Prey for Us

by Geoffrey Neil

  All good.

  Clay buried his head in his arm and laughed with relief. He replied:

  Don’t scare me like that. What the hell happened at the apartment?

  It’s all under control.

  Call me. Need to talk.

  Sit tight. Will call later. Don’t worry. See you soon.

  Clay stared at the message for a long time. It was terse enough to be from Morana, but the see you soon didn’t sound like her. See you soon was too big a commitment for Morana because she never told him when she would see him.

  Chapter 24

  THANE WOKE UP shortly after dawn on a set of blankets piled in the corner of the garage. After only an hour of sleep the previous night, he yawned as he walked to his work counter to check his phone for voicemail. He hadn’t heard the phone ring since yesterday but hoped that somehow he had missed Morana’s call while dozing. As he neared it, the zero on the phone’s base station blinked just as it had since last night.

  He went to the center of the garage floor and pivoted, examining the results of the huge project that had taken most of the night. The photographs of his shop that he discovered on Waylon’s phone yesterday had generated such anxiety that he immediately set out to remove any similarity between his workspace in the garage and the photographs. He wanted every identifiable object from the photos either removed or concealed.

  For hours he transported supplies and tools down to the sub-lair where he stored them in a hidden chamber. The larger items, he moved to a space between the rear of the garage and back fence that separated his property from Mrs. Perkins’s.

  All that remained inside his shop were a couple of sawhorses, two bundles of rolled carpet and his mother’s old upright piano, covered with a dusty tarp. After clearing off everything except for his landline phone, he hung sheets to conceal his work cabinets and countertop.

  On each ascension from the sub-lair to the garage, he checked the phone for any message from Mo, desperately hoping for news that she’d successfully dealt with Waylon.

  He had quarried five new blocks from the west end of the sub-lair and transported them up to the garage, stacking four of them atop one another to completely obstruct the inside of the large garage door. After verifying that the knob was locked, he moved the fifth block to the entryway, buttressing the door so that it couldn’t open.

  Only after he was safely barricaded in this reinforced cocoon did he try to get some sleep on the blankets.

  The thin outline of the morning sun intensified around the edges of the garage’s window coverings. Thane reached down and picked up Gus’s bowl on the floor beside the countertop. He stared at the untouched food for a moment before placing the bowl back on the floor. “Gus… Gus?” his voice echoed. He stepped back and looked up to the cabinet tops where he last remembered seeing the cat comfortably curled up on a blanket. He didn’t remember Gus slipping out through either the roll-top or entry doors while he moved items from the garage last night. He wondered if the massive changes to the interior of the garage had temporarily scared Gus away.

  He went to the eight-ton block that buttressed the entry door and moved it away. He tested the knob and was relieved that it was still locked. He opened the door, leaned out and examined the outside knob. Its talcum powder was untouched. He scanned the yard between the garage and the rear of his house, including the shaded spot under the solar panels where Gus sometimes napped. Gus wasn’t there. All was still and quiet, except for some chirping coming from the direction of Mrs. Perkins’s bird feeder over the fence.

  He stepped out and whistled. Typically, if Gus were in the yard after Thane had been absent in the sub-lair, the cat would have bounded to the entrance at the slightest click of the door opening.

  He locked himself back in the garage, re-barricading the entry door with the block and then called Morana again. “Come on, I need you,” he said as it rang. When the call went to voicemail, he hung up without leaving a message. He hated leaving messages. The idea of giving a permanent recording of his voice to anyone who could share it indefinitely without his knowledge or permission repulsed him. But why wasn’t she answering? During their last conversation, she was adamant that he should call her if he needed anything.

  He spent the next three hours installing a new turbine vent in the garage roof. He then tested its venting capacity by slowly lifting the Gateway block with the garage roll-up door closed. The turbine vent spun faster than Thane had anticipated, creating a loud whirring.

  Despite knowing that Mrs. Perkins’s sound-sensitivity was no longer a factor, he got back to work, creating a second slatted vent beside the spinning vent before testing again. The additional opening reduced the sound to a barely audible rush of air. Now he could travel down to, and up from the sub-lair keeping the garage doors locked and without fear of blowing out the windows.

  He returned to the center of his shop for another inspection. He wiped sweat on his sleeve, smearing the fine dusting of coral rock powder that covered his clothes and afro. His fingers were slightly swollen, his arms were tired, and he was finally ready to eat.

  It was just after noon when he tried calling Morana again, this time crossing his fingers as the phone rang. When he heard her voicemail greeting, his desperation to reach her finally surpassed his fear of leaving a voicemail. “Hi, it’s me. You told me to call you if I needed you. So, I need you. Please call back.”

  He descended on the lift into the sub-lair where he pushed open a door block just outside the elevator chamber. He passed through it, then closed himself inside sealing himself in pitch darkness. He pulled the flashlight from his pocket and sidestepped along a hallway barely the width of his shoulders. After about thirty-five paces, he stepped onto a smaller lift and began ascending.

