The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (9 page)

Soren leaned down, getting near Friday’s face, oblivious to whether she might try and attack him. But she just watched him calmly.

“Did they say anything about a second target?” Soren asked in a panic.

Friday shook her head.

“No, but whatever they’re doing, I think it’ll be soon,” she said. “They made sure we met last night, so this is when you’re supposed to be the most distracted, right? Looking for the evil doppelgänger?”

Glen was looking at Soren with concern. “What do you mean, second target?”

Soren was already moving toward the phone. “They’re going after Alex,” he said. “They want Sara’s son.”

Sara stood outside the school, waiting for Alex’s class to be released.

She could have let him take the bus home; most of the other kids in her neighborhood did. But she enjoyed driving him home herself. Right after school was the only time she could get anything out of Alex. If she waited to see him until she was done with work, his answers to her persistent questions about his day would be monosyllabic. Get him going right after school, however, and he would often babble randomly about what happened during his day. She’d find out what the boys played during recess, what his friends ate for lunch, or which kid skipped math by hiding in the bathroom for most of the period.

She didn’t have long with Alex—a half hour while she took him to her mother’s house and dropped him off—but at least she counted it as quality time. Luckily, Wallace didn’t seem to mind her taking a little time off every afternoon.

She hadn’t been ready for motherhood eight years ago, but now she understood that Alex had saved her life. Without him, she didn’t think she would have found the strength to carry on, to face down the stares and whispers that said she and Soren had conspired to kill John.

A memory surfaced of Soren standing there in court, looking mournfully at the judge as he read the charges against him. She had stood right behind him, a show of support for her best friend. She had loudly and frequently proclaimed Soren’s innocence, and for that she had been tagged as his accomplice. She’d become a pariah, too, and lost most of her friends.

And she had been
so very, very wrong. Sara had sacrificed her reputation to defend a guilty man. And now it was too late. Declaring that Soren had done it after all wouldn’t help when she had no evidence.

Her son appeared then, walking with the rest of his class on the sidewalk outside of school. He was bundled so tightly in his jacket he seemed less like a boy than a walking blue coat, but she could see his eyes watching her from deep within the recess of his hood. She wanted to run to him and hug him fiercely, and almost did. At nearly nine years old, he still tolerated excessive shows of affection. But it was also an age when kids were growing out of that, and classmates might make fun of him.

She felt her cell phone go off in her pocket, but she didn’t bother to answer. If it was work, it could wait. She hated seeing the parents—mostly fathers, she noticed—who chatted on their cell phones while they picked up their kids. She wanted to shake them and tell them that this was the most critical time, and they were missing it.

When Alex was a few feet away, Sara could see there was something wrong. Alex was always a happy kid, which Sara chalked up to nature over nurture. It must have skipped a generation because his father hadn’t been that way, and she certainly wasn’t. But today he looked visibly unhappy. He was walking slowly toward her like he was about to get in trouble. The cell phone went off again, and Sara distractedly slipped her hand into her pocket to turn it off. She stepped forward to hug her son. He hugged her tightly, clinging to her. But the hug lasted a bit too long, another indicator of some internal distress. When Alex drew back, she gave him a searching look.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He smiled a pretend smile, the one that might have fooled everyone else on the planet but his mother.

“Nothing,” he said. “It was a good day.”

“You can’t fool me, buddy,” she said. “What is it?”

Alex looked around back at the school, like someone nearby might be bothering him. “Can we just go home now?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, taking his hand as they walked back to the car. “You want to swing by the ice cream store on the way to Grandma’s?”

“We don’t have time,” Alex said.

“We can
make
time, honey,” Sara said. “It’s okay to stop things for a minute.”

He looked up at her sharply.

“You can’t stop this,” he said.

The resigned look in his eyes scared the hell out of her. She stopped walking and leaned down again, looking him right in the eye.

“Alexander John Ignatius, you tell me what’s going on right this minute,” she said, invoking her most serious don’t-fuck-with-me mom tone.

