Secret Triplets

by Holly Rayner

  When I turned to look at him, he was still motionless in the pickup, staring at me, as if he wanted to stay and would stay if only I asked him. But I turned my back on him once more and walked to the café’s door. When I turned back, the truck was gone. Brock was gone.

  I hurried to my car, and when I got there, I reached into my pocket.

  Nothing. I reached into the other pocket and found the same. I ripped off my coat and shook it over the pavement. I emptied my bakery bag on the ground, flipped and shook every item like an addict looking for a lost stash. In a way, it wasn’t all that different. I was screwed without that fuel pump, and yet there was no denying that it was gone. I had lost it, probably on our ill-begotten trek out to the pond.

  Now my make-believe had become real. My car really was out of service, and I was far away from the garage.

  What was I supposed to do now?

  I took a miserable look at the Half Moon Café and rushed inside, past the empty tables, to the back, where I went into the flowery-wallpapered bathroom.

  There, crouched over the toilet, I heaved, over and over again. Nothing came out, though I felt better afterward. I guessed what was making me feel sick had left in the maroon pickup.

  In a dreamlike state, I wandered back to the counter, told the red-haired girl with the crooked smile I wanted four cookies, paid for them, and slumped into a seat. Only halfway through my third cookie did I notice I was at the same table as last time, the one under the picture of the mountain ridge. It was funny, being at the same table when I was already a different person than the last time I had sat there.

  A traitorous current of uncertainty was coursing through me, making me devour the cookies rapid-fire, tearing off chunk after chunk until my mouth had all it could chew. When I was finished, having scarfed down every last cookie, I was left with nothing but my phone in my hand and the realization of what I had to do next.

  I typed “East Street Garage” into the search bar and then called the number shown. They picked up on the sixth ring and replied with a terse “yeah, yeah, all right” when I explained that I’d need a tow to their location since my car was “somehow” missing the fuel pump.

  Then, once I’d hung up and the next, bigger choice was before me, my fingers dialed again before my mind could think better of it.

  “Hello?” said Russell Snow.

  “Hi. This is Alex Combs. I did it. I found Brock Anderson, went to the cabin he’s staying at, and got pictures of some illegal guns he has. I’ll be sending you the pictures over email shortly. I just have to get home first.”

  “Ah, excellent. Where is he?”

  “Nederland.”

  “And you’re still there?”

  “Yeah. My car’s temporarily out of service. Needs a part replaced before it can get back on the road. They’re coming to tow it now.”

  “I can give you a ride home.”

  His answer came so fast and easily that I had to take a minute to think about it.

  “Really? No. I should be fine.”

  “Please. It would be my pleasure. You’re in town now?”

  “At the New Moon Café, but—”

  “I’ll be there in about two hours. I’ll bring the money.”

  Then the dial tone signaled that the matter was settled.

  I stared at my phone for a minute. Then I went back to the café’s front counter and ordered a sandwich, realizing I’d eaten nothing but cookies for almost 24 hours. It was going to be a long wait. Already my stomach was churning with ominousness. Clearly, staying unoccupied while waiting for the man I wasn’t sure I wanted to arrive wasn’t going to be an option.

  The wait dragged on even longer than I’d expected. I returned my mom’s call (“Yes, Mom, I’m fine. Just working on a really big case. Yes, I’ll come down for dinner tomorrow. Yes, I love you too.”) and Tiffany’s (“Hey! Sorry about taking so long getting back to you. Been consumed by this crazy case. Yeah, things are looking up. Dinner Wednesday? Definitely!”)

  And then, finally, just when two hours had rolled around to three and I’d given up on Russell Snow entirely, in he came.

  Even the second time seeing him was jarring. He was taller than I remembered, more angular. His all black suit was hilariously out of place in the quaint little café; his whole body was, really. His face was all sharp planes that looked tacked together. The smile he tried to give me looked more sinister than if he had scowled outright. He sat across from me and bared his teeth into another troubling, yellow smile.

  “Knew you could do it. Knew you were different,” he said in his cold voice.

  “So you’re sure this guy is dangerous?” I found myself asking in response.

  The thin white lines of his eyebrows lowered.

  “You went to his cabin, you said?”

  “I… He just doesn’t seem like the ‘unhinged criminal’ type is all.”

  An unseemly smile crept over his face, and he gave my hand an icy pat.

  “The worst ones never do.”

  He took out an envelope and said, “Here’s your $2,000 as agreed upon.” Then he paused. “Can I see the pictures?”

  “Sure,” I said, taking out my phone.

  When he saw the guns, that same smile returned.

  “Yes, yes.”

  I took the phone away, perhaps too fast, because he gave my hand another pat, this time resting his bones over my fingers.

  “Miss Combs, if only you knew what this vicious man has done.”

  My gaze was rapt on his boney hands: their snakes of tendons, knobs of knuckles, yellow half-moons of nails.

  “Try me.”

  At this, his gaze grew hard. Russell Snow rose.

  “You ready for that ride?”

  His hand was clutching the envelope so hard the knuckles and tendons were standing out and white. His face was just as strained looking. Clearly, I was going to have to go along with Russell Snow’s ride in order to get paid.

