“Everything seems distorted,” she said. “Like my whole world has been shifted a quarter of an inch to the left.”

“So something’s out of place?”

“No.” But she double-checked just to be sure. “It only feels like it.”

As he spoke to her, she knew he wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were sweeping over the windows, the door into the cellar, the rooms beyond—which were dark.

She wished she’d left every light she had on.

“Are you always armed?” she asked as that hand of his stayed in his windbreaker’s pocket.

Daniel looked at her. “Would it bother you if I said yes?”

“Considering the day I’ve had? No. Not at all.”

“My weapon is legal and I know how to use it.”

“Good.” She put the box on the table and then dead-bolted the door. “I’m coming with you while you check.”

“Okay, but stay behind me. Bullets don’t have a reverse gear.”

Just as she went to follow him, she doubled back and grabbed the box. With him in front, like he was a shield, they went through to the parlor, leaned into the study; then turned to the stairs.

“At least you don’t have a flood coming down them,” Daniel remarked as they started for the second floor.

“Where the hell do you think Peter is?” she asked, more to herself than to him.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever find him.”

The sound of a rattle coming out of the box made her shake the thing just to double-check it was the source of the noise. It was. Whatever had been shipped to Peter was loose.

Please, God, let it not be bones, she thought.

Daniel made quick work of the two bedrooms and bathrooms, and he went through closets and checked under the beds. There wasn’t an attic.

“I’ll do the basement when we get back downstairs,” he said.

“It has a dead bolt because there’s a storm door to the outside.” She went over to the window seat and sat down. “I want to open this now. Up here.”

Where no one could see them.

He took something out of his back pocket and tossed it across. “Use this.”

Lydia caught the Swiss Army knife and flipped the big blade free. “Thank you.”

The box was sealed up with clear packing tape—all of its seams, even the ones that didn’t have to do with top or bottom flaps, were covered with a double layer. The UPS label had a return address from Lancaster, PA, and a delivery of—

“Wait.” She looked up. “This was supposed to go to Peter’s home. Not the WSP.”

“Maybe he changed it online under delivery preferences. We used to do that at some of the apartment buildings I worked at for equipment that the management office didn’t want to deal with.”

“It was mailed twelve days ago.”

As she turned the box over, so she didn’t mess up the label by cutting through it, the contents rattled again, some kind of weight thumping into place.

One quick slice and she was in, popping the flaps.

“What is it?” Daniel asked.

“Just old floppy disks.” She took some out. “The kind before USB drives took over everything.”

The black plastic squares with their silver slides were branded Memorex and unmarked with labels. They’d been in holders, but the three half containers were as loose as the floppy disks, unable to hold on to their contents.

“What do you know,” she said as she set them aside. “Radio Shack is still alive and well.”

“You going to see if you can open them up?”

“Maybe.” She cleared her throat. “You want to eat?”

“Oh, yes. I’m starved.”

They went back down, and as she got out frozen servings of her favorite Finnish comfort food, he unlocked the cellar door and went into the basement. After she turned on the oven and put two carb blocks on a baking sheet, she sat down at the table.

And felt like crying.

Instead of giving in to all that nonsense, she took the gold medallion her grandfather had given her on his death bed and rubbed it back and forth between her fingers.

When Daniel came up the stairs, his weight was so great, the wood steps creaked, and then he was in the open jambs.

“Would you like to stay in the guest room?” she said abruptly.

“Yes,” he answered. “I would.”

 

Out at his Harley, Daniel lit up a cigarette. He only coughed once, which was progress in a bad direction. But whatever, as soon as shit got handled, he was going to quit again. This was just a vacation, not a permanent relocation, to Nicotineville.

Biting on the filter with his front teeth, he leaned down and unbuckled his saddlebags. When he straightened, he checked the barren lawn and the rough line of the forest—or what he could see of things as the night sucked the light out of the sky. Still, the silence around him was so pervasive, he was inclined to trust what his ears were telling him: Nobody else was on the property.

At least not right now.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

He looked over his shoulder. Then he bunny-eared the cigarette and exhaled. “I un-quit today.”

“I can’t say as I blame you.”

“I won’t do it inside, and this is not, like, I’m not forever with this.”

“My grandfather smoked a pipe. More fragrant, but not that different.” Lydia sat down on the back steps. “Was stopping part of your health kick?”

“That and the drinking. I was never into drugs—but I got a little too fond of Jack Daniel’s. That I will never un-quit.”

“I’m glad you got things under control there.”

“Me, too. Not a road I’m going down again.”

Out on the county road, a car approached and kept going, the headlights white, the taillights red.

“I’m sorry you’re mixed up in all this.” She took her hair out of its tie and rubbed her scalp as if she were trying to relieve a headache. “You came for a job, and now—”

“I have a job.”

“Well, technically, that’s just an eight-thirty to four-thirty kind of thing. So you’re working overtime and not getting paid here.”

Daniel exhaled over his shoulder even though the wind would have carried the smoke off anyway. “I’m not staying with you for work. We’re … friends. I’m here because a friend needs my help.”

“Friends.”

“Yup.” He tapped the cigarette. “Unless you have a better word for it.”

“English is my second language. I wouldn’t know.”

“Wow, you sound like a native speaker to me.” He looked around again at the lawn, the drive, the house. “No accent. Good vocabulary. If there were another word, I think you’d know it.”

“I guess … friends it is.”

Daniel nodded, licked his fingertips, and crushed what was glowing orange—

“Ow!” she said as she jumped forward. But she stopped herself before she touched him, falling back into her sit. “Didn’t that hurt.”

“Pain is in the mind.” He tapped the side of his head. “All up here.”

“I thought that was fear.”