It ended not with a swell, but a soft trill.
His fingers lingered on the keys, as they always did when he reached this part. He didn't await applause or adoration, however. He simply wanted to feel the notes.
To feel anything: a concession he would never admit aloud.
No matter the means or location – the state room of a great mansion or the dusted corner of a cabin,, this would always be his constant. The music was his escape from the numbers, words, and white noise that played within him sunrise to sundown.
The music was David's escape from himself.
When the first knock came, he expected it.
The mob had arrived to collect its latest pint of blood.
Two knocks….
Perhaps Tad and Jesse had decided that a mob of two would suffice.
Three….
The most fleeting of all.
At the third knock, David imagined opening the door to a different image. He cursed his weakness, cursed the fragmented figment of the imaginary future that had slipped by his well-constructed defense system: the smiling little boy with the stethoscope around his neck, reaching out for his -
David released his monkey's paw as the knocking ceased. He did not open the door to bloodthirsty mobs or to smiling ghosts. His eyes followed the path of a butterfly that made a lazy eight past the flickering light and into the deserted road.
On the bench, one unsealed envelope fluttered in the breeze.
####
"Hit the gas!"
"Hey, you're normally the one who's telling me to ease up."
"I think normal took a hike about five left turns ago."
In response, Brot pushed down on the accelerator and finally turned on the lights. They both knew there was no turning back now.
"What do you think is in this file? Did he ever mention it to you?"
Natalia shook her head. "Not a word. Dad's gotten skilled at that. Whatever it is, it can't be any worse than what we've already found." God, she hoped it wasn't, anyway.
They'd both strictly avoided that topic: the elephant in the room. Right now, they couldn't think about the personal ramifications of what these sick bastards had done. If they did -
"What if we can't find it? Jesse was in such a hurry to get over to Slater's that he –"
"Don't worry. I know all about hidden panels in sock drawers. And don't ask why."
Brot raised his brow and cleared his throat, turning his attention to the empty parking lot they had just entered. It was a rare moment of lightness that she would gladly take.
After they pulled into the nearest spot, Natalia fumbled with her seatbelt. Damn it, not now.
If I just - If I could –
Brot slipped his hand underneath hers. "I'm the clay." They exchanged a slight grin as she began kneading. The small muscles in her hand slowly gained strength…confidence.
Removing his hand, he instructed, "Peg and trace."
She envisioned the imaginary pegboard.
"Breathe. PACE."
She obliged.
"Trace."
The grin returned. "I thought it was PACE."
"Don't make me explain the intricacies of hand-eye coordination. I had a hard enough time with the doc explaining it to me."
She held her free hand up. "OK, OK." With her finger, she drew rough, then increasingly precise circles around the buckle's catch.
The thought of their first tracing exercise subject brought a smirk to her face She couldn't stop when the smirk transformed into a smile, just as she couldn't stop the tiny fist pump and brief jolt in her chest when her fingers twisted and the latch clicked.
"Success!"
Her hand paused briefly on the door handle when she caught her fiancé regarding her again.
"If you even think about telling me to stay here…." She let the warning trail off, in search of its target.
Brot shrugged. "I was just gonna tell you to lock the door."
Bullseye.
The next missions, opening the door and actually getting out of the car , went off – to her relief – with ease.
Headlights temporarily blinded them and, on instinct, Natalia's hand dropped to her side…to an empty holster.
The car pulled into the adjacent slot, and she became aware of Brot's back brushing into her, pushing her behind him. With the sudden dryness in her throat, she couldn't even muster a protest.
"Probably just one of the tenants." The tenseness of his hand contradicted the softness of his words.
"Hey, what –" A semi-tackle cut off Brot's question, and simultaneously knocked Natalia back a few steps.
"Damn, Nattie, I'm sorry. I didn't even see you there." The apology was followed in short order by another tackle.
"Frankie, easy," she scolded, sinking into her brother's embrace nonetheless. She tried to pull back with a scowl, but that quickly dissolved into a chuckle. ""So when did you get back, and why the hell am I the last to know?"
