Final Days

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Relax, Mr. Keller,” Lewis said. “Everything is right on schedule. Have all of our agents checked in?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have they met their quotas?”

  “All except for one. Wilkes is still working his way down the coast.”

  Lewis nodded. “Tell him to hurry up, unless he wants to miss the boat.”

  “Yes, sir,” Eric replied.

  Five

  Kendra

  8 Days Left…

  Kendra and Peter rolled into the office slightly past noon. As expected, Peter was hung over and an hour late; then traffic had been congested, with people filtering in and out of the city, not sure who to believe about the impending disasters.

  “Home sweet home,” Peter said, grabbing his bag from the trunk. “You won’t tell Carly about last night, will you?”

  Kendra shuddered. “What did you do?” Carly was his wife of twelve years. It wouldn’t be the first time Peter had stepped out on her, and whenever they saw one another at a work function, Kendra had to bite her tongue to refrain from warning the woman about her cheating husband.

  His eyes went wide, and he smirked. “Jesus. I thought you were there. Never mind. I really shouldn’t have had that last drink.” He rubbed his head with long fingers, and Kendra rolled her eyes at him.

  “You’re a pig.” She entered the San Diego FBI office, and saw the place was in disarray. Phones were ringing off the hook, and everyone looked exhausted.

  “What’s going on here? I told you we should have avoided the office,” Peter said.

  “Shut your trap, Peter.” Kendra shoved him away and went to her office, setting her bag on her chair.

  Her boss waved at her through her glass wall where he stood at the coffee maker, and arrived two minutes later with some fresh brew. “Baker. I heard about the takedown. Good work.” He shut the door.

  Kendra slumped forward, resting her head on the desk. “Bill, we were so close. Peter killed the bastard,” she told him.

  “Indeed. I read the report. You killed someone too. How are you handling everything?” he asked.

  The truth was, she hadn’t given a second thought to killing the man guarding the kidnapped girls. He’d deserved far worse than she gave him. “I’m fine. I’m done with Costella. I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

  “Baker, look, you’ve had a long month. Have you watched the news? I think you should travel inland. I’m taking Linda and heading with the kids to my cousin’s in Houston. Our office is helping out there,” he said, pulling his glasses off and folding them into his breast pocket. He appeared every bit the government man, his pocket protector keeping his shirt free of ink blotches.

  “You’re leaving? What the hell, Bill? Do you really believe this?” Kendra was incredulous.

  “I do. The president has gone dark, and that tells me a lot,” he whispered.

  “Shit.” That did worry Kendra. “Have you seen a file about missing persons cases in California?”

  “There are thousands of those all the time. What are you asking for?” Bill shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “New one. Doctors, scientists, engineers… a whole bunch of them are missing. I want the case,” she said.

  He nodded, and gave her a tight-lipped smile. “I was given something about that. Fine, take the file, but take Peter with you.”

  “No. I’m doing this solo. Plus, you think he’s going to stick around when his boss isn’t even crazy enough to stay on the coast?” Kendra asked.

  “Good point. Stay in touch. This could be the big one. Be safe.” Bill knocked on the desk and stood up, leaving her alone in the office. A couple of minutes later, Bill’s assistant dropped off a file folder, along with a thumb drive.

  Kendra took her bag, laptop, and case details, and left, noticing Peter Costella was nowhere to be found on the way out. She was relieved. Maybe, if she was lucky, she’d never have to see him again.

  * * *

  Her blinds opened, sending dust particles dancing in the sunlight. It was hard to believe all the talk about doomsday when it was such a gorgeous California afternoon out there. Her AC kicked on as she played with the thermostat, and Kendra glanced around, seeing how sparsely furnished her place was. A layer of grime covered everything, and she spent a few minutes cleaning up.

  She’d been gone for a month, so everything left in her fridge had turned. She tossed it all, setting the bag at her front step for the time being. The parking lot in her complex was mainly empty now too, and she was realizing that things were much more dire than she’d thought.

