Never Forget: A Novella in the Echo Platoon Series (13 page)

Why did children have to test their parents? It only made it harder on the both of them.

Outside thunder gave way to a torrential downpour. Raindrops pelted her windows, filling her with an inexplicable uneasiness. She’d felt the same way when Rusty had mentioned that he saw the dead—he actually
saw
them! How could that be?

As a special investigator, she held great respect for the value of evidence. Evidence was something one could examine, look at, and smell. Where was the proof that ghosts existed, let alone that he could see them? She shook her head while nibbling on a hangnail. It made no sense in her black-and-white take on reality.

Her gaze swung toward Ian’s portrait hanging on the wall.

I’m looking at the dead right now,
she reasoned. But that was completely different. The picture was solid. Furthermore, it wasn’t Ian looking back at her but merely a likeness of him. And the portrait never talked to her, however much she wished it would.

At least Rusty hadn’t asked her to believe him. No, he’d just taken a moment filled with sensual promise and blown it to hell with his, “Oh, by the way, I see dead people.”

Had he done it on purpose to derail the moment? Or perhaps he hallucinated due to war injuries or even because of survivor’s guilt?

She ought to have known he was too good to be true.

A noose of self-pity closed around her throat. At this rate, she would never love again. Her youth would fade, leaving her a lonely widow for the rest of her days. She supposed she ought to be grateful this had all come about before they’d gotten any closer. For, in her mind, their amazing connection would have taken them swiftly in the direction of marriage.

But now? Probably not.

Her gaze slid to the clock by her bed and worry fell like a rock to the bottom of her belly. Goodness, it was coming up on eleven already! Picking up her phone, she called Curtis again, with the same results.

Had he decided to spend the night with Matt and forgotten to tell her?

Heaving a sigh, she decided to march over to Matt’s house and rouse the family so she could find her son. Her temper simmered. The night she’d looked forward to all week was turning out to be a nightmare.

Raising her eyes to Ian’s portrait, she heard herself say, “If you’re really there in spirit, then I could use your help right now.”

*

C
URTIS EYED THE
faint light coming through a hole high above him.

After what felt like hours on his hands and knees, he’d arrived at the end of the line at a catch basin where he could stand up in water that came to his knees. For a heart-stopping moment, he’d thought it was just a dead end and all the crawling had been for nothing.

Patting down the walls, he had felt a concrete ledge and then a rusty bar with another one directly above it—a ladder!

That was when he’d looked up and glimpsed a narrow aperture high above him. Water drizzled through it, but beyond the water, he caught a glimpse of the nighttime sky. A way out!

Sluggish with cold, he climbed awkwardly onto the ledge. Once there, he reached for the rungs of the ladder and stepped carefully onto the algae-slick bar. Hope gave him the impetus to pull his weight upward and climb, one rung at a time toward the suggestion of escape.

Foot by foot, he ascended until he drew eye-level with the opening, several feet wide but only six inches high. Peering through it, he realized that bright new streetlamps were providing the light. He made out a paved road with nothing but trees and stakes in the ground, along with For Sale signs. It struck him as vaguely familiar.

He suddenly realized this was the newest addition to his neighborhood. The road had been paved, but construction had yet to take place. No one ever came here.

He couldn’t fit through the intake anyway. It really was a dead end, and he would die here, after all.

About to climb back down, he glimpsed a metallic disk above his head. In the dim light, he made out a manhole cover. There was a way out! Putting a hand flat against it, he pushed up with all his might, fully expecting it to move.

Nope. It didn’t shift an inch.

Manhole covers were heavy, but not this heavy.

With panic rising up in him, he shoved upward with everything he had. Suddenly, his footing slipped. He dropped, groping for a rung to catch his descent, but his hand slipped too. With a strangled scream, he fell straight down, striking the ledge with his shoulder.

The
snap
he heard let him know he’d broken something—probably his collarbone. He flipped off the ledge and into water that filled his nose and ears and mouth as he opened it to shout in sudden pain.

In that terrifying moment as he fought his way out of the water so he wouldn’t drown, a thought settled in his head like a nail driven into a coffin.

