by Noir, Roxie
“I’m not giving it to you if you’re gonna call now,” he says, sounding irritated. “Wait until morning.”
“I will if you give it to me,” I say.
“You also will if I don’t give it to you,” he points out, standing and taking our mugs. “My phone’s in my room, can you make it that long?”
“I guess I’m waiting until morning,” I say.
Daniel puts the mugs into the sink, then sighs, turning to me.
“C’mere,” he says, and holds his arms out for a hug.
I step in. I don’t hug my brothers that often but he’s firm, solid. He pats me on the back, his short beard just barely tickling my ear.
“This sucks but it’s gonna be okay,” he says. “Try to get some sleep, you look like shit.”
“Thanks,” I say, and for once, I’m not even being sarcastic.
“You know what I mean,” he says.
“I do.”
We hold each other for one more second, and as we separate I tousle his hair. He makes a face at me.
“Go the fuck to bed, Eli,” he says, but he’s smiling.
Chapter Forty-Three
Eli
There’s some contraption on Silas’s head. I stand next to my Bronco, arms crossed, and watch as he and Grady get out of their vehicle, and try to figure out what in the blazes Silas is up to.
They’re both wearing all black. Grady has on cargo pants, and Silas, in addition to the head contraption, has on something that looks like the cargo pants of fanny packs.
I finally walk over to them.
“Hi,” I say to Grady, holding out my hand. “I’m Eli. Thanks for coming.”
“Happy to help with your problem,” he says, shaking my hand. “Hope you don’t mind that I brought Silas along, he can be very useful in a tight spot.”
I glance around the Bramblebush employee parking lot, wondering what tight spots exactly they think we’re going to get into. There’s one nighttime security guard, and so far tonight, he’s spent most of his time watching The Office on his phone and occasionally walking around the grounds.
It’s a former farm in the middle of nowhere, and it’s not like we’re storing gold bullion here. The cameras are mostly to watch the employees and guests, not the building when no one’s around.
That doesn’t make what I’m trying any less stupid. If I get caught — and since I’m a chef and not a cat burglar, there’s a decent chance that I will — I’m definitely getting fired.
I’m fine with it. Montgomery can fire me all he wants. I already cashed the check.
“Not a problem,” I say, regarding Silas, who looks like a kid in a candy shop. “What’s that on your head?”
Silas grins and points to the big black bulky thing strapped to his head.
“Night vision goggles,” he says. “I haven’t gotten to use these things in years.”
“No,” I say.
Silas crosses his arms in front of himself. Grady glances over at him, an I told you so look on his face.
“These can give us a serious tactical advantage —”
“Anyone who sees you is going to wonder why the hell you look like you’re waiting for the aliens to land,” I say.
“That’s the point,” he says, raising one eyebrow. “No one is going to see me.”
I realize that maybe I haven’t been clear about our plan tonight. I rub my hands together, looking from Grady to Silas and back, and I feel a little guilty because they’re very, very excited for a secret operation.
“This is where I work,” I explain. “I’m here at weird hours sometimes, like a few weeks ago when I had to marinate a pork shoulder for exactly —"
They’re both standing in a perfect line, feet planted shoulder-width apart, arms crossed in front of their chests. I feel like they’re about to salute me or something.
“—the why’s not really important, but the important thing is, it’s completely unsuspicious that I’m here, and it’s not even suspicious that I’ve got some people with me. So act like you’re some buddies of mine and I had to make a quick stop here to check on something, and we’re golden. Got it?”
“Got it,” Grady says.
Silas is quiet. The goggles are still on his head.
“Silas?”
“I’m telling you —”
I shove one hand through my hair. I thought he’d make things easier, not harder, because I just want to get in, find these deleted files, ruin Martin’s life, and get back out.
That’s what I need right now. I need vengeance. I want justice for Violet. I’ve seen her twice since our fight, for about one second each time, and the way she looked at me felt like it was tearing my heart out.
Even if she’s mad at me forever, I need to do this. I’m not sure it’s the nice thing my mom wants, but it’s something.
“Can you put them in a briefcase or something?” I finally ask.
“Roger that,” he says, and opens the car door again.
Five minutes later, we walk through the side door of the Bramblebush office barn. I spent some time today doing a little recon, to the best of my not-very-good ability, but I think I at least know where the cameras are.
“Okay,” I say as we walk, going over the plan one more time. “We need to get into the security office, where the camera feeds are. There are keys in the janitor’s closet, which is usually unlocked.”
Grady just sighs. Silas shakes his head.
“Do people around here not know how to lock a door?” he asks, rhetorically. “I know we think it’s safe and everything, but…”
“We’re in this whole mess because I didn’t password protect my phone,” I say.
“Eli,” Silas says, horrified.
Grady just shakes his head.
“It has a password now,” I grumble. “Anyway, we get into the security office, you get the files back, we put them on this thumb drive, we leave.”
“Do we delete the footage of us breaking into the security office?” Grady asks.
“…yes,” I say, trying to act like I’d thought of that.
