Signs of Life Read online

  “Oh, sweet man,” she whispered, as she stroked her fingers through his hair. “Oh, mijo.”

  The comforting touch and whispered endearment were his undoing, and he lost it right there, great heaving sobs ripping from his chest as he clutched her to him. He couldn’t let go of her, couldn’t stop crying as he pushed her maternity shirt up so that he could lay his cheek directly against her skin, right over where his son rested.

  Leticia let him, held him and murmured to him until she could coax him inside and lead him into her homey, welcoming living room. She pulled him down to the couch with her and grabbed his hand, placing it low on the side of her belly where Jeremy could feel a rippling, actually see the skin bulging in and out with the baby’s movements.

  “He’s active today,” Leticia whispered. “He knows that his daddy is here.” Those words brought fresh tears, and she cupped his cheek.

  “Talk to him, mijo.”

  Jeremy did, his cheek resting once again on Leticia’s belly as he talked to his son, feeling the baby move almost as if in response to his words. She had a Doppler listening device she used, pressing it to her abdomen and moving it around so that Jeremy could hear the baby’s strong, fast heartbeat. At that moment it was what he needed the most, and he loved her for it.

  She fixed him a cup of tea and let him spend as much time as he wanted, Keith having taken their boys over to their grandparents’ to give Jeremy some privacy. Finally he took his leave, hugging her close, whispering his thanks in her ear.

  “You’ve helped me today more than you know, Leticia.”

  She stroked her hand over his hair once and kissed his cheek. “I’m glad.”

  He drove home, the savage darkness of his grief lightened a little by the promise of new life, of renewed joy. The next couple of weeks passed quickly as Jeremy finalized the sale of his La Jolla house and traded in his sports car for a sleek new SUV with every safety feature imaginable. His realtor forwarded some listings for him to look at, and he settled on a small but elegant house on Coronado Island. He loved the neighborhood, lined with large mature trees, the beach and city parks just a short drive away. Perfect for raising a child, and perfect for a fresh start.

  With Zachary’s birth imminent, he had everything but the nursery items put into long-term storage, and he rented a furnished condo not far from his new house. He needed a place to bring the baby home to while he had some light renovations done, and he didn’t want Zachary around the noise and chaos.

  Grief was never far from the surface, sometimes roaring up like a tsunami, unexpectedly and at awkward moments, dragging him under, suffocating him under the weight of it. He weathered each storm as it came, missing Brent so much it was a constant ache, the thought of the baby’s arrival the life ring he clung precariously to.

  A week before Leticia’s due date, Keith called to say Leticia hadn’t felt the baby move in several hours, and when she realized it during her daily kick count, she immediately called the doctor. They didn’t seem overly concerned at first, advising her to drink a glass of juice and see if the sugar wouldn’t help to “wake him up.” An hour later there still hadn’t been any movement.

  “They want her to come in, Jeremy,” Keith said, his voice strained. “We’re leaving as soon as I hang up with you.”

  A low-grade dread started burning in Jeremy’s gut. “I’ll meet you there,” he managed. During the half-hour drive from Coronado to East Chula Vista, he gripped the steering wheel and prayed, “No. Please, God, no.”

  When he arrived at the doctor’s office, the front desk lady wouldn’t look at him and Jeremy just knew. There wasn’t any need for words like “cord accident” or the doctor’s gentle attempts to explain “sometimes these things just happen.” Leticia was inconsolable, weeping in her husband’s arms, her eyes beseeching as she looked at Jeremy, needing his comfort and assurances he didn’t blame her. He didn’t, but he was beyond comforting anyone, beyond feeling anything, a crushing numbness spreading through his body and pulverizing what was left of his shattered heart.

  When the doctor informed them Leticia would be admitted to the hospital for immediate induction, and there would be a private room set aside for as long as needed for everyone to hold the baby and say their good-byes, Jeremy turned on his heel without a word and strode toward the parking lot.

