Recoil

by Evelyn Drake

  Blackness was instant, and Kyle did not feel himself hit the cold, hard ground.

  23

  Tobias

  Rivulets of smoke tendrils wafted up from the blunted, charcoaled end of a tightly bound bundle of dried sage as Tobias moved around his living room, being sure to wave the smoking bundle in each of the room’s four corners. He attempted to keep his mind clear but full of light, welcoming positive energies into his home, but his thoughts kept sneaking away to wonder what could be taking Kyle so long to get there.

  Finally, after making it back to the center of the room, Tobias set aside his energy cleansing routine and picked his phone up from the low coffee table in front of the sofa. The phone hadn’t chimed with an incoming message, but he felt compelled to check with his eyes, hoping he’d see something his ears had missed.

  “No messages,” he mutter, biting the inside of his lip as the line between his brows deepened. His fingers started typing before he’d consciously made the decision to do so.

  TOBIAS: Be here soon?

  He held his breath and pursed his lips as he stared at his phone’s face, waiting for a message to appear. Deflated, he let the air out when no message came in and he bent to put the phone back on the table. Then just as his fingers were slipping free of the phone, it chimed.

  Tobias snatched the phone back up and read.

  Kyle: Something came up. Catch you later.

  Tobias’s brows furrowed even deeper.

  TOBIAS: You okay?

  He waited… and waited some more. Only silence answered.

  “Fuck!” Tobias blew out a breath and then rubbed the back of his neck, wishing it were Kyle massaging the tension out of his muscles instead.

  He tossed his phone back on the coffee table and paced the room with his hands shoved down into his pants pockets, his gaze constantly turning to stare boorishly at the silent and dark-faced phone.

  “What the hell?” he finally exclaimed to the phone, stopping his pacing so that he could face it directly. His entire body itched to be wherever Kyle was so that he could face whatever Kyle was facing. “I’m overreacting,” he said to himself, taking a deep breath. “Kyle’s a grown ass man and he’s got his own life.” The scowl on his face deepened as he crossed his arms over his chest and haunched his shoulders as if to barricade himself against the idea that Kyle did not need him as much as he wanted to be needed.

  “Alright,” he said, clapping his hands together and then rubbing them vigorously. “He doesn’t want to be with me—fine. I can entertain myself.”

  He shoved his hands back into his pockets as far as they would go and stared at his phone, leaning his head forward a little as if waiting for it to tell him what to do next. Finally with a grunt, he gave the device a dismissive wave and walked into the kitchen to prepare a late dinner—the late dinner he’d planned to make with Kyle—a hearty salad with grilled chicken on top. Simple. Easy. No way was he going to try to compete with Monica for the love of the man’s stomach.

  The rest of the evening was spent sitting slouched on the couch with his feet propped on the coffee table as he surfed all of his TV channels, one after another and then back again in a huge loop. Nothing could satisfy him. What he wanted wasn’t there… but those thoughts merely led to more scowling at his silent cell phone. “Judas,” he called it and then felt guilty. It wasn’t his phone’s fault that his boyfriend was a dumbass who had just blown him off.

  Sleep was fitful when it finally came full of tossing and nightmares. Tobias woke up twice with a start but managed to go back to sleep each time. He’d had lots of practice waking up covered in sweat in the middle of a night terror only to manage to go back to sleep less than a half hour later. Yet as the night ticked on and his sleep deepened, he felt gripped by something he couldn’t shake.

  As dawn crept closer, Tobias’s exhaustion warred with the voices within that would have been silent if Kyle had been there with him, holding him. Instead, their wailful taunts turned to malicious, gleeful, jeers. Instead of decrying injustices, they laughed about retribution. They laughed at Tobias and all he had to lose… all he was about to lose.

  A banshee-like scream ripped through Tobias’s mind and he sat bolt upright in bed. Gasping for air, his body was drenched in sweat, his sheets were soaked wet, and his head was pounding hard enough to make his vision blurry.

