Centralia (3 page)

Peter held the note with numb, trembling hands, his heart in his throat. He glanced at the toilet tank. It didn’t stick with every flush, sometimes not for days, even weeks. Lilly had known he’d be sure to find it eventually. But whom had she been hiding it from? Karen? Someone else?

His mouth suddenly gone as dry as sawdust, he stared at the note. Those words glared defiantly back at him.

Daddy, we went to Centralia.

He knew of no Centralia. Had never even heard the word before. Was it a company? A town? A park?

Centralia.

It seemed he’d known what it was at one time. But why couldn’t he remember? Why had whole chunks of his memory been surgically removed while other areas remained unscathed?

The toilet was still running, so Peter reached into the tank and repositioned the stopper.

He walked to the bed on weak legs and sat on the edge, still holding the note in front of him as if it were some magic incantation that if recited long enough would summon the memory he sought.

“Centralia.” He said it out loud, hoping the auditory stimulation would trigger something, anything. But it didn’t. It was just a word, nothing more than a string of letters, a compilation of sounds.

Again tears came to his eyes, and he brushed them away. Regardless of whether he knew what the note meant, this was the proof he’d been looking for. Lilly was alive. And her note said they’d both gone together. If Lilly was alive, he had every reason to believe Karen was too.

He had to find them. He had to figure out what Centralia was and what he was supposed to remember.

“Oh, God, help me.”

Peter shuddered. The ease with which those words had passed over his lips surprised him, and again the sense was there, the feeling of frayed fragments just out of reach of both memory and soul. As far as he knew, the words meant nothing to him. But their weight tugged on him until a noise outside startled him from his reverie.

A car door closed, then another and another. They were close. In the driveway.

With prickles of anticipation swarming his arms, shoulders, and neck, Peter stood, crossed the room, and slid the blinds far enough to the side that he could peer out and get a view of the driveway below. A dark-gray SUV was there, one of those jumbo jobs the size of a small apartment. There were no corporate or government
markings on it that he could see. And from where he stood, he couldn’t get a look at the license plates.

Then, from downstairs, came the sound of someone tampering with the front door. The knob rattled softly, turned, and the door opened.

Peter froze, still holding the blinds with one hand and the note with the other. His pulse thumped in his neck.

After releasing the blinds and shoving the note into his pocket, he crossed the room again, back to his dresser, and slid open the top drawer. From there he retrieved a handgun. It was a Glock 19 he’d bought last year after a rash of home invasions in the neighborhood. At the time he wasn’t sure he’d have the resolve to fire at another person. Now the reality that he might have to face that uncertainty put a ball of dread in his stomach. He rooted through the drawer for the magazine, but it wasn’t there. Not beneath his underwear, not tucked into the mess of random socks. Had someone taken it? He was sure he’d put it in the same drawer as the pistol. Crossing the room quickly and quietly, he slid open the drawers of his bedside table, but the magazine wasn’t there either. Peter tossed the useless gun onto the bed and returned to the doorway.

His mind reeled in a hundred different directions, spinning like an off-balance top. He drew in a deep breath in an attempt to steady his nerves, but it did little. He had no idea how many intruders there were. Three closed car doors would suggest three men, but there might be others.

Footsteps sounded downstairs, soft and careful. This was not a breaking and entering done by amateur thieves in search of electronics or jewelry they could hock to a local small-time dealer. These intruders knew he was home, and they were taking extra precautions. They knew
 
—or at least thought
 
—he was armed.

Peter returned to the bed and snatched up the gun. The intruders didn’t know it was useless, and that could be his only advantage. He stepped easily to the bedroom doorway and peeked around the corner. From there he had a view of the stairs and a partial view of the foyer. He saw no one but could hear movements in the kitchen now.

As silently as a cat creeps across an open room full of sleeping dogs, Peter slipped into the hallway and made a dash for the top of the stairs. There he pressed his back against the wall and tried to settle his breathing. Light footsteps moved across the first floor from kitchen to hallway. Peter peeked around the corner. From where he stood, he could now see the entire foyer area and some of the living room. A man dressed in dark jeans and a khaki jacket exited the kitchen and appeared in the foyer. His hair was trimmed close, showing a lot of scalp, and he carried a silver handgun equipped with a silencer. As the intruder turned toward the staircase, Peter ducked behind the wall and held his breath.

