was no time to go outside and play in the sun for her.
Though, as her father’s stare bored holes into her own, Kate thought a break for the park might be better than what was about to happen.
“It’s really not that big of a deal,” Kate finally conceded. “Can’t you just let me deal with it?”
Her father shook his head with a firm no.
Defeated, she put her purse on the counter and pulled out the baggie and its contents.
Alarmed wasn’t a strong enough word for Deacon’s reaction.
“Is that blood?” he asked, voice a mile past concerned. Careful not to rumple the letter inside, he took the bag and set it on the counter.
“It’s made to look like it, but if it’s like the last one it’s synthetic.” His eyes widened.
“The last one? You mean you’ve gotten one before this?”
Kate gave one more sigh. She’d hoped to avoid this conversation with her father until after her trip, when she was sure the letters would stop altogether. Sitting on one of the bar stools opposite him, she explained.
“Over the last few months I’ve received a handful of letters here and at the office,” she admitted. “Only this one and the last one were covered in what looks like human blood, but we tested and confirmed it to be fake. Though, I still wouldn’t touch that without gloves on.” She pulled another set out of her purse and passed them to her father—a man curious enough to want to pull the letter out. Silently he slipped them on and did just that. Kate quickly put down a paper towel so the blood—fake or not—wouldn’t touch the granite.
“It’s covered front and back with writing,” he observed, squinting at the handwritten letters. It was identical to all of the other notes she’d received. “But it’s only one word, repeated. Zastavit.” He kept saying the word, as if tasting it to figure out its root.
“I think it’s Czech,” she said after a moment.
“Are you sure?”
She shrugged. “No, but I can guarantee it means ‘stop.’”
His eyebrows rose in question.
She held up her index finger and made a quick trip to her bedroom. There she picked up a small box and brought it back to her father. Sitting back down, she waited for him to open it and extract the bundle of letters.
“Only a handful of letters? How many hands are you talking about in this scenario?” The letters numbered eighteen in total. Each had a single word repeated over the paper’s entirety.
“They are all in different languages, but they all roughly translate to the word stop,” she explained. “Plus, the first one was in English. I suppose to help me out just in case I didn’t understand...or, you know, use a translator or the internet.”
“Stop...stop what?” Realization lit his features before Kate had time to answer. “Your research.”
She shrugged. “I suppose so. That’s the only thing I really have going on in my life. Unless they want me to stop drinking coffee. Which, I’ll be frank, isn’t going to happen anytime soon.”
“Dammit, Kate!” Her father slammed his free hand down on the counter, making her jump. “Stop joking about this!” He waved the note closest to him—the Hungarian one—in the air. “These are threats, not some love letters. Someone obviously invested a lot of thought and time into these.”
“But they aren’t threats, Dad,” she insisted. “They are simply eclectic suggestions. No threat of harm has been given in any of them.”
“But they’ve been delivered to your home, Kate!”
“And that’s what I told the cops after the second one I received.”
He was surprised at that.
“What did they say?”
“Exactly what I just said. They aren’t really threats and nothing else has happened. They suggested putting a camera on the front porch, but...” She quieted.
“But what?”
“But I’ve been so busy preparing for the convention that I keep forgetting.” Her father seemed to be trying very hard to keep his anger at his daughter’s apparent lack of concern under control. He placed the letters back in the box and the newest one back into its bag. He slid that one over when done.
“You will test this as soon as possible to make sure it is in fact fake. I am calling in to the store and taking off the rest of the day. Make me that coffee you mentioned.” He picked the box up and walked to the eat-in table. “I’m going to look through all of these in silence while I try to figure out what I did to deserve such a stressful child.”
* * *
KATE
