by Platt, Sean
She wanted to tell Acevedo, but something stopped her. Instead, Marina approached the bedroom.
“That’s it, Marina, come closer.”
Everything in her said to turn and run back to the kitchen. But Marina felt a compulsion to see what was inside the room.
Her heart was like thunder, goose bumps raking her flesh as she crept toward the door. Marina reached out slowly for the doorknob, her mind screaming at her to turn around.
She tried to turn the handle.
Locked.
OK, that’s it. Turn around and go. Now.
Finally, Marina felt something click inside, and she was able to turn away from the door and walk away.
As she headed back to the kitchen, the sound of Acevedo’s saw cut off.
Behind her, she heard the door unlock.
Click
Marina turned, staring at the door.
“Marina,” the voice said again, this time sounding muffled, as if coming from the other side of the door.
She turned to look at Acevedo who had turned the saw back on and was cutting again, oblivious to Marina and whoever else might be in the house.
She turned back to the door and walked toward it.
She reached out, turned the knob, and stepped through the doorway into a pitch-black room. Light from the living room should have bled inside but didn’t.
The room clutched its darkness like a cloak to disavow nature’s laws.
“Come in,” the man’s voice said from the far corner of the room.
She could barely make out a shape in the darkness, not enough to see who it was.
She wanted to turn and leave.
This is a terrible idea.
Acevedo’s saw faded into the background as if it, and he, were becoming impossibly distant and far away.
“Come closer, so I may see you,” whispered the man.
Marina’s body obeyed.
The door closed behind her.
Click
Marina’s every fiber screamed at her to run. She was being tricked by The Darkness, eager to finish the job It had set out to do: kill her.
Yet she couldn’t turn away.
Marina had to move closer and see what It had to tell her.
She moved toward the corner.
“You cannot trust him,” said the man in the dark.
“Who?”
“The priest. You must make sure he doesn’t get the vials.”
“Why?”
“You don’t really know anything about him, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
The sound of her name cut into the conversation — Acevedo from the other room. “Marina?”
She turned back to the man in the shadows, but he was gone, and she was alone in the darkness.
“Marina?” Acevedo called again, his footsteps approaching the door. He twisted at the handle, but couldn’t open it.
“Marina?”
“Coming.” She reached out in the darkness, found the lock, twisted it, then opened the door.
“What’s going on?” he asked, eyeing Marina suspiciously.
“I was looking around and … the door just closed and locked itself behind me.”
She left out the part about the man in the darkness and his warning, hoping that Acevedo couldn’t tell she was withholding.
She looked down and saw a metal box in his hands.
“Is that the vial and the list?”
“Yes,” he said, “please, take it. You need to open it.”
“Why me?”
“I don’t need the temptation.”
“OK.” Marina opened the box.
Inside was a thick black cloth wrapped around a vial. Marina couldn’t see the vial, or its glowing blue liquid, but she could feel it humming, louder as she opened it.
Beside the vial was a piece of folded paper.
She pulled it out and saw three numbers written in her father’s handwriting.
“What are these?”
“The names of the other three people who have vials, and their addresses. Written in code.”
“I assume you have the key?”
“Yes,” he said pointing to his head, “up here. Let me see the list.”
He took the paper from Marina and looked it up and down.
“Make sense to you?”
“Yes, and one of these is in town. I suggest we head there first. Let’s get out of here. I feel like someone’s watching us.”
Marina wondered if that’s who she saw in the room. The someone watching them. She wanted to tell Acevedo about the person, and the message, but at the same time something in her gut said the voice could be trusted.
Yes, her father had trusted Acevedo enough to give him a vial and a list of the others. And yes, he didn’t seem to want any part of the vials, enough to have told her not to surrender them.
Yet there was something off about the priest. Being fooled by Steven had taught Marina to acknowledge her instincts. There had been small signs of Steven’s oddness that she’d gathered from time to time, things she shouldn’t have ignored. Marina allowed her love, if she could call it that, to blind her.
She wouldn’t be that stupid again.
At the same time, Marina wouldn’t blindly trust a voice in the dark.
There was no rush to tell Acevedo anything. She could hold her cards and bide her time until she had reason to trust the priest, or not.
Marina hoped she could trust him.
If not, she had no one else.
* * * *
CHAPTER 3 — EDWARD KEENAN
Ed listened through the walls, ear to the long-range Agency microphone’s earpiece until the saw’s buzzing scream finally abated.
Afterward, he heard Marina talking to the man Paola said was a priest.
Judging from their conversation, they had a list with the names and locations of the other three people holding vials.
“Should we grab them up?” Luther asked.
“He said it’s written in code,” Ed said. “If we grab him now, he might not give it up.”
“I’ll make him give it up.”
“No, we wait and see. He said one was local, so we follow them some more.”
“How many you think they have now?”
“Paola said at least two to start with. So if they picked one up just now and they lead us to one more, at least, then we have four. It’s not worth blowing by moving in now.”
