He screamed as pain racked his body and his eyes glowed red as the thing inside him willed him to attack, but he resisted, enduring the pain. Sam Storm had been no coward. He would not kill these children and he would harm their mother no more.
He fought the evil, turning away from the bloody, naked woman.
Christina saw a chance to attack, but something told her if she did, she’d die and her girls would die, too. She held back, gasping, filling her lungs with air, and watched as the battle raged inside of the man that had come to kill her.
“ Take your children and go. Now,” the man whispered with his back to her. “Go and hide and don’t come back. If I live, I’ll find you.” Then he put his cock back in his pants and left the room as Christina fainted.
J.P. heard the noise from upstairs. He didn’t need a program to know what was happening. Someone was hurting Christina and the twins. Probably killing them. Probably the same man that killed his dad and Sylvia, the same man who had been after them in the garage last night. Then the man was going to come downstairs and get him. The Ragged Man.
He slipped out of bed and padded across the den to the closet. He opened the door and pushed aside the shoes. He knew from the two weeks he and his mom had spent with Christina over Christmas that there was a trap door in the closet that led under the house. He pushed aside old shoes and a vacuum cleaner and opened the trap door. Then he grabbed the cage holding Dark Dancer and entered the closet, closing the door after himself. In the dark, he slid through the square hole in the floor and pulled the trapdoor down over himself. Then he crawled on his belly across the cold dirt, pushing the cage in front, until he came to the foundation wall at the front of the house. He could see the street through a small mesh covered opening in the foundation. He hoped Rick would come soon.
Storm thudded down the stairs, stopped when he reached the bottom, turned and fought the urge to go back up and finish the job. The pain was intense, his skin was on fire, his insides were ice. He took a step up and felt the pain ease. The message was clear, kill the woman and her daughters and the pain would cease. He took another step up. The pain stopped and a ripple of pleasure ran through him. He turned amid a flash of boiling cold and hopped down to the floor.
He raised the knife, faced it inward and clasped it with both hands. There was one way to stop the pain, but before he could bring the knife down into his belly, the pain quit. Whatever wanted him to kill those little girls wanted him alive more.
Pleasure zapped through his body again, the woman and girls out of his mind, but he had to find the boy. Holding the knife in his right hand, picking up his shoes with his left, he made his way into the downstairs bedroom and discovered that the boy wasn’t there.
Again the pain came and Storm dropped both shoes and knife and started to tear the room apart. He ripped out dresser drawers and emptied their contents onto the floor, then he smashed the drawers into the two bedside lamps, breaking them and breaking the lamps. Not satisfied, he put his fist into the dresser mirror, shattering the glass, cutting himself and showering the dresser top and everything he touched with blood.
It wasn’t long before J.P. heard heavy footsteps overhead. Loud. He held his breath and shivered. He was aware of his own heartbeat. He was scared. The footsteps stopped directly above him. Then he heard the front door open and he heard the footsteps stomp across the wooden porch. He peeked through the mesh opening and watched a big man cross the street to an older car that was parked under a street light.
The man reached his car, turned and looked back at the house. He seemed to be looking directly into J.P.’s eyes. J.P. wanted to turn away from that stare, but he couldn’t. The big man was the same man who he had seen at the record meet the day before yesterday. The man who had killed his dad. The Ragged Man. For a second he thought he was going to come back and kill him, too. Then the man turned away, opened the car door, got in and drove away.
“ Mom, wake up.”
Christina opened her eyes. She must have passed out. Swell was washing the blood off of her stomach and Torry was wiping the blood from her lip.
“ We heard what the man said, we gotta get outta here.”
“ J.P.?” Christina said.
“ He’s gone. The room’s a mess.” Swell said, trembling. It’s all covered in blood. We think the man killed him and took him away.”
“ J.P. might still be in the house,” Christina said. “We have to look.”
“ No, he’s not,” Torry said. “We checked.”
Five minutes later Christina and the girls quietly left the house by the back door. J.P. was gone and her heart ached about that, but she had her girls, her car and plenty of money. She’d be in Mexico by morning, sipping margaritas with Susan.
Chapter Fifteen
Rick’s plane landed about the same time Sam Storm was slipping in through Christina Page’s dining room window.
He was the first one off the plane, his only luggage, a little over twenty thousand dollars. Ten thousand, in hundreds, in each hip pocket and a wad of twenties in the right front. He moved through the concourse with a stiff stride, trying to work out the kinks and get his blood circulating as he headed for the taxi rank outside.
He inhaled the night air as he passed the shuttle busses in favor of a more expensive, but much faster cab. It was a hot night and the jet and auto exhaust fumes made it seem all the more oppressive.
“ Long Beach, The Beach Inn on Ocean. You know it?” he asked the first driver in the taxi rank, an elderly Vietnamese American.
“ Like the back of your hand.”
“ You don’t know the back of my hand.”
“ I don’t know the way to the Beach Inn on Ocean either,” he said, smiling.
“ You know the way to the Long Beach airport?” Rick smiled back at him. He liked the man’s sense of humor.
“ Yes, sir.”
“ I’ll direct you from there.”
“ You got it,” the driver said. “Just settle back and relax.”
Rick nodded and closed his eyes as the driver lurched the cab into the airport traffic. It wasn’t long before he drifted off and found the sleep he couldn’t get on the plane.
What seemed like scant seconds, but was thirty-five minutes later, the driver reached over and shook Rick awake.
“ Okay, Mister, I need you to guide me.”
Rick knocked the fog from his head and looked out into the dark.
“ Go straight down Lakewood Boulevard to the Traffic Circle, follow it around to Pacific Coast Highway and then take the first right and follow it all the way to the beach.”
They drove the next five minutes in silence, until the driver stopped the cab in front of the Beach Inn.
“ What room is Christina Page in?” Rick asked the underage boy behind the counter.
“ Just a sec.” The kid punched keys as he stared at a computer screen. “Not here,” he said after a few seconds.
“ You sure?”
“ The computer doesn’t lie.”
“ She was supposed to check in this afternoon.”
“ That explains it. We’re full up. Been that way for a couple days.”
“ Damn,” Rick said. “Thanks.” He left and walked down Ocean. He turned left on her street and walked the block to her house. He mounted the porch, rang the doorbell and waited. No answer. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He turned the knob and felt his stomach flutter. Something was wrong.
The living room was small and connected to the dining room. Only the change in ceiling texture told the division between the two. He made his way through the rooms toward the light switch.
He swore as he banged into a coffee table. He stepped around it, moving between the table and a sofa, toward the switch. He flicked it and the two rooms lit up. Calling out Christina’s name, he went into the kitchen. He was worried. She wouldn’t go out and leave the front door unlocked. In the kitchen, everything appeared to be in order. He opened the refrigerator and checked the vegetable bin where she kept a plastic head of lettuce, stuffed with a another kind of green. If she’d gone to ground, the hidy hole would be empty. It was.