Dark woods, p.1
Dark Woods, page 1
Dark Woods
A Lance Brody Novel (Book 5)
Michael Robertson, Jr.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarities to events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and should be recognized as such. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, etc.) without the prior written consent and permission of the author.
Copyright © 2020 Michael Robertson, Jr.
Cover Design Copyright © 2020 Jason Collins
Contents
Dark Woods
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Author’s note
Also by Michael Robertson, Jr.
DARK WOODS
1
Lance Brody had finished the coffee.
All the coffee.
First his own cup, and then the rest of the pot they’d asked the waiter to leave at the table. Refill after refill, it had taken Lance less than twenty minutes. He felt fidgety, but not because of the caffeine. Well, not entirely. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands now that he’d finished his food. He shifted in the booth, the ripped vinyl upholstery sticking to the back of his legs. He ventured a glance out the diner’s darkened window to the night that lay beyond. Surveyed the same parked cars that were there the last time, only a couple minutes ago. Looked back to the table, then shifted his gaze to the door by the front counter where their waiter was currently ringing up a customer at the register and telling them to have a nice evening as he handed over the few loose coins of their change.
“Is it safe for me to order another pot of coffee? I, uh, didn’t exactly get much the first time.”
Alexa’s voice snapped Lance’s attention back to the table, back to his companion seated opposite him, a buffet of empty plates and saucers and coffee mugs dividing them. She’d stripped off her black leather jacket and stuffed it into the corner next to her, the same way Lance had done with his backpack. Her black long-sleeved T-shirt had a tear near her shoulder and a stain of some sort on the right elbow. She was giving him a sly grin. But even so, Lance could still see the hardness in her eyes. Years of mistrust, if he had to guess. But there was still kindness there, buried beneath all the rest. He only knew a little about her and wasn’t sure if he’d ever learn more.
“Safe?” he asked.
Alexa shrugged. “I don’t want your heart to explode. Though I suppose there’s worse ways to go than death by coffee, am I right? Nature’s nectar.”
“Oh,” Lance said, only half paying attention. “Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”
“Why are you so nervous?” Alexa asked, raising her hand to signal for the waiter, who had finished at the register and was asking a middle-aged man in a booth three down from theirs if there was anything else he could get him. The man shook his head without looking up. The waiter nodded once and then saw Alexa’s hand in the air and put on a bright smile as he headed their direction.
“What?” Lance asked.
“Nervous. You don’t need to be.”
The waiter arrived at their side, a thin guy who might have been thirty and was nearly bouncing with energy, all smiles and cheer. “Yes, ma’am?”
Alexa handed over the empty coffeepot. “Can we please have another one of these?”
“Absolutely! Regular?”
Alexa shot Lance a look and thought for a moment. “Actually … let’s make it decaf.”
“Sure thing. Anything else for you, sir?” he asked Lance. “Another slice of pie, maybe?”
Lance looked down to the three empty pie plates before him. Nothing left but crumbs and a few smears of dried fruit filling. His stomach seemed to literally be thumping along with his heartbeat.
“Yes, please,” Lance said. “That’d be great. Apple, please.”
Alexa snorted a laugh, and the waiter—whose name was Brian, according to the beige name tag pinned to his apron—waited a beat, as if he thought perhaps Lance was joking. When Lance said nothing, Brian made a face that was somewhere between shocked and impressed and said, “Yes, sir. Right away,” before turning and going back behind the counter.
“How are you not three hundred pounds?” Alexa asked.
Lance looked out the window again and saw the same cars. The same streetlights. The same row of small houses across the street. Run-down porches and yards in need of a green thumb. Rusted cars in the driveways. Small-town inner-city living. Middle of nowhere.
The man in the booth three down from theirs coughed, startling Lance as if a gun had sounded. Lance looked away from the window and back to the man, who was sitting with his hands tucked into the front pocket of his sweatshirt. He looked tired. Pale face with dark circles beneath his eyes and hair that was thinning and peppered with gray. He’d been there when Lance and Alexa had arrived. There was a paperback novel on the table beside him. Lance had seen it as they’d passed by on their way to being seated—a tattered copy of some long-ago Koontz—but Lance had yet to see the man pick it up.
He’s lonely, was Lance’s first thought. He’s alone and he comes here hoping somebody will talk to him. He doesn’t want to go home, where the silence is enough to weigh him down to the carpet and crush the air from his lungs. He likes the noise here, the hustle and bustle.
Lance wasn’t sure why he had this thought. Maybe it was because he knew what it was like to be alone in the world. Isolated. Hungry for companionship. Desperate to be normal, whatever that might mean.
