The small clock on one of the bookshelves showed the arms of time had finally flung themselves past 2:00 a.m.
Trudy was gone now, off back home and thousands of miles away, and even if Tamara called her, what were the odds her friend would believe any of this? She’d think for sure that Tamara had finally snapped.
The only one in all of this who she could reach out to was Detective Parker. She still had his card and had nearly convinced herself to call him twice already. But she worried that they were both being monitored by the police now. They had their story, yes, but it had holes that any idiot could see, and both of them were tied to missing people, one a presumed murderer and the other a missing cop.
The odds were good that someone’s phone was tapped.
And besides, what would she say? “Help. There was a demon under my daughter’s bed!”
Detective Parker, of all people, might’ve believed it, but in the end what could he do about it? Nothing.
So instead Tamara sat while the gears in her mind ran at speeds beyond her control.
Three times now. It had happened three times: something had come after them. First, the creature that had attacked her in her bed, paralyzing her, then the mother and daughter creatures at that rest stop, and now the creature under Janie’s bed.
For what? For whatever Kyle was mixed up in, that’s what. Not was. Is. Is mixed up in. He’s still alive. Don’t let go of that. He is.
It wasn’t fair. Not one bit. She’d done nothing to start this ball rolling. Kyle had. The Gray Man and all that followed would’ve never happened had Kyle not messed up, and now it was all spilling over into her and the kids’ lives.
It wasn’t fair.
The words bounced around in her head for a while, admittedly making her sound like a five year old, before a single word broke into her mind and snapped her to attention: Ben.
Ben had done this.
Well, not Ben himself, but what she had felt… what she had done… with Ben.
That’s when it all started—when she’d cheated with Ben.
Cheated? I didn’t even sleep with him. We made out, that’s all…
But she had wanted him, and gotten half-naked with him and…
Stop it! Just. Stop.
And right after that was when that thing crawled onto her bed.
No. No. No.
That was the first time.
The first time the enemy had come after her.
The words startled her: “the enemy.” A church term she’d been taught when she was young. As a child of missionaries it was a term they used to explain to indigenous people, who were often tribal and war-like, the nature of the devil.
The light from the lamps in the living room held firm as the room remained still. That voice in her head, though, that voice of her conscience, just wouldn’t shut up.
The enemy couldn’t see her, at least not… clearly… until she’d done that. Not until she opened her heart to that sweet idea of sin.
No.
Original sin.
No.
Yes. She couldn’t just blame Kyle. She’d brought this on her family too.
I was confused. I didn’t mean to.
But she had.
What did it matter? The devil saw everyone anyway.
Perhaps. From a distance. But what had her dad always cautioned the natives about? “You have to start the dialogue, and once you do?”
He zeroes in from there.
Seth rolled over, his head against her leg, and yawned in his sleep before resuming his measured breathing.
She blinked and forced herself to quit thinking about it.
Outside the sky was going from black to bluish gray, as if it had been punched.
When the sun rose she would begin packing, with the exception of Janie’s stuff of course—she was never going into that room again.
Some of the kids’ clothes were in the hamper on the dryer. She’d manage an outfit for each of them or get them out of the house in their pajamas. Who cared? She could buy them clothes on the way out of town to…
To where?
And that’s when it hit her: a sudden, pounding sense of dread.
Where could she possibly go to get away from the Devil?
Evil had followed her before, to that truck stop, and it would follow her again, wherever she ran.
She glanced at the knife on the armrest, its shining silver tip peeking out from the blue and white checkered folds of the dishtowel.
If something came after them again, there was no guarantee she could fight it off this time. A sob escaped her chest but she held it firmly in her throat.
Something crackled in the wall and up to part of the roof, but it was a sound she was used to. Just one of the normal sounds their home made when the heater turned on. Warm air began to flow out of the vents and she welcomed it.
Alongside Seth lay Janie, sandwiched like a sardine between him and the cushions of the sofa. Her right arm was beneath her, her left hand on Tamara’s knee, fingers still slightly curled, ready to clutch and grip at a moment’s notice.
Tamara thought of church. Maybe she could run to church.
She actually shook her head slightly, even though there was no one in the room to see it.
They would love her, accept her and take her in. And then call the authorities. Not out of malice or bad intent, no, but out of a sincere concern for the children.
Then the police would take the kids, and what if that thing under the bed came after Janie again, but this time Tamara wasn’t there to stop it?
Her dread began to manifest itself into resolve.
No way. There was no way she was going to let her babies out of her sight now. Not with this danger present and lurking.
Outside, the cry of a peacock echoed through the La Canada woods.
Despite the work of the heater, Tamara’s left hand was shaking. Nerves. And exhaustion. She would have to sleep sometime, but something told her that the day was the safest time for it. When the sun was up, she would get some refuge somehow.
