by Skye Knizley
“Where’s Nikki, she’s okay, right?”
Tyler looked away. “We haven’t found her yet, Ceej. The Fire Marshall thinks she’s somewhere in the wreckage.”
Cadence sank to her knees in the burned grass. Cold water and fire suppressant soaked through her jeans, and she didn’t care. Nikki… Nikki couldn’t be gone. Not now. Gaia, how much was the universe going to take from her?
“Are you sure?” She asked.
Tyler squatted beside her. “No. Ceej, Nikki was my best friend, she went to the prom with me, and in my heart I don’t believe she’s gone. The police are looking for her. Torres hasn’t said it but he’s suspicious she started the fire, which is−”
“Horse shit,” Cadence finished. “The house was beige and she hated the color, but this was home and she knew I was coming. Where the hell is Torres?”
Tyler extended a hand to help her up. “At the hospital waiting for Mr. Bennet to wake up.”
Cadence let herself be hauled to her feet. “Then that’s where I’m going.”
“You owe me a beer and a catch-up later,” Tyler said.
“I promise, when this is over I will tell you everything,” Cadence replied.
Tires squealed and the engine growled as she raced through town to Lobo State Hospital. Like the rest of town, it was unchanged save for new signage. Everything in town was getting a modern makeover that wasn’t exactly attractive.
The car slid to a stop outside the emergency room and she hurried inside. She didn’t care she was illegally parked, this was more important. Her gut told her this was no accident, and a clock somewhere was ticking.
The hospital lobby was almost empty; it usually was, this was Lobo, not Santa Fe. The most dangerous thing in town was the merry-go-round at the park and the worst injury anyone ever got was a bad case of nausea.
She stopped at the counter and tried to smile at the receptionist, an older woman with steel hair and a dour expression. “Jerry Bennet, please?”
“Cadence Phoenix, is that you?”
Cadence glanced at Sherriff Torres, who was sitting in one of the uncomfortable orange chairs in the waiting room to her left.
“Yes. Have you found Nikki, yet?”
Torres stood and approached her, one hand on the grip of his pistol. “Not yet, but you being back in town makes her absence a whole lot more suspicious. What do you know about the Bennet Fire?”
“I need to know what room Mr. Bennet is in, please,” Cadence said to the receptionist.
Torres grabbed her arm. “I asked you a question, missy.”
Cadence yanked her arm free. “I heard you. It was a stupid question, you know as well as anyone I’ve been gone and just got back. If you don’t believe me, check the toll booths this side of Santa Fe.”
She looked back at the receptionist. “Room, please?”
“He’s in ICU-A. You can see him, but he isn’t conscious,” the receptionist said.
“Miss Phoenix, we need to discuss your absence−”
Cadence whirled on him and almost grabbed his shirt. “You listen to me, Torres! You let my dad get killed. You knew he’d been shot and you were too stupid to post a guard in case the shooter came back. You’ve also done jack shit to find his killer. My absence is none of your damn business.”
She backed away from his astonished expression then turned and jogged toward ICU-A, the large, open ICU unit on the first floor of the hospital. When she passed through the sliding glass doors, an intern in blue stopped her with one hand.
“You need a mask, miss, then you can tell me who you are visiting,” he said.
Cadence took the offered cloth mask and slipped it over her head. “Jerry Bennet?”
The intern pointed to a cubicle in the far corner. Like many small ICUs, there was little privacy here. Each small cubicle was separated from the next only by a small partition and a curtain that could be closed for modesty when changing bandages. Otherwise, there was nothing to slow the responses of the staff in an emergency. Saving lives was more important than privacy.
Jerry Bennet lay in the narrow bed with an oxygen mask over his face. He’d been badly burned, Cadence could see the bandages over his arms and chest, as well as the one that covered his face at an angle from left to right. His good eye was closed and his legs were covered by the sheet. Or what was left of them. It was clear the left had been removed just above the knee.
“How is he?” Cadence asked the attending nurse.
“Worse than he looks,” she said softly. “The doctors aren’t sure he can pull through. If he makes it through the night he’ll be moved to the Santa Fe burn unit for further treatment.”
How could he be worse than he looked? He looked like overcooked meat. It was good he was asleep, the pain he was in would be excruciating.
“CJ?”
Cadence looked at him, surprised to see his good eye was open and aware.
“I’m here, Mr. Bennet,” she said, sitting on the chair beside him.
“Mr. Bennet, you shouldn’t be conscious,” the nurse said. She turned to the IV beside him and began adjusting the drip. Bennet raised a hand and grabbed her arm.
“One…moment,” he said. “CJ? Nikki… they took Nikki.”
She was alive. It was a short-lived relief, she was alive and Cadence had some idea who had taken her, and why.
“Who took her?”
“A… man. In. Black coat. Said his name was… Bishop. Said you… would know,” Bennet said.
Bishop? Who the hell was Bishop? Cadence leaned forward and looked into Bennet’s eyes. “Where did he take her? Where’s Nikki?”
Bennet began to fade, the light in his eye dimmed and the lid lowered. “Bishop…” was all he said before the monitor beside him began to scream his death.
