Housebroken (32 page)

“Isn’t this your home?”

“It’s a house, not a home,” Adam said flatly.

Joje nodded as if he completely understood. “You prefer blond or brunette? Or ginger?”

“Brunette,” Adam said.

“So Jenna’s out,” Joje said with a laugh. Adam couldn’t help but join in. “Dwew told me about your tapes—classic. But you don’t want a girl like that. There are much better rides with a lot less maintenance per mile. In fact”—he snapped, pointing his finger at Adam—“I know the perfect one! Unless you wanna wait till Sha-Nay-Nay gets off work?” He nodded toward the kitchen, where the waitress had disappeared.

Adam knew he was supposed to speak but found himself unable. He felt spellbound, as if he were being hypnotized. Was this what Adam did with his friends back home? That same effect—them hanging on his every word, wanting to please him—he now felt for Joje. He didn’t understand. He was supposed to be immune to this.

Despite everything, he felt himself relax. He was in the hands of a master.

“I didn’t pick your house at random you know?” Joje said.

“I know.”

“You do? Of course you do. But you don’t know why I chose you.”

As Joje told him the reason, Adam found himself relaxing even more, understanding—real understanding—settling in, making itself at home. His life was no longer just a house, four walls with furniture and a family of stick figures, present yet empty of reason, of meaning. He was coming home for the first time in a long time, and his life would never be the same again.

Blake blinked.

He swallowed, though there wasn’t enough spit to wet his throat.

The house had been immersed in darkness, a thick, unforgiving black capping every surface like oily snow. At least in the only corner he could see.

The corners of his mind were equally dark.

The digital display of an oven clock provided a recessed glow, and whatever moon floated over the waves outside teased a shadow here, beam there.

Such a tease.

They aren’t coming back for me.

The truck idled at the curb of the street in front of a one-story bronze building that had metastasized into a hospital, wings sprouting from every side. Stu refused to drive into the parking lot, said they had cameras in there.

The stale air pushing through the plastic vents smelled like a squirrel had climbed in to the truck’s engine and died there.

Jenna was cradled in Drew’s arms, lying across the bench, her feet lifeless in Stu’s lap. From her toes to her calves, she looked like some swamp creature out of a horror movie, the kind his old boss used to make, with more shots of boobs than monsters. Flakes of dead skin as thick as twigs were gathering on Stu’s pants. Drew had almost forgotten he had been the one to do that to her.

“You could always say she died before we got here,” Stu said. “I’m surprised she didn’t.”

But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was Joje wanted him to kill her. At least it was the first problem.

On the drive back down the mountain, Drew had had plenty of time to think, discovering three overreaching problems that, unresolved, would get him caught, killed, or worse.

The fourth problem, he had realized, was that he had never been good at solving problems.

“Joje would know. If I was lying to him,” Drew said.

Stu nodded. They all knew Joje’s uncanny ability to sense a lie, however minute.

“What if she wakes up?” Stu asked. “You know that’s why he’s not walking in there. Might as well slap cuffs on yourself if you take her in.”

He was right. It was the second of his problems, one he had yet to work out. Because if she woke, she would talk, and if she talked, there would be no shortage of security and police officers to bring Drew down.

But he was
so close
.

If he thought Jenna might live without a doctor, he’d disappear right now, but to go out alone . . . what would the point of this past week have been?

“Look, uh, I’ve got more I need to do, so let’s either dump her or I tip my hat ’cause you’re a braver soul than I,” Stu said.

“I’m going,” Drew said. He leaned forward, lifting his hands from beneath Jenna’s head as if going for the door but bending lower, reaching down to the floor. “Help me with her.”

“I’m not steppin’ outside,” Stu said, not realizing what Drew was reaching for.

When he came back up, it required only a movement of a few inches. The hilt that fit so succinctly in Drew’s grip pressed forward, the attached blade sliding into Stu’s chest just below his sternum. Drew twisted the blade, pinning him to the driver’s door. Blood burst from Stu’s mouth, spilling over his chin and into his beard, his eyes wide as if he had one more question for Drew.