"Yesterday, and it's only because I save the best for last, Sis." He was giving her that grin that made it impossible to stay mad at him. "I had to make a run to the market, so Mom's with my baby. That why you're here? You can't stay away either, huh? What can I say? My daughter has that effect."
"You've got us, man." Brot stepped up, putting an arm around her, trying to convey 'let's keep your brother out of this' with one glance.
Natalia took his hand and added. "So what do you say we go fight over the kiddo? Of course, I'll leave the diaper duty to you strapping young men. I am disqualified from that particular procedure for now."
"Using your injury to avoid the dirty work, huh? That's, that's…"
"Inspired?"
The light-hearted banter continued from the parking lot to the front door.
When they entered the apartment, Frankie disappeared into the back room. "Mom, we have –"
The dead silence was worse than any piercing scream. It was the one thing that had Natalia running for the first time in over a year.
The ensuing images unfolded in achingly slow motion: Frankie, kneeling beside his fallen mother and an empty crib -
Empty save for a piece of yellow paper tucked between its bars.
####
He'd worked in this house. He'd made out with a girl in this house. Hell, he'd temporarily lived in this house. But this place could still turn him into that punk kid hiding under the covers. The haunted mansion with one ghost too many could never truly be a home.
That's why he had turned down Adam's invitation. If he could only do the same to the man himself –
Miguel flinched at the next thump. No matter how hard he tried, how much he called himself an idiot, he couldn't stop looking for monsters in the walls.
Not here. Never here.
Even the mighty Chandler mansion didn't boast bookcases with growling stomachs, though. He approached the antique collection of books and ran a hand over the hard leather. Perfectly neat, perfectly organized, except for one off-kilter book.
Either Winnifred had taken a day off, or -
He ignored the knot in his stomach, embraced his genes, and pushed the misplaced first edition inward. Turning the screw, in more ways than one.
Carved oak slowly swung open. Still enough time to keep the monsters at bay. Fight or flight, one of the few remnants from high school psych.
When light finally fell into the dark opening, one of the impulses took control.
####
As the door first opened, they gave it only a passing glance. Perhaps they had convinced themselves it was an illusion, a sudden shift of light. More likely, they were not yet prepared to readmit the outside world and all of its accompanying…niceties. Not when they were so very, very close to – to what he could not say.
The voice of one perplexed police chief, however, shattered the illusion and brought them back, a bit more beaten, but ultimately intact.
Zach did not let his wife's hand go. He pulled her up as he rose and addressed Jesse. "Wow, I'm touched. I had no idea that our little predicament here would capture the attention of Pine Valley's finest. I must say, though, that our ever-dwindling wine stock thanks you."
Jesse stepped back through the door, giving them leave from their makeshift 'cave of truth.' "What the hell happened here?" he asked.
Kendall was giving her husband uncharacteristic license to serve as the chatty one. "You mix a sudden yearning for vintage spirits and a rebellious door, and it's not the wisest combination, let me tell you." These small diversions, Zach knew, would necessarily end. He might as well bring them to a close sooner rather than later. "What brings our hero here?"
The next words gave Zach his answer.
"We need to talk." Jesse turned to Kendall, hands stuffed in his back pockets. "Could you give us a few minutes, Kendall?"
At this 'request,' Zach preparing himself best he could for his wife's inevitable, and likely spirited, refusal of said request. Those preparations proved unnecessary.
"Okay. I need to go check on the boys," she said.
Both men watched the woman leave, each displaying their own form of amazement. Jesse's more animated face gave new meaning to the phrase eye-opening, while Zach settled for a slight shift of the eyebrows that did not betray the real storm still brewing inside him. Before his houseguest could begin, he held up a hand. "I know I have been the subject of a recent investigation." He craved directness, but, try as he might, the small strain of desperation in his voice found its release. "Tell me, what did you find?"
