The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (13 page)

Outside, Jones approached cautiously and called out for him. Unable to answer, he sank to one knee, the edges of his vision darkening. He moved for the door as Jones called out again, slightly louder this time.

“Paul, someone’s coming.”

He turned and made his way out onto the porch slowly. The whine of Kai’s engine approaching on the highway was a small relief. Paul slumped on the first step, watching as his brother veered into the driveway and rumbled down to park behind Greg’s truck. He leaped out of the cab, shouting, “Did you find her?”

“Jesus, Kai,” was all he could say. “Jesus, Lani’s dead.”

Kai pushed past him, heading straight into the house. Paul heard him stop for a moment in the hallway, and then the sound of his heavy steps taking the stairs two at a time. His voice came down, loud and hard, shouting, “Sarah? Sarah?”; then his footsteps sounded again, moving farther away from the front of the house. Shaking off the scene in the hallway as best he could, Paul shoved himself to his feet and steeled himself to walk back into the house. Jones, already on the porch with him, stepped behind him noiselessly.

They moved quickly into the den, avoiding the hallway and heading for the kitchen. Kai came thumping down the stairs again, his high school baseball bat in hand. His face was pale, grim, his eyes narrowed as he walked unfazed past the body in the hallway. Jones stood off to one side, unsure of what to do, while Kai paced the kitchen and Paul leaned against the refrigerator with his hands on his head.

“So she’s not upstairs?” Paul asked.

“No. I talked to her, and she said she was in her closet. I checked there first. Then I checked my room, yours, Dad’s, all the closets, the tub . . . I called for her. She’d come out if she was here.” Kai spoke rapidly, crossing the kitchen in three long strides before turning back. “Maybe the police got her.”

Jones cleared his throat. “What if—”

“Don’t!” Kai snarled. “I would have said I found her if she was up there.”

“She called me,” Paul mumbled.

“Me too. Her phone died.”

“Did she call the cops? Do you know?”

“She said she did, but then she hung up to call me again. But I can’t get through to nine-one-one. I tried,” Kai said, dragging the bat behind him.

“I don’t think the cops would have left Lani here,” Paul said quietly.

They all fell silent for a long moment. Suddenly Kai stopped pacing and turned toward the front of the house. His clouded features began to clear as his eyebrows lifted.

“Hey. Hey. The feed is here,” he said hopefully. “Did you see that? The feed is sitting in the driveway. You think Mike got her?”

Paul frowned. He hadn’t seen any feed, but then again, he had been focused on getting to his sister.

“Yeah, Mike must have her!” Kai’s voice rose. “He was bringing by the rest of the order, and he must have taken her.” He radiated relief so that the other two felt equally sure that Sarah was safely away from the house. Just then, Jones leaped away from the kitchen window and let out a stifled cry.

“What?! What?!” Paul cried.

Jones had landed crouched, his fingertips against a cabinet and the other hand spread out flat in the air. His eyes were wide and darting from the window to the door.

“Someone’s here. Outside. Out there,” he whispered. “Something just moved out in the back, past that window . . . big. It’s gotta be a person.”

Kai and Paul looked at one another.

“Mike’s truck isn’t here,” Paul said.

His eyes on his brother, Paul saw the moment that his features hardened into a stony mask; Kai’s jaw flexed, his eyes narrowed slightly, and the groove between his brows stood out in shadow again. He tightened his grip on the bat. Without moving or looking away from Paul, he shouted once, “Sarah?”

They strained, listening for any kind of response. The kitchen clock ticked loudly, and the gusty breeze hissed through the foliage. The motion sensor clicked on again, sending yellow light streaking through the window. Taking a deep breath, Kai shouted again, louder this time.

“Sarah, listen to me. If that’s you, find a place to hide where you can see the back door. I’m going to come out there—”

Jones hissed, “What are you doing?”

Kai ignored him. “—and I’m going to kill whoever else is on our property. You find somewhere you can see me, and you yell for me when I step out. I won’t let him get to you, kiddo, I promise.”

Paul finally straightened up. “You’re going to kill him?” he heard himself ask.

The look on Kai’s face was a blend of disbelief and disgust. He pointed the bat past Jones, toward the door that led into the hallway.

“You see what he did to her?” His voice was low, rumbling.

