“Gone?” Trudy asked, perplexed. “Do you know where?”
Biting at the corner of her mouth, Tamara answered. “No.” Now that was a lie for sure.
“Well, I mean, what happened?”
Tamara thought things through for a moment, and when she responded she realized that it was with a natural ease and a convincing tone. There was a certain amount that Trudy and everyone else would hear on the news. She had to just try to stay within those lines.
“I got there right when those detectives did.”
“No shit! So you were right? He was going to see that woman?”
Tamara nodded with a yawn, as if she didn’t know that the “woman” in question had actually tried to kill her husband.
“Then what?”
“Well. Then it got weird.” Tamara shook her head at the recollection, and then continued. “We got to her home and they made me wait out front. I mean, we literally almost pulled into the driveway at the same damn time. I was out front trying to work up the courage to knock on the door. I mean, it was almost nine, when here they come. They were pissed at me and told me to stay put. Then one of them goes in through the front door, I guess it was partway open, while the other one goes around to cover the back of the house.”
“Was Kyle inside?”
“He must’ve been. They moved towards the house like they knew something I didn’t, which was totally possible, I guess.”
“So…”
Tamara raised her eyebrows. “So then Detective Villa, the Latin cop, went in the front. There was screaming, yelling… shit was getting broken, like there was a fight of some kind.”
“What?! Was Kyle’s ex-girlfriend in the house? Or her family?”
“Evidently not.”
“So what the hell? Was Kyle hiding out inside? That’s just creepy.”
Oh. If only you knew what creepy really was, Tamara thought, remembering the little girl in the bathroom at the rest stop crawling under the toilet stall. Sighing, she continued, “So I’m waiting for a gunshot or something when the sounds all stop, and the next thing I know the cop that went around back, Detective Parker, he comes running around front to ask if I’ve seen anything.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I know. Kyle must’ve broken away and ran? I dunno. Shit. Cop cars started pulling up all over the place. Then it got confusing, but best I can guess is that Detective Villa chased after him.”
“Did he catch him?”
Oh God. I hope so. Again Tamara bit her tongue before answering, “We don’t know. I mean. Obviously not, because…”
An odd silence filled the living room as Tamara struggled to finish.
Trudy reached out and grabbed Tamara’s hand. “Tam? What happened?”
It was hard to lie to your best friend, especially when you’d promised never to do it again only a few days before. Still. Detective Parker was right. The truth would only convince Trudy and everyone else that Tamara was neck-deep in a nervous breakdown, and who knew what that meant for the kids, or the house, or her career now, as the sole earner of the family. No. There was no other choice. “They’re missing.”
Trudy blinked hard, twice, and then cocked her head to the side as a look of confusion spilled across her face. “What?”
“Yeah. I know. It sounds crazy, but they’re both missing now.”
“And?”
“The house was in a wooded part of Monterey. He must’ve chased Kyle into the woods, and who knows what happened after that.”
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Do they think Kyle killed him? Out in the woods, I mean?”
“I don’t care what they think,” Tamara said with a defiant shrug, “Kyle hasn’t killed anyone.”
“Jesus. This is just a whole ’nother level of insane now. All of it.”
“I know.”
“First the girl, the one at the hotel, and now this? Tamara, if he’s flipped this bad you gotta cut him loose.”
“Trudy… please.”
“No. Bullshit, Tamara. I mean it. If he’s killed a cop now? He’s obviously lost his freakin’ mind, and you have to protect yourself and the kids.”
Trudy’s concern was so deep that it was heartbreaking. Tamara felt crushed. She tried to lessen the weight of her lies with a half-truth or two.
“Listen, we don’t know what really happened. We should wait and—”
Tamara noticed, as the light outside began to brighten, that the mid-morning sun beyond the clouds was trying to break through, but instead of casting the world in a golden glow, the light was… gray.
She thought of him instantly: The Gray Man. An angel. A real angel. A distraught angel. Gone to save her husband.
Trudy scooted closer to her, keeping her voice hushed as she spoke. “Listen, Tam, I’ve been trying to be supportive in all of this. Non-judgmental, I mean. Kyle was a great guy. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but now, enough’s enough.”
Tamara lowered her head. “Trudy. The police are looking for them both. I don’t know what else to say.”
Then it was like something in her told her to stop talking. She waited, hoping that her friend would give her some space.
Trudy sighed heavily. “Okay. Later. You want me to make some coffee?”
Tamara didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Please.”
Tamara sat in the stillness of the living room, looking around, something every five feet reminding her of Kyle: a picture, one of his favorite books, the autographed football over the entertainment unit.
This room, the whole home… was one memory of Kyle after another, and they hurt. She wiped at her eyes and realized with no small sense of dread that all of this was the easy part.
The kids would wake up soon, and that’s when things would get hard.
It dawned on her that hell could be found in a lot of places.
And her home, now, was going to be one of them.
AS PARKER DROVE down the highway, his hands clenching the wheel tightly despite the exhaustion that had crept into every corner of his body, he could think of only one thing: Napoleon’s face, twelve hours earlier.
