<It’s like being back in IET. And of all the things I miss least about my military service, Basic Training ranks near the top.>
Lunch consisted of slapped together ham and tomato sandwiches, a choice of mayo or mustard. Presley had one of each.
Fabler didn’t talk.
Afternoon focused on grappling practice. Fabler had some serious skills, and drilled Presley on several moves; arm bars, wrist locks, leg locks.
Several times, his hands touched the bandages beneath her shirts.
He didn’t comment. But Presley noted that Fabler took care never to touch the same bandage twice.
He also became gentler. Which felt less like grappling, and more like hugging.
<Ugh.>
“Let’s try the choke hold again.” He sat behind her on the ground, his arms and legs around her. “Cinch it under the chin. Tight. Like this. This is important, in case your opponent has a longer neck.”
“A longer neck? Are we wrestling giraffes?”
Fabler didn’t respond.
They switched positions, Presley wrapping around him.
<Feels like gripping a sack of iron cables.>
Fabler made her choke him fifteen times.
After grappling, dinner was spaghetti. Just noodles and a jar of sauce.
<Fabler’s homemaking skills are inversely proportional to his combat ability.>
“When do I get paid?” Presley tried to make it sound casual as she wiped her plate with the last of the brioche.
“Every seventh day.”
“And the boarding includes food?”
“Yes. That’s what you’re eating right now. Food.”
“Could it be food I pick out?”
Fabler stared at her.
“I could do the shopping next time I go into town. I can go into town, right?”
Presley had no intention of visiting town again anytime soon, not with Kadir prowling around. But she wanted to gauge Fabler’s reaction.
“Of course. Grocery shopping is one of your activities.”
“Can you tell me what other activities? Or are they secret?”
She went for playful, using the tone she’d developed for married men in bars.
“Getting your hair and nails done. Going to the spa for facials and massages. Hot yoga at the gym.”
<Well, this sure is unexpected.> “You’re paying for all that?”
“Yes. It’s part of the job.”
She guffawed, just once, more out of surprise than amusement. “I still don’t know what this job actually is.”
“You will.” Fabler slurped a long noodle into his mouth, getting sauce on his lips. “In time.”
FABLER ○ 9:38pm
Fabler put on a Sigourney Weaver DVD and watched Presley walk down the hallway.
<Right past the hidden panel, without a glance.>
The top-notch carpentry work made Fabler confident Presley wouldn’t discover the hidden door.
<She’d sure be in for a shock if she did.
<Anyone who saw it would be shocked by my secret room.
<If she put her ear up to it, she’d hear something.
<But what’s the likelihood of that?>
“I’d like to turn in early, if that’s okay.” Presley yawned. “I’m pretty beat.”
“After the movie.”
“Watching movies is part of the job, too?”
“Yes.”
Presley sat on the couch and watched the film.
Fabler sat in the easy chair and watched her.
THE WATCHER ○ July 27, 2017 ○ 1:56+am
The obedience prod is a shining example of form and function.
It delivers an electrical impulse which stimulates the entire nervous system.
The pain is excruciating.
Pain leads to compliance.
Even the most primitive of animals can be taught to comply.
It can render a mastodon helpless.
The Watcher stands before the Experiment, prod in hand.
“It is again time for surgery.”
The Watcher uses the prod.
He does this several times, so the lesson is properly learned.
When the Experiment is splayed out on the floor, conscious but unwilling to fight back, the severing begins.
PRESLEY ○ July 29, 2017 ○ 6:22am
Lying awake in bed, Presley waited and listened.
She kept her burner phone off, and her only two contacts had explicit instructions to never call unless it was an emergency.
For the past three days, Fabler had gotten up at dawn to jog through the woods. It baffled Presley how the man found the energy, considering he trained alongside Presley, doing everything she did.
Fabler usually jogged for twenty to thirty minutes. That gave Presley a chance to check her phone for messages, which she quickly went through.
It also gave her a chance to snoop.
Yesterday, she’d called the doctor to transfer her prescription from Walmart to Fabler’s grocery store of choice, an independent, family-run business. Presley hoped Kadir wouldn’t be able to trace it. She no longer needed Xanax to fall asleep; being constantly exhausted took care of that. But Presley still depended on her Prazosin to keep the night terrors at bay.
Getting up four times a night, screaming, didn’t qualify as restful. And even though Fabler had been extremely good at avoiding any personal chit-chat, high-volume night terrors would likely be a topic he’d want to address.
<And I don’t want to address it at all.>
Presley wouldn’t trade her military experience for anything. Not only did it forge her into the self-reliant woman she became, but she’d gotten the greatest gift ever during her tour.
On the downside, the PTSD continued to stick around, long after the bombs stopped dropping.
Presley could usually control her fear and anxiety during the daytime, only needing Xanax when a panic attack cinched in. But asleep, with her subconscious untethered, she relived Afghanistan and the firefights and the explosions and Jason and enough blood and guts for a dozen lifetimes. Prazosin quelled that nightly storm.
