Storming Heaven Read online

  STORMING

  HEAVEN

  KYLE MILLS

  Science without religion is lame.

  Religion without science is blind.

  —Albert Einstein

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

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  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Kyle Mills

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  A TRAGIC HEART ATTACK AT THE TENDER YOUNG age of fifteen and a half, Jennifer Davis thought. That’s what the headlines would say tomorrow.

  She stood up on her pedals, but had to sit down again when the back wheel of her mountain bike lost traction. Less than halfway up the last climb of the race, her lungs already felt like they were full of hot tar. Worse, she could hear the unmistakable crunch of tires closing in on her from behind.

  Jennifer glanced back over her shoulder, ignoring the flaring color of the sunset as the light filtered through the Phoenix smog, and focused on the face of the rider behind her.

  The good news was that he looked like he was in bad shape. His mouth was wide open and, despite the dry cold of the desert, the sweat was literally streaming off his nose.

  The bad news was that she felt like he looked.

  The angle of the hill eased off a bit and Jennifer stood up again. This time her tire held and she was able to accelerate slightly, struggling to stay out front.

  The panting behind her grew louder as the rider began to close the distance between them. Jennifer grudgingly eased her bike right to allow a lane for him to pass, and then dropped her head and pedaled with everything she had.

  About twenty-five yards from the crest of the hill, when he was only inches behind, he gave up. She heard a gasped obscenity and the unmistakable click of gears as he downshifted.

  Jennifer remained standing, in case it was a trick or he got a second wind, but when she looked back again, he was off his bike, pushing it slowly up the hill.

  At the top of the climb, Jennifer leaned forward and rested her arms against her handlebars. A small but enthusiastic crowd lined the narrow trail, and she coasted carefully through them.

  She could see her parents threading their way through the throng as she passed under the checkered banner that announced the finish line. When her father jogged up alongside her, she draped an arm around his shoulders and used him as a crutch as she slid off her bike and fell to the ground.

  “Great job, Jen! I thought that guy was going to get you on the hill!” She closed her eyes and listened as her father picked up her bike and rolled it off the track.

  “Honey? Are you all right?”

  Jennifer opened her eyes and looked into the plump face of her mother hovering over her. “Fine, Mom. No problem.” She turned to her father. “How’d I do, Dad?”

  “Fourth place, looks like to me. Just out of the money.”

  Jennifer let out a low groan as she stood and began pushing her way through the crowd, shaking various hands and stopping briefly to talk and laugh with friends and other racers.

  “We’ve got a surprise for you, honey,” her father said as they broke free of the crowd and headed for the parking lot. Jennifer slowed and then stopped. Her father just wasn’t the no-specific-occasion gift-giving type. Surprises were usually a bad thing. Her eyes followed his outstretched index finger to a white Ford Explorer in the parking lot. Three people stood next to it. Two of the three were waving.

  “Oh Dad. You didn’t.”

  “What? The Taylors have really been looking forward to seeing you race.”

  Her mother smiled. “They really have, honey.”

  The Taylors had lived two doors down from them for as long as Jennifer could remember. And for as long as she could remember, they and her parents had been conspiring to get her together with Billy, the Taylors’ football-playing, cheerleader-chasing, Budweiser-swilling moron of a son.

  As they neared the parking lot, Mrs. Taylor rushed up to Jennifer with her arms flung wide. She thought better of the big hug she had undoubtedly been planning when she saw the amount of mud caked on Jennifer’s jersey. Instead, she adjusted an imaginary flaw in her rather tall hair and opted for a distant peck on the cheek. “Wow, that was really impressive, Jennifer. Very exciting.” She turned to her semicatatonic son. “Wasn’t it, Billy?” He snapped out of his stupor long enough to generate a weak smile.

  There was a short lull in the conversation while everyone waited to see if he would actually speak. When it became obvious that he wouldn’t, her father said, “We thought we’d go out and grab some dinner before we drive back to Flagstaff. What do you think, Jen?”

  “Are you kidding? Look at me!” Jennifer took off her helmet and held her arms out to give him a better view. She was spattered head to toe in mud. A gash above her knee, suffered on the first downhill of the race, was still oozing blood. And to top it off, her hair had taken on the shape of her helmet.

  Her father didn’t look impressed. “We’ll just tell them you were in a mountain bike race. They’ll understand.”

  She assumed that “they” referred to the maitre d’ of a really, really snooty restaurant, who would look at her like she was a homeless person and then grudgingly get them a table because her father was the largest car dealer in Arizona.

  Jennifer sighed and walked over to her parents’ Cadillac. Leaning into the open window, she pulled out a small backpack containing a change of underwear, a pair of shorts, and a sweatshirt.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, walking toward a white van with SPECIALIZED painted in red across the side.

