The Serial Seven (The Final Form Series Book 2)

by J. D. Cavan

  Charlie stayed outside to help, but it was Luca who was doing all the work loosening the lug nuts. As he watched Luca he touched his jaw and winced; it was sore and puffy.

  They had been on the run together for only a couple of hours and Charlie certainly didn’t trust either one of them yet, but he had decided to tell them the truth about the hunters. Reluctantly, he admitted he had witnessed the murder of Lang and he was sure the hunters would be coming for him because of it.

  Neither seemed pleased about the news of the murder, but they didn’t seem hugely surprised by it either. Charlie had learned Samantha and Luca were orphans, running from foster care to group homes and street life with odd jobs along the way, so tragedy was not unknown to either one of them.

  Luca had some spotty memories of his mother from when he was very young, and some sad knowledge of her life in and out of prison. Samantha, on the other hand, had no memories or information about her biological origins at all. She’d been left as an infant at a police station. The two of them seemed to protect each other, and that idea—of two kids looking out for each other—felt very familiar to Charlie.

  Luca was crouched struggling to free the blown tire, and then suddenly stood up in frustration. “The lung nuts are stuck!” he huffed, and started pacing in front of the headlights. Although it was freezing, Luca had rolled his coat sleeves up and Charlie noticed circular burn marks up and down his forearms. He couldn’t help but glare at the gruesome scars. Luca stopped and looked at Charlie.

  “Foster parent used to like to stick lit cigarettes in me.” Luca held his arms out.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” Charlie replied.

  “It’s alright, everyone does when they see them.”

  Charlie had a chance to study Luca for a moment. His neatly combed brown hair contrasted sharply with his blue eyes, which seemed dark and bit lifeless. But when Luca smiled it was genuinely friendly. This led Charlie to believe that it was some kind of suffering he was seeing in Luca, and not dangerousness.

  After a couple of long hours working together the three of them changed the tire. At first the lug nuts wouldn’t come off, but Samantha found some silicon spray in an old toolbox and that did the trick. Just as they were putting everything back in the bed of the truck, headlights cast out on the highway behind them.

  “Get in!” Luca ordered, and all three climbed back into the truck quickly.

  “It’s the cops, Luca,” Samantha said, just as the patrol lights began to spin.

  The police car came up quickly and a voice over the speaker system suddenly rang out in the night. “Stay in your vehicle,” it said.

  “I’m not going to any group home, I can tell you that,” Luca stated.

  “Just stay calm,” Samantha said. Charlie had found out earlier they were still under the age of independence and could be placed back in the child welfare system. Samantha was only sixteen years old, and Luca seventeen. They had speculated that Charlie was probably about the same age, given his appearance.

  The door opened and the officer got out and approached the truck. Luca unrolled the window and the bright light of the officer’s flashlight shone into the cab. Luca squinted his eyes and turned his head while Samantha put a hand up to block the ray.

  “What are you doing out here?” The police officer lowered his beam. He was dressed in a heavy down coat and had on a cap with earflaps.

  “We had a blow out, just finished changing the tire,” Luca replied. The officer looked pretty cold and white smoke blew into the cab from his mouth.

  “I could see where you hit the rail,” he said, motioning back up the road. He looked into the cab of the truck. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, fine. We got lucky.” Luca spoke for the group as the police officer peered at them.

  “How old are you three?” His face became suspicious.

  “We’re not underage, if that’s what you’re asking,” Samantha said quickly. “Sam,” Luca said under his breath.

  “I didn’t ask that, but since you mentioned it.” The officer turned his flashlight on them again.

  “We’d like to get going. Will you please let us go?” Luca asked. The police showed some sympathy for a moment.

  “Okay, but we’ve been looking for someone, a man. He’s about five-eight and wears black clothing. He’s extremely dangerous to kids,” the officer said.

  “You haven’t caught him yet!” Samantha blurted before Luca could stop her. Charlie could see Samantha was the kind of person who either spoke her mind and didn’t care or was totally impulsive. Either way, it wasn’t working in their favor. There was an awkward pause.

