Vanish (4 page)

Stan nearly fell off the stool. “No way.”

Mitch nodded. “I’m serious. My old man.”

“You haven’t talked to him in, like, five or six years, right? Did he want to yell at you some more?”

Mitch frowned. “No… no, he didn’t yell.”

“What did he want? Did he preach at you?”

“No. No preaching.”

“Well, what did he want?”

Mitch ran his hand through his hair. “He said he wanted to try to patch things up between us.”

“You mean he just called you out of the blue to make amends. Just like that?”

“Something like that.”

“Dude, you’re like in the Twilight Zone.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So what did you say? Did you tell him where to go?”

Mitch stared at the floor. “I didn’t know what to say. He kind of caught me off guard.” He shook his head. “He said he was dying.”

Stan stopped chewing. “Whoa… dude.
Dying
?”

“Yeah. Cancer, I guess.” Mitch went to the refrigerator in the back of the garage and retrieved the bottle of Merlot.

Stan watched him, his mouth open. “You’re not still gonna propose tonight, are you?”

Mitch shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I?” He wrapped the bottle in a towel and packed it gingerly into the cycle’s leather side bag along with a pair of plastic coffee mugs.

“You… you just found out your old man is
dying
.”

Mitch slid his jacket on. “He’s been dead to me for six years.”

“Dude, that’s cold.”

“Whatever. I’m late. Linda’s waiting.”

Stan grew more earnest. “But it’s like bad karma or something, y’know? It’s like an omen. I don’t think you should propose tonight.”

Mitch’s expression darkened. “So I gotta put all my plans on hold because my old man got sick? When did he ever do that for me?” He swung a leg over the bike and gunned the throttle. “I got my own life to live.”

Things were just starting to work out for him. He was going to marry Linda and buy the garage from Rizzo. He was going to keep moving forward. He cast a glance back at the building as he rolled out onto the highway.
North Chicago Muffler and Brake
. Next year there would be a big, glowing sign that read
Kent Auto
.

Or something like that.

Mitch headed north and checked his watch. Linda worked at an out-of-the-way bar and grill just across the Wisconsin border. It usually took him fifteen minutes from the garage, and Linda had finished her shift five minutes ago.

After a few miles, he glimpsed lightning flashing in the sky off to his right. Lightning? He swore and pulled to a stop along the highway. A bank of clouds was rolling in off the lake.

Mitch’s shoulders slumped.
It can’t be a storm. The news predicted a clear night
. This was going to ruin everything. Their ride on his vintage Harley. His late-night proposal at the lake. Maybe Stan was right. Maybe his father’s news
was
an omen.

Mitch peered up at the storm front and frowned. The curtain of black clouds moved low and fast on a westward course. Too fast. Thunder rumbled deep and steady over the sound of his engine. Lightning flashed inside the churning billows. Long, bright flashes. Red, blue, and yellow.

The storm front rolled overhead with a deafening roar. His chest vibrated with the noise. This wasn’t like any storm he’d ever seen before. Without warning his motor died. The headlight and gauges blinked and went out. Mitch sat in the darkness on the empty highway as the clouds swirled overhead. Suddenly a light blazed in his face. Everything flashed white.

And then everything went black.

CONNER WOKE FROM a deep slumber. His head throbbed and the ceiling spun above him. After several moments, he recognized his surroundings. He was sprawled out on the wood floor of his study, but the room swayed like the deck of a ship.

What had happened? The last thing he remembered was…

He couldn’t recall the last thing he remembered.

His tongue felt thick like his mouth had been stuffed with cotton. After a minute, he managed to stagger to his feet and survey his surroundings. His suit coat was tossed over a chair, and a half-empty bottle of Scotch sat on his desk. He stumbled to the patio doors and tugged the drapes aside. Sunlight drove shards of pain through his skull. A wave of nausea forced him back into the chair at his desk.

Running a hand through his hair, Conner strained to remember anything from the previous day.