Alex responded by swinging the backpack off his shoulders and opening it up. He rooted around past his Batman lunch box and pulled out a piece of paper, handing it to her.

“You’re going to need this,” he said.

She looked at it without comprehension. It was a drawing of several objects, one of which looked like a hair dryer. She barely paid attention to it, seeing it as a distraction from what was bothering him.

“Mom, I’m sorry I haven’t been telling you stuff,” Alex said. “I didn’t want you to be upset.”

She stuffed the paper into her jacket pocket. “What are you talking about?” she said, trying to keep her voice from going shrill. “Has someone done something to you?”

Alex shook his head violently. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Alex said. “I kept thinking there was another way, but this is the only one where you don’t die.”

Sara stopped worrying about her tone of voice.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

She was interrupted by a voice behind her. “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you Sara Ignatius?”

She reluctantly turned to see who it was. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time,” she said reflexively, before noticing the man’s police uniform. Normally, this would have reassured her—she liked the Arlington police, in part because she’d dated one of them—but at this moment it just added to her sense of alarm.

“Ma’am, you’re going to have to come with me,” the policeman said.

He looked down at Alex.

“You and the boy,” he said. “We believe you two may be in danger.”

Sara didn’t move. The policeman was dressed in the right uniform, and his squad car was parked just a few feet away on the road by the school. But his mannerisms were off. There was something almost robotic in the way he talked, as if he were carefully speaking a foreign language and enunciating every word.

She glanced around her to see if any of the other parents nearby had noticed the strange officer. She saw a few people turning in her direction.

When she looked back at the officer’s face, she realized his skin tone was unusual. It looked ashen gray, not pink. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, yet showed no sign of being cold. Her first thought was that it was the pretender from last night. Her second was that it was Soren, now in another’s body.

Sara put her arm out reflexively to guard Alex, and started backing away. She raised her voice.

“Help me! This man is trying to take my son!” she shouted.

She didn’t dare look away from the cop’s eyes, but she could sense startled parents around her reacting. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw some headed her way.

The cop leaped toward her and backhanded her across the face with an unexpected force that sent her flying. She hit the ground hard and bit her tongue, tasting blood.

Screaming, Sara looked up to see other parents running to help, a few of them frantically pulling out their cell phones to call the real police. But the cop was too quick. He grabbed Alex by the arm, who offered no resistance, and pulled him toward the police car.

Sara pulled herself up, her head ringing, and sprinted toward the cop, but he pulled a gun and aimed it directly at her.

Sara jumped to the side just as the gun went off and felt the bullet pass right by her.

A man just behind her started shouting that he was hit. She looked back to see a spot of blood blooming on his chest as he fell to the ground. The cop opened the squad car door and threw Alex inside.

He held the gun out menacingly toward her, but Sara didn’t care anymore. She slammed into him with her shoulder, but he barely budged. It was like hitting a brick wall.

The cop struck her in the chest with the gun, sending her sprawling to the sidewalk. She picked herself up again as the cop jumped into the car and pulled away.

She stood there screaming for help, for anyone to follow that car, but it was too late.

Alex was gone.

Soren tore down the road, passing eighty miles an hour, not caring if the police or anyone else tried to stop him. The cell phone was pressed to his ear with one shoulder, but no one was answering. He’d tried Sara’s number six times in the past hour.

With his eyes only half on the road, he dialed Wallace Leggett’s number, hoping Sara’s new boss might know where she was. Thankfully, Wallace picked up.

“You’re too fucking late,” he snapped.

“What happened?”

But he knew. Of course, he knew. He barely registered Wallace’s response, telling him about Alex’s kidnapping at his elementary school.

Soren felt like screaming in frustration. “Where’s Sara?”

“With the police,” Wallace said. “She called me to tell me what happened. She thinks it was a pretender who took Alex, maybe the same one who killed Audrey. She saw it, said it was strong and fast, but there was something off about it. I’ve got all my people on the case now.”

