FOUR
The plink, plink of sleet on the atrium roof drove Kit deep into his wing apartment. The afternoon turned dark and ominous while the former cop shouted at the elements. Kit purposely left the sound off while the staff lunched. He’d lost his appetite and tried to immerse himself in his work but the sketch of the new character he was developing kept insisting on a brooding countenance and a facial scar. In fact, the character looked almost exactly like his would-have-been protector.
Kit envisioned the new story he wanted to tell with this new game. Something Kady had said not long ago about the really good games not having well written female characters. Either they were damsels or princesses or if they were strong women the games weren’t good. He wanted to create a game for Kady. One with a strong female and an equally deserving male lead. Partners. He wanted them to be equals. He just didn’t know what story he wanted to tell.
Sketching Beastly made him wonder if the man ever smiled. He’d seen photos of him before the scar. His military photo was as lock jawed and about as friendly as the man sitting in his den had been.
He’d sat watching the world outside turn white until his nerves couldn’t stand the sound of ice hitting glass any longer and he’d abandoned his sketchbook and what little light was left for the silence of his bedroom. He’d chosen what had been a dining room when the house was still in use and turned it into his personal suite. Taking the windowless section and draping the walls with heavy velvet curtains to hide the gold flecked wall paper and the dreadful family portraits that his uncle refused to allow him to destroy. He didn’t care that they were still there as long as the ancient Auberon’s couldn’t look down upon him in judgment.
He knew he was a disgrace. He didn’t need the awful paintings of dead dudes to tell him as much.
Kit flopped onto his bed and tried not to think of the brooding man with the humorless eyes. But Kit couldn’t stop thinking about what an ass he’d been. Kit realized that he’d made a mistake the moment he’d dismissed the man. But it was too late to change his mind. The ticket had been purchased. Beastly would be on a plane first thing in the morning and that was that.
He woke up in the dark. Cold and starving, Kit looked up at the clock display. It was late. Very late. Nearing midnight. And he’d fallen asleep and slept for hours.
He never slept. Not much anyway. Certainly not most of the day and into the night. And he was freezing. The heat wasn’t on yet. He’d avoided it for as long as possible. The sleet this afternoon wasn’t forecast. At all. He thought he had another few weeks before winter set in.
His stomach gnawed at his spine forcing him up and out of the warmth of the bed. He wrapped his day robe about his body and finger brushed his hair out of his face.
Food. He needed food.
The kitchen would be closed down and Mrs. Gibbs safely back home with her husband. Rochfort would have long ago retired for the night. Maybe he’d thought to leave Kit’s supper tray for when he awoke.
He meandered through his apartment letting the wall socket night lights guide him without turning on the main lighting. He liked this time of night. Working in the dark suited his mood. He could chat with any of a hundred online friends. Work on his current project. And watch the moon skim across the sky over the atrium and the stars come out. He loved stars. There were never stars when he lived in the city. And the two years he was confined to a windowless room in the children’s ward…he didn’t want to think about that time. But lately he couldn’t stop thinking about that time.
There was leftover soup in a microwave container and sandwiches wrapped in wax paper in his small kitchenette. He loved sandwiches. Such easy food to eat. Meat and cheese and vegetables with flavored spreads wrapped in bread and he could eat with one hand and work at his computer with the other. The perfect food.
He set the soup to heat and unwrapped the sandwich. A long tuna salad sub with cheese. His favorite. After roast beef and cheese with mayo and gravy po’boy. Or a shrimp po’boy. Anything po’boy or sub really. Mrs. Gibbs made the best sandwiches. She also made the best fried chicken.
He’d have to remember to ask her to make friend chicken soon. He scarfed down half the sandwich standing at the small sink. Thirsty. He was thirsty. He wiped mayo from the side of his mouth and licked his finger on the way to the mini-fridge. Kit peered inside at the choices from sparkling water to stout ale and everything in between. He felt like lemonade and grabbed a bottle of Mrs. Gibbs homemade drink and flipped back the stopper. He loved these little bottles. So cute.
