Final Days

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Come on! We have to get outside!”

  They ran for the door, and Andrew struggled to pull it open, cords standing out on his arms as he wrenched on the handle with everything he had. The frame was twisting along with everything else, making it impossible to open the door.

  Then the thunderous shaking stopped, and the door flew open. Andrew stumbled back a few steps and ran outside with Selena. Car alarms were going off all over the city. Smoke rose in a dark pillar above the tops of the palm trees that lined the horizon.

  Andrew and Selena stood staring at each other in shock before hurrying to his truck. Andrew climbed in first.

  “Just a tremor,” Selena breathed as she entered the vehicle and slammed the door.

  “How long does the news say we have before the big one hits?” Andrew asked, dragging his gaze from staring sightlessly out the windshield.

  “Who knows? Days? Weeks? It’s not that precise. I’d guess it won’t be long.”

  Andrew nodded and stared out the windshield, his hands on the wheel, wondering what to do.

  “Andy, what if we don’t find her in time? Mike sent me a message. He said we’re packing up and heading for his grandparents’ ranch in Texas to wait out the storm.”

  “Mike can wait out the storm in hell for all I care. I’m not going anywhere until I find our daughter.”

  Selena nodded and bit her lip as she looked away, her eyes drifting out of focus. “I’m due for my shift at the hospital soon. I haven’t even slept...”

  Andrew nodded. “I’ll take you home. I have enough leads to follow on my own for now.”

  “What leads?” Selena demanded.

  “The brother. I’m going to wait around and see if he shows up. If not, I’ll try to track him down at his university in San Diego.”

  Selena seemed torn, still biting her lip.

  “Seriously, there’s not much you can do to help me at this point. If something comes up, I’ll let you know.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Okay.”

  Andrew drove Selena home to Malibu, then pulled into a gas station to fill up on gas and munchies for what was to come. From there, he raced over to Santa Monica to stake out the Claremontes’ place. After about an hour and two bags of potato chips, his eyelids sank shut. He told himself he’d just take fifteen minutes...

  And then he woke up in the dark to the sight of red and blue police lights strobing through his truck. He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, staring hard at the police cars parked in front of the Claremontes’ home. There were three cars. He left his truck and ran up to their front door, ignoring the protests of several policemen along the way. Two of them were standing on the front step, speaking with Rick and Tina.

  “Hey!” Andrew called out. The policemen turned, their hands on their guns. They stared at him for a long second, quietly gauging how much of a threat he might be. “What’s going on here?” he demanded, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.

  “That’s really none of your business, sir,” one of the officers said.

  Tina answered, “Justin is missing, too.” Her voice sounded far away, dull with shock. She shook her head. “He was answering his e-mail, but when I tried to call him, it went straight to voice mail. Then I tried his girlfriend, and she said he was supposed to be here...”

  Andrew cursed under his breath and spun away, running back to his truck. The police called after him, but he ignored them. Three disappearances now. They had to be related. Either Justin was the one who had taken both girls, or else he was a third victim. Either way, the only thing left for him to do was to head to UC San Diego and start asking questions around campus.

  Nine

  Andrew

  6 Days Left…

  It took Andrew three hours to drive from LA to San Diego. By the time he arrived, it was after midnight and everything was closed. He wouldn’t be able to investigate much until morning, so he pulled into the nearest motel and booked a room. He wasn’t tired, but the alternative was waiting in his truck until sunrise, and he wasn’t sure he liked his odds out on the streets in the middle of the night, with all the looters and crazies emerging from their hiding spots.

  Andrew couldn’t help but notice that his truck was the only one parked in the motel parking lot. The street it backed onto was deserted, and the highway on the way down had been suspiciously devoid of traffic as well. The only sounds to break up the ominous silence of the night were the ubiquitous screams of police and ambulance sirens, but how long before even those were silenced?

