“You put a dent in the Roadster’s bumper. Mike is going to kill you.”
Andrew smiled and barked a laugh as he backed out of the driveway. “I’d like to see him try.”
By the time they finally reached the Edwards Calabasas theater complex, got their popcorn, and found their seats, the movie was already twenty minutes in. Both Andrew and Val were completely lost, so they passed the time making fun of the plot and bad acting.
“Shut up, old man!” a guy behind them hissed.
Andrew frowned. He and Val were only whispering. He turned around and glared at the guy. The complainer was just a kid, maybe sixteen. He was wearing an Armani t-shirt and sitting beside a girl who was obviously way out of his league. He probably thought his parents’ money made up for that.
“Tell you what, kid. How about you go fight a war in Afghanistan, watch an RPG turn your buddies into spaghetti, and then you come back here and tell me to shut up?”
The kid’s lips twisted into a smirk, and the girl beside him laughed nervously. “People like me don’t fight wars,” the kid said. “We make people like you do it for us.”
The dark haze had returned, and suddenly Andrew couldn’t breathe.
“Dad...” Val whispered. She put her hand on his arm. That grounded him, but only slightly. He turned to face the movie screen with a scowl and dug a fistful of popcorn out of the box he was sharing with Val.
Laughter rippled out behind him. If one of those kids kicked his seat or threw a piece of popcorn at him, he was going to lose it.
“Let’s just watch the movie,” Val whispered.
“Yeah, okay.”
Fortunately, the rest of their time in the theater was uneventful. Maybe that kid realized how close Andrew had been to tossing him into the aisle, or maybe the big man upstairs was protecting him from himself. The kid’s parents would press charges for sure, and that was the last thing Andrew needed right now.
On the drive to his place after the movie was over, Val came out of her shell. “Mike was drunk again last night,” she said.
“I see,” Andrew said. He wasn’t sure what to say to that. He didn’t like the idea of his daughter living under the same roof with an alcoholic prick, but he wasn’t in a position to judge.
Then again, maybe he was. At least he was working on it. He could feel the weight of the green ninety-day AA chip around his neck, hanging beside his dog tags from the thick silver chain that Val had bought for him last Christmas. She was so proud. That was what kept him sober. He couldn’t let her down.
She caught his eye with a mischievous grin. “He fell in the pool and took out his iPhone.”
Andrew chuckled. “Classic Mike.”
“I might have stuck out a leg to help him,” Val added, “but my culpability is debatable. He shouldn’t have been pacing around the pool and texting after having that many gin and tonics.”
Andrew snorted and shook his head. “Did he notice?”
“Maybe. Who cares? Plausible deniability. I was reading my Kindle, and I didn’t see him coming. Just like he didn’t see me.”
Andrew snorted and shook his head. It was nice to have someone on his side. Val lived with her mom because the court had ordered it, not because she liked Selena better.
They stopped behind a stream of cars at a red light, and his daughter’s words echoed through his head. Mike was drunk again. “So what else does he do when he gets drunk?” The light turned green, and Andrew tapped the gas pedal to follow the blue Toyota Prius in front of him.
“Most of the time he fights with Mom.”
“And you?”
“Sometimes. He yells about stupid shit like wearing my shoes in the house, or forgetting the cereal box and milk on the kitchen counter. At first I did it by accident, but now I do it to piss him off.”
“You shouldn’t provoke him.”
“Really, Dad? Pot, meet kettle; you’re black, too.”
“Has he ever laid a hand on you?”
Val laughed. “If he did, I’d break it off.”
Andrew smiled. “That’s my girl.”
“I’m hungry,” she said.
Andrew checked the time on his dash. Ten o’clock. “Not much is going to be open at this time.”
“What about pizza?” Val asked. “Domino's stays open till after midnight.”
Andrew smiled, his stomach already growling at the thought. “Domino’s it is.”
