Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) (3 page)

He didn’t respond.

She kept the flashlight beam in his face. “What’s your relationship to this boy? Are you his father?”

“Guardian,” he said.

She’d heard that one before, and the creep factor multiplied exponentially.

She needed more than this damn flashlight. She needed the overheads on, and maybe the added light would bring the kid—and
her—
back from planet What-the-Fuck.

“Don’t move,” she said, then went to the wall and tried the switch. Nothing. She stepped past an overturned lamp stand, then crossed to an end table, tried the lamp there and got the same results. Either the power company had prematurely pulled the plug or these two had tampered with the electrical panel.

But to what end?

“Are we under arrest?” the man asked.

“What do you think? You’re contaminating a crime scene.”

“We haven’t touched anything.”

“Except the lock box, right? How long have you been here?”

“Maybe ten minutes or so.”

“And does your little friend ever snap out of it or is he suffering from some kind of brain damage?”

The man made a face. “Why are you so hostile?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because you don’t belong here?”

“Look,” he said, “I appreciate your caution, but I’m unarmed and I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

“Except answer my questions.”

“Could you at least quit pointing that gun at me. I’ve seen what they can do too many times.”

“Meaning what? Are you a cop?”

He laughed again and shook his head. “No.”

“Then who the hell are you?”

“Nobody you need to be concerned with. I can promise you that.”

“Forgive me if I don’t feel reassured, Obi-Wan. You saw the yellow tape out there, yet you chose to ignore it. You know exactly what happened here. And if you don’t tell me who you are and what the hell you’re…”

The boy suddenly moved his head, shifting his sightless gaze from the ceiling to stare straight into the flashlight beam.

Straight at her.

… Etak, yako s’ti …

And there it was again, that strange, nebulous radio transmission inside her mind—an odd foreign language that was impossible to translate.

… Diarfa eb t’nod … Uoy rof gnitiaw neeb ev’i …

What the hell was happening to her?

Kate took a step backwards and then the boy’s entire body started to quake, shimmying and shaking as he stood in place. The overhead lights flickered on, then went out again as his knees buckled and he fell to the floor, his back arching, his feet twisting, his body bucking wildly.

Shit.

A seizure. He was having a seizure.

The man dropped to a crouch beside him and began loosening his clothes.

“A towel!” he shouted. “I need a hand towel or a wash cloth—quick.”

Kate was at a loss. “For what?”

“I don’t want him to swallow his tongue. Check the bathroom—please!”

Kate didn’t need any further prompting. Tucking her Glock in its holster, she rushed through the side doorway into the hall, using the mini-mag to light her path. She’d been in this house enough times to know exactly where the bathroom was—at the far end and to the right.

She got to it and barreled inside—a cavernous place with double sinks and a Toto toilet and wood everywhere, with the same attention to detail as the outside trim and window treatments. This was one of three bathrooms in the house and stood adjacent to the two younger daughters’ bedrooms, and Kate could see them in here, getting ready for school every morning, fighting over who got to shower first—a ritual that had ended five nights ago in the most brutal fashion imaginable.

She dashed to the linen closet in the corner and threw it open, using the flashlight to illuminate the stacks of towels, searching until she found the shelf holding the wash cloths.

She snatched one up and as she turned to leave, it suddenly struck her— Wasn’t that whole swallowing your tongue thing a myth?

Emergency response was part of every officer’s training, but that had been a long time ago and she’d be damned if she could remember. She was a major crimes detective, used to dealing with burglars and rapists and dead bodies, not victims of epileptic seizures. But she had a feeling she’d just been conned, and conned good.

Fuck.

Stupid cops were also often embarrassed cops, and she had just won the gold medal for morons.

Yanking her Glock free again, she lit out, nearly bouncing off the walls as she hurtled back down the hallway, ready to open fire if that creep or his kid tried to intercept her.

But they didn’t.

To nobody’s surprise, when she got back to the living room they were gone, nowhere to be found, and Kate heard a car engine firing up outside.

The Rambler.

She glanced toward the window, saw its headlights go on, then dashed through the front doorway and onto the deck, raising the Glock with both hands.

“Stop!” she shouted. “Stop right now!”

But they didn’t stop. The Rambler lurched forward and made a quick U-turn as Kate ran into the drive and blew past the yellow crime scene tape.

“Stop, goddamn it!”

She was tempted to fire, but knew she couldn’t, not with a kid sitting in the back seat.

How would she explain that?

Instead, she focused on the license plate, which was barely legible in the moonlight. It was an original from
NORTH CAROLINA
, black and yellow, the words
DRIVE SAFELY
stamped across the top. She committed the tag number to memory, trying one last shout for good measure— “Stop!”

But she was wasting her breath. The Rambler came perilously close to burning rubber as it dug out and disappeared down the road.

Kate lowered her weapon, letting loose a string of angry curses. She was a veteran cop, for Christ’s sake, the head of her squad, yet she’d felt out of sorts from the moment she got here and had handled herself like a ham-handed amateur.

And she could almost hear her father cackling with glee.

I
T WAS THE BOY, SHE
decided. The boy who had thrown her off. Those eyes and that odd, rocking trance and that nebulous radio transmission that had filled her head—which she knew was impossible—yet felt as if it had come directly from him.

Etak, yako s’ti.

There had been more, but that was all Kate could remember, and she wasn’t sure she even had
that
much right.

Etak, yako s’ti.

And the sound of it—that
sound
—a language that seemed so familiar, but was impossible to place.

Jesus—was she losing her mind?

Easy, Kate. Take it easy.

You’re fine. You’re golden. You aren’t losing anything.

