I had slept in my clothes as the only ones that Matt had thought to buy or bring was the purple dress and black leggings. I could get away with wearing one of their t-shirts over the tights but that was the extent of my wardrobe change. They were getting pretty grungy. And stunk.
I picked at my pants as I sat at the chrome table in the kitchen. Jake served me a double heaping of everything plus a glass of milk and orange juice.
“Ketchup? Hey, where did the OJ and milk come from?”
“Ketchup? For what?” he asked. He was the cook, the apron at his waist said so. They needed clothes too, but I suspected that Matt could find some in his brother’s house. “And Matt went to the store this morning while you were sleeping.”
“Again? Did he get ketchup? I can’t eat eggs without ketchup.”
Jake rolled his eyes and went to the glass-fronted cabinets, pulled out a huge bottle of Heinz and set it top down near me. I squirted the yellows until there wasn’t a hint of yolk showing and then mashed the whites and yolks together into a pink slop. He looked green as he stared at my eggs.
“That is plain disgusting,” he said in disgust. I shoveled the food in, slammed the OJ and milk down, remembered to put my dirty dishes in the dishwasher before I started off in a hurry.
“Hey! Where you going?”
“Look for Matt!” I yelled over my shoulder as I headed for the game room. He wasn’t there; I knew that he was up, I’d seen the second coffee mug in the sink.
He wasn’t in the game room, either of the three bathrooms or looking at the video feeds in the mini-office. The last place I looked was the weight room and he wasn’t there, either. Frustrated, I went back to Jake and asked him if he knew where Matt was hiding.
“He is back from grocery shopping, right?”
“Yeah. He’s down in the basement. On the firing range.”
My eyes grew round. “This place has a shooting range, too? Cool. Can I shoot?”
“Can you? Safely?”
“I’ve hunted for food since I was five, Jake. I can shoot the nuts off a squirrel.”
He grinned, laughed as if I had said something funny. I really had shot nuts out of a squirrel’s mouth without killing the squirrel. I didn’t tell him that.
“Shooting at people isn’t like shooting a squirrel,” he returned soberly.
“I know that, Jake. I’ve shot deer, turkey, feral hogs and gators. Coyotes, too. Whatever Mom and I could eat, or I sell for the hides.”
“What did your mom do, Cris? She work?”
I looked at him. Wondered if he was implying anything about mom. “She cleaned toilets and motel rooms. She wouldn’t go to welfare because she knew she didn’t need or want their help and besides, my dad would have been able to track us down that way. So, I hunted. Cleaned out junked cars in salvage lots. Hauled metals to the pawn shop. You’d be surprised what you can find under the seats in a car.
“Whatever I could find and sell, I did. We didn’t have cable or Wi-Fi, or cell phones. We ate good. Had decent clothes, electricity. Flush toilets. I went to school. Mostly,” I added truthful.
“Mostly?” His eyebrows raised. Probably thought I was an ignorant, illiterate redneck cracker.
“I can read, Jake. I wasn’t registered. Had to prove who you are and have shot records. I snuck into the large classes when I could. Listened. Used the library and offered to help other kids with their math homework. They paid me, sometimes.”
He asked me questions about history, English, math and geology. I knew the answers to most of his questions. He asked me what kind of weapon I had used for hunting.
“A Marlin .22 Long rifle,” I said. I hadn’t been able to bring it on the bus and wondered who had wound up with it. Probably Mr. Calibrisi had pawned it. Wasn’t worth much, it was about worn out. It had been my dad’s rifle when he was a kid, the one thing that I had taken from him when Mom and I had run. I had visions of shooting him with it.
“You know where the door to the basement is?”
“No.” That was one place that I hadn’t explored, yet.
“Two doors down from the garage door. The light switch is inside the stairwell on the right. Matt will be wearing earphones and won’t hear you. Don’t sneak up on him. Blink the lights three times before you even go down the first step, he’ll know someone is coming.”
I nodded and went looking for the door. I did what he said and when I climbed off the last step, Matt was waiting for me at the half-wall of a large shooting gallery. The walls were painted an off-white and were baffled. The range went back for a hundred feet and there were six firing lines. Paper images of bad guys not bullseye were hanging at the 25, 50, 75 and 100-foot marks. In some were bullet holes but others were pristine.