There was a coldness coming off the man in the booth three down from theirs. It cut through the air that was hot and heavy with grease and thick with the aroma of coffee. It danced through the soft eighties tunes coming from weak overhead speakers. Crawled over the top of Alexa’s bench seat, slithered across the table and plopped in beside Lance. He shivered and was hit with such sympathy for the man. There was a sadness to him.
Brian the waiter appeared at their table, a blur at Lance’s side that distracted him from the feeling of sorrow. The cold air vanished and was once again replaced with the cloying diner atmosphere and the warmth coming from the full pot of coffee Brian set on the table with one hand while delivering Lance’s pie with another. He began scooping up some of the discarded dishes and said, “I’m just going to charge you for a whole pie. It’s cheaper that way. So if you want two more slices to go, just let me know, okay?”
Lance said nothing. He was looking back toward the man in the sweatshirt.
“Thanks so much, Brian. We appreciate that, don’t we, Lance?”
Lance looked at Alexa, then to Brian. Allowed his brain to catch up. “Yes, thank you.”
Brian smiled. “Sure thing!” Then he was gone, off to dump their dirty dishes in the kitchen.
Alexa snapped her fingers in front of Lance’s face. Once, twice. Snap-snap! “Hey, look at me. You okay? You’ve got a strange look on your face. This isn’t just nerves, is it?”
Lance was about to open his mouth to speak. Was about to say, No, I’m not sure what this is, but I don’t like it. But then the bell above the diner’s door gave off a ring as it was pushed open.
And she was there.
A few heads at the counter turned to see who’d entered before returning to their burgers and pies and newspapers and conversations. A couple of them let their eyes linger a bit longer than was perhaps polite, but they too eventually turned back to their food. And who could blame them? Blond hair, blue eyes. Jeans and a red sweater. A smile that could illuminate the dark. An energy that was palpable.
Leah.
She walked inside and stood next to the counter by the register and Brian rushed from the kitchen to greet her, his smile forever in place. They exchanged a few words, and Lance, who’d not let his eyes leave her from the moment she’d crossed the diner’s threshold, watched with increasing anxiety as Leah’s head turned to survey the diner, searching, scanning down the row of booths until her eyes met his.
And everything vanished.
The anxiety and nervousness melted away, leaving only the warmth of happiness.
No, it was more than that. It was elation. It was joy that cut through Lance’s fears and worries and transformed him. In that moment, he wasn’t Lance Brody who could see beyond the veil and into the shadows, a soldier for the light in the war against the darkness. He became Lance Brody, just a regular guy who was happy to be reunited with his friend.
Leah give him a smile so pure it made Lance’s heart sk ip. He felt his own smile grow across his face and he wondered when the last time he’d smiled this big had been. Leah pointed to Lance and said something to Brian, who followed her pointing finger and nodded and pulled a menu from behind the counter and handed it to her.
“Judging by the goofy smiles on both of your faces, I’m guessing that’s Leah?” Alexa said, smiling herself, turned halfway around in the booth to look toward the front of the diner. “I can see why you were nervous. She’s very pretty.”
But Lance didn’t hear her. Because something was happening.
As soon as Leah took her first step away from the register and toward the row of booths, Lance’s smile vanished. His elation drained from his veins like a sink whose clog had finally cleared, emptying fast and leaving no trace behind. The world slowed down all around him, vibrant colors fading and being replaced by grays as if somebody was slowing dimming the lights.
Leah noticed his change in demeanor, her own smile also faltering as she stopped midstride just short of the first booth. Her eyes widened, eyebrows raised, her look silently asking him, What’s wrong?
And for a beat, Lance was so impressed with how perceptive she was, a quick reminder of how smart and headstrong she’d been in Westhaven and every time they’d spoken since. But this feeling of appreciation, just like the elation before it, was quickly erased.
The coldness from earlier, that despair that had seemed to radiate from the man in the booth three down from theirs, was back and stronger than ever. Icy cold with fangs that could sink into your neck and paralyze you with fear. The diner’s lights grew dimmer in Lance’s vision, movement slowed even more, the eighties-tunes soundtrack sounded as if it were playing from deep down underwater, muffled and distorted.
Lance moved to stand from his seat at the same instant the man in the booth three down from theirs moved to do the same. And when Lance saw the look on the man’s face, a wave of coldness rushed at Lance so fast it nearly knocked him back, just as the man stood from the booth and pulled his right hand from the pocket of his hoodie, where it’d been since they’d arrived.
The blackness of the small handgun shined in Lance’s vision, the evil of its character like a beacon in the darkness.
The man turned around, raising the gun.
