How does one go back to sleep after watching a man die?

I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. I had to get word to Jack, had to let him know that this was happening, let him know that things were much bigger than we’d suspected.

They were killing people! And my sister, my mother, could be next.

I got out of bed because I couldn’t just lie there. I had to do something. I had to protect my family.

I paced, looking around the room, wondering how closely they were watching me. He had been specific with his instructions. I was to stay at the house when I wasn’t working. I knew a couple of the guys on the construction crew were Guardians, which meant he felt I was under lock and key being watched over by them. Did that mean he was watching me here, too? If so, how?

Was my phone bugged? Were there cameras hidden in my room? The living room? The kitchen? Did they know about the scans I made of the church paperwork in my father’s study? Did they know about the virus I’d put on their computers?

How much did they know?

I felt paralyzed, afraid to move. What if they were watching me right at that moment? What if they disapproved of my pacing, of my refusal to go back to sleep? What if I said the wrong thing at a meeting or did the wrong thing at work? Would they kill Ruth or my mother over a faux pas?

I knew in my head that I was panicking. But I couldn’t help myself.

I had to get word to Jack. I had to make sure he protected Ruth.

The idea came to me close to dawn, just a short time before my alarm would be sounding anyway. The scanner. I still had it in my jeans pocket. I could write a note and hope it got to Jack quickly.

It was the best I could do. I couldn’t risk using the phone in case it was bugged. I couldn’t go see him. I couldn’t go to Crispin or Quentin, couldn’t go near anyone who was known to work for Stone Security. It was the only option.

I went into the bathroom and moved around like I was going to take a shower, forced to assume that if any of the rooms in the house had a camera, then all of them did. I wrote on a piece of scrap paper that I’d folded into my pocket, writing as quickly and as legibly as I could, standing in the shower with the curtain drawn, the paper pressed to the back wall. Then I scanned it and crossed my fingers and toes.

It was the best I could do.

When I was done, I tossed the paper into the toilet and flushed, watching it disappear into the city sewers, and slipped the scanner back into my pocket, a tiny three-inch device that any camera small enough to be hidden wouldn’t pick up.

All I could do now was wait.

 

 

I arrived at the Lawsons’ home that night with a single rose in my hand, dressed in jeans and a dress shirt my mother had pressed for me in silence just an hour ago. Todd Lawson opened the door, looking very casual in a t-shirt untucked over his slacks.

“Matthew,” he said, offering me a friendly handshake.

“Mr. Lawson.”

“Oh, I think you can call me Todd for tonight.”

He stepped aside and gestured for me to come inside. Kari was sitting on the edge of the couch in a proper dress that a woman might have worn for one of these dinners in the fifties. It was fitted at the top and belled out around her hips, falling to just above her knees. Very proper, but flirty at the same time.

She was staring at the floor, her hands clasped between her knees.

“Kari. Come say hello to Matthew.”

She immediately stood and came over, a soft smile barely touching her lips as she offered one small, thin hand.

“Hello, Matthew.”

She seemed unnaturally thin. Unusually tired. There was no color in her cheeks, and she was more interested in the pattern on the carpet than in me. There seemed to be little life in her, little of the enthusiastic, pretty girl I’d once known.

“How are you, Kari?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been doing well.”

“I’ll let the two of you get reacquainted,” Todd said. “Dinner should be on the table in fifteen minutes or so.”

I watched him go, then turned back to Kari only to find that she had returned to the couch. I sat beside her and offered her the rose.

“Thank you,” she said politely.

“I heard you went to Brazil last year.”

She nodded. “The church has a small clinic down there. I was helping with the children, organizing the immunization clinic.”

“Sounds interesting.”

She glanced at me, her eyes coming to life for a second. “They were beautiful children. So innocent.”

“Most children are.”

“Do you think we were?”

It was an odd question. I tilted my head, watching as she played with the rose, her thumb brushing over the thorns over and over again. It must have been painful, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I think we were.”

“Do you remember prom?”

“I do.”

“You didn’t want to be there with me. You were always looking at that other girl, that blonde.”

“I hadn’t realized you’d noticed.”

“I notice more than people think.” She pulled a couple of petals from the flower. “People just don’t notice anything about me.”

It was a bizarre conversation. I found myself wondering what the hell was going on here. Wasn’t she supposed to be excited to see me? Wasn’t she supposed to have a crush on me? Everyone seemed to think we’d make a perfect couple, but she was completely checked out. She clearly wasn’t into this.

“Do you know why your father asked me to dinner?”

She dropped a couple of petals to the floor. “He wants us to be a couple. He thinks it will keep you from leaving the fold, and it’ll make me more of a good girl.”

“A good girl?”

She hesitated before her thin lips parted to answer the question. But in that moment, her mother arrived in the room to announce that dinner was ready.

We sat across from one another, her parents on either end of the table. It was a roasted chicken with perfect little red potatoes, a lovely dinner for such an awkward meal.

“You’re working for your father again?” Todd asked me as his wife served the food.

“I am.”

“Do you like construction?”

I bit back my first answer, which was to say that security seemed more my cup of tea even though I’d been given mostly scut work. But that answer would have gotten me into more trouble than Ruth and my mother could afford.

“I like the hard work. And I like the crew.”

“You were in the office before.”

“I was. And I will likely go back there when I’ve learned enough about the construction part of the business to take the knowledge into sales.”

Todd nodded, clearly satisfied with my answer.

He asked his wife about her day, and I found myself watching him, wondering what, exactly, his role was in the Guardians. Did he know who the big guy behind everything was? Did he know about the poison Tucker had demonstrated for me last night? Did he know that someone could easily slip it into this food, and he’d never know?

My appetite suddenly disappeared. And, judging by the way Kari was pushing the food around on her plate, it seemed I wasn’t the only one.

She walked me to my car when the meal was finished, at her father’s insistence. I could see him watching us from the living room window. She slipped her hand into mine without looking back at him and without looking up at me.

“I think we’re both stuck in something we don’t want,” she said softly.

I pulled her close to my car and stood with my back to the house, hiding her almost. “Why is he really doing this, Kari?”

She shook her head, her eyes falling to the ground.

“You clearly don’t want me here.”

“I was happy in Brazil. I wanted to stay, but he forced me to come back.”

“How did he do that?”

She rolled her shoulders. “He has his ways.”

“Is he hurting you?”

She shook her head, but wouldn’t look up at me. “Not me.”

“Your mother?”

She shrugged again. “It’s complicated.”

I touched her chin and pulled her head up, studied her face. “Are you afraid of him?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I am. I’m afraid of them all, but I’m not going to let that stop me from living my life.”

She snorted. “You have no idea what they have planned. You have no idea what they can do to you if you don’t do what they say. They have all the control here.”

“No, Kari. They don’t.”

She studied my face for a long moment. “Do you know why I knew about you and the blonde girl? Whitney?”

“Why?”

“Because I was watching her, too.”

She pulled away and went back to the house. I watched her go, aware of Todd Lawson watching from his window. He seemed satisfied with what he’d seen, turning away when Kari walked into the house.

We had to stop them. We had to stop their crazy plans, had to stop the hurt they were piling on people that no one ever saw. Poor Kari.

How had I never guessed that about her?

I desperately wanted to go to Whit that night. I almost drove out to the Watering Hole, needing to catch just a quick glimpse of her. But I didn’t.

I couldn’t put her in any more danger than she was already in.