A Cross to Bear (11 page)

She considered that. No, Maggy wouldn’t have treated such a room so seriously. Whatever was down there was important. Gold perhaps? Gabby could only wonder.

Finding her courage, Gabby slowly began down the stairs. When she hit the third step, the torches flared to light. She was so startled that she dropped her phone. It went toppling end over end down the stairs and came to rest at the bottom.

Unlike the rest of the cellar, this room was made entirely of concrete. Gabby figured that Maggy must have had it built somehow.

Gabby continued on down the steps slowly and retrieved her phone. The door had no handles, just strange, swirling lettering like that found on the bottle. Should she have brought it with her? Gabby considered it, but then she noticed the small screen beside the door jutting out from the wall. It looked like one of those hand-scanning contraptions from the spy movies.

“Jesus, Maggy, what were you into?”

Silence permeated the hidden stairwell. She listened for sounds above, not wanting to have to explain this to the FBI. Looking up at the door, she decided to close it. It would be easier to explain her sudden disappearance than this strange iron door and whatever lay beyond. At the top of the stairs, she pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. She tried again but to no avail. Again she thought of the bottle. After retrieving it, she placed it back on the shelf where it belonged. There was a click and the sound of turning wheels. Gabby hurried to get behind the secret door before it closed with a thud.

“Shit!” said Gabby, realizing that she had no way to get out. She searched for some sort of button or lever, but the wall was smooth and unadorned.

With a sigh, she decided to deal with that later. For now she had other things to worry about, like what was beyond the iron door.

She hurried to the bottom of the stairs once more and placed her hand on the scanner. There was no line of light that read her hand and no glow coming from the device. Instead, something pricked her index finger.

“Ouch!” she yelled, pulling back her hand.

A single bead of blood pooled on her fingertip, and Gabby sucked the wound, staring at the scanner. A red light began to blink on the scanner. There was a beep, and the red light turned green.

Three loud mechanical clicks, like heavy bolts retracting, sounded in the big iron door. As the sound died away in the small space, Gabby reached out her hand and pushed the door open slowly.

Gabby took one step into the dark room and was not surprised when it lit up like the Fourth of July. The walls, ceiling, and even the floor glowed a soft white.

“What. The. Hell?” Gabby asked no one.

The room was small, ten feet wide and ten feet long. And it was empty.

Gabby moved to the far wall to inspect the rectangular panels of light. She ran her hand over one, and it blinked out suddenly. She stepped back, ready for anything. No booby trap was sprung, but rather the panel slid out from the wall mechanically and stopped. To Gabby’s utter surprise and confusion, the drawer held a dozen wooden stakes, wickedly pointed at one end and blunt at the other. A small but heavy-looking silver hammer sat on velvet beside the carefully placed stakes, along with a type of harness with loops to hold the strange weapons.

Gabby touched the front of the drawer again, and it receded into the wall. Terrified, excited, and curious, Gabby touched another. This one held four pistols and holsters. Another below it was full of ammo—silver bullets. Other drawers contained throwing knives and two long-barreled machine guns. Frantic and fearful of what this all might mean, Gabby checked each and every one. She found briefcases full of dozens of currencies, passports, and fake IDs. To her shock, she found ones in her name, as well as her father’s. She found silver and gold coins, a sniper rifle, silver nunchucks, throwing stars, daggers, and even a pair of katanas. There were many other guns, along with Kevlar body armor and an entire drawer of strange-looking jewelry.

Gabby felt like she was going crazy. It made no sense. Why would Maggy have an armory of weird weapons, dozens of currencies of cash, and all those IDs and passports?

“What the hell is going on?” Gabby yelled, frustrated and scared.

Hoping that the last hidden compartment would tell her something more, she placed her hand on the glowing panel. It slid back, revealing a single keyhole. Gabby instantly thought of the strange key that Maggy had left her. It was upstairs in the bedroom.

She went through the collection again, inspecting the weapons and documents for something, anything. Then she found it. Engraved on a plate on one of the pistols was a strange, swirling symbol. Excited by the lead, she checked the other weapons, many of which bore the same thing. She took her phone out of her pocket and snapped a couple of pictures of the symbol and hurried back out of the room. The iron door closed behind her silently as she reached the top of the stairs.

