The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4

by Robertson Jr, Michael

  Meriam nodded. “I know, I know. But maybe…” Then she moved out of sight, headed toward where the sofa had been when Lance had been inside the room with her in the present. Murry stayed where he was, arms crossed, watching his wife. Waiting.

  Minutes passed by. Lance didn’t move, afraid that if he looked away, the entire scene would change and he’d end up in some other place, some other time. Finally, Meriam’s voice disturbed the silence.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  And then the sound of a bell giving off its ring-a-ding echoed in the empty office space behind Lance, and he turned around so fast his entire vision blurred and danced and he felt so dizzy he thought he might vomit and—

  And then everything slowed and returned to normal. Except…

  Except it was no longer nighttime. And he was no longer alone in the office.

  The room was a muted gold as early-morning light warmed the space. Murry was hunched over the check-in counter, wearing clean blue jeans and a t-shirt, though the work boots were still spoiled with dirt. He had a cup of coffee on the countertop next to him, beside a plate of bacon and what looked like the remnants of scrambled eggs. A newspaper was splayed out beside this, turned to the sports section.

  But Murry wasn’t looking at the newspaper. His eyes were turned upward toward the person who’d just walked through the motel office’s door. It was a young girl, dressed in checked pajama pants and mismatched neon-colored socks. A baggy sweatshirt fell nearly to her knees. Her hair was tangled from sleep, but her eyes said she was very much awake.

  Lance recognized her immediately as the girl he’d seen from his vision earlier when he’d watched the copy-and-paste boy embrace the fuzzy-television people outside the motel rooms. The girl who’d been in front of room five. Though up close now, Lance thought his early guess at her age might have been off. Now, standing in front of him, with her features more prominent, Lance thought she might be thirteen or fourteen. Older than he’d initially thought.

  She walked up to the counter in her socked feet. Murry stood up straight and smiled. “Yes, ma’am, can I help you?”

  Lance could hear the concern in his voice.

  The girl said, “My dad is dead.”

  14

  (1993)

  Alexa Shifflett was at her friend Maggie’s house when the press conference started. They were on the floor in front of the couch in Maggie’s living room, legs stretched out in front of them and bowls of popcorn balanced precariously on their thighs as they watched Nickelodeon on cable and tried to secretly put popcorn in each other’s hair.

  “Have you seen Jurassic Park yet?” Maggie asked with a mouthful.

  Alexa shook her head, took a sip of Pepsi from the can beside her. Her dad never let her have drinks in their own living room, telling her he didn’t want her to spill them and stain the carpet or the couch. Her dad was always worried about things like that. Their house was always super neat and tidy, and when people came over, they always jokingly asked, “Geez, does anybody even live here?”

  Alexa’s dad would laugh along with them, but Alexa could tell he was secretly pleased. And Alexa felt a bit of pride at this, too, because her daily chore list was one of the reasons the house always looked the way it did—what with her vacuuming and dusting and doing the dishes (always drying them and putting them away, because dishes left in the drying rack were an eyesore!).

  Alexa had always assumed her dad’s fastidious habits of neatness and cleanliness had something inherently to do with him being a police officer, because in all the movies about war and soldiers, you always saw the parts where the soldiers were told to make their beds real neat and shine their shoes real nice and somebody was always screaming in their face if they didn’t. Actually, somebody was usually screaming in their face even if they did what they were told. She knew that being a soldier and being a police officer were two different things, but the correlation still made sense to her twelve-year-old self.

  “No,” Alexa said. “Haven’t seen it yet. Daddy’s supposed to take me soon, but he’s been really busy at work lately. I can’t wait, though. It looks soooo scary.”

  Maggie washed her mouthful of popcorn down with her own sip of Pepsi. Burped and then said, “It is! We went two nights ago and mom nearly ripped my dad’s arm off. Dad said he’s going to have a bruise for weeks! My favorite part is when the T. rex—”

  Alexa shot a hand out and pressed her palm against Maggie’s lips, Maggie’s eyes going wide in surprise. “Hey!” Alexa said, “Don’t ruin it for me, dork!”

