by A J Rivers
"Emma, I need to ask you something," he says gingerly. "The picture that was with Greg when they found him…"
I already know what it is, and I don't want to hear it. I'm not there yet, not ready to make sense of any of it. So I keep going.
"It's hard to explain how much his disappearance got to me. There was this sense of 'it's happening again'. First my mother. Then my father. Then Greg. Him going missing made everything so fresh again. I was experiencing that pain all over again because it never went away. It never could," I say.
"Emma…"
"No one was able to explain what happened to either of them, so there was no real way for me to get through the thoughts and feelings and put them behind me. My mother was dead. Is dead. There's no ambiguity in that, but it's not knowing how or why that's made it so I can't process those feelings completely and move on. They got tucked away into the back corner of my mind, and I moved forward. Then when my father disappeared, there was again no explanation. No good reason. Nothing for me to grasp onto so I could at least try to cope with it. After a while, I forced those feelings into the back of my mind too. It wasn't that I couldn't feel it anymore, or that I didn't think about it. I just needed to not have those thoughts front and center all the time, or I wouldn't be able to function."
"Emma, I know you said the scars don't match, but…"
"Then there was Greg. Again, somebody in my life was gone, and I had no idea why. This time, it was all around me. My father protected me when my mother died. I dealt with my father's disappearance by myself except for the very small circle I talked to about it. Everything was controlled. With Greg, I didn't have that chance. I was bombarded with images of him. News stories. People asking me questions and prying way too deep to try to figure it out, while other people put up blocks to prevent me from having anything to do with it. And just like that, I cracked. A few months after he disappeared, it all got to me. A stupid remark pushed me over the edge, and I completely bungled that undercover assignment. It got me six months of desk duty and funneled me right here to Feathered Nest."
"Emma," Sam says, slightly more firmly this time.
My head snaps in his direction.
"I don't know who he is, Sam. The man in that picture isn't my father, and the only explanation is he's his brother. That fits with his appearance and with the birth record from Iowa. But I never knew about my father having a brother, much less a twin. It sounds like a soap opera; only I'm fairly certain nobody is going to be returning from the dead any time soon."
"You had no idea you have an uncle?"
"None. I never met him or heard of him. My entire life, everybody treated my father like he was an only child. Dad, Mom, my grandparents. No one mentioned another son," I tell him.
"Why would they do that? Why would they pretend he didn't exist? If it's authentic, that picture shows him with Greg in the last two years. He's been around all this time, but you didn't know about him."
"No," I insist. "I didn't know anything about him. I don't know anything about him. Eric will make sure the picture is authenticated."
"And then?" Sam asks.
Squaring my shoulders to Sam, I stare him directly in the eye, unafraid of the truths hidden there among the questions.
"I find out who that man is, and what he’s up to, and plan a little family reunion."
Chapter Eight
Lotan
Fifteen years ago…
His steps were slow and methodical. They made barely any noise when they touched the ground, which was exactly how he intended it. That took control. It took power and a tight grip to stop all the emotions, the anger, the pain, the grief, from making his feet heavy, so they echoed through the aging building. Levi and Thomas knew he was there, but his silent steps kept them from being able to trace his movements so easily. It gave them just a little bit of hope. Maybe, if they were able to run fast enough, they could get out. But they’d have to find their way first.
Fear is a funny thing. For some, it creates focus. Intense concentration that ensures the one who is afraid can think clearly. They will overcome whatever challenges are in front of them and persevere. They become strong and turn their thoughts and motivations inward so they can push themselves through whatever they need to in order to survive.
Then there are those who can’t cope with fear. Rather than getting clearer, their thoughts get tangled and confused. They question themselves, question everything that’s going on around them. Their decisions become clouded, and rather than thinking about what they need to do to survive, they panic. Rather than breaking the situation down into the most basic of elements and managing them the way the others do, they become obsessed with the sum totality.
And that's what was happening now. The men probably could have escaped. There were times when he let them get away before. Just to enjoy their sense of fear and know he was making them dangle for just a little bit longer. Just like in that old story, he had them tied to the rack and was forcing them to watch the pendulum swing ever closer. He was letting them feel the blade of the scythe, then pulling it away. Every time he did it, it broke them down just a little more. Took away their strength, their trust. This time, he wasn't going to let them slip away. The time had come.
They could feel it. They knew he was there and had no intention of letting them go. But if they really tried, they might have been able to. If they had thought it through and not let the fear take over, they could have overcome being split up in the belly of the abandoned hotel. Each would have thought about himself and made the logical, calculated choice to make their way through the building and out. But they wouldn't. Each time the pendulum swung made it less likely. Every time he’d let them get close enough to the edge that they could feel the breath of the reaper on their neck, it loosened their grasp on their control of the situation.