“What do we do if the security guard hears something suspicious and decides to check it out?” he asks.
“You get the deleted files and I’ll distract him by talking about how perfect Pam and Jim are together,” I say. “We just need the files. That’s all I care about.”
“I care about not getting arrested,” Grady says.
“You won’t get arrested,” I say, and I’m at least eighty percent sure I’m right.
There’s no one else around right now. It’s a Thursday night in the off-season, and though there’s a small event tomorrow, it’s not the sort of thing that anyone’s staying late for. We walk through the halls without meeting another soul and get to the janitor’s closet undetected.
It’s unlocked. I open it, lean inside, reach for the key ring on the hook where I saw Hank leave them earlier today.
There’s no key ring. I frown. I lean further in, my hand scrabbling at the wall, but there’s nothing.
I turn on the lights. I go in. The closet is nine feet square, maximum, so it doesn’t take me long to look around, my heart pounding.
There are no keys. My heart rises in my chest, the hook in my ribcage twisting.
“No keys?” Grady asks. Silas is behind him, his back to us, keeping a lookout.
“They’re not here,” I say.
“It’s fine,” Grady says. “Come on.”
Now he’s smiling. I’m starting to wonder if asking Silas and his military buddy for help was the greatest idea I’ve ever had, but I turn out the light, close the door, and lead them to the security office.
There’s only one camera on the hall, and I point it out before we walk past it. For a moment I’m afraid that one of them is going to whip out a can of spray paint and black out the lens, but thankfully, they both just nod and turn their backs to it.
When we reach the door to the security suite, Grady stops. He holds his hand up. Sil
as and I both stop short. My palms are sweating, and there’s a single bead of perspiration making its way down the back of my neck.
I’m not cut out for this. I’m not the sneaky type. I’m not good at doing things undetected and unseen, and all the quiet and subversion here is making me ten times more nervous.
Without warning, Grady goes down on one knee. He pulls something from one of his many cargo pockets, a tube about a foot long, sticks it under the door, and puts an earbud in his ear.
I look at Silas. Silas is standing practically at attention, fully alert, both hands on his belt.
I close my eyes briefly and pray he didn’t bring a firearm. This is not a firearm situation.
“Clear,” Grady murmurs, putting the tube and the earpiece back into his pocket, pulling out a small black pouch from another one.
He unrolls it. It’s full of small silver tools. He selects a few and gets to work.
The door’s open in twenty seconds. He nods at Silas, and Silas slips through, into the dark. I follow, and practically trip over Silas the moment I get inside.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
The door closes. A red light shines on the ground, and I jump.
We set something off, I think. Not now, we’re so close…
“You don’t lose your night vision with a red flashlight,” Silas explains, and waves the light around the room as I try to still my heart. “Where to now?”
I point at the back room where the monitors are glowing. We go in. We sit. The monitors are all quiet and still, except for the ones on the Lodge, and even those are boring: the receptionist typing at her computer, someone in the lounge reading a paperback.
Grady opens the laptop, and the desktop comes up.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he mutters. “Do you people even know what a password is?”
“You can get it, right?” I ask.
“If you give me a second,” he says.
Silas is outside the door to the tiny monitor room, standing at attention again. He has a laptop bag slung over one shoulder, and he has one hand on the zipper like he can’t wait to get those night vision goggles out.
“Sorry,” I apologize.
Grady says nothing. Silas says nothing. I point out the folder with the pool’s security footage. I point out the missing date. Grady just nods, then pulls a thumb drive from yet another pocket.
“Two minutes,” he says, and gets to work.
I stand up. I can’t keep sitting. There’s not enough room to pace in here, so I just stand there, arms crossed, watching the monitors, my stomach in knots.
It’ll work, I keep telling myself. This will work.
What if the camera doesn’t show anything?
What if Martin knows how to really delete something?
And what if it works? What then?
I don’t know what then. I know I send Montgomery the security footage anonymously — Grady gave me detailed instructions on that when we spoke on the phone.
He’ll get fired. I’m almost positive. There have been rumors swirling about Kevin’s mom, a personal injury attorney, suing Bramblebush for negligence. If the footage shows that Martin unlocked the pool and brought the bull, that means he opened Bramblebush up to a nasty lawsuit.
A lawsuit.
That gives me another idea. It’s sneakier. It’s more devious. It might even be mean.
I shove it aside for now.
“Is it working?” I ask.
“Yes,” Grady says, tersely.
I swallow hard and take a deep breath. All I need is that file in my pocket, and I’m done. I don’t care what happens after that, though, like Grady and Silas, I’d prefer not to get arrested.
Then Grady leans in, frowning, his face lit by the laptop screen.
“Huh,” he says, and my stomach lurches.
“Boys,” Silas says, before I can ask Grady what’s wrong. “We got company.”
He points to the bank of monitors. I look up. Grady doesn’t.
The lone security guard is walking through the halls. I watch him come down one, then another.
I think he’s coming here. It’s a little hard to tell with the layout of the monitors, but I’m pretty sure —
He passes the bathrooms, then the break room.
