Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

HIRO

“Do you know how hard it was to watch you sleep on the floor ?” Maddox asks when I wake up. “I wanted to pick you up and switch you with me, but I knew if I went over to you, the ghosts would wake you up. I couldn’t get close to give you a blanket since I knew they’d jostle you if I got close. And I was even trying to think of ways to throw one at you, but I was too afraid you’d wake up and come scurrying back to bed where you’d feel even worse. I felt awful. I set one near you in the hopes you’d wake up and grab it, but you never did.”

I point to Bandit, who is in my arms. “Bandit was my blanket.”

“Why didn’t you grab a blanket?”

“I didn’t want to wake you up because then you’d have refused to let me sleep on the floor,” I explain.

“You bet your ass I would have. But there are more blankets than the one I’m currently using. I’m glad you finally got to sleep, though.”

“Thanks. I was… in a rough headspace, but I think some sleep helped a bit… that or I’m still too asleep to remember how panicked I am.”

“We’ll arrange something differently tonight. If you’re that afraid of me sleeping in a room alone, I can… I don’t know. Have Avery come over. Snuggle with Shion. Ask Nicolás or Patricia to spoon.”

I grin at him. “No, you can’t spoon with my mom and brother. I’ll just sleep on the floor again. Are you working in the office today?”

“I am, so you don’t have to go with me. I have the tech department looking through that site. We’re also reaching out to the department in Kyoto in the hopes we can toss information back and forth.”

“I feel like we should be doing something more. Like I can’t stand the idea of going into work, so I’m going to go with you.”

“What if you see if Barry can come in? You go open up, and by the time he comes in, I’ll be finished up with stuff I have to get done at work. I understand to us this seems to take top priority, but we have no proof besides something no one else can see, which means it’s going to get pushed back. So while we wait for more information, there’s nothing you can do. Don’t you have some deliveries coming in today?”

I hate it when he’s right. “I’ll drive you to work and then open up. I’ll see if Barry can come in early. If he can’t, I’ll leave it closed.”

“Okay. That’ll be acceptable.”

“Then I’ll come and stare at you for the whole day. So you definitely have that to look forward to. I also have a ghost army watching you. They’re going to alert me if you even think about leaving the building.”

“I will not leave the building.”

I hesitate. “What if it’s someone in your department? Maybe you should just stay home? Or in a padded room locked in a deep cellar where only I know the combination. It’ll be like one of those impossible puzzle games to get you free.”

“You think someone from our department zipped over to Japan coincidentally at the same time as we did to be in the subway station when we were, then ran back in time to try to murder me here at work?”

I glower at his smarts. “FINE. Dammit. Stop trying to make sense.”

“I’ll definitely stop,” he teases.

After Shion and I drop Maddox off at his work, we head to my bookshop.

“You sure you don’t want to go somewhere more exciting?” I ask him.

“More exciting than your bookstore? First time in the US and this bookstore is the first place on my list,” he jokes.

“Well… I hope it lives up to your hopes and dreams,” I say as I unlock the door and slide the open sign in place as I wait for the delivery. Barry’s going to be here by eleven, and he assured me he doesn’t mind coming in a couple of hours early. I keep promising him I’ll hire another employee if it’s too much for him, but he told me he wants the hours. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when he graduates college and finds a job in his field.

“What do you need me to do?” Shion asks as he wanders around and flips through some books.

“Nothing, honestly. Just relax. There’s a coffee shop a few doors down that’s really good,” I say before I’m interrupted by a buzz from the back door. “That’s the delivery driver.”

“Oh, I can get it. Where do you want the books?”

“Oh no, go get a coffee or something. I’m not going to make you deal with the boxes.”

“Nah. I can handle it.”

“Anywhere in the back storage room right there,” I say.

And off he goes to deal with that. I was planning to help him but a woman comes in with a question. I help her find what she’s looking for and almost as soon as she heads out, the door opens again.

“Goddammit, Hiro, what the fuck did you get yourself into?” Keaton asks.

“What?” I ask, confused about what Keaton could possibly be going on about. So far, so good… well… I mean… maybe the masked man standing in the doorway with a gun is less than ideal… and maybe even less ideal than that is another masked person behind him. Fucking hell.

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” I mumble. Like… really ? I really need to be robbed right now?

“Put your hands up,” he says as the second person comes in behind him and shuts the door as Shion steps out of the back.

“I stacked the boxes; do you need me to unpackage… huh.”

“Put your hands up!” the man yells. It is soooooo fucking clear who the man is. I don’t even know why he thought he should wear a mask because how the hell could I mistake him for anyone else? Maybe they thought they’d fool the cameras… or maybe they really are that fucking stupid.

“Is this a… thing with you, Hiro?” Shion asks as he holds his hands up. “Like do bad people just flock to you?”

“Maddox is going to be so fucking pissed about you two doing this,” I say as his mom has the guts to give me a wide-eyed look of shock. Is she seriously surprised that I could figure out who the two masked assholes are? Like who the fuck else would be over here robbing me?

“Keep your hands up!” the boyfriend shouts as he hands the gun off to Maddox’s mom before he comes over and pats me down for my phone. He tosses it and then tosses Shion’s.