Again she looked at her cell phone and the business card that was lying right next to it. She should call Detective Parker, at least to see if this kind of stuff was happening to him too. It couldn’t hurt. Well, it could, maybe. If they were listened in on, it would blow the whole thing wide open.
Then you lose the kids anyway, one way or another.
So, despite the nagging feeling within her that she was making a big mistake, Tamara decided once and for all not to call.
HE KNEW he shouldn’t have, but Parker needed to. The two missing girls were bad enough. The sheriff’s concerns that somehow the cases were linked to the Fasano case were worse. But even beyond all that, the immensity of the whole thing, the entire mess, was starting to weigh on him.
So he’d escaped here, to this tiny little bar a half-block from his motel room, to drink a Rolling Rock and try to sort out what was next. What to do next. What to say next. Where to go next. He was lost. He’d gotten himself this way. It was no coincidence.
The Rolling Rock was no coincidence either.
The kid from Pennsylvania, Wallace, that was his name, loved Rolling Rock. He used to get it shipped in from home on the down low, not an easy thing to do in the middle of a war. Parker reckoned that by the time Wallace greased all the appropriate palms, he’d probably paid ten times the going rate back home for the two cases of beer that came each month. It didn’t matter. Wallace was one of the smart ones; he knew that dying was always just a second away on any given day in Afghanistan, and money in your pocket could do nothing to save you.
So he used up all his checks on beer, poker and the occasional whore.
Right up until the day a sniper caught him just below his left eye, the force of the shot damn near ripping his head clean off his body.
They’d been on patrol just outside of Kamdesh, in a hilly region with dense pockets of desert brush where the sniper had no doubt laid in wait. Like all snipers, he did h
is job—he got his kill—and then melted away. Parker figured he was alone out there because after he’d taken down Wallace there’d been no more shots. Parker and the rest of his platoon had split off and taken cover, but still, usually any good sniper, after taking out the point man, would’ve at least tried for one or two more.
But no. Silence.
Every man has his breaking point, and that day, with Wallace’s blood splattered across his face, Parker finally reached his.
Just the night before Wallace had finished the last six pack of Rolling Rock, a full moon lighting the desert sands full past midnight, and shared with Parker his concerns for his father back home, who was suffering from Parkinson’s.
“The disease is fucked up enough, dude,” Wallace said, “but worrying about me every day is only making it worse for him.”
Now, thanks to some little rat fucker with a long scope, Wallace’s dad wouldn’t have to worry anymore. He would just get to suffer, his grief piled high on top of his disease.
“Rodriguez, you’ve got command,” Parker ordered, his face twisted with grief. “Get Wallace back to base!”
“What?” Linares started grumbling, the other five men in the platoon chiming in their own respectful protests right behind him.
“I’m going after him,” Parker said, ignoring the other men, his focus solely on Rodriguez. “You get everyone back safe, but this one’s mine. I don’t come back, so be it. You got it?”
Rodriguez flashed with doubt, but he nodded. “Got it.”
They both knew the odds of one man going into those hills alone and coming back were about as good as Wallace being raised from the dead right next to them.
Still, Parker nodded at the rest of his men and took off, heading north-east.
Where he’d seen the muzzle flash.
Damn rookie sniper, is what he was, a rat-fucking-rookie-sniper-terrorist who’d got his kill, panicked and made a run for it. Before long he would get the hang of it and then start picking off whole platoons.
That was, if Parker didn’t get to him first. And Parker knew he would. Knew it as soon as he slung his M16 over his shoulder and started running in long, fluid strides, down one mountain face and up another, from dirt patches to rocks to boulders, moving swiftly and mostly silently, avoiding the brush with its snapping twigs or loose gravel that would landslide and echo across the canyons.
It was just under a hundred degrees, a cool day for that part of the world in mid-May, but the sweat began to build on his chest and trickle down from under his arms and across his tight belly.
He’d covered a good three clicks over uneven terrain, and was finally ready to give himself a water break, when he saw him, on the opposite hillside, only three hundred yards away, walking up a narrow goat path, his tan shirt and pants only offset by the light beige keffiyeh on his head. Normally red or black would be the preferred color for this region. But not if you were a sniper trying to stay undetected. Then? Then you did all you could to blend in with the desert and mountains around you.
Using his single scope binocular Parker zeroed in on him, just for confirmation: over the man’s shoulder was slung a sniper rifle, the black scope clear as day.
He was walking with an even, relaxed stride, as if he were pleased with himself. Like he’d just been to the damn market for some eggs and found them on sale.
Burning red with a rage that made the desert sun seem like a meager flame, Parker wasted no time, because there was more than one marksman in this canyon now.
Swinging his M16 off his back, over his shoulder and around to aim, Parker dropped to one knee, flipped off the safety and without a shred of guilt or a speck of shame, he shot the sniper clean in the back, at the base of his spine, just above his buttocks.
He fell over unnaturally, probably paralyzed before he even hit the ground.
Which was good.
It meant Parker could take a long drink of water before he walked over to finish him off.
