Chimera

by Rob Thurman

  “Who are these people? The ones who look?”

  “Could be anybody.” He shrugged. “Anybody I find reliable. Best ones are women who work in the mall. They have the eyes of eagles and the boredom of the ages driving them. The second best are people working at the schools or hospitals. Most kids go through there one way or the other when it comes to my business.” He didn’t have to elaborate; I understood all too clearly the hospital reference. Tilting his head slightly, he said honestly, “It was a long shot, Smirnoff, you know? I had no idea it might turn anything up. Chances are if Lukas is still alive, he’d be far from his original abduction site.” He drained his glass, eyes gleaming with the thrill of the chase. “One big-ass long shot that just might have paid off.”

  I liked Skoczinsky well enough, I did. I didn’t have any particular urge to do the man harm . . . not until now. Right then I could’ve cheerfully pounded his head to a bloody pulp against the table without an ounce of remorse. Narrowing my eyes silently, I waited. It was something I was good at by now. The poker face I wore came with long years of practice, but card games had little to do with it.

  Regardless, Saul seemed to take the hint. Uneasily, he shifted a bit in the chair. “One of the girls in the International Mall spotted someone yesterday who looked like the picture—not exactly, but close enough. One green eye, one blue. Hair was brown, not blond, but that wouldn’t be unusual. A lot of blonds get darker hair as they age. Kid looked about sixteen or seventeen, as Lukas would be. Paloma’s young, nineteen, but smarter than most anyone has a right to be. I trust in her. If she says he matched our specs, then he did.”

  I was stunned, literally. A hammer slamming between my eyes wouldn’t have produced a much different reaction. A mall—he’d been in a mall. How could that be? It was as if the Holy Grail had shown up in a crane-operated arcade machine, surrounded by stuffed animals with the mechanical claw poised right above it. I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  “In fact,” he continued, “I trust her enough to have followed him. She called me and I was there in fifteen. I picked them up before they hit the parking lot.”

  “Them?” I was surprised my vocal cords were still working. For that matter I was surprised any of me was still working.

  “It looked like he was on some sort of field trip.” He frowned, striking his fork lightly against the edge of his plate. “Some sort.” I could tell something had puzzled him as he’d watched the group. Before I could ask what, he elaborated. “There were fifteen of them—quiet, well behaved. Weirdly so. Not at all like normal kids turned loose in a mall. I thought private school maybe, something parochial with those ruler-wielding nuns.” Shaking his head, he instantly refuted his own theory. “But that wasn’t it. Their teachers weren’t nuns, that’s for damn sure. Not unless they were drill sergeants on their days off. These guys looked like guards. Yeah, sure, they were wearing typical teacher crap. Polyester blazers, cheap button downs, bad shoes. But it was just a look. Whatever link they have to the educational system is damn slim at best. Most of them looked like you.” He grimaced and added, “Sorry, minus the polyester of course.”

  “Thugs, in other words.” With a shrug, I cut off whatever else he was going to say. That was just Saul, thinking the fashion commentary was more of an insult than comparing me to a chainik, a professional bully. I knew what I was. It would be rather futile to get pissed off when someone pointed it out. Plus, Saul was more than on the shady side himself when it came to “physical persuasion.” He simply concealed his a little better than I did. Maybe it was all about fashion sense. “Where’d they go?”

  “That’s where it gets weirder.” Saul’s gaze was frank on mine. “Lukas . . . If this is Lukas, he wasn’t the victim of an ordinary child abduction. At least not ordinary in any sense I’ve seen before. They came to the mall in two vans, not a bus. I followed them about two and a half hours west to their school. Hell, if you could call it that. It was more like a compound, a fucking miniscule military base.” While my appetite had long disappeared, his was still in full force. Efficiently rolling another fajita, he made quick work of half of it in two bites. “I looked it over all I could, which wasn’t much. They got a gate straight out of Dade Correctional and a wall that would put that one in China to shame. The president should have their security.”

  What did that mean? What did all of this mean? “Government?” I couldn’t imagine how the hell the government could be involved in Lukas’s disappearance. That made no sense whatsoever.

