Page 13 of Fighting for Julia (Laguna Beach Cops #6)

THE PRESENT

LAKE FOREST CEMETERY, ILLINOIS

Anderson Family Mausoleum

Old headstones rose like sentinels guarding ghosts through thick, low-lying ground fog.

Twin wraiths, dressed alike in heavy black clothing, moved with stealthy grace toward their target—a large stone structure with intricate carvings designed especially for the Anderson family in the early twentieth century by the grandson of one of the original architects of Lake Forest Cemetery.

The tallest of the black-clothed figures climbed a set of three cement steps and dropped a backpack in front of a pair of heavy iron doors.

Half smiles carved into the faces of cherubs mocked them.

“I hate these baby-faced angels.” Without a word, her companion handed a hammer to her. Emitting guttural, animal-like sounds of anger and frustration, she struck again and again at those carved faces until they lay in pieces on the cement beneath her feet.

The dead did not hear the last terrible echo of metal striking metal as it faded into the dark night of a crescent moon. The dead did not stir to the call of the metal siren.

Her brother reached into the backpack and removed a lock-picking toolset they’d acquired on their journey north.

They’d befriended an elderly couple who’d happily obliged them by offering the siblings their Cadillac and most of the money in their bank account.

To prove they weren’t the ruthless, murderous savages described on the news, Axis and Axalia left the couple alive, untouched and unharmed by cruelty.

“We’re in,” Axis whispered, though it didn’t matter.

On well-oiled hinges, the doors swung open in silence. As silent as the cemetery with the susurration of the wind through the trees.

Taken into custody during the raid on the Andersons’ underground home in Oregon and held prisoners by the government, Axis and Axalia had not been allowed to attend their parents’ and brother’s interment without proper funeral rites.

Their foster parents in Hawaii had been instructed not to discuss the aftermath of the raid with them, nor the circumstances that led to Axel, Jr.’s demise, along with Dr. Schow and Dr. Sherman, their parents’ trusted friends.

Only Dr. Manfredi had been kind enough to share the painful truth.

Since then, Axis and Axalia had been planning for this moment and biding their time. Now it was here.

The siblings switched on small flashlights.

Beams arced and danced across gold-engraved nameplates bearing the identities of Axis and Axalia’s Anderson ancestors.

Since their parents and brother were the newest additions to the long dead, they had been interred in the middle of the last row in the back of the crypt.

“Here’s Mama.” Axis focused his beam on the nameplate. “I told you that she is good and dead.”

“I want to see her.” Axalia raised the hammer she still held in her hand, intending to break into the tomb.

Axis grabbed it and dropped it into the backpack. “No. We’re not disturbing Mama. She’s finally at peace. Besides, after so long, she won’t look like herself.”

“She looks like Julia. So do I.”

“To a degree. Now let’s find what we came for and get the hell outta here.”

Axis and Axalia flipped over a memory bench and pried open the bottom. From inside, they removed stacks of bundled cash in various denominations, fake IDs for both, and a black notebook that contained the location of safe houses that Julio Escobar had set up while on the run from his father.

Axalia scanned the list of addresses. “Do you think these places are still around?”

“Yeah. Mama said her hacker friends were keeping watch for her. We’ll head straight south to Alabama, then west into Texas and cross the border into Mexico.”

“All right.”

Before they left Lake Forest Cemetery, they exchanged the elderly couple’s car for an old pickup truck in the groundskeeper’s shed. Within thirty minutes, they switched the license plate and headed due south.

“We should find that couple and kill them,” Axalia remarked. She lounged with her feet propped on the dashboard and idly scraped dirt from beneath her stubby nails with a pocketknife. “They’ve ratted on us by now.”

Axis glanced sideways at her. “No. No more unnecessary slaughter. Blood leaves a trail. Besides, Chief McQuaid and his cops think we’re headed west to Laguna Beach, and that’s fine with me. They don’t know about our connection to the Escobars.”

“The Escobars don’t know about our connection to the Escobars,” Axalia reminded him.

Axis grinned like Jack Nicholson’s character the Joker in the original Batman movie starring Michael Keaton. “Wait until they get a load of us.”

Axalia laughed. Axis laughed, too, and pressed the gas pedal.