Shadow Memories: A Novel (The Singularity Conspiracy Book 1) Page 11

  I looked around. The guard was hidden by the fountain, but I could see the hint of his shadow, outlined by moonlight.

  So, with more than a little reservation, I lowered myself down the other side, landing with a thud on the lush, green grass. Here, I caught my breath for a moment, looking up at the starry night through a copse of trees. These, they weren’t from around here. Nothing around Seaside Heights grew this green. I waited, tracking the guard’s movements, until down the paved driveway, I could see the gatehouse, the light inside indicating that the guard had returned to the front.

  I brushed the grass from my pants, grabbed the hook and went the opposite direction, staying hidden by the trees.

  44

  Antiques

  There was one window—stained glass, ancient, stolen from a Medieval cathedral—that wasn’t hooked up to the alarm system.

  It was the one that overlooked the Pacific, straight over a sheer drop cliff.

  After scrambling across the courtyard and making my way to the side of the mansion, I saw what I was up against. Well, I knew it already, but seeing a problem in three dimensions is always a much more sobering experience.

  I pulled on my leather gloves and edged closer to the cliff, where the ground disappeared into an almost bottomless drop. This had to be against building code. A kid or a dog could be chasing a ball and just run straight into the ocean, dropping seventy feet to a watery grave.

  Maybe Ames didn’t have kids. Or a dog. Millionaire playboy real estate developers don’t have time for ball and chains.

  I licked my lips and bit my tongue. Then I pressed up against the mansion’s cool brick and hugged the tiny lip—no more than a foot or a foot and a half wide—that stretched around its back. I tried to look straight out, into the night sky, but there was no avoiding it—everywhere I looked, the ocean on the horizon whispered don’t fuck up.

  I would’ve shaken my head to try to clear my thoughts, but I was too afraid that I’d face plant on the boulders below. That’d be nice. About midway through, realizing what I was doing, I had a little existential freak out about my life and the choices that had led me to this ridiculous juncture.

  You know, if I’d just gotten a decent office job, or maybe like, an honest construction gig, working with my hands, then I wouldn’t be about to die, with no one to even notice that I was gone.

  “Goddamnit, goddamnit, get it together, Kurt,” I muttered, trying to give myself an intense pep talk in a whisper. Heart yammering and waves spinning below, it didn’t help much. I turned and looked back, then at my destination.

  No man’s land, caught right in the middle. Which caused my heart—already threatening to attack—to jump into a jackhammer like thump. But there was no good way out. Might as well continue.

  Inch by inch, I moved my feet along the cliff’s edge, fingers grasping for anything that I could find. But the masonry was impeccable, and there were no defects, no handholds. The search comforted me, though, gave me hope of safety—and that was enough to keep my mind from the churning waters below.

  I reached the space below the window.

  I craned my head backwards.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  The schematics said it was seven feet off the ground. But that extra foot above me seemed like a light year.

  I reached back and flailed with a gloved hand, bracing myself against the wall with the other. I connected with nothing. Stones skittered into the water as my feet ground into the loose dirt. Body wobbling, I brought my arm down and I leaned heavy against the brick, throwing all my weight against it, as if this would keep me from toppling into the sea.

  When I was convinced that my balance had returned, I tried again, this time my hand smacking the window. The sharp crack of breaking glass echoed through the night. I sucked in my breath, waiting for the alarm, recalling my conversation with Bob on the matter.

  “What do you mean I just break the window,” I had asked, “isn’t someone going to hear it?”

  “Not unless they are present in that room. Or have the windows open above.”

  “That’s reassuring,” I had replied, “so it’s a crapshoot.”

  “Is not everything in life this way, though?”

  Goddamn Bob. I’d like to see him remain that Zen, out here on a cliff, tip of his sneaker hanging out into nothingness because the ground was too narrow, with the sound of broken glass running through his head like a gunshot.

  He wouldn’t be so cool then.

  As I brought my hand back down, slivers of glass fell around me, sprinkling my hair and the sea below. A shame, the way I had to ruin this antique. No doubt cost this Ames fella quite a bit of money to steal or acquire from whatever far-off land it’d caught his fancy in.

  I reached back again, swinging my arm a little harder, so I’d have to spend a little less time out here on the cliff.

  As I did, I felt the ground beneath me give way. Just a little, but enough to know that something wasn’t right.

  I grasped at the sill.

  My feet left the ground just as the dirt crumbled into the abyss below, forming an empty hole where I’d stood not moments before.

  Leaving me hanging from a window sill seventy feet above some very jagged rocks.

  45

  Chapel

  Looking down and seeing that your feet have nothing beneath them is terrifying. When does that happen in real life? There’s nothing you can do to prepare for that.

  But there I was, hanging over a nasty drop, trying to break into a millionaire’s mansion. And for what? To help Bob on his little Beacon grabbing quest?

  Fuck Bob.

  Not that this sentiment did me any good, stranded high above the sea. The bed was already made; too bad it was full of rusty nails.