  Rolling onto his side, Tobias reached for his phone and then blinked several times to get his blurry vision to clear. Once he could see, he texted Kyle.

  TOBIAS: You okay?

  He waited, too afraid to breathe less he scare the incoming text away. But despite that, nothing came and his phone remained silent.

  Sitting up then, he navigated the necessary screens to be able to hit call. It wasn’t even 6 AM yet, and his heart pounded hard from calling Monica so early. He was worrying senselessly and if Kyle was losing interest in him, calling Monica in the wee hours of the morning was not going to help him. But if that wasn’t the problem, if Kyle wasn’t going off of him and was instead in some kind of trouble…

  “Hello?” Monica’s voice sounded through the phone.

  “Monica, it’s me, Tobias.”

  “Is everything okay? Is Kyle okay?”

  Tobias’s breath froze in his lungs. He’s not with her.

  “Kyle’s not here,” Tobias said, “I was hoping he was with you. Is there any chance he could be asleep in his room?”

  “I’ll check,” Monica said and he could hear her movement and then the tapping of knuckles on wood followed by the creak of a door opening. “Tobias, he’s not here. Is something wrong? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Tobias mentally kicked himself for making Monica worry, but he’d had to know if Kyle was with her.

  “I don’t know anything yet. Kyle was supposed to come over here last night and then we were going to go to your house after a late dinner. I got a text from him saying he was on his way, but then he never showed, and when I texted to check on him, he said something came up. I haven’t heard from him since.”

  He could hear movement coming from Monica’s end as if she were still moving and then heard her call out Kyle’s name.

  “He’s not here. I’ve checked all the rooms now, and he’s not here. Tobias, where is he?”

  Tobias closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the butt of his palm.

  “I’ll find him, Monica. I promise.”

  Their call disconnected. You’d better be out with friends, Kyle. You’d better be okay.

  Tobias went through his phone’s list of contacts until he found the one for Mary-Ann Feckle. She answered on the first ring, not sounding as if she’d been asleep.

  “Yes?”

  “Mary-Ann, it’s Detective Sohbier. I’ve been unable to locate Kyle’s whereabouts since last night. Do you have any idea where he could be?”

  “Well fuck it all! Don’t tell me I’ve lost another one. I’m going to burn this goddamn place to the ground!”

  Fuck!

  “So you haven’t seen him?”

  “No, not since he got off work and left.”

  “And he did leave?

  “Yep, right out the front door. Saw it on the surveillance cameras.”

  “No afterwork parties? He said he was giving his notice.”

  “He did give it, and people were making a todo about him quitting, but I don’t know about any parties and I’m almost always invited to those things. I tend to pick up the tab or part of it, so they’re fast to invite me, and I didn’t hear a peep from anyone about any party.”

  Fuckfuckfuck!

  “Okay, will you let me know if you learn anything?”

  “I will. You’re on this, right? You’re going to find him?”

  “I’m going to find him,” Tobias vowed, his fists and jaw clenching.

  “Good.”

  The call ended then, and Tobias tossed his phone to the side as he buried his face in his hands and rocked back and forth. “This can’t b
e happening,” he said, repeating the words over and over to himself as his stomach knotted and he relived the soul-crushing experience of having Kyle ripped from his life the first time all those years ago. Tobias could still see their Mom’s face as she stood in the door to the house he’d so recently called his home and told him that Kyle had been dragged into a nearby field and beaten to death.

  Rolling onto his side, Tobias scrambled to grab his small, nearby trashcan. His stomach heaved violently, expelling what little it had in it until there was nothing left. Dry heaves followed.

  Tobias was covered in sweat all over again by the time he was able to push the can aside with a shaky hand.

  Getting out of bed, he headed for the shower. There, burying himself beneath the hot spray of water, he demanded that his racing brain slow down so that he could find his way through what he knew instead of being buried by the unknown.

  What’s different between Kyle and the other murders?

  Tobias knew there was something. It was right there in front of him. He just had to put his finger on it.