The damnable sympathy he saw reflected back at him morphed into something else…and for once, Jesse Hubbard was unreadable. The pupil had outshone the master. "We discovered encrypted files that Ryan had been keeping, and they contained some….things."
"Things involving me?"
"Your name did come up, along with several others. But the main issue –"
"—is that you wanted to find his murderer." This time, he would hold the gaze steady, no matter how much every organ inside him might be churning. This time, he would not run. "Have you found him, Jesse?"
And he did not run, even as Jesse uttered the words: "Yes, I have."
"Who is it?"
He did not run even when his worst fear was abolished, even as it was replaced with the two words that transformed fear into living nightmare: "Your father."
Zach only ran to capture his wife, who was nearly stumbling down the stairs. She shoved a paper at Jesse and turned to Zach with a fire restored to her eyes that the streams of water surrounding it could not extinguish.
####
She should be used to this by now.
She should really, really be used to this. But that fact did not stop her from swallowing the burning bile rising in her throat. Nor did it prevent her from engaging in the true fool's task: going over and touching that ice-cold skin. A guiding paradox in her life – even the most blistering heat could not melt the sub-zero of death.
"I think it's been a few hours, at least." Yasmin detached her hand, nearly frostbitten, from the neck of the woman laying prone on her desk….the woman who a casual observer might mistakenly assume was sneaking a quick nap on the boss' watch. A forgivable indiscretion, if the boss did not have a penchant for murder.
She stepped away from the body - partly, she could tell herself, to preserve the crime scene – and turned to Bianca, half-expecting the other woman to be frantically searching for clues or at the very least to be unleashing an angry tirade. What she saw, however, was too opposite.
Too familiar.
Bianca stared at the desk blankly. Every muscle in her face was still, but not in its usual guarded way. Yasmin knew that despite all outward appearances, the story playing out behind those eyes was anything but blank. "Bianca?" She knelt, gently shaking her companion's shoulder. "We need to call the police. We both know who is responsible for this."
"Yes."
The word was barely a whisper, but Yasmin had to take it. She squeezed Bianca's hand before tugging it. "We have to go. There's nothing else we can do here."
"I'm sorry." The even softer words were contrasted by their speaker's unyielding body.
Yasmin knelt again, her hand settling in the other woman's. "Sorry for what?"
Bianca's gaze was still fixed on the desk, and a single tear emerged from the the crumbling wall. With everything she had, Yasmin resisted the compulsion to wipe it away.
"For making it happen again."
Those broken words disintegrated every resistance. "This is not your fault, Ghazal. " Her finger settled under an eye that had finally allowed an emotion entrance: bitter anger.
Bianca pointed at the dead woman. "Oh, but you don't know the whole story. You see, Sarah here was the beginning of a rather unfortunate trend. Mom said once that I had a penchant for the strays, the lost little souls who were still searching for their place, searching for something real. If they were teetering on the Kinsey scale, catnip. And bonus points if they were my BFF." The laugh was hollow, empty. "Maybe I can finally admit to myself that I'm more her daughter than I would have ever admitted. Maybe I just liked the challenge….and the inevitable destruction. Maybe I'm a masochist, or a sadist."
Yasmin didn't know the details of what had happened between the women, but she had formulated an overall picture that told her enough. "Or maybe you're the person who gives all or nothing...without condition or reservation. And maybe right now you've settled on nothing because you believe –"
"That'll happen." The jab toward the desk was more fierce. "That's the inevitable result of giving a damn."
Yasmin took the shaking hand back in hers. "Not always."
For the first time, the other woman's hand relaxed. "Even after I used her, she still wanted to help me. She wanted to tell me something, and I'm going to find out what it is." For the first time, she looked upon the body with something other than despair and anger. "She deserves that much from me."
Yasmin nodded, rising, and they began their search. Both of them avoided the desk, although both knew that the search would soon need to center there. The investigation produced only two things: a severed computer cord and a severed phone line.
At the precise moment the door slammed shut behind them, the fax machine – the only electronic instrument still in operation – sprang to life.