Now the two of them scrambled around the dark, grimy building, looking for each other rather than escaping. And so he moved quietly. He wasn't hunting them. They were already caught. But he wanted to savor the fear for just a little longer. He wouldn't have it anymore after this. All he would carry with him were the memories and the satisfaction of his revenge. It would never really be enough. They couldn't atone for what they had done. They had taken something indescribably precious out of the world. They had taken Mariya. And there could never be enough fear, enough pain, enough blood to cleanse them of that.
He took another step. The floorboards groaned beneath him. They'd already been stripped of most of their carpet and padding, so he walked on gritty dust-covered subflooring that was already giving way to the years dragging down on them. At some point, someone had obviously seen some sort of hidden value in the carcass of the hotel. They thought they could save it. Another funny thing about people. Some always have the compulsion to save. Even when there is nothing there to save, hope lingers. Like they can still see the aura of what used to be and think if they only believe in it enough if they put enough into it, they could make those lingering memories solid and real again. Or even transform them into something better.
More often than not, it doesn’t work. All the optimism in the world can't drag some things back from disaster. It seemed whoever had started the process of attempting to restore the hotel gave up somewhere along the line. Throughout the building was an uncomfortable dichotomy of distress and progress. Some spaces still held onto the lingering traces of the last people who used them. It was like they just walked away and forgot about the newspaper left sitting on the table beside a floral couch now coated and grayed with dust, or the mail set in a nook behind the desk, never given to the intended recipient. Or even the mug of what could have been a morning coffee set on the marble mantlepiece above the lobby's fireplace.
In other places, all that had been torn down. Carpets ripped up; walls crashed through. Elevators removed from their shafts and the entrances boarded. Signs that whatever team was brought in started in specific areas of the building, but left others untouched. Now it was a
bandoned again, shuttered, and locked, left to decay.
He knew all of it. Every space. Every room. He'd taken his time to learn it so there would be nowhere the two could hide. Levi and Thomas had been running for just over two years. They began in the softness of spring and would end in the heat of summer. July. When he decided his chase was over and the time was coming, it only seemed appropriate to choose July. These two men ruined Emma's life the night they shot her mother, because they saw a shadow instead of a face, movement instead of eyes. She deserved vengeance, too.
She would never know this is what he did to celebrate her birthday.
They could have kept running. They could have gone anywhere. In the two years they ran, they ventured far across the country. Sometimes they even flourished. They managed to find people who would help them. Sometimes out of the kindness of their own hearts. Sometimes because they were running, too.
But it was the other times that brought them back here. The times that they struggled and clawed for the survival that was barely theirs to claim, anyway. No food, no place to live, no hope. Yet they kept going. Drive for survival at its finest. It was that drive that brought them back. Just as he knew they would be back. Both probably believed they could disappear here just as well, now that time had passed. They would simply melt away into the world's biggest town before he found them.
They underestimated him. Or overestimated themselves. Both were adding sin upon sin.
And so, in the days since he found the men, he set his plans. He took delight in them. They were brought here. Left inside like small animals in a maze. A flicker in the shadows from one side told him one of the men had made it out to this floor. He'd heard the whisper moments before, Levi calling out to Thomas, quietly enough that he hoped he wasn't heard, yet loudly enough to hope he was. He took a step, and in a fraction of a second the man rushed across the small intersection of the hallways in front of him, he caught sight of Levi's face in a slice of moonlight. It was heartbreaking in a way. Those occasional ribbons of mercurial light breaking through the boards covering the windows or slithering around the edges of doors padlocked from the outside was the only light in the hotel. It was the only bit of illumination the men had to guide them, and it betrayed them.
There was no need to hurry. Levi didn't have the control he did, couldn't keep his footsteps quiet on the bare floor. But he ran anyway. Just for the fun of the chase. His blood faster through his veins and triggering the rhythm of his heart. To feel the air on his face and feed off the adrenaline left slick in the air where the man fled from him.
A door crashed behind him, the sound stopping him in his tracks. Now he had a choice. What fun.
He considered which way to go, whether to continue to chase Levi further through the labyrinth of corridors or to follow the sound of the crash, envisioning their positions in the hotel. He wondered if they had found one another already and decided to stay split up so one may have the chance to survive. He doubted it. He knew these men well, understood their motivations. He also knew there were only two directions this could go. Bonds between people either thrive in adversity or collapse because of it. These two would either stop at nothing to find one another, magnetized to each other out of a toxic mix of loyalty and mind-contorting fear, or they would turn on each other, feeding one another to the lions if they had to.
Either would be delightful to see.
For now, he would go for the more exciting catch. He turned away from the sound of Levi's footsteps moving deeper into the building and went in the direction of the crash. A flick of his thumb turned on the beam of his flashlight, and he let it pool at his feet before sweeping it over the walls and into the corners. It only took a few minutes for him to find what he was looking for. A heavy metal door, once cream but now scratched and chipped into a mottled gray, jostled from its position. Not fully open but caught on a piece of debris when it bounced back after crashing closed. It stood just slightly out of place, revealing Thomas's secret.
