The Next Chronicle (Book 1): Next (9 page)

Archer frowned. “No. Not 'one of you.' The bastard who killed those people and took that boy is a Next, but don't lump him in with the rest. He's a monster. Plenty of normal people fit that bill, too. He wouldn't be any less a monster if he'd done it with a gun. You understand?”

Kit thought back to her trip into the city. “Yes,” she said.

“
Good,” Archer said. “Because this is officially our business now. The police are doing the legwork, the forensics, all that. Our job is to find the killer and stop him, and to save the boy. You good with that?”

Kit nodded. The people in that house had seen it coming. Most of them had their hands up to defend themselves, the ones that still had hands. Their bodies were shredded, the room nearly destroyed.

“Couldn't stop me if you tried,” Kit said.

“
Glad to hear it. Grab your stuff. We need to see the crime scene ourselves.”

Kit walked through what had been the front door of a house.

From the street, it was harder to tell anything was wrong. The damage was like a bullet wound. The exterior was not obviously broken, while the exit wound was a complete disaster. The door was gone, ripped to pieces under an assault of telekinetic force powerful enough, judging by the skewed pictures on the wall, toppled vase, and general disarray, to shake the entire house. The frame was present but broken and displaced. Kit was unpleasantly reminded of an operation in Yemen and an enemy whose leg she had shattered. The bones had jutted out of the skin in much the same way the heavy timber of the frame stood out from the drywall.

Broken wood littered the floor, mixed with fragments of ceramic and more blood than Kit had ever seen in one place. There were pools of it, streaks of it, splatters, and even hand prints. The bodies were gone, but the scene itself was a testament to how those five had died. Two adults, three children ranging from ten to seventeen. Some of the hand prints were tiny, moving away from the table for nearly five feet before ending in a puddle. A girl only ten years old, dragging her broken body away from danger.

Kit rushed outside and vomited.

Archer, who had followed her in, did the same a few seconds later.

As they finished and cleaned themselves up, Kit saw him weeping openly. Former cop or not, the scene hit him hard. She felt no embarrassment in her own reaction. She would have been more concerned for herself if she
hadn't
become violently ill at what she was seeing. Killing an enemy of the state, an adult, was hard enough. This was light-years beyond her experience.

They went back in.

Kit tried to record every detail of the scene. The front door would have opened on the large, open-floored front of the house. Half the tiled floor was taken by a family area. Television (screen broken), entertainment center, couch, love seat, recliner. The other half, visible through the front window, was the dining area. If the door had a window, it was likely the killer could have seen the family gather for breakfast through it.

Initial reports suggested the family (Ellen Maggard, Greg Maggard, their children Greg Jr., Steven, Grace, and of course Thomas) survived the assault for a short time. Looking at the scene it was a clear assumption to make. The patterns in the blood showed people trying to escape. Bones broken, organs ruptured, the urge to run away must have been overwhelming.

Kit moved around the dining area, and as she stepped on one of the few tiles not soaked with blood, it broke. She crouched to inspect it.

“
Archer,” she said. “Bring Towney in here, and then come look at this.”

The big man grunted a reply, and a moment later returned with Gil Towney. Archer had introduced him quickly as they left the facility. He was supposed to help them track the little boy.

Archer hunkered down next to Kit as she carefully lifted the edge of the broken tile with her pen.

“
What am I looking at, Kit?”

“
These tiles are ceramic. They're really, really strong. These are all broken and weak,” she said. Kit pointed at the edge of the tile, then made a line leading toward the table with her finger. “Follow that line and you can see breaks in the other tile here and there through the blood. We should get this cleaned up. I'm curious how the floor took this kind of damage. The people, the door, that makes sense. This doesn't.”

Archer didn't argue, which surprised her. Instead he stood and pulled out his phone. As he began rattling off instructions, Kit approached Towney.

He was the rotund man with the walrus mustache Kit had met on her first day. He was a Reader—a person capable of pyschometry—and was walking around with his hands extended, gliding them over objects in the room.

“
Got anything about our killer yet?” Kit asked.