  My forearms burned and the fingers in my hands seared, the sharp edges of the window cutting through the leather and into my skin. I could feel my hands inching closer to the sea side, slipping with my waning energy.

  My feet tried to scramble up the wall, but there was nothing for them to do against the slick brick.

  I was going to fall.

  They say your life flashes before your eyes right before the end, but it doesn’t.

  No, you’re just scared. I don’t believe anyone when they say they’re ready to go. Don’t want to live any more. Have given up on all this.

  That’s all I was thinking, then. How real it all felt. Even the pain, in a way, was good. Because it meant I was still breathing—even when it seemed like a white hot fire poker was being jammed through each finger.

  Fingers on the very edge of the sill, it wouldn’t be long now.

  Falling. It began, and then a strong grip wrapped around my forearm.

  “Pull,” the voice said, “pull harder!”

  With the last bit of my strength, I grasped the frame, yanking my body forward. With the extra help, it almost came easy, like it wasn’t a big deal. I toppled face first into the small room—a replica of a medieval chapel—and groaned. Warmth spilled from my hands, seeping through the gloves and into the stone floor.

  The figure was on top of me in a flash, pinning me against the cool stone.

  “Kurt?”

  “Cassie?” The voice had sounded angelic, ethereal, when it had popped out around the edges of the glass. My brain could only accept it as such. But it was her. The only question then, was simple. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  And I was so enjoying my rapture moment, too.

  “You’re outside, on the fucking cliff, trying to break in, and you’re asking me that question?”

  She rolled off me, and with a mighty groan, I brought myself into a kneeling position. It hurt like hell, but what I saw hurt even worse. There was Cassie, but she wasn’t my Cassie. No, she was dressed in a see-through black teddy, and her hair was tousled, a
hint of dampness clinging to her brow.

  I staggered to my feet, heading towards the door. She cut me off, and pushed me down onto one of the hard wooden benches, which wasn’t too difficult to do at that point. I winced.

  “I got to do something…for Bob.”

  “Bob?”

  “The alien.”

  “You call him Bob?”

  “He sent me here for one of those Beacon things. Said that the guy who lives here has one of them. Ames.”

  “Jordan? I don’t—”

  “Hey, look at that,” I said, “I know something you don’t, for once. Your new boyfriend’s one of those Singularity kooks.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re right,” I said, disappointed that she didn’t fall for the bait, “he’s not. You Guardians hide these things well, seeing that regular people can get them.”

  “Only if someone doesn’t do their duty.”

  “Oh, so I see that you’ve embraced this new Guardianship gig than you let on,” I said. “I’m learning all sorts of things today. This is fun.”

  “Kurt…” But her thought was cut short by the sound of footsteps, and another voice.

  “Cassie? Are you down here?”

  “Hide,” she said, dropping her voice into a hurried whisper, “move faster, damnit.” She kicked me over to the bench closest to the window. I resisted.

  “But I’d love to meet him, maybe ask his secret.”

  “You two can measure dicks later,” she said, “but right now, if you don’t want to go to jail, you need to get under the damn bench.”

  “A persuasive argument. I’m touched you care.”

  “I don’t know how much I care, but if they sent you here, then they had a damn good reason to do it. And I trust them.”

  “I see that,” I said, curling up underneath the bench. “We’re not done here.”

  She silenced any further dissension with her serious eyes, then walked to the front of the room, where she crossed Jordan’s path.

  “There you are,” he said, “I thought you might have gotten lost.”

  “Yeah…” she said, her voice trailing off, like she was looking for words, “I just saw the chapel, and I didn’t know you were religious and shit.”

  He laughed. “I’m not. My architect thought that it would bring in a nice light through the window. Want a little tour?”

  “No, no,” she said, and I think I heard her pulling him away from the door, “it’s dark, anyway.”

  “But the stars, they’ll shine through it.”

  “I can think of something better. It’s blasphemous, though.”

  I heard the sound of a kiss. Then another, wet and sloppy, before the pair crashed to the ground in the hallway, out of sight but not of mind.

  It went on like that forever. Bastard was like a goddamn endurance runner.

  “That was great,” Jordan said through gasps of breath when the calamity outside was over.

  No, no it wasn’t. That was fucking terrible.

  But I didn’t get input on the matter.

  “Yeah, it was,” Cassie said.

  Goddamnit.

  46

  Brief Respite

  Stallions need their rest, even if it’s standing up. Jordan took his lying down, though, or at least I imagined he did, since he followed Cassie’s suggestion to go to bed.

  Cramped, stiff and in a negative state of mind, I rolled out from beneath the bench and stared at the mini-domed ceiling. How could a guy compete with something like this? A couple hundred for finding lost dogs just wasn’t going to cut it.

  I allowed, however, my feelings of intense dislike for Ames to cede into the background. I didn’t want to piss Bob off, and besides, these Singularity fellows were bad news. Whatever the powers of these little figurines and cave paintings were, I shuddered to think what those whackjobs would do with them.

