by Sidney Bell
Then he was sliding inside, quiet and quick, and Tobias followed, if slightly less quiet and less quick.
They paused.
The townhouse was silent; the hardwood floors and high ceilings would make for an echoing sort of place, but there was no sound at all beyond the rush of traffic leaching through the front windows. They went through the main floor first, spending seconds only, because the place was laid out roughly in a circle—a huge living space on one side of the dividing wall, an expansive kitchen and dining room on the other. There was periwinkle blue button-tufted furniture with mahogany points and an impressive entertainment system in the living room, granite counters and stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, and the place was so pathologically neat as to be sterile, leapfrogging Tobias’s own compulsive neatness by miles. There wasn’t a crumb on the counter, not a flipped-up corner of a rug, not a single piece of mail or scrap paper on the island.
Still, he didn’t spare his surroundings more thought than that. Now that they’d determined that there was no place for Ghost to be hidden on the main floor—and they hadn’t expected otherwise, but it made sense to be sure since they hadn’t been able to discern the full layout of the place from outside—he focused on the stairwell tucked back beside the kitchen. Before he could do more than elbow Sullivan, they were moving again, clambering down the stairs to face a dark hallway T-junction.
Sullivan pushed Tobias to the right and they began opening doors, finding a couple of guest bedrooms—the nicer and larger of which was empty of the guest but clearly lived-in. The dim light from the barred basement window revealed keys and loose change on the nightstand, a black jacket slung across the straight-backed chair sitting in front of an elegant desk, upon which a closed laptop rested. The duvet and sheets on the bed were rumpled, like they’d been kicked off by someone getting up.
“I think—” he started, and then had to clear his throat because the words had come out dry and cracked. “That’s Ghost’s computer, I think.”
The closet was a walk-in without a door; other than some shirts and a pair of black lace-up boots, it was empty.
“Where is he?” Tobias asked.
“Come on,” Sullivan replied, darting back out into the hallway. Tobias checked his watch—from the moment they’d entered the backyard to now, seventy seconds had gone by. As he followed Sullivan, Tobias felt the passing of every additional second in increments. Four steps to the door—three seconds. Peeking into an empty, gleaming bathroom—two seconds. Proceeding down the hallway past the stairs and opening a door to find a laundry room with neurotic lack of clutter, but for the laundry basket half-full of clothes in one corner—ten seconds.
Staring at the heavy padlock and thick, stainless steel hasp on the last door in the hallway—fifteen seconds.
Sullivan was already yanking the pack off of Tobias’s shoulder, unzipping it to find the small crowbar they’d packed. He put it to the door frame, concentrating not on breaking the metal but on separating the screws from the wood. He wrenched hard, multiple times, and the wood began to splinter, but it was slow, so slow.
Thirty seconds passed. Sullivan cursed under his breath. Another twenty seconds passed, and the hasp was down to one screw, the wood clinging stubbornly but ineffectually, and finally Sullivan stepped back and kicked hard.
The door gave, and they rushed forward into a completely empty room. No furniture. No blinds on the barred window. No rugs or artwork on the wall. There was a single drowsy cobweb dangling in one corner.
“What the hell?” Sullivan said, but Tobias grabbed his arm.
“Look.”
Unlike the closet in the room Ghost had been occupying, this closet had a door, and Tobias pointed at the padlock on the jamb. He yanked on the knob uselessly, but then Sullivan was there, pulling a small, silver key from a tiny hook that’d been screwed into the wall, hard to see in the shadows of the dim room. His hands weren’t entirely steady as he got the padlock open. Tobias shoved the door wide and there was Ghost, naked and zip tied, a handcuff linking the tie to a D ring in the wall over his head. He was sitting on what looked like a sheepskin dog bed, leaning against the wall, and he was gagged. A bright red rubber ball thing was in his mouth, the black straps going around his head, saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth from how long he’d been wearing it.
And there was nothing else there—no glass of water or pail for urine, no books, no nothing.
