Right Behind You

  Telly was moving faster than they were, but he also had to pause to consider. And the empty house next door would pose another tempting target. Maybe even a place to hole up and rest . . .

  “With any luck,” Cal informed Antonio, “the kid made some attempt to break in next door. Looking for water, food, other supplies. Might be our first chance to catch up with him.”

  Antonio turned to Mr. George. “Sir, is it possible to see your neighbor’s house from your upstairs windows?”

  “Now, see here, what are you implying—”

  “Recon, sir. I’d like to be able to check your neighbor’s house for any sign of activity before we go strolling up to the front door.”

  “Oh. Well. Yes. From the bathroom window, now that you mention it . . .”

  Antonio followed Mr. George back to his house. Cal resumed studying the break in the shrubs. They wouldn’t pass through it. That would disturb evidence. Instead, they’d go all the way around, pick up the trail from the other side. Now he and Nonie inserted more orange flags for the crime scene techs following up behind them.

  Ten minutes later, Antonio reemerged from the house. “No sign of movement. I radioed in our position. The chopper’s on its way; it’ll conduct an aerial sweep of the neighborhood.”

  “Good. We’re making some progress.”

  They fell back in line, exiting Mr. George’s property, heading back to the shaded dirt road, looping around the hedge.

  The neighbor Aurora’s house appeared to be a cute cape, set a distance back. Cal took the first step.

  A fresh crack of gunfire.

  Not from Mr. George’s house to their left. Not from the cute cape to their right.

  But from behind them. Across the street.

  Cal was still pivoting, still realizing the magnitude of his mistake, just how badly he’d been outplayed.

  Then Antonio was down in a spray of red. Nonie screamed.

  While the distant rifle cracked again and again and again.

  Chapter 17

  RAINIE AND QUINCY ARE TALKING in the kitchen. Their voices are low; they don’t want me to hear. This is not a discussion “suitable for children.” And yet, it’s all about me.

  Quincy arrived home fifteen minutes ago. There was a look on his face. . . . I can’t explain it. I want to both run away and rush over and hug him. So me being me, I held perfectly still. While Rainie came to stand beside me, her eyes locked on his face.

  “Sharlah,” she said quietly. “Please go to your room.”

  I went. Without saying a single word. Which is not at all like me.

  Now my legs are jiggly. I can’t sit down. I can’t stay still. But I’m doing my best, lying on my stomach, my ear pressed against the slit under my door. They may be talking about things that aren’t suitable for me, things that are even terrifying for me, which is all the more reason I have to hear.

  “Two down,” Quincy is saying now. “One of the flankers was hit in his shoulder. The second tracker, Norinne Manley, was shot in the arm. Both are being medevaced to Portland, the SWAT officer in critical condition.”

  “You’re sure it’s Telly Nash?”

  “Of course it was him! They’d traced Telly to some remote house where he’d broken into a shed. That homeowner, however, spotted him and fired off a couple of no-trespassing shots. The kid escaped around the back of the shed and appeared to have approached a neighbor’s house. Except . . . he didn’t. Or did and had already moved on. The tracker, Cal Noonan, is still trying to sort it out. But somehow, Telly ended up behind them. And while they were approaching the neighbor’s house, he opened fire from across the street. Now two out of four members of a tracking team are down.”

  A pause. I hear the muffled sound of movement. Maybe Rainie crossing to Quincy, placing a soothing hand on his shoulder, as I’ve seen her do many times before.

  “Do they know where he went?” she asks, voice quiet.

  “Out the rear of the property, where we’re told there’s a maze of trails. He stole the neighbor’s four-wheeler, giving him speed and flexibility. Shelly has a low-flying chopper scanning the area, though how heat-seeking imagery can pinpoint anything in these temps is beyond me.”

  Sighing. Frustrated. Heavy. Deep. From Quincy, I figure, all fired up, except, of course, he prides himself on never being overly emotional. Maybe my brother has that effect on people. Personally, I’m fighting a nearly uncontrollable urge to rub the scar on my shoulder.

