by Rachel Caine
I go back and open the laptop, find the pictures again, and print one out. I write on the back of it: It's okay if you like her, you know. I slide it under my sister's door, close down the computer again (because if I didn't, I might sit down and look up stuff I know I shouldn't, like news about the search for Dad), and step outside onto the porch. Mr. Esparza's bent over working on the barrel of a shotgun, but when he sees me, he straightens up and groans a little. "Getting colder out here," he says. "She all right?"
I nod. I don't tell him she's got a secret girlfriend. "She's in her room," I tell him.
He gives me a long look, and I make sure I'm staring somewhere else. "And you? You all right, Connor?"
I shrug. I don't know how to answer that. What does all right look like?
"You know you can talk to me if you need to."
I settle onto the steps, and Boot the dog comes and flops next to me. I stroke his head, and he licks his chops and rests his head on my leg. It's heavy. I've never seen him really mad, but I can imagine it's pretty scary.
"You know about my dad," I say. I'm staring at the trees beyond the fence. They're rustling and swaying in the wind, and overhead the clouds look like moving metal.
"Yeah, a little bit." Mr. Esparza's being careful about that. He probably knows a lot more than a little. "Doesn't feel good, does it?"
"What?" I know what he means. But I don't want to let him think that.
"Thinking your dad's done something terrible."
I shake my head. I don't know if I'm just generally saying It doesn't feel good, or rejecting something else. I don't know how I feel anymore. "Mom doesn't talk about it."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
Mr. Esparza nods and goes back to working on his gun. It's familiar. I remember Mom doing that same thing, carefully breaking the guns apart, cleaning and oiling and putting them back together. He's neater about it than Mom. Everything's lined up straight on the cloth. "You mind if I talk about it?"
I shrug again. Can't stop adults from doing what they want. And I'm curious, anyway.
"I know about what he did. They had it in the papers, online, on the news. Not that I was following the story, but I couldn't avoid it. Everybody said it had to be some kind of monster to do things like that. You hear people say that?"
I nod this time. I heard it. Lots.
"He's not a monster," Mr. Esparza says. "He has a monster inside him."
"What's the difference?"
"It's still okay to think of him as a person, if you want to. But just don't forget: he's still got the monster."
"Like he's possessed," I say. "Like in the horror movies." Not that Mom lets us watch horror movies. But I sometimes watch them with my friends, when she doesn't know.
"Not exactly. Possessed people can't help what they do. Your dad made choices." Mr. Esparza hesitates, and I can tell he has to choose his words carefully. "You know I used to be a marine, right? A soldier?"
"Yeah."
"I've seen people make those choices. Maybe they love their families. Love their pets. But that doesn't stop them from being monsters when they get the chance. People are complicated. It'd be easy to call your dad a monster, because then it's easy to talk about killing him, because we kill monsters, right? But he wasn't always a monster to you. I get that. And it shouldn't be easy to kill. Ever."
I finally look at him. "You killed people, though."
Mr. Esparza's hands are steady when he picks up another part and cleans it, but he's looking at me. I can only stand a second of that, and I watch his hands instead. "Yeah," he says. "Es verdad. You know what that means?"
"It's true."
"Right. I killed people. And I'll kill again if I have to, to protect others. But having that ability, that's a responsibility, and I can't take it lightly."
"But it's not that way for my dad."
"No," he agreed. "It's not. For him, it's fun. He likes it. And that's why your mom is so careful with you. Understand?"
"He wouldn't kill me, though."
Mr. Esparza doesn't say anything to that. He lets me think about it. Everything he's said makes sense. I know he's right. But at the same time, it's not what I feel. I feel like Dad . . . cares.
"How long do you think we're going to have to stay here?" I ask. That makes his smooth, practiced motions hesitate for a second. He's done cleaning now. He's starting to put the gun back together.
"I don't know." At least he's honest about it. "But however long it is, you're going to be safe here. I promise."
"Who's the better shot, you or Ms. Claremont?"
"I am. It's my job. Hers is solving crimes. But she's pretty good."
