Closer: Bay City Paranormal Investigation, Book 4

silence. Beneath the sheer outer wall of the fort, Sam hunched his shoulders and scowled at the heavy steel gate guarding the interior. It was closed. The light on the lock’s keypad winked on and off, waiting for them to input the security code. The code they didn’t have.
Sam swore. “Shit. How do we get in?”
“Hm.” Dean pursed his lips. “Maybe we don’t need to.”
“But he would’ve gone inside if…” Sam trailed off as he realized what Dean meant.
“If he could get in,” Dean finished for him. “But obviously he didn’t get in. Not through the gate, anyway.”
It made sense. “So what do we do now?”
Hands on his hips, Dean turned in a circle, surveying their surroundings. “Let’s each take a direction and scout the outside perimeter. He may have found another way in. We’ll eventually meet up, but if either of us finds Bo or any sign of him before that, we’ll call each other.”
Sam nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ll take the beach side. There’s more floodlights on the inland side, and I have the strongest flashlight.”
“Okay.” Dean laid a hand on Sam’s arm. “We’ll find him, Sam. It’ll be all right.”
Sam managed a smile despite the fear curdling his stomach. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Sliding his hand down to Sam’s, Dean squeezed his fingers, turned and strode off to the right, following the line of the fort’s outer wall.
Sam drew a deep breath and blew it out, willing himself to keep it together. Panicking wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Bo. When he felt calm enough, he started making his way along the ancient brick wall.
The first leg of the search was easy. The security lights bathed the wall and most of the parking lot in a harsh yellowish glare in which nothing larger than a gnat could possibly hide. Raindrops glinted silver and gold in the glow. An occasional cockroach scuttled along the wall or flew into the night as Sam approached, and once he spotted a drenched brown rat darting through a crack in the bricks, but there was no sign of Bo.
The dark reasserted itself when Sam rounded the curved corner between one side of the pentagonal fort and the next. There were lights along the top of the wall, but their illumination seemed to dissipate as the scrubby grass gave way to sand and sea oats. The beach sloped away into the darkness beyond. Sam heard the thunder of the waves on the sand, though he couldn’t see them. Overhead, the thick clouds obliterated the moon and stars.
Taking the flashlight out of his pocket, Sam switched it on and played it over the ground at his feet and the wall looming on his right. A candy bar wrapper half caught under a stone flapped in the rising wind, the only sign of recent human activity. Sam turned to shine his light toward the beach. Just beyond the edge of the beam, on the other side of the chainlink fence cutting across the dunes, something small and white darted between two clusters of sea oats. A ghost crab, Sam realized as the little creature stopped and raised its claws in clear threat.
Something about the presence of the normal nocturnal animals made Sam feel better. Hopefully it meant he wouldn’t be dealing with a portal tonight.
Keeping the flashlight beam trained on the uneven ground, Sam made his way along the strip of grass and mud between the fort and the fence. He couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be for someone to climb the fence as he and Dean had done to gain access to the fort. Of course, the ramparts rose thirty perpendicular feet above the ground, with the sturdy stone parapet jutting outward at the top. A person would need some serious climbing gear to scale that wall. Since the fort contained very little in the way of removable objects with any value, Sam doubted most people would bother.
The obvious difficulty of getting in this way eased some of Sam’s fear, since it seemed clear to him that Bo could not have climbed over the wall. Which meant he must be outside somewhere. Considering his nearpathological obsession with Fort Medina during the past few days, Sam figured Bo would keep close to the fort rather than wandering off to the beach, or into the woods on the inland side. With any luck, either he or Dean would find Bo within the hour.
With hope spurring him on, Sam hurried along the edge of the fort, swinging his flashlight this way and that as he went. The rain had slacked off a bit in the last few minutes, though the wind had picked up enough to lash the falling drops against