You're Next

‘Why wouldn’t they be?’ Sheila asked, still focused on the monitor. Mike and Andres exchanged a look. Before either could answer, she said, ‘No, those files haven’t been opened since twelve twenty-one P.M. last Thursday.’

That had been Mike, perusing the vitrified-clay invoice to torture himself over lunch break.

‘But wait,’ Sheila said. ‘This was opened Saturday night, one thirty-two A.M.’

‘What is it?’ Mike asked.

‘The personnel files.’

A chill ran across the back of his neck. ‘They looked through our personnel files?’

She clicked around some more. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just yours.’

He took a step back. Andres and Sheila turned to him, their mouths moving but their words not registering. Dodge and William were digging for information not on some job but on him. Just as the sheriff’s deputies had been.

Dodge and William, it seemed, wanted to know who he was just as much as he did.

He became aware, slowly, of his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He wiggled it out and glanced at the screen, which showed a text message from Annabel: HI HON WHERES THE KEY TO THE SAFE DEPOSIT BOX AGAIN I FORGOT NEED TO GRAB SOMETHING OUT.

He stared at the message, that timpani thrum in his skull urging his headache to loftier heights. He and Annabel never texted; they were old-fashioned and preferred to use phones for talking.

He called his wife right away. It rang through to voice mail. ‘Hi, it’s Annabel. I’m probably digging around for my phone in that tiny space between the car seat and the door, so-’

He signaled Andres and Sheila to give him a minute and began pacing cramped circles around his desk as the home phone rang. Voice mail.

It took him a moment to realize that Sheila was talking to him. ‘Mr Wingate. Mr Wingate. You’re due to walk that undeveloped land in Chatsworth at two. Which means you have to leave now.’

‘Can’t do it, Sheila.’ He barreled toward the door. ‘I’ve got to get home.’

She pressed an irritated smile onto her face as he swept past, his jog turning to a sprint.

Chapter 17

Mike raced home, running red lights and stop signs, dialing and redialing the home line. Finally Annabel picked up. ‘Hi, babe,’ she said. ‘I just walked in, and that kitchen sink’s getting worse. I know, shoemaker’s kids and all that, but-’

He cut her off. ‘Did you text me?’

‘When have I ever texted you? I’m not fourteen.’

‘Where’s your cell phone?’

‘I’ve been looking for it all morning. I think I left it at school.’

He took a moment to level out his breathing, then said, ‘They stole it. I got a text from your cell asking me where the safe-deposit key was.’

‘In the tissue box in your nightstand. I wouldn’t ask that.’

He told her quickly about the message, William’s coming by the job site, and the break-in at the office. A dreary silence as she tried to catch up to the information. ‘Okay… so they want into the safe-deposit box because that’s where people keep private stuff they don’t want to hide in the house.’ Her voice trembled a bit. ‘Which means they’ve searched the house.’

‘They searched my office.’ He turned onto their street. ‘I’m here.’

Now, anger. ‘How would they even know we have a safe-deposit box? It’s not like everyone has one. Plus, bank records are confid-’ She stopped. He could hear her breathing harder with the realization.

‘The deputies,’ he said. ‘Law enforcement could get clearance to see those records, to know there’s a safe- deposit box at our bank in my name.’

She was at the front door, walking the key out to him as he pulled in the driveway. He could see her mouth moving an instant ahead of the words in his ear. ‘You think they’re working together? These guys and the deputies?’

‘Someone’s prying around at a higher level, either officially or unofficially.’ He was still talking into the phone, though she was now a few steps away.

He rolled down his window, and she leaned in, dropped the safe-deposit key in his lap, and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

When she pulled back, her gaze was tense, scared. ‘Whatever this is, how do we get free of it?’

‘Depends what they want,’ he said.

‘Seems like they want to know where you came from.’

He closed a fist around the key and put the truck in reverse. ‘Don’t we all.’

Walking past the gaze of his favorite prim-mouthed bank manager, Mike signed in and stepped into the privacy booth with his safe-deposit box. A deep breath before lifting the thin metal lid. A mess of pictures and documents greeted him. An abandoned child report. The county-issued form, three decades old, assigning him a new last name. Elementary-school transcripts. His old Social Security card. The Couch Mother’s obituary. A few tattered photos of him and the Shady Lane boys. That college acceptance letter he’d prized so. A probation report, documenting his sentence served.

A chronicle of the imperfect history of Mike Doe.

A flood of nostalgia almost choked him. Here, before him, was everything that remained of his former self.

He dug through the contents, his fingers striking something hard and buried. He lifted it carefully to the light. A Smith & Wesson.357. Straightforward and easy to handle, it was the only make of gun he’d ever been comfortable with. Shep had given it to him for home protection when Mike had first gotten his own place. Mike had kept it in his nightstand drawer for years, finally moving it here at Annabel’s behest when Kat was born. He’d never fired it away from a shooting range and hoped he never would. The heft of it in his hand felt familiar and dangerous.

He set it gently on the counter.

He pulled the empty plastic liner from the trash can beneath the counter and dumped the box’s contents into it. Bag slung over his shoulder, he stared down at the revolver for a beat.

He pocketed it on the way out.

Mike crouched in a deserted alley, the shadows stretching dusk-long, the whine of traffic thrumming off the brick walls. The door to his Ford stood open, casting a triangle of light onto the ground. He leaned forward, broken glass crunching beneath his shoes, and touched the end of a lit match to a corner of the trash bag. His eyes glassy, he watched the flames catch and flare, peeling away the plastic and eating through all those photographs and documents.

There is no past.

And yet, clearly, there was.

It ended with a sad little pile of ash, which he kicked to the dead air, scattering it. He stamped out the embers, climbed into his truck, and drove away.

Dinner preparation on pause, Annabel sat on the kitchen counter and stared down at the.357 clutched nervously in her lap.

‘It’s a revolver,’ Mike said. ‘Easy to handle.’

She spoke in a hushed voice so Kat, busy with homework in her room, wouldn’t hear. ‘I’m worried about having it around her.’

‘Let me show you how to use it.’ As the pasta water boiled, he positioned his wife’s slender hands around the grip, but she pulled back, leaving him with the revolver.

‘It makes me uncomfortable.’

‘We’re past comfort now.’