Stress. That’s what this was. From the case, and her father dying, and her guilt over hating him… And then there was her failed marriage, and the thoughts of her mother’s battered corpse—

—and that boy. That strange, yet compelling boy.

Even the best cops have an off day, and while she was better than most, she didn’t come close to being the best. She knew that.

Though she tried. God knew she tried.

Come on, Kate. Man up, pull it together, grow some gonads. You blew the play, so quit your whining and make it right.

Sitting in her car now, she took a deep breath, reached for the mic on the dash and radioed the dispatcher, giving him a description of the vehicle and its occupants and the number of the North Carolina license plate.

A decrepit old Rambler should be easy enough to spot. And before long, she’d have the boy and his evasive creep of a guardian in custody, and then the real interrogation would begin.

It might not solve her case…

…but it was bound to be interesting.

I
T PROBABLY WASN’T A GOOD
idea to be playing games with the police.

As they drove out of Oak Grove and headed back toward the city, the man thought about their impromptu bit of theater, and part of him admired their quick thinking. But it wasn’t wise to mess with law enforcement. They needed to be careful. To stick to the shadows. To fly low and stay off the radar to prevent any impediment to their progress.

He and the boy had spent the last ten months managing to
avoid
confrontations. And now, thanks to an overzealous detective, they would have to go underground for awhile. And stay there until they were little more than a forgotten entry in the Santa Flora law enforcement database.

Which meant ditching this wagon, of course, the car Anna had so loved.

But maybe it was time for a change. The man had done his best to keep the Rambler running, but the road had begun to take its toll. It killed him to give it up—one of the last links to the life he’d once known—but he’d do what had to be done. He and the boy couldn’t afford to be caught. They were sharks, who could not slow down, could not stop until they had their prey in their jaws. Until they had devoured him, just as he had devoured their past.

The man cursed himself for not being more aware of his surroundings back at that house. He’d been in one of the back rooms and hadn’t heard the detective’s car pull into the drive. And by the time he returned to the living room to check on the boy, it was too late. She was already coming through the door.

He’d have to learn to stay more alert. Not only to avoid the police, but to be ready in case the unthinkable happened. In case the roles they had chosen for themselves were reversed, and the hunters became the hunted.

Because next time it might not be the police coming through the door.

Next time it might be someone far worse.

∙ ∙ ∙

Shortly after they rolled onto the Interstate, the boy sat up in the back seat.

We should have turned by now. Where are you going?

“We can’t stop,” the man said. “We’ll be drawing heat for what happened. We can’t go back to the motel.”

What about our bags? Our clothes?

The man hated when the boy got like this. He was usually so calm and so eerily self-assured. “We’ll get new ones.”

But what about my photo book? I need my photo book.

Ahh, yes. The man had forgotten about that. That photo book was the
boy’s
only link to his former life. He had spent many nights curled up on motel beds, the small, pink album clutched to his chest, the name
Lucy
written across the cover with a blue permanent marker. Every so often he would press his nose against it and smile, as if he were breathing in the best parts of his past.

And maybe that was exactly what he was doing. Maybe the smell of the cheap plastic conjured up images in his mind. Took him back to a time when all was good in the world.

To deny him that small pleasure was cruel.

But what choice did they have?

The man didn’t doubt that the detective had already called in a description of the Rambler. And even worse, she may have managed to get the license plate number. They needed to be gone, as quickly as possible.

It was probably too late to catch a train. But according to his map, there was a station in West Santa Flora that also doubled as a bus depot. They could ditch the car, hole up there and catch the red-eye bus to Los Angeles, where they could stay lost long enough to figure out their next—
Turn around!

The boy’s shout was like a needle piercing the brain.

Turn the car around!

There was a ferociousness to the sound he had never heard before. A ferociousness laced with desperation.

Turn it around! Turn it around!

TURN IT AROUND!

Hot white heat stabbed at the man’s skull and he grabbed his head with one hand as he jerked the wheel and pulled to the side of the road. Stomping on the parking brake, he spun in his seat and scowled at the boy, whose own face was twisted in agitation.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

The boy shrank back and the man immediately regretted the harshness of his tone. He never wanted this child to be afraid of him. No child should ever be afraid.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still feeling the remnants of the pain. “But that last one nearly made my head explode.”

The boy was breathing rapidly, but seemed to have calmed a bit.

You don’t understand. I can’t leave without my photo book. I have to have it. Please.

“But what if they’re already looking for us?”

I don’t care. I need that book.

The man was certain they’d regret this, but he did understand. The boy had already had so much taken away from him. They both had.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll go back, but we need to make it fast. I want to get rid of this car and be gone as soon as possible.”

Thank you,
the boy said.
Thank you.

“And one more thing. I will never hurt you, okay? You never have to worry about that.”

I know.

“Do you? Because it’s important to me that you do.”

I do. I know.

“Good,” the man said.

Then he faced front again, released the handbrake and drove toward the nearest exit.

T
HE NIGHT SHIFT AT THE
East Division of the Santa Flora Police Department consisted of two dispatchers, eight uniformed patrol officers, and a single detective who spent most of the night napping at his desk in the Major Crimes squad room.

Santa Flora was a large and thriving Central California beach town that attracted thousands of tourists daily. Most of the crimes it saw involved minor theft or break-ins or domestic disputes. And while murders and other serious crimes were rare compared to the surrounding cities, there were enough to justify a ten-deputy detective squad, of which Kate had recently taken the lead.

She had inherited the job from Russell “Rusty” Patterson, an old school veteran known mostly for his knack for departmental PR and a long string of successful solves. These were largely due to the men and women who worked under him, and Rusty was always happy to give them credit. But if you ever took part in a Rusty Patterson investigation, you’d find your name in the small print while he grabbed the headlines. And the public ate it up.