Roses Manor, Weston Chapter 17
Gabriella didn’t like the way this headache settled back into place as she moved through Classroom Four after the meeting. After about twenty minutes of playing with the energy sensor beside her and the heart monitor visible on her wrist, it was time for a break.
“I’m getting a coffee,” she said to Elliot. “Would you like one?”
“I’m all set. Hey, any thoughts on where to go for dinner tonight? I don’t really know Leominster that well.”
Suddenly everything she knew about her hometown seemed to fly right out of her head. “Um, I’ll think about it,” she said, grabbing her phone so she could look up restaurants in the thirty seconds she was gone.
He smiled at her. “Great.”
She went into the kitchen and saw James in there refilling his coffee. “Listen,” she said quietly. “I know you guys don’t like Elliot-”
“Right.”
“But he is helping.”
“He is,” James agreed mildly.
“And I know why and I know it isn’t just what he did to me. But could you maybe…”
She trailed off as the appropriate description failed her. But James raised an eyebrow. “We’ll be professional with him,” he said, voice a little chiding in a way that told her she was pushing her luck, even if he wasn’t going to argue with Elliot’s results. “But to be fair, Bradley’s injury isn’t anybody’s business.”
“I know. But I’d just appreciate it if no one mentions scams. I’m really trying to get past everything and I know he feels bad about it.”
James thought for a second, then nodded. “I can’t speak for everyone else,” he said. “But yeah, I’ll let it lie. And I’ll talk to the others when I get a chance. But I gotta be honest, Gabs, I don’t have time to track everyone down right now to try and make them play nice. I won’t say anything though.”
She believed him. Now if only the others would do the same. But having been on the receiving end of the team’s protective anger in the past, she doubted that.
“Thank you,” she said, with a little twist of guilt in her stomach at the mini-lecture.
“I’ll be out here if you need me.”
She headed back to the gray bedroom, where Elliot was taking a turn at Classroom Four. After another twenty minutes or so, they arrived at the end and Elliot frowned at the next empty code space. “This one’s tough,” he said. “Do you think maybe this time it’s in the newsletter printouts? I’m thinking maybe it’s something with that bird at the beginning. It was subtle, but just a little obvious enough to be something. Let’s look through the printouts.”
Her heart sank slightly as she remembered who was currently holding the newsletter printouts. And the files were in Madelyn’s email and Madelyn wasn’t here today, so she couldn’t just go print out new ones herself on one of their broken printers. “Maybe,” she said. “But I can take a look later.”
“We might as well while I’m here,” Elliot said with a smile. “Let me help you while I can.”
He looked so happy to be helping her and here she was, about to lead him right into the bear’s cave to be eaten. “Fine,” she said, forcing herself to hope Bradley was too busy to be nasty.
Bradley was in the back bedroom with the door open, working on the computer with the stack of email printouts right beside him on the desk. “Hi,” Gabriella said from the doorway as Elliot hovered awkwardly behind her.
“Hi,” he said without looking at them.
“Are you done with those?”
“Yeah, working on the next scam on my to-do list.”
Twenty minutes. It had taken him twenty minutes to say it. But to be fair, James had warned her he couldn’t stop everyone else.
Elliot was silent behind her. Was it worth fighting Bradley over this? Did she even want to? She’d been accused of scamming just like the rest of them and they had the right to their own feelings about Elliot. So she just took the stack of papers and brought them back into the gray bedroom.
“Maybe I should go,” Elliot said.
“You don’t have to,” Gabriella replied. “But don’t stay if you don’t want to.”
“I should leave,” he said. “My shift starts early tomorrow, anyway.”
And that hadn’t come up when she invited him to stay over? Now she just felt stupid. “Right. Um, thanks for coming in to help us with it.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. I owe you dinner.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
She walked out to the living room with him, feeling like an asshole and still holding the printouts. “I’ll look through these,” she said. “Thanks for figuring out that level.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Elliot said, looking at something behind her. “Sorry I can’t stay.”
He hadn’t seemed inclined to leave until Bradley had made his comment, but she also wasn’t entitled to keep him here working on her case. Or to go on a date with him after work. So it didn’t help that she was so confused about how angry she should be with him that she had no idea what to say. But after he left, she lingered in the doorway for a moment longer, watching as his car moved down the road. Then she took the printouts and sat down on the couch to sort through them.
James came out of his office a few minutes later. “Did Elliot leave?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“That was sudden.”
