Book I: The Disappearance (The Fallen Race Trilogy). Colin Patrick Garvey

Rushmore looked awfully fidgety for a guy who just got some R & R.”

      Curious, Kaley quietly asks, “What do you mean?”

      “Well, sir,” Rogers says, “what Boyd is saying is that Rushmore looked ‘bout a shade whiter than grandma's thighs. He kept looking all around, real paranoid-like.”

      “Yeah,” Boyd adds, “like he was being watched or something.”

      Kaley nods solemnly, cursing himself again for the mess he has gotten them in.

      “Yeah,” he says somberly, “well, let's just hope he'll turn up soon, huh boys?”

      They both nod.

      Kaley feels another pang of guilt course through him as he realizes that the prospect of finding Rushmore, let alone alive, seems to be rapidly dwindling.

      Kaley solemnly nods again, pats them both on the shoulder and heads back to his jeep. He jumps in with his stomach turning cartwheels, and guns the accelerator for destinations unknown.

      * * *

      Sean O'Connell peeks through the window from outside the home and immediately does not like what he sees. The inside is in absolute shambles, with obvious signs of a struggle. There are upended chairs and a table, a broken bookshelf, and a cracked mirror. There is a streak on the wall that could be a bloodstain. He closely scans the room, but sees no sign of anyone lurking about. Sean does not like what he sees because this is his friend's house and he knows that Jon Kaley is a compulsive neat freak.

      After his escape from the beach, Sean trekked through the woods for over an hour before deciding it safe to emerge. He hated to take advantage of the trusting nature of the Michiganders, but he did not feel he had many options at that point. He boosted an old, beat-up Camaro sitting in someone's driveway, the keys teasingly dangling in the ignition. Sean made the trip to Kaley's house in a little over two hours, practically a record considering the distance. He abandoned the car several blocks away in a supermarket parking lot and continued the rest of the way on foot to Kaley's pad.

      Sean creeps around towards the rear of the house and finds that the back door is slightly open. He opens the screen door and kneels down for a closer inspection of the lock, but sees no sign of forced entry. If the intruders chose this as their entry point, they left no marks, a certain sign of a professional at work.

      Who the hell did Kaley get himself involved with? Sean thinks.

      He knows Jon does not gamble and thus, that eliminates any angry bookies or their associated muscle arriving to claim a debt. Sean immediately discounts drug peddlers or gangsters because it simply does not mesh with Kaley's persona. He is a fucking Boy Scout, a do-gooder, someone who would help an old lady across the street. He would not be involved with low-lifes like that, Sean is certain of it.

      Sean enters the house and conducts a thorough search of the kitchen, the bedroom, and most of the rest of the one-story. The kitchen looks as if it was cleaned yesterday. Knowing Kaley, it probably had. The bedroom, too, appears undisturbed. The sheets are made and perfectly creased at the corners, leading Sean to conclude that if Kaley was interrupted in the middle of the night, they did not catch him while he was sleeping. The only other part of the house that appears out of the ordinary is the counter in the bathroom, where Sean finds a small streak of blood. Besides that, everything is normal, or as normal as can be considering the living room is a total disaster area, as if a twister ripped through this area of the house.

      Sean stands in the middle of the living room and assesses everything, attempting to pry the smallest piece of information from any of the objects in the room. As if simply by standing amid this chaos, the scene that played out here will eventually reveal itself. When Sean, at last, realizes that he is not a vessel for ESP or able to glance back in time, he frustratingly sighs and shakes his head. He is about to leave when he notices a faint light coming through a crack in a closet door directly off of the living room.

      Sean cautiously approaches and pushes the closet door open to find that it is, in fact, no longer a closet, but rather Kaley has converted it into a small home office. The room is cramped, with no windows, bookshelves occupying three of the four walls, and a small desk. On top of the desk are a computer and a tiny lamp, which emits the light he saw from the living room. Sean also notices that the computer monitor is on, but the screen is blank except for a small American flag floating across the top, an obvious screensaver for a man like Kaley.

      Sean moves the mouse and the computer hums to life, followed by the screen slowly defining itself as it comes into focus. The desktop appears with several file folders and the basic Windows applications.

      He reads some of the file folders: “Contacts,” “Military 1,” “Military 2,” “PJ,” and “Command Structure.”

      Sean clicks on the file marked “Contacts,” and instantly, a box pops up prompting him for a password.

       Shit.

      Knowing the intricate security measures Kaley likely established to protect against “unauthorized” eyes viewing something he does not want them to, Sean is about to abandon hope of finding anything useful on the computer when he notices at the bottom of the desktop a small box. The box is labeled, “PJ,” and it is open, minimized at the bottom of the screen.

      “What the hell is this, Jon?” Sean says out loud.

      He clicks on the box and it opens up. At the top is a heading: “Personal Journal.”

      The cursor is flashing at the end of a sentence, waiting for its next command. The previous entry was last night, July 4th, only several hours ago. Sean begins to read:

       July 4, 2011 11:58 pm—What is it that we have witnessed tonight? Something horrible I imagine. Something I hope our government is not behind, and yet I have this terrible suspicion that it is the very institution I unquestionably serve that has committed an act I am unable to understand. How else to explain the fact that F knew so quickly of the situation, and steps had already been taken in response?

       Innocent Americans have been taken or killed, by what or whom I cannot fathom. The news reports have started to trickle in and they are all saying that it is a “terrorist attack.” I am afraid that what I have witnessed tonight along with R was no terrorist attack, and furthermore, what we have seen may place us both in extreme danger. There is evidence of what we have witnessed, or at least evidence of something, but I fear there is no culprit that can be brought to justice for this…

       I hope my friend didn't go to the beach this weekend

       they're here

      Sean rereads the journal entry and the same chills inhabit his skin now that did the first time he read it. The second to last line even references Sean. Although he has not spoken to his friend in several weeks, Kaley knows that Sean and his family typically spend the Fourth of July holiday at the beach house in Tamawaca.

      Kaley saw something surrounding the events at Tamawaca Beach, something “horrible” he imagined.

       That means the military is somehow involved, right? How else would Kaley know about what happened there?

      Sean's mind flashes to the image of the soldiers storming their way up the beach.

       Who are “F” and “R”? What was the situation “F” knew about and the rapid response to it?

      The fact that Kaley wrote that “innocent Americans” had been “taken or killed” and he suspected the government, specifically the military, was responsible, make the situation seem all the more surreal. Kaley does not appear convinced it was a terrorist attack, an opinion that Sean is in complete agreement with. Certainly Kaley and the mysterious “R” were not knowing participants in whatever occurred. If anything, it seems that what they have seen could get them both hurt.

       But what had they seen? What evidence do they have?

      And then the ominous last line…