Housebroken (16 page)

The blow to Blake’s head was much more severe than a shattered globe. He never saw what Drew used, but as he flew off Joje toward the desk, he welcomed the darkness so quick to embrace him.

Adam’s fingers glided over the keyboard of his father’s laptop like a concert pianist preparing to play his first note. The TV was the first purchase he’d be making, followed by ordering dinner, then a wheelchair for Jenna, Joje’s orders. He’d see what else he had time for before they decided the computer should be put away.

Alone in the kitchen, he scrolled the cursor through the icons at the bottom of his father’s laptop. He hovered over the symbol that read “a-mail.” He knew what it was: Blake’s secret e-mail software that was supposed to read your mind or something. His heart beat a little faster as he considered opening it and sending out a one word e-mail to Blake’s list of contacts.

Help.

At the very least, it would make things interesting.

He moved past it, instead launching Chrome. It was too late for help.

His father was gone, probably had brain damage from that blow to the head. Drew had held nothing back when he swung that golf club. They had dragged Blake into the garage. Who the hell knew what they were doing in there?

Adam clicked order on an eighty-five-inch 8k ultra HD TV without looking at the price. It was a model not being released yet to the general public, eight times the definition of 1080p with 3-D technology that didn’t even require glasses. He entered his father’s credit card info from memory, a card Blake didn’t even know he had. They had gone to a Nailers game a few years ago though neither of them followed hockey. It had been right after his sister was born, and Adam suspected Blake just wanted out of the house. One of the booths out front had been giving away jerseys if you signed up for a credit card. Blake had been on a conference call or something but told Adam to fill out wrong info for him to sign just so Adam could get the jersey. But the jersey wasn’t what Adam had been interested in.

Since then he had mastered his father’s signature and now had a dozen or so credit cards in order to bounce balances back and forth. Intercepting the mail had never been a problem, and each new card came with a limit Adam would never reach. He clicked on the twenty-four hour delivery and watched as a spinning wheel began processing his order.

His eyes flitted from the bright screen to Jenna on the couch. She lay staring blankly at the ceiling, her swollen eye barely cracked open. IVs ran from hanging bags of clear liquid the doctor had brought, connecting to her neck and arms. It may keep her alive, but it wouldn’t help the real problem. She was addicted to antidepressants, and Adam conveniently “forgot” to add those pills to the pain meds he was in charge of bringing her. Considering the stress of their current situation coupled with her injuries, he gave her another day at most before she turned into a total vegetable. She’d be so unresponsive Joje and Drew would be able to do anything to her.

An ache grew in the back of his eyes like a physical weight. There was a good chance Blake wouldn’t be coming back around. Jenna was a mess, and Adam couldn’t imagine living with her alone. For the first time in a long time, he thought about his sister.

Blake had been right. He should run away.

He opened a new window and began searching for wheelchairs. The door to the garage opened, and Joje entered from the connecting hall. Blake and Drew weren’t with him.

“How’s my dad?”

“Bweathing,” Joje said, which didn’t say much. “And how’s awe good docto feewing?”

The doctor was tied to a chair in front of the broken TV, duct tape covering his mouth. A true kidnapping. His white eyes bulged from his wrinkled and saggy cheeks, his bald and spotted head shiny from all the sweat. He stared at Adam, begging, pleading.

Adam wondered if the doctor had known when he woke that morning that today would be the last day of his life. He couldn’t even pronounce the guy’s name.

The doctor squirmed in his chair, beating against the back of it, as Joje approached.

“Can I go for a swim?” Adam asked. The question clearly caught Joje off guard. Adam kept himself from smiling.

“Sawee, I need Dwew wight now.”

It always took Adam a minute to understand Joje. “I’m bored. I already ordered the TV and wheelchair. They’ll be here tomorrow. I just need to get out of the house for a bit.”

Adam could almost see the turning gears behind Joje’s eyes as he considered the possible outcomes. “That’s fine.”

Joje came forward, putting his hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Thank you again, fo’ expwaining about the phone. I’m pwoud of you.”

Adam shrugged, letting Joje’s hand slip off his shoulder.

