by C. L. Stone
The smell of cigarette smoke increased. I lifted my hand over my nose. I leaned in, surveying without opening the door any further. I recognized the room from what I had seen through the camera, but a little disorienting with the change in perspective. I spotted the wall and TV first. I leaned in further, trying to scan.
The bed was empty.
I paused, afraid. Maybe he left his bedroom and was in the bathroom. I checked once more, making sure he hadn’t gotten up and moved to another part of the room.
But Theo was gone. I swayed back and forth, looking around; unless he was standing right behind the door, he wasn’t in there.
I tiptoed back down the hall to check the bathroom. The door was open and the light was off.
I paused. Maybe he went into Charlie’s room?
I followed the sound of movement in the main living area. I stopped outside of the kitchen, where the guys were heating up leftovers from Silas’s fridge. The living room was empty, too, and the guest bathroom had the door open and the light off.
“Where’s Theo?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Luke said, staring down the timer on the microwave. “He’s in his room.”
“No, he isn’t,” I said.
There was a pause in everyone’s movements, and eyes shifted to me. Dr. Green turned to the boys for a moment, and then put down the plastic cups he’d been holding. He came to the kitchen entrance, and then gently eased me to the side. “Stay here with them,” he said quietly.
I wrapped my arms around my stomach, leaning against the counter, looking in at Luke and Gabriel, who seemed curious and watched Dr. Green as he slipped down the hall. The microwaved beeped, and Luke opened it quickly to stop it from making any more noise. Gabriel moved over, put an arm around my waist, but was standing where he could look over my shoulder and keep his focus behind me.
“He’s not here!” Dr. Green shouted suddenly.
Gabriel released me. I turned and followed him and met up with Dr. Green down the hall. Luke smacked into me when I stopped.
Gabriel shook his hands in the air. “How the fuck did he get outside? We’ve been here the whole time.”
“Maybe a window?” Luke asked. “Did we secure those?”
“It’s the second story,” Gabriel said.
“So?” Luke grinned. “Doesn’t stop me.” Maybe he sneaks out.”
Dr. Green sliced his hand through the air. “However he does it, we need to find him. He couldn’t have gone too far.”
We followed Dr. Green to the front door. We all spilled out onto the walkway. There didn’t appear to be anyone outside right now. The parking lot was quiet. We scanned the area, but there wasn’t any movement.
“Now what?” Luke asked.
Dr. Green sighed. “Someone’s going to have to stay here in case he comes back. “And someone goes out and tried to find him.”
“We’ll go,” Gabriel said. “Luke and Sang can come along. You stay.”
“What?” Dr. Green asked. “Leave Sang here.”
“No,” Luke said. “We should split up. We’ve got the alarm set for the front door. Two of us should go on foot and circle the block. Two of us should drive around. I’ll take Sang with me.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “We three should go and Dr. Green should circle the complex and come back. See if he tries sneaking in the window or check out his room and see if there’s anything in there to tell us what he’s been up to lately.”
Dr. Green rifled through his hair, grabbing at it, and making the smoothed out hair puff up a little. “I hate it when you guys are right,” he said. He pointed at Luke. “Don’t you lose her.” He pointed at Gabriel. “Don’t get her arrested or hurt.” He swung his finger and pointed at my nose and then beeped it. “And you. If you see any trouble at all, leave these idiots and run away. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Owen’s going to kill me,” he said. “Theo had better be out buying cigarettes.”
The Three Amigos
Hunt for Theo
I curled up in the passenger seat. The sun was gone, with just a sliver of light left, darkness trying to take over. It’d already been a long day. My head was back against the headrest, and I reached back, taking out the hair clip and twisting my hair on top of my head to re-clip so I could lean my head back without it being in the way.
Luke was driving. He glanced over while I was arranging myself. “I’ve got a lot of your hair clips,” he said. “You need some back? I didn’t realize how many I had at home until yesterday.”
I thought about it. “I don’t know where another one is, actually. This might be my last one.”
“Good,” Gabriel said. He was messing with his phone. “You don’t need any clips. Wear your hair down for once. And I don’t know how Victor does this shit. How are we supposed to track Theo if he doesn’t have a cell phone?”
“Let’s check out the churches,” Luke said. “That’s where we suspect he’s going. If he isn’t at any of them, why bother?”
“There’s the one that burned down near here,” I said. “Is there another one nearby?”
“Hang on,” Gabriel said. He sat up, and put a hand on my shoulder, but he focused on Luke. “Wait, wait, wait. We should go check out the old church that burned down.”
“Why?” Luke asked, but he pulled down a side street and then turned again to almost take us the way we’d come from.
“That happened last night, didn’t it?” Gabriel asked. “There might be someone still around to tell us what happened. We need to find the fire print.”
“What’s a fire print?” I asked.
“It’s how a fire started,” Gabriel said. He held his hand up, counting off by touching a finger each time he made a point. “There’s when the fire started, the accelerants used, wind conditions, locations, point of entry...”
