Hard Times (A Sam Harlan Novel Book 2) (18 page)

Down the street, the door to Fiesta Cancun opened. Leticia Mendoza exited, followed by her son, Franco. They crossed the street, got into a white Nissan Altima, and took the first right, heading home. The lights inside the restaurant went dark as Elias exited. He fiddled with the keys, locking the front door, then crossed the street and got into a beat-up black Honda Civic and headed south past us.

“You’re going to lose him,” Tommy said, squeezing the dashboard.

I shook my head. “Give him a minute.”

I waited until there was a few blocks between us, then started the engine and did a U-turn, heading south. “I don’t know if that thing is out there following him. Who knows? It could be following
us
.”

Tommy whipped his head around, then slunk down in his seat, glancing in the side mirror. “You think that’s possible?”

“Could be,” I said. “You never know with monsters.”

* * *

We tailed Elias south, turning east onto Olive, past the high school, and then south again on Edgebrook until he eased his Honda into the driveway of a small one-story house. I pulled the Chevy against the curb two houses down.

“What are you going to do?” Tommy asked.

“I’m going to talk,” I said.

I started to open the door and felt Callie’s hand on my shoulder. I could tell she was concerned, even in the darkened cab.

“Go easy on him,” she said.

“I need information,” I said. “If I can shake him up, force him to remember, maybe we can
finally
catch a break.”

“Just go easy on him,” she repeated. “The vampire has supplanted his will.”

“Come what may,” I said, “we’re going to get what we need.” I wanted to yell, to tell her how lousy I felt, how every breath felt like a hot knife in my ribcage, how my head still throbbed, and how scared I really was of that thing in the night. Instead, I said, “I’ll do what has to be done.”

Tommy watched the exchange in silence, but I saw the fear flicker across his face. He wasn’t scared of the vampire. He was scared of me.

Well, he damned well ought to be.

I got out and quietly shut the door behind me, then quickly made my way to Elias. He had gotten out of his Civic and was almost to the front door when I caught up to him.

“Elias,” I said, just loud enough for him to hear.

He turned, surprised, then his face lit up in recognition. “Sam, right?” He stopped next to a jack-o’-lantern on the front step. “What are you doing here?” He still wore the black polo shirt with the Fiesta Cancun logo on it and he looked exhausted.

“This your girlfriend’s house?” I asked.

He started to nod, then thought better of it, and even took a step back, closer to the front door. “Why are you following me?”

“I told you before,” I said. “Colden is worried about Elena. You said you haven’t seen her. What about your other sister?”

“Olivia?” he asked.

“Yes. The deputy asked about her, remember?”

This time, he nodded. “Yeah, I remember. I
told
him. I haven’t seen her.”

“When was the last time?”

“The last time what?”

“The last time you saw her. Or Elena? When was the last time you saw your sisters?”

He shivered, and it wasn’t from the October chill. “I—I can’t remember. That’s weird. I guess … Sunday?” He frowned and shook his head, like he was trying to clear out cobwebs. “Why is it so important, anyway?”

“Because,” I said, “I think something happened to them.” I kept my voice calm, matter of fact. “Don’t you feel it? The feeling that something has happened? A disaster? A tragedy?”

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, a dawning terror on his face, then he took another step back and put his hand behind him, steading himself on the front door. “No. Everything is fine.” His face cleared, leaving only a bone-weary exhaustion. “Everything is fine,” he repeated dismissively.

“No,” I barked. “It’s
not
fine.”

The porch light came on and the door behind Elias opened. A pretty young woman with a blond pixie cut peeked out. “Elias?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

Elias turned to speak to her. “Nothing, honey. Go back inside. I’ll be right there.” She shut the door and Elias turned back to me. “Look, everything is fine.”

“Is that your girlfriend?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been spending your nights here?”

“I don’t—”

“You haven’t been home in several days?”

He frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

If his mind had been tampered with, it must have been slipping. “Elias? Have you seen your grandmother lately?”

He couldn’t have been more surprised. “My grandmother?”

“Maria Diaz is your grandmother, right? I met her the other day. I stopped by your house to speak about Elena. She wasn’t herself. Now she’s missing, too.”

