Chapter 25 - Reed
REED
“We have to get out of here now,” I warn as I sprint onto the back deck.
Dax wears nothing but his dripping wet underwear. He fills an ice bucket from the downstairs wet bar with spa water and spills it out into the grass. He moves with haste, footsteps clomping on the deck boards.
In the wavy color-changing lights of the spa and the light affixed to the house, I get a prime look at Dax, topless and barefoot.
Tattoos peak out from various places on his hair-coated chest. One wraps around his muscular forearm.
His sopping briefs cling to his contours, from his voluptuous ass to his hefty package, which hangs loose and free up front, distracting me for a moment.
“No chance. I found it,” Dax says with certainty and a cocky smile.
His thick dark eyebrows and his wide nose scrunch with focus.
His hair and beard, which are teetering toward going fully gray, shed droplets of water as he walks.
I try not to think about how good he’s going to look when he’s a silver fox.
Maybe that was my mistake earlier. He is no wolf. Never was. He is a fox in wolf’s clothing. A fox I want to domesticate.
“In the hot tub?” I ask, disbelieving. Most safes are waterproof, but even still, the chance of a seal breaking and whatever valuables inside getting damaged is too great. Besides, the spa isn’t even that big. Wendell can’t be hiding whole statues and heirlooms in there. They wouldn’t fit.
“Not in,” Dax says. Water soars over the deck boards and hits the yard with a resounding slosh. “Under. X marks the spot.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, keeping my distance. Wendell Blitz is not some ship captain with an eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder.
“At the bottom of the hot tub, there is a small X etched into the cement,” Dax says in a distracted monotone.
“So?” I say.
“The safe was purchased at the same time the hot tub was being put in. I don’t know how I missed that,” Dax says.
“The X is probably just an imperfection, a mistake by the people who installed it,” I say.
Dax shakes his head. Droplets of water fly everywhere. “Billionaires don’t leave room for mistakes. If there’s a mark down there, it’s meant to be there. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
We’re losing time the more we linger here arguing. “Dax, listen, there is a bomb strapped to one of the cars in the garage.”
His eyes whip directly to mine. Fright unfurls in his gaze. “Say that again?”
“A bomb. I don’t know how I didn’t realize it sooner.
Like you just said, billionaires don’t leave room for mistakes,” I repeat.
“There’s one car unlocked with the key inside.
It’s made by Wendell’s very public nemesis, Elton Mills, and the model was recalled for a combustible battery.
I think he planned to make it look like a freak accident so I would… ”
I can’t bring myself to say die, even though I’ve been so close to death multiple times tonight. I’ve gotten up in its face. I’ve smelled its bittersweet breath. Still, I’m not ready for its kiss. Not when Dax Sharp has agreed to be my partner.
Dax pauses, taking this in. “Show me.”
The bucket clatters to the ground as we charge back to the garage. I point him toward the red Sensha and the mechanic creeper I left out. Fear holds me back by the shoulders from stepping into the garage again. One wrong move and boom.
“Jesus,” Dax says from under the car, his voice muffled. “Fuck!”
After fiddling with the digital watch on his wrist, he rushes up the stairs to the loft, where I got the hammer earlier.
He rummages around. I ask what he’s doing, and all I get in response is a series of grunts.
My heart rate continues to climb like a second active bomb nearing detonation.
Seriously, I could have a heart attack before we have any chance of escape.
Dax comes back down the stairs wearing new gloves and a pair of safety goggles. A long tube and a pump are tucked under one arm, and a sledgehammer and a stake are under the other. “We’ve got to move fast,” he says, brushing by me.
I trail him, tripping over my own feet. “What are you doing? We don’t have time for home demolition projects. We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Not until I find out if I’m right. That the safe is under the tub,” he says as he beelines back outside. The night air is cold and bites at every inch of my exposed skin.
“Dax, be real! Nobody in their right mind would put their safe full of important documents and possessions beneath an inground spa where they can’t get to them,” I say.
“The safe was never for daily access. For passports, cash, or highly valued artwork, taken out of rotation for a time,” Dax says.
He moves quicker toward a control panel, where he shuts off the power to the hot tub.
“Whatever is under there is a break-in-case-of-emergency stash. A the-world’s-ending-and-this-is-what-I-have-left stash.
An everyone-has-found-out-about-my-abusive-business-practices-and-now-I-need-physical-assets stash. ”
The water from the hot tub goes sailing out into the yard through a tube at a rate of likely thirty gallons per minute. As the level lowers, I see the X Dax felt. It’s tiny. You’d have to be seeking out an imperfection to even notice it. I sure didn’t when I soaked in this tub only yesterday.
Yesterday.
If I could go back, would I? Things were so much simpler.
I had no confirmation that Wendell Blitz was my dad.
Dax hadn’t hulked his way into the house.
I was still blissfully na?ve, thinking this was all going to work out in my favor.
Now I’m destroying my birth father’s property in the off chance he stowed valuables beneath it.
When the tub is drained, Dax descends the steps, hoists the sledgehammer, and smacks the X like that special spot on a glass bottle of Heinz ketchup that makes it all pour out. The tub proves no match for Dax’s strength. The concrete cracks in chunks.
I step closer, holding a hand up to protect my eyes. Patches of brown dirt appear beneath the concrete. Compact, dark, and unassuming. Almost too unassuming.
Without waiting for instructions, I go to the camouflaged tool closet and remove a trowel meant for landscaping. Once Dax has pried up enough of the tub’s base, I frantically scoop up soil. Some of it gets into my mouth. An earthy taste and a gritty sensation skim over my tongue.
The point of my shovel hits something, and it doesn’t clang like metal. I hoist up a phallic-shaped plastic tube about the size of a table lamp. Items ping around inside.
My heart is in my throat. We did it. We found it! We might just get away with this.
But then I see the six-digit code lock, and my stomach falls into the freshly dug grave in front of me.