Kayla looked like she was going to reel off the words the acronym stood for again, but Rob spoke before she could. "You know what a bearer bond is?" he asked.
Aaron nodded. "Sure. It's a piece of paper that says whoever walks into the bank with it is entitled to its face value in cash. But no one uses them anymore."
"Sure," said Kayla. "Because the world is filled with dishonest people. Ain't it a shame?"
"Kay," Rob said warningly. But he wasn't really mad at her, or even irritated. This was too good to get mad about.
It all changes. Tonight.
To Aaron and Tommy, he said, "The use of bearer bonds was cut back by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act in 1982. People – bad, bad people," he added, with a grin to Kayla, "were using bearer bonds to launder money. So the government basically got rid of them with the TEFRA act. But," he added, "TEFRA also stated that outstanding bonds – especially ones that got interest as they matured – could still be cashed."
Tommy's face showed confusion. "So –"
"So some bearer bonds are like certificates of deposit, bro," said Kayla. "People would buy them, but they couldn't be cashed out before a certain date. The downside was the bearer bonds were useless before that date. Upside was they got interest."
Rob nodded. "And even though the government wanted to get rid of the use of bearer bonds, it wasn't going to steal people's money if they had already invested their money in bonds that hadn't matured yet. That'd be illegal." He relished the irony of the last word.
Kayla was shaking her head. Not in denial; it was the appreciative back and forth motion of someone who's looking at something too good to be true. And going all in. "So the fact that this guy said tomorrow is a TEFRA day means he's got long-term bearer bonds that mature – with interest – tomorrow."
"Right," said Rob. Again he caught everyone's eye. Even Aaron was paying attention at this point. "So we steal it tonight, and tomorrow we leave the country. A quick flight to one of about a dozen countries with lax money laws, cash the score, and we're sitting pretty."
Kayla and Tommy were already sold. Aaron….
Dammit, why do you have to screw up everything.
"Did he even say for sure that they were in his house?" asked Aaron.
Rob nodded. "Yeah. Said they were in his safe."
"But that still doesn't tell us if the score's even worth it. For all we know, he could have twelve dollars' worth of bonds."
Rob laughed. Hard and loud. Donna actually poked her head out of the back room, like she was worried he might have a heart attack or something. Then she was gone as fast as she appeared.
It took him nearly a minute for his laughter to die down enough to allow him to speak. "Are you kidding me?" he said. "This guy was wearing a twenty-thousand-dollar watch, a fifty-thousand-dollar suit, and he lives in a house with more bathroom space than the Empire State Building." Rob looked back at the architectural plans. Huge rooms, luxury appointments. "No, it's millions. Eight figures at least. But we have to get it before he cashes it, which he said is happening tomorrow." He pointed to a spot on the plans. "We go in here. And we do it tonight."
He looked at Aaron. "The safe?"
Aaron looked supremely uncomfortable. "Like I said, the safe company I hacked showed installation in the master bedroom."
"Just sitting out in the middle of the room?" said Tommy. Aaron was being difficult, and the big man knew it.
Aaron's eyes dropped back to the beer before him. "The closet."
Tommy laughed.
Rob understood instantly what Tommy was laughing about. "These rich bastards always do the same thing," he agreed. "Might as well stuff their money in a cookie jar." To Aaron, he added, "Do the records say if the safe company wiped the presets?" Custom safes always came with a company-installed preset combination. And it was Rob's experience that a surprising number of people who installed the safes never had the preset wiped. Made it easy to crack the safe.
"Yeah," said Aaron. "The safe company wiped it, the owners put in their own combo." He brightened a bit. "And it's a tough one, so maybe we shouldn't even –"
Rob's face darkened in exact proportion to the excitement on the kid's face. He cut him off with a slashing motion. "No." Then he forced a smile to his face. "No, you can crack it. I have faith in you."
He tried to make "I have faith in you" sound more like "I will murder you if you botch this job." And the total despair he saw in Aaron's eyes made the job worth it, money or none.
Only that's a lie, Rob. You don't need to see him beg, you don't need to see him cry.
You need this job.
Tommy and Kayla seemed to sense this was the last word – not just for Aaron, but for everyone. They both rose as one and headed for the door.
"Back in twenty." Kayla tossed the words over her shoulder, almost as an afterthought. Then she and Tommy rattled their way through the cruddy front door.
Aaron opened his mouth to speak at the same moment Rob did – both of them hoping to get the first word in.
Both were interrupted by the sound of Donna opening the bedroom door again. She must have heard the front door shutting, assumed the "meeting" was over.
Rob's blood boiled in his veins. "Get back in your room!" he screamed. Turned back to Aaron.
But Aaron was ready. He got in the first word after all. "I think I'm gonna sit this one out, Rob."
Rob held himself in check. Kept himself from –
(killing him)
– railing or ranting, even though after repeated viewings of Donna's klutzy stupidity he was ready to scream.