  “Jeremy, please!” Keith chased after him, calling his name until Jeremy stopped in his tracks, his fists clenched at his sides.

  “I won’t go,” he warned in a low voice. “I can’t.”

  “Please think about what you’re doing, man,” Keith pleaded. “Leticia—”

  Jeremy whirled on him, his voice savage. “You’ll still get your fucking money, Monahan. It’s in the goddamn contract.”

  Keith’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “It’s not about the money,” he whispered. “It never was.” Jeremy turned away and started walking toward his car again, Keith’s voice rising as he called after him. “You and Leticia need to say your good-byes to this baby, Jeremy. You’ll need the closure, and you need each other. Please!”

  Jeremy whipped around again and advanced on him, forcing him to retreat. “It’s not her child, Keith,” Jeremy said cruelly, wanting to hurt, to wound, a dying animal turning on the attack. “Her job is almost over. Obviously I have no further need of her services.”

  Keith reeled back as if struck. “You don’t mean that, Jeremy. Leticia carried this baby inside her for nine months, nurturing him, loving him, until she could put him in your arms. She needs you to be there while she goes through this, and you need her, man. She’s grieving too. Don’t think for one minute that this isn’t killing her. Please. Don’t do this!”

  Jeremy slammed the car door on Keith’s pleas, and he roared away without a backward glance. As he drove toward Coronado, he called the surrogacy agency and informed them the Monahans’ final payment was to be released to them immediately, and that he desired no further contact with the couple.

  The rest of the day passed in a blur as he contacted the funeral home that had handled Brent’s services to make arrangements for the baby’s cremation and interment, and then called the general contractor to cancel the renovations that were scheduled to be done on his new house. He loaded the nursery items that were waiting to be set up back into his SUV and dumped them at the nearest donation center, then headed to his bank and withdrew a large sum of cash. His cell phone rang unanswered on the seat next to him, going to voice mail over and over until Jeremy tossed the phone out the car window, watching in his rearview mirror as it shattered on the pavement.

  He drove and drove as waves of darkness and grief crashed over his head, pulling him down into the pit, swallowing him up.

  Chapter 2

  Two years later

  “DIE, MUHFUCKAH!” The epithet was accompanied by a loud pop-pop-pop and screams of pain. A body fell heavily to the ground. Whoops and yells echoed through the trees as running feet scuffed through leaves, more pop-pops and curses filling the air as the body count rose.

  Kai Daniels crouched behind some bushes, peering carefully around the leafy vegetation, his weapon clutched in his slick hands. Sweat ran from under his mask and dripped from his chin. He took deep breaths through his nose, trying to quiet the gasping caused by exertion, biding his time. He was waiting for the perfect moment, refusing to be like these idiots crashing around in the underbrush to their deaths.

  Finally Kai stood up cautiously, his footfalls as quiet as he could make them as he edged out from the sheltering bush toward a wide tree. Furtive movement to his left caused him to freeze, listening, before he resumed his trek. If he could just get to the tree, he could—

  Suddenly another loud whoop, and several projectiles slammed into his back. He stumbled forward and fell to his hands and knees, his head hanging low. Kai pitched sideways until he was lying on his back in the crunchy leaves, arms and legs akimbo. He looked up into a ring of grinning faces that appeared seemingly out of nowhere, masks pu
shed up on top of their heads.

  “Ow!” Kai said plaintively, and the circle of faces broke into outright laughter.

  “Mr. D be dead!”

  “Damn, dude, you done blew Mr. D’s shit away!”

  “Thought you was bein’ sly, D-Man, but we knew where you was the whole time!”

  Kai lay there and listened to the group of kids congratulate themselves on “killing” him before a volley of shots from an enemy caused them to scatter, howling. Paintball rules called for all the “dead bodies” to remain where they were until the game was over, so Kai pulled himself to a sitting position and leaned against the tree he’d been trying to get to.

  So far the day had gone pretty well, about as he’d expected. He still remembered his assistant principal’s face when Kai proposed this end-of-the-year field trip.