Presley heard the front door slam; Fabler going on his morning jog.
<The sound I’ve been waiting for.>
After a slow count to ten she got out of bed and checked her phone.
<No emergency messages.
<If Fabler sticks to his schedule, I have about fifteen minutes to search the house and get back into bed before he returns.>
Presley knew the house well. Not only because she made it a point to pay attention to her surroundings, but because Fabler demanded it; one of her latest training exercises required navigating the cabin with her eyes closed. She knew how many steps from her bathroom to the kitchen, how many from the front door to the porch, how to get from the living room to the backpack in her bedroom in under eight seconds while wearing a blindfold and ear protection.
She had already done a quick toss of the place during Fabler’s previous excursions, checking closets and cabinets and drawers, searching everywhere except for Fabler’s bedroom.
That’s where he kept his computer.
Presley decided to try the PC before she searched the room. She slid on some blue shorts that clashed with the purple t-shirt she’d slept in. Then she checked to make sure he wasn’t on the property, and spent a good ten seconds listening for sounds in the woods. Satisfied Fabler wasn’t nearby, Presley padded through the house, quiet even though no one was home, moving slowly down the hall and pausing outside his bedroom.
The wooden floor creaked under her feet.
A loud, shrill creak.
<Enough to wake Fabler, if he’d been sleeping.
<Good to know.>
She stared at the door, closed but without a knob or lock, took a deep breath, noted how her heartbeat seemed louder and how much it had speeded up, checked around her again to make sure Fabler wasn’t there, placing a palm on t
he door, slowly pushing it open and seeing—
An ordinary bedroom.
The bed made up, military style. Presley bet the hospital corners were so tight the sheets could pass the quarter bounce test. Everything clean and in order and squared away. Two dressers, two closets, a trunk, and a nightstand.
Presley continued into his room and paused, catching a scent.
The room smelled like a guy. Musky, male, and something else.
<Fear.>
Fear had an odor. Sort of metallic and sharp. Presley knew it well, thanks to combat, and the scent brought back memories she wished weren’t memories.
Presley hesitated—
<Don’t freeze, stay focused.>
—then resumed motion, walking toward his desk, the floor creaking again.
<Damn. Creaky house.>
She pulled out the chair and sat, inspecting the computer. Compact model, the tower small enough to fit on the desktop next to the printer and monitor. Luckily, it boasted a CD drive. Presley found the power button. The PC appeared brand new, but the processor was low end, taking forever to boot up, whirring and chittering and making so much damn noise that Presley wondered if Fabler could hear it, even from a kilometer deep in the woods. When the Windows screen finally came on, it asked for a password.
Presley tried the obvious.
L-O-R-I.
The user name or password is incorrect.
As ex-military, Fabler knew the importance of keeping his data safe. But a grunt was a grunt, and the 11 Bravo guys Presley had met weren’t renowned for their tech savvy.
<I bet Fabler’s only protection is a password. His computer files won’t be encrypted.
<I’ll try a simple hack at first, and see how far I can get.>
Presley inserted her OphCrack CD in the drive and restarted, then repeatedly tapped F10. Once she set the PC to boot from her disk, it took a few minutes for the OphCrack loading screen to come up.
The program searched hashes. Unlike a brute force attack which could take days by trying every possible key combination up to 14 characters, OphCrack searched the hard disk’s SAM files for stored passwords; a simpler and quicker solution. As the program did its thing, Presley took a quick tour of the house, peering through windows for Fabler, ears tuned to any sound of human presence. After a tense few minutes, she squeaked back into the bedroom and checked on the computer.
The program found the password.
I-L-O-V-E-L-O-R-I.
<Sure you do, crazy guy.>
Presley removed the CD, rebooted using F10, changed the boot order back to HDD, and then waited for the password screen to come up. Windows accepted her typing <thx OphCrack>, and then Presley stared at Fabler’s desktop screen—
—and was surprised by what she found.
FABLER ○ 6:43am
Fabler blew his breath out through clenched teeth as he surveyed the woods around him.
Once again, he hadn’t been able to find what he’d been looking for.
<It has to be here.
<Somewhere.>
He checked his GPS screen. It had tracked all two dozen of his forest excursions, jagged lines jutting out from the center hub where his house stood. The image looked like a child’s crayon drawing of a flower.
<No luck. Yet again.
<Time to head back.>
He tucked the Garmin into his jacket pocket and jogged toward home. Double-time.
<I’m pretty sure Presley was awake when I left.
<I could tell by her breathing.
<I’ve been gone for eighteen minutes.
<Which is too long to leave her alone.>
There were things in the house he didn’t want her to find.
PRESLEY ○ 6:44am
There were only a handful of icons on the computer desktop, all of which came with the computer.
She checked his control panel.
