Crow - The Awakening (60 page)

Sally looked at the beer, trying to compose what she was going to say. "First off, Steven's never late. He never misses his responsibilities. And he never forgets anything he intends to keep with him. Well, unless it's his lunch or something. But wallet and phone, for him those would be must-have items. He's extremely... obsessive about stuff like that. Nothing, no girl or anything would distract him from that."

Sarah looked at Charley, crestfallen. That bit of information basically obliterated their hopes that he was just out being irresponsible. But why would he have left those items behind?

"Did anyone come here? Any strangers?" Sally asked. "One would look like a very large linebacker." Sally wondered if Lohet and the team would have disguised themselves like last time. "The other tall and pale, a woman and a... little girl." She leaned forward in her seat, watching Sarah's face closely. But she just looked blankly at them, shaking her head. Sally relaxed a little. Maybe not them, then. She had no idea how to ask about the golems. They all looked just like regular people.

Sally looked at both of her hosts for a moment longer, then continued. "Okay, Steven's parents discovered something that some important people didn't want discovered. They are missing now. Abducted. Steven has spent most of his life trying to find them."

"I thought you were his parents?" Sarah pointed at them. "He's always calling me Sally by mistake."

"Really?" Sally blushed and looked at Jonah, squeezing his hand. "We adopted him after his parents went missing. That's what they wanted." She was flustered that her son would still be thinking of her and she struggled to keep her focus.

"Why would anyone want to harm Steven?" Sarah asked, incredulous. He was the sweetest boy she had known. Excepting her brother, perhaps.

"We think he may have come across what his parents discovered," Sally said. "We did our best to steer him away from that, but he has a mind of his own and found a way. That's why he left home." She looked at Jonah who nodded. "There's other people looking for him too. The ones I described. They think he has abilities that they want to use."

Sarah looked at Sally and Jonah back and forth, expecting more. "And?"

"We really can't tell you more than that," Sally said. "But we're going to find our son."

Sarah was having trouble making heads or tails of the story. Steven has gone from being a kid that might be lost or otherwise occupied, to a kid that bad people wanted to capture, like some cheap spy novel. She was about to ask more when there was a knock at the door.

"What now?" Sarah got up and opened the door. A well built but slightly balding man stood there smiling. She looked at him for a moment then asked impatiently, "Hello?

"Mrs. Windsong?" he asked pleasantly.

"Yes?" Sarah shook her head, starting to get even more impatient with the interruption.

"My name is Jacob Bradly. You called in a missing person's report?"

Sarah raised her eyebrows, nodding, unsure whether this could be good or bad. After all, Steven wasn't there with him. Sally stood up, trying to look past Sarah at Jacob.

"My associates and I would like to have a word with you concerning Steven Crow," Jacob said with an amicable smile as two burly, armed men in black body armor entered the apartment, pushing a very startled Sarah back. Jacob walked in after them, looked back out in the hall, then closed the door.

"You're a graduate already?" Coby's jaw dropped. "You can't be more than... twenty?"

"Almost eighteen." Steven admitted. He looked down at his knees. "It's just a bachelors, though. No one really cares for that anymore."

"Wow. That's still incredible. I'm in my thirties and am just now getting around to finishing my masters." Coby was flabbergasted. Sitting in the same car as a prodigy. He'd only met one before in his life, another kid who was in college.

Steven shook his head. "It's not that incredible. It hasn't helped me get work."

"To be honest, man, I think your age had more to do with it than your degree," Coby grinned. Steven was still very young and no doubt not all that experienced. That's the worst part of being a prodigy. No one could get past their young age.

"Yeah, there's that, I guess." Steven looked out the window. It was getting dark.

"I wouldn't sweat it too much." Coby looked over at him. "After all, you've got your whole life ahead of you."

Steven smiled thinly, hoping he would even survive the week. For the past couple of days he hasn't spent much time thinking more than a few minutes ahead, much less his “full life”.

"But even then, you'll still want to hit up your masters. A bachelors will only get you so far," Coby continued. "There was a time when a high school diploma meant something, then it was the bachelors. Now it's the masters. I'm waiting for the other foot to drop and force me to get a PhD just to get ahead in life." Coby shook his head.

