Never Coming Back (19 page)

It took me half a minute to get back down to the main road. The phone never stopped ringing the whole time. At the bottom of the drive, I paused, looking both ways. No cars. No people. The phone booth was about fifty feet further along, its glass panels steaming up, condensation breaking in thin lines out of the dome-shaped roof. Inside, it was empty.

I headed toward it as water sloshed in the gully to my side and puddles formed in the uneven tarmac. Trees swayed as I passed under them, leaves snapping and twisting. I was starting to feel cold now. The wind was icy, funneled along the road by the walls on either side of me. As I got to the phone booth and pulled the door open, there seemed to be a momentary lull, the rain easing off, the wind dying down. Then, as I stepped inside, the storm stirred and came again, great sheets of water smashing against the glass. I pulled the door shut and placed my fingers around the handset. And then I picked it up.

Silence on the line. Then some distortion.

“What do you want?” A man.

I looked out of the phone booth again, in both directions along the road, and across into the fields opposite the house. “I just want to talk,” I said.

“About what?”

“About the Ling family.”

No response. I looked for a third time, trying to spot him through the rain. If he could see me, I should have been able to see him.

“You need to leave,” he said.

“Why?”

“It's safer that way.”

“For you or for me?”

More distortion. “You think this is a game?”

He said it matter-of-factly; calmly, evenly. I turned to the house, damp and dark and being taken back by the fields around it. “No,” I said. “I don't think this is a game.”

“Are you sure? Because you look like you're enjoying this.”

There was no one on the road. No one in any of the fields I had a view of. No one at the house.
Because you look like you're enjoying this
. Was it just a figure of speech or did he really have a clear sight of me? I removed
my cell phone and placed it on top of the dial box. The line crackled and shifted, as if the caller was moving around.

“Seriously, why are you here?” He sounded more impatient now. When I didn't respond, I could sense his agitation rise again. “Huh? Why are you
here
?”

“I want to find that family.”

“Forget them.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Just forget them.”

“Why?”

“Because they don't
matter
.” His breath crackled down the line. “Nothing matters anymore. It's all fucked. Forget that family. Drop the search for them. Walk away.”

“I can't do that.”

He sighed. “Do you want to get killed? Is that what you want? Because they'll do it. They'll bury you so far under the earth, even the worms won't find you.”

“Who will?”

“Are you listening?”

“I'm listening. Who are we talking about?”

“We're not talking about anyone. This is me
telling
you what's going to happen.” He stopped, sighed, and then said very calmly, “Do yourself a favor. Walk away.”

“I told you: I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I want to find the family.”

“Forget them.”

“I can't.”

“Forget them!”

I turned back to my cell phone. I'd placed it there for a reason. Moving it right to left, I pretended to scroll through the address book, and for a second time the line glitched and shifted, like the signal was drifting. There was something else, too: the very gentle sound of footsteps.
He's moving around again
. I stepped in even closer, hunching over the phone, and the same sounds came again.
He's trying to get a better view of me
.

Which means he can see me.

I dropped the cell back into my pocket, and—very casually—turned
and faced out along the road. My eyes shifted left to right: from the fields, across the road, through every tangle of undergrowth and thick covering of trees, and then finally to the house.

“You think you're so clever,” the voice said. Again, I didn't respond to him. “You think you're some kind of hero, riding in to save them. But you ever thought that the reason no one's found them yet is because no one's
meant
to find them?”

My eyes stayed on the house at the end of the driveway, dark and abandoned. The door. The windows. The empty barn.

“Do you think you're unkillable—is that it?”

It was the only place that made sense. If he was on the road, I'd have seen him. In the fields there was no cover. The village itself was too far away now, hidden behind a wall of rain and mist. So he had to be in or around the house. But where?

“Huh? Is that it?”

“Is what it?”

“You think no one can get to you?”

“It depends who we're talking about.”

A snort of laughter. “You're an idiot—you know that? A fucking idiot. And when he gets to you, and he
will
get to you . . . don't say I didn't warn you.”

The line went dead.

I continued watching the house.

And then I saw it.

A fractional movement—there and then gone again. Not in the windows, or at the door, or in the barn. In the roof. Through the space where the tiles had fallen away.

He was in the ceiling.

I jammed the handset into the cradle and then hurried back along the road, trying to keep my pace even and my eyes away from the roof; trying not to let him know I'd seen him. At the top of the driveway, as I turned to face the house, I stole a glance at the space in the roof—a five-tile gap where all the rain and moisture came in, where all the decay and damp stemmed from—and saw movement in the darkness. A flash of white—maybe a shirt, or a face. He was shifting position, following my movements.

My car was twenty feet away.

