“There’s a hatch?”
He nods, trembling.
“Open it before I open your skull.”
He kneels and brushes away a bunch of old magazines, revealing a small trapdoor, not dissimilar to the one in my kitchen. He grabs a loop metal handle and pulls hard.
Fuck.
He tricked me.
The handle comes away. An alarm trigger.
Instantly, a high-pitched squeal cuts through the entire center.
“I told you,” he yells over the sound.
I should put a bullet in his head, but I don’t know him. Don’t know how far he’s gone. Don’t know if he fits my code.
I don’t have time to hang around. The alarm is no doubt linked to a response force. Men with guns, who’ve been waiting for a chance to fight. Men who want to make a name for themselves by protecting the Don’s passion project.
Rushing through the center, I burst out the back door and run through the night.
On the ride home, I pass sparkling houses with Christmas decorations out front. A big red Santa waving his mechanical hand. Artificial snowflakes glittering on an enormous tree in a front yard.
Each one makes me think of her. Celine. My decorator, the woman I only really knew for a few days, the woman who changed me and broke me.
At a red light, I close my eyes. Try to calm myself down.
I call Agent Keane on speaker, though I know it’s probably a waste of time. But I’m getting sick of this crap.
“Damian–it’s late.”
“I got inside the gambling recovery center.”
A pause. “Yeah, and?”
“Got a basement door with a false handle on it, triggers an alarm which leads to a rapid-response force. Something bad is going on down there.”
“Something bad,” he repeats. “Any specifics? You can’t expect me to…” He cuts himself off, realizing his tone is less than respectful. “Sorry, Damian. I’m tired.”
He’s always doing this, as though he thinks one day I’ll turn the Beast on him.
“You know I can’t do anything without specifics. I’m risking my job working with you as it is. What if we bust in there and it’s a bunch of electronics or some other crap?”
I hang up. He’s right. I shouldn’t have even called him.
But I just want this to end.
Halfway home, I bring the car to a stop in an alleyway.
Something is tugging at my consciousness. An instinct, and I never ignore those. Something about the storage room where the trapdoor was.
I close my eyes, replaying it in my mind. The rush of a job is often so fast and stressful that I have to do this sometimes, use the calm after the storm to discern the true shape of the downpour.
In the room, there were shelves lined with magazines and crates of coffee and cups and folded cardboard boxes and…
And a pair of pink underwear, hooked to a corner of one of the shelves. Like a flag marking territory. Like a sick joke. A pair of underwear with kittens on it.