Raising his hands in deference, Paul answered, “Listen. I was at the beach, and something like this happened. People went nuts, Boomer attacked Greg—”

“And Trent attacked Brandon!” Kai yelled over him. “And some lunatic
killed
Lani!” With that, he stepped to the kitchen door and threw it open. The motion sensor light did little to illuminate the backyard; the dirt area between the house and the shed was easily visible, but past that, the shrubs and trees shadowed the grounds. Kai stood in the doorway, puffing up to fill almost the whole frame. Paul took a few steps forward, saying, “Don’t kill him, Kai. I don’t know what’s happening, but if the police show up, and you’ve—”

Finally Kai’s temper broke. He swung the bat with unbelievable force into the doorjamb, sending wood splinters out into the night.

“
Sarah is out there!
” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. Falling silent, Paul felt his shoulders slump. The only sound was Kai’s heavy breathing as he worked to regain his control and stepped down onto the dirt. The ground scratched beneath his feet. He waited, peering into the dark. Then he shouted, “
Now
, Sarah!”

There was no sound, no movement from the yard. Kai’s frame seemed to shrink a little. Paul watched him—his shoulders heaving, his hands wringing the grip on the bat. When Kai called out again, his voice broke.

“Sarah!” It was both a command and a plea. Again, no answer came. Paul stepped out onto the porch to join his brother.

“Kai, listen . . . I have my cell phone. Do you have Mike’s number? I’m sure she’s with him,” he said quietly.

After a few moments, Kai let the bat swing down in one hand. He kept his back to the porch as he shoved his free hand into his pocket, digging for the receipt from the shop. After a moment he loosed his grip on the bat, letting it fall to the ground, and dug in his other pocket as well. Just then, the sound of crunching gravel sounded from the side of the house, and a figure tore around the corner into the backyard. His yellow shirt was stained with blood, soiled with vomit and dirt. Paul cried out incoherently as he recognized the jogger from earlier in the day, sprinting straight for him, his teeth bared like an animal. He shrieked horribly and lunged forward; Paul braced himself for the impact.

A sickening thud sounded as Kai collided with the jogger, sending them both smashing into the side of the house. The jogger yelped and fell back, scrambling in the dirt away from Kai, who was working his way forward, his left hand pressed into his side. In his right hand was the bat.

The jogger scrambled a few more feet, then leaped up again and pounced at Kai. Paul watched in stunned horror as the maniac clawed and swiped, lashing out with his legs and fists, beating on his brother. Kai pushed away from his attacker just as the man snapped his teeth at Kai’s face. Swinging the bat up, he brought it crashing down on the jogger’s shoulder. Even from the porch, Paul heard what he thought must have been breaking bones. The jogger collapsed, snarling in protest. His body curled defensively into a ball in the dirt as Kai hefted the bat into the air again. Trying to lift his wounded arm to cover himself, the jogger howled in agony.

Any thoughts Paul had of mercy or consequences had evaporated at the appearance of the jogger. He had been too far away from the beach to really see the horde or what they had done to each other. But the connection between Lani’s ruined corpse and the bloody man on the ground before him was immediate and horrifying. As Kai brought the bat down on the man’s head, Paul felt only a dull sickness at the indescribability of the sound it made. A tiny, distorted scream escaped from the jogger just before his brother smashed the bat down a final time.

Kai stumbled away, trembling moans blending with his exhales. He backed toward the porch, as if he were unable to take his eyes off the figure in the dirt. The concrete step bumped his calves, and he collapsed onto the stairs.

Paul stood above him on the porch, not knowing what to do. His brain fumbled for words, feelings, judgments, plans . . . nothing came. On the step below him, his brother sat slouched forward, his elbows on his knees, his forearms hanging limply between his thighs. His right hand still held the bat. Slowly, he shifted it to his left, then leaned up on his hip and dug into his pocket. Paul heard crinkling paper as Kai drew out a receipt and held it up over his shoulder without turning to face him. His hands were shaking.

He said only, “Call Mike.”