As soon as I'd passed it and headed to the house, he'd either know I hadn't taken his advice or he'd know I was coming for him.

So I took my phone out again, pretending to take a call.

When I got to the BMW, I started shouting into the phone, “I can't hear you!” I stepped around the car, closer to the house. “It's absolutely hammering it down.”

Another step closer.

“Can you repeat that?”

Then I was right up against the front of the house. He wouldn't have been able to see me now. The angle from where he was in the roof was too sharp. I continued talking for a couple of seconds, and then, at the side of the building, dropped the phone into my pocket and headed around to the back. At the entrance to the kitchen, I eased the door away from the frame and stepped inside. Paused. Listened.

A creak from upstairs. Nothing more.

I padded through to the hallway, glancing in at the living room and front bedroom in case he'd moved, but they were both still empty. At the bottom of the stairs, I paused and looked up into the semi-darkness of the landing, wondering which of the rooms he was accessing the loft from. I hadn't been looking for it the first time.

Another creak.

I took the stairs slowly, one at a time, angling myself so that my back was to the wall and I could come on to the landing without having to worry about what was behind me. Then I worked my way forward, stopped at the door to the first bedroom—the one facing out to the front—and peered in. No loft space. I stepped sideways to the one opposite—facing out back—its interior much darker. It was the same.

Edging along the hallway, I stopped short of the next two doors. The second front-facing bedroom was smaller and easier to see into, and I discounted it immediately.

Which left the other rear-facing room.

The one he'd been sleeping in.

One step. A second. With a third, I was at the entrance to the room, and my eyes had to adjust momentarily to the shadows. I could see the frame of the bed, the mattress, the sleeping bag. I could see the box of supplies.

And then I could see a loft hatch, hidden in the corner.

It was open.

Suddenly, he came at me from my left, from the corner of the room where the darkness was thickest. I shifted forward and down, trying to duck, but he caught me hard: a fist to the ribs, the flat of his palm to the side of my head. I stumbled sideways into the room. In my peripheral vision I saw him coming again, beanie pulled down over his head, over the arch of his eyebrows, over his ears and the side of his face. He was all in black, disguised against the shadows; part of the room itself.

But this time I was ready for him.

When he tried to swing another punch, I blocked it and then drove back into him, lifting him up off his feet. As he hit the ground, the whole house seemed to shudder. Floorboards rippled. Flutes of dust erupted out of the walls. Plaster rained down from the ceiling. He rolled over on to his front and tried to scramble to his feet, but I was too fast for him: I grabbed the collar of his top and pulled him toward me. Before he had a chance to react, I had him in a headlock.

With the point of my elbow against the middle of his chest, I could feel his heart hammering against the inside of his ribs. “Are we done?”

I tried to angle my head, tried to see his face.

“Are we
done
?”

He nodded.

Shifting my body away from his, I let him out of the headlock and pushed him across the room. He stumbled forward on his hands and knees, and then—slowly, gingerly—got to his feet. Back still toward me, he removed his beanie and threw it off, on to the sleeping bag. He was five-nine, five-ten, probably thirteen stone, with blond hair.

“Turn around,” I said.

He sighed. And then he did as I asked.

It was Lee Wilkins.

Saturday, August
27, 2011
| Fifteen Months Ago

Destiny stirred in the passenger seat of the Civic and opened her eyes. Immediately in front of her were the jagged peaks of a mountain range, scorched brown, its folds dotted with pale green cholla and the graying skeletons of old trees. When she turned her head to the right, rolling it against the seat, she could see the car was about a thousand feet above Las Vegas, parked on the side of an old, dusty mining road. Wind whistled through the rusted doors of the Civic, through the windows that wouldn't close properly anymore, and she rolled her head back the other way. Outside, about twenty feet to the left of the car, a man was standing in front of a wire-mesh gate; beyond, the mining road continued, dropping down through a thin gap in the ridge before disappearing from sight. He was unlocking the gate, removing the padlock. After it came loose, he paused, the padlock in his hand, as if sensing he was being watched. And then he turned and looked at her.

It was Hank.

Or the man she thought had been called Hank.

The way he was looking at her, unblinking, hands clasped at his front, sent a cold finger of fear down her spine. As her heart started to quicken, she tried to move—but her wrists were bound together, and so were her ankles. She glanced back toward Vegas, to the lights still winking on the desert floor, even as the sun began to rise in the sky above, and wished for her time back, wished she'd never tried to take Hank for a ride. And then she remembered Carl, and how he'd been left on the ground at the parking lot, bleeding out, and an involuntary whimper passed her lips. “Oh shit, oh shit,” she mumbled. “What's he going to do to me?” Slowly, reluctantly, she turned back to face the man who'd called himself Hank.