Lance lunged forward, feeling himself moving too slow, too late. “He’s got a gun!” he shouted, his own voice sounding muffled and distorted along with the eighties music.
The man walked forward, gun raised and aimed at his target.
One step, two, three. Fast. Too fast.
Leah’s eyes widened.
I’m so stupid, Lance thought, his mind whirring across an entire gamut of emotions as he desperately tried to reach the man with the gun. I should have never brought her here. I should have never thought somebody could be with me and not be in danger for the rest of their life.
He felt his legs moving but knew it was too late. Even as he pushed off with all his strength and dove through the air, arms outstretched, ready to tackle the man, he knew it was hopeless.
It was all over. All over before it had even had a chance to start.
The coldness reached in and squeezed Lance’s heart.
He heard Leah scream his name just before the gun went off, which sounded like a cannon inside the diner’s walls.
2
Two things happened at once.
First, Lance collided with the man with the gun, throwing his full weight into the assault, wrapping his arms around the man’s torso and locking down tight on the man’s arms, hoping to throw them down to the man’s side while he tackled him to the floor. It worked—as they began to fall together, Lance heard the gun bounce across the floor, metal skipping across tile.
The second thing that happened was that Brian the waiter’s head snapped back, the bullet ripping open a nasty hole just above the corner of his eyeball before exiting out the back of Brian’s skull and lodging into the wall behind the cash register, a tail of blood painting the flyers for yard sales and church fundraisers and piano lessons and health department ratings pinned to the corkboard with a splattering of crimson accents.
Somebody screamed as Lance and the man hit the floor. Not Leah, not Alexa. Another woman’s voice. Another of the few customers, maybe, or someone from the kitchen. Lance didn’t know and didn’t care. He was alive with anger, his vision slowly coming back into full focus, tinted with red. The man grunted as his face smashed into the diner’s floor, following it up with a great whooshing noise as Lance’s weight fell on top of him and the air was forced from his lungs. There was a clattering of dishes and mugs and silverware as the remaining diner patrons all rushed to get up from their seats, bumping knees and hips on the tabletops and toppling chairs over backward from the few four-top tables in the back. There was the shuffling of feet and panicked voices rushing by. Somebody tripped on Lance’s shoes, stumbling in his peripheral vision before regaining their balance and making their way to the exit. Somebody shouted, “He’s dead!” Somebody else shouted something about calling the police.
In a matter of only half a second, Lance, feeling the full force of his adrenaline and rage pulsing through him, found himself suddenly filled with the fantasy of grabbing a fistful of the man’s hair and smashing his head into the floor, over and over and over, harder and harder and harder, cracking bones and splitting lips and shattering teeth. He wanted the man to bleed, wanted to inflict the pain. In such a rare and unexpected moment of vindictiveness, Lance Brody wanted blood.
Because this man had shot at Leah. And no matter what the outcome might be, Lance would forever blame himself for that.
Lance tightened his bear-hug grip on the man, squeezing the muscles in his arms so tight he could hear the man’s joints creaking beneath the pressure. And yet … the man was not struggling. His breath was ragged and he grunted against the pressure Lance was applying, but otherwise he was still and steady. He wasn’t resisting at all. Not attempting to flee. Not attempting to fight.
And then Lance noticed another change in the man’s breathing. A more staggered hitching of gasps and breaths, followed by the undeniable sound of sobs.
The man was crying.
Stunned by confusion and coming down off the high of his emotions, Lance loosened his grip, slowly at first and then completely. His face had been pressed hard against the man’s back, his cheek pressed tightly between his shoulder blades, and just as he was about to risk his first glance around before cautiously raising himself up, ready to spring back into action and subdue the man if necessary, he heard Leah’s voice.
“Go ahead, Lance. I’ve got him.”
Lance looked up. Saw Leah holding the man’s gun. She was aiming it directly at the attacker’s head.
Lance began to push himself up. “Leah…”
She gave him a small grin and said. “I’m fine. This thing’s smaller than anything Daddy ever taught me how to shoot.”
She said it with confidence, her voice strong and resolute, but Lance could see the subtle tremor of her hand. He wanted to move to her, pull her close and tell her everything was alright now. Because it was, wasn’t it? The man with the gun hadn’t shot her. She was still there, alive and breathing and grinning and looking more beautiful than ever. But Lance glanced to the splattering of blood on the cork board on the far wall, looked down and saw one of Brian the waiter’s legs poking out from behind the register counter, still and lifeless. Instead of going to Leah, Lance planted one of his size fifteen sneakers into the center of the man’s back and shouted, “Did anybody call the police?”