Rachel.

He had picked up Rachel for the weekend.

No, he had been late picking her up. And Marta had been none too happy about it. He and Rachel had eaten alone in the dining room, and he had ended up in the study because they had argued about something. He lost his temper and had gone to his study for a drink.

The storm.

Conner frowned. He had watched a bank of clouds roll in off the lake. He recalled the lightning flashing. It was the strangest thing.…

His nausea subsided and he peered outside.

The backyard was bathed in the amber morning sunlight. The patio abutted a small flower garden and fountain. Beyond that, a dense carpet of sod stretched out a dozen yards, ending abruptly at the forest that encircled the whole condo complex.

Conner shook off the last tendrils of sleep and stumbled to the kitchen. He put on a pot of coffee and went out to get the paper.

He stood on the stoop, scowling. The paper was always there by seven o’clock. Always. Conner searched in the bushes and out on the driveway. Maybe Rachel had brought it in already, though he’d never known her to be an early riser. Then again, he was finding he really didn’t know her at all anymore.

He went back inside.

“Rachel, did you get the paper in already?”

Silence.

“Rachel?”

He made his way upstairs to the spare bedroom.

“Rachel?” Conner knocked and peeked inside. Rachel’s bags lay at the foot of the bed. The blankets were crisp and tidy. The bed hadn’t been slept in.

“Rachel?” His voice sounded strange in his ears now. Like a man growing more frantic each second. He hurried downstairs. “Rachel!”

He checked all the rooms, the garage, and back outside.

He returned to the kitchen and dialed Marta’s number. After four rings, her voice mail kicked in, and Conner swore. Marta’s voice sounded detached and mechanical.

“…so leave a message at the tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Marty,” Conner began. “Marty, I can’t…”

He stopped. Can’t what? He couldn’t very well leave a message saying their daughter had disappeared.

He hung up and dialed her cell phone. No answer there either. It kicked him back into her voice-mail service.

Conner hung up and swore again, louder.

He stared at the phone a few seconds longer, then dialed 911. He knew the police wouldn’t be able to do much at this point. Particularly when they learned Rachel was the daughter of divorced parents. Teens like that were always acting up, running away just to get attention.

The phone continued to ring. Conner stared at it in disbelief. Had he misdialed?

He dialed again.
9-1-1
.

No answer.

Conner sat at the kitchen table, staring at the phone. The ring tone droned on.

He returned to the living room and switched on the TV. The screen was blank and static hissed through the speakers. He thumbed through a dozen channels. Nothing.

He returned to his study and flipped open his laptop. While it booted up, he dialed half a dozen other numbers—friends, people from the office, anyone he could think of. Each number he called sent him into voice mail.

When his laptop was ready, he tried connecting to the Internet. A pop-up error message informed him the server was not available. He tried several more times, growing more frustrated with each failed attempt.

Conner sat at his desk for a moment, trying to clear his head. What was going on? He could understand how his cable and Internet service might both be down at the same time—maybe affected by the storm. But his phone was working; it was just that no one was answering.

His mind started to reel, and he struggled to think logically. His first priority was to locate Rachel. There was no sign of a break-in or struggle, so wherever she had gone, she had gone willingly. His car was still in the garage, which meant she had either walked or…

Or someone had come to pick her up.

Had Marta come to get her? Or one of her friends?

He had to get out of the house to find some answers. He walked to his neighbor’s door. It was 8:35 when he rang the doorbell. He could hear the chime inside and waited. No answer. He rang a few more times and knocked as well. He peeked inside the front window but couldn’t see any sign of his neighbors.

Conner returned to his condo and dialed Marta’s number again. Again he got her voice mail. This time he decided to leave a message.

“Marta, it’s Connie.” He paused, trying to decide how much to tell her. “Listen, I need you to call me back as soon as possible. Okay? Call me back on my cell.”