  “I’m going to have to see some ID, from all of you. You’re not going anywhere.” The officer took his handheld radio from inside his jacket.

  “We don’t know where the serial killer is, if that’s what you think—” Samantha tried to say before Luca hushed her, shaking his head angrily.

  The officer spoke into the radio, “I need extra help here. I have three kids who may have had contact with the suspect and need questioning.”

  Another set of headlights appeared on the highway and the police officer glanced at the approaching car, then back at the three of them in truck. The sedan slowed up, and passed them, but then the bright red break lights shown in the dark. The car began to back up. It pulled all the way back to the group and the passenger-side window opened.

  “Officer, is everything okay?” a man’s voice hollered from the driver’s side.

  “Keep it moving,” the officer said quickly, waving the car on while keeping his eyes on the three of them.

  “Nothing I can do to help, are you sure?” the voice said again.

  The police officer appeared angry and turned around to face the other driver, shining the flashlight into his car. Luca put his hand on the gearshift while Samantha leaned up in her seat to try and make out the shadowy figure behind the wheel of the sedan.

  “Hold it!” the officer said, quickly reaching for his pistol. There was loud blast. Charlie startled as he watched the police officer stumble backward and fall against the window of the truck. Blood streaked across the windshield before he collapsed to the ground.

  “GO!” Samantha screamed. Luca looked stunned and froze as another bullet hit the front windshield, followed by another one that ripped through open window, just missing Charlie’s head and burying itself into the headrest. The killer was at the window with the gun pointed at Luca when Charlie reacted. He reached over Luca and opened the truck door as hard as he could, smashing it into the killer, who fell backward and discharged his gun into the air. Luca snapped out of it and put the car into drive, hitting the gas.

  “Oh my God, that’s the serial killer!” Samantha yelled. She quickly picked up her cell and called the police, making an anonymous report. A police officer was down. The operator tried to keep her on the phone, but she hung up.

  “Killer?” Charlie asked in a panic.

  “You honestly don’t remember?” she said, breathing in and out rapidly. Luca raced the truck down the road and into the night, and the engine revved loudly.

  “Remember what!” Charlie asked, frustrated. He tried to force his memory, but nothing came and he knew it was a waste of time. He’d learned that whatever bits of himself he had were all he was going to get—his life, who he was, was gone.

  “You saved me from him. You saved my life from that killer!”

  “How do you know that’s him?” Charlie asked.

  “She doesn’t!” Luca shouted. “You never got a good look at him to begin with!”

  “I just know it’s him—”

  “If you’d just shut up, Sam, we’d have been out of there!” Luca snapped.

  “He’s following us,” Samantha said urgently, her head turned. Charlie felt his heart start to pound even harder. He could see bright headlights coming up over the road behind them.

  “This is gonna end now!” Luca started to slow the truck as if he was going
to turn it around, but then seemed to change his mind and instead hit the gas harder, pushing the truck forward. But the sedan was moving too fast behind them.

  “He’ll be on us in a second.” Charlie had his eyes on the sedan.

  Luca was shaking his head and pounding the wheel with his fist. Then suddenly, he slammed on the breaks and whipped the wheel of the truck around, heading it back toward the sedan.

  “You’re crazy!” Charlie cried and braced himself, but Luca only drove faster, racing the car directly into the headlights of the killer’s sedan. It was a game of chicken as the two vehicles flew at each other in the freezing cold night. They were moments from collision when the sedan finally broke and slid wildly, crashing into a snow bank. Luca stopped the truck and spun it around.

  “What are you doing?” Charlie asked, his heart still racing.

  “We’re gonna finish this piece of crud, right now.” It was pitch black and silent as Luca drove the truck up and put the headlights on the sedan. The sedan was leaning sideways against a heavy bank of snow and looked as though the doors might be blocked on one side. Charlie tried to see inside the car but it was too dark.

  “Keep the lights on me,” Luca ordered as he jumped out of the pickup grabbing the tire iron from the back of the cab. Charlie could see Luca’s body in the headlights, parts of white-covered trees behind him as he walked toward the car.

