“My mother had a terrible singing voice,” I said. “I think I inherited it. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard.”
Smiling at my admission, Stacy spread the documents out. “I don’t see anything here about Chuck.”
We both looked through all the documents but were interrupted when Nanette came back with two plates of food for us. My stomach growled loud enough for her to hear it.
“Let me know if you need anything more,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Setting aside Stacy’s papers, we both dug into our meals like ravenous wolves. When I finished, I felt a little better, but I was falling asleep on my feet.
I waited while Stacy read every document again. Finally, she slapped the last one down on the table in frustration.
“There’s nothing here,” she said, and I could see tears begin to form at the corners of her eyes.
“Listen,” I said, trying to sound as comforting as I could, “we’ve both been through a lot this morning. We’re not thinking straight. We need to figure this all out, but I can barely keep my eyes open. I know we need to find Chuck, but I can’t think until I get some sleep. I’m running on fumes.”
Stacy looked as if she were going to protest, but then I saw her let out her breath. “You’re right.” Glancing out the window, she said, “There’s a motel half a mile from here.”
Stacy gathered her documents together and stuffed them back in the envelope. I pulled enough money out of my wallet to cover breakfast, and dropped it on the table.
Together, we made our way to the motel. After Stacy checked us in, we went to the room. I collapsed on top of the sheets, still in my clothes, and was asleep within seconds.
* * *
I bolted out of bed. The room was pitch black, and I reached out blindly.
“Mom!”
Then my memories came flooding back. My mother was dead. My house destroyed. My life shattered.
I looked down. My clothes were drenched and sticking to my skin. I must have been having a nightmare.
Struggling to a sitting position, I ran my hand through my hair.
Stacy was sitting at a small round table, and was going over all of her personal documents again.
“Any luck?” I asked.
She didn’t look up. “No. How was your sleep?”
“Good, I guess.” I looked around for a clock. “How long was I out?”
“About ten hours.”
I pushed myself off the bed and went over to her. Sitting down on the chair opposite her, I said, “Thanks for letting me sleep. You look like you could use some.”
She waved off the suggestion.
I looked at the documents upside down. “Was there anything else Chuck said?”
“What do you mean?”
“If anything happened, he wanted you to drop everything and split. Did he say what he wanted you to do next? How to find him or anything?”
Stacy shook her head. “No. And I never really asked. I thought he was just going on, you know. I never took it seriously.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Why do you keep asking me? I have no idea.” Stacy glared at me, and then her eyes softened a moment later. “I’m sorry. I guess I am getting tired.” She waved her hand over the documents. “I don’t know, maybe he thought he could find me wherever I went.”
Quietly, I said, “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I got you into this mess.”
“No.” She looked me in the eye. “I don’t mean to be so snappy. I’m just worried.”
“I know,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”
She laughed without humor. “Here I am going on about my brother when you just lost your mother. I’m so sorry, Rich.”
I sat there without saying anything for a while.
Stacy asked, “You told me you didn’t have any other family. There’s no one you can call?”
“No,” I said.
I had never met my father, and my mother rarely spoke about him. I had tried to bring it up several times, but I only heard the story once. She told me they were never married, but had lived together for six months. His name was Edgar Lineman, and he had just graduated with an architectural degree when my mother got pregnant. According to my mother, he was adamant he never wanted kids, and thought my mother had tried to trap him. He had moved across the country before I was born. That was all my mother would say on the subject.
One time, when I was fourteen and just starting in my rebellious phase, I dug through some of the papers in my mother’s closet and found a letter she had written to him telling him she regretted the way things had ended. She had addressed it, but never mailed it.
His address was in Miami, Florida, and I went through directory assistance to find his number.
I said to Stacy, “I tried to call my father once. It was a long time ago. When I told him who I was, he said, ‘I don’t have any children. Don’t contact me again or I’ll call the police.’ ”
Stacy reached up and touched my cheek. “I’m so sorry, Rich.”
“I’m sorrier for my mother,” I said in a croak. “My father abandoned her, and sixteen years later, I did the same thing to her. I’m such a piece of shit.”
“You were a kid; you didn’t know any better.”
I choked back a tear. “And now she’s dead, and I never asked her to forgive me.”
“You know she loved you, right? I didn’t spend a lot of time with her, but I could tell. Every time she said your name, her eyes lit up.”
It was too much for me to cope with. I’m not sure my words were coherent when I said, “I’m sorry.”
I stumbled out of my chair and headed for the washroom. At the sink, I ran the cold water and splashed it on my face.
After a moment, I noticed Stacy standing behind me. She stepped closer to me and wrapped her arms around me, leaning her head against my back.
We stood like that for some time before she grabbed my hand and led me to the bed.
