Never Forget: A Novella in the Echo Platoon Series

by Marliss Melton

  What a hell of a way to ruin a perfect evening. Why, oh why, did he have to be so freaking honest?

  *

  CURTIS WAITED UNTIL the last echo of the men’s footsteps faded. Total darkness pressed in on him, hemming him in like the narrow tunnel he’d been forced to crawl up inside.

  They’d searched his pockets for a phone and ended up taking his money. Then they’d swung the tubs full of guns out of the tunnel and forced him to crawl inside, face first.

  As he’d craned his neck to look back at them, they closed the grate behind him and replaced the padlock. Then Tom, having dragged a confession out of Santana as to how he’d opened it in the first place, had taken the screwdriver and tamped the screws down tight.

  “There’s no way he’s gettin’ out of here now,” he’d declared.

  They had finally left him there—to die. And not a word or a look from Santana, reassuring him that he would come back for him or call the authorities.

  Curtis had watched them walk away, taking the light with them. With the hard plastic of his cellphone bruising his nuts, he hadn’t cried or begged for mercy. He couldn’t wait for them to leave.

  At last, when all he could hear was the steady trickle of the water chasing through the pipes, he reached inside his drawers and pulled his phone out.

  The green glow of the keypad drove back the shadows, staving off his panic. He deliberated a moment—call his mother first or 9-1-1?

  He opted for his mom. The phone chirped as he pressed the keys. Then he put it to his ear, breathing heavily as he rehearsed what he was going to say to her.

  He waited for a ringing sound . . . and waited . . . and waited.

  Oh, no. He glanced at the bars on his screen, and his hopes plummeted. One bar. He didn’t have enough cellular reception.

  Oh, God, no. He’d been counting on the phone to get him out of there. But the depth of the tunnel and the density of the earth above it kept his phone from working.

  Don’t panic!

  But his lungs labored for oxygen and fear paralyzed him.

  No one but Santana and the gun smugglers knew where he was. Santana would be too afraid to tell anyone. He could end up rotting in here, just like Uncle Will had intended!

  A sob of fear broke through the stricture of his throat. The cement enclosure magnified the sound, driving home just how terrified he was becoming.

  Don’t let fear take over. Rusty had never said that to him, but Curtis could practically hear him saying that. What would Rusty do under these circumstances? He’d think his way through it.

  He knew the grate was locked. He’d heard the distinct click of the deadbolt after they’d shut him in. Then Tom, having gotten a confession out of Santana that he’d unscrewed the hinges to break in, had taken the screwdriver and twisted the screws down tight. There was no getting out the way Curtis had gone in. So, now what?

  A distant rumble of thunder seemed to echo down the pipe he was in. In the next instant an unmistakable wetness touched his elbows, then his belly, then his knees. He lifted himself away from it, only to strike his head and shoulders on the ceiling of the tunnel.

  Rainwater.

  He snatched up his cell before it got wet and faced its dim light ahead of him. It must be storming outside. Clearly, the tunnel sloped downward if the rain was only now reaching him. That meant if he crawled forward, he’d be headed toward better cellular reception.

  Uncle Will had said something about there being no way out. But that couldn’t be true if water was coming in. Maybe the line would lead to an opening he could squeeze through. At the very least, he could make a phone call.

  Closing his cell with a decisive click, he snuffed out the light. Darkness engulfed him. He slid the phone into his back pocket, swallowed his fear, then started forward. The water that had been seeping down the pipe streamed past his hands and knees, nearly an inch deep. He could hear it pouring out of the drain behind him into the concrete main.

  “Oh, come on,” he moaned, wondering what would happen if this line continued to fill. What if he drowned down here?

  Stay focused.

  He crawled as quickly as he could, the rough cement floor abrading his palms and his knees. His breath sawed in the enclosed space, louder even than the sound of water rippling around him.

  The tunnel seemed endless. He lost track of how far he’d gone. The water level had crept to his wrists. His palms and knees felt raw. Did this line ever end? He paused for a moment, dried a hand on his T-shirt and pulled out his phone to check for reception. Two bars, yes!

