Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1) (4 page)

She was barely—well
almost
—fourteen. That didn't make her an idiot. Clearly the guy she thought might be her dad was a nutcase. He was talking about those military dudes like they were animals. Smelling and feeding. Jesus.

“Are you listening?” His face loomed close to hers.

She blinked, nodded, and locked her knees so she could stand on her own.

Lockman pulled a set of keys from his pocket and thumbed a fob. He pointed to a Honda Civic parked at the near curb. “Get in the car.”

A sound, what at first Jessie thought was the screech of tires on pavement, echoed down the alley from where they'd come. Jessie turned and saw one of the masked men standing in the alley. No car, though. And nothing else that could have made that noise.

“Now,” Lockman (had to be him, she might as well stop trying to dodge the truth) said and pulled her toward the vehicle then opened driver's side door.

She glanced from the open door to him. “I…I can't drive.”

“And you can't shoot. I'd rather we took our chances with you behind the wheel.”

Before she could say another word, the masked man from the alley was right there. He'd somehow traveled a distance of thirty or so yards in a few seconds. Impossible.

Lockman, not fazed by the sudden appearance, whipped the cross out from his back pocket and held it forth like…well, like people did in movies with vampires. That was just crazy, right?

The masked attacker recoiled and that shrieking sound buzzed against Jessie's eardrums loud enough to make her shrink back. No doubt this time. The sound came from the man. Or whatever he really was.

“The car,” Lockman growled through clenched teeth.

Jessie didn't hesitate another second. She slipped behind the wheel and grabbed at the set of keys Lockman offered with his free hand.

The masked man/thing had backed away only about ten feet. He hunched his shoulders and scuttled back and forth as if trying to find a way past some invisible obstacle.

Jessie started the engine. Lockman kept the crucifix aimed at the attacker and skirted around the front of the car to the passenger side. Then something landed on the roof of the car.

The impact startled Jessie into kicking the gas pedal and revving the motor while the car remained stationary, still in park. She shrieked as the roof buckled slightly. Another alien screech tore at the frayed remains of Jessie's nerves. She felt her body going cold. This couldn't be happening. None of this.

Gunfire erupted once again. Jessie ducked and covered her head, expecting a bullet to blast her head off at any moment.

Then Lockman dropped into the passenger seat. “Drive.”

Jessie's hands shook. Somehow she managed to put the car in gear and pull away from the curb. She clipped the bumper of the car parked in front of them, but she didn't let that slow her. She mashed the gas pedal down as far as it would go. The engine revved and whined.

“Ease up on the gas,” Lockman instructed.

But she didn't want to ease up. She wanted to get the hell away from there as fast as possible. Focused entirely on speed, she didn't consider accuracy. The steering wheel didn't make the car respond as quickly as she expected. Before she could straighten out on the road she smashed into another car parked on the opposite side. They jerked to a sudden halt and a black clad body rolled off the roof, down the windshield, and onto the hood.

Jessie screamed.

“Don't worry about him,” Lockman said and twisted in his seat. “He aimed one of his pistols over the back of the seat and fired three times through the back window.

Jessie's ears rang. She cranked the wheel all the way to the left and pressed on the gas. The car's front end grinded against the car she’d hit. The engine groaned.

Lockman looked over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get unstuck,” she shouted in answer.

“Reverse might have been a better choice.”

Reverse hadn't even occurred to her. Despite all the chaos going on around her, she felt her face turn hot.

Before she could switch strategies, their car scrapped along the length of the other and curled away, back onto the road. The body on the hood rolled off the side and out of view.

This time Jessie eased off the gas and lined up the car to the road. Once she felt like they were straight enough, she jammed on the gas again. “Where are we going?”

Lockman fired once more out the back window. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Silver's stopped working.”

She glanced in the rearview and saw another of the masked men, maybe the one from the alley, sprinting along behind them and
gaining
. A check of the speedometer showed the needle creeping toward forty.

“Back up is probably on the way. More cops are definitely on the way. Shit.”

They were approaching an intersection that came to a T. She would have to turn or end up crashing straight into the face of a tall apartment complex.