* * *
Without any idea what else to do, we paid for another day at the motel. For lack of a better plan, we decided to hope Chuck would find us. We had left as many breadcrumbs as we thought were safe. The waitresses at the diner knew we were staying at the motel, and throughout the day, Stacy called some of her friends to ask if they had seen Chuck; if they did, could they get him to call or text her.
I flicked through the channels on the television, not really paying attention to any of the programs, except when the news came on. No one could come up with an explanation for the tornado that ripped through my house, but rescue workers had found one person—my mother—in the wreckage. So far, the police were still investigating, but there was no mention of how she died.
Several times, I thought about the odd power that had thrown Al and Tom around like dolls, and which had brought that fateful tornado down. No matter how much I concentrated, I couldn’t bring it on again. After a while, I began to think it had been my imagination, as Stacy had said.
* * *
Chuck’s whereabouts remained a mystery. The news had stopped talking about the tornado. If not for the fact that my mother was dead and Chuck was missing, Stacy and I could have simply been spending a weekend away together.
Stacy spent hours going over her documents, looking for any clue she might have missed.
I tried to help, but I had no idea what to look for.
“I’m sure he’s all right,” I said to her that night while we sat in bed, watching a few comedies on the television. “He’s a resourceful guy.”
“Resourceful is right,” she said.
“Oh?”
“After our parents died, we were put into the foster system. The first home we went to was all right at first. We were there for four years, and that’s when the parents went through a divorce. I was about twelve, then.
“Chuck and I were sent to a second home, but that only lasted about a year. The mother got pregnant and wanted to focus on her bi
ological child, so out we were once again.”
Stacy took a moment before she continued her story. “The third was the worst. I was fourteen, and I never felt right with the foster father. I always got a creepy vibe from him. That’s when Chuck started to get into computers. He hacked into the father’s computer and found photos of me while I was sleeping, and video files of when I was in the shower. The father had apparently installed a hidden camera in the bathroom. Chuck reported it to child services and to the local police. He sent them both an anonymous email attaching the pictures and clips.
“Chuck made the decision for us. We were better off on our own. We ran from the home that night, and we never looked back.”
Stacy buried her face in my shoulder. “We need to find him, Rich. I don’t know what I would without him.”
Chapter Seventeen
We opted to spend one more day at the motel before heading back to Seattle. The waiting was killing me, and I began to feel cooped up in the motel room.
Around six, Stacy said she was going out to get us some supper.
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
“No, you stay here.” She picked up my car key. “I’ll be back in a while.”
Three hours later I started to get worried, and I found myself pacing the room, going to the window once in a while to see if she had come back. I picked up the hotel phone to call her cell, and cursed when I heard it ringing on the night table. She hadn’t taken it with her.
I was on the verge of leaving the motel on foot to go looking for here when I heard a rumbling, like the roar of a tornado, coming from outside.
Making my way to the window again, I peeled back the drapes.
Half a dozen motorcycles pulled into the parking lot. Several men in helmets slowly dismounted. Some of them slapped dust from their leather pants and jackets; others stretched or did knee bends to get their blood circulating again.
Opening the motel room door, I stepped out and looked up and down the row to see if Stacy had come back.
One of the men pulled his helmet off and looked at me askance. He had grizzled features; a full black beard and greasy hair tied back in a ponytail. Dismissing my existence, he strode toward the office. If the other bikers were aware of me, they didn’t show it, either. Instead, they untied packs from their bikes, slung them over their shoulders, and followed their leader into the building.
I spotted movement from the opposite direction and saw Stacy walking toward me with a bulging plastic bag. She had parked the car at the other end of the lot; I could barely see it behind the ice machine.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said, hefting the bag as she neared. “I guess I just needed some time. You hungry.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was worried.”
Holding the door open for her, I let her go in first. She dropped the food bag on the small round table and ripped the plastic rather than untie the knot at the top.
“You forgot to take your cell phone,” I said, watching as Stacy pulled out two bottles of soda and two Styrofoam containers.
“Sorry,” she said, but I got the feeling she had left it here on purpose. She probably wanted a few hours to herself to think.
I sat down and opened the lid on the food. It was some kind of pasta—I could never remember the different names: this one looked like tubes. There were slices of chicken on top, covered in a white sauce.
We dug into the pasta, and by the end of it, I had forgiven her for making me worried. I put the plate down on the table, and a drop of white sauce spilled onto one of Stacy’s documents.
“Damn,” I said, and tried to wipe the sauce off with my finger. As I did so, I noticed that the document was a stock certificate. “I hope I didn’t ruin it.”
“Oh,” Stacy said. She waived the certificate, and then shrugged. “It’s probably not good for much more than toilet paper anyway. We lost our shirts on this one. It dropped fifty percent six months after we bought it. I haven’t bothered to check on it in a while.”
Then she cocked her head.
“What is it?” I asked.
“GingerBeef,” she said.
“Huh?”