Glad to leave the stuffy recycled air of the plane behind him, Gary stepped into the terminal at LAX and tried to shake Tanya Miller from his trail. She had been seated beside him on the flight from Honolulu and talked incessantly about her vacation home, missing her dogs, and the problem with tanning past the age of forty. He had guessed, but not said, that she was actually well past that age; dark roots peeked out from under her platinum-blonde hair, and the strange gloss of her skin implied plastic surgery. On another flight, he might have been more receptive, but today everything grated on his nerves. Two hours into the flight, he had made a show of getting out a paperback, to no avail. She had simply turned the subject to her favorite authors. He hadn’t had the guts to put his headphones on and watch the in-flight entertainment. The last half hour sitting on the tarmac had felt like an eternity; it was difficult to block the scent of her breath, a mix of Bloody Mary and ham sandwich, while he waited for the pilot to announce that they could turn their cell phones back on.

“Oh, Gary!” she called from somewhere behind him. “Gary, I wanted to tell you . . .”

He didn’t stop, swerving between clumps of people heading to their gates. Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he checked again for any messages. Although he had none, he held the device to his ear and feigned a call, keeping his head down as he approached baggage claim. There was plenty of open space to stand, but he wedged himself between two groups from his flight to wait for his bag and ward off Tanya.

He was still pretending to be on the phone when it rang. The violence of the tune in his ear made him flinch; embarrassed, he picked up the call and said, “Sorry, I must have lost you.”

There was a brief silence on the other end, and then a quiet voice said, “Have you landed safely?” It was the same voice that had called two months ago and warned him about Brandon—the same voice that had offered him help.

“Yep. Yeah, I’m at the baggage claim,” Gary responded. He was working to appear and sound casual, and he was pretty sure it showed.

“Good. I’m in the Theme Building outside the terminal. Upstairs; the restaurant is called the Encounter
.
Just tell the hostess you’re meeting a client, and she’ll point you to me.”

Before Gary could answer, the phone went dead.

“Okay, sounds good!” he said cheerfully. It felt awkward, but he was extremely conscious of trying to appear relaxed and in good spirits. His hopes sank somewhat when he jumped again at the sound of an alarm, signaling the arrival of the bags. No one around him seemed to notice his tension, but in the back of his mind, he was convinced that something about the look of him would give him away. His one comfort was that he himself wasn’t sure what it was he would be exposing.

The regular jostling for position began as the bags dropped heavily onto the belt and started their circular trip. Twenty feet down the line, he caught a glimpse of Tanya looking unhappy, her overstuffed lips positioned in a grotesque pout. She slipped on her sunglasses when she caught his eye. Relieved, he turned his focus back to the belt and the approaching bags.

Finally his luggage emerged and slipped down the chute. With it in sight, he felt his stomach start churning and his pulse quicken. It was the same nondescript, blue K-Mart luggage he had toted around for years; normally it took him two or three rotations of the belt to finally pick it out. Today, his eyes were glued to it the second it appeared. His suitcase was less than ten feet away when a hand reached out and yanked it off the belt into the crowd.

“Hey!” he shouted, then shrank back from the surprised stares around him. Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he started forward, parting the crowd and working his way toward the spot where his bag had disappeared. Finally he saw it, sitting on the floor with a slightly younger man crouched over it, fumbling with the zippers.

“Hey! Hey, that’s my bag,” he said forcefully as he stumbled past the last couple in his way. The younger man looked up, frowning.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that, man,” he replied, standing. “Looks just like mine. I was looking for the name tag . . . I always hook it to the zipper.” He smiled at Gary.

There was nothing suspicious in his appearance. He looked to be in his late thirties, with dark brown hair and eyes, dressed comfortably but well. But something in the pallor of his skin made Gary feel uneasy as he stepped forward to claim his bag. He checked the back for the red piece of duct tape he used to identify his luggage and glanced back up at the other man, who had stepped away and resumed searching the belt for his own bag.

“Sorry,” Gary called out weakly. The man didn’t even hear him. Turning and heading for the door, Gary rolled his bag behind him, gripping the plastic handle tightly. When he stepped out into the cool Southern California air, he was overwhelmed with sudden fatigue. It had been balmy and breezy when he had boarded his plane in Hawaii. There, he would be sitting up watching television or working at his desk with the windows open, the outside air still soft and warm. The time difference meant that it was close to 1:30 a.m. in Los Angeles, and the streetlights did little to fend off the blanketing darkness. He was surrounded by the clashing energies of people arriving for red-eyes or hailing taxis after a long flight home. He felt his nerves fray just a little more.