  I ran through the blueprint of the house. To the left, the master wing. To the right, down some twists and corners, sat Jordan Ames’ extensive collection of ancient objects.

  Inside the mansion, the security was far more lax. It was almost normal. I strolled down the hall, imagining that I owned the place. Rounded a bend, then another, admiring the paintings and artwork littering the hallway, as if someone had dropped them there for a short stay.

  I shredded my torn gloves with my teeth as I walked, binding my hands with the strips of ruined leather. It wasn’t quite surgical, but it stopped the bleeding and tempered the pain.

  And boom, I was outside the art wing. Even in the dim light, I could see that there was a plaque above the door that read The Jordan Ames Collection. Man, to be like this guy. Must’ve been nice to floss your teeth with hundred dollar bills.

  I glanced over my shoulder. No one had followed me, although a faint trickle of blood had accompanied my walk, leaving behind an undesirable crimson breadcrumb trail. Great. At least my DNA wasn’t on file with the cops.

  I might have had a checkered past, but a lot of criminals have lines. Firm lines.

  So, in that regard, I was doing nothing besides dirtying his nice floors.

  I pushed open the doors.

  Gliding through the opening like a snake, I slid up against the nearest wall, just out of view of the camera in the corner. I slipped a sock from my back pocket over the lens. That was it. I shimmied along the other wall, towards the opposite corner, and did the same to the other one.

  Now I was alone.

  Lit up or no, this room was impressive. Suits of armor, Roman swords, vases of all sorts—and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of smaller objects—everything from beads to arrowheads to coins—adorned the insides of the cases, from all periods of history.

  This Ames guy, he was quite the collector. There was so much here, it was making my task more difficult. Spotting a three inch figurine in a haystack of historical oddities was a tall order.

  After circling the cases, I began to wish that the Beacon would light up, like the emergency alarm button on a car’s clicker. No such luck; I’d have to sort through all the minutiae. My mind wandered as the novelty of all the old stuff wore off.

  “After you have the Beacon,” Bob had said, “you are to exit out the front—”

  “The front? What do you mean, the front?”

  “—after you disable the central security box in the basement.”

  “That sounds like a hoot,” I’d said, “sign me up.”

  “And then, you are to meet one of our representatives at the Seafood Shack.”

  “Keeping it classy, I see.”

  “Try to be there by midnight,” he’d said.

  A quick glance at my watch indicated that whoever my contact was, he’d be waiting for a while. They could blame Ames and his magic dick for that. 12:32.

  Whatever. If it kept the Singularity off my back—Bob promised protection, which sounded wise-guyish, but I bit my tongue at that—then it was worth it. As for Cassie, well, she’d reap the benefits of this, too, the sneaky bitch.

  I pressed my nose up against another case, like a kid watching the snow fall outside. My eyes scanned over the contents; a model Viking ship. Some brutal looking knives. Was that blood or rust? Christ, the curves in these things could gut a man. Which was the point.

  No wonder there was a Geneva Convention.

  But then my eyes locked on to the prize: a worn, tiny statue of a dragon. Fantastic. I almost screamed for joy, but then I remembered that doing so would net me five years in a very nice cell—so my celebration remained silent, personal.

  I couldn’t smash the glass. There weren’t laser trip-wires running all over the floor, but the cases were all rigged with alarms. Sensitive to excessive force. That wouldn’t do.

  Here was where my skills came into play; they were getting a real work
out as of late. I slid the lock picking set out of my back pocket, feeling along the edges of the case for the keyhole. It was on the back; I shifted positions, crouching and holding a small flashlight between my teeth.

  This was some serious hardware—better than the top of the line mechanical locks Manny had, anyway. Which wasn’t saying much of anything, just that it’d take a little adjustment period. With two busted up and bleeding hands, this was going to be a tall order.

  One where I’d need all the precision I could muster.

  I set the flashlight down to get a better look at my hands. The aroma of rusty pennies filled my nostrils as I brought them close to my face. Some pretty grisly and unappealing wounds. I gulped and turned my focus to the lock. I hoped it wouldn’t get in my way.

  Everything around me was still as I set to work.

  I could hear my pulse in my ears.

  The tick of the quartz movement in my watch.

  The clink and clicks of the tumblers as they slid into place.

  The woosh of the case as it popped open, the stagnant air escaping its cage.

  The gentle scrape of the figurine against the velvet bottom as I grabbed it, liberating it from its captor.

  For a moment, everything was perfect. The world made sense.

  And then there was the sound of the doors exploding inwards, thundering to the marble floor, shattering the cases, accompanied by the high-pitched whine of an alarm.

  The thing about breadcrumbs was that they brought pests.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Not by a longshot.

  47

  Stoned

  Smoke from the charge filled the air, or maybe that was just my mind trying to make sense of everything. I clung to the back of the case, out of direct sight of the doorway. Here came the laser beams, cutting through the dusty room, although these were attached to something far more lethal than the ones that guarded art collections.