  “Is he always like this?” Charlie squinted his eyes as he tried to follow Luca, who was disappearing a little from view.

  “He doesn’t mess, never has. And he especially doesn’t like bullies,” Samantha replied, reaching down under her seat. She was clearly searching for something but kept her eyes peeled on Luca.

  “This is a super bully, I’d say,” Charlie uttered. “He’s going to get himself killed, and maybe us too.”

  She grunted a little. “Here it is.” Samantha pulled a pair of brass knuckles out from under the seat and fashioned them to her right hand. “He’s a kid serial killer,” she said as she opened the truck’s door and began to climb out. “And we’re going to see that he doesn’t hurt any more kids.”

  “You’re bonkers too,” Charlie blurted. Samantha just smiled at him, then leapt out of the truck and into the night. Charlie took a couple of deep breaths before following her. He would be a sitting duck in the truck, so he let his adrenaline give him the courage he needed. As soon as they crossed in front of the headlights of the pickup they heard Luca screaming into the night.

  “You better run!” he shouted. When Charlie reached the empty sedan he noticed the footprints in the snow. The killer had climbed out, gotten something from the back of his trunk and headed deep into the woods. There was blood everywhere and it followed the trail of the killer’s footprints.

  “Let’s go Luca, the cops will be here in a second,” Samantha called out while heading back to the truck.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for them, to tell them what we witnessed?” Charlie remained standing by the road, still in shock, while Luca walked past him from the sedan toward the pickup.

  “We didn’t see what he looked like, Charlie,” Luca said as he passed by. “We can’t ID the killer. Plus, that car isn’t going anywhere and if the killer doesn’t bleed to death first, he’ll freeze.” Charlie glanced back at the sedan and the bloody footprints and then back at Luca, who was now getting in the truck. He felt the fear finally catching up to him.

  “Good point!” he shouted, then sprinted back. As he climbed into the pickup his mind wandered.

  What am I getting into with these two? But then he contradicted himself. What am I getting them into? Many thoughts raced back to him at once, rearranging themselves as he tried to make some sense out of it.

  Then Charlie felt the hair on his head bristle and his breath escape for a moment. Ordering details of his short memory painfully came into place. The Serial Seven warning entered his mind like an unwanted guest. Number one, he said to himself, and thought of Karl Lang. Then he thought of the serial killer in the sedan and said to himself, Number two?

  3

  LUCA INSISTED THEY drive twenty-four hours straight to Prince George, stopping only for food and bathroom breaks. He wanted them to get as far away as they could as fast as they could, but he was now sound asleep while Samantha drove. Luca’s head rested on the passenger-side door while Charlie sat between them, wide awake. The sun was just starting to come up over the white-peaked mountain ranges and the roads and streets were still empty, the world still silent.

  “Let me get this one-hundred-percent straight,” Samantha said, pulling her eyes from the road and glancing at him. “You don’t remember anything about your life at all?”

  Charlie noticed her appearance again. It must have been the morning sunlight, but she looked very different. At the club she’d had her hair up and now it was down. She had long, auburn wavy hair, dark skin and light-brown oval-shaped eyes, like cat eyes, that seemed to weave into his soul every time he gazed at them. Charlie had thought she was amazing when he first met her but now he thought his heart might jump through his chest and land on the dashboard.

  “I only remember about four months of my life, when I was in the cabin with the hunters. They found me in the Yukon wilderness, freezing to death and about to be eaten by wolves.” Charlie felt sick to his stomach as the memory returned to him.

  “You came to me in my thoughts and I could see you, but no one else could. You knew about the serial killer.”

  “I don’t even know what that means, in your thoughts, let alone remember it. Did I say anything about who I was?” he asked.

  “No. I asked you though, but you wouldn’t tell me. Just your name, and I think that was a slip up, like you weren’t supposed to tell me, or something. I was sitting on a bridge the first time you came to me, after just booking from another crappy foster home, and I was going to meet up with Luca when you warned me about the killer. Then you came to me again, at the club. You were still after this killer.” Charlie was shaking his head back and forth. Nothing was coming back, and it never ceased to be frustrating.

