They (45 page)

Mike nodded. “Okay.” He looked at Frank. “You got a tooth brush I can borrow? My mouth feels like a septic tank.”

“Go for it,” Frank said, motioning to the bathroom. “My stuff’s in there.”

“Thanks.” Mike stepped past them and paused briefly. “We’ll call you in a few hours and discuss what we’re going to do next. If you don’t hear from us by the end of the day, do what you can to drop out of sight completely. Disappear.”

Vince and Tracy nodded. They left the room as Mike brushed his teeth and freshened up quickly. Then he and Frank left the room for the Bank of America in Fountain Valley where he kept his safe deposit box.

THEY ONLY HAD to wait a few minutes for the bank official to wait on them. She was a small woman with porcelain features and waist length black hair. “Can I help you?”

Mike presented his pseudonymous identification. “I’ve got a safe deposit box I’d like access to.”

The woman smiled and typed into her computer. “Box number?”

“1356,” Mike replied.

The woman typed the number in the computer and waited. “Identifi
cation?”

Mike pushed his wallet across the desk. The woman looked at it, looked at Mike, then smiled. She reached into her desk for a set of keys. “Come with me, Mr. Costello.”

Mike motioned for Frank to stay seated and followed the clerk towards the vault.

The woman opened the vault with a key and escorted Mike in where the safe deposit boxes were. “Box 1356?”

“Yes,” Mike said. He reached into his pocket for his copy of the key, which he’d attached to his key ring. The woman took it, slid it into the lock, and opened it. She took out the box and handed it to Mike. The moment Mike took the box, he felt a sinking sense of despair.
This should be heavier than it is
, he thought.

“There’s a room around the corner.” The woman said. “Call me when you’re finished.”

“Thank you.” Mike followed the woman out of the vault and went to the room where he closed the door.

The box he’d gotten was the largest the bank had to offer. It was three feet long, four inches deep and seven inches wide. It was large enough to fit manila file folders and manuscripts in. Mike had stored two zip disks of information as well as three file folders of affidavits, notes, and photographs, among other things. His heart hammered in his chest as he opened the box.

For a minute it felt like his heart was going to stop. He stared into the box, not believing what he was seeing. He pulled the plastic top all the way off, running his hand inside.
This can’t be
, he thought.
I was just here last
fucking week!

The safe deposit box was empty.

Mike Peterson felt the room spinning. His stomach lurched, doing slow flops. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. It felt like he was going to be sick. Good thing he hadn’t eaten yet; still, it was probably his empty stomach giving him the jitters. But no, the box was empty; that was a cold, hard fact. He opened his eyes again, hoping his vision had been deceiving him but it wasn’t.

“Miss.” His voice sounded shaky, trembling. He stepped outside the room and caught the teller’s eye. “Miss?”

“Yes, Mr. Costello?” The woman approached him, a smile on her face.

Mike stood aside, conflicting emotions of fear and surprise and anger battling for position. “My box is empty. Who emptied my box?”

The woman looked puzzled. “Excuse me, sir?”

“
I said my fucking box is empty
!” Mike yelled. He suddenly had the irresistible urge to slap this woman, this bank drone, to take her by the shoulders and shake her, demand that she tell him who she’d let in here to take his stuff. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
Calm down
, he told himself.
It’s not her fault, just calm down, calm down
—

The woman was stunned. She opened her mouth, looked behind her towards the line of tellers, as if debating on whether she should sprint to safety then turned back to Mike. “I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid…um…”

“The last time I was here,” Mike said, forcing himself to be calm and not go ballistic, “I deposited two zip disks and a file containing important documents. I also had several other files containing other documents. That was last week.”

“Do you share this account with anybody else?” the bank clerk asked.

“No.”

“And this is your box?” The clerk looked at the box, probably to verify for herself that, yes, Mike did have the correct key.

“Yes, this is the right box.” It was taking all of Mike’s willpower to not go crazy.

“Wait here a moment please.” The clerk left, heading across the bank.

Mike could only look into the empty box, his mind swimming with a thousand questions.
Carol wouldn’t have been able to have access to this box even if I gave her a key. She’s not a signatory. If something had happened to me, it would have taken weeks for Carol to gain access to this box. That means somebody knows, they’ve known who I am for months, maybe even years, and
—f

“Mr. Costello?”