Ghost was staring at him from above that gag, his green eyes wide and confused and perhaps even afraid, and Tobias abruptly remembered his mask. He reached up, intending to show Ghost who he was, only to jerk when Sullivan grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t,” he whispered, and jerked his chin upward to direct Tobias’s gaze to the small camera mounted in the upper corner of the closet.
“Okay,” Tobias breathed, and turned back to Ghost. “It’s me, Ghost, you recognize my voice, right? You know who I—”
Ghost frowned, his head shaking once as if he didn’t believe it, and then his eyes closed and his entire body sagged into the corner, boneless and small. For a second, anyway, one second before he straightened again and yanked pointedly at his wrists.
“Get clothes for him,” Sullivan said, angling Tobias out of the way. Ghost tensed as Sullivan loomed over him, and Tobias wanted to say that Sullivan wouldn’t hurt him, but they didn’t have time, so instead he ran back to Ghost’s room and scavenged a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and his boots.
By the time he was back, Sullivan was crouched beside Ghost where he knelt on the carpet, grimacing as he stretched his arms out. The gag was gone, and his lips were red and swollen, the corners cracked and bleeding.
“Here.” Tobias held out the clothes and Ghost stumbled to his feet, clumsy as Bambi for a minute as his body readjusted to standing upright. He yanked his jeans on, his gaze returning to Tobias again and again as if he doubted his vision.
“Come on,” Sullivan snapped, and headed out the door, turning left and starting up the stairs. Tobias thrust the shirt into Ghost’s hands and followed, and he got all the way to the main floor before he realized Ghost wasn’t behind him. He snagged Sullivan’s arm, making him whirl and say, “What?”
“Ghost,” Tobias called back softly, but there was no response.
“Where the hell is he?” Sullivan checked his watch. “We’ve got to go. We’ve got less than a minute, Tobias.”
“I know.” He started to head back down and Sullivan grabbed his wrist.
“Forty-nine seconds. We did our part. We don’t have time to drag him out. Let’s go.”
“You go.” Tobias gave him a nudge toward the window. “I’m serious. Go. I’ll get him.”
“I’m not—are you fucking insane?” Sullivan asked, and Tobias wished he could do or say anything else, because Sullivan clearly didn’t understand—his face was pinched and unhappy. “Tobias. Come with me. Please.”
“I’m not—I can’t.” Tobias twisted his wrist free, shoved him in the direction of the broken window, and ran for the stairs. He called back over his shoulder, “Get out of here. I mean it.”
He thundered back down the stairs cursing Ghost silently and hoping fervently that Sullivan had listened. He would have to address that hurt in Sullivan’s expression later, because this wasn’t a choice, not the way Sullivan seemed to have taken it. It was more that Tobias knew where his efforts were better spent, and of the two of them, Ghost was definitely the one who needed supervision. Of the two of them, Ghost would be the one to do something unpredictable and dangerous. As Tobias ricocheted off the basement wall and spun to the left, he half expected Ghost to lunge at him from a dark shadow with a gas can and a blow torch, ready to take the whole place down and he and Tobias with it.
Instead, he found Ghost in the laundry room, tearing at the tables and bins by the far wall.
“What?” Tobias asked helplessly. “We’
re leaving, Ghost.”
“Go, then.” He didn’t hesitate, instead tearing madly at the small rugs that would keep the cold tile floor comfortable for bare feet. “I’m not leaving without it.”
“Ghost!” Tobias grabbed at his arm. “Whatever it is isn’t worth your life, now come on!”
Ghost shoved him hard enough that Tobias went flying into the wall, stumbling and going to one knee before blinking up at him in shock. For a second he thought Ghost would kick him, but instead he upended a small cabinet so that detergent and dryer sheets came tumbling out. “I didn’t go through all of this for nothing,” he bit out, checking the newly cleared area for whatever it was he’d lost. “Now either help me search or get the fuck out.”
Tobias got up, shaky and furious and stung, and said, “What am I looking for?”
