The Hunter Inside

by David McGowan

  And now she knew how.

  35

  O’Neill barely heard Mayhew close the door behind him. He stepped out into the storm, wincing as its power increased seemingly every second he was in it. The stinging whip of the rain attacking his eyes made him abandon his search for loose change and hold both hands in front of his face, rivulets of rain dripping from the tip of each of his fingers. He would have to wait until he found a phone booth before resuming his search for change. The cotton pants that he wore were too tight for him to walk and have his hand in the pocket at the same time anyway, and this was something that displeased the Special Agent. Six months ago, when he had bought the pants, he had needed a belt to go with them. They were the most comfortable he’d had in years. Now though, the crotch felt as if it would split with every step. The belt lay at home, gathering dust on the top shelf of his closet. It was something he intended to bring out of its early retirement, if he got the chance. First of all, though, he had to find a way through the storm and get to a telephone.

  He ran along the wooden planks past the other motel rooms, sending splashes of water across his shoes and soaking his feet. He would almost certainly have a cold come the end of the night. But will the end of this night ever come? he wondered. Will we ever come out of this dark, dark night?

  And it was night. The clouds that pushed down on Atlantic Beach blocked out most of the fading light, making the June evening seem more like a late September evening.

  O’Neill continued on without pausing as he reached the reception area. It was the most obvious place to find a telephone, but his earlier run-in with the woman on the main desk (he, unlike Bill Arnold, hadn’t paid any attention to her name-tag), coupled with his desire not to be overheard when making the call, were reason enough for him to carry onwards and look for a booth out in the street.

  It meant a difficult journey of five blocks for O’Neill, and by the time he’d traveled two, he wished he’d ignored his nature and taken the easiest option. His clothes, he felt, could not get any wetter. His blue cotton pants were now an even snugger fit, and his shirt became transparent, allowing the wind to whistle through its thin fabric. Every hair on his body stood up, but any body heat that he had bled out quickly. He shivered as he ran along the third block, cursing his luck at the lack of a phone booth. The severity of the storm meant there was no one for him to ask on the streets.

  The hatches in Atlantic Beach were well and truly battened down. The crisis the residents prepared themselves for was the rain, the wind and the power of the storm. They had the right idea. He wished the storm could be his only worry, but his was a position he had earned through choice, and he ploughed on through the fourth block before seeing the phone booth halfway down the fifth.

  He pushed through the door of the booth with a gasp of relief, able to get a proper breath for the first time since leaving the motel room. Five blocks, he thought to himself. Five goddamn blocks. Now he would have to go back five blocks. If he had known how long it would take him to find the phone, he would have taken the car. Now, it would take him longer to get back to the motel. Granted, it would not take as long as his journey from the motel. The wind had been blowing towards him, making him walk with his head almost level with his knees. It would carry him back. It would push him onward. If he wasn’t careful it might even lift him off his feet.

  O’Neill forced his hands into his pockets and felt with his thumbs for the paper with Hoskins’s number on it. He found it without any trouble, and eased it out of the sodden material, tearing it slightly due to its being damp. He looked at it anxiously, hoping that the tear did not obscure the number, and was relieved to see that he’d managed to tear it in the gap between the prefix and the suffix of the number. The ink had not run. Again he fished in his pocket for change. First the left pocket, then the right. Nothing but a twenty-dollar bill.