Minutes later, when he finally came upon the man, his face was turned to the side, his eyes darting back and forth in fear, his mouth making an odd gasping sound.
His rifle was still over his back, and that’s when Parker noticed the fresh, one-inch line scraped into the butt.
Parker was right. He was a rookie. As rookie as they came: Wallace had been his first.
His virgin kill.
And this sniper, this “assassin,” was no man at all: he was a boy of maybe sixteen.
In Arabic, Parker asked him why. At first he didn’t answer. It was obvious he was in pain. His legs and one arm didn’t move, but the fingers of his left hand kept violently digging into the dirt.
Again, Parker asked why, and this time the boy spat and coughed a bit, then managed only three words. “You or me,” he said.
Parker exhaled in rage and disgust.
“You killed my friend,” Parker said softly in Arabic as he leaned over the boy, whose keffiyeh had shifted, spilling his long black hair over one eye and cheek. Reaching down, Parker gently pushed the hair out of the boy’s face, patted him on the head like a dog and looked at him. “And for that? I want you to lie here and die, very, very, very slowly.”
Then Parker turned away and made his way back out of the canyon, the boy desperately whimpering something from behind him. Parker didn’t know what.
“He was probably asking for mercy,” Parker said to himself, his eyes returning from that far away desert to the glaring Budweiser sign in the window next to his stool at the bar.
He took another swig of his Rolling Rock and sighed, rubbing the fingers of his free hand like erasers against his eyelids, the images of that day like smeared chalk that just wouldn’t disappear.
The tremor came almost immediately, down his left arm, swift and sharp. He clenched his jaw and focused on “the steps” his therapist had trained him to go through, one at a time: name the pain, contain the pain, release the pain.
It was his little mantra. They’d gone over it at the base a few times before Parker lied and told the therapist that it was really working, that the tremors had gone away completely. They both knew it was a lie. But Parker had only two months to go before his second tour was over, and his therapist knew that Parker’s only dream in life now was to go into law enforcement.
And there was no greater killer of that dream than a PTSD diagnosis. Not one.
So he let Parker loose, let him avoid the meds, but kept after him about “the steps.” Remember the steps. Don’t let go of the steps. Use the steps.
“Hey, buddy, you want another?” the bartender, a stout old man in his seventies, asked.
First Parker was going to say no. The tremors usually came on easier when he drank, so perhaps it was a good idea to pass on another round. But, dammit, he needed to breathe. He did. “Yeah, big guy, I’ll have another.”
“You got it,” the bartender replied, popping the lid off another bottle and sliding it down the bar saloon style to Parker, who then slid his empty bottle back to him the same way.
The tremor held tight in his shoulder for a second, and then dissipated slowly.
Parker took a fresh swig of the new beer and felt old beyond his years.
Drinking was probably a bad decision, but if so, it was his third one of the night.
The last one had been reminiscing about that God-forsaken desert, but the first one was not much better.
His first bad decision had been in deciding not to call the captain. Even when suspended, if an officer knew, suspected or obtained new information that may possibly be related to an open or pending case, he was required to report that information up the chain of command immediately.
“But… fuck you, Captain,” Parker whispered under his breath. “You did this to Nap. You did it to me. So? Fuck you all the way to China.”
It was brave talk, and Parker had the nagging feeling that he was making a big mistake.
He should call. But there was no way in hell he was going to.
Inst
ead he took another drink of his beer and thought of Wallace. “This one’s for you, buddy.”
CHAPTER 22
“WHO ARE YOU?” KYLE asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“My name is Michiko,” she answered while glancing around them and scanning the perimeter of the force field. “We’re taking too long,” she added. Reaching around her left hip, her hand disappeared into a satchel and then produced a small flask. “Here. Drink this.”
At first Kyle wanted to resist, but at this point, it really didn’t matter. He was too weak to put up a fight. So he opened his mouth as she placed the tip of the flask gingerly against his lips. A cool, minty liquid spilled over his tongue and down the dry crevice of his throat.
“I think I’ve had this before,” he croaked after she paused to give him a second to catch his breath.
She smiled. “Of course you have. It is from the same essence that makes up your powers.”
He frowned, but before he could speak she gave him another drink. This time he pulled on it, hard, gulping at the liquid, feeling energy return to his body. Soon it coursed through his bones, then his muscles and tendons until, at last, the tips of his nerves were nourished as well. All the pain from his stings was erased, save from the one on the back of his neck, but even that one was now reduced to barely an ache.
“Can you stand now?” she asked tentatively.
To his surprise he felt that he could. “Yes.”
She pulled him to his feet with ease. Standing face to face, Kyle could see that she was about five foot nine. She stood with the calm stance of an athlete as she returned the flask to her satchel and put her hands on her hips. “So,” she said with a humorous squint, “you’re the millionth?”
Kyle shook his head in complete dismay. “I’m the something or other.”
A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2) Page 21
