“Have you got any aspirin?” Ryan asked before she could call up her blog. He didn’t want to face it without a pain reliever in his system. Though he tried to muster enthusiasm for the Lion Truth blog, he would never be as excited about it as she was. He had hoped it would be a passing fad with her, but the hobby had morphed into an obsession. “I can’t shake this headache I’ve had since the bomb threat evacuation.”
“Sure,” Sumiko said. “I’ll be right back.”
With her gone, he sagged in the chair, bowing his head and cupping his temples in both palms. The skin across his scalp was pulled tight, as if from a nasty sunburn. His pulse throbbed insistently and the pressure seemed to swell behind his eyes. An insane idea crossed his mind, that if he cut his flesh and let some of his blood escape, he could relieve the pressure.
“You’re in luck, big guy,” she called from down the hall. “We’re down to our last two Excedrin.”
“Great, thanks,” he called, pushing himself against the chair back.
A moment later, she entered the bedroom with two aspirin in one hand and a paper cup of water in the other. He swallowed the aspirin and finished the water, crumpling the cup and tossing it toward her trashcan. Of course, he missed.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he said.
She pushed his knees apart and came close, placing her hands on his shoulders. With him sitting and her standing, their heights were almost equal. “Are both your feet on the floor, Bramble?”
“Yes.”
“Are both my feet on the floor?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said. “Then I can do this.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. This time, she lingered and their mouths opened and the taste of strawberry lip gloss gave way to the sensation of her tongue darting across his lips.
Ryan’s hands encircled her waist and began to drift down, seemingly of their own accord.
She pulled her head back and frowned. “I forgot what I was doing.”
“I’ll remind you,” Ryan said, a little breathlessly.
“The blog,” she said. “I wanted to show you what I’ve done.”
“Of course,” Ryan said, “the blog.”
“Oh, don’t be grumbly,” she chided. “My mom’s fifteen feet away!”
“I thought we were good with all four feet planted.”
“I guess I’m not as daring as I thought.”
She slipped from his grasp and sat in her chair, spun to her computer screen and brought up her blog. “So, I’ve expanded the blog,” she explained. “Before it was all about school stuff, which is fine, short term. But we’ll be gone soon and that will be irrelevant.”
As will I, Ryan thought darkly.
“The bomb threat got me thinking,” Sumiko continued, ramping up to full blog engagement, “with all the bizarre accidents happening around town, I thought maybe there’s a pattern.”
“A pattern? To accidents?”
“Granted, the sample size is small,” Sumiko said, “but this is not a normal distribution pattern: too many accidents, too many fatalities. I think some kind of force is at work here. Maybe it’s man-made, or a government experiment, or a terrorist cell.”
The pain in Ryan’s head was driving him to distraction, and Sumiko’s voice was a harsh counterpoint to the throbbing in his skull. He felt his hands trembling, and clutched them together to stop the involuntary movement.
“Terrorists? Don’t you think that’s a stretch?” Ryan reasoned. “The bomb threat was a fake.”
“Right,” Sumiko conceded. “Jesse Trumball called it in.”
“You know that for sure now?” Ryan’s right eye had begun to twitch. He pressed his fingers against it. His forehead felt clammy to the touch. Stress compromised the immune system. That made sense.
“It’s the only explanation for why he was there,” Sumiko said. “Big bozo.”
“What?”
“Jesse. A bozo.”
“Oh.” For a fleeting moment, Ryan had thought she was insulting him and his fists had clenched. I was about to hit her, he realized. What the hell is wrong with me?
“So it was a hoax. How do you get terrorists in Laurel Hill out of that?”
“Terrorists are one option,” Sumiko said. “They’re not the only option. Remember the big pile-up on Wednesday?”
Ryan nodded. “You mentioned it before. So?”
“Well, you know Teresa Pezzino? Her brother is a junior patrol officer. Get this—he told her that none of the vehicle airbags deployed during the pile-up. Not one. You don’t think that’s bizarre?”
“It’s … it’s unusual, yes. But …”
A sharp pain knifed across Ryan’s forehead. He staggered to his feet, knocking the chair over. It fell to the floor with a muffled thump. Ryan stood with his legs spread, hands clutching his forehead.
“Ryan? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled. “Headache.”
“Oh, okay,” Sumiko said. “I can explain the rest of this later.”
“I don’t give a damn about your blog!” Ryan suddenly exploded. “That’s all you talk about, all you care about. I’m sick of it. Screw the damn blog!”
He swung his arm out and swatted her flat-screen monitor so hard it tumbled off the desk and collided with the metal armrest of her chair. The screen cracked before tumbling toward the floor, suspended by its power and data cables.
“Ryan!” Sumiko yelled. Her eyes were wide, her normally pale face flushed. “Get out! Now!”
“Sumiko—”
“Out!”
“I’m—”
“We’re done,” she shrieked, shoving him repeatedly toward the door. “I never want to see you again!”
Ryan stumbled out of the room, staggered down the stairs, one hand on the railing as he pressed the other against his forehead, trying to contain the throbbing. He turned toward the front door and heard Mrs. Jones calling after him.