  “Victoria and Ginger both died at the club,” Tobias said to himself. That meant that if Kyle left the club—but was missing—he was different than Victoria and Ginger.

  “The killer knew that Victoria and Ginger would eventually be found.” The killer either didn’t care or he or she wanted them to be found, yet the killer took Kyle to somewhere other than the club.

  How’s he different? What’s different about him?

  “He’s a man, and someone’s been stalking him.” Tobias saw the images from the sex tape flash through his head, the one with Kyle in the alley with woman after woman after woman. There’d been no evidence to indicate that either Victoria or Ginger had been stalked. They were both sleeping with Kyle. Jealousy was the easy answer. It could still be anyone, though. Any one of those women.

  After they’d slept together, the sex video had shown up at the precinct. “Whoever it was didn’t want to kill me but did want me to lose interest. They wanted to show me that him sleeping with me had meant nothing. That I was nothing to him. But why not kill me?” He already knew the probable answer to that. Killing a cop was messy business. Cops didn’t like other cops murdered. It would have pulled in the attention of the whole precinct. “So,” he surmised, “the killer doesn’t actually want to get caught. This isn’t a game to them. They got desperate when I didn’t lose interest in him, then used the car.”

  Tobias shampooed his hair, continuing to pick through his thoughts, reorganize, rearrange and make new connections.

  “They wanted me to think I was nothing to him… because they want to be someone to him, and they don’t currently feel like they have his focus. His devotion. They feel on the outside of his love, and they want to be inside. They want to be his world.” Sort of like that stalker asshole, before he got killed. Why him?

  Something was there. He could feel it. He was close.

  Rinsing off, he got out of the shower and dried. He was out the door less than fifteen minutes later, and he was at the precinct ten minutes after that.

  “I don’t care how long it’s been!” Tobias railed against Sgt. Darton. “I want a missing person’s report filed on Kyle Rivers and an APB sent out on him now!”

  Sgt. Darton’s face turned ruddy. “You know how many missing persons got reported yesterday? You know how many of them were actually just off fucking off? What do you think happens when too many APB’s go out? Your boy’s been missing eight hours, tops. What about all those families who actually lost someone who’s not gonna be coming home… ever? And you want me to crowd those reports with someone who probably went home with some girl for the night?”

  Tobias stepped forward so that he was toe to toe and chest to chest with Sgt. Darton. “Send out the report,” he ordered, his voice deathly calm. “Two people are dead and I’m trying to make sure it doesn’t turn into three. Send it out or I’ll make a case for your suspension.”

  Sgt. Darton’s face turned red enough that Tobias worried the man would stroke out, and he knew it was his imagination but he could almost see thorns growing out of the guy’s skin.

  “I’ll send it out,” Darton growled. “Now get the fuck out of my face.”

  It was all he needed. Tobias didn’t give a rat’s ass what Darton called him as long as he did his job and put out the All Points Bulletin to announce Kyle as a missing person. Every minute counted. Tobias could feel it. Every breath Kyle had in his body—if he had any left—were a countdown to his last.

  By the time Tobias made it back to his desk, his cell phone was ringing. Pulling it out, he saw that it was a call from Mary-Ann Feckle, the club’s owner and manager.

  “There’s something I think you should see. When can you get here?”

  “I’m on my way,” Tobias said and then ran for the doors.

  I won’t lose you again, Tobias chanted in his head. The drive to The Derriere consisted of honked horns and flipped fingers as he broke every traffic law to get to the club in the shortest amount of time possible. The place looked desolate and wrong in the early morning light. It made Tobias think of looking behind the wizard’s curtain in the Wizard of Oz and finding out that all the magic was gone.

  He rapped on the door but when no answer came, he stepped below an overhead surveillance camera and waved his hands. The sound of the door unlocking met him a moment later followed by Mary-Ann’s face as she opened the door. Even though it was early morning and the woman had probably been up most or all the night, she looked energized and raring to go.

  When does the woman sleep?