  Suddenly something furry bumped into his knee. He jerked reflexively, and tiny claws sank into his thigh.

  “Aaagh!” Startled, he shook it off, dropping his phone in the process. It splashed into the water. He groped for it, hoping to snatch it out in time to avoid damage. Where was it? Not there. Not anywhere. The current must have carried it away.

  “No!” His howl of despair echoed up and down the tight, dark cylinder.

  “Fuck!” he added, because what difference did it make? Thanks to his stupidity and his blind trust, he was stuck in this storm drain. He would either drown in the next few hours, or he’d slowly starve to death. Neither option appealed to him in the least.

  “Mom!” He yelled the word that had always brought his mother running.

  But the only reply was another distant rumble of thunder. It sounded as far away as it had before he’d started crawling.

  With a sob that came from deep down inside of him, Curtis started bawling.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‡

  MAYA PACED THE length of her bedroom, her bare feet silent on the carpet. Outside her dark window, thunder rumbled, echoing the turmoil in her heart.

  Rusty had dropped her off an hour earlier, leaping out of his car to open her door. He’d walked her up her stoop, stopping short of taking her keys to open the lock for her.

  A tense silence had enveloped them, making the moment supremely awkward, where she’d hoped it would be silent in an exciting, anticipatory way. If he hadn’t brought up that business about ghosts, then she’d have been deliberating whether they would have time before Curtis got home to make love. Instead, all she’d wanted was some time alone, in which to ponder what he’d told her.

  Fortunately, he was an astute man. As her door swung open, he’d captured her hand, lifted it to his lips, and softly kissed her knuckles.

  “Sleep on it,” he’d advised before retreating with the kind of stealth she was coming to associate with him.

  But she couldn’t sleep. For one thing, Curtis wasn’t home yet. She had called him on his cell and texted him, reminding him he was supposed to be home at ten, but his phone went right to voicemail, suggesting his battery had died. She would have to ground him for ignoring his curfew.

  Why did children have to test their parents? It only made it harder on the both of them.

  Outside thunder gave way to a torrential downpour. Raindrops pelted her windows, filling her with an inexplicable uneasiness. She’d felt the same way when Rusty had mentioned that he saw the dead—he actually saw them! How could that be?

  As a special investigator, she held great respect for the value of evidence. Evidence was something one could examine, look at, and smell. Where was the proof that ghosts existed, let alone that he could see them? She shook her head while nibbling on a hangnail. It made no sense in her black-and-white take on reality.

  Her gaze swung toward Ian’s portrait hanging on the wall.

  I’m looking at the dead right now, she reasoned. But that was completely different. The picture was solid. Furthermore, it wasn’t Ian looking back at her but merely a likeness of him. And the portrait never talked to her, however much she wished it would.

  At least Rusty hadn’t asked her to believe him. No, he’d just taken a moment filled with sensual promise and blown it to hell with his, “Oh, by the way, I see dead people.”

  Had he done it on purpose to derail the moment? Or p
erhaps he hallucinated due to war injuries or even because of survivor’s guilt?

  She ought to have known he was too good to be true.

  A noose of self-pity closed around her throat. At this rate, she would never love again. Her youth would fade, leaving her a lonely widow for the rest of her days. She supposed she ought to be grateful this had all come about before they’d gotten any closer. For, in her mind, their amazing connection would have taken them swiftly in the direction of marriage.

  But now? Probably not.

  Her gaze slid to the clock by her bed and worry fell like a rock to the bottom of her belly. Goodness, it was coming up on eleven already! Picking up her phone, she called Curtis again, with the same results.

  Had he decided to spend the night with Matt and forgotten to tell her?

  Heaving a sigh, she decided to march over to Matt’s house and rouse the family so she could find her son. Her temper simmered. The night she’d looked forward to all week was turning out to be a nightmare.

  Raising her eyes to Ian’s portrait, she heard herself say, “If you’re really there in spirit, then I could use your help right now.”

