Liam shrugged. “I don’t know. A guy. He was staring at me.”
“Oh?” The grin on her face said she was about to get giddy again, but this time, it was a conversation they’d had before. “Was he hot?”
“Yeah. Kind of. Yeah.” Liam pictured him again. Definitely hot, more like it. Strong build, dark hair. Liam’s type. He wasn’t someone who went out much, and he rarely dated. He wasn’t opposed to the idea of sex. But sex always brought him back to the last and only time he’d been with another guy: the night before the murders. But, if he had to come up with a type, the guy in the window fit nicely.
Nina looked around. “He still here?”
“I don’t think so.” Liam shook his head. “I thought I recognized him.” There was something about him. In only that split second he saw him standing there, something clicked in Liam’s brain, a recognition that hit him from out of some strange hidden doorway.
“Well, I didn’t see anybody,” Nina said, then she turned her attention back to her phone.
Boisterous laughter caused them to look up to the café entrance. Three guys came in.
“Shit,” Nina said. She put her phone into her pocket.
Liam saw who it was, and he quickly turned back with his back to the door. They were three guys that Liam knew all too well. The resident assholes in the dorm he lived in. Preston was the lead asshole’s name. Preston was one of those guys that, on first glance, might come off kind of hot—but then he’d ruin it all by opening his mouth to speak.
They never picked on Liam. Somehow, he escaped their radar. It was Nina that always bore the brunt of their comments. A rumor went around that Preston hit on Nina the first week of classes, and Nina turned him down. When he persisted, she kneed him in the balls. After that, it was endless torture for her anytime he came around.
“We should go,” Nina said. She kicked Justin’s legs from under the table and startled him awake to loud protests until he saw who Nina stared at with worry in her eyes. She began gathering her stuff to put into her backpack. Things tended to get lost and broken when Preston came around.
But it was too late. “Look who’s here! It’s the slam pig!” Preston stopped next to their table, and he grinned down at them all. The two others with Preston, Liam didn’t know. They were all on the baseball team.
“Yeah, look,” Nina said, still grabbing her stuff. “It’s a douche bag.” She rolled her eyes and picked up her laptop to put it into the case.
“Oh Nina, come on now,” Preston said. He stood next to their table. He leaned over with his hands on the table. “Hey, my buddy here, Ricky, wants to know if you’re free tonight.”
Nina stopped what she was doing and glared up at Preston. Liam guessed one of the guys grinning like idiots behind Preston was Ricky.
“Yeah, he says he wants some chick willing to spread her legs for anybody.”
“Fuck you, Preston,” Nina said, and she shoved her laptop into her backpack and zipped it up.
“Come on. Pretty girl like you, you’d be making his night.” He reached up and touched Nina’s hair. “I told him how good you were. Usual price?”
Nina slapped Preston’s hand away.
The two guys Preston was with started laughing. There was a gasp from some of the people in the café. Liam felt like the rest of the café watched, like they were the floor show, the afternoon’s entertainment. Some people even started filming with their smart phones like they expected this to erupt into a fight at any second.
Nina picked up her half-full coffee and flung it into Preston’s face. Preston backed up like he’d been struck, and the expression on his face was one of both amusement and twisted rage.
Liam stood up and faced Preston. “Leave her alone,” he said. But Preston barely took notice. Some knight in shining armor he was when he couldn’t even get the school bully to take notice of him.
Nina stood up too. “I got this,” she said to Liam.
Preston guffawed. “Oh look. She got some karate moves she’s gonna do on me. Do they teach karate in the hood?”
By that point, Justin stood up. “Preston,” he said, “why don’t you grow up?”
“Oh, you want some of this too?” Preston said to Justin. “She been teaching you some of her karate?” He took a step forward, almost brushing Liam’s shoulder.
In a fit of anger, Liam shoved Preston back until he hit a table and caused a guy reading a book about Nietzche to scramble to stand. He surprised himself. He also had the stone in his hand, even though he didn’t remember retrieving it from his backpack.
Preston seemed to take note of Liam for the first time. A squint of recognition, maybe shock.
Liam straightened. “Preston, this is my place of work,” Liam said, as if he hadn’t just shoved the guy into a table.
Preston righted himself, and he stared at Liam, confused. “What?”
It wasn’t the response that Liam was expecting.
But his heart hammered in his chest, not from the shove, but from something else, something internal, a warmth that spread throughout his body and seemingly supercharged his nerves. The heat radiated from the stone in his hand, subtle yet noticeable.
Plates clattered all at once like they were held from a small height then dropped. Startled screams from the people in the café. Even Preston ducked into a stunned silence.
The ceramic and glass cups stacked behind the bar trembled. An earthquake shuddered through the café that made people move back from their tables, some standing and searching, expressions on their faces to suggest they were ready to run but weren’t sure where.
The lights hanging over tables pulled in toward the center of the café. They didn’t swing back.
Liam’s skin tingled like he was covered in an invisible gauzy material. It settled over his entire body, the center of it concentrated in his chest.
A ceramic espresso cup hit Preston in the back of the head. Liam watched it lift from an empty table and hover for a short second over the saucer where it previously rested then fly in a straight shot directly at Preston.
