Never Miss

by Melissa Koslin

  He turned to look out the side window. “My parents died of Ebola. They were working for Doctors Without Borders in the Congo.”

  “That explains your dedication. Were you close to them?” Then she added, “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

  There was a long pause, so long she assumed it meant he did not want to talk about it. She was not going to push him.

  “We were very close,” he said.

  She was quiet, letting him talk as much or as little as he wanted.

  “I’ve always been like my mother—a little blunt sometimes, coming from a sense of hyper logic, not rudeness, which can make people uncomfortable, but also very reserved with anything of personal importance. She never thought she’d marry, until she met my dad. Her focus was research, but she joined Doctors Without Borders to be with him.”

  “What about your dad?”

  The corner of Lyndon’s mouth curved. “He was audacious. He had a miraculous ability to stop arguments, cause laughter, and make people love him.”

  “They sound like they balanced each other.”

  He nodded and left it at that. He was definitely like his mother.

  A little while later, they pulled into an old neighborhood of California bungalows.

  “Do you know which house?” Kadance asked.

  “Drive slow. I’ll recognize his car.”

  She paused at the next cross-street so he could look down the road and try to spot the car.

  At the next street, he pointed to a 1950s Chevy, pale blue and white, in the driveway. “There.”

  She made the turn. “That’s how you met—you both have a thing for 1950s Chevys, right?”

  “He ran me down one day when he saw me getting into my truck.”

  She parked along the street, and they both got out of the car. She opened the back door, pulled Mac’s bowl out of her bag, and dumped some of her bottled water into the bowl. She set the bowl carefully on the seat. “We’ll be just a little bit, buddy.” Then she rolled the window down, low enough for air and for him to get out if he needed to do his business.

  “He probably won’t mind if you bring him inside,” Lyndon said.

  “Mac will be okay.” She stroked his head and down his back. He stood on his toes and arched his back, and then wagged his tail in that way of his, a quick wave back and forth.

  Kadance and Lyndon walked up to the front door of the cute California bungalow. The tree in the front yard rustled in the breeze, and a wind chime somewhere tinkled.

  Lyndon knocked. Then he turned to Kadance. “Are you sure Mac will be okay?”

  “Trust me, he’s fine.” She glanced back at the car. He had his paws up on the door, watching them out the window. She could hear his meow from here.

  Mac was fine, though maybe a little annoyed to be excluded, and everything in the neighborhood that she could see was fine. But for some reason, she felt hyperalert.

  A woman walked by on the sidewalk, and her little dog yapped at Mac. Mac kept watching Kadance and Lyndon. Or maybe he was watching something about the house. She took another good look around. The curtains were closed, so she couldn’t see inside. Only the one car was in the narrow driveway. She couldn’t hear anything from inside the house.

  Lyndon knocked again.

  Finally, the door opened. An older man with dark skin and gray sprinkled into his short black hair stood in the doorway. “May I help you?”

  Lyndon’s eyebrows twitched together. “Professor Ibekwe. It’s Lyndon Vaile.”

  Professor Ibekwe didn’t answer, but the muscles in his neck looked tight.

  Kadance scanned as much as she could see inside his house. The bookshelves and furniture in the front room looked tidy. She glanced up and down the street. Nothing appeared out of place. She set her hand on Lyndon’s forearm, ready to yank him out of the way if needed.

  Lyndon glanced at her and then back to Professor Ibekwe. “I hope you don’t mind my showing up like this. I remembered where you mentioned your family home is, but I don’t have a phone number for you now that you’re retired. I wanted to see if I could have just a few minutes of your time.”

  Professor Ibekwe opened his mouth but paused. Then he said, “Of course. Your friend can wait on the porch and enjoy the breeze.”

  Kadance smiled. “I’d like a few minutes in the AC if you don’t mind.” A voice in the back of her mind didn’t want Lyndon going in there. She didn’t have a rational reason to ask him not to, but she certainly wasn’t going to let him go in alone.