  “That work?” Jennifer asked the young man sitting on a lawn chair in front of the van. He put down the hopelessly misshapen wheel he had been contemplating and picked up the end of the hose lying next to him.

  “Sure, Jen. You want to spray off your bike?”

  “My parents want to go out for dinner.”

  He examined her carefully and fished a beer out of the cooler next to his chair. “It’s gonna be pretty cold.”

  She tossed her pack through the window of his van and waved him on. “Do it.”

  “Okay, now I’m ready,” Jennifer said, wearing her clean clothes and drying her hair with a heavily stained towel her friend with the van had loaned her. She bent forward and shook out her damp, unnaturally blonde hair. “Hey, Billy. None of this grease is coming off in my hair, is it?”r />
  Her question had the desired effect. Billy looked appalled.

  “Well, I thought it was a very nice dinner.”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes.

  “Watch the road, honey,” her mother cautioned. “They’ll deduct points on your driver’s test.”

  Jennifer reached over and turned the volume of the radio all the way down. “Mom, Billy and I have known each other our whole lives. He’s a jerk. And he thinks I’m a jerk. My history teacher says that most people faced with a common enemy, in this case you guys, develop at least a teeny bit of a friendship. You’ll notice we haven’t.”

  Her mother’s chins drooped. “They’re such a nice family, I don’t see why you’re so resistant …”

  Jennifer craned her neck and looked at her father, who had retreated to the far corner of the back seat. “Help me out here, Dad.”

  He ignored her and continued to peruse the road map lying in his lap, apparently oblivious to the fact that they were half a mile from home.

  Jennifer turned back before her mother could get on her about her driving again. “Try to follow me here, Mom. Billy likes the cheerleader type. Girls with long red nails who can squeal at just the right pitch when he makes a touchdown. Besides, I have a boyfriend. And he hasn’t been lobotomized.”

  Jennifer flipped on the blinker and turned the car into their driveway. She sped along the winding drive and escaped the car before her mother could start in again.

  As she pulled her bike off the top of the car, she tried to ignore the cold and her mother’s pouting form walking toward the house. It looked like the guilt was going to get pretty thick tonight.

  Jennifer wheeled her bike into the open garage and leaned it against the wall. “You want me to pull the car in, Mom?” she yelled at the open door that led to the kitchen.

  No answer. Yeah, this was going to be one serious guilt trip, she thought, jogging up a short flight of stairs and stopping at the door. The lights inside the house were still off. “Did we blow another fuse? Dad? Do you want me to check the box?”

  “Run, Jennifer!”

  She froze at the sound of her father’s strangled voice. The rhythm and force of her heartbeat increased until she could almost hear it in the silence following his shout.

  She took the last step into the house hesitantly and edged up to the washing machine so she could see into the kitchen. “Dad?”

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from the glare of the bare bulbs in the garage to the gloom of the kitchen, but the moonlight streaming though the windows above the sink created enough colorless contrast to see what was happening.

  A man in a dark suit was dragging her mother toward the living room. His hand was clamped over her mouth and his thumb and index finger pinched her nose shut.

  Jennifer resisted the urge to run to her mother and pry the man’s hands from her face. Instead, she retreated, almost falling backward down the steps. When she reached out to steady herself, her eyes finally found her father. He was pinned against the kitchen counter by a similarly dressed man. The combination of a thick forearm pressed against his throat and a gun pushed into his cheek had silenced him.

  Everything in her told her to stay and fight, but she knew that would be stupid. There was nothing she could do. She had to go for help.

  She spun around and cleared the stairs leading into the garage in one jump. The keys were still in the car.

  She didn’t see the hand as it reached out from behind her father’s tool bench and grabbed her by the back of her sweatshirt; she only felt the shirt go tight across her chest and her feet skid out from under her. She would have fallen on her back, except a powerful arm had snaked around her waist. An instant later, the hand that had been tangled in her sweatshirt moved to her face and clamped over her mouth and nose.

  She thrashed wildly when her air was cut off, surprising her captor with her strength and throwing them both against the wall. She grabbed at his arm, finally getting her fingers behind something that felt like a thick metal bracelet.

  It was hopeless. Panic and lack of air were making her groggy, and she felt herself weakening as she fought back the blank whiteness encroaching on her peripheral vision. It took only a moment for the man to regain his balance and lift her off her feet, robbing her of what little leverage she had.

  Making one last effort, she grabbed for the door-jamb as she was carried into the house. Her strength had left her, though, and her sweaty fingers slid ineffectually along the wall.

  “Stop!”

  Jennifer heard the shout—a woman’s voice—but had no idea where it came from. The fingers around her nose loosened and she felt her feet connect with the ground, though the man’s arm remained tight around her waist and his hand was still clamped on her mouth. She took in a deep breath through her nose and felt the oxygenated blood begin to clear her head.

