by Tom Secret
“Why, Mommy?” she mumbled around her thumb.
“Because Grandpa suggested it and we think it’s a good idea.”
Lilly’s thumb popped out. “Is Daddy coming with us?”
“He’s coming later, baby.”
“Why? I want him to come with us now!”
“He needs to take care of something first before he comes.”
She stomped her tiny foot. “I don’t want to go!”
Lola blinked back her tears as she watched her daughter’s eyes well up. “It’ll only be a few hours, so please go finish packing.”
Lilly’s face wrinkled as her lips quivered. “I want to stay with my daddy!”
Lola crossed to the landing and crouched down. Wrapping her arms around Lilly’s waist, she leaned forward until their noses touched. “Sweetheart, you’re a big girl now, and big girls understand that daddies need to work, don’t they?”
Lilly’s face un-wrinkled a little. “Okay, I’ll finish packing, Mommy.”
“That’s a good girl.” Lola kissed her on the cheek, then looked up as Jack appeared, dressed in torn jeans, black sneakers, and a black death-rock T-shirt.
“Mom, where’s my baseball bat?”
“Look on top of your wardrobe, and change out of that awful T-shirt.”
“I did, it’s not there, and it’s my favorite shirt.”
“Well it’s not appropriate, so change it, please—and don’t roll your eyes at me, young man.”
“But where’s my bat?”
“I told you, I haven’t seen it. Why don’t you look under your bed?”
“I already looked there.”
“Well, then how should I know where you left it! Find it yourself. And change that top. You look like a hoodlum.”
Jack huffed, started away, and froze in mid-step.
“What is it?”
He whipped his hand up, palm out.
Lola bristled. “What is it, Jack!”
He put his finger to his lips, then jabbed it toward the floor. “Someone’s whispering downstairs!”
“Maybe it’s your father,” she whispered.
“Then why is he whispering, Mom, and why are you?”
“Go look out the window and see if his pickup is there.” Lola stood up and pulled Lilly close to her leg as she strained her ears for sounds of movement.
Jack reached the window overlooking the driveway, glanced at her with eyes wide, and shook his head.
“Quick!” Lola hissed. “Give me your cell phone.”
“It’s in the kitchen, Mom!”
“Crap so is mine!”
A clang sounded downstairs, and the hushed voices came again.
Lilly looked up with wide eyes. “Mommy, why are you shaking?”
Lola crouched down, clutched Lilly by the shoulders, and looked into her frightened eyes. “Baby,” she whispered, “I need to you to be brave, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I want you to go to your room, get in the closet, and close the door. Don’t make a sound, and don’t come out until I come get you, okay, sweetie?”
“Can I take Mopsey?” Lilly whispered.
“You can, baby. Now, run along, and remember, not a peep.” Lola watched Lilly trot into her room like a brave little soldier.
Jack leaned over the banister rail, then whispered back, “What are we gonna do, Mom? Where’s Grandpa?”
Lola pulled herself up on the rail. “He went for groceries.”
“So, what should we do?”
“How the heck do I know!”
“Shh! They’re moving down there.”
Lola took a deep breath. “Jack, I need you to be a man now; so go to your room, find that baseball bat, and if something happens, remember, Fairweathers play for keeps, okay?”
Jack hesitated, glanced between her and the stairs below, then nodded.
Lola closed her eyes as he crept away. Let this be a dream, she pleaded as the voices came again. Oh, Jesus, I need a weapon. She scanned her bedroom from the doorway but saw nothing. Damn you, Brad, I should have got a gun!
She stepped to the threshold of Lilly’s room, with its brass angel bedside lamps and the angel-print duvet. Against the far wall was the closet concealing Lilly, but otherwise, there was nothing but coloring pens and dolls strewn across the floor.
She remembered the knife on the kitchen table beside the phone, but that meant going downstairs. A twinge in her bladder didn’t help. She crossed to the landing again and listened. Nothing stirred. She flicked on the switch to the lower hallway light and peered over the railing, inching toward the top step. Got to be brave, got to be brave. She crept down the first two steps, leaned over the balustrade, and hollered. “I’ve got a gun!”
