The Taken

Chapter Six

The wind had picked up by the time Kit arrived home, and for the millionth time she wished she’d gotten her garage door fixed. The outdoor carport was a charming architectural detail, and one of the distinctive mid-century features that had drawn her to the sprawling ranch house in the first place. Yet when the wind was spitting at you and your best friend was dead, you wanted a bit more protection than four beams and a wooden roof afforded.

I’ll start a fire, she thought, holding her swing coat tight as she rushed to the front door. Something to warm her, keep her company, and burn away the night. Shoving her key into the giant teal door, she wondered if she should have accepted Marin’s offer to stay in her cozy stacked town house, or at least returned one of the dozens of calls from friends offering to come over. Her father had always said Kit was too independent. That a friendly nature and curious mind was well and fine, but truly living required being known by another soul. In the years after her mother died he’d lamented not giving Kit a sibling, though the wish was likely as much for him as it was for her.

At any rate, the reality of being alone had all seemed more distant in the day. For one thing, she was used to it. For another, a companion had seemed unnecessary fuel when her body still burned at the core, waiting to ignite. But now, with the wind blowing icicles through her veins, it felt like she, too, was in the grave. All her nuclear energy had been snuffed like a match between the night’s icy fingers.

A shower would help, Kit thought, shivering. Some whiskey. That fire to watch over her until light appeared again. That was a start.

Kit punched in her code, silencing the alarm before dumping her bag and briefcase on the sofa. Kicking off her ballerina flats, she left the lights off and headed straight for the kitchen. She flipped on the utility light hovering over the gold drink caddy along the right wall, which she’d salvaged from the Dunes right before the city blew the old girl up. Hotel estate sales, now mostly a thing of the past, were the best. Yet the decanter holding the scotch and the full set of crystal tumblers had been her mother’s, a garage sale find from the summer before she’d died. It was the only glassware Kit drank from when she was alone.

She poured two fingers, thought a moment, then poured a third, already sipping as she headed back into the living room. Yet something caused her to pause at the doorway. Glass halfway to her mouth, she turned back to face the wall of sliding glass. Outside, the wind roared, a tornado in an inky vacuum. She crossed to the door slowly, disconcerted but ultimately uninterested in the disheveled woman reflected back at her, then pressed her forehead against the cold pane so the room behind her disappeared. For all the movement outside-branches swaying, bushes ricocheting, the water eddying in the pool-there was no life. Who would venture out on a night like this, anyway?

So why did she have the feeling of being watched?

Because you are surrounded by the dead, she told herself, nose pressed against the glass. Your dead mother’s drink, your dead father’s voice, your dead friend’s camera. The world might be raging outside, but the inside of her home was a crypt, and Kit felt sealed up by all the loss.

Without using her hands, she pushed back from the sturdy glass door, her image again superimposing itself on the chaos outside. It was rare that she didn’t care what she looked like. Kit believed a person’s way of moving about in the world spoke volumes about them, and to her it was an art.

But she didn’t judge herself tonight. Forget the curve of her hips, a too-wide flare in a heroin-chic world. Forget even the clothes that marked her as a devoted lover of another era. Tonight she was the odd one out because of one thing alone: she was still breathing. She was still alive.

That was a relief, right? So why, as she stood there, exhausted and alone, was she thinking that it’d be nice if the wind could reach inside her homey tomb and whisk her away as well?

Living requires being known by another soul.

So why the hell was she here? Because the woman who’d known her best was dead, and the man she’d stupidly wed didn’t even know how to live. And for all her big talk about the ability of the press to change lives, and the power of living deliberately to give meaning to one’s own, Kit was still standing here alone.

Take away this sad woman across from me, she found herself thinking, focusing on her dark, wind-whipped eyes. Put her in a different place entirely. Please… just make her disappear.

The first thing Grif noted as Katherine Craig broached the room was the shadows under her eyes. He could see her clearly, though he was altogether invisible to her from behind the folding screen. Plasma moved tellingly behind her in a faint shimmer of silver-gray that threaded the room, inching her way. Despite that, all he could focus on were those telling circles, dark as bruises above the apples of her cheeks, as if the day had gone and punched her square. Then his gaze flickered, and he caught a real movement behind her.