Like the clumsy gorilla he was, Preston fell sideways onto a table and spilled coffee and a cheese danish over himself and two unwitting customers. Once he hit the table, he rolled over and fell to the floor.
The shaking in the café stopped. The lights swung back, some of them hitting the wall, metal lampshades clattering and clanging together on the upswing.
“What the fuck?” Preston said as he got to his knees, holding a hand to the back of his head. Bits of shattered cup covered the floor. When Preston pulled his hand away, there was blood on the palm of his hand. “Who the fuck threw that?” He turned to search the café like some kind of wild, cornered animal. One of the other guys in Preston’s crew helped him to his feet. “Somebody better fess up right now!”
Nobody said anything.
Liam grabbed his backpack, and he hooked Nina by the arm, and they made for the door with Justin following close behind.
As they made their way to the café door, Liam had the weirdest sense: The stone was satisfied.
Six
Seattle, Washington
Special Agent Zachary Shepard’s plane almost didn’t land at Sea-Tac airport. He gripped the arms of the seat as the plane bumped, and Glenda made fun of him until the masks dropped down. Then the worry crossed her face too. People grabbed at their masks like they were a final lifeline, even amidst the flight crew over the PA system saying it was only a massive air pocket and the masks weren’t actually dropped on purpose. They were tossed around enough that people were crying and saying prayers.
Zach’s row didn’t have masks drop down, so he didn’t put one on—which only made matters worse for him. By that point, he was pretty much resigned. He kept his eyes closed. This plane was probably going to end up nose first into the side of Mount Rainier and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He put himself into the hands of some higher power the minute he stepped onto this plane, and that was how it w
ould be.
“If we crash,” Glenda said in his ear, “it’ll probably be quick and painless.”
“Not helping,” he said. But he hoped she was right, that it would be quick and relatively painless.
He thought about Toby, his son, home with his mother in Pennsylvania. That’s not where Zach lived. Zach lived in D.C. All of Zach’s thoughts, if these were to be his last moments on earth, were reserved for his boy. He always thought he’d go out in some spectacular fashion, not strapped to a chair in a metal tube that tested the boundaries of matter and velocity.
His skin tingled as he sat in his seat. It felt prickly like blood was being cut off from his limbs, only the dead weight that one felt when an arm or a leg fell asleep wasn’t there. It was like there was a pressure on his whole body that, if he didn’t figure out how to push away, he could suffocate. It made his flight uncomfortable, and there was a point when he thought he was going to pass out.
The captain came over the loud speaker, though, and said they’d been cleared to land and that, if passengers weren’t already, that they should be in their seats with their seat belts securely fastened, and would the flight attendants please prepare for landing. It didn’t take much. Nobody was up and moving about the cabin, and if they were, they were stupid.
And the plane made it. When it touched down on solid ground again, people cheered and clapped. Zach touched fingers to his lips and hunched over. He had to admit he was pretty glad too, even as he tried not to show it. People were quick to get off the plane once the doors opened. Not many lingered to leisurely pull their extra bags out of the overhead bin space. They were happy to get off, some of them with angry glances at the flight crew, and, as Zach crossed the threshold from the jet bridge into the airport terminal, more than a few of them were yelling at gate agents like the turbulence coming into the airport was somehow their fault. Stupid people.
“Well, that was interesting,” Glenda said.
“Something like that,” he said.
It was storming in Seattle. That, in and of itself wasn’t a big surprise. But the storm was a fierce one. Thunder rolled through the terminal as they walked toward the exit. Zach was surprised they were even cleared to land.
They made their way out of the terminal to find their ride. There was nobody standing there with a sign. Zach just knew what to look for, the two guys standing off to the side looking like twins in bad suits and government haircuts. And the tell-tale bulge of a gun beneath their jackets. He tapped Glenda on the arm, and they walked up to them.
“You Shepard?” the tall one said to Glenda. He looked about his mid-fifties, gray at the temples and permanent scowl. He offered his hand.
“Alvarez,” she said. She shook his hand.
“I’m Shepard,” Zach said.
He nodded. “Pleasure. I’m John Hanks of the Seattle PD,” he said. He referred to his partner. “And this is Detective Greg Neufield.” After they exchanged greetings, Hanks looked to the both of them like he was none too happy to be on pick-up detail. He clicked open the back of the SUV and stood with his arms crossed as Glenda lifted her bag to toss it into the back. “I imagine you’ll want to get checked in to a hotel,” Hanks said.
“Not really. We’d rather go see the scene first, if that’s okay,” Glenda said.
“Of course.” Neufield said.
“Did our chief call you guys in?” Hanks asked.
Neufield raised a hand. “Hanks…”
“Our order came from Quantico,” Glenda said.
Hanks wasn’t ready to back down. “We had this under control.”
And Glenda was always ready to push back. She put her hands on her hips and locked stares with Hanks. “I’m sure you did, detective, but, in case you missed it, there was another set of murders just like yours in San Diego this morning. That’s a lot of decapitated people in a single day, don’t you think?”
