by Jordan Dane
“How did you—?” Mia gritted her teeth. “Please...stay out of this. For once, do what I’m begging you to do. For Lucas’s sake.”
Rayne stared at her sister in disbelief.
“Sure. Don’t I always, sister dearest?”
From the look on Mia’s face, she knew what Rayne meant. “Sure” meant “So Not Gonna Happen.” The mounting mistrust between them had started with the shock of losing their parents, and anything left had gone swirling down the toilet ever since.
Mia left without another word. Rayne really hadn’t expected her sister to suddenly confide in her about Lucas, Ward 8 and his questionable medical care. But if Rayne had any doubts about what she would do, she’d made up her mind after “talking” to her sister. With cops on the church payroll, it made no sense for Rayne to report Lucas missing on her own. That would be a total waste of time. Mia would see to that.
Rayne filled Floyd’s food bowl with salad mush she had in the fridge and replenished his water dispenser—enough to last him for a while. With Floyd satisfied, she searched her cell phone for a recent photo of Luke to take with her, one taken on a better day at Haven Hills when he almost recognized her.
His sweet face had a crook in his lip for a half smile and his beautiful gray eyes looked sleepy, as if he’d awakened from a long nap. It was one of her favorite pictures of him because she could see the little boy he used to be. She grabbed her leather jacket again, the keys to her motorcycle, and locked up her apartment, heading out to search for Lucas. She’d start at the convenience store where he had called her.
Unlike Mia, her brother didn’t have the law in his pocket or a church with money to fall back on. Luke had no one—except her—but Rayne felt sure about one thing.
Mia had been hiding something about Lucas. Definitely.
Minutes Later
Before Mia got to her car, where Officer Preston waited for her, she placed a call. She wasn’t looking forward to reporting that Lucas hadn’t gone to Rayne. How did everything get so screwed up? It bothered her that her sister had found out about Ward 8. How did Luke know about it? With all the medication he’d been under, how could he be aware of such a secret part of the hospital that linked directly to the church and their beliefs? Not even Mia knew what went on there. All she knew was that Ward 8 was the unconventional last stop where the church took over—the last hope for patients who resisted more traditional care regimens. She had hoped that Dr. Haugstad could have intervened with better news on Lucas’s behalf, but now she might never know. She didn’t have time to dwell on that now. On the second ring, a husky voice answered her call.
“It’s me. He wasn’t there.”
“He’s your brother, Mia. Where would he go?”
She only knew the man by one name—O’Dell. His low, guttural voice made her skin crawl—like he stood too close and whispered in her ear—but she needed him to have faith in her. The Church of Spiritual Freedom had assigned the man to search for Lucas discreetly, making sure anyone of authority outside the control of the church’s many resources would not get involved. She had no choice but to cooperate. The church had insisted and needed to control what might turn into ugly public exposure if things weren’t contained. O’Dell would be the key to everything. If she failed in his eyes, she’d never become part of the inner trust circle, and that wasn’t an option.
“I’m taking Officer Preston to our old house. The last place we were a family. He might go there.”
In truth, Mia had no idea where Lucas would go. Their old house wouldn’t be likely with him being on foot, but it would buy her time to think of a next step. She had to find Luke, and that meant relying on a man like O’Dell to help her.
Everything depended on it.
“Call me after you check it out,” O’Dell said. He ended the call without waiting for her to say anything. Not a good sign.
Where would Luke go?
* * *
Running had taken everything out of Lucas. His chest heaved as he tried to fill his lungs; his legs burned and he felt sick. In the shadows of a dark alley, he bent over with dry heaves. On an empty stomach, he had nothing to throw up. Being confined to a mental hospital and on medications, he’d been robbed of everything. He felt weak and didn’t know who he was anymore.
He’d gotten ahead of his pursuers, even though he still felt them. He slid down a brick wall in the darkest corner of the alley, panting, and closed his eyes. He needed rest. It would be easy to fall asleep and let fate take over. The drugs that still lingered in his system left him confused. He ran from Haven Hills to escape what he felt sure would come. The nightmares had escalated and driven him to run, but even outside the hospital, he couldn’t stop them.
He flashed back to the dark dreams that he had about
Ward 8.
Whether he had his eyes closed or not, his exhaustion and the shadows in the alley made the memory of his recurring nightmare come in blinding bursts of sounds and images that made his heart pound. He had so many night sweats over it, he couldn’t tell what could be actual memory caused by the drugs or only paranoia over what could happen if he got sent there. Over the years, drugs had controlled his body and made it a virtual prison—a cage he couldn’t escape, even now. He didn’t know what was real. He only wanted to leave it all behind him and make it stop.
Only one thing felt solid and kept him from giving in to the fear and letting the Believers find him.
The girl’s voice in his head.
You have no idea how powerful you are.
Her voice made him open his eyes. He struggled to his feet and used the brick wall to stand.
Come to me. I can help you.
The girl’s voice helped him make that first step and the next. He had to find her, but she’d given him an even bigger gift.
She made him care what happened to him.