  A hundred feet above him in the main house, air rushed through the fireplace and out the chimney and sucked draperies, pressing them to the windows that he always left open a few inches. Less than a minute later, Thane rose through the floor of a bedroom closet in the main house. He opened the closet door and stepped into the second bedroom.

  He walked quietly to the door and listened. The house was silent. He stepped into the hallway cautiously peered around each corner as he made his way to the front of the house. After he verified that the front door was locked, he went to the kitchen and verified that the back door was still locked as well. He looked out the kitchen window to the backyard, hoping to see Gus, but there was no sign of him. Even from a distance, he could see that the faint dusting of talcum powder was undisturbed along the front edge of the garage.

  He wolfed down a couple of sandwiches, then went straight to the master bedroom where he pulled the soiled and tangled linen from the bed and stuffed it into a laundry basket. He snapped open a plastic garbage bag and dumped in a couple of empty wine bottles, a package of cookies, and a badly torn bag of deep-fried pork rinds, some of which had fallen to the floor.

  He hurried from the room and came back moments later carrying a broom and a set of new linen he tossed onto the bed. He swept up the crumbs on the floor under the bedside table and wiped down the headboard with a rag and furniture polish. He paused when he noticed a pair of handcuffs dangling behind the headboard from one of its rungs.

  After he finished cleaning the bedroom, he went to the bathroom and cleaned the shower and sink until they were spotless. He placed clean bath towels on the shelves, then leaned to check his work from several angles, wiping a few drops of water from the faucet handle.

  After putting his cleaning supplies away, he went to the foyer and found a note taped to the inside of the front door. He pulled it off and opened it. His shoulders drooped as he read it. He squeezed the note into his fist and stuffed it into his pocket.

  He looked out the peephole. With no one in sight, he took a deep breath and opened the front door. He whistled for Gus. There was no response.

  Thane was already averse to spending time out in the open, but stepping outside with W
aylon on the loose gave him a shiver. He approached the two steps at the edge of the porch and looked around the front yard. None of his neighbors were out. The street had an eerie silence.

  On the side of the porch sat 12 trays of flowers, two large bags of potting soil and a new trowel that had been delivered.

  There’s no way Morana would approve of what he was about to do after her stern warnings about Waylon’s penchant for revenge.

  He left the front door ajar, hoping that, if necessary, he could get inside and lock it before Waylon could catch him. The open door would also allow him to hear the landline phone.

  He got to work on his hands and knees, weeding the overgrown flower bed below the living room window. Constantly looking over his shoulder as he worked, ready to run inside at any moment.

  He spent the next hour planting the flowers while keeping vigilant watch and stewing over Morana’s delay in contacting him.

  When only two trays remained, Thane crawled to the porch steps and sat, taking a brief break. He looked at the new rows of fresh flowers lined up in a perfect grid pattern in the bed. A lopsided stack of empty flower trays sat by the garbage bags of weeds. Sweat stained Thane’s shirt and patches of dried mud covered the front of his clothing.

  As he stood up to finish the last flower trays, he heard the phone ring. He dropped the trowel, ran through the open front door, racing to the kitchen where he snatched the phone from the holder. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Thane, I’m so glad you’re there. It’s Mo.”

  “Where have you been?” Thane yelled. “You told me to call you, so I’ve been trying to call, and you never pick up.”

  “Sweetheart, calm down. I’m sorry, I couldn’t answer.”

  “Did you get Waylon?”

  “Well,” Morana said, hesitating. “Yes, I did.”

  “Thank God. Did he have Gus?”

  “Gus? No, why would he?”

  “Gus is missing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. He’s been gone since yesterday. He’s never gone that long. His food hasn’t been touched.”

  “Maybe he had a successful hunt?” Morana said. “You told me he’s a great mouser.”

  “Except that he doesn’t eat the mice after catching them. He brings them to me.” Thane walked back to the open front door and looked out. “There are no dead mice in front of the garage or house. There are no talcum paw prints. There’s nothing.” He closed the door and locked it.

  “I have a hunch Gus is out exploring,” Morana said.

  “Your hunch is wrong. I thought Waylon took him, but you’re telling me you caught him.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you, Thane.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s more to it than that. I’m going to tell you something, and I don’t want you to panic…”

  “You’re panicking me—just say it.”

  “I did catch Waylon, but he attacked me, and he got away.”

  “What?” Thane shouted. “How could you let him get away?”

  “I didn’t let him get away. I tracked him down and captured him at his house.”

  “Captured? That’s not what we discussed.” Thane stomped to the living room where he circled the coffee table, squeezing his hair with his free hand.

  “Thane, it was out of my control—let me explain. You don’t need to worry if you stay in the sub-lair like I told you to. Meanwhile, I have a new plan to get him back.”

  “A plan? I don’t need a new plan. I don’t need you to get him, I need you to finish him—that was the plan.”

  “You didn’t like it when I raised my voice to you, please don’t raise yours to me.”