The microwave timer went off and Kit placed his sandwich on an oblong plate made for holding soups and sandwiches. He took a crockery bowl from the cupboard and poured the hot soup into it. Food balanced on the plate he took his lemonade into his atrium workstation and woke up his computer.
The night outside was white. The moon shone through the snow clouds. Snow. He was seeing snow, not sleet. The grounds were covered in…eyes…there were eyes. Watching him. He could feel their vengeful gaze over his skin. Cold seeped into his bones. He dropped the plate with his dinner, his brain frozen.
Not again.
This wasn’t happening again.
But it was.
Eyes.
He was being watched.
By a ghost.
And there was nowhere to hide.
Not anymore.
* * * * *
After the most uncomfortable meal of his life, Micah excused himself to rest from his flight. Rochfort confirmed the morning flight booking. He didn’t need to say he needed to rest for that trip. They already knew he wasn’t staying.
Apparently, Christopher Auberon had Delta on speed dial. He’d not been at table for more than five minutes when the confirmation call came. Spencer would be here early to see him back to town.
His room was warm, the drapes open enough for him to watch the sleet build up. The sound of ice hitting the window somehow soothing to him. It had been years since he’d spent any time in a cold climate. He’d seen very little snow in Afghanistan. His time with the Marshals was served in California where it rarely snowed. He missed snow.
The last couple of days caught up with him and he forgot to brood about the man/child who had dismissed him with a flick of his elegant wrist. He changed into flannel pants and a long T-shirt, belatedly remembering the warning to keep his drapes closed. Let the boy prince get an eyeful.
Homophobic little shit.
Dark had fallen when Micah woke up. Snow fell heavily outside his window. The silence almost deafening after the furious pelting of ice.
He checked the clock. It was early yet. Not long after eight. And his stomach was bitching. That lunch had been hours ago. And he was still on California time. Jet lag. Drama. Whatever. He was wide awake with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
He left his room to find the kitchen. How in the hell was he supposed to get back to the city if this weather stayed bad? Maybe he shouldn’t have napped. Maybe he should have waited for the driver to make the drive back. At least he’d be at the airport instead of out in the middle of nowhere.
He’d hoped to smell food cooking or at least the remains of some kind of meal when he entered the kitchen. Instead he found Rochfort, in robe and slippers watching the weather on the tiny kitchen television.
Micah cleared his throat before scaring the old man to death. “Is there coffee?”
“In the carafe. Cream is in the refrigerator and sweeteners are on the counter. Help yourself.” Rochfort went to the stove to dish up a bowl of the leftover soup from that afternoon. “I just took Master Kit in a fresh tray. He seems to be sleeping. Sleet, well, any winter precipitation sends him into the darker parts of his domain.”
The soup waited at the island when Micah sat with his coffee. The savory aroma made his stomach grumble. He’d hardly eaten anything that afternoon and even left over this smelled incredible. “Thank you.”
Rochfort nodded and went back to watching the weather report. “We’re clearing for now. But more could be on the way by tomorrow. I’m not sure you’re going to make your flight.”
Micah nodded and blew on a spoon of broth. He watched the small screen with the butler. Possible blizzard conditions predicted for the morning. “This looks bad. The airport will likely suspend all flights anyway.”
“We’re fully stocked. But if it does come I’m afraid Mrs. Gibbs will not be on hand to cook. I’m not much in the kitchen. Sandwiches and some basic pasta are about all I can manage. Master Kit doesn’t care. He eats what is brought to him. I’ve never heard him complain, at least.” Rochfort seemed worried. It was hard to tell with him but he didn’t strike Micah as the type to list his short comings. “With the weather turned bad the security team has taken the dogs into the stable. We’ll have to hope blizzard conditions deter any new incidents.”