“It’s a tag,” she said.
“A what?”
Stacy clicked her tongue. “Gamers use them as their online screen names.”
“Is it all right for me to say ‘huh’ again?”
“Chuck uses the name ‘SamuraiChuck’.”
I asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”
She pointed to the stock certificate. “We got onto this stock from one of Chuck’s online friends. He calls himself GingerBeef; his real name is Eugene Yates. He’s the one who turned us on to this stock a few years ago.”
I recalled Chuck’s reaction when we had first talked about the stock market. He had said it was too risky for him. Maybe the experience of losing his investment was what had spurred him into his data-mining venture.
Turning the paper back around, Stacy regarded it a moment longer. “Chuck hasn’t talked about Eugene for a long time. I thought they might have had a falling out, but maybe Chuck was just being careful.”
“How?”
“Eugene might be in on this insider-trading thing. Chuck was always telling me Eugene had forgotten more about hacking than he would ever know.”
“Then maybe this Eugene character knows how to get in touch with Chuck?”
“It’s a good bet,” Stacy said and went to grab her cell phone. “I’ll call directory assistance for Vancouver, and see if he’s listed.”
“Vancouver, Canada?”
“No, Washington, near the state line, north of Portland.”
While Stacy dialed and spoke to an operator, I cleaned up dinner.
“Any luck?” I asked when Stacy was finished.
“There’s no listing under his name,” she said. “But I remember Chuck saying Eugene owned a gaming and hobby store right down the street from his place, next to a pancake house. I’m sure we can find it.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say. It seemed that Stacy had taken charge of the situation, and since she was obviously thinking better than I was, I didn’t want to tell her I thought it was a long shot.
“Well,” I said, “Vancouver’s only about three hours away. Did you want to go now?”
“The Gaming Boys won’t open until the morning,” she said.
“Who?”
“That’s the name of the game shop Chuck told me about.”
My stomach suddenly fluttered and I felt a tingling sensation run through me.
“What’s wrong?” Stacy asked, noticing.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“You’re not allergic to anything are you?”
I grabbed my stomach. “No. It’s not the food.”
“Then what is it?”
The moment had passed, but I still felt odd. “You ever stand next to a live wire? It’s like something electric just shot through me.”
She folded her arms and gave me a level stare. “This doesn’t have anything to do with what you told me before, does it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” she said, obviously struggling with her words. “I really don’t believe in the supernatural or psychics or any of that. I figured you were overtired and hallucinating it all. If I gave you some time, you would realize it was just your mind trying to rationalize what happened. I can’t explain why you don’t need glasses now, but I’m sure a doctor can.”
I felt my face flush. I still hadn’t come to grips with the events of that morning, but I believed there was something supernatural that had occurred—how else could I explain the force that had sent two men flying across a room, or the tornado that had torn my house to splinters?
No matter what I thought was the truth, I understood that it was impossible for any other rational person to believe it, especially since they had not witnessed what happened.
“I know I sound crazy,” I said. “But—”
/> Just then, I felt another small jolt go through me, and put my hands on the arms of the chair, as if that would stabilize me.
Stacy sighed. “I hate warm soda. I’m going to get some ice.”
“I’m not making this up,” I said in protest as she grabbed the ice bucket and left the room.
Taking a deep breath and holding it for a few seconds, I let it out slowly. Maybe I was imagining things. There had to be a logical explanation for everything. I could be allergic to something in the food. My mind could have tricked me into thinking some unseen force had thrown those men across the room, when it might have been a result of an adrenaline surge.
The tornado, though…
I stood up and went after Stacy. I had to convince her I wasn’t crazy. She was the only person I had left in the world.
The moment I stepped out of the room, a different sensation came over me. This one was natural and immediate.
At the end of the row of motel rooms, Stacy stood between the ice machine and two men.
The panic on her face was evident to me, and without thinking, I broke into a mad run toward them.
Chapter Eighteen
The overhang threw the area into enough shadow that I couldn’t make out who the men were. I could only see their silhouettes. My first thought was that it was the bikers I had seen earlier in the evening, but as I neared, there was something more familiar about Stacy’s assailants.
One was tall and the other short. Both wore suits. I recognized them as Al’s henchmen—there was no other suitable word for them—Nick and Tom. I felt my blood boil. It didn’t cross my mind to wonder how they had found us.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Leave her alone.”
The two of them swiveled in my direction, and I could see that they had guns. My shout startled them long enough for Stacy to bolt in the other direction. Tom, cursing, chased her down. With his long legs, he caught up quickly and threw an arm around her, pulling her off her feet. She kicked and screamed.
Inside me, I felt that electric sensation from before—quite different from the fluttering I had felt in the room a few minutes ago—and I knew that there was something in me summoning that terrible power. Somehow, I could sense it begging to be unleashed.
The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels Page 31