Kingdom of Villains and Vengeance

by Laura Greenwood et al.

  I had to hurry to keep up. When my dad had a destination, he was single-minded and didn’t notice if he left you in his dust. When we walked up the marble stairs into the modern building, I realized I’d never been in the police station before.

  Our steps echoed in the quiet lobby as my dad made a beeline to the person manning the front, leaned over, and spoke a few soft words. The uniformed officer at the desk nodded, picked up a phone, and spoke to someone else. After hanging up, they nodded and a buzz sounded.

  "Let's go."

  My dad tilted his head, waiting for me to follow but I hesitated, uneasiness filling me along with guilt as I glanced at the officer. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but for a moment, I wondered if I could get arrested for wasting their time. My dad didn't seem to think anything was wrong with what I was doing though so I held onto that and followed.

  He appeared to know where he was going, walking purposefully toward the left and up the stairs. When he halted at a door that said Detective Avery and knocked, it swung open immediately.

  “James." A deep voice greeted my dad.

  I regarded the man with curiosity. He had short, curly black hair with sprinkles of grey at the temples that stood out starkly against his deep brown complexion. He looked around the same age as my dad, but where I’d always viewed my dad as easy-going, the lines bracketing this man’s mouth suggested someone who'd seen a lot of painful things even though he smiled as he stood to clasp my dad’s hand.

  "Rob." My dad shook the detective’s hand before clapping him on the back.

  He gestured for us to sit down and I did, waiting for someone else to speak first. Everything felt painfully slow as the detective’s eyes tracked over to mine, and he reclined in his chair, putting his feet up on the desk.

  "Your dad said you know something about a kidnapping?"

  I cleared my throat nervously, for some reason not having expected the man to dive right into it. He didn't ask my name, or do any of the things I'd seen cops do on TV. He just watched me, waiting as I fumbled for the best way to explain why we were there.

  His eyes were so intent that for one surreal moment I got the sense he would be able to tell just by looking at me if I was lying. I quickly brushed the thought away, not wanting to deal with anything else out of my realm of comprehension.

  Wasn’t it bad enough I'd had the dream in the first place?

  I winced when my voice cracked and rushed on, hoping he hadn't noticed. "I, um, yes. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure it was my friend who was kidnapped a few hours ago. The one in the Toronto Star story."

  The detective slid his feet off the desk and leaned forward, steepling his fingers together as he rested his elbows on the desk. "Who is your friend and why do you think he’s missing?"

  I swallowed hard, remembering what I'd seen in the dream. It wasn’t hard. "His name is Paul. He’s in my class at Laurier—we’re both in grade twelve. He has a new job working at a convenience store and…"

  I trailed off, pressing my lips together to keep an unexpected sob from escaping as I remembered the way he’d been attacked. I wasn’t supposed to get emotional at my age, but under the circumstances, it was hard to hold back.

  To my surprise, the detective relaxed, and once again leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms and resting one ankle negligently on the other knee. He nodded his head a few times before moving his piercing gaze over to my dad.

  "You knew about this?"

  I frowned at the casual tone, but my confusion deepened at my dad’s reaction.

  "I suspected something like this could happen, but it’s the first time he's ever come to me. Other than small things, he’s never found anything big. I do believe him though."

  He nodded and turned back to me, with the same intent gaze. "Tell me why you think it's your friend who's missing.”

  I leaned forward. "So someone is missing? I'm not imagining it?"

  Rob raised the shoulder. "First, tell me what you know. Then I’ll tell you what I know. Maybe we can figure it out together."

  I quickly ran through the story I’d woken my dad with. About the building, and how I'd seen two men wrestling with someone who looked exactly like Paul before knocking him out and carrying him inside the dark building.

  The entire time, the detective watched my face. I felt like he was waiting to catch me in a lie, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Everything was exactly the way I remembered seeing it, and when I’d finally finished, he let out an exhale.

  He got to his feet, resting his hands on the desk and rapping on it before nodding once. "Okay."

  I waited for him to add something, not sure what ‘okay’ meant, but he didn’t say anything else, and when my dad stood too, I got to my feet.

  What was going on? For the first time I could remember, I had no idea what my dad and this strange detective—friend?—of his were thinking.

  I couldn't read either man’s face.

  "We can take my car."

  Holding the door open, the detective waited as my dad and I used it before locking it behind him. As I trailed after them down the hall, I realized I was more in the dark now than I’d been when I’d first woken from my dream.

  What kind of nightmare had I gotten myself into?

  Chapter 4

  Rob's car turned out to be pretty nice – it was one of the undercover, sporty SUVs you wouldn't notice until after you’d sped by and the lights and sirens stopped you. With the exception of the wire cage between the front and back, it looked like the kind of vehicle a lawyer would drive.

  I tried to sit in the back, but my dad shooed me into the front. "No son, this time you can have shotgun. I'll sit back here and listen."

  That was why I was sitting in the front passenger seat, becoming increasingly uncomfortable the further we drove. I felt like screaming at how slow everything was moving. They were so relaxed and I wanted to ask what was going on, but I held my tongue. Nothing was going the way I expected, but I trusted my dad. And it appeared he trusted the detective, so I waited impatiently for someone else to speak first.

