20. Abel
Abel
Silence.
Well, I say ‘silence’, but what I really mean is no human noises. No vehicles, no mechanical equipment, no talking or laughing… just the wind in the trees, the birds singing and calling to each other, and the occasional insect buzzing past close enough for me to hear it.
Heaven.
Sure, there’s the occasional airplane in the sky.
In fact, West Virginia is known for being the ultimate “flyover” state due to its central location.
Planes from L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, and other west coast cities all meet and converge over my head at thirty thousand or so feet, either en route to, or heading back from, their east coast destinations—Boston, New York, Miami, and so on.
But they’re a long way up, and the planes are like tiny insects in the sky, their vapor trails the only real sign of their existence other than the occasional glint or shimmer when one catches the sunlight at just the right angle.
They don’t bother me. They’re far enough away to be meaningless to me and, more importantly, they have no way of coming down here and interfering with me. No way for them to even know I exist.
Which is just fine by me.
I stow the last of my emergency supplies in the cupboard in the combined kitchen and living area of the hunter’s log-built lodge that I’ve commandeered for my own use, for the time being at least. There’ll be plenty of time to make more plans—more permanent ones, that is—later on.
This place will do just fine for a month or two.
It’s only an hour away from the others, and because I’m almost directly above them elevation-wise, believe it or not I have perfect line of sight.
And that means… well, I never did get the chance to talk to Grant.
Or to Regan, for that matter. So presumably they still don’t know about the Italian-looking guy in town who’s been asking after Maria and Sandro.
And they should know about that. If anything happens before they find out…
well, I’ll not be able to live with myself.
Which, of course, is why I planted a couple of hunting cameras on the premises.
One by the entrance off the road, and one by the door to the main building.
Both have normal and infra-red modes, and both are set to switch on only when there’s movement, to save memory space and battery life.
The cameras are also equipped with SIM cards and antennas, so when the motion sensor is tripped, the camera records whatever it sees and automatically uploads the footage to a cloud server before sending me a message to let me know there’s something to check.
It’s a good system. Its only fault is that it ain’t truly real time. What happens is the camera senses movement and turns itself on. It starts recording whatever it can see onto the SIM card, and only once the recording finishes—or the card fills up—does it begin uploading the file to the cloud.
All in all, it could be as little as a handful of minutes of delay, or as much as an hour or more before I get to see whatever happened.
Do I feel guilty about what could be thought of as spying on my friends?
Maybe a little.
But my rule is simple: intent is everything.
If I was doing it for personal gain—blackmail or voyeurism, let’s say—that would be one thing. But that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because none of them are taking the threat from Maria and Sandro’s previous life seriously enough. Never have done, in my opinion.
I prop my phone up on the shelf below a mirror positioned above the solid-fuel cooking range, where I’ll be sure to hear the alarm go off if any motion is detected on either camera.
The range will keep the whole building warm through the winter months, now I’ve fixed the roof and replaced a couple of cracked window panes.
The hardest part had been smuggling the aluminum stovepipe and new PVC guttering out here, but I’d picked a day when Grant had been busy in the office with phone calls and Regan had been out in the tow truck.
Of course, this was well before Maria and Sandro had arrived, so there’d been no one around to notice what I was up to.
In fact, over the last three years, I’ve gradually made this place pretty damn habitable, always assuming your tastes run to the simpler side of things.
I have my fishing poles, my crossbow, my hunting rifles, a handgun for personal safety—a Glock 19, because it’s the perfect balance of concealability, firepower, comfort, and reliability—a few local maps, some good books on flora and fauna in the region, practical clothing and footwear for all seasons, plenty of bedding, emergency medical supplies, dried rations, a good range of gardening tools and equipment, plus a whole bunch of packets of seeds and bulb sets along with a couple of beginner books on vegetable gardening.
I’d decided the hunting rifles made too much noise.
An occasional shot probably wouldn’t matter, but ongoing shooting in the area would eventually create a pattern someone might start to notice, and then they might decide they need to investigate it.
It’s not that I’m doing anything wrong, as such.
But it’s not actually my land, so technically I’m trespassing and stealing game.