  She’d lived in this place for the last five years, ever since she’d made the move from the FBI’s Financial Crimes department to Missing Persons. The change had been significant enough that she’d convinced herself to find a new place to live, bigger than the previous one-bedroom apartment. She’d thought it might help her grow roots, maybe meet someone, start a family. Kendra assessed her surroundings, feeling the weight of the empty condo more than ever. One picture adorned the fireplace mantle. She picked it up, seeing her and her sister’s smiling faces. Had she ever been so young? So happy, so carefree?

  This photo had been taken the summer before Carrie had disappeared, and Kendra couldn’t keep the tears from falling as she stared at the picture. “I’m sorry, Carrie. I’m sorry that I couldn’t find you. I’m sorry you had to go alone, and scared. I’m… sorry.” She clutched the photo to her chest and fell onto the couch, staring at the wall with a blank gaze, her vision blurred through the tears.

  She couldn’t help her sister, but she could help the people in the file. She set the frame on the mantle, blew her nose, and decided it was time to stop feeling sorry for herself. Soon fresh coffee was brewing, and Kendra called the Thai place up the street, but the line rang without any answer. Maybe they’d left town too. She found some crackers in her cupboard, sat at her empty kitchen table with her laptop, and began to pore over her work. The coffee was strong and dark, since she was out of cream, but she savored it regardless.

  Over a thousand people were missing in her state alone, but in California there was no waiting period required to report someone missing. Most of these would be overzealous parents calling in a kid who’d elected to smoke weed behind school before going home from football practice, or custody battle children. She’d need to filter them better, so Kendra spent the next hour finding the list from the news the other night. She cross-referenced them, marking off the spreadsheet she’d begun building with occupation, age, and location last seen, along with home addresses and places of employment.

  By the time the sun had shifted enough for the room to grow dim, she’d hacked the list of over one thousand down to under one hundred. Much better.

  Her gut was telling her something seriously fishy was going on, and no part of her thought this many people with families and great careers would disappear at the same time. She was going to get to the bottom of it.

  * * *

  Kendra’s eyes snapped open as someone beat on her door. “Hold on!” She snatched her gun and holster from the side table, pulling the Glock free. She walked to the entrance and peered through the viewer. She slid the lock open and stepped to the side, letting Mrs. Foster in. She was a flurry of leopard print and red-dyed hair.

  “Kendra, what are you still doing here?” she asked. Her voice had the rasp only a woman who’d smoked for fifty years could pull off.

  “Mrs. Foster, I live here.”

  “You know what I mean! I told you God was going to smite us. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?” Mrs. Foster asked loudly.

  “You did. On several occasions. I could ask you the same thing,” Kendra said.

  “The same thing?”

  “What are you doing here?” Kendra turned the question around on the old lady.

  Mrs. Foster lit up a long skinny cigarette, and Kendra didn’t stop her. “I’m leaving. I saw your car in the parking lot. Almost everyone is gone. They’re evacuating the city,” she spouted
.

  “Not yet. It’s recommended, but not official,” Kendra said.

  “Nothing but semantics, my dear.” Mrs. Foster headed for the fridge, and frowned when she found it empty. She shut the door with a slam and spun to face Kendra. “Come with me.”

  “What?”

  “I said come with me. I have a nephew in Oklahoma. Says it’ll be safe there. Safe as we can be, anyway,” Mrs. Foster said. Her oversized plastic-framed glasses slipped on her nose, and she pushed them up, blinking quickly as she waited for a reply.

  “I can’t.” Kendra pointed at the desk full of papers, and the glowing laptop screen. “I’m in the middle of a big case, and these people’s lives are more important than mine.”

  Mrs. Foster made a tsking sound and shook her head, grabbing Kendra by the shoulders. “Sweetie, you have to take care of yourself first. You can’t help people if you’re in the middle of the ocean.”

  Kendra didn’t know what to say.

