Page 65 of Peace Under Fire

She wanted to shove him back, open some breathing space between them, remind herself, and him, that she’d moved on from her crush. But that was an emotional kneejerk reaction that didn’t fit the current situation. He wasn’t trying to seduce her. He was protecting her. Big difference. Shoving him aside would be foolish and reactionary, and make her look like an idiot.

Crusher lifted his closed fist above his head, then slowly lifted one finger after another. Just after the third finger rose, he reached over and shoved open the door—which was hanging loosely on its hinges thanks to the battering ram the cockroaches had used to force their way inside. Keeping low, his gun outstretched, Crusher swung left and surged through the door.

The fact the door opened at all was a painful reminder of the attack on her home. Giulia and Kaylee had been fanatical about keeping the doors locked. Billy followed Crusher inside. Grumpy and the other two men moved in next. Gray and Brick remained outside, loosely flanking her.

They were protecting her. The realization tightened and heated her chest. They might not believe her, or trust her, but they were protecting her anyway.

“Clear.” The word drifted out from the open door several long minutes later.

As though that were the cue he’d been waiting for, Jacob levered himself off her, pulled her upright—gun in hand—and steered her through the open door. Brick and Gray followed. But Brick remained next to the door, his gun drawn, guarding the entrance.

The air had a slight chemical tinge to it, which scratched at her throat, but the men accompanying her didn’t seem bothered by it.

The combined living and dining room was directly in front and to her left. The space was familiar—oh, so familiar—yet creepy and alien at the same time. All the familiar furniture and knickknacks, the pictures and posters, the television, desks and computer screens, the carpeted floor—everything was glazed with that weird fluorescent glow. Moonlight penetrated through the holes in the walls in filaments of shimmering green. The kitchen table sat in its normal spot across the room, its surface splashed with a luminous chartreuse glow and littered with coffee cups and water glasses. Two of its sturdy chairs were overturned.

Gray eased over to the green-slicked table and stared down at something on its surface. He reached down and flipped a page. He was looking at a notebook or something. After a few seconds of page flipping, he looked up and beckoned her over. Jacob’s hesitation was palpable, but he steered her over to Gray’s side. She recognized Patti’s sketch book as they drew closer.

But what was it doing out here? The cockroaches knew that Patti had visions. They knew that after a vision she always recorded what she’d seen in her sketchbook. When they’d lived at the institution, beneath the scientist watchful care, they’d kept Patti supplied with a constant supply of sketch books and interrogated her daily on what she’d drawn, and what the images represented.

They would have taken the sketch book with them if they’d seen it. She was certain of that. Nor would they have missed it, sitting in plain sight like this, which left just one explanation.

Someone had found the pad and moved it to the table after the cockroaches left.

Had JoAnn done that? Had she left it as a clue for Mandy—a means of tracking down their sisters? Was there a sketch between those pages that showed where her sisters had been taken. Or, perhaps, sketches of some of the monsters who’d taken them?

As soon as she was close enough, she reached for the pad, but Gray scooted it out of reach. Instead, he flipped through the pages until he reached a particular sketch, then he turned the book around until the sketch was facing her and tapped it twice with his index finger.

Mandy and Jacob leaned in closer to get a better look. Even then, because of the way the NVDs turned everything so weirdly green, it took a few seconds for Mandy to make out the sketch’s details. But when the picture finally distilled into an image, her skin went cold.

Ice cold.

The sketch was of a woman kneeling, her head tipped back, eyes wide and blind with terror, her mouth open in a silent scream. Long dark hair spilled down her shoulders halfway to her waist. She was wearing a t-shirt, one emblazoned with a field of flowers. Mandy didn’t recognize the shirt, but she recognized the woman in the sketch. It was hard not to. She saw that same face every time she looked in the mirror.

Against her jean clad knees in the sketch was another figure. A male. He was on the ground, on his back; face slack, dark hair tousled, eyes open, staring blankly up. A black stain crawled across the front of his t-shirt. She tensed, instinctively knowing the black stain was blood, and the man was dead.

But he wasn’t wearing a sheep skin jacket, not like he was now.

Jacob twitched—hard—as he recognized himself in the sketch. “Fuck.”

The word was low, almost breathless, as though someone had knocked the wind out of him. Mandy studied the picture more closely, trying to think past the horror that had turned her blood to sludge.

She turned to inspect the man standing frozen beside her. The t-shirt Jacob was wearing in the drawing was different than the one currently beneath his coat. His shoes were different too. He wore boots now. In the sketch he had on tennis shoes. She turned back to the drawing again. They were framed by trees, by thick, broad trunks. The bark on those trunks was so realistic, so well defined, she could almost feel the texture beneath her fingers.

There were trees here on the property, but their clothes were wrong. Whatever was going to happen, whatever was going to kill Jacob, wasn’t going to happen here.

But where…and when?

* * *

What the hell? What the…all fucking… hell?

Squish leaned closer to the drawing. There was no question the two people in the sketch were him and Mandy. Nor was there any doubt that he was dead. The artist had caught the empty, unblinking stare of death. And that black lake swallowing his chest and flooding the ground beneath him looked bad. Fatally bad.

“The clothes are different,” Gray said quietly, his NVDs turning toward Squish. “And you’re not wearing a ballistics vest or a helmet.”

“That’s because this doesn’t happen while we’re here. It happens someplace else,” Mandy said quietly.

Squish glanced from the sketch to Mandy’s tight face and back again. “You’re saying this is going to happen?”

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