Darkus couldn’t disguise the panic in his voice. “But, Dad—”
“Don’t argue with me. The Combination is here, and I can’t guarantee a satisfactory outcome.”
Knightley walked to the open window and released the dove. He looked down to see a long black sedan with tinted windows parked outside. It resembled a hearse.
Darkus stood frozen.
“Do as I say,” Knightley ordered. “Whatever happens, I want you to stay hidden and don’t come out.”
“What about you?”
Knightley grabbed Darkus by the shoulders. “Let me worry about me.”
A creaking noise came from the lower staircase. Knightley silently gestured to Darkus to scram, then went to a wood-paneled cupboard and took out a short baton. He pressed a switch, and the baton telescoped out to a length of two feet. He pressed the switch again, and a low electric hum emanated from the tip.
Darkus didn’t have time to ask what it was. He looked around as if playing a bizarre game of hide-and-seek, only this time the stakes were exponentially higher. He crossed the landing to the bathroom.
Behind him, Knightley descended the stairs softly, the baton trained in front of him.
Darkus looked around the bathroom, scanning for options, but found none. He looked back at the office, but it was too obvious, surely. The catastrophizer began ticking and vibrating, generating a variety of possible outcomes, none of them good. He felt the familiar sensation of fear, draining his adrenal glands, quickening his pulse, leaving a dry, sour taste in his mouth. He looked around the room again for a hiding place.
Two floors below, Knightley reached the bottom of the staircase and moved across the hallway, the baton aimed ahead of him, lightly humming. Through the kitchen doorway he saw Bogna’s feet laid out on the floor, pointing upward, still wearing her Crocs. Now fear took hold of Knightley too. She couldn’t be dead. She had the constitution of an ox. He put his feelings in a locked box and tried to keep his wits about him. He was too old for this, too ill prepared. He crept quickly across the carpeted living area, circling with the baton to cover every angle. He crossed onto the linoleum and knelt by Bogna’s body, which was spreadeagled on the floor. He found a strong pulse in her wrist, then she let out a long, bronchial snore. Knightley exhaled with relief and got to his feet, moving back into the living room, then he stopped.
The heavy curtains over the front windows appeared to move. Knightley aimed the baton ahead of him and used it to part them. The tip of the shaft crackled loudly with a rhythmic ticking sound, sparking off the curtain fabric. With a quick movement he tore them open, letting sunlight flood into the room. He shielded his eyes as—
Presto appeared from behind a sofa unseen, directly behind him, wearing a Spanish gaucho hat pulled low over his face.
Knightley sensed something and spun around to find Presto approaching across the carpet. Knightley instantly swung the baton, too wide. Presto ducked and seemed to reappear on the other side of the room, out of range. The stun baton connected with an overhead lamp in a shower of sparks. Blue wisps of high-voltage electricity ran up and down the length of the weapon as Knightley turned to face his opponent again.
“Got any other tricks, Alan?” said Presto, his mouth leering under the brim of the hat.
“What do you want?”
“I warned you not to proceed with this investigation . . . You chose to proceed.”
“Old habits die hard,” said Knightley, slipping his hand through the wrist strap for security.
“You’ve lost the old magic, Alan—playing second fiddle to the boy.”
“Leave him out of it,” warned Knightley.
“Not my fault you made it a family affair.”
Knightley lunged toward him but Presto dodged the baton again, trapped Knightley’s arm, pivoted, and threw him over his shoulder.
Knightley gripped the stun baton, which crackled and sparked off everything it touched on the way down. He smashed through a coffee table and awkwardly staggered back to his feet.
Presto spun and kicked his opponent’s arm, sending the baton ricocheting against Knightley’s chest, giving him the full brunt of the charge. Knightley’s eyes rolled back, then the baton made a deafening pop and jerked out of his hands, skittering to the floor. Knightley flinched, recoiling onto the sofa in a heap.
“The Coh—” Knightley stuttered. “The Cohm—”
“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Presto swaggered toward him as if performing for an invisible audience.
Knightley rolled himself off the sofa and crawled toward a desk. “The Combination . . . ,” he said, sounding strangely surprised.
“That’s right, fella. Alive and well.”
Knightley dragged himself across the carpet, seeing only optical white noise, the remnants of electricity running pell-mell around his head. Then a row of numbers and letters appeared on his visual cortex, burnished like exploding stars, beginning with the characters 2 and D. It was what he’d been looking for all this time, on street signs and on the back of buses. The shock treatment had apparently dredged them up from the depths of his subconscious. His brows knitted as he tried to read them in his mind. He didn’t even know what they meant; he only knew they were important.
“Yes-yes . . . ,” he muttered, crawling on all fours through the jungle of carpet fibers toward where he knew the desk was.
“Where are you going, Alan?” Presto bent down and picked up the stun baton, then held it over Knightley’s scuttling body. “It’s sleepy time.”
Presto touched the baton to Knightley’s back, sending voltage coursing through him. Knightley cackled hilariously as the current ran through him, causing his limbs to dance crazily, then he rolled over and continued in a sort of backstroke across the floor. Presto laughed too. A forced, bellowing laugh that resounded through the whole house.
While Presto’s head was back, roaring, Knightley raised his leg and delivered a spasmodic kick to the groin. Presto’s laugh reached a maniacal high-pitched crescendo as he doubled over in pain.