"As long as you're happy doing what you're doing, what does it matter?" Steven asked. He really didn't intend to get into a deep philosophical discussion with Coby, but it did distract his mind from the torment of the past couple of days.

"Who's really happy at work anymore nowadays?" Coby looked over at him. "I mean, we get neck deep in debt going to college getting some business degree so we can go to work crunching numbers or filing papers then we can't wait for the weekend. It's like we spend our entire lives trying to get by hoping someday we might find something that we're happy doing. But happiness doesn't pay the bills."

Steven nodded. It was starting to get a little deep for him. Coby was clearly unsatisfied with life. Steven figured a lot of people were. He had grown up around people who didn't care much about the holy grail of getting ahead and they were some of the most well adjusted and content people he knew. He was about to mention that when Coby put on the brakes.

"Whoa, look at that!" Coby looked forward. The intersection ahead had been completely blocked by a tremendous wreck and crews were detouring the traffic down a side street. "Someone is having a really bad day today." He looked at the wreckage as they turned. Steven saw emergency crews chopping the car up to get to the occupants inside as they passed slowly. Suspicious, he scanned the vehicles in the area, but none stood out. Perhaps it was an honest wreck after all. After seeing so much wreckage at the hands of those pursuing him it was hard for Steven to relax.

"Sir, we have him on the passenger side of a blue late model Corolla," the spotter said. He had placed himself on top of a box van in a parking lot and lay prone, scanning the traffic with his binoculars, covering the passenger side of cars turning thanks to their detour. Given that any passenger was sure to gape at the wreckage, it was rather easy to spot him. Another spotter was positioned on other side and he confirmed it as the car drove past him. "We have an unknown driver. The target is in the passenger seat and is coming your way."

Laurence grinned. They were taking the bait. "Activate the second detour."

The men had narrowed the traffic to a single lane while they waited and now closed it off altogether when they saw the car approaching. One of them waved the car onto a side street with a flashlight wand while others pretended to be doing something with the manhole. The car turned without any issues. The trap was now armed.

"Another detour?" Coby peered out his windshield at the blocked intersection. Steven started getting worried. One is fine, but two in a row seemed more than coincidental. And why were they being sent down the side street rather than around the construction work?

"I don't have a good feeling about this, Coby." Steven looked around. As they passed through the intersection, Steven looked back and watched the men. He noticed that they promptly tossed the cones to the side of the street and disappeared. "Coby, this is a setup. You need to speed up and get us out of here."

"What? Setting what up?" Coby looked at Steven then in the rear view mirror, perplexed.

"Some people are after me and I think they just set us up." Steven was looking around trying to spot them and craned his neck to look up in the sky, hoping against hope they didn't rain down bullets from the air again. He saw an SUV suddenly pull out behind them. "Floor it, Coby!" Steven yelled, looking around for anyone else.

Coby looked at his passenger and wondered if he was having a fit. "Hey, everything's okay, man. Chill."

"No, it's not. We're being followed. Watch out!" Steven braced himself. An SUV had pulled out right in front of them. Coby noticed it just in time to slam on the brakes and the car came to an abrupt stop inches from the vehicle.

Steven reached for the door handle, his heart racing and already going into flight mode when he found himself looking down the barrel of a gun. He turned and saw that Coby was looking down a similar barrel. "Don't kill him! Please! He doesn't know anything," Steven pleaded, terror filling him as yet another person who had gotten close to him was about to suffer.

"Don't worry kid. He'll wake up in a few hours with a bad case of cotton-mouth." The agent pulled the trigger and Coby went limp almost immediately. Steven yelled, reaching for the dart, but it was too late.

Steven turned and saw a puff of smoke emerge from the gun pointed at him. Something hit him in the chest. Shocked, he looked down and grabbed the dart. Another one hit and he grabbed that one as well. Many more came, more than Steven could remove. It occurred to him that he wasn't even the slightest bit sleepy. He looked around. There was no chance of escape. Instinctively he decided to go limp like Coby, hoping an opportunity would present itself later on.

