The Doc in my head shrugs.Probably, Tits. I don’t know, I’m you.
I inspect the keypad. I might not be the brainiest girl in the world, but Mr. Parker has never struck me as very smart about things he considered beneath him, like not telling his girlfriends about his secret plans.
This safe is here in case he dies, and Mr. Parker doesn’t think he’ll ever die so he definitely would have half-assed it. So, what’s the code? His birthday? I punch in 01-21-1974 and the safe gives an angry buzz.
I press a hand to my face. What does Mr. Parker like? What does he love? Power? Revenge? Being a creepy dick…?
I close my eyes and think back to a conversation we had outside the Kensington Stables once. Mr. Parker told me that his father liked horses. The racing ones, not the riding ones. “He always bet on the same numbers…” he said, his big blue eyes scraping over my face like a butter knife. “He always chose…”
“Seven, fourteen, twenty-one,” I mutter, pressing the buttons. “Odd numbers that go up by seven, which I remember because it was so fucking stupid—”
There’s a small click and the safe door pops open. I stare at it dumbly. I can’t believe I’ve done it. Quickly, before the safe can vanish and I realize I’m actually back at the cabin dreaming, I shove the door open.
I don’t know what I was expecting but I’m struck by the obvious: bundles of important-looking papers and silk pouches that are probably full of jewels. There’s loose stuff too, gold necklaces, diamond rings, and a sapphire tiara I’m pretty sure belonged to my birth mom.
“Asshole,” I mutter, pulling the rucksack over my shoulder. I don’t bother trying to sort things and just shove everything into the bag. Once the jewelry’s gone, I find the stranger things: a pair of silver scissors, a black leather glove, a metal bull-clip-looking thing, a handful of small glass vials. They have labels on them, and I hold one close to my face to read it.
Orchard. Batch 188.
I recognize the jagged handwriting. It’s Doc’s. This is the Orchard Parker stole from him years ago. The Orchard he drugged me with when I was fifteen. I throw all the bottles into the rucksack vowing to pour it into the grass as soon as I get down the tree. It’ll never hurt anyone ever again, not if I can help it.
The safe is almost empty. I reach into the corners and find a strange little bundle of fur. I hold it up and realize it’s not fur. It’s hair. It’s dark and curls slightly at the ends. I stare at it for a moment. It’s mine. And not my hair now, the bundle is too soft and fine. It’s my hair from when I was younger. Corinne must have given him a cutting when I was just a little girl.
“Gross!” I moan, tossing it into the bag. “You’re sofucking gross, Parker.”
I find another bundle of hair. It’s bright copper and I know that it’s Emilia’s.
The two of us locked in his safe. It could be for a weird cloning reason, but I don’t think so. It’s because Mr. Parker always has a part of us trapped in his safe. Even when he wouldn’t allow himself to touch me, he was probably jerking off to my hair clippings. Ugh.
“Well fuck you,” I say, tucking Emilia’s hair into the bulging rucksack. “We’re gone now.”
I’ve always found it harder to climb down trees than up. It feels like gravity’s trying to rip you back to earth, making you lose your footing. Even so, I practically fly down the trunk. Almost at the bottom, I hear Archie hissing. “…falling out!”
Touching the rucksack, I realize things are spilling from it, but I can’t do anything about it. I keep climbing down until I can jump onto the dark grass, my heart pumping.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what happened.”
Pulling it off, I see the silver scissors cut a hole in it and stuff started to leak out. Archie is shoving jewelry and velvet bags into his pockets and Bill is examining one of the Orchard vials.
“It’s gone bad,” I say quickly. “It’ll make people sick.”
“I wouldn’t give it to someone even if it was fine.” Bill hands me the vial. “You got the pass?”
“Um, I don’t know,” I say, shoving the ruined sack at him. “That’s everything that was in there.”
Bill shuffles through the papers looking more severe by the second. “It’s not in here. It should look like a little iron bar—”
“You mean this thing?” Archie bends over and picks up the bull-clip from the grass.
Bill’s face almost melts with relief. “That’s it. Fucking Christ, that’s what we need.”
Archie hands it over and Bill examines the bull-clip with a look of reverence I never thought to see on his face.
“Can it unlock the prison cells?” I ask.
“It unlocks everything.”
Archie stops snuffling around the grass for stray gems. “Everything?”