  “That’s what I thought at first, but . . .” The waitress chose that moment to come back for a second round of water and flirting. The black scowl and flash of bared teeth I turned on her had her rethinking that in a hurry. Saul watched her go with a wistful glint in his eyes, but he knew better than to complain. Knowing how pivotal a moment this was for me and how unexpected, he also knew I was hanging on to my control by a fast-unraveling thread. “Keep it together,” he ordered quietly. “We might finally be there, so don’t lose it, okay? Stay with me.”

  If anything was ever easier said than done . . . Never mind the world had disappeared beneath my feet and left me in dizzying free fall. Swallowing against the chunk of dry ice burning in my throat, I consciously unclenched my fingers on both hands and uncurled my fists. Placing my hands flat on the table beside my plate, I sucked in a deep breath and said calmly, “I’m okay.” At his skeptical snort, I qualified, “Really. I’m okay as I’m going to be. So, let’s get on with it. Not the government? How do you know?” It wouldn’t be long before the shock wore off and reality set in. Reality didn’t have a history of playing well with others.

  Saul went on to tell me just what he had found out. He’d run a title check on the land where the compound resided. There was a series of dummy corporations, but Saul had cut his teeth on that kind of duplicity. It’d slowed him down, but it hadn’t stopped him. At the end he’d run into a company he simply couldn’t crack, but it wasn’t federal. That didn’t mean there might not be federal ties, but the organization was privately owned. Although he couldn’t find out what the organization was, he could find out everything that it wasn’t. They weren’t owned by the government and no one in the business world had any idea they existed. They had no stocks; they weren’t insured; they had no accounts with any bank in this country. And as far as Saul could determine, they didn’t pay taxes. So either the government didn’t know they existed, or they turned a blind eye for some reason.

  It didn’t make any goddamn sense, none of it. And the more Saul talked, the less sense it made. A compound in the boonies, a school that wasn’t a school, security that back in the old days would’ve made the KGB say, “Damn, where you been shopping?”

  Eventually Saul ran out of things to say, and in many ways I was as lost as I’d ever been. Bits and pieces made up a jigsaw puzzle designed by a schizophrenic. I wasn’t missing a few pieces; I was missing an entire frame of reference. I wasn’t sure I was any closer to knowing what had happened to Lukas, save for one small difference.

  Now I could ask him.

  Chapter 3

  It happened Christmas Day.

  It was the same Christmas Day that was captured in that goddamn photograph—people all eggnog and smiles, never seeing that the moon was tumbling from the sky; unaware that the sun had gone black and the earth itself trembled under their feet, hungry to devour them. I guess that’s how people made it through life . . . by the God-given grace of ignorance. If you knew what was coming, I had my doubts you’d stick around this vale of tears to experience it firsthand.

  If ignorance is bliss, I was the happiest dumb fuck around that day.

  Christmas for a kid was always the best day of the year. It was even better than Halloween. Yeah, okay, Halloween did have costumes and pounds of tooth-rotting candy, but at fourteen, I’d been far too old for that; not that Lukas and I’d ever had much of an opportunity for trick-or-treating. Our home, the one we’d lived in all our lives, wasn’t the kind that ru
bbed shoulders with its stuccoed neighbors. The nearest house to us was at least a half mile away. You could say we lived in a gated community, only the gate started at our driveway. There was a modest wall of crushed coquina shell that while nearly indestructible was easily scaled. How’d I know? I’d done it many a night, just for the hell of it. I’d also gotten my ass busted each time I was caught. The true security lay in the most up-to-date system on the market—two German shepherds and a few rotating “friends” of my father’s. He had a lot of friends, Anatoly. All that wasn’t as easy to get around as the wall. No, not easy.

  But not impossible.

  We’d spent most of the day with the new horses, riding them inside the walls, which was a good ten or twelve acres. It sounded like quite a bit when you said it, but on horseback it may as well have been the corral at a pony ride. We wanted to run flat out, gallop as long as the horses would go. We wanted to hit the beach and kick up clouds of sand and water. It wasn’t an extraordinary request. I was good on a horse, thanks to lessons, and Lukas may as well have been born on one. He was a throwback to our Steppe days, our father liked to say; our own little Cossack. On most days the Cossack and I would’ve gotten our way.

