Chapter 74 Are You Ever Going To Talk To Me?
Malcolm drops to the floor loudly, completely knocked out, and I pant as I lock eyes with David.
Before addressing him, I grab Malcolm’s arm and drag him to the side, picking up some spare cable ties that are on the floor, and starting to tie his wrists and ankles together, before securing him to the table leg against the wall.
Then I walk over to David, and kneel in front of him, looking up. He has an expression behind his eyes that I can’t place, but I know it makes me nervous. His focus is lasered in on the specks of blood dotted over my face, the red patch on my jaw that tells him someone has hit me there.
The gun I’m holding in my hands is placed on the floor between the two of us. Reaching behind me, I grab the knife I have in my waistband that I picked up on the way in, and set about cutting the ties off his wrists.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” I whisper, moving down to his ankles.
David says nothing as he watches me cut through the ties and stand up. He stands up slowly, almost towering over me and commanding all the air in the room. I keep my eyes locked on his as I feel his hand brush mine, guiding the knife out of my hand.
“Why did you come here?” I ask, after a few silent seconds stretch out. He holds my knife up.
“These are dangerous.”
“Not as dangerous as a machine gun.” I retort, and I think I spot the twitch of a smile on his lips, the memory of my shooting practice flooding both of our minds.
It must remind him as well, because he reaches his hand to my face, and gently wipes some flecks of blood away from below my eye.
The memory is short-lived, however, knowing I have so much more to say to him. “Dav–”
“I would have killed him.” He interrupts, walking over to Malcolm, rummaging through his pockets for his keys, gun and phone, stowing them away in his jacket pocket along with my knife that he’s still holding. I bend down and pick up my gun.
When he turns back to me, I try again to open my mouth, but he marches straight past me, finding Marcus, Theo, Harlan and Danvers waiting outside.
“Ready when you are, boss.” Harlan smiles gleefully, cocking the gun proudly in his hand he used to help rescue Marcus.
“How many left?” David asks as I walk up behind him and watch weapons being passed between them until David finally sighs, one of his own guns safely back in his hands.
“Not many. Me and Nora got most of them when we came in.” Danvers smirks, glancing at me. “I’m surprised you kept her away from all this. She’s a natural.”
I feel a sense of pride in my chest, but it is also peppered with a mixture of guilt and resentment.
“There are still four rooms unaccounted for. We also haven’t seen Rhys yet.” Marcus replies, making my ears perk up.
“No one touches Rhys.” I say loudly.
While the others look at me weirdly, David makes no indication that he heard me.
“Take one room each. Leave no one alive. I’m going to find his office.” David says robotically, a signal for the others to walk away.
David heads left.
A second later I start hearing gunshots from the other rooms, and race to catch up with David.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I call after him as I struggle to meet his pace. No response. “Or are you just going to ignore me?”
David opens a door on his left and looks in, before shutting it again, his gun raised high, ready for action. He is stepping over the littered bodies on the floor that Danvers and I took care of on our way in. I figure he would have commented on it, but he never does.
He doesn’t speak at all.
I run in front of him and stop, making him stop as well. He still doesn’t look down at me, opting instead to look up at the ceiling as he breathes in.
“You came here for me, didn’t you?” I ask quietly. “David, please.”
Finally, he blinks, then looks down at me. His eyes aren’t angry like they have been the last few times we’ve crossed paths, but they aren’t completely soft either.
It looks more like…hurt.
“Are you ever going to talk to me again? Properly?” I add. “You can’t leave this conversation like you left me in bed.”
I see his jaw tense.
Then he steps around me and continues walking, checking the door to his right.
“You’re going the wrong way.” I say, folding my arms over my chest. It makes him freeze. “I grew up here. If you want the quickest way to his office it’s down here.” I wait until he turns to face me before kicking the bookcase on the wall beside me, making it swing open and reveal a secret corridor. “Rhys and Malcolm like their privacy.”
David keeps his eyes on mine as he walks towards me, diverting his gaze only when he goes down the secret corridor. I pull the bookcase shut behind me, and follow.
The corridor is dark and quiet. It resonates with the fact that David and I aren’t speaking, making it all the more obvious, and all the more awkward. David approaches a fork in the corridor, pausing and nodding his head towards it.
I huff and lead him the right way. Eventually I reach the end, and kick the door open, which looks like a simple framed piece of art on the other side, and drop down into the study.
It is then that I notice someone hunched over the desk. David and I immediately draw our guns, and step forward.
“Show yourself.” David warns. The person turns around.
I exhale loudly.
“Rhys.” I sigh, running up to him and hugging him.