  Professor Ibekwe smiled a tight smile and stepped back to allow them inside.

  Kadance scanned every corner of the house that she could see—nothing but old, shiny wood floors running down a center hall, plaster walls painted a creamy color, and a mixture of antique and new furniture.

  They followed the professor into the front room. He took a seat in an armchair in front of the wall of bookshelves, and she and Lyndon sat on a small sofa backed against the front window. Kadance stayed on the edge of her seat.

  Lyndon glanced at her.

  “What can I help you with?” Professor Ibekwe asked.

  “I hear a hint of an accent,” Kadance said. “May I ask where you’re from originally?”

  “My parents were born in Nigeria. I lived in Angola until I was ten years old and my father moved us here.” He turned to Lyndon. “What can I help you with?”

  “Do you know much about the peoples living along the Congo River?”

  Professor Ibekwe hesitated. “Very little. My focus has always been northern Africa.”

  Lyndon’s eyebrows twitched.

  “You’re from central Africa, right?” Kadance asked. If she remembered correctly, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was almost smack in the middle of the continent and bordered Angola. Plus, as an African Studies professor, surely he knew something about the area.

  “It’s been a very long time,” Professor Ibekwe said.

  “If I remember correctly, you’ve taken several trips back over the years,” Lyndon said.

  “Not for a while. There’s so much turmoil and change in that area of the world, it’s hard to keep up.”

  Finally, Kadance’s unease forced her to her feet. “We should get going.”

  Lyndon stood as well. He asked Professor Ibekwe, “Is something wrong?”

  Kadance took Lyndon’s hand. “Let’s go.” She walked a few steps toward the center hall, and Lyndon followed. Then she paused at a sound coming from the dining room on the other side of the entryway.

  ten

  “LEAVING SO SOON?”

  Lyndon stood in front of Kadance as a man walked out of Professor Ibekwe’s dining room. He itched to reach for the gun in his waistband, but the man already had a gun in his hand. Lyndon couldn’t grab his before the man shot. He wouldn’t risk it with Kadance here.

  There was a creak in the old wood floors from down the center hall, and Lyndon peripherally saw another man walking toward them.

  “Let him go,” Professor Ibekwe said from behind them in the front sitting room. “They don’t know anything.”

  The man in front of Lyndon answered. “You weren’t much help figuring that out, now were you?”

  Lyndon cataloged all the details he could to try to formulate a way to get out, or at least get Kadance out. The man in front of him wore a scruffy reddish-brown beard; a black leather jacket with several patches on it, which all appeared to be related to some kind of motorcycle club; and worn jeans. His gun appeared to be a simple Taurus 9 mm—inexpensive but still did the job. The man approaching from the side was a carbon copy except black hair and beard and a bigger gut.

  “My fight isn’t with you,” Lyndon said to the apparent leader in front of him.

  “No one said anything about a fight.” His voice was scratchy, probably from years of cigarette smoking. “Did we, boys?”

  Several voices affirmed. Lyndon noted the number of voices and the direction from which each voi
ce came—six men, all from various directions and not all yet visible, surely all listening and watching from around corners.

  “I meant,” Lyndon said, “that you were hired. You’re not the one behind all this.”

  The man’s bushy eyebrows disappeared behind his bushy mane of hair. He nodded. “Very good.” Then he cocked his head. “That’s not gonna help you none, though.”

  “What would help us?”

  “Answer my questions, and I’ll let you be on your way.”

  Kadance squeezed his hand. He could just see peripherally that she was watching the man approaching slowly from down the hall as well as Professor Ibekwe. He took her squeeze to mean that they shouldn’t trust what the man told him. He gently squeezed back in agreement.

  “I’m not sure what you think I know,” Lyndon said.

  The man took a piece of paper out of a pocket inside his vest. “Write down exactly your theories, any evidence you have to back up your theories, and anything else of importance.”

  “What theories?”

  The man shook the folds out of the paper and read something. “About Ebola.”

  “I’ve published everything I’ve found. Tell your benefactor to read the scientific journals.”

