Darkroom

by Joshua Graham

Footsteps come thumping up the stairs to the second floor.

  The safety box opens. There, like a perfectly preserved artifact, lies a handgun, which I take with my jittery hands. They’re so slick with perspiration, I’m afraid the gun will slide out.

  A blast of amber sunlight hits me in the eyes as I pass the open window. For a moment I’m blinded. The only thing I hear is the sound of the ocean, door hinges in the distance, and the percussion of my own heart.

  From the sound of the rushing footfalls, there’s more than one person in the house—no fewer than two. Furtive murmuring, irregular movement patterns. They’re looking for something, or someone.

  Should I call the police? I’m a fugitive, hunted by God knows how many law enforcement agencies—probably not. The panic room! That’s why I saw it. I’ll hide there until they leave.

  Regardless, I can’t just stand around here. The master bedroom has a door leading directly to the media room. From there I can exit to the back stairs and go directly to the panic room. Or continue downstairs past the mud room, then the garage.

  I open the door, steal inside, and shut the door behind me.

  Pitch black. Of course.

  There are no windows in the home theater room. If only I could remember where those light switches are. The farther in I walk, the shakier my breath gets. It’s still as death in here. The acoustic insulation and heavy curtains dampen any sound that might escape.

  But sounds in the room can be heard. Such as someone taking a step onto the carpet before me.

  Someone’s in here with me.

  If I could find the door, I would turn and run. But any move I make will give my position away. Silent as I can, I bring the gun up in front with both hands.

  Cock the hammer.

  Within a fraction of a second, another gun hammer clicks right in front of me.

  “DROP IT!” he hisses.

  “YOU drop it!”

  In an instant, I thrust my hands forward. The muzzle of my gun presses against something. It moves at first then freezes in place. Then something cold and metallic presses against my forehead.

  There’s going to be blood.

  67

  GRACE TH’AM AI LE

  Del Mar, California: December 31, 1999

  Sitting on the deck of our beautiful house overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I now see what Peter meant over twenty years ago when he described the beauty of a Pacific sunset. Life has been wonderful since we’ve moved out to San Diego, Peter’s birthplace. Del Mar is such a beautiful place. So quiet, so serene, and the ocean view is spectacular.

  Peter has not had any secret meetings for six years now, and I am happy to say that he is becoming more and more like the man who loved Phở Ga and proposed to me not once but twice.

  Xandra has been accepted to Princeton on a full scholarship. She has grown into a fine, trustworthy young woman. Serious about her work and studies, not like those loose girls you hear about who think only about parties, sex, and drugs. No, Xandra has taken after her father and become an award-winning photographer in her own right. Peter doesn’t show it, but we both know that deep inside he’s proud. As a graduation present, he gave her his Graflex camera, the one that helped him win the Pulitzer.

  The stocks Peter’s invested in, once fledgling internet companies, have returned over four million dollars in gains. Financially, we are set for life. And yet I am troubled by dreams and visions concerning Peter and now Xandra. The images seem random, and I cannot discern their meanings as clearly as I could when I was younger. Perhaps it is my advancing age.

  Del Mar, California: September 11, 2001

  We were awakened by a phone call from Peter’s colleague in New York. Right away, while still on the phone, he tossed me the remote and motioned for me to turn on the TV.

  On every channel, the most horrific, surreal scene imaginable filled the screen. Over and over again, the footage of a huge airliner crashing into the Twin Towers played.

  But what really made me cry out loud was when one of the towers just crumbled like sand. If you have never stood on the sidewalk and tried to look up to the top of the Twin Towers, you would have no idea of just how immense those buildings were.

  It was like a scene from a high-budget Hollywood disaster movie. But it was real. And that is what put me in a state of shock, my hand over my open mouth the entire time I watched.

  “Dammit!” Peter had been trying to make a call on his cell phone, then on the landline. “I can’t get through.”

  That’s when I remembered. Xandi had taken a semester off to work an internship for a law firm located in the World Trade Center towers. “Oh Peter, you have to call her!”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing, but the circuits are busy.”

  Then came the footage of people leaping from burning offices. How awful it must have been for them to choose to die by jumping to their deaths. A dark voice in the back of my mind said, That could be her.

  “No!”

  “Grace, what are you—?”

  Right away, I grabbed my Bible, clutched it to my chest, and prayed. I didn’t care that Peter shook his head, or that he of all people thought I was being superstitious. I just prayed. And a verse came to my mind.

  A more familiar voice spoke to me in my spirit. Not the dark one, but the bright, comforting one. Proclaim it.

  Proclaim what?

  The Word.

  I opened my Bible without thinking. There under my fingertip was a verse I had never read before. From Psalm 118.

  Proclaim it for her.

  And I read it aloud. Repeated it again. Because it was for my Xandi’s sake, I continued to repeat it.

  “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.”

  Del Mar, California: September 12, 2001

  Peter did not sleep at all last night. He kept trying to call Xandra, kept watching the nonstop news reports. Only once did he attempt to lie down, and that was at my insistence.

