"What do you mean, disappeared?"
She waved her shaking hands at the front seat as if it should be evident, then explained, through a quickly rising tide of tears.
"We were driving home from vacation. But Dad didn"t want to stop at a hotel because he has to get back to work in the morning and we"d already left too late. So he decided to drive straight through. I was sleeping. Mom was too, in the front seat. Then I heard this loud whistling sound that woke me."
She lost her voice to a sudden torrent of tears.
"It"s okay," Ed said in his calmest voice. He would have put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but was too far from reach in the front seat. It was probably for the best; she might see the move as a threat and then she"d really lose her mind.
She found her breath and finished her story. "I heard this whistling sound, and woke up. There was ... something else in the car."
Her green eyes were wide, wet, and tinged in red.
"It was like a dark cloud or something, but it moved weird, like it was alive. Pulsating. It moved over me and I could feel it, cold and filled with some sort of electricity. It even zapped me a bit, but it didn"t hurt exactly ... Then I noticed my dad was asleep at the wheel. And the car wasn"t moving. The cloud thing moved faster and faster like we were inside a mini-tornado. The whistling grew so loud I had to cover my ears. And..."
She cried again, then swallowed before continuing.
"There was this flash of light and it was suddenly gone, just like that. My parents too."
She surrendered to her tears as Ed tried to make sense of what she had laid out. He wanted to ask the girl if she were certain she saw what she saw. Maybe she"d been dreaming. But she was obviously fragile and he knew from limited experience with his own daughter, as strong and independent as teenagers often appeared, they could easily and quickly regress to small children who needed rea.s.surance that the monsters in their closets weren"t real at all.
No, the real monsters are on the street. And they"re often confused for the good guys.
As much as what she said seemed unbelievable, Ed had the honed instincts from years of training that told him when people were lying to him, or even themselves, with a shocking accuracy. It was part of what made him such a valuable a.s.set to the agency. This girl wasn"t lying. To him or herself.
Ed felt the unseen pieces of the night"s puzzle slowly shift into place. Something had happened to the people on the plane, to the people in the house he"d been in, to the people in the store, and the cars, and everywhere else.
Something big went down.
Something his experience hadn"t prepared him for.
It wasn"t a terrorist attack or natural disaster. It was probably something that fell off the edge of his understanding.
"How long have they been gone?"
The girl looked at the clock on the radio face. 5:12 a.m.
"Three hours; it happened at 2:15 a.m. I remember looking at the clock because it kept flicking on and off while the cloud thing got faster. 2:15 over and over again."
That was about the time his plane went down, though he"d not had a watch to know exactly. He swallowed hard and asked the next question in his softest, most careful tone. "What do you wanna do?"
She looked up at him as if it hadn"t occurred to her to do anything other than wait for her parents to return. She was sh.e.l.l-shocked, normal thoughts were canceled until further notice.
"What do you mean?"
"They"ve been gone almost three hours. You can"t just sit here on the side of the road. I almost ran right into your car."
"I ... can"t leave. What if they come back?"
This wasn"t going to be easy and time was a foe. He"d have to level with her.
"Three hours ago, I was flying in an airplane. I fell asleep. When I woke up, the plane had crashed. Somehow, I was thrown into the nearby woods. But when I went back to search for other survivors, there weren"t any."
She looked at him. "None?"
"None. And no bodies. Everyone on that plane, except for me, had vanished. At exactly 2:15."
Her eyes widened as something inside her started to click.
"I drove through town and didn"t see anyone there either," he continued, leaving out the part about breaking and entering.
"So what are you saying? Everyone"s gone?"
"I don"t know about everyone; I mean, we"re still here. But there"s a lot of people missing."
"Where did they go? Are they coming back?"
Ed looked down at the purse on the floor, searching for the right words, but finding nothing. "I don"t know."
The girl swallowed, wiping tears from her face. She seemed to be a bit less broken than she had a few minutes before. But he saw the familiar glimmer in her eyes - her brain was making the necessary adjustments to move on, even if it wasn"t letting her know just yet.
Ed marveled at the brain"s ability to sever emotions when necessary, to do what needed done despite emotional connections. He"d seen children become cold-blooded killers, soldiers mercifully end the lives of their fallen comrades, and agents turn on one another without hesitation. The Switch, as he called it, was in most people, though most would never discover it unless led there by circ.u.mstance. And it was almost never a good circ.u.mstance which showed you how to flick The Switch. It certainly wasn"t in his case.
Sometimes it was necessary to find The Switch in order to move forward. Those that couldn"t or wouldn"t flip it often paid a high price for their hesitance.
"My name is Ed," he offered, leaning closer and extending his hand.
"Teagan," she said, shaking his hand with a frail grip.
"Okay, Teagan. What do you want to do? Where"s your home?"
"Cape Hope, North Carolina."
"Do you want to go there?"
"Do you think my parents might be there?"
"Honestly? No. I don"t know where people went, but I definitely don"t think they went home."
She stared out the window, then her hands went to her stomach, soothing her unborn child.
"How far along are you?"
She pulled her hands away, as if embarra.s.sed by her condition.
"Five months," she said, then paused as if she were going to say something else, before deciding not to.
"Do you know if it"s a boy or girl?"
"I hope so," she said, her face straight for a moment until he got the joke. Then she smiled.
She found The Switch.
Now she could move forward.
"I don"t know; I want it to be a surprise," she said, staring into the dark. "Do you think there are still doctors left?"
"I don"t know," Ed said. "But I"m sure we"ll find someone who can help."
