Brainrush 04 - Everlast 01: Everlast (4 page)

F
RANCESCA SAGGED INTO
the stiff chair beside
the pharmacy window. She missed her father. It had been four months since she
and Jake and the children had last visited him in Venice. He’d been thrilled to
see them, his gondolier spirit hearty and strong as ever. It had been a tearful
good-bye when they’d left a week later.

It was difficult for her and her father to be apart after thirty
years of living together. He’d raised her as a single parent for most of her
life; she’d been nine when her mother died. But her father never regretted his
daughter building a new life in California. To the contrary, he’d encouraged it,
insisting she followed her heart. It was her childhood dream come true—loving
someone with the same depth her mama had loved her papa. Francesca had found
her man in Jake, one like no other—in so many ways. 

This morning’s news from the doctors had changed everything.
The moment she told her husband the truth, the dream would end.

She choked back her sadness, recalling Jake’s guarded
behavior with Doc. Was trouble brewing on that front as well? The nagging
concern wormed its way around her belly and reminded her he’d left a voice
mail. As she reached into her purse for her phone, the pharmacist poked his
head over the counter and said, “All set.”

Rising, her eyes went to the slanted mirror running along
the top of the back wall. It allowed an unobstructed view of the store’s
interior, discouraging shoplifters. Three smartly dressed Asian men wearing
tinted glasses had just walked in. That in itself wasn’t odd, but when two of
the men remained stationed at the front entrance while the third walked a quick
track across the front of the store, systematically glancing down one aisle
after the next, it put her senses on alert. She turned her back on the hunter,
keeping an eye on his movements with the mirror.

“Restroom?” she asked the waiting pharmacist. Her grimace
and hand on her abdomen sent the silent message that she needed a quick reply.

He pointed down the small hallway to his right. “Through
there, ma’am,” he said. He held up her prescription bag. “Whenever you’re
ready.”

She nodded appreciatively, hesitating a moment as if waiting
for a cramp to pass, all the while tracking the movements in the mirror. She
knew she was in trouble when her pursuer stopped abruptly as he reached the aisle
that provided a view of her position. He stared in her direction for only a
brief moment before nodding to the two men at the door. One of them ambled
toward the checkout counter to stand behind the only other customer in the
store, while the other placed a phone to his ear and exited toward the parking
lot. The hunter assumed a casual stance, scanning items on the shelf as he
maintained his sight line to her. Whatever they wanted from her, it appeared as
if the trap would be sprung when she left through the front door. She doubled
over slightly and moved toward the bathroom.

The moment she turned the corner down the hallway she heard quick
footsteps behind her. The hunter wasn’t taking any chances. It had finally
arrived—the moment she’d prayed would never happen. Fear for her children and
Jake sent her muscles into overdrive. She kicked off her heels and ran, moving
past the restroom and pushing through a swinging door labeled
Employees
Only
. The small warehouse space consisted of two short rows of partially
filled pallet racks. The roll-up door at the opposite end was closed. The pedestrian
door beside it had a push bar labeled
Emergency Exit
. She sprinted to it and
shoved it open.

Any doubt she’d had about the validity of the threat was
washed away when the third man stepped into view to block her path. His mocking
expression dared her to try to get past him, but she yanked the door closed and
pulled out the only weapon she had—her cell phone. She ignored the first man as
he burst into the space from the hallway, her focus on the group text message
she composed.

She hit
Send
just before he grabbed her arm and ripped
the phone from her grasp.

Jake ignored the yellow light,
swerving around the two cars that slowed in front of him, and spinning into a
hard turn up the intersecting street. A quick check in his rearview mirror
confirmed no one was tailing them.

Yet.

Traffic on the four-lane street was heavy, but he refused to
slow. He weaved the Mustang between cars as he sped forward. “Quickly!” he said
to Doc, who was struggling to steady himself as he fumbled with Jake’s phone.

“I’m try—ing,” Doc said, his voice breaking as Jake spun
into another turn.

“Look in my Favorites list. The group’s called Doomsday,”
Jake said. He floored the gas pedal on a straightaway, his mind flashing on Marshall’s
insistence on the dire name when they’d hatched their evac plan a year and a half
earlier.

“Got it. Wait, a text just came in from Francesca. All it
says is
now
.”

Jake slammed the brakes, a vague part of him registering the
startled grunts from Doc and Eloise as they were thrown forward against their
seat restraints. Tires squealed as the car behind him swerved to avoid rear-ending
him. Cars stopped. Horns blared.

Doc’s voice was tremulous. “Dammit, man. What does it mean?”

It means I’m not the only target, Jake thought.

Francesca, the children…

“Jake,” Doc shouted, shaking his shoulder.