“Which way?” she asked.

“Straight.”

“The road ends.”

“Don't worry about the road.”

“I'm worried about a
lack
of road.”

“Just do as I say. And give it all the gas we've got.”

She bit the inside of her cheek and lifted her butt off the seat so she could stand on the gas pedal. She had imagined a lot of possible scenarios about meeting her father for the first time. Everything from finding a famous movie mogul that took her in and helped make her into the next Spielberg, to his outright rejecting her, telling her he never wanted a daughter and didn't want to get to know her. None of those scenarios depicted anything close to this.

A surprising thrill ran through her.

They careened toward the intersection. Jessie’s heart pounded in her chest. A metallic taste rolled over her tongue. She’d bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed. What was she doing, listening to this guy? If she kept on the gas, they would die. Smashing into the face of a building going nearly fifty miles per hour (and without her seatbelt on, she realized) guaranteed death, if not a permanent vegetative state.

Almost to the intersection, Jessie screamed, “I can’t do this,” and slammed on the brakes. Momentum carried them past the stop sign and into the intersection, the car sliding sideways while the tires howled against the pavement.

Lockman opened fire even while they slid out of control. Each shot felt like a nail through Jessie’s eardrum. She hung onto the steering wheel while centrifugal force wanted to tear her out of her seat and throw her through the windshield. Just as she felt like she couldn’t hold on another second, the car jerked to a halt and Jessie slammed into her seat.

The engine had quit. Horns blared from the cars that had nearly entered the intersection at the same time they had come sailing in. Most of the bleating quit when Lockman fired a few more times at their pursuer. Jessie looked out her window, which now faced the way they had come, saw the bullets strike the running figure, once in the leg and once in the chest. The man staggered, but got right back to sprinting for them as if a couple bullet wounds were little more than insect bites.

“Damn. He must have ate good.”

Jessie twisted in her seat to face Lockman. “Ate good?”

He sat forward and dropped his guns to the car floor. “Ammo’s out. Time for me to drive.” He lifted her over his lap as if she weighed nothing, then slid behind the wheel and set her in his place in the passenger seat. He turned the key, got the engine started. “Say what you want about foreign cars.” He peeled out just as the man in black reached the intersection.

Jessie turned to look out the back in time to see the man raise his machine gun and start firing at them.

Chapter Six

“Hi. I’m Kate Cohen. Jessie’s mom.” She held her hand out to shake with the woman who had answered the door.

The woman looked down at Kate’s offered hand as if it held canned botulism. “I’m sorry, who?”

“Jessie. Ryan’s girlfriend?”

The woman’s lip curled. It did not flatter her one bit with all the wrinkles around her lips from what had to be a life-long nicotine habit. Not to mention the stench of smoke that had wafted out when the woman first opened the door. The inside of the house smelled like a bowling alley.

“Ryan ain’t got a girlfriend.”

Oh, nice.
“Well, I have met him. He’s been to our house many times.”

The woman shook her head. “Nope. Not my Ryan.”

Kate forced a smile. Looked like her daughter had about as much taste in men as Kate had when she was younger. Of course, she never had anything close to a boyfriend until high school. She had not been at all pleased with the label when Jessie first used it to introduce Ryan Whitaker. But the boy had seemed nice enough, and Kate made sure they were in sight whenever he came to the house. If they did any making out, they would have to do it somewhere else.

“Can I see him?”

“Ryan? What for?”

“I’m looking for my daughter. I thought he might know where she was off to.”

“She ain’t here.”

“Please, Mrs. Whitaker. I only want a few minutes.”

Her curled lip twisted to a thoughtful frown. She shrugged. “Whatever.” She stepped aside and let Kate in. The stench grew twice as thick once over the threshold. She tried to stop herself from coughing and made an even worse gagging sound.

Mrs. Whitaker eyed her wearily. Then she screamed, “Ryan.”

Kate started.

From down a nearby hall came a muffled response. “What?”

