Six years ago, in fact.
I know this place. I forced myself to come here once, when I was about thirteen. I touched the sharp edges of the wood. It was still clinging to life, but I knew it was dying.
Once was enough.
Now, on foot, it’s unavoidable. My throat closes up and my easy breathing is a memory.
This is the place where my father died. This tree is the one his car hit when he went off the road. That drop is the slope his car plunged down.
I want to keep running, but my legs aren’t having it. I slow to a walk. I stop altogether.
I bend over, hugging myself, and I sob.
No time. No time.
I gulp some air and start running again, faster than before, my legs pistoning.
* * *
From the road you can’t really see the main Spiker building, just the top floor. I can’t run down the steep driveway. I have to walk in giant going-downhill steps, fighting gravity.
I near the entrance to the underground garage. My mother’s gleaming white Mercedes convertible is in her designated space. She’s never put the top down.
I glance back, wondering how far behind me Adam and Aislin are. I’m scared. I’ve rushed in here like I have a plan.
For the first time in my life, I wish I had some kind of weapon.
I survey the garage for something weapony. My mind’s racing with made-up dialogue.
Hi, Mom, Solo and I sold you out and how are you? Nice blouse. By the way, I need some more cash.
So, Mom, while you’re in prison can I stay in the house alone? Please? I’m old enough!
Mom … what the hell?
There’s a fire extinguisher near the entrance. I take it from the hook. It’s surprisingly heavy. How do they expect people to use these things? But I find the size and weight and general metal-ness of the thing kind of reassuring.
Up the elevator. I have to punch in a code to get to my mother’s office. For some reason, my addled brain actually remembers it.
Even now, scared, tired, and a thousand times more confused than I’ve ever been before in my life, even now, with some disturbing montage of Solo and Adam and Aislin and the gangbanger and the scared Mr. Sullivan from accounting, even with the eerie images from the flash drive, even with all of it swirling like a tornado inside my brain, I have energy left over to feel nervous.
Why? Because I’m going to be interrupting my mother.
My mother does not like to be interrupted.
I approach her office on tiptoe. The door to her outer office, the one inhabited by her assistants, is wide open. The computer screens are blank. The lights are low.
The portal—it’s way too impressive and huge to call a door—leading to Mom’s office is closed. I press my ear against it. I hear the murmur of voices. Not happy voices. Angry voices. Of course, that’s normal enough in Terra Spiker’s office.
My fire extinguisher bangs against a planter and instinctively I say, “Shhh!” But I doubt anyone hears. Not over the sound of yelling.
“Hey!”
I spin on my heels. A man and a woman have come up behind me. The woman is small, dark-skinned, with penetrating eyes and an extremely long braid. The man is sweating. He is large in all dimensions and has on a name tag that reads DR. MARTINEZ.
I stare at them. They stare at me. No one knows what’s going on, it seems.
“Are you here to see my mother?” I ask.
“Are you?” the woman demands.
The man asks, “Is there a fire?”
“Oh, this?” I glance down at the extinguisher in my hand. “This is—”
He leaps for me. But he’s a large guy and definitely not a quick guy.
I back up, banging into the door as he slams into the wall to my right.
“Martinez!” the woman cries. “Get her!”
“Get me?” I repeat it in shock. Seriously? Get her? It sounds so comic book.
“She’s the boss’s daughter,” Martinez protests.
“We’re probably going to kill the boss,” the woman points out in a voice that’s all reasonableness, with just a tinge of hysteria.
This isn’t news to Martinez, but he seems embarrassed by it. It’s something they don’t want to say in front of me.
Martinez lunges. I push back against the door. It gives way and I stumble back. I drop the extinguisher. It rolls a bit, then comes to a stop. I catch myself before I can fall, then pivot to see the tableau before me.
My mother’s office is as extreme as ever. The waterfall still pours. My father’s extraordinary, oversized sculptures still hang on wires from the impossibly distant ceiling.
My mother stands behind her desk. She is casually dressed in a custom suit flown in from her London designer, a twenty-thousand-dollar watch, and a diamond necklace worth more than the lifetime wages of a hundred Guatemalan families combined. As always, she radiates the scent of Bulgari. I can’t see her shoes, but I am morally certain that they are not a beat-up pair of Nikes.
“Evening,” she says, frosty as ever. “Your timing is unfortunate.”
Tommy, the scientist with the tattoos, is here. There’s also an Asian guy and a shrimpy little middle-aged nerd.
Tommy has a gun in his hand. No one else is armed, as far as I can tell. The gun holds my attention. It’s funny how a gun will do that, kind of make everything else blur into the background while the gun occupies the entire foreground.
I’m suddenly feeling a certain sympathy for Maddox. It must have been terrifying, seeing that gun leveled at you. Watching the trigger being squeezed.