The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 18
“She thought I was working for Isabella Bryson.”
Cassian drummed his thumb against the table.
“She seemed so convinced that I couldn’t have run into Francesca here in the city. Which must mean she doesn’t live in the city. But couldn’t she have been visiting?”
“Maybe she wouldn’t have without Willow knowing.”
“Which would mean they keep in touch.”
Another poet stepped on the stage—a Black man wearing a beanie over long dreadlocks.
Eden slumped in her chair, trying to combat the hopeless disappointment crawling through her chest. They’d come here looking for answers. They hadn’t found a single one.
“Wanna get out of here?” Cass asked.
Her stomach dipped.
She imagined returning to Lou’s with no more information to occupy them. Just the memory of their make-out session and the single, full-size bed. With a nervous swallow, she nodded.
He tossed a tip on the table and snagged his jacket from the back of his chair. He motioned for Eden to go ahead and followed her out into the night. As they turned toward his bike, she could feel someone behind her.
“Excuse me, miss?”
Cassian spun around like one prepared to throw a punch.
A young man stopped short and held up his hands. “Relax, man. I’m just a messenger.” He reached into his pocket, which hardly encouraged Cassian to relax. His entire body tensed beside her like he was expecting the guy to pull a gun. Instead, he removed a folded slip of paper.
“What’s that?” Eden asked.
“A note. Some girl paid me to pass it to the pretty blonde in the sweater. You’re a pretty blonde. And you’re wearing a sweater.”
Eden’s attention flitted about like the girl was hiding somewhere in the dark.
The messenger lifted his eyebrows.
She reached for the note, but he pulled it back. “A messengers gotta get paid, yeah?”
He’d already been paid.
With a glower, Cassian pulled a twenty from his back pocket and handed it over.
The guy exchanged the note for the bill. He nodded at them both, clapped Cass on the shoulder, then slipped inside The Coffee Hound.
A gust of wind blew, crinkling the paper.
Eden’s pulse raced as she unfolded it.
Two lines had been scrawled in blue ink.
You’ll find answers in the Bryson’s safe. Basement.
Willow had underlined the last word.
Eden looked up at Cassian, her hope restored.
They wanted answers. Willow had given them a map.
Their treasure awaited in the Bryson’s basement.
28
As soon as they reached Lou’s, they began to plan.
First, they needed to identify the best time to get in and out of the Bryson’s home, preferably without the family knowing anyone had paid a visit. They pulled up archived surveillance to establish a routine.
Every weekday, Gage and Clay left together for work and school. Bella came and went with no reliable consistency. In the evenings, she brought Clay to practice. A half hour later, Gage would arrive home from work. An hour or two after that, Bella and Clay would return and remain until the next morning when the routine restarted itself.
On Thursday evenings, the group of girls would come.
If Cassian and Eden were going to sneak in, the weekends were their best chance.
For the past several Saturdays, Gage would leave at noon. Bella and Clay would follow an hour later. Both vehicles would roll into the driveway around four. For the past several Sundays, the three of them left together at exactly nine in the morning. Eden guessed they were going to church—an unsettling thought.
Looks could be so deceiving.
She was proof. Barrett, Violet, and Ellery were proof, too.
So were the Brysons—from the outside looking in, an all-American family. The father, a guidance counselor at the local high school. The mother, a volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center and a support group leader. The son, the starting point guard for his traveling basketball team. Eden pictured the three of them sitting in a church pew, nicely dressed with hymnals in their laps while somewhere out there, a girl named Francesca Burnoli lived with only one functional eye.
Cassian tapped the sticky note marked Saturday. “This is our best bet.”
It was the longest, most dependable stretch of time.
Three hours to get in, find the safe, break into the safe, get whatever answers were hiding inside the safe, then get out.
It should be plenty of time.
It was also tomorrow—a fact that both terrified and exhilarated her. Breaking and entering was a serious felony, but Eden was beyond ready for answers. As far as they could see, this was the only way to get them.
“She drives away before she closes the garage,” he said, rewinding and watching as Bella reversed out of the driveway and onto the road. The garage door didn’t start closing until she shifted into drive. “I bet we could sneak in through the garage without her noticing.”
The biggest hurdle would be the safe itself.
After a few basic searches, they discovered that there were many kinds of safes. They had no idea what kind the Brysons owned. Thankfully, it seemed the most foolproof method of breaking into a safe without a code or key was the same across the board, regardless of the type. Not so thankfully, the method required a powerful earth magnet called neodymium, which was no longer sold commercially.
Cassian pulled two familiar, small discs from the inside pocket of his jacket. “What about these?”
Eden leaned away, surprised to see them.
The discs were magnetic. Powerful enough to shut down electronics. Powerful enough to shut down Eden and Barrett and Violet. Were they powerful enough to shut down the locking mechanism in the Bryson’s safe? Jack had attempted to learn their composition. He’d ruled out iron and nickel. Might it be neodymium or something just as strong?
“They have surveillance cameras,” Cassian said. “Even if these don’t work for the safe, we’ll be able to use them to disable the security system.”