“Ryan? What’s going on? What happened up there?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I really don’t know.”
Mortified, he ducked out of the front door and ran down to the sidewalk, feeling alone and completely lost. Sumiko had been his last anchor, the last thing holding him in place, and he’d screwed it up, pushed her away.
Now he had nothing.
Sixteen
Breathless, Dawn Nyberg returned from the dance floor of Club Elektric to the chrome and glass table occupied by several of her coworkers. She fanned her face with both hands to cool off before picking up her glass of club soda and draining it. Because she planned on drinking later at her cousin’s bachelorette party, she wanted to pace herself here. She glanced at her smartphone lying on the table and saw a text message from her older sister, Summer.
“Summer’s on her way,” she said to her coworkers. “I wish I could stay with you guys.”
“How well do you know this cousin?” Rebecca Walsh, her manager at Price Group Communications, asked with an arched eyebrow, teasing.
“I haven’t seen her much since we were kids,” Dawn admitted. “But she’s family. I can’t bail on her.”
“Just say your car broke down,” Khristine Butler suggested. She had been temping for PGC for nine months and had become friends with everyone at the company.
“Stop pressuring her,” Meg Price, the company’s owner, told the others. She was only a few years older than her employees and always sought to build a sense of camaraderie in the workplace, a team atmosphere that eschewed backbiting and petty jealousies. “She already feels guilty.”
“But she might change her mind,” Khristine said, “because she has a not-so-secret admirer.”
“What?”
“Uber-formal guy,” Khristine said with a slight tilt of her head toward the bar. “Bowler hat and cane. Looks British. He just ordered a mai tai. He couldn’t take his eyes off your sweet dance moves.”
“Shut up, Khris,” Dawn exclaimed, giving Khristine a playful shove. Sh
e felt her face flush with embarrassment.
“Oh, my, he’s huge,” Rebecca said as she took a sip of her margarita timed to sneak a peek at the bar. “Maybe Jeeves is scouting this place for the royal family.”
Khristine giggled.
Dawn raised her hand to her chin, tossed her hair aside, cast a subtle glance toward the bar, and looked away immediately. The man was staring at her as if expecting to make eye contact. Something was off about him. And it wasn’t just his out-of-place clothing. “Please tell me he’s not coming over here,” she whispered urgently to her coworkers.
“Warning, Ms. Nyberg,” Khristine said with her hand shielding her mouth, “he’s downing that glass of liquid courage with a gleam in his eye.”
Dawn’s phone vibrated against the glass table, startling her. The music was so loud, it masked the sound, but the shimmying movement unnerved her. Dawn grabbed the phone and read the display. “Thank God. Summer’s outside.”
Khristine shuddered involuntarily. “It looks like he could hide silver dollars in that forehead.”
“He’s not that bad,” Rebecca said. “If you like them massive.”
“He’s all yours,” Dawn said, dropping her phone in her small clutch purse and hurrying away from the table. She eased through the crowd and apologized to those she inadvertently jostled. With each step, she begged herself to not look back. By the time she reached the hostess counter at the front of the nightclub, the urge to glance over her shoulder had become unbearable. She had been holding her breath so long her chest hurt. When she finally shot a glance behind her, the large man was ten feet back and closing.
As she stepped outside, cool air chilled her flushed skin and she shivered.
For a panicked moment, she stood there alone, wondering where her sister was. She had nowhere to go now. Knowing she would be riding with Summer to the bachelorette party, she had carpooled to work with Khristine, so there was no car waiting for her. She dared not turn around and walk toward the strange man.
She heard a heavy footfall behind her. The hair on the nape of her neck rose.
Summer’s Prius zipped across the fire lane and came to an abrupt stop in front of her. Without looking back, Dawn stepped off the curb, grabbed the handle and yanked, praying the door was unlocked. The door opened and she jumped into the passenger seat with a frightened squeal.
Only after she engaged the lock did she look out the window.
She screamed with fright as a large hand reached toward the glass.
“Go!”
“What the hell, Dawn?”
“Just go, damn it!”
Summer floored the accelerator and the car shot away from the curb. After they had pulled out of the parking lot, Summer frowned at her.
“What was that about?”
“A freaky guy,” Dawn said, her hands trembling uncontrollably on her knees. She took several deep breaths to calm down.
After they had passed a few traffic lights, Dawn said softly, “I can’t explain why, but that man scared the hell out of me.”
So close! She had been within a few strides of him when the car pulled up at the curb. Though Tora hurried, she slipped into the car a moment before she would have been within arm’s reach. He blamed overconfidence for botching the abduction.
Inside the nightclub, she had made brief eye contact with him and then abandoned the relative safety of her companions. Foolishly, he had believed she might be drawn to him, to his aura of power, and had decided to meet him outside the club for a brief assignation. He had been lulled by the apparent ease of the hunt, his prey willingly separating herself from the herd. Alcohol had not dulled his senses, hubris had.