  ‘Damn.’ His curse was uttered with such vehemence that spittle hit the glass window of the booth. It was noticeable only by the fact that it remained on the window. He had seen ornamental pieces resembling the window of the phone booth. A continuous stream of water down a pane of glass, thought in various quarters to have soothing qualities. He had never understood why people would want to reproduce the effect of a miserable storm in the center of their living room. For him, there was nothing soothing about the continuous flow of water down the glass that made the world beyond seem like a hazy watercolor painting. The thought of venturing out in it again to find change for the phone offered him even less comfort, and it was only by picturing Todd, Sandy and Bill waiting at the motel, that he managed to leave the phone booth. Upon doing so, the strength of the wind knocked him sideways. He grabbed onto the phone booth and steadied himself, aligning his head almost with his knees as before in order to walk. He could not run; he felt as drained as he ever remembered. The wind swirled around him, not pushing him on like he had hoped, but spinning him as though it was trying to disorientate him. He was forced to walk a further two blocks, before seeing a store that was still open. His legs ached so much that he thought they might not be able to carry him back to the motel if the storm failed to ease off. He was a big man, but the storm he was experiencing was too big and too strong for him to have any hope of standing up to it. He was not big enough.

  He struggled onwards towards the convenience store, holding the twenty-dollar bill, with some effort, in his right fist. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man rushed out from the side of the store. He was twenty meters away from O’Neill, who could not hear what he was saying due to the rattle of the wind in his eardrums. But the way in which he waved his arms about suggested to O’Neill that he was in some kind of distress. Not now, he thought to himself with an interior groan. I gotta keep moving.

  O’Neill continued, getting closer to the man, blinking water out of his eyes as he went. By now he could hear that the man was calling someone, but he could still not make out a name. He was five meters away from the man, who had turned and rushed towards him as he approached, before he realized who it was. It was Joe Myers.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ O’Neill screamed at the top of his voice to make himself heard over the wind.

  ‘My kids…it’s my kids. They’ve gone.’

  O’Neill observed a look of horror in the eyes of Joe Myers. His distress was such that he ran around in a circle, oblivious to the tempest that made O’Neill sway. This was the worst possible scenario for O’Neill. He felt positively mad at Joe Myers, despite the terror that he also felt at this news. He had told him not to come. Now Shimasou had the two kids, and O’Neill knew that they were part of its plan somewhere down the line. Joe Myers might just as well of handed them over.

  ‘What are we gonna do?’ Joe looked at the Special Agent, his tears mixing with the rain as it ran down his pale face. It was by the look on his face that the Special Agent knew of the tears. His eyes were screwed up in a tortured expression, drawing his cheeks and mouth upwards into a grimace that reflected his distress.

  O’Neill thought about the question. It was certainly a good one. What could they do? O’Neill thought this was probably a more realistic one, and he struggled to find an answer to Joe Myers’ original question as he pondered his own.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. And he really didn’t know. This was a case that he could not predict the outcome of. He hadn’t even come close to foreseeing the possibility that Shimasou would kidnap the kids. But why not? They were obviously part of the chain of Sandy’s family, and the anger that he felt towards Joe Myers for ignoring his advice and bringing the children to Atlantic Beach was replaced by a sense of guilt at letting the children down. Shimasou did not have a reason to allow the children to live. By killing them, it would become stronger and nearer to achieving its goal. For the first time, O’Neill felt like crying. All their efforts had been superseded by an event he should have foreseen, and now he stood, soaked to the skin and more helpless than ever before in his career.

  ‘Do you have any c
hange?’

  ‘What?’ Joe Myers had heard what O’Neill said, and the reason for his question was surprise.

  ‘Do you have any change?’ He was more insistent this time. He needed action, not words, and Joe nodded. O’Neill grabbed him by the arm and ran back to the phone booth, practically dragging Joe Myers behind him. The big Special Agent pushed the smaller man in first and then squeezed himself in beside him. Now they were nose-to-nose, cramped into the tiny space and trying to get their breath back as fresh forks of lightning flashed in the sky nearby.

  ‘Listen, you gotta try and stay calm, Joe. Or you won’t be able to help them. You hear me?’ He knew that the kids might already be gone, but he also knew that he needed a strong Joe Myers. He could be the next target for Shimasou.

  Joe looked the Special Agent in the eye. ‘You really think they have a chance? It’s him isn’t it? It’s the person who killed Sandy’s parents, isn’t it?’