Doc’s touch snapped Jake out of it—just in time for him to
see the black SUV roaring toward them from a side street. A gun appeared from
the passenger-side window and its muzzle flashes were accompanied by several
thunks near the bottom rear of the Mustang.

Jake stomped on the gas as another car unwittingly steered to
block the SUV’s path. His mind raced as he realized their pursuer’s intent had
been to shoot the tires, not the occupants. They’d killed the professor but it
appeared they wanted Jake alive. That gave him an advantage—and the hope that
his family wasn’t being targeted for murder.

“Toss the phone!” he shouted.

 “What?” Doc asked.

“Throw my phone out the window. They’re probably tracking—” Jake
hesitated as they passed a sign indicating they’d just entered Brentwood.

Doc rolled down his window and cocked his arm.

“Wait,” Jake said, taking the next corner so fast that the
rear end veered violently onto the curb. He pointed the Mustang north, toward
the tree-studded hills of luxury homes and winding streets that overlooked
Santa Monica. Discounting the risks of the plan that was gelling in his mind,
he said, “Don’t get rid of it yet. Call Tony.”

Traffic was lighter but he still had to swerve to pass a
stubborn driver. He glanced in the rearview to see Eloise with her face buried
in her hands, her body still hitching with sobs as the car’s momentum threw her
from side to side. “Jerry…Jerry,” she moaned.

Jake felt her pain as if it were his own, not because he
knew the professor very well, but because he feared her feelings of loss might
assault him many times over in the hours to come. Beyond her he saw the SUV about
four blocks back.

“I got Tony’s voice mail,” Doc said. “Should I leave a
message?”

“No,” Jake said, knowing he was breaking every rule by
keeping his phone on. “Hang up and call Marshall. Then Lacey.”

He pushed the Mustang to its limits around each bend and
turn, hoping to increase their lead as the road steepened.

“Voice mail again.”

It’s happening.

 His mind reeled as the tires squealed through a switchback.
The fact that no one answered was either good news—everyone had followed
protocol and ditched their phones—or bad news, meaning they had all been taken,
or worse. He was tempted to call the kids next, but if his phone was being
tracked as he suspected then their location would be identified as well. “What
the hell’s going on, Eloise?” he growled.

The fury in his words made her eyes grow wide. “I-I don’t
know,” she said, her voice choked. “You must believe me. We had no idea they’d
do something like this. We were placed there for the science, nothing more.”
Her eyes glazed over as if she were recalling a dark memory. Anger crept into
her voice. “The brutality when they grabbed Timmy was unnecessary. And they
shot Jerry…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes pinched closed as she struggled
with her emotions.

“Who are
they
?” Jake asked, one side of his mind
trying to understand while another focused on driving and finding the right
spot. Through the trees he caught glimpses of the roofscape that spilled down
the hills to Santa Monica. Only the first levels of the tiered-lot homes to his
left were visible from the street, while to his right steep driveways
disappeared into a forest of trees.

His eyes took it all in, his brain analyzing, searching,
calculating.

Eloise was about to answer Jake’s question when Doc said, “I
just got Lacey’s voice mail.”

Jake cringed. “Who
are
they, Eloise? Where are they
taking my fam—?”

He stopped midsentence, slowing the car.

Eloise said, “We were contacted a year ago—”

“Wait a second.” Jake’s eyes narrowed as he studied an empty
lot coming up on his left. It had been cleared, staked, and graded in
preparation of a new foundation. He checked the tree-studded driveway on the
opposite side of the street. It could work, he thought, stopping the car and
backing it up the narrow drive until they were out of view of the road and
halfway up the incline. The round convex mirror at the end of the steep drive
was posted there to warn of oncoming traffic.

Perfect
.

He held one foot on the brake pedal while the other stood
ready to pounce on the gas. With a final glance to the backseat, he said, “Hang
on tight.”

Doc said, “You can’t be serious.”

“Welcome to my world, Doc. Prepare yourselves.”

Doc gasped, grabbing the handrail above his seat.

Eloise wrapped a double-handed death grip around her own
handrail. “Dear God…”

Jake banned them from his consciousness and focused on the
distant mirror. The fish-eye image of the road was his world, and his senses,
reflexes, and body became the machine that his brain would manipulate to
accomplish his task. Nothing else mattered.

The black SUV came out of the turn, the curve of the mirror
making it appear smaller than it was. But Jake’s mind adjusted easily for the
variable as he monitored the vehicle’s accelerating speed and growing image.

Three, two, one…

He released the brake, floored the gas, and the Mustang shot
down the drive.