He probably did.

Drew waited until Stu’s eyes glazed over, his head lolling forward. One of his arms plopped onto Jenna’s leg, and she stirred beneath him. His third problem hadn’t been that difficult after all. With a little luck he’d find a way to manage the others.

He wiped at the sword’s handle with a scrunched-up napkin he found in the seat. He wouldn’t be taking it with him. The thought was disheartening; that sword had been a part of his transformation, like Adam picking up the Sword of Grayskull and discovering he was He-Man the whole time.

I have the power
, Drew thought,
and no one—not even George—can take it away
!

He looked down at the creature stirring in his arms, more beautiful than any of the buxom blonds Welchsetzer had used. And used. Drew had always gotten his turn, but only when it was time to take out the trash, leaving him empty and craving more. But with Jenna it would be different. A dumpster may still be at the end of their union, but not after their first time. Not after their hundredth.

With the napkin in hand, he opened the door, taking care to wipe at any edge he may have touched. He lifted Jenna into his arms like a sleeping child and descended the two metal steps down to the sidewalk. A lit-up stone sign read, “USC Verdugo Hills Hospital,” but might as well have read, “This Way to a New Future.”

Drew took a step forward, then another, his future now within grasp. In his arms Jenna moaned despite being unconscious.

He could get used to that moan.

One problem at a time.

Between the sloppy notes of a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo sped up at four times its normal speed, the prattle of his current mental state discussed on an overhead projector in a classroom the size of Tokyo, and the insane screaming in his head, Blake heard a thump at the back door. Then another.

No wonder Jimi’s solo was getting increasingly messy. He passed it off as just another piece of sanity dissolving, but the thumping continued.

Coming
, he thought, the laugh in his belly never rising to his chest.

Someone was trying to break in.

“Dad! Dad?”

Adam was back for another haunting jaunt. This time would he repeat, “‘It’s all
your
fault, all
your
fault?’”

The door broke open with a crash, the chill of the night air sweeping in uninvited. Blake felt suddenly naked, serenely so. He was lying on a beach, a sprinkling of stars overhead. Water too warm to be the ocean broke just before his body, retreated, coming back to prod again. His clothes were wet, and he was cold—deathly cold—yet not shivering. Shivering required energy his body simply couldn’t expend.

“Dad?”

Adam stood over him. He was no longer lying on a beach; he was at the bottom of a grave, earth opening beneath him as he sank, his son growing more distant above.

“We’re back, we’re safe.”

Warm water lapped up against Blake’s face and side. “You’re not real,” he said.

“Dad, it’s me, come on!”

The moonlight split through the shutters over Adam’s face, erasing his eyes, leaving only his hair and smile, a wide swath of darkness between.

“Come on—you’ve got to try!”

His neck rotated back as if in a cinch, each fraction of an inch clicking into place another notch. He cried out in pain—Tick, tick, tick went the square clock.

The door to the cage was open, and yet Blake still couldn’t move. Countless times he had imagined his rescue, his body spilling out like beads from a broken vase, pouring onto the floor as soon as the latch was thrown open. But like a sandcastle that doesn’t fall apart when the plastic mold is lifted, his body had formed to the cage, the crate.

His new home.

At least it’s warm here
, he thought, a cloud of heat dispersing from the water around him.

“We’re home, you’re okay, Dad. We’re okay.”

Water slopped up over his face and into his mouth. He breathed it in, choked, coughing, his lungs and chest heaving, the movement like a thousand hot needles spreading through the muscles in his back and shoulders and side.

Every exhalation brought an exclamation, suffering beyond imagining. He was going to rip in half, a baby was forcing itself out, a camel going through the eye of a needle, only he was the eye. Hands rubbed his body, his shoulders, his arm that felt it had detached from the rest of him, his hand, its flesh undercooked. He brought it up and over the outer lip of the crate, his fingertips poking through a gridded square.

From the outside.

He was kicking, thrashing against the waves, but they were too strong, the currents slapping him away like a doll. He’d never reach his son—Adam would die, drown, and Blake would hear his cries and see his splashing and hear him scream his father’s name

“Dad! Calm down!”