Careful to keep the piece of debris in place so the door wouldn't automatically lock behind him, he went through and headed up the narrow set of stairs. He counted the floors as he went, listening for the sound of the feet above him. He wondered if Thomas realized what he had done. Maybe he had. Maybe he had a plan still running through his mind. Or maybe he thought the stairwell would have doors to the other floors and only realized his mistake when he was too far up and knew he was being followed.
He heard Thomas go through the final door at the top of the stairs and paused. He didn't want the chase to end too quickly. He wanted to give it just a little bit of time, then have Thomas’ fleeting hope wither away like the edges of a rose petal held to a flame. The seconds ticked by. He counted panicked footsteps with them. He couldn't hear them, but he could imagine them. They came along with a look of mounting terror, and only then did he climb the last of the steps and walk through the final door out onto the roof of the hotel.
Thomas whipped around to face him. His eyes widened, and his body swayed as if he wanted to take a step back, but his feet wouldn't cooperate.
"Disappointed?"
"Lotan," Thomas murmured, somewhere between an acknowledgement and a plea.
"Did you think there would be another door? Or perhaps a fire escape? Most of those were taken from buildings years ago, yet people still look for them. But there wouldn't be one coming off the roof. People run to the roof to wait for rescue, not to scramble to the bottom." He took a few steps toward the man. "I suppose if there was really danger and no rescue coming, there would be a choice to be made. Either stay and face it. Or jump off the ledge."
He looked around, taking in the sagging remains of the heating and cooling system and the water tanks. His eyes closed, and his head dropped back as he drew in a breath of the velvety night air, spreading his arms out to the side.
"Sir," Thomas whispered.
He stayed motionless for a long moment. Then he lowered his arms and snapped his eyes open, staring directly at Thomas.
"If I were you, I would choose the ledge."
Chapter Nine
Now
"It was a shock, to say the least, when Creagan told me he had an undercover assignment for me. For those six months, I'd been doing literally nothing but sitting at a desk shifting papers around. It felt like I was never going to do anything useful ever again and that he was trying to phase me out. Essentially what LaRoche just said about me,” I tell Sam.
We've gotten inside the cabin, and I'm still talking through the strange nostalgia creeping in at me from every corner. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel right now. It's not happy to be back. That's not it. But there also isn't fear. I'm not afraid of this tiny building or what it represents.
“You know it isn't true,” Sam tells me, setting the bags at his feet so he can take me by my shoulders and look into my eyes. “That man is so intimidated by you; he doesn't know how to do anything but try to knock you down a few pegs. It's the only thing that keeps him feeling like he's in charge around here.”
“He is in charge around here,” I point out. “That's precisely the problem. He's in charge now, and he was in charge when I came here before. Only he didn't know who I was, and so I was able to slither around in his investigation a bit more. Now he knows exactly who I am and why I'm here. He has absolute control, and he loves it. He had it out for me as soon as I got here.”
“You just said he didn't know who you were, so you are able to get closer to the investigation,” Sam says.
“He didn't know who I was as in he didn't know I was an FBI agent. He did know I was an outsider who quickly proved herself a major annoyance. We set it up, so my undercover persona was that I was trying to find a place to start a new life.”
“It's already starting to sound like Sarah Mueller's Ruby Baker story," Sam notices.
I suddenly decide I don’t like how having our hastily thrown together bags sitting in the living room feels like an escape hatch, so I pick mine up and carr
y it into the bedroom.
“Yeah, except she used her boyfriend's connections to take over an empty house, and I ended up in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Well, and she was on the brink of becoming a serial killer, and I was here to stop one," I note.
"An important distinction," Sam shrugs, following me and setting the rest of our stuff on the bed beside the bag I carried.
"It is. As is the one between abandoned and rarely used,” I say.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“When we first rented the cabin for me to stay in, it was because Creagan wanted to make sure I was close to the action. Feathered Nest is a pretty small place, so it's not like there are tons of hotels and Airbnbs sitting around available. He found this place on a property listing and was told it was abandoned, but available for use. But when I had Clancy over to repair the furnace, he made a point to mention the town owns the cabin and rents it out to people visiting the area. I'm definitely not the first person to stay here, and it wasn't really abandoned. He told me, Wendy, the woman who lived here died, and the property was never claimed,” I say.
“Wait,” Sam frowns. “The woman who lived here, as in Jake's grandmother?”
“Now you're catching on. Granted, nobody knew she was his grandmother or that he spent time here. But it's why the property wasn't claimed. Wendy and her daughter—Jake’s mother—did not get on well at all, and when Wendy died, she never came forward to claim it. Wendy practically disowned her when she married John, Jake's father. John was far from being an upstanding pillar of Feathered Nest society. Everybody in town knew him, and Wendy knew the type of person her daughter was and the way they mistreated Jake. Staying out of their way meant being able to protect Jake and not being humiliated by her own daughter. Years before her death, she told Clancy she had a daughter but didn't see her anymore. I'm sure that's exactly how she felt.”