Silence rang in her ears.
“I’ve got a gun, and I’ll use it!”
Nothing stirred.
Lola inched downward, straining to hear any movement. Reaching the creaky bottom step, she hesitated, squinted into the half-light of the rooms beyond the hallway, then hopped onto the floorboards, raced into the kitchen, slapped the light switch, and froze. “Oh, sweet Jesus, no!”
31. ANGELIC VIGIL
Monday, 5:33 p.m.
Lilly’s scream cut through the house as a razor through silk, spinning Lola, and sending her racing back across the hallway.
By the time the second scream ricocheted off the walls, she was taking the stairs three at a time, hitting the landing like a charging lioness, she stopped dead as her eyes fell on her worst nightmare.
Lilly’s angel lamps cast a shadowy vigil over the bloody-faced man holding Lilly aloft by her neck, with her baby girl, thrashing at his arms. Four feet away at the foot of the bed, the second man was holding Jack in a neck lock, cowlick falling into his eyes, while he pulled a zip tie from his pocket with the other hand.
Lola felt a primal rage surge up as she screamed, “Let go of my babies!”.
She thundered forward, driving her shoulder into the bloodied man’s side, spinning him into Jack’s attacker, and tumbling them to the floor.
Lilly’s attacker rolled onto his hands and knees as Lola leaped up, stepped back, and fired a piston kick at his head, smacking his mouth with the sound of a baseball bat whacking a peach.
He reeled backward, clutching his face as blood poured between his fingers. “Fucking bitch, you boke by teeth!”
Jack staggered to his feet and managed two steps toward the bedroom door before the balding one lunged forward and caught him by his T-shirt. Lola’s boy whipped around but launched his fist an instant too late. The man’s knuckles connected with his jaw, snapping his head sideways and sending him reeling across the room, where he thudded down next to Lilly like a broken toy.
“Grab the bitch!” Lola heard the bald one shout as she darted toward Jack, then felt herself being yanked around to face the bleeding man she had kicked.
“Look out, Mom!”
Ducking instinctively, the bald one’s fist skimmed the top of Lola's head, as Jack’s sneaker hit his knee from the side, buckling his leg beneath him; her pride vanished as something smacked the nape of her neck and sent a blinding pain through her skull, slamming her to the floor.
When she opened her eyes, she had no sense of time or space, and there was no breath—only the bulging pain in her temples, and a crushing pressure from the hands on her throat. Through the blur, Jack’s silhouette landed punch after punch on the back of her attacker’s head, but the image grew murky, then faded completely.
She found herself sitting on the rusty swing beneath the gnarled old willow tree in the orphanage garden, watching the sunset as its fading warmth embraced her spirit in an orange glow. Into the dream came a sound, faint as the babble of a stream, but growing louder and louder, until the noise in her head was a roaring river. “Mommy, don’t die! Mommy, come back! Save Jack!”
Lola snapped open her eyes and forced them to focus on the devil who sat astride her, pinning her arms with his knees while his fingers choked
away her life’s breath.
Lungs aflame, she searched for Jack as her vision blurred again, but a voice in her head told her to buck.
In a giant spasm, her body jolted upward, and for an instant, the viselike grip on her throat eased. She stole a breath, bucked again, and this time her right hand broke free and flailed over the carpet, searching.
The man redoubled his throttling hold as Jack’s cries rang out from behind him.
She tried to buck once more but barely managed a convulsion. The shouts and screams were growing distant as a sense of peace descended. Then her fingertips touched something, crept over it, clutched it, as her brain interpreted the shape of Lilly’s coloring pen. She tried to draw a sip of air, but the weight on her chest and clamp on her throat was too much, so, with the last of her strength, she flicked off the lid with her thumb and ordered her arm to move.
The exertion stole her vision for the second it took her arm to arc upward to his neck. There was the faintest sound, like the bread of the Eucharist tearing in church.
The pressure on her throat loosened for a second, permitting a thimbleful of air to power another strike as her vision cleared enough to see the man’s bloodied face contort with rage.