“A USB. I threw it in here and it’s—it’s got to be here. He’d have said if he found it, so it must be here, it must’ve bounced off of something—” Ghost’s words grew more panicked as he went. Tobias uselessly kicked aside the overturned laundry basket and pawed through the dirty clothes there.
He heard Sullivan call his name, his tone a rich mixture of anger and concern. Damn it. He was supposed to be gone, he was supposed to be safe by now.
Tobias went to the door and yelled back, with all the fury he could muster, “You don’t need to be here. Go!”
It came out impressively commanding. A second later, footsteps echoed overhead. Something thudded loudly. Then silence.
All right.
All right. Sullivan was gone. He would be safe. He was gone. It was on Tobias now. And that was as it should be, because this was his mess, and had been since the beginning.
He glanced at Ghost, who was searching through the wreckage he’d caused with an air of utter single-mindedness. He felt suddenly certain that he’d made a tremendous mistake and was grateful that Sullivan had gone instead of following him down here into it. But there was nothing else to be done about it now—he couldn’t leave without Ghost, and he couldn’t make Ghost leave without what he’d come for.
So Tobias started yanking on the washer, a black and chrome monstrosity standing on a raised dais inset in the wall in a way that would be tricky to shift. It was heavy but not immovable; it rocked when he tugged on it.
“Here,” Tobias started, and Ghost’s head jerked up, eyes sliding to him, narrowing on the washer when he saw what Tobias was up to.
“Yes,” he said, and the two of them managed to work the washer out by several feet. It was awkward and slow, and they’d only gotten it halfway out when Tobias caught a glimpse of his watch.
00:00.
Who knew how long it’d been flashing that collection of zeroes?
“Ghost,” he said, his throat tightening, but it was useless. Ghost was hoisting himself up on top of the dryer to lie flat on his belly, lurching forward so that his head and half of his torso disappeared back behind the washer, legs spread to help him keep his balance, and Tobias grabbed his ankle to provide leverage. For a second there was nothing, and then Ghost popped back up, lips pressed tight and bloodless.
“It’s behind the dryer,” he said. “I saw it. It’s back there. Help me.”
“Ghost,” Tobias repeated. “We’re out of time. We have to—”
Ghost didn’t say a word; he only grabbed Tobias by the elbow and thrust him in the direction of the dryer, and Tobias found himself moving without thinking, found himself clutching at the dryer’s corners and heaving.
“Again,” Ghost gasped. “Pull.”
Together they got the machine to the edge of the dais, and Ghost didn’t bother waiting for Tobias this time so they could lower it together. He let it go and Tobias couldn’t hold it alone; his sweaty fingertips slipped and the dryer crashed to the floor with an immense racket. Ghost was already scrambling up and over, deft as he eased his way down behind the wreckage. He vanished from sight for a second only, and then was vaulting back up, slipping over the stainless steel in his bare feet, and landing in a crouch with a small black USB clenched in his fist. He brushed past Tobias, leaving him behind without a word or glance, and as he hurried to catch up, Tobias tried to ignore the blinking zeroes on his watch. The stairwell loomed in front of him, Ghost already halfway to the first landing and then—there—the sudden sound of a door opening overhead.
Ghost froze. “Is your partner still here?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Tobias mouthed. He hoped not—the fear clogging his throat only worsened at the idea of Sullivan upstairs.
The footsteps were cautious and slow, the floorboards creaking in a vaguely circular pattern, and Tobias swallowed hard—it wasn’t Sullivan. Sullivan would have no reason to work his way through the living room and kitchen like that.
“Move,” Ghost said, hurrying back on silent bare feet, guiding Tobias with unkind hands into the guest room on the opposite side of the hall—the one Ghost had previously occupied. He shoved the USB into Tobias’s back jeans pocket.
“Don’t lose that or I’ll kill you,” Ghost breathed, and Tobias wasn’t entirely sure he was being flippant. No, there was no—Those green eyes were colder and harder than emeralds by far, reptilian in their indifference, and a shudder ran the length of Tobias’s spine. He thought, I believe you. I believe you would kill me. He thought, you don’t give two shits about me, do you?