This is where it ends.

*

T
HE DOORBELL DIDN’T
wake Santana. He was lying in his bed with his eyes wide open when it chimed, sending Lucifer into a barking frenzy in the bedroom behind him. Bolting out of bed, Santana crossed to the window and pressed his cheek to the glass in order to see his front stoop. He both dreaded and hoped that the cops were standing on his dark doorstep.

But it was only Curtis’s mother, her golden hair reflecting the street lamp behind her as she stood there wringing her hands, waiting for someone to answer. Guilt plowed into him like a fist to his belly.

What would happen if he threw open the window and called down,
Curtis is trapped in the sewers
?

For one thing, his uncle would kill him. If not his uncle, then his friend Tom would make certain Santana paid the price for telling. If Uncle Will went to jail, who would help Santana’s mother pay the rent? Money had been an issue ever since his dad ran off. Uncle Will helped out in his brother’s stead, but without
his
help, the collections agents would start calling again like they used to do, all day long. Supposedly, Uncle Will had his shit together, being in the Navy. But that was a lie. Santana knew the real story.

His uncle was a loser just like his father. And Santana wasn’t any better than either one of them.

Leaving Curtis in the sewers to die, in the dark and all alone—that made him a murderer.

“
I
’M SO SORRY
to bother you. Are you Santana’s mother?” Maya asked as a stranger opened the door.

The haggard, overweight blonde nodded back at her. “Yeah,” she admitted on a cautious note. She clutched a robe around her, and clearly had been roused out of bed.

“I’m sorry to intrude so late. I’m Curtis’s mother,” Maya continued, hoping that the fierce-sounding dog barking in the recesses of the condo was securely restrained. “Has he been by your place at all? He was supposed to be at Matt’s this evening, but they said they’d been out for the evening. Did he come here, by any chance?” She didn’t care if she was babbling; worry held sway over her tongue.

“Oh.” The woman scratched her chin and searched her memory. “No, I haven’t seen him tonight.”

Maya’s dismay deepened. “You haven’t seen him,” she repeated. Santana’s house had been her last option. If Curtis wasn’t there, she didn’t know where to look. “Could I talk to Santana?” she requested.

The woman at the door seemed to consider her request but then shook her head, no. “He’s sleeping,” she said on a terse note.

Dark thoughts snaked into Maya’s mind, bringing to memory the suspect she was investigating who lived in her neighborhood. Had William Goddard decided to avenge her in advance of his judgment by NCIS? It didn’t make sense to avenge someone who hadn’t ruined you yet.

She had to be jumping to conclusions.

“Thank you,” she mumbled as her brain tried to come up with her next course of action.

“No problem.” Santana’s mother started closing the door in her face.

At that moment, Maya heard the dog again. Putting out a hand to block the door, she took a shaky breath. “Just curious—is that a Rottweiler you’ve got in there?” she asked.

“No, it’s a Doberman,” the woman said, sending her a strange look.

Years of practice kept Maya from displaying the jolt of adrenaline that exploded inside of her. Her intuition had been right. Part of her longed right then to demand to speak to the dog’s owner, but she wasn’t prepared to confront Will Goddard at that moment—not on her own and not without backup.

“I see. Good night,” she said, turning away and hurrying through the drizzle to her condominium.

Practically breaking her own door down as she charged into her condo, she turned, put her shoulder against the paneling, and locked the deadbolt. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she dialed first her colleague at work, explaining to his answering machine what she suspected had happened. Then she called 9-1-1, ordering her thoughts more carefully as the operator answered.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“This is NCIS Special Investigator, Maya Schultz. I live in Boulevard Crossing. My fourteen-year-old son is missing, and I believe he’s been kidnapped by a suspect I’m currently investigating.”

“Just a minute, Mrs. Schultz. I’m connecting you with police dispatch.”

As Maya’s pulse echoed off her eardrums, she suffered an overwhelming urge to call Rusty next. But she couldn’t imagine how he could help her or why he would. She’d turned into an ice queen when he’d mentioned ghosts, and he hadn’t been able to get away from her condo fast enough. He certainly owed her no assistance.