Better to use the fishing pole and the crossbow.
Maybe make a few simple traps as well for things like rabbits. That shouldn’t be beyond me.
Yes, all in all, I should be quite comfortable here. I can stay here without any pressure or worry whilst I figure out what I should do next.
Goes without saying that I’m not expecting anything from my time with Grant and Regan. It would be different if they had been the ones to ask me to leave. In that situation I might perhaps have had some kind of right to ask to be bought out, or something.
But no. I’m the one deciding to leave. And whilst I don’t feel I owe them anything, neither do I think they owe me.
Besides, it’s only been three years, and the last thing the business needs right now is to have to pay money out to an investor.
No, it wouldn’t be fair on them. That had never been the plan.
The plan had always been ten years at an absolute outside minimum before we anticipated any returns.
I can’t expect special treatment now just because… well… just because of how things are.
I look around me. At the whitewashed walls, the neat cupboards and oak table, the fishing pole leaning in one corner, the old but serviceable armchair, the ancient fire-blackened cooking range, and the sounds of summer drifting lazily in through the open doorway.
Fuck it… things could be a lot worse.
I must have drifted off. So much for the alarm waking me.
I guess I was more tired than I’d thought. Or more deaf. The damned thing’s flashing at me from its shelf over the cooking range, and I’ve no idea how long it’s been signaling for. Then I hear the sound of an approaching vehicle, and I sigh heavily.
One day. That was all. Not even that. Half a day.
Who is it? I wonder.
I’m guessing it’s Grant and Regan. I mean… who else can it be? I guess they must have known about this place after all somehow, despite all my efforts to keep it secret.
It’s that little sneak Regan, I’ll put money on it, following me around like Gollum in Lord of the Rings.
Still, I strap on my shoulder holster and lift a hunting rifle from the rack, just in case it’s someone else, automatically checking the safety catch and making sure the rounds are chambered properly.
Quietly, I step outside and make my way across the clearing, fading into the shadows of the trees to await my visitors from a position where I can see them before they see me.
I’ve not long to wait.
The unmistakable sound of Regan’s F-150 tells me who’s coming even before they round the final bend and pull up beside the cabin, swinging open the doors and stepping out into the sunlight.
Three of them.
Three dead bodies, if I’d had a mind to turn my weapons on them. I could hardly have missed from this range.
Jesus, have Grant and Regan forgotten even the basics?
I step out of the shadows.
“Bang. You’re dead,” I say.
Grant looks at me like I’m some kind of idiot. He looks angry. But Regan… Regan takes a pace toward me, then freezes, apparently unsure what to do or how to do it. Then suddenly he strides rapidly across the clearing, arms wide.
“Thank God, Abe. Thank God you’re okay.”
And with that he flings his arms around me in a heavy embrace that would probably have toppled me over if I hadn’t weighed as much as I do.
With a squeal of what seems to be genuine relief, Maria throws herself at both of us, hugging and kissing us, tears rolling down her cheeks.
What on Earth is going on?
Then comes the biggest shock of all.
Grant finally joins the embrace, roughly tussling my hair before pulling me into a fierce hug, as if we’d just survived a deadly firefight together or something. He grips my cheeks and forces me to look him in the eye.
“Don’t you ever leave us again, Big Man.”
“Don’t listen to him, Abe,” Regan cuts in.
“What he really means is that we are both really, really sorry for making you think you needed to go off like this. We want—no, we need—you back. And we’re not going anywhere without you.
You’re one of the team, and if we made you feel like you weren’t important to us…
well, that’s on us. Because you are. Always will be. No matter what.”
“Yeah,” says Grant gruffly. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Blood brothers. Remember?” says Regan, and Grant nods.
I shift a little, the three of them have me at a disadvantage. I’m cornered. Outnumbered.
“But… well, what about Maria?” I nod towards Maria. “It seems to me that the three of you?—"
“No!” Grant’s voice is emphatic.
“Well, what then?”
“Nothing is what. Nothing changes at all.”
“What? Of course things have changed. You’re both sleeping with Maria.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… suppose it was the other way around.”