  “What do you think he wants?” Rainie continues.

  “I have no idea.”

  “If he’s a spree killer,” she says, her voice calmer than his, “then his rage is its own endgame. He will destroy, till he self-destructs.”

  No answer. Because Quincy isn’t one to talk? Or because Quincy, the profiler, already knows the answer to these questions, and it’s too terrible to say?

  “We know spree killers are all about feeling misunderstood and wronged by the world,” Quincy states. “Which fits with how Telly has been described.”

  Is that who my brother has become? Is that how he truly feels?

  I see Cheerios again. A cheerful yellow box in the middle of a dingy table. And I’m sad in ways I can’t explain. For the boy who brought me those Cheerios. Or, maybe, for the way that made me feel. Like I would at least have him, forever and ever.

  Except it hadn’t exactly turned out that way, had it?

  “According to Telly’s PO,” Quincy is saying, “Telly can be a good kid when he makes the effort. But under stress, he’s also prone to impulsive acts of violence. Taking a baseball bat to his entire family. Destroying school lockers with his bare hands. Under pressure, Telly explodes. And afterward, he often doesn’t even remember what he’s done.”

  “So what is his trigger now?”

  “From the sound of it, time. He’s a year away from graduation with no idea what to do with himself. As well as aging out of foster care without a plan. By all accounts, his foster parents, Frank and Sandra Duvall, were good people. They asked for a teenager explicitly because they were looking for a mentorship role. Now, that all sounds very good, but change, even positive change, can be stressful. It could be that Frank and Sandra’s tough-love style was too much for Telly. They pushed too hard, leading to his explosion.”

  “I don’t buy it. All the things you’re talking about—the stress of being seventeen, the pressures of adolescence—that’s all slow burn. With spree killers, there’s always an inciting event. Meaning, if Telly’s now on this rampage, what triggered it?”

  Quiet now as both consider the possibilities. Quincy furrows his brow when thinking. I can picture him doing that, and it sends another pang to my chest.

  My foster dad is stressed. That’s part of his job, I guess. But he’s also fearful. I can hear it. He’s worried. And that’s because of me.

  Everything about this particular case is more difficult because of me.

  “At this time, I know of only one new element in Telly’s life,” Quincy murmurs finally. “Which is Sharlah. According to the probation officer, Frank Duvall believed Telly needed closure from what happened eight years ago. Meaning Frank himself was pushing for a meeting between Telly and Sharlah. I don’t know what happened with that, as certainly no one contacted us—”

  “They would have to go through the caseworker, Brenda Leavitt,” Rainie murmured. “I spoke to her earlier. She never mentioned any outreach from Telly or the Duvalls.”

  “So maybe Frank never went through official channels. But clearly he was talking about the idea, putting Sharlah back on Telly’s radar screen. Then, five days ago . . . Telly sought out his sister? Randomly spotted her as you guys crossed the library parking lot? I don’t know. But he took those pictures on his cell phone. Then he waited and followed Sharlah home.”

  Silence, neither one of them speaking.

  Rai
nie had told me about the photos earlier. I still feel shocked and faintly violated. The least my brother could have done was walk up to me outside the library and say hey. And yet, at the same time, if I’d been the one who spotted him, would I have that kind of courage? I doubt it. I might snap a photo, though. Which I guess means, all these years later, my older brother and I remain kindred spirits.

  Except, of course, I haven’t spent my day gunning down innocent people.

  “Sharlah? The new variable is Sharlah?” Rainie’s voice is clearly distressed.

  “She is a new variable in Telly’s life. But is she the thing? We don’t know yet, Rainie. There’s still too much about this kid we don’t know.”

  “He can’t have her. I don’t care how many guns he has, how many four-wheelers he steals. She’s ours, Quincy. Homicidal maniac or not, Telly’s not getting her back.”

  Given the tone of her voice, I believe her.

