I closed my eyes and ran the damn thing over again in my mind, more slowly, and this time I heard the jingle of the little dog’s name tag and license. And I saw that his owner was limping a little—favoring his right leg. The stop sign on the corner reflected the sun, blinding me and making me glance down, and I saw that the dog had left a fresh deposit on the ground next to the pole. The old man had failed to scoop the poop.
I rounded the corner, and this time I stopped the memory before the smell.
Dog, collar, poop…
“Cat food,” I said aloud, and pulled Milo with me into the memory of my excursion into the police station. I played my encounter with Sergeant Olga Moran on fast-forward—Ba-dah, ba-dah, ba-dah, ba-dah, ba-dah, bahm! She opened the can of cat food, and boom.
I yanked us away from the memory of the smell and dragged Milo into my recollection of Garrett stopping to offer me a ride. Cars pulled around him—including a white van. I froze the memory. Garrett’s mouth was open, but it was the van behind him that I mentally pointed to. It had a cartoon image of a dog and the words Doggy Doo Good on its side.
I ran back to the memory from the police station, to Olga Moran and that cat food can—and sure enough, it was the Doggy Doo Good brand.
Whoa, Milo said.
Yeah. I was onto something here. I flashed into my memory of the morning I’d gone for a run with Garrett, when the doorbell had mysteriously rung. Had my powers done that? That wasn’t important right now. I kept going. When I’d opened the door, no one had been there, but there had been a woman walking three little well-pampered dogs, right across the street. On leashes purchased, perhaps, from the big-chain pet store?
That left the first two times—both in Sasha’s bedroom. Before and after her abduction.
Sasha smelled it too? Milo asked, and I nodded.
Maybe the person who’d taken her—creepy old-lady-thing or other—had been lurking outside the night I’d babysat. And maybe she’d had her pet…snake with her that she’d bought from Doggy Doo Good…?
Or maybe the smell is her, Milo suggested.
And I finished the thought for him: And she spends so much time at the Doggy Doo Good that everything in the store is polluted with her stank.
We both opened our eyes at once—as Dana got back into the car. “Let’s move it, Scoot. On to the Taj.”
“No!” Milo and I spoke in unison. “To the Doggy Doo Good.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“What the fridge is a Doggy Doo Good?” Dana asked, still annoyed.
We’d found the closest twenty-four-hour superstore on Cal’s phone map.
It hadn’t taken us long to drive there, and we now sat in the nearly empty parking lot, gazing at the warehouse-sized building.
“You haven’t seen the TV commercials?” Cal asked her. “They’re pretty freaking relentless.” He started to sing. “Doggy Doo Good—”
“It’s basically an upscale pet-store chain,” I told Dana.
She snorted. “For people who’ll only feed their puppies distilled water and designer chow. And you think…” She let her voice trail off. Her skepticism that we’d find anything here was written all over her face.
It was true. The idea that the woman who’d kidnapped Sasha—a woman who was pure evil—held down a second job at the Doggy Doo Good was pretty ridiculous.
Dana shook her head as she studied the door to the massive storefront.
“We need to go in,” Milo said.
“I agree.” To my surprise, Dana nodded. “Let’s take a stroll.”
The four of us approached the enormous warehouse of a store. It had wide glass doors that slid open to reveal a cavernous room filled with rows upon rows of doggy toys, dry food, canned food, collars and leashes, crates, and plush pet beds.
As we got close enough, we triggered the sensors. The doors swooshed open, and an overhead video screen clicked on to reveal a cartoon dog. “Rel-row,” the dog greeted us cheerfully. “Rel-come to Doggy Doo Good!”
“Really?” Dana said.
“Let’s just walk around,” I started to say. But before I could get the words out, a blast of that god-awful stench hit me. The world turned white, and I was enveloped by an overwhelming surge of vertigo that sent me tumbling to the tile floor.