  Maggie started to lick the palm of Alexa’s hand and Alexa shouted, “Ewwww, gross!” and wiped her hand on the side of Maggie’s face. Which then prompted Maggie to take a handful of popcorn and try to stuff it down the front of Alexa’s shirt, which led to a bit of a wrestling match in which, surprisingly to everyone, not one Pepsi can ended up sideways.

  “Okay, okay, enough, girls,” Maggie’s mom, Trish, called out as she entered the living room. She was rushing across the carpet to the television. “I swear, you two can be more like boys than girls sometimes.” She started pressing buttons on the front of the television, changing the channel up, up, up. “Oh for goodness’ sake, Mags, what channel is—”

  “Mom, like, you can use the remote, you know? Technology is a good thing!” Maggie said, rolling her eyes at her mother, causing both her and Alexa to burst out laughing.

  “Oh, here it is. Shhhhh, girls, please.”

  Something in Trish’s tone set both the girls straight immediately, and when Alexa’s eyes locked on to what was being shown on the TV screen, suddenly everything else in the room began to fade away, blackness engulfing the living room, leaving only the picture being broadcast to the thirty-two-inch Zenith in Maggie O’Connell’s living room.

  On the screen, Alexa saw her dad.

  He was dressed in his uniform and seated in one of the chairs lined up in a row behind a podium with lots of microphones coming out of it. Alexa also recognized the two men seated on either side of her dad. His boss, the sheriff, was to his left, and the district attorney was to his right. Alexa had no idea what a district attorney was, or how the man knew her father, but apparently their jobs overlapped from time to time. The man had been to their home for dinner on several occasions, and he’d even brought Alexa her own personal chocolate cake the last time after he’d learned it was her favorite. Both the sheriff and the district attorney were older than her dad, but today, as the three of them sat side by side on the platform, age seemed to melt away. Alexa couldn’t quite figure out why, but to her they suddenly all looked the same. Then it hit her. She thought they all sort of looked like they were about to be sick. Like whatever reason they’d all been gathered there together was not something they wanted to participate in. They looked like they felt the way Alexa felt when she had to go to school and knew she had a big math test and had forgotten to study the night before.

  The tops of heads of the crowd gathered in front of the small raised platform were just visible as the camera operator tried to zoom in a bit tighter on the man standing behind the podium, raising his hand in an effort to quiet everyone. Alexa didn’t know this man, but he was wearing a suit that looked nice and his hair was combed neatly and he definitely was older than her dad—and the sheriff and the district attorney.

  The man started to speak, and while Trish O’Connell was hanging on his every word, and Maggie began tossing popcorn in the air and trying to catch it in her moth, clearly bored with the sight of a grown-up in a suit on television, Alexa Shifflett simply watched her father. She wondered if he knew she was watching right now. She wondered if he’d be upset when she told him. If I tell him, Alexa thought.

  Her dad did not like to talk about his job with her, opting to provide only one ambiguous phrase whenever the question was asked about what he actually did all day.

  “So it is with great honor,” the older man in the suit said, his words slicing through Alexa’s thoughts, “as mayor o
f this fine town, representing all of you wonderful people, that I extend my hand and offer up, with extreme gratitude and respect, my sincerest thanks to this man seated behind me. Please join me, folks, in a tremendous round of applause for the leader of this courageous task force, our very own, Officer Robert Shifflett. The man who makes sure our children are safe!”

  The crowd rose to its feet and started to clap, along with the sheriff and the district attorney. Alexa watched as her dad sheepishly stood from his chair, a shy smile across his face as he stepped forward and shook the mayor’s hand. Then the mayor ushered him to the podium, to the sea of awaiting microphones, and her dad said something that must have been funny, because Alexa heard a small murmur of a chuckle trickle through the crowd.