“I want my son to be just wike you.” As he returned to the family room, Joje pointed at Jenna on the couch. “Stay,” he said, laughing as he continued back to the garage.

“Bye, Jenna,” Adam said in a whisper. He went to the back door, passing Conrad’s empty cage, and stepped outside. Joje’s misplaced trust was something he had worked hard to earn, but Adam was beginning to realize how much he had underestimated their kidnappers.

With Joje, he felt like he had fallen into a wormhole, popping out and meeting his future self. It had been intoxicating at first—frightening, sure—but no different than smoking his first joint or bedding his first girl. A fear more thrilling than it was scary. But soon he’d be alone with that future iteration, his parents out of the equation, and he was no longer sure that mirrored projection was who he wanted to be.

First his sister, now his parents.

And it was all his fault.

He ripped off his shirt and dove into the pool. The collision with the water cleared his mind, ideas floating to the surface like rising bubbles of air.

Blake’s words, “Take the first chance you get and run.”

Joje telling him, “I’m pwoud of you.”

And Adam left with nothing to say for himself.

He broke the surface, swimming to the far side of the pool. Maybe there was nothing left to say. Had he known when he woke that morning that today would be the last day of his life? Joje’s pwoject would soon be coming to an end. At least for him.

Blake awoke with a gasp. From the base of his skull running to the middle of his forehead, it felt like someone had pried their fingers deep into the spongy tissue of his head, and was about to peel it back like the skin of an orange. It was a new and much more intimate acquaintance with the term “splitting headache.”

Water poured over his face, which had most likely ripped him from unconsciousness. He tried to shake it off, but its source was bent on drowning him. He coughed, his lungs suddenly burning. With dread, he realized it wasn’t water.

It was gasoline.

Fumes climbed down his throat and nose, causing Blake to choke and snort. At last the flow of liquid stopped, his clothing drenched and sticking to him as he lay in a gathering puddle of fuel. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, even longer to connect image to thought. Speckled pavement, artificial light, shelving filled with boxes . . . and a twisted and bent bicycle lying on the floor.

His garage.

He rolled to a crouching position, rising to his hands and knees. His head hung, eyes closing to stop the dizzying effect of the room spiraling beneath him. It didn’t help.

“I’m only going to ask this once, Bwake, so pay attention,” Joje said.

Blake hacked through another bout of coughing, his lungs trying to eject the fumes inhaled with every breath. When he was through, Drew bent down, forcing Blake’s head up.

“Where are the files stored?” Joje asked.

His sight was so blurry Blake barely recognized Joje, though it could have been because he wasn’t smiling. He blinked through the pain, the burning sensation in his eyes making him wonder if they hadn’t already lit a match.

“From your phone,” Joje continued. “Where are they stored?”

“Go to hell—”

Drew’s fist cuffed Blake across the chin, and his head lolled backward. He could have sworn he heard marbles clicking around somewhere inside his skull. More gasoline poured over his face, the toxic air doubling him over, a wretched and wet cough forcing its way out.

“Let’s try again. Where do they keep the record of the files from your phone?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t—”

Air shut off like a valve closing as Drew’s hand clamped over Blake’s mouth. His neck was forced back, eyes squinting at the blinding lights overhead. Just as Blake felt unconsciousness circling above him, Drew removed his hand.

Blake gasped for air. What he found instead was gasoline.

Liquid flame fought its way down his throat, into his lungs, gasoline dribbling through the passageway of his nose. He felt it floating in his head, his throat burning from the inside out; if there had been a flame, he could have spewed fire. Chortled gags and the painful wrenching of stomach muscles no longer in his control brought up meals in puddles of blood-ridden fuel.

“Please,” Blake said, a line of spittle hanging from his open mouth. “I don’t know where—”

A match burst alive in Joje’s outstretched thumb and forefinger. Blake could smell the burning sulfur, see the flame’s sway in both of Joje’s eyes.

“Do it,” Drew said, backing away from Blake. “We can take care of the others, be gone before anyone finds out.”

“We still have unfinished business.” The flame climbed down toward the bottom of the match, lighting upon Joje’s fingers. He didn’t so much as flinch.