  Andrew strode across the blacktop. It was wet and gleaming, like blood, in the motel’s giant red neon sign. He pushed through the doors into the motel office, but no one was sitting behind the front desk. Stepping up to it, he slammed his palm onto the old silver bell half a dozen times.

  Something thumped like a person falling out of bed, and a door creaked open somewhere down the hall. A man in a sweat-stained white tank top crept into view, holding a shotgun.

  Andrew slowly raised his hands above his head. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You here to rob me?” the man asked.

  “No. I need a room for the night.”

  The man crept toward the front desk, keeping Andrew covered with his shotgun the whole way. He recognized the make and model of the weapon: a Mossberg 500 Bantam. The guy holding it had a shiny runway strip on his head between two thinning tufts of long, greasy brown hair that were sticking out at odd angles above his ears. He bore a striking resemblance to Krusty the Clown. A hairy belly peeked out right above the band of his boxer shorts. All he needed to complete the look of middle-aged desperation was a soggy cigar butt dangling from his lips.

  “A room, huh? Are you crazy? Or is that just where you’re gonna stash your loot for the night?”

  “What? No, no loot. I’m here for my daughter. I just drove from LA. I’m looking for a place to lie low until UC San Diego opens in the morning. I figured my chances of making it through the night undisturbed would be better with a door and a lock than sitting in my truck.”

  “Yeah.” Krusty grinned and nodded slowly. “Sure. That makes sense.”

  “So, how much for the night?” Andrew asked.

  “How much you got?” Krusty replied. There was a nasty gleam in his eyes that brought Andrew’s guard screaming up. He glanced wistfully at the doors behind him and his truck waiting out in the lot. He had a pistol in the glove box. He should have brought it with him.

  “What’s the matter?” Krusty asked. “Someone waiting for ya out there? Are you the bait?”

  Andrew heard the action of the shotgun rattle as Krusty raised it to his shoulder. He turned back around and summoned what he hoped was a nonchalant expression. “No, it’s only me.”

  Krusty’s gaze darted over Andrew’s shoulder to his truck and back a few times, as if he was waiting for someone to jump out. “All right, then. Hand your wallet over. Nice and slow.”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy,” Andrew said. He slowly lowered one hand to his back pocket and withdrew his brown leather bifold.

  Krusty spared a hand from his shotgun to pocket the wallet in his boxers, not bothering to check the contents. He’s lucky he has side pockets, Andrew thought. Or maybe I’m the lucky one. Where would he have put my wallet if he didn’t?

  Andrew shrugged. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “Yeah? What about that phone of yours?” Krusty nodded to the rectangular bulge in Andrew’s jeans pocket.

  He grimaced and removed the phone, handing it over.

  Again, Krusty switched to a one-handed grip on his shotgun, this time balancing the stock under a hairy, sweaty armpit while he examined the phone.

  “Nice. Latest model Samsung, huh?”

  Andrew nodded.

  “That might fetch something. What’s the lock pattern?”

  “A V, as in veteran. That’s who you’re robbing, by the way.”

  “No shit? Tha
nks for your service, man.” His gaze dipped to the phone to try the code.

  Big mistake.

  Andrew sprang forward, grabbing the shotgun barrel in both hands and forcing it out of line with his chest. A split second later it exploded in his grip as Krusty pulled the trigger. Glass shattered behind him, and Andrew’s hands went painfully numb as pins and needles raced up both his arms. He ignored the sensation, and ripped the shotgun away in one smooth motion. Krusty’s beady black eyes flew wide, and he lunged after the weapon, but Andrew was far too fast for him. He withdrew in two quick steps, pumped a new round into the chamber, and aimed the gun at Krusty’s chest. “Hand the wallet over. Now.”

  “Sure, man,” he said, licking his lips and smiling like a true psycho. Krusty placed the wallet on the desk between them, too close for Andrew to safely reach for it.

  “And the phone.” Andrew nodded to where Krusty had dropped it in their brief struggle over the gun. “Pick it up.”

