Mine (15 page)

Much to his mother’s chagrin, he refused to open any of them until he received answers to all his inquiries.

“What if some of them are time sensitive?” she argued. “You might miss an opportunity.”

“Then I miss an opportunity. This is the way I want to do it.”

A year or two earlier, she might have been able to pressure him into changing his mind. But he was nearly eighteen now and had sloughed off most of his obedient adolescence.

Between Friday and Saturday, six additional letters came, bringing the total to ten. That left five outstanding, including the ones from the three schools in Europe.

On Sunday, his mother could barely contain herself. She was all energy, flittering around the apartment, cleaning things she’d already cleaned and cooking enough food to last them at least a week.

Even with the door to his room closed that evening, he could
feel
her. Finally, unable to take it anymore, he grabbed his laptop, shoved it in his backpack, and left without saying a word.

His intention was to go to the library to finish a paper that was due in a few weeks. He was only a block from campus when—

Go right
.

The voice.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

He hadn’t woken with any breaks or bruises or cuts that morning. Never before had he heard the voice without those coming first.

Go right
, the voice repeated.

As he turned right, the mental map appeared and showed him where to go. He was used to this now. Since the Sandra Wilson incident, he’d been visited by the voice at least once a month. Few of the assignments—as he came to think of them—had been as bad as that first night, but they hadn’t exactly been easy, either. A convenience store robbery quickly thwarted, a teenage fight halted, and multiple nonsexual assaults stopped.

The one that had probably reached the same disturbing level as Sandra’s involved the kid. A boy eight years old lured into the car of a man claiming to be a friend of the kid’s parents. Joel hadn’t been able to stop the abduction, but the voice had guided him to the man’s house, where Joel was waiting when the guy pulled his car into the garage. The kid was seen safely home, while the man was found by the police tied up, broken, and unconscious on the floor of his kitchen.

Currently the map was guiding him through a residential area and onto a street where several shops were located. The glowing red dot corresponded to a yogurt place across the street, but as Joel dodged between cars to get there, the dot moved.

Now it was in the alley behind the store.

Hurry.

He could circle around the block and enter the alley from either end or run through the yogurt store. Though he might meet some resistance from the staff, the latter was the most direct route.

He adjusted his hoodie, pulled over his face the scarf he now always kept with him, and ran into the store. Yogurt machines lined one wall and tables the other. At the back was a cash register, a scale for weighing the product, and a bored-looking red-headed girl talking to an equally bored-looking black-haired boy. To the left of the counter was an opening to the back with a placard overhead reading
RESTROOMS
.

Hurry.

As Joel passed beneath the sign, the girl said, “Hey, those are for customers only.”

“Was he wearing a mask?” her coworker asked.

Joel ran past the restrooms and straight out the back door. As he stepped into the alley, the dot in his head began moving again. To the left and fast.

Turning, he spotted one of those big cars from the last century—a Cadillac or Pontiac or something like that—turning out of the alley and speeding away.

Hurry.

The dot in his head was traveling so fast now that even as he ran toward the alley exit, the distance between him and the dot kept increasing. He rounded the corner and stopped. The car was out of sight.

Hurry.

“How?” he pleaded.

A new dot appeared on his map. Blue and blinking and stationary, it hovered over a residential street in San Jose, twenty miles to the southeast. It was similar to the dot that had helped him save the abducted boy, but it was so much farther away.

“How am I going to get there?” he whispered.

Hurry.

His only chance was a taxi, but there were none on this street, so he raced to the next corner and looked both ways. Parked at the curb half a block down sat a Prius taxi, its service light off and its driver behind the wheel looking at his phone.

Joel rushed over and tapped on the window.

Without looking up, the driver shook his head and said, “Off duty.”

“Please. I need a ride.”

“I said off duty.”

Joel pulled out his wallet and counted his cash. “Seventy-eight dollars and forty-two cents if you take me to San Jose right now.” He could hit an ATM later to get home.

The guy looked at him, his face tired. “Off duty means I’m not working.”

Taking a cue from countless movies and TV shows, Joel said, “You can leave the meter off. It’s all yours.” When the driver said nothing, he added, “Please. It’s important.”

The man stared at him for a moment longer, and then rolled his eyes and nodded toward the backseat. “Get in.”

Hurry
.

Joel gave the cabbie the address and off they went.

Closing his eyes, he checked his mental map. Three dots were on it now. One for the San Jose location, one for the big car, and a yellow one for the cab Joel was in. At its current pace, the other vehicle would reach the blue dot a good five minutes before Joel arrived.

“Can we go any faster?” he asked the driver.

“Not for seventy-eight bucks.”

“Come on, please. I’m begging you.”

Another frown was followed by the Prius increasing its speed by three miles per hour.

Seriously?
Joel thought, but refrained from pushing again in case the guy decided Joel wasn’t worth the trouble and dropped him off at the bottom of the next exit.

They took the 101 past Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara, and exited near the San Jose airport. That’s when the blue dot winked out. A second later, a new one appeared, also in San Jose, but in a different area.

Hurry
.

“I, uh, I just realized I gave you the wrong address,” Joel said.

The cabbie looked at him in the rearview mirror. “What?”

Joel told him the new location. “It’s about the same distance, so shouldn’t make a difference, right?”

“Kid, if you’re trying to pull something…”

Joel leaned forward and dropped his money on the front passenger seat. “I’m not trying to pull anything. I’m just—” He took a breath. “It’s an emergency.”

The cabbie started to pull to the curb.

“What are you doing?” Joel asked.

“I don’t know where this is. I got to input it into my nav.”

“I’ll direct you.”

