by The Behrg
“We’re back, we’re safe.”
Warm water lapped up against Blake’s face and side. “You’re not real,” he said.
“Dad, it’s me, come on!”
The moonlight split through the shutters over Adam’s face, erasing his eyes, leaving only his hair and smile, a wide swath of darkness between.
“Come on—you’ve got to try!”
His neck rotated back as if in a cinch, each fraction of an inch clicking into place another notch. He cried out in pain—Tick, tick, tick went the square clock.
The door to the cage was open, and yet Blake still couldn’t move. Countless times he had imagined his rescue, his body spilling out like beads from a broken vase, pouring onto the floor as soon as the latch was thrown open. But like a sandcastle that doesn’t fall apart when the plastic mold is lifted, his body had formed to the cage, the crate.
His new home.
At least it’s warm here, he thought, a cloud of heat dispersing from the water around him.
“We’re home, you’re okay, Dad. We’re okay.”
Water slopped up over his face and into his mouth. He breathed it in, choked, coughing, his lungs and chest heaving, the movement like a thousand hot needles spreading through the muscles in his back and shoulders and side.
Every exhalation brought an exclamation, suffering beyond imagining. He was going to rip in half, a baby was forcing itself out, a camel going through the eye of a needle, only he was the eye. Hands rubbed his body, his shoulders, his arm that felt it had detached from the rest of him, his hand, its flesh undercooked. He brought it up and over the outer lip of the crate, his fingertips poking through a gridded square.
From the outside.
He was kicking, thrashing against the waves, but they were too strong, the currents slapping him away like a doll. He’d never reach his son—Adam would die, drown, and Blake would hear his cries and see his splashing and hear him scream his father’s name
“Dad! Calm down!”
And these four torrential waves would box him in on every side, a cubed vortex, pinging him back with every attempt to escape, reminding him he had come so close, so close,
“Say something!”
So close.
Metal prongs clung to the top of his skull, raking into his flesh, ripping out hair as he slid his head backward, backward until he was
Drowning, water in his ears, crawling down his nostrils, a thin film above his eyes over which everything wavered—Adam, shifting back and forth without moving, face a blur.
He lay on the marble kitchen floor, the coolness of the stones like the caress of a corpse.
He lay an inch beneath the water in his pool, if he slipped from this step, he would drown, he couldn’t remember how to swim.
He lay, Adam holding his head in his hands, looking into his eyes as if he no longer recognized his own father, shouting, shouting,
His words unclear beneath the surface of water,
Shouting his name, shouting
“Dad,”
We’re home.
5
The fire crackled in the middle of the pool, a cinder spitting out into the sky before dissipating midflight. Wherever it had intended to go, it never made it.
Blake sat at the lip of the pool, legs dangling in the water. Every few seconds he would gasp, muscles tensing, his body taut. And then he would remember where he was.
Adam stood nearby, Joje leaning back in a patio chair by the table, granting them space. A colorless moth flew overhead in tired loops.
Adam told him about the men who had kidnapped him and his escape, how if Joje hadn’t shown up, he would be dead.
Thank God for Joje.
Jenna had been hurt and taken to a hospital. He asked which one. Neither of them knew.
“Did anyone come by the house? Anyone hear you?” Joje asked.
Blake didn’t know.
“Well, there’s an unmarked van across the street. I don’t think they know you’re here. Probably don’t have a warrant or they’d already be inside, but you can bet they’d like to bring you in for questioning,” Joje said.
The flames crested and dipped so similar to the waves of the ocean. Blake was mesmerized by them.
“We had to park out on the main road,” Joje continued.
“The PCH,” Adam said.
“Right. We came around through the back.”
Blake couldn’t believe how many shades of orange and yellow hid within each flame.
“We got a dog,” Joje said. “You should see her, a real beauty.”
Weal booty.
“What kind?” Blake asked, the fire reminding him of Conrad.
“Wrong question,” Joje said. “Care to try again?”
Blake didn’t. Eventually Adam helped him to his feet as he took his first tenuous steps, leaning on his son for support. He felt like a mannequin, knees and joints refusing to bend, his jerky movements so uncoordinated.
“Did the water help?” Adam asked.
It hadn’t. Or maybe it had, just not enough.
“No lights,” Joje said, following them inside. “I want them thinking we’re not here.”
The dog crate was directly in front of the broken door, the lock’s latch busted, pieces hanging. Adam led him around the table pretending not to notice Blake hyperventilating at the sight of the cage. They stopped at the fridge, pulling out a bottle of Vitamin Water. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
“There’s something you need to see,” Joje said. “In your office, where they won’t notice the lights.”
Blake grabbed a second bottle as well as a bag of baby carrots.
“What kind of dog?” he asked as they crossed the family room. The shattered TV still leaned up against the wall, the newer shinier version hanging above it.
“Just a bitch, nothing special,” Joje said. “We shouldn’t stay long, she’ll be getting lonely back at the car.”
“You’re not staying?” Blake asked. “Don’t make me go back in the cage! Please, I’ll do anything!”
“I know you will,” Joje said.