I left out the part about her death. He was on the cusp, I could feel it. His memories would return if I just kept pushing.

“Grandma?” he asked. “She’s a little old lady. Why would she be missing?”

“The question you should ask yourself is why your mother and father didn’t mention it,” I said. “They didn’t, did they?”

His confusion grew. “No, they didn’t.”

“Have they said anything about where Elena or Olivia went?”

He shook his head. The confusion faded and the look or terror returned. “What are you talking about? Everything is fine!”

I saw it in his eyes. The compulsion was slipping, the logjam of memories threatening to burst free. I just needed to push a little harder. “Elias?” I asked softly. “Has there been anyone around your house? Someone new?”

He sank back against the door, his head thunking against the glass. He dropped to his haunches, his face a mask of sheer terror, and whispered, “Ignacio.”

Callie kept glancing
at Elias’s girlfriend, Angie Bent, who listened and shook her head in disbelief. We were clustered around Angie’s kitchen table, the overhead light bright against the yellow-and-blue pastel walls of her home. Tommy listened intently as Elias explained his first meeting with Ignacio Santiago.

“He showed up a couple of weeks ago,” Elias said. “We’d just closed the restaurant for the night and when we went home, there he was, sitting on our couch. Grandmother introduced him, said he was an old friend…” He frowned. “She never smiled. Not once. She just stared at him.”

“Go on,” Callie urged.

Elias took a breath and shuddered. “He introduced himself. Ignacio Santiago. He was friends with my grandmother and grandfather. He said he knew them back in Mexico. It didn’t make any sense.”

“What didn’t make sense?” Tommy asked.

Elias glared at him, apparently still not happy with the deputy. “It didn’t make sense because Ignacio wasn’t old enough to have known my grandparents in Mexico City. They crossed the border in the late sixties. Ignacio isn’t even thirty. There’s no way he could have known them!”

“There are things that don’t seem possible,” I said, “but they
are
. Did your grandmother confirm his story?”

He nodded. “She said he was friends with Grandpa Flaco, and that he used to attend their church. They were poor, she said, and then Grandpa’s cousin told them he was making good money picking fruit in California. So, they left. Ignacio said he stayed, hoping for a better opportunity.” Elias grimaced. “Ignacio laughed after that. Grandma never looked at him. She never made eye contact.”

“What did the rest of your family do while Santiago was telling this story?” Callie asked.

“Nothing. They just sat there. Nobody spoke. It was strange. Ignacio kept smiling and nodding at my grandmother. It was creepy.”

Angie took her boyfriend’s hand and squeezed gently. “What does any of this have to do with your sisters?”

I caught her attention with my eyes and shook my head. “Go on,” I said to Elias, “what happened next?”

Elias’s hand trembled. His eyes darted to his girlfriend and then back to the table. “It’s hard to remember, exactly. We were sitting there, and then he started speaking to us. Telling us what to do.”

“Like what?” Tommy asked, his voice razor sharp.

I glanced over at him and shook my head. The last thing we needed was Elias closing up and burying the memories of that night.

“He told us to go about our day,” Elias continued. “To keep working. But it wasn’t just words. There was something else. It was like—”

“A command?” Callie said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just like that. A command.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“He left. We didn’t speak of it.” His squinted at me, his face full of anguish. “Isn’t that weird? Why didn’t we say anything? Like, how about that creepy dude on our couch last night? Why didn’t Grandmother mention him before? He couldn’t have been friends with my grandparents. He’s not even as old as my mom.”

“When did you see him next?” I prompted.

Elias shook his head. “A few days later. He talked to my mom and dad in the kitchen. They came back and sent us in, one by one.” He shuddered. “He told me I wouldn’t remember his visit, that no matter what happened I was to tell anyone who asked that everything was fine. He told me to keep doing what I normally do.” A tear rolled down his cheek and he sobbed.

The sound galled me. The entire family had been manipulated, their will subverted. I knew how he felt. Jack had done the same to me. Unintentionally, perhaps, but the effect had been the same.

I started to speak. “There’s—” I paused. It would sound unbelievable, but it was time for the truth. “There’s no easy way to say this. Ignacio isn’t a man.”

