Chapter Thirteen

The orange Dodge Charger pulled up to the gated entrance of Madison Reddick’s Beverly Hills mansion. Clarissa opened her window and started to reach for the buzzer. “You don’t have to do that,” Aaron said. “I have his code.”

He recited the code and Clarissa entered it into the keypad. The gates split open with a metallic chung.

“How’d you get his code?”

“He gave it to me. I’ve been taking care of his lawn for eight years. It’s a convenience, he doesn’t have to be home to let me in.”

In reality, Madison was usually home these days and loved having visitors to share a cold drink with from his collection of exotic teas.

“I’m glad you’ll have a chance to meet him,” Aaron said. “He’s going to like you. It’s important I tell him goodbye and thank you.”

As Aaron and Clarissa walked the winding brick path that led to the front door, Aaron worried about Madison’s ability to find someone else to take care of his lawn and gardens – but it was Madison who had urged him to leave the area, paying him an absurdly large ‘severance package’, encouraging him to join the chip resistance rebels and giving him instructions for finding a secret sanctuary in Santa Barbara.

Reaching the front entrance, Aaron prepared to poke the door buzzer. Before his finger made contact, there was an abrupt BANG from inside the house. Aaron jumped.

“What the hell was that?” asked Clarissa.

“Sounded like…” Aaron couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“A gunshot.”

“Holy shit.” Aaron pressed the buzzer repeatedly. He banged his fists on the door. “Madison!”

After several minutes of pounding and buzzing without a response, Aaron stepped back from the door.

“Now what?” Clarissa asked.

“We’re going to find a way in.” Aaron was very familiar with the mansion’s exterior and searched his brain for the easiest entry point. He pictured the east-side rose garden with its bluestone paving, gazebo and delicate side door of paneled glass.

“Come on,” he said. As he circled the house, he pulled a red brick out of the dirt from edging work he had done earlier in the year for one of the garden borders.

Aaron arrived at the side door, glanced through the glass and saw a portion of Madison’s long, elegant kitchen. He listened for a moment, heard nothing, then broke into the house. He smashed a square pane of glass with one strike, reached in and unlocked the door. An alarm did not sound – that meant Madison was home.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Clarissa said.

“He’s my friend,” said Aaron, and the statement felt awkward to say aloud because Aaron rarely referred to anyone as his friend these days.

Aaron entered the kitchen with Clarissa close behind. He stepped softly, listening carefully. The house was silent, except for a ticking wall clock. He noticed a block of carving knives on the white marble counter. He glanced at Clarissa, then back at the knives. She read his thoughts and nodded. They each took a knife – the two biggest ones in the set.

“Madison?” Aaron said, cautiously creeping forward with the knife in his grasp.

He heard nothing but the wooden floorboards creaking under his feet.

Aaron and Clarissa advanced down a hallway of framed black-and-white photographs of Madison with various Hollywood celebrities from a bygone era.

They entered Madison’s favorite room, his massive den, where Aaron had engaged in countless conversations with Madison after a long day of landscaping. Aaron immediately spotted Madison seated in his favorite, throne-like chair, surrounded by his bookshelves, plants and movie posters. He was unnaturally still and hunched forward.

His arms had fallen to his sides and there was a handgun on the carpet.

“Oh my God, no,” Aaron said, dropping the knife to the floor. He rushed over to the old man.

Madison Reddick was dead. Blood leaked from a red hole in his temple. His eyes were shut. His mouth drooped open.

Aaron wanted to shout Madison’s name and shake him back into consciousness but it was obvious he was gone. There was a small round table next to his chair. Typically it held a glass of tea and perhaps some books.

Now it held just one thing: a short, handwritten note.

Trembling, Aaron picked up the note. With Clarissa standing over his shoulder, he read it out loud.

“I have lived a long and prosperous life. Now is the time for my departure to whatever waits on the other side. Society has changed into something I do not recognize. I no longer belong. I am at peace with my decision. Do not mourn for me, my day has come.”

“Wow,” said Clarissa quietly.

“I didn’t expect this,” Aaron said, gently returning the note to the circular table. He had to turn away from Madison. He couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. Madison’s color was fading. He was no longer a person, just an empty carcass.