  “You’re fucking crazy, Daniels, wanting to take a bunch of gangbangers on a field trip to hunt and kill each other.”

  “It’s paintball, Dave,” Kai said drily. “You make it sound like I’m taking them on a human safari.”

  “Sure as shit they’ll be gunning for your ass, and in case you didn’t know, those paintball pellets hurt.” Dave winced, rubbing his arm as he obviously remembered paintball wars of times past.

  Kai certainly had to concede he was right. His back throbbed in at least three different places, but it was manageable, and seeing the open, genuine smiles on the kids’ faces was worth it. Most of them didn’t have much to smile about, their dads and/or moms in prison, a different foster family every year, siblings scattered to the winds. A great majority of them held one or more jobs, just trying to get by, existing on the fringes of the gangs that plagued even a beautiful city like Bend, Oregon.

  Kai sighed, thinking of the past school year. He wasn’t going to delude himself into thinking he was the kind of teacher who would write a bestseller someday about the way he’d turned some tough kids’ lives around, or watch his life story made into a Lifetime TV movie. Life wasn’t a movie, and the reality was most of these kids would be absorbed into gang life as their parents had been, as their older siblings were. But Kai had made it out, and if he could help at least one kid get a decent shot at life….

  An air horn sounded in the distance, followed by the paintball marshal bellowing through a bullhorn, “Game over! Make your way back to headquarters. Be sure you have all your equipment with you to turn in!”

  Kai pushed himself up from the ground, picking up his gun and mask, then making his way toward the paintball company headquarters. He met up with several kids as they walked back too, all of them spattered with paint and sporting sparkling eyes and ear-to-ear grins. Kai grinned back, knowing the $500 of his own money he’d spent for this was worth every penny.

  As the kids turned their equipment in to the marshal, Kai did a quick headcount, breathing a sigh of relief when all showed present and accounted for. Field trips like this were rare in the alternative high school where Kai taught, but he was of the firm belief that kids, even gang kids, would respond to an incentive. It was a sad fact that out of the twenty-six students on his roster for each of his math and science classes, if eighteen showed up, that was one for the record books. Most days he had maybe fourteen to sixteen, some only coming two or three days a week at that, and less than half of those kids bothered to do any work.

  Kai considered himself a realist, and he did the best he could for those students who showed up ready and willing to learn. The kids that did show, and did try, he wanted to reward them somehow, and so had thought of the paintball field trip to celebrate the end of the year and the conclusion of state testing. In order to get to go, the kids had to show up to class at least 60 percent of the time, and hand in all work assigned in class as completed. He assigned homework, of course, but as a realist he knew kids working two jobs and most likely taking care of younger siblings or fellow foster kids would have little to no time for that.

  Twelve students from his math class had made the cut, as well as nine students from his science class. It was apparent a lot of the kids considered math and science a “fuckin’ waste of time,” and if he had a dime for every time someone said, “Don’t need to learn no math when I got a friggin’ calculator on my phone right here,” he’d be a very, very rich man.

  All in all Kai considered the day a success, and he held his hands up for quiet.

  “Great job, guys,” he said. “I saw lots of teamwork and good sportsmanship out there today, and I’m proud of you.” There was the usual spate of eye rolling and hand gestures at those words, but all in all the kids looked happy and well pleased with themselves.

  “And since the bet was that nobody would be able to smoke my ass, and I got smoked—” He turned around to show the paint spatters on the back of his protective vest to loud cheers and high-fives. “—I guess I owe you guys some pizza!”

  Hollering, the kids made a beeline for the picnic table, which held several stacks of pizza boxes Kai had arranged to have delivered, helping themselves and settling down cross-legged on the ground clutching laden paper plates. Kai handed out cold soda from the coolers he brought along, enjoying the excited chatter of teenagers getting to be kids for one afternoon.

  Once all the students were served, he fixed a plate for himself and waved over Juan, the school bus driver, and then the two of them leaned companionably against the back of the bus, watching over the kids as they ate.