He had the earphones tucked around his neck, his service weapon holstered. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the smoky blue air. I hadn’t heard a single shot since I had opened the door. Since he was firing a 9 mm, the noise in the enclosed room should have been felt as well as heard, yet I had done neither. The range must have been sound-proof.
“Can I shoot, too Matt?” No sooner had I asked than the lights went out in the basement. It was so dark that I couldn’t see him or my own hand. I reached out and grabbed him by the sleeve, making sure that I didn’t touch his weapon. We waited and when the lights did not blink or come back on at all, Matt grabbed me by the collar of the t-shirt and dragged me to the far end of the shooting range. He kept one hand on the short wall, but I had no visual clue, so I stumbled over my own feet. The one time I tried to ask him anything, he clamped his dry hand over my mouth.
I was slightly behind him so when he ran into the corner of the wall, I ran into his bulk. I could feel him running his hand up the cement wall and seconds later, found out why. The firing range had another exit and once the door closed behind us, he spoke. Quietly.
“Careful. There are steps up.”
“Matt. What’s going on? Why did the lights go out?” I shuffled forward and swept the wall, searching for a light switch. There wasn’t one. Which was odd, there should be one at the top and bottom of the staircase. For safety’s sake.
“Someone is in the house,” he said grimly. He pulled me up onto the staircase. “When we get to the top step, you head for the panic room.”
“But Jake –”
“Jake managed to warn us. He turned the lights off.”
“Why didn’t he tell us? How did they find us here? Is it Tempe? Or the Beilbys?”
“Maybe he couldn’t warn us,” he returned. I felt him reach for his weapon. I still couldn’t see anything in the black stairwell.
We crept up the steps, me behind Matt and I counted the treads. The average number of steps in a house was twelve and it held true even in this mansion’s basement.
The twelfth step led to a door and instead of light gleaming under the sill, I saw flickering spots on the floor. Spots that bounced – like from flashlights. The people holding the flashlights didn’t open the basement door but walked past it. I wondered if it was one of those that was disguised as part of the walls and was hidden from casual view.
I didn’t hear Jake. I didn’t hear anything over the thundering of my heart. Matt slowly eased the door open onto the hallway leading to the bathroom and the kitchen. When he was sure that the intruders weren’t in the area, he motioned me out, shoving me toward the panic room. I didn’t want to go, I wanted to stay with him and find Jake.
Angrily, he pushed me hard enough to almost knock me down. I didn’t say anything. “I can’t protect you and help Jake,” he whispered. “Hide, Crispin. I can only do this if I know you’re safe.”
I nodded, not sure if he could see me in the black-as-night house. Tears made my vision blurry, but I’d spent enough time exploring the house that I could find my way to the panic room without lights.
I made it as far as the short hallway under the stairs when two strong arms grabbed me by the head and mouth, lifting me into a wide chest. I struggled, kicking, my hands clawing, gouging at theirs and drawing blood. A muffled curse in my ear and the smell of fried bacon made me stop. I recognized Jake’s voice and the apron he was wearing around his waist; it still smelled of bacon and eggs. He carried me into the panic room. Once inside, he locked the steel hatch and looked me over. There was no need for him to turn on the lights, they were on an automatic sensor.
“You okay?”
I nodded. “Sorry I hurt you. You scared…startled me.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just lucky you didn’t bite me.” He ignored the bleeding scratches as we stood over the video screens. Luckily, they operated in night vision, so we could watch Matt sneaking his way down the hall towards the office where he would check on the video feeds both inside and out of the house.
The first screen showed the garage and the living room, both areas had dark figures in black clothing with ski masks covering their faces slowly easing their way through the rooms. They wore bulky goggles which I knew were night vision glasses and carried long-barreled pistols. There were at least four men, two inside the house and the other two coming around by the beach side.
“Silencers,” Jake whispered. They wore square pouches Velcroed to their belts; like for cell phones but they weren’t phones. I knew that.
“Tasers. They want us alive, or at least one of us. Zip-ties, too. Not handcuffs. They’re wearing body armor. Who are these dudes? Military? They look tactical. You piss somebody off in the CIA, NSA, Homeland, Cris?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, Jake. I’m selling state secrets to the Saudis.” We watched the videos with horrid fascination as Matt left the safety of the office to stalk down the hallway towards the nearest intruder.