He hung up and gathered his wallet and keys. As he backed out of his driveway, he turned on the radio. He listened to AM 1020 every morning in to work. Now static hissed through his speakers. He pressed the Seek button and the LCD screen scrolled through all the frequencies without stopping. He tried the same on FM with the same results.

Conner headed down Baltic Avenue to Columbus. His first stop would be the police station. It might be a bit premature, but it was the place he’d most likely get some answers.

He had driven less than a mile before he realized his was the only car on the road. He rolled past strip malls and grocery stores with empty parking lots, gas stations void of customers. There were no other cars in sight. No pedestrians. No signs of life anywhere.

A sick feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. This was more than just his daughter missing. Everyone else seemed to be missing as well.

Conner rolled to a stop in the middle of the road and got out. He was in the heart of the Lake Forest business district on a Saturday morning and not a soul was in sight. Silence surrounded him. No sounds of traffic. No planes overhead. Nothing.

The sun blazed down from a hard, blue sky, and a warm breeze tugged at his clothes. It was a beautiful day. Other than the fact that he seemed to be the last man on earth… it was a beautiful day.

HELEN STOOD ON her balcony. Lake Michigan spread out under the morning sun like a vast, diamond-studded carpet to the horizon. Thirty-seven floors below, Lake Shore Drive snaked its way south to Navy Pier. A cool breeze wafted off the lake and tousled her hair.

It was a daily ritual for her as soon as the weather turned warm enough in the spring: enjoy a cup of steaming coffee and the newspaper as the city stirred to life.

Helen normally drank in the vista with pleasure, but this morning she had no pleasure, no coffee, and no morning paper. She drummed her fingers on the railing and stared out over the city. She couldn’t see a soul on the streets below. No traffic, no people. No sign of life anywhere.

She had awakened from a deep slumber ten minutes ago, groggy and disoriented. Apparently she had fallen asleep in the deck chair on the balcony. She found no morning newspaper in the hall and had gotten no answer when she called management downstairs.

Helen tried to reconstruct the events of the previous evening, but it was all still a little fuzzy. Kyle had come over—surprised her with a birthday dinner. They had eaten and… and Kyle had mentioned his job. He was moving to New York. She now recalled the anxiety she had felt coming to grips with her son moving so far away. She had gone to the balcony for some fresh air when… when she saw the storm.

And that was the last thing she could remember.

She went back to the kitchen and called Kyle’s cell phone. After two rings, an automated message came on: “
If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again
.”

Helen frowned. Had he switched off his cell phone? He never shut it off. It should’ve at least sent her into his voice mail. She tried again, hoping she had only misdialed.

“If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial—”

Helen slammed the phone down and swore. Where was he?

After several minutes, she ventured back into the hallway. She hesitated at her neighbor’s door and then knocked.

“Walter?”

She knew Walter Kiel casually—he was a divorced investment banker or something, also in his fifties. They only spoke in passing or on the elevator.

He didn’t answer.

Helen pressed her ear to the door but could hear nothing on the other side.

She knocked again. Still no answer.

She went around the corner to Jeff and Susan Russel’s suite. They had moved in a few months earlier, and Helen had developed a somewhat amiable relationship with Susan, though she had yet to meet Jeff.

No answer there either.

She moved on to the next door. Felicia Wilcox was always home. Helen had met the reclusive author after retrieving her shih tzu from the stairwell a few years earlier. They visited once or twice a month.

She knocked. “Felicia? Are you home?”

No answer.

She pounded. “Felicia?”

Her heart raced now and she paused to regain her composure. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the door and focused on her breathing, just like her yoga instructor had taught her.

Where was everyone? Had they evacuated the whole building last night? Had no one thought to even check on her?

She was used to being alone, but this was surreal.

There had to be someone else in the building. Surely the whole of Chicago hadn’t been completely abandoned.

She returned to her apartment and shut the door. Her hands trembled. There had to be a logical explanation. She just needed to stay calm. Her first order of business was to contact Kyle. His apartment wasn’t too far away. She’d stop there first.