At 1:02 pm the next day, the Bryson’s garage rumbled open. Bella reversed from the driveway with her son riding shotgun.
Blood thrummed through Eden’s veins.
They had parked Cass’s bike a few streets away, then crept through yards like stealthy ninjas. Now they were crouched along the side of the Bryson’s home, behind a row of bushes, Eden’s ear cocked as the tires of the SUV rolled over the curb and a gear shifted.
Bella drove away as the garage began rumbling shut.
Eden leaned forward, ready to move, but Cassian held up his hand. He waited until the last possible moment, when Bella’s car was much further down the road, then slid his backpack through the shrinking gap between the closing garage door and the ground—triggering the sensor.
The door stopped and reversed course.
Up ahead, the Bryson’s SUV turned out of sight.
Cassian peeked around the corner, then threw the small disc. It zipped through the air and clinked against its target—a security camera mounted above a set of storage shelves made of plywood. The red blinking light above the lens went black. Cassian stepped out from behind the bushes and gestured for Eden to follow. Once inside, she jabbed the button and the garage door rolled shut with a resounding clatter.
They’d done it.
They’d gotten inside.
Cass climbed the three stairs to the door leading into the home. There was a keypad above the handle. He removed the second disc from his pocket and held it over the lock. He pulled his thumb and forefinger apart. The disc clamped onto the metal and a mechanism clicked.
He twisted the handle and eased the door open—just a sliver. Inside was a tidy mud room with a washer and a dryer and on the opposite wall, the home security control panel. Cass removed the disc from the keypad and threw it with a flick of his wrist. It sliced through the air and landed with a soft but decisive clack.
They had reason to believe that this would disable the entire system. To test the theory, Eden stepped out of the camera’s view as Cassian climbed the storage shelves and confiscated the first disc. They waited to see whether the red light would return.
When it didn’t, Eden stepped inside the home, her body humming with adrenaline. She was committing a crime that could easily result in another mug shot. The normal emotions in such a situation had to be fear and unease. Instead, she felt the same feeling she’d felt when she took part in that idiotic senior prank—invigorated. Like someone stepping out into the fresh air after living in a windowless basement for far too long. Like she was designed for this kind of adrenaline. A disconcerting thought as she beheld the Bryson’s life in still form.
A gym bag sat half-zipped on a wooden bench with a pair of basketball shoes tucked underneath. A sign that read Happy Fall Y’all hung above the washer. There was a bowl of kitty chow and a bowl of water and beside the disabled security panel, a key holder designed to look like five cats, their tails curved into hooks, with a set of spare keys hanging on one of them.
A dishwasher ran in the next room and a cat meowed as Cass stepped inside behind her.
A fluffy white feline slinked into view.
It blinked at them, intruders in the entryway. Then it crept closer with its head low to the ground. With another meow, it wound itself around Cassian’s leg, rubbing up against his calf. He scratched behind its ear with one hand, pulled his gun with the other, and peeked into the kitchen.
The camera mounted above the pantry didn’t blink red. Further proof that their theory was valid.
The kitchen was clean and orderly except for a stray bowl in the sink. A vase of flowers had been set on the table—red and orange and yellow mums. A candle on the counter scented Radiant Red Maple sat next to a stack of mail. Eden thumbed through it. Bills, mostly. Along with an already opened thank-you card from someone named Jules.
They tiptoed into a sunny living room with a fireplace. Fake fall leaves lined the mantle, along with an assortment of small pumpkins and gourds. Orange pillows accented a matching sofa set and above the couch was a large metal cut-out of the United States painted with rustic blues and reds in the design of the American flag. Framed photographs hung on the walls to their left in a darkened hallway. Willow Bryson wasn’t in any of them.
To their right, a door. Slightly ajar.
Cassian pushed it.
The hinges let loose a slow, ominous groan.
On the other side, a set of rickety wooden stairs led into a basement.
The cat followed them down, meowing curiously as the temperature dropped and the steps creaked. When they reached the bottom, Cassian pulled on a hanging string and the space flooded with light. There was a refrigerator and a chest freezer and a dusty foosball table with a litter box underneath.
They walked through the room, into another that seemed to be half storage, half workspace, with the furnace and water heater and shelves and boxes on one side, a workbench with an assortment of tools on the others. There were also two doors across from one another. One had a heavy-duty bolt.
Cassian unlocked it and opened the door.
Eden hoped to find a safe on the other side.
Instead, they found a room with no windows. Just a cement floor and padded walls and a naked twin mattress with no frame.
A shiver crawled across her skin. “What is this?”
“Evidence that the Brysons aren’t who they pretend to be.” Cass closed the door and locked the bolt.
Eden tried not to imagine Willow or Francesca trapped inside.
With a shudder, she moved to the other door.
It led to an oddly shaped closet. And in the back stood the Bryson’s safe. Tall and black with a five spoke handle. Eden’s heart leapt as Cassian stuck the disc to the upper left corner and slowly dragged it toward the handle in the center.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
And again.
And again.