But he didn't. He just stood there. Watching Aaron fiddle with his beer. And as he did, he calmed. Aaron was going to do it. Not just because Rob was going to make it happen. The kid was too weak to just get up and walk out, and that meant he'd never have the strength to not do what Rob wanted.
"You said it yourself," he finally said. "They wiped the presets. So we need a safecracker or there's no job."
"Still –"
And just that quickly, Rob got sick and tired of this game. "How's that wife of yours?" he asked.
Another silence. This one filled with a different kind of menace.
"We're… we're grateful, Rob," Aaron finally managed. "I'm grateful. But I don't want to do this anymore. I can't."
"One last job. For old time's sake." Rob leaned in close. So close he could smell Aaron's sour breath – the smell of a man held tight by fear. "Or maybe for the time I gave you the money to get her treated."
For the time I gave you a good life, right before you shafted me out of mine.
Aaron didn't answer. Rob moved in closer. Right beside the kid's ear. Whispered, "Okay, how about one last job or I'll go and finish what the cancer started."
Aaron froze. Went so rigid it felt like the air around him grew cold. He drew back. Looked at Rob and Rob could tell he found no mercy there.
He shook his head. But it wasn't a "no" to Rob, it was a sad plea to the universe.
The universe doesn't care, kid. And the faster you learn that the better off you'll be.
"Promise me," he finally managed. "Promise me this is the last."
Gotcha.
Rob didn't move away from his prey. But he smiled good-naturedly and raised his hand. "Scout's honor."
"Like you were ever a Scout." It was a last gasp. At dignity, at the man Aaron would never quite manage to be.
Rob shrugged.
"What if I can't get it open?" Aaron whispered. "Safe like this… it's a real possibility."
"Then we'll use alternate methods to get the combination."
Aaron knew what that meant. Another shake of the head, another gesture that lacked both strength and conviction. "No. Promise me no one gets hurt. Not again. I… I can't take that again."
"Scout's honor," said Rob.
And then he saw what he expected to be the second-best payout of the night.
Aaron wept.
Rob let him.
&
nbsp; Then Aaron left.
Rob let him.
Because he knew the kid would be back. And that he'd do whatever Rob told him to do.
He watched the door slam behind the kid.
Then he turned to the back bedroom. Waited.
Of course now she doesn't stick her fool head out, when I could actually use her.
He moved toward the closed bedroom door. Cracked his knuckles.
Aaron wasn't the only one who needed a life lesson tonight.
"Oh, Donna!"
12
Aaron sat in the car with the others, and tried to cast his mind as far away as possible.
The task was beyond him. He tried to picture her – dark eyes that always seemed a bit sad, like she knew your most secret sorrows and felt them with you. A smile so bright it pushed away that sadness, tempered it into something stronger than it had any right to be.
He was hers, completely and utterly.
Liar. Not completely, because if she owned you like that you wouldn't be under Rob's thumb.
I'm doing it for us. For her.
The last thought – he wasn't sure if it was true or not.
What if I just killed myself? Then she'd be okay. Rob wouldn't come for her – why would he bother?
There would be no reason for Rob to do anything to Dee if Aaron was gone. But then, he had no trouble picturing Rob hurting his wife – or worse – just for the sheer spite of it.
No. For us.
He tried again to push himself away; to place his mind somewhere so far and so safe he wouldn't be able to see what was right beside him and all around him.
He failed. Every time he tried to capture Dee's face in his mind, it was replaced by Rob's angry expression. Every time he tried to fall into the memory of her eyes, he saw Tommy's quietly homicidal rage, the sociopathic stare Kayla turned on everyone and everything.
Every time he tried to escape… he just found himself right back where he started. In a dark car in a dark night surrounded by people whose thoughts and goals were blacker than either.
Tommy and Kayla sat in the back of the car, the rustle of their black clothes and the occasional clink of the tools they each had stuffed in the many pockets they wore the only sounds they made in the night. Rob made even less noise. Aaron knew if he looked over he'd see the man driving, face illuminated to ghost-tones by the dash lights.
The houses outside might have helped ease his spirits, if it were only daytime. They were driving through Spurwing Green, the richest area in a part of the world famous for riches. The houses weren't houses in the way that ordinary folks understood the terms, they were more like the New World's answer to the castles of feudal times. Each held in its quiet grasp a Lord or Lady, master of all they surveyed. Safe behind their privacy walls and their security systems.
Until the marauders come. The invaders.
Us.
13
This is what the house looks like.
It is nice – very nice – though its obvious value comes not so much from its size (though it is large) or its spacious grounds (though spacious they are), or even the topiaries and fountains that grace its surroundings (though there are, of course, many of those).
No, its value can be seen, even by the least discerning eye, in the details. In the whole.
This house, unlike many others in the surrounding miles of estates, is not white. It is a tan that darkens to gray-brown in the night. A place the darkness has begun to infect with a quiet, ugly disease.
A cancer not of body, not of heart or lungs or lymph. A cancer of the soul.
A place where death has come to call.
The house is surrounded by a lawn big enough to be called a meadow. Trees that lend shade during the day, and that deepen shadows at night. Bushes that bring beauty in the light, that transform to malignant growths in the dark.