Funny, but Yasmin almost preferred the phantom door slam in this supposedly deserted building to the quiet whir of the machine. And the white piece of paper now laying innocently in the machine's tray...that white square terrified her more than any ghostly apparition could.
####
The ache in his clenched hand brought him back. He regained focus at the precise second before his fist smashed into his father's face. Miguel sucked in as much air as he could before he turned, his gaze finally falling on the source of his rage.
Two blackened eyes stared up at him.
Had he been defending the memory of his girlfriend, or his sister?
Had he been defending her memory against his former boss, his former friend…
Or his brother?
His head pounded and spun, as if he'd just gone ten rounds. Judging by the condition of the man on the floor, maybe he had. Miguel spun back to Adam. "Why the hell did you stop me? He's not –"
"Finally got him..." The busted lip slurred the words. Those bruised eyes were not looking at their attacker, but instead fixed on Adam, whose own eyes were dark, focused.
"I'm glad…..I'm glad you got the son you always wanted….."
Miguel grabbed the dead weight by the shirt and shoved him against the chair. "You wanna play out your daddy issues now, you son of a bitch? After you ran away from you punishment like a coward?
"Stop it! Good God, just stop it!"
Both men immediately looked to their father, and Miguel at least saw the twisted sickness in that reflex. That 'instinct.' Both still the little boys waiting for Daddy to choose.
But Daddy's attention was, once again, elsewhere. Adam didn't say another word. He just silently read the piece of paper in his hand. That silence said everything.
Miguel collapsed beside JR, and they both waited.
Brothers bonded by blood in the most literal sense.
Bothers bonded by fear.
####
"Stay with me, stay with me!" Her training kicked in, and all she could see were the numbers, the steady rhythms. All she could feel was the subtle give-and-take of chest muscles, and the dull ache in her arms.
The groan, no longer dismissible as a primal response, hurtled her back….and the crash landing was unforgiving.
Cara's knee slipped in a pool of blood as she scooted closer to the pale face, its innocent beauty overwhelmed, desecrated, by a grotesque mask of the harshest making.
"It's okay. Don't try…don't try to talk, sweetie."
The lips, which only offered up more blood, moved restlessly.
Cara placed an ear to the girl's nose and mouth, trying desperately to be the stoic doctor and not the terrified, inefficient woman who'd come home to find her babysitter –
The breaths were only rattles, shallow and barely-there, cloaked in something she couldn't acknowledge yet. Not if she wanted to—
"Al…"
That she dismissed as a desperate, incomprehensible misfire in the girl's traumatized brain.
"Sorr…sorry….Alej….."
"What?..."
Those eyes - those haunted, terrified eyes that had against all odds remained perfectly clear, perfectly lucid – those eyes closed. The rattles stopped.
Cara gently laid the body down again, whispering "I am so sorry" before rising on legs that no longer felt like weighted lead.
She had no memory of entering the bedroom or of picking up the crumpled paper stamped in blood. On auto-pilot, she read the words. She did not call the police. She made no response except the tiny, sharp gasp that wrenched itself from inside.
When Cara rushed from the room, David's poinsettia stirred - the only motion in her son's empty crib.
####
Technology has its benefits, but I have always preferred the feel of a crisp sheet of paper and a pen between my hands. It is most quaint, don't you think? I would love to catch up, but I am afraid that business never waits. It has been too long, Doctor. Rest assured, though, that I have been a most diligent and faithful fan of your work. Your recent advances in the medical field have been a great source of pride for us. We do not wish to take away from your genius, but you must understand that our interests are intertwined with your own. What we desire, Doctor, is really quite simple: a return on our investment.'
David's nails tore into the paper. No way in Hell.
We realize your likely reluctance to part with your work, so we have taken great pains to arrange an incentive. Your son, I must say, is really quite charming, Doctor….and already so bright. I see truly limitless potential.
David's mind - that mind that had launched a thousand traps…
It was reeling.
And its owner sunk onto the unrelenting bench.