  “I honestly don’t remember. And I honestly don’t know how I was in your thoughts, flying around invisible.” Maybe she was crazy, Charlie considered, but she didn’t entirely seem it, and who was he to say anything?

  “When I saw you for real, sitting with those hunter dudes, I just couldn’t believe it.” Charlie watched her pull a piece of chewed gum from the dashboard and shove it into her mouth. She must have been saving it. He watched her chomp on the gum and mess with the radio.

  “I tried to tell Luca about you but he didn’t believe me. And I know he’s not asleep anymore. He woke up about thirty seconds ago. I can always tell.” Charlie glanced over at Luca, who had one of his eyes slightly open and a smirk on his face.

  Luca started to rub his eyes and ran his fingers though his hair. “Interesting conversation you’re having,” he said, sarcastically. “But more importantly, I’m starving.”

  “Like ten minutes away from food,” Samantha replied, before going on. “We need to figure out who you are, Charlie, and why you came to me the way you did.” Charlie found himself distracted staring at Samantha again. “Because this is no coincidence. I might not be the smartest girl in the world, but I can tell you that.”

  “Well, if you can help me find out who I am, I’ll owe you big time, because I’ve been racking my stupid brain and have zero, except some sense that I know you somehow.” Charlie breathed a sigh of frustration.

  “And I can tell you this—I don’t know you at all, Charlie, and I don’t trust you,” Luca said. “But I know Sam, and I trust her with my life. So if this insane story about you being some kind of superhero out to stop serial killers who can’t remember that you are one is true, then it’s probably pretty important that we try and find out why.”

  All of a sudden the boy from the stone castle popped into Charlie’s head.

  “Did I mention anyone named Jack when I came to you?” he asked
. Samantha just shook her head no.

  “Jack? I thought you didn’t have any memories?” Luca said, suspiciously. Charlie looked down for moment, away from them. He felt ashamed for some reason, rotten inside that all he had to tell them about was some sad dream.

  “I had a dream of a boy in a stone castle, just before I woke up from freezing to death. His name was Jack.” It was silent in the cab. “It was just a dream so I didn’t want to bring it up. Who knows if it means anything about my life?”

  “What else happened in the dream? Maybe it’s information about who you are.” Samantha had taken a water bottle out from under the driver’s seat and was sipping it. Charlie felt Luca staring at him, and he again considered telling them about the Serial Seven. Just tell them, he said to himself, and almost did, but then something stopped him. It was strangest thing, superstitious, but he felt like he shouldn’t say it aloud. Like if he spoke it that would make it real. That’s ridiculous—if it’s true it’s true, he said to himself. It wouldn’t matter if I said it aloud or not. If Lang was number one and sedan killer number two, then three was coming. But as much as Charlie didn’t want it to be true he didn’t know for sure if it was. So why upset them with something that isn’t real to begin with? Plus, they’d probably only think he was insane anyway. His credibility was already pretty shaky with Luca.

  “No, nothing else,” he said. Then it happened again! Charlie heard Samantha say something. Even though he had accepted his ability to read minds it still surprised him. He thought he heard her say, Bullshit. His head felt like it was going to explode, so he grabbed it with his hand.

  “You okay, Charlie?” Samantha looked at Luca.

  “I’m sorry, I—I’ve been a little out of it.” It was quiet in the truck.

  “It’s alright, Charlie,” Samantha said softly. She put her hand on top of Charlie’s. He noticed Luca glance at them and then heard him say something. He took a deep breath and shook his head, trying to get it to stop. His brain was still hurting from the punches.

  Luca didn’t say anything, Charlie ultimately told himself. But there was something about Luca and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Luca had thought something. He went into Luca’s mind to read his thoughts and at first there was nothing. I should leave his head, Charlie told himself. It didn’t seem right to creep around people’s private thoughts like this. But when it came to his survival all bets were off, and there was something about Luca that unsettled him. He searched his mind further and finally got what he’d been looking for. It was right in front Charlie’s face to begin with; he hadn’t needed to go climbing around Luca’s brain to get it. It was something Charlie had in common with him. It was obvious. Luca was in love with Samantha.