“Yeah, we did. But I don’t think it was really Lisa in there. You know what I mean?” He smoothed his hand over Cade’s dark hair. “That woman wasn’t acting anything like Lisa. Lisa wouldn’t have tried to kill you, and Lisa wouldn’t have pulled that bullshit and gotten herself shot.” He paused and turned back to Cade, his face serious. Cade knew by his expression that he was about to suggest something she wouldn’t like. “We need to get the body out of the car.”
“Should we call the police?” Cade asked. She finally stole a reluctant look back at the vehicle. She was surprised at how normal it appeared sitting at a slant on the side of the road. Cade had expected it to look dark and sinister, to bear some evidence of the events that had transpired inside of it on its outsides. As she stared at the Jeep, a van sped by on the highway with a roar of its engines, but it made no move to slow or stop.
Ethan hesitated as he thought her question over. Then he shook his head slowly. “No. They have enough to worry about right now. Just … trust me, okay?” he urged. He put his hand gently against her back. “We need to get her out of the car, and then we need to get to Gadsden and make sure my mother is okay.”
Chapter 8
It didn’t take Ethan long to move Lisa’s body out of the Jeep’s back seat. He laid her body out as gently as he could on the passenger side of the vehicle so she couldn’t be seen from the highway. He covered her with a blanket before he moved back to the car to scrub the blood out of the seat. Cade waited on the side of the road, her back to the blanket-covered body and the Jeep. Her shoulders were so tense that Ethan could see her stiffness even from where he stood.
Ethan ran his hand through his hair, pushing the blond strands away from his eyes as he scrutinized the darkened interior of the Jeep. It looked like he’d gotten as much blood as would be possible out of the seat, but the faint scent of the metallic liquid hung in the air. Ethan wrinkled his nose in disgust and took a step back from the opened door. Something told him that he and Cade were going to end up driving to Gadsden with the windows rolled down, despite the chill starting to bite into the air around them.
“How’s it coming?” Cade called from her spot at the side of the road. She stood with her arms wrapped around her as she watched traffic pass along the highway. Ethan felt another pang of worry. He knew that this wasn’t the first time the Israeli woman had been involved with a killing. It wasn’t the first time for him, either. Their histories had put them in the occasional situation where they’d been forced or ordered to pull the trigger. Somehow, though, this time felt different. This time felt more like murder, despite the threat Lisa had posed to them. Perhaps it was the fact that Ethan had known her in life that made her death so difficult for him to wrap his mind around.
Ethan stepped away from the car, leaving the back passenger door open, and walked over to Cade. He stood beside her in companionable silence for a moment and watched the traffic roll by. He wondered where all the people were going, where they thought they could escape to as the entire southeast crumbled around them. North? East? West? Ethan knew it was only a matter of time before whatever caused this chaos spread to other cities—and possibly even other countries.
Ethan let out a weighty sigh and shook himself free from his thoughts. He hooked his arm around Cade’s shoulder, pulled her close, and gave her a gentle squeeze. “I think the car is about as clean as it’s going to get,” he told her.
Cade leaned into Ethan’s side. She stared off across the highway blankly as they stood side by side. She finally broke the silence that had settled over them like a thick blanket. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
“Head out to Gadsden, like we planned,” Ethan said. He leaned his head against hers and squeezed her again. “And when we get there, we’re going to make sure Mom is okay. After that, we’re going to hole up and not think about anything for a while. A long while, if I can help it.”
“And after that?”
Ethan breathed out again. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, okay?” he said. He looked back at the Jeep and tugged at her arm as he took a step away from her. “Come on. We need to get moving. I’ll drive for a while.”
Ethan could sense the gratitude in the look Cade gave him even in the darkness around them. She pulled away from him and circled the Jeep to the passenger side, stepping delicately around Lisa’s blanketed body to climb inside. Ethan considered not moving on until the highway was clear of cars. But that could take hours, and he didn’t think they had hours. Resigning himself to the likelihood that someone would see Lisa’s body on the side of the road at some point, Ethan climbed into the driver’s seat. He put the Jeep in gear and headed down the highway once more.