Screaming…all the screaming…too much…all those little girls with their terrified faces, arms and legs squished into cages like dogs in a pound…like animals, really, and screaming and screaming… A truck! They were in a truck, huddling together, shaking, screaming…pieces of rope hanging from the sides of the interior…or were those dog chains? Collars? Dog collars and leashes and huge bags of dried dog food, stacked in neat rows. And the deafening screaming… They wanted their mommies… Oh God, they were gonna die, they were gonna die theyweregonnadie, theyweregonna—
Still thoughts. Still thoughts. Still thoughts…
When I opened my eyes, Milo was kneeling over me, his big arms wrapped tightly around me.
I was too terrified to feel embarrassed.
Still thoughts. Still thoughts. Still thoughts…
My breathing steadied, and my heart rate slowed, and I realized that I wasn’t puking my guts out all over the pet-store floor, even though I was still highly aware of the sewage stench.
And I knew, the way that I now know things, that as long as I kept my connection to Milo, I wouldn’t throw up, no matter how overpowering the smell became.
And I realized too that my vision of those terrified little girls wasn’t gone. It had slowed way down, as though Milo’s presence inside of my head, with his calming mantra and solid warmth, was somehow permitting me to focus on individual images, one by one.
As much as I wanted to erase any and all of those terrible pictures from my brain, never mind avoid seeing any additional horrors, I bit the bullet and closed my eyes, willing the images to become more complete.
“Don’t move me,” I heard myself say to Milo—or maybe I hadn’t said it out loud. Maybe I’d simply sent the message to him through my thoughts. Either way, he didn’t budge.
And there it was. Someone—a man. A big man. In a room this time. A large room. Hot. Smelly, and not just with fish-fear, but with the stench of unwashed bodies. All those little girls were now in rows, chained to cots. The man was carrying a… What was in his hand?
I concentrated, but someone was talking—someone in the Doggy Doo Good store. It was one of the clerks. She was asking if I was okay.
What she didn’t realize was that the sound of her voice was making it difficult for me to stay focused on the vision.
“Shut up!” I growled without opening my eyes, adding a please, because, damn, I sounded like the girl from The Exorcist.
The room became quiet.
And…a different man and a woman? Naked. Ew. They were kissing in a hot tub, but they looked kind of bored and… Was it…on TV?
No. A computer?
A computer!
Then back to the big man—fully clothed, a red shirt and filthy jeans—in the huge room, but he wasn’t on TV. He was real. And he was holding a…
What was it? Was it a baseball bat?
The computer again… The lady’s acting skills were overwhelmed by her apathy. Why was I seeing this? But as soon as I wondered, I realized that the computer screen had a clock.
8:04 p.m.
And then the vision shifted and I saw big eyes squeezed shut, little hands clinging to a teddy bear with its nose chewed…
Sasha.
Sasha. Alive.
“Sasha’s alive!” I shouted. And I knew I’d said that out loud, because as I opened my eyes, a group of complete strangers all gasped in unison.
Dana and Calvin were there too, hovering close to me. Milo still held me, his eyes sad and solemn as he rubbed his hands up and down my arms.
I shudder
ed. “I saw…I saw so much.”
Dana looked up at the small crowd of store clerks and warehouse workers. “All right,” she said impatiently. “Show’s over. Go back to your chew toys.”
“Come on,” Milo said quietly, guiding me as I shakily stood.
“You heard the girl. Stop standing around. There’s nothing to see here.” Calvin’s voice was defensive as my friends help me walk out of the Doggy Doo Good.
When we were finally outside, Dana stepped in front of Milo, ripping him away from me as she grabbed my shoulders. “What happened in there?” she demanded.
“I saw Sasha.” I nodded, driving my point home. “I saw her. Alive. She was asleep but she was alive. I have no. Doubts. About it.”
Dana had already begun to shake her head. “No,” she said. “Sky, we’ve been over this again and again. Sasha is—”
“Alive! I saw her! She was holding her teddy bear, and there was…a computer screen. Someone was in the room with Sasha. A gigantic man.” I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “He was watching Skinemax. What kind of man watches that in a room filled with little girls?”
Calvin lifted an eyebrow.