<This is bizarre.>
Fabler hasn’t installed a single program since setting the computer up, May 13th.
She checked his recycle bin, found it empty, and pushed a thumb drive into the top USB slot. It held a data recovery program, which could restore any deleted files. Recycling a file in Windows on an HDD didn’t actually erase it. Instead, Windows allowed the data to be overwritten as new files and programs were saved or created. The data remained there until something replaced it.
<Anything he deleted, I should be able to recover.>
While she ran the program, she tried to check Fabler’s email, and noted he hadn’t set it up.
<Hotmail or Google, maybe?>
She checked his Chrome history, searching the websites he’d recently visited.
<Holy shit.>
GRIM ○ 6:48am
A nightmare woke him up. One where he needed to get away from something, or maybe get to something, and it was like running through a neck-high river, the current against him.
He considered trying to go back to sleep, knew it would be futile, and checked the time.
<Perfect. It’s beer o’clock.>
Grim got up and grabbed a cold one from the fridge and took it into the bathroom to drink while he pissed.
<In one end, out the other.>
He finished the beer <cheap crap but still better than that alcopop> while in the bathroom expelling the ones from last night. A finished beer was always a cause for sadness. But, happily, it was three minutes after beer o’clock, which was also beer o’clock.
Grim cracked another brew, because it was futile to fight beer o’clock, and then he checked the monitor app on his phone. After cycling through the cameras he located Presley sitting at Fabler’s computer.
“What’s she doing?”
Donny didn’t respond.
Grim checked the other cameras. No Fabler in the house. He switched back to Presley, trying to make out what was on the computer screen.
<Too far away to see anything.>
“Should have bought the better cameras.”
He glanced at Donny, who was upside-down and staring at his little plastic treasure chest.
Waiting for something to happen.
<I feel you, man.>
Grim flipped through the other cameras, one at a time, and paused on the porch.
In the distance. A blur of movement.
<Fabler.
<Jogging toward the house.>
“Oh, shit.” Grim switched back to Presley, who was still hunched over the keyboard. “Get out of there. He’ll go postal if he sees you on his computer.”
Grim had been trained to act during a crisis situation, which this certainly was.
<But what can I do?
<Warn her. I need to warn her somehow.>
Grim changed the camera view to the porch.
No Fabler.
But his muddy hiking boots sat next to the patio door.
<Holy shit.
<He’s in the house.>
FABLER ○ 6:52am
After kicking off his shoes, Fabler went in through the sliding door and padded quietly to the kitchen.
<I’ll find it. Eventually I’ll find it. There’s a lot of woods out there, and—>
Something interrupted his train of thought.
A clicking noise.
<Sounds like fingers on a keyboard.
<Presley?>
Fabler left the kitchen, following the sound.
GRIM ○ 6:53am
<Do something.
<Warn her.
<How? How can I warn her?
<Call. I need to call.>
Grim hit the home button on his cell and dialed a number he hadn’t dialed in almost three years.
PRESLEY ○ 6:53am
She scanned through Fabler’s search history.
<Redheads.
<The only thing he does online is look for redheads.
<Dozens of them.>
Presley continued to scroll down, hoping to see something else. Anything else. Even kinky porn wouldn’t be as disturbing and incriminating as endless search
es for red haired women.
The only website he visited that had no connection to redheads was clearanceemployment.com.
<He looked for me.
<There’s nothing on that site that will expose my secrets.
<But what’s with this redhead obsession?>
Presley clicked on one, and the results were worse than she feared.
The woman in the link lead was missing.
So was the next woman she clicked on.
And the next.
<Is he searching for missing women?
<Or…
<Could he be searching for them, and then they go missing?>
Presley was looking for a date on the page, and then jerked halfway out of her chair when the phone rang.
GRIM ○ 6:54am
As the phone rang, Grim held his cell at arm’s length and glared at the cameras.
Presley sat completely still, perched in front of Fabler’s computer,—
—staring at the ringing phone on the desk next to her.
<Don’t pick it up, Presley. Let Fabler get it. Then you’ll hear him.>
Grim accessed the kitchen camera.
No Fabler.
Grim quickly checked the other five cameras.
<He’s not anywhere.
<Where the hell is he?
<The hall?
<He’s gotta be in the hall.>
Grim hadn’t put a camera in the hallway. But the hall connected to the kitchen, which connected to…
<Fabler’s room. He’s coming.
<C’mon, Presley. Get out of there.>
Grim willed her to move, praying to a God he didn’t believe in.
“C’mon. Move. Get out of there. Get out of there, goddammit.”
PRESLEY ○ 6:54am
She almost answered the phone. Fabler hadn’t gotten a call in the entire time she’d been there, and Presley’s curiosity piqued.
<Who could it be?
<He never gave me instructions not to answer the phone.>
<Maybe it’s Fabler.
<Maybe he’s calling and wants me to pick up.