Lost and Found (15 page)

"What the hell, Riley? What's wrong?"

"I know what they want," I breathed heavily into his face.

"Who…what the hell are you talking about?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

"The dead…I know what they want from me." He stared at me in the darkness, confusion
on his face, exhaustion embedded into the wrinkles around his eyes, but I kept talking
until a look of partial understanding registered in his gaze. "I know what they
need
. Connor, I know how to set them free."

"We're not far. The 5 is just a few more miles ahead. Are we staying on the trail?"
Kris asked. She folded the wrinkled map until it was small enough to fit into the
front pocket of her shirt and stretched both feet out in front of her, flanking my
thighs with her dusty boots. We were all restless, the sooner we found the gas station
where Jacks discovered Kris, the better. From there, we would work our way back up
the highway until she remembered the warehouse her captors had taken her. Once we
found it, we planned on stashing the horses somewhere safe and staking it out for
a few hours to see if they were still using it.

"Yeah, we'll stay along this till we hit the highway and then go north. Why, are you
getting tired of the scenery?"

She laughed and rolled her ankles, flexing them from side to side before lowering
her feet to secure them in the stirrups again. The last few hours were spent walking
along the Santa Ana River Trail and even though we knew we were on a golf course,
the only thing to assure us of that was the symbol on the map. The manicured lawns
and neatly trimmed trees grew wild, encompassing the hills with weeds and tall grasses.
Summer had been harsh however, killing off most of the green and replacing the softly
rolling hills with a yellowish color. The horses tried to stop every few feet and
snag a bunch of grass to munch on, which meant Connor and I were constantly pulling
at the reins - something we weren't accustomed to. The extra effort at keeping the
horses moving was wearing on us, but we continued along the trickle that time reduced
the river to at a somewhat steady pace, stopping once for the horses to drink. I let
Kris take the reins for a bit and became the navigator behind her with the crinkled
map opened up between my chest and her back.

With proper upkeep, the trail must have been a gorgeous one to hike on in the middle
of the residential areas of Orange County. In some places, we were completely surrounded
by growth. It blocked the fencing and rooftops from view, almost making it seem like
we were riding through the mountains of Laguna again, except for the funky smell of
rotting bones.

A pang of sorrow rippled through me as we neared a street underpass. I missed Zoey
and the others. The dog must be confused after being left behind. With Kris and I
both gone, I hoped the men were taking her on lots of walks and swims in the lake.
It was this daydream world I was lost in when the first rifle shot rang out.

Clumps of dirt sprayed up into the air and showered down on us in dusty chunks. Foxy
skittered to the side and nearly bucked me off her back before bolting. Instinctively
I wrapped my arms around Kris and held on tight. There wasn't time to look for Connor
behind us as we rushed into a small grove of trees. Within seconds, we came out the
other side, exposed in the open landscape of the river bed. Shots rang out all around
us, echoing around the golf course. It was impossible to pinpoint the shooter.

Foxy flew along the embankment as fast as her legs could take us. Something whizzed
past my right ear and for the briefest of moments, I imagined it was a bird. A hummingbird
racing us along the nearly dried-out river. But it wasn't. A bullet struck the top
of my shoulder and just a fraction of a second later a small explosion erupted in
my hip, sending me flying off the horse in a mid-air somersault. I landed hard in
the dirt and rolled too many times to count before I came to a stop in a thick patch
of flowers so purple that it hurt to look at them.

Struggling to inhale, I heard Kris scream, followed by a loud shout from Connor. What
happened next became a blur. Sunny went down not far from me. Her front legs collapsed,
sending her muzzle straight into the dirt. A cloud of dust bloomed out around her
like a mushroom as her body flipped once and landed at an awkward angle. There was
blood, a lot of it, coming from her crest and shoulder area. She didn't move again.

My voice wouldn't work. I couldn't call out to Connor - I couldn't return his cries
of my name. The more he screamed for me, the more frantic he became. He couldn't see
me. I was so close and he couldn't find me buried among the overgrown flowers. More
rifle shots boomed from nearby and all went quiet. The only sound became the ragged
catch of my breath in my throat and the subtle shift in the flower stalks as the slightest
of breezes eased through them.