  Trish O’Connell turned and looked at Alexa, a beaming smile on her face. “You must be so proud of your father, dear.” Then she turned and continued listening to Alexa’s father’s speech.

  “What did your dad do?” Maggie asked, stuffing another fistful of popcorn into her mouth.

  Alexa looked at her friend and shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  But all she could think of was what her dad always told her when she asked what he did all day.

  I catch the monsters, baby girl.

  * * *

  Robert Shifflett pulled his car into his driveway and waited for the garage door to open before he drove in and sat in the driver’s seat and watched in the rearview as it closed shut behind him. It was a habit of his, from long before he’d even joined the police force. Something he’d seen in a movie once when he was a kid. A woman arriving home and pulling into her garage and not paying attention to the killer who’d been waiting patiently in the bushes along the side of the house and had jumped in before the door could close fully and done exactly what he’d set out to do, which was end the woman’s life in a spray of blood and a dramatic swell of music.

  Given Robert’s profession now as an adult, the paranoia was even higher. You could never be too careful in this world. You never knew what was lurking in the bushes or waiting around the corner. You never knew what places you thought were safe might not be. You never knew who people truly were on the inside.

  Robert checked the rearview again and then both the side mirrors, scanning all around the car for any unwanted guests, and then pushed open the door to his Ford Explorer and stepped out, reaching back in across the center console to grab the pizza box from the passenger seat.

  Cheese.

  Alexa’s favorite.

  The thought of his daughter sent both a spike of love and a flood of fear through him. The spike because coming home to her was the best part of his day, each and every day. The fear because, until he could see her face with his own eyes and feel her body against his as he hugged her, he had to entertain the possibility that something might have happened to his little girl—though, she wasn’t that little anymore. Hadn’t been for quite some time.

  He used his free hand to close the car door and then unlock the deadbolt he’d installed on the door that led into the small mudroom. Inside, he closed the door, relocked the deadbolt, and quickly punched in the code for the alarm, silencing the chime that had started to ring out through the house. He set the pizza down carefully on a wooden bench by the coatrack and then sat next to it and untied his boots, taking them off one by one and lining them up neatly with the other shoes along the wall. He saw Alexa’s sneakers, a pair of Nikes he’d bought her at the start of this school year that were honestly entirely too expensive, but she’d begged and begged and the smile on her face when he’d agreed had been worth every penny. Robert was smiling now. Because the Nikes, still nearly as clean as the day he’d bought them—because that had been part of the agreement, that Alexa take care of the shoes if he were to buy them for her—sitting in the neat line with the other shoes meant that Alexa was home.

  A twinge of pain shot across the left side of his head, starting right behind his eyeball and zapping its way to the back. Robert sighed and dug in his pocket for the pill bottle, found the migraine medicine and shook a tablet into his mouth. It was the most potent stuff his doctor could prescribe him, though Robert had pleaded for anything stronger—legal or not—if it would keep the migraines at bay, even just a little bit more.

  They’d plagued him since he was a teenager. Blinding, white-hot, kill-me-now headaches that could cripple him for hours if not days at a time. He never left home without his bottle of pills. Never let it get close to being empty.

  “Dad?”

  Alexa. His angel. Calling to him from the kitchen, where he knew she’d have the plates and glasses set out on the table like she did every night he was able to come home for dinner. Robert dry-swallowed the pill, stuffed the bottle back in his pocket, and then carried the pizza into the kitchen and set it on the counter.

  Alexa was sitting on one of the counter stools and flipping through a Tiger Beat magazine. Internally, Robert groaned. He disapproved of those types of magazines, especially for kids as young as Alexa. It was all about vanity and fame and nothing a wholesome young girl like his daughter should be worried about. He’d always refused to buy them for Alexa, but he’d not specifically forbidden them. The one she had now, she must have gotten from a friend. He considered starting a conversation with his daughter, asking her what exactly it was she found so appealing about what was essentially a gossip magazine for teens, but after the day he’d had—the hours spent with his boss and the DA prepping for the press conference and—another zap of pain in his brain—the presser itself, he was mentally exhausted and wanted nothing more than to enjoy his pizza with his daughter and then take a shower.