  “Whatcha gonna do over the break, amigo?” Juan asked around a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese.

  Kai swallowed his bite of veggie pizza before answering. “Not much,” he said, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “I want to do a little hiking and camping, go into Portland for a weekend here and there, stuff like that.”

  “You still doing that karate shit?”

  “You mean Krav Maga?” Kai replied, elbowing him lightly. “It’s not karate. It’s an Israeli martial art.”

  Juan rolled his eyes. “Whatever that fighting shit is you do,” he mumbled, taking a huge messy bite of pizza, cheese stringing from his slice and slapping down along his chin.

  When Kai proposed this field trip to his assistant principal, Dave tried hard to talk Kai into taking a couple of security guards along as well. Kai replied he could take care of himself just fine. After all he’d spent years running the streets with a gang when he was his students’ age. That, along with his Krav Maga practice, meant he could defend himself against any punk who might take a swing at him, even if said punk had a knife.

  “Yeah, I’m still doing it,” he answered. “Wanna come sometime? It’s good for losing weight.”

  “Fuck you, Daniels. You saying I look fat?” Juan slapped his own ample gut with a smirk. Kai nodded pointedly at Juan’s plate piled high with pizza, and Juan scratched his nose with his middle finger, causing a couple of kids who saw it to hoot with laughter.

  After everyone ate their fill, Kai made sure the kids helped to clean up the mess and dispose of the empty boxes, then double-checked all equipment had been turned in before boarding the bus for the trip back to the school.

  As they bounced along, Kai pulled his phone out and saw a text from his best friend, Loren. Club in Portland tonight??

  Kai was just about to type out a reply to him when a boy in the back exclaimed, “Look, there’s that crazy running mofo again!”

  Kai glanced out the bus window just in time to see the figure of a man running on the shoulder of the highway flash past.

  “See that dude runnin’ everywhere, man. Nigga be crazy.”

  Kai reprimanded him for the language, but it was halfhearted. If he handed out punishments for every “fuck” and “nigga” he heard on a daily basis, he’d never do anything else. Of course he didn’t tolerate hate or bigotry, but to these kids, “fuck” and even “nigga” were part of their culture and everyday vernacular.

  One of the girls made a show of fanning herself. “I saw that dude when I was at Starbucks the other day, and he’s kinda hot.”

 
; Kai had to agree. The man was some kind of ultramarathoner or something, and he ran crazy distances all around the area; once Kai had seen him at least fifteen miles out of town, running with a loose, easy stride, and he ran rain, snow, or shine.

  Kai was in line at a grocery store a couple of months ago and he saw the man come in. He was distinctive, dressed in black running tights and a light nylon jacket in neon green, and Kai had just passed him on the road about half an hour before, a few miles out of town. He watched as the man helped himself to a bottle of Gatorade out of one of the checkout line coolers, moving through the express lane and paying for it.

  When Kai got outside with his groceries several minutes later, the man was leaning against the wall, finishing up his drink. His eyes flashed to Kai’s, and Kai immediately noticed the unusual color, a pale gray. He was very good-looking, with thick dark hair and a chiseled jaw. What really struck Kai, though, was how flat and cold those eyes were, almost icy. He looked unfriendly and completely unapproachable.

  Still Kai had nodded to him and murmured, “Whassup?” but the man didn’t bother to answer, just moved past Kai and threw his empty bottle away before turning and jogging off toward where he came from. After that Kai started keeping an eye out for him, and as the weather warmed, the man switched to brightly colored running shorts, sometimes paired with a tight tank top or, like today, going completely shirtless. When he flashed past a few minutes ago, Kai got a glimpse of a very nice body, chest and abdomen rippled with sleek muscle and glistening with sweat.

  His phone suddenly buzzed in his hand, and he looked down to see another text from Loren: What about club, loser?? Need to know whether to wait for you or not. Portland was a good three-hour drive away, and they’d need to leave almost immediately after Kai got home if they wanted to get there before the night was half-gone.