“Your mother, something she said.”
“You spoke to her? I thought you said—”
He was struck suddenly by a wrenching agony centered directly behind his forehead.
“Alex?”
“I’m okay,” he said, grimacing.
“No, you’re not. And we shouldn’t go to your house.”
He was massaging his temples now, features starting to relax. “Why?”
“Because they could still be there.”
“Who?”
Sam didn’t know what to say.
“Who, Sam, who?”
“Your mother,” Sam said, instead of answering, “she told me to get you, to run.”
“Run?”
“That’s what she wrote.”
“Wrote?”
“I … can’t explain now. You need to see for yourself.”
“Give me your phone. I should call the police.”
“No!” Sam blared, remembering. “Your mother said no police!”
“But I’m supposed to run. Like someone’s after me?”
“There were these … men,” Sam said, not bothering to elaborate further. “They were still at the house when I left. They could be waiting for you, probably are.”
“Then let’s go meet them.”
“What?”
“Drive, Sam, just drive.”
28
WHERE THE HEART IS
“PULL INTO THAT GAP in the trees by the road,” Alex ordered Sam, as they snailed down his street at the far end from his house.
He was out of the Beetle before Sam got it stopped all the way, looking through the trees at his house. The cars belonging to Alex’s mom and dad were neatly parked side by side in the driveway. The exterior lights were on, the drapes drawn across both the upstairs and downstairs windows. There were no broken windows or doors and no strange men hanging out on his front porch. The scene couldn’t have looked more normal. So maybe, just maybe …
“I know what I saw,” Sam insisted, as if reading his mind.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Pop the trunk.”
*
The Beetle’s “trunk” was actually in the front, under the proverbial hood with its engine in the rear.
“You have a spare tire?” he asked.
“Yes, sure, but … do I have a flat?”
“Pop the hood,” Alex told her.
*
They looped around to the rear of the house, Alex holding the old-fashioned tire iron tight by his side. The old Beetles came with a full-size spare and hardware that was ancient by modern standards, but very handy in this case. He noticed Sam was brandishing something too.
“Sam, what the hell?”
“It’s a taser.”
“Like I said, what the hell?”
“My parents insisted I carry it. I keep it in the car. For those drives back and forth to Ames at night. Makes them feel safer.”
“I’m glad somebody feels safe.”
Sam ground her sneakers to a halt in the tall grass Alex had neglected to mow. They reached the kitchen door, which opened onto the backyard, the room beyond dark as it would always be at this time of night. Alex eased the door inward, slowly enough not to draw the stubborn creak due to an oiling the brackets desperately needed that he’d forgotten to give them.
“Stay here,” he told Sam.
“No.”
“It wasn’t a request. If you hear … anything, run and get help.”
“I’ve already got you,” she said, not believing how lame it sounded.
He laid his strong hands on both her shoulders, Sam feeling the weight of the tire iron. “I’m going to check things out.”
“Alex—”
He lowered a hand to her lips, shushing her. “I’ll be right back.”
*
And he was, within moments, but they were the longest moments of Samantha’s life. She expected his expression to be bent in heartache, in misery, and was surprised he wasn’t sobbing audibly or hadn’t cried out when he saw the bodies of his parents on the living room floor. Instead, his expression was just blank and befuddled.
“You can come inside now,” Alex told her.
29
TO PROTECT AND SERVE
THEY PADDED SOFTLY TOWARD the opening leading from the kitchen into the living room, still nothing amiss or awry, which should’ve made them breathe easier, though it didn’t in Sam’s case. All the downstairs lights had been switched off, bathing the living room in darkness broken by a single lamp shining down from a table at the top of the stairs. Sam’s eyes adjusted quickly, still making nothing out until their next stop brought them across the threshold from the kitchen into the living room.
But the living room was empty. No bodies or blood. Everything in place just as it always was. An and Li Chin nowhere to be found.
“Sam?”
“I know what I saw,” she said, advancing ahead of him, stiff with shock. “Your father was lying here and your mother here. And right here, in this spot, is where your mother had written the message in blood.”
“Blood?”
“I didn’t tell you before. Your mom had written this message on the floor. Telling me to find you and run.”
“Where is it? Where are my parents?”