“But I could see the little clock on the lower right-hand side of the laptop monitor,” I continued.
Milo watched me. I knew he’d seen at least part of what I had, and I looked to him for confirmation.
“It read 8:04 p.m.,” he offered.
“Right!” I exclaimed “See? Dana, do you see? It was happening in real time!”
“No, it wasn’t.” Dana grabbed Milo by the wrist, inspecting his watch. “It’s nine oh eight.”
It was a full hour later than I’d thought or felt or… It didn’t make sense. I was so certain…
Dana continued. “The time was random. You’re psychic, Sky, not prescient. It was a vision from whenever. Last week. Has to be.”
That had been a real-time vision, I knew it. “No. I’m not wrong about this.”
Dana silently held out Milo’s wrist so I could look at his watch myself.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe…the clock on the computer was wrong, or…” I looked at Milo, searching his face, hoping he’d have the answers, but his expression was one of helplessness. “Please,” I exclaimed. “Tell Dana what you saw—what we saw. You know Sasha’s alive, right?”
Calvin played with his phone as he sat next to us, clearly absorbing the heated argument despite his attention elsewhere.
“I can’t… I’m not sure what that was, Sky,” Milo finally managed.
Great. Even the guy who could read my thoughts didn’t believe me.
“So I googled Doggy Doo Good,” Cal offered, “and it says here that the main warehouse for the chain is in—”
“Alabama,” I stated without hesitation.
“Dang,” Calvin said. “I thought my 7G was faster than your piece-of-crap phone.”
“I didn’t look it up,” I told him. “I didn’t have to. I knew it. Like I know that Sasha’s alive. She’s somewhere north of here—I can feel it—and Alabama, well, it’s north of here, right?”
Milo and Dana exchanged a long look.
“Right?” I demanded again.
Milo cleared his throat. “Those leaves that Sky saw in her dream? They were something called shagbark hickory. They definitely grow in Alabama.”
“Fine,” Dana said finally. “You think Sasha’s in Alabama? Let’s go to Alabama. I guess I don’t have anything better to do.”
I swallowed hard. “Really?”
But Dana was already marching toward Cal’s car. “Come on, Princess!” she called. “Let’s do it. Let’s go! Alabama ho!”
I checked Calvin’s face to see how he felt about the whole thing. He just shrugged. “I’ll just call and tell my ’rents I’m crashing on your couch. It’s your mom who’ll flip out.”
It was the truth. If I didn’t make it home by my twelve-thirty curfew, there was a distinct possibility that Mom would notify the FBI, along with the Coast Guard and the Navy. And there was no way we could make it to Alabama and back by twelve thirty.
Still, being grounded for the next three decades was a seriously small price to pay if it meant finding Sasha and bringing her safely home.
“Cool,” I said, not quite believing what I was agreeing to. “Let’s do it.”
The four of us climbed back into Calvin’s car. Milo kept an eye on me as I buckled my seat belt—presumably to make sure I wasn’t about to projectile vomit, faint, or burst into tears.
“Where are we going?” Cal asked.
“Alabama,” Dana replied, stating the obvious.
“Gee, thanks. I kinda meant where in Alabama.”
“I’ll know when I feel it,” I stated. “Just drive. I’ll get us there.”
—
I’d never liked long car rides, and tonight was no exception.
Calvin tapped the steering wheel, releasing nervous energy in the form of a vague drumbeat.
I looked at the clock on the dashboard. We’d been driving for hours. My curfew had come and gone.
I was so grounded when I got home.
“Everyone awake?” Cal asked loudly.
“Are you?” Dana’s look was challenging.
“I’m fine,” Calvin scoffed, although I could tell he was getting tired.
“Pull over,” Dana replied. “I’ll drive for a bit.”
Calvin began to shake his head, but Dana took the liberty of making him nod instead, even as his head tipped to the side. “I’d absolutely love it if Dana would drive my car right now.”
As Calvin took the next exit, he added sullenly, “Your mind-control is mucho creepy.”
“I do what I can.”
