The woman was stunned. She opened her mouth, looked behind her towards the line of tellers, as if debating on whether she should sprint to safety then turned back to Mike. “I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid… um…”
“The last time I was here,” Mike said, forcing himself to be calm and not go ballistic, “I deposited two zip disks and a file containing important documents. I also had several other files containing other documents. That was last week.”
“Do you share this account with anybody else?” the bank clerk asked.
“No.”
“And this is your box?” The clerk looked at the box, probably to verify for herself that, yes, Mike did have the correct key.
“Yes, this is the right box.” It was taking all of Mike’s willpower to not go crazy.
“Wait here a moment please.” The clerk left, heading across the bank.
Mike could only look into the empty box, his mind swimming with a thousand questions. Carol wouldn’t have been able to have access to this box even if I gave her a key. She’s not a signatory. If something had happened to me, it would have taken weeks for Carol to gain access to this box. That means somebody knows, they’ve known who I am for months, maybe even years, and—f
“Mr. Costello?”
Mike looked up. An overweight balding man with glasses wearing a white shirt, black slacks, and a dark blue tie had approached him. The man bore the official look and demeanor of the branch manager. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yes,” Mike said, holding the empty safe deposit box. “My box is empty and it wasn’t empty last week when I came in to deposit something inside it.”
“I see,” the bank manager said, taking a quick look at the box. “And you don’t have a co-owner or an executor to this—”
“No!” Mike said through gritted teeth.
The bank clerk returned with the sign-in card. The bank manager nodded at Mike. “The sign-in sheet should tell us something. Let’s see.” He ran his finger down a column. Mike placed the empty safe deposit box down on a shelf and joined them. “Ah, here we are. Three days ago.” Mike looked at where the bank manager’s pudgy finger was pointing and his heart leaped in his chest. This can’t be, he thought. This just can’t be.
“It appears you were in three days ago,” the bank manager said, his voice sounding far away. “There’s your signature.”
Mike stared at the sign-in sheet. Sure enough, the signature he used to sign his pseudonym, Matthew Costello, was identical to the one he had used all the other times. This signature was scrawled on a line halfway down the page, with a date of July 13, 1999, three days ago. Box number 1356.
“But that’s impossible,” Mike muttered. “I wasn’t here three days ago. I was back east.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” His mind reeled. Three days ago he was traveling to Philadelphia with Frank and Vince. He’d placed items in the box a day or so before, and sure enough, there was his signature verifying that. But three days ago—
“Sir?”
Mike looked up. The bank manager and the clerk were looking at him with worried, concerned expressions. The bank manager exuded the false concern, business-as-usual. “May I ask what you were storing in your box, sir?”
“No,” Mike said. He turned toward the empty box, his mind spinning crazily. “No, it’s…” They’d been here. They had gotten to his wife, had probably gotten to his family, and then they’d come to the bank and taken all the evidence. He’d thought that by adopting another identity he’d shield his personal life from them. Obviously they were more powerful than he’d thought. If there was any doubt as to the validity of this group now, those doubts were now gone entirely. There was nothing else to do. They had to go to Billy Grecko with what they had now. “…it’s nothing,” he said, as the sudden urge to get out of the bank propelled him out of the vault. He shouldered his way past the startled bank employees and threaded his way through other bank patrons, catching a glimpse of Frank still seated by the bank teller’s desk. Frank looked up with a startled expression on his face as Mike approached. “They’re onto us, we need to get to Billy, I need to find Carol,” he said, repeating the mantra to himself, feeling the blind need to find his family, to find Carol, to find Jimmy and Cathy and baby Kimberly and his other son up in Lake Tahoe. Oh God, suppose they’d gotten to his kids and his granddaughter too—
“Mike!” Firm hands gripping his shoulders. Mike started, looking up into Frank’s worried countenance. “You okay?”
“No,” Mike said, the need to get out of the bank strong. He looked behind his shoulder, saw the bank manager and the clerk looking toward them. “No, I’m not okay,” he turned to Frank. “Let’s get out of here.” And then he started walking toward the double-glass doors that spilled out onto Talbert Avenue.
“Mike!” Frank rushed after him, keeping pace with him. “What the hell is going on?”
“The Children of the Night is not some urban legend,” Mike said, heading to Frank’s car. “They’re very real and we under-estimated them.”
THERE WAS NO clear destination in mind. Frank simply got behind the wheel and drove the hell out of the bank’s parking lot.
Mike seethed beside him, part fury, part fear. “I should have been looking for Carol last night. I should have done something! Why didn’t I see this coming?”
“It’s not your fault,” Frank said, heading down Talbert toward the beach. “Neither of us knew this would’ve happened.”
“Well, we should’ve,” Mike snapped. He glanced at Frank briefly, then turned back to look out the window. “My adopting a separate identity wasn’t enough, and I thought it would be. They took everything. My files, all the backups I had saved to the zip disks, everything.”
Frank listened. This new development bothered him as much as it did Mike. Hell, it scared him. All the evidence they had was on those zip disks, contained in those manila file folders. All that was remaining was Frank’s laptop, which now resided in a secret compartment in the trunk of Frank’s car. Frank had sent Mike copies of documents via e-mail, and while he still had them on the hard drive, that wasn’t the point. For Mike’s safe deposit box to have been breached meant somebody knew about their investigation and had been following them for months. Maybe they’d known the whole time. Frank gripped the steering wheel, his mind racing. If they’d gotten to Carol, what about Brandy? If he and Mike had been followed this whole time, couldn’t it be possible that—
“I don’t know what else to do,” Mike said, breaking Frank’s thoughts. He was shaking his head, his features crumbling. “Carol’s gone and they’ve got the stuff, they’ve fucking got it! We’ve got to call the police.”
“For all we know the police might be in on this,” Frank responded.
“Well, what else are we going to do?”
Frank sighed. “I don’t know.”
They rode on in silence for a moment. “I’ve got to find Carol,” Mike said. “How… how are we going to do that unless…”
“If the police are in any way involved, the minute you call them they could alert whoever was responsible for abducting Carol,” Frank said, his eyes on the road. “Then they’ll get you. Then me. Then Vince.” He turned to Mike. “Then it really is over.”