I pull off the bottom part and dump it into the box with the others. Then notice a black spot on the floor.Oh, no.Is thatmold?
Shit, shit, shit.Holding my breath, I bend down and squint, but up close it doesn’t look like mold. In fact, it looks like…a microSD card?
Huh.No brand name or anything. It’s pristine, so it couldn’t have been that Dad dropped it while installing the floor. So where did it come from? I pick it up, then the discarded half-section of tile. On the bottom of the tile is a shallow gouge about an inch long. So… Did somebody hide the memory card under the tile? The slot looks deliberately created.
And just what’s on the card that this much effort went into hiding it?
Curiosity spurs me to get off the floor. I find the memory card adapter that came with the microSD card I bought for my phone a while back. Then I dust the card off, stick it into the adapter and plug it into the slot on my laptop.
A folder pops up. I click on it, see a pdf file named OttosFavoriteThings. Did this belong to Dad? Otto isn’t exactly a rare name, but it isn’t that common either.
When Dad died, there was no will, no last words. But then his death was abrupt and violent. I’m curious what he’d consider his favorite things and why he’d hide a file about it in the kitchen floor. He sometimes acted like he was starring in a Bond flick. Was this another example of that? Did he ever mean for me to find it?
I open the pdf. The first page shows a black-and-white photo of a woman and CLASSIFIED stamped in red.
I look away for a moment.This better not be porn…
The top line reads ASSET: LAURA BENNETT. Lots of blacked out lines in a document that looks like the CIA dossiers fromThe Bourne Identity, except the agency is nothing I’ve ever heard of, and I don’t recognize the olive-wreathe-over-a-shield-and-spear emblem.
Whatisthis? Some kind of weird role-playing game he did with others? Except wasn’t he always too busy to fool with stuff like that?
Or maybe he never had any time because he spent so much of his energy on the game. There are people who get so into games they basically live online.
The rest of the pages about her are mostly blacked out, but dates and locations and targets can still be read. Wonder what the difference is between the blacked-out ones and not blacked-out ones.
I scroll down some more…and my heart jumps to my throat.
ASSET: NOAH LASKER. Lots of lines are redacted, but I see a hand-written note in the margin:Nora Blane’s son and favorite asset. The writing is blocky, with familiar overly loopeda’s ande’s—Dad’s.
Noah’s mom introduced herself as Nora.And she wanted him to “unclog her toilet” in Dubai. Even flew all the way to SoCal to get him to do it. I thought she was just an eccentric wealthy woman—one thing money can’t buy is common sense. But what if she’s something else…?
Besides, if this was just a harmless game my dad played with her and Noah, wouldn’t they have said something? Noah knew who my father was. When he first visited me at this house, he saw a family photo pinned to the fridge and I told him they were my parents.
I scan the pages for clues that this is just a big prank. Words jump out.Outwardly unserious. Possible sociopath. Unpredictable. Difficult to control. Unmanageable. Highly trained and skilled. Prolific. Refers to his rifles as “cheetahs.”
I shoot cheetahs. Noah’s statement about what he does for a living fleets through my mind, icy apprehension slithering down my spine.
I close the pdf, unable to process what I’ve just seen. Of course this is a joke. Dad had basically zero sense of humor, so maybe he thought this would be funny… Noah? A possible sociopath? Come on! The man is tight with his brothers. Ellen adores him. Who puts stuff like this on a microSD card and hides it in a kitchen tile? There’s another explanation for all this. Has to be.
But…
Every innocent scenario I come up with to explain the document is ridiculously unbelievable.
Señor Mittens meows, obviously bored with my stunned stillness. He hops down from the window sill, purposely knocking over the tablet on which the Korean drama is playing, chin held high in a disdain that demands I entertain him.
Not too interested in humoring you at the moment.I go over to pick up the tablet and check to make sure it didn’t get damaged.
The male lead on the screen stares at his girlfriend. “You saw?”
“I saweverything,” she spits out, the wind blowing her hair into her face. Her eyes are red with gathering tears. “You never loved me. You only cared about the secret you thought you could extract from me.” She throws papers at him. The red CLASSIFIED stamps flash as the documents swirl in the air.
The man’s jaw tightens, and he pulls a gun on her. She lets out a hollow chuckle. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
The man glares at her. She suddenly puts a hand behind her, as though reaching for a gun, and he fires. Red bursts on her chest, terrible against the white of her shirt. She falls on her side, and there’s nothing in her waistband.
The tablet suddenly goes black—out of battery.
I stare at the dead device, feeling like I’ve just seen a bad omen.You only cared about the secret you thought you could extract from me.