The man gave him another look, and then sped back up. “All right. Where are we going?”

Joel guided him through the city into an area of business parks and workshops and distribution centers.

“There,” Joel said, pointing at a group of metal buildings ahead.

After the cab pulled over, the driver looked around and said, “You sure this is where you want to go?”

At this time of night, most of the buildings were dark, the only light coming from street lamps and a few security floodlights.

“Yeah,” Joel said as he hopped out of the car. “Thanks.”

Joel’s destination was not the place he’d told the cabbie it was, but rather a windowless building across the street and half a block down.

Hurry!

There was more urgency in the voice than Joel had ever heard before. He crossed the street and raced over to the building. Attached to the front above a large garage-type door was a sign that read
PHILLIPS MACHINE WORKS
.

Joel looked down one side. It was a solid wall, no entrances or windows and no big car parked nearby.

“What do I do?” he asked.

Hurry!

The garage door?

He ran over and spotted a pair of damp tire tracks running into the building. The big car was
inside
.

He scanned the door but found no way to open it, so he hustled to the far corner and searched the other side.

Joel, there’s no time. Hurry!

A quarter of the way down was a set of double doors nearly as tall as the wall. He raced over and tried them, but they were locked. At a loss, he stepped back. That’s when he noticed the beam jutting out of the building at the very top of the doors. A hoist of some sort.

Joel!

The hole the beam stuck out of was wider than the beam itself. Remnants of a rubber seal meant to cover the gap filled some of the opening, but much of the seal had rotted away. If he could get up there, he should be able to slip inside.

Hurry, Joel! Please!

A ladder would have been great, but none was around. There were, however, some pipes attached to the wall near the door that, if he was creative, he could use to climb up.

He slipped once but caught himself before he fell, and then continued on. The frame at the top of the doors was just wide enough for him to get half the sole of his shoe on. He inched his way across it to the beam by keeping one hand on the roofline and the other above his head to maintain his center of gravity.

Now! Now! Now!

The moment he reached the hole around the beam, he shoved his head through the gap. Immediately he heard the sound of someone crying in pain. He worked his shoulders inside, and then shoved against the interior wall to pull the rest of his body through.

The room was a maze of machinery, much of it old and covered with dust and cobwebs. Though dozens of work lamps hung from the ceiling, only three were on, creating an undulating vista of deep shadows and weak light.

More sounds—mechanical, an electric motor and pistons; and human, slapping and punching—all coming from the back of the facility.

The area directly below Joel was empty, but even with his superior abilities, he knew he’d break a leg or more if he jumped. Near the center, however, were several machines he could drop onto.

He made his way quickly along the beam in a crouch, slowing only to work his way around the occasional support anchors hanging from the ceiling. As he lowered himself onto an industrial cutter, an electric motor at the back of the room began to whine.

Oh, God. Too late, Joel. You’re too late.

He scrambled across the machine and dropped the final few feet to the concrete floor. As suddenly as it came on, the motor went silent and a hush fell over the shop.

In all of Joel’s outings since the voice had first come to him, he had never failed to accomplish the task it gave him, so he refused to believe he would do so now.

He wove around the machines until he heard someone humming a string of random notes, as though unaware he was making any noise at all.

It’s over. Get out.

Joel had always obeyed the voice before, but not this time. He homed in on the sound, creeping forward until it was only a dozen feet away. Light hit the area at an angle that created long shadows, giving him plenty of darkness to hide in, and allowing him to peek unnoticed around the machine he was crouched beside.

A man, maybe five foot eight if he was lucky, was cleaning off a large flat metal table—with a cloth that sounded wet. He appeared to be in decent shape, the arms sticking out of his black T-shirt having seen some weight training. His hair, either dark brown or black, was cut high and tight. His face was unremarkable.

Joel crept backward and circled to the other side for a better view.

Don’t, Joel. Please. Just go!

As he moved forward again, he saw why the voice wanted him to stop. On the floor next to the table lay the body of a woman, but not just any woman.

No. Turn back.

Though she was bloodied and damaged in ways that made his stomach churn, he still recognized her. Sandra Wilson. The girl from apartment 319. There was no question she was dead. Her head was turned farther than anyone could survive.

He stared at her, unable to move, unable to understand why or how this could have happened. Had she been fated to die no matter what he did? Or had she just been in the wrong place twice? His guilt at his failure leaned toward the former, while his gut leaned toward the latter. The only way to know for sure was for it to happen again.

Get out
.
There’s nothing here for you to do
.

That was where the voice was wrong.

Joel eased into position behind the man and purposely scraped his foot across the floor.

Sandra’s killer whirled around, a bloody rag in his hand. For a moment, their eyes locked, and then the man threw the rag at Joel and ran.

Joel easily moved out of the cloth’s path and chased the man around the machines.

The dust on the floor did the man in. As he tried to take a sharp turn around one of the giant devices, his foot slipped out from under him. He threw out a hand to stop his fall. It glanced against a power button, turning a machine on, and then landed on a flat surface. He tried to jerk his hand back, but was unable to clear it out of the way before a metal plate slammed down on it.

Joel arrived a second later and hit the off button so that the plates didn’t separate. The man, his pancaked arm caught inside, dangled against the machine, barely conscious.

Now Joel knew why he hadn’t woken with any injuries. The man had done this to himself. Joel was tempted to finish the job, but unlike the monster before him, he was no killer.

Though Joel knew it was unnecessary, he confirmed Sandra was dead. Then, using wires he found on one of the worktables, he tied the man to the machine just in case he somehow managed to free himself, and then used the man’s own phone to call the police.

When he heard the sirens, he quietly made his way to the Caltrain station.