In one word, I feel raw, like a layer of flesh has been stripped away and everything that touches me hurts, physically and mentally. I love Damien, entirely and irrevocably. But I wrestle with what that means. Have we doomed each other to something we didn’t entirely think through? I trust him more than anyone but maybe Maeve, and even that relationship is now on shaky ground. I sigh when I think of her. I owe her a call. What happened between the three of us is morally complex. I believe I've done the right thing freeing Damien, but I owe her aconversation to clear the air.
Not today, though. Today, I’m going to paint.
I pad down the first-floor hallway to my mother's studio, noting the purple dragon curled at the base of the door. I reach for the doorknob and then stop, studying the mural again. The dragon's eyes are open. The two-dimensional creature was asleep before. I’m sure of it. But that’s impossible. Either I imagined its eyes closed before, or someone’s been in my house and painted the eyes open. I run my fingers over the dragon’s face. Dry and of similar texture to the paint around it. I have to have been mistaken about its previously sleeping state. Either that or I’m losing my mind. I give my head a good shake.
Entering, I walk around the tower of knives, giving the sculpture a wide berth. At the rear of the studio, I find a small, blank canvas and set it up on an easel near the window overlooking the rear garden. The leaves have started to fall, but the yard looks freshly raked. Grams must have hired someone. I’ll have to track down who she’s hired and for how much. If I can afford them, I’d love to keep them on. With the grounds being so extensive, I doubt I can do all the maintenance myself and I fully intend to stay here. This is my home.
As I place dollops of paint on my pallet and select a brush, I sense Grams and my mother beside me. And then, for the first time in years, I bring brush to canvas and begin. Hours pass like minutes while the shape of my family takes form before me. Grams and Gramps stand at the center of the canvas, grinning. Grams winks at me, her face round and hair thick as I remember it from before she developed cancer. Mom stands beside her, wearing a royal blue halter dress. I paint my dad next to Gramps, arms folded comfortably as he watches me with that proud expression I remember sowell. I've painted them all in the backyard, surrounded by the bobbing lights of a family of fairies.
“There,” I whisper. Grams wanted fairies, so I gave her some.
I stand back and admire my family. All gone now. The crushing knowledge that I’m alone in the world creates a black hole in my chest that absorbs everything and leaves me empty. But as I continue to admire my painting through teary eyes, eventually, another emotion moves in. The faintest whisper of hope courses through me. My family has moved beyond this plane of existence, but somehow they are still with me, in me, around me.
A long time passes as I ponder that thought and my own mortality. I focus on my Grams again and remember the truck's bobbing lights. Where the hell were all those trucks going? The Anderson's farmhouse was condemned right after Tony and his family moved out. There’s nothing else back there. The road behind my family's cemetery is a dead end, only designed to give access to the Anderson's farmland. I quickly debunk the theory that the truck had taken a wrong turn. Grams had been seeing lights every night for who knows how long. She'd talked about it for months.
Possessed with a need to know the truth, I quickly soak my brushes and trudge to the back door, grabbing my Barbour jacket off the hook and pulling on my tall rubber boots. It’s a cool, wet afternoon, and I walk out into a cloud of gray mist, my red hair curling tighter, until pieces come loose from my ponytail and coil around my face. I try not to think too hard about Grams as I walk past her grave. Crying again won't help anything. I've cried myself out already. Today, I want answers.
A short journey through the woods and I step onto theaccess road, which is nothing but two ruts in stone-packed earth. The Anderson farmhouse looms in the distance beyond a field of dead stalks that were once soybeans, its unkept exterior giving it a haunted appearance against the overcast sky. I start in the direction the trucks traveled. Something is off about the dirt road, but exactly what remains irritatingly out of mind. Until I reach a very odd metal grate that does not belong there and put together what's missing.
Weeds. There are none growing through or around the grate. A quick inspection confirms that this road is being maintained in a way the Anderson farm is not, down to its neatly trimmed shoulders. And as it is technically on my property and I am not keeping it up, someone else has to be. Had Grams hired someone to do it? The same person caring for the yard?