Mike looked up. An overweight balding man with glasses wearing a white shirt, black slacks, and a dark blue tie had approached him. The man bore the official look and demeanor of the branch manager. “Can I help you with something?”

“Yes,” Mike said, holding the empty safe deposit box. “My box is empty and it wasn’t empty last week when I came in to deposit something inside it.”

“I see,” the bank manager said, taking a quick look at the box. “And you don’t have a co-owner or an executor to this—”

“No!” Mike said through gritted teeth.

The bank clerk returned with the sign-in card. The bank manager nodded at Mike. “The sign-in sheet should tell us something. Let’s see.” He ran his finger down a column. Mike placed the empty safe deposit box down on a shelf and joined them. “Ah, here we are. Three days ago.” Mike looked at where the bank manager’s pudgy finger was pointing and his heart leaped in his chest.
This can’t be
, he thought.
This just can’t be
.

“It appears you were in three days ago,” the bank manager said, his voice sounding far away. “There’s your signature.”

Mike stared at the sign-in sheet. Sure enough, the signature he used to sign his pseudonym, Matthew Costello, was identical to the one he had used all the other times. This signature was scrawled on a line halfway down the page, with a date of July 13, 1999, three days ago. Box number 1356.

“But that’s impossible,” Mike muttered. “I wasn’t here three days ago. I was back east.”

“Are you sure?”

“
Yes, I’m sure
!” His mind reeled. Three days ago he was traveling to Philadelphia with Frank and Vince. He’d placed items in the box a day or so before, and sure enough, there was his signature verifying that. But three days ago—

“Sir?”

Mike looked up. The bank manager and the clerk were looking at him with worried, concerned expressions. The bank manager exuded the false concern, business-as-usual. “May I ask what you were storing in your box, sir?”

“No,” Mike said. He turned toward the empty box, his mind spinning crazily. “No, it’s…” They’d been here. They had gotten to his wife, had probably gotten to his family, and then they’d come to the bank and taken all the evidence. He’d thought that by adopting another identity he’d shield his personal life from them. Obviously they were more powerful than he’d thought. If there was any doubt as to the validity of this group now, those doubts were now gone entirely. There was nothing else to do. They had to go to Billy Grecko with what they had now. “…it’s nothing,” he said, as the sudden urge to get out of the bank propelled him out of the vault. He shouldered his way past the startled bank employees and threaded his way through other bank patrons, catching a glimpse of Frank still seated by the bank teller’s desk. Frank looked up with a startled expression on his face as Mike approached. “They’re onto us, we need to get to Billy, I need to find Carol,” he said, repeating the mantra to himself, feeling the blind need to find his family, to find Carol, to find Jimmy and Cathy and baby Kimberly and his other son up in Lake Tahoe. Oh God, suppose they’d gotten to his kids and his granddaughter too—

“Mike!” Firm hands gripping his shoulders. Mike started, looking up into Frank’s worried countenance. “You okay?”

“No,” Mike said, the need to get out of the bank strong. He looked behind his shoulder, saw the bank manager and the clerk looking toward them. “No, I’m not okay,” he turned to Frank. “Let’s get out of here.” And then he started walking toward the double-glass doors that spilled out onto Talbert Avenue.

“
Mike
!” Frank rushed after him, keeping pace with him. “What the hell is going on?”

“The Children of the Night is not some urban legend,” Mike said, heading to Frank’s car. “They’re very real and we under-estimated them.”

THERE WAS NO clear destination in mind. Frank simply got behind the wheel and drove the hell out of the bank’s parking lot.

Mike seethed beside him, part fury, part fear. “I should have been looking for Carol last night. I should have
done
something! Why didn’t I see this coming?”

“It’s not your fault,” Frank said, heading down Talbert toward the beach. “Neither of us knew this would’ve happened.”

“Well, we should’ve,” Mike snapped. He glanced at Frank briefly, then turned back to look out the window. “My adopting a separate identity wasn’t enough, and I thought it would be. They took everything. My files, all the backups I had saved to the zip disks, everything.”

