Chapter Two
Decisions
Three days passed before I looked at the box again. I guess I thought that if I ignored it, it would simply go away. Note to self: that never works. I had been trying to perfect that technique for years without success. Most of my reaction those first few days was shock… shock and a sickening numbness in the pit of my stomach, like when you just know the worst is yet to come.
Maybe I didn’t yet have anything concrete on which to base that feeling of dread, although to my way of thinking the proof was probably already there. The wonderful mix of having to deal with my sister’s creep of an ex-husband (I swear I’ll never know what she saw in that man), an alternate universe (what a joke), and a brother who had apparently vanished into thin air was not an appealing combination. The way I saw it, dread was probably the best possible outcome.
I could still hear John’s unspoken command from the impromptu meeting of the previous week—find your brother and bring him to me. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t actually said ‘bring him to me.’ The implication was there. There was still the matter of an undisclosed amount of cash that my brother presumably owed. I sighed and rubbed my temples. I wasn’t sure if I could find Mike, but if I did, I hoped to God he had a wad of cash on him.
I had a hard time picturing John as a hit man, but I did know that he was a shrewd businessman who apparently felt he owed very little to ethics. The fact that I knew John would never get his hands dirty did not ease my mind one bit. Just because John Hanlen felt such things as battery and murder were beneath him did not make him opposed to the idea altogether. Of that I was certain.
It had also occurred to me that nine tenths of what John had told me was a complete lie. I didn’t know all the details about the money Mike had been given, only that it was cash and there had been a lot of it. There was an obvious connection between my brother, LanTech, and John. I was still very reluctant to believe that Mike had intended to rob some secret archaeological site using a map he found in central Africa five years ago. The very idea was not only convoluted but ridiculous. Bottom line, I couldn’t afford to believe a word that John said. And this, I thought with a bitter smile, was a truth my entire family had known for quite some time.
I crossed my legs and took a long drink from the bottle of beer that sat on the carpet next to me in the den. I frowned and sat the beer on the fireplace ledge in front of me. Even though it was just now early fall, Seattle wasn’t the warmest place in the world to live. Not that I was particularly cold; the fire was more for ambiance than any real need for warmth. The fire was also not the best thing to have next to a flammable box of even more flammable notebooks…especially when they were possibly one of the only remaining links to my brother.
No. I wouldn’t go there. Mike was all right. He had to be. But burning his notes was still not a smart idea. I scooted back some and picked up the first book. At least, I hoped it was the first book. A quick peek inside told me that, bless him, he had numbered the pages.
My bare fingernails drummed on the thin paper. The first step would be to translate his notes, in English—I snickered—onto separate books. Not that I required any special keys to read the notes, but there was a lot of material there. I remembered what John had said about alternate realms, and prayed for that information to make sense.
It took several hours to copy the pages onto a new notebook. I stood up and stretched aching muscles, reaching far behind my back. The good thing was that it had been fairly easy work. The bad thing was that I was translating what appeared to be a children’s fairytale gone wrong. And my hand was cramping. Come to think of it, so was my butt. To top it off, I was out of notebooks.
I thought it might be a good idea to pick up some fresh pens, too. It was only seven in the evening, and although it was already dark outside, the weather was clear and cool; there was still plenty of time to get through another book that night. I glanced down at the pile by my bare feet and groaned. Only eight more books to go, which meant I was definitely going to the store.