And here comes tonight’s knockout blow.

But first, the shower. It gave the intruders, which soon materialized as men, time to position themselves in the hallway, not that time was a factor anymore. They’d entered the home almost as soon as Craig left the kitchen. Grif had felt the invasion like a worm burrowing under his flesh. This woman was already dead, he thought, even as she disappeared under the water.

Nervous, or perhaps just impatient, one of the men stepped forward as if testing the room. Grif jolted. It was the blond he’d seen through the gas station’s security camera, the one who’d taken Craig’s notebook after Rockwell was murdered. He looked to be in his forties, older than Grif if you didn’t count death years, but still strong enough that muscles fought against his turtleneck as he moved.

There was a hiss from the hallway, his partner cursing, and a gloved hand appeared, gesturing him back. Instead, the blond slid along the wall in total silence, almost like he was wandering, to disappear in the darkness of the corner opposite Grif. There was nothing after that, and he knew the rest was already planned. The two men were like sparring partners, waiting to come together at the clang of the bell.

Grif felt a headache growing behind his eyes, and forced himself to relax his clenched jaw. He tried to control his breathing, but felt like he was waiting for a bell, too. He needed a corner man to talk him down, help him shake it out, get his head right. If he could just talk to Sarge, he could make him see that this wasn’t right. Not for Grif. Not for the woman, Craig, either.

And what about these men? Why couldn’t someone talk sense into them? That was one thing Grif had never been able to wrap his gray matter around, crimes against women. To him, it was like lifting a babe from the carriage and smashing its melon on the sidewalk. Easy destruction, just for the sake of it.

And forget about premeditated violence, the unstoppable train that was just minutes away from Craig’s station. Even a random, careless act-even bad luck-was too much for most females to handle. After all, wasn’t the way Grif had bumped into Craig’s life random and careless?

But it was physiology that was really at fault. Even the big girls were easy to put down. Craig wasn’t big or small, but right in the middle where a woman should be. She was like that roller coaster he’d loved at Coney Island as a kid, made up of long slopes and wide curves, built for thrills. Something wild, he thought, but also something that made a man just want to let go.

You’d think that kind of natural wonder would engender a sort of awe in all men, but some were the moral equivalent of a smoker’s cough. They were a black noise let loose in the world, a cloud heralding illness and death. The two men entering this room were like that. Walking cancer. Destruction, just for the sake of it.

The shower droned on. He glanced down at the wristwatch Evie had given him on their second anniversary, latching on to the memory for distraction. He remembered the way she’d bitten that sweet lower lip of hers, watching him unwrap it, though she’d waited until it was fastened around his wrist to tell him it was a knock-off. Like he cared. Point was, Evie had been thinking of him even though he hadn’t exactly hung the moon for her in the previous twenty-four months, and he was both touched and secretly relieved that she still celebrated being his wife. That she still believed in him.

So he accepted the watch, and wore it religiously, never telling her he thought timepieces were silly affectations, never saying that he believed nothing really started until a person got there anyway.

But everyone’s here now, he thought wryly, lifting his head as the shower snapped off. At least for fourteen minutes longer.

You’re going to bring that poor girl’s soul home. You’re going to offer her guidance.

But I don’t want to, he found himself thinking as the plasma moved like a panther in the air. It peeled away from the hallway, padding silently through the bedroom and into the bathroom.

Propping one creamy, pale leg at a time on the vanity stool, Craig began toweling off. The limbs appeared disembodied from where he stood, but the blond cancer-man could see everything from his corner, and Grif knew he’d be the one to add violation to death.

I didn’t cause this, he almost said aloud, and realized desperation had somehow turned the thought into a prayer.

Nicole Rockwell did this, he said silently to whomever was listening. Frank did this, because he was allowing it.

God did it.

There was no reprimand. As with any prayer, no answer at all. Instead, the wind just continued howling outside, while another minute dropped away within.

Bricks, thought Grif, squeezing his eyes shut. Twelve minutes, and this will all go away.