I
WAS MIDWAY THROUGH
a leap off a building,
blasting my M1216 shotgun at two opponents who’d just run past, when my cell
phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a burst of three short vibrations, then three
long, three short—Morse code for SOS. I think my heart might’ve skipped a beat
because my breath caught in my throat. I glanced up to see shocked expressions on
my sister and brother, and even with my noise-canceling headphones on, I knew
the ring tone that accompanied the code on all our phones was “Danger Zone,” a
song from Dad’s favorite movie,
Top Gun
, programmed to play by an application
that synched specific text messages with distinctive tones.

I ripped off my Spider and we all scrambled for our phones.

“Oh my God!” Sarafina gasped. Her face was white.

“No, wait a minute,” Ahmed said, standing up so fast that
his chair toppled backward. “I was supposed to go surfing. What about school?
My stuff? I haven’t even eaten lunch yet. This can’t be for real—”

I ignored him because the moment I unlocked the screen on my
phone, I knew it
was
real. Mom and Dad had pounded it into our heads
over and over again. The alert message would never be sent as a drill. The
group text had come from Mom’s phone. I stared at the four characters that
would change our lives forever:

Now!

Sarafina dropped her phone on the table. Her hands shook and
her fingers danced in the air as if they were playing an aggressive song on the
piano. 

Ahmed’s rant continued, his words spilling over one another.
“Where’s Dad? We don’t even have a car. I love this house. What about my
board—”

I tuned him out, recalling Dad’s instructions:

Don’t question. Act!

I snapped off the back of my phone, yanked out the battery,
and threw the device as hard as I could against the tile floor. Glass cracked,
plastic splintered, and my sister and brother froze. I set my jaw and returned their
stares, ignoring the tears spilling down my cheeks. Sarafina’s fingers calmed
and Ahmed’s lips tightened. We needed to work together. I knew it. They knew
it.

Ahmed blew out a breath behind clenched teeth. His eyes
narrowed and a nod told me he was back in control. He removed the battery from
his phone and dropped the remnants beside mine on the floor. Sarafina followed
suit. That act of solidarity was like the Spider game’s countdown clock
reaching zero.

“Move!” Ahmed said, grabbing his laptop and running toward
the staircase leading to our bedrooms. Sarafina was right behind him. I jammed
the Spider and tablet into my backpack and followed.

“Sixty seconds!” Ahmed shouted as he dashed into his
bedroom.

My sister let out a yelp and disappeared around the corner.

I ran into my room and a flush of sadness washed over me
when I realized this would be the last time I’d ever see it. I pushed the
feeling aside and kept moving. Most of the stuff I needed was already in my
pack, but Dad had drilled into us that our survival depended on having
everything on the list. So I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and pulled
out a new cell phone, a rolled-up sweatshirt, a Swiss Army knife, and a rubber-banded
wad of documents and money. I shoved it all into my pack.

“I
hate these long pants,” my sister shouted from her bedroom. “They make me look
fat.”

“Don’t
forget the barrettes!” Ahmed said.

I pulled on my jeans, laced up my sneakers, and slung the
pack over my shoulder. Fighting back a sniffle, I took one last look at my
room, memorizing every detail—the action figures on my dresser, the wall
covered with my favorite fractal patterns, the model airplanes hanging from the
ceiling—

“Thirty seconds!” Ahmed shouted.

I flinched, grabbed my favorite Transformer figure, and
rushed out the door. There was one last thing I had to get that wasn’t on the
list.

Dad’s life depended on it.

Jake timed the impact perfectly.

The nose of the Mustang rammed the front right quarter of
the SUV in a steel-crunching crash that pushed both cars on a track across the
street. For a moment the vehicles were side by side and Jake relished the
startled gazes of the killers just a few feet away, the impact having knocked the
driver’s stylish eyeglasses askew.

Because of the steep drop-off to his left, the driver of the
SUV steered up the road—into Jake’s car. But instead of veering away, Jake held
his wheel firm, keeping his foot on the gas, and the Mustang’s powerful engine
drove both cars over the opposite curb and onto the leading edge of the hillside
lot. Too late, the driver of the SUV realized his mistake. He slammed on the
brakes and yanked his wheel away from the Mustang. The maneuver might have
worked to stop him in time—if not for the fact that the front bumpers of the
vehicles had locked together.

Jake braked and steered the wheel to the right, hoping to
snap free and spin to a stop before hitting the slope. But it was no use, and
the world slowed as the large SUV’s momentum pulled both skidding vehicles toward
the drop-off. Jake knew they were going over, so he did the only thing he could
think of in order to break free of the larger car and gain some modicum of
control on the way down—he straightened the wheel and plastered his foot on the
gas.

