Chapter Twenty-Five
Beryl was having a terrible dream where invisible beings chased her around throwing basketball-sized light cubes at her. Every time one hit her, she imagined a giant bruise forming. It was like playing dodgeball with medicine balls lobbed in her direction. Unfair.
From a distance, she heard a familiar voice say, “Hey, Beryl. Wake up.” Was that Jett? Why was he here?
“What?” Beryl heard her own voice croak out that single word and realized quickly that she sounded like death warmed over. What was wrong with her?
“Beryl! Wake up!” She heard what sounded like someone snapping their fingers next to her ear. How rude.
Her eyes opened halfway and she stared blearily at a face. For a second, she thought it was Jett. As the impatient features of her tormenter became clear, she realized it was Ian, Jake’s customer. The man who kept popping up when and where he was least expected. Like now.
Ian grabbed Beryl’s shoulders and pulled, forcing her to sit up.
Before she could fall back down, he tightened his grip on her shoulders.
Once she was steady, he guided her to her feet.
Sort of. Beryl’s legs seemed solid, the rest of her…
not so much. She fell forward from the waist, hand flailing out to catch hold of the nearest dining room chair as feeling came back into her tingling body.
She saw the bag of chili from the Cosmos Café on the floor near her feet.
Ian snapped his fingers in her face and demanded, “Where is—” He stopped, as if his brain had to compute something before he finished, “—Jake. Where is Jake?”
That got Beryl’s attention. She stood up straighter even as her body fought the good fight to find a good spot to lay down.
No. Wake up! This is serious! She stiffened her spine and looked toward the closed bedroom door. Jake always left his bedroom door open. He had a special Maxwell the Martian doorstop and everything.
“What is the last thing you remember?” Ian asked, sounding impatient.
“We came inside the house. I was first through the front door. I got as far as the dining room table when I saw something that was off. Wrong.”
“What was it?”
Beryl pointed to Jake’s bedroom door. “The door was closed.”
“What does that mean? The door was closed.”
“Jake always leaves his bedroom door open. Always. Every day. He bought a special doorstop to make sure it stays open. But as soon as I realized it was closed, I knew something was wrong. I think I said something to Jake about it. I’m not sure.
All of a sudden, it felt like someone stabbed me in the chest with an ice pick. ”
“Did you see who it was?”
Beryl started to answer and almost bit her tongue to keep quiet.
Her senses were returning and she remembered she could not share this kind of information with a human.
If Ian was human. Beryl was confused, but she was fairly certain that the man was hiding something and might not be who he said he was.
Either way, Beryl needed to play it safe. She was not going to be the one who let it slip to a possible human that there was an invisible being on the loose, trying to hunt Jake down for some reason.
She said, truthfully, “I didn’t see anyone inside the house.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then I blacked out. What time is it?”
Ian told her and she said a bad word. “Oh, my gosh. I’ve been out cold for over an hour! Jake is gone and we need to find him.”
“How are we going to do that?” Ian asked her.
Beryl tried to control her fear and panic. She felt wobbly, but anger and fear were waking her body up. She stared at this man and his familiar features, so much like her brother’s, and demanded, “Who are you? Really?”
He pushed out a frustrated-sounding sigh. “Really can’t say. I will tell you that Jake is my friend and we need to find him right now. He’s in trouble.”
“I know he’s in trouble!” Beryl spun around and almost fell down again. “Wait, where’s my purse? Do you see my purse anywhere? I need it. Right now!”
Ian moved away from her, looking all around the space like a person who had professionally searched more than one room in his life. He went to the entryway, walked a few steps, then bent over near the sofa. When he straightened, he had her purse, which he almost shoved into her hands.
“Thank you,” she said, rifling through it to retrieve her phone. She dialed the number from memory and put the phone to her ear.
Ian grabbed her forearm, pulling the phone away from her head. “Don’t call the police.”
“I’m not calling the police.” She snatched her hand away from his light grasp, repositioning the phone at her ear. “Yet.”
“Who are you calling?” he asked at the same time she asked, “Why can’t we call the police?”
When a voice said her name into the phone, she turned away from Ian to speak. “Hey. I know this is your day off and everything, but we need to activate Operation Diabolical. Now.”