  “Last chance.” Mrs. Foster moved for the door. She nodded at the bag from LA, full of dirty clothes. “I see you already packed a bag.”

  “Have a good trip. I’ll see you soon.” Kendra noticed the grim look on her elderly neighbor’s face, and shut the door as the lady slid into a running minivan.

  Kendra pushed the looming dread aside and returned to work. She made notes about where she would visit tomorrow, starting with the university near her house.

  Six

  Andrew

  8 Days Left…

  The door to Andrew’s jail cell swung open with a groan of rusty hinges. “Miller! It’s time to go. You made bail,” the overweight bespectacled guard said.

  Andrew waved goodbye to the guy on the top bunk, a little-known actor arrested for a DUI, and nodded to a few of the others on his way out. There were at least thirty people sharing his cell, all on misdemeanor offenses and bunking together while they awaited trial. Andrew had been unable to convince a bondsman to post bail for him, because apparently his boss had decided to fire him when he’d failed to show up for work on Saturday morning.

  Instead of waiting for a trial, which could take weeks, he’d called Selena about a dozen times over the past thirty-six hours to convince her to pay his bail. Evidently, one of those calls had finally convinced her.

  Andrew walked ahead of the guard down a long gray hall to the elevators. This jail had nine different levels, with all of the most dangerous criminals concentrated in the lower ones.

  On his way out, Andrew signed for his personal belongings and got dressed. The guard escorting him swiped his key card at two separate security doors that buzzed loudly as heavy locks slid away. On the other side of the second door, Andrew met his ex-wife.

  “Thanks, Sel, I owe—”

  She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Save it.”

  The guard behind the bulletproof glass in the receiving area buzzed the front doors, and Selena burst out into blinding sunlight. Andrew felt stupid following her down the steps wearing his PJs and Nikes.

  “Do you have any idea how dangerous what you did was?” Selena hissed as they crossed the parking lot together. “You could have killed someone! You could have killed Val!”

  A painful lump rose in Andrew’s throat, but he forced it down. “Selena, there really was a burglar. I swear I saw him. I didn’t imagine it.”

  Selena stopped and turned to him with her arms crossed over her chest. “You saw him like you see me now, or like when you see the faces of the guys from your old unit?”

  Andrew narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s not fair.”

  “No, what’s not fair is that your daughter loves you, and now she’s scared of you. That’s what’s not fair. You need to get your shit together before you lose her, too.”

  Andrew flinched at those words. A roundhouse slap would have hurt him less. “I’ll fix it. I’ll talk to her.”

  Selena shook her head. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.” Whirling away from him, she crossed the rest of the way to her Mercedes. When they reached the car, she rounded on him again from the driver’s side door. “Were you drunk?”

  “What?” He blinked in shock, and then pulled out the green chip dangling from his neck. “I’m ninety days sober!”

  “Ninety days. That’s only three months, Andy. I might believe you if it was three years.”

  “Screw you.”

  Selena smirked. “I’m not yours to screw anymore, remember?” She yanked her door open and ducked inside. “You made sure of that.”

  Andrew got in on the passenger’s side and glared at his ex while she backed out of the parking space. On the way to his place she scolded him a few more times, but his pulse was pounding so loudly that her lectures fell on deaf ears.

  She pulled up in front of his house. “Thanks for the ride. And bail,” he said. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Don’t bother. Just get rid of the gun and fix things with your daughter.”

  “The police have my gun.” One of them, anyway, Andrew amended to himself.

  “Good.”

  Andrew slammed the door and stood watching as Selena drove away. He felt furious and depressed at the same time.

  When she was gone, he dragged his gaze away, up to his crumbling bungalow. How the hell was he going to pay the rent without a job? Forget rent, how was he going to pay a lawyer to defend him on those charges?

  Leaden feet carried him up the path to his front door. The damaged pane of glass gleamed in the morning sun as he turned his key to unlock the door. He pushed his recently-stitched hand carefully through the hole in the door, wondering if maybe he really had broken it himself while chasing an imaginary burglar. But how could he have opened that door if he were sleepwalking—or, for that matter, have fired his gun? It didn’t seem possible.