  Krusty smiled, but he made no move to comply. “Go ahead and shoot me. That’s the new law. Kill or be killed. It ain’t murder. It’s survival. No one blames a lion for killing a deer.”

  “Lions and deer don’t even live on the same continent.”

  “They do these days,” Krusty said, his eyes gleaming like black pearls. “Shoot me.”

  “If you have a death wish, you’re going to have to fulfill it yourself. Now pick up my phone.”

  “No.”

  “Fine.”

  Andrew flipped the shotgun around and smashed the stock into the man’s forehead. Krusty stumbled back a step, blinking in a daze. Andrew swept in behind him and yanked the gun up under his chin, pulling it hard against his throat. The man’s hands flew up, trying to push the gun away, but Andrew was stronger. Krusty tried donkey-kicking a few times, but he wasn’t flexible enough to reach anything vital, and Andrew’s shins could take some kicks. It wasn’t long before the fight left the man entirely and he collapsed on the floor in a stinking heap.

  Andrew’s nose wrinkled at the sweat smell now clinging to him. “Idiot,” he muttered, even as he checked the guy’s pulse. Still going strong. He stood up and left the clown lying behind his desk to conduct a quick search of the area. He checked the man’s bedroom first, and found actual handcuffs and keys in the nightstand. He snatched the handcuffs out of the drawer, trying hard not to think what they might have been used for, and tossed the keys under the bed.

  Back at the front desk, he used the cuffs to chain the guy to a metal beam that made up part of the desk. The middle-aged motel owner groaned and stirred where he lay, his wrist now bent at an awkward angle. Andrew straightened and plucked the phone off the desk, snapping the cord before tossing it aside.

  Andrew spared a rueful glance at the motel owner before grabbing a room key off a rack on the wall. He took the shotgun with him and stalked out of the office. Eventually the owner would find a way to drag his desk into the bedroom, and he’d find the keys for the handcuffs under his bed. But by then, Andrew would be long gone.

  Five minutes later he was lying on a bed that he didn’t have to pay for in one of the motel’s many vacant suites. The shotgun leaned against the nightstand beside him for company. Having slept all through the day while staking out the Claremontes’ home, he wasn’t the least bit tired. Probably just as well.

  But idleness soon turned to worry, and worry to naked terror as he contemplated how many hours had passed since Val had disappeared. The alarm clock on the nightstand showed 2:39 a.m. Tuesday already. Val had gone missing at about 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, at about the same time that Selena had been bailing him out of jail. He remembered reading somewhere that the first forty-eight hours of a missing persons investigation were the most critical. After that, the trail typically went cold. By the time he could snoop around UC San Diego, it would have been almost exactly forty-eight hours.

  Andrew gritted his teeth, vowing to rain hellfire on whoever had abducted his daughter.

  * * *

  Kendra

  There were far more people remaining at the University of San Diego’s campus than Kendra had expected. Some students milled about, and she stopped a pair of young men on her way towards the registrar’s office.

  “What’s going on? Are classes still taking place?” she asked one of them.

  He looked her up and down, obviously judging her pantsuit as a sign she wasn’t a freshman. “We were just told the semester’s been put on hold. Can you believe it? They really have faith in this crap about the storms. I bet we don’t even see rain,” the guy said, slinging his pack higher up on his shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Kendra said dryly.

  She headed to the main office and pushed through the unlocked doors. A red-eyed woman sat at the front desk, her hair a mess, her clothes wrinkled.

  “Can I help you?” The words out of her mouth were robotic.

  Kendra cleared her throat. “I’m Special Agent Kendra Baker, and I’m here to talk about Professor James Hughes.”

  The woman’s eyes went wide behind her plastic-framed glasses. “Mr. Hughes isn’t here.”

  “I know. I’d like to speak to someone about him.”

