Watcher in the Woods (22 page)

They waited for a reply. And waited.

David yelled, “Do you know about our mother?”

After a minute of silence, Xander whispered, “I don't think he's in there.”

“How could he leave? I thought you had to open and shut the door?”

Xander shook his head. “Maybe he just made his point: nothing is as simple as that.”

David said, “Want to look?”

“No way.”

David stepped past him and pressed his ear against the door. He squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of a
bang!
suddenly breaking his eardrum. He heard nothing inside. No breathing, no metal buckling under shifted weight. He squinted up into the vents. Only blackness.

“If he's not in there, he's in our house,” Xander said.

“With the big barefoot guy,” David agreed. To Xander's puzzled expression, he said, “I'll tell you later. Dad needs to hear it too.”

Xander nodded toward the locker. He said, “Is there stuff in there? Books, a jacket, like someone's using it?”

“I didn't see anything.”

Xander stepped closer. He licked his lips, then began slowly turning the dial on the combination lock.

“What are you doing?” David hissed.

“We don't know if this locker has been assigned or not. Either way, a lock will draw attention to it. And we had to give them our combinations, in case they want to open them and not use bolt cutters. I don't want any school officials even
thinking
about this locker. And I definitely don't want them thinking about
me
and this locker.”

“Like someone's going to take the time to test every combination they have to see whose lock it is,” David said.

“If they figure out the locker does weird things, they will,” Xander said, leaning closer to the dial. The lock snapped open.

Before he could slip it off the latch, David grabbed Xander's fingers and the lock. He whispered, “What if he's in there?”

“Get ready to run.”

With the care and slowness of a demolition expert snipping the wires of a bomb, Xander maneuvered the lock out of the hole in the latch. As soon as it was clear, he backpedaled away. David matched his steps, never taking his eyes off the locker door.

They waited. Finally, Xander nudged him. He gestured with his head and started for the bend in the hallway. They went around it and headed toward the double doors at the far end, snapping their eyes over their shoulders to make sure no one was following.

When it seemed safe to talk again, Xander said, “There were two kids roaming around when I came in looking for you. Are they part of this?”

David said, “I was trying to hide from them.”

“In the locker?”

David nodded.

“And you ran into Taksidian? Your luck just seems to get better and better, doesn't it?”

“Tell me about it,” David said.

By the time they reached home, David had told his father about the linen closet portal, his passage through it that afternoon, and his encounter with Taksidian. Xander confessed his role in keeping the linen closet secret and helped David explain the part about talking to Taksidian through the locker door.

Dad stopped the SUV at the end of the street in front of their house. He sat there with the engine idling, peering through the windshield. Xander turned in the front seat to exchange a worried look with David. Even Toria understood the significance of it all and remained quiet.

“Well,” Dad said finally. “I can't say I'm happy about your keeping the closet a secret, but I understand.” He reached out and gripped Xander's shoulder. “And I suppose I don't have the best track record for honesty myself right now. But no more secrets, okay?”

Xander nodded.

Dad threw his arm over the back of the seat and gazed at David. “Okay?”

“Um . . . Dad?” David said, wondering how his father was going to take the news of his sons getting shot at on some Civil War battlefield. “Last night—”

“I woke him up again,” Xander interrupted. He gave David a quick scowl—there and gone. “We . . . looked for that guy again who was watching the house.” He smiled, a little too broadly. “We didn't see anybody.”

Dad looked from Xander to David, back to Xander.

He knows something's up
, David thought, miserable.

But instead of quizzing them, Dad simply nodded.

David leaned forward and turned his head to peer at the house. “What if they're still in there?”

“Daddy?” Toria said, sounding frightened.

Dad looked through the window at the house. “Okay. We'll search the house together.”

“With knives?” Xander suggested.

“No!” Dad said, pointing at his oldest son. “We'll just . . . grab something to defend ourselves when we get in there. No knives.” He killed the engine, and they all got out.

As Dad unlocked the front door, David edged close to him.

“Dad?” He touched his father's arm. When he got no answer he said, more insistently, “Dad!” and gave him a push.

“What, Dae?”

Instead of answering, he pointed. Thirty or forty feet beyond the side of the house, a man stood in the woods. He wore a dark overcoat like Taksidian's, but it wasn't Taksidian.

“What the—?” Dad said. Without taking his eyes off the stranger, he descended the porch steps.

“Dad . . .” Xander said.

“I'm taking care of it, Xander,” his Dad replied.

Xander said, “No, Dad, look.”

Dad looked up at Xander; then his eyes followed Xander's pointing finger toward the opposite side of the house. There, deep in the woods, stood another man. Dad looked again at the first stranger and took a step toward him. He called out, “You're on private property! I'm calling the police.” He went to the door and pushed it open. “Come on, kids.”

“Who are those men, Daddy?” Toria asked.

“Just people trying to scare us.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, sweetie. Xander, shut the door. Make sure it's locked. Let's take a look around.”