  The silence continued down the street, past the corner of Bloor and Younge. Just when I was about to start blathering, the detective looked at my dad in the rear view mirror.

  “You hungry, James? We can stop at Tim’s on our way.”

  My dad nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll get my usual.”

  They fell silent as we went through the drive through and he ordered for all of us, confirming what I wanted in the process, just a coffee.

  How could I eat at a time like this? How could they?

  After thanking the worker, the silence grew once again as he drove easily, clearly with a destination in mind. I glanced back, noticing that my dad appeared similarly calm as he ate his sandwich.

  My tension was escalating in comparison. I pressed my lips together, breathing slowly through my nose in an attempt to calm down.

  When a car beside us ran a red light, he smiled for the first time and caught me off-guard. "You saw that, hey? If I took time to stop every single person for minor traffic violations, I wouldn't get any other work done. But don't worry. Guys like that get caught sooner or later. And for your information, that particular light has a black-box. His ticket’s already in the mail.”

  I smiled back when he winked, but the moment of relief vanished when he sobered and met my dad’s eyes. "Have you told him anything?"

  I turned to my dad, wondering what he meant.

  "No, nothing about you. Not much about the family, either. I’ve been waiting to see what happened."

  He nodded as if it was what he'd expected to hear, casting another sideways glance at me. "Well, now that we've got our food and are away from the station, we can chat a little more freely. I know you’ve got questions. There's a park ahead we’ll stop at and I’ll tell you a little story. That should bring you up to speed."

  “Um, okay?" I winced inwardly, thinking I sounded the same age as my little brother, Robbie.
I watched him park, wondering if I was losing the ability of critical thinking. When he engaged the safety brake, it hit me.

  "Hey, I’ve got a brother named Robbie, well, Robert actually.” I drew my eyebrows together and turned to the back. “Dad, did you name him after..."

  He nodded before I could finish, which was a good thing, because I was having a lot of word-finding problems as my brain tried to process the increasing levels of oddness of my life.

  "Yes, we did. Not only did we name Robbie after Detective Avery, he’s also your godfather."

  I narrowed my eyes. "I have a godfather? How come I’ve never met him before tonight?"

  The two men stared at each other for a minute. At first, I didn't think I would get an answer, but when the detective nodded, my dad gave me an apologetic look.

  "Rob is my oldest, and best, friend. But he has a dangerous job. You’ve met him before, but not since you were a little boy. We decided it was better to keep our distance in case his work ever followed him home. If too many people knew who he cared for, it could put you all in danger. Before I had children I wasn’t concerned, but after you and your brother were born, we had to reevaluate our connection.”

  I turned to the detective, wondering what I was supposed to do with this stranger who was apparently family. He gave me a sympathetic smile.

  “Your dad’s telling the truth, kiddo. I know you don't remember me. You couldn't have been more than four or five the last time we got together. Even then, I knew you were going to be something special, some day. I’ve kept an eye on you and your brother, just in case, and your dad and I talk at least once a week. Now that you're older though, I think it’s time we get to know each other better."

  I squinted at him, wondering what they weren’t telling me. There was more to the story than that, otherwise why would they have kept it so quiet?

  "Okay, I get the feeling there's a whole bunch more you’re not saying." I looked between them, finally shaking my head. "Why didn't you say anything before now? Did you know something like this would happen?"

  My dad sighed and rubbed his forehead as if he was trying to get rid of a headache or a thought he’d rather not be having.

  "Yes and no. I wasn't sure what presentation it would take. You see, from the time you were a little kid, you had this uncanny ability." Now he smiled, giving the detective a proud look. "He never lost anything you know. And if anybody else did, he was right there, telling them exactly where to find it. Let me tell you it was a wonderful bonus in a house with two boys creating all kinds of messes."

  I shrugged, discomfort causing me to downplay his praise. "Yeah, but lots of people can do that."

  He shook his head. “Not like you can. It's one thing to have an idea where your own things are, but another thing entirely to find items you’ve never seen for people you don’t know."

  I tried to remember something like that happening but couldn't. "I didn't do that. I mean, at least, I don't think I did."

  He sighed, looking at the window for a moment. As if he’d made a decision he looked at me. “You used to do it all the time. But as you got older, people started to look at you funny. When they started to get angry with you, thinking you knew where things were because you had taken them, you stopped saying things out loud. I didn’t know if you’d gotten scared or blocked your abilities completely.”

  Turning to look at the detective, the solemn expression on his face made my thoughts freeze into stillness even before he replied. “Well, James, I guess tonight gives you the answer.”

  I flinched as he patted my shoulder, then exhaled as I considered what they were saying. Was it true? Was I able to do what he said?

  I met his intense eyes, noticing some of the edge had warmed, so that they were comforting instead of demanding and judgmental.

  "I get it, kid. It's hard to rearrange our thinking when stuff like this happens. People with talents can only bury them so long until they come back. If you’re not careful, they tend to bite you on the nose, so to speak. The same thing happened to me when I was around your age, so I know what you're going through. The person who talked me through it was something special. She helped me to see I wasn’t imagining things.”

