Drop of Doubt

by C. L. Stone

  “Gabriel,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I actually spoke aloud or if I’d whispered. Maybe I just mouthed his name.

  Gabriel reacted, perking up and turning his head. Droplets of blood splattered over his face. His mouth hung open, and he swiped at his mouth with the back of his arm. His knuckles were covered in thick blood. His crystal eyes were wide, wild, and ferocious.

  My heart dropped down, lower than the floor, into the earth below it. It was a side of Gabriel I had never seen, and for the moment, I forgot my Gabriel, the one who sat with me in my mother’s closet, the one who picked out my clothes, the one who looked out for me.

  I saw a different Gabriel, raw, angry, destroying.

  North had said everyone had a breaking point. Gabriel had reached his.

  Gabriel fell back onto his butt onto the hallway. His hands shook, lifting to his head. He curled up, his palms covering his ears. He mumbled something low. He wasn’t talking to me. He was whispering something over and over again, but I couldn’t catch it.

  I couldn’t dare to look back at Greg. After the blood on Gabriel’s hands, I couldn’t imagine what he looked like.

  But I needed to be here.

  “Gabriel,” I said softly. I didn’t know how to approach him, but I needed to bring him back, like he once brought me back after I learned the truth about my real mother. Only I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t move. I was too terrified.

  “Sang!” Luke’s voice called to me. He materialized from the far edge of the hallway. He ran up, stopping just short of the bloodied, unconscious Greg.

  Gabriel stared off at Greg, breathing heavily, hate heavy in his eyes.

  Luke swiveled on his feet, checking with me. “You okay?”

  I nodded, even though I wanted to tell him no. I wasn’t okay, because Gabriel wasn’t okay.

  Luke leapt over Greg, dropping to his knees in front of Gabriel. He reached for him, putting his hands on his shoulders and drawing him in. He hugged him in a gentle move. “Gabe. Hey man. You got him.”

  “I have to kill him,” Gabriel said. He stared off, as if oblivious that Luke was touching him. “I’m gonna kill him.”

  “No, you’re not.” Luke’s voice was soothing. His hand smoothed over Gabriel’s shoulders as he pulled back to face him. “Look at me, buddy. Focus. Sang’s okay. Everyone else is okay. He’s down.”

  “He almost killed her,” Gabriel said. “He was going to.”

  “He didn’t,” Luke said. “You got to him first. He’s not your dad, okay?” Luke pulled back, cupping Gabriel’s face. “Look at me. You’ve got him. He’ll go away. We won’t let him go this time. Look, Sang’s right here. See?” Luke looked back at me. His dark eyes pleading with me to help him. “Aren’t you, Sang? Tell him you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” I said, willing to do anything Luke said right now. He was being and saying all the things I wanted to be and say for Gabriel, but couldn’t. I wondered what he meant by talking about Gabriel’s dad, but I couldn’t ask that question right now. I swallowed, trying to find my voice. “I’m fine. He didn’t get me.”

  “We have to get rid of him,” Gabriel said. He shook his head hard, wiping at his own hands on his shirt as if to clean them. He turned, his crystal blue eyes lighting up and focusing again. The wild Gabriel seemed to be receding. He nudged Luke away, holding hands up toward me. “Go away, I want her.”

  Luke chuckled, releasing Gabriel and stepping back, glancing at me.

  I jolted myself up, but stepped forward slowly. Part of me was afraid, not that Gabriel would hurt me, but just from the situation. I forced myself to go to him, not wanting to scare him like I’d once done to North. I held my hand out to him, thinking Gabriel was going to get up, and I was ready to help him. Instead, Gabriel tugged my hand. I fell to my knees between his legs. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, hugging me to his body.

  “Gabriel,” I said softly, not knowing what else to say to him. I was just happy he came, and he wasn’t hurt.

  He buried his face into my shoulder as he embraced me close. “Oh my fucking god, Sang. Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?”

  “How did you know I was down here?” I asked. “How did you know about the elevator?”

  “The phone started ringing by the bed. Someone said you were running around in the basement. He said there was an elevator.”