Angie’s eyes widened, her mouth opening in a thin line. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Is he some kind of child molester? Is he a pervert?”

Callie beat me to the punch. “He’s an inhuman monster,” she said grimly, “a fiend from Hell. A thing that destroys the best of us and kills for pleasure. A beast.” The heat in her voice matched the ferocity in her eyes, and the light dusting of freckles across her cheek stood out against her cheeks. “That
thing
isn’t a human being. Not anymore. It’s a vampire.”

Angie and Elias gaped at her. I didn’t blame them. They couldn’t know. Angie hadn’t been exposed. She hadn’t experienced the vampire’s evil.

Hell, Elias sat right next to one and he doesn’t believe.

Tommy searched their faces, then quickly added, “It’s true. I saw it myself. It’s
not
human.”

Angie started to speak, but I cut her off. “Elias. You’ve met Ignacio. You say he ordered you to stay quiet, to go about your day, and to forget you saw him. You did. You kept telling me everything is fine, but you don’t know where your sisters are. You can’t remember the last time you saw them. How does that happen?”

“I—I don’t know,” Elias stammered. “Hypnosis?”

Tommy barked out a laugh that bordered on panic, then turned to me and raised his eyebrow. “Was I this blind?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “You were.”

He started to argue, then shrugged. Somewhat mollified, he said, “Elias. I know you don’t trust me, but I’m in love with Olivia. I have no reason to lie. Sam’s telling the truth.”

It couldn’t have gotten a bigger reaction. Elias jerked back, his face red. “No way! Olivia hates you. She thinks you’re a jerk.”

Tommy sighed heavily. “Well, she used to.”

I couldn’t tell from the look on Elias’s face which revelation concerned him more—the truth about vampires, or the truth about his sister.

“Olivia?” Elias asked. “After all those things she said about you?”

“Hey,” Tommy said. “I’m
right
here. Look, I know acted like a jerk. It was Elena. I liked her, but it turns out she loved Colden. I wasn’t going to stand in their way. I never expected to fall for Olivia. It just sort of happened…”

Angie shook her head, her short pixie-bob bouncing wildly. “I don’t believe any of this,” she said. “This is some kind of scam—”

“It’s no scam,” Callie said. “Elias knows. Deep in his heart, he knows it’s true.”

I saw the truth filter into Elias’s eyes.

Yes. He knows.

Elias struggled with the words. “It sounds so unbelievable…”

“But you believe it,” I said. “Don’t you?”

He turned to his girlfriend, who looked at him like he had sprouted tentacles from his forehead. “Something happened with Ignacio,” he said. “I know what it sounds like—”

“Come on,” Angie said. “You can’t believe this.” She pointed at me. “He’s crazy. You can see it in his eyes.”

I saw Callie’s worried glance.

See it in my eyes? Does she think this whole quest to kill vampires is a fool’s errand?

It wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought a million times since Peoria. Any reasonable person would have their doubts about me, if they had seen what I had been through.

Elias tried to calm Angie but she pulled away.

It’s now or never.

“I have bad news for you,” I said to him. “Ignacio killed your grandmother.”

Angie stopped talking, her face going white. Elias turned to me and his eyes widened.

He didn’t question or argue.

He knew. Somehow, he knew.

“Grandma Maria?” he finally squeaked out.

“She was resisting,” I said. “When the Sister and I went to speak with her, she wanted to tell us about Santiago. I know that now. He killed her before she could. I think she was close to breaking free. I think that’s why you’ve been spending so much time here. You resisted the only way you could. Sleeping here kept you away from Santiago’s control. Your mind was rebelling.”

Callie nodded as she put the pieces together, and Tommy sucked in his breath. He was reliving the events of the past several days with the new information about Santiago, finally understanding.

“Ignacio killed my grandmother,” Elias said. “He’s taken Elena and Olivia. He made us forget. He made us pretend everything was fine.”

“Yes,” I said. “Now we need your help.”

* * *

“I don’t know anything,” Elias said, sipping from a cup of hot tea that Angie prepared for him.

I took a drink of my own. The tea was black and unsweetened and so hot it scalded the back of my throat. My stomach rumbled. The hunger was so intense I found it hard to focus on Elias. “Just tell me everything you remember,” I said.