Micah nodded only half listening. The steaming food enough to make him forget his own mother’s name for a moment. “Wait? What did you say? Incidents? Plural? There’s been more than just a break in?”
“Gideon didn’t tell you?” Rochfort refreshed his own coffee cup. The worry he’d displayed before replaced by concern. “How much did he tell you?”
“That his nephew was agoraphobic and paranoid and someone had broken into the house. He didn’t say much more, which naturally led me to believe he was only hiring me to appease a demanding kid. The money was too good. I didn’t ask more questions.” And Micah kicked himself for being a fool. He was better than this.
“Naturally.” The butler’s lips pulled tight in displeasure, possibly even anger. “Kit’s uncle…well, let’s just say most of Kit’s problems could be solved if he had real family around him instead of hired family.”
“So the agoraphobia thing isn’t real?”
“It’s real enough. The closest to outside he’ll go is the former conservatory. He enjoys the view but he won’t venture past the door. He lives his life on the internet. He went to college. Earned an advanced degree in several computer fields. Makes enough of a living that he hasn’t touched his inheritance since.” Rochfort answered honestly.
“And the break in? When did this happen exactly?” Gideon had told him, but it was more an offhand remark than any real information.
“Not quite two weeks ago. The perimeter alarms were disabled but the cameras caught a man walking through the west wing. He didn’t seem to really care what he tucked into his bag. He seemed to be looking for something. The west wing is closed. We do a dusting once a month and the house is inspected for wiring and structural deficiencies twice a year. Other than that it’s kept locked up.”
Micah spooned another bite into his mouth while he thought. The broth was cooling but still hot enough to scald his tongue. “Wasn’t that the same wing you said the maid fell down the stairs?”
“That’s right?” Rochfort sat up straight now. “A couple of days before the break-in, come to think of it.”
“I take it that wasn’t dusting day?”
“No. She said she’d heard a noise and went to investigate, but got lost, frightened and tripped on the carpet in her haste to get back to familiar territory. The video footage seemed to support her story. Though no sound was detected before she went up the stairs.”
“Curious. Why was she let go?”
“Her decision. She said the house was haunted and threatened to sue. Kit paid her a year severance and gave her a recommendation. And that’s the last we heard of her. We’ve decided not to hire a replacement at this time.”
“So what else has happened? And honestly right now that seems like a standard B & E of the biggest house in the state. The guy probably was looking for loot. Not the drama prince.”
“Little things. Probably nothing. The perimeter alarms triggered at various spots. One of the dogs went missing. We found him in the woods a few days later, he’d been shot. We think he found a place in the wall and slipped through but could never find it. Past the property is a hunting preserve. Too many little things. Enough to make Kit nervous. Enough to make him think he was being watched. More specifically, he thinks he’s being haunted.”
“Sounds like delusional paranoia to me.” Micah shrugged but even then something niggled at him. “Why doesn’t he speak? He mentioned an accident.”
“I guess he would call it an accident. He has no memory of the events. Kit may be a delusional paranoid. But he has every right to be.”
Micah chewed on a chunk of potato while he mulled that last bit over. Rochfort didn’t elaborate and Micah hesitated asking more. There were ways to find out, without alienating the butler in the process. “You said the dogs are in the stable? They’re not there alone are they?”
“Mercy no, what sort of monsters would we be to lock the dogs up with no care? We have personnel in the outlying buildings. Only house staff lives in town. Though Mrs. Gibbs would move here in a heartbeat if her husband retired.”
“Ah, okay. Horses and other animals?”
“No, unfortunately after Kit’s grandfather passed the horses were sold. Kit’s uncle isn’t a horseman, and Kit would never go near them when he was a child. Just the old groom is there now. He keeps the property up for us and supervises the gardeners who come and go. And then there’s the old caretaker, he doesn’t get out much anymore but he likes to think he’s keeping the security team in check.”
“A lot of redundancy there.” Micah pointed out.
