Page 17 of The Knight (Endgame 2)
I’m leaning forward in the seat, literally on edge. “What happened?”
“It was too late to bow out. I knew too much. They would have offed me and then done it anyway. So I tipped off the cops and went in as their inside man instead.”
“Oh my God.”
“Never thought I’d be a rat, but I couldn’t let anyone get hurt.”
My breath is caught. “Did anyone get hurt?”
“Only me. When shit hit the fan, the cops came busting in. My buddy, all the way from grade school, he saw that I’d snitched. Shot me once in the chest before they brought him down.”
“Oh no.”
“Had a couple surgeries. By the time I woke up, most of the plea deals had been made. I took what they gave me. Three years in minimum security for my part.”
I frown. “That seems like a lot. You helped them.”
“I should have locked in a plea deal before handing over the information, I guess. Should have had a better lawyer. I didn’t mind too much. Minimum security isn’t a bad gig.”
“And Gabriel hired you when you were released?”
Another pause. “Before I was released.”
Before. “What could you do from inside?”
“He had a friend in there. Three months. Make sure he makes it through and I’d have a big bonus when I got out. He gave me the bonus and offered me a job too. Said anyone strong and loyal had a place with him.”
“That sounds like Gabriel.”
We pull off the freeway into an area with large estates and gated communities. Affluent. Exclusive. A place I had always felt at home, but it looks foreign now. I’m a tourist in my own country.
We reach my driveway, the limo rocking over the old cobblestone. I stare out the window at the unkempt bushes, the forlorn birdbath. Everything in disrepair. “Would you say he’s a good man?”
“No, miss.”
“Why not?”
“Because he wouldn’t like me saying so. He wants everyone to think he’s dangerous and cruel. Sometimes he is. But only when he needs to be.” He pulls the limo to a slow halt in the circular drive. His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “I’d call him a fair man. You take care of him, he’ll take care of you.”Chapter ElevenI grew up in this house, stealing warm cookies from the baking sheet when Rosita made them, finding every nook and cranny to hide my dolls. And after my mother died, the house became my conduit to her. A temple with which both my father and I worshipped her memory.
Anticipation speeds my heartbeat as I cross the front walk.
The engraving on the front door looks foreign after only a few weeks away. I examine it with the kind of detachment I might use in an art gallery. Beautiful architectural detail. Nothing more.
It doesn’t feel like home.
That will change once I’ve won the auction. It has to.
Inside the air feels different. More dusty. More dry. The rooms are mostly bare from when I sold the furniture to estate dealers and antique stores, desperate for money. Not enough. Never enough until I auctioned the most valuable piece left—myself.
Upstairs I find my bedroom the way I left it, a plain mattress on the floor. Some old posters on the wall—overly colorful kittens and the grinning face of a male pop star. The room of a teenager, never updated when I moved to college and definitely not when I came back.
It’s a little like looking at a museum. A sepia photograph.
History, not the present.
That will change once I have the house back, once I can take down the posters and buy back antique furniture for the rooms. A small voice whispers, what if it doesn’t? Except if I’m not fighting for my mother’s house, I don’t know what to fight for. This is all I have left.
A shiver runs through me, as if the house is haunted.
I leave the room and wander the empty hallways, aimless and melancholy. And it strikes me suddenly that I might be the specter haunting the house. My sudden laugh cuts off abruptly, strange in the hollow space.
At the end of the hall a small door leads to old metal stairs. I spent some time in the dusty attic when my father got sick, sifting through stacks of antique headboards and trunks of old dresses. Some of it was sold along with the furniture in the house. Whatever’s left was too broken or too personal to be of any value.
The lights don’t work up here, the wiring too old and faulty. Instead I pulled down boards from the stained glass window so I could see. As soon as I open the low door, blue and yellow light floats down from the top. The smell of old paper and cedar draws me up the stairs. Stained boxes hold the only things with any meaning left in the house.
