Perhaps the phone would have led them to him if he'd had it on him. But even so—if it had happened that way—that would mean that he and his sister would find his father. Cage wasn't sure that was what he really wanted.
If his father was alive, then, certainly. But, given what he suspected happened, he didn’t want to follow a signal to his father’s last known place. He didn’t want to face what he would find there, nor the evidence that his father was truly gone. Right now, he held a thread of hope, even though his thoughts were rolling firmly toward belief.
Maybe he didn't want to find whatever was left of Nate Mazur.
“Let's check his room.” Joule was already marching up the stairs. That was the most logical place, even though they'd looked before. This time, they checked everywhere—drawers, pockets of coats, under the edge of the bed—and still found nothing.
“Do you think he took it with him?” Joule asked.
“You just argued that he didn't!” Cage huffed his reply.
“I know.” Her voice was low and soft, as though she understood she was being contradictory. But it didn’t stop her. “The coordinates they gave us are for the last place the phone pinged. It just occurred to me that we're maybe looking for a phone that isn't here.”
“It was last here. That’s what she said.”
“Well, it was last on in this location,” Joule clarified. “Since we can't find it, I’m now thinking it's possible that he used it here, turned it off, and left with it. Maybe he did think he’d be out and could call us from where he wound up.”
Cage groaned again in disbelief. They'd spent all this time looking for a phone that probably wasn't even here. She was right.
They stood on opposite sides of their parents’ bed, unused now for going on a week, and looked at each other. Without needing words, Cage asked her, Then what do we do now?
His sister’s gift—or one of them, she had many—was cold practicality in the face of a crisis. Not being able to find the phone hardly qualified as that, but when Cage analyzed it, he felt as though his whole life had been one big crisis for a month and a half now. So he looked to Joule, who didn’t disappoint.
“There’s laundry in dad’s closet. I have a growing pile myself. So let’s do laundry. If he comes back, he’ll be glad for clean clothes.” She paused a moment. “And so will I.”
Cage didn’t know if she also purposefully gave them a menial task that was time intensive. She might have done it just to keep them focused on something normal, something they could accomplish. So he agreed.
She grabbed his father’s laundry basket and headed into her room to get her own. Cage was still standing in the same spot when he heard her feet on the steps to downstairs. With a jolt, he looked around the room.
The bed. If his father came back… he’d appreciate a clean bed. If he didn’t, then leaving the bed dirty was pointless and unsanitary.
See? Cage told himself. He could be practical, too.
He tugged off the pillowcases and pulled back the sheet. As he did, the phone fell out from where Nate must have tucked it under a pillow.
47
Cage set down his own basket of laundry next to where his sister was beginning to paw through her clothes and put blue things into the washer.
She was turning her attention to his father's laundry as he said, “Look, I found it.” And held up the phone.
Her eyes widened as she sat back, suddenly still. “Where was it?”
“It fell out with the sheets.” He was still holding it up as though it was going to reveal a secret of the universe. It wasn't going to do that, though—the battery was completely dead. He'd already tried three times to turn it on. “I was pulling back the covers and it hit the ground, so maybe it was under his pillow.”
“That's good that you found it.”
“I'm going to go upstairs and plug it in,” he offered. “Once we get this load started, maybe it will have enough juice to power on.”
Ten minutes later, with the washer chugging from downstairs in a show of domesticity, they hit the power button on the phone and watched as it lit up.
Quickly they pushed buttons, calling up their father’s most recent interactions. They combed through text messages, but there wasn't much there that was new information.
Cage felt his breath hitch when they stumbled on a few back-and-forths between Nate and their mom that he hadn't deleted. Of course he hadn't deleted them. They might have been his last recorded conversation with his wife.
As Cage read it, he realized his parents were exactly as they appeared. They texted each other with the same love and snarky comments that they passed around in person. They had been the model for his own future thoughts of a family, but having watched as his father devolved after his mother died, he was no longer so sure.
Joule, however, was grabbing the phone, reading quickly and clicking buttons almost before he was ready for the next screen.
“Look,” she said. “He was using one of the other messenger options and sending himself notes on the dogs. Holy Fucknuts.”
Despite the swear words, the sound was reverent. She’d turned the phone closer to her own face to read, but now rotated it back toward Cage. He looked and read as fast as he could, before she could yank it away again.
Stunned, Cage tried to filter the words—they almost seemed to not make any sense to him. “Dad was going out almost every night.”
He’d thought the words would come out of his mouth as a solid sentence, but they had pushed by weakly, almost as a whisper. He couldn't believe what he was reading.
Joule only nodded in reply, seemingly unable to find her own words. But she scrolled through more of the notes and read the messages out loud.
“The pack was seven. I killed three, wounded two, and ran from the others.” With a pause and a quick scroll to the next entry, his sister added her own breathed out, “Jesus.”