  So he did call Gabriel and he led me to the elevator where he knew Gabriel would find me. But how did Greg know we were here? I didn’t have an answer, and we had something more important to worry about now. I backed off of Gabriel, planting my hands on his chest to hold myself up. “We have to go,” I said.

  “Not this shit again.” Gabriel said. He dropped his hands onto my hips, looking up at me. “Sweetie...”

  “It was that masked guy,” I said. “Volto wanted the dragon desk code from me.”

  “You know the code?” Luke asked behind me. I turned my head to see him standing over Greg, as if monitoring to make sure he didn’t wake up and come after us. He kicked the knife aside.

  “I saw it the other day when we were in his office,” I said. “The guy had me pinned and said if I didn’t give it to him, he’d let Greg get to me.”

  “Motherfucker,” Gabriel said. He released me and fell on his back on to the tile. “I thought maybe we’d misunderstood him before. Now I don’t. Show me to him. I’ll get him next.”

  “We have to go,” I said, starting to get up. I tugged Gabriel by the arm. “We have to go find Victor and make sure this guy doesn’t somehow break into Victor’s house and get what he wants.”

  “We’re supposed to go home,” Luke said. “That’s why I’m here. I was supposed to come find you two and whenever you woke up, I was supposed to take you straight to your house, Sang.”

  “But they don’t know this guy is coming for Victor’s desk.”

  “There’s no way he’d break into the house. There’s security.”

  “He must have a way in,” I said. “There’s got to be, or else he wouldn’t bother figuring out the code.” I yanked out the phone I’d snagged and held it up and studied it. It was an iPhone with a bright pink case and a cracked screen. "He had this."

  Luke knelt next to us, hovering over my shoulder. "Isn't that yours?"

  I punched at the screen, illuminating the surface. I recognized the cracks. “I thought ... It was broken. From the night I was in the shower."

  "Let me see," Gabriel said. He sat up and took the phone from my hands. He checked the messages. "This must have been how he has been texting everyone. "

  Luke’s face tightened. "So Mr. Morris giving away her number in class was a coincidence?"

  "Or a set up to send us down the wrong trail." Gabriel grumbled. “They could all be in on it.”

  "He stole this phone though," I said. "He had to get it from Victor. He took it from me after I broke it."

  Gabriel nodded. "And to take it, he needed to break into the house because he keeps the broken ones in his office."

  Luke shifted on his feet, pressing weight from one foot to the other, as if weighing out what he was supposed to do. "Which means he can break in."

  Gabriel let his head fall back onto the tile. “Shit. Let’s go save Victor’s stupid computer.”

  THREE AMIGOS, AT THE READY

  Gabriel and I had to clean up in an abandoned bathroom downstairs, washing off Greg’s blood. Luke placed an anonymous call when we were a good distance from the building, calling in hospital security on Greg. Luke’s call made it sound like a gang attack. From what he said as we were leaving, hospital security would keep him under their thumb until they could figure out what happened – but he’d placed a call to the Academy for assistance so Greg wouldn’t be giving our names. He assured me, since I was the one worried about it, that Gabriel and I wouldn’t be going to jail.

  Luke and Gabriel tried calling the others, but Victor wasn’t answering his cell phone, and the other phones were still turned off. Even Dr. Green
didn’t answer.

  “Should we call the emergency line?” Gabriel asked Luke. We were inside the black truck. Luke was driving. Gabriel was in the passenger seat and I was between them. Gabriel twisted my phone in his hand.

  Luke seemed to consider this and shook his head. “We’re not dying,” he said. “I don’t want this masked guy knowing that phone exists if he doesn’t know it yet. And the only phone we have is Sang’s old one. We don't know if he’s figured out she has it now and is listening. It’s not secure."

  "Isn’t it wired?” I asked.

  Gabriel broke open the pink case. He used his teeth and fingernails, wedging the back off. He removed the battery, pulling out a tiny circuit board. He unrolled the window, tossing the circuit out the window before he pieced the phone together again. “Now he can’t. Just in case.”

  “What if we use a payphone to call the emergency line?" I asked.