Frank listened. This new development bothered him as much as it did Mike. Hell, it
scared
him. All the evidence they had was on those zip disks, contained in those manila file folders. All that was remaining was Frank’s laptop, which now resided in a secret compartment in the trunk of Frank’s car. Frank had sent Mike copies of documents via e-mail, and while he still had them on the hard drive, that wasn’t the point. For Mike’s safe deposit box to have been breached meant somebody knew about their investigation and had been following them for months. Maybe they’d known the whole time. Frank gripped the steering wheel, his mind racing. If they’d gotten to Carol, what about Brandy? If he and Mike had been followed this whole time, couldn’t it be possible that—

“I don’t know what else to do,” Mike said, breaking Frank’s thoughts. He was shaking his head, his features crumbling. “Carol’s gone and they’ve got the stuff, they’ve fucking
got it
! We’ve got to call the police.”

“For all we know the police might be in on this,” Frank responded.

“Well, what else are we going to do?”

Frank sighed. “I don’t know.”

They rode on in silence for a moment. “I’ve got to find Carol,” Mike said. “How…how are we going to do that unless…”

“If the police are in any way involved, the minute you call them they could alert whoever was responsible for abducting Carol,” Frank said, his eyes on the road. “Then they’ll get you. Then me. Then Vince.” He turned to Mike. “Then it really
is
over.”

“You fucking hypocritical piece of shit,” Mike muttered, his green eyes blazing with anger. “What about
your
family? Don’t you think they might not have already—”

Frank pulled the car over. They’d just crossed Adams Avenue and even though he pulled the car into a No Parking zone, he didn’t care. He put the car in park and turned to Mike, his own panic and anger rising. “I’ve put in a lot of time and I’ve risked my own life to get to the bottom of this shit. I don’t need you to jeopardize it by—”

“Oh, so now
I’m
the weak-link, huh?” Mike sputtered, his face red, leaning toward Frank. “You just want us to forget about our families, forget our loved ones and keep going so we can find out what happened over twenty and thirty years ago—”

“
It’s not just about that
!” Frank thundered, his voice so loud that it even surprised him. Mike stopped, eyes widening.
Calm down
, Frank told himself.
Don’t blow up now, you need him, you need each other if you’re going to get through this, so just calm. The fuck. Down
. “We knew what we were getting into when we started this,” he said, his voice straining with anger. “We knew the risks involved in not only our own lives, but our families. We went into this together knowing those risks. It was your choice to keep your wife and kids in the dark.”

“
Bullshit
!” Mike started again, looking like he wanted to leap out of his seat and throttle him.

“I’ve already sacrificed my own life,” Frank said, ignoring him. He tried not to think about this as he continued. “I know I’m never gonna see my wife or kids again. I took measures to protect them. Brandy knows something is going on, but she doesn’t know the specifics. Oh, she suspects, I’m sure she does. But I went out of my way to prepare for the worst. It kills me knowing I’ll never see them. I know that if I go back to my family I’ll be followed and they’ll be at risk and it doesn’t matter how many times I change my name to throw them off my trail. They’ll find me no matter what. They found Vince and his mother and they’ve found others. I don’t want to live like that the rest of my life, knowing they
could strike anytime, anywhere, anyplace. That’s why I made the deci
sion myself. That’s why I’m
not
going back to my family. As much as I want to see my kids again, to hold my wife in my arms…” Frank stopped, trying to control his emotions. He wanted to break down and cry. He wanted to smash something. He felt like he was going to explode. “I can’t go to the police,” he said, reigning his emotions in. “I don’t trust the cops more than I can throw them. If there’s even the slightest chance that even one cop is an insider—”

“Oh, and what are the chances of that?” Mike exclaimed.

“You know as well as I that they’ve infiltrated law enforcement,” Frank said. He heard his voice rising and he fought to control it. “Okay, maybe they’re not everywhere, but we can’t take that chance. Even if you get lucky and get cops that aren’t aware of the Children, they’re not gonna believe you. I mean, what are you gonna tell them?”

“What do you think I’m gonna tell them? I’m gonna tell them somebody broke into my house and kidnapped my wife!”