  Finally, around nine forty-five a.m., we got the call.

  It was Xandi!

  She was all right. Yes, she was in the South Tower before it went down. Her entire law firm had a good lead and began to evacuate together down a stairwell.

  But she heard the voice of an elderly woman across the hall. It was one of those women who pushed a cart around selling bagels and coffee every day. She had tripped, and her cart had fallen and pinned her leg to the ground.

  Xandi watched as every one of her coworkers rushed for the stairs. But she could not just leave the old lady there. So, despite the urging of her friends not to, she went down the hall to help the bagel lady.

  Xandra and the lady ended up going down a different stairwell and eventually made it out alive, thank God.

  “But Mom, that’s not the most incredible thing of all this.” Xandi was crying when she told me this. “No one else from my office made it out.”

  That day, Peter even said to me, “Maybe there is a God.”

  Del Mar, California: July 4, 2007

  I cannot sleep tonight. The fireworks have stopped, the people have gone home after a wonderful barbecue that Peter arranged with our neighbors and my friends from church. I am awake at two thirty in the morning because of three things.

  For one, Peter’s nightmares have returned. And when he experiences them, I am the one who is kept up.

  Another reason is that I am so worried about Xandi, who right now is on assignment in Iraq, doing a feature on female suicide bombers.

  Peter forbade her to go, which of course only goaded her further. He thinks she’s trying to outdo him, though he denies any sense of competition. I honestly think she’s trying to prove something, to win his approval.

  “It just takes a couple of words,” I always tell him. “You can speak life into her by just telling her how proud you are of her.”

  “Oh, come on,” he’ll say, brushing it off. “She knows.”

  But I don’t think she does. Since she was twelve, she’s been trying
to win his affection. By the time she turned sixteen, it was apparent she would just settle for any attention, positive or negative. She still does, in my opinion. Which is one reason I believe she dated that terrible young man, Ethan. He was everything her father wasn’t. Negative attention.

  But instead of dealing with it, Peter asked me to talk with her. Of course, Peter has started again with those secret meetings. Where are those visions now? Perhaps it’s best if I don’t know about those meetings. Perhaps I truly am being protected. At least he is not flying away for days at a time now. But the very memory of those days early in our marriage causes me to feel ill.

  And that brings me to the third reason I can’t sleep. I’ve been suffering from severe migraines. Peter has taken me to some specialists, but so far none of the medications they’ve prescribed has helped. Putting a bright face on it all, I keep my family from worry. But I fear it may be worse than anyone imagines.

  68

  KYLE MATTHEWS

  We were shouting simultaneously. All I can tell is that it’s a woman. No time to speculate, she’s got her weapon pressed into my chest. What was I thinking coming after Xandra like this? It goes completely against protocol. This is what I get for following my heart.

  We’re both breathing heavily. I’ve got to take control of this situation. “All right,” I whisper. “We’re both going to have to—”

  “Kyle?”

  “Xandra, is that you?” The gun lifts away from my chest. I lower mine as well.

  “Yes. Where are the lights?”

  “What are you doing sneaking around in my father’s house? I almost killed you!”

  Reaching out, I find her hand. It’s clammy and shaking. The thought that I almost put a bullet through her head horrifies me. Thank God I didn’t. “I decided, against my better judgment, to come after you. Where’s your father?”

  “I don’t know. But whoever ransacked his office—they’re still here.”

  Someone’s rummaging around behind the door to Carrick’s bedroom. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Back stairs,” Xandra says. “We can get to the garage.”

  “I just came up that way. The back door was unlocked. Caught a glimpse. Three men. They look like Secret Service agents.”

  “Real ones?”

  “Hard to tell. But they’re armed.” The person stalking about Carrick’s bedroom is stepping toward the door. “We have to go back down.” I take Xandra’s hand and lead her in the dark toward the rear door.

  Groping in the dark, I find the wall, and finally the doorknob.

  The bedroom door opens behind us.

  A shot rings out. “Get down!” The bullet whisks over us. I fire two shots into the dark. I feel under my feet the heavy thud of a body hitting the ground. Taking Xandra’s hand, I lead her to the exit.

  Someone else pushes against the bedroom entrance to the media room, but the body of their fallen colleague blocks it. Xandra aims her gun back at them and pulls the trigger.

  Nothing but an empty click. She forgot to insert the clip.

  Blindly, I fire two more shots in their direction and push Xandra through the exit door. But two agents force their way into the media room. They fire several shots, a couple of which hit the exit door.

  Just in time, we escape into the long hallway that leads to the back stairs. But the door jams as I try to shut it. It must have been damaged by the bullets. “Can’t close it,” I whisper.

  “Wait,” Xandra whispers and pulls my arm back.

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t move.”

  Her whims are getting on my nerves, especially now, with a dangerous situation bursting at the seams. “We don’t have time for—” Right when I take a step forward, the hallway lights—which I now realize are controlled by a motion sensor—activate.

  Xandra whispers something not particularly nice.

