Annabelle nodded and did as he said. Dylan still hadn’t moved from where he sat on the other side. Jack moved to the teenage boy and stood in front of him.
“Dylan, your father and mother were killed for whatever information is on that laptop.” He knelt before the boy and found his green eyes. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” He asked softly.
Dylan stared at him, as locked in that blue-eyed gaze as anyone ever was. He didn’t answer, but after a few intense seconds of silence, he nodded. Once. He knew. He knew they had to get out of there and figure out what ever it was that his father had thought important enough to die hiding.
Jack stood and Dylan stood after him. The boy swayed a little on his feet and Jack’s hand came up to his shoulder to steady him.
Jack turned to Annabelle, who’d unplugged the laptop and tucked it under her arm.
“Get your jacket from your room and then head through the hallway and to the right. Last door.”
Annabelle nodded and brushed past them, moving away from the living room and the kitchen beyond it, where a very young, very unsuccessful assassin lay on the linoleum, his eyes glazed over, his blood filling the cracks between the refrigerator and the stove.
She grabbed her riding jacket and back pack from her room then rushed down the hallway to the fourth door on the right. How many rooms did this vast apartment have? Jack was too loaded for his own good.
She turned the knob and pushed the door open to reveal a room that was nearly void of all decoration or furnishings, but for a tall work desk along one wall, and an adjacent pair of closet doors. The desk, itself, was constructed of thick, solid oak, and covered with a variety of tools that appeared both complicated and deadly. Annabelle knew, at once, what profession they’d been constructed for. She wondered where Jack got his supplies. Did he have a “Q”, like Double-O-Seven? Why hadn’t she ever thought to ask?
Behind her, Jack came in after Dylan. He carried a non-descript black bag in one hand. They stepped fully into the room and Jack shut the door behind them.
Annabelle handed the laptop to Dylan so that she could fold the jacket and stuff it into the backpack. Then she slipped the backpack over her shoulders.
Jack strode to the table against the wall. He glanced over the tools on its surface, selected a few, and pocketed some of them, placing the larger ones in the black bag. Then he turned back to Annabelle and Dylan.
“Do you have everything you need?”
They both nodded. Jack turned back to the table, reached beneath it, and pulled some sort of lever that neither of them had noticed before. Nothing appeared to happen and Annabelle turned to Dylan, who looked at her questioningly. Some of the color had returned to his cheeks. She shrugged, indicating that she was at as much of a loss as he was.
Then Jack brushed past them to the closet doors and swung them open, revealing a set of stairs lit up by lamps along the wall. It descended several stories.
Annabelle’s jaw dropped open. How the hell had he managed to dig a stairwell in the middle of an apartment complex filled with other tenants?
“I own the complex,” he told them flatly, as if he could read her mind. “The escape route was constructed before I admitted tenants. Now,” he said as he gestured for them to enter the closet without further hesitation. “If you don’t mind?”
Annabelle shook her head, once, and then descended the stairs. They were made of solid stone and free of dust or dirt. Jack had kept them clean. As she climbed down, she could hear Jack’s and Dylan’s footsteps following behind her.
She reached the end of the stairs and began to make her way quickly down a long stone corridor. There were no windows or turns until she reached the end. As they approached, two large metal exit doors swung slowly outward. Annabelle’s brow rose. Automated? Or maybe it was that switch Jack had pulled beneath the table. Either way, she was impressed at the thoroughness of this escape route. She wondered whether he’d ever had to use it before now.
She glanced over her shoulder to see Jack pull his cell phone out of his pocket once more. Dylan walked in front of him, his gaze somewhat distant. He was most likely in shock. Too much all at once.
Annabelle reached back and took his hand. He glanced down at her. But he didn’t smile. And she didn’t let go. They stepped out of the hallway, into the Minnesota night beyond. It was a moonless, cloudy evening, and the darkness was near absolute. Annabelle moved slowly, unsure of her footing.
“Around the corner, out into the lot. We want garage number nine.” Jack issued the order calmly, speaking in a voice a mere breath above a whisper, and then turned his attention to the phone in his hand. Someone must have picked up on the other end. “We need a nest for the remainder of the evening. Yes.” He paused, waiting as someone spoke to him. “Perfect. Meet us there.” He closed the phone and re-pocketed it just as the three of them carefully rounded the corner to enter a street that shot straight down between two rows of garages.
Annabelle’s vision was adjusting to the darkness. She could tell there were twenty garages in all, so Annabelle assumed that Jack had nineteen tenants.
She located garage number nine and waited to the side of the white-painted metal door while Jack punched a series of numbers into a key pad beside it. Each number made a different-toned beep as he pressed it, and his fingers flew so fast over the pad that it nearly sounded musical. In the absolute silence of the night, the sound was nearly cacophonous and it made Annabelle distinctly nervous. She chanced a glance over her shoulder into the trees that lined the apartment complex. Of course, she could see absolutely nothing. In a second, a mechanical whirring began, another rude noise in an otherwise quiet night, and the garage door slid upward.
Everyone except Jack stepped back, the darkness yawning beyond the door somewhat intimidating. Only Jack knew what actually waited in its depths.
Once the door was open, Jack stepped forward into the darkness and Annabelle lost sight of him completely.
“Come in, Bella,” came Jack’s voice from a few feet away. “I want to shut the door before turning on the lights.”
Annabelle nodded. That made sense. She moved forward, gently tugging Dylan behind her. Jack pressed more noisy buttons and the door slid slowly shut.
“You should get a quieter keypad,” Annabelle said then, if only to hear herself say something out loud.
“Yes, I was thinking the same thing.” Jack flicked a switch on the wall and fluorescent lights flickered on above them.
“Wow.”
“Holy shit.”
Dylan and Annabelle stood motionless where they were just inside the garage. Despite all that had happened that day, the garage’s inhabitants warranted some kind of respectful acknowledgement. And Dylan and Annabelle didn’t disappoint.
“Jack, you’ve been holding out on me.”
Jack smiled, perfect teeth flashing white in a shit-eating grin.
Annabelle blinked, pulled her gaze away from his, and stared at the contents of the room. She counted. A dozen bikes, in three rows of four each, plus one motorcycle in the corner that was hidden beneath a Dowco motorcycle cover. All of the bikes were brand new, or at least they looked it. Chrome and metal-flake paint jobs shimmered like magic beneath the overhead floodlights.
Among the Harleys, Annabelle noticed a Triumph or two and even a Kawasaki Vulcan 2000. Jack wasn’t one to snub his nose at a good bike just because it wasn’t a Harley Davidson. And, he was British, after all.
But in all of the chrome and shimmer, it was the bike that wasn’t shining that grabbed Annabelle’s attention the most. She found herself moving toward it as if she were being pulled by some sort of magnet. The V-shaped engine on the bike had been coated flat black in the factory. The paint job was pitch as night. The exhaust system was straight-shot, different from its sister bikes. It had to be.