On the fifth attempt, there was a click.
Cassian twisted the handle and opened the safe.
The first thing Eden noticed was an array of firearms and two bulletproof vests. Then—a significant amount of cash, a folder of birth certificates, social security cards, a will, and passports. Cassian thumbed through them as Eden spotted a cigar box on the safe floor. She reached behind one of the hanging rifles and pulled it out into the open. She lifted the lid and found photographs and postcards and pamphlets inside. She scooped the stack into her hand, her knuckle skimming something beneath.
A miniature, glass blown sculpture of a Monarch Butterfly.
Her body broke out into goosebumps.
With her breath hovering in her throat, she picked it up. Turned it over. Positive it had to mean something.
“Celebrating Sanctus Diem,” Cassian read.
It was the title of the pamphlet on top of the stack.
“That’s Latin,” she said.
They looked at one another meaningfully.
The name of her network was Latin.
Ellery and Violet and Barrett’s were Latin, too.
“Do you know what it means?” he asked.
“Sanctus means holy and Diem means day. So … Holy Day?”
“Look at the date,” he said.
Eden gaped.
October the fourth.
The day of The Attack.
The one for which Interitus was responsible.
She turned the pamphlet over and found more Latin on the backside.
“Magnes Matres,” she read. “That means … Great Mothers.”
The strange heading was followed by a long list of names in tiny font. With a quick computation, Eden registered that there were ninety-three of them.
It was an odd number.
Cassian pointed to a name halfway down the list.
Lillian Kashif.
Bella Bryson’s sister.
She flipped to the next item. A photograph of a younger Clay standing between Willow and another girl Willow’s age.
“That’s Francesca,” Cassian said.
With both of her eyes intact.
Eden flipped the photograph to the back. The next was a picture of six women, one of whom she recognized immediately, and her goosebumps multiplied. “This is Prudence Dvorak.”
“Prudence Dvorak,” he repeated, as though trying to place it.
“She’s a fugitive. A member of Interitus.”
Her name and her face had been on the news.
She was a known follower of Karik Volkova.
And here she was, inside the Bryson’s safe, along with five other women. All six of them stared somberly at the camera, reminding Eden of painted portraits from centuries past wherein the subjects never smiled. What was Prudence doing in this picture, and who were the rest of these women? Eden checked the back of the pamphlet to see if Dvorak’s name was listed, so wrapped up in the onslaught of questions spinning in her mind she didn’t hear the sound. She didn’t register it at all until it stopped.
It was the sound’s absence that caught her attention.
A garage door going silent.
Then a car door slamming shut.
A third door opening in the mudroom above them.
Beside her, Cassian froze.
He’d heard it too.
“Should I call the police?” came Bella Bryson’s voice from up above, so clear it was as if she were inside the strangely shaped closet with them.
“Not yet,” came Gage’s low reply.
Overhead, a set of heavy footsteps tromped across the kitchen and into the living room. Eden didn’t move. She stood beside Cassian, unmoving in front of the opened safe. Her mind flitted to Willow Bryson and for a moment, she wondered if the girl had set them up. Did she contact her mother? Tell her some random girl came to The Coffee Hound and started asking about The Monarch?
“Glory?” a male voice called down the stairs.
The cat meowed at their feet.
Eden’s chest went tight as the feline darted away.
“Gage, come look at this,” Bella called.
“What is it?”
“Some sort of … magnet. On our security panel.”
The basement door clicked shut.
Eden’s blood went cold.
More clomping feet.
A long pause.
She pictured the Brysons, huddled together around the security panel, examining the disc Cassian had thrown. If they were in league with Mordecai, did they know what it was? Did they have a collection of their own? The footsteps moved across the living room again and stopped at the top of the stairs.
The door opened.
A few seconds later, something bounced and rolled down the steps. Something that made a sharp hiss as soon as it hit the ground. Eden looked outside the closet and saw a plume of smoke gathering through the opened doorway.
With a curse, Cassian stuffed the file and the cigar box into his bag. He grabbed a gun and handed it to Eden, but she recoiled. The last time she held a gun, she almost killed him. She almost killed her mother. Cassian shut the safe and pocketed the disc. They stepped out of the closet, where the smoke was thickening.
He covered his mouth and nose with the hem of his shirt.
Eden glanced from the heavy-duty door with the bolt to the basement windows on the perpendicular wall. It was their best chance for escape. Cassian lifted her easily. She wrenched the window open and crawled out into the fresh air. Cassian lifted himself after her.
“They’re out here!”
The shout came from nearby.
It belonged to Clay Bryson, who was backpedaling with wide, frightened eyes, not more than several yards away, watching the basement windows.
Eden and Cassian didn’t stick around to shut him up. They took off, hopping over the fence, sprinting through the backyard as Gage came tearing around the house, yelling at them to stop. To freeze.
A gun fired.
A bullet whizzed past Eden’s ear.
She and Cass jumped into another yard and sprinted out onto the road as another shot exploded. They didn’t stop until they reached his bike. Eden climbed on behind him as he revved the engine and tore away.