Hanks didn’t answer. He put his hands on his hips. “You guys think it’s terrorists,” Hanks said. He turned his head sideways and spit something out of his mouth.
Glenda ignored the spit. “We’re just here to make sure there’s no connection. If it’s not, we’ll happily go on our way. If it is, then we’re looking at a multi-state, coordinated attack, and that’s a problem we all need to work on together.”
They stared at one another for a moment longer until Neufield put a hand on Hanks’s shoulder and moved him back. “We’ll take you over to crime scene,” he said to Glenda and a nod to Zach.
Hanks muttered something as he turned around.
“Hanks!” Glenda said.
He turned around.
“Don’t be an asshole,” she said. He glared at her. “We’re on the same side here. We’re not trying to muscle into your crime scene because we got nothing else better to do. If this is all connected, then we can help one another.”
Hanks didn’t say anything else. He turned and got into the front passenger seat and left Zach and Glenda to crawl up into the backseat.
The drive took them over to Mercer Island. It rained the whole way, and they had to run from the car into the house when they finally parked in the circular driveway in front of the house. Before they even got out, Zach glanced to Glenda, and they seemed to share an agreement. This was like déjà vu of their morning in San Diego, aside from the thunderstorm. Another big house, just like the San Diego place. And this time, the crime scene was still cordoned off. The bodies had been removed earlier.
One Seattle PD cop car stood outside, and the officers didn’t even bother to get out of their car when they drove up. They only waved them on through. Not far from where the cop car was parked, there was a Fed Ex truck parked in the driveway.
“Whose is that?” Zach asked.
“We don’t know,” Neufield said with a shrug. “It’s been parked there since we assessed the crime scene this morning. We’re not sure whether to haul it in or to call the package company and tell them to come get their stuff. It’s been searched and processed. Waiting on fingerprint analysis now. Nobody’s inside.”
“No driver?”
“Nobody,” Hanks spit back. Zach didn’t push it, even if Hanks was really starting to piss him off.
Hanks and Neufield got out of the SUV and ran through the rain to the front door. It was unlocked, so they went inside.
Only, Zach didn’t go right inside the house. He stood outside with the rain hitting the shoulders of his suit jacket and splashing him in the face. Neufield stopped and turned to him. “Agent Shepard?”
Glenda stopped with them. “What’s up, Zach?”
But still, Zach didn’t move. He thought back to the uneasiness he felt walking into the San Diego house, and he wanted to see if he could feel it here too. Maybe if the same knot in the pit of his stomach was there, it would be a clue, a connection.
And there it was. He put a hand on his stomach. His nerves. Only it didn’t quite feel like nerves now.
There was something else too. He studied the vegetation around the house. Tall grass, huge leaves, ivy creeping up the side of the house like a home invader, almost as if nature was taking this plot of land back.
“Look at the plants,” Zach said to Glenda.
She did, then she shot him a look of confusion. “What am I looking for?” she asked.
“Just like in San Diego,” he said. “They’re out of control.”
She looked at them again. “Maybe they both needed to hire better gardeners.” she said and waved him inside, out of the rain.
He looked to the windows of the house to see if the woman was there. She wasn’t, not this time.
“You okay?” Glenda asked him once they were inside.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You tell me,” she said.
He stopped and looked at her. “I told you, I’m fine.”
She shrugged and moved past him. “Just checking,” she said. “Thought maybe the plane ride in shook up your brain a bit too much.
”
“Funny,” he said. He had to admit, though, he was still a little wobbly from the plane.
Inside the house, the entry way was just as expansive as the other house. This guy, their killer—or killers, if these scenes were connected—sure knew how to pick his rich people to kill. They all put on latex gloves.
Zach searched the entry way and the tastefully decorated rooms off either side and further back into the house. He turned back to the detectives. “You guys find any sort of doorway?”
Hanks frowned. “Lots of them. It’s a big place.”
“No, I mean hidden doors.”
Hanks scoffed. “I think we’d have mentioned it if he had.”
Neufield stopped Hanks with a raised hand. “You mean like a panic room or something?” Neufield said.
Zach shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Shepard,” Hanks said, “but you’re kind of odd.”
“Thanks for that,” Zach said.
Glenda stood with her hands on her hips, her jacket flared out. “While I agree with your assessment of my partner,” she said and winked at Zach who only rolled his eyes, “We found a secret passageway at the other scene.”
Hanks and Neufield exchanged glances. “Huh,” Neufield said. “Well nothing like that here, and CSI was all over this place this morning.”
“What are you thinking on timeline?” Glenda asked.
“We’re thinking sometime last night our killers came in here and did all nine of these people.”
“Probably around the same time as the San Diego murders,” Zach said.
“Killers,” Glenda said. “You’re thinking a group. Some kind of blitz attack.”
“Aren’t you? Nine people ain’t going to stand around and let somebody come up and chop their heads off,” Hanks said.
Zach’s brow furrowed. “Why nine?” he said to nobody in particular. Everyone turned to look at him.
“Because eight would just be lazy,” Hanks said. Then he rolled his eyes.
“Nine killed in San Diego this morning…” Zach said.
The Stone (Lockstone Book 1) Page 8