“Shit!” she said, remembering that she had closed herself in. “What would Maggy do?” she asked herself. “Well, she wouldn’t have overseen getting locked in here.”

She pushed on the door and felt the smooth walls. Finally, she kicked it. “Open up, damn it!”

To her surprise, the door opened. A strange laugh escaped her, so strained and frightened that it scared her to hear herself. She quickly raised and lowered the crystal bottle, causing the door to close once more.

As she ran up the stairs from the cellar, she thought that she would find an agent waiting for her. To her relief, she was alone. She hurried to the window and saw that all was as it had been before. In the bedroom, she locked the door and texted Darb from work.

I need your help. Sending pics. Can you tell me what this is?

Gabby waited.

And waited.

She nervously paced the bedroom. Every few steps or so, she was peeking out through the blinds, expecting to find Victor staring in at her.

Had she really seen him out there in the alley?

No, that was ridiculous.

Now that the moment had passed and doubt had time to set in, she began to wonder how much of what she saw and heard had been part of the dream. The dogfight had sounded unlike any she had ever heard. Even the memory of it sent chills down her spine and awoke a primal instinct inside her.

Gabby wondered if perhaps it hadn’t been dogs. She thought of the silver bullets and the wooden stakes.

Her phone chimed, and she jumped.

Cursing herself for having the volume so loud, she checked the message. It was from Darb.

Hey, Gabs. Heard about your sister. I’m really sorry. I feel like I should call you . . .

Her phone rang.

“Son of a bitch!”

Gabby didn’t feel like talking about her sister right now. She wanted to know what the hell the symbol on the guns meant.

The phone rang again.

If she didn’t answer it, he would know that she was screening his call. She had just texted him.

Another ring.

Reluctantly, she swiped the call through.

“Hey, Darb.”

“Gabs . . . I’m really sorry to hear about Maggy.”

“Thanks, Darb.”

“I would have gone to the funeral, but I didn’t even hear about it until today.”

“It’s all right. You hardly even knew her anyway.”

“How you holding up? You need company?”

Gabby knew that even if she wanted Darb to come over—which she didn’t—the feds wouldn’t let him in anyway. They had been pretty eager to get rid of Quip.

“Thanks, but I’m all right. Just trying to wrap my mind around everything that has happened.”

“Do you have someone? I mean, people with you?”

“Yeah. I’m all right.”

“I know you, Gabs. Not to be harsh, but you don’t really have a lot of friends. Is Derek at least being supportive?”

Gabby sighed; she didn’t want to get into all of it right now. “Not really. He’s not in the picture anymore.”

There was a long silence.

“Oh?”

“
Yeah. He and I are done.”

Another silence.

Gabby knew that Darb harbored feelings for her. He was actually quite forward with her over the years, and she with him. He called her Big Tits, which she actually liked coming from him. He was harmless enough. She in turn called him Cock Ring, due to the fact that he had a Prince Albert piercing on the end of his helmet. Gabby had never seen it. She had never wanted to. In truth, she was just flirting. Darb had entered the friend zone years ago. It was just that he didn’t really know it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he finally said.

He wasn’t.

“Don’t be. He is a piece of shit.”

“And it really is his loss.”

“That’s right. Listen. That picture I sent you might seem a little weird. It’s just for a story I’ve been working on. I’ve found that I have to stay busy right now. You know?”

“Of course.”

“Did you have a chance to look into it?”

“Didn’t have to. It’s an ancient German symbol called the Wolfsangel.”

Gabby thought of the sound of dogs fighting outside her window and shivered.

“A what?”

“Wolfsangel. Basically, an ancient insignia of a wolf. What kind of story are you covering?”

“Oh, just something for the blog,” said Gabby, jotting the word down on a piece of paper.

“Gabby Gabby? Have you decided to publish it?”

“Not yet. Still playing around with what exactly it will be about. Can you do a search for any companies here in the US that have that insignia as their corporate brand?”