Burbank
In a dimly lit room of his bunker command center located in Burbank, O’Dell walked through murky shadows as he felt the surge of energy he got off the supplement drink he’d downed. The power drink, his concoction, increased the anabolic effects after his usual workout. He felt pumped as he squeezed a rubber ball to strengthen his hand and forearm muscles. He called his ball routine “flexing the snake.” Most women shot him a raised eyebrow whenever they heard that, but O’Dell had the tattoo of a snake wrapped around both his forearms. Whenever he gripped the rubber ball and squeezed, his muscles flexed the snakes and made them move.
His twin snakes got him noticed and earned him respect. O’Dell liked traveling outside the herd. He didn’t punch a clock. Day jobs were for suckers. In this place, he was in charge. Flashes of color from the bank of computer screens swept over the faces of his people. The darkness made it easier to focus on their surveillance. Each station monitored a different street grid for L.A.
O’Dell and his people had hacked the city’s traffic cameras—looking for Lucas Darby and others like him, using a facial-recognition program they called the Tracker.
They had eyes everywhere.
O’Dell went to his office, located on a raised platform behind the bank of computer operators. A huge window kept him connected to everything that happened below. He sat behind his desk to replay the footage of the Darby kid at the pay phone. Even in low light, he saw the kid crying and wiping his eyes, and he had a pretty good idea why. When the boy looked up at the surveillance camera, it was as if he knew he was being watched. That made O’Dell smile.
Damned freak!
He remembered the file he’d gotten on Darby. It had been thin. The bare essentials with no other explanation. O’Dell got assignments in the form of a digital file he received online. Dossiers of targets included surveillance photos to scan and load into the Tracker with details to help facilitate the abduction, discreetly. He had a search grid and faces to hunt down. Whenever he scored a hit and acquired his target, he’d put them in a holding cell located in his bunker until he could arrange for a secured pickup via an online sta
tus-tracking site.
The guys that picked up those kids were dressed in white and came in an ambulance. They always drugged the kids they transported, too. Although the medical attire and setup could have been only for show, he didn’t know where the kids went and didn’t care. Whenever his crew got orders to dispose of spent bodies, they were given a secure rendezvous point and strict orders not to look into the black body bags, but O’Dell broke the rules once and peeked. He recognized one of the dead kids, a boy he’d hunted, and he never looked again, especially after he saw the condition of the body. These kids only meant a paycheck and bonus money to him and his team.
He didn’t know how or why the targets were selected. The covert organization he worked for had a compartmentalized structure. He figured they had satellite operations all over the globe, but that was only a guess. If kids like this existed in L.A., they had to be other places, too. O’Dell took care of his assignments, even though he didn’t know much about the organization above his head. Not knowing who was higher up the food chain might bother some people, but he liked that no one knew about his operation, either. Everything was on a need-to-know basis. If anyone got caught by authorities, they knew nothing that would put the group at risk, and online security could be shut down fast.
O’Dell liked how things were, and he got off on the thrill of tracking down these brainiacs. Supposedly Indigo kids had high IQs and were the next evolution of mankind with their special gifts. Yeah, right. If they were so evolved, how could a drama major make them look as dumb as a mountain of pea gravel?
He shook his head with a smirk. The idea of using the kid’s sisters really turned him on. The hot sister, Mia, would have to track and turn in her own brother to prove her loyalty to the church. That girl had to be plenty greedy. She could make real money with the right attitude. But for her to get on board the money train, she’d have to betray her brother and work against the younger sister—the one that kid had called and cried over. His gut told him baby sis would be the one to watch.
O’Dell caught the eye of one of his men below and called him up to his office.
“I want someone at that pay phone where the kid made the call,” he told the man. “He could come back. And put a surveillance team on his other sister, Rayne. Use those gang kids if you have to, that MS-13 crew, but don’t tell them anything.”
The Mara Salvatrucha 13 gang had originated in Los Angeles with a violent reach that had spread across the United States, Canada, Mexico and even into Central America. O’Dell found them useful, and since they were on his turf, it paid to have gang members on his side.
“What if she becomes a problem?”
“If she gets in the way, have them convince her that’d be a mistake. Do whatever it takes to put the fear of God into her.”
“I’m on it.”
O’Dell grinned. Let the freak show begin.
* * *
Rayne had started her search for Lucas at the public phone he’d used to call her. The convenience store wasn’t that far from the hospital. It made sense he would head there to call, but where would he go next? She hung out and watched people before she questioned the clerk on duty and everyone who stepped foot into the store. To jog memories, she showed Lucas’s picture on her cell, but no one had seen him.
Now, three hours later, Rayne felt exhaustion creeping into her muscles as she rode her father’s Harley low rider, searching old haunts and new ones. Her bike carried good memories and she needed the positive karma as she tripped into a past she had shared with her brother. The vintage Harley reminded her of those days. As kids, she and Lucas had watched their dad work on the motorcycle to restore it, and when their mother didn’t know, he took them on short trips. It was their thing and the reason she’d inherited his low rider when Lucas got hospitalized. Her father had used strict language in his will on how the bike would be handled. No one, not even Mia, could intervene and overturn his last wishes. Rayne had scored the keys from a disapproving Mia after she was old enough to get her license and needed wheels.