  The man’s forearm rippled as he tightened his grip on his gun. “Stop playing games.”

  Kadance’s words that he was a terrible liar came back to him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The man aimed his gun at Lyndon’s head. Lyndon stared back at him. If the man shot Lyndon, that would likely give Kadance an opportunity to pull the Glock out of her waistband and maybe get out the door to her car.

  The man lifted his chin, and then he shifted his weapon to aim at Kadance.

  Lyndon tried to shift in front of her, but the man who’d slowly approached from down the hall grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from her.

  “We can’t be blowing your valuable brains,” the leader said. “But hers splattered all over the wall, I think, would add a nice accent to the place, don’t you think?”

  “Don’t,” Lyndon demanded.

  Kadance stood there, not even tightened in fear, gaze calmly focused on the man in front of her.

  “Let her go,” Professor Ibekwe pleaded.

  Some small part of Lyndon was thankful Professor Ibekwe obviously hadn’t instigated this, but a larger part of him felt guilty that Ibekwe had been involved in this due to an old casual friendship with Lyndon. Maybe Dr. Grant had even reached out after they left earlier and let his contact know Lyndon was still in LA and talking with old professors.

  Kadance barely glanced at Lyndon, and somehow, in that glance, he understood what she was about to do.

  She exploded forward toward the leader, and Lyndon charged at the man in the hall.

  He used his shoulder to tackle the man, and they slid down the hall across the smooth floors.

  “No.” Professor Ibekwe’s protests and hurried footsteps followed him.

  Straddling the black-haired man, Lyndon punched him in the face and knocked him out. He stood, ready to attack another of the mercenaries, but then Professor Ibekwe moved into his line of sight. He was being held in a choke with a gun pointed to his head. The man holding him was dressed much the same as the others but younger with a beard not quite so scruffy.

  “Don’t hurt him,” Lyndon said.

  “That’s entirely up to you.”

  Lyndon took a quick count of the men around him—the black-haired man on the floor knocked out, the younger one holding Ibekwe on his right, and a man with a handlebar mustache on his left doing the talking. He’d hoped more of them would focus on him, underestimate the beautiful woman, and leave her in just the hands of the leader.

  “Are you ready to talk?” Handlebar Mustache asked.

  “If you want me to talk, you have to let the professor go.”

  Professor Ibekwe’s eyes were wide with fear. Though his gaze was on Lyndon, he didn’t look like he was really seeing anything, surely too focused on the gun aimed at his head.

  Lyndon added, “The professor is a gentle person. He’s innocent and not involved in this. He’s of no help to you.”

  “Why’d you come here if he’s no help?”

  Lyndon clenched his jaw. All right, I can’t lie. I have to come up with something else. He used a calm, almost monotone voice. “Zaire Ebolavirus is more commonly known as Ebola virus or just Ebola, but what I’m researching is the genus Ebolavirus. There are several known species within that genus, most of which cause severe hemorrhagic fever. The Ebola virus genome is a single-stranded RNA, which is about 19,000 nucleotides long—”

  The younger man holding Professor Ibekwe said, “What does all that have to do with anything?” He shook the barrel of his gun at Lyndon, as if to say, Hurry it up.

  Lyndon surged forward, grabbed the gun in his left hand, and used his forearm to rake the man’s elbow upward with enough force to make it pop out of its socket. He stripped the gun out of his hand. He aimed it at Handlebar Mustache on his left just as the man aimed a 9 mm at him.

  The younger man he’d disarmed stumbled to the side, holding his elbow and cursing.

  Lyndon shifted in front of the professor. “Out the back door,” he ordered Ibekwe.

  “Not if you want to live,” Handlebar Mustache said.

  “My brain is too valuable to lose,” Lyndon said. “That’s already been made clear.”

  The man sneered.

  “It’s either shoot through me or let the professor go.” With his gaze on the mercenary, Lyndon tilted his head toward Ibekwe and muttered, “Go. Now.”