He’s coming here.
“Shit,” I say, and turn to Silas. “Okay, if I—”
He’s already strapping the goggles to his head, a huge grin on his face.
“I got this, kid,” he says.
Then he’s gone.
“Oh, fuck,” I say, my hands over my face. “Fuck.”
“He’s fine,” Grady says, still leaning in, totally unconcerned. “He’s happier than a pig in shit right now.”
Silas is on the monitor. Silently, I watch him stalk a hallway, the sidle around a corner.
A second later, the guard rounds the corner at the opposite end of the hallway. He freezes for a second. It looks like he shouts something.
Then Silas runs, and the guard runs after him. I turn my attention to Grady, who’s still frowning at the laptop. There’s a popup window with a progress bar on the screen, but the bar seems to be frozen halfway.
I just sit. I don’t even bother asking Grady if it’s working, because I don’t think he wants to hear my dipshit questions right now. I just watch Silas and the security guard on the monitors, darting through hallways.
“That is not how I would do it,” Grady mutters, mostly to himself.
Then, to me: “You’re sure this was deleted?”
I try to swallow against the brick in my stomach.
“No,” I say, truthfully.
“Huh,” he says, and lapses back into silence.
I watch Silas and the security guard on the monitors. My heart pounds. I’m sweating, my stomach in knots.
What do I do if this doesn’t work? I think.
I have to do something. That’s not the question. There’s always the option of beating the shit out of Martin, but bruises heal and I’d prefer not to face assault charges.
There has to be a way to trace that email he sent Montgomery, I think. Maybe if I can find someone to hack into—
“Is this it?” Grady suddenly asks, and turns the laptop screen toward me.
It’s a video of the pool. It’s daytime. There are a few kids splashing around, a yellow float bobbing in the water.
“It’s labeled the 25th,” he explains, and I reach for the computer.
I scan through the video. It gets dark. The float disappears. Everyone leaves.
I scan farther, and suddenly, there’s Kevin on a stretcher, two paramedics attending to him. I sit bolt upright.
“Yeah, this is it,” I say, and go back.
On the monitors, something catches my eye, and I glance up. It’s a golf cart, wheeling around the side of the building. A moment later, there’s another golf cart.
“What the fuck?” I say.
“We should probably hurry this up,” Grady says, calm as can be.
I grit my teeth. I focus on the laptop, scan backward, skip through.
Pool closed. Night time. Nothing. Nothing.
Someone at the locked gate, carrying a box. We let it play.
He unlocks the gate. He comes inside. I can’t see his face, but it’s him. It has to be him. He comes round the side of the pool.
Show your face, I think. Show your goddamn face.
He sits on a lounge chair, pulls the mechanical bull out, and starts blowing it up. We skip forward. It takes him forever to blow the thing up, and his back is to the camera the whole time.
He knew it was there, I think.
I’ve gone through all this and I’ve still got nothing. Silas is leading a golf cart chase right now, and I’ve got nothing.
Finally, on the screen, he tosses the bull into the pool.
And then, for one second, he looks right into the camera.
It’s definitely, without-a-doubt Martin.
“There it is,” Grady says, a
nd sticks another thumb drive into the laptop.
I look at the monitors again. The golf carts are still going, and my chest tightens. The guard must have called the police by now.
“How long does it take to — oh,” I say, as he pulls it out and sticks another in.
“I’ll make a few backups,” he says, clicking a few keys. “You take some, I’ll take some. Leave at least one in a secure location.”
He hands me four thumb drives. On the monitors, the golf carts are stopped. The security guard gets out of one, but Silas is nowhere to be seen.
On another monitor, blue lights flicker. Grady glances up. He does something else on the laptop. A box of code pops up. He types something, and then the screen goes black.
On the monitor, the cops pull into Bramblebush’s long driveway.
“Is there a back exit?” Grady asks. “Any way we can leave without being seen?”
“Come on,” I say, and we leave the security offices.
* * *
I come out of the locker room and practically throw an apron at Grady. He puts it on without asking, standing in front of the stainless steel counter.
I put an onion and a cutting board in front of him, practically shove a knife into his hand.
“Do I cut this?” he asks, knife in one hand, onion in the other.
I open a refrigerator and heave a stockpot out, put it on a burner, and turn it on.
“Just look like you could,” I tell him.
The kitchen doors open, and the security guard steps through, followed by two cops.
“Didn’t realize you were here,” he says. “Late-night cooking?”
Grady grips the knife and frowns at the onion, concentrating ten times harder than he did at the computer. I have no idea where Silas is right now. I haven’t seen him since he abandoned his golf cart at the edge of the forest, so hopefully he’s alive and not being eaten by a mountain lion or something.
“Forgot to put something in the consommé for tomorrow’s event,” I tell them, smiling. “Just need to add a touch of seasoning to this, let it simmer for a bit longer and while it’s doing that, I may as well start proofing the rolls, right?”
Grady cuts into the onion, right through the middle. The skin is still on, and he’s holding the knife like he’s going to stab someone with it.