“Are you gonna call the cops?” David asked.

Dad frowned at him. “Probably not. I'm not sure anyone in this town is on our side.”

CHAPTER forty - three

TUESDAY, 4 : 31 P . M .

They searched the house and found nothing. Even the secret door in the wall was shut and looking just as it should. David was glad that Xander had heard Taksidian pound on the locker door. Otherwise, he would have wondered if his family really believed everything he had said about that afternoon. After the search, Dad and Toria went to the kitchen to start dinner. David and Xander found themselves in the MCC.

“Why didn't you let me tell Dad about last night, about going through the portal to the Civil War?” David said in a harsh whisper.

Xander squatted by the rolls of movie posters. He picked up one and unrolled it just enough to see what movie it advertised. “If we tell him now, he won't let us go back into it.”

“What? To that same world? Why would we want to?”

Xander raised his eyebrows at him. “Because we're trying to find Mom, remember?”

“Dad knows that,” David said. “He's not against us going over. He just wants to do it safely.”

Xander dropped the poster and picked up another one. “And what does that mean, exactly? I don't even think Dad knows. Why isn't he up here now, planning a trip through a portal to find Mom, instead of downstairs making dinner?”

“Xander, I almost got killed last night—again! I thought we agreed we can't just hop into these worlds, grab Mom, and bring her back. Not unless she happens to be strolling around right where we appear, and that doesn't seem very likely. And it's like everywhere we go, someone's trying to kill us. Xander, listen to me!” He waited for his brother to look at him. “I'm totally with you—but we need Dad too. We need to do this smart.” David's shoulders dropped, and he couldn't help feeling a little sorry for himself and a lot sorry for Mom.

Xander dropped the poster and stood. “All right, but let's do one thing that will show Dad we aren't just being . . .
rebellious
. Let's show him that our hearts are in the right place.”

“How?”

“He's the one who suggested putting something in each world that Mom would recognize so she'll know we're looking for her.”

“Bob,” David said.

Xander nodded. “But Dad didn't know if it would stay there after we left. We don't want to be going through all these worlds, taking the time to leave a message for her in each one just to have it disappear from that world when we come back to the house. If we can just give Dad something solid, a positive yes-it's-still-there or no-it's-not . . .” He shrugged. “Then at least he'd know.”

“A rule,” David said. “Dad likes to know the rules. But how are we going to—”

“We go back and look. Right now. All we have to do is go in, see if Bob is still on the tent, and get out.”

David glared at his brother. His stomach and throat were so tight he wasn't sure he could speak, but he did: “Xander, I
can't
. The bullets were like . . . I mean, I heard them zipping past my head. I . . .”

“Okay, okay,” Xander said. “Then, just come up with me. Help me find the room and wait for me. In case I need you.”

“Don't go.”

“I have to, Dae.” He stepped over the posters to grip David's good arm. “Look around. This room is
all
we've done to find Mom.” He shook his head, obviously frustrated. “You stepped into that World War II village, but that was almost an accident. We're supposed to be
doing
something.”

David bit his lip. “We promised: no more secrets. Dad's told us how many times, Xander? The portals are off-limits . . . at least when he's not with us. It's only been two days since Mom was taken. Give Dad some time—”

“We don't
have
time!” Xander said forcefully, but not with enough volume to warn Dad of their argument. “
Mom
doesn't have time.” He closed his eyes, then opened them slowly. “Let's do this one thing.”

“When does the sneaking stop?” David asked. “First Dad didn't tell us the real reason we moved here. Then we started sneaking through portals into other worlds, even after Dad told us not to. When does it stop, Xander?”

Xander held up his index finger. He said, “After this one thing. Dad would say, ‘No, it's too dangerous. We don't know enough yet.' But maybe if he saw progress—you know, if we showed him that the way to learn things, to get closer to finding Mom, is to go over and not just talk about it—then maybe he'd get going and
do
something.”

David just frowned.

Xander continued: “When you wanted to see for yourself what those doors were all about, when you thought Dad was going to take us away, you said you'd go over with or without me.”

David's eyes narrowed. “So?”

“So, I'm going to do this whether you help or not.”

“That's not fair. That was before Mom—”

“Are you in or out, Dae? That's all I need to know.”

Xander was probably right that Dad would nix this plan in a heartbeat. It was also likely that handing Dad proof that they were learning about the other worlds would psych him up to take more action.

But they had
promised
. How many more broken promises would it take for Dad to completely lose his trust in them? Then he would definitely take them away, because he wouldn't be able to trust them to be safe.

In the end, it was the determination in Xander's face that made up David's mind. He said, “I'll help you this one last time. But I mean it, Xander. No more secrets. We do this as a family . . . or not at all.”

Xander smiled. “Agreed.” He stood there, waiting for something.

“What?” David said.

“I need to hear you say it, man. Come on, for me.”

David gave him a lopsided grin. He said, “Let's do it.”