  “Yes,” I said.

  With that, he strode out the café door. I hurried after him to find him at a fully blacked-out SUV.

  Catching my stare, he grinned.

  “Can’t be too careful.”

  Just then a tow truck stopped, barring my way.

  “That tan one yours?” a young ball-capped guy asked from the open window, pointing to my car.

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you need anything else from me?”

  The boy shook his sandy blond head.

  “Just call us up and we can let ya know when we’re finished.”

  Then the tow truck continued toward my car.

  “Miss Combs!” a voice said.

  It was Russell Snow, now in his car and waving me over with the hand holding the envelope.

  I kept my gaze on it as I slid into the passenger side. Just a few more minutes and I’d have the money I so desperately needed and had more than earned.

  But as soon as the door closed beside me, Russell locked all the doors, started the engine, and said, “You don’t mind if I run an errand first.”

  I didn’t answer his question that was really a demand; he was already pulling out onto the road anyway, driving out of Nederland. I stared out the window dully at the town I’d never see again now that I’d delivered what may have been a good man to the most unseemly creep I’d ever encountered. Was going against what I knew was right really worth the money?

  “So you never said where he was,” Russell said.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “Nope. It was part of the agreement.”

  I almost asked him, “Was it?” before I said, “Oh. Well, I’ll need to go home and look over a map to retrace my steps.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his face fall. Abruptly, he pulled the car over.

  “I haven’t told you the full story,” he said, spreading his fingers on one hand and then bringing them in again.

  “Oh?” I said.

  “This job is important, really important, for personal reasons. It wasn’t j
ust those guns Brock’s been involved in. He stole from my girl, my Kaya. I swore to her I’d get her jewelry back. The longer it takes, the less chance there is that it’ll be there. If I don’t have an address to give the police now, who knows how long it will take. I know you just stumbled on it, but the facts remain.”

  I stayed silent, my gaze locked on my motionless fingers.

  “I”—his voice cracked—“I don’t know what to do. Kaya has lost hope in me. My friends have all given up too. I…I’m out of options, Miss Combs.”

  As unseemly and unwelcome as I found Russell Snow, my gaze was inescapably drawn to him. His face was even hollower, even paler. The line on his forehead looked like a full-on dent. It was incredible, and yet there was no denying it. Russell Snow was telling the truth. He was broken up about it.

  I swallowed and shifted my gaze to my other hand. Really, it was wrong of me to withhold information from my client. He had paid as promised after all, and it wouldn’t hurt telling him the address now.

  I cleared my throat and turned to Russell.

  “He was living in a cabin in the woods,” I said. “You get there from a street connected to the parking lot of the East Street Garage.”

  His face softened, and I let out a sigh of relief.

  A few minutes later, we were approaching the East Street Garage where it had all begun. My ache of nostalgia transformed into a twist of suspicion as our car made a turn into the lot.

  I turned around, stifling my gasp at what I saw: two other blacked-out cars behind us, exactly the same model and make.

  Chapter Ten

  “You don’t mind,” Russell said easily. “Brock is the sneakiest bastard we’ve had yet. Time is of the essence if we’re going to nab him.”

  I said nothing. Clearly, this was not the time to admit that I’d been counting on a way to help Brock escape ever since Russell had walked into that café.

  “And turn him over to the police, of course,” he said with a smirk, like he knew he was lying and didn’t care if I knew or not.

  As we turned onto the dirt road off the parking lot, I sneakily checked the door again. Locked, of course.

  “Maybe you could just…”

  “Don’t have time to drop you off, unfortunately,” Russell returned coolly.

  He hit a button which made music blare through the car. It took a minute for me to recognize the angry song.

  The song was jarring, the singer’s voice a rebellious rasp, the guitar a groaning, percussive hit to the gut, the percussion itself just slamming along. It was ironically appropriate, when the singer yelled “screw you, I won’t do what you tell me”, almost like the universe thumbing its teeth at my predicament. I had chosen money over righteousness, and now I was going to pay the ultimate price. I was going to witness first-hand what Russell and his goons were going to do to the man I may have just fallen for.

  My gaze slid around the car dully. I noticed everything: the floor mat littered with beer bottles at my feet, the cup holder of cigarette butts by my elbow, the hand sanitizer flopped atop them like a joke. The whole car was a hotbox of smoke and my own idiotic failure. My hand grabbed the window handle.

  “Can I?”

  Russell responded by leaning over and, as the car bumped along, twisting the handle around and around. Once the window was down enough, I stuck my whole head out the window and gulped in the fresh air greedily. A light snow still coated everything, and some icy leaves brushed my eager face. This was the calm before the storm, and what was coming was inevitable.

  When I pulled my head back inside, my glance slid to the glove compartment. Its door was ajar. Inside, what looked like a gun glinted. This was bad. This was very, very bad. I felt in my pocket for my phone. Maybe if I just dialed…

  “You understand, of course, that my friends and I take our work seriously,” Russell said, his voice light. He shot me a significant look. “Very seriously.”

  I let my phone go. I would just have to go along for the ride. I didn’t have any choice.

  The drive took even longer than I remembered. Russell spoke to me just once to ask how far in it was.