  "Let's get downtown first," Luke said. “All someone has to do is change the passcode.”

  “What are we going to do anyway?” Gabriel asked. “Just show up and baby sit the computer?”

  “If we have to,” Luke said. “It’s the best course right now and why I don’t mind going. I just have to make sure you two are out of the way safe, and if we’re behind the wall of Victor’s house, so much the better. And we’ll have his security guards paying attention this time.”

  “What if the masked guy is ahead of us?” I asked.

  “Let’s just hope Victor was right and nothing important was on the computer,” Gabriel said. “What I’m more interested in is how he seems to think he’ll get past security. If he can do it, it means we’ve got vulnerability issues there. Not much of a safe house if it can get broken in to.”

  Luke pursed his lips. I felt the same. I didn't like that this guy was so close that he could walk in anytime he wanted. He'd already stolen Mr. Blackbourne's car. He tried to manipulate us all. Now we knew he had access to Victor’s house. What next?

  The drive into downtown Charleston seemed to take hours. Luke weaved his way through sleepy city streets. When we got to Victor's large estate, Luke made a circle for the back gate. He slowed as he approached, but the gate didn’t open. He was forced to stop in front.

  We waited, but the grounds were dark. I checked the dash. It was two in the morning.

  "Are the guards sleeping?" Gabriel asked. He leaned over, gazing through the bars of the gates. "Why aren't they opening?"

  "Do they know it’s us?" I asked. "And it’s dark. Maybe they can’t see?”

  "I don't like this," Luke said. He shifted the car into reverse. "Let's try the front door."

  Luke found a place to park on the street in front of the house. We got out and approached the front wall gate. Luke and Gabriel paused in front. Gabriel sought out my hand and held it, his fingers interweaving with mine, comforting. Luke found a call button next to a box. He punched at the button. "Hey, anyone home?"

  After a long pause, Luke repeated himself, but no one responded.

  "Shit," Gabriel squeezed my hand. "Okay, you and I are leaving."

  "We just got here," I said. “We need to get inside."

  "No, we need to go somewhere else. You aren't taking on this fucker-head."

  I grunted. "We don’t know if he’s here. We’re supposed to stop him if he is, aren’t we? I can do it. Leave if you want but I want to go in with Luke. I don't want to leave him to deal with this alone."

  "Maybe we should stick together on this one," Luke said. "This guy gets to us by separating us. Let's just find a way in. We’ll get inside, find Victor, tell the guards to do a security sweep. Maybe that’s what Volto did. He broke the security system somehow."

  Gabriel groaned. "I hate break-in missions." He released my hand and moved to stand next to the gate. He hunched over, putting his hands together.

  Luke approached him and planted his foot in Gabriel's palms. Gabriel hoisted him high enough that Luke could scale the gate, landing with a soft thud on the other side.

  Gabriel hunched over again. “Sang?”

  I dashed over, planting my foot into his hands. He held me close, and I hung on to his shoulders. He pushed me up. I found a foothold in the groove of the wrought iron and was able to angle myself over the top. When I slipped down the iron bars, Luke caught me by the waist.

  Gabriel climbed like a monkey up and over the gate. When he was safe beside us, he started grunting, clutching at his leg. “Shit,” he said. “I hope I didn’t just break a stitch.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Peachy. Let’s go inside. I want a bath. Let’s skip school tomorrow and go to the spa.”

  As we approached the main house, I fell in behind Gabriel and Luke. I didn’t want to chicken out, but it was a comfort to have them standing in front of me. The front porch was dark. A few lights on deep within the house were the only sign someone might be up.

  I kept waiting for security to come around the corner. Didn’t Victor ask me before not to climb the wall? How come we just had and nothing was happening? I had thought at first that running into Morgan security guards would be horrible, but not meeting them now was even more frightening.

  Luke pushed the doorbell on the side of the massive, two-door entryway. I worried we might wake up Victor’s parents. Or maybe that would be a good thing. Wouldn’t they understand we were here and worried about Victor? And to make sure the security system worked?