Cade and Ethan traveled in silence for over two hours, the radio the only sound between them. As they listened to the frantic reports of riots spreading out from the limits of the major southeastern cities, Ethan dialed his mother’s phone number repeatedly, but he kept getting the operator informing him that his call could not be completed.
Ethan swore as the operator’s mechanical voice spoke into his ear again. He slammed the cell phone down into the console between the seats. “Fucking phones are down,” he grumbled as Cade gave him a questioning look.
Cade pushed her windblown hair out of her face and rolled up her window halfway. She pulled her leather jacket tighter around herself with her free hand. “Can’t get in touch with your mom?”
“No, and I’m worried,” Ethan admitted. He slowed the Jeep as he approached the end of a very long line of glowing tail-lights. “The radio’s mentioned—”
“Birmingham,” Cade finished. Gadsden wasn’t very far from Birmingham in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the escalating violence had reached the city in which Ethan’s mother lived, and they were both fully aware of it. “I know. I heard.”
Ethan fell silent once more as nightmarish thoughts swirled in his head. He had no idea what he was going to find once he and Cade reached Gadsden, but he had a creeping suspicion that it would be something he wasn’t going to like. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and glanced at Cade. She had picked up his cell phone and had begun to scroll through his contacts list, her ice-blue eyes focused intently on the small LCD screen.
“Have you tried sending a text message?” Cade asked. She started to type with one of her thumbs on the phone’s small keypad. “Sometimes if the network is overloaded with voice calls, it’s easier to get a text message to slip through.”
Ethan’s cheeks flushed with heat as he shook his head. He was honestly embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of that. “No, I haven’t,” he said with a healthy dose of chagrin. “My mother doesn’t have a text messaging plan. I’m kind of in the habit of not sending them to her.”
Cade continued to peck out her message on Ethan’s phone. “Well, I’m sending her one. We’ll worry about the whole ten cents it will cost her later, okay?” She smirked as she finished the message and hit the send button. She flipped the phone closed and set it back in the console before looking out the windshield at the cars ahead. “Is there any way we can get around this damned traffic? I don’t feel comfortable getting stuck in it. God only knows what will happen with so many people around.”
Ethan grabbed the map book from the dashboard where he’d tossed it and flipped backwards through it to examine the map of Alabama. “We’re over the state line now, aren’t we?” he asked. He squinted through the windshield and searched for a road sign to give him a hint of their location.
“I think I saw a sign back there that said something about Jasper,” Cade suggested. Ethan found Jasper on the map and started to measure the distance between it and Gadsden with his fingers.
“We want to avoid Birmingham itself,” Ethan said as he walked his fingers over the paper. “And the way I normally go to Mom’s takes us right through Birmingham. So we’re going to get off on Highway 69 just up ahead and cut up above Birmingham.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Cade said. She leaned down to the floorboard of the Jeep and retrieved the heavy black case at her feet. She set it across her knees reverently and ran both hands over the lid, nearly caressing it. “Can I have the key, please?”
“Key?” Ethan repeated. She seemed to be asking him for keys an awful lot lately. “What are you doing?”
Cade shrugged innocently and held out her hand to him. “Doesn’t hurt to be prepared, does it? Now, key please.”
Ethan sighed and shoved his hand in his pocket. He pulled out the silver key but didn’t hand it to her right away. Instead, he closed his fist around it and simply looked at her as the Jeep idled in the stalled traffic. She made an impatient face and wiggled her fingers. “You’re not going to get us in trouble, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” Cade said. “The permits are in the case, and I barely even have any ammo for it. It’s just a precaution, Ethan. Always be prepared and all that shit.” She waved her hand around flippantly as she said the last part and gave him a small smile.