“You evil bitch!” Releasing the grip with his right hand, he smashed his fist into her cheekbone.
The pain shot through her head, and the room spun, but she gasped another breath. His hand clamped her neck as she tried to scream, but no sound escaped. Pawing at his grip with her free hand, she watched, helpless, as the balding man dragged Lilly and Jack by their hair out onto the landing. Her baby girl had soiled her jeans and was screaming while Jack lashed out, his strength no match for the man’s, but as they reached the top of the stairs, her boy reached out and wrapped his arms around the newel post as the bald one fought to dislodge him.
But now Lola’s mind drifted back to Daisy’s last night, the hospital receptionist, the policemen with their Tasers, and the three men who had set these events in motion.
She tried to focus on the man with buck teeth, choking her to death while the other stole her babies. Then a voice boomed in her head: Hit him!
She clutched the pen and ordered her arm to strike once more. The tearing sound was as imperceptible as the first, but it hit true.
The man cried out and released his hold to clutch his bleeding neck. Lola gasped as her windpipe opened and the inner voice thundered, finish him!
Her arm swung through the air, possessed by a higher power, puncturing first his left hand, his ear, then lodging in the flesh of his cheek.
The man screamed and pulled back from the pen, tearing a two-inch gash down his face as he scrambled away from her, eyes wide at the growing red epaulet seeping down his front.
With his head down, Lola saw her chance and thrust a heel into his chest, driving him against the wall, below the window.
“Mom, help me!” Jack cried from the stairway.
Lola scrambled to her feet and lurched toward the bedroom door, grabbing the brass angel lamp by its base and yanking the cable from the wall as she took two paces across the landing and swung.
Everything slowed as the lamp arced through the air and the shade crumpled into the side of the balding man’s head, shattering the bulb when the solid brass angel’s wing connected with his ear. By the time the cry had left his mouth, she was on his back, legs wrapped around his waist, with one arm around his neck as her free hand jabbed and jabbed the pen into his bald pate. The man thrust backward, smashing her against the stair wall, but she held fast as Lilly crawled past her on all fours and Jack dragged himself to his feet.
As her blows rained down, the man lost his footing and lurched for the handrail, as Jack swung his foot into the man’s groin. He cried out, clutched himself, and fell backward, knocking Lola off, he stumbled down the remaining steps to the front door.
Breathing hard, he straightened himself, smoothed the comb-over across his bloodied pate, and looked up at Lola and Jack, barring the stairs. “You will lose!” he said, then swung the door open, limped along the path past the broken gate and disappeared into the frigid night.
32. FUMES
Monday, 5:44 p.m.
Lola slammed and locked the front door and peered through the glass to make sure he had gone. “Where are you, Brad?” She scanned the road, praying for a glimpse of his truck, then hurried into the living room. The cell phone had moved from the kitchen to the corner of the mantelpiece, but there was no sign of the missing kitchen knife and no time to linger. She darted back into the hall, glanced through the glass at the empty driveway, then took the stairs two at a time.
By the time she reached the landing, she was running on fumes. Jack was standing guard at the entrance to Lilly’s room. His skinny arms, red with welts that would soon bruise, wrapped around his little sister’s shoulders. They both stared at her, wild-eyed and silent as though she’d landed from Mars.
She looked over their heads at the man slumped beneath Lilly’s bedroom window, clutching the blood-soaked angel-print duvet to his neck. She dialed Brad’s number and pressed the phone to her ear. “Where are you? No, I’m not all right, and neither are the kids. Those bastards came back! I need you here!” She clicked off, shoved the phone into her jeans pocket, and ran her fingertips across Jack’s arms. “How bad are you, sugar?” Lola watched his eyes track across her neck and face and settle on her swollen cheekbone.
“Better than you, Mom.”
Lola closed her eyes for a moment. “I need you to be strong just a little while longer, okay?”
Jack’s eyes met hers with an almost imperceptible nod.
“Your father will be here soon, so take Lilly and get yourselves showered and changed as fast as you can.”
“What are you going to do?”