“He has a shift in Hillsborough tomorrow morning he didn’t mention. And Bradley made a comment.”
“He did try to fight him.”
“I know,” Gabriella said, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of her voice. “I don’t blame any of you. And I’m mad too, I think. We were going to get dinner after work tonight and he didn’t mention anything about a shift in the morning until Bradley said that. Then suddenly he couldn’t leave fast enough.”
“Bradley has that effect on people.”
She buried her face in her hands for a second, then looked up as James sat down beside her. “Do you and Meredith ever fight?” she asked.
“We’ve only been together a few months, and it’s got an end date.”
God, that was depressing. She’d been so happy for him and that end date had seemed so far away when he told them all they were dating. And now it was just a few weeks away. “So, no?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted. “But do you want to date him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s so sweet, and he’s genuinely sorry about everything. Like, I can see him actively trying in a way he didn’t before. But I don’t think he realizes he still talks down to me. And we had plans tonight. He was going to stay over and then suddenly remembered he had an early shift. So I’m also mad at him right now. But I think he might be mad at me.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t tell Bradley to get fucked when he said he’d moved on to the next scam on his to-do list.”
James tried to hide the laugh, but she giggled helplessly as she closed her eyes for a second and rested her head against the back of the couch. “He said that to Elliot?” James asked. “What an asshole.”
He said it lightly, with affection. “I thought maybe I should say something?” Gabriella said. “And maybe he expected me to and when I didn’t, he left. But, like, does he think just because he and I made up that everything should be fine with everyone? Or was I out of line not standing up for him? And I’m not even sure about any of it, so we might not be in an actual fight, but it feels like it.”
“Fights happen,” James said. “I know I’m not the expert in love and relationships and all that, but they’re going to happen. So I guess you figure out what you can tolerate and whether the good outweighs the bad.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He nudged her with his knee, and she smiled. “He figured out that level,” Gabriella said.
“Good.”
“It was a picture that we reverse-engineered and it brought us to a website with the code on it.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of that,” James admitted.
“Me neither. He suggested maybe the emails are next, or maybe something with an image at the beginning of the level.”
“Did the Ghost King leave?” Bradley asked, from where neither of them had heard him shuffle down the hall.
“Yeah. So you don’t have to hurry on to your next scam,” Gabriella said.
It didn’t sound quite as snotty as she’d expected it to. “Did he sign the cross-team consultancy paper?” Bradley asked James.
“McGovern said the administrators say not to worry about forms right now.”
Bradley froze where he was standing. “They said what?”
“Just not to worry about the forms.”
James’s voice was cautious, and Gabriella sat with dread pooling in her stomach. The only reason this fight had ended was because Bradley got hit by a car on a slushy Fitchburg side street. There had been no actual resolution.
“McGovern told you not to fill them out?”
“Well, yeah, but the order came from higher up. Bud, it’s fine, it was a change in routine, maybe they didn’t-”
“Who?” Bradley demanded, his hands clenched in a death grip on his crutches. “Which higher up?”
“Um, Prentiss?”
“Prentiss?” Bradley’s voice went higher in disbelief. “What did Prentiss say?”
“That they’re too busy to deal with any forms right now. Look, it’s fine. We’ll fill them out later and it’ll be fine. You still get to fill out forms.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Bradley muttered.
He pivoted toward the computer bank and nearly toppled, then righted himself as James moved to steady him. He went over to the first computer, sat down and opened his email, putting on his glasses as the program loaded. It took so long to open that Gabriella sat awkwardly where she was, wondering if she should leave.
“They said they don’t want forms?” Bradley repeated, biting off every word as he finally navigated to his inbox. “They’re too fucking busy for forms?”
“Yes,” James said, frustration in his tone. “What-”
He squinted toward Bradley’s screen, then got up and went over as Bradley moved aside so he could see. Gabriella could see it clearly from where she sat, an inbox full of messages with subject lines like MISSING FORMS and URGENT: RETURN TEAM INFORMATION PACKETS.
“What the fuck?” James muttered, taking the mouse and scrolling through Bradley’s inbox in an obvious violation of Foundation privacy regulations.
“I am getting inundated with emails from them about these goddamn form packets,” Bradley said. “At least twice a day, some going to the admin email list in general and some coming directly to me. I spoke to Renée, the team admin over at East Barnstable County, and she said the same. Someone called her the other day for the packets.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t I tell you I was getting emails to send in things that are part of my job?”