While Presto was distracted, Knightley hauled himself up against the desk. The numbers and letters in his head were now clear as day. His fingers groped blindly across the desktop, quickly locating the notepad and fountain pen that were always kept there. He grasped the pad and pen, pulling them to the floor, then removed the pen top with his teeth and frantically began to scribble, before balling up the note and throwing it under a chair.
Presto came to stand over him, grabbing Knightley’s lapels and hauling him to his feet. “Game’s over. Someone wants to see you.” Presto swung his right hand, knocking Knightley unconscious.
Darkus heard a thud from downstairs, but was unable to move due to the confines of his hiding place or to see anything other than a very faint ray of light through the tunnel of darkness that extended some nine feet above his head. Darkus stopped believing in Santa Claus many years before the rest of his peers. He considered it his first criminal case. After conducting a cursory examination of the logistics involved, Darkus deduced that children the world over were laboring under an illusion. Now, finding himself wedged inside a chimney, he found the idea even more laughable. He shuffled farther up the narrow tunnel, keeping his shoes pressed against the inner walls for stability, not sure whether he would make it to the top, but certain he needed to get as far up as possible.
He now heard another noise: a heavy car door being slammed on the street outside.
The catastrophizer told him that his father had already been taken. But, fortunately, if the villains had wanted his father dead, they wouldn’t have issued a warning. Darkus had to conclude that his dad was now in the hands of the enemy, and he was on his own.
Whether or not they wanted him was another matter.
He pressed down with his feet, keeping himself wedged into the chimney to stop from falling. His clothes would be covered in soot, and he imagined himself a Dickensian character stuck in a plot that was far more sinister than anything he had ever read about. He wondered if any other children had followed these same tracks in years gone by, climbing through the darkness and hopefully emerging intact at the other end.
He heard a different noise now. It was the creak of the office door opening. Someone was still in the house, on the top floor, only a matter of six feet below him. He froze, listening for any noises that were funneled up to him. He heard a floorboard give slightly, the whisper of a foot brushing the carpet. Then he looked down, seeing a tall, slim shadow fall over the fireplace.
“Come down, Darkus. I know you’re up there.” Presto’s disconnected voice echoed up the chimney.
Darkus began shuffling higher, dislodging large bits of carbon from the walls. He accidentally inhaled soot and choked, trying to fight back coughs. His throat tightened, his stomach cramped, his lungs burned and contracted until he coughed heavily, unable to stop himself.
The voice appeared again. “Do you like magic tricks? All kids like magic tricks. Come down and I’ll show you one.”
“Leave me alone!” Darkus called down the shaft, feeling the blood pound through his head. He looked down, seeing the shadow over the fireplace grow and expand to cover the whole grate.
Then an arm leaped up the chimney after him. A gloved hand grabbed at his feet. Darkus stumbled and tried to move farther up, but lost his footing and dropped straight down several feet. He cried out in terror as he wedged his back and feet into the inner walls, tearing his jacket but stopping his fall. The hand groped again, getting hold of his ankle and yanking sharply downward. Darkus’s teeth chattered, his mouth unable to form words, even to scream. He wedged himself deeper into the narrow space, then kicked down, dispensing with the hand, which crumpled and recoiled.
A muffled curse came from below him in response. Then a series of sounds were funneled up to him in quick succession. A wailing alarm pierced the walls, blaring out across the whole street. Then a thundering stampede arrived on the stairs, ascending to the top floor, created not by a group but by a single person. A torrent of Polish swear words accompanied the wild clanging of a frying pan.
Whatever happened was over quickly. A tussle resulted in the shattering of a windowpane, and the shadow vanished from the fireplace. A car door slammed on the street below, an engine revved up, and the car screeched away, leaving just the blare of the alarm, which did little to calm the nerves.
“Doc? You are okay?” Bogna’s face appeared at the bottom of the chimney like a vision of the Virgin Mary.
“Yes-yes,” Darkus answered nervously, then began his descent into the office.
“Your clothings!” said Bogna, looking appalled.
“Dad,” he stammered. “They’ve taken Dad.”
After Bogna disabled the alarm, Darkus explained why they could not contact the police until he had conducted a superficial examination of the scene. Bogna reluctantly agreed, suspecting that this was exactly what Knightley Senior would have done in the circumstances.
Darkus retraced his father’s steps, moving across the front room, noting the roughly drawn curtains, the displaced cushion, the collapsed coffee table. He then got to his knees and crawled across the carpet, observing the subtle changes in the direction of the nap. His father had left a trail of sorts, like the path of a large snake, meandering from the sofa toward the desk.
Darkus found the fountain pen without its top. The nib was dripping black ink onto the rug. Bogna’s eyes went wide, and she quickly descended on the stain with a damp cloth until Darkus stopped her. A pen without a top meant his father had to have left him a message.
Lying flat on the floor, he peered under the furniture, swiveling around on his front to check every corner. Discarded under a bookshelf he found what he was looking for: the balled-up piece of paper. He reached for it, his fingers rolling it arduously into his grasp. Then he got to his feet and uncrumpled it, spreading it out on the desk. The paper was creased in all directions, the handwriting was jagged and out of control, but the message was clear enough:
The meaning, however, was anyone’s guess.