“What do you hope to accomplish?” I ask, honestly curious about this. She had to have targeted me because of Maddox, but why? Just to piss him off more? As payback for him refusing to deal with her?

“Hiro, just do what they say. A couple hundred dollars isn’t worth getting shot over,” Keaton says. “People like these two are the ones who fuck up. They might have no intention of shooting you, but mistakes happen.”

“Get on your knees,” the guy orders, so I drop to my knees and Shion gets down beside me.

The guy has some duct tape that he starts winding around our wrists before slapping tape over both of our mouths.

“Hurry,” Maddox’s mom urges.

“I’m fucking hurrying. You want to do this?”

Once he’s done, he rushes over to the cash register as Shion looks over at me. It’s a very clear, “What the fuck are you involved in?”

And all I can think about is how pissed Maddox is going to be. Oh, and that I feel a bit guilty dragging Shion into a robbery on his first day here.

“I don’t know how to open the cash register,” the boyfriend says.

Maddox’s mom flails her arms a bit in exasperation. “I don’t fucking know. Just take the whole thing.”

“I can’t take the whole thing, it’s bolted down.”

“Then fucking ask him.”

“You fucking ask him!”

I suddenly get the weird and ridiculous impression of two children both too stubborn to ask an adult something. She turns to me. “How the fuck does this open?”

And I stare at her, unsure how she expects me to answer when my mouth has been taped shut.

She huffs and scurries over to rip the tape off my mouth as my grandpa, who’d been watching Maddox for me, appears. Keaton must have told him because Reggie comes too, and he’s fucking pissed .

“I will fuck up this bitch,” he growls.

“Reggie, just stay calm,” Keaton says, but the look on Reggie’s face tells me he’s anything but calm.

Maddox’s mother looms over me. All I can see are her eyes, but the expression they hold is rather cruel. “How do you get the money out?”

“I have to do it,” I say.

She grabs my face in her hand, her nails digging into my cheek as I get a whiff of alcohol coating her breath. “You don’t fucking have to do it, tell me how.”

I try to pull my head back as her nails dig in deeper. I can’t help but question how she has the money to have them done up like that but has to rob me. “I have to do it. It requires me to be there or it won’t open,” I tell her as Grandpa walks right up to her and tugs at her mask. As it’s jerked back, she reels away, causing her nails to pull free from me as she scrambles to fix her mask.

“She can smile for the camera,” Grandpa says.

“Good. Now smack her,” Reggie says as Maddox’s mom looks alarmed while she spins around to figure out who pulled her mask back.

“What the fuck was that? What the fuck?” she asks.

“Guys, be careful, you don’t want them to become erratic and shoot someone,” Keaton says. “Reggie, please just don’t touch her. We don’t want something bad to happen.”

“Fuck, fine,” Reggie whines.

“But you could message Maddox,” Keaton says.

“Right! Come on, Gramps, let’s get Maddox here. I’ll make sure he arrives shirtless to make this bullshit better.”

I sigh as I question whether they’re going to fuck this up. Hell… I really don’t even want to tell Maddox. He’s going to be so upset that this happened to me and will immediately blame himself because his own mom was involved in it.

“I don’t know how to use one of these fancy-dancy phones. I croaked before we had this smart shit,” Grandpa says as he pokes at the phone on the counter.

“I can do it… I can do it if I can focus well enough. It’s so far from Hiro, though… here, press that button. Hiro, fuck, I forgot your password! It’s definitely 6969… fuck… oh! I remember.”

I’m dragged over to the cash register, which has to help Reggie since I’m closer to the phones now. As long as no one sees the phone turn on, it should be fine. “Open the fucking cash register,” she demands.

“My hands are taped behind my back. What would you like me to use to open it?” I ask as I turn my body to keep her from seeing what Reggie is doing.

She yanks the tape off, leaving me to open the cash drawer before I’m dragged back to Shion where I’m taped down again. I’m hoping it was enough time for Reggie to get the text sent off.

“I take it you know these two?” Shion whispers, having rubbed the tape partly off his mouth.

“The woman is Maddox’s mother.”

“You guys definitely do things a bit differently in America.”

“Maddox seems to dislike her with a passion… I’m starting to see why.”

“Odd how you could possibly have that impression,” he says sarcastically.

She smacks something off the counter and waves the money at me. “What the fuck is this?”

“Money?” I ask, not sure what she’s wanting. Technically it’s my money that she suddenly seems to think is hers.

“There’s barely anything in here!”

“Yeah… we literally opened like fifteen minutes ago. I start every morning with a hundred dollars in the drawer. You have to realize people don’t pay with cash often, so I don’t carry much cash on me.”

“Where the fuck’s the rest of your money?” she asks.

I refuse to let her know I have some in the safe in the back. “The bank. I drop off any excess after closing up for the night.”

She storms up to me and hits me across the face hard enough it hurts, and Reggie fucking blows up. The gun is smacked out of her hand and goes skidding across the floor a moment before he smashes her in the face.

I’m honestly surprised at the force he hits her with.

