The Unseen (15 page)

He smiled. Good timing on Saul's part. Or bad timing, depending on your view.

The car started and backed out, then the garage door rumbled back into place again. Lucas remained still, listening, waiting. He had no way of knowing if other people were inside the home. Saul didn't exactly seem like the wife-and-2.3-kids type, but then, he didn't seem like the historic-cottage type either.

He could probably go back through the garage ceiling now, enter the home through the door between the garage and the main house. But it still felt better to be up here; he'd check to make sure no one else was in the home before dropping through the ceiling.

Satisfied it was safe to proceed, Lucas went to the small square of gypsum board that accessed the home underneath. He felt the edge of the board with his fingers, lifting it out of its place and putting it to the side. Below was a hallway with honey-colored wood floors.

Lucas stuck his head through the opening, surveying the hall, listening for other sounds. Nothing, save for the heavy tick of an oldfashioned pendulum clock somewhere out of sight. He couldn't see it, but he recognized the sound immediately; an image of a tall clock with glass doors, weights you pulled down each day to keep the clock running—

Where had that come from? Had he ever actually seen such a clock? Not that he could remember. So why was he getting that mental picture?

No matter. Satisfied that the interior of the house was empty, he pulled out his nylon rope and knotted one end of it over a ceiling joist. He wrapped the rope around his forearm, then dropped down through the hole and into the home.

The home smelled warm, inviting. Saul had obviously cooked himself some breakfast recently, and the smell of it still clung in the air. Sausage or bacon, maybe.

Lucas went down the hallway, looking at some photos that had been mounted on the wall—old black-and-white photos, including one of a balding man, grin stretching across his whole face, with an arm draped around the shoulders of a woman who wore her hair pulled back into a severe bun. The woman was smiling as well, but seemed somehow embarrassed, as if someone had just told an inappropriate joke, and she was staring down at the ground in front of her.

A happy moment, a totem that drew him immediately. Yes, this would make a nice totem.

The end of the hall opened into a sitting room, and the oldfashioned clock he had heard was against the wall in the corner. Its face was engraved with scrollwork and Roman numerals, and the clock's cabinet was made of dark stained wood, buffed to a sheen in places by its many years of service.

It wasn't exactly the clock he'd pictured, but it was close—close enough to make him stand there, staring at the brass pendulum swinging back and forth for a few moments, comforted by its reassuring arc.

Yes, this clock—well, not
this
clock, but one very much like it—brought back . . . something. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but it bobbed at the surface of his consciousness, begging to be remembered.

Tearing himself away from the clock in the sitting room, Lucas made his way to the kitchen and looked around. An old teapot, bright red, sat on the stove. Knickknacks and antiques adorned the shelves on the walls. Nothing interesting there.

He had turned to go back to the sitting room when he heard something that stopped him dead: a key going into the front door, just ten feet away from him past a small coat closet. There was a curtain across the glass pane on the front door, but Lucas could see a man's head outlined behind the curtain, struggling with the key.

He'd have no time to get back to his nylon rope and his escape route through the ceiling. Time to improvise. As he heard the bolt turning inside the lock, he stepped toward the door and into the space behind it; a fraction of a second later, the door opened and swung inward and toward him, creating a small pocket where he now hid. The figure made no effort to close the door behind him, instead hurrying toward the interior of the home. Footsteps made their way across the hardwood floors, and Lucas immediately recognized the gait of Saul himself. He could tell the man was muttering, saying something to himself as he moved through the home.

Saul disappeared for a few moments, then reappeared. He had his head down and was going back toward the front door when he stopped. He changed directions, and Lucas peeked, watching as Saul went to the ancient pendulum clock on the wall; he opened the glass doors on the front and pulled the weights on the chains, which would allow the pendulum to keep moving and the clock to keep running. Saul took a last look at the clock, nodded, and turned toward the door again.

Lucas pressed himself against the wall, feeling the door get pulled away as it closed. Saul twisted the key to relock the door and moved away from the house. Moving his head and peeking out of the curtain on the door, Lucas saw the man go back to his blue sedan, which sat haphazardly in the driveway with the driver's door still hanging open. Once inside, he backed the car out of the driveway and then pointed it west, chirping the tires a bit as he wheeled onto the street.

Lucas relaxed, realizing he'd been holding his breath for the last several seconds. Close call.

Okay, so Saul had obviously forgotten something at the house and came back to retrieve it before going to . . . wherever he was going. In the process, Lucas had nearly been caught.

This was one reason why he didn't ever creep into people's homes: too many variables. You never knew when someone was going to change plans or show up unannounced.

And yet, the thrill of it was coursing through his veins now. He had to admit, this was much more interesting than scanning the desks of secretarial pools. Much more dangerous.

After a few moments, Lucas tried to retrace Saul's steps. He hadn't seen where the man went, so he had no way of knowing for sure. However, Saul hadn't seen the nylon rope or open hole in the ceiling of the hallway, so he was pretty sure the man hadn't gone down his hallway. Good thing. Really, that only left the sitting area.

He'd been able to see Saul at the pendulum clock, but not in the rest of the sitting area. What had he returned to retrieve? Could be something as simple as a wallet, he supposed.

First things first. What if Saul came back a second time? After all, if you forget one thing, it's just as likely you'll forget something else.

Lucas went to the front door, found a vase holding some reeds sitting by the door. He pulled them in front of the door, so the door opening would hit the vase and topple it. If Saul came back, he'd knock over the vase, curse as he uprighted it and cleaned the mess, wondering how the vase had got behind the door. But he would dismiss it, thinking he had knocked over the vase when he left or something similar. Lucas knew this; it was the way people naturally thought. Part of looking but not seeing. Part of hearing but not feeling.