I approach the grate and then stand on it. The only thing visible through the holes is more metal. Turning in place, I search for any clue to its purpose. A glint to my right draws me toward an overgrown yew. When I push the branches aside, I find a keypad on a metal pole. The three, six, and nine are abnormally worn, and my inner Nancy Drew kicks in. I try different combinations of the three numbers in four and six-digit combinations. Nothing works, and I think about walking back to the house. But then I remember something —the code for the penthouse's security system. The numbers were similar.
“No…” A dark foreboding feeling comes over me. Swallowing hard, I type 693369 into the pad, the same code we'd used to disarm our residential system. The metal-on-metal grind of something large and automated causes me to whirl around from the keypad. One end of the grate has lowered into the earth, revealing the gaping maw of an underground passageway.
Part of me thinks I should turn around right now and go call the police. This is weird. What is this doing on my property? The code can't be a coincidence. Whatever is down there, Tony thought it was worth killing for.
But if I call the police, I can’t tell them about Tony trying to kill me without also reneging on my story that the intruder ran. Damien did something with the man’s body. Changing my story sounds like a good way to be charged with murder.
I could wait until nightfall and come back with Damien. But Grams only saw the lights at night. Now, during the light of day, might be my only opportunity to investigate without being seen. I listen for voices. When all is quiet, cautiously, I descend into a well-lit, concrete-floored room that looks a bit like the entry to a parking garage. With only one way to go, I follow the ramp around the corner and stop short.
“Holy, fucking hell. Shit, shit, shit.” My mouth keeps muttering random curses as my legs carry me forward of their own volition. I’m in a massive, underground cavern with a dock at one end that extends into a deep, murky inlet. Buoys are tied to its posts as if boats dock there regularly. Between me and the dock, cubes of plastic-wrapped cash are stacked on pallets, ready for transport.
My palms start to sweat as I shuffle to the closest cube and rise on my tiptoes to inspect the faces of the bills. Damn, there has to be millions here. My arms break out in gooseflesh as I smooth the plastic with my hands to get a better look. A tiny smudge winks up at me from the upper right corner of the bill.
My mind spins out like a car on ice.This is Tony's counterfeit money, waiting to get loaded onto a boat in a sea cave under my property. I can't see where the water leads, but I can guess —the Rappahannock River. Tony is floating his fake cash down to the Chesapeake, the same way old mill workers floated logs. That's as far as I get piecing things together, though, because the low hum of a boat's motor rings through the cave. I run for the cover of a metal shed, flattening myself against the side, my chest rising and falling in ragged pants.
The boat engine grows louder, then cuts out, the sound of voices taking its place. “We're behind schedule. Get these loaded and to the ship. I don't want any surprises today.”
I gulp. That’s Tony's voice! I peek around the corner and confirm it’s him, along with two other men who start loading the cubes of cash onto a medium-size trawler.
“It's still early. Are you okay with us risking the river in daylight?” one of the men asks.
“Do it,” Tony says. “No one's going to question it.”
“What about the girl?” The other man points skyward at what I can only assume is my house.
“I'll take care of the girl.”
I flatten myself against the shed again. I’m the girl in this equation. How exactly is Tony going to “take care” of me? But then I know, don't I? He sent that man to kill me last night. Does he mean to finish the job? By the way he answered, he must know the man he sent was unsuccessful.
Pulse pounding, I glance toward the exit. I have to get out of here before someone hears my increasingly shaky breaths. I wait until all three men are inside the boat's cabin, then sprint on my toes in the direction I came from. I pause around the bend that leads to the ramp. I can hear Tony and the other men continuing to load the money. Rushing back the way I came, I panic when I see the ramp isgone, then notice another keypad on the wall. I plug in the code. The ramp engages, lowering with a screech.
Fuck! I shoot a panicked glance over my shoulder. There is no way those men didn't hear that. As soon as the ramp is low enough, I jump on, climb the grate, and bolt for home. I don't stop until I’m inside Harcourt Manor with the door locked behind me.
40
The Key
