Broken Moon by Laken Cane
Chapter Fifteen
Snow had begun falling once again, and the city, for once, was quiet. I cranked up the heater, waiting impatiently for the car to warm as I drove slowly down residential street after street, going where the spirit pointed.
The always present pain of my hobbled shift was almost comforting, if only for the fact that it was so familiar. It also gave me something to concentrate on so I wouldn’t fall to pieces at the thought of a child in the hands of a monster.
“Who are you?” I asked the man beside me. “How do you know about this child? And what killed you? Are you related to the mayor? Obviously this child is why you’re still here instead of crossing over into whatever afterlife awaits you. So who are you?”
I couldn’t remember being so anxious, so nervous. I was practically jumping out of my skin, and I wished more than ever that I could shift. I felt the importance of what was happening, and it was overwhelming.
I could feel the dead man’s sorrow. It wafted from him, wrapping around my heart and bringing tears to my eyes. He put his hands over his face, then looked at me, and there was not only sorrow and pain in his eyes. There was also guilt.
“You had something to do with his kidnapping,” I realized. Sudden rage rose up to swallow my anxiety, and I welcomed it. “You need to atone.”
He nodded.
“Fuck you,” I snarled. I didn’t speak to him again, just followed wherever he pointed, until finally, he let me know we’d arrived.
I parked the car at the side of the street but left the engine running so I could feel the heat. I was never this cold. Maybe it had something to do with the proximity of the dead, but that cold slid through my body like a thousand icicles.
Jim had led me to a part of the city known casually as “the ‘ville,” short for Clarksville. It was an unpleasant neighborhood but not a terribly dangerous one. It boasted its own post office but little else, other than a couple of pizza joints and a gas station. As long as I’d lived in Jakeston, I’d been to Clarksville exactly once.
Finally, I turned the engine off and climbed out, shutting my door gently as though afraid I might wake and warn the child’s abductor. A dog barked incessantly, adding to my anxiety. It was beyond me why people got a dog only to chain the poor thing outside.
Jim disappeared and I had to scan the area for a good thirty seconds before I saw him standing in the shadows of an alley. I jogged across the street—Oak Street—and down the alley between two houses with peeling paint and dark windows before cutting through someone’s back yard. I nearly tripped over a bicycle, then looked up to see him standing on the back stoop of a two-story with rusty fencing around the tiny back yard and a gate with a chain and a padlock keeping it secure.
I jumped over the fence easily and landed on the other side before I straightened, stared up at the house, and lost my breath.
God, it’s bad here.
Cold, ugly, grim. I could feel the horror of this house’s past sliding insidiously across the ground. Its dark hands wrapped around my ankles and pulled me closer to the house, and I had to fight the nausea that threatened to make me lose all of Lucy’s delicious dinner.
Jim remained on the back stoop, slightly hunched, his agony obvious. If he’d helped steal that boy, I hoped he felt the agony of his actions for eternity. The dog, less loud now that I was farther away, continued to bark.
Any doubt I might have had was gone. Little Noah Hedrick was inside that house. “Is he still alive?” I whispered.
Jim nodded, then held up a finger, which I took to mean, but not for long.
“I’ll call a detective I know,” I told him, then turned and raced back to my car. The urgency I’d felt had escalated, and I knew I had to hurry.
I climbed inside my car but didn’t turn on the heat. I was no longer cold after my initial reaction. I was burning up. I dug my phone from my pocket and tapped Detective Moreno’s name.
He answered almost immediately, though his voice was a little sluggish. “Don’t you ever sleep, Kaitlyn?” he grouched.
“Detective,” I said, and just like that, my voice was thick with tears and I began to shake.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice suddenly sharp. “The demon?”
“Not the demon,” I managed, then took a deep breath and forced my momentary weakness away. “I found Mayor Hedrick’s son. I know where he is.”
“The fuck,” he growled, and I could hear a bustle of activity as he likely leaped from bed and began dressing. “Address, Kait.”
“1121 Brown Street. Two-story white house, fenced back yard. I parked on Oak Street, directly across from the house. You’ll see me.” I hesitated. “He’s alive, Rick, but I don’t think he has very long.”
“You’d better not be wrong,” he said. “I have to call the mayor. We’ll be there in fifteen.”
“Come in quiet,” I told him. “If you warn the man—”
“I know my job, Kaitlyn,” he said, and then he was gone.
Fifteen minutes was equal to forever.
Jim never reappeared, and I wondered if he was inside that house, standing over the mayor’s child, attempting to keep him safe from a monster. Smart guy, having me park a street over, as though he’d been afraid the child abductor would somehow hear or see me.
And despite the fact that a spirit had led me here, despite the fact that I’d felt not only the evil but the innocence inside that old house, deep down I was terrified that I was wrong.
I pulled my cell from my pocket when I felt its vibrating ring, and the very instant I saw Lucille’s text, I realized that with everything that had happened, I’d forgotten the address Jessie’s friend had given me.
997 Oak Street, Clarksville.
I was literally standing on the street where Jessie’s ex lived. One street over from the kidnapping bastard the spirit had led me to. “Small world,” I whispered, and because I had a few minutes left before Detective Moreno arrived, I sent Lucy a quick reply as I slipped down the street to Trevor Short’s house.
I didn’t have time to talk to him, but I could scout out the house. It was a tall, skinny place, appeared well-kept, and it was the house where the dog was barking.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.
