When I learned that the victim of the Mission San Jose killing not only went to Lee High School but was also a football player, I felt like the intersection of all of this crap was, for now at least, Mia’s school, even though the two murdered girls hadn’t attended Lee. How Mia’s disappearance or kidnapping, or whatever it was, fit into all of this was still baffling. In fact, part of me was worried that I’d become so desperate to find clues on her whereabouts, I’d mistakenly clung to these murders with the hopes they would lead me to her.
I knew there were more holes to my theory than actual pieces. In fact, I didn’t really have a working theory—that was how far behind I felt I was. All I could do was dig and ask questions until something popped up. And something would pop up. It had to. For Mia. For her grieving parents.
I could see the top of the school just over the row of rooftops at the end of the block. A light mist fell from the sky. It quickly matted my hair and sent a slight chill through my core. Part of me wished I was snuggled up with Saul in his apartment. But who was I kidding? I would never be able to sleep if I knew I wasn’t doing everything humanly possible to bring Mia home. There was a chirp from my jeans pocket.
34
I continued walking and took out my phone to see a text from Cristina.
You still up?
I thought about walking and texting, but even with no one in sight, I didn’t trust myself from twisting an ankle or doing something else equally as graceful. I pulled to a stop just at the corner of the last fence before the high school. I wondered if she’d found anything about Mia online.
Me: Just out taking a stroll near Lee HS. Find anything new about Mia?
Cristina: Not really. She’s either the biggest square, or she’s better at hiding it than most.
Me: So nothing?
Cristina: Not even a reference to her old boyfriend, Brandon.
Me: Odd.
Cristina: And then some. But I told you before, she might be playing all of us. I only checked the accounts her parents gave us. She could have different accounts on the same social media sites using different login creds, even a different email address. Some people get off on how many personalities they can be. Of course, these are usually the same people who play video games 24/7 while cramming ten different kinds of junk food in their mouths.
I quietly laughed at both her character description as well as the speed in which she spit out text messages. It was something to behold. But her point was solid. The only thing we really knew about Mia was that she was almost obsessed with trying to be a perfect person. Her Big Rules. I could see someone like that creating a different online persona, if only to feel like she wasn’t boxed in.
Me: Anything else?
A splash of light caught my eye. It looked like it came from behind the main building of the school. I hopped across the parking lot, put my back against the brick wall on the east side of the school, and began to scoot closer toward the back. I glanced at my phone.
Cristina: I’m kind of dead. Need a little sleep, then I guess I can start searching for the mysterious alt personality of Mia. Although I might have better luck in winning the Chinese lottery.
She wasn’t making much sense, but I understood her frustration. We needed someone to give us more information. Someone had to know more about Mia’s whereabouts.
Another flash of light. Yep, it came from the field house. I typed in a quick text.
Get ready to call 911.
I made it to the northern edge of the building. Another text chirp, but my attention was focused on the field house. More than one beam of light, and they were moving. Without looking at my phone screen, I flipped it to mute and kept it in my hand.
I could see the dim outline of the field house, and then, a couple of seconds of light illuminated the far side. I didn’t move for what seemed like a full minute. The coaches had probably made the building impenetrable by now, given what had happened there, so it made sense for the perps to be performing their ritual just next to it. Was there another animal sacrifice going on? I had to act. I couldn’t just sit here and watch from afar.
I quickly measured my options. If I had Cristina call the cops, by the time they arrived the people could very well be gone. And what if they were nothing more than late-night walkers?
Assume the worse, Ivy. I hated to think that way, but the thought of animals being killed just to satisfy some bizarre ritual made my whole body tighten.
Another option: move in close enough to see if they are actually harming an animal, and then scare them off. The downside, of course, was that they’d get away.
A thought hit me like a bolt of lightning. What if they were killing a human being? What if these were the same people, or at least people from the same group, who’d killed the two girls and the boy at the missions?
I pushed off from the brick wall and scampered across the parking lot to a small brick enclosure for garbage bins. I peeked around the edge, waited a few seconds, then saw the lights flash across the sky from the same location as before. They hadn’t run off.
I wiped water from my face—the rain had picked up—then plotted my next move, which was, essentially, running so quickly and silently that I could make it all the way to the field house without being detected. I’d aim for the closest position to where I stood on the western side of the field house.
I started giving myself a countdown, then I said screw it and just took off. I ran low to the ground, my sights looking for any movement of a person in the darkness on the side of the field house from where the lights were shining, or anywhere else. I stumbled over the curb—my teeth clamped down on my tongue—and then slammed my back into the brick facing of the field house. I was panting like a dog, my heart peppering my chest.
I glanced around the edge of the building and didn’t see anyone. As I took a quick peek at my phone, I tasted blood. There was so much of it I could feel it swirling in my mouth like a fine wine. I read the text from Cristina.
Were you serious? Are you actually at Lee HS?
In checking the time stamp, another text came in a few minutes later, probably while I was taking a chunk out of my tongue.