These were definitely not concerned neighbors stopping by to deliver a casserole.

Footsteps ascended the stairs at a cautious but even pace.

Peter thought about rounding the corner and rushing the man while he was on the steps. He had the high ground and the element of surprise on his side. Any attack from above would throw the intruder off-balance and send him tumbling down the stairs. But such an aggressive confrontation would produce a lot of noise and would call the others to the scene. Abandoning the idea of such a frontal assault, and without so much as creaking a floorboard, he took three steps to his left and ducked into Lilly’s room, leaving the door open.

The footsteps stopped at the top of the staircase, and a few
seconds’ worth of silence hung in the air. Peter held his breath, afraid the intruder would hear his increased respiration and get a bead on his location. With a handgun but no ammunition, he’d have to find another way to take the man out. He needed to keep the element of surprise as long as he could. Right now, surprise was his only advantage
 
—that and the fact that this was his home, his turf, and he knew every angle, every vantage point.

When the footsteps started again, they headed in the direction of Lilly’s room.

Peter’s pounding pulse moved from his neck to his ears. He strained to listen, to determine where exactly the gunman was. The soft footfalls grew so close that he could now hear the man’s steady but deep breathing just on the other side of the wall.

Peter slipped his Glock into the waistline of his pants at the small of his back and braced himself behind the open door. An empty gun would do him no good in a situation like this.

On the other side of the door, a handgun came into view. Two thick-knuckled hands grasped it. As the man moved forward, more of his arms became visible: the wrists, then the elbows.

Peter knew he had only one chance, and he had to act now before the intruder pushed the door all the way open and found his prey crouched and vulnerable behind it.

In one smooth motion, surprising even himself with the agility and force with which he moved, Peter grabbed the man’s gun with his left hand, pulled forward, and jammed his right elbow into the gunman’s face. One, two, three times. Nasal bones cracked and the gun discharged with a muffled pop. The man stumbled backward, his nose broken and pouring bright-red blood down over his lips and chin. But Peter and the intruder still each had a grasp on the gun. Quickly Peter clutched the weapon with his right hand and
swung around to drive the back of his left elbow into the side of the man’s head. It connected solidly with the force of a hammer.

The man grunted and finally lost his grip on the gun. But Peter lost his hold on it too, and it clattered to the floor.

Getting his feet under him, the trespasser righted himself and squared off against Peter. The two men stared at each other like gladiators battling to the death, panting, sweating. The intruder ground his teeth and narrowed his eyes. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood from his nostril to his cheekbone. He opened and closed his fists as if squeezing strength from his muscles. The gun lay on the floor between them. Peter instinctively knew he had to act fast. The others downstairs had no doubt heard the commotion and were on their way.

The gunman shifted his attention to the pistol on the floor, and seeing his opportunity, Peter reacted. He jabbed his hand forward and found the big man’s throat with his knuckles. The guy’s head snapped back, his face paralyzed in agony. He pawed at his throat and gagged. Taking advantage of the opening, Peter lunged forward and drove a fist into the man’s face, catching him square in the nose and pushing him back against the doorjamb. The intruder’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he gasped for air.

Peter followed with another right to the jaw, then a quick left to the temple area. His adversary teetered on rubbery legs, tried to sniff, tried to lift a hand. Peter raised his leg and landed a foot in the man’s abdomen. The gunman doubled over, then slumped into the hallway and crumpled to the floor.

Immediately the sound of heavy but quick footsteps advanced. They were up the steps in no time.

Now on his knees, Peter reached for the handgun, leaned out the doorway just far enough to get a look at the hall, and squeezed the trigger as another of the intruders rounded the corner. The slug hit the man solidly in the chest and pushed him back and down the steps.

Ducking into the room again, Peter pressed his back against the wall and waited. There was at least one more trespasser to deal with, possibly two.

Sweat stung his eyes; his hands trembled. His breathing was quick and heavy, like the chugging of a steam engine pushing at full throttle. Adrenaline surged through his veins, sharpening every sense.

The man on the floor in the hallway was still out cold.

“Ryan!” a man shouted from the staircase. “That’s enough, Ryan.” Fear strained and tightened the voice.

“Who are you?”

“Let’s finish this the easy way. Put the gun down. There’s more of us. There’s no way out of this.”

“What is
this
?”

“Ryan, you need to come with us.”