  *

  CURTIS EYED THE faint light coming through a hole high above him.

  After what felt like hours on his hands and knees, he’d arrived at the end of the line at a catch basin where he could stand up in water that came to his knees. For a heart-stopping moment, he’d thought it was just a dead end and all the crawling had been for nothing.

  Patting down the walls, he had felt a concrete ledge and then a rusty bar with another one directly above it—a ladder!

  That was when he’d looked up and glimpsed a narrow aperture high above him. Water drizzled through it, but beyond the water, he caught a glimpse of the nighttime sky. A way out!

  Sluggish with cold, he climbed awkwardly onto the ledge. Once there, he reached for the rungs of the ladder and stepped carefully onto the algae-slick bar. Hope gave him the impetus to pull his weight upward and climb, one rung at a time toward the suggestion of escape.

  Foot by foot, he ascended until he drew eye-level with the opening, several feet wide but only six inches high. Peering through it, he realized that bright new streetlamps were providing the light. He made out a paved road with nothing but trees and stakes in the ground, along with For Sale signs. It struck him as vaguely familiar.

  He suddenly realized this was the newest addition to his neighborhood. The road had been paved, but construction had yet to take place. No one ever came here.

  He couldn’t fit through the intake anyway. It really was a dead end, and he would die here, after all.

  About to climb back down, he glimpsed a metallic disk above his head. In the dim light, he made out a manhole cover. There was a way out! Putting a hand flat against it, he pushed up with all his might, fully expecting it to move.

  Nope. It didn’t shift an inch.

  Manhole covers were heavy, but not this heavy.

  With panic rising up in him, he shoved upward with everything he had. Suddenly, his footing slipped. He dropped, groping for a rung to catch his descent, but his hand slipped too. With a strangled scream, he fell straight down, striking the ledge with his shoulder.

  The snap he heard let him know he’d broken something—probably his collarbone. He flipped off the ledge and into water that filled his nose and ears and mouth as he opened it to shout in sudden pain.

  In that terrifying moment as he fought his way out of the water so he wouldn’t drown, a thought settled in his head like a nail driven into a coffin.

  This is where it ends.

  *

  THE DOORBELL DIDN’T wake Santana. He was lying in his bed with his eyes wide open when it chimed, sending Lucifer into a barking frenzy in the bedroom behind him. Bolting out of bed, Santana crossed to the window and pressed his cheek to the glass in order to see his front stoop. He both dreaded and hoped that the cops were standing on his dark doorstep.

  But it was only Curtis’s mother, her golden hair reflecting the street lamp behind her as she stood there wringing her hands, waiting for someone to answer. Guilt plowed into him like a fist to his belly.

  What would happen if he threw open the window and called down, Curtis is trapped in the sewers?

  For one thing, his uncle would kill him. If not his uncle, then his friend Tom would make certain Santana paid the price for telling. If Uncle Will went to jail, who would help Santana’s mother pay the rent? Money had been an issue ever since his dad ran off. Uncle Will helped out in his brother’s stead, but without his help, the collections agents would start calling again like they used to do, all day long. Supposedly, Uncle Will had his shit together, being in the Navy. But that was a lie. Santana knew the real story.

  His uncle was a loser just like his father. And Santana wasn’t any better than either one of them.

  Leaving Curtis in the sewers to die, in the dark and all alone—that made him a murderer.

  “I’M SO SORRY to bother you. Are you Santana’s mother?” Maya asked as a stranger opened the door.

  The haggard, overweight blonde nodded back at her. “Yeah,” she admitted on a cautious note. She clutched a robe around her, and clearly had been roused out of bed.

  “I’m sorry to intrude so late. I’m Curtis’s mother,” Maya continued, hoping that the fierce-sounding dog barking in the recesses of the condo was securely restrained. “Has he been by your place at all? He was supposed to be at Matt’s this evening, but they said they’d been out for the evening. Did he come here, by any chance?” She didn’t care if she was babbling; worry held sway over her tongue.