Blake had forgotten about the fallen chandelier, thought maybe by now police chalk would line where its corpse had lain on their entrance floor. The aftereffects of his and Joje’s fight were apparent in the living room: overturned lamp and piano bench, blood smeared on the white carpet like oil stains on a driveway. His office was only another reminder of his defeat.
“I got a text earlier,” Joje said, “on my phone. My personal phone. From your friend?”
Now Blake understood why Joje sounded so upset. Rory Shepherd had paid him a little digital visit.
“How can he do that? My number’s not listed anywhere.”
“Child’s play,” Blake answered.
“Well, this text, it was an e-mail address and password. I didn’t even know what it meant, but Adam figured it out—he’s brilliant, your son, you know. So we logged in to the e-mail, and there’s one message. A video.”
Joje flipped open the cover to Blake’s tablet, powering it on. He had forgotten about it, back in his briefcase. Had Joje found it in his car? Joje handed it to Adam. “Here, you work it.”
The black screen came aglow, casting light against the far wall. Adam toggled to the web browser then went to hotmail.com. For e-mail, he typed in blakes-effed. Blake couldn’t tell exactly what the password was; he decided he didn’t want to know.
A single e-mail was available, as Joje had said, marked read. Adam opened it—no subject line, no text, there was only an ASF file as an attachment. Blake would have ordinarily refused to open such a file—especially from Rory—but right now things like that didn’t seem to matter.
Adam double clicked the attachment, a small window popped up, and he clicked full screen. He looked at Blake almost apologetically.
It was a grainy black-and-white feed, but what it showed was unmistakable. Jenna’s SUV pulling up to the back dock of the warehouse. It spliced forward, showing Blake walking alo
ne up the stairs toward the building, holding a small tank. Another splice. Blake walking down the hall inside the building, alone, tank in hand. Cut to Blake holding the tank above his head as he ran past a camera. Another angle. Blake pouring the liquid gas onto explosives wrapped around a pillar. Another cut. Blake slamming into the young janitor, then leaving the screen. The janitor stayed down on the floor—he lifted his hands as if to ward off an attack. Then the feed went to static.
Blake looked from the screen to his son. It would have been better had I just died, he thought. At least then Adam wouldn’t think of me as a killer.
He felt an intense need to explain himself, that he hadn’t known the kid was in there, hadn’t wanted to destroy that building, that Joje was the one who had done it, made him do it, that somehow he had known this would happen, had even planned this moment to make Adam think his father was less of a person; a murderer, someone he could no longer look up to or long to be like.
“There’s more,” Joje said.
The static gave way to a black screen, a hand appeared holding a white piece of paper with words on it written in black marker.
“Tomorrow. Midnight.”
The hand let the paper drop, another one behind it.
“Payment Due”
Papers continued to drop, as the message unfolded.
“Saint Helena’s”
“Stitch”
“Nice”
“Doing”
“Business”
The video ended, reverting back to a frozen frame of the SUV pulling into the loading dock. Blake squinted—could you see there were two people in the car? The reflection off the windshield made it almost impossible to tell. Not that it would matter.
Rory had him. If Blake couldn’t find a way to get JT’s coin by tomorrow night, that video would leak all over the Internet. Between Rory and Joje, Blake’s sentencing was guaranteed.
“Wanna watch it again?” Joje asked
“I didn’t know,” Blake said to Adam. “I was just trying to—”
“It’s all right, Dad. I know Joje made you do it.”
“No. This is important—I didn’t do it for him,” Blake said. “I did it for you.”
“You killed that kid for me?”
“No!”
“We’ll help you, Bwake, to get that coin,” Joje said. “We’re in this together. Just our little family.”
“No, I don’t want Adam involved in this.”
“I’m already involved,” Adam said.
“No,” Blake said, the word coming out more forcibly than he had intended.
“What’s this Saint Helena’s and stitch thing?” Joje asked.
“Location maybe? A church? I don’t know, wherever he wants us to deliver his payment,” Blake said.
“And stitch?” Joje asked.
“No clue.”
“Why don’t we go get the dog, bring her back to the house, and then we can all brainstorm for tomorrow’s activities?” Joje said.
“I want to talk to Jenna first,” Blake said. “Make sure she’s okay.”
“Of course you do,” Joje said. “All in good time.”
6
Drew felt like a bug beneath a microscope, under the scrutiny of every passing doctor and nurse in the vicinity. They had taken Jenna almost as soon as he had stepped through the ER doors, and now, as the seconds and minutes ticked by, he was no longer sure if he had made the right call.
A magazine was on the hard plastic chair to his right, “10 Secrets to Please Your Man” slapped on its cover. The gaunt, pale face of the model with her hair pulled back wasn’t enough to get Drew to pick up its pages. Instead he waited, his thumbs circling the inner tips of his index fingers without even knowing it.
A plump nurse, with an ass so large it looked like someone had done a boob job on her behind, strolled from the double doors toward him. She moved like a walrus, shuffling one side forward, then the other. Most of the other nurses deferred to her, Drew had noticed. Must be some kind of pecking order based on who had to lug around the most weight on their butts.
He stood, wanting to be ready. Bad news could take many forms, and running might be the only option he had.