“Excellent.” Jett sounded delighted. “I’m ready. Where are we going?”
“The thing is, I need you to tell me.” Beryl closed her eyes, hoping against hope that she wasn’t too late.
“What do you mean? How can I tell you?”
Beryl cleared her throat. “I know I told you to remove the tracker from Jake’s jacket, but I’m hoping that you didn’t listen to me, like you never listen to me or ever do what I tell you to do in a timely manner. So, Jett, please tell me you did not remove it.”
Jett sounded contrite and pleased. “You know, I meant to, Beryl. I just had not gotten around to it yet, I promise. If he’s wearing that jacket, I can track him.”
“Good. The last time I saw him, he was wearing it. I need you to find him for me as fast as you can. Somebody knocked me out and I’ve lost an hour already. I’m worried we might be too late.”
Jett’s voice turned deadly serious. “Someone knocked you out? What happened?”
Beryl shook her head, though she knew he couldn’t see her. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll explain later. We need to find Jake now.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll put you on speaker and get the app up on my phone.
” After some muffled sounds, Jett said, “That’s weird.
His jacket’s at some place called Krab’s Cookie Palace on the outskirts of town, like two miles past the Big Bang Truck Stop on Highway 88, just inside the town line for Skeeter Bite. ”
“Krab’s Cookie Palace? That place closed down before we moved to Alienn, not surprisingly.”
“Well, that’s where the tracker is. I hope that’s also where Jake is,” Jett said.
“Tell whoever you’re talking to that we will meet him there,” Ian said in an overloud tone as he moved toward the front door.
Beryl started to repeat it but Jett said, “I heard. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
Beryl followed Ian as best she could. Wake up, limbs, and work! Ian noticed her slow progress and doubled back to guide her out of the house and to the driveway.
“I think you should drive,” she said.
Without comment, he put her in the passenger side of a nondescript sedan, much like the one Jake had been whisked away in by the invisible alien.
Ian didn’t seem like the type to make small talk in a good situation let alone the bad one they were in right now.
Beryl spent most of the drive quietly hoping they weren’t too late and that they got there in time to save Jake.
She tried not to imagine what the invisible alien might be doing to him.
They drove in silence all the way to the now defunct Krab’s Cookie Palace.
It was no surprise to her that the out-of-the-way business had shut down.
Surrounded by forest, there was nothing to draw customers in.
On top of that, they’d ignored the advertising gold of the town’s riff on outer space in choosing their name, Krab’s Cookie Palace.
Besides, who would want to eat a seafood cookie? Ick.
Ian did not drive like an old man, and they made it to their destination in less than ten minutes.
Jett was waiting in the parking lot, the back hatch of his SUV wide open as he pulled out the bag they had put together after work in preparation for Operation Diabolical.
It was Beryl’s solution to an invisible enemy.
Through the storefront’s main window, which was half covered with sheets of tattered, drooping, yellowed newspaper, they could see a faint glow coming from somewhere inside.
“If the front was the store, then it would follow that the kitchen is in the back, right?” Beryl said in a loud whisper.
Both Jett and Ian nodded. In the moment, which was really not the perfect time, Beryl realized that the two of them standing side by side could be brothers. Easily.
She shook the thought off and got back to the business at hand.
“I think that’s where he will be.” She turned to Jett. “You and I should go through the front and Ian should come through the back. Let’s just hope there are no more exits that our bad guy can escape through.”
They both nodded in eerie unison and Ian disappeared silently around the side of the building.
“Who is that guy?” Jett asked her.
“I don’t really know. My guess is he’s a friend of Jake’s from before he lost his memory. Let’s talk about it later, okay?”
Jett smirked, but nodded and together they moved to the front door. Beryl was worried they might have to break in, but the door was unlocked when Jett tried it. He pushed it and the hinges, shockingly, didn’t even squeal.
They walked carefully through what used to be the display area, filled with empty boxes and papers strewn on the floor as if the previous tenants had left in a hurry. They walked around the counter and crept through a swinging door into what did turn out to be the kitchen.
The déjà vu was unsettling. Once again, Jake was flat on his back and unconscious. Instead of a wooden dining room table, he was strapped to a stainless-steel prep table. The rippling, wavy air at his side didn’t move. She wondered if the alien had his back to them.