Chapter 24 - Reed
REED
My mom may not have imparted much on me as a kid, but she had one theory that always stuck with me. Women with secrets will keep them close to their chests, while men with secrets will flaunt them in your face so you don’t even realize they’re secrets.
While I don’t subscribe to her deeply gendered thinking, I do think there’s veracity to it for people of her generation. Learned behaviors don’t disappear just because they’re problematic.
When we visited her boyfriends-of-the-moment, they were almost always alcoholics like Mom, except instead of being discreet about it or making it blend in, they’d leave the empties on their counters and bring attention to a mini-fridge they kept only six-packs in.
My mom, on the other hand, hid her drinking at home like it was a war secret.
She’d covertly place bottles in unexpected places around the trailer—inside the zippered couch cushion cover or inside the water tank over the toilet.
On rainy days as a kid, I turned finding her liquor stash into a game, pretending I was Nova Ranger on a mission to capture rare space gems that had the ability to save the universe.
By the time I was fifteen, she’d run out of new hiding spots, and I gave up the game, realizing it was sad for her to be hiding them, but it was even sadder for me to go searching for them like I needed more proof of her disease.
I figured those old sleuthing skills I honed back then would come in handy in my hunt for the safe, but I keep coming up empty.
I tear photos down from the walls, tip over chairs, and dig up potted plants—the very same ones I’d been charged with watering. Crawling, I rap my knuckle along the floorboards, and I press cocktail glasses to walls, hoping to hear the unmistakable hum of a locking mechanism working hard inside.
It pains me to admit, but Wendell is right. The safe is unfindable.
Still, something I saw yesterday isn’t sitting right with me.
At the entrance to the garage, I stand on the cool cement floor and inspect the lineup. Black poles separate one car from the next. While I’d expect Wendell Blitz to have the newest and nicest cars around kept in pristine condition, one of these stands out more than the others.
In my obsessive research of Wendell Blitz, he spoke a lot about luxury electric cars and their Earth-saving abilities.
Funny to think a man so cavalier about the murder of his son would care at all about emissions and the environment, but the bleak humor of that doesn’t make me laugh. It makes me look closer.
All three of the cars in the garage are electric.
All three are made by different manufacturers.
Only one of them is made by the company, Hadron, whose CEO, Elton Mills, has a public beef with Wendell Blitz.
It’s very well-documented online. Elton Mills is the kind of insecure man who dukes it out on social media, throwing barbs as if the internet were the colosseum and his conquests were gladiatorial.
Why would Wendell Blitz own a car made by a man he despises?
Stepping closer to the low-lying red sports car, I hear a soft, repeated beep.
I have to stop moving and quiet my breath to make it out.
I cup my hands around my eyes and peer in through the tinted window.
On the floor, on the passenger side, partially obscured by a kicked-up mat, a dim red light blinks.
I expect the car to be locked, but when I try the door, it opens. The overhead light comes on with a bright ding. I crawl over the white leather driver’s seat. From under the mat, I discover the car’s key.
I turn the fob over in my hands. Leaving this behind must’ve been an oversight. Otherwise, I could raise the garage door right now and speed off into the night.
The beeping I heard outside the car is duller in here. I tip the fob to my ear. I shake it. The sound is not coming from the key itself. I feel around on the dashboard and tap on the navigation panel. Nothing is on or making a peep.
I circle the car with its wax job and Wyoming license plates. It’s the emblem and word beside the license plate that strike me most. Sensha. It’s the Japanese word for chariot. I know it because, aside from comics, I’ve also read my fair share of Manga. But I also know it for another reason.
A month ago, this make and model from Hadron Electric was recalled and pulled from dealership lots. It was all over the news. Senshas have an issue with their batteries, which could cause them to short-circuit and burst into flames.
I pop the hood on the car and see no telltale signs that the battery is malfunctioning.
Against the wall where other car maintenance tools are set, there is an orange mechanic creeper. I use it to roll myself under the car. What I find fills my entire body with immediate, all-consuming dread.
Strapped to the underside of the car is what appears to be an explosive of the homemade variety. On its front is a red digital timer that counts down with each passing second.
One hour, eight minutes, thirteen seconds.
The exact amount of time until sunrise.
You have until sunrise to get the hell off my property, or I have far less pleasant ways of expelling you by force. Wendell’s words come back to me now. More foreboding now that I know what the threat actually is.
He didn’t care if Dax killed me because he wanted me dead this whole time. Even if Dax hadn’t chosen tonight to break in, I’d have been gone by morning. Trapped in the burning compound. He wanted me out of the picture so badly that he was willing to destroy his new house to make it happen.
I’m reminded again of my mom’s theory and what Wendell said earlier.
The house is insured, and the old saying, ‘You can’t go home again,’ is true. I don’t much care for Wyoming after all.
I recall what Dax said earlier about the local police not wanting to use the software that Wendell invested a lot of capital in.
About how there was a contingent of Wyomingites who wanted nothing to do with the elitist billionaire and even protested the openings of his warehouses and the building of his vacation house.
They didn’t care if this was his home state.
They wanted him to take his business elsewhere and leave them alone.
I am the last piece of evidence that Wendell Blitz has a child, and he planned to do away with me before I could do anything with that information.
Clever, too, because it would’ve looked like just another senseless death caused by a faulty battery in a car made by his competitor. Two birds, one explosive stone.
Well played, Mr. Blitz, I think. But sorry, I’m not planning on dying tonight.