  “Obviously,” Quincy says, seconding that. “I’m back to what I said earlier—you and Sharlah should take a trip. Drive up to Seattle. Or, better yet, fly out to Atlanta and pay Kimberly a visit. I don’t care. But given Telly’s interest, I don’t want Sharlah anywhere in his vicinity. The boy has now shot six people and killed four. No way he’s taking Sharlah down with him.”

  Rainie doesn’t hesitate: “I started looking into options. There’s a red-eye flight to Atlanta, eleven P.M. Until then?”

  “One of us is with her at all times,” Quincy says.

  Armed is what he means. I’ve already observed the bulge in the small of Rainie’s back. From the twenty-two she has tucked beneath the cover of her light hoodie.

  They will keep me under armed guard, then get me out of town.

  So my big bad evil older brother won’t get to me.

  My shoulder aches. This time, I roll onto my back and give in to the urge to rub it. I wish I could understand all the emotions spinning through my head. Gratitude for Rainie and Quincy, who certainly seem to be in this for the long haul. And yet fear, too. Because getting me away isn’t the same as keeping Telly from coming here and looking for me. And a spree killer like him, who shoots innocent cashiers and doubles back to attack the tracking team, he’s not going to show up unarmed and open to conversation. If the whole point of these killers is that they’re pissed off at the world, news of my absence is hardly gonna calm Telly down.

  So maybe he doesn’t get a chance to shoot me.

  Doesn’t mean he still can’t hurt me.

  Cheerios boxes. Clifford the Big Red Dog. Go to sleep, Sharlah, I’ll take care of everything . . .

  The exact same boy, staring at me with his red-flushed face and bulging eyes as he raises the bat up, up, up . . .

  Telly, no!

  The last words I ever spoke to my brother.

  Telly, no.

  At least, I think that’s what I said.

  Then, no more time for thinking: A fresh sound reaches me. Footsteps coming down the hall. I bolt off the floor and do my best to prepare for what must happen next.

  —

  LUKA IS SPRAWLED ON MY BED. When Rainie enters my room, he raises his dark head and yawns. I do, too, from my position sitting beside him, scratching his back. Rainie isn’t fooled by either of us.

  She moves into the room, pulling out my desk chair, taking a seat. She sits stiff-backed on account of the twenty-two. She follows my gaze, smiles faintly.

  “So,” she says. “Did you hear half of the conversation or all of it?”

  “Most of it,” I allow.

  “Are you okay, Sharlah?” she asks me softly.

  In response, I shrug. I don’t know what I am.

  “You don’t need to be afraid. You know that Quincy and I are trained members of law enforcement. We’re not going to let anything happen to our daughter.”

  “Why are you adopting me?” The question is out before I can stop it. I’m not sure which of us it surprises more. I’ve never asked this question. Not even the afternoon they sat me down and told me they wanted to be my forever family. What do you think? they asked. Sure, I said. Because sure is as close as I could come to describing all the mixed-up emotion inside of me. Because sure is safer than a lot of other words, and a girl like me, I can’t help but play it safe. Hence all the new friends I’ve never made. And my new parents who’ve never heard me say that I love them.

  Cheerios boxes, I think again, and now my eyes are stinging except I don’t know why.

  I’m on the verge of losing something. I can’t see it. I can only feel it. And I know the pain of that loss is going to be deep and lasting. It will hurt.

  “We love you, Sharlah,” Rainie is saying now. She gets up from the chair, moves to the bed beside me. Quincy has appeared in the open doorway. He hesitates and I know it’s his own emotions that hold him back. The words he feels the most are the words he has the hardest time saying. He and I share that, just like Rainie and I share sleepless nights and the same taste in superhero movies.

  Rainie, Quincy, Luka, and me. We are family.

  I turn slightly, rest my head against Rainie’s shoulder. This is me hugging, I think, and I know from Rainie’s stillness that she gets that.

  “I’m sorry,” I hear myself say.

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” Quincy from the doorway, his voice thick. “Telly’s actions are his own.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Do you miss him?” Rainie’s voice, soft against the top of my head.

