by J. R. Ward
Pushing the chair out of the way, she got down on her knees and looked under the desk. In her Nancy Drew mind, she imagined an envelope taped to the underside with her name on it. When she opened the thing, there would be a note from Gerry, in his messy handwriting, telling her what to do in the event of his death. Whether to be suspicious or not. And maybe at the end, there’d be an apology for him being so distracted and withdrawn toward her.
Nothing.
She sat back on her heels. Then she gave the chair an examination worthy of a proctologist, getting into all kinds of nooks and crannies of the padded seat, the undercarriage, the rollers.
Nothing.
There was a set of file cabinets off to one side and she opened each of the drawers, training her cell phone’s light inside them. For all of Gerry’s orderly thinking, he had sucked at the basics of life, like remembering to pay bills and file taxes and get car insurance, and the anemic collection of folders that had been laid down flat, instead of suspended properly on the slides, seemed like a symptom of his my-priorities-are-elsewhere. Going through the layers, she found his employee orientation packet from RSK BioMed as well as his first set of ID credentials that had given him partial access to the facility.
Seeing his face in the little picture made her breath catch.
God, he looked so young, all clean-shaven, smiling, and bright-eyed.
The image bore little resemblance to the second ID he’d gotten, the one that went with his top secret clearance. In that photograph, he’d been grim, his eyes narrowed and baggy’d, his face drawn from stress.
Where were those credentials, anyway? she wondered. He’d kept them with him always, even when he was in here.
Their disappearance hadn’t seemed relevant before now.
The rest of the documents in the cabinets formed a chronology of their major purchases. The titles to their cars. The contract and then the mortgage for their house. Brochures for the honeymoon to Europe that they had considered signing up for. There were also copies of the taxes for the years they had been in Ithaca. A term life insurance policy on her that was still good. A term life insurance policy for Gerry for which he had been preliminarily approved, but, because he’d never gotten the physical done, was not in force.
She could remember nagging him about that and getting nowhere. At first, he’d put it off because they’d been too busy getting settled in the house. Then he’d been too busy getting settled at work. And then they hadn’t really been speaking.
Sarah shut the bottom drawer and went over to the closet across the way. Opening the lever doors, she shined her light in.
Nothing but a bald hanging rod with two pant hangers on it and a set of shelves carrying a light load of Harvard-related paraphernalia of the academic variety: textbooks, notebooks, old laptops. She was about to close the doors again when she saw the pair of boots down on the floor.
Crouching, she picked one of them up, and as she saw the mud still caked in the tread, her eyes filled with tears.
Gerry had been as outdoorsy as an orchid. He burned to a crisp in any sunlight. He hated bug bites and bee stings and anything with more than two legs and an upright ambulation. Grass and trees were things to be regarded with suspicion, as they were nothing but housing units for creepies and crawlies. And bodies of water, particularly those with more than three feet of standing or rushing H2O? Forget about it. Somewhere he had heard that there were sharks at the mouth of the Mississippi that were capable of surviving in freshwater.
So therefore, it was possible that a mutant version of one could show up in the Finger Lakes of New York. Or Lake Champlain. Or Lake George.
And yet he had gone camping with her the first month they’d arrived in Ithaca. The pair of them had invested in hiking boots and a tent and some sleeping bags. She had promised him it would be a good time. He hadn’t exactly been thrilled, but he’d known she wanted to go and had been determined to make the best of it.
The weather had been terrible for late August. Rain both days.
They’d laughed about sharks falling from the sky. And this had been before the first Sharknado had come out.
Looking at the dried mud on the sole, it seemed unfathomable that he was gone. That this boot that had been worn so casually and then put away without any mindfulness was now in her hand as a symbol of everything that had been lost when he’d died.
She was touching both their history and their unfulfilled future. And the feelings that came up for her, the sadness and mourning, were so powerful, it was just as the pain had been in the beginning for her, the raw absence of him incomprehensible.
According to the calendar, she had had two years to get used to the death. Why then did it still hurt this badly?
Sarah turned the boot over in her hand—
Something fell out and bounced on the carpet.
Frowning, she pointed her little light source at it, and the warm glow of metal was a surprise.
A key. It was an odd-shaped key.
CHAPTER TEN
The painting of a French king slid back on the wall of Darius’s drawing room, revealing, just as it always had, a set of narrow, curving steps that disappeared into earth. A torch, mounted on the stone wall, frothed quietly, casting liquid yellow light over the descent. The smell was the same, candle wax and lemon.
As Murhder stood at the threshold, he told himself to go down, take the bedroom on the right, crash in the bed that he’d used before.
Instead, he looked back over his shoulder. Vishous was at a computer at the receptionist’s desk in the room beyond, the Brother’s black-haired head bent forward in concentration, the hand-rolled between his teeth releasing a faint tendril of smoke, the tattoos at his temple distorted from his frown.
Off in the distance, low voices percolated. And there was the smell of bacon. Someone was making a snack.
Four of the Brothers had stayed behind after Wrath had left. Vishous, Rhage, Phury, and some dark-haired, stocky male who had a scent reminiscent of the King’s. Had to be a blood relation, but other than that, Murhder didn’t know anything. Not even the male’s name.