And these four torrential waves would box him in on every side, a cubed vortex, pinging him back with every attempt to escape, reminding him he had come so close, so close,

“Say something!”

So close.

Metal prongs clung to the top of his skull, raking into his flesh, ripping out hair as he slid his head backward, backward until he was

Drowning, water in his ears, crawling down his nostrils, a thin film above his eyes over which everything wavered—Adam, shifting back and forth without moving, face a blur.

He lay on the marble kitchen floor, the coolness of the stones like the caress of a corpse.

He lay an inch beneath the water in his pool, if he slipped from this step, he would drown, he couldn’t remember how to swim.

He lay, Adam holding his head in his hands, looking into his eyes as if he no longer recognized his own father, shouting, shouting,

His words unclear beneath the surface of water,

Shouting his name, shouting

“Dad,”

We’re home.

The fire crackled in the middle of the pool, a cinder spitting out into the sky before dissipating midflight. Wherever it had intended to go, it never made it.

Blake sat at the lip of the pool, legs dangling in the water. Every few seconds he would gasp, muscles tensing, his body taut. And then he would remember where he was.

Adam stood nearby, Joje leaning back in a patio chair by the table, granting them space. A colorless moth flew overhead in tired loops.

Adam told him about the men who had kidnapped him and his escape, how if Joje hadn’t shown up, he would be dead
.

Thank God for Joje
.

Jenna had been hurt and taken to a hospital. He asked which one. Neither of them knew.

“Did anyone come by the house? Anyone hear you?” Joje asked.

Blake didn’t know.

“Well, there’s an unmarked van across the street. I don’t think they know you’re here. Probably don’t have a warrant or they’d already be inside, but you can bet they’d like to bring you in for questioning,” Joje said.

The flames crested and dipped so similar to the waves of the ocean. Blake was mesmerized by them.

“We had to park out on the main road,” Joje continued.

“The PCH,” Adam said.

“Right. We came around through the back.”

Blake couldn’t believe how many shades of orange and yellow hid within each flame.

“We got a dog,” Joje said. “You should see her, a real beauty.”

Weal booty.

“What kind?” Blake asked, the fire reminding him of Conrad.

“Wrong question,” Joje said. “Care to try again?”

Blake didn’t. Eventually Adam helped him to his feet as he took his first tenuous steps, leaning on his son for support. He felt like a mannequin, knees and joints refusing to bend, his jerky movements so uncoordinated.

“Did the water help?” Adam asked.

It hadn’t. Or maybe it had, just not enough.

“No lights,” Joje said, following them inside. “I want them thinking we’re not here.”

The dog crate was directly in front of the broken door, the lock’s latch busted, pieces hanging. Adam led him around the table pretending not to notice Blake hyperventilating at the sight of the cage. They stopped at the fridge, pulling out a bottle of Vitamin Water. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

“There’s something you need to see,” Joje said. “In your office, where they won’t notice the lights.”

Blake grabbed a second bottle as well as a bag of baby carrots.

“What kind of dog?” he asked as they crossed the family room. The shattered TV still leaned up against the wall, the newer shinier version hanging above it.

“Just a bitch, nothing special,” Joje said. “We shouldn’t stay long, she’ll be getting lonely back at the car.”

“You’re not staying?” Blake asked. “Don’t make me go back in the cage! Please, I’ll do anything!”

“I know you will,” Joje said.

Blake had forgotten about the fallen chandelier, thought maybe by now police chalk would line where its corpse had lain on their entrance floor. The aftereffects of his and Joje’s fight were apparent in the living room: overturned lamp and piano bench, blood smeared on the white carpet like oil stains on a driveway. His office was only another reminder of his defeat.

“I got a text earlier,” Joje said, “on my phone. My
personal
phone. From your friend?”

Now Blake understood why Joje sounded so upset. Rory Shepherd had paid him a little digital visit.

“How can he do that? My number’s not listed anywhere.”

“Child’s play,” Blake answered.