Riding her father’s bike made her feel as if she hadn’t gone alone. Her dad’s spirit rode with her. She sensed his quiet strength and remembered how it felt to have his arms around her, holding her tight and keeping her safe like he did when she was little. Memories of her father gave Rayne a connection to channel Lucas, but it was hard to fight the hopelessness of looking for Luke, the needle in a haystack the size of L.A.
In a few hours it would be dawn. She had no luck spotting him, but as the night wore on, Rayne got a strange feeling. Luke’s paranoia had rubbed off. Ever since she’d left her first stop—the pay phone where her brother had called her—the hairs on the back of her neck had tingled. Something felt off, like eyes were on her, but when she looked in her rearview mirror, she didn’t see anything suspicious. No car sped up when she hit the accelerator, and no one tailed her when she made a turn.
Still, she felt something.
When her paranoia jacked with her adrenaline and forced her into making her search longer by taking extra maneuvers, she figured it was time to call it a night. Her last stop would be a place not far from West Hollywood—the old Griffith Park Zoo, off Ventura Freeway near Glendale.
Lucas had his own reasons for trekking through the old L.A. zoo grounds, even though he’d been too young to ever see it in operation after it closed in the sixties. He’d been to a boy’s camp not far from the abandoned zoo. Lucas loved to hike the trails. The underground tunnels and old cages and pits, tagged with graffiti and street art, had lured him as a kid—a choice slice of nature in the heart of the concrete and asphalt of L.A.
Rayne turned onto Crystal Springs Drive and drove the curving, narrow road that led to the main entrance. Memories eased through her mind as she rode, but at night the moonlight played tricks on her eyes. Trees shape-shifted into lurking beasts with eyes, and the trailheads could’ve been good places to film Hollywood slasher flicks. Yeah, mega creep factor, but she had one good thing going.
If someone had tailed her into the old park, they’d be easy to spot now.
Rayne parked her motorcycle near the entrance, took off her helmet and breathed in the night air as she listened for sounds. She peered through the darkness for any signs that she’d been followed. The constant thrum of freeway traffic got muffled by the hills and dense trees of the park, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary. No headlights behind her. No sound of tires on gravel. The only light came from the city skyline in the distance.
Satisfied that she was alone, Rayne grabbed a flashlight she kept stowed on the Harley for roadside emergencies and secured her bike. She entered the park and followed the asphalt trails through decrepit animal pens covered in overgrown vines and walked in silence, at first. Given the size of the zoo, she decided to yell Lucas’s name. If he was there, making noise might draw him out.
“Lucas, it’s me, Rayne.”
When she got farther into the park, closer to the larger bear and lion habitats, she took a deep breath and prepared for the worst—the underground tunnels. If Lucas wanted shelter and a solid place to hide, unfortunately for her he would’ve headed for the belowground maze. His favorite part. It was the last place she wanted to be at night, but for Lucas, she had to risk it. It was what he would’ve done. The way he was, Lucas didn’t see demons in the zoo tunnels, like most people would have. He chose to see adventure and possibility—and the beauty in nature reclaiming the grounds.
Guided only by the narrow beam of her flashlight, she found the yawning mouth of the tunnels and headed down. Every step she took, her boots crunched on decayed leaves that littered the stone stairway. Spiny fingers of dead vines marred the walls and covered the street art of painted skulls and gang signs. In daylight, the art was impressive—almost like a church—but at night the images looked like hell, literally.
For Lucas...I’m here because of Luke.
Rayne repeated that in her head, trying not to jump at every shadow, but she felt like a damned ch
icken. Her skin itched like it crawled with bugs, and the muggy stench of mold and animal poop hit her hard. If she didn’t have her flashlight, she would have been in total darkness. Only dim light from the moon leached through rusted metal bars in flickers and spiraled down tunnel openings as she crept by. Her night vision sucked from the glare off her flashlight, but that couldn’t be helped.
“Lucas!” She called his name as she felt her way through the dark with a hand running across a rock wall to steady her steps. The deeper she got into the bowels of the deserted zoo, the more her voice echoed and sent chills skittering down her spine.
“Luke!” she called out again.
With her throat feeling like sandpaper, his name came out sounding raspy. She cleared her throat to yell again, but when something moved up ahead, Rayne gasped and stopped dead.
The moon? A shadow?
Instinct made her turn off the flashlight and shut her eyes tight for a second to get her night vision back. Had she only imagined it? She held her breath and searched the dark for anything that moved. She prayed that whatever she’d seen had only been a branch blowing in the wind up top or some other harmless thing. Normally her luck was for shit, but if she hadn’t stopped cold, she never would’ve heard it.
A footstep...and another.
Someone had followed her into the tunnels. Rayne wasn’t alone.
Chapter 3
Griffith Park Zoo
Rayne’s heart pulsed in her ears, overshadowed by the hard thump it made against her ribs. Someone had followed her. She couldn’t catch her breath. After she shut down her flashlight, her night vision took time to kick in, making her nearly blind. From what she saw, she’d made it to a larger part of the tunnels, some sort of workroom. One shadowy corridor stretched behind her, where she had heard the footsteps. Another way out was dead ahead.