“It’s how you ID an arsonist,” Luke said. “It’s really hard to do. Mostly it works with serial arsonists. Sometimes fires are started by accident, or for insurance purposes, so it only happens once. Serial arsonists are really hard to catch, though. Evidence gets burned up, which makes it difficult to trace. Basically you have to get lucky or catch them in the act.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyebrow and rubbed. “So how will knowing the fire print help us find Theo?” I asked.
“We’re more concerned if he’s been setting anything on fire. Or if these fires aren’t him, if it will trigger him to start,” Gabriel said. He sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. His lips pursed. “If that motherfucker screws up Silas somehow with this...”
“We don’t know what he’s doing,” Luke said.
“But we can’t keep chasing him around when there’s people out there stealing Kota’s car, or the bomb threats we’re supposed to be dealing with. We’re already wasting time trying to babysit him when he’s not doing what he’s supposed to be doing. And now he’s climbing out the window? That’s not what a normal person does.”
I wanted to suggest something, a way to fix it. I didn’t want Silas in trouble, but I also felt Theo needed someone to understand him. How many times had I escaped out the back door when I felt too confined? I was suspected of doing wrong constantly within my own home without any proof. Maybe Theo did something bad back in Greece, but being locked away like a dirty secret would make anyone want to escape, at least for a while.
Luke turned down another road, and before he finished straightening the car, I could see the ruins of the old church. Three of the walls were still intact, with scorch marks rising over the broken-out windows. The roof was gone, and it looked like a back wall might have crumbled. There was a heavy smell of burned wood seeping in through the car. I swallowed, tasting it at the back of my throat.
Lines of yellow police tape crossed over a wide area. The street was quiet, and the place appeared to be mostly abandoned.
Luke pulled up to the old parking lot, and parked close to a set of trees by the road. We sat in the car, looking out
the windows. I was nearly leaning over Luke. Mostly, I was scanning the area for Theo, in case he was lurking around somewhere.
I really hoped he wasn’t. I hoped we were wrong. Maybe we could find him and he could tell us he’s got a girlfriend he sneaks off to see. Or maybe he really did go out for cigarettes, and we just missed him somehow.
Luke turned off the car, opened the door and then looked at me. “Okay,” he said, and he pointed a finger at me and then at his seat. “I want you to sit right here.”
My eyes widened. “Why?”
“I’m going to run around this lot,” he said. “Gabriel can circle the block. We’ll check out who’s here. If someone approaches the car that isn’t me or Gabriel, I want you to drive off.”
“Uh, no,” Gabriel said. He got up, shoving Luke out the door and taking his seat behind the wheel. “We’re not really supposed to split up. Either we all go, or I have to stay here with her.”
Luke put his hands on his hips, and smirked, looking in at us. “Theo isn’t the only one we have to watch out for. There might be a few people who will check out to see if there’s anything valuable hanging around. Scavengers. Or hobos.”
“Which is why someone has to stay here with her,” Gabriel said.
Luke sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut. “Okay, maybe we should all take a walk around the thing. But if we’re chased by a hobo, I’m leaving you behind while Sang and I run for the car.”
“I’ll kick his fucking ass. I’m not running shit tonight. I hate running.” His voice was a little more gravelly and deeper than usual. Gabriel shoved Luke in the chest. Luke backed up a few steps while Gabriel eased himself out of the car. “Let’s just get Theo.”
I opened my door and got out. The air, heavy with the smell of burned wood filled my throat and nose then, making me sneeze a couple of times into my elbow. I swallowed and kept my eyes closed to try to keep from doing it again.
“Oh my god, what the fuck. She even sneezes cute?” Gabriel was looking at me over the top of the car when I lifted my head. His mouth was hanging open and part of the blond lock of hair fell away from the russet brown. Some strands flew into his mouth and he spit the hair back out and raked his fingers through to fix it. “Come on, Trouble. Let’s go before you start farting bunnies and rainbows or some shit.”
Luke started laughing hard, and clamped his hand over his stomach, squeezing his brown eyes almost shut.
Even with the crisp bite to the air as it became evening, my cheeks flushed warmly.
As the boys started walking, I sped up to walk super close between them. They must have been cold, too. Gabriel grabbed my arm and held mine over his. He was in his tank shirt and his arms were bare. Luke was walking really close, keeping me between them so we were sharing body heat.
We took a wide circle around the entire churchyard. There were parts where the ground was a little soggy. Luke eventually had me get up on his back and hang on to him to get over a super muddy patch we found ourselves in front of. I climbed back off when we got back to the edge of the parking lot.
“Okay,” Gabriel said as we came back around and toward where the old doors of the church used to be. He had his flashlight out and was shining it into bushes. “I don’t see anyone. Let’s go scope out the next church.”
“Maybe we should check the inside?” Luke asked, pointing to the doorway. “Just be careful. We don’t want—”
“Hey!” A voice cried out behind us.
We all turned at the same time, although Luke and Gabriel jumped in front of me. They remained elbow to elbow. I was tiptoeing to peer over Luke’s shoulder.
A cop car had stopped at the corner. The door was open, the lights on inside. A cop was walking toward us, alone. He had his hands up in a cautious way. From the light of his car and some street lights, I could see his short-cropped hair, and he was tall. He didn’t appear irritated or wary, mostly curious. How had we not noticed it? Then I noticed his headlights weren’t on. He snuck up on us. How did he know we were here?
