I don’t hear the tactical team. The men are so quiet it’s as if they aren’t here. All I detect is blowing air and the clocks.

TICK TOCK TICK TOCK

“Did you notice them?” I persist. “Because I didn’t and I would have.”

“I don’t remember. But there was a lot going on.” Marino has stationed himself between the staircase and the door under it that leads down into the cellar.

“I’m quite certain I would have noticed. I’m surprised you didn’t.”

Marino’s answer is to look up at the ceiling, his head cocked as he listens, his right hand by his gun. I can tell he’s thinking what I am. Ajax and his team are quiet. They’re too quiet. If something has happened we’ll be next. I feel a certain resignation about it, a deeply stored feeling I don’t pull out and look at often. But it’s there. It’s familiar. It’s not an acutely sad or unpleasant feeling but more of an acquiescence, a tacit consent that I can hold fate in my hands like a skull and unflinchingly look it in the eye.

You can’t destroy me if I don’t care.

This day could be our last and if it’s in the cards then so be it. I’ll prevent any bad thing I can. That’s my life’s mission. I also know how to accept finality, to give myself up to what I can’t begin to change. I don’t want to die. But I refuse to fear it. I wait for it without dread because there’s no logic in living a tragedy before it’s happened.

“Truth is,” Marino says as I wait and listen, “I don’t remember hearing any clocks but I saw them when I walked through. I’m pretty sure they all told a different time,” he explains and my expectation intensifies as I wait for what’s about to happen.

Something will. Or it already has.

“I did notice that when I was in the living room,” Marino continues. “I couldn’t believe all the weird shit in there, the spinning wheels, the little crosses made out of iron nails and red thread, the hourglasses. The more I think about it, Doc? I can’t swear the clocks were working.”

“They are now and antique clocks have to be wound manually. They have to be constantly adjusted if they’re to be in sync.” I listen to everything going on around us and hear blowing air and the clocks.

“Someone’s been in here,” Marino says.

“That’s my point.”

“Someone who has a key and the alarm code.”

“Possibly.”

“Not possibly. Absolutely unless you’re talking about a ghost who can pass through walls.” He’s agitated and edgy as he looks at his phone, finding a number.

Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33