  A man appeared from down the hall, sporting a tweed jacket and khaki pants, nodding to the receptionist. “It’s all right, Bonnie. I’ll talk to Ms. Baker.” He was older, maybe sixty, and had perfectly coiffed hair. He smelled like English Leather, even from across the room, the exact opposite of Bonnie.

  “Thank you, Mr.…?” Kendra showed her badge, even though he hadn’t asked to see it, and he nodded, turning to lead her to his office. It was stuffy, the lights dim and the window coverings closed.

  “Carl Manson. With everything going on out there, I’m surprised to see the FBI sniffing around for one missing man. The police didn’t seem interested in the least,” the man said, with the hint of an English accent. She guessed his parents had emigrated from England when he was young.

  “I’ve noticed a trend, and I’m hoping you can help me out. The report didn’t indicate much about what happened, only that Mr. Hughes was gone,” Kendra told him.

  “That’s because the police couldn’t get out here sooner. James was absent last Thursday, which in itself didn’t cause us alarm, but on Friday, we began to suspect he was sick or had been hurt. With the warnings starting to trickle in about the inevitable catastrophe, at first I thought he might have headed inland like countless others.

  “We’ve had four professors and half of the students absent for some time now, but James wasn’t like that. He was dedicated, and always considerate. I checked his house,” Carl said.

  Kendra made notes on her tablet. “You checked his house?”

  He nodded. “There was no sign of forced entry, and his car wasn’t there. So I came here and watched the footage.”

  “The footage? You have surveillance?” Kendra asked.

  “Let me show you,” he said, flipping his desktop monitor around on his cluttered desk. He opened a program and found the correct file, playing it for her.

  She watched as a man, presumably James Hughes, slid into a compact blue hatchback and began to drive off. A black Tesla pulled behind him, following him from the parking lot.

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “May I?” she asked.

  “Be my guest,” he said, relinquishing his chair for her. It was much more comfortable than the hard one she’d first been offered.

  Kendra flicked through the feeds and found another angle. This one was from five minutes earlier, as the Tesla arrived. She paused the video and zoomed on the plate, marking the details down. 6TRJ2… The last two digits were blurry. She fought for another angle, but the limited surveillance resources at the university made it impossible to obtain a better viewpoint.

  Kendra scanned through the other camera’s footage and found a shot she could use. The driver of the Tesla was wearing sunglasses, but she could tell he had short dark hair and was wearing a b
lack blazer.

  “Excuse me. Do you have a printer?” she asked him, and Manson nodded.

  “Just hit print, and it’ll come out,” he replied.

  Soon she had about five solid images. She’d spent a good day or so combing over the cases, and at least twice there had been mention of a black Tesla at the scene, as well as a tall Caucasian man with dark eyes and hair. This was the guy. She watched him follow James from the lot, and realized she needed to find this man. He was the linchpin in the entire case. She could feel it in her veins.

  “Thank you for your help, Mr. Manson.” She shook his hand and slipped her card on his desk. “If you find out anything else, let me know.”

  * * *

  Andrew

  The next morning Andrew gave the belligerent motel owner a break and fetched the keys to his handcuffs. He also returned the shotgun, minus the shells.

  “You’re lucky I don’t call the cops!” the motel owner said while massaging a red mark around his wrist.

  “Back at you,” Andrew said.

  He left the office at a run, climbed into his truck, and raced out of the parking lot with tires squealing and engine roaring. Not long after that, he stormed the campus of UC San Diego, heading straight for the registrar’s office.

  Inside, a woman with frizzy, tangled hair sat behind the front desk. She watched him as he approached, her eyes red from crying.

  “Hello,” he said, pretending not to notice her distress.

  “What do you want?” she snapped.

  “I’m looking for a student who goes to school here.”

  “No one goes to school here anymore. The semester has been suspended, pending further notice.”

  “Okay, but what if I want to find out about a student who was studying here recently?”

  The woman gave him a disinterested stare, eyes blinking slowly, drifting out of focus. “That information is private.”