  Andrew went inside and stalked across the blood-smeared floor to fetch his wallet from his bedroom. On the way back, he snagged his car keys from the rack beside the coat closet.

  Before he’d even fully admitted to himself what he was doing, he was parking in front of the liquor store, walking in, and then whipping out his credit card to pay for a bottle of single malt Scotch.

  Soon after that, he was lying on his couch, chugging straight from the bottle. Sweet warmth flooded his veins, and he grew blissfully numb. A world of tension bled out of him, and gradually all of his troubles faded to black. The last thing he registered was the bottle falling from his slack hand to the living room rug with a hollow thump. After what felt like only a few minutes, he awoke to the sound of his phone vibrating noisily against his keys on the coffee table. He stirred and shook his head. An instant pounding headache was the result. His mouth was so dry that it took a second for him to pry his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

  He leaned over the couch to catch a glimpse of his phone. It was Selena. He made a sloppy grab for the phone, missed, and knocked his keys off the table. The second attempt was a success. “Hello?” he croaked.

  “Andy! Val is missing!”

  He sat up, feeling suddenly sober. “Missing how?”

  “She went to a friend’s house to study this morning, but she never came home.”

  Andrew rubbed his face and scratchy eyes with the hand not holding his phone; then he glanced about to get his bearings. It was dark outside. He checked his watch. 22:08.

  “Andrew, did you hear what I said?” Selena pressed.

  “Yeah, I heard you. She’s been missing for what, twelve hours? Did you call the friend’s house?”

  “Of course I called! They said she never arrived. They thought maybe she changed her mind. What if it’s related to all of the other people who are going missing? What if it’s some crazy serial killer? Or, or... some kind of doomsday cult?”

  “What other people?” Andrew demanded.

  “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

  “You know I don’t.”

  “Well, get your head out of the sand! There are hundreds of people missing all over the countr
y!”

  “Hundreds?” Andrew whispered.

  “Yes!” Selena’s voice was muffled now. She was sobbing into the phone. “I need you here, Andy. Mike doesn’t think it’s anything. He assumes she’s out with a boy... He doesn’t know Val like we do! She’s not like that.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Andrew said, and hung up the phone.

  * * *

  The door of Mike’s mansion swung open, and Selena ran out into his arms. Mike stood in the doorway behind her, sipping brown liquor from a crystal tumbler.

  “What are we going to do?” Selena whispered, and sniffled loudly in his ear.

  Andrew wrapped his arms around her in a hug and shook his head. He’d been wondering that same thing on the drive over. “We’ll find her,” he said in a voice that sounded more confident than he felt. Selena nodded against his shoulder.

  “You mind letting go of my wife?” Mike growled.

  Andrew scowled at him, but Selena stepped back, and Andrew let his arms slide away from her.

  Mike smiled insipidly. “Thanks.”

  “Have you called the police yet?” Andrew asked.

  Selena bit her lip and shook her head.

  “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours!” Mike burst out. “In fact, I don’t even think it’s been twelve!”

  Andrew stared hard at the man. He looked ridiculous with his baby-smooth, surgically-tightened face and thinning hair dyed a bright blond that he probably couldn’t have pulled off in his twenties, let alone at forty-seven. A vain, shallow man struggling to hold onto his youth. Turning his attention to Selena, he said, “Are you coming? We have to make a report.”

  Selena nodded quickly.

  Mike snorted. “Have fun. You’ll excuse me if I don’t join you. I have a surgery tomorrow morning.”

  Andrew grabbed Selena’s arm and pulled her gently away from the entrance and Mike’s toxic influence. Mike’s eyes blazed as he stared at Andrew’s hand on Selena’s arm. A flash of satisfaction coursed through Andrew with that. She was mine before she was yours, buddy.