Cadence backed away while the ICU staff struggled to help him. There was nothing she could do, and Nikki was still alive, she needed her help most. But who was Bishop, and where had he taken her?
She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer to the Goddess, then turned on her heel and jogged back through the hospital. Whoever Bishop was, he was going to pay. Bennet and Nikki weren’t part of this, they were innocents. Involving them, like involving Phoenix, was crossing a line.
Torres was still waiting in the lobby when she stormed through, and he reached out to stop her. “I still want to talk to you−”
Cadence pushed him away with a smaller version of her shield. “I don’t have time for you, sheriff. If I get back in one piece, we’ll talk.”
Torres crashed into the wall and fell butt-first into the waiting room chairs, where he sat, dazed. Hospital staff rushed to help, giving Cadence a wide berth. She didn’t care, let them try to arrest her for assault. No judge in the world was going to believe she could send sound-energy from her hands, no matter how many witnesses there were.
Outside, she slid behind the wheel of her car and twisted the key. The engine roared to life, jarring the video cassette lying on the dashboard so that it slid and caught her attention. Cadence picked it up and wasn’t at all surprised to see it said ‘Play Me’ on the outside.
There was a Stereo Shack in town, it was the only place she could think of to play the tape. Her house was likely foreclosed and sold by now, Nikki’s house was a smoking crater and she had no idea where her other friends might be.
As the sun was going down she pushed through the doors into the small electronics store and spun, looking for a machine that would play the smaller-sized cassette.
“Can I help you?” The bespectacled manager asked. He was an older man with a receding hair line, grey hair and Stereo Shack polo shirt.
Cadence held up the tape. “I need something that plays these.”
“Ah, Betamax. We don’t sell many of those, but we do have an exc
ellent player, right this way,” the clerk said.
Cadence followed him through the small store to the collection of televisions and video cassette players in the back. He gestured at two of the machines and smiled.
“The one on top is the better machine, coming in at around two hundred, the lesser machine is on sale for seventy-five.”
“Thanks,” Cadence replied. She pushed the tape into the more expensive machine and glanced at him. “Which television is it connected to?”
The clerk pointed to one just above and right of the player. “That one, it’s a Magnetron, also on sale−”
He stopped talking when the crying, screaming face of Nikki appeared on the camera. She was tied up and lying in the back of some kind of vehicle. One eye was bruised but she was otherwise unharmed. The camera then turned away to show a tall man in a floppy western-style hat and a long coat. He had slimy-looking black hair, dark eyes and several days’ growth of beard.
“Cadence Phoenix, as you can see, we have your girlfriend. We will trade her for you. Come to the Seattle Needle for an even exchange. No tricks, no weapons, no police. I’m watching you.”
He moved closer to Nikki and licked the side of her face, making her squeal and struggle. He then grinned at the camera. “You have two days. If you aren’t there, pretty little Nikki takes a swan dive off the needle.”
The tape ended in static, leaving the small store eerily silent. The clerk cleared his throat and ejected the tape. “Can I ring these up for you? Get the player and the television for a low, low price.”
Cadence gave him a look. “You saw the tape. Do you really think I’m buying anything?”
She took the tape from his unresisting fingers and walked back outside. Seattle was at least twenty hours away unless she took a plane, and she didn’t have money for that, which meant she needed to be on the road as soon as possible. She backed her car out of the lot and pointed it into town, intending to stop at the sporting goods store for some provisions to help her make the drive with as few stops as possible. She’d long ago used up the emergency food and water her father had kept in his ‘bug out bags’ but she knew exactly where all of his supplies had come from.
Lobo Outdoor Sports and Guns sat at the end of Main Street, where it became the old highway that wound its way through the mountains and came in the back of a small ski area that Cadence and her friends were fond of. The owner, Jacob Folish, thought the location helped his business. People on wilderness hikes could find him easily enough, as could anyone on their way up the mountain.
The lot was empty and Cadence took the spot nearest the doors, backing in to make it easier to load the car. She needed to buy gear, use the facilities and hit the road. Every second counted.
She climbed out of the car and her stomach rumbled at the smell of barbecue coming from the nearby Wolfhead Steakhouse. They had some of the best trash ribs she’d ever eaten… well probably the only trash ribs she’d ever eaten, and the memory of them made her mouth water. She was so distracted by hunger and worry that she almost walked through the spirit of Dr. Lee as he coalesced onto the sidewalk. It was like watching smoke appear out of nowhere.
“CJ, we need to talk,” he said.
Cadence stopped and held up her hands. “Why aren’t you through the Veil?”
Lee folded his hands. “I stayed to watch over you, but was too weak to appear to you outside Lobo. I didn’t expect that.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m in a hurry, raincheck on the pep talk?” She asked, shuffling past him.
He grabbed her arm, and she felt the cold chill of the grave. It stopped her in her tracks, and made anger flare behind her eyes.
“I don’t have time to help you pass on or beam up or whatever the hell it is, Specter has Nikki!”
Lee shook his head. “I’m trying to help you, Cadence. I know Nikki is in trouble, and you know it’s a trap. Let me help you.”