Clarissa continued to stand close to Aaron for comfort but did not put her arms around him. Aaron stared down at the ground, feeling sick with despair.

“I thought he was a fighter,” he said. “He was funding the resistance. He was helping to set up sanctuaries. He was outspoken, trying to bring others to his side. He didn’t sound like a man who was giving up.”

“Maybe it finally got to him,” Clarissa said. “I mean, look at this place. It’s like a monument to the past. It’s everything he’s outlived.”

“We’ll carry on with his mission,” said Aaron. “That’s what he wanted. That’s why he set me up to join a sanctuary. He used to say, if there is a true rebellion, it needs to come from the younger generation. It can’t be the past facing off against the future. It’s people like us who have to reject what society is turning into.”

“There’s me, there’s you,” Clarissa said. “And we know there are others. We can either fight this thing or all wind up like my brother.”

Aaron took one last look around the den. It was filled with mementos of the arts as a physical medium. He knew this would be his last time in this room. He would remember his long conversations with Madison Reddick. Madison used to call himself irrelevant, but he wasn’t. Madison would live on through Aaron’s memories and his mission.

“Let’s go,” he said quietly. He left the mansion with Clarissa at his side.

* * *

After Aaron and Clarissa left the mansion, two men stepped into the den. They wore dark, loose clothing. One of them was slim with darting eyes; the other had a puffier physique with an encroachment of gray in his black hair. Both had stoic expressions.

The heavier man made a call on his cell phone.

“The visitors have left,” he said.

“Did they see you?” asked a steely voice on the other end.

“No.”

“What about your car?”

“We parked down the street.”

“Who were they?”

“We’re not sure. But we got pictures. We’ll send them over for face matching. From what we heard, it sounds like they’re part of the resistance.”

“Upload those pictures to me now.”

The heavyset man did as he was told. “They didn’t suspect anything. They took it as a suicide.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. They read the note.”

“Did they contact anybody?”

“No. They just left.”

“Hold on. I’m getting a reading. The woman is Clarissa Harper, Elysian Valley. She is not in compliance. The gentleman is Aaron Holt. Elysian Valley. Also not in compliance. We have recent intel that suggests he might be a runner. It says his roommate reported him.”

“You want us to go after them?”

“No. Not now. Finish going through the house for information on his network. Collect his computers. We’ll take care of the kids. We have their names and addresses. We’ll place them on the Red Alert list and send local regulation enforcement after them.”

“Got it.”

“Anybody attached to this Reddick character should be considered a threat to the administration and isolated before they can spread the cancer of noncompliance.”

“Roger that. We’ve killed the queen bee. Now we’ll break up the hive.”

* * *

Before Aaron and Clarissa left Los Angeles County to head up the coast, Aaron directed Clarissa on a short tour of some of his former clients in the Beverly Hills area, reminiscing about his reputation as ‘gardener to the stars’. Most of the properties had since fallen into neglect and ruin.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life now,” he said. “But it’s going to be better with you.”

“If that’s an attempt to be romantic, please stop,” she said. It was a typical Clarissa comment, although Aaron noticed that lately she was saying such things with less of an edge – and sometimes even the hint of a smile.

“Okay, I’ll stop.” The Beverly Hills tour was coming to an end. “How about some music? Does that old cassette player really work?” He pointed to the strange, decades-old cassette deck that fit snugly in the dashboard.

“Open the glove compartment.”

He popped it open and a pile of audiotapes spilled out into his lap and onto the car floor. He started laughing. He picked one up at random and read the handwritten label out loud.

“Black Flag.”

“Eighties punk, baby. Stick it in.”

“Analog physical media,” Aaron said. “Delivered from speakers to your ears without satellite chip technology. You are a true rebel.”

“Nah. I just know what I like.”

He stuck the cassette into the player. She reached over and cranked up the volume knob.

Raw hardcore punk rock pounded out of the speakers and covered the interior of the car in a blanket of organic, human-powered noise.

Clarissa launched the Dodge Charger onto Interstate 405, shooting north at ninety miles per hour. Aaron braced himself in his seat, alarmed by her speed, then gave in to the adrenaline rush that tickled his body. Traffic was light. The skies were blue. The music screamed with a cathartic punch.

Aaron began laughing, not exactly sure why, and lost himself in the moment.