  A woman stepped out from behind the shadow of the refrigerator, prompting the man holding her to loosen his grip a bit more and allow her to take another deep breath as she watched the woman approach.

  She was probably three inches shorter than Jennifer’s five-nine, with a boyish haircut—short and parted on the side. Her skin must have been very pale, because it just glowed the color of the moonlight bathing the room.

  The woman stopped about a foot away and reached out. Jennifer jerked her head back, but it just bounced off the chest of the man holding her.

  “You must be very still and very quiet,” the woman said, running a hand through Jennifer’s hair.

  Jennifer let out a quiet squeal, muffled by the hand still clamped over her mouth. She tried to look into the woman’s eyes to see if there was anything there that could tell her what was happening, but they just looked black.

  The woman moved to her right slightly, letting the moonlight hit her fully in the face. “Look at me, Jennifer. You will be quiet, won’t you?”

  Her voice was smooth and soft, but her newly illuminated eyes looked cold and cruel. Jennifer wanted to scream when the man’s hand slid from her mouth, but she found herself transfixed by the woman’s stare.

  “That’s better,” the woman said, letting her fingers fall from Jennifer’s hair and slide down her arm, finally closing them around Jennifer’s wrist. “Come with me. There’s something I want you to see.”

  She pulled Jennifer from the arms holding her and toward the living room. Jennifer wanted to break away, to run for help, but she was afraid. Not of the man who had captured her or the ones who had subdued her parents, but of this small, pale woman and what her eyes told Jennifer she was capable of.

  She allowed herself to be led to a small loveseat situated on the far wall of the living room. The light was better there, thanks to two skylights and the large windows that surrounded the room.

  Jennifer sat down on the sofa that she had spent so many nights on—watching TV, doing homework, talking on the phone. But now her eyes were locked on her parents and the men holding them at gunpoint at the other end of the room. The woman’s hand slid from her wrist and Jennifer watched her walk through the moonlight to her parents and begin speaking quietly to them. Jennifer leaned forward to try and hear what was being said, but a strong hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her back.

  She watched them for what seemed like forever. The shadows made it difficult to read their expressions, but she could see the tension slowly falling from her parents’ bodies. Her father was the first to peel his back off the wall, followed closely by her mother, who stepped forward, put her arms around the small woman, and began to sob. The muffled sound coming from her throat was a strange combination of deep sorrow and joy that Jennifer had only heard once before—when a close family friend had died after a long and painful bout with bone cancer.

  Jennifer relaxed slightly. The cruelty she had seen in the woman and that had caused a nauseous feeling of hopelessness to form in the pit of her stomach must have been a trick of light and darkness. Her parents recognized her. Maybe they’d known her for
years. Perhaps the woman was afraid, too. Perhaps she was here because she needed their help.

  When the man standing next to her father reached out and offered him his gun, Jennifer let out a deep sigh of relief. Certainly killers and rapists weren’t in the habit of arming their victims. Maybe she and her family were in some kind of danger and these people were here to protect them?

  Her father wiped at his eyes with his sleeve as he took the gun. Jennifer watched as he weighed it uncomfortably, then pointed it at the back of her mother’s head and pulled the trigger.

  For a moment she felt like she was sitting in a dark theater watching a movie. The crack of the pistol, her mother’s body jerking forward, the black fluid momentarily backlit and then silently painting the wall.

  Jennifer threw herself forward, trying to escape the sofa, but the man behind her had anticipated this and jerked her back again. The room started to spin and she felt her stomach tighten into a sickening knot as she struggled against the hands that held her in place.

  “Daddy!” she screamed as her father tucked the gun under his chin.

  Her shout seemed to pull him from his trance, and he hesitated for a moment. “I know this is hard, honey. But you don’t belong just to us. You never belonged just to us.”

  The gun sounded again and the window behind her father cracked from top to bottom, leaving a spiderweb prism as he collapsed to the ground.

  She felt all the strength go out of her. She slumped forward and turned away from the scene in front of her. For a moment, it felt as though she had forgotten how to breathe. Her mind seemed to shut down everything as it tried to process what had just happened.

  Her parents had both been only children and her grandparents had been dead for years. In an instant she had gone from being one-third of a happy family to being completely alone. It must be a dream. A nightmare. It must be.

  She didn’t see the woman approach, and barely noticed when she knelt in front of her. Jennifer saw the dull flash of the syringe in the woman’s hand and felt herself being pushed face down into the soft cushions. A hand slid beneath her stomach, unbuttoned her shorts, and pulled them and her underwear down. There was the sharp jab of the needle and an unnatural heat flooding her body. Then there was nothing.