“Better than releasing employees with nothing after their jobs cease to be. It’s called loyalty. But we’re all that’s left. The old staff remains while the new staff members cycle in and out.”
“Your own personal Downton Abbey playing out in the modern age.”
“Possibly.” Rochfort huffed a bit, clearly offended. “With that, I’m going to retire for the evening. There is more soup on the stove and the leftover sandwich and fruit from this afternoon is in the refrigerator. Help yourself.”
Micah watched as the man made his way back toward the main part of the house, presumably to the stairs.
“Oh, hey, Sam?” Micah called after him as a though occurred to him. “Is there Wi-Fi I can connect too? I’d like to catch up on my email and other bits of business while I have the time.”
“There is a connection. It should come up. No password since we’re so far out. Good night Mr. Beasley. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Micah took the man up on the offer to raid the fridge and made himself a sandwich and grabbed a bottle of water to take back to his apartment. He rinsed his soup and coffee dishes and placed them in the dishwasher and for a moment he stood looking out of the windows to the falling snow. He felt alone. Seriously alone. Almost as if he were the only person around despite knowing that the lord of the manor resided only a short walk away and the butler slept somewhere in the house.
The atrium or former conservatory as Rochfort had called it was dark with no signs of life inside. No telltale flicker of computer or television screens. No tall waifish figure passing by. Nothing.
No wonder the kid was creeped out. He lived here full time and Micah had been here less than a day and already thought the place was…well, he wouldn’t fall into the popular theory of haunted. But definitely lonely.
Hell of a life to live.
He didn’t wander around. He didn’t want to get lost in the house. Hell, it wasn’t a house, it was a damned mausoleum. A relic of times long gone. Micah didn’t belong here. He belonged on some mean street chasing down…well, that wasn’t going to happen now was it.
He went back to his little apartment with the old furniture and the frilly bedspread and pulled his laptop out of his satchel.
Rochfort was right, the only Wi-Fi even showing was free and clear and he logged right on. The signal was strong. And fast. Faster than anything he’d ever had before. Including the government issued Hotspots.
“What does the kid have? His own fucking satellite?” Micah ran the kid’s name through the search engine and was surprised at how many links came up. And not a damned one of them were recent. The last was an article from about fifteen years ago. After that it was almost as if the kid had fallen off the face of the Earth.
He skimmed news articles that said very little. Christopher Auberon’s life seemed to be one redaction after another. Just enough to know something happened. Not enough to know what.
He picked up his phone and called a friend in the department. It would still be early out there. Early enough at least. And Dirk owed him a favor.
They chatted for a few moments before Dirk asked the question Micah wasn’t sure he wanted to answer. “So, it’s been months, and you suddenly call out of the blue. What’s going on, Beez?”
Micah sighed and held his phone to his ear with his shoulder, or tried to while he shuffled the file Gideon had given him around on the table. “I kind of jumped into a job without doing my homework first.”
“That’s not good, man,” Dirk laughed on the other end but Micah could hear his chair squeaking and knew he was still in the office. Hopefully with access to the information Micah needed.
“I know. I thought it was going to be a cupcake assignment.”
“There is no such thing as a cupcake assignment. Give me the name.” Micah could hear the amusement in Dirk’s voice but he was damned happy that Dirk was willing to help him out.
Micah gave him everything he had. Kit’s full name, date of birth. And after a couple of moments Dirk whistled into the phone. “Damn man, you have done stepped into a fucking hornet’s nest. The Auberon kid. I remember when all this went down. I was just a rookie back then but damn. How could you even begin to think this was a cupcake babysitting job? The kid is probably psycho. I would be if I was him. Hell, I didn’t know he was still alive.”
“Jesus, what the hell?” Micah skimmed all of the online info he’d managed to pull up and nothing at all led him to believe this kid was anything but some rich hermit. Probably crazy. But most rich people were as near as he could tell. “I can’t find jack shit on this kid through the civilian channels.”
