“I—don’t—”
“Shut your face. We’ll have you in a cell soon enough.”
He closed his eyes and heard a distant roar, a sound like a giant waking up in a bad mood. When he opened them again—
—Everything was different. He was in the same car. But there was blood all over the place and the windshield was gone, shattered into a billion shining pieces on the dashboard and across the seats. Even across the hood. A billion shining pieces, all of them soaked in red and glistening.
At least the car wasn’t moving anymore.
He saw red marks across both of his wrists, deep and angry marks that didn’t look like they’d be healing anytime soon.
He tried to climb out of the car, but the doors were locked. No, wait, not locked. Blocked. There were trees crushing into the car from both sides. Hunter stared at them for a moment, unsettled, and then looked around them to the pasture up ahead.
There was no sign of the cops that had been yelling at him before, just the blood all over the place.
“What the hell is going on around here?” The policemen were gone and he found himself wondering if somehow his parents had found him. Maybe that was why the cops had shown up. Maybe that was why they’d been driving him in the car—
No. They’d hit him with a Taser. That was serious stuff, one step down from putting a bullet in his head. And they had been beaten, both of them.
He shook his head. None of it made sense and his skull still felt too small for his brain.
The radio in the front of the squad car was ruined, smashed into broken plastic and glass. There was a smell like gunpowder in the air, though he couldn’t remember when he’d have ever smelled the scent before.
Hunter climbed over the headrests between him and the front of the car and then slid out of the broken windshield and onto the hood of the car. The metal under his butt was still warm as he scooted across it. Too warm for the early morning sunlight to have heated it up. The engine beneath him had been running recently and running hard by the looks of the damage to the car. Broken glass and blood scraped at the paint. How the vehicle got wedged between two trees was another of those mysteries that kept trying to sink him.
His clothes were all wrong. They were torn apart, bloodied and not his. The fabric was fine and expensive, and he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d ever worn a three-piece suit. Then again, he couldn’t remember that much of his life, but even if he could, he wouldn’t have put on clothes that were the wrong size.
Hunter shook his head. He didn’t have time to worry about anything like clothes! He was standing next to a wrecked cop car. He didn’t think much of his chances of explaining why he shouldn’t be arrested if anyone else came around.
“Screw this.” His voice rumbled and he shook his head again. He didn’t remember sounding like that, and even after five months it was weird.
Hunter looked around. The cops would be back soon. Nobody left a wrecked car behind without plans to come back. He wanted to be long gone before they came back.
He stared at the sun and then at the watch sliding loosely on his wrist. Four in the afternoon. That meant the sun was already in the west. A quick look at the side of the squad car told him that he was in Pennsylvania.
He wanted to go north and he had a long ways to go if he wanted to get back to Boston.
He started walking, staying off the road itself and trying to keep in the cover of low-lying bushes whenever he could.
He never saw the bodies of the two policemen that had been shoved out of sight behind the bush closest to the car.
Chapter Ten
Cody Laurel
CODY LAUREL SNIFFED THE air and winced. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell that he wasn’t at home. If the sounds of two people arguing hadn’t told him he wasn’t in his room, the rancid body odor and the stench of stale booze would have made it clear.
He opened his eyes and looked around. Yep. Not home. Looked like a jail cell. He wanted to panic but forced the fear back down. He knew that showing fear was the best way around to get all the wrong attention. That’s the kind of stuff you learn when you’re the class loser.
Still, the man lying next to him on the narrow cot was enough to get him moving. The old dude looked like he was asleep, but he was also trying to spoon with Cody. “Ugh.” He rolled away from the mattress and shivered in the cold air.
There were five other men in the same cell, and all of them were asleep, a few of them snoring loud enough to wake the dead.
Cody pulled at the pants around his waist. They were way, way too big and even the belt that held them up wasn’t helping him any.
He didn’t have any shoes, just socks. He didn’t have a shirt either.
Not far away, he could see a couple of police officers struggling with a man who didn’t want to get locked up. The cops were winning.
When they were done locking the door to the cell a few feet down the way, Cody called out to them. “Excuse me? Excuse me!” His voice broke, the already high tone jumping even higher for a second. Puberty sucked. “Help, please!”
The man who came over to see him had steely gray hair in a crew cut over a face that was sagging. Cody guessed he was on the other side of fifty.
“Kid? What the hell are you doing in that cell?” The voice was rough and deep and fit the face perfectly.
“I was kind of hoping you could tell me that.” His heart was pumping along at way too high a speed and his knees wanted to shake themselves off.
Ten minutes later he was sitting in an interrogation room and sipping a hot cocoa from a coin-operated coffee machine. The hot chocolate was weak and watery and he savored every scalding drop of it.
His parents were on the way. He knew that only because Sergeant Tooley, the man who’d found him in the cell, had been nice enough to tell him. Tooley also demanded to know what he’d done with the other man in the cell, but Cody had no answer for that. He was still trying to work out why he was in jail and not the morgue.