Blake sputtered, trying to catch his breath. “There are . . . warehouses—it could be anywhere or backed up at every one. I have no idea. I’m not involved in any of that.”

Joje dropped the match.

Blake’s heart fluttered, a miniscule comet breaking Earth’s atmosphere, carrying with it only death. The last of its flame snuffed out a second before striking the ground, its smoking top put out by the puddle of gasoline.

“You’re going to fix this, Bwake. And I’ll show you why. Bring him.”

Drew lifted Blake from his armpits, dragging him toward the front of the garage. They crossed from where the Escalade was parked over to the back of Blake’s midnight blue M6.

“Pop the trunk,” Joje said. Drew dropped Blake to the floor, moving to the driver’s door and reaching in. “I believe you know a bit about poker, Bwake? Have even played in a tournament or two? You probably know the old saying, never show your cards unless you have to. If everyone folds and you take the hand, you drop the cards facedown. But I believe there’s power in showing your hand. In letting your opponent know you’re not bluffing.”

Blake felt Drew’s hands pick him back up, dragging him toward Joje. Toward the trunk.

Drew lifted him to his feet. Blake had to catch himself from falling, placing his hands against the rail of the open trunk. The smell hit him before he could register what he was seeing.

Legs. Arms. Detached from a thick torso that was cut into fourths like a sandwich. And tucked beneath the crook of an elbow, the back of a head, a mass of matted black hair like lichen crawling upward.

Blake bent forward, vomiting onto the side of his car, then backed away, the garage door clanging as he smacked into it.

“You said you were tired of games, right? So no more games. Find a way to fix this, or you’ve just seen what becomes of your lovely wife and son.”

Wuv-wee indeed
.

Inside the house the first thing Blake noticed was the rolling metal arms with hanging bags of clear fluid, wires and tubes snaking over to Jenna’s arms, one biting into her neck. He approached her hesitantly, every step wobbly, aware of the fumes and stink of gasoline surrounding him like a cloud. Her eyes were closed, and as much as he wanted to put his hand on her head and run his fingers through her hair, he stayed himself.

Drew was unwinding a rope Blake had used to tie down a Christmas tree to the top of their Jeep one year back in West Virginia. The tree had only made it halfway to their house, sliding from the roof of the car and bouncing along the barren curved road of slush behind them. They had gone fake every year since.

Beneath the rope was a frail, wizened old man. Drew ripped the tape from his mouth with a stinging pull that stole the color from the man’s cheeks. He raised his hands tentatively, the wrinkles in his forehead spreading like ripples in a pond as he arched his eyebrows.

“Please? I can leave?”

Dr. Cheverou was a relic from another age caught in a world moving too fast. And this time it was bound to get him hurt.

“No leave,” Joje said. He pointed to Blake. “Make sure he’s . . . okay in the head.”

Dr. Cheverou smiled as if he were used to people speaking to him like a three-year-old.

“Make it quick,” Drew said.

“Sit please?” The doctor’s thick accent rolled his sentences into one continuous word.

Blake lowered himself onto the loveseat perpendicular to Jenna. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back up. “Where’s Adam?” he asked, suddenly realizing his son was missing.

“In the pool,” Drew said. He must have seen the fear sweep over Blake’s face because he added, “He’s just swimming.”

“I need my tools?” the doctor asked.

“No tools,” Joje said.

Dr. Cheverou turned back to Blake with a scowl that had been perfected over a lifetime.

“Thank you for helping my wife,” Blake said. “She looks better, her face . . . it has color.”

Dr. Cheverou only grunted.

“Where are you from?” Blake asked.

“Look up,” the doctor intoned. He moved his face forward, mere inches from Blake’s. Blake could smell the musk of the doctor’s cologne over the reek of gasoline, an odd cocktail of engine oil and old man smell mixed with sweat. And fear.

Dr. Cheverou’s fingers prodded around Blake’s eyes. “I am from Ukraine. Lugansk. Is like little Los Angeles.” He turned Blake’s head to the side, massaging around the back of his skull. Blake winced, a piercing spike spreading forward all the way to his eyes. “Fingers.”

Blake held out his hands, not understanding it was a question until the blurring of his vision settled to a more muted amplification.