In the meantime, that would give Lucas enough time to make his way up the nylon rope and back into the ceiling. If Saul used the garage instead, he knew the electric door opening would give him plenty of time to escape.

He turned away from the front door, went back through the sitting room and down the hallway. In the hall there were three doors, all of them closed. The first was a bathroom, the second a bedroom, the third a guest room/home office. He smiled as he stared at the desk and file cabinet in the office. This was where he would start.

First he went to the file cabinet and opened the top drawer. Four or five years of income tax returns, some owner's manuals for various equipment, a file for warranties, and another filled with bank statements. He checked the front page of the first tax return, filled out for a Saul Slater. Lucas paused; so Saul really
was
his name. Go figure. Saul's occupation was listed as a federal agent for the United States government. That wasn't much help.

Lucas pulled out the tax file and checked the declared income, then compared it to what he found in the banking folder. Nothing looked suspicious, until he got to the back of the banking. In the past couple of months, Saul Slater had opened a Swiss account and made deposits totaling something more than $200,000. Lucas doubted those figures would show up on this year's tax return.

The second drawer held nothing of interest. Health club memberships, some medical records, various insurance policies. The desk held nothing he wanted, either, so he backed out of the room and went to Saul's bedroom. Something in his gut told him he was looking for something well hidden, something Saul wouldn't just leave out in the open. What it was, he didn't know. But he felt there was something in here. Still, after searching Saul's closet, dressers, and bed, checking for false bottoms and other hiding spots, he came up empty.

The banking files were there, suggesting Saul wasn't just your friendly patriotic secret agent, but that's all he had.

Disappointed, Lucas went back to the sitting room, sank into the easy chair with a deep sigh. He knew he should be cleaning up, moving things back where they were, getting out of the house—Saul could be back again any time—but he needed to think. He didn't want to leave the house without . . . something tangible. If he hadn't seen the bank records, he wouldn't be suspicious. Well, wouldn't be
as
suspicious, anyway. But something smelled fishy, and he needed to find the fish before he left.

A sudden whirring sound startled him, and he leapt to his feet, only to realize it was the giant wall clock across the room from him. It was the top of the hour, and a small mechanical bird came out of its perch behind a small door, tilting its head and chirping. After ten chirps, it retreated, and the small door shut behind it.

Lucas smiled. A cuckoo clock. That's what it was called. Had he seen a cuckoo clock? Once again, his gut told him yes, he had been around one of these things before. But he couldn't say when. It was something that existed in the Dark Years—the years before the orphanage, when he knew nothing about himself.

Still standing, he walked slowly across the floor and approached the clock, much like a bomb technician approaching a suspicious package. This was a powerful totem, he knew, a very powerful personal totem, and he didn't even know why.

Standing in front of the clock, he watched the large pendulum swing back and forth a few times, creating giant arcs in the air. The heavy
tick-tick-tick
of the clock was louder than ever, and he could hear gears and movements spinning inside the cabinet.

He touched the face of the clock, running his fingers over the surface. Then he moved to the glass over the giant pendulum, and finally to the closed wooden cabinet making up the base of the clock. He half expected the cabinet to be locked, but its dark walnut door opened easily for him. Nothing inside to see, but he felt around with his hands, knocking on the surfaces, and in a few moments he found a small lever at the very back of the space. When he pressed the lever, the side of the cabinet folded out, holding a sheath of papers.

His trembling fingers touched the papers, then grasped them and brought them out. He pulled open a seal on the sheath and examined the papers inside.

Lucas knew immediately that he was looking at dark secrets, secrets that could get him killed. The first several sheets were printed with vertical characters he faintly recognized: Japanese writing, or Chinese maybe.

Below these thin onionskin papers, he found a printout of an Excel file: names and addresses of several people—at least a couple dozen in all. Next, a stack of half a dozen photos. Surveillance photos, obviously, of several people he didn't recognize.

And a few he did recognize, from his Creep Club meeting. One in particular: Snake, the founder.

Okay, that shouldn't be too surprising. Saul had said, after all, that he was tracking the Creep Club, trying to break into their midst.

Next were a couple of compact discs in cases, and finally, several sheets of correspondence. He glanced at the notes and printouts of e-mails back and forth between someone identified as Native Son and another identified as Beast from the East. A quick glance at the correspondence told him it was setting up a series of meetings, dropoffs, exchanges.

Lucas thought of the bench near the Lincoln Memorial. Had Saul met this contact there the day before? He thought it was a good bet.

Lucas kept scanning the documents, his mind taking in the information and storing it. One word in particular caught his attention and begged for further consideration:
Guoanbu
.

Lucas put down the files, then swung around his backpack and dug around in it for a few moments. He came out with a small digital camera and began snapping images of the papers and photos. He didn't need the images for himself; his photographic memory was filing away information as he looked through the folder. But he thought he might need to show the images to someone else.

The more Lucas studied the documents he held, the more he became convinced Saul was, indeed, working for a secret government agency.

But he was also convinced it wasn't a government agency of the United States.

Lucas put everything back in the sheath, refastened the seal, and set it all back in the secret compartment. Part of him wanted to take the compact discs, but that would certainly alert Saul that someone had been in his secret stash.

That done, Lucas replaced the vase beside the front door, then combed through the house again, making sure everything was exactly as it had been when he entered. Finally, he climbed his nylon rope through the ceiling, one word flashing in his mind again and again.

Guoanbu
.

FOURTEEN

BACK AT THE LIVEWIRE, HE PUNCHED INTO THE CREEP CLUB HOME PAGE again. Donavan's username and password were deleted from the system, which meant Lucas was now locked out.

It also meant he had no way of tracking the movements of the club; he had no idea where or when its next meeting would be, unless he made it back over to Donavan's house and trailed him. Something he'd have to try, just as soon as he did a bit of research.