“That’s dumb,” Blake said, rising to his feet and almost falling straight back down. “What if I hadn’t remembered the code?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.” He stepped forward. “I knew it.” He turned on his heel and went back inside the house, leaving a blank look on Blake’s face.
What a tool.
There wasn’t much Blake could do. Unprepared to face the nostalgia, he followed in behind Greg, who rushed ahead and stood in the hall at the bottom of the open stairway.
Blake looked around, soaking up the reality of his surroundings. It felt surreal; he hadn’t been here in over twenty years, since he’d gone off to college. Nothing had really changed. Sure, a painting had been replaced here or there, and the banister had a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise everything just seemed… smaller. His eyes lowered onto Greg. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“Seems we’re looking for different things. I want something that’ll tell us where your old man has gone. Looks like you just want to get some feely emotional memories from when you lived here.” He grimaced. “You know, I was stood right here when I first met you. You were a scrawny little thing, but there’s no denying you were bright. Your dad introduced me as the gardener. I stood right here and shook your hand. You took it and said—”
“That’s an expensive-looking watch for a gardener.” Blake laughed. “That was you?” He couldn’t help but smile, brush his hair back, and keep looking down. “I must have been… hmm. No older than seven.”
“Sure were observant,” Greg said. “Kid, why don’t you put that observation to good use and look around the house?” His smile vanished, revealing that the past moments of humor had been a mere act, and then he wandered into the nearest room.
Blake knew it as the kitchen and had no desire to be in there—they had already eaten at Frank’s place before they left that morning. Instead, he ascended the stairs, taking one small step at a time. The times he’d run up and down these were beyond count. But that was back in the day. Back when he was naive enough to take the world at face value.
At the top of the stairs, he faced an L-shaped corridor. One direction led to a bathroom and the gaming room, gym, and so on. The other end held the bedrooms, which he mostly associated with reading and playing on the rug, which later evolved into studying and cleaning the rug. Funny how times change, he thought, heading toward the bedroom. He felt like a ghost, a visitor in someone else’s history. He’d been away for so long that the property felt alien to him.
As he approached the door, not pausing to wonder what Greg had found, he slowly pushed it open, the long creak revealing his memories little by little. It took a few moments for the shock to register.
He’d expected a converted room, perhaps a second gym or another games room. Hell, a study wouldn’t have been a bad idea, and in the very least his window might have been doubled-glazed since he’d left. But no. What he was looking at was a room that was exactly as he’d left it. Blake stepped inside, feeling as though he were walking through a time portal.
To his right was his old computer that may or may not still work. His bed was still made up the way he liked to do it. So many memories dwelt here: his first kiss with Rachel in their teen years, the time he broke his leg and read through every one of his books. Oh, the books. He turned to see his perfectly neat shelf with every piece of literature still lined up in alphabetical order. The only thing that had changed was that every surface was coated in dust. But upkeep was a lot to ask after having his memories preserved like this. Blake hadn’t known his father still cared that much. Could it make sense that he would keep this room in its original state and still flee from his life without so much as a goodbye?
Sure it could. Blake wanted to believe it.
His heart throbbing, he sat down on the bed. A fine cloud of dust rose with a puff. He looked around the room at his AC/DC poster, and below that, his old desk. It amused him that those two items had belonged to the same kid.
Blake stood and crept over to the window, ready to reacquaint himself with the view. From there he could see a road, though it was a long way in the distance and divided by dusty plains and trees. The hill they’d been lying on was to the left. Blake’s eyes landed on the gravel where the car had been and followed up toward the distance.
The sudden glimmer of sun stung his eyes.
He winced.
What was that?
He looked again. His heart ran wild, and his legs began to tremble. The familiar silver Audi was coming back, drawing closer to the house.
“Greg!” he called, running out of the room and onto the stairs. “She’s coming back!” He went from room to room, pushing open the doors. He had no time to savor the memories that lay behind each one. If Marcy caught him in her house, there was no telling what she would do with that information. Blake hurried downstairs and burst into the kitchen without slowing down, but Greg was nowhere to be seen.
Sweat began to appear at his brow, and he felt weak with panic. Blake had barely had time to check the rest of the rooms when he heard the front door open. Footsteps echoed through the hallway. The front door slammed shut only seconds after, and for one moment, the house was in utter silence. The footsteps started up again. They came closer, louder. Blake realized that his fingernails were digging into his palms. The kitchen door handle turned. The door began to open. A hot wave flushed over him.
How could he talk his way out of this one? The short answer: he couldn’t.
The door was halfway open. He could see the edge of a hand pushing it from the side, but then it stopped. Blake held his breath. The door held still for a few seconds, and then, after hearing Marcy mutter under her breath, it closed and the footsteps rang back across the hall.
Blake sighed with relief. He wanted to turn around and high-five Greg, but he wasn’t there. He still had no idea where that man was. What if Marcy found him in another room? Blake knew he should probably stay put, but if Marcy came back, he was screwed. Besides, he had to find Greg—he would know exactly what to do.
