CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN - ALEC
In private moments, I have sometimes mused over what it might be like to be the type of person who doesn’t think so much. The type of oke who doesn’t spend half of his day considering angles and wondering how to manipulate circumstances. Would it be nice, I wonder? Would it make my life easier? Would it, at the least, cause it to feel easier?
I don’t know. I do know that it would probably cause me to be less suspicious. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing. Bad, of course, insofar as my suspicious nature has kept me alive. Good, less obviously, in that right now I likely wouldn’t be wondering over the particulars of this engagement with the Watsons.
I have multiple thoughts, colliding in no real order.
- Somehow the Watsons are involved. Somehow this excursion we’re on is in some way orchestrated to wipe me, Christine, and Danny off the face of the earth.
Which is ridiculous and even in a world of senselessness makes no sense.
- Eliza is in the process of cultivating some plot to bring me back into her life. Because now that she’s seen me again, she is desperate for my love.
That idea is even more senseless than my previous one.
... In private moments, I have sometimes mused over what it might be like to be the type of person who doesn’t think so much ...
I’d probably not miss the obvious truths staring me right in the face. Like Lars. Like, I neglected to care for Lars, to see after Lars, to notice Lars, for years. And the one person I should have been considering got overlooked. And now this, here, is the price I have to pay.
I’ve no clue what is going to happen when we get there, but I won’t have to wait much longer to find out because we are here. We’ve arrived.
Danny, Brenden and Charlie should be in place on one side of the grounds. Russell, Eliza, Christine and I are making our approach from the other side. There had been some discussion about possibly trying to gain access from within the tunnels out of which I emerged yesterday, but it was deemed ill-advised as those are now likely guarded more strenuously, and we would be cut off from radio and satellite contact.
We’re operating under the presumption that, assuming the force that was here previously is still here, they’ll not be expecting us to return. Or, alternatively, that they’re one hundred percent expecting us to return and we’re about to enter into a woefully mismatched battle that we really shouldn’t even be considering taking on.
There is a not insignificant part of my mind that wonders if perhaps we all missed this. By “this,” I mean this one-upmanship. This continuing game of “who can steal it better.” I wonder if we are all just addicts. Addicted to the thrill. Addicted to the intrigue. Addicted to the risk. Addicted to each other in one way or another.
No matter how one examines it, and as much as any of us may wish it not to be so, the Watson clan and the triangle that is me and my family are now bound. Inexorably linked. It could be ignored before, but now that we have all seen each other again and seen the child called Andra, I wonder if we are going to be a unit for more of our lives than we previously planned.
I wonder.
“Theo?” Russell whispers into his microphone from where we’re crouched in the woods. “How we looking, mate?” He nods. Then his eyes narrow and he says, “What?”
“What? What is it?” Eliza asks.
“He says there’s no movement.”
“What do you mean, there’s no movement?”
“He says there are no heat signatures, no images on the satty, nothing.”
“No guards?” Christine asks.
“Not so far as he can see,” Russell says.
Again, my mind starts riffling through the possibilities.
- They’ve gone to find us before we can find them. If I know what Lars might do, he must know what I might consider.
- They are, in fact, hiding in the underground tunnels. They know we’re coming and they’re waiting to ambush us.
- None of any of this has happened, it is all still a dream, and I’m going to wake up in bed with Danny and Christine again, and won’t that be fokken better?
“Is the gate up, Theo? The electrified fence?” Russell looks us all in the eyes and shakes his head ‘no.’
“This suddenly seems like a bad idea,” Christine says. “Nobody’s here? The fence is down? What the fuck?”
“Well,” I offer, “perhaps it’s as simple as… if the Crown Jewels have already been stolen, there’s no longer any need to protect the tower.”
“So, in this scenario, that makes you the Crown Jewels?” Eliza asks.
“In all scenarios, I am the Crown Jewels, love.” I wink. I do it just to be cheeky and to try to gin myself up the way a fighter will do before a bout when he wonders if he is outmatched, but looking at Christine’s reaction, I realize that cheek is perhaps best stored elsewhere when Eliza is involved.
“Well, what the fuck do we want to do?” Christine asks
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we drew up a plan based on a certain situation and that situation looks quite a bit different than we prepared for.” She is right. And as I think about that, I can’t help but smile. “Why are you smiling?” I don’t answer, directly, just continue grinning. “No,” she says. “Alec, no. We already—”
“Danny, bru?” I say into my radio.
“Yeah?”
“Are you all in position?”
“Yep. Charlie and Brenden are playing rock, paper, scissors for who gets to fire the .50 cal if it comes to that, but we’re here.”
“Hundreds. But listen, man, turns out that apparently there may be nothing to do here and no one to do it to.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the plans, all the scenarios we considered, were predicated around the manor being occupied, and… it may no longer be.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“As cancer, my bru.”
“Fuck. Do you think that’s true?”
“That no one is here?”
“Yeah.”
“Not one bit.”
“Me either,” he says. “So, well… OK. What do you want to do?”
Still smiling, I say, “I think we may have to improvise.”
There’s a pause, and sure as I’m grinning like a Cheshire Cat, I’m certain I also hear a smile in his voice when he responds with, “Copy that.”
Emerging from the wooded surrounding area, past the not-currently-electrified fence, and stepping into the open grassiness of the estate itself, I do have a bracing moment of stiffness. That hitch one gets when one is certain they’ve emptied their pockets of all metal but still aren’t sure if the metal detector is going to go off or not. If a spotlight were to suddenly illuminate all of us and our bodies were to be riddled with bullets, I would be less than shocked.
But that does not happen. No light. No bullets. No riddling. Something does catch my attention out of the corner of my eye. A rabbit. A tiny, white bunny with what appears to be a handful or more of bunny children. I didn’t know rabbits were nocturnal. I certainly don’t think baby rabbits should be out this late. It must be well past their bedtime.
Ach, look at that, I sound like a parent. A parent wearing a five-thousand-pound suit and carrying a T91 assault rifle, stalking the grounds of an eerily deserted-seeming mansion with the intent of finding and murdering his own brother.
Well… at least I’m not some type of bosbefok circus acrobat like Andra’s mother. That’s just strange.
“It really does look empty,” Christine says, regarding the darkened, monolithic colossus of a structure here in the midst of nowhere.
“It does look that way,” Eliza offers.
“You think it’s a trap?” Russell asks.
“I always think everything’s a trap,” Eliza says. “Which is why I’m still alive.”
“Are you fucking quoting The Princess Bride?” That’s Christine. Eliza smirks. “Just… fucking don’t. I love that movie. I want to still be able to.”
“Brilliant,” Russell chimes in. “Let’s be careful, shall we?”
“I don’t like this at all,” Christine says. “It doesn’t feel right.”
Before I lead our way, I give her a kiss on the head and assure her that no matter what, we’ll all come away from this intact. Every one of us. And while I have made a vow to no longer lie to her… or Danny… in this one instance, I’ll make an exception.
Where did you go, Lars?
Where are you now?