“You stupid piece of shit. I will fucking make you regret coming here,” Reggie screams, even though she sadly can’t hear it.

“What the fuck happened?” the boyfriend asks.

Maddox’s mom is looking around in a panic. “Something fucking attacked me. Something attacked me!”

Shion is quicker than me. I’m over here gawking at them while he dashes over and kicks the gun under a shelf before standing in front of it so they can’t retrieve it.

Reggie’s pissed and he’s using my proximity to go after her again. She’s slammed back and he grabs her by the hair and begins dragging her toward the door. She’s screaming and flailing, incapable of getting free as her boyfriend is staring at her in horror. He reaches for her, then must decide fuck it and dodges out the door. “Fucking… exorcist shit,” he cries as he disappears.

She twists and escapes Reggie’s hold. He’s now far enough from me that he can’t catch her again, and she slips right through his fingers as he growls like a feral animal. She scrambles out the door in a panic as I watch Reggie fume, clearly pissed he couldn’t keep up the ass kicking. Grandpa slides the lock to the front door in place.

“Good job, Reggie,” Keaton says. “Thank you for disarming her first.”

Reggie looks over at him. “Yeah?”

“It was very impressive,” Keaton tells him.

Reggie’s anger dissolves before my eyes as he turns quite pleased. He almost looks a bit shy, which just confuses me. “Really? I mean… thank you… of course it was. I work out on my days off.”

“I noticed,” he says, even though there’s obviously nothing there to notice. Unless Reggie is referring to the hand he uses to pet his cat Snugglebum while watching movies, he does very little working out.

That’s when I see that Shion has turned into a mime. His hands are still bound but he’s sure trying to flail them around a bit as his head cocks, his mouth opens then closes, and then he just looks right at me. “That… the woman… her hair… she slid… the gun… the door…” Shion cocks his head and just stares at me, like direct eye contact will solve everything.

“Uh… yeah…. That was mostly Reggie,” I tell him.

“Suuuuuuure was,” Reggie says, quite proudly. “That bitch comes back, and I’ll smack her all the way into the new year.”

Shion’s eyes are narrowed now before he looks around, as though he’s expecting someone to jump out from behind the shelves with an “April Fool’s, you dumbass!”

And I’m over here wondering why my splitting headache has to come back in full force. Like… I didn’t ask Reggie to save my ass, and while I’m quite thankful about it, why do I have to suffer?

“Hiro, why didn’t you do that the first time you told me about the ghosts? I definitely would have believed you then,” Shion says.

“Because all of that can only happen when there’s a lot of… emotions involved. It’s generally only when I’m in danger. Like the other day, Reggie tried pushing a suitcase over and couldn’t. I think… things are changing for some reason, and I don’t quite know why.”

My grandpa comes around behind me and begins picking at the tape on my hands as my phone starts ringing. I hurry over to it and use my face to accept the call before putting it on speaker.

“Hey, hon,” I say.

“Hiro, what the fuck is happening? I’m almost there,” Maddox asks.

“I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

“I’m almost there. What happened?”

“Everything’s fine. We’ll calmly talk about it when you get here,” I reply a moment before I see him heading for the door. “My god, how fast did you speed?”

“I beat the police, so obviously fast enough,” he says. “Unlock the door.”

“My hands are taped. My grandpa is trying to get them undone but it’s a lot of tape.”

He digs around for his own set of keys and unlocks the door before rushing in. “What the fuck happened?”

“Maddox… just…”

He takes one look around him and his expression turns from worry to complete rage. I’ve seen Maddox angry before but he’s beyond angry. “My fucking mom did this, didn’t she?” he asks. “I’m going to fucking destroy her life since she keeps insisting on destroying mine. Which way did she go? Did you see what kind of vehicle she was driving?”

“Maddox, please unbind my hands.”

“Where did she go?” he asks as he quickly works at my hands.

“I don’t know—” And he’s out through the door the instant my hands are free.

“Maddox, dammit,” I growl as I hurry over to Shion while the sound of sirens gets louder. Two police officers that I recognize but don’t know well enough to remember their names hurry in, but so do Avery, Mick, and Parker.

“Why’s the whole gang here?” I ask, wondering if there’s been a murder I’m not privy to.

“Because we never know if you’re like ‘I’ve fallen into a pit’ or ‘I’ve been abducted’ or ‘I’m being held up by a serial killer,’” Maddox’s boss Parker says. By her side is Mick, one of the techs from homicide who really doesn’t need to be here when there are no bodies involved.

“Has all of that happened to you?” Shion asks curiously.

I shrug. “Maybe. Less of a pit and more like this creepy basement with all these ghosts and…”

“Honey, ‘a pit’ sounded better,” Detective Avery says as she pats my shoulder. She’s the detective who took over Keaton’s position after he was killed. She’s super sweet, borderline bubbly, and a pretty good match for Maddox who commonly works as her partner. I feel like the people they interact with are less likely to shake in fear when being interrogated if Avery is involved.

I rush out the door as Avery calls after me, asking what’s happened. I pause long enough to wave toward my computer. “Her face should be on the camera! The computer is unlocked,” I shout as I hurry outside to figure out where Maddox is.