by Hadena James
“We should have brought the food up,” I told Gabriel as he stood. “Or at least most of the food and that way we could just camp out here until the cavalry arrived.”
“It’s not like you to want to be rescued.” Gabriel told me.
“I know, but I have some concerns. There are traps out there and I am injured, and I’ll be honest, it’s kinda painful. Which means I’m going to be taking drugs and trying to avoid traps and trying to keep both of us alive out there. That bothers me.”
“Which part?” Gabriel asked.
“Keeping you alive,” I told him. “I know you can survive on your own, but with me injured and not as on top of my game, I’m afraid I will do something stupid to get you killed.”
“The team is probably only five or six hours from us and they should be able to get in here and get you out without you worrying about doing something stupid. Plus, there’s food up here too, fridge, freezer, pantry. There’s also one bedroom, and Raphael has clothes in it. I think he’s been living here.” Gabriel told me. He plugged Raphael’s phone in. “Know how to reset a sim card to remove the lock?”
“No, see if you can redial Malachi’s number,” I told him. Gabriel began giving instructions to the phone. It kept telling him it didn’t understand. Twice it told him to unlock the phone and try using the phone dialer.
“Your dad is listed in there,” I told Gabriel. “Call him and have him call Malachi if you don’t want to call Mary again.”
Gabriel told the phone to call Gabriel. It began to ring, through the speaker, but I could hear it ringing in the bunker too.
“You know we didn’t find your phone, right?” I told him as I got up off the couch and began to follow the sound. It was strange inside a metal building, sounding tinny and like it was coming from all directions. Gabriel turned Raphael’s phone off speaker and we both began to search. When it went to voicemail, Gabriel called it again.
We found Gabriel’s phone in the upstairs bathroom, under some dirty clothes that looked like Raphael had been busier doing more than just skinning part of my leg. After closely inspecting Gabriel’s scalp and then him inspecting mine we concluded none of the blood was Gabriel’s and I wasn’t a bleeder, which meant it probably wasn’t all my blood. I had a horrible thought that some of it might have been Nathan Green’s. Caleb was not going to be happy to find Raphael alive.
Gabriel’s phone had 104 missed calls and almost as many voicemails. He went through and just deleted the ones from his family without listening to them. He did the same to mine and the one we had left by accident from Raphael’s phone. After eliminating all the calls from SCTU members there was only two voicemails left, one from Nyleena, probably to see if he had found me yet, and one from Alex. He didn’t listen to Nyleena’s, but he did Alex’s. She said she was calling to just try to get a location on his phone using all the toys Daniels’ Security had. The phone flashed once and went dead. We took Raphael’s off the charger Gabriel had found and plugged in Gabriel’s. Luckily, they both had Android phones. Another phone began to ring. We found it in the pile of bloody clothing. It was my phone, and Apex’s number was showing up. Not the 2 he used when he called through the service, but his actual cell phone number. I answered it and the phone died. Almost immediately, Raphael’s phone began to ring. Gabriel and I both went back into a weird little area that was part dining room, part recreation room where he had plugged in his phone instead of Raphael’s.
“Hello,” Gabriel and I both answered it together on speaker phone.
“That was odd. I was trying to trace your phone Aislinn, see where it got left.”
“It died; it‘s in the bunker with us,” I told him.
“Did you guys get out of the bottom level?”
“Yes, Raphael was nice enough to set a timer on his phone for us. When it went off we ran to the hatch and heard it give a hiss like the lock was disengaging and the door was unsealing, so now we are in the upper level trying to figure out whether to stay or go out and meet the search team.” I told him.
“If you have food and drinks, stay,” Apex told us. “On foot it’s at least a day’s hike to a road from where you are and without a GPS coordination to get you to Malachi, you could miss each other and then they would accidentally find Raphael in the bunker and that might not be great.”
“A day?” I asked.
“You are near the Canadian border, Ace. There are lots of hills and nothing but trees and even if you find a game trail, it would still be rough terrain. Your closest neighbors are going to be poachers or lumberjacks, not people living in houses like you’re used to. This is where people go to live off the grid in Maine.” I nodded once, even though he couldn’t see it. Some part of my brain had known that Maine was a bit like Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, sparsely inhabited and not the friendliest place to be if you were a federal officer. However, I still wasn’t fond of the idea of being rescued in a day or two with Raphael below us. He was trapped for now, but what if that changed. “Not to mention, it’s March. There’s probably snow outside, and you are prone to hypothermia.” Apex hung up.
If I had needed something to convince me, it was that word, snow. Like a lot of four letter words, I wished people wouldn’t use it in my presence. I hated snow. I hated the cold. I pretty much hated winter because of both those things. I often thought I should have moved to New Mexico or something. We had chased a serial killer around Anchorage in March. It hadn’t been my favorite case simply because Alaska seemed to have snow and lots of it, even in March. I knew Maine was slightly further south, but it wasn’t a whole lot further, which meant snow in March was probably a given. One more reason not to move to Maine. Of course, I had never had the desire to move to Maine anyway. Gabriel found a jar of peanut butter and made himself a sandwich.