Hello? Should I call 911 or not? Dammit, don’t do this to me.
I didn’t have time for her drama. I slowly shuffled down the side of the building, glancing at the ground for something I could use as a weapon, if it came down to that. I found a couple of small rocks, but that was it.
My gun. Dammit! I so rarely carried my Luger that I’d forgotten to bring it. Probably for the best. If it was just a couple of kids hanging out, doing nothing wrong, I’d scare the shit of them. Literally. I could question myself and my methods a hundred different ways, but it wouldn’t change a thing right now. I amended my plan: I’d get just close enough to see what they were doing, and if needed, I’d send a quick note to Cristina to go ahead and call the cops.
I shuffled about fifty feet, then stopped the moment I heard voices. They were young. At least one girl and one boy. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then, against the dark sky, I saw the lights again. I took a hard swallow and continued moving forward. At about ten feet from the end of the building, I heard a swooshing noise. It sounded familiar, but my mind couldn’t place it.
And then I smelled something. It was rancid, as if my face had been stuffed into my cat’s litterbox. I plugged my senses just as my mind connected all of the dots: they had killed an animal. Or a person! Maybe they were high on acid and dancing around their victim. For some reason, the story of Charles Manson and his crazed group of followers came to mind.
I had to get the cops here. I tapped my phone, which, of course, made the light come on. Crap! Then I remembered the camera on my phone. That was it. I had to get a picture of them. Sure, they would likely run away, but I’d have the image that would convict them of this horrible crime.
I jogged around the corner while I opened my photo app—which meant I wasn’t looking where I was going. My foot slipped on a patc
h of grass, and I went airborne. People scrambled, shouting things like “get the hell out of here” and “teach that bitch a lesson,” all before I hit the ground, knocking the breath out of me.
I clawed at the mud, trying to pull myself upright. A flash of light swept across me, and a shoe was swinging right at my face. I pulled back, and the shoe glanced off my shoulder. I cried out, fell back to the ground.
More yelling and people running. Then, two people jumped on top of me and started slapping and punching me. I crawled into a ball and tried to protect my face and head, but the blows still connected. I could feel the sting when one shot broke the skin on my forehead.
“Come on, man, let’s get out of here before the cops show up,” a boy said.
More footfalls all around me. I lowered my arm from my face and saw two people running away—in robes, the kind a monk might wear. I blinked a couple of times and pushed myself upright. I’d survived the mugging. Where was my phone? I needed to get a picture, call the cops.
I didn’t see the fist until it was too late. It came out of nowhere and connected squarely with my jaw. Lights flickered as I teetered for a couple of seconds. I lost my balance and dropped back to the ground. On my way down, the guy who I thought had been the one to throw the punch jumped in front of me. Another flash of light.
What was that?
Something round and metal dangled from the guy’s chest.
“Should we kill her, or is she dead already?”
Those were the last words I recall hearing.
35
More lights flashed in my eyes, and I pushed the paramedic’s hand away. He sighed, then looked over at Stan and Cristina, who were talking quietly off to the side of the red truck. I noticed the rain had dialed back to just a light mist.
“Will you let the man do his job, Ivy?” Stan said. He sounded more irritated than compassionate.
“I’m not doing anything.” I wiped my face and realized I sounded like a whiner. “Okay,” I said to the man with the nice-sized tire around his waist. “I’m ready.”
It seemed like I’d been on the gurney for a good couple of hours. He’d already treated a number of my cuts, including one on my forehead that made him say, “That sucker’s going to hurt for a few days.” That comment had upped the pain meter another couple of notches.
He went back to shining the light in my eyes. He lowered his little flashlight just a second before I was going to smack it out of his hand.
“Both eyes are dilated,” he said. “More than likely you have a minor concussion. You sure you didn’t go unconscious?”
I thought about where this answer would lead me—straight to a hospital where I’d be held hostage for hours, if not a day or more. “I’m okay.”
He lifted an eyebrow. Perhaps I wasn’t convincing enough. I said, “Seriously, don’t you think I’d know if I went dark?”
“Don’t believe her,” Stan said as he and Cristina moved closer.
I gave Stan the eye.
“If you think she went unconscious and you think she should make the trip to the hospital, then by all means, put her in the back and take her. Even if you have to strap her down.”
“Stan, that’s not your decision,” I said with an air of defiance.
He turned to look at Cristina, who was staring right at me. I lowered my chin just slightly.
“She always looks like this,” Cristina said, trying to make a case for letting me skip the trip to the hospital. But it came off like she was either blind or covering for me, the latter being the truth. Stan just shook his head.
“Look, guys, I got beat up. That’s rather apparent,” I said, pointing at my face. “It hurts, especially that last punch. But I’ll live. There’s no need to follow some antiquated protocol.”
“Stubborn…” Stan put his head down, reading his notepad as he mumbled something else. I didn’t bother asking for clarification.
“Wait. I found another cut on the back of your neck,” the paramedic said.