Besides, she’d been dealing with every crisis by herself for a decade. And she would do the same thing tonight.

“Police dispatch. What’s your emergency?”

It took ten nerve-fraying minutes to persuade the police to put a BOLO out on Curtis. Because he wasn’t a three-year-old but a male teenager, they weren’t convinced he was really missing but, rather, acting out. It took a threat to involve the FBI before they agreed to send two officers to her home immediately.

Wishing she could turn to Rusty for solace, Maya put her phone away and fetched her laptop, settling in to do some research of her own. There just might be something in William Goddard’s file that would suggest why and where he would have taken Curtis.

*

R
USTY JERKED AWAKE,
and Draco leaped from the bed as if it were exploding.

“Sorry, buddy, sorry,” he crooned as the dog fought to get inside the closet.

Swinging his feet to the floor, Rusty continued to croon comforting words while reconsidering the dream that had awakened him.

Ian had been crouched next to him, firing away on the M240. The clatter of the grenade rolling toward them had grown louder. Rusty knew what would happen next. He’d dreamed it so often that he knew every detail of the dream right down to the feel of grit between his teeth. But this time, Ian didn’t just look down at the grenade and then at him with that look of absolute resolve. This time he spoke.

“My son needs help.” And then he dove face-down on top of the grenade and it blew up under him, waking Rusty up.

“Curtis needs help,” he repeated to the dog, who licked his hand.

Were the words real or just a spin-off of a recurring nightmare? With his heart still thudding in his chest, Rusty snatched his phone off the bedside table. Maya hadn’t texted him. There was nothing going on with Curtis; it was all in his head.

Except he couldn’t shake the certainty that Ian had just spoken from the other side.

What to do? Call Maya to ask if Curtis was okay? He dismissed the idea. She already thought him a lunatic for claiming to see ghosts. He looked at Draco who sat there regarding him expectantly. He had to do something. He would head over to her place and at least take a look. If Curtis really was in trouble, then there ought to be some sign. He’d be better off shooting himself in the foot than waking Maya up for no reason.

She wasn’t going to have anything to do with him if she thought he’d become delusional.

*

“
M
A’AM—”
T
HE OLDER
officer who stood at her breakfast bar scanning the file on William Godfrey shook his head, “I hear what you’re saying, but there’s not enough evidence to suggest an abduction. Do you have any witnesses?”

He’d already asked her that question. “No.”

“Any evidence besides a barking dog?”

“No.” She paused, fighting the panic clawing inside her to remain rational in front of these officers. “All the evidence I have is that my son is still missing.”

“But Goddard has no motive for revenge since NCIS hasn’t yet prosecuted.”

“Yes, he does. His pay has been reduced. He’ll probably get passed over for an upcoming promotion since he’s under investigation. You should have seen the look he gave me when he realized who I was. My son goes over to his house all the time to hang out with his son or his nephew—I don’t know what their relationship is. Can’t you at least question him?”

“We can knock on his door and talk to him if he answers,” the officer offered.

“Please,” she begged.

He heaved a sigh of annoyance while meeting the other officer’s eyes. It was clear they both thought Curtis was fine. Boys his age disappeared all the time. He’d be back in the morning.

“As long as you keep your distance,” he replied. “Hurling accusations at the man isn’t going to help anything.”

“Of course,” she agreed.

Slapping his hat onto his balding head, Officer Ramsey headed for her exit with his colleague. Maya chased them to the door. They had parked their cruisers in the middle of the complex. The sirens were silent, but their blue lights strobed the brick facades of the condominiums around her. She could see the faces of several neighbors peeking out of adjacent windows.

Too distraught to care, she planted herself on her front stoop and watched the officers make their way up the road to Santana’s condo. His mother wouldn’t be happy to see them, Maya was sure. But it was William Goddard they wanted to talk to.

It had stopped raining, she noted absently. Heat rose off the pavement, forming an eerie mist in the cooler air. Crickets and tree frogs played background music as Ramsey and his colleague, Officer Reynolds, climbed the stairs to knock at Santana’s front door.