“No, I mean, I-” James took a breath. “I just mean…”
“Also, I fucking did.”
She should just leave, if these two were starting it up again. “There’s ways to tell me that don’t involve being an ass,” James murmured, though most of his focus seemed to be on the email list as he leaned over Bradley to see the screen better. Bradley sat beside him, hand moving briskly over his injured leg as he waited.
James stopped, then broke policy even further by clicking on the top email in Bradley’s inbox. “I’m CC’d on this one,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s from an hour ago, CC’d to my superior. Was this before or after Prentiss said they’re too busy and don’t want to deal with forms?”
James shook his head as he read the email. “After, of course,” he said. “They’ve been talking about wanting to cut down on paperwork for weeks. I’ll deal with this, don’t worry about it.”
He turned to look at Bradley, then did a bit of a double take. “Those new?” James asked, pointing at Bradley’s glasses.
Was he serious right now? Bradley touched the frames defensively. “Yeah.”
“I like them.”
James looked at the list of emails again, then took a small notepad out of his pocket and jotted down a couple notes. “I have a meeting with McGovern tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “I’ll talk to him about it then. Alright, Bradley, you’re done for the day. Leave. I want to do a quick drive-by on the Rochelle Drive case for tomorrow before the snow gets any worse, so I’ll drop you off.”
He looked at Gabriella before Bradley could argue with him. “When are you out?”
“About an hour. I’m going to go do my workout first.”
Suddenly, angry running two miles felt like the perfect way to end this shift.
***
Gabriella barely had time to work on Sixteen Roses for most of the next day. Once again they were out in the field all day and she was so busy that she almost forgot about feeling bad about what happened with Elliot yesterday. Or angry. A text from him came through around noon asking if she wanted to have dinner that night instead. Gabriella took a partially petty, partially busy hour before answering that she had work all night, then heard nothing else.
She’d barely gotten back from following up at St. Christopher’s when James had her and Amelia at a home in Lancaster taking interviews. She was on a double shift, though, so she figured the night would be devoted to finding the next Sixteen Roses code, if she could keep her eyes open.
But when they got back from the Lancaster case, miraculously there wasn’t anything waiting on the schedule for her. Bradley was in the living room and Gabriella spotted the stack of emails on the coffee table in front of him as she came back out of the kitchen with the lunch she was finally going to eat.
“McManus,” he said, motioning for her to come over to where he was sitting.
She walked over, hoping against hope that he had something. She moved two textbooks off of the couch and sat down so she could read along with him with whatever this was.
“Your codes are all three to five digits, right?”
“So far, yeah.”
“Look at these.”
He pointed to a list of bullet points the email sender had written about the history of Sixteen Roses. The information was nothing she didn’t already have, but Bradley had circled the actual bullet points with blue ink. They looked ordinary, but there had to be something going on with them. She squinted at the page, but they just looked like black bullet points. “I don’t see it.”
She waited for him to huff impatiently, but he took out another paper. This one had a color picture of one of the secret levels on it, possibly the second one if she remembered correctly. Again, he’d circled the bullet points beneath it.
“They’re both color printouts,” he said, “But this is the only one that shows that. If you look at the bullets closely, they’re not fully black.”
He took out his phone and turned on the flashlight app, holding the beam directly over the bullet points on the first paper. Looking closely, Gabriella could see that there were blue marks in the bullet point, just a couple shades off from the black around them.
“You’re kidding me,” she breathed.
Bradley’s backpack was sitting on the couch beside her and a pencil stuck out of one of the side pockets. “Do you mind…” she started, motioning toward it.
He just shrugged, holding the light in place. She took the pencil and carefully traced the dots. They were tiny, and the eyestrain intensified the general headache that had been hanging around her all day. But sure enough, her hypothesis was proven correct as connecting the dots on each bullet gradually revealed four numbers.
8-4-1-0
“This could be for any level though,” Bradley said, and her enthusiasm dampened until she spotted the little crow appearing as she traced the specks in the last dot.
“No, it’s this one,” she said. “The crow showed up at the beginning of the level, just for a second. I missed it, but Elliot mentioned it as a possible clue. We either got lucky or it’s the only level where the email gives the code.”
“I’ll take some luck,” Bradley muttered.
“When are you back in the field?” Gabriella asked, rubbing her eyes.
