Chapter 50
HAWK
I hadn’t been to the Blackwell Paper Company in years, but from the looks of things, it hadn’t changed. We pulled up in the G-Wagon and got out, then stood, looking around.
The place was as deserted as I remembered, a big factory building near the Blackwell River on the outskirts of town. Weeds grew two feet tall through cracks in the old paved parking lot, the field surrounding the old building glowing gold in the late September sun.
In the distance, the trees in the preserve were starting to turn, shades of red, organs, and yellow mixed in with green under the kind of blue sky that only happened in fall.
Vigo looked around. “I’m surprised Bram hasn’t bought this place already.”
“Give him time,” I said.
It was an open secret that Bram Montgomery had been buying up property in Blackwell Falls for years. No one knew why or what he planned to do with it, and none of the property had ever been developed.
The rush of the Blackwell River got louder as we headed for the three-story brick building that had once been the Blackwell Paper Company.
“Your dad work on the machines here?” Jagger asked.
“I’m not sure,” Cassie said, her brow furrowed. “I was pretty young when he worked here, but I guess that would make sense. They’d need people to maintain all the equipment.”
My heart kind of hurt looking at her, that combination of vulnerability and unrealized strength a fucking drug I couldn’t quit.
She looked as heartbreakingly beautiful in the shorts and white T-shirt she’d thrown on that morning as she’d looked in the designer dress she’d worn to the award ceremony for Vigo’s dad.
I was almost starting to accept that I would never stop wanting her.
“It looks like it’s been closed forever,” Vigo said.
I did a double take. When had he grabbed his bat?
I frowned. “What the fuck are you doing with that?”
He slapped the end of it against his hand. “What aren’t I going to do with it is the question.”
“It hasn’t been close that long actually,” Cassie said. “The paper mill. About eight years I think.”
“It’s in pretty good shape,” Jagger said. “I hope we can get in.”
He was right: the exterior of the building looked fine, the brick worn but otherwise intact, metal door lining the ground floor where workers must have entered to start their shifts every day.
“We’ll get in,” I said.
I started around the building with the on my heels. It was eerily quiet, nothing but the river rushing a hundred yards away, a distant plane humming in the autumn sky.
The windows on the side of the building were boarded up, but we found out opportunity in the back: two windows here the plywood had been removed, graffiti marking the building in multicolored streaks and whorls.
“Fucking kids must have a heyday with this place,” Jagger said.
Vigo took his bat and cleared the jagged glass from one of the window frames.
“See?” he said looking at me. “It’s an all-purpose tool.”
He tossed it through the window, then climber through.
“I’ll give you a boost,” I said to Cassie, broken glass crushing as I crouched in front of the window.
I made a sling with my hands.
She stepped into it and held onto the window frame as I pushed her closer toward it.
“Got it,” she said, hoisting herself over the frame.
It was the wrong time to ogle her luscious ass, but what could I say? I was just a man, and I couldn’t help thinking about how she’d looked the night before, the claw opening up her ass while Jagger and fucked her tight little pussy.
I ordered my dick to stand down as I followed Cassie through the window.
Not the time for a hard-on.
I landed onto a concrete floor and stepped back as Vigo did the same.
“This place is huge,” Jagger said, looking around the abounded warehouse space.
“I think I remember it,” Cassie said. “Maybe my mom brought me here to see my dad while he was working or something.”
It was probably so different with people working and machines running,” Vigo said, picking up his bat and skipping into the shadowed space.
”We’re not here to play,” I said.
“Duh,” Vigo said. “We need to get to the third floor.”
We followed him deeper into he building even though I had no idea if he even knew where he was going.
The front half of the building was open all the way to the ceiling, but about halfway to the back a mezzanine hovered above the factory floor, glass-walled offices overlooking the warehouse, probably for the foreman to watch over workers on the line.
It was like a relic from another past, and I wondered how many other buildings like this sat empty, victims of progress and technology and shit, across the country.
Across the world.
I felt the futility of fighting it. The wheel of progress ground on, however much we might want to stop it.
“That’s the second floor,” Jagger said, looking at the glass-walled offices at the top of a flight of metal stairs.
“This way,” Vigo said, swinging his bat.
We followed him deeper into the building until we came to an industrial-style elevator.
Vigo pushed the button and I was surprised when it screeched to life from above.
“Maybe we should find the stairs,” Jagger said.
I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been. It was one thing to be reckless as fuck when we were alone, but we had Cassie now.
“Fuck no,” Vigo said when the elevator ground to a stop in the shaft. It’s door creaked open to reveal a plain metal box. “When else are we gonna get to ride one of the old-timers.”
He stepped in, then waved when we all didn’t move to join him before the doors closed again.
“I really hope we don’t have to call the fire department to get him out of there,” Cassie said.
“That would definitely blow our cover,” Jagger agreed.
We headed for the back of the warehouse, hunting for the stairs, and found them a minute later behind a door marked Stairwell.
I held open the door, then followed Jagger and Cassie through.
The concrete stairwell was dark and claustrophobic, the gray walls seeming to close in on us as we climbed the stairs.
Vigo was waiting, bat in hand, when we emerged into a large room on the third floor.
The elevator stood open at the center of the lobby, and he flashed us a grin. “Suckers.”
I flipped him off before turning my attention to the room.
It had been a lobby once, the sheetrock now full of holes, carpet stained and smelling of mildew.
A desk stood at one end of the room, tilting crazily thanks to three missing legs.
Several rusty chrome chairs were turned over in the space, stuffing emerging from their rough blue upholstery.
On one wall, a cheap print of a forest hung sideways from a single remaining nail.
A broken window looked out over the back of the building, long ild grass stretching to the Blackwell River glinting through the trees.
“What’s up?” Jagger asked Cassie.
She seemed frozen, her gaze sweeping the room.
“I’ve definitely been here before,” she said. “I remember this.”
“Really?” Jagger asked.
She nodded. “Come on. I think I remember my dad’s office.”