  O’Neill nodded. ‘Yes, Joe. It probably is. But we found Sandy. She’s safe, waiting at a motel five blocks from here.’ He observed a flicker of something like hope in Joe’s eyes at the news of his wife.

  ‘But…the kids. She couldn’t handle it if…’ He trailed off, unable to finish his sentence. O’Neill thought that the man in front of him was already grieving for the loss of his children. He didn’t think they stood a chance.

  ‘The change, Joe,’ O’Neill said, and Joe absently put in his hand in his pocket and withdrew several coins before handing them to O’Neill.

  ‘Who are you calling?’

  ‘I left my cell phone at the motel. I’m calling Todd.’

  ‘Is that the guy who was with you at my house?’

  ‘Yes. He’s with Sandy at the motel.’

  ‘But what are you going to say to her?’

  ‘I don’t know, Joe. But I’ve got to let them know about the kids. There’s no other way of doing this.’

  Joe wondered at the Special Agent’s words. No other way? It was a strange choice of words. And he had said ‘of doing this’. This? What was this? He watched as O’Neill fed coins into the silver slot. He knew very little of what was actually going on here. Up until yesterday he had thought Sandy’s parents had died in an accident. Now, he knew that they had been murdered. What was more; the man who killed them had driven his wife away from her home and had kidnapped his children. But he still knew very little about him. He wondered how much the cop knew.

  O’Neill keyed the number of his cell phone into the pad in front of him, hoping desperately that the battery on the cell phone was not totally flat.

  36

  Sandy listened to the rain bombarding the motel room. Apart from its insistent drum roll, there was no other sound in the room. Mayhew and Arnold sat, looking away from one another, and all three felt completely helpless. Each of them wondered what had happened to O’Neill. It seemed like an eternity to Sandy. She wanted action. She wanted things to move. Sitting still at a time like this didn’t seem to be an option. She needed to be moving, making strides towards her goal of getting back to her family.

  Bill Arnold had no family to think of. He would be happy to get back to watching football and drinking Bud at home. He might even give up trucking once all of this was over. If it ever is, he thought. O’Neill had been gone almost half an hour and they’d received no word. Bill wondered whether something bad had happened to him, but despite being anxious to get through to the other side of this, going out into the storm to fight Shimasou was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

  Todd Mayhew sat and looked at the cell phone. For ten minutes he had been studying it, willing it to ring. The longer it went without ringing, the less chance of the battery lasting for more than a few seconds when it did. The situation, like the weather, was deteriorating rapidly.

  Without warning the phone began to buzz and move sideways along the wooden surface on which it had been placed. Thank God, Mayhew thought, and snatched it up, pressing the send button and placing it at his right ear.

  ‘Hello. Is that you, Sam?’

  ‘Yeah, listen.’ O’Neill launched into a speech that was punctuated by loud bursts of static and the wind whining through the microphone of the cell phone. Mayhew struggled to comprehend what he was saying as Sandy and Bill watched him intently.

  ‘Hold on Sam. The line’s bad. I’m gonna go outside and see if that helps.’ Mayhew stood and went quickly out into the rain, followed by Bill Arnold. He cupped his hand around the cell phone in an attempt to stop it being affected by the rain, while inserting a finger into his left ear to block out the noise of the wind.

  ‘Go on Sam,’ he shouted, ‘it should be a little better now.’

  ‘Todd. It’s the kids. It’s taken Sandy’s kids. Joe Myers is with me here. We’re gonna get his car and drive back to the motel. I want you to stay there and keep Sandy and Bill there. We’ll be there in five. You get all that?’

  Before Todd Mayhew could answer, the Special Agent was gone. The battery, he thought, and looked at the cell phone’s blank display. Luckily though, he had gotten what O’Neill had said. But this was bad news, very bad news. Mayhew looked at Bill Arnold.

  ‘What did he say?’ Arnold asked.

  ‘It’s here, and it’s got Sandy’s kids,’ Mayhew answered, a dejected expression somewhat akin to that of Bill Arnold’s spreading across his face.