He pulled into the parking lot of a boarded-up Corn Dog Palace. And as Dana and Cal worked to switch seats—Dana using her telekinesis to plop Calvin ungracefully into the passenger side—I took a moment to observe the very non-Southern-Florida trees around us and to pretend that Milo wasn’t observing me.
“Alabama,” I said out loud.
Milo nodded. “Alabama,” he repeated.
Dana huffed and puffed in the wheelchair driver’s seat, adjusting herself as she quickly became familiar with Calvin’s special buttons. “It’s kind of like driving a motorcycle,” she said out loud.
“You sure you’re gonna be a’ight?” Cal asked uncertainly. “I mean, it’s not rocket science, but it takes practice.”
“Which is what I’m doing right now,” Dana said impatiently. “We’re good,” she added, pressing the button for accelerate. She got us quickly back onto the highway as if she’d been driving a car with hand controls for her entire life.
“Alrighty then,” Cal said, leaning his head back against the seat.
“Alabama, here we come.” What Dana was lacking in enthusiasm, she made up for with attitude.
“The end of this journey is taking us back to the beginning,” Milo whispered quietly.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means we’re coming full circle here,” Dana offered. She shook her head. “Frickin’ Alabama,” she repeated, and shook her head.
“Let’s play the Would You Rather game!” Calvin announced cheerfully.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“What’s the Would You Rather game?” Milo asked.
“It’s just basically Truth or Dare without the actual dare,” I said. “But Cal has this unbelievable ability to come up with questions that suck.”
“You suck,” Calvin said gleefully.
“Who’s going first?” Dana asked.
“I am,” Cal said.
Dana glanced at him. “Are you asking the questions or are you answering them?”
“Asking,” Cal replied. He crossed his arms. “All right! Dana. Would you rather…”
“Cal, seriously,” I warned, grinning a little despite myself. “Cut her a break with the nasty scenarios.”
“Fine,” Cal said, pretending to sulk. “I’ll have mercy on you. Um…okay, then I’ll go off topic entirely and ask you a serious question I’ve been wondering for a while. Why is this so important to you?”
Dana frowned as she drove. “What do you mean?”
Calvin got more specific. “Why are you here? Why are you in this car right now, looking for a little dead girl you’ve never met?”
I rolled my eyes at the word “dead,” aware that Milo was watching me. It bummed me out that he didn’t believe me. I mean, I’d expected it from Dana and Calvin.
Cal continued. “I know you’re such a Good Samaritan and all, but there’s gotta be a reason you’re putting so much time and energy into this.”
Now Milo watched Dana.
She cleared her throat. “Maybe it’s just what I’m supposed to do,” she said.
“That’s weak,” Calvin argued. “Come on.”
Milo leaned forward in the seat, chewing on his gum. “Dana?”
“Fuck you, Milo.”
I frowned and impulsively grabbed Milo’s arm. Why do you let her speak to you like that?
Milo’s words cascaded through my mind as he laughed a little. She doesn’t mean it as… She’s just… She has a funny way of saying I love you.
I let go of Milo’s arm. Dana loved Milo.
I hadn’t had extensive experience in the relationship department, but last time I checked, eff you and I love you were two different sentiments.
Still, Dana was unique.
“Fine,” Dana grumbled. “You wanna know why I’m here? Her name was Lacey Zannino. She was a gorgeous little girl with a big heart and a beautiful mind. She was funny and sweet and talented. And she was also my sister.”
I lurched forward in my seat, not sure I’d heard Dana correctly. “Your…”
“Sister.” Dana nodded, as my heart sank. “Lacey was my little sister. And those pieces of shit took her away in the middle of the night. They stole her body and her innocence, and then they stole her life.” She swiped at her nose furiously. I knew Dana would rather die than cry in front of us. “And then, to make matters worse, they framed my dad. Who never would have hurt either one of us. He would have done anything for Lacey. Or for me. But now he’s rotting on death row. And Lacey’s rotting in an unmarked grave.”
Night Sky Page 35