  At my “not sure, pretty far though,” he grunted and said nothing more.

  He turned off the radio in the middle of a country song that liberally used a cowbell.

  The quiet was even more stifling, and the occasional clank of beer bottles didn’t help things. I was on edge. Every little movement Russell made and every tiny sound from the car or outside frightened me. Meanwhile, our blacked-out clones were still behind us. We passed a twisted ruin of a tree trunk, and my heart fell. We were almost there.

  By the time we pulled into the all-too-familiar parking lot, I felt like I was going to pass out with fear.

  “Finally,” Russell said.

  Then, one hand on the steering wheel, he slipped the other into the glove compartment and took out the gun.

  With a playful wag of it at me, he joked, “Now, don’t you go trying anything now.”

  I clenched my fists, and he got out of the car.

  As I watched him and seven men assemble in front of the cabin, unlikely explanations flew through my head. Maybe Russell was telling the truth. Maybe he and his men (who also happened to be wearing all black) just wanted to capture Brock and take him to the police. Maybe Brock was going to be fine and would just have to finally pay for his crimes. Maybe everything was going to be all right.

  But when the other men took out their guns, even those unlikely reassurances disappeared.

  Russell knocked on the door.

  Please don’t answer, I silently begged Brock. Please, please be out on a walk, or peer out the window first. Please, don’t you open that door.

  But then the door swung open, and I found myself terrified yet pleased. Seeing his handsome face again, even in these circumstances, was something I thought I’d never get to do again. Brock’s face went grave at the sight of Russell and the others, and then his gaze slid over their shoulders…to me. I shrank back, wanting to disappear into the black polyester seat or onto the beer-bottle-covered floor, but it was too late. It was too late entirely. Brock had seen me, and his face looked like he’d been shot already. He hung his head and then slammed the door shut.

  The next second, Russell and his men were hammering on it, yelling. Finally, they kicked it, smashing into it with such force that it gave way. There was a crash and then Brock was on the roof, leaping into a snowbank below before taking off running. He disappeared into the forest.

  I couldn’t sit still in the car any longer. I tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Somehow Russell had locked it so that I couldn’t leave, unless...

  I climbed out the window and hopped onto the snow just as Russell and his men came running out.

  Russell raced over to me, his face now a full-on snarl, his gun clutched in white-knuckled hands.

  “Which way did he go?”

  I gaped at him, and he took a casual look at his gun and then at me.

  “Which way?”

  “That way,” I said, pointing in the opposite direction I had seen Brock run.

  As two of his beefy men ran up, Russell swept his gun out in the direction I had pointed. “That way.”

  Then, turning to me with a put-on smile, Russell gently said, “You probably want to be getting home, now don’t you?”

  I nodded dumbly, and he walked over to the car and unlocked it.

  “Got it all fitted out with a whole bunch of customized features,” he said casually, slipping inside.

  I stood there for a minute, staring at the seat I had been in. Did I really want to go back in there with him? How did I know that Russell was going to return me home safely, that he wasn’t going to get rid of me too for knowing too much?

  “You coming?” Russell’s easy voice broke through my reverie.

  He was turned to face me, his gun still in hand. Whatever he intended to do with me, I had no choice but to go with him. I opened the car door and sat down. Leani
ng over me, Russell closed the window.

  “And we’re off,” he said, and then we were, rumbling down the way we’d come, down the road I’d gone up and down too many times now.

  The last few minutes replayed in my head in a surreal haze, like scenes from a movie. The gun, Russell’s men, the fallen door, the crash, Brock’s look. That heartbreaking look of knowing, of realization. That look I would never forgive myself for.

  As we passed it, I glared at the twisted trunk of the tree. It was strangely emblematic of all that was left of me, of how low I had let myself fall for my job. I had sacrificed a good man, had done what I knew was wrong, to save myself and my job.

  Russell didn’t even try to have a conversation now. Lost in his own vile thoughts, he absently picked up a cigarette, lit it, and puffed away. It was all another job to him, all another day’s work, while to me, for a moment, this man, Brock Anderson, had been everything.

  It was getting late now; the sky was an unimpressed gray, the trees all bowed over with the too-heavy snow, claws of branches extended towards me eerily, as if begging for the help they knew they couldn’t have. Still, I whispered a “sorry” to them, one that was meant for him, really. It was for everyone I had ever failed—myself most of all. It was a “sorry” for failing once more, for making the wrong choice.

  By the time I checked my phone, I was hardly surprised to find his message: I’m at your apartment, waiting by the door. I won’t leave until I’ve seen you. It was Charlie. He always had a knack for coming at the worst times, the lowest times when I couldn’t say no.

  When Russell pulled up to the darkened East Street Garage, we sat there for a minute. I was too tired for any more pretenses. I hardly even cared for the money. I just wanted to get out of this suffocating prison of a car.

  Russell said, “You will tell me if he contacts you again, if you see him. If you find out anything about him.”

  I nodded my head robotically and told him I would.

  He handed me my envelope, and I got out.

  One step away and—“Miss Combs!”

  “Yes?”

  “You must have been proud, happy to see your good detective work being put to use.”