“There should be fuck tons of shit on this kid,” Dirk grumbled over the line. His typing was peppered with grunts and muttered curses. “Sending what I can. Which is enough to get you up to speed. Let’s just say if he’s sane and able to walk upright then that’s one hell of a tough kid. Let me know when the files come through. The rest is classified. I can’t send them.”
Several mail files popped up and Micah clicked them open one by one. There were video and news articles. Some of the same articles he’d already read but with the information he needed magically included. “Got it. Thanks man. I owe you.”
“We’re even. But you didn’t get this from me. Talk to you later….Oh hey, Micah, if you need anything else, use my private line. I’ll see what I can do off the record.” And Dirk was gone.
Micah started at the beginning. Nearly twenty years of news stories filtered across his screen. No wonder he’d never heard of this kid, most of this happened when Micah was still a kid. Christopher Auberon wasn’t really a kid, he was twenty-six but he seemed so much younger. Micah shook his head, he’d spent exactly five minutes with him, and he’d made a couple of snap judgments based on appearance and what he assumed was a snap judgment made about himself.
Kit Auberon, like Dirk had said, was one damned lucky person to even be breathing.
He scrolled the news stories that started out as a mere mention of a fire in a luxury mountain chalet in Aspen, Colorado that ended with arson, murder, and kidnapping.
Jesus.
Kit had lost both of his parents in one night and along with them his memory, his voice, and possibly his sanity.
Two weeks after he and his nanny had gone missing while the house in which Kit’s parents slept burned to the ground Kit had turned up in a roadside convenience store in Iowa. He was barefoot, wearing a pair of thin pajamas, and covered in blood. Some of it was his own.
The video was grainy black and white footage. Just after dawn by the time stamp, he’d walked into the store and everyone inside had stood there looking at him with horror and surprise clear on their faces. And then he opened his mouth in what looked like a primal, hysterical scream but witnesses say not a sound came from him.
Authorities found his nanny stabbed to death in a fallow cornfield about a mile away. No weapon had ever been found. By the time they found the body new snow had covered the tracks leading to or away.
The nanny had been cleared of suspicion to kidnap the kid. He’d probably been taken to keep the kid quiet. Or, Micah, surmised, he was in on it all along and grew a conscience. Either way only two people knew what really happened that night. The dead nanny and a kid who, by everything Micah read, had no memory of the two weeks he was missing.
Trauma would do that. And drugs. His toxicology report had come back with trace amounts of sedatives. Maybe they’d run out and the kid had escaped. Maybe having someone try to slit his throat open…
Micah could run any scenario and still come up with the fact that he was ten years old at the time and Kit was younger and that was a long fucking time ago.
He looked through the files but couldn’t find an arrest. It was almost as if the case had been put on the back burner and eventually forgotten.
How in the hell did the murder of two one percenters not make international headlines? And why in the hell was it swept under the rug?
Something was definitely wrong here. This mess he’d stepped in reeked of bullshit.
He closed out the file and had clicked up the next file when his screen went black.
“What the fuck?” He didn’t get to the part where panic over a computer crash could set in when a familiar digital face appeared on his screen.
The fucking kid had hacked into his damned computer. Fuck him.
The head seemed to be able to see right through him and Micah wondered if Auberon had reversed his camera to spy on him. “Beastly!” The head said, its radiant blue eyes seemed almost human, as if it was almost real, and scared. “There’s a man outside. He’s just standing there. Watching me.”
Micah triggered the chat box that appeared. “How did you get in my computer?”
“I’ll explain later. Please come. I need your help.” The head did indeed sound afraid. “Don’t turn on the lights and I’ll buzz you in. Please hurry.”
“Fuck.” Micah found a heavy sweatshirt and pulled it on, along with his boots. He’d need those if he was going to go traipsing around in the snow in the middle of the fucking night, with a blizzard heading his way. “Fucking awesome.”