Exasperated, Cadence threw up her hands. “Help how? What are you going to do, go ‘woo woo’ at them?”
Lee reached out and plucked the deposit box key from the thin gold chain around her neck.
“Go open the box, I left you things that can help.”
“Money?” Cadence asked.
“Some. As well as hints to your past, a map and a key to a location you will pass on your way to Seattle. A bunker your father and I located,” Lee said.
“What bunker?” Cadence asked. She remembered Lee and her father going on a camping trip to Idaho, something about an adventure. They’d come back more sober than excited, but neither was willing to give any details about the trip. Everyone had just though they’d been in an argument or something.
“It’s in Idaho, not far from where the Blackwell Test Facility used to be,” Lee said. “We put it all down for you on the map.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Cadence said.
She turned and tried to enter the store, but was pulled back by Lee.
“Please, Cadence, listen to me,” he said.
Cadence spun and pushed him away with her shield. He almost vanished under the force of her attack before reappearing a few feet away.
“Bunkers? Secrets?” Cadence roared. “How is any of this going to help get Nikki back and why the hell didn’t you tell me before?”
Lee floated closer. “As to the latter, we didn’t think you were ready, and that was our mistake. As for helping Nikki, you will have to see what is there. It isn’t far from your path and you have nothing to lose by going.”
“Do you have any idea how I’m going to get into the bank? It’s after hours,” Cadence said.
Lee smiled. “Leave that to me.”
***
An hour later, Cadence stood in the basement of Lee’s Dry-cleaning, the building adjacent to the old Wolf State Bank. She was familiar with it, Phoenix only trusted them to do his uniforms and she had been the one who picked them up for him, sometimes twice a week.
“You never told me you were the same Lee who owned this place,” she said, following the spirit through the maze of silent dry-cleaning machines and racks of waiting clothes.
“Technically, it was my father’s, but I grew up here,” Lee said. He stopped and looked back at her. “He opened it a few years after the war, with money he got from the Blackwell Foundation.”
“What is the Blackwell Foundation?” Cadence asked.
Lee turned away. “A think tank created during the war. He was a bio-engineer working for the OSS.”
Cadence stopped in her tracks. “Wait, are you trying to tell me−”
“Yes. I believe my father worked in the lab that created the original MK Alpha serum,” Lee said, interrupting. “Come, we must hurry.”
Her mind full of questions, Cadence followed him through the basement to a section of bricked up wall. Lee passed through without slowing, then came back.
“I remembered right. Before this was a bank, it was part of my father’s building. This passage leads into the bank’s basement. There are no alarms and the deposit vault is unguarded,” he said.
The wall was old, perhaps sixty or eighty years. It was made with red bricks that were now faded to a dull orange, and the mortar was crumbling in places. Still, she couldn’t just walk through.
“I believe a high C two octaves above human hearing should work,” Lee said.
Cadence made a face. “How do you know how high I can sing?”
“I couldn’t appear, it doesn’t mean I didn’t keep an eye on you and help where I could,” Lee said.
The thought made Cadence feel ill. Sure, she’d loved Dr. Lee, he’d helped her and been a good friend, but he was still an old man. Unknowingly having him in her room was downright gross.
Lee must have seen her expression, for he blushed and rubbed his lip with one fi
nger. “I wasn’t that close, CJ. I appeared when you needed me, that is all.”
“Fine, whatever, let’s just get this over with,” Cadence said.
She took a breath and screamed, pushing her voice as high as it would go. The shockwave did its work and the bricks began to crumble under the onslaught, falling away to reveal a short corridor somewhere below the bank.
When the dust cleared, Cadence wriggled through the hole she’d made and dusted herself off. The basement of the bank was more modern than that of the laundry, but not by much. The walls were of cinderblock on top of brick and the ceiling was an acoustic tile drop ceiling, evidently to make the place seem more like an office and less like the dank old basement in rural New Mexico that it was.
A staircase led upward, and Cadence checked it for any signs she’d been detected before continuing on to the small vault at the end of the corridor. It was another antique, probably dating back to the 1920’s when the village became a resort town. There was a six-handled wheel in the center beside an old-fashioned tumbler-lock, and the door swiveled on two massive hinges.
“Now, you’re going to have to break into the vault,” Lee said.
Cadence raised an eyebrow. “That’s your plan, sneak in and break into the vault by force?”
“It’s all I could come up with on short notice,” Lee replied.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Cadence muttered.
She stepped closer to the vault and looked it up and down. It looked sturdy enough, even if it was old. The hardware was worn but serviceable, the hinges were shiny with oil, and the tumbler looked flush to the door. Breaking in wouldn’t be easy.
On a hunch, she spun the handle with the back of her left hand, and the door opened with a loud ‘clonk’ noise.
“Who would have thought they would leave the vault unlocked,” Lee said.
“It’s Lobo, we leave everything unlocked,” Cadence replied.
The vault was dark, but Cadence had brought an old flashlight for just such an emergency. She aimed the narrow yellow beam around the interior, and glanced at Lee.