The last thing he remembered clearly was running for dear life from Hank Chadbourn and Glenn Wagner. The two had been after him at the football game, ready to pound his head into the concrete for reporting them to Principal Corcoran. He’d known he was going to get a stomping if they found out. He’d been discreet and he couldn’t think of anyone who’d been in the office when he reported them.
So when Jeremy and Will convinced him to go to the pep rally, he thought everything was just fine. Besides, it was a chance to see Melanie Chambers in her cheerleading outfit. Hell, seeing her endless legs alone was enough to risk a beating. Add in the shape of her butt and he was willing to face a pack of lions.
The pep rally was less annoying than he’d expected and Melanie did a couple of splits that fired up his imagination, and when he went to the game afterward, he never had an idea he was in trouble.
He caught on around the same time Chadbourn hit him on the shoulder. The ape walked up with a scowl on his ugly face and slammed his fist into Cody’s shoulder hard enough to rock him in his seat and to leave a bruise. Cody was still trying to recover when Wagner said, “You’re a dead man.”
Wagner had been standing next to Hank, and both of them had smirks on their butt-ugly faces that said they were going to enjoy stretching his entrails around a few trees before they got serious about hurting him.
He got up and hauled his ass as fast as he could because no way in hell did he want to get his face rearranged. That didn’t seem to matter to Chadbourn and Wagner. The two were rednecks in training and seemed to really want to start their criminal record as soon as possible. The only thing going for him was dry air that stopped his asthma from acting up too much.
He ran and they followed, calling after him and demanding that he stop, like there was any way he was going to make it easy for them to break every bone in his body.
He’d just cut around the corner of the access road to the football field and could hear their heavy footsteps catching up fast and he’
d known—absolutely known—that he was about to die when—
WAKE UP!
—there had been a loud noise and after that, the only thing he remembered was waking up in the jail cell with a drunk trying to use him as a teddy bear.
The door to the interrogation room opened and Cody saw his parents heading in his direction. He felt both a thrill of excitement at seeing them and a chill of fear at the looks on their faces.
His father was a big man, six feet tall and round, growing an intimidating beer gut to match his broad shoulders. He was normally cheerful, but the scowl on his face told Cody it wasn’t going to be a good day. His mom was slender and pretty, dark hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion that made her look younger than her years. Half of his friends had made clear that they thought she was hot, and he could understand that even if it was a little freaky. He got his complexion and hair color from her. Unfortunately he also got his build from her, which was to say he was skinny. It worked better on her. Much better. Mom’s eyes were puffy from crying, which explained the expression on his dad’s face. The best way in the world to make his father angry was to make his mother cry.
He flipped his bangs back from his face.
“Mom. Dad. Hi.” Despite himself, he let the relief win over the nervous edge. It was good to see them, even if he figured he was about to be grounded for a year or two. He couldn’t remember doing anything wrong, but he knew there was no way he was going to get out of this without some sort of punishment.
Linda Laurel looked at her son and started crying again. He was her baby and he knew it. She spoiled him rotten and here he was making her cry. Guilt cut through him like a knife.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I don’t even know how I got here.” His mom threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly enough to make his ribs creak. His father looked at him and the face he’d known for as long as he could remember softened for a moment. Neither of his folks was exactly strict, but he’d never given them a reason to be. The stony expression crept back over his father’s face and Cody swallowed.
“Cody, where the hell have you been?”
“Dad, I don’t know. The last thing I remember was being at the game and—”
The broad face that he normally saw smiling or cheering at a football game darkened and his dad fairly snarled. “That was four days ago, Cody! We’ve been worried sick!” His father stepped in closer and Cody half expected the man to hit him.
“Four days?!?” Frost crawled through his veins at the idea. Four days? What the hell happened to me?
His mother’s voice broke. “We thought you were dead, baby. Oh Lord, we thought you were dead!” She sobbed against him and held him even tighter. His dad moved from one foot to the other, his big hands balling up into fists and loosening again and again.
“Son, we’re going to have a long talk about this.”
“Dad, I don’t know what happened! Honest! I don’t know!” He felt the panic coming on now, a cold fear that made what he’d felt when the goon platoon was after him feel like the calm before a bad storm.
Four days? He closed his eyes and took comfort from his mom’s arms around him, even from her tears on his shoulder and the feel of her breathy sobs.
He couldn’t think anymore. Four days had disappeared from his life and he had no idea how to handle it. Cody had lived a sheltered life, never wanting for anything and always aware of how much his parents loved him. Nothing he’d ever experienced had prepared him for the idea of disappearing for over half of a week.
His dad led them both from the room. There’d be arguments later. He’d have to explain whatever he’d done to end up in a jail cell. But right now, it was all he could do just to move. Panic was sinking jagged teeth into his body and shaking him like a dog working over a favorite chew toy.
It was a new experience for him and he hated every second of it. All he’d ever wanted was to feel safe, so he basked in the feel of his mother and father protecting him.
It would be the last time he felt safe for a long, long while.
Chapter Eleven
Gene Rothstein
“YOUR PARENTS ARE GOING to have a fit.” Uncle Robbie’s words were slurred, but not enough for Gene to worry about anything. Robert Stein was a family friend. He’d been the best man when Gene’s parents got married and he was Gene’s godfather, which was one more reason Gene prayed nothing ever happened to his family. The last thing he needed was to be raised by a man who bordered on being an alcoholic.