“Someone here to see you.” Her shrill voice sounded like it could shatter the glass to a nearby display case featuring a collection of ceramic dolphins. Dolphins and a bowling trophy, complete with golden figure wielding a bowling ball ready to launch down the alley.

“Nice house,” Kate said and tried to hang onto her smile.

The woman grunted as if calling out Kate on her false compliment.

They stood in the living room under one of the more awkward silences of Kate’s life. When Ryan finally came out, Kate almost gasped with relief. His hair was tousled as if he’d just rolled out of bed. He looked bleary-eyed at Kate and his jaw dropped.

“Hi, Ryan. I’m glad to finally meet your mother.”

Mrs. Whitaker gave her son that same botulism look she’d given Kate at the door. “You going out with her daughter?”

Ryan ducked his head, shrugged.

“You fucking her?”

Kate started for the second time.

“Mom, come on,” Ryan whined. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Well, are ya?”

“No.”

The answer didn’t seem to relieve Mrs. Whitaker. And now that the subject was out there, Kate had to admit she wasn’t too sure herself. She couldn’t watch her daughter at all times. Why did they feel the need to hide their relationship from Ryan’s mother? Did Mrs. Whitaker know something that gave her reason to suspect they were…? Kate squeezed the thought out of her mind. She hadn’t come here to find out about Jessie’s sex life. Not that she wouldn’t file this conversation away for a later date, once Jessie was back home safe and grounded for life.

“Look, Ryan. Jess didn’t come home last night. I was hoping you might have an idea where she is.”

He shrugged again, his gaze still aimed at the floor.

Mrs. Whitaker slapped him upside the head. “You look at the lady when she talks to you.”

Ryan scowled, but he lifted his gaze to meet Kate’s. “I don’t know.”

He said it with a straight enough face. Still, something tingled at the back of Kate’s neck. Call it Mother’s Intuition. She sometimes referred to it as her spider sense. Basically, it boiled down to knowing your kid well enough to know when they were lying. And sometimes that skill translated to her friends.

“Are you sure?” Kate asked.

“I haven’t seen her, sorry.”

Hands on her hips, Mrs. Whitaker turned to Kate. “You want me to search his room?”

“For what?”

“Condoms.”

“No. That isn’t necessary. I…” How could she put this? “Ryan, I know Jess shares a lot with you. You two might think I don’t have a clue, but I know you care about her as much as she cares about you.”

“Oh, miss, I think you’re giving my boy too much credit,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “He’s a good kid and all, but he’s a dog like his father was, too. A dog who doesn’t know when to keep it in his pants.”

Kate tried to ignore the queasy feeling growing in her stomach. “You really have no idea? Maybe a friend’s house? Someone I haven’t met?”

His eyes shifted back and forth. He obviously wanted to look away. Which just bolstered Kate’s suspicion he wasn’t telling the truth.

Mrs. Whitaker made a disgusted huff and marched down the hall Ryan had come out of. “I’m checking for condoms.”

Ryan whirled around. “Mom, no. There isn’t any…” He threw up his hands and turned back to Kate. “We aren’t having sex. My mom thinks I’m having sex with everyone ever since dad left. I was ten when he left. She’s a little messed up in the head.”

Kate didn’t know what to say to that. The kid really shouldn’t talk about his mother like that, but he wasn’t exactly exaggerating either. “Where is she, Ryan?”

He scratched the back of his mussed scalp. He made a low, hesitant sound.

“Please, tell me. I promise not to say how I found her.”

“That won’t matter. She’ll know anyway. Besides, I’m not sure you
can
find her.”

A cold wave rolled over her skin. She didn’t like the sound of that one bit. She grabbed Ryan by the shoulders and shook gently until he looked her in the eye. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know the details. She wouldn’t tell me. Probably because she knew you’d ask me and knew I wouldn’t be able to lie about it.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

“Something she hinted about a lot lately. This crazy plan she had cooked up about… Look, she’s going to come back. She promised me she would.”

Kate wanted to shake him again, a lot harder, shake the answer right out of him. The flash of temper made her cheeks flush. She released Ryan’s shoulders in case her anger got the better of her. Deep breath. “Where did she go, Ryan?”