Time enough to change your mind, Sarge, he thought, feeling panic rise, making itself known as an ache in his chest.

A white robe whirled and was wrapped tight. Grif’s boxing robe had always been white, too. He’d loved the feel of it, the scent of bleach against the stiff terry-cloth. Not that it ever stayed white for long.

Plasma swirled, wrapping around Craig’s legs like shackles as she rubbed her hair dry. Grif wanted to close his eyes.

Then she stepped into the room. The shower had relaxed her, and the booze piggybacked her fatigue so that her empty tumbler hung from two fingertips. But instinct-prey’s or woman’s-had her suddenly stiffening. She whirled, eyes wide, but the cancer-man in the hallway, faceless beneath a ski mask, was already on her. Grif had already seen this on the TV, but the sound hadn’t been turned up then. His death senses were firing like rockets now, and Craig’s knifed gasp jolted him. The slap of flesh was a shot fired. The man’s growl was feral as he pounced.

Craig strained forward, but it was useless, and only had her robe falling wide. She turned instinctively to close it, and spotted the blond man already reaching for her flesh. But Craig-Grif’s Take, his case, the woman-looked away from that oncoming train for a split second, and, with a mixture of shock and horror, focused on him.

She screamed, and this time it didn’t sound like static from a television. It sounded like a woman. It sounded like his Evie.

It sounded like a bell ringing, calling him from his corner.

Grif rocketed forward, clambering over the bed like he was bounding the ropes. As he entered the ring, he thought he heard an announcer’s voice in the static buzz of adrenaline coursing in his veins. It was an audience’s far-off roar, and it swelled when Grif rounded the S-curve of Craig’s white, naked hip and caught the man holding her, hard in his ribs. The blond stuttered in surprise, allowing a backward step that gave Grif space to pivot, just as the hallway man shoved Craig to the ground.

Rage had him going for the man’s throat. There was no training driving him now; the rust of death-years had softened the one-two, one-two-three-four of his youth into an uncontrolled flurry, but Grif knew just what to do when he caught the chin. He might not have wings, but he still had fists.

Fear entered the hallway man’s eyes, but then Grif connected… and the swirling plasma parted like the Red Sea.

Sure, a part of Grif still knew he was wearing a watch with marching minutes, that fate wouldn’t allow a knockout blow. But something had snapped inside him, that same howling something the Everlast had failed to heal, and he half-believed that if he punched hard enough-if he could just send his award-winning, no-holds-barred southpaw hook directly through the back of the cancer-man’s no-good skull-he could prevent what was already done. He could turn his timepiece into a stopwatch. He could halt Craig’s death.

The murderer’s feet caught air, out for the count before he hit the wall. Grif pivoted through the motion and turned, pulling back one of his mitts and letting loose a fist that wiped the What the fuck? right off the blond rapist’s face. The blow struck home, and Grif was suddenly there. Solid on the rock, square on the Surface, sure-footed in the mud, knuckles singing, breathing deep of the polluted air.

The awareness cost him. A fist came out of nowhere to deaden his nose, and he gagged as blood filled his mouth. The blond man loomed for a moment, but then there was a flash, a white tide rolling his attacker to the other side of the room.

Not a tide, Grif thought, staggering. A different kind of natural wonder. He broke through the shock of tasting his own blood just in time. Pushing Craig aside, he took the blow meant for her, and bled some more, but it didn’t matter. The blond was suddenly gone, reduced to a shadow dragging his sparring partner from the room. Grif tripped on his own legs before realizing he didn’t need to follow. The air was curiously cancer-free. It was also clear of silvery-white plasma, naked but for shadows that loomed in black and grays.

So Grif just bled. Chest heaving, stinging knuckles bunched on his knees, breath straining in lungs that creaked, he squinted at his watch. Then he looked back up at Craig, who stared back at him with open-mouthed horror.

“Ten seventeen,” he said, and offered her what had to be an unsettling, bloody smile. But unbelievably, miraculously, time had just proven his long-held theory right.

Nothing really started until a person got there, anyway.