“You think they know we’re here?” Luther asked, having heard the priest say he thought someone was watching.
“I dunno. Maybe they can feel us like Paola feels them.”
“All the more reason to grab them now?” Luther suggested, pointing to the pair getting into their car.
Acevedo looked up and down the street, and for a moment his eyes stopped on their van.
“Shit, he made us,” Luther said. “Let’s move in.”
Ed slapped a hand on the man’s wrist as he went to key the ignition.
“No, we wait. He can’t see anything through the windshield.”
“Unless he’s like Paola,” Luther said.
“We sit still.” Ed hated explaining himself to the giant. He wasn’t used to questions from people under his rank, and wasn’t about to start letting it happen with Luther.
Luther was about to continue arguing, but Ed met his eyes and glared at him.
“I am not repeating myself.”
“Yes, sir,” Luther said.
They stood down as Marina and the priest climbed into the classic Mustang then headed down the street.
Ed flipped on the tablet, synced to the tracking device he planted on the car while the two were inside the house.
He watched as the beeping dot traveled two blocks. It turned south then east — giving the priest just enough time to ensure he wasn’t being tailed.
“OK,” Ed said, “now you can follow.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 4 — BORICIO WOLFE
Boricio woke
feeling like he’d been wedged up a giant’s asshole.
It wasn’t just the smell, Boricio couldn’t move his arms … at all. He shook, trying to break free, but was trapped in a Houdini’s worth of FUCKALL.
“Let me out!” Boricio screamed and kicked out, stubbing his toes against the cell door and thrashing against the straitjacket.
Pain shot from his toes to his ankles.
Fuck! Fuck!
The fuckers had taken his shoes. And his clothes, save for the straitjacket. The giant’s shit was his own; Boricio was sitting in a homemade pile.
“Goddammit, let me the fuck outta here, you stupid cunts!”
Boricio’s heart hammered so fast he thought he might have a heart attack and die — alone in BumFuck County Lockup, buried in a John Doe grave, barely a shit stain to remind the world that Boricio Wolfe had been in it.
The utter confinement made Boricio brew with a fresh batch of rage. It was one thing to be stuck in the cell. That, he could handle. Boricio still had some space and could move around. A shark in a tank was still a fucking shark. And it was one thing to have his hands tied behind his back. A kick in the nuts, but something he could deal with and worm his way out of in time.
But this was different.
The straitjacket was a coffin, pinning him down from all sides, hands secured in front of his chest.
Boricio wanted, no needed, to break free of the jacket. He had to move. He felt like he had crabs crawling all over his entire fucking body.
“Let me out!!”
Boricio screamed loud enough to wake his earliest victims, but no one responded to shit. So far as he could tell his cell was small and dark with a floor and walls of concrete.
The only light came from a sliver under the door, cockteasing the world outside.
Boricio screamed again until his throat was raw and tasted of blood.
After what felt like a fuck you from forever, a shadow finally moved across the floor and Boricio heard footsteps outside.
He sat straighter. Pain seized his back, but Boricio ignored it, eager to see anyone who might come through the door.
Except the motherfucker who did.
Guard Tard opened the door to blinding light, the man still half-concealed in shadow. But he was quick to talk and surrender himself like a dipshit. No sense of suspense. With turned tables, Boricio would’ve given the ass crack an HBO of horrors.
“Well, well, well,” Guard Tard said, “we’ve got ourselves a genuine badass here, don’t we?”
Boricio let the guard gloat.
“Tell me, John Doe, do ya consider yourself a careful man?”
Boricio still said nothing, though he was curious where this bag of cock meat was going.
“Because I get the feeling that you do. You’re the kinda guy that lives behind the walls, just outta sight, where ya scamper out to do your sneaky, dirty little deeds unseen, like a goddamned cockroach. Am I right?”
“Yup, you got me all figured out.”
“More than you know, pal. More than you know.”
Boricio knew the fucker wanted him to beg for an explanation, smiling like a goddamned retard at a petting zoo full of kittens and titties.
But Boricio refused to play ball. He just sat there staring Guard Tard in the eyes instead.
Guard Tard kneeled down, coming to within a few feet of Boricio’s face, close enough to smell onion and bologna on his breath, along with a strong whiff of tartar suggesting this man’s dental hygiene was about as half-assed as his grammar and attention to nostril hair.
“See, boy, you don’t need to use your name for us to find out the best stuff about ya.”
Boricio stared straight ahead, pretending not to be a tenth as interested as he suddenly was.
“Even the most careful of killers sometimes leave evidence behind. And you, my cockroach friend, have slipped a few times. Hmm, let’s see. We got this motel in California where a former cop and this Church of Original Design guy were found dead. Then we got this case a while back, a pedophile got himself killed and left out in the middle o’ nowhere. Any of this ringin’ a bell in that little insect brain o’ yours?”