Bradley shrugged, glancing down at the brace around his knee. “Whenever McManus says I can, I guess. But whatever. I’ve been out in the field more this year than I have in my entire career, so I’m used to desk duty, anyway.”
He didn’t sound thrilled about it though, and she remembered her conversation with Madelyn. Bradley looked almost absently at James’s office door, which was closed while he was in a meeting with McGovern. She could hear his voice muffled behind the door as he clearly dealt with yet another stupid and avoidable situation.
“Do you think if I open Sixteen Roses on one of these computers, it’ll melt?” she asked.
“Probably. The laptop is slightly better than these. Or the back bedroom computer like Madelyn said.”
That wasn’t encouraging. She went and got the laptop, bringing it back out to the living room instead of bringing the papers out back. She wasn’t sure why, maybe it was as much her not wanting to be alone in the back of the house as the slim (very, very slim) possibility that she was reading the room correctly and Bradley also didn’t want to be alone. Maybe they were both just feeling morose right now.
She sat down on the other couch, noting a good size tear in the fabric of the cushion she’d landed on. How long had that been there? It had been a long time since she’d sewn, but maybe Gabriella could borrow her mom’s sewing kit and patch that up. Or pick up her own kit, it was probably a good idea to have one here.
Unless…
Gabriella started the laptop, knowing full well that it was going to take twenty minutes to wake up enough to run the game. She left it on the couch, then went over to the supply closet just past the stairs. It was small, deep enough to take a few steps in, but narrow and crowded with metal shelving. Leaving the door open, she picked up a flashlight that was sitting on a lower shelf and began shining it around. There were rows of neatly packed boxes, some less neatly packed boxes, some weapons, and chemicals of some kind. Maybe those were what had set off the sensor the other day?
“What are you looking for?” Bradley called in.
She was about to answer when she spotted it. Up on the shelf, pushed back almost too far to reach, there was an old-fashioned sewing kit. The box was wooden and dusty, but as she managed to carefully nudge it to the front of the shelf and grab it, she realized it was beautiful, intricately carved with a pattern similar to her grandmother’s. And, to Gabriella’s relief, filled with ordinary sewing supplies.
She brought it out to the living room and sat down on the couch, moving the busted cushion so she could assess the damage. It was a long tear, but the edges flapped with what was probably a bit of missing stuffing. That’d make it easier, because this certainly wasn’t going to be the prettiest patch job she’d ever done.
Threading the needle was simple. There was nothing behind it, nothing symbolic and no riddle in it. Nobody was going to question her skills here or leave her more confused than ever about whether she wanted to kill or kiss them. She just wet the end of the thread slightly with a quick sweep of her lips, threaded it through the needle in one move (not common, she had to be a little impressed with herself for that one) and started stitching.
“You don’t have to do that,” Bradley said.
She shrugged. “I’m waiting for the laptop to load. Is this standard equipment for every branch?”
It would make sense. No one was stitching wounds this way (hopefully), but clothing and supplies ripped all the time, and the Foundation wasn’t going to shell out for replacements when a simple repair could solve it. Not that anyone had time to devote to that right now unless they were waiting for a terrible laptop to move off of its loading screen to open a murderous video game.
“I’ve never seen it,” Bradley said. “It must have come with the house.”
From back when normal people living normal lives lived here. Gabriella wondered if they’d believed in ghosts. Maybe their ghosts were still here, watching them right now. Wondering what the hell had happened to the nice little house where they raised their family.
The laptop was nearly done loading by the time she finished stitching the tear. The stitches weren’t as neat as she would have liked, but it had been years since she’d done anything like this. When Gabriella was a kid, she’d sew patches onto her doll’s clothes, then later her own clothes. Not that she had the guts to wear those to school, just at home. Because maybe they suddenly wouldn’t look as cool once she got to school. But her parents had always complimented her when she came out of her room with new patches on her jeans.
James came out of his office as she was cutting off the thread. He looked at her repair job and nodded. “Nice work, Gabs,” he said.
“Thanks.”
Then he looked at Bradley. “Tell me if you get any more emails from them,” he said. “You shouldn’t.”
He grinned sunnily, winked, then headed down toward the gym, ruffling Bradley’s hair playfully as he passed. Gabriella looked at Bradley, expecting a scowl and something nasty lobbed in James’s direction. But he had a slight smile she was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to see as he looked back down at the stack of emails in front of him.