  He smiled again but this time there was a tinge of sadness in his face, which made the grooves next to his mouth appear deeper. He looked out through the window then, and the atmosphere in the car grew heavy, expectant the way the sky was just before a large storm when the clouds opened up and poured down.

  Excitement filled me. Here it was. Now I would find out what was going on.

  He opened the door and waved for me to follow. "Let's walk. I want to show you something."

  I was too curious to be scared, and after waiting for the detective to let my dad out of the back, I followed him down the empty path through the park deeper into the silence of the June morning.

  The sun was barely visible over the horizon but the birds in the trees sang as if delighted summer was here. It felt like there was no one else in the world, and even the ubiquitous sound of traffic was muted so I could almost forget it was there.

  After walking about five minutes, he stopped, standing in front of a tree with a weird look on his face. The tree was nothing special until suddenly both my dad and the detective knelt at the base. Alarm ran down my spine.

  "Um, what are you doing?"

  My dad smiled at my uneasiness, wrinkling his nose and tilting his head to the side as he looked at the detective. "We met here. How long ago was it? Thirty years?"

  The other man nodded. "At least. We were what? Thirteen? Fourteen?"

  My dad nodded before surprising me with a bark of laughter. "I wanted to kill you so bad that day."

  The detective threw back his head and let out a deep belly-laugh. "I saved your life. But just so you know, I knew you were pissed off, even then. Yeah, I did."

  I looked back and forth between them. I had no idea what they were talking about. Clearly it was an inside joke. I hated inside jokes I wasn’t on the inside of.

  Finally, the detective took pity on me. He sat cross-legged at the base of the tree with his back to it and watched a squirrel dash across the ground and up the tree before speaking.

  "Your dad and I met here when we were in our teens. We were both on our separate ways home from school when a group of older boys decided your dad would make an easy target. It had already become physical when I stumbled upon the scene. I’d never met any of them before, but I knew I had to stop them. You see, it was like I could read their minds. I knew if I didn't stop them, they were going to beat him into the ground."

  My eyes widened as I turned to my dad.

  He nodded. "It's true. I’d never met them before either, but they didn’t care that I didn't want to fight. I was already on the ground by the time Rob came along. To this day, I still don’t know exactly what he did. Whatever it was made them suddenly vanish and the next thing I knew, he was helping me up. Course, I was angry, mostly due to hurt pride. But it didn’t last long. You ever see wolves take down a deer?”

  I thought about a National Geographic film about animals I’d seen years ago and nodded.

  My dad smiled bitterly. “I was the deer and it was like a grizzly scared the wolves away. By the time we left this park, I knew Rob was someone I could trust with my life. Strange, because I would never recommend keeping a bear for a best friend.”

  The detective laughed, immediately denying the comparison. "I didn't do very much, and I’m no grizzly. I just knew what to...say...to get them back off.” His smile faded as he picked at the knee of his pants. "You see, Mark, I'm like you in some ways."

  He looked up again with that same strangely intense gaze, and once again, I felt like he was reading my mind.

  "You're right, I am."

  I blinked at him and he leaned over and gently chucked my chin. I closed my mouth with a snap, making him laugh again.

  "That's part of what makes me so good at my job. I don't have a finding ability,
like I think you do. You could call what I do telepathy, not that it always works.”

  “You mean you can actually read minds?”

  It was starting to become clear to me my life had completely turned head over heels. If my previously unknown godfather could read minds and was saying I had a finding ability—whatever that was—maybe I actually could do something to save my friend.

  “Yea, I can. And just like with your talents, it’s usually easy to pass off as well-developed intuition, the kind of thing any detective worth their salt should have by the time they have salt in their hair.”

  He winked, running his fingers through the grey on his temples and despite my bewilderment, I smiled.

  “You have to keep this to yourself though. Only your mom and dad, and a small handful of other people know about this. You are included in a very select group of people because I know you can understand the repercussions of the wrong people hearing about this."

  I thought about what my dad had said about me as a kid. If I had suppressed my finding abilities because of self-preservation, what would happen to someone who could read minds if a person wanted to hide secrets?

  I shivered and nodded. “I won’t say a thing.”

  "Perfect. In that case, I’d like you to call me Rob. Anyone who knows I can read minds doesn't need to keep thinking of me as ‘the detective’. Besides, I'm not worried you're going to tell anyone. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you can talk about without people thinking you're crazy. Not to mention it looks like you have your own secrets to keep now."

  I nodded, sinking down beside Rob underneath the tree. "So now what? If my dream is right, it means my friend is missing and maybe badly injured. Or worse. Can you find him? How can I use the dream to help him? Surely, I had it for a reason."

  Rob’s face turned grim as he gave my dad a sidelong glance. "We can use your information to start searching. I'd like to go back to where you saw him taken, if you think you can handle that. Do you know where he works?"

  I nodded. "Yeah. We walked out of school together on Friday. He turned down the street to the convenience store when I turned to go home. I can show you the place."