Ethan snorted and shook his head ruefully. “You weren’t even in the Girl Scouts, Cade,” he pointed out. He surrendered the key. He didn’t know how he felt about Cade running around the state of Alabama with that rifle in her hands, but discomfort was definitely high on the list of possibilities.
“And you weren’t exactly a Boy Scout, but the idea still holds true, doesn’t it?” Cade said. She took the key with a look of almost unholy glee on her face.
“Why do I get this horrible feeling that I’m going to regret handing you that key?” Ethan asked. He tapped the gas pedal to ease the Jeep forward.
“Probably because you know me entirely too well,” Cade said. Her small smile turned into a wide, cheeky grin as she unlocked the case and flipped the lid open.
Chapter 9
Ethan pulled the SUV to a slow stop in front of his mother’s house. The sun had barely begun to tint the sky, and it was difficult to see the house in the dim light. There was no light coming from it or any of the houses nearby, and the street was dark. The lack of light made Cade nervous, and she gritted her teeth as she leaned forward in her seat. She clutched the rifle in her hands for some level of comfort and looked around the interior of the car, checking the console and glove box for a flashlight. “You got a light, Eth?”
Ethan nodded and opened his door. “Yeah, there’s one in my bag in the back,” he said as he slid out. Cade opened her own door and eased slowly out of the Jeep. She lifted her rifle to her shoulder and swept the street as she squinted into the darkness. Her instincts screamed for her to get back inside the Jeep, but she refused to let Ethan go on alone. Nothing about the dark street felt safe to her, and any backup she could offer Ethan would be given without hesitation or request.
“What’s with the gun?” Ethan asked as he offered Cade the flashlight. Cade took it and turned it on. She shone it over the front lawn of Ethan’s mother’s house as far as the beam would reach. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary—other than the oppressive darkness in the street.
“Rifle,” Cade corrected automatically. “And I’m just taking adequate precautions.” She spoke casually, but her tone didn’t do much to mask the nervous butterflies that kicked up in her stomach. She swallowed hard and curled two fingers around the flashlight to keep the beam ahead of her as she made her way to the front door. “Your mom can yell at me for waving a rifle in her face later. I’m just trying to keep us from getting killed right now.”
“Getting killed?” Ethan repeated. He followed Cade up the concrete walkway. “You think it’s that serious?” Cade looked back at him. Despite his words, she noticed his hand resting on the handgun he kept at his hip.
“That’s what my instincts are telling me,” Cade said as she reached the front porch. “And I learned very quickly to listen to my instincts in the IDF. They never failed me then, and I’m sure they won’t now. Get up here and open the door.”
Ethan followed Cade’s lead and drew his Glock from its holster. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and thumbed through them to find the right one. He only dropped the set of keys once in the attempt, and after he’d scrambled to pick them up, he slid the correct key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open with his foot. It swung open with barely a sound and revealed an interior that was just as dark as the street outside. “Who’s first?” Ethan asked.
“I’ll go,” Cade volunteered. She pulled the keys from the lock and tossed them back to Ethan before she slipped inside. She scanned the dark entryway as she shone her flashlight across it. “Where would your mother most likely be?”
“Probably upstairs in her room,” Ethan guessed. Cade frowned as she moved farther into the foyer to make room for Ethan to enter the house behind her.
“Leave the front door open,” Cade said. She dropped her voice to a hushed murmur, more out of an abundance of caution and instinct than anything else.
“Why?”
“Just in case we need to get out quick,” Cade said. “Because I actually have a sense of self-preservation.” She nodded toward the living room door. “I’ll check out the living room and kitchen. You hit the other rooms on this floor, and then we’ll go upstairs together.” Ethan let out a breath and nodded. Cade caught his forearm as he started to move past her. “Keep your eyes open and stay on guard,” she said. “You never know what we’re going to find here. It’s best to be prepared for the worst.”