But now he was right outside the car.

Her heart hit her throat, and she made another noise: louder, more desperate, like a frightened child. She shuffled back across the passenger seat, pushing herself up against the door, as far away from him as possible. Yet he made no move: he just stood there, three feet from the car, far enough away so that he didn't need to bend to see her.

She looked down at the binds on her wrists and then back out through the window at him. He seemed faintly amused now, like he was watching an animal in a cage. “Let me go!” she screamed. He didn't move; his expression, his body, his gait, all remained perfectly still. You gotta stand up for yourself, she thought. You gotta show him you're not some helpless girl. “Let me go, you son of a bitch! I will fucking kill you!”

The smile dropped from his face.

Another stab of fear cut across her chest. It had been the wrong move. The man reached down to the driver's door and pulled it open. It squeaked on its hinges. Wind rushed into the vehicle, drawn through the door and the holes in the rusting shell. Then, finally, he bent over and slid in at the wheel, pulling the door shut behind him.

Silence.

“I'm sorry,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I didn't mean it.”

She remembered more about him now: the English accent, the tan, the great teeth, the way he looked at her. When she'd been trying to grift him, when he'd been Hank the dentist, she'd seen some kind of humility in him, an innocence even.

Now there was none of that.

“Please,” she said, her voice breaking up. She tried to lean away from him, to get even more distance between the two of them, but her back was already against the door. She was as far away as she could get. “Look, Hank—”

“My name's not Hank.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I'm sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? I never told you my real name. There was no way you could know.” He looked out, across to the unlocked gate. “You see that over there?”

She swallowed.

He turned back to her. “It's okay, Destiny. Relax.”

Her eyes flicked to the gate, then back to him. She was confused now: his voice had softened, but the hardness in his face remained. He was playing games with her.

“You see that gate?” he said again.

She nodded.

“That's where we're going. There's a place down there that means a lot to me. It's kind of important in my life. I thought you might like to see it.”

She glanced at him. “Okay.”

“Is there something in your life that's important to you?” His eyes were still on the gate, but when he didn't get an answer, he turned and looked at her. “Is there, Destiny?”

“There was—”

He jabbed her in the throat.

The move was so sudden, so unexpected, it took a second before her brain even made the connection between what she was seeing and what she was feeling. Then her body went into lockdown. Her windpipe closed up. Her vision smeared. All the air was drawn from her lungs, and as she tried desperately to force out her next breath, all that came back was a gentle wheeze; like the last breaths from her deathbed.

“I don't give a fuck about your life,” he whispered, eyes widening, face burning
with rage. And then, as she shrank away from him, pushing so hard against the door she thought she might go through it, he came at her again: one jab to the stomach—and then one to the side of the head.

And then only darkness.

•   •   •

She woke slumped in a chair, at a table, in an all-white room. White floor tiles, two bright strip lights on the white ceiling above. A flight of steps up to one door. A second door at the other end of the room. It looked like some kind of basement. The walls looked to be painted white too, although it was difficult to tell.

Because there were photographs everywhere.

They covered every inch of all four walls, and they all looked to be of the same man. When she tried to shift the chair away from the table, to look at the ones nearest to her more closely, she couldn't—and then realized why. The chair was bolted to the floor. One of her wrists had been handcuffed to a welded metal loop on the edge of the table. Then she noticed what she was wearing. Panties. A bra. No heels. No blouse. No skirt.

“Help me!” she screamed. But, within seconds, something tripped in her throat, and the scream turned into a painful cough, and all she was doing was hacking up saliva and blood. She spat some of it out, across the surface of the table, and then tried again. “Help me!” she yelled, raging against the silence of the room. “Somebody help me!”

The door clunked.

She turned to face it, her heart shifting in her chest. It slowly moved away from the frame and then—beyond it—she could see two men. One was Hank: he was the taller of the two, broader, dressed in the same clothes as he'd been wearing when they'd first met. The other she'd never seen before: he was smaller, stooped, walking with the aid of a cane. He looked old. Really old. Maybe ninety. He was completely bald with liver spots all over him. He paused behind Hank, hunting around in his jacket for something, and then removed a pair of glasses. He slid them on to the end of his nose.

The two men came down the steps into the room, Hank helping the older man. When the old man negotiated the final step, Hank pulled a chair out from the wall and guided him into it. Destiny looked between them. The old man sat there, hands out in front of him, resting on the cane. He was smartly dressed in a brown three-piece suit.

“Hello, my dear,” he said.

He had a slight accent that she couldn't pin down.

Hank came over to the table, perched himself on the edge of it and smiled briefly at Destiny. “You should respond to people when they say hello.”