  “Oh.” The woman scratched her chin and searched her memory. “No, I haven’t seen him tonight.”

  Maya’s dismay deepened. “You haven’t seen him,” she repeated. Santana’s house had been her last option. If Curtis wasn’t there, she didn’t know where to look. “Could I talk to Santana?” she requested.

  The woman at the door seemed to consider her request but then shook her head, no. “He’s sleeping,” she said on a terse note.

  Dark thoughts snaked into Maya’s mind, bringing to memory the suspect she was investigating who lived in her neighborhood. Had William Goddard decided to avenge her in advance of his judgment by NCIS? It didn’t make sense to avenge someone who hadn’t ruined you yet.

  She had to be jumping to conclusions.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled as her brain tried to come up with her next course of action.

  “No problem.” Santana’s mother started closing the door in her face.

  At that moment, Maya heard the dog again. Putting out a hand to block the door, she took a shaky breath. “Just curious—is that a Rottweiler you’ve got in there?” she asked.

  “No, it’s a Doberman,” the woman said, sending her a strange look.

  Years of practice kept Maya from displaying the jolt of adrenaline that exploded inside of her. Her intuition had been right. Part of her longed right then to demand to speak to the dog’s owner, but she wasn’t prepared to confront Will Goddard at that moment—not on her own and not without backup.

  “I see. Good night,” she said, turning away and hurrying through the drizzle to her condominium.

  Practically breaking her own door down as she charged into her condo, she turned, put her shoulder against the paneling, and locked the deadbolt. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she dialed first her colleague at work, explaining to his answering machine what she suspected had happened. Then she called 9-1-1, ordering her thoughts more carefully as the operator answered.

  “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

  “This is NCIS Special Investigator, Maya Schultz. I live in Boulevard Crossing. My fourteen-year-old son is missing, and I believe he’s been kidnapped by a suspect I’m currently investigating.”

  “Just a minute, Mrs. Schultz. I’m connecting you with police dispatch.”

  As Maya’s pulse echoed off her eardrums, she suffered an overwhelming urge to call Rust
y next. But she couldn’t imagine how he could help her or why he would. She’d turned into an ice queen when he’d mentioned ghosts, and he hadn’t been able to get away from her condo fast enough. He certainly owed her no assistance.

  Besides, she’d been dealing with every crisis by herself for a decade. And she would do the same thing tonight.

  “Police dispatch. What’s your emergency?”

  It took ten nerve-fraying minutes to persuade the police to put a BOLO out on Curtis. Because he wasn’t a three-year-old but a male teenager, they weren’t convinced he was really missing but, rather, acting out. It took a threat to involve the FBI before they agreed to send two officers to her home immediately.

  Wishing she could turn to Rusty for solace, Maya put her phone away and fetched her laptop, settling in to do some research of her own. There just might be something in William Goddard’s file that would suggest why and where he would have taken Curtis.

  *

  RUSTY JERKED AWAKE, and Draco leaped from the bed as if it were exploding.

  “Sorry, buddy, sorry,” he crooned as the dog fought to get inside the closet.

  Swinging his feet to the floor, Rusty continued to croon comforting words while reconsidering the dream that had awakened him.

  Ian had been crouched next to him, firing away on the M240. The clatter of the grenade rolling toward them had grown louder. Rusty knew what would happen next. He’d dreamed it so often that he knew every detail of the dream right down to the feel of grit between his teeth. But this time, Ian didn’t just look down at the grenade and then at him with that look of absolute resolve. This time he spoke.

  “My son needs help.” And then he dove face-down on top of the grenade and it blew up under him, waking Rusty up.

  “Curtis needs help,” he repeated to the dog, who licked his hand.

  Were the words real or just a spin-off of a recurring nightmare? With his heart still thudding in his chest, Rusty snatched his phone off the bedside table. Maya hadn’t texted him. There was nothing going on with Curtis; it was all in his head.

  Except he couldn’t shake the certainty that Ian had just spoken from the other side.