Cade closed her eyes for just a moment as Ethan disappeared into the darkness of the house. His footsteps echoed faintly against the walls. Cade suddenly felt horribly alone. In the absence of the one distracting element she’d had since their flight from Memphis, Cade found her mind sliding back to thoughts of Josie and Andrew. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she bit down hard on her lip as she struggled to quell them. She shook her head as she forced her mind to focus on the task at hand. Shouldering her rifle once more, Cade moved on cats’ feet toward the living room, barely making a sound as she slid down the hallway to the door.
Cade had been to Ethan’s mother’s house before, when Ethan had dragged her along to visit his mother after his father’s death. The room looked almost exactly the same as it had the year before, though there were a few new pictures of Ethan and Anna lining the mantelpiece. She swallowed hard as she saw Anna’s smiling face frozen in the frames above the fireplace, and she forced her eyes away. She didn’t need to succumb to emotional impulses when she had work to do. Cade swept her rifle quickly over a room completely devoid of movement before she stepped inside and eased her way along the outer walls to the kitchen door.
Cade stopped short as she took in her initial sweep of the usually immaculate kitchen. What she saw by the beam of her flashlight made her eyes widen in surprise.
The kitchen had been the scene of a tremendous fight. Canisters of flour and sugar had been knocked over and their contents spilled across the counter and onto the floor. A bowl of cereal lay broken and clotted on the breakfast table in the corner of the kitchen. Chairs were overturned. The open back door let in the frigid air from outside. The knife block in the center of the island counter lay on its side. The largest knife in the block was missing from its slot. Cade shone her light around to look for it and spotted a pool of partially congealed blood near the stainless steel refrigerator. It was splashed across the wooden floorboards and spattered on the bottom half of the refrigerator. Cade was unsure if it was enough blood to indicate that someone had died there, but it was enough for her to dart back to the hallway to call for assistance.
“Ethan!” Cade yelled. “Get in the kitchen, quick!”
It took Ethan only moments to meet Cade in the kitchen doorway. Cade shone her flashlight’s beam around the kitchen to show Ethan what had prompted her to call out. Ethan stopped short two steps into the room and sucked in a sharp breath.
“Jesus, what happened?” Ethan asked, horror invading his features.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Cade said. S
he paced the room and took in the sight of the damage. “It looks like there was a serious fight in here. You find your mom?”
“She isn’t here,” Ethan confirmed. “I finished up downstairs quicker than I thought I would and checked out the second floor. No sign.”
Cade nodded to the open back door and paused in the doorway to look out across the back yard. A cold wind blew through her dark hair and inched up underneath her jacket and flannel shirt. She shivered violently. Her finger hovered over the safety on her rifle, ready to slide it to its off position at a moment’s notice. “Maybe she got out of here,” Cade suggested. “Think she might be at a neighbor’s or somewhere nearby?”
“Maybe,” Ethan said. His voice was heavy with doubt. “We should check it out.”
“Wait,” Cade said. She stepped out onto the back deck, her boots thumping hollowly on the treated wooden planks. She scanned the back yard again and studied the shadows for anything unusual. Her instincts still yammered at the back of her skull, clamoring for attention. Cade drew in a breath and stepped back inside. She shut the door firmly and locked it behind her. “We should wait until the sun comes up. I want to be able to see everything around us.”
“But my mom—”
“If your mom is at a neighbor’s house, then she’ll be fine for another thirty minutes,” Cade insisted. She skirted the pool of blood and went to the front door to close and lock it too. “And if she’s not at the neighbor’s house…” Cade trailed off and let the implication hang in the air.
“Then there’s nothing we can do for her,” Ethan finished.
Cade nodded and retrieved a chair from the kitchen. She set it by the front door and sat in it, studying the street outside in silence. She rested her rifle across her knees and took her hair out of its ponytail so she could put it back up more neatly. “You okay?” Cade asked Ethan after she’d snapped the elastic band back around her hair.
The Becoming Page 8