Three
Kendra
10 Days Left…
The air was crisp as Special Agent Kendra Baker sneaked into the rear entrance of the squat building. It was getting late, almost ten p.m.: as good a time as any to break into the target’s den. It was dark inside; only a handful of the hallway lights were on. One of them flickered ominously as she headed past it, toward the staircase. She was accompanied by two heavily armed LAPD SWAT members, and they flanked her as she followed them up the stairs. The carpet was stained brown in blotches, exposing the entire place to a sickening smell.
They arrived at the second story, and her heart rate picked up. She was overheating, drops of sweat cascading down her side under the heat of her pantsuit and bullet-proof vest. The male SWAT officer lifted a hand, and she stopped as a door beside them opened wide. Kendra swung her gun around, aiming at the dark shadow in the doorway.
It was an old man, his wispy white hair sticking straight up. He raised his arms, yelling something in Mandarin.
“Keep it down,” Kendra hissed through her teeth at the man, motioning him back inside. He disregarded their orders and followed them at a distance as they kept moving. Months of investigating the smuggling ring had led them here, and Kendra wasn’t about to let this one be blown. Even with all the crap going on outside, she needed this case to be a win.
Kendra stepped over a bag of garbage, and wondered how anyone could live in filth like this. She wanted to scrub her hands clean and take a hot shower, but she pressed on.
A bullet struck the wall beside her, and her local escorts began firing their semi-automatic weapons down the hall, seconds later the entire floor was silent. Kendra glanced behind her and noticed the old man had returned to his suite.
“Front of the building’s quiet. What’s going on up there?” a voice asked into her earpiece. It was her partner, Peter Costella. He always managed to stay out of danger in every altercation. It was his superpower.
“Shots fired, but the halls are empty. We’re going in,” Kendra said, and took the lead, walking over broken glass as they arrived at another door. She assumed the light was shot out, as it was almost pitch black in the hall. The number 203 was labeled with cheap plastic, the three hanging upside down as one of the screws was missing.
Another shot rang out, and the female SWAT officer staggered sideways. Kendra pressed herself against the near wall, and fired her Glock toward the attacker. One. Two. Three pulls, and even in the dimly-lit corridor, she could see the target slump to the floor.
“Are you okay?” Kendra asked the officer, and she grunted in reply.
“Good shot,” she told Kendra, and they moved on, arriving at a doorway. This was what the dead man at their feet had been protecting.
“There could be more inside,” the officer said. “Be ready.” He stepped away, lifting his thick leg. The door sprang open with his kick, slamming toward them as it swung quickly back on the hinges. He tapped it again, and they rushed inside the room.
“Hands up! Hands up!” Kendra yelled, and scanned over the ten or so young girls’ faces lit softly by the glow of a solitary lamp at the edge of the room. “Where are they?”
The SWAT officers ran through the few messy rooms in the suite. “It’s clear.”
One of the girls was crying, and Kendra walked over to her, not sure if the girl spoke English. “Where did they go?”
The girl lifted a shaky arm and pointed out the door, down the hall. Kendra took off toward the other staircase, and heard muffled footsteps. She moved faster, the heavy rhythm of the LAPD o
fficers behind her. The target entered her sights: long dark hair, pulled in a ponytail, flapping erratically as he ran for the door.
She needed him alive. These were at best low-level scumbags, but they would lead to the real source of the smuggling. “Stop!” she commanded as he pressed through the glass doors, heading straight toward the waiting officers.
Kendra arrived just in time to see the man hit the concrete, skidding to a stop. Blood pooled beside him while her partner stood a few meters away, gun raised, and a smile spread over his stupid face.
Instead of confronting Peter, she avoided him, hoping they hadn’t wasted the last two months to emerge empty-handed. A short time later, the girls were wearing blankets, and were ushered toward an ambulance in front of the building. This hadn’t been a waste. Lives had been saved today, and that was good enough for Kendra. It had to be.