Lola glanced at the dying man in the bedroom, gritted her teeth and pointed with the pen in her trembling, blood-covered hand. “That one has some explaining to do.”
Jack studied her for a moment, then led Lilly away.
Lola took a deep breath and stepped back into the battle zone.
The stench of blood and urine caught in her throat as she rounded the bed to where the remaining brass angel lamp threw deep shadows across the groaning man beneath the window. His open cheek looked like sliced raw steak. She inched warily forward, then kicked the bottom of his shoe. “Who are you?”
The man looked up, a sickening grin on his gashed lips sent a torrent of rage through Lola’s veins. She kicked again. “Answer me damn it!”
He shivered and tugged the crimson duvet higher. “Fuck you!”
“Last chance, creep!” Lola lifted her foot high and stamped with all her weight on his shinbone.
“Arrrggghhhh!” The man’s body shook as he clutched his knee, staring wide-eyed at the protruding shard of bone beneath it. Tears streaked his bloodied cheeks; he reached out with his finger and touched the end as if he wanted to push it back under the skin. His eyes and jaws clenched shut as a spasm racked his body. “What… have… you… done?”
“Who are you?”
The man slumped against the wall, shivering.
Lola felt herself sway and inhaled to keep from throwing up. She had to make him talk while he still could.
A guttural chuckle escaped the man’s mouth.
“What are you laughing at?”
“You’re… gonna lose!”
“Lose what!”
“Everything!”
Lola felt a shiver down her spine. “Who the hell are you?”
The man took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. “Your worst nightmare, bitch!”
Lola clenched her jaw and drove her foot forward, shattering the bridge of his nose and slamming his head into the wall behind him.
“Aggghhhh! Wu… boke… by… dose!”
“Talk!”
The man shook his head.
“Now!”
“You can’t hide. We see everything.”
“What do you see? See
who? Who the hell are you?” Lola stepped forward and raised the pen hand to strike his face.
“No!” He tried to duck away. “Malware… we hack into TV… cell phones, computers, speakers, cameras, cough, cough, everything!”
“You watch us in our homes?”
He hawked and spat a blood clot. “N… no.”
“What no?
“Not just your home. CCTV… call tracking… social, cough, cough, media… credit cards, shopping… creates matrix! We’re the all-seeing fucking eye!”
“Who’s we?”
The man’s body convulsed; he gulped for air, then coughed, swallowed, inhaled, and tried to grin. “Nemesis!”
“Well, you picked the wrong mother, asshole!” Lola swung for his right eye, but as the pen arced down, he shifted and raised his hand to take the blow. The skin popped as the point drove between the bones.
“Aargh! My fucking hand!!”
Lola readied the pen for another strike.
“W-wait,” he hissed.
Lola leaned closer to catch the words.
“IRS… work for Cilcifus, but… there are others.”
“Cilcifus who? What others? What did you want with my children? Speak, damn you!”
The man let out a heavy, gurgling sigh. “Traffic… South America to Europe, Asia, for…”
“You do what? For what?”
The man slumped forward, his breaths coming short and sharp. Lola raised her arm. “Tell me, or I swear I’ll-”
He raised his head. “Some… gangs harvest… organs. We sell for… sex slaves.”
“Slaves?” Lola staggered back and clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from vomiting. “Why? Why us?”
“Because of Cilcifus.”
33. EYE FOR AN EYE
Monday, 5:56 p.m.
Brad’s pickup screeched to a halt behind the Mercedes as his father ran through the front door and disappeared into the sitting room on the left.
Hard on his heels, Brad leaped up the stairs and raced across the landing. He stopped dead, spun around, and sank to his knees. “Oh, my God, thank heaven you’re all safe!”
Lola, Lilly, and Jack sat with their backs against the upper landing’s banister spindles, facing the open door of Lilly’s bedroom. Between Lola’s blood-spattered pink Nikes, lay the phone, and the bloodied pen. Her left arm cradled Lilly, her right hand cupped something in her lap. None of the three looked up at him; their haunted stares fixed on something in Lilly’s room.