“I hid from the pack. Eight total. Too big. All eight of them bigger than what I’ve been seeing.”
Cage interrupted. “He saw bigger hunters than what we normally saw?”
With a shake of her head that said she didn’t know, Joule looked back down and finished reading that entry. “Saw two lone dogs, dispatched both via machete.”
As Cage read the odd little missives for himself, he occasionally looked up at his sister to see that her face was pulling back in horror, though whether it was horror at what their father had done or at his casual note-taking system, Cage didn’t know. He only knew what he was feeling himself and expected his expression mirrored hers.
“I'm trying to count how many he killed in total,” Joule said at the same time as Cage commented, “I was looking at how many nights he'd gone out.”
His sister looked up at him, her eyes wide and clear, but the spark behind them missing. “These first notes are long before I even suspected he wanted to go out and fight.”
Cage nodded. He, too, had expected it started after he and Joule refused to go back out—well after the night the three of them fought together. But apparently, Nate had been out by himself long before that.
“Look.” He pointed to one of the small entries. “He called them dogs in all the ones before, but then calls them night hunters after this one.”
“The date matches,” she agreed with a sigh that said she was more disturbed by the find than pleased or even relieved.
What bothered Cage was that his father had pushed them to agree they all had to stick together. Cage and Joule had gone out the one night in part because they felt dragged into the fight by that exact promise. Though Cage hadn't quite believed his father bought into it, he had desperately wanted to believe his father would hold to the vow.
But the promise itself had been made on a lie. Nate had already been going out, and slaughtering whatever dogs he could, long before he’d taken Cage and Joule out.
“Holy shitballs.” His sister’s calm swear brought his attention back to the phone.
Her swears were not uncommon, but
her artistry with them was. She whispered the phrase again. “Holy shitballs.”
“What?”
“Cage, he was going out before he even had the chain mail.”
She scrolled a couple of times, moving the words faster than Cage could follow, not knowing what she was looking for. She summed it up as she moved up and down through the entries. “He mostly used the machete. He really only walked up and down the street—”
“Do you think anyone saw him?” Cage interrupted.
“God. I hope not.”
They were still thumbing through the records in the phone much later when the washer dinged, reminding them that they’d left their dinner to sit out and they had tasks to do. And that, despite the notes their father had taken, his phone didn’t seem to be much help in finding him.
Joule handed the phone to Cage with a shrug and a sigh, indicating she was done with it. She waved her hands and her tone wavered, too. “There's nothing in here we can use to find them.” She sounded almost angry. “He didn’t have any techniques we can use that are safe.”
Cage started to open his mouth to say his father had survived plenty doing things this way, but Joule shook her finger at him before he even got the words out.
“It's not safe! He died doing this.”
Again, it was a punch to Cage that she was willing to say it out loud, even though he knew it and believed it in his heart. His jaw clenched with the pain of the words that now both his parents were gone, and he turned his head to the side in an effort to fight the sudden smack of tears that threatened to come.
And then his heart stopped.
“We fucked up.” He whispered the words as he looked out the window.
It was way too dark outside already.
“Joule, turn it off. We have to close up. Now!”
He tried not to yell. He desperately didn't want to make noise—in case there were night hunters out at the edge of the yard, already stalking in the shadows.
Without breathing he stepped slowly and cautiously toward the window to close the curtains.
“Don't,” she whispered harshly. “Don't touch them. I think I see movement… We can't afford to close the curtains.” Her tone pleaded with him to agree. “It's already too late. I'm just hoping there’s enough daylight left that we can turn off the lights without getting noticed.”
Slowly, she dropped to the floor then, and crawled. He caught on that she was hoping to stay under the level of the windows, and he followed.
“You get the lights. I’ll lock the doors,” he said as quietly as he could above the pounding of his heart.
Piece by piece, they secured what they could of the house and came back on their bellies to the middle floor.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Hallway.” She pointed one finger toward the upstairs, and added, “Attic.”
When they got into the hall and out of the view of any of the windows, they pulled down the makeshift staircase Kaya had installed for exactly this kind of incident. The ladder-like stairs slid down smoothly, despite the roughness of the woodwork, and they climbed up.
There was no way to see from the outside into the hallway, so at least this movement was free. Cage breathed a little easier as Joule grabbed the stairs and pulled them up behind her. They slid back into their folded position and she crawled awkwardly around the opening, reaching down into the hallway and grabbing the long string. Joule pulled the cord up with them and secured the door.
That was protocol. They had to pull up the knob and string, because what if the hunters jumped up and grabbed it? This was safer.
Looking at his sister, he allowed himself to let out the breath he’d been holding. They would be okay in the attic overnight. At least he wanted to believe that. He told himself that his mother had saved her children once again, and she would be proud. He hoped she could see that they would be okay.
But even as that thought passed through his head, Cage heard the sound of breaking glass and nails on hardwood.