  “Hi, baby girl,” he said, sliding around the counter and wrapping his arms around her and kissing the top her head. “Good day at school?”

  Alexa closed the magazine and looked him in the eye. “Yes, sir. Mrs. Mallory was out sick, so we had a sub, and me and Maggie just played hangman with Michael and Jeremy.”

  Michael and Jeremy … boys. Robert wasn’t ready for that yet.

  Robert smiled and nodded and moved the pizza box to the kitchen table, motioning for Alexa to sit and join him. “And you finished your homework at Maggie’s.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you came straight inside the house when they dropped you off?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good girl.”

  He opened the box and put a slice on Alexa’s plate before dropping two onto his own. Alexa had already filled their glasses. His with water, hers with milk. To say that she and he had a comfortable routine would not be incorrect. He was very thankful to have gotten so lucky with her. Such a respectful, well-behaved, beautiful girl.

  It was a shame her mother wasn’t around to see it all. But, if Robert was being completely honest with himself, there was a big part of him that was glad Alexa’s mother had run off with what’s-his-name. Because it meant Robert got his little girl all to himself. Every first of Alexa’s life, every milestone, every achievement, and every learning experience, it’d been him who’d been there, holding her hand every step of the way.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, baby girl? How’s your pizza, is it good?”

  Alexa swallowed the bite she’d been chewing and nodded. “I saw you on TV today … at Maggie’s.”

  Goddammit. That ignorant Trish O’Connell…

  “Did you now? Boy, I bet that was boring, huh? Geez, I was so embarrassed up there.” He gave a big toothy grin and Alexa giggled and nodded.

  “Yeah … I mean … yes, sir. Kinda. Maggie and I didn’t really listen to much of it. But I heard that man in the suit thank you for keeping the kids safe.”

  Here we go … she’s going to ask.

  “Yes,” Robert said. “He did. It was very nice of him and all those people to come out and say thanks.”

  Alexa nodded and took another bite of pizza, and Robert hoped that would be the end of it, was thinking of something—anything—to start talking about to change th
e subject.

  But before he could, Alexa asked, “Did you … did you catch a monster?”

  And there it is.

  Robert reached for his water and took a sip. His head was starting to pound worse and he badly wanted to take another pill, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Alexa, didn’t want her to know he was hurting.

  As a rule, he didn’t talk about his job much with his daughter. She didn’t need to know about all the awful things out there, waiting for her. Waiting for anyone, himself not excluded. But, because irresponsible Trish O’Connell had allowed his twelve-year-old daughter to watch a police press conference—which, if Alexa was telling the truth, she and Maggie thankfully hadn’t paid much attention to—Robert could not simply pretend it had not happened.

  “I did, baby girl. I did my job and those nice people thanked me. And that’s enough about that.”

  Then he stood and placed his plate in the sink, kissed Alexa one more time atop her head and said, “I’m going to go take a shower. Daddy stinks.”

  15

  Lance watched as, after the girl had delivered her bomb (My dad is dead.), Murry’s smile faded and his body grew rigid and he asked, “Did you say dead?”

  The girl nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  And then Murry was moving. He rushed around the side of the check-in counter and headed for the door. The girl jumped back, out of the way, nearly falling into the watercooler, and Lance saw the flash of fear in her eyes.

  She thought he was coming after her.

  “What room?” Murry called out over his shoulder as he pulled open the door.

  The girl, having regained her footing, started after Murry and said, “Five.”

  And then Murry was gone, the bell above the door jingling as the door slammed shut. The girl followed. Another jingling of the bell. And then it was just Lance, alone in the office. He bolted from his position behind the counter and ran for the door, jumping through it without a thought, his whole body buzzing with electricity and dizziness and—