Alone.
The word had a new meaning then. Connor wasn't coming. He wasn't going to save me
this time. My right side was sloped at a downward angle. So that's the direction I
rolled in, until I made it to my stomach. There wasn't any pain - not yet. I pushed
through the flowers, following the slope of the embankment until it dropped out from
beneath me and I tumbled down the sand, landing face first in a dried mud hole. It
smelled of dead grass and old water.

I stayed still, breathing raggedly through my mouth, watching a dark pool of blood
gather beneath my shoulder. The cracked mud soaked it up greedily, spreading my burgundy
life force out along the shallow crevices in little streams. As I watched my blood
flow away, I became aware of the heat on the back of my neck. The sun burned something
fierce. An overwhelming urge to lather my neck with sunscreen came over me, but a
bottle of SPF 50 didn't materialize in front of my face.

An unfamiliar pair of dusty-black combat boots did.

***

Bubble baths and sateen sheets. Vegetable broth and crackers washed down with flat
ginger ale. And sleep; days and days of it.

I walked around the lavish bedroom during the day twirling my full-length nightgown,
giggling at the soft feel of the expensive silk as it danced around my freshly shaved
legs. At night, I dined on salads full of every kind of vegetable, drenched in olive
oil and vinegar. For dessert, I had wine - with a side of lemon gelato.

How glorious it was - this house. At least two stories, though I seemed only to wander
around the same floor. In fact, I never left the bedroom or the attached bathroom
with the whirlpool tub. But it didn't matter. I twirled the nightgown. I danced. I
slept. I ate. And then I did it all over again until the rain came.

Like a child, I cowered under the blankets every time the thunder boomed in the sky.
I yelped in fear when white light flashed outside the windows. I was alone in this
room and the storm wanted in. The windowpanes shook as hail pelted the glass from
outside, threatening to break through with every gust of the vicious and unrelenting
wind. I knew it wanted me.

The storm was coming. And I was all alone.

***

The pillow was the first thing I recognized as I drifted out of my watery dream and
back into reality. It was soft and squishy and even though I knew what it was, it
felt unlike any pillow I'd ever rested on before. For a moment, I rolled my head from
side to side, enjoying the plush feel of it beneath my scalp. But it wasn't
my
pillow. The thought was enough to startle my eyes open.

I was lying on the right side of a massive four-poster bed with sheer curtains eloquently
draped around each mahogany post. It was dusk, or dawn. At least according to the
pale lighting that peeked through the slatted windows. Orange curtains with a paisley-like
white pattern flanked each of the floor length windows to my left, just beyond the
wide expanse of the mattress.

"So…she lives." A gravelly voice beside me purred into the quiet room, making me jump
under the sheets.

A man lounged in a deep armchair next to the bed, with his bare feet propped up, heels
resting just beside my covered legs. His face was all shadows but I was certain of
one thing - he was not Connor.

His jeans rustled as he lifted his long legs off the bed and lowered his feet to the
carpeted ground. When he leaned toward me, with his hands casually draped across his
knees, I flinched and tried to push up onto my elbows but my left shoulder throbbed
in painful protest from the movement.

"I wouldn't do that," the stranger said with a soft chuckle, "Unless you want to tear
your stitches."

I let my head fall back into the pillow and tried not to lose myself in the luxurious
feel of it. My side hurt too, just as bad as my shoulder. Worse, actually.

"Where am I?" Hearing my voice was startling. The sound came out strained and dry
like my vocal chords hadn't been used in months.

"You're safe. For now," the man answered.

"And…who are you?"

"A friend."

"For now?" I asked, glancing nervously in his direction. He leaned back into the chair,
obscuring his face once again in the shadows. After a pause, he laughed and I couldn't
decipher if it was meant to calm or frighten me.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that."

"How long have I been here," I asked, lifting my hips as far off the mattress as they
would go. This was only about half an inch.

