Subject Seven

Chapter Ten
Cody Laurel

Cody Laurel sniffed the air and winced. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell that he wasn’t at home. If the sounds of two people arguing hadn’t told him he wasn’t in his room, the rancid body odor and the stench of stale booze would have made it clear.

He opened his eyes and looked around. Yep. Not home. Looked like a jail cell. He wanted to panic but forced the fear back down. He knew that showing fear was the best way around to get all the wrong attention. That’s the kind of stuff you learn when you’re the class loser.

Still, the man lying next to him on the narrow cot was enough to get him moving. The old dude looked like he was asleep, but he was also trying to spoon with Cody. “Ugh.” He rolled away from the mattress and shivered in the cold air.

There were five other men in the same cell, and all of them were asleep, a few of them snoring loud enough to wake the dead.

Cody pulled at the pants around his waist. They were way, way too big and even the belt that held them up wasn’t helping him any.

He didn’t have any shoes, just socks. He didn’t have a shirt either.

Not far away, he could see a couple of police officers struggling with a man who didn’t want to get locked up. The cops were winning.

When they were done locking the door to the cell a few feet down the way, Cody called out to them. “Excuse me? Excuse me!” His voice broke, the already high tone jumping even higher for a second. Puberty sucked. “Help, please!”

The man who came over to see him had steely gray hair in a crew cut over a face that was sagging. Cody guessed he was on the other side of fifty.

“Kid? What the hell are you doing in that cell?” The voice was rough and deep and fit the face perfectly.

“I was kind of hoping you could tell me that.” His heart was pumping along at way too high a speed and his knees wanted to shake themselves off.

Ten minutes later he was sitting in an interrogation room and sipping a hot cocoa from a coin-operated coffee machine. The hot chocolate was weak and watery and he savored every scalding drop of it.

His parents were on the way. He knew that only because Sergeant Tooley, the man who’d found him in the cell, had been nice enough to tell him. Tooley also demanded to know what he’d done with the other man in the cell, but Cody had no answer for that. He was still trying to work out why he was in jail and not the morgue.

The last thing he remembered clearly was running for dear life from Hank Chadbourn and Glenn Wagner. The two had been after him at the football game, ready to pound his head into the concrete for reporting them to Principal Corcoran. He’d known he was going to get a stomping if they found out. He’d been discreet and he couldn’t think of anyone who’d been in the office when he reported them.

So when Jeremy and Will convinced him to go to the pep rally, he thought everything was just fine. Besides, it was a chance to see Melanie Chambers in her cheerleading outfit. Hell, seeing her endless legs alone was enough to risk a beating. Add in the shape of her butt and he was willing to face a pack of lions.

The pep rally was less annoying than he’d expected and Melanie did a couple of splits that fired up his imagination, and when he went to the game afterward, he never had an idea he was in trouble.

He caught on around the same time Chadbourn hit him on the shoulder. The ape walked up with a scowl on his ugly face and slammed his fist into Cody’s shoulder hard enough to rock him in his seat and to leave a bruise. Cody was still trying to recover when Wagner said, “You’re a dead man.”

Wagner had been standing next to Hank, and both of them had smirks on their butt-ugly faces that said they were going to enjoy stretching his entrails around a few trees before they got serious about hurting him.

He got up and hauled his ass as fast as he could because no way in hell did he want to get his face rearranged. That didn’t seem to matter to Chadbourn and Wagner. The two were rednecks in training and seemed to really want to start their criminal record as soon as possible. The only thing going for him was dry air that stopped his asthma from acting up too much.

He ran and they followed, calling after him and demanding that he stop, like there was any way he was going to make it easy for them to break every bone in his body.

He’d just cut around the corner of the access road to the football field and could hear their heavy footsteps catching up fast and he’d known-absolutely known-that he was about to die when WAKE UP!

– there had been a loud noise and after that, the only thing he remembered was waking up in the jail cell with a drunk trying to use him as a teddy bear.

The door to the interrogation room opened and Cody saw his parents heading in his direction. He felt both a thrill of excitement at seeing them and a chill of fear at the looks on their faces.

His father was a big man, six feet tall and round, growing an intimidating beer gut to match his broad shoulders. He was normally cheerful, but the scowl on his face told Cody it wasn’t going to be a good day. His mom was slender and pretty, dark hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion that made her look younger than her years. Half of his friends had made clear that they thought she was hot, and he could understand that even if it was a little freaky. He got his complexion and hair color from her. Unfortunately he also got his build from her, which was to say he was skinny. It worked better on her. Much better. Mom’s eyes were puffy from crying, which explained the expression on his dad’s face. The best way in the world to make his father angry was to make his mother cry.

He flipped his bangs back from his face.

“Mom. Dad. Hi.” Despite himself, he let the relief win over the nervous edge. It was good to see them, even if he figured he was about to be grounded for a year or two. He couldn’t remember doing anything wrong, but he knew there was no way he was going to get out of this without some sort of punishment.

Linda Laurel looked at her son and started crying again. He was her baby and he knew it. She spoiled him rotten and here he was making her cry. Guilt cut through him like a knife.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I don’t even know how I got here.” His mom threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly enough to make his ribs creak. His father looked at him and the face he’d known for as long as he could remember softened for a moment. Neither of his folks was exactly strict, but he’d never given them a reason to be. The stony expression crept back over his father’s face and Cody swallowed.

“Cody, where the hell have you been?”

“Dad, I don’t know. The last thing I remember was being at the game and-”

The broad face that he normally saw smiling or cheering at a football game darkened and his dad fairly snarled. “That was four days ago, Cody! We’ve been worried sick!” His father stepped in closer and Cody half expected the man to hit him.

“Four days?!?” Frost crawled through his veins at the idea. Four days? What the hell happened to me?

His mother’s voice broke. “We thought you were dead, baby. Oh Lord, we thought you were dead!” She sobbed against him and held him even tighter. His dad moved from one foot to the other, his big hands balling up into fists and loosening again and again.

“Son, we’re going to have a long talk about this.”

“Dad, I don’t know what happened! Honest! I don’t know!” He felt the panic coming on now, a cold fear that made what he’d felt when the goon platoon was after him feel like the calm before a bad storm.

Four days? He closed his eyes and took comfort from his mom’s arms around him, even from her tears on his shoulder and the feel of her breathy sobs.

He couldn’t think anymore. Four days had disappeared from his life and he had no idea how to handle it. Cody had lived a sheltered life, never wanting for anything and always aware of how much his parents loved him. Nothing he’d ever experienced had prepared him for the idea of disappearing for over half of a week.

His dad led them both from the room. There’d be arguments later. He’d have to explain whatever he’d done to end up in a jail cell. But right now, it was all he could do just to move. Panic was sinking jagged teeth into his body and shaking him like a dog working over a favorite chew toy.

It was a new experience for him and he hated every second of it. All he’d ever wanted was to feel safe, so he basked in the feel of his mother and father protecting him.

It would be the last time he felt safe for a long, long while.