Laurence was yelling into his bluetooth as he put his car in gear and sped off toward the trap. The SUVs parked by him followed behind. "Keep darting him! Dart, dart, dart!" He was frantic. His quarry wasn't responding to the darts. He wanted Steven incapacitated where he sat before they even pulled him out of the car so there'd be no chance of him running away.

"I got it, sir. He's out."

Laurence felt a huge wave of relief. "Get him on the monitor and keep adrenaline handy if he crashes." That many darts in him can't be a good thing. He was still amazed it took so many to take him out and eagerly looked forward to the dissection of this kid to see just what made him tick.

"Already on it, sir," the agent replied curtly.

Laurence hit his steering wheel in elation. This was the messiest collection he had ever been a part of, but it was finally over. "Take him back to base and shut the net down." Laurence was half tempted to stop for a drink, but he really wanted to see Steven with his own eyes, just to be sure. Then he was going to sleep for a week. After that, maybe a drink.

Steven peeked as someone put something on his finger. It started beeping in tune with his heart. Looking around without moving, he noticed that there were too many people for him to get up and run as he was dragged out of the car. They carried him bodily and put him in the back seat of a waiting SUV. Someone else was pushing the car off to the side of the street so it wouldn't be found. Steven felt horrible for Coby, but at least he was still alive, which is a vast departure from the norm for anyone who got close to him.

Two agents got in the front seat and Steven felt the SUV shift as it was put into drive and started rolling. He started thinking desperately, looking around while trying not to move. He could jump out of the doors but they were in a vehicle that could go faster than he could run and the men were well armed, and he was sore and nearly spent in spite of a long sleep. There was nothing in the back seat for him to use either, no tools or anything on the floor. As he lay there, Steven felt something in his hand. The darts he had removed. They had dropped from his other hand when his fingers were opened to put on the heart monitor, but he still had a handful of them. Steven had no idea if they were still effective.

He looked up at the agents. One was turned a little to listen to the beep of the monitor and they were busy talking about their next assignment. Steven recalled his discussion with Coby and it dawned on him that these guys really did love their job. As they came to a stop at an intersection, waiting for the light, he heard one complain about missing the light and the other one indicate that they'll catch up easy enough. Were they isolated from the convoy? Steven wasn't going to wait to find out. He shifted half of the darts into his other hand, then sat up as fast as he could and jabbed the darts in their necks before they realized something was wrong.

Both reached for the darts then slumped. Steven was surprised it actually worked. The SUV started rolling just as the light turned green and Steven scrambled over the seats and steered the vehicle into a parking lot. He could hear the bluetooth earbuds buzzing with voices and knew that someone had noticed them. He opened the driver's door and shoved the driver out onto the pavement and closed the door, then did the same with the passenger. Suddenly it occurred to him that he should have retrieved their phones so he could listen in, but it was too late now. He wasn't about to take the time to get out and get them now.

The scanner caught his attention and Steven's jaw dropped. It had not dawned on him that he had been bugged. He saw other dots starting to converge on his location so he put the SUV in drive and hit the gas, erupting out of the parking lot and speeding down the road toward Brandon's home. Steven figured the dots represented the other cars out there so he left the main avenue and started driving down side streets to avoid the dots. They continued to converge on him. If he could see them, they could see him. That was a double curse on him, since he also had whatever bug they put on him, plus the tracking the vehicle had. He decided he needed to ditch the SUV as fast as he could.

Desperate, he looked around for another car and saw one that looked like a pizza delivery car. It had its driver's side door open and Steven guessed the driver was busy making a delivery. Steven mashed on the brake pedal then jumped out of the SUV before it fully stopped and it continued until it rolled into a telephone pole. He remembered something and ran back to the vehicle, reached back in and grabbed the scanner, then ran to the car. Its engine was still running so he jumped in it and hit the gas without looking back. As he turned the corner, he ducked as SUVs sped past him heading down the street. Looking back, he saw them box in the SUV he just left, and also saw a fella waving his arms. He figured it must be the pizza driver. Steven hated stealing the car but he was running for his life. Before they noticed him, he turned off the street and started taking random turns as he tried to cool down his trail before making a beeline toward Brandon's home.