“You didn’t answer my question. What’s
this
? Why are you here?”

“To take you in. It doesn’t have to happen like this.”

“Take me where?”

“You know where.”

“I don’t know where.”

None of this made any sense. He had to finish it soon. If there were more than one intruder left, the longer this went on, the more advantage the others had. Even now they might be repositioning, blocking exits, cordoning off whole sections of the house. If he knew for sure there was only one left, he’d try to take him alive, question him, beat answers out of him if he had to. The man might know where Karen and Lilly were. But he couldn’t take that chance.

Peter grabbed a stuffed hippo from Lilly’s floor and aligned himself in the doorway so he could see flush with the wall the whole way to the corner of the staircase. He then tossed the hippo down the hall, away from the staircase. The hippo hit the wall and fell to the floor with a muffled
thunk
. The man popped out from around the corner for a quick scan of the area, but before he could duck back behind the wall, Peter aimed and pulled the trigger.

The man howled and cursed.

While the intruder struggled, Peter hurried toward the staircase, slid his gun around the corner, and squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession.

There was a weak grunt, the sound of a mild exertion, followed by the loose thumps and soft knocking of a body toppling down the stairs.

The entire incident with this third intruder had taken less than ten seconds.

All was quiet again, but Peter didn’t feel safe. He needed to know if there were any more intruders. Still in a crazy fog of adrenaline, he pushed himself across the hallway until his back found the wall, then leaned to his left to get a view of the staircase. One man lay on the steps, head down, the front of his shirt soaked with blood. Another man lay sprawled on the floor at the base of the stairs, bullet wounds to the chest and abdomen. He appeared to be dead as well.

The sound of fabric against fabric snapped Peter’s attention back to the intruder in the hallway. The man groaned and pushed himself to his hands and knees, looked around and found Peter with glassy eyes. Clumsily, he slid up his left pant leg, revealing a small revolver holstered to his shin.

“Don’t,” Peter said, pointing the pistol at him.

But the man didn’t heed his warning. Grimacing, fury and hatred now cascading over his face, he eased the gun from its holster.

“Stop,” Peter warned again.

Defiantly, as if he knew this would be his final volitional action in this life and was resolved to make it count, the man pulled back his lips in a painful sneer and raised the revolver. But he never got a chance to bring it high enough to aim. Peter squeezed off one shot, hitting his mark just below the collarbone. The man dropped his gun and fell back, chuffing like a sick dog and groping at the fresh wound. Peter acted quickly and retrieved the revolver, shoving it in the back pocket of his jeans.

The man tried to roll, tried to sit, but the gaping wound in his chest oozed blood and kept him down. His eyes as wide and bloodshot as tomatoes, breathing shallow and rapid, and still coughing sporadically, he looked at his bloody hand and cursed Peter.

There wasn’t time for niceties and formal introductions. Peter knelt on the man’s abdomen. “Where are my wife and daughter?”

More cursing. The intruder tried to take a feeble swing at Peter but barely had the strength to lift his arm. He was losing blood rapidly.

“Where are they?” Peter asked. He had to make this interrogation quick and efficient in case there were more unwanted visitors.

A crooked smile stretched across the man’s face. His teeth were stained red and blood pooled in the corner of his mouth. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.” He drew in a deep, gurgling breath.

Peter put the end of the handgun’s barrel over the wound and pressed. “Where are my wife and daughter?”

The big man gnashed his teeth and moaned pitifully. Again the lips parted and the man smiled. “You’re in deep, Ryan.” His eyes lolled back in his head, his jaw went slack, and he lost consciousness.

After checking the rest of the house and carefully scanning the yard through each of the windows, Peter determined that there indeed had been only three intruders. But who they were and why they had broken into his home was still a mystery.

He started with the man on the floor at the bottom of the steps, searched his pockets, but found nothing. The intruder at the top of the stairs yielded no information either. But on the big man in the hallway, the brute who wouldn’t heed Peter’s warning, he found what he was looking for: a small wallet in his right hip pocket.

Opening the wallet, Peter stumbled back until he found the wall, then slid down to sit on the floor. He fumbled with the guy’s identification card, yanked it from the wallet, and held it an arm’s length away. The photo was definitely him. Peter’s heart banged and his breathing quickened. Tears pooled in his eyes.

The intruder’s name was James McNally.

The guy was a cop.