He thought, what am I doing here?
Ghost went to shut the door and Tobias held the knob, remembering the time he and Sullivan had hidden in Ghost’s apartment. Sullivan hadn’t closed the closet door all the way, mentioning that people assumed that hiders would shut doors.
He jerked his chin at Ghost—come on—but Ghost only shook his head and jabbed a finger hard in Tobias’s direction before vanishing in the direction of the stairs.
Stay here. Of course.
As he eased out of sight from the hallway, Tobias half expected that old, dangerous itch to rear its ugly head. He expected to feel frustrated and angry, to chafe under the need to act in the face of being told to wait, but there was nothing. The recklessness had well and truly gone.
So he stayed and waited and was in perfect position to hear a crisp voice from down the hall say, “When I saw them in the closet with you, I assumed the worst. I owe you an apology for that.”
Ghost, more quietly, subdued: “You don’t. I almost went with them.”
A pause. Then the crisp voice—Spratt, Tobias decided, placing the vaguely familiar voice as the one who’d given the speech at the civic picnic that weekend—said, “The fact that you stayed proves how much you’ve grown. I know what she wants you to be, what your friends on the streets want you to be. But you’re so much more than that, and you’ve changed. Already, you’ve changed so much. You can be cleansed of all of that. You’re better than all of that.”
Tobias had been in the process of looking for a potential weapon, but Spratt’s words brought him up short. Or rather, Ghost’s response did.
“I’m not,” Ghost said, and the words were blank, just as his body language and expression had been when Tobias had watched him through the windows from Sullivan’s parked car.
“You are,” Spratt replied. “Here. Come here. Wild things need order to be good. Won’t you let me help you? You’ve taken the first step, you want to be here... I’ll keep you safe from her. I’ll take care of you. All you have to do is let me.”
Spratt’s voice made Tobias think, weirdly, of putting butter on a burn—it was a faintly greasy process, possibly soothing in the short term, but destructive in the long term. Spratt was saying other things in the same vein now, and they made Tobias’s stomach roil even as he looked around the room in search of a weapon. The lamp at the bedside table wasn’t heavy enough to do much damage, and it was awkwardly shaped enough that it wouldn’t be easy to wield. There was a painting on the wall behind glass, but he’d
never be able to get a shard without making noise, and he’d probably cut himself up in the process. There was a white vase full of silk flowers on the dresser standing a foot away. The vase was hardly sturdy, but probably his best bet. He pulled the flowers out and set them on the floor as quietly as he could before creeping over to the doorway and peeking out.
Spratt stood at the foot of the stairs in an elegant gray suit. Despite the heat outside and the rush he must’ve been in to get here so quickly, he looked cool and collected. His pistol was in his right hand, but it was currently lax at his side, pointed at the floor, and with his left hand, he was touching Ghost’s shoulder, coaxing him forward, trying to ease Ghost closer.
Ghost complied in degrees—leaning first, a small step next, and then a second, larger step.
“You’re mine,” Spratt murmured. “I’ll keep you safe. Help strip you of all of that virulence. All you have to do in return is talk to me, to stay here with me and be mine.”
Ghost took a last step forward and pressed himself against Spratt’s chest. Spratt wrapped one long arm around him and twisted his upper body, reaching behind him to set his pistol on the step so he could hold Ghost more firmly—without fear, Tobias supposed, that Ghost could reach the weapon. Ghost’s face tipped in Tobias’s direction, and his eyes were closed. His lips were trembling.
“I’m sorry,” Ghost said.
And as Tobias watched, his vase lifted high, ready to step out and brain Spratt as soon as the opportunity presented itself, two jeans-clad legs appeared at the top of the lower flight of stairs, appeared and clambered down, suddenly giving up silence for speed, and Ghost ducked out of the way at the same time.
Sullivan hit Spratt hard in the back of the head with something that Tobias couldn’t make out, but it didn’t matter. The cop crumpled to the floor, ungainly in unconsciousness, face mashed against the hardwood.