When we separate, Rhys gives me a smile then looks over at David.
“Really, Reid?” Rhys says. “You sneak through my house and you think I’m the one that needs shooting?”
Looking over at David, I see him hold his gun steady, aiming at Rhys’s face. Out of a protective surge, I step in front of Rhys.
“Kill him if you want,” I say, my voice firm. “But you’ll sure as hell have to kill me first.”
David’s eyes flick to mine, then back to Rhys.
After a few seconds of deliberation, David lowers his gun.
“Now that all that drama is over,” Rhys remarks. “I assume you came in here for a reason?”
“I’m looking for his deeds.” David mutters, holstering his gun and walking over to the desk, stopping beside Rhys and starting to rifle through the papers on the desk and in the drawers.
“They’re not here.” Rhys replies. “He’s either smarter than I give him credit for, or he has a secret hiding place.”
“You mean… like a safe?” I offer.
The two men look round to me.
“Yeah. Exactly like a safe.” Rhys narrows his eyes at me. “You wouldn’t happen to know where said safe would be, do you, Biscuit?”
I toy with my tongue in my mouth, not responding verbally as they both scrutinise me. Then, I slowly walk over to the side of the desk, and bend down, prising the panel off, and revealing the door to a safe within the leg of the desk.
“Is everything hidden in this bloody place?” David asks angrily, and it makes Rhys and me smile, but I say nothing as I set about twisting the dial as I try to open it.
Yeah, Rhys and Malcolm made a lot of secret stashes, secret walkways, hidden rooms. They knew about half of each other’s hiding places. But I knew about all of them.
I spin the dial, focusing on a few dates. My birthday. The date I left. My dad’s birthday. Rhys’s. Nothing.
I try the last attempt with a shaky hand – my mum’s birthday.
It still doesn’t work. Then I think of another one.
The safe springs open when I put in the date my mum died. Trust my dad to have this kind of sick sense of humour.
Blinking away my sudden tears, I grab everything in there and hand it up to David, who starts looking through them and passing ones he doesn’t want to Rhys. There is a thicker envelope right at the bottom, and I pick it up and stand as I open it.
I pull out one of the items from inside, and see it is a picture of my mum.
Confused, I tip the entire envelope onto the desk, over the papers the other two have been trying to look at, and out spill a hundred photos. Different places, different angles. But each one has my mum in it. Some have another person in, but I don’t realise who it is until David picks one up and looks at it.
“This is Nick.” He says softly.
Rhys snatches the photo out of his hands, a frown appearing on his face.
I look at the others, and sure enough, it is Nick Hale. With my mum. Walking along a street, in a car together, at the park. Looking happy. Looking like…
“Were they together?” David asks, and the question makes my stomach drop.
I shake my head, rifling through the other pictures, but they are just more of the same.
“They knew each other for years, it wasn’t abnormal for them to go out together.” Rhys explains, shaking his head, but there is something in the tone of his voice that doesn’t make me feel any more reassured. It is like he is trying to reassure himself, but he only sounds nervous.
“Was this abnormal?” David asks, showing a picture to Rhys that just makes his face drop in shock.
“What?” I question, but Rhys tries to move the photo away from me. I snatch it from him and look.
There in black and white is my mother kissing Nicholas Hale.
“I don’t… I… she would never…” I stutter, taking the picture from David.
I can feel his and Rhys’s eyes on me, but I can’t take my eyes off the picture.
How could I have not known that my mother was dating Nicholas Hale? When did this even happen? She didn’t look that young. In fact, she looked just the same as I last remembered.
I hear rustling somewhere around me. Then David’s hand appears over mine, guiding it down. He hands me another piece of paper.
“What’s this?” I say, sniffing a little as I try to focus on reading it, but I can’t pick out any of the words on the page. “What’s this?” I repeat, handing it back to David.
“It’s… it’s an invoice. For $200,000.” He explains.
“Right. What does that mean? Malcolm has loads of money.”
“It’s an invoice to a company that…” David breathes in. “They specialise in specific work.”
I wait for him to continue talking, but he doesn’t.
“God DAMN IT, DAVID!” I yell suddenly, slamming my fists on the desk. “Just fucking tell me!”
“They’re hitmen, Nora.” He whispers. I blink back at him. “If this is in here, then it probably means… Nora, I’m so sorry.”
He goes to step towards me, but I step back instinctively, my entire body on high alert. Like I have pure energy coursing through my veins, my heart thumping harshly, and my brain spinning as I try to put the pieces together in a way that doesn’t mean…
“Just say it.” I mutter.
I watch him sigh.
“I… I think your father ordered a hit on your mother.”