His hands were shaking as he stepped forward and pressed his ear against the door. There was nothing but silence. He turned the handle and pulled open the door, its creak high-pitched. He had to be careful, but he also had to be quick. Knowing he’d not yet checked there, he crept across the hall and dove straight into the reading room. There were memories here, too, but mostly memories of being shuffled out by a father who was irritated at the fact he’d been disturbed.
The shelves were twice as tall as he was and even higher than the last time he’d seen them. Blake closed the door behind him and took a quick peek between the two rows of bookshelves, thinking that he would slip his shoes off and get sucked into a book if he had more time on his hands.
“Greg?” he whispered.
Nobody replied though, so Blake moved back to the door, opened it, and crept across the hall in time with the grandfather clock’s tick-tock-tick. The floor made squeaking sounds on the soles of his shoes, making him wince each time. He was just at the door of the dining room when it opened. Blake froze.
Greg stepped out of the room.
“We need to go back,” Blake began, but then he took a closer look at the man. “In… Wait, why is there blood on your sleeves?” He didn’t know for sure if it was blood, but when it came to this man, it was the first thing he associated with him.
“Let it go, kid,” he said, pushing the heel of his hand out to keep him away.
Something didn’t seem right. The blood was one thing, but Greg was no longer looking him in the eye. Sweat appeared at his temple, a single bead rolling onto his red cheek. He glanced over his shoulder as if to make sure he’d cleaned up for visitors.
“Let me in.”
“I said no.” His hand came out to stop him.
No longer considering the noise he was making, Blake tried to push past. Greg grabbed him by the arm, twisted it until Blake’s body contorted and left him hanging just above the cold marble fl
oor. “Let me go!”
Feeling the grip loosen, he broke free of the arm lock and pushed open the door before he was even fully on his feet. As soon as he entered, all the red caught his eye. The floor looked like a painting, swirling pools of blood brushed in thick strokes across the canvas.
What have you done?
He took slow, unsteady steps around the dining table until the body came into view.
Blake felt sick. He’d never seen a dead body before, and the last thing he expected was to see his stepmom lying in her own blood, her vacant eyes gazing up at the ceiling. Blake’s knees gave way and hit the floor with a bone-crunching thud. His hands went straight to his head.
No, he thought as the tears began to well.
No, no, no.
Chapter Eleven
“Get the hell away from me!” Blake screamed. He was kneeling by Marcy’s unmoving body, unsure where to put his hands. When he put them on her chest, sticky, red blood covered them. He felt ill, dizzy.
“Kid, I didn’t have a choice.”
Blake had his back to the man but shifted away from the discomfort, landing on his rear with Greg to the side. “You had… no right. No reason…” He stared at the floor. He couldn’t look at her, and he sure as hell couldn’t direct his gaze toward Greg. There was fire in his blood, and looking at his stepmother’s murderer would only add fuel to it.
Although she’d set him up for a murder he hadn’t committed, although his current situation was all her fault, he couldn’t see how she’d deserved this. When he looked at her, all he saw was the always-cheery face that had cared for him in the past.
Greg inched closer, pulled the cigarette pack from his breast pocket and fingered through it. He must have realized the pack was empty, so he crushed it in one hand and tossed it across the room. “For crying out loud.” He placed his hands on his hips, took a deep breath, and looked down at Blake. “I had to do it. She would have called the police.”
His vision was a blurry cloud through thick tears. “So? We could have talked to her. I could have talked her onto our side. She would… she would have understood.”
Greg laughed. “Not likely. You’re aware that this woman is the reason you were in the police station to begin with, right? If it weren’t for her, you’d probably still be at work sniffing after that Robin chick.”
“It’s Rachel,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Whatever.” He huffed. “Look, let’s get this all cleaned up in case anybody comes by here. You’ll be surprised how normal this feels when it doesn’t look so messy. It might even put some hairs on your chest.”
The man Blake had met at the police station was not the man he gawked at now. The responsible, capable hero of a man had been reduced to a mere monster. At least to Blake. He’d always considered him dangerous, but for some reason it had felt more protective than aggressive. His true colors were coming to light—that was, if these really were his colors.
“Come on,” Greg pressed, lowering his tone. “Let’s tuck her up somewhere quiet, then we can get what we came for and get the hell out of here.”
It was hard for Blake to recall why they’d come here in the first place. He knew it was for the sake of a clue as to where his father was, but if he knew Marcy’s life was the price, then he wouldn’t have paid for it. For all he knew, Greg was lying about her involvement in the entire police fiasco. But what choice did he have other than to trust Greg’s word? Without him, Blake would be on his way to jail, or worse. “There’s… probably room in the basement.” He told him. He would have to cooperate. For now.
“I didn’t even know there was a basement.”
Blake clambered to his feet, dusting off his knees and swiping at his eyes with his sleeves. “You’re not supposed to. It was Dad’s retreat. I’ll show you.” He slipped out of the room, his breathing heavy. Out in the hallway, under the stairs, he pushed a dark, varnished wooden panel in the wall, which popped open to reveal a simple bolt lock.
“How long has it been here?” Greg asked, his voice growing louder as he caught up.
Blake pulled the lock to the side, and a regular-sized doorway opened up, revealing the first few metal steps into darkness. “Only the family knew about it. He suffered from depression and liked to come down here for a break from society. This was his hiding place where he could collect his thoughts until he was ready to… What’s so funny?”
Greg was smirking at him. “The basement is news to me, but I knew about the depression excuse. It was the lie he was most ashamed of.”
For God’s sake! The more this man spoke, the more Val Salinger became a stranger. Everybody has secrets—he understood that—but was anything about his father true?
“Forget it. Follow me.” Blake descended the stairs, yanking on a light cord that lit up the steps like an underground base. Blake had never been any farther than halfway down and still felt as though he were breaking a rule.
When his foot came off the bottom step and hit the concrete floor, he looked around in amazement. The well-lit room was almost as large as the entire house. All along one wall was a workbench, which held stacks of boxes similar to the one he’d found in his father’s trunk. He approached cautiously, hearing Greg step in behind him.
“I’m guessing Daddy kept his secrets bottled up in here.”
Blake ignored him, trying to take everything in. It was as if a handful of items from every imaginable scene had been thrown in here. A dirt bike sat in one corner, stripped as if somebody had been maintaining it and then given up at the drop of a hat. Along the far wall, metal shutters encased something; something Blake could only assume to be a stash of weapons. Right now, he would rather not find out. “It’s like… a work station.” He turned to Greg. “And you had no idea about any of this?”
“I figured he had somewhere to shut off and focus on his work. Every agent has a kind of retreat or safe house. Hell, I have sixteen of them.” He held a power tool of some sort up to the light, examined it with a look of bewilderment and then dropped it back onto its metal tray. “He was quite the engineer, you know. Knew how to take something ordinary and make it… well, extraordinary.”
Blake thought back to his youth, trying to pair up his father’s personality with the man he was learning about in this secret basement. Had he ever been a tinkerer of sorts? Blake had always been able to carry his technology over and ask for his help, and sure enough, it would come back within a couple of hours working better than it ever had. Even his first car had seemed far more powerful than it ever should have done; he’d almost crashed it into a bush on its maiden voyage, a memory he would never forget.
“Kid, this has your name on it.” Greg held an envelope between two fingers.
Blake snatched it but hesitated to open it. It looked older, tainted, like it had been stained with dust and age. His name was scrawled across the front in black cursive—his dad’s writing. He had no trouble recognizing it. He slid his finger under the flap, about to tear it, and then stopped. He felt eyes upon him.
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?”
He didn’t want to. Not here. But what choice did he have? The letter was clearly old, so there couldn’t be any troubling news inside. He tore the paper open, carefully unfolded the ragged letter, and looked it over.
My dearest Blake,
I write to you from 1993, at the height of my career.
Right now you are only a boy, and I watch proudly as I see you fighting to achieve your dreams. If you grow to be a better man than I am, no matter how easy that may seem, it would please me more than you could ever know.
If you’re reading this, you may have been informed of my death, and if the Agency has done its job correctly, you have been financially compensated and informed of my past. I needn’t stress the importance that it remain a secret, and nobody should become privy to that information.
It would not surprise me to learn that you have questions that need answering, not to mention a painful sensation of
abandonment. Please know that my retirement should come at the time of my career during which my acquaintances become a threat to my family, and I have left for no other reason than to protect you from my own mistakes.
I will leave this letter within their capable hands and, when the time is right, it shall be handed to you by my colleague and good friend, Michael Crang.
Stay strong and never change.
Love,
Dad
“Looks like he thought better of it. Never handed it to the Agency,” Greg said.
Blake stifled a tear, folded the letter and stuffed it into his pocket. He looked to Greg, who’d been reading over his shoulder. “Michael Crang?”
“Not me,” he stated, recognizing the accusation.
“You swear?”
“Far too fucking often,” he quipped, sighed, and patted Blake on the back. “Come on—we got a body to move and a call to make.” Greg headed for the steps without looking back.
“A call? To who?”
“The Agency,” he said as he reached the door at the top. “Who else?”
Chapter Twelve
Mr. Grover sat waiting in the back of the limo, where everything smelt of rich leather and squeaked every time he moved. It wasn’t all bad; nobody could see through the blacked-out windows, there was plenty of leg room, and at least he had a hot latte at his side.
“Can’t we just go in there and get her?” the driver asked, overstepping his mark.
Grover didn’t reply. The driver’s ideas were unimportant, and he should be keeping his thoughts to himself. Besides, they didn’t want any of her friends or neighbors to poke their noses in with information about who was seen taking her. No—this would go so much smoother away from her territory, where she could really taste the fear.
They’d pulled up just a little too late and seen her head into the building. If everything worked in their favor, she would be out shortly, and they could get their job done as swift and easily as Charlie had made it sound.
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