“
No,” he said. “Didn't expect to, not for the killer. Works best with objects that have emotional attachments.”

Towney had the faintest hint of the East End in his speech, which she hadn't noticed when speaking to him before.

“You're British,” she noted.

Towney gave a small nod. “Moved here when I was a lad. Lost the accent for the most part. Comes out a bit when I'm stressed.”

“I do the same thing, except I swear in Hindi. When I start cursing in Hebrew, you should get worried,” Kit replied, trying to lighten the mood.

Towney nodded solemnly. “I'll remember it.”

Together they moved through the house until they found a door covered with pictures and collages. Each had a sloppy signature.

Thomas Maggard.

Kit opened the door but didn't enter. The room was small and cramped enough that Towney alone was enough to fill the empty space. His hands continued their glide but came to rest quickly over a small, clear bag. He smiled sadly as he showed it to Kit. There were colored pencils, erasers, and crayons inside. Everything an aspiring artist needed.

“
This'll do,” Towney said thickly. “He loved this thing.”

“
Does it hurt, to feel the things these people felt?” Kit asked.

Towney shuddered. “It can. This isn't so bad, but it reminds me why we're here. This kid needs us. It's a lot to be going on with.”

“No time like the present,” Kit said. “How does this work, exactly?”

The round man stroked his mustache and cleared his throat. “Well, I get the imprint from the object, and that creates a connection between me, the object, and the person who owns it. Sort of like being a compass, you see. Not very detailed. I can't tell you where he is on a map, but I know the general direction. The feeling will get stronger as we get closer.”

Kit gave him a gentle slap on the shoulder. “That's fantastic. Let's grab Archer and go.”

Ten minutes later they were back in the car, each of the three feeling something different. Towney was nervous, obvious by the way he constantly fidgeted. Archer was furious, still carrying on an angry conversation over the phone, the seventh call he'd made since showing up at the crime scene.

Kit was feeling trepidation and a little bit of excitement.

“
Dammit, Deakins, no. I don't care
who
you pull, where you pull them from—yeah, okay, not that case, obviously—my point is we need at least another three-man unit here. Yes, we need a telekinetic. Yes, it's going to be dangerous. Have you been paying attention? This one killed an entire family at once. Took a little boy. We're tracking the boy now. You know damn well if the killer still has him we'll be in a fight.”

There was a beat in which Archer took a breath, and Deakins took that chance to start shouting back. Kit couldn't make out that half of the conversation, but it was loud enough that Archer cringed away from the phone. After a few seconds the big man deflated with a sigh.

“Okay, that's fine. Our GPS is on. We're heading for the west end of town. Tell them to track us and join up. Make sure they call.”

Archer ended the call and jammed the phone in his pocket. “Well, we aren't getting any help for at least an hour and a half. Looks like we start looking on our own and hope backup shows before we find the bastard,” Archer said.

“Do you think that's a good idea?” Towney asked.

Kit took a calming breath.

Archer shot Towney an Antarctic look. “If I'd have known you were that much of a coward, I wouldn't have hired you.”

Towney winced, but a flush swept over him. “Wait a minute, now. I'm just pointing out what you just told Deakins. This guy can literally kill us with a thought. Going alone seems suicidal.”

Archer scowled and opened his mouth to protest, but Kit raised a hand.

“
He's right, Archer. You know this is going to get very dangerous, very fast if we do manage to find the killer,” she said, before turning to face Towney. “And Archer might have said it like an asshole, but he's not wrong, either. We don't know why the killer took Thomas. He could be planning to kill the kid, or worse. The sooner we find him, the better the chance we find the kid alive. We don't have a lot of choice here.”

That settled both of the men down somewhat, though she could see neither was satisfied.

“How's the signal, Towney?” Kit asked.

The older man's attention snapped back to her, then to the small art kit. His eyes closed as his fingers stretched across it the plastic surface, twitching gently as if the pad of each fingertip was trying to find the perfect spot.

“He isn't moving right now,” Towney said in a detached, almost ghostly voice. “We're heading in the right direction. The link is stronger. We're still a good way off. He's...”