48
Joule was convinced she was going to have a heart attack.
Her heart was beating erratically. She knew the exact out-of-cadence rhythm because, unlike a normal day, she felt every heavy hit of pressure in every portion of her body, particularly in her head. Her brain might explode as well as her chest.
Her breathing was labored, too—probably PTSD from the last time she'd spent the night in an attic, listening to the night hunters roam through the house below.
The click of their nails on the hardwood floor was even more disturbing this time. She hadn't realized it before, but sitting here all night, she had nothing but time to think.
Thinking, at least was quiet.
The houses in the neighborhood were all built around the same time, probably by the same manufacturer. Which was why the click of the nails on her own floor sounded exactly like they had the night she had spent terrified and convinced she was going to die and her family wouldn’t know what had happened to her.
Now, only her brother remained to miss her. And if she went, he likely would, too.
Her hand reached out and clutched his, a physical reminder that this time was different. She tried to console herself with the numbers. She had done this once before, and she had survived. She was more knowledgeable now. The first time, she’d ducked into an attic on a whim. This time, it was a plan, and they had followed it to a tee. They would be okay.
Unfortunately, she followed the numbers right back into a serious round of hyperventilation and heart-thumping fear.
The first time, the hunters had stalked her and then eventually let her get away. She’d waited them out, and in the morning, she’d come home. She was smarter now, but so were they…
They would have learned, too, and they might have figured out how to get into an attic.
She couldn't tell what Cage was thinking, only that he held her hand tightly. He wasn’t speaking, but she could still hear, loud and clear, that he wasn’t immune to these kinds of thoughts.
Did he grip her hand as hard as she gripped his back? She didn't know, and she couldn't ask.
It was constant work to keep her breathing as silent as possible. It was exhausting, with only short moments without sounds when she could relax just a little.
She heard two of them.
Then three. Coming up the stairs.
She and Cage sat, still with hands clutched, waiting as the creatures walked the hallway directly below them.
Joule heard them as they passed from wood to carpet, going into the bedrooms. They didn't smell well, so she didn't know what they would do in there. Did they sniff at her things? Nudge them and roll them around?
She thought of the jeans she’d left on the floor. The shirt she had peeled and left out a few nights ago that she should have picked up and put in her hamper. Now, she would throw it all out and never wear it again.
Though she listened as carefully as possible, Joule couldn't tell. Did they climb up on her bed, walk across, curl up?
From the sounds of steps, one of the hunters stayed in the hall. Then another came back into the narrow space. She could hear them right below her.
Her fingers clenched involuntarily. Her breathing shallowed out and sped up.
She talked herself through, counting to six for breaths in and never quite making it. She tried counting to six to breathe out, too, and barely made it to four.
Eventually, the night hunters seemed to have left. She hadn’t heard anything in a while. She must have missed them leaving down the steps and out the front. Maybe she’d dozed. Joule didn’t know.
But, ever so slowly, her breathing returned to normal.
Then she heard it. Just below her.
Another tap—a tail, perhaps hitting a wall—and she froze.
They knew she and Cage were up here.
The night hunters hadn’t left. They were sitting there in the hallway, waiting them out.
49
Joule breathed in and out as slowl
y as she could, forcing herself to painfully hold each breath to five seconds. She wanted to talk to her brother, but even that was dangerous. Waving her hands or shifting, even just an accidental bump, would be a reminder that they were up here.
The night hunters always left before morning. Or they had. But did they have to?
Was it the sunlight that drove them off? Because it sure seemed to be the dark that brought them out.
What happened if she and her brother opened the attic door and the hunters were still there?
It had been pitch black in the attic throughout the night. She’d only known she was with her brother because she was holding his hand. In fact, she’d had an incredibly creepy thought that maybe he was gone and only his hand was left with her holding it.
Had she fallen asleep and dreamed that? It was hard to believe that she could have possibly slept through the tension that haunted her all night. But she didn’t know.
She listened through the stillness, cataloging each creak of a branch outside the attic. Each pop as the houses settled. Each thump of a tail on the wall. Each touch of a softly padded foot on the floor she walked barefoot most mornings.
A series of soft thumps made her believe she was hearing them leave. It sounded like paws on steps, heading downward. Then through the living room.
Cage grabbed her hand and gave a couple of quick squeezes indicating that he heard something happening, too.
Another sound followed the first. Maybe only two of them had left, and now she heard another walking along the hall and down the stairs.
Was there a fourth waiting? Had she counted correctly?
If she’d been wrong at any point in her estimates, then she and Cage could open the door and find a killer waiting for them.
Her next question was: Had they simply gone all the way into the lowest floor of the house? If they decided to stay down there, that was trouble, too. Then the twins would need to find a way out of the attic without going through the house, a task that would be difficult at best.
The Hunted Page 20