Hard Rider

“Something wrong, Stoggins?” the Captain asked, his mustache bristling at the intrusion.

“We just got a call, Cap, and I think Gunner’s gonna wanna be on this one.”

Cap snorted like a bull about to charge. He hated being interrupted. Hated cryptic shit like what Stoggins said even more. “The hell are you talking about?”

“It’s your house, Gunner,” Tom said, turning to me. “There was a 9-1-1 call just a few minutes ago.”

My stomach went cold and I froze in place. My thoughts drifted right to the worst possible scenarios—Tanya lying dead on the living room floor, some freak in a drama mask standing over her with a knife. My house in flames.

“Let’s go,” I said. When I moved, I didn’t think about it. I was action man again, muscle memory taking over. The exact same thing that let us charge into burning buildings without ever thinking about the consequences.

I was still on autopilot as I geared up and climbed into the cab of the fire engine. My pulse pounded like a war drum in my ears and the siren wailed as we pulled out of the garage, a symphony I’d heard a thousand times before, but now it was different. Personal.

Loss wasn’t really my thing. I tended to book it before I could get attached. I’d learned that from a shitty father—drink it away, or get away. But now, with Tanya, I had no choice. I had to wade right into the thick of it. For once, I had to stick around and see how it all turned out.

I started preparing myself for the worst.

Chapter 12

Tanya

I knew the second I saw the house that something was wrong.

I was on the phone with Chelsea, walking back to Gunner’s from the bus stop. I’d just finished a mini shopping spree at the mall. I wanted to get there early enough so’s I wouldn’t be getting home after dark. Gunner lived in a nice enough part of town, but considering some psycho had the hots for me and was on the loose, I wanted the sun beating down on me at all times. I wasn’t gonna make it easy for him.

Besides, I was on my own carrying bags full of new clothes and holding a brand new cell phone to my ear. No way I was gonna chance it.

“You’re serious?” she asked me. I could almost see her wide, doe-like eyes through the phone. “Jesus, Tanya. You think it’s the guy with the mask?”

“That’s my best bet,” I told her, plodding along the sidewalk. It was an older neighborhood and I had to be careful of cracks and raised tree roots. “It makes the most sense, at least. I can’t think of anyone else who’d go through the trouble.”

“What about Craig?” she asked, and I cringed. If I never heard that name again, it would be too soon. “He was always kinda nutty, huh?”

“Craig was infatuated, Chel. Not obsessed.” He was an old ex of mine, some fan from my days at the Dollhouse. I was just nineteen when I met him, and he was forty-six. I guess I thought back then that having an older guy interested in me meant I was hot shit. I didn’t realize until later that all the perverts go for the chicks with daddy issues.

“Besides,” I continued, “Craig’s been out of the picture for years. Why would he show back up now?”

“That’s true,” Chelsea admitted with a sigh. “I don’t get it, sweets. You got all the bad luck.”

I smiled a little. That was one hell of an understatement. But I knew Chelsea had seen her fair share of bullshit, too.

“Well, both our moms are dead,” I pointed out. “Maybe this is just the shitty part of the movie right before we become Disney princesses.”

Chelsea laughed at that, a shrill chortle that nearly blew out the speaker in my phone. When she came back down to earth, she said, “I love you, sweets. Just be safe, huh?”

“I will,” I’d promised her.

So when I got to Gunner’s driveway and saw his house—when I knew something was wrong—it took me a long time to build up the courage to figure out what it was.

It’s hard to say, even now, how I knew. Even from the outside, I could tell something was just... wrong about the whole thing. Jax wasn’t where I’d left him this morning, either—out front by his dog house, safe and sound behind the chain-link fence. And I didn’t hear him bark when I got to the stoop.

I put my hand on the knob. “Jax?” I called out. “Here, boy...”

Nothing. Silence.

I let go of the doorknob to grab my key, but when I did, the door just swung open. It was already unlocked. And I was sure I hadn't left it that way.

I set my bags down on the stoop and dialed 9-1-1. Most people only ever have to call once or twice in their whole lives, but for me, it was becoming a habit.

“9-1-1, state your emergency.”

I peered through the open door. “I think someone’s in my house.”

“Okay, ma’am,” the dispatcher said in this stoic way that made what was happening to me seem even creepier. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah. And it’s my brother’s house. Not mine. 4288 Camptown Drive. Yellow with a teal door. You can’t miss it...”

Stupidly, I crossed the threshold into the house. When I did, the silence around me was deafening. Thick, like it held actual weight that pressed down on me like a vise slowly, slowly clamping shut.

I glanced around. Everything seemed the same. And yet not the same. Somehow, I knew that everything around me had been violated.

The dispatcher’s voice startled me. “Where’s your brother, ma’am?”

“At work,” I whispered. “He’s a firefighter.”

“Are you in the house?”

I was moving down the hall. I couldn’t stop myself. Something was pulling me forward. Urging me on.

“Yes,” I told her.

The dispatcher said, “Can you get out?”

“The dog,” I answered. The door to Gunner’s room was open. I had to look inside. “I can’t find the dog...”

“Ma’am, the police are on their way. If you can get out of your house...”

Gunner’s room looked normal. Or normal as far as I knew, anyway. There were some clothes on the floor. A wrinkled, unmade bed. But nothing out of the ordinary, except for one conspicuously open drawer.

I knew better than to touch anything that could be a crime scene. I backed out my stepbrother’s room and turned toward my own. That door wasn’t open.

That door could have someone behind it.

Someone who was in my room. Waiting for me. Breathing, just on the other side of that door.

Wearing that awful mask...

“Ma’am? Are you still there?”

“I think...” I paused to swallow. My mouth was so dry. “I think he’s in my room.”

The operator was telling me to run. To get the hell out. Solid advice, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t move.

Except to reach out toward the door. The one that might have held my death behind it. The one I should have, under no circumstances, tried to open.

But I did. As if in a dream, or guided by some unseen force, I thwarted my own will and used the back of my wrist to open my bedroom door.

“Jesus,” I gasped. “Oh, fuck.”

My room was trashed. I hadn’t owned much, but the furniture and bed I’d been using were strewn across the floor. The TV was broken, fragments of the screen scattered right in my path. The dresser was overturned, drawers pulled out, its flimsy back panel in splinters.

As I surveyed the damage, I saw my mattress had been stripped, as well. And hanging over the wall in front of me was the top sheet, covering up something beneath it. Something that smelled.

“He left something for me,” I said into the phone.

But as I reached up to pull down the sheet, I saw it. Right at the top, there was a glass container with what looked like powder in it.

That was when I’d finally listened to the dispatcher and left the room, wishing I knew where the fuck Jax was.

Almost an hour later, I was standing in that room again, but this time there were cops everywhere. They’d called in the big guns—bomb squad, fo

r starters. The CSI team was there too, ready to start dusting for fingerprints once the other guys were done with the scene.

Gunner was beside me. He’d raced home as soon as he’d heard. It was because of him we were even let back in here at all. He wanted to know what was under that sheet. I did, too, but I guessed firemen had a bit more pull than strippers did.

“We’ll analyze the material in the vial and get back to you,” one of the officers was saying, “But I think I have an idea of what it is, based off this painting.”

Gunner shook his head in wonder. “Christ. It’s a fuckin’ mural.”

They were talking about what they’d found under the sheet, which was a massive, hastily-drawn scene, a collection of frantic strokes made in a hundred shades of red. There was a naked woman sitting on top of a man or beast, something with way too many heads, while little humans writhed and stretched before her.