The Mustang leaped forward, separating from the SUV right before
the cars hit the edge. Jake felt an instant of familiar weightlessness as the
car went airborne, his eyes widening as he saw the impossibly steep decline
ahead. Doc grunted, Eloise screamed, and Jake growled through clenched teeth.

The front of the Mustang soared over a concrete-block retaining
wall, the rear tires clipping the edge and dipping the nose to spear into the graded
soil. The gut-wrenching impact barely slowed the car as it gouged through the
earth like an overpowered tiller, before bouncing back up to barrel down the
shrub-covered run that separated it from the rear yard of the estate three
hundred feet below.

A dark shadow in the rearview mirror revealed that the slower
SUV had not been so lucky. A detached part of Jake’s mind watched in
fascination as it nosed into the retaining wall and flipped end over end onto its
back, picking up speed as it slid upside down over the scrub. Jake ignored it,
angling the Mustang into a controlled skid to the right in order to avoid an
outcrop of boulders, then back to the left to circle a depression. There were gasps
and yelps from Doc and Eloise as back and forth he turned, like a skier through
moguls, brush, and rocks. Tree limbs ripped at the car as they barreled toward
a stand of tall pines surrounding the expansive grounds of a three-story Tudor.

The hill steepened and Jake struggled to maintain control as
his brain flash-plotted the possible routes through the trees, instantly
discounting one after another until finally settling on the only course that
would accommodate their speed and the width of the car. The serpentine track was
enough to challenge even the best off-road professionals, but the fact that it
dead-ended at a tall chain-link fence surrounding a tennis court brought a dark
smile to his face.

Just like the last-resort emergency nets on a carrier
landing.

He laid in his course, straightened his tack, and aimed for
the entry point.

The low-hanging branches from the first set of trees whipped
across either side of the car. He jerked  left, then right, barely missing one
tree after another, losing control at one point as bark, steel, and side mirror
met in an ear-piercing scrape. The car slowed, but they were still moving at
over fifty mph when he swerved onto the short straightaway leading to the fence.
He jammed both feet on the brakes and braced himself against the back of the
seat. He let loose a warrior’s cry, accompanied by Eloise’s scream.

The car crashed into the fence, and the front and side
airbags deployed in a powdery burst. The vehicle jerked violently as the
galvanized steel fence snapped from its posts, its ripped-out length assaulting
the front and sides of the charging Mustang with a barrage of cracks and
scrapes. Jake ducked just as the windshield and side windows exploded, abruptly
silencing Eloise’s scream. The car lurched to halt and he spun around to see
Doc staring aghast at her unconscious form slumped against the shoulder
restraint.

The side curtain over her window was shredded and her face
was covered in blood.

The brief moment of shocked silence was shattered when a
thunderous crack announced the arrival of the out-of-control SUV. Jake looked
back to see the upside-down vehicle buckle around a tree and burst into flames.
He cringed as the trapped men inside let out ear-piercing death screams. Their
bodies wriggled and twisted within the growing inferno.

Jake shook the sight from his mind.

The Mustang’s motor rattled, and steam spewed from its
crumpled front end. He put it in reverse, backed up enough to break free of the
chain link, and shut it down. Shouldering open his door, he got out of the car
and opened the passenger door beside Eloise.

Doc had slid beside her, his arm wrapped around her to prop
up her head, his other hand pressing a handkerchief against a gash in her
forehead. Her eyelids fluttered and for a moment her senses returned to her.
She stared intently at Jake and her lips moved as if to form words, but nothing
came out.

“No need to talk. Just take it easy.”

She shook her head, the movement causing her to wince in
pain. “I-I must tell you…” Her voice trailed off as she slouched back into Doc’s
embrace, unconscious again.   

A shout drew Jake’s attention to the house. An older couple
was running toward them. “I called 911,” the man yelled, waving his phone.

Under normal circumstances, Jake would have appreciated the
news. Not now. He turned to Doc and whispered, “If we allow her to be taken to
a hospital, they’ll find her. Kill her. We’ve gotta get off grid. Leave all the
cell phones in the car, then follow my lead.”

Doc nodded, his face ashen.

Jake turned around as the couple arrived. They appeared to
be in their sixties, fit and anxious to help. The woman’s face scrunched up
tight when she saw Eloise.

“The ambulance is on its way,” she said.

“Thanks,” Jake said, reaching into the car and lifting
Eloise into his arms. “But there’s no time for that. We need to use your car.”

“Dear God, man,” the man said with a British accent. “You
shouldn’t move her.”

Doc slid out of the car with his briefcase in hand. “It’s all
right. I’m a doctor. Every second counts.”

“I’ll get the keys,” the woman said, hurrying toward the
house.