He thought to tell her that he could, in a pinch, deliver a baby. But decided not to. She was still three or four months away and there was no telling what would happen between now and then. They were stuck in a rather horrible present, and to count on anything beyond the moment was wishful thinking. For now, he would look after her. But he couldn"t allow himself to get attached. If s.h.i.t hit the fan, he"d have hard choices to make and he needed to know he could find and flip his Switch without missing a beat.
They decided to drive to Cape Hope, even though it was sure to be a pointless trip. Ed hoped to find someone she knew that she could stay with, and then he could go on his way.
She left a note in the car for her parents telling them where she was and that she was with "a guy named Ed" who was helping her. Ed hoped for her parents" sake they didn"t come back to the car to find the note. He was sure that if roles were reversed, he"d be scared s.h.i.tless to find his pregnant daughter running off with some "guy named Ed." She took her mom"s purse and their suitcases from the trunk, so n.o.body would steal them, and loaded them into "his" SUV.
About 20 miles south, he decided they would need some sleep before the next day"s travel. They stopped at a store and grabbed some clothes for him, along with a trio of portable lanterns and several packs of D-batteries. They filled the truck with food and drinks, then found a Trinity Suites Hotel, a place that normally charged $400 a night for its cheapest room. Though its sign wasn"t lit, the lobby had a faint glow from the backup lighting.
They parked in the hotel"s lot, which had a couple dozen cars. The lobby doors were open, just as Ed expected. "h.e.l.lo?" he called, his voice echoing off the empty halls.
The hotel was silent, save the buzzing from the emergency lighting and the signs above the doors. They took the stairs to the second floor and knocked on a few doors. Satisfied n.o.body was inside, Ed kicked in one of the doors while Teagan lit the room with a lantern. It was large, with two Queen-sized beds, a large flat screen TV hanging on the wall, and a broken mini-fridge, plus a separate bathroom and a mini-office setup against the windows.
The beds were made, meaning the room had likely not been occupied when the Big Vanish occurred.
"Nice room," Teagan said.
"Okay," Ed said, "Here"s the deal. You can stay in the next room, and I won"t take offense at all. I"m an old dude with a daughter older than you, so I"m sure you"re nervous to stay in the room with me. On the other hand, I"m not sure what the h.e.l.l is going on and I want to keep an eye on you to make sure you"re safe."
Teagan thought about it for a moment. "Are you some kind of cop?"
"I used to be ... something like that," he said, not wanting to tell her too much, just in case someone hit the cosmic pause b.u.t.ton again and the world resumed as normal in the morning. The less Teagan knew, the better off they both would be. "You can trust me. Though I"m sure a homicidal maniac would tell you the same. Which is why I"m going to give you this."
He pulled out the pistol and Teagan nearly jumped back when she saw it, eyes wide.
He quickly handed it to her, to strip any idea in her mind that he intended to use it on her.
"Here. Take it. Just click this b.u.t.ton here; it"s the safety. Aim and fire."
"No," she said, shaking her head, "I don"t want ... need that."
"Okay, fair enough. Then you take this," he said, removing the cartridge from the gun and handing it to her. One was still in the chamber, but she didn"t need to know that.
She took the cartridge. "Okay, I"ll stay here. Which bed?"
"I"ll take the one closest to the door," Ed said, "Just in case."
"In case of what?" she asked, sitting her lantern down on the nightstand.
"In case of anything."
After Teagan lay down, Ed went into the bathroom. The sink, shower, and toilet were still working to his rather large relief. He took a long s.h.i.t and then a longer shower. The water was slightly warmer than ice, but after the night he"d had, he didn"t mind at all. He was bruised and battered, but his injuries would heal quickly. A decent night"s rest and he"d be ready to roar.
He dressed in his new clothes - jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt, a far better fit than the stolen clothes, then lay on top of the sheets on the bed closest to the door.
He looked over at Teagan, balled up under the comforter, then flicked the lantern and threw the room into darkness.
"Noooo!" Teagan"s scream woke him violently from his sleep.
His hand was on his gun in less than a second, his eyes scanning the dimly lit room as he jumped out of bed to face whatever was there.
But they were alone.
Sunlight lit enough of the room that he could see Teagan sitting up in bed, crying.
"What is it?" he asked, sitting on the edge of her bed.
She fell against him.
"They were coming for the baby."
"Who?" he asked, putting his hand awkwardly on her shoulder.
"The men with the helicopters. They were hunting us because they want my baby."
LUCA HARDING.
Luca had never been in a helicopter. And though he thought it would be exciting, it was mostly loud and a little bit scary. Fortunately, they wouldn"t have to stay in the helicopter too long. Will said they would fly to the nearest airport where they could trade the copter for a fully fueled airplane.
"You can fly a plane?" Luca had never met a pilot before.
"Like you wouldn"t believe," Will beamed, "Was in the U.S. Air Force for 14 years before we started thinking one another were crazy."
They did stop at the airport to trade the copter for a plane, but only after a small stop first.
"Been wanting to get down here for days, but I wasn"t sure when you were gonna show, and I sure as a trip to Disney World didn"t want to miss you."
Will winked at Luca as he lowered the helicopter into the mall parking lot, right in front of Nordstrom"s front doors. "Do wish I could"ve looked a lick or two more presentable, though."
Will gave Luca an awkward smile then hopped from the helicopter and held his hand out. "Come on," he said, "I think you should come with me. The dog can stay in here if he wants. He"ll be fine and I"ll be quick. Promise."