  Something jogged my memory. Wasn’t his parents supposed to be gone at some point? Staying at some hotel? Maybe no one was home.

  Luke stepped back, peeking in the windows. “It’s really quiet,” he said.

  “It’s two in the morning,” Gabriel said.

  Luke rang again, knocking on the door after. “I hope I don’t have to climb in a window. I don’t want to get shot.”

  Before we could figure out if we should try, the front door started to rattle as if someone behind it was unlocking a series of security locks. I stepped behind Gabriel more, dropping my head behind his shoulder and peeking around it.

  The door opened a crack. The pale girl with the plain face and brown hair popped her head out. She glanced at Luke and Gabriel and seemed surprised to see them. “Mr. Taylor,” she said. “Mr. Coleman, what are you two doing ...” her voice faltered when she spotted me. Her eyebrows lifted in more surprise, and with something else, but in the darkness, I didn’t quite catch it. “Miss Sorenson?” she said, though her voice dropped an octave.

  My nerves rattled as she said my name. How did she know my full name?

  “Sorry to bug you, Muriel,” Luke said. “Do you know what happened to security? The gate wouldn’t open.”

  “We’re not allowed to let anyone in,” she said. “Mr. Morgan ...”

  “It’s an emergency,” Luke said. “Can you let us in? We need to check on something.”

  Muriel pursed her lips. “I’m not allowed. I was told not to let anyone in.”

  “Can you tell Victor to come down?” Gabriel asked, stepping up. “Seriously, we need to talk to him.”

  “He’s not seeing anyone,” Muriel said. She turned her head, as if she heard something from inside the house. She turned back quickly. “I have to go. I’m sorry. I can’t let anyone in.”

  Gabriel stepped forward, putting his foot in the door before she could shut it all the way. “Look,” he said. “We don’t have time for whatever he told you ...”

  “No,” Luke said. He planted a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “It’s okay.” He addressed Muriel. “Sorry to bug you. We’ll go.”

  Muriel looked relieved. Gabriel slid his foot out and she shut the door. She threw a bunch of locks on the other side and everything went quiet.

  “What are you doing, Luke?” Gabriel asked. “We need to—“

  “Not here,” Luke said. He started signing to me, “Let’s get back to the car and pretend we’re leaving.”

  I followed the boys back to the gate, unsure what Luke wanted. We were quiet. I
was unsteady thinking he assumed someone could listen in on us. I tried to will my heart to calm and trust that I was with Gabriel and Luke. They knew what to do.

  On the other side of the gate, we got into the car. Luke turned toward us. “I don’t like this,” he said. He found my phone. “I don’t want to use this, but we need Mr. Blackbourne.”

  “Why wouldn’t she let us in?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Luke said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s no security here. We’ve crawled all over that place. Gabriel even nearly pushed his way past Muriel, and no one showed up. The power’s on, so security had to have been turned off from the inside.”

  Luke started dialing when something caught my eye. A familiar dark brown sedan was parked in the driveway of the house being renovated across the street. I snagged Luke’s wrist. “Wait,” I said.

  He looked up. Gabriel did, too. They followed my gaze to the car.

  “Mr. Morris?” Luke asked. “Isn’t that his car?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Shit,” Gabriel said. “He followed us.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “He was supposed to be following Mr. Blackbourne tonight.”

  Luke looked back at the brown car. “So he followed Mr. Blackbourne here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I nudged at Gabriel’s arm. “Let me out.”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Let me go talk to him,” I said. “Let me find out what he knows. Maybe he’s seen something.”

  Gabriel grunted, looking at Luke. “Aren’t we supposed to take her home?”

  Luke smirked at him. “You’re sounding a lot like North right now.”

  Gabriel’s eyes went wide. “See what you’re doing to me, Trouble?” He caught the door handle and shoved it open.

  I wedged myself out. “You two stay here. I don’t want to scare him into thinking we’re after him.”

  Gabriel shoved a finger in my face, pointing at my nose. “You better be right about this. And don’t get hurt.”

  I feigned like I was going to bite his finger and he diverted and chopped me on the head. I dashed away before he could get me again.