  “Sorry.” Thane sat on the sofa and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “The one thing that hasn’t changed is my desire to have him out of my life forever. You couldn’t have been clearer about how you would help me achieve that. You told me about the whole airplane V1 thing with no turning back. I agreed. Why would we be talking about capturing him?” He got up and returned to the kitchen, peering out the window to the garage.

  “Capturing him allows for more options. Let me finish telling you what happened… I had him cornered. We fought and ended up on the ground. I had him pinned. He swung at me, got lucky and must have landed a solid blow to my head because I blacked out. When I came to, I was tied up in the trunk.”

  “That’s disappointing,” Thane said. “You were so confident. You told me you had this under control.”

  “I did, and I do. Listen, Thane, I can throw in the towel now, and you’ll be on your own to sort this out with law enforcement and to defend yourself against a legal machine that Waylon is a master at manipulating.”

  “No, I don’t want that.”

  “Then you need to trust me. The bottom line is that I got away, and everything will work out. You’ll see.”

  Thane sighed. “How did you get away?”

  “While riding in the trunk, I found a jagged piece of metal framing near the latch and used it to free my wrists and ankles. When Waylon opened the trunk, I was ready. He must have assumed that I’d still be tied up, which was careless on his part. My legs were free, when he leaned in to pull me out, I kicked him. When I jumped from the trunk, he ran.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “At Remly City dump. I chased him through a nearby swamp, but he disappeared in some woods at the edge. Thane, this place was so godforsaken, I’m sure he planned to kill me.”

  “I’ll be a bigger prize for him,” Thane said. “He’ll kill me now, I know it.” He went back to the front door and double-checked the deadbolt.

  “Actually, I don’t think so,” Morana said.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “He made a call while driving. I couldn’t hear his voice clearly from the trunk, but I understood parts of the conversation. Thane, your trap floor blew his mind. He was more amazed by it than either of us thought he would be. He wants your secret, and he’s fully aware that he can’t get it from you if you are dead. I heard him telling someone about it on the phone.”

  “What exactly did he say about it?” Thane said, peering at his unfinished flower bed through a crack in the living room drapes.

  “He told the person that he felt the sensation of dropping on an elevator. He said he was surprised that his feet remained on the floor during such a rapid drop. Then he told them about the darkness, and he mentioned that I was with you, but that he didn’t know my name.”

  “Did he mention the photo he took?”

  “No.”

  “Did he describe anything else in my shop or the sub-lair?”

  “I only heard part of the call. The conversation was short. Listen, Thane, I have some new information on Waylon. I had planned to wait until I saw you, but this situation may be more urgent than I anticipated.”

  Thane sighed. “You lost him, and he’ll kill me. What could be worse?”

  “I understand that you are upset, but if you had followed my advice in the sub-lair, a perfect plan would have already been executed—so to speak.”

  Thane quietly replied, “I know. What new information do you have?”

  “I asked Clay for help.”

  “You brought Clay into this?”

  “Hear me out. I told him none of the personal information you shared with me about Waylon. Clay can be useful to us. I’ve never met anyone who can sleuth as much information about people and as quickly as Clay can. The only thing Clay currently knows about your situation is that Waylon has been after you for some time.”

  “Did you tell him about the sub-lair?”

  “I would never do that without your permission.”

  “Clay talks a lot. If you told him, I’ll discover it.”

  “I understand. Listen, Clay uncovered evidence that the problem of Waylon goes deeper than either of us suspected. Waylon’s bullying extends to many more p
eople than you.”

  “Of course. I would assume that.”

  “Yes, but this is much more serious. Clay uncovered organized crime ties, specifically an organization called Delboro. You may have seen them on the news.”

  “I don’t watch the news.”

  “All you need to know is that they are dangerous criminals based here in Florida, linked to credit card fraud, prostitution, and drug trafficking. The bad news is that Waylon has plenty of connections with them. I’m not yet sure where Waylon ranks in this organization, but if I were to kill him outright, payback for eliminating a key player for these people doesn’t appeal to me. It also means that Waylon may not need to come back for you personally with the types of resources at his disposal.”

  “My God,” Thane said. He walked around the house turning off all the interior lights.

  “What these criminals do is horrific,” Morana said. “Clay showed me photos. We can track Waylon’s whereabouts if he’s in one of his cars.”

  “What does he drive?”

  “He has a black BMW and a red Mercedes, so you need to keep an eye out for either of these cars parked on your street.”

  “I’ll try, but I don’t pay attention to the cars outside.”

  “Now is a good time to start, and you have to understand that there’s a possibility that he or someone he works with could show up at your place at any time. Because of that, I think it would be safest for you if I stayed with you for the time being.”

  “Why?”

  “If he’s after both of us, we can be sure he’ll revisit your garage.”

  Thane didn’t reply as he went to the bedroom and opened the closet door.

  “Did you hear me?” Morana asked.

  “And if Waylon trespasses again, how do you plan to handle it?”

  “We can use the trap floor again.”

  “Have you forgotten why I originally released him from the sub-lair? I don’t want any crime on my property. I could lose everything.”