Eyes still closed, Towney cried. Kit didn't know how to react. Should she wipe the tears away? He was old enough to be her father, and she was his superior. His pride might not take it.

So, she wiped them away, and in a calm, warm voice, said, “Tell me.”

Towney's fingers restarted their little dance. “Thomas is terrified. Angry. Hurt. He doesn't understand what's happening. I can't get a good sense of specific things, but there's confusion and rage and sadness all mixed in a blur. I shouldn't be able to feel that so far from him. God, he must be hurting for it to be so clear.”

Towney dropped the bag into his lap suddenly. “Sorry. I need a minute. I'll start again. Just keep going west.”

Kit gave him a pat on the shoulder, and Towney actually gave her a grateful smile. In the front seat, Archer remained silent. His eyes were on the road and hard at the edges, but Kit knew he'd already forgotten the tiny spat with his employee. That look, that rage, was all for the killer.

She was less worried about what they might face if they managed to find the killer than she was about keeping Archer from doing something stupid. Even from the back seat she could see the rage in every line of him, knuckles white on the steering wheel, tension across his shoulders. The tendon in the right side of his jaw jumped in a clockwork rhythm as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. Weeks of working with him and seeing his moods made her more aware of the changes.

“
I'll take the lead on this one,” Kit said. She caught Archer's sharp glare in the rear view mirror, but she pushed on. “I think it's obvious I will have to act as a field agent again, regardless of who Deakins can pull away to help us. Neither of you is suited for a fight.”

Archer snorted. “And you are? Sorry, did you miss the part where this guy can shatter your bones by looking at you?”

Kit held his gaze in the mirror as she answered. “No, I caught that. Did you forget the part where I'm actually trained to move undetected in urban environments for the express purpose of capturing or killing an enemy? Or has my pleasant and friendly demeanor over the last few weeks distracted you from the fact that, if I wanted, I could twist you into a giant man-pretzel and still have a hand free to chat on the phone while I did it?”

Archer barked a laugh. “'Pleasant and friendly'? Really?”

Kit grunted. “Not the point, Archer. We might have to go up against this guy alone, since all our teams are either out on collection details, in training classes, or helping with the cleanup at the facility.”

Which was something she was trying not to think about. The many phone calls Archer had made and received were mostly with Deakins. Today, a day the collection teams happened to be short-staffed, a minor riot had erupted in the minimum-security block. All agents in the building had been called down below to help with containment and cleanup.

It was all a little suspicious to her, but during one of the short breaks between calls, Archer had explained that occasionally small groups of inmates would work together. It was a thing backup plans were made for. It had happened half a dozen times over the previous year, he'd said, twice while he was away at conference. Even if the inmates were somehow coordinating the episodes, they weren't very good at it.

Archer had stopped short of explaining some of the higher-end defenses in place for a mass breakout. He'd glanced at Towney, who was totally oblivious. Above his pay grade, Kit assumed.

She held Archer's eye in the mirror, waiting for him to shout her down. Kit was under no illusions. Archer had been at this longer, and if he pushed, she would back down and let him run the show. She would do her part and take orders, and she would do everything in her power to make certain the killer didn't harm anyone else.

And after that, she would quit. Whatever the consequences, even rejoining the civilian population, she wouldn't work in a place where her authority ended at the first sign of trouble, but the responsibility she felt continued on. That simply wasn't going to happen.

After seconds that felt like minutes, Archer looked away. “It's your show,” he said with a grunt. “I'm just the driver.”

Kit held back a smile. “Good, then. We keep on until we locate Thomas. If we manage that, and he's in a stationary location, we wait for backup. The three of us probably aren't a match for the killer, and I want to minimize the risk to us as well as the boy.”

They continued to drive, the city gradually giving way from urban to suburban sprawl. People unfamiliar with the place had no idea how big the Louisville-Metro area is. Kit certainly hadn't. Not the size of New York, but bigger than Chicago in square mileage, it spread out across the entire county in a constant smattering of small townships all linked together.