  Tobias stepped inside the club and followed Mary-Ann’s quick-paced step back to her office. There, she sat him down inside the small space in front of the computer and then leaned past him to start the video that she wanted him to see. The club flashed onto the screen. The images were dark and hard to make out, but Tobias managed to recognize Kyle as he took on an inebriated customer. As he watched, the altercation escalated.

  “The other bouncers and some of the girls said that the snot there was making threats to kill Kyle.”

  “Do drunk customers make those types of threats very often?”

  “No, not really. They’ll say stuff like ‘I’ll call the cops,’ ‘I’ll call a lawyer,’ or ‘I’ll get you,’ but the threats tend to be pretty vague. From what I heard, this kid made some of those kinds of threats, but then as the situation heated up, he started swearing that he’d kill Kyle.”

  As Tobias watched, Kyle slammed the customer’s face into the floor.

  “Do you have his name?”

  “No, him and his buddies came with a big wad of cash. But,”—she clicked the computer’s mouse and the video changed—“I know who this guy is. He’s a cabbie who hangs around outside most nights. And look, that’s Kyle tossing the customer out…”—she paused, waiting for the video to catch up—“and this is the cabbie leading the customer away.”

  “Did they leave together?”

  “I don’t know. It was out of range of the camera. But, there’s more.” She clicked the mouse a couple more times, and then more footage—with a time tag of a couple hours later—filled the computer screen. “Watch this.”

  Tobias leaned forward slightly when he saw the back of a man who looked to be Kyle walk into the camera’s view. There was the glow of the man’s cell phone as he tapped into its face, and Tobias remembered the text he got from Kyle—the one saying that he was leaving. Then, he saw Kyle dig his keys out of his pocket as he reached his car.

  What happened next made Tobias want to reach through the screen to stop what was unravelling. As he watched, a shadow detached itself from a nearby car. While very slender and hidden within the coverings of a full-length coat that included a heavy hood, the shadowed figure was almost as tall as Kyle. Then, sparks lit the darkened screen, Kyle’s body jerked, and his head slammed forward into the top rim of his car door. The ricochet rocked him backward as his knees buckled, and the biggest, st
rongest man Tobias had ever known was left crumpled and unconscious on the parking lot’s asphalt.

  Tobias squeezed his eyes shut as his clenched, white-knuckled fists shook. Come on! Work this! He took a deep breath, willed his rampaging fear to calm, and forced his eyes to open.

  Taking control of the mouse, Tobias backed the video up a few seconds so that he could watch the attack again. This time, he kept his eyes open afterward as he took in every piece of information he could glean.

  He played it again, then he jumped back to the altercation with the customer, and then once more back to the attack on Kyle at his car.

  Tobias tapped the screen. “This person is taller and thinner than the customer. Their shoulders are tiny, but they’re nearly as tall as Kyle. Any way this could be one of the dancers or waitresses?”

  “I think it could,” Mary-Ann said. “A lot of times the girls wear platform high heels. I’ve seen them put almost a foot of height on before.”

  Tobias continued to lean forward in his chair, studying the video as it played on. As he watched, the figure on the screen fought with Kyle’s unconscious body to pull it into the back seat of his vehicle. Giving up, the attacker disappeared to return a minute later with a rope. Tying it around Kyle’s torso beneath his arms, the attacker made a harness of sorts with lead ropes coming off of it. The person then climbed into the back of the car and pulled.

  Watching Kyle get pulled into the back of the car felt excruciatingly slow despite the fact that in reality, it happened pretty fast. From the time of the attack, Kyle’s body was in the back seat of his car less than four minutes later. The car’s lights came on, and then it was gone as the attacker simply drove away. They didn’t even hurry. They just drove off.

  Tobias rubbed his forehead before rubbing the unshaved scruff around his mouth.

  “Did you see their hand slip?” Mary-Ann asked.

  “Yeah, looked like they took quite a hit to their arm against the door frame. Maybe even left a bruise.”