Not that he could say that. His dad would go through the roof if he ever thought about saying something like that in public.
“You hear what I said?” Rob was talking again. He looked away from the road ahead of them and his eyes sort of swam from side to side in his head. Oh yeah, this was going to be a fun trip. Gene double-checked to make sure he’d fastened his seat belt.
Gene had called Robbie when he couldn’t get hold of his mom or his dad, except for their answering services. Mom was probably due in court and Dad, well, Dad had his medical practice to take care of and that had to come first. It was the emergency room, after all. He was in charge of the whole department, so he couldn’t exactly skip off to find his son some forty miles from home on a school day.
That left “Uncle” Rob, the closest thing his family had to a drunk embarrassment, at least as far as Gene was concerned. He had to curb his dislike of the man. They’d been close once, before Gene realized that the man liked whiskey too much. That was back when Rob cracked jokes and told the greatest stories. Something had happened a while ago, though, that changed the way the man felt about Gene. Not about the rest of the kids, but he could feel it, the way that man avoided looking at him when he’d had too much to drink.
“Yes, sir. I hear you.” What else could he say? Of course his parents were going to have fits. He was having fits. He still didn’t know how he’d gotten to Brooklyn or where his clothes were or anything. He’d had to beg the lady at the muffler shop to let him use the phone and she’d acted like he was taking food from the mouths of her babies the whole time.
He bit everything back, of course, because that was what he did. If he was worried or scared or angry, he took after the examples his mother had presented and held it all in check. Bottle it up, let it out when you are on your own and no one has to deal with your problems but you. That was the way he had been raised and it worked just fine in his book.
At least Rob hadn’t started his favorite rant, the one about how—
“You know what the problem here is? You don’t know how good you’ve got it. That’s what the problem is.” Rob’s voice grew louder, like Gene had set out to ruin his otherwise perfect day and now he was going to yell and scream until he could no longer keep his audience captive.
Perfect, he thought. Just what I need. Another sermon from Revrund Robbie. There was a rhythm to Rob’s words, like a dance. Once you learned it, you could slide through his sermons and come out of them with only half your mind melted.
He tried to work it out again. In bed, sleeping, and the next thing he knew in an alley watching a big freaking rat chow down on breakfast. Somewhere between the two memories he’d either been abducted by aliens—not even remotely likely—or he’d been kidnapped—almost as crazy—or he’d been sleepwalking. Hell, maybe he’d accidentally knocked back a few of Uncle Rob’s gin and tonics when he wasn’t looking.
“And that’s the part you don’t get, Gene.” He was brought back to the present by the use of his name. Normally when Robbie called on a person by name, he was rounding up for the final pitch and ready to win the game. “You might think this is all just fun and games and that you don’t owe your parents anything, but where would you be if they hadn’t adopted you? You’d probably be living in some dive near where you called me from, that’s where.”
His stomach froze solid. His ears rang with a high, clear note, and all the spit in Gene’s mouth vanished.
What? What did he say about adopted?
“Wai
t, what? Adopted?” His normally calm surface broke and his voice cracked harshly as he looked toward Robbie.
Robbie weaved the car wildly across a lane of traffic and just managed not to kill them both as he stared at Gene, his eyes going wide. In that second Gene understood the truth. The man had opened his mouth too far and spit out a secret that Martin Rothstein had trusted him with, a secret that Gene was not supposed to hear. Gene stared at him, trying to find more words, wanting to vanish because what Robbie had said had to be a lie. It HAD to be! His parents had always told him the truth, had always pushed hard at how important the truth was, how it was more valuable than gold or any other commodity.
“Oh, hey, Gene, don’t listen to your uncle Robbie . . . I’m just . . . I’m just messing with your head.” Weak. His voice was faint and lacked any conviction. He was lying, trying to backtrack from what he’d just revealed, and both of them knew it was too damned late.
“What do you mean I’m adopted?” His voice was louder than he meant it to be, but the ringing hadn’t left his ears and all the sounds beyond that continuous note sounded like they were muffled by cotton.
“Gene . . . ”
Gene held up his hand to gesture for silence. Normally the idea of trying to get Robbie to shut up was crazy, but the man listened. “I can’t talk to you, Uncle Rob. I can’t talk to you right now, okay?” He fought back the tears that burned at his eyes.
Damned if he’d let the drunk loser see him cry.
Chapter Twelve
Tina Carlotti
TINA CLIMBED FROM THE train and hauled her duffel bag with her. If anyone was amused by the skinny little girl carrying a sack almost as big as she was, they didn’t show it. Back in Camden they would have, so she kept her peace and made sure to look every last one of them in the eyes. Never flinch and never show fear.
And she was absolutely terrified. The train had stopped in Wilmark, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from upstate New York. She’d planned on heading into New England, but her eyes were aching and her head felt like it wanted to explode and she needed to rest in a safe place and call home, call her mom and get everything worked out.
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