They climbed two flights of stairs and walked to a door at the back of the building. Martin placed the key under the matt. They never saw Diane. When they got back to the car, Martin said, “I told you there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’m still glad I came.”
NOW
THE LACES TORE. Ethan tugged and jerked until his arms were free. Then he untied his ankles, strung what remained of the laces into his shoes, and grabbed the flashlight.
So that’s the way they went, he thought, shining the flashlight into the south tunnel. The traitor and his bitch.
NOW
THE AIR GREW increasingly damp. Water dripped from stalactites. Just over a ridge, at the end of a long tunnel, the light from Cynthia’s headlamp twinkled on the exposed part of an underground stream.
To get around it would be a daunting task.
Martin licked his lips at the thought of taking a drink, but did not do so for two reasons: the water was too far below the ridge to reach without diving in, and, in Martin’s opinion, drinking from an underground stream could be dangerous to his health.
It was as useful to him as a mirage.
Martin tossed the backpack on the ground, and they climbed the ridge, anyway, to take a peek—to see how deep it was, how they might get around it. That was when Cynthia noticed the candy wrapper bobbing against the east wall, trapped on a rock.
THEN
MARTIN STARTED DRINKING more to numb the pain of Diane’s betrayal and to slow the thoughts that spun in his head—ideas, philosophies, beliefs Ethan had shared with him night after night at the bar.
Revenge. Justice. Freedom.
“Whatever you want can be yours. You just have to have the balls to take it.”
Then there were the nights they spent popping off BBs at strangers from the top of Ethan’s apartment building. A good hit was always dead center on the butt or the balls.
“It ain’t powerful enough to kill anybody,” Ethan said the first time they went up to the roof. “It’ll just give ’em a good sting.”
And that it did.
A solid shot sent several passersby to their knees, hands cupped on their crotch.
“Think about it like you’re popping one off at your old man,” Ethan had said, and Martin liked that idea.
Later, he was dragged to Poppy’s apartment building and introduced to one of her friends. The four drank and talked until nobody was sober enough to think clearly.
The next thing Martin remembered was waking up in a stranger’s bedroom—his arms wrapped around a girl he didn’t know, his head pounding.
Ethan was standing over him, shaking his shoulder.
“We got to go,” he said after Martin opened his eyes.
“What? Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
And now they were here, sitting in the car outside somebody’s house in North Carolina. Martin checked the clock.
Six a.m.
He’d slept for more than half of the ride. Ethan had insisted on driving because, “I know where I’m going.”
“Where the hell are we going?” Martin asked when he awoke.
“You’ll see when we get there.”
“But we’ve been driving for almost three hours. We’ve both got to go to work tomorrow.”
“Call in sick. It’ll be worth it, trust me.”
NOW
“YOU KNOW WHAT this means?” Cynthia said. She stared excitedly at the candy wrapper.
“Yeah. It means there was a litterbug down here before us.”
“No. Think about how deep we are. Do you think anybody else has been down this deep? Besides, there hasn’t been any other garbage down here. If it was a litterbug, we would have seen a napkin or water bottle or something else before now.”
“How do you think it got here, then?”
“I think it floated in. Martin, I think we’ve found our way out.”
THEN
THE HOUSE WAS dark. Either the owner wasn’t in or was asleep.
“What are we doing here?”
Ethan got out of the car without answering. “Come on.” He buttoned his jacket to his neck to stave off the cold.
Martin reluctantly followed Ethan’s lead, past the squeaky fence, through the overgrown front yard.
“Do you know somebody here?”
Ethan knocked hard on the door. A light came on.
“No, but you do.”
Martin’s heart started to pound. “My father? But how did you—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Ethan didn’t have time to explain that he had stolen the photograph from Martin’s bedroom (which Martin apparently never missed, or never mentioned, anyway). He didn’t have time to tell Martin that while he was fucking Poppy’s friend, Dallas was giving him Frank Campbell’s address.
That would lead to questions about how he knew Dallas, and maybe to more about his fake ID. Martin still didn’t know Ethan’s real age, and Ethan preferred to keep it that way.
The lock on the front door clicked.
And even if Ethan answered Martin’s questions, he still didn’t know how Dallas had gotten the address. He didn’t know that Dallas had cracked into the records for the Department of Motor Vehicles, searched old files (that had been cataloged, stored, and probably forgotten) until he found a name and a face that matched Frank’s. Nor did he know that Dallas had then used his driver’s license number to get his social security number, and his social security number to get bank statements, tax returns, medical statements—anything that could verify the man’s current residency.
Dallas followed this up by matching a phone number to the address and placing a phone call under the guise of a telemarketer to confirm that he hadn’t moved. Ethan didn’t know this either.
And he didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that he had the address.
“What do you want?” Frank said, the door cracked only as far as the security chain would allow it to go. He had put on some weight since the photograph was taken, and he compensated for the hair he lost from his scalp by growing in a thicker mustache. His undershirt was stained with sweat, his sweatpants wrinkled but