Gabriel brought his sandwich into the living area and sat down on the couch next to me. He had a heaping pile of plain potato chips along with the peanut butter sandwich. I stared at them before taking one. I ate it but regretted it. I wasn’t much on plan potato chips.
“Do you and Raphael like the same kinds of foods?” I asked after a moment.
“He doesn’t eat vegetables, but otherwise sometimes. Why?”
“Peanut butter is one of those polarizing foods. You like crunchy or you like creamy. It can result in massive fights, especially among siblings. So are potato chips. However, you instantly found creamy peanut butter which is an abomination and plain unwavy potato chips. Chips and peanut butter are non-negotiable foods. Like Eric only likes creamy peanut butter, but I will only eat crunchy peanut butter unless the other option is starving to death. However, I know you only keep creamy peanut butter at your house and you never run out of plain potato chips, so I was just curious as to if Raphael had the same preferences as you.”
“He won’t eat crunchy peanut butter and he likes plain potato chips, used to have a fit if they were plain but had ridges.”
“Did you adapt to his eating preferences or did you have them to begin with?”
“I prefer barbecue potato chips, but I don’t want ridges on them and I don’t eat crunchy peanut butter because of the texture.”
“Meaning peanut butter and potato chip preferences might have some kind of genetic component having to do with how each of us processes taste.”
“Or it might just be that they are better.”
“I doubt that. Not with how territorial people get over them.”
“Not everything has to have some deeper significance,” Gabriel told me. “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Xavier.”
“Well with Lucas and Trevor having problems, and you having a secret girlfriend, someone has to spend time with Xavier, and I can’t foist him onto Fiona.”
“I don’t have a secret girlfriend,” Gabriel told me.
“Really? Then why all the phone calls? I was stuck in protective custody with you, we all were, do you think we didn’t notice all the text messages and late-night phone calls?” I smiled at
him. “Don’t worry, you’re allowed to be happy. Someone should be happy. Especially if Lucas and Trevor can’t get past their differences. For all of us to be Fiona and Xavier would be miserable.”
“What about you? Don’t you deserve to be happy?”
“I am happy. I could never be happy in a relationship. I’m not built that way. My sexuality goes way beyond sex. Relationships are complicated, messy, full of deep meaning, and hidden social cues that I can’t read, not to mention I like being alone. It’s a hell of a lot easier to tell my mom I’m going to go hibernate with my knife collection than a boyfriend or husband. Even if the most amazing man on the planet came into my life, I would still not be happy in a relationship. Look at Caleb, he’s practically perfect. He was very gentlemanly on our date, he held open car doors, let me lead the way even when I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going, he bought me funnel cake, and if that isn’t a sign of a gentleman, I don’t know what is, and when it got chilly, he gave me the blanket he had brought for himself to sit on to wrap around me. He didn’t try anything, he didn’t even try to hold my hand or kiss me goodnight. He was great. I love having him around, but if I had to have him around a lot, I’d kill him for annoying me.”
“Have you considered you might be a lesbian?”
“Yes,” I told him. “Only, I’m not attracted to women any more than I am men. And I couldn’t date one. Just sharing a hotel room with Fiona makes me want to kill her or myself or whoever happens to be handy. I hate to have someone around all the time. I like lots of alone time. Nyleena and I have always been really good at vacationing together, but by the end of it, I’m not sorry to see her go. It may be weeks before I talk to her after we’ve spent ten days traveling together. Not because I’m mad at her, but because I’ve had enough of her to last me until I’m ready to not be alone again. We went to New York for twelve days. Same trip you caught Turkish Jack on, anyway, when we said our goodbyes at the airport, I called her to let her know I had gotten back to Seattle just fine, but then I didn’t call her for seven weeks. We sent emails back and forth, but we didn’t talk on the phone. And I know I’m no prize either. I am a cranky, cranky person with a lot of pet peeves and a whole lot of irritating quirks.”
“You’ve changed a lot in the time I’ve known you,” Gabriel said.
“Thanks, I think.”
“For the better. When I was assisting with the case in Chicago, it was obvious that you were considering shooting me every time I opened my mouth. Now you rarely get that look. Now for a while, Fiona seemed to get that look every time she opened her mouth, but the fact that you two are now friends gives me hope that you are only irritated at first and once you get to know someone it gets better.”
“Poor Rachael.” I told Gabriel.
“Luckily, she is in Malachi’s unit.”
“I wouldn’t consider that lucky. You realize I had to shoot him because he almost raped my college roommate when he first started out as an FBI agent, right?” I asked.
“I understood it was consensual.”
“To begin with, but then yes turned to no because Malachi likes it rougher than most girls are willing to allow unless they are getting paid by the half hour or so.”
“Nyleena had sort of explained it to me when Fiona joined the unit. She can’t figure out why you continue to be friends with him though.”
“Because I need him.” I told Gabriel. “Nyleena’s great. But she doesn’t understand me the way Malachi does. Plus, he owes me, and I haven’t been able to collect yet.”
“Owes you for what?”
“I killed for him.” I admitted. “It was a bad situation all around. If Malachi had done it, he would have gotten caught. I wasn’t even a suspect.”