“Gimme a sec.”

Gabby could hear his fingers flying over the keyboard and waited patiently.

“Huh . . .” said Darb.

“What is it? What did you find?”

“Well, there is one company out of Montana that has the Wolfsangel as their logo. They appear to be a weapons manufacturer.”

“
Yes!
” said Gabby. “That’s it! What is the company called?”

“The company’s name is Lycaon.”

Another chill ran down her back, and goose pimples sprouted on her arms. “Did you say Lycan?”

“Yes, only it’s spelled L-y-c-a-o-n. The name derives from King Lycaon and is the root of the word
lycanthrope
, as in werewolf.”

Gabby’s throat went dry.

“Gabby?”

“Yeah . . . awesome. Thanks, Darb.”

“Wait. Look, Gabs. I think that you should think twice about writing anything about these people.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I had to dig pretty deep to get to this stuff. Nothing came up on the usual servers, so I searched for it on the dark web.”

“The what?”

“The dark web . . . it’s the Internet below the Internet. Think of it as the underbelly of the World Wide Web. The black market of the digital world.”

“Okay . . .”

“There is no okay about it, Gabs. Everything about this company is weird. For instance, they don’t come up on regular search engines except for random blog posts or cryptic mentions that I do not doubt are code. It is clear that they produce weapons of some kind, but none of this makes sense.”

“Is Lycaon in any way associated with Lunaris or Michael Steele?”

“The billionaire?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Another silence filled the line.

“Gabs, what are you up to? Wasn’t Maggy’s body found outside of Steele Tower in Chicago?”

Shit!

“I don’t want to get you into it, Darb. The less you know, the better.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m already balls deep here. If something is going on, I need to know.”

“I’ll explain it all, but not now. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

“I can be there in half an hour.”

Gabby peeked out the window and went back to pacing the bedroom. “You can’t. They won’t let you in.”

“Huh? Who?”

Gabby sighed. “The feds. Listen, you’ve just got to trust m—”

“The feds!”

“Yes. Please. This isn’t the time. Is Lycaon associated with Lunaris or not?”

It was Darb’s turn to sigh into the phone. “Gimme a sec. I’ve been checking into it since you mentioned it.”

Gabby sat on the edge of the bed and waited with the phone in the crook of her neck and a pen and pad at the ready. On the other end, Darb’s fingers were flying over the keyboard.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Hold on . . . almost got it . . . fuck you, dude! Got it. All right . . . Jesus, Gabs, what are you getting into here?”

“What did you find?”

“Funny thing happened. I started digging deeper into Lycaon, and someone attacked my computer. Tried to hack it. They sent a plethora of viruses my way, but I beat them down like the little bitches they are.” Darb laughed. “He’s still trying. Fuck you!” His fingers moved so fast over the keys that it sounded as though more than one person were typing. “Boom! Deal with that!”

Gabby waited as Darb ushered a chorus of profanity and typed like someone had a gun to his head.

“What’s going on?”

No answer was forthcoming from Darb for what seemed like forever, then finally he gave a cheer.

“You still there, Gabs?”

“What the hell is happening over there?”

“Oh, just an epic hacker battle. You are never boring, are you, Big Tits?”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“This dickhead was trying . . . hold on . . . shit! Son of a bitch!”

“What’s wrong?”

“My whole system just crashed,” Darb said in utter astonishment. “How the hell . . .”

“Is that bad?”

“Of course it’s bad!”

“I’m sorry. I should have never gotten you into this.”

“Well, you did, babe. I got some info before the uber dick shut me down. It seems that you were right about Lunaris being somehow associated with Lycaon. I found a few clues, just mentions, but still, given the lengths that
someone
went to in trying to stop me, I know it’s something. I followed the rabbit hole from Lycaon, stumbled across a dozen fake companies and sister companies, and pinned the tail on the donkey. Unless I’m mistaken, Michael Steele owns Lycaon.”

Gabby finally hung up the phone with Darb, promising that she would explain everything shortly. It was a lie. She had no idea what was going on, and the more she dug into Michael Steele, the stranger things became.