Page 49 of Boxed In

“I’m here.” After a pause, he added, “We’re getting more integrated.” The phrasing and the voice sounded more like the computer man, and she knew the comment had come from Luke.

She studied the way his face looked. Luke’s visage had been that of a modern man. The features were the same, but now there was a subtle difference. This person’s face was harder, more determined. More savage.

“Is that good?” she asked. “I mean—integration.”

“It’s less confusing for me.”

“Not to me.”

“Think of us as one person.”

“Okay, but Zabastian is in control?” she asked.

He sighed. “Sometimes.”

She nodded. “How do you know the Moon Cult is here—aside from vibrations?”

He shot her an annoyed look. “Not just vibrations. I know because your world is still here. But it is in grave danger.”

oOo

Carl Peterbalm had decided on the direct approach. He pulled into the parking lot in front of Olivia’s building and looked around. Her apartment was in the far corner of a low-rise garden complex in Baltimore County. He’d never been here before, but he’d looked up her address in the company records.

He wanted to know what was going on. But he didn’t want to speak to her over the phone and leave a record.

So he got out and looked around, taking in details. In the illumination from several overhead lights, he saw that Olivia’s building wasn’t exactly the garden spot of the county. It bordered a patch of scraggly woods dotted with trash. The lawn was crisscrossed by footpaths. Someone had neglected to clean up after a large dog. And kids had doodled in chalk all over the sidewalk.

It was getting dark, and the lights were on in some of the apartments. Probably the complex looked worse during the day.

Couldn’t she afford anything better?

He barked out a laugh. Well, maybe not on what he was paying her. So had she gotten mixed up with the mob or something? Had they come after her for a gambling debt—and somehow his office had gotten wrecked.

He checked the address once more, wishing he could turn around and leave. This place gave him the creeps.

But he needed to find Olivia, so he scanned the mailboxes and found her name, then went to apartment 3A, on the ground floor.

Not a very secure location. He pounded on the door and waited. Then pounded again. No answer.

He called out her name, but she was still silent.

When he rapped louder, the door across the hall opened and a large man stepped out. He was wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt that barely covered his bulging belly.

“Cut the racket,” he said.

“Have you seen Olivia Weston?”

“Naw. She usually comes home around 6:00, but I ain’t seen her.”

The man eyed Carl for a few more seconds, then ducked back into his apartment and shut the door—none too gently.

Carl might have kicked Olivia’s door—except that he didn’t want to tangle with the neighbor again.

As he turned to leave, he heard a car door slam and looked up. In the light from the street lamp, he saw three short, dark-skinned men standing on the sidewalk. Looking like they were all controlled by the same game box, they turned and marched up the walk to the apartment building. They might be wearing business suits, but they looked like mob enforcers or something worse. Hired assassins? And they were heading for the same building that he’d entered.

Were they the guys who had wrecked the office? They certainly looked like they were capable of violence.

Maybe they hadn’t seen him, since he was in shadow in the stairwell, and they were under the streetlight.

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