  That day was the exception. Anatoly’s annual Christmas party was in full swing before noon and would most likely last until past midnight. People would come and go all day. Thoroughly vetted at the front gate, they’d wine, dine, and suck up to the almighty Korsak with all the lip-smacking capability in them.

  With the festivities, no one had the time to take us out and keep an eye on us—as if we needed that. It was the typical sneering complaint of the average teenager. And for all that went on in my father’s business, I was still as average as they came. Unforgivably stupid would be another label that fit to a T. Life can be like that, for an adult or a kid. You look away from the road for one moment, one reckless, idiotic moment, and your car is careening directly into Hell. It could be that you go over a cliff or ram a school bus full of children. It might even be convincing your little brother that sneaking your horses out of the back gate for a ride is the best idea since peanut butter and Playboy.

  The wall hadn’t been much of a challenge for me, and it wasn’t one at all for the horses. They sailed over it, flowing smoothly as a quicksilver shot of mercury. We’d gone to the far back wall and escaped unnoticed. It was an innate skill. Lock a punk-ass teenager in Fort Knox and given enough time he’d find his way out to the nearest trouble. It was what we were bred for.

  “Just like Zorro,” Lukas had said, beaming, his hands entangled in mane.

  For my little brother, however, it wasn’t sneaking around. It wasn’t breaking the rules. It was an adventure of two heroes, no more and no less.

  We rode bareback, and as I pulled a ferocious mock scowl at Lukas, I felt the warm liquid glide of horse muscle beneath me. “If you’re Zorro, then who am I?”

  “My loyal sidekick,” he said solemnly. Our mounts, Annie, the sorrel mare and Harry, the big bay gelding, moved over dry ground and stubby grass toward the path that led down to the beach.

  “Okay, I see where this is going.” Narrowing my eyes, I nudged Harry’s sides and propelled him into a trot. “So, if you’re Robin Hood, I’m . . .”

  “Little John,” he finished with delight, urging Anna after us.

  Counting myself lucky he hadn’t said Maid Marian, I continued the game. “Butch?”

  “Sundance!”

  “Batman?”

  “Robin!” he crowed, laughing at the image of me in green tights.

  I couldn’t decide whether to howl in outrage or laugh. I laughed. It was an easier choice to make then—far easier. “No more old reruns for you, Lukasha.” And then we were on the trail and rocketing down it to the beach at a pace that would’ve turned any adult’s hair white instantly. When we hit the bottom we were at a full gallop. Sand plumed in the air and burned pale gold in the December sun. Salt stung our nostrils as we sent Anna and Harry into the water, but it was a good sting. It was the kind that let you know you were alive and made memories that refused to fade. Until the day I died, the smell of the ocean would always be intrinsically linked with the scent of horse. As much as the rest of that memory sucked, the beginning of it I still cherished. It had been the last perfect moment in my life—the last instant I hadn’t been one of the walking wounded. It was the last time I’d been whole.

  “Slowpoke,” Lukas called over his shoulder as he raced his mare along the shore to leave me in the proverbial dust.

  I let him go, not realizing just how true that was. I let Lukas go, never knowing how permanent a surrender it was. Directing my mount deeper into the water, I hissed at the chill that soaked through my jeans. Harry snorted at the sensation, tossed his head, but kept going. I would chase after Lukas later. After all, we had all day, right? Child that I was, I believed that . . . right up until I heard the first gunshot.

  It was the first I’d ever heard. And although I’d heard a few since, the sound would never rip through me like the first. It couldn’t. The bullet didn’t hit me. It wasn’t even aimed at me, but it staggered my heart as if the lead had plowed through it dead center. When I saw Annie fall, I started to suspect that it might as well have. And when Lukas tumbled onto an outcropping of rock, I wished it had. I wished the blood staining my brother’s pale hair were pumping from my chest instead.