Good. Something other than my brain to occupy his time.
As I turned my head so he could treat the cut, I noticed a purple glow on the horizon. It had to be close to sunrise. I thought about Saul.
“Has anyone contacted Saul? He might be surprised to not see me when he wakes up.”
“I’ve texted him a dozen times,” Cristina said. “I think he’s a deep sleeper.”
At least he couldn’t say we didn’t try. “Are you guys finally going to share with me what we’ve got?”
“A dead raccoon, for one,” Stan said.
“And some sloppy graffiti,” Cristina added, looking beyond the front of the truck, out of my line of sight.
That swooshing sound. That must have been spray paint. “What does it say?”
“Eh, we’re trying to decipher it,” Stan said.
“Is it some Satanic reference?” I sounded a little too eager.
“Maybe. Can’t tell. The light rain made it all smear. So, there are letters, maybe two words, maybe sixteen or seventeen letters, but there are a lot of possible combinations.”
I asked Cristina to go take some pictures of it with her phone, which she did. When she returned, she plopped her phone in my hand. I tried to focus on the small screen, but it made my head hurt. I kept that to myself, of course.
“Hmm.” They were right. The words looked like some type of Egyptian hieroglyphics. I started to swing my legs to the side of the gurney.
“I’m not done yet,” the paramedic said.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Stan said, on the heels of the paramedic.
“I’ll have a better chance of determining what the graffiti message is if I can take a look for myself.”
Stan shook his head. “Do you ever give up? This isn’t happening. Not now. You have a concussion, and he’s in the middle of treating a wound.”
I huffed out a breath and tried to again focus on the picture from Cristina’s phone. It felt like a nail was being driven into my skull with each passing second. I handed the phone back to Cristina. “I’ll be a good patient and just wait a few more minutes.”
Stan was called away by a couple of uniforms, but said he’d be back to ask me more questions. Cristina began to tap her phone screen.
“Still trying to dig up something on Mia, or is NSBitch—excuse me, Jasmine—reaching out to you again?”
“Neither. I’m playing a video game,” she said, her eyes peeled to the small screen.
Video games? Now? Without turning my head, I took a closer look. She seemed intense, if not stressed. “Who’s winning?”
“I don’t know. Just playing. Doing something to occupy my time.”
“Are you bored?”
She lowered the phone, looked off for a moment. “Ivy, you could have been hurt really bad. You could have been killed.”
“It was just some punks. They’re not killers.” Just as I said it, I realized how naïve I sounded.
“They killed an animal, and you told us that someone yelled out something about killing that bitch.”
I didn’t recall sharing that information. Not that I wanted to withhold anything. “That must have been when Stan first showed up. I was still a little groggy.”
The paramedic stopped what he was doing, looked at Cristina, and shook his head. No other words were spoken, thankfully.
“Cristina, these things happen in this line of work.”
“But you know you shouldn’t have tried to jump into the middle of it. You should have asked me to call nine-one-one, and then wait for the cops to show up. You know it.” Her tone had some bite to it.
Ow. “Looking back on it, you’re probably right.”
“Probably?”
“Okay, you’re right. Good enough?”
She started laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“You. Me. Didn’t they make a movie like this where the daughter and the mom somehow switched personalities?”
“Now you think I�
��m old enough to be your mom.” I tried to keep a straight face, but a grin finally won out. Until the paramedic made me jump. “Ouch.”
“Sorry. I’m almost done, so bear with me a moment.”
I heard a loud voice over the din of the engines. “Who’s that?” I asked Cristina.
She walked a few steps, then came back. “Some dude blowing a gasket with a cop. Looks like he’s headed this way.”
A few seconds later, Principal Peterson appeared just on the other side of the paramedic. He cocked his head and crossed his arms. “Why am I not surprised? Every time something bad happens on my campus, you’re right there. Am I wrong?”
A jolt of pain hit me in about ten different places, as if alcohol had just been poured inside each wound.
36
I lifted my hands, but they quickly felt heavy and they dropped to my lap. “I wasn’t the one who defaced the side of the field house or killed another animal. I was actually trying to get a picture of the people who committed this crime. It just didn’t quite work out.”
“What were you doing on my campus anyway?” He narrowed his eyes.
“I was in the neighborhood and was curious. Ever had that feeling?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is you were trespassing, and I’m getting sick and tired of you acting like you run this place.” He rolled up his sleeves, started jabbing his finger at me. “This is my campus and—”
“Put a sock in it, Peterson.” Stan appeared out of nowhere, standing in front of the gurney. He held his prosthetic arm in front of Peterson, keeping Peterson from further intruding on my space.
The school principal, who I’d just noticed was wearing some type of suede jogging suit, smacked his lips a few times. He glared at Stan. “What is this about one of our prized student athletes being murdered at that mission?” He put a hand to his chest and coughed.
“Just got an ID earlier,” Stan said. “It’s very sad. We’re investigating every possible angle.”
The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 67