It was a face of complete faith, framed with resolve.
He’d volunteered for something completely unfathomable, and surrendered his life over to… someone… who Parker supposed was an angel of some kind. At least that’s what Tamara Fasano kept saying he was, under her breath, just before Monterey PD followed standard procedure and separated her and Parker when they realized they had a problem on their hands: not only a fugitive on the loose in their lovely little suburb, the ever-elusive Kyle Fasano, but now a missing cop as well.
It hadn’t taken long for backup units to be called in, from Carmel to the south and Watsonville to the north, to help search the woods around the Brasco residence. A helicopter swooped in, its spotlight drawing a search pattern over treetops that were still eerily outlined by moonlight. Before long the lights in the windows of neighboring residences came on, one by one, as people awoke to a manhunt that was really all for naught.
Through it all Parker stood with the watch commander at the top of the driveway and played along, occasionally glancing over at Tamara as she no doubt answered the same questions he was being asked, over and over. He realized that the one thing they both had going in their favor that night, indeed the one thing that was like the light-footed dance partner to their heavy-footed story, was the fact that they were both genuinely in shock.
You can’t fake shock. Parker learned that his first month on foot patrol. People try all the time, but the look of fake shock on a person’s face is a mask that says one thing: guilty. Be it of hiding a baggie of pot in their sock or of stabbing a rival gang member in the neck. Fake shock was a universal giveaway.
But he remembered now how, whenever he had glanced Tamara’s way, no matter which officer she was speaking to, she looked to be genuinely in shock, almost to the point of appearing ill.
Why shouldn’t she b
e? She believed more than Parker that her husband had been dragged to hell.
She believed it as much as Napoleon.
Parker shook his head. It was madness. All of it. But it had happened, right before his very eyes, and there was simply no denying it. And now, right out there on the fringes of his mind, he could feel his concept of reality beginning to tear, taut threads of perception snapping sharply, one at a time.
Because if hell was real, then so was heaven.
And if heaven was real, then so too were a lot of ideas and beliefs that would call his lifestyle into question, especially the things he’d done.
Done over there, in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan. Especially to that little blue-eyed Taliban boy, who never saw it coming. Because he wasn’t looking and because, well, he most likely was trying to get away. Would’ve, as a matter of fact, if Parker had let him. But Parker hadn’t. No. No. No. That just wasn’t gonna happen.
Payback’s a bitch, my man.
Except he was a boy, not a man, probably no more than sixteen. Probably died a virgin. Probably died wishing he could have lived a little longer. Maybe to at least seventeen.
The car was cave-silent. The windows were up despite the fact it was a sunny day outside because, no matter how hard he tried, Parker couldn’t stop shivering. The images now in his mind, of the boy, having pushed out the image of Napoleon’s face, only made the shivering worse.
Monterey PD had released him to Klink and Murillo’s custody, both of whom were pissed that they’d been forced to drive up and babysit him. Parker figured the captain was just playing it safe, or covering bases that Parker was just too tired to see right now.
It was clear that neither he nor Mrs. Fasano were suspects in anything. Their stories had been baffling, but they evidently matched up enough to let things go, at least for the time being. But Parker knew that once he was given a chance to get it together he would be called in to the station house, where there was going to be a lot more questions, by the captain and the lieutenant, and shit, probably the chief of police himself.
The department was no doubt on the verge of burning to the ground. Not only had Caitlyn Hall’s presumed murderer escaped, but now one of the cops who had gone after him was missing too. It was a PR disaster, and heads would roll for sure.
Napoleon had tried to warn Parker to get off the case. Back in San Diego he told him that they were practically lambs to the slaughter. But Parker refused. The case might’ve been a clusterfuck of circles that overlapped or never closed, but that was no excuse for giving up. You stuck by your partner. If nothing else, war had taught Parker that, right or wrong, easy or hard, you hold the line.
Even if that line causes you to kill.
Jesus.
He thought about that word: a name, a nice guy, maybe even a prophet or whatever. But Son of God? Silly stuff.
His unit commander, Ortega, had tried to tell Parker many times of one salvation or another, quoting as he did from his little pocket Bible. Parker was mostly indignant, finding Ortega’s audacity of hope in a place of constant death, where even the air you breathed was tinged with the taste of hate, almost repugnant. After the blue-eyed boy, though, Ortega had given up.
Parker swallowed hard and wondered if Napoleon had gone off to visit the very place Parker himself was destined for, someday.
A white Nissan pulled aggressively around his car and whipped in front of him, having raced out into the opposite lane to beat on-coming traffic. Parker realized he’d zoned out and was only driving at 40 mph in the fast lane.
Blinking hard, he accelerated the car back up to seventy and tried to get his mind off the subject.
Off the subject of hell.
Off the memories off stupid Ortega and his crazy notions of an afterlife, of a peaceful place called heaven where you walked on streets of gold and hung out with a God who looked like Santa and spoke like Morgan Freeman.
But each time he tried, there it was again: Napoleon’s face.
So sure of where he was going, to a place that should’ve had him filled with fear.
But no.