  I don’t remember how, but I managed to get the gelding out of the water and gallop him down the beach. I was in the water and then I was almost to Lukas, limp on his back, with no passing of time between. I was close enough to see his hand lying half on sand, half on rock. It was turned palm upward, the fingers curling slightly, unmoving; a piece of flotsam washed in with the tide, lifeless and still. As the next shot took Harry between his intelligent, dark eyes, Lukas’s hand was the sight I carried with me.

  I wasn’t knocked out, although I may as well have been. Harry took me down as quickly and thoroughly as any tidal wave. The fall crushed the air from my lungs and for several agonizing minutes all I saw and all I breathed in was blackness. Blind and deaf, I struggled against the vise locked around my chest. When the darkness finally parted, I blinked up at an intense blue sky. Not a cloud . . . not one. It was beautiful. The sun was warm and heavy on my legs; so damn heavy. I reached down and felt it under my hand. It was soft, silky, and tickled my skin with the caress of butterfly wings. I frowned. It wasn’t the sun. Warm, yes, but it wasn’t the sun.

  Harry.

  Pulling ragged gasps of air into aching lungs, I pushed up on my elbows. Ominously motionless, the gelding lay across my legs, pinning me to the ground. In my life less than half a day, Harry had now moved on. Reaching over to pull myself up with handfuls of glossy bay fur, I saw someone else moving on as well.

  The man had his back to me. All I could see was short dark hair, a black Windbreaker, and a gun tucked in the back waistband of the man’s jeans. He didn’t look at me, not once—not even when I began yelling at him, when I screamed for help; when I screamed for my daddy in a way I hadn’t since I was a baby. The shooter ignored it all. Stooping, he scooped Lukas up in his arms and began walking away. Thin arms and dangling legs, my brother was the puppet turned into a real live boy, only this time it was the other way around. I screamed until my voice was gone, but the sound of crashing waves and screeching gulls was my only answer. The house was too far, the party too loud. I clawed uselessly at the sand, trying to dig my way out from under the horse.

  When the man disappeared up the trail with Lukas, I was left with nothing but a throat torn to silence, a jaggedly bloody slice along my jaw, hands scraped raw, and a burden of guilt far heavier than the dead horse across my legs.

  There were times, even ten years later, when I woke up in the middle of the night and still felt Harry weighting the lower half of my body down against the mattress. Tonight was one of those. Considering the news Saul had broken to me at lunch, it wasn’t much of a surprise. Brushing a hand over my legs, I almo
st felt the rasp of horsehair against my palm. “Sorry, Harry,” I murmured.

  Pushing against the invisible weight, I sat up and slid out from under the sheet. The clock on the bedside table read just past three a.m. Not your usual digital alarm, it was a fancier, chrome-and-silver-chased timepiece. A gift of my last girlfriend, Natalie, I’d wondered whether it had been her way of telling me our time was running out. In the end, I never got the message, as it had stayed longer than she had managed to. She was the exception. I wasn’t much on long relationships. Blaming it on my “work” would be easy enough, but the true bottom line? The search for Lukas took up so much of my resources, including the emotional ones, that I simply didn’t have enough left over to live a life.

  So I screwed around with the type of women who didn’t mind my unpredictable hours or what I did with that time. Most were dancers at the club or friends of girlfriends of the guys I rubbed shoulders with. Consequently, most had a moral elasticity that more than rivaled mine. They weren’t any more invested in me than I was in them. Screwing around was the right term on both sides. Our kind weren’t into relationships. Natalie though . . . Natalie had been different. I’d gone to college with Nat and even dated her off and on my sophomore and junior year. When I ran into her three years later, we had picked up where we’d left off without missing a beat. There was the same banter; Nat had a wit sharper and more delicately cutting than glass. There were the same habits of late-night pizza and early-morning runs, which was one helluva sacrifice for me. Sleeping late wasn’t just a hobby; it was a God-given right. Only Natalie could’ve prodded me out of bed as quickly as my frequent nightmares did, but her way tended to be much more pleasant. Long red hair, that natural kind almost as orange as a carrot, laughing blue eyes, and freckles that bloomed like tiny scarlet poppies across the tops of her milk-pale breasts, she was beautiful, intelligent, quick-tempered, and honest to the bone—so honest, in fact, that she became the first woman I lied to.