  “I barely remember him.”

  “If there’s any way to help him,” Quincy says, “you know I’ll do it.”

  “He’s killed people. A lot of people.”

  “Not all killers are evil, Sharlah,” Rainie counters, her voice ruffling the top of my hair. “Some are sick. Telly may not even know what he’s doing. He might be in an altered state, not himself, so to speak.”

  Like the night he killed my parents? Injured me? That’s the unspoken question. And how many episodes of being “not yourself” do you get before people figure out this is who you really are?

  I should sit up, ask Rainie about this impromptu trip to Atlanta, what kinds of things I should pack. But I don’t. I stay exactly where I am, my head against Rainie’s shoulder. And I feel the comfortable bulk of Luka, now pressed against my hip, the steady weight of Quincy’s stare.

  Family.

  Something that can be found. Something that can be made. The caseworker has preached it to me for years. But I’ve never really believed. Even when Rainie and Quincy first sat me down, I remained skeptical. Maybe, I thought, once we were all standing in front of the judge in November, and the papers were officially signed, I’d feel something move inside me. An understanding. Acceptance.

  But I get it now. Family. My family. People who want me, even with my knobby knees and flyaway hair. People who accept me, even when I can’t raise my hand in class or talk in front of strangers or do the things I know I’m supposed to do. People who love me, enough to actively plot to keep me safe, because I am theirs and they’re not letting me go without a fight.

  Family. My family.

  I sit up. I wipe my eyes because somehow, there is moisture all over my cheeks.

  “I’ll go with Rainie,” I say softly.

  “Give me an hour,” she says. “I’ll talk to Kimberly, work out the details.”

  She looks over my head at Quincy, and I feel the pull between them. The years together that allow them to communicate everything they need to say without speaking a single word.

  “Pack a little bit of everything,” Rainie tells me.

  Then she’s up and standing. She hugs me. For a change, I hug her back. I close my eyes and wonder if I ever hugged my real mom like this.

  For a second, I catch a whiff of memory. Cigarette smoke. Overpowering perfume.

  I can
see myself with my mom, my arms wrapped around her knees. I loved her, I think. At least, I wanted to. Right before my father stabbed her with the knife. And then . . . madness ensued.

  I feel a weight inside me. Sadness, guilt, shame. All these years later, one night, one memory, one set of actions neither Telly nor I can ever escape.

  My brother hates me. I remember saying it to the family caseworker standing next to my hospital bed. My brother hates me, I whispered, and though I can’t talk about it with Rainie and Quincy, though I’ve never talked to anyone about it, I do know why. Is that what this is all about? Eight years later, my brother has decided I should pay?

  Rainie follows Quincy out the door. I remain on my bed with Luka, who’s already studying me, his dark eyes filled with concern.

  “I love you,” I tell him, because with Luka, the words have always come easier.

  He rests his head on my lap. I stroke his ears.

  Water, I think. We’re going to need lots and lots of water. As well as dog food and a flashlight and emergency supplies.

  Rainie and Quincy have their plan.

  Now I have my own.

  Chapter 18

  SHELLY AND HER HOMICIDE SERGEANT Roy Peterson met up with Cal Noonan outside the house Telly Ray Nash had used for his latest shooting. Cal had disappeared for a good hour after the medevac chopper had left with his team members.

  “Be back,” he’d said, and Shelly had never doubted for a moment that Noonan had something specific he wanted to check out. He’d had that kind of look on his face: grim, determined.

  Now he walked them through his findings.

  “The neighbor, Jack George, called it correctly: After checking out George’s property, Nash headed next door, where he found the owner’s hidden key and made himself at home. Apparently the owner, Aurora, is away visiting her family. She left a fully stocked fridge, however, which Nash raided. Kitchen table is covered with a half-liter of soda, leftover lasagna, and melted ice cream. Means our suspect has refueled and rehydrated—though soda wasn’t his best choice. In these conditions, he’ll need water again soon enough.”