Instead his face wore the resolve of a man going into the unknown, but not going there alone and, most assuredly, not going there without a belief in something else.
A belief in heaven. A belief in God.
It was madness. All of it. At least it used to be.
Now it was time, Parker knew, to start coming to grips with the fact that there was, indeed, an afterlife. And knowing this, far from making things easier, it only made them harder.
In all the living and the dying that went on in the world each and every day, his number could be called next at any moment.
Which meant he had to be ready.
He eased his grip on the wheel and lowered the window, feeling the warm desert air. The scent of Joshua trees spilled into the car as Parker swallowed hard and figured it was time to just get to it. So, for the first time in his life, he prayed.
Having no real exposure to religion growing up, he had no idea how he was meant to do it. So he just talked to God as if he were Morgan Freeman.
And hoped He would understand.
CHAPTER 7
KYLE CALLED ON THE blue. Nothing. He tried again. Same result.
Seeing a large branch at the edge of the water he could use as a weapon, he stepped to his left to avoid the little girl’s charge and dove for it. His fingers were just closing around the wood, which felt slippery with ash, when The Lantern Man stepped in front of him.
From Kyle’s vantage point on the ground, The Lantern Man looked even taller now. He held the lantern out as if it were a talisman of sorts and the girl, who had already spun for another charge at Kyle, shrunk back with a hiss, the skin on her nose wrinkled back in multiple folds, giving her a piggish look as her eyes burned with focus.
“Howwww dare you!” she growled.
“Stay back,” The Lantern Man replied.
“Thissss is my domain,” the girl insisted angrily as she rocked her weight from one foot to the next, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her hair falling in strands over her face.
“We will pass. You have a price. So name it.”
“You will not pass.”
“We will. One way or another. So take the offer. Name your price.”
The lantern began to hum. It was a low pitch at first, but then it built to a higher tone and then held. Kyle sensed that it was weapon of some sort, now cocked like a gun.
The girl took note of it but showed no fear. Instead, like a wolf assessing the reward versus the risk of an attack, she stopped, smiled again and nodded softly before asking, “Where you going?”
“That is not your concern. You only have a right to your price, and you’ve yet to name it. I will not ask again.”
Kyle shifted his weight and rolled over to his side, which was a mistake; it seemed to excite the girl again. She glared at Kyle like a bully on the playground angry that the recess teacher had intervened. For a second, it looked like she would attack, but with apparent effort she forced her focus back to The Lantern Man.
“Fine. My mother and sister. Tabitha and Melody. Blanchard, Virginia. Tell them to get me out of here.”
The Lantern Man scoffed. “To what end?”
In reply, the girl wore a look of hurt. “They’ll help me. They have ways.”
“Witches in the backwoods, both of them, this you know. As you also know that if they try and fail, it will only get worse for you here.”
“Worse?” The girl seemed stunned at first, and then she became incredulous. “How? How could it possibly be worse? In the water the leeches feast on my insides. Out of the water my skin burns like acid. And… in my mind…”
She faded out of the moment, her expression tortured, and when she came back she looked again at Kyle, but this time with a pitiful desperation.
“In my mind it happens over and over again. I just want it to stop. It hurts so much. Even the leeches, feeding on my heart, feel be
tter.”
Kyle was about to speak to her, to ask her what had happened, amazed at his sudden instinct to actually try and help the girl somehow, here, in this place, when The Lantern Man spoke first. “Your price in named and granted. I will tell them the next time I’m out their way. You face the consequences.”
“But—”
“Leave us now. The deal is struck.”
The girl lowered her head and began to weep before slowly walking back into the water. She stopped and moaned every few steps and Kyle could actually see them this time, the leeches, by the thousands, floating on the surface of the water and sticking to her like gum. Pretty soon she was up to her shoulders in them, then her neck. She let out a brief scream before her head went under, leaving behind a slight eddy as a single water ring expanded and then dissipated.
“Come,” The Lantern Man said, walking to the water’s edge.
“I’m not going in there,” Kyle said firmly.
The Lantern Man turned his head, as if he were looking at Kyle. Closer now, Kyle could tell that his face was firmly wrapped in the swaths of cloth. He could see the outlines of a nose and mouth, but barely, and they didn’t move when he spoke.
“You won’t have to,” The Lantern Man said.
In front of them, a black-tar-covered bridge rose slowly from the water, pieces of marsh grass clustered in places along its rope railings, the water dripping off them. The bridge stretched across to a distant shore that, until now, had been obscured behind the fog. The bridge looked rickety, and it was only a foot above the water’s surface.
“Where are we going?” Kyle asked.
“The White City,” The Lantern Man said as he started out across the bridge.
Kyle hesitated.
“Look,” The Lantern Man said, glancing back curtly, “we don’t have much time. You’ve got to snap out of it. Have you accepted where you are?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have to know the danger. This creature accepted an offer,” The Lantern Man said, pointing down into the water. “The next one might not.”
Kyle nodded and started off across the bridge, noticing that the wood planks shifted and creaked under his weight but not under that of The Lantern Man.
A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2) Page 6