Soren thought of Friday. If she hadn’t been with him at the exact moment this occurred, he would have been off on a wild goose chase.

“No,” Soren said. “I captured the pretender a couple hours ago. It’s not her. This was a set-up.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Soren filled him in, telling him everything Friday had told him.

“Jesus,” Wallace said when he finished. “And you trust this thing?”

Soren considered the question. He didn’t trust Friday—not even a little. But he couldn’t deny the fact that she was with him when Alex was kidnapped. Even if she was lying, there was another player involved.

“Not entirely,” Soren said. “But what she’s saying fits with what we know. And it’s not the first time something tried to take Alex because he’s different.”

“You think Audrey was just a distraction?”

“Yes and no,” Soren said. “They wanted me to think the pretender took her, but Audrey wasn’t randomly chosen. According to what Glen and I dug up, she was ‘special,’ too.”

Soren rocketed through a red light, swerving to avoid a turning car. He ignored the blast of the car horn.

“Sara never said Alex was psychic,” Wallace said.

“I don’t think she knows. I don’t know that he really is, Wallace. But whoever wants Alex must believe he is. That’s who we need to find, the person in the shadows that’s been directing all this.”

“Who is this bastard?” Wallace asked. “I’ll throw everything we’ve got at him.”

Soren gripped the steering wheel in frustration.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I looked into it months ago and came up with jack shit. All I know is there’s some loose confederation of supernatural beings in Washington, and they answer to something powerful. But I didn’t turn up anything—”

He stopped talking as a dark thought hit him. Soren hadn’t been the only one looking into who was trying to find Alex. Soren abruptly changed course, taking a hard right at the next light, the car’s tires squealing in protest. He was no longer headed toward Sara, but back toward Leesburg.

“You should have told me this earlier!” Wallace was shouting.

“I didn’t meet you until two months ago, and since then I’ve had my own problems,” Soren said. “Besides, I thought the case was solved.”

“You thought fucking wrong, didn’t you?” Wallace said.

“Yes, I did,” Soren said. “But I’m going to fix this, okay?”

“How?” Wallace asked.

“Just . . . tell Sara I’ve gone to get Alex. I’m not coming back until I get him.”

“I thought you said you don’t know where he is,” Wallace said.

“I don’t,” he said. “But I have a hunch I know someone who does. And I’m going to pay him a visit right now.”

*****

Soren kicked down Terry Jacobsen’s door.

The retired parapsychologist lived in a small colonial in an unremarkable and quiet part of Leesburg at the end of a cul-de-sac. Soren stomped inside, roaring Terry’s name.

The old man in the bow tie appeared in the hallway, looking unperturbed by Soren’s entrance.

“You could have just turned the handle,” he said. “The door was unlocked.”

“Tell me what you know, Terry.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“The fucker who tried to take Alex a few months ago. You were looking into it, right? And you found something.” Soren said.

“I’ve already told you I didn’t—” Terry started.

But Soren strode across the room and grabbed Terry by the shoulders. He shoved him into the wall so hard that one of the framed photos hanging there fell off and shattered.

“I know what you told me,” Soren said. “You couldn’t find him. I believed you then, but now I know you’re capable of keeping secrets.”

Soren had Terry pinned against the wall, yet the old man showed no signs of alarm. His calm was infuriating.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“Somebody took Alex,” Soren said.

“That is unfortunate, but I still don’t know who he is,” Terry said, looking right into Soren’s eyes.

Soren shook Terry.

“I don’t believe you!” he shouted. “You have more contacts than anyone I know. And yet you turned up nothing? I don’t accept that. I won’t accept that. You have to know something.”

“Let me go, Soren,” Terry said calmly.

Soren put his face within inches of Terry’s.

“I’ll let you go when you tell me who this fucker is,” he said.

Terry pushed Soren harder than he thought possible. It was enough that it forced Soren to take a step back and release Terry.