* * *
Kendra was surprised by the applause from the City Center East precinct as she and Peter entered the building the same moment that the clock struck midnight. It gave a sense of finality to the day, and she was spent.
The local office’s sergeant came over and shook her hand, then Peter’s. “Great work, you two.”
“Thanks for the assistance,” Kendra told him.
“We’re more than happy to help the Feds,” he said with a smile. This, of course, was a lie. The local departments always bristled when she stepped anywhere near their people or cities. It was an unwritten rule for the PDs to be uncooperative with the agency. She’d given up fighting it years ago. Her initial naive attitude at being a special agent had been washed away with the years and far too many deaths. Lately she just rolled with it, trying her best to keep her head above water.
Today had been tough. Peter was grinning ear-to-ear as the locals talked to him, patting him on the back. All he’d done was wait for her to run the guy out the door, and then pulled a trigger. She’d been the one inside with all the risk. What did it matter?
A woman watched her from near the coffee maker. So familiar. Kendra ignored the sergeant’s comments, and walked away.
“What’s her problem?” the man asked Peter.
“Nothing. She’s a little off,” her partner said. So much for the unwritten rule of partners.
The woman had chestnut-brown hair, longer than her sister’s had been, maybe dyed. Kendra had to stop this. This wasn’t Carrie. Carrie was gone. The woman poured herself a coffee and turned, smiling at Kendra. She was at least ten years older than Kendra’s sister would be, and bore no resemblance to her. She needed to stop fabricating ghosts.
“Everything okay?” Peter asked from behind her, making her jump.
“I need to go to the hotel and rest,” she told him, and he nodded. He tossed the rental’s keys at her.
“Go for it. I’m joining them for a celebratory drink. You sure you don’t want to come?” her partner asked. His eyes were squinting, his hair receding into a thin gray mat.
The thought of celebrating alongside him was disgusting. He’d killed their only lead, but to be fair, she’d shot the other one.
“No. I’ll see you tomorrow. We leave at eight. Be in the lobby,” she told him. From the look in Peter’s eyes, she fully expected him to be there in the morning, having not slept and trying to mask a headache.
She left him there, taking her time on the unpredictable roads to the hotel. Sirens rang in the distance, and twice she had to come to a stop to let mobs of people pass. They were walking the streets with casual disobedience, and she hated what was happening to their society. Three times in the last decade, the fearmongering news networks had riled everyone up, making them think the world was ending, and each time they’d made it through with nothing more than a minor hurricane or earthquake. Kendra didn’t believe the hype, not for one minute.
She eventually arrived at the hotel, and like every time, she wished they were staying somewhere nicer. For once, she’d like to be at the Ritz Carlton. She parked in the lot, noticing most of the cars were absent. It had been three-quarters full earlier in the day.
The neon sign flickered between Vacancy and No Vacancy, and Kendra glanced at the crappy bar to her left, then toward the rooms. With a huff of her breath, she followed the sound of men talking over a cigarette outside the bar.
“I’m tellin’ you, this is for real. My cousin knows a science dude at Berkeley. Says this whole section of the country will be under water in a week.” The man leaned against the brick wall, one foot planted on the building. He tossed his cigarette butt to the ground, and Kendra stepped over the burning stub.
“No way. This is all a bunch of crap the government feeds us every few years. They probably want us to leave so they can wire our houses or some bull,” the other man said, lighting another smoke.
Kendra walked past them without comment, and pushed the bar’s heavy door open. It was almost one, and the place was nearly empty. A man and a woman were playing pool, standing at impossible angles displayed only by those with enough drinks in them. Kendra took a seat at the bar, the surface sticky under her elbows.
“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. She almost laughed when she saw him. He was the epitome of every small-town bartender in the US. Thirty pounds overweight, prematurely gray hair, and a moustache that cried out for a comb.
She peered behind the bar and noticed the smudged glasses. “Beer. In the bottle,” she said, and the man nodded. The TV behind the bar was playing a newscast, and she watched as it showed a map of the US, and a simulation of predicted tsunamis from the Pacific as they rolled over the West Coast. Swirling hurricanes hit the East Coast, and the supervolcano in Wyoming shot ash over the rest of the country.