He had allowed a prime specimen for his own courtship ritual to escape his clutches when a small show of his real power could have brought her down easily. A broken high heel, a stumble, a collision with another nightclub patron at an inopportune time and he would have had her in his grasp.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of suitable human females in Laurel Hill. But with only two days until the new moon, the time for subtlety had passed.
Walking briskly toward his van, he decided to try a less crowded location. And this time he would leave nothing to chance. With his other plans already in motion, quick, decisive action was called for.
As he opened the driver’s door of the van, he caught a whiff of the decaying plumber in the back. He would need to acquire another vehicle soon. The company name was painted on the side panels and somebody would have reported the plumber missing by now. Tora saw no reason not to dump the van and the body at the same time.
He climbed in and drove out of the parking lot, looking left and right for an out-of-the-way location to abandon the van. Someplace where it might escape notice for a few days. The colder the trail he left, the less he would have to deal with human interference.
Ahead, movement caught his eye.
A fit young brunette with a ponytail that exposed a long, graceful neck, wearing a light jacket and black yoga pants was attempting to lock the exterior door of Sunrise Yoga Studio. She struggled with the keys, fumbling for the lock she couldn’t see as she balanced two boxes crammed and overflowing with colorful pamphlets on her hip.
Perfect, he thought. She had come to him as good as gift-wrapped.
He steered the van toward the curb and slowed to a gentle stop.
The fingers of his right hand drifted to his temple.
The keys slipped from her fingers.
As she crouched to pick them up, the top box overbalanced and dozens of brochures spilled across the sidewalk.
Sumiko muttered a string of curses under her breath as she unplugged and untangled her damaged flat-screen monitor. It had cracked right down the middle.
Ryan, she fumed, that selfish son of a bitch!
“What gives him the right?”
There was a knock on her doorjamb.
For a split second she thought Ryan had come back to apologize and she fought the urge to hurl the monitor at him before he could utter a word. But she sagged in relief—and a little disappointment—when she saw her mother standing in the doorway with a concerned look on her face.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did Ryan do something … inappropriate?”
Sumiko laughed. “Yes,” she said, shaking her head. “He broke my monitor!”
“Oh,” her mother said, confused. “You had an argument.”
“After he broke it,” Sumiko said. “Before that …” She set the damaged monitor on the carpet and sat dejected on the edge of her bed, forearms against her thighs. “Apparently I was boring him.”
Her mother sat beside her and wrapped an arm around Sumiko’s shoulders.
“The blog?”
“How did you know?” Sumiko asked.
“Well, you, ah, mention it quite often.”
Sumiko dropped her chin to her palms, totally deflated. “Great. I bore my own mother.”
“I’m happy with anything that excites you,” her mother said supportively.
“That’s mom-speak, right?”
“It doesn’t mean it’s not true,” her mother said, smiling.
“It doesn’t mean he’s not a jerk for breaking my monitor,” Sumiko said.
“That was uncalled for, yes.”
“He’s been acting, I don’t know, weird lately,” Sumiko said. “Complaining about headaches. And I know he’s having trouble at school.”
“Trouble?” her mother asked, her tone becoming less supportive and more concerned. Mother alarm bells ringing.
“His grades,” Sumiko explained. “He’s struggling with his class work. I’ve tried to help him, but … What am I going to do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” Sumiko said. “I told him it was over—we were over.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know. But I’m still mad at him.”
“Maybe you should sleep on it.”
“I guess so.”
“Hardly,” Sumiko said, finally smiling. “But I’ll need your help with the monster in the closet.”
“Monster?”
“The beast,” Sumiko said, rising to pull open her closet doors. Placing her hands in the middle, she slid her rack of clothes apart, pushing the hangers to either side, to expose the floor littered with retired computer parts. She pointed to her old nineteen-inch CRT.
“Sumiko,” her mother said, “that’s as big as our dishwasher.”
“Probably heavier, too,” Sumiko said. “Hmm … If Ryan comes back, I could drop it out the window on his head.”
“Sumiko!”
“Just joking, Mom.”
Together they carried the old CRT to her desk and Sumiko connected it to her computer.
“And we’re back in business,” she said, slapping her hands together to brush off the accumulated dust.
“Have you heard about the hospitals?” her mother asked.
Sumiko sensed something to take her mind off the fight with Ryan. “No. Spill!”
Her mother told her about the deadly flu virus spreading through Laurel Hill, along with the outbreak of MRSA afflicting nearly two-dozen children. “Wow,” she said, stunned by the news. “This is Lion Truth material, Mom. Thanks!”
“I thought your blog was about school stuff.”
“Past tense, Mom,” Sumiko said. “Something big and bad is happening in this town. I thought today’s bomb threat was part of it, but that was a false alarm.”
“Sumiko, maybe it would be better, and safer, if you stayed focused on school activities,” her mother suggested.
“Mom, I have to get the word out about this,” Sumiko said. She had already pulled up her blog dashboard and begun typing her next post. “Somebody needs to stop this. They need to know what’s happening.”
“The evening news is handling that, dear.”
“Nobody waits for television news anymore, Mom. It’s all about the blogosphere. Instant access to all the information. Did you hear any names?”
“Names of victims? No, but some of these other accidents …”
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