"Will you teach us to shoot? Me and Lanny?"
"If your mom agrees," he says. "And if you want to learn."
I nod, and I think for a couple of seconds. Then I stand up, dislodging Boot's head from my leg. "Can I just walk around in the yard? I don't want to be inside all the time."
"Sure, just don't go outside the fence without me, okay?"
I nod. "Me and Lanny need to have something to do that isn't just . . ."
"Sitting around inside? Yeah, I know that," Mr. Esparza says. When he sighs, it comes out in a thick, misty plume. "I'm working on it. Maybe we'll do some camping, fishing, that stuff. What do you think?"
I think it sounds cold and lonely, but he's trying, and I nod. "Maybe we can go to another town and see movies sometime? Like, Knoxville?"
"Maybe," he says. "Hey, if you're staying out here, put your coat on. Gloves, too. I don't want you catching cold."
"That's not how you catch cold," I tell him, very seriously. "You have to get a virus."
He laughs. "I know. But it's still good advice."
I go back inside, put on my coat and gloves, and when I go out, Mr. Esparza is done reassembling the shotgun, and heads back inside to get warm. Boot doesn't seem bothered at all by the chill, but then, he's wearing fur. He happily jumps off the porch and runs around with me. We play fetch for a while, and then I sit down on the far side of a tree trunk. I pick the side of the house that has the fewest windows. Boot paces around, looking at me. I guess other people find him scary--I know Lanny does--but to me he's comfort. He doesn't look at me like I'm a bomb about to go off, or somebody about to break like a soap bubble. He thinks I'm normal.
It's good to have some privacy. No one looking at me, monitoring how I'm feeling. They all want to help, I know that. But I don't want it. Not right now.
I'm far enough from the cabin that nobody can hear me with the windows closed. With the tree at my back, they can't stare at me, either. Boot flops down beside me and puts his head on my leg again, and I pet him for a few minutes.
I finally slip my hand in my pocket and take out the phone and the battery. I turn it over and over in my fingers. I know it's bad. Real bad.
But I'm half-bad anyway, right? My dad's half of me. He has a monster inside.
Having a phone that connects me directly to Dad is a little like playing with matches. It's thrilling and scary at the same time, and yet once you start, you can't stop yourself.
Until you get burned.
I've thought about what would happen if I called him. I've imagined what he's going to say to me. How his voice will sound. How surprised and pleased he'll be to know I kept the phone. Hello, son, he'll say to me. I knew you could do it.
I still remember him saying that to me--I knew you could do it--when he taught me to swim at the local pool. I was scared to death, but he stayed with me. Held me up while I thrashed at the water until I could stay up by myself. He taught me how to float on my back.
He also took me swimming out at one of the lakes where they later said he put dead people. I know I should hate that, but I remember what a good day it was, how happy he was to take me out on the boat, how we'd do backflips off into the cold, murky water and race each other in laps around the boat. He let me win. He always let me win.
The reason I rememb
er all that so clearly is that he was almost never paying attention, so when he was, when he was really Dad, those were the brightest, happiest days of my life.
It only occurs to me now that Mom and Lanny were never with us for swimming. It was always him and me. It never occurred to me to ask why.
Don't do it, I tell myself again. I've been thinking it constantly. Give Mr. Esparza the phone. Or Ms. Coleman. It might help catch Dad and send him back to jail.
But if I do that, it just means Dad's one step closer to death.
I look at Boot. "Hungry?" I'm sort of joking, and sort of not. "Help a fella out?" At least if the dog eats the phone, it won't be my fault. None of it would.
He licks his chops and drops his head to my thigh again. Not interested.
I slip the back open and put the battery in. I turn it on, watching the dancing HELLO, and wait until the screen comes up. You don't have long, I tell myself. Figure out what you want to do, and do it.
I don't want to call him. I'm not ready to call him. It's too much.
So instead, I start typing a text.
hi dad i miss u
I stare at it for a long time. I can feel Boot's drool soaking into my pants. It's getting even colder, and I can see my breath on every exhale. I start counting, one breath for every letter I just typed.
