Torch
When I got home after that awesome Damned Angels church meeting—we finally had church back!—I had been so excited to grab hold of Erin and hug her for minutes. I was so pumped. The meeting had gone great. After too many months without it, we were all back on the same page again.
Pres had had some hard moments in there. He’d been keeping mum about his daughter Carly’s absence from the scene and his ties to Danny Fletch, the whole real reason our MC had been stuck working security for Fletch and Centerfold.
Without church, we’d all been hard-pressed, and I don’t think anyone knew what was really going on. But now, he’d come clean about all of it. And we were all of one mind now: find Carly through Fletch and Owen somehow, and nail those two bastards to the wall.
We had our brotherhood back. I felt like the very air had been purified. And I needed to share this feeling with my woman. She was intrinsic to this revolution, and I was feeling happy and grateful.
The problem was, when I got home, Erin wasn’t there.
I saw her note almost immediately, and I groaned. Damnit, she was not supposed to go back to her place without me.
Okay, so I hadn’t said so to her in so many words, but I didn’t figure I’d have needed to.
I tried calling her, just to hear her voice, make sure she was all right. She never picked up.
I didn’t have the number for her landline—hell, I didn’t even know if she had a landline. I figured I’d best get my butt on the road and head over to her complex. I knew she’d only been gone a few hours at the most, but I did not have a good feeling about this, especially since she wasn’t answering her phone.
I grabbed my helmet, checked my gun in its holster, and headed back out. I powered up the bike and was on the road in seconds flat.
When I got to Erin’s, I saw her car still in the lot. That didn’t signify much. I needed to see her, to know she was okay. I headed to her door—and noticed it was ajar when I got there.
That was not a good sign.
I went in with my gun in my hand. I didn’t call out for her, just in case Owen was in there with her; I didn’t want to give him a heads-up. It didn’t take long to learn that no one was in the apartment. That’s what I had already begun to fear. My breathing started to come fast, and I realized the worst had probably come to pass. He had taken her. I fucking knew it.
Of course, I had no proof of it; it was just a gut feeling. But it was the only thing that made sense of her car being in the lot and her door open and her not answering her phone. Goddamnit.
I was back on the bike and on the road without thinking. I headed to the only place I could think he might have taken her, although it was a Hail Mary shot in the dark as to whether it would pan out. I’d only ever seen Owen at Centerfold and at his gargantuan fugly McMansion of a home. I figured the house was my best shot. If he hadn’t taken her there, maybe I’d find a clue as to where else he might have her; or maybe I’d find him, and get it out of him somehow.
I had to think this through, but I barely had enough time to do so. If they weren’t at the house, would it be best to not let him know I was there, and then follow him back to her? Presuming, of course, he had her in some other undisclosed location. Or would it be best to overpower him and force him to tell me where she was? He was a cagey motherfucker, lowest of the low, a slick bottom-feeder.
I figured I’d just go with my gut and see where the moments took me. I couldn’t think to plan it well.
Damn, the woman had me near panic level.
Once I arrived at the gate to the suburban monstrosity, I left my bike parked behind a large berm that hid the property from street view but wasn’t too far from the wall. The dude had a freaking brick wall around the property; it probably rose about ten feet up off ground level, so it wouldn’t be an easy jump. I followed it around a corner, off street side, and finally found a section where a tree on the outside reached over some branches to his side. I figured this was going to be my best shot at bridging over, so I took it.
Success—god bless my regular workouts. Once over, I assessed the house and decided to just walk in direct. At this point, I was beyond covert ops. I wanted and needed action and result.
I approached the front door and tried the handle. It opened. No beeping of an alarm, no laser lights. I didn’t even see any cameras pointing at me. For being a rich freak sick-as-fuck depraved-porn killer, this guy was seriously lax about security. I guessed the fuckwit thought his big gate and pretty wall were enough to deter any unauthorized entrance. Well, let today be his unlucky day to realize otherwise.
The house was silent when I went in, and there were no immediately obvious signs nor sounds of movement on the first floor. With my gun in my hands, I began to search the house, approaching each room like it was booby-trapped and/or had military- or guerrilla-type guard. My careful approach ended up being unnecessary; I didn’t encounter anyone, friend or foe, in my search. I had gone through from the foyer to the living room through the dining room to a kind of service hall to the kitchen and looped back around through a hallway to a kind of den/TV room, and finally found myself in the library/study where the computer and books were, the scene of my hard-drive heist from less than twenty-four hours ago. Nada. No sign of life, no clues as to Owen or Erin.
Stumped for the moment, I tried to think my way through what I knew about Owen, about this place, and about where Erin might be. Little Danny Fletch had kept referring to this house as the house of mirrors. I wasn’t sure what was behind the phrase. I mean, yeah, there were lots of mirrors in the house: in the foyer, in the hallways, in the bedrooms and bathrooms. I just figured Owen was a narcissist. It was not a great leap of the imagination.
Looking around the library, I noticed yet another framed mirror tucked into one of the gaps on a bookshelf. It was leaning against the wall, not attached to it. I picked it up and found a fucking light switch behind it, in the middle of the wall, not near the door. I flipped the switch, and one of the bookcase sections immediately opened hydraulically, pulling back to a large recessed alcove. This guy was a piece of work. So was his house, apparently.
Lifting my handgun from its holster, I stepped into the unlit cavern, and my eyes were drawn to the only point of light: the LED of an elevator call button. An elevator. In a hidden alcove. Behind a trick bookcase. It figured. What next with this fucking guy?
Not sure whether this was a smart move that might lead to helping me find Erin, or if it would lead me in an opposite—but surely not an uninteresting—direction, I did the only thing a red-blooded American would do. I hit the call button, ready to investigate the dark side in this house of mirrors. That seemed to be what the moment called for.
By the time the elevator doors slid open, my eyes had adjusted to the darkened cavern, and I had thought enough to move one of the leather armchairs from in front of the desk to block the closing of the bookcase, just in case I had any trouble getting back out from the dark. If Owen or someone came in in the meantime and removed the chair, I might be locked in and fucked, but I’d worry about that when I got there.
Once in the elevator, I had the option to go up or down. I chose up at random. When the doors opened on the second floor, I was a little surprised to find myself in a man’s closet, a huge walk-in with a shitload of suits and shirts, ties, and mirrors all over the place. But still, a closet just the same. A hidden elevator into a closet. That’s some weird shit.
Looking at the plethora of expensive men’s attire, I figured this had to be Owen’s personal space. I peeked into the adjacent bedroom to see the huge master space, also devoid of other humanity for the time being, no different than the first floor.
After a fairly quick walk-through to make sure Erin wasn’t tied up somewhere in here or in the en suite bathroom, I made my way to the hallway and scanned every room on the floor as fast as I could. I was being less careful about making noise now—I really didn’t sense anyone else in the house, I hadn’t seen any cars outside in the drive, and I figured this was not going to be the most revealing of searches, in these rooms. Nevertheless, I had to be thorough, or I might end up wanting to kick my own ass if I passed over the opportunity and there was something important to be found up here. So I made like a professional, and I looked.
Every door opened into crystal-clean space—I figured he’d had some maid service come through it in the morning hours, cleaning up after last night’s debauchery. Bedrooms, bathrooms, a couple of closets. There were a lot of mirrors.
But there was nothing showing me where Erin might be and nothing cluing me in as far as Owen’s other holdings.
Done with this floor, I sped back to the master bedroom and its fancy closet to recall the elevator. It was time to explore the basement in this house of fucking mirrors.