  ‘What are we gonna do?’ Arnold asked. He didn’t really expect an answer; Mayhew knew as much as he did, but it was a question he couldn’t prevent himself from asking the old man.

  ‘Sam said we’re to stay here. He’s with Sandy’s husband. They’re gonna come back here. Then I suppose we’ll take it from there.’

  ‘But what about Sandy? Do we tell her?’

  ‘I think we’d better keep it to ourselves. She’s already restless. This might tip her over the edge. We’ll keep it to ourselves until they get here.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bill answered. Mayhew was probably right. He pointed at the door of the motel room, indicating to Mayhew that they should go inside. Mayhew nodded, and Bill motioned with his hand, allowing the smaller, older man to enter the room first. As he followed him into the room, Bill Arnold looked around. At the same time, Todd Mayhew called out, ‘Sandy’. She was not there. Bill ran to the bathroom and looked inside. No sign of her there either.

  ‘Shit, where’s she gone?’ Arnold asked Mayhew. It was another rhetorical question; he knew that Mayhew couldn’t have any idea.

  ‘She must have heard us on the phone,’ he said. ‘She’s gone to find her kids.’

  ‘Now what are we gonna do?’

  ‘We’re gonna wait here for Sam to get back. We can’t do anything until we know the order in which it took its victims.’

  Both men sat back down on the bed. The sound of the rain faded into the back of their minds as they thought about Sandy, out in the storm and trying to find Shimasou. Both men were amazed by the strength she showed. Despite the knowledge of just what the threat from her stalker was, her desire to reach her children was stronger than her fear. Her desire to fight was stronger than her desire to run. Both men waited in silence.

  37

  They were wrong about Sandy’s reason for leaving the motel room. She hadn’t overheard them out in the storm as they spoke to O’Neill on the phone. If they stopped and thought about it they would see it was impossible for any of their conversation to penetrate the motel room from where they stood; the tumult of the storm beating down on Atlantic Beach wouldn’t allow it. But they didn’t think about it.

  Sandy ran onwards through the rain. The wind was at her back, which was small mercy, for the huge bombs of rain that fell onto her reacquainted her with the shivering she’d managed to shake off while in the motel room. She had no idea what O’Neill had said on the phone. Her reason for leaving had been the brilliant flash of light that had at first half blinded her, and had then revealed an image of the huge beast carrying Sean and David, one of them under each of its huge arms, back to
wards the building from where her second dream, or vision, had started earlier in the day.

  All at once she had known that she had to go to them. She also had a strong feeling that she didn’t need to know where she was going; she would find them. She would find it. She didn’t know how she would be able to beat it, but she had slipped past the two men as they spoke on the cell phone to O’Neill anyway. She couldn’t afford to wait around, she had only seen the legs of her sons, but she knew it was them. Even by the way they were struggling to get free.

  As she struggled onwards through the driving rain, running through puddles and sending waves of water up her legs and away from her across the asphalt pavement, she thought about Arnold. She’d hoped he would be ready to fight to beat this beast, but he seemed happy to sit and wait in the motel room. His fear of dying had paralyzed his fighting spirit, and she felt a certain amount of resentment towards him, especially now that she knew it had her children.

  My boys.

  As for O’Neill, she didn’t really feel anything. She didn’t resent him; he wanted to help. He just didn’t seem capable of doing so. It had taken him thirty minutes to find a phone; hardly a good advertisement for an FBI Special Agent, and the sign that Sandy took from the image shown to her of her children was that she would have to go it alone. For now at least, everything seemed to be against her.

  Atlantic Beach might as well be another planet. She had never been here before, and as she ploughed onwards she groped desperately for some image in her mind that would help her find the building in which her sons were now held captive.

  She had been inside this building. She had been inside Shimasou inside this building. The image had been so vivid that she could have been actually standing outside of it when she saw her boys being carried inside, but she did not know where, or what, it was.