Katherine glanced back at her Audi. The car wasn’t moving, and Ian was still sitting in the passenger seat. She turned forward, and the boy in the passenger turned around and said, “What’s your name, sugar?”
“Don’t slow down,” she said. “Keep going.”
“We’re heading to a party down in West Hol’. You down?”
She scanned behind her. The Audi wasn’t there.
Katherine saw only the headlights as they veered out of a side street, barreling toward the car she was in. She barely got out a scream before the Audi impacted against the sedan and sent it spinning into the intersection. Another car came from the other lane, blaring its horn as it tried to swerve, and clipped the sedan. The boy in the passenger seat flew out the window, his legs twisting unnaturally as his body squeezed through the small opening.
When the motion had stopped, her head hurt from hitting the roof. The boy next to her lay on top of her, unconscious, his head dribbling blood down over his face. She pushed him off, feeling pain in her wrists as she did so. The driver was groaning, and the flesh on the side of his head was exposed, spraying blood.
Her door opened and she stepped out, dizzy and with blood in her eyes. Someone grabbed her wrist, but she was too disoriented to scream. Only vague images filled her line of sight. Two people were shouting, and the spit from a silenced pistol followed, and then silence. She was forced into the driver’s seat of an unfamiliar car, and someone sat next to her.
“You okay?” Ian asked.
“No.”
“Let me drive.”
She switched seats, still unsure where she was and what she was doing. Only motion and unclear pictures and colors were in her world, and she laid her head back and went to sleep.
When she woke, Katherine was in a hospital bed. The sheets were rough against her sensitive skin, and the lighting was too bright. She closed her eyes tightly, then rolled to the side and reopened them. A chubby nurse with blond hair was checking her IV.
“Where am I?”
The nurse smiled at her and came to the side of her bed. “You’re in Good Samaritan. How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts.”
She adjusted something and pressed a button. “That should help. Do you remember what happened?”
“I remember a car hitting us… not much else. Somebody in the seat next to me.”
“It was probably your brother. He left for a bit but said he would be back.”
“My brother?”
Images flooded her mind. She remembered a woman’s neck breaking, someone shot to death at his door… and a man who laughed at all of it.
“You have to call the police,” she said, panic rising in her voice. “I was kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped by who, dear?”
“That man who said he was my brother. He kidnapped me. He was the one that caused the car wreck. Please, you have to call the police.” She grabbed the nurse’s hand. “Please. Please!”
“Okay, sweetheart. Okay, calm down. I’ll call them, okay? You just sit tight. Okay? Can you do that for me?”
“Don’t leave me alone,” she said, nearly bursting into tears.
“Sweetheart, there’s twenty people right outside this room. He’s not going to do anything. We’re going to take you down for your MRI in a minute anyway.”
“Please don’t leave.”
“Okay, hold on. Hold on.” The nurse lifted the pager strapped to her shoulder. “Amanda, you there?”
24
Howie drove so slowly, he wouldn’t have been surprised if someone jogged past him. The streets were empty. The trucks and Humvees were using just the highways. But the choppers were always overhead, like vultures scavenging for a meal. Whenever lights flickered in the sky, he would pull to the curb and duck across the seats until the lights moved on.
Howie grew discouraged, knowing that Malibu was forty-two miles away and that the only way to get there was the Pacific Coast Highway. How was he going to dodge choppers on the PCH?
As he drove, he observed the empty houses, and a creeping feeling of melancholy and dread overtook him. It had taken so little to tear apart his entire world. The government had just decided to act, and he would never be the same. The most frightening part was imagining how far the government was going with this. Was the entire state shut down? Had they closed the whole country?
A chopper angled overhead, and he pulled into a driveway, parked, and turned off the car. The chopper banked left, sending the light down around him and flooding the car before disappearing over the tops of the trees. He didn’t move for a long time. As he sat back up, he realized getting to Malibu like this was impossible. At this rate, he would need at least a day, and he certainly didn’t want to be driving during daylight.
As he was debating what to do, something caught his attention-the outline of headlights. He ducked again, and a rattling engine rolled past him a bit, then stopped. He looked up over the door. A military jeep was parked in front of a house a few doors down. The brake lights were on, illuminating the darkness around the jeep with a bright red. They shut off, and a single uniformed man stepped out.
He glanced around slowly, all through the neighborhood. Then he turned to the house and went inside through the front door.
A few minutes later, he came out carrying a suitcase. He stuffed it in the back of the jeep and then went inside and came out maybe five minutes later with armfuls of electronics and silver.
When the man went back inside, Howie sat up. He saw himself in the rearview mirror and took a deep breath. He thought of Jessica and about the day she was born. The sound she made, her first sound, had never left him. He heard it in his dreams, and sometimes when he was newly divorced and living in an empty house, he swore he heard it in the house.
Nighttime was harder, and he remembered when she would run to him when he got home and say, “I missed you, Daddy.” He couldn’t remember the last time she’d called him Daddy.
He closed his eyes, then opened the door.
The night air was warm and still. For the first time he could remember, Los Angeles was quiet. The only noise was the sound of chopper blades, but they were far off.
Howie walked quickly to the front door and heard someone throwing drawers on the floor. He peeked inside and didn’t see anything, so he took a few steps in. Another drawer crashed somewhere, and he followed the sound to where the man was standing in the kitchen, sifting through a cabinet that held various mementos and crystal.
Howie swallowed hard. The man’s back was to him, and he was oblivious of everything around him. He assumed he was alone and didn’t think twice about it. Howie glanced about… and spotted a rolling pin hanging on a hook. A golden thread strung through one end looped around the hook. He grabbed it and pulled it off.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward.
Only five feet or so separated him and the soldier. He was close enough to see the small hairs on the man’s neck. He took another step, his foot coming down softly on the linoleum as he gently shifted his weight and brought his other leg in front of him. Sweat was dripping down his forehead into his eyes, but he didn’t wipe it away.
The man was glaring at a silver bowl. He was about to toss it when he felt something and glanced back.
Their eyes met, but neither of them moved. They were like two men who shared a secret, and neither wanted to be the first to acknowledge that it existed.
The man’s eyes went down to the rolling pin, and Howie’s did, too. A grown man holding a rolling pin appeared so ridiculous, so cartoonish that he thought the soldier might burst out laughing. But he didn’t. He stared at the rolling pin and then up to Howie.
The men stood there for what seemed like a long time, but was surely no more than a few seconds. The soldier reached for the pistol in a holster at his hip.
“No!” Howie shouted.