Destiny glanced at the old man. “Hi.”

The old man blinked, but said nothing.

Don't show them you're scared, she thought.

“Okay, Destiny, I'm going to ask you some questions.” Hank removed a pen from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and then paper. At first she thought he was getting ready to write something down, then she realized the pieces of paper were printouts. “Can you remember being in the Bellagio two weeks ago—that'll be August 13?”

She looked at him. “What's going on?”

“Do you remember being at the Bellagio?”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“You and—” He checked his printouts. “Carl Molsson.”

Destiny rattled the handcuffs against the welded arch. “Why are you doing this to me?” She looked between the men. “Why the fuck are you doing this to me!”

Hank moved quickly: he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it back, forcing her to arch her spine and look up at him. “Answer the question, you stupid bitch.”

She looked at him: his teeth clenched, his eyes glassy like marbles. “No,” she said, trying not to let him see he was hurting her.

“‘No,' you don't remember being at the Bellagio?” he responded. “Or ‘no,' you're not going to answer the question?”

“No, I don't remember.”

She looked away from Hank, not able to meet his eyes anymore, and as she did, he released her head. In front of her, the only movement the old man had made was in his eyes: they'd narrowed slightly, tightening to milky discs.

Hank placed a piece of paper down.

It was a black-and-white shot of her and Carl, taken from a security camera. They were walking along a hotel corridor, circled in red pen. In the bottom right was a digital readout: 32-CAM4A / 11:12 /
08/13/11.

“Does this jog your memory?”

A second later, she remembered the evening of August 13. There had been this guy in the bar. Eric. He'd been some sort of retired doctor, up in Vegas for a few days of gambling. She'd tried to grift him at the Petrossian Bar in the Bellagio, tried to persuade him to take her to his room, but he'd turned her down. So she'd stolen his keycard. He hadn't had much worth taking, but they'd still found something.

Hank leaned in. “You remember the night of the thirteenth now, Destiny?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good,” Hank said. “That's good. You're doing really well, Destiny.” He tapped
a finger to the printout. “Okay, so: can you see what your friend Carl is carrying there?”

“It's a duffel bag,” she said.

“Correct. And do you remember what was in it?”

“I, uh . . .”

“Save the act.”

She cleared her throat; could taste blood. “A laptop.”

“I need to know who you sold it to.”

“I don't—”

“Think really carefully.”

She looked between them. “Why are you keeping me here?”

“Who did you sell the laptop to?”

“I want to know what's going on.”

“Tell us who you sold the laptop to.”

“Why are you keeping me here!”

Hank made a sudden movement toward her, his eyes fixed on her, like an animal tracking its prey. She shrank automatically.

“I can't remember,” she said, quietly.

“Well, you'd better start remembering.”

Her brain felt fuzzy, panicked, even though she was pretty sure she knew who they would have sold it to. The same person they always took their stuff to: Leonardo. He ran a pawn shop down on Spring Mountain Road. Everything looked legit from the outside, but Leo had a nice little under-the-counter business on the side: Carl would push things his way, Leo would keep them until the heat died down, then sell them on.

“Leo,” she said quietly.

Hank leaned in, his attention fixed on her. “Who's Leo?”

“Leonardo Ferrini. He runs a pawn shop.”

And then she told him the rest.

“Good. That's really good, Destiny.”

Behind Hank, the old man finally moved, hauling himself out of the chair, almost in slow motion. Hank glanced at him, then back to Destiny. There was nothing in his face now: just a blank, his eyes suddenly dark, his skin tanned and hairless.

“Have you got any family, Destiny?” Hank asked her. “Anyone who will be missing you?” He asked quietly, almost tenderly. It confused her for a moment, because there was no tenderness in his face, no sense that he cared either way, but then, when she'd cleared her head, the answer to his question hit home: she had no one but
Carl. She thought of her parents back in Sacramento. She hadn't thought of them in years, sitting on the front porch of their house in The Pocket, if they were even still there, Mom in her rocking chair, Dad getting his hands dirty painting panels, or working on his Ford Bronco. The thought of them, of being back home now, in this moment, even for just a second, brought tears to her eyes. She blinked, trying to disguise them, trying not to let the men see her like this. But then she swallowed, pain registering in her throat, and she was back in the room, Hank staring at her—and tears were running down her cheeks.

“No,” she said. “No one will be missing me.”

A short pause.

Then Hank punched her in the side of the head.

She rocked off the seat and fell away from the chair. Her legs hit the floor, her hand jarred as the handcuffs locked at her wrists, and her head smashed against the table. Her skull exploded in a firework of white static, then her vision gradually began to fade to black. She heard the two men start talking again as darkness washed in.