“Yes?” Luke answered.
“You shouldn’t be hanging around here,” the cop said. “And don’t go inside. The floorboards might break, and those walls could come down at any time.” He stopped midway into the parking lot and then made a gesture that we should approach him.
Luke and Gabriel did, slowly at first. “Sorry,” Luke said. “Actually, we were wondering what happened. We heard it on the news.”
The cop waited until we were close enough that he could talk without raising his voice. He put out a hand. “What’s your name?”
“Luke,” he said, and he put out his hand and shook.
The cop nodded. “I’m David. I didn’t mean to spook you, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t making trouble. Do you live around here?” he asked.
He was very casual for a cop. He struck me differently than another one I’d run into before with them. Very informal.
“At an apartment complex nearby,” Luke said, pointing toward where Silas’s apartments were.
“How’d the fire start?” Gabriel asked, although his voice was different. Very curious, like he didn’t know anything at all about what happened and was very stunned to hear there was a fire.
The cop squinted at Gabriel and then turned his attention on me. “From what I’ve heard, it was a slow-burning accelerant. They don’t know what exactly without taking it to the lab, they just followed a timeline. Some sort of chemical. Maybe it was meth-heads cooking or something. Or maybe a homeless guy was living there, started the fire, and didn’t have a way to contain it.”
“When did it start?” Luke asked.
“The fire wasn’t reported until two, after it had already started.” The cop shifted his weight and then nodded toward the church. “Somewhere close to the altar from what I hear. Or where the altar used to be. I wasn’t sure it was there anymore. Someone said it was like the other two that burned, but this one was different from the others.”
I felt Gabriel and Luke shifting, tense. “Could they still be related?” Gabriel asked.
The cop’s face changed then. There was a small smug smile in the corner of his lip. I wasn’t sure if the others caught it, but it was significant to me. He got some information he wanted simply by Gabriel’s question. I realized then he was being open with information, because he was hoping to steer us into seeing how much we knew. Was it because they weren’t surprised to hear about the two additional fires?
“You don’t happen to know someone who would want to do this sort of thing, do you?” David asked. He motioned to the church. “I mean, I know it is run down and all, but that’s not a place to hang out and just start fires. Usually an arsonist works up from something else. They don’t just automatically target a specific building like old churches. I mean, there’s not that many abandoned ones in a town even this size. Eventually you run out of the abandoned ones and work up to property damage.”
“Won’t the police catch whoever it is?” Luke asked. “Aren’t there any suspects or leads?”
The cop shook his head. “Honestly, they would if they ran into some solid evidence. That’s just wishful thinking, though. To spend the resources in really tracing down chemical compounds in the accelerants to find out what it is and to develop a profile, it costs too much money, and they aren’t going to waste time. If it was private property burning down, maybe, but usually insurance teams will do the footwork in those cases and they give us the report we might be able to work from. If people were hurt, that would be different. The police have better things to do, higher priorities. I wish this guy would cut it out, though. I hate having to come out to something like this, when someone who really needs my help might be out there.”
I swallowed, feeling like I was getting a lecture for something I hadn’t done. I didn’t think he was accusing anyone, but I had a feeling he was talking about checking up on us and possibly needing to be somewhere else.
“Sorry, man,” Gabriel said
, holding up a hand. “Wish we could help. We were just wondering if the guy was going to start hitting homes or something else.”
“Sometimes when these guys go unchecked, they escalate,” he said. “They start waiting until people are around, so they can show off. That makes it dangerous. Then someone really could get hurt, burned or worse. It’ll be on his head.”
Luke shrugged and then started to turn. “Hopefully he’ll think better of it soon. I mean, that’s a pretty mean thing to do.”
David stood quietly, his hands resting on the handle of the flashlight in his belt, and on the radio piece on the other side. He smiled for a moment, and then reached into his pocket, pulling out a card. “You know, if you hear of anything, any rumors that seem like they might not be just rumors, you can give me a call. My cell phone number is on the back.”
Luke took the card. “You’ve got it.”
The cop waited where he was while we retreated to the car. I kept my mouth shut until we were in the car, down the road a ways, and out of sight from the cop. My heart was beating hard, wondering if the cop would call in about us, and if he somehow knew who we were.
Gabriel had taken the front passenger seat this time, and I sat in the back. “Whew,” he said. He covered his eyes with his palms, pressing at them. “He could have been a real dick and took our names and shit. Or took us in for trespassing or corrupting a crime scene.”
“We got what we wanted to know, though,” Luke said. “They aren’t interested right now, but they will be if this changes to private property.”
“And the slow-burning accelerant,” Gabriel said. He dropped his hands and then fished out his phone. “This is a Victor thing. He should check to see if the fire department ever really identified any details. The accelerant doesn’t just light the fire. Something has to start it.”
“The fact that there is accelerant means someone’s doing this on purpose,” Luke said. “This isn’t coincidence or an accident. This wasn’t meth heads. There would have been meth and junk around that would have made it obvious. The hobo thing...maybe. But it would have been the same thing, it should be obvious not a question.”