Nine

42

Malibu, California

Thursday, May 22, 9:00 A.M.

After leaving his uncle Alex’s house, Chase rode in the limo with his father to a house in Beverly Hills, to pick up his mom. She had chosen to have breakfast with the friends his parents had traveled with in New York, waiting with them while his dad came to get him.

Chase had expected to be berated during the ride from Manhattan Beach to Beverly Hills, but nothing happened. That had puzzled him, especially since his dad had made sure the window between their seats and the driver stayed up.

In Beverly Hills, Chase watched his dad grow angrier and angrier while his mom kept talking to her friends, taking her sweet time. Chase had seen her do this kind of thing before, and he was certain that she knew how mad his dad was, and that she was enjoying watch him get more and more pissed off. His dad would never take his anger out on her, Chase knew, so he really hated it when she played this game, because he would pay the price.

When they finally got back in the limo, his dad was in an awful mood. Chase knew it was unlikely that his dad would hit him in front of her-although she knew that had happened a couple of times before, she pretended it hadn’t-so he waited for his dad to start yelling at him, something his dad felt free to do anytime, anywhere.

Somewhere along Sunset, his dad told him he was grounded for a month for running away. Chase didn’t bother arguing with him. Then his dad told this totally bogus version of what had happened at Uncle Alex’s house. He claimed that while Chase was getting in the limo, Uncle Alex had insulted her and then assaulted him. Chase watched his mom. She was smiling.

“You find it funny that my brother attacked me?” his dad asked.

“Of course not,” she said, and looked out the window. She was still smiling.

Just then, Chase’s cell phone rang. A friend called to ask if Chase wanted to go with a group of kids to the place up on Mulholland Highway where those two dudes had offed themselves-the Exterminators. Turns out a girl they went to school with, Sherry, had been dating Morgan Addison, and she also knew Freddy Whitfield. Wasn’t that crazy? And a bunch of other people knew Freddy and Morgan. “We’re going to go up there and start, like, you know-a little memorial.”

“I’m grounded.”

Chase was glad of the excuse for a couple of reasons. One was that he knew what Uncle John and Uncle Alex thought of these two dead guys-that they were really no better than any other killers, and maybe worse. He didn’t want to be disloyal. The other was that although being grounded wasn’t fun, telling a friend you were being punished in this way gave a guy a certain kind of status that Chase was not above enjoying.

“Oh, dude,” his friend said, “that sucks. Is it because of stealing the car?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m with my folks right now.”

“Oh, I get it. I’ll try to sneak over there later. Maybe we can talk.”

“Thanks, man.”

He hung up. He didn’t even like that kid all that much, but he appreciated the moral support. Maybe he would even tell him about Rusty. He was thinking this as his father snatched the phone out of his hand.

“Why’d you do that?” Chase asked.

“I’m taking away your phone privileges, that’s why.”

“So you’re making me use the phone at home?” Chase asked. “You get mad if I’m talking to my friends on it. You say I talk too long to them.”

“No-you aren’t using any phone. I think it would do you good to spend time away from some of your friends. No computer time online, in chat rooms, or anything like that. For that matter, I don’t want you to sit around talking to your uncle John, either.”

“But Dad! No, Dad, please! Uncle John-”

“You heard me.”

“Miles…” his mother said.

“Don’t contradict me, Clarissa! It’s not natural for a boy his age to spend so much time with an old man. He needs to develop a better set of associates than the ones he has now.”

Chase could see that he had made her really mad. When his mom got mad, she didn’t yell or scream or throw a tantrum. She turned cold. It wasn’t that she just ignored you. It was more like you weren’t even there to be ignored.

By the time they were on Pacific Coast Highway, Chase was staring out the window just like his mom. There was more traffic than usual-a bunch of sheriff’s cars and ambulances heading up toward Decker Canyon Road. He would have taken more interest in that, or in the slow speed at which they made their way up the road to the house-behind a van and a motorcycle-but he had started to think about not even being able to talk to anyone. It was one thing to not be able to go anywhere for a month-that was bad. But it was another to be completely isolated, cut off without communication during that time.

He might have waited to see if this would really happen, but as Chase climbed the stairs to his room, his father said, “I’m going to call John and tell him that if they’re keeping that dog for you, to just take it to the pound now.”

Chase had learned enough from watching his mother to withhold the sort of reaction his dad was looking for, but thoughts of Rusty being put to sleep in a pound horrified him. He knew that Uncle Alex had not really wanted the dog. He had to let them know that no matter what his dad said, he wanted Rusty. He’d take whatever punishment his dad wanted to give him after that.

If he ever came back to receive it.

In a way, by falsely accusing him of it, his dad had been the one to plant the idea in his head of running away. He had thought of it before, of course, but he knew Uncle John, the one person he would have run to, would have encouraged him to return home. He wasn’t so sure Uncle Alex would make him go back. Uncle Alex seemed to understand how bad things were now. Maybe he had understood what Chase’s dad was like a long time ago, and that’s why he no longer had anything to do with his own brother.

His dad hadn’t always been this way, Chase thought. It really hadn’t started until this past year. When he had asked his mom what made his dad feel angry toward him all the time, her answer hadn’t been serious. She had said, “Man-hood.”

He briefly considered leaving a note but decided against it. To leave a note for someone, you had to have something to say to them.

He took some cash and his ATM card, and left by a side door for the garage. He took out his bike and pushed the remote that opened the front gate. He quickly rode down the drive and out to the winding road that led to Pacific Coast Highway.

He had escaped the house many times before, but somehow this time felt different to him. Before, he had no doubt of coming back. This time, he thought of Sedgewick and of all the other depressing things that were in store for him if he returned.

Perhaps because his mind was on all these other things, he didn’t see the van that was just behind him. One moment he was keeping the bike’s speed just where it needed to be for the downhill ride, the next, it was wildly accelerating, careening as the van tapped the back tire and he fell hard and skidded against the pavement. He hit his head, not hard enough to pass out, just enough to daze him and make him think-in a spacey kind of way-that Uncle John would be pissed when he heard that he hadn’t worn a helmet.

Someone was helping him up, a guy wearing a motorcycle helmet with the visor down. He stood, shaken, and the guy took him toward the van that had hit him. The world started spinning. “I’m going to be sick,” he said, but he wasn’t.

“We’ll take care of you,” the motorcycle guy said, and gave him a shot, which he thought was kind of strange, but now Chase could see that it wasn’t a van but an ambulance, or something like that, because it already had another patient in it.

He was lying down on a mat, then, next to the other patient. A girl, he realized, but she was dressed like a boy. She lay without moving, except that her eyes briefly fluttered open. There was a bruise on her jaw, and her wrists and ankles were tied.

Why would you tie up a patient? He was feeling more and more drowsy. Nothing made sense.

The motorcycle guy shut the doors and it was dark and they were moving.

Just before he gave in to the unyielding tide that rushed him away from awareness, he wondered who would save Rusty now.