  One glance back tells me that the bright lights I just turned on are now streaming through the crack I left in the doorway. The footfalls in the home theater rushing toward us confirm this. “We’ve got her,” the voice of our pursuer says after a walkie-talkie beep.

  To make matters worse, another set of footsteps pound up the back staircase, converging on our position. “We’re trapped.”

  Xandra takes me by the arm and leads me through the hallway. “Maybe not.” Running her hand along the wall, she stops at a picture frame. She slips her hand behind the picture. Suddenly, a panel in the wall recesses and slides to the left. A hidden door appears. “Panic room.”

  69

  XANDRA CARRICK

  The panel slides open. I pull Kyle into the panic room and shut the door.

  He jiggles the doorknob. “There’s no lock!”

  “It’s all electronic,” I tell him, fumbling with the keypad on this side of the panic room. The first combination yields a rude beep.

  “Doesn’t matter, they’ll wait us out. Or burn the house down.”

  Two words enter my mind: auxiliary exit. That’s right. I almost forgot. Dad told me about it during the orientation held by the company that installed the panic room. The auxiliary exit was designed as a last-measure fail-safe if the panic room is breached.

  I punch in the correct sequence and enter my security code. “Follow me.” I take Kyle’s hand and lead him past the bathroom and kitchenette to the back of the room. “Check for another control panel door hidden in the wall.”

  “Got it!”

  “Two-two-three-eight-one!”

  He enters it and another door opens. We get inside and the door slides shut. On the monochrome monitor screen, two men in black suits rush into the panic room. Their guns are held out ready to shoot.

  I hit the red button with an octagonal icon. The entire panic room goes pitch black. A heavy slam confirms what is now displayed on the monitor:

  PANIC ROOM SEALED

  “Let’s go.”

  Kyle follows me, his eyes still drawn to the monitor. “I assume the room is lined to—”

  “Block cell phone signals, yes. At least, that’s what they told Dad. Only the right access code can remove the shield.” For all intents and purposes those men are trapped inside until we let them out.

  The auxiliary exit leads us to a tunnel that ends at a ladder stretching up to a hatch door. We climb out and find ourselves standing on a hill overlooking the road leading up to Dad’s house. Wincing from his wound, Kyle points to his car parked outside the gate; we make haste to get in and drive off.

  “Your father’s got the cell phone and calling cards. He’s gone dark until he can contact us safely.”

  “I am such an idiot. Should have known they’d come here.”

  “Your father’s clearly a target now.”

  I’m not concerned with the thugs locked in the panic room—there’s enough food and water to sustain a family of five for two weeks. The real question lies with Kyle. “Why did you come?”

  “Following my heart, for a change.” He puts his gun down on the center console and turns to me. “Still, you should have discussed this carefully before storming off like that.”

  “What would you have said?”

  “Besides waiting until we make a plan with your father, that it was too dangerous to go to his house.” He strains and puts his hand over his wound. “By the way, why does a photographer need a panic room?”

  “Doesn’t every public figure have one?”

  “No.”

  “Dad always told us that public figures—wealthy ones in particular—are always potential targets of crime. That’s why he made sure we knew about the room, the gun, how to use it. My mother wouldn’t even look at the gun.”

  “Well, all I can say is, I’m glad I came.”

  Grateful that this was the closest he came to saying “I told you so,” I redirect the conversation to something that I’ve wanted to ask since Kyle showed up on my flight to San Diego. “Just what is it about this case that’s got you so obsessed? You’re as driven as I am,
but what’s your motivation?”

  He presses his lips into a tight line. Finally, after some deliberation, he speaks. “My father died in a mining accident when I was three. So I was raised by a single mother. But I had a strong father figure up until I was twelve. My uncle Ray. You might be familiar with his name.”

  “Can’t say I—”

  “He was a member of Echo Company.”

  “Oh!” It doesn’t take a vision now to know what he’s getting at. “Lieutenant Raymond O’Neil.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Didn’t he take his own life?”

  “Absolutely not. And trust me, I’m not exaggerating when I say his murder was what drove me into a career with the FBI. For twenty years, I’ve hunted his killer.”

  It all makes sense now. Caressing his hand, I let out a long breath. “Kyle, if my mistake costs us the chance to find out who’s been killing the Echo Company vets, your uncle …”

  “There’s still a chance. I spoke with Jennings earlier. He’s expecting us.” Gradually, his fingers intertwine with mine. His warmth infuses me from my hand to the center of my being. For the next couple of miles we’re silent.

  “Since we’re being so open here, there’s another question I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  “Shoot.”

  I’m not particularly fond of that phrase at the moment. “How is it you never questioned my ability to see visions? I think I’ve had more doubt than you.”

  He considers the question. Rubs the back of his neck—which I continue for him—and then answers. “For one thing, I know you’re sincere.”

  “But it’s so bizarre. Makes no sense scientifically.”

  “One thing Uncle Ray taught me that I’ve never forgotten: things that can’t be explained by science are in themselves evidence of its limitations.”

  It takes a few seconds to sink in. “So you don’t think science can explain everything.”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t have solved half of my cases.”

  “So, how many psychics have you consulted with over the years?”