As the painkillers kicked in, he found it easier to move and began craving food. Did this apartment have a stocked kitchen? He shuffled toward the door. “Obviously someone knew it existed or they wouldn’t have hired my services, but I never met the buyer. In my line of work, it’s rare to meet a client. They like to keep a layer of deniability in place.”
“How did you track down the book?”
“More like the client did and sent me in to fetch it. The job consisted of an address and description. A tome bound in black leather, tooled in gold leaf. Inside, an illustrated story. Old.” The job? Crack the safe where it was being hidden and bring it back for a plump reward.
It proved ridiculously easy to get inside given the target’s teenage daughter left the side gate unlocked every night for her boyfriend. She also deactivated the alarm system on the house.
No one noticed the extra shadow that entered the mansion. Not a single creak gave away his presence as he made it to the massive study. The painting on the wall proved light and easy to remove, revealing an embedded safe, old-school style, with a dial and everything. His favorite kind. He pressed his ear to the metal and listened, but the stupid fish tank in the office with its gurgling made it difficult and he couldn’t just blow the door off.
“You’re a safe cracker!” Nora breathed as if in wonderment, having listened with rapt attention to his story. “That’s cool.”
“I have a knack for locks.” He downplayed his innate skill. “It’s not a big deal. Mostly you need quiet. Pure quiet.” Which was why he had unplugged the fish tank then rested his ear on that big beauty of a safe. He closed his eyes to the outside world and tuned inwards. Click. Tick. Crank. Tock.
He didn’t even realize he’d relaxed into that happy Zen place until she said, “You love cracking safes.”
“I do. It’s satisfying.”
“Can you unlock electronic ones too?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t have the same feel.”
“If we get a chance, would you show me how it’s done?”
Show her? He must have looked surprised because she ducked her chin, for the first time acting as if shy. “I’d like to learn.”
“Sure.” He’d never taught anyone. Would have laughed at the idea until she asked. Now he couldn’t think of anything he’d like to do more.
“So what did you find inside?”
“Books. In the plural. Which I wasn’t expecting. It didn’t help they looked identical.”
Which one did they want? Did they even realize there was another?
Pulling them out, he’d run his hands over them, the first feeling as it should, grainy and musty smelling. The other…it held a hint of cold to it, as if it had sat in a fridge.
He shivered as he opened it. Could swear he felt a cold breeze.
“Since I didn’t know which was the right one, I tucked them both into my satchel. But only handed over one of them. Never said a word about the other.”
“I’d have done the same thing. How did you choose which one to keep?”
He wasn’t about to say one of them almost made him tingle. That was just weird, so he stuck to, “I liked the one with the unconventional ending.”
“Did the people who hired you ever find out about the other book?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Not that I know of. And like I said, it seems like there might be a few versions in circulation.”
“So when did you go after the key?”
“I didn’t until they hired me. I was staying low with the book just in case. My plan was to eventually auction it on the dark net.” Not the whole truth.
He’d gone back to bartending, but on his breaks, he tried to decipher the text in the book, enlarging the pictures he’d taken and doing searches to see what language it was in. When the mighty Google didn’t recognize it, he knew he was on to something. Something big.
“I’m surprised you’re admitting this to me,” Nora said, interrupting his mental memory. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll rat you out for stealing?”
He snorted. “As if you always obey the laws.”
“Do I look like a criminal to you?”
“Bad girl, definitely.”
She tossed her hair. “Thank you.”
“Not going to deny you’re a rule breaker?”
“Sometimes they get in the way.” Her tiny smile was too fucking cute.
He looked away and went back to his story. “You want to know about the key.”
“First tell me more about the book. You didn’t sell it. You had it translated.”
She was astute. “I did. After all, a good salesman should know his product. After much research, I discovered it was an unused medieval Russian dialect only taught by one professor.”
“And rather than email someone in Russia for a translation, you traveled there to meet with him?”
“Yes. For two reasons. The same people who hired me to find the book were already looking for the key. They had a head start.”
“But you found it.”
“Actually, they did. They hired me to go get it for them.”
“But you never handed it over.”
“The moment they asked, I planned a way to keep it for myself. That’s when I had the fake made based off the images in the book. I managed to acquire the real one and had the copy ready to hand off when I was…” How to summarize his next terrifying moments? “Detained.”
“You disappeared, and your buyers didn’t get any key. What’s surprising is they didn’t tear apart your place right then and there. The reports say your sister lived in your place for months before anyone thought to dismantle it looking for the missing key.”
“They probably thought I had it with me.” Because he knew for a fact they’d been looking for him. Watched his sister for months before acting to threaten her, hoping to use her to flush him out.
It wouldn’t have worked given he was still catching birdies in the mental institution. A fancy word for an old drafty building with wards kept docile via the administration of drugs.
“Were you hiding for those six months?”
“Not so much hiding as detained.”
“By the asylum. But what about the weeks before that? Where were you?”
In the grips of pure evil? Too much? He stuck to, “Being held prisoner by someone with an axe to grind.”
“Who?”
“The original owner of the key. Only she was more annoyed I’d escaped her and her pet tiger than the actual theft.”
“Wait, so the tiger and shit you kept talking about was real?”
“Parts of it were, like the bit where she locked me up and hurt me to amuse her pet.”
Distaste crossed her features. “That’s sick! I’m going to need the name of that lady.”
“I’m afraid it won’t do you much good. She’s disappeared. It’s believed the tiger they found in her house might have eaten her.”
“Happens when they get old,” was her odd reply. “So the old lady tortured you until you escaped. Then what?”
“I lived like an animal in the woods for a while until they found me and put me in the loony bin. Pumped me full of drugs on account I wouldn’t stop talking about the tiger. That’s where Lawrence found me.”