Then I start deleting.
hi dad i miss
hi dad i
hi dad
I stop. I should turn off the phone and strip the battery and throw it all away, somewhere into the woods where it'll get rained on and short out, and it'll be like I never had it at all.
I can't do this. I shouldn't do this. It's bad. It's dangerous.
But it's like the impulse to light those matches. This time, Lanny won't walk in and yell at me to stop before I burn the house down.
There's nobody but Boot, gazing up at me with sad eyes.
I press the "Send" button.
The second I do it, I know it's wrong, and I wish I could take it back. I feel sick, and I grip the phone so hard I think I might break it. Turn it off. You have to turn it off. Boot looks at me like he can tell I'm upset; he gets up and sits taller so he can lick my face. I can hardly feel it, but I put my arms around him and hug him, tight.
He whimpers a little and wiggles in my grasp. I'm going to turn it off and throw it away, I promise, even though I'm not sure who I'm really promising it to. Me? Lanny? Mom? I slide the cover off. I reach for the battery.
And then it's too late, because the phone shakes in my hand.
I let go of Boot, and I open the phone and stare at the words on the screen.
hi son
I should throw it away. I know I should. I'm not crazy.
But just looking at the phone, I can hear his voice. I can feel the way he hugged me on the good days, the days when everything was right. I don't think about the other days, most of them, when Dad drifted through the house like a ghost and looked at us like strangers. Sometimes, he'd go days without talking to us. Sometimes, he wouldn't be there at all. Working, Mom always said, but I could feel how worried she was that he wouldn't come home.
This message feels like Good Dad. I'm back home, and I'm not scared anymore, and everything is finally . . . safe.
Just this once, I think. I'll get rid of the phone tomorrow.
That's how it starts.
11
GWEN
After leaving the warehouse, we head back to the coffee shop. Nursing more caffeine, and I ask for a phone book from the counter lady, who gives me a disbelieving look and finally unearths a water-stained copy that must be nearly ten years old from the back of a cabinet. I don't tell her why I'm such a Luddite, and she doesn't ask, thank God.
The directory gives me the phone number and street address for Rivard Luxe.
I work through six choose-a-number menu options before I reach the cool, disinterested voice of an operator, who calmly informs me that Mr. Rivard is not available for calls. I expect that. I say, "Please send a message to him and ask him if he's missing an investigator he hired a few months ago. If he is, I've found his man. He's dead."
There's a short silence while the operator parses that out, and she doesn't sound quite so serene when she replies. "I'm sorry, did you say dead?"
"Absolutely. Here's my phone number." I read it off to her. I'll have to buy a new disposable after this, but that's an acceptable trade-off, because I was planning to do that anyway. "Tell him he has one hour to call me back. After that, I won't answer."
"I see. And . . . your name?"
"Miss Smith," I say. "One hour. Understand?"
"Yes, Miss Smith. I'll see he gets the message right away."
She sounds off balance enough that I believe her. I hang up and raise my eyebrows at Sam, who nods. We're well aware that he could do a variety of things, including calling the Atlanta police, and we're fully prepared to ditch the phone into the trash the second we see a cruiser. We watch the comings and goings of patrons. Nobody pays attention to us. The hot topics are, as in most coffee shops, schoolwork, writing, politics, and religion. Sometimes all at once.
Ten minutes later, my phone rings. "Please connect me to Miss Smith."
"I'm Miss Smith," I tell him. "Who's this?"
"Ballantine Rivard." He has a southern accent, but it isn't Georgia. It's an unmistakable Louisiana drawl, rich as cream sauce.
"And how can I be sure it's you, sir?"
"You can't," he says, and he sounds amused about it. "But since you reached out to me, I suppose you'll have to take your chances."
He's right. I can't prove I'm talking to the right man, but what choice do I really have? "I want to talk to you about the man you hired. The one who's gone missing."
"The dead man, according to your discussion with Mrs. Yarrow."
"Yes," I tell him. "He's dead. I can tell you what I know, if you meet with us."