“Not even a dinner bell.” No one got to Boricio — not ever — but this fucker was. He smiled to bury his rage.
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to say a word. That’s the beautiful thing about DNA evidence. You play dumb all ya want, but we still fuckin’ got ya. Rest on that, Smarter Than the Average Bear.”
Guard Tard stood up, spun, and slammed the door closed behind him.
Boricio wanted to kick.
Wanted to scream.
Wanted out of the fucking straitjacket.
Wanted to kill something.
But he was stuck in a giant’s asshole with a genuine pile of shit.
* * * *
CHAPTER 5 — MARINA HARMON
“You want to handle this one?” Acevedo asked as they pulled up to the black iron gate that circled the first house on their list.
The estate was massive, two stories, and situated on a bluff looking down on Hollywood. It wasn’t Malibu, but Marina still put the sticker price at three million minimum.
“Sure.” Marina got out of the car, then went to the touch screen and camera that stood to greet anyone requesting entrance.
She pressed a call button and was met by a black screen and a man’s voice: “Yes?”
“We’re here to see Mr. Milton Rosen.”
A moment’s pause, then, “He’s dead.”
Marina looked down, embarrassed. “Are you his son? Andrew?”
“Yeah, who are you?”
“It’s been a long time, so you may not remember me. My name is Marina Harmon. My father was Josh Harmon, and our fathers were friends. You came out to our house a few times for dinner parties several years ago.”
Marina couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Mr. Rosen or his son but was reasonably sure he was a teen at the time, and likely in his early twenties now. She wondered if the kid had inherited everything, or whether it had all gone to his mother. She couldn’t even remember if there were a Mrs. Rosen. She barely remembered Mr. Rosen, other than the fact that her dad had played golf with him on occasion, and he was a famous Broadway playwright who’d written some plays her father had rather liked. How the two had become friends, Marina wasn’t sure. She didn’t think Mr. Rosen had ever been a part of the church.
“So, whadya want?” Andrew asked through the speaker.
“I’d like to talk to you about something.”
“Mind telling me what?” He sounded perturbed.
“Not over the speaker. I’d rather we sit down.”
“Who’s that with you?”
Marina looked back to Acevedo sitting in the passenger seat, looking as annoyed as she felt.
“This is another friend of my father’s, Mr. Acevedo.”
“I don’t know him.”
Marina sighed and folded her hands together. “OK, may we still talk to you?”
“You can. He stays outside.”
Marina was about to object, but Acevedo said, “It’s fine, go ahead.”
She rolled her eyes behind their lids and faked her best smile. “OK, then, may I come in to talk to you, alone?”
“Yes,” the young man said, “alone.”
The gate opened.
Marina leaned down into the car and met the priest’s eyes. “So, any advice?”
“Ask him if his father left behind a vial of any kind, and then tell him you need it.”
“What if he doesn’t want to hand it over?”
“Then come back here, and I’ll go get it.”
“What about these?” Marina patted her pocket where she’d taken his vial and added it to her father’s old box. “Do you want me to leave them with you for safekeeping?”
He stared ahead into the house for a moment, as if considering Marina’s offer, then shook his head no. “I don’t want any part of them.”
“OK.”
She thought again of the warning from the man back at the house. He’d said not to trust Acevedo with the vials, but the priest didn’t disagree. It made no sense, unless it was The Darkness trying to wedge its way between them.
The front doors opened before she reached them.
Marina was met by a buzz-cut, stocky man wearing all black with a gun holstered at his side. He held a metal-detecting wand in his hand and told her to stand with her arms out.
“All this to see an old friend?”
Marina wondered why Andrew had a security detail. Perhaps he was famous himself. She recalled him doing some local TV back in the day, but hadn’t heard anything about movie roles or some other claim to fame.
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” the guard said.
Marina looked around the house. Red carpet, white walls, and matching white modern furniture decorated the living room, stretching from the home’s rear where giant windows stared out over the city below.
The kitchen, a mix of black and white, was off to her right, but Marina saw no sign of Andrew. She assumed he was up the spiral stairway, on the second floor.
The guard frisked her, and his hand paused on the box in her coat.
“What’s this?” He drew the box from her pocket before she could stop him.
The guard shook the box then went to open it.
“Don’t!” Marina reached out to try and retrieve the box.
He pulled it away, glared at Marina, then opened the box and looked inside. “Ah, Mr. Rosen will be quite happy to see these. Come with me.”
The guard led her to the stairs.
Shit. Not even a minute into the house before they got the vials. I should’ve left them with Acevedo.
Marina considered what the guard had said — that Andrew would be “quite happy” to see the vials, which implied an awareness. If so, was that a good thing or a bad thing?
At first she’d taken Andrew’s attitude for arrogance, but perhaps he was merely cautious. Maybe he’d seen some of the same dangers that she had and was afraid that someone would be coming for his father’s vial.