I still couldn’t see him so I crept around to the back of the house, because I couldn’t resist. The second he saw me, he stopped barking and crept behind the tree to which he was chained.
He peered around the tree, his little white face the brightest thing in the darkness. The streetlight didn’t reach back there, at least not well, but I could see that he had what appeared to be an old ice cream bucket to hold water, though I couldn’t tell if it was full or empty.
The ground was already covered with snow, and it was cold, grim, and dark, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him chained in the snow for endless hours.
“Hey baby,” I murmured. I walked close enough so that he could reach me if he wanted to come from behind the tree, but not close enough to scare him. I wished I had something to feed him when he finally walked from behind the tree, then belly crawled toward me. He was emaciated. I could count his ribs and his backbone was prominent. The asshole who owned this dog was neglecting him. “Hey little pibble.”
He inched closer, flinching only a little when I held my hand out to let him sniff. He’d know I was safe. He’d smell my wolf, and though it seemed a dog would be at the very least suspicious at smelling wolf in a human, most dogs were reassured at once.
He laid his face in my hand and stared up at me with his sweet eyes, eyes full of the need to be with a pack, to be touched, to be loved…
God, I knew well that feeling.
I murmured to him as I gave him as much love as I could before I heard the cars rolling quietly down the street, and then I kissed his head and though it broke my heart to do it, I left him there.
Detective Moreno stopped beside me as I jogged back down the street, and I kicked my boots clean on the side of his car before climbing in.
Behind us came two black cars, and behind them, four patrol cars. “I told them all except for the mayor that an anonymous person called in a tip,” he told me. “Louis and Amy are in the car behind us.” He hesitated, not looking at me. “I told them you were the caller, but no one else will know.”
There was a tap on my window, causing me to jerk, and before I could let it down, the person outside pulled open the door.
I swallowed. “Mayor Hedrick,” I greeted.
He looked ill. Haggard and unkempt, his black hair threaded with gray, though he was only forty-two years old. His eyes were bloodshot and full of a grief I couldn’t begin to understand.
“Ms. Silver,” he said, his voice raspy but soft, “if you give me back my son tonight, I will be forever in your debt. There will be nothing I won’t do for you. But if this is a lie, if my boy is not inside that house…” He had to pause to gather himself, and when he spoke again, his voice was full of rage and tears. “Then I will bury you.”
I only nodded.
Someone pulled at his arm, and he looked around then moved aside so his wife could get to me. She threw herself at me, then wrapped her arms around my neck and sobbed until the mayor finally pulled her away.
“God,” I whispered. I hoped they would give her the man who’d taken her child. I hoped they would stand back and let her rip him to pieces.
The mayor led her away, but only to stand against the car they’d arrived in. And already, their eyes were turned toward the alleyway from which they hoped the police would carry their son.
“God,” I whispered, again.
Detective Moreno reached over the squeeze my arm. “I’ll need you to stay here with them.”
I didn’t argue. “Bring him out of there, Rick,” I murmured.
“I hope like hell I can do that,” he said.
Two policemen stood with them while the others, with the detective leading them, ran like shadows across the street.
I got out of the car because I couldn’t bear to sit there. I paced up and down the sidewalk, watching, waiting, hoping. I didn’t go near the parents, because I wasn’t sure yet that I could. I knew the mayor wouldn’t want me there, not yet. Not yet.
Surprisingly, the dog was no longer barking.
Behind me, a porchlight flicked on. “Fuck,” I said.
An ambulance pulled in behind the line of cars. Almost sinister in its quiet, hulking significance, waiting with the rest of us.
I wanted to run across the street and into that house of horrors and help, but I wasn’t that confident. I didn’t want to be a distraction or the cause of something going wrong. My presence there wasn’t needed. They knew what they were doing.
That’s what I kept telling myself, over and over and over.
And then, Amy Hedrick shrieked when gunshots rang out, one, two, three times. The cops beside them tried to shove them inside their vehicle, for safety, but Amy fought them and finally, the mayor yelled at them to get away. “Go help my boy,” he cried.
They drew their guns and they went.
I rushed to the mayor and his wife, and I put my arms around them both as they huddled in a little knot of terror and cried. They let me, because I might be the enemy, but I might be the one who saved their baby, and they wanted so badly to believe the latter that they pulled me into their circle and let me cry with them.
“Right here the entire time,” the mayor kept whispering.
“Ms. Silver,” the mayor’s wife said. “Please. Please. Tell me he’s in there. Tell me he’s okay.”
I felt a presence and looked up, and finally, I saw Jim. He stood across the street, his hand raised, smiling. He nodded.
“Yes,” I whispered. “He’s alive, Mrs. Hedrick.” No way in hell was I going to say he was okay. “Little Noah is alive, and they are bringing him to you now.” Gently, I pulled away. “Look.”
They jerked around to face the alley, and just as they did, Detective Moreno rushed from the shadows, surrounded by cops. Not all of them. Some of them were still in that house. But most important of all, Moreno carried a small boy.
“Noah,” Amy Hedrick screamed.
I watched, barely able to breathe as the mayor and his wife snatched their child from the detective, and I knew they would never, ever let him go again.
And then it seemed like the world lit up, full of noise and hope and light as dawn came to chase away the darkness and to witness a perfect and miraculous reunion.