“This is messed up.” The bartender passed the beer over, and Kendra took a sip.
“Which part?” she asked, feeling the tension of the day melt away with each tick of the clock.
“What do you mean? They’re evacuating the city,” the man said.
This was news to her. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Just now, on the TV. Guess it’s not enforced yet, only precautionary or something. I got nowhere to go,” he told her.
“Where are they saying is safe?” Kendra asked.
“They don’t have a solution. Guess the best shot is Texas. Least that’s what they’re saying.” The bartender glanced around and poured himself a double whiskey, slamming it back with a smack of his lips.
She didn’t blame him. He thought the world was ending. “What are you doing here if you believe all this?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I got nowhere else to go. Even if I headed to Texas, those sleazy hotels will be charging crazy rates to stay. The greedy bastards are going to take every red cent they can.”
Kendra couldn’t argue with him. He was right. A commercial ended, and the broadcast started up. The volume was low, but she read the scrolling banner: Dozens missing in California.
“Mind turning this up?” she asked, and the man did so without hesitation. He leaned against the bar, finding her another beer and taking one for himself. Her first was still nearly full.
A woman in a professional blue dress was interviewing a man inside a home office. “And why is the police department not taking this seriously?” she asked him.
“They don’t have the resources, manpower, time, you know, the usual runaround,” he told her. “Let’s face it; missing people are always low on the totem pole. These aren’t kids. For the most part they’re professionals, adults.”
The woman nodded emphatically. “And why do you think they’ve been taken? How can you assume this is nefarious?”
“My sister calls me twice a week. She’s never missed Sunday dinner, and yet, here we are. She’s gone. The hospital hasn’t seen her, her friends haven’t heard from her, and her social media is silent. Her cell phone was inside her condo, along with her purse. I’m the only one with a key,” the man said.
“We wish you the best of luck, Dan. If anyone has any information about Dan’
s missing sister or any of these other people”—two dozen photos adorned the screen—“call this number.”
Kendra took another pull of her beer, feeling the effects. It was making her sleepy. Missing persons, and many of them from her hometown of San Diego. She picked up her phone and sent an email to her office, asking to be placed on the case. Her sister might be gone forever, but maybe she could find someone else’s.
Four
Andrew
9 Days Left…
By the time they finished eating their pizza and pulled up in front of Andrew’s place in West Adams, it was just after midnight. His place was an old two-bedroom bungalow with peeling paint and sagging gutters. It had a tiny yard out back, and a paved one-car driveway running alongside a patchy lawn. A humble abode if ever there was one, but it was close to the garage where he worked, and in a relatively quiet neighborhood. Besides, rent in LA was insane, and a nicer place would have been out of his budget.
Andrew killed the headlights and the engine, and climbed out with Val. He slammed the door at the same time as she did, and they walked up the front steps together. He yanked the screen door open and spent a minute fumbling with his keys in the dim yellow glow of a flickering bug light that illuminated his collapsing front porch. Finding the right key, he unlocked the entrance and swung the ancient wooden door open with a noisy creak. There was a rusting, after-market metal frame bolted around the grid of single-pane windows in the top half of the door, but Andrew was pretty sure that a determined thief could easily rip those burglar bars out of the rotting wood. “After you,” he said, and waited for Val to go in first.
Andrew shut the door behind them and locked the deadbolt with his key. Kicking off his shoes, he angled straight for the living room. He flopped into the couch with a tired sigh, drawing a beleaguered groan from the aging springs. Reaching for the remote, he flicked on the TV. “Feel like watching our show before bed?” he asked, craning his neck to search for Val.
He heard a can of Coke click open, and noticed her standing in front of the open fridge. “Sure, I’ll put my bag in my room and get changed,” she said.
Final Days Page 2