"Three days," he said, standing from the chair fluidly. His form towered over me and
I recoiled as a hand reached out to pull the sheet up to my collarbone.

"And my friends…are they here too?"

Instead of answering my question, he crossed the room, lifted something off a long
dresser, and brought it to the foot of the bed, holding it up for me to see.
Kris's pack.
I tried to remember the last few moments of our ride. The golf course. The gunshots.
The horses. Sunny down in the dirt - bloody and broken.

He tossed it into the center of the bed and turned to walk away, saying over his shoulder,
"I found this but there wasn't time to stick around and hunt through the weeds for
bodies."

I stared at the pack and the bright red stain along one strap, not noticing him walk
from the room, leaving me alone in the bedroom with my thoughts and all that was left
of them.
Kris and Connor.
They were right - all of them - I lost the two most important people left in my life
before we even reached downtown Los Angeles.

"I'll find you,"
I whispered into the silence,
"I'll find you and make sure your souls rest. I promise."

***

The surprising thing about losing Connor and Kris is that I accepted it immediately.
I cried for one day and then the anger set in. It was the kind of anger that you can
taste on your tongue and feel coursing through your body like an untapped electrical
current. It was the kind of anger that kept me alive and fighting. For days, it was
all I could think about, all I focused on. It festered inside me like a parasite until
my need for revenge became stronger than my will to eat. Even despite the chip in
my hipbone from a bullet graze and the one that was yanked out of the back of my shoulder
after I passed out from the blood loss, the revenge was strong and alive inside me.

As soon as I could walk, I started doing crunches on the carpeted bedroom floor and
push-up's against the wall. Using water glasses and then shampoo bottles, I did bicep
curls, and lunges from one side of the wide bedroom to the other. And I disassembled
and reassembled the handgun that was stuffed inside Kris's backpack until I could
do it with my eyes closed.

I counted my bullets and touched them every day, making sure my DNA was left along
the tip of each shiny point. I did this because one day soon I'd be firing each of
those bullets into the heads of the people that took my family from me.

I was going to empty my clip into their thick skulls until their bodies stopped twitching.

***

"You coming down for food, or staying up here again?" His gravelly voice vibrated
through the heavy bedroom door.

"I'm not hungry, Drake," I said, ignoring the involuntary twitch of my stomach.

"Liar," he answered placidly.

I stared hard at the doorknob, expecting him to turn it and enter the room. He didn't,
of course. Frozen in a sit-up, I waited for him to retreat down the hallway, but heard
nothing but silence.

Cursing and groaning I rolled onto my side and stood up, ignoring the fuzzy feeling
in my head as I stomped over to the door and flung it open. He leaned comfortably
against the outer portion of the frame with a knowing smile on his face.

I didn't trust his hazel eyes just yet, regardless of the fact that he saved my life.
There was a darkness hidden there, and his lack of free-flowing information didn't
ease my doubt about his intentions. After spending two solid weeks holed up in the
two-story house, I knew
nothing
about my rescuer other than his first name. Though he stood silently before me, the
arrogant expression of triumph was spread smoothly across his face like a buttered
slice of bread.

Pushing past him, I sauntered down the hallway and took the stairs slowly, as if I
wasn't salivating at the idea of eating. By the time I was half-way down the stairs,
I finally heard him descend behind me.

Canned vegetables. Canned fruit. Homemade bread with an olive oil and balsamic vinegar
for dipping. Lunch never looked so good. My tongue curled and twisted in my mouth
as I served myself a humble amount of food and poured a glass of what looked like
fresh lemonade before carrying my loot into the next room to sit at the expensive
wooden dining table. My meals had mostly consisted of oatmeal, over-ripe fruit and
tons and tons of water. It wasn't until a few days before that my appetite came back.
Drake could tell but I didn't want to eat around him, or serve myself food that he
had scavenged or prepared. It was obvious, even to myself that I had lost a considerable
amount of weight since leaving San Diego. This reminded me of the conversation I needed
to have with the man that sat quietly opposite of me, eating his lunch as if he was
the only person in the room.