“Why isn’t Matt coming here?” I hissed.
“Probably because he’s looking for me,” Jake said. He pulled off the apron and I noticed for the first time that both were wearing dark clothes. Dark jeans and t-shirts. Both were armed, too with their service weapons. Jake’s holster was on his belt, he checked his clip and patted his pockets, looking for the spares. He had two.
“Where are you going?” My mouth was dry. They were going to leave me alone.
“Even the odds,” he said calmly. He handed me the girly pink coat and my sneakers. I was barefoot, wearing only an oversized pair of wool socks that I had found in a dresser. “Get dressed in case.”
“In case what?” My voice came out all squeaky. Scared. I cleared my throat. Pulled on the heavy jacket and slipped my feet into the sneakers.
“If anything happens. No matter what, stay in this room.” He paused. “Unless they find it. If you think that they are going to break in, use the escape exit and run.”
“Why don’t we call for help? 9-1-1?”
“I tried. There’s no phone service.”
I stared. “How is that possible? I thought it was a dedicated line?”
“Me, too. Somehow, they must have known where it was buried and took it out. Wouldn’t surprise me if they know about this room. You. Stay. Here. Promise me.”
I nodded. Really scared. He looked at me for a second and left for the front door, punching in the code to open the steel hatch. He disappeared in seconds. I ran back to the video screens and watched.
When I saw the tall man sneak up behind Matt and stick his weapon into the back of his head, I screamed. No one could hear me, of course. Not in the sound-proof, bullet-proof, fire-proof room. I ran for the hatch. I couldn’t stand by and see Matt die, not on the screen or in person without trying to stop it.
I ran down the hallway and into the dining room, screaming his name. The lights came on. Bright, blinding and the man standing behind Matt cursed as his hands went to his face, tearing off the NVGs. That was all Matt needed. He ducked, spun around and knocked Tempe’s pistol out of his hand. It flew towards me.
They started fighting. Kicks in the air that was like watching ballet. Fists and hands punching, the sound like that of an ax cleaving through wood. They grunted, groaned and wheezed as I stood there in shock. I had not known that my father or Matt were clearly experts in martial arts.
I saw the gun lying nearer to me than the pair, so I walked over as if my legs were made of two un-bendable sticks and picked it up. The muzzle was hot, as if it had been fired. The silencer on the end was screwed on but landing on the floor had bent it, cross-threading the barrel. It came off easily enough.
The gun was black, bulbous and ugly. A P226 Sig Sauer. A cop’s gun. It was loaded with a full clip and the safety was off. I pulled the trigger and the boom made both men stop in their tracks as the bits of gunpowder and blue smoke drifted from my hand. Chips of ceiling stucco fell from where my bullet had impacted over their heads.
“Stop,” I said. My voice did not quiver, it was steel. Firm resolve. Not the voice of a 12-year-old kid but of a 200-year-old ghost. “Stop. Dad. Father. Matt. Tempe. Captain Lacey. Johannsen. This is it. This is the end. No more. I can’t do this anymore. What do you want, Tempe?”
My father slowly peeled off the ski-mask, his face battered beyond recognition. He stared at me from darkened eyes. The blood from Matt’s punches and kicks pooled under his skin, making his cheekbones and eyes swell. Changing the shape of his face so that it no longer resembled that of my father but of Johannsen.
“You. Your Trust Fund.”
“You have five million in gold. How much do you need to validate your life, to make you feel worthy? How much is enough?” I asked quietly.
“Only two million,” he said. “I lost 3 million just fencing it,” he admitted. “Hiring mercenaries took another million.”
“If I give you the money will you go away and leave us alone?” I asked.
“Well, no. You’re my son. I want you.”
Matt stared at that. Those words had an entirely different connotation to each of us. To Tempe, it meant a lifetime of exploitation, abuse and torture. To Johannsen, it meant a sexual toy that he could use for his perverse pleasures and murder when he was done. To Matt, it meant a child that he could raise and love. To Captain Lacey, it meant a chance to right a wrong and redemption.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said softly. “I forgive you. I hope that you can do the same for me.” I pulled the trigger.