She stopped in front of him, her weight settling in like Jell-O that’s just been passed. “You’re the husband?”
“I am.”
7
Blake lowered himself halfway down the wall before leaping to the hard cement below. His feet slapped against the patio of whatever celebrity or investment broker’s house this was but once again failed him, his body rolling to the ground.
Each time he fell it was getting harder to stand back up.
He paused, listening to see if anyone had been alerted. The pool in this backyard was straight and narrow, crossing beneath an exterior wall and continuing lengthwise inside the home. Its liquid dark and quiet, as enticing as the night. Quite the contrast from the waves crashing to Blake’s right, or the light spilling from inside the home.
The back walls of the mansion were glass, giving the occupants a clear view of the ocean. Apparently, wall jumpers hadn’t been a consideration.
Blake flattened himself against the wall, keeping a juvenile palm between him and the house. The kitchen looked empty, its white lights casting a glow upon what could have been a laboratory it looked so clean. The room next to it must have been a dining area, small bulbs of light flickering softly. No, candles. A light was on in one of the rooms upstairs but provided little beyond silhouettes that Blake’s mind turned into people staring and pointing.
He heard a scrape above and looked up. Adam, tipping one leg over the side of the wall without even a huff of exertion. Joje would be right behind. He had been keeping his distance from Blake since they had set out for the car, probably a good thing. Adam cleared the landing with ease, motioned toward the house.
“They were having sex,” Adam said. “In the bedroom, when we came through earlier.” Blake followed his gaze to the hovering light upstairs. “Joje thought it was two guys. I couldn’t tell. Next one should be the last, another motion sensor but no dog.”
Adam ducked low, creeping between the bushes and cliff’s edge almost in a crawl. Blake followed, the boom of another swell breaking against rocks, causing his heart to flutter. That sound no longer provided the reassurance its digital soundtrack had only a week ago. He’d never sleep to waves again.
They cleared the other yard without incident, pausing the two times rear spotlights sprang from sensors. Beyond the last wall they were greeted with sparse weeds atop volcanic rock and boulders, sand wedged into every crevice, blowing softly with the breeze. The occasional car roared past twenty yards away on the Pacific Coast Highway.
“How big is it,” Blake asked as they scrambled down a ravine, thick brush camouflaging how much farther they needed to go. “The dog? Are we gonna be able to carry it back?”
“You’re asking the wrong question,” Joje said.
They followed the highway down a quarter mile to a grouping of dilapidated houses that were probably condemned. Each shack looked as if it would blow over at the next gust of wind, yet year after year, storm after storm, they stood, defying nature’s laws. Only in Malibu could you find a two-bedroom, six-hundred-square-foot home built in the 1920s and never renovated since that would still appraise for over a million dollars.
These homes had the same stubbornness Blake had seen in many CEOs, the ones who had built their companies from the ground up. Hardened older men, often in their late seventies or early eighties, who should have retired years ago yet continued, opposing their age, competition, innovation, and often younger children and grandchildren trying to replace them any way possible.
A sparkling white Mercedes SUV with dealer plates was parked in front of a one car garage to one of the small homes. The garage appeared to be the only thing keeping the house from collapsing in on itself. Joje and Adam both walked toward the car.
“Did you steal that?” Blake asked.
“Bought it,” Joje said. “Jenna’s car took a dump.”
“This one had good reviews,” Adam said.
“You bought a car together?”
“Sales guy even let Adam drive,” Joje said with a smile.
A car whizzed past on the curved road doing at least sixty just a few feet from where they stood, its tail lights disappearing around the next bend. Where was the formidable duo, Randall and McClellan, when you needed them?
Blake ran his hands up to the windows, peering inside. It was empty.
“In the house, Bwake. We were concerned she might make too much noise. Dogs do bark after all,” Joje said.
The porch was stooped, shingles sliding down the left side of the roof like children sledding in snow. The door was so sun faded it looked to be completely colorless. No damage to the doorjamb; Blake wondered how they had broken in.
Inside was a narrow hall that led to an open bathroom and closed bedroom door on the right, kitchen on the left. Lines in the carpet like wheel tracks of a stroller led toward the bedroom. Blake followed the sound of footsteps and continued into the kitchen. A stand-alone stove, yellowed countertops, and pine cabinets that looked to have fed generations of termites. The table in the center of the small room was nothing more than a piece of plywood resting on two small refrigerators the size Blake typically saw in executives’ office suites. A stained glass lamp with decorated floral insignia hung like the last branch of a dying tree from the ceiling.
A million might have been generous.
“In here, Bwakey,” Joje shouted from the adjacent room separated by a sliding glass door. Blake was glad architecture had improved in the past nine decades.
Before continuing into what had to be the living room, his eyes fell on a wooden block next to a microwave with a wind-up dial, the kind that cooked your food while pumping radiation into your organs. The block had six knife blades stuck into it.
Blake slid one out, examining it. A butcher knife, some cheap made-in-China brand he didn’t recognize, its flimsy blade less than ideal. He placed it back in—way too bulky—and settled for a smaller boning knife, its curved steel hopefully giving him some advantage over its dulled edge.