There are fountains, but they are silent. No water passes through them, and the stone cherubim stand motionless as death, imprisoned forever in silent moments of torture.
Many windows stare out from the sides of the house. In daytime they shine, during the early hours of the night they glow warmly.
Now, they are dark – eyes blinded nightly by the dark cataracts of a black sky. All but one – a single blazing square of light through glass on the second floor. The light brings no courage, no cheer. It seems out of place. A beacon that will serve not to guide ships through rocky shoals, but to guide evil to its prey.
There are shadows all around.
One of the shadows moves.
Heads toward the single bright window.
Begins to climb.
14
It was an anniversary day, and Dad had come home happier than he ever was. Some anniversaries could do that to you: anniversaries that were so special they required one's full attention. Days so important they merited nothing but cheer, nothing but brightness.
Even at seventeen years old, Susan Crawford knew this. She knew that this was a special, important day.
That was why she was in here. She had stayed up long enough to greet her dad, to see his special smile, to hear him say loving words to Mom.
Then off to her bedroom. Mom and Dad would be in bed soon – she knew what that meant, too. And that meant she got to make a call. One she'd been looking forward to for a while. Ever since she met him.
TJ Field had been a surprise. Not like the kids Susan knew at school. He was rougher, harder in a certain light. The rough edges didn't detract from his good looks, though – they heightened them, the way shadows will heighten reliefs carved into a wall.
But he made everything better. He completed the world she and her parents had made here, in a house she could never help but think was too big for them.
When TJ came, he filled it – or at least, filled it enough. And sometimes enough was just right.
She looked at the clock that sat on her dresser. All of five minutes later than it had been the last time she looked.
She returned her gaze to the book that sat on the bed in front of her. AP Physics. Normally it wasn't hard to concentrate on the information it held – she had a special affinity for the way things were built, for the way they came together at the smallest levels – but tonight she stared at the lines of text and math and none of it made sense.
There was only the night. This night.
And a noise.
She glanced at her window.
Did I hear something?
She waited a moment, staring out at the night. The small hairs on the back of her neck rose with a feeling of… what?
Expectation.
Hope.
The night seemed to stretch on forever beyond her window.
And, at last, she turned away from the darkness. Not back to her book – any pretense of studying was gone for good. Instead she turned to the dressing table that sat in one corner of a –
(huge, enormous, nearly-empty)
– room. She was dressed for bed, wearing the boxers and tank top that were her favorite sleepwear. She'd brushed her teeth –
(like a good little girl!)
– scrubbed her face. She might as well complete the nighttime ritual while she waited….
For the night to truly begin.
She sat in front of the dressing table. A discrete light sat atop the mirror – not the tacky brightness you saw in movies about movies, where starlets sat in front of a globe-lit mirror and made impossibly pretty faces even more impossibly pretty, but a light perfectly designed to throw maximum light against your face without turning it into a series of crags and flaws.
She wondered, not for the first time, what it had set Mom and Dad back to buy it. Whatever it had been, it was too much. There were better things to spend their money on.
Not much she could do about that. What was past was past. Only the future could be changed, molded, perfected.
She took the brush that sat on the table top, began to pass it over and through her hair. Sweep, sweep, sweep. She could fee
l the strands separating, flowing back together, softening.
Sweep, sweep, swee –
Scratch.
She spun again. Looked at the window. The darkness.
"Is there someone out there?" she called. Then chided herself for being silly.
She turned back to her task. Sweep, sweep, swee –
And saw the shadow in the mirror an instant before she felt a hand on her shoulder. A scream tried to break free, but it was muffled, then silenced, by the other hand that clapped over her mouth and nose.
She was sitting on a stool, and the man behind her spun her around. She looked into green eyes.
The hand came away from her mouth.
She punched the intruder. Hard.
"You… you… bastard!"
She meant the words, but TJ just laughed them off. Still rough around the edges, but the laugh softened him. Just barely, just enough to make him look –
(innocent)
– younger. Unaware of the life he would lead, and happy because of that fact.
He laughed again.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, her voice something between a hiss and a whisper. She tried to put some level of irritation in her voice, but failed. She was glad he was here, tonight.
Anniversaries should be special. Certainly for her parents – and with TJ's arrival this anniversary became special for her, too.
TJ leaned in and kissed her ear. A gentle nip that sent shudders through her frame. "I shouldn't be here?" he whispered. "And yet you called me." He paused, but didn't move from his spot near her, so close she could feel every breath against her neck. "And you turned off the alarm for me."
"How do you know that?" It was all she could think to say – the first and only words that sprung to mind. She could barely think at all, he was so close.
TJ drew back. Cupped a hand to his ear. Frowned. "You hear that?"
She listened. Half-expecting to hear more noises coming from outside.
"I don't hear anything."
TJ's frown was swallowed by a wide grin. "Exactly."
Susan crossed her arms in another attempt to be angry. She failed, so settled for a mock-anger that she knew he would see through.
The House That Death Built Page 6