“I’m not sure this is something I should know,” Gabriel told me.
“Malachi would be furious if I told you.” I informed Gabriel.
“Okay, but now you have to tell me because you started it and then added that little caveat to it.”
“It can’t ever leave this room. You can’t tell Malachi you know. You can’t tell your secret girlfriend. You can’t even go whisper it in a confessional.”
“I haven’t been inside a Catholic church in over a decade,” Gabriel told me.
“You know Malachi’s half-brothers have different fathers, right? Abigail Blake has terrible taste in men, always has, and I’m including Malachi’s father in that list. He’s no prize either.”
“Anyway, when Malachi was off at college and came home for a couple of days, I was still in junior high, well junior high for me. The middle one had just been born, I can’t remember his name. He was maybe a year old. Nyleena would babysit for Abigail when she was home, to pick up extra money. Nyleena needed everything she could get, from what I understand, while she was in law school Malachi wouldn’t even touch his younger brother, afraid he’d break him or something. Abigail and stepfather number two get home. Malachi leaves to go hang out with his cousin, Peter West. Peter was up for a promotion or something. I don’t remember all the details of what was going on with Wednesday Adams at the time, but he was celebrating something, maybe he was getting married, I don’t know. So, when Abigail and stepfather get home, they pay Nyleena and Malachi and Nyleena leave. He came home somewhere close to dawn. Abigail is downstairs on the couch crying. There’s blood streaked throughout half the house according to Malachi. He is freaking out. He calls my mom and asks her to come over. Eric had just gotten married to Elle if I remember right. My mom goes over. She convinces Abigail to press charges. Police come and arrest stepfather number two. His brother bails him out of jail within a few hours. My mom and Malachi convince Abigail to come stay with us for a while. They lived about a block from us at this time. Abigail, my mom, Malachi, Eric, and Elle are all packing up Abigail’s and the baby’s things when stepfather two and his brother get to the house. There’s a massive fight, but you don’t pick fights with Clachans, it’s not a good idea, especially where we lived. Donnelly was still considered a hero, he’d only been dead a little while, and Isabelle was still in the minds of the police department, so mom got extra special attention from them. She calls the police and they come and arrest both stepfather number two and his brother. The wife of the brother bailed them out, but Abigail and us got her stuff packed up and taken back to our house. That night, stepfather number two goes home to an empty house and sets it on fire. He also called our house threatening to kill Abigail if she didn’t come back home right that minute. Malachi and I both know that something has to be done, because stepfather number two is violent, abusive, and eventually he is going to kill her and possibly the baby. I snuck out, crept over to the house. We heard the firetrucks and one of the firemen came and talked to my mom, he had known my dad. Not a lot of damage, mostly smoke damage to the outside of the house. Which gives me an opportunity. After they leave, I make my way over there. I knocked on the door and he let me in, he thought he could convince me that I should send Abigail back home. Instead, I knocked him down, bashing his head against a coffee table. Then into the area of the garage where the fire had been on the outside of the house. Found that some of the fire had heated up the wall enough that I could poke a hole in it with just my finger. I did, then I noticed a bunch of shredded newspaper in the wall. The insulation was practically non-existent. I dropped a match onto that newspaper and reignited the fire. The official report was that the fire had heated up a mouse nest caught in the wall and that it had started to burn again, stepfather number two, in his haste to put it out, tripped over his own feet and hit his head on the coffee table and died. It didn’t help that he was really, really drunk when I was there, I’m sure the coroner figured out he was really drunk too. However, my mom, Abigail, everyone was able to vouch for the fact that Malachi hadn’t gone back to the house. No one thought to ask where I had been. I was a teen girl. It was ruled accidental after the full investigation and still no one asked where I had been during the hour or so that the fire flared back up. They did ask whe
re Malachi was, though. The only person to ever ask me about it was Eric. Eric wasn’t quite so sure about the flame up story. I told Eric I was home with Mom and Abigail and Malachi. He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t say anything.”
“Where did your mom think you were?” Gabriel asked.
“In bed with a headache.”
“Why didn’t Eric believe you if everyone else did?” Gabriel asked.
“Because Eric was outside the house waiting for his opportunity to kill stepfather number two. He told me when I saw him for the first time after joining the SCTU that he had been outside trying to figure out a way to do it when he saw me walk through the backyards and up to the front door.”
“Why would Eric have cared that much about Malachi’s mom?”
“Because when Donnelly and Isabelle were murdered, and my mom was doing everything in her power not to go insane, Abigail and Malachi came and stayed with us. They made sure we had meals, that our homework got done, that the house was clean, the whole kit and caboodle. Lots of people were nice enough to drop casseroles off at the house and offer their condolences, but Malachi and Abigail actually moved in with us. They took care of all three of us and when she wasn’t busy at our house, she was busy at Isabelle’s. Abigail took all of her sick leave and all of her vacation time to look after Mom, Eric, and I. Malachi was there to walk me to school every day. He was there at every lunch period to make sure I didn’t have to sit alone. He was tall and popular and a few years older than me, so he could easily have just ditched me and left me to fend for myself, but he didn’t. He and I were in the same classes because I had jumped so far ahead by then.”