"If you knew anything at all about me, you'd know I don't meet with anyone." He still sounds polite, but there's a new firmness. I can sense I'm losing him. "Please call the police with your story, Miss Smith. I have no money for whatever scheme you're--"
"I'm not looking for money," I interrupt him. I decide to take a chance. "I'm looking for Absalom. And I think you are, too."
There's an electric silence that stretches on forever before he says, "You have my attention. Talk."
"Not on the phone," I say. "We'll come to you."
Sam is watching me intently, coffee forgotten now. He's as surprised as I am that the great Ballantine Rivard returned my call, and that he's still on the phone.
"You'll be thoroughly searched," Rivard says. "And you'd best not be wasting my time, or I promise you, I'll have you arrested without a second thought. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Then come to the Luxe building, downtown Atlanta. I assume you are in town?"
"Yes."
"And what are your real names? The ones on your identification you will be showing my people?"
I don't like doing it, but he's right; I'm going to have to show ID. "Gwen Proctor," I tell him. "And Sam Cade." I know that he'll have minions Googling us in seconds, providing him with a complete dossier of every news report ever written about Gwen Proctor, and Gina Royal. It'll be a thick enough file. Sam's will be far thinner.
If he recognizes the name, he doesn't show it. "You'll leave everything with security. Phones, tablets, computers, notes, paper, clothing. We'll give you something temporary to wear. If you don't agree with those conditions, don't show up, Ms. Proctor. If you do, I'll see you promptly at one thirty."
That doesn't leave us much time. We've left Lustig, or rather, he's gone off to do what he needs to do. He didn't ask what we intended to get up to the rest of the day. That might have been a mistake on his part.
I say goodbye and hang up, then put the phone on the table between us.
"You got us an invitation to the Ivory Tower," Sam says. "My God."
"To what?"
&nb
sp; "That's what they call the Luxe building," he tells me. "Rivard's been living at the top of it for twenty years now. Hasn't left it in a while, especially after his son's death."
"How did his son die?"
"Suicide," Sam says. "Broke Rivard's heart, according to the tabloids."
"Oh, and you read the tabloids?"
"I'm as weak as the next guy when it comes to celebrity gossip."
"I'm not judging," I say, and for the first time, I feel a real smile forming. "So you're the Rivard expert of the two of us. What do you think will impress the man?"
Sam sips coffee. "Honesty," he says. "And I think you've already got that part down."
"Glad you think so. They're going to strip-search us," I say. He chokes on his coffee. "Just being honest."
It's not quite a prison search--I've had plenty of experience--but Rivard's people are clearly serious about their work. Our phones are taken. Backpacks, including my laptop and our phones. We're asked to strip to our underwear, searched, and then allowed to put on some dark-blue velour tracksuits in just the right sizes with RIVARD LUXE embroidered in gold thread over a crest on the front. Not quite business casual, but I'm willing to bet that they're exorbitantly expensive. Matching slippers, and they're so comfortable it's like walking on clouds.
We go up in a private elevator that looks salvaged from the height of the Gilded Age, a work of art in itself. A security man rides up with us and hands us badges on black cords. "You'll need to wear these at all times," he says. "Stay inside the designated areas. If you go beyond those, the badges will sound an alarm."
"And how will we know where the designated areas are . . . ?"
"Assume you should ask before you go anywhere at all," he says. He looks like a former military man, one with a fairly high rank, too, and he's used to being in charge. I glance over and see that Sam is fidgeting with the zipper on the front of his tracksuit. This is not his kind of outfit. He sees me looking and shrugs.
"I feel like a Russian mobster," he says.
"Wrong shoes," Mr. Security says, and I have to laugh. Then I have to consider how many of that type he's ushered up here.
We arrive at a large, round entry hall. One end of it is crusted in a multicolored glass window, a mix of modern and deco, which shows a man reaching up toward the sun. It's a mesmerizing piece of art, and it's enormous. Worth, I presume, several million dollars. Or ten or twenty thousand of these tracksuits we're wearing. I'm not sure just how Rivard counts money.
