“Do you have anything to declare?” the rather bored-looking man behind the counter asks without looking up from the paperwork.
For a brief second, Jon oscillates between how would you react if I told you what was in my pocket and yes, I declare this to be a complete waste of time, but he’s anxious to get this over with, so he simply says, “No, nothing.”
The man rattles off a few more standard questions, which Jon answers with only about half his attention. His eyes keep wandering over to the gates, just a dozen or so yards away. It’s so close, he’s almost there…
“Right, that’s everything,” the man says at last. He stamps Jon’s passport and pushes it, along with the requisite forms, over the counter. “Welcome to London. Next!”
Jon moves towards the down escalators, awkwardly attempting to stuff the papers back into his bag as he walks. Well, technically walks. He’s moving at a fast clip that doesn’t quite count as a run but could probably keep up with one. Part of his brain wanders off down the path of linguistics and semantics, trying to figure out what distinguishes a run from a fast walk, but most of it is preoccupied with what’s on the other side of those gates. Through the portal, down the stairs, outside and to the Tube station; he’s not thrilled about it, actually, but under the circumstances, it’s the best he’s going to be able to do.
Damn Julia for destroying his phone. Again. Nowhere has pay phones anymore, either. God, they’re going to be so worried, he promised to check in and he didn’t and now he’s a whole day overdue from what he originally said would be the latest he’d be back. The trains should be running, even this early, he should be able to get home before they have to leave for the Institute, and if he doesn’t he can just go the rest of the way to the Institute and meet them there…
He’s tired, he’s jet-lagged, he’s stressed. He’s used up too much of himself, given in to the Eye more than he should, and it’s overwhelming. He’s learned virtually nothing useful on this trip and he just wants to be home. He feels like he could sleep for a week. Or at least like he wants to.
When this is all over, he promises himself. When it’s all over, after the Unknowing, if Elias is still around, Jon will insist on vacation time for himself and his team members. They need the downtime, and Jon won’t lie, the idea of getting to spend a few weeks with just Martin and Tim is appealing. For the moment, though, he’ll have to settle for a few hours.
He would dearly love to take the day off. But Elias has made it clear that he wants them to think time is of the essence, so he can’t tip his hand and stay out too long. Maybe they can come in late. On second thought, though—he glances quickly at the outsize clock on the wall—he’s not going to make it home in time for much more than a quick nap, if that, before they have to leave. Maybe he should just go straight to the Institute, use the phone in the Archives to call and say he’s back, and curl up on the cot he still keeps in the storage room. He can at least get some rest, maybe—
“Jon! Jon!”
Jon’s head jerks up and whips around. He doesn’t have any checked luggage, so he just kept going and he’s crossed the line from the passengers-only area to the public area, but he hasn’t been paying attention to much around him. There’s a bit of a crowd, but not so much of one he can’t see Tim and Martin watching him from a few yