The Secret Page

by Al Turner

  The man didn’t have a better play. “Go, boy. No funny business.”

  “Understood.” Tripp crept out the window while the two men watched. Carson stared at him, puzzled at first as she saw him unwinding a cord he had hidden under his shirt.

  She gave him an amused look. “What’s this?” she asked softly and took the hooked end he handed to her.

  “It’s a self-repelling device.”

  “Please don’t tell me this is another of Daniel’s flawed inventions.”

  Tripp thought it wise to refrain from admitting just that. “Allegedly, it should hold both our weights.”

  Carson looked worried. “What the hell has happened to you? You’re acting crazier than me.”

  “Desperate times.” He calculated the rate of their descent with the extra weight. “We’ll need some dramatics on your part to secure it to the stone railing down there.”

  Dramatics she could do. “No, you’re on their side,” she said loudly. “They’ve brainwashed you. Come with me, brother. Let’s jump to our destiny.” Carson turned and looked about to dive over.

  “Sister, please contain these irrational passions,” Tripp said and instantly wished he’d taken more of an interest in theater.

  Carson groaned. Their acting was worse than what you’d see in an elementary school play. “Think of something,” she whispered.

  While not the brightest bulbs, the men in the window were convinced something was up. They decided to take the risk and climb out.

  The danger of what he and his sister were about to do hit Tripp and he hesitated. Carson grabbed him and dove over the stone railing. They missed the shocked expressions of the men.

  Carson and Tripp hit the slanted roof—that was mere feet below them—and slid down where it ended at more stone railing. Carson, not waiting for the two men to figure out what had happened, hopped to her feet and quickly fastened the hooked end of the rope around the railing. Tripp had just stood when she grabbed him and pulled him over once again.

  At first they dropped a couple of stories slowly, but as with most of Daniel’s devices, something went wrong. The rope tightened and then abruptly loosened. They plummeted to the ground, Carson landing on top of Tripp.

  Her drop cushioned by her brother, Carson sprang to her feet. Tripp, however, wasn’t ready to rise. He waited until he could breathe again.

  The men above them, surprised by the plunge, yelled down and waved their pistols. But a few people on the courthouse lawn had witnessed the stunt, and realizing it was a bad time to flash guns around, James and Paul cursed and ducked back into the tower.

  Carson motioned for Tripp to follow her and tugged on his sleeve. He yelled to alert her he was sore from their landing. He also had to remove the hidden harness that housed the repelling device.

  “We have to get back to the apartment before those guys can catch up,” she said.

  Tripp followed her around the courthouse and back across the street. As they reached the top of the stairs, Carson pounded on the door.

  “C’mon, Daniel, open up!” she yelled, just before the deadbolt was unlatched.

  The door opened, and Tripp and Carson took a startled step backward. It wasn’t who they had expected.

  The man tipped his fedora and nodded. “I’m not buying cookies this year.” They stared at him, baffled. “Girl Scouts? Oh, never mind,” he said, pulling them inside.

  While Tripp had no idea who the man was, Carson soon figured it out. “Shelby? Without a dress?”

  “In both spirit and flesh.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You called for a ride, didn’t you?” He started toward the kitchen. “I was just finishing the lunch your uncle Joe provided.”

  Carson followed Shelby into the kitchen. “That was supposed to be our lunch. Speaking of Uncle Joe, where is he? And Daniel?”

  “Well, let me see if I can repeat what the nerdy one said. The computer at this place is merely blah, it points to some other blah, and they’ll call when they find what they’re looking for near San Antonio.”

  Tripp tried to translate the terribly conveyed message. “So this location isn’t the server room we’re looking for. I’m guessing the machine here acts as some sort of proxy server, perhaps to throw off anyone trying to trace the IP address of the actual server. That means Daniel accessed the machine here and determined it communicates with another server near San Antonio.”

  Shelby was impressed. “You have a strange magic, kiddo. Glad I could help.”

  Carson looked less impressed. “I’m used to you taking something vague and making it overly complicated, Tripp. We’ll retrieve our treasure and head that way.”

  She went to the closet and began to remove things. Tripp assisted her while Shelby looked on disapprovingly.

  “No more treasure hunting, kiddos. Pops sent me to retrieve you guys.”

  After everything they had been through, Carson was hardly ready to give up. Even Tripp protested. At first, Shelby would hear none of it, but Carson in her stubborn fashion wore the man down. Banging his head against a Carson-shaped wall only prolonged things.

  “Fine. Go get your treasure,” Shelby said, gesturing for them to proceed.

  Tripp retrieved the round device from his pack while his sister haphazardly threw the contents of the closet out into the hall. Once he had a clear path, he dived into the closet and carefully inserted the disc-shaped key into the safe door. He tried to turn it clockwise first, but it wouldn’t budge. He then tried counterclockwise, and it eventually began to rotate.

  With a metallic click and a brief hiss of escaping air, the door to the safe popped out. Tripp pulled on it the rest of the way to reveal an airtight, sealed drawer. A light in the drawer came on, illuminating the inside.

  Carson’s and Shelby’s heads poked into the closet. Tripp reached into the drawer and lifted out the single item it contained. He carefully backed out, turned, and displayed the object.

  “What in the hell is that?” Shelby asked and touched it. “It feels cold.”

  “I was hoping you could shed some light on the subject,” said Tripp.

  It was about a meter long, roughly four inches in diameter and tubular. Although metal, it wasn’t as heavy as it looked. Lighter than steel but heavier than aluminum. Tripp concluded it was titanium.

  It was far from being a perfect cylinder—slightly thinner on one end than the other. All sorts of engraved patterns decorated it, and holes of various sizes appeared throughout the structure. It was neither solid metal nor hollow but contained some sort of material. There were no discernible buttons or switches on it, but Tripp figured it had to be an electrical device.

  Carson ran her hands across it as she examined the many grooves and engravings. “It’s pretty, in a Gothic sort of way.”

  Shelby’s phone rang. He glanced at the number calling and muttered, “Thank goodness,” before he answered. “Hey, Jack.”

  Carson’s eyes lit up. “Dad!”

  “Yes, that was your daughter. And thank you, Shelby, for going all the way to Texas to get your kids.” He paused to listen to Jack.

  “Tell Dad we found this cool device,” Carson said, but Shelby hushed her so Jack wouldn’t know what they had been up to. It was too late.

  “Uh, you mean that weird tube hidden in the closet?" Shelby asked, speaking to Jack on the other line. "Sure, we can retrieve that. No, I think we can figure it out.”

  Tripp studied Shelby’s expressions as the man listened. He looked puzzled, then surprised. Noticing he was being watched, Shelby turned his back to them. “Okay, just to confirm I’m not insane, you want us to go where?”

  Carson and Tripp were straining to hear their father’s voice. They tried to follow Shelby, but their efforts were in vain, as he disappeared into a room and locked the door.

  “Dammit,” Carson said and put her ear to the door.

  Most of what Shelby said on the other side of the door was muffled. He sounded resistant t
o some request. The one thing they made out clearly, when Shelby raised his voice: “Because that woman scares the bejeebers out of me.”

  A siren could be heard in the distance. Tripp wondered if someone had seen the two men in the tower with guns. Carson pulled herself away from the door and went to a back window. She watched as two police cars passed the street behind them, headed for the square.

  “Shit,” she said as she went back to the door and knocked to get Shelby’s attention.

  He finally came out of the room, no longer on the phone with their dad. Carson opened her mouth to start questioning him about the call, but he held up a hand for silence. It sounded as if the police cars had stopped nearby.

  “What did you kiddos do?” Shelby asked. “What part of the story did you leave out?”

  “Nothing,” Carson said.

  “Someone might have seen our attackers holding weapons and called the police,” Tripp said.

  “Attackers?”

  “We escaped by plunging off a veranda. They’ve almost certainly searched for us outside.”

  “Well, we shouldn’t go out the front, then. Is there a back exit?” Shelby asked.

  “Just the window in the back server room. There’s a steel ladder on the side of the building, but I don’t think it goes all the way to the ground.”

  “Just how far does it go?” Shelby asked.

  “Roughly twelve feet, give or take, short of the pavement,” Tripp said. “But if you were to hang down from the bottom rung, the drop should be about half that.”

  Shelby studied the window and contemplated the drop. “That’s just lovely.”

  “Hey, Shelby,” Carson said, “what the hell is that contraption in my brother’s hand?”

  “Something I wish we’d never seen.”

  “I hope it doesn’t have radioactive isotopes within its components,” Tripp said with concern.

  “Damn, that would suck,” Shelby said.

  Carson disappeared and came back with two pillowcases, which she and Tripp wrapped around the mysterious device. They tied it snuggly with a computer cord they had salvaged. Tripp found another, longer cable, an RJ-45 connector for a router, in a drawer. He tied it to the device so they could lower it out the window.

  Shelby made on his way down the ladder. As he reached the end of it, he hung as close to the ground as he could and dropped the rest of the way. His feet hit the pavement and he rolled backward, down the three steps that led into the street. Carson and Tripp watched as he slowly got up, in obvious pain, and motioned to them to lower the device.

  After doing so, Carson went next. She made the drop look easy. She slapped Shelby on the shoulder as she passed by him—a mild taunt. Tripp followed. The gracefulness of his effort was somewhere between Carson’s and Shelby’s.

  “Where are you parked?” Carson asked as she looked around for Shelby. He had quietly disappeared as Tripp came down. “Where’d he go?”

  Tripp dusted himself off, then froze at what he saw just beyond Carson. She looked alarmed as he raised his hands.

  “Did you miss us?” came the voice from behind her.

  Carson whirled around to see the thugs from the clock tower. She backed up until she was almost even with Tripp. The two men followed, their pistols aimed at them.

  “Oh look, Paul, they actually thought they’d given us the slip,” James said. “I guess they thought they were smarter than we are.”

  The other man grinned briefly but lost the smile as he lowered his weapon, dropped it to the ground, and raised his own hands. “James,” he said and pointed at Shelby.

  James looked dumbfounded until he saw the silenced pistol pointing at them. He followed Paul’s lead, and soon both men had their hands up.

  Shelby emerged fully from behind the large steel Dumpster he had ducked behind. He motioned to Carson and Tripp to join him, then waited as they moved out of the line of fire. “Would you gentlemen prefer the head or the chest?”

  Paul swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean to shoot both of you. Where would you like the bullet?”

  “Uh, sir, do we have another choice?” James asked. “I mean, people don’t really walk away from being shot in either of those spots.”

  Shelby eyed him curiously. “Your scrotum, perhaps? Look, I have to shoot you somewhere. It’s your fault I had to climb out of a four-story window when there was a perfectly good front door.”

  Both men followed Shelby’s finger as he pointed at the window. Paul said nothing, while James looked as if he was thinking.

  “Maybe if you just winged us in the leg, we’d be even.”

  “James, is it?” Shelby asked and the man nodded. “Tell me why Lloyd Security wants these two so badly and I promise to shoot just one of your nuts off.”

  The two looked horrified at the prospect. They both said, one right after the other, “Who?”

  “Really, jackasses?” Carson said angrily. “They’re the same pricks who hired your buddy Mark. You know, the guy who tried to kidnap us and murdered at least one person.”

  “We really don’t know what you’re talking about, little lady,” Paul said.

  “Oh, so now I’m a lady. Mr. Shelby, maybe if you shot one of them the other would start talking.”

  “I like your style, lil’ darlin’,” Shelby said as he aimed at Paul.

  Tripp was alarmed. “Hold on,” he said as he moved between Shelby and the two men. “I don’t think these men came with the same intentions as Mark.”

  Shelby lowered his pistol halfway. “Get out of the way, Tripp.”

  “Hear me out,” Tripp said. “They never even placed a finger on the trigger of their guns when pointing them at us. And they gave up easily when you pointed your gun at them. They hardly strike me as professional at anything, except perhaps lying.”

  “That’s all true,” James said. “Paul and I are just security guards. We wouldn’t really hurt anybody.”

  “I have a wife and two kids,” Paul said. “And James has an ex-hubby who ran off, but he still gives him money.”

  James flashed an irritated look at his colleague. “You could’ve just stopped with your wife and two kids, Paul.”

  “Well, at least I didn’t tell ’em your hubby ran off with a woman.”

  “You just did, asshole.”

  Carson laughed. “Oh, so that’s why my charm didn’t work on ya.”

  “No offense,” James said.

  “Enough,” Shelby said. “Okay, Tripp, you win. I won’t shoot these pathetic bastards if they tell me what I want to know.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Shelby,” Tripp said with relief.

  “You’re welcome, softie. Okay, bastards, who hired you?”

  “We honestly don’t know who he is, sir,” said James.

  “He was a young black fella with a lot of cash. He visited us at work,” said Paul.

  “In McAlester,” James added.

  “Where?” Tripp asked.

  “There are several prisons in McAlester, Oklahoma,” Carson said. “I’ve passed through that town a few times.”

  The men confirmed she was correct. Shelby questioned them further but learned little. They had been given a sizable down payment to make the trip down to Texas, with the promise of even more upon delivery of the twins. The men had no idea where the drop-off would be since they were supposed to call when they were on their way.

  Shelby used one of their phones to call the number, but it went to voice mail. Whoever would be listening to the message would call back with instructions. Typically, that would be when to set a trap for the party responsible, but Shelby was pressed for time.

  Carson felt the men were getting off way too easy and wanted to teach them a lesson. Reluctantly, Shelby disappeared and then returned with a roll of duct tape. “Get creative,” he told her. Tripp and he tossed them in the Dumpster once she had finished her work.

  “The van is this way.” Shelby pointed to the vehicle parked on the other side of
the dumpster.

  “You’re disturbed,” Tripp told his sister as he entered the back of the van and found a spot to secure the long metal object. He climbed over the seat to sit behind Shelby.

  “I’m an artist,” Carson replied, clearly proud of her work with the tape. She took the shotgun seat, and immediately her face expressed her disdain for the vehicle’s interior.

  “I like old vans,” said Shelby, as if reading her mind. “They’re very useful.”

  “I’m sure,” Carson said, cringing at the dingy smell. “I hope you don’t mind if I puke in here.”

  “Here,” Shelby said as he handed her a paper bag. He started the van and carefully guided them away from the square to the highway. They turned north onto I-35. Shelby plotted a course on his phone’s GPS map.

  “Where are we heading, sir?” asked Tripp.

  “You can call me Shelby, and we’re heading north.” He paused as he altered the final coordinates. “To Grandma’s house we go.”

  “Whose grandma?” asked Carson.

  “Yours, of course.” But Carson merely looked puzzled. “The crazy one,” he added.

  “The witch?”

  Shelby laughed. “Right, the Wicked Witch of Southeast Oklahoma.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your dad wants us to retrieve something.”

  “How about you go get it and we’ll head south.”

  The look on Shelby’s round face said more than his words. “If I showed up without you guys, I wouldn’t make it through the front door. Even if I did make it through, I’d never be seen again.”

  WITCH WAY

  Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house they went. The area was alive with campers, kayakers, and fisherman. It had been years since Tripp had been to this or any part of Oklahoma, although Carson had traveled to the state whenever conditions were ripe for storm adventures.

  The white van, windowless in the back, made its way along the route. Shelby was ready for a drink and cigar but figured it better to wait. In the backseat, Tripp was still fidgeting with his phone. In the front passenger seat, Carson had been flipping through some pages of her mother’s diary but grew tired and decided to take a nap.