Clara Kensie - Run to You Part Three - Third Charm

“That’s classified.”

No reply from the intercom.

Tristan sighed. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“...No.”

“I’m Tristan Connelly.”

“So?”

Licking his lips, he glanced at me. “So, my dad is Dennis Connelly.”

I tried not to show him how much that upset me as the intercom clicked off.

When a few minutes passed without it clicking back on, I said, “He’s not coming.”

Tristan gave me a knowing smirk. “He’s coming.”

A few minutes later, a guard with a thin, weasely face and a stubbly attempt at a mustache opened the door. Tristan took my hand and stepped into the doorway. “Whoa, not so fast,” the guard said. “Warden says you can leave whenever you want.” His eyes landed on me. “But the girl stays.”

Tristan tightened his grip on my hand. “That’s right. She stays with me.”

Weasel Face widened his stance, folding his arms across his chest. “I can’t let her out. Warden said it’s Doc Sheldon’s orders.”

Tristan growled and fisted his hand, but I stepped in front of him. Intimidation wasn’t going to get me that binder, not with this guard. I lowered my chin and looked up at him with doe eyes, attempting to appear as docile and meek as possible. “Please, sir?” I begged Weasel Face, who couldn’t be more than three years older than me. “You’re the only one who can help us.”

He looked nervously down the hall and back to me. I made my lower lip tremble. With one more glance down the hall, he stepped back, waving us out. Tristan squeezed my hand, and we rushed from the cell before the guard could change his mind.

I’d been in the hallway three times before but had never seen it. I’d either been blindfolded, paralyzed by fear, or lost in the fog. This time I purposely raised the fog, enough to clear my mind and focus on every detail, planning an escape route.

The hallway was long, narrow, full of turns. Musty and damp. Gray metal doors, all sealed shut, lined the cinderblock walls.

My parents were behind those doors.

Strutting beside us, Weasel Face watched me with a suspicious frown. I blinked innocently at him.

We reached the elevator. “Wait for us here,” Tristan told the guard.

He snorted and rested his hand on his tranq gun. “No way.”

The elevator doors slid open silently, and the three of us entered. We rode up four floors and arrived at ground level.

We dashed close to the walls. This hallway was lined with closed doors as well, but instead of solid steel, they were made of heavy paneled wood and had brass knobs. Shadows stretched above us as the hall disappeared into complete blackness at the far end. From the other end came the faint tapping of booted footsteps—guards on patrol, perhaps. I tried to breathe slowly through my nose, sure they would be able to hear each exhale.

We neared a door illuminated in red from the word EXIT hanging above it. Tristan seized my arm, pulled me in tight. Weasel Face noticed and gripped his gun.

They were probably right to suspect I’d try to burst through that door and flee, but running hadn’t even occurred to me. I needed that binder. I needed Tristan to know the truth, that my parents were innocent. I marched past the exit without a second glance.

Tristan stopped at the last door in the hall. “This is Dr. Sheldon’s office,” he whispered, and turned the knob. “Locked. Damn.” He turned to Weasel Face. “Do you have the key?”

“Nope.”

Before I could even begin to be disappointed, Weasel Face bent his fingers into a claw and stared hard at the knob. He swiveled his hand in the air, and a few seconds later I heard a tiny click.

“Nice,” Tristan said. “You’re psychokinetic?”

“Kinda. Ferrokinetic. I can manipulate metal.” He pointed to his belt buckle, which was twisted into a big, stylized G. “I just made this tonight,” he said. “It’s for the Green Bay Packers.”

I gave him a whispered, slow ooooo, like I was awed by his handiwork. He beamed and pushed the door open.

Tristan ushered me inside. A computer monitor was on and gave the room an eerie blue glow. The monitor sat on a utilitarian desk, cluttered with papers, pens and old cups of coffee. A garbage can stuffed to overflowing sat in the corner. Black filing cabinets lined the back wall. Stacked haphazardly on top of the filing cabinet was a pile of manila folders with papers sticking out, old date books and a vase holding a dusty silk flower.

And balanced precariously on the very edge of the cabinets were four green binders. I could just make out the code running down the spine of the top one: CARS0520.

Tristan and I glanced at each other, then he turned to Weasel Face. “So, buddy, where you from? Who recruited you?”

“I’m from Sioux Falls,” the guard said. “Ted Rigby found me. I was just working for a mechanic, doing oil changes and pretending to pound out dents. Now I’m here. Wild.”

“Yeah, Rigby’s great. How long have you been working here?”

While Tristan kept Weasel Face occupied, I grabbed the binder, then slipped it under my top, grateful I was wearing Tristan’s huge sweatshirt. Dr. Sheldon’s office was so messy, hopefully she would just assume she’d misplaced the binder. I put a confused look on my face. “I don’t see it.”

Tristan played along, pretending to look around the office. “I don’t either.”

“What are you looking for?” Weasel Face asked.

“Um, my Green Bay Packers sweatshirt,” Tristan said. “It’s lucky. Every time she wears it, they win.”

Weasel Face pursed his lips as he scanned the office. “I don’t see it. Damn.”

I swapped my confused expression for a disappointed one. “I hope the Packers can win without me.”

“Hopefully,” Tristan said, and smiled. We work well together, his smile seemed to say.

Yeah. We do, I smiled back.

Too bad for him this was the last time.

Chapter Forty

Weasel Face—who no longer seemed so weasely—escorted Tristan and me back through the hallways and down the elevator to the Underground. Tristan gave him a handshake and a promise to go out to watch the Green Bay Packers soon, then suggested it would be awesome if he would disable the surveillance camera over the door. With a conspiratorial grin, Weasel Face wiggled his index finger at it. Tristan quickly steered him out, the door sealing shut behind him.

I took the binder from under my sweatshirt and opened to a random page. A black and white surveillance photo of my parents. Young and serious, they were sitting at an outdoor cafe. Mom was absently fiddling with her wedding ring. Dad was looking at the menu. A completely neutral photo, boring really, but it brought tears to my eyes.

I flipped through the pages. How odd to see our real names in print after all these years.

Andrew Carson.

Gwendolyn Carson.

Jillian. Tessa. Logan.

We’d wiped away our identities with each move, and this binder held the only proof of our existence.

Clips from my father’s newspaper columns when he wrote as Xander Xavier.

A picture of our big red brick house in Virginia, standing majestically over an expansive lawn.

My parents’ old financial records. “See, Tristan? They really did make all that money,” I said. “Paychecks. Stock market investments. It’s all right here. All legal.”

“They wouldn’t mark their blackmail payments as blackmail. They’d mark them as stock market investments.”

I glared at him for a full minute before returning to the binder.

Another photo of our house, this time reduced to rubble and ashes.

Pictures of some of the other houses and apartments we’d lived in.

Testimonies from our old neighbors.

A list of our aliases.