  Ibekwe stood frozen for a couple of seconds and then shifted back a step.

  Handlebar Mustache aimed his gun lower, at Lyndon’s thigh. “I don’t have to shoot you in the head.”

  “And if you hit a major artery and I die of exsanguination? Will that satisfy your benefactor?”

  Handlebar Mustache gripped his weapon tighter, and his forearm rippled.

  Ibekwe’s footsteps shuffled through the kitchen toward the back door.

  Handlebar Mustache tried to get around Lyndon, but Lyndon shifted in his way, blocking the doorway to the kitchen. “I’ll make you a deal. You let the professor and the woman go, and I’ll give myself up.”

  “No one’s going anywhere.”

  “Then I’m not talking.”

  Handlebar Mustache looked at his younger friend still cursing about his dislocated elbow. “Get him!”

  Lyndon braced himself for an attack, but the younger man ran through the kitchen after Professor Ibekwe. Lyndon hurtled toward him and grabbed his collar.

  But then Lyndon lost his grip and yanked to a stop himself. Handlebar Mustache had followed him and grabbed his shoulder. He had Lyndon off-balance enough that he was able to strip the gun out of his hand and also take the gun out of his waistband.

  Lyndon regained his balance and punched the younger man with the broken elbow in the face, and he stumbled back against the cabinets. He cursed and held his nose while blood streamed out between his fingers.

  Lyndon barely glanced at the professor. “Go!” Before he could see what the professor did, Lyndon turned back to Handlebar Mustache, who was aiming his own gun at him and grinning.

  Lyndon swung his hand around, wrapping his arm around Handlebar Mustache’s gun hand, and drove an upset punch into his gut.

  While the man doubled over, Lyndon took the second to look over his shoulder at the professor. Ibekwe was staring at him.

  “Go!”

  “Come with me.”

  The younger man at the cabinets pushed himself toward them. Rage festered on his face, and spittle ran down his chin.

  Lyndon let go of Handlebar Mustache and shoved Professor Ibekwe out the door.

  He heard Handlebar Mustache coming at him from behind. Instead of striking either of them, perhaps pulling one into the other’s path, Lyndon slammed the door shut and stood against it.

  A fist
landed in his gut, and another snapped across his jaw. Lyndon held himself against the door, blocking it.

  Footsteps pounded down the wooden stairs of the back porch.

  Lyndon’s sense of relief that Professor Ibekwe was safe was short-lived. Where is Kadance?

  eleven

  KADANCE SLAMMED an elbow into the bearded man’s nose. Then she skirted around the dining table, away from the footsteps approaching from behind. She rounded the table as two more men entered the room.

  The bearded leader held his nose and cursed. Blood seeped out from between his fingers, and his voice was muffled by his hand. “Get her!”

  There’d been six voices, she was sure. There were three here. That means Lyndon is dealing with three. Plus, she was sure he was doing all he could to protect the professor. Something deep inside her started to panic, a feeling she hadn’t felt—hadn’t been allowed to feel—since she was a small child. She stomped the feeling down and focused.

  The men moved slowly around the table from both sides.

  She left her Glock tucked behind her back. She made her expression twist in fear, something she’d perfected years ago. “Don’t hurt me.”

  The man whose nose she’d broken had taken a cloth napkin from a drawer in the sideboard and had wiped most of the blood off his face, though there was still a lot in his beard. “No need to hurt anyone,” he crooned.

  The men approaching her from around the table paused.

  “Just give me some information,” the leader said. “And all this is over.”

  “I don’t know,” Kadance simpered—goodness, she hated that sound. “Lyndon’s the scientist. I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Just tell me some of the things he’s said, even if you didn’t understand it.”

  She guessed he was assuming the same thing Dr. Grant had, that she and Lyndon were dating.

  “He said something last night about . . .” She scrunched up her face. “Bola?”

  The man on her right rolled his eyes. That’s right, think I’m an idiot. Good job.

  “Who hired you?” she asked the leader.

  “None of your concern.”