Vishous had been at the computer for hours now, the three letters that had been handwritten and sent to Murhder fanned out next to him. Naturally, they had been read, and in retrospect, he’d been foolish to think he could hide the request that had been put to him from the people he was asking help of. But at least no one had argued about him searching for that son.
Yet.
Murhder had been mostly in the waiting area, his ass getting numb in spite of the cushioned chair he’d been given. Fritz, Darius’s ancient butler, had been as kind and solicitous as ever, insisting on delivering food which Murhder had eaten without tasting. But that had been how long ago?
The chiming of a grandfather clock, slow and laborious, began out in the foyer. Nine in the morning. With all the drapes in the house pulled and the inside shutters in place, it was impossible to tell day or night.
Murhder looked down the stone steps. Took another deep breath through his nose.
Then he stepped back into the drawing room and retriggered the release on the painting, watching the full-length portrait slide back into place.
Pain lanced through the center of his chest, the grief both unexpected and not surprising. “When did Darius die.”
When there was no answer to his non-question, he walked over to the waiting area’s desk. “Well?”
Vishous sat back in the swivel chair, taking a drag and then tapping the ash off the tip into a mug of cold coffee. “Who says he’s dead?”
“His scent isn’t anywhere in this house. Not even down where he sleeps.”
V shrugged. “Fritz is good with a vacuum.”
“Don’t play games with shit like this.”
The Brother regarded the glowing end of his hand-rolled. “Fine.” His diamond eyes swung up and met Murhder’s. “It’s none of your fucking business. How’s that.”
“He was my brother, too.”
“Not anymore.” Vishous shook his head. “And before you get on your high horse and go all right-to-know on me, I’ll remind you that you left the Brotherhood.”
“I was kicked out.”
“You chose to slaughter those humans. Do you have any idea what the cleanup was like? We saw it on the news after the humans found your little party out on that lawn. It was a national fucking incident. It took us two weeks of stripping memories to calm that shit down, and spare me the eye-for-an-eye shit. You created a lot of problems for us. Thank God the Internet hadn’t been like it is today or God only knows what would have happened—”
“How did Darius die?”
Vishous narrowed his eyes. “How do you think.”
Murhder looked away. The war with the Lessening Society was such bullshit. “When?”
“Three and a half years ago. And that’s all I’m going to say.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole about everything.”
“Oh, right. I’m supposed to give a male who has a history of poor impulse control and mental instability details about someone who has nothing to do with his life.”
Murhder leaned forward and bared his fangs. “I fought with him for over a century. I’ve earned the right—”
Vishous shot up out of his chair and slammed his palm down on the letters. “You haven’t earned shit, and if you think we’re wasting one more fucking man hour on this stupid fucking MacGuffin of yours—”
Big bodies entered the room on long strides and the next thing Murhder knew, Phury was pulling him back.
“Get your hands off me,” Murhder snarled as he shoved the Brother away. “I’m not going to do anything.”
“How do we know that?” V taunted as Rhage blocked his flight path.
“Shut the fuck up, V,” someone said. “You’re not helping.”
“The hell I’m not. I’ve found his fucking female.”
Sarah left her house with her sunglasses on. Which was ridiculous. It was cloudy, the overcast sky clearly considering the idea of dumping more snow on the ground, the wintery landscape not that bright, blinding kind, but rather an all over gray. More than all that, however, there was no fooling anybody who was watching her house.
She was about to get in her car and drive off, and a pair of Ray-Bans wasn’t going to disguise that. Although given her line of thinking, maybe she needed to hat-and-dark-glasses her Honda.
Yup, she was straight-up 007 material.
She tried to look casual as she got behind the wheel, backed out, and headed for the main drag. The unmarked nothing-special that had been three houses down two hours ago was gone, but there was another now, in a slightly different position, and her dark lenses were useful as she went by the navy-blue sedan. Keeping her head straight, she shifted her eyes over.
There was a woman with short dark hair in the front seat, staring forward.
Looks like everyone is wearing sunglasses today, Sarah thought.
The local bank she and Gerry had their accounts in, one for household bills, the other for savings, had branches all over town. They’d only ever been to the one at the strip mall a mile and a half away from the house, however, and it took her no time to go over there, find a parking space, and get out.
As she came up to the glass doors of the entrance, she made a show of rummaging through her purse like she was looking for something. Then she took out her checkbook and nodded, as if she were relieved she hadn’t forgotten the thing.
Inside, the bank was warm, and there were two tellers behind the counter, several darkened offices, and a manager talking to a customer.
Sarah went up to the teller who wasn’t helping someone at the drive-thru. “Hi, I’d like to get some cash but I forgot my check card. Have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
The man smiled. He was on the young side, with a name tag that read “Shawn.” “No problem. Do you have your driver’s license?”
“I do, yes.” As she took out her wallet to slide her ID free, she passed the key that had dropped out of the boot across to the guy. “And can you please tell me if this goes with one of your safety deposit boxes?”
Shawn leaned in. “It looks like it.”
Sarah took her sweet time putting her name on the check and writing out “one hundred and no/100.” “My fiancé and I have a joint account here—I mean, he’s passed, so everything came to me. Can I get into the box? I brought with me the power of attorney I got as executor of his estate just in case it’s only in his name.”
Over at the door, there was an electronic bing as someone entered—and she wanted to wheel around to see if it was the brunette with the sunglasses that had been parked on her street. But that seemed like a rookie move for somebody trying to be covert.
“Let me check on your account,” Shawn said as he started entering things into his computer from her driver’s license. “If it was joint, then you’d have right of survivorship, and I believe that would carry over for any safety security box that you got as a service when you both opened the account. Do you remember signing for a box at that time?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Okay, let me see what I can do.” More typing on his keyboard, quick and sure. And then Shawn smiled. “I need to check with my manager, hold on a second.”
“Take your time. I write slow, anyway.”
Or at least she did today, turning the check over and printing “for deposit only” like she was carving the letters in hardwood.
Shifting her position, she looked across at the man who had entered. He was waiting for the other teller to finish up with the drive-thru customer. As with the woman in the unmarked, he was staring straight ahead. Jeans. Buffalo Bills parka. Sneakers that had snow on them.
Impossible to know if he was undercover or not.
Yeah, like she had anything to go by in making that assessment.
“So my manager—oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Sarah forced herself to ease up. “It’s okay. Too much coffee this morning.”
“My manager said she’d be happy to help you in her office.”
“Great.” Sarah almost packed up her fake withdrawal. “Oh, here. All made out.”
Five twenties and a no-thanks-I-don’t-need-the-receipt later, she was sitting down across from an early thirties woman who looked about halfway through her pregnancy. Her tag read “Kenisha Thomas, Branch Manager.”
“These are totally sufficient,” she said, after she entered some things in her computer and reviewed, then scanned, the notarized POA. “I’d be happy to let you in. It looks like your fiancé simply signed for the box associated with the savings account by himself. You weren’t billed because it was a free service that came when you started banking with us, and you would have had access if you’d just come in with him and your ID.”
Sarah turned the key over in her hand. “I guess he forgot to tell me about it.”
Bullshit, she thought.
“Happens all the time,” the manager said as she passed the POA back.
Does it really?
“Come with me.”
As Sarah followed the manager back out into the open area, she looked for Buffalo Bills guy. He was gone. Maybe she was just being paranoid.
The safety deposit boxes were way in the back, in a vault that must have weighed as much as the rest of the entire strip mall. After a little manila envelope was taken out of a narrow filing cabinet, Sarah was invited to sign on one of its vacant lines.
She froze with her Bic. The sight of Gerry’s signatures was like those boots with the mud in the treads, but worse: Without her knowing, he’d been in and out of the box seven times over the twelve months before he’d died . . . seemingly at random as she noted each of the dates.
The last one really got to her.
The Saturday he’d died. As she blinked away a wash of tears, she imagined him coming here as she had just done. Which spot had he parked in? Who had he talked to in the branch? Which of the
staff took him over here to sign this little envelope?
What had been on his mind?
And like her . . . who had been watching him?
“Why wasn’t there a notice when he died?” Sarah asked. “I mean, why didn’t I get a notice that I needed to switch this to my name?”
The branch manager shook her head. “My guess is that because it’s a joint account, there was an assumption that you’d signed as well.”
“Oh.”
“Just right there at the bottom,” the manager pointed out gently. “That’s where you sign.”
“Sorry.” She focused on the initials beside each of Gerry’s John Hancocks. As they were just a squiggle, she couldn’t read them. “Is that you?”
“No, my predecessor. I took over this branch about nine months ago.”
“Oh, okay.” Sarah scribbled her name. “I was just wondering.”
The bank manager initialed and then they were inside the vault, looking for 425 in the rows of rectangular doors. Twin key turns later, and Sarah had a long, narrow metal box in her hands.
It was light. But there was something in it, a shifting weight and soft clink being released as she turned and went into a private room with no windows or glass.
The bank manager hesitated before closing the door. As she put her hand on her round belly, her deep brown eyes were grave. “I am very sorry for your loss.”
Sarah put her palm on the cold metal of the box and focused on the manager’s engagement ring and wedding band set. It was hard not to think that if Gerry hadn’t died, maybe she’d be where the other woman was. Then again, if Gerry had lived, who knows where they would have ended up, given how things had been between them.
God, she hated thinking like that.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she sat down in the chair.
Sarah waited until the door was shut before she lifted the latch and opened the half lid. Her whole body shook as she looked inside.
A USB drive. Black with a white slide.
And a set of BioMed credentials she’d never seen before.
Frowning, she put the USB drive into the zipper pocket of her purse. And then she inspected the credentials. The laminated card had the BioMed logo on it, and the bar code that got scanned by security whenever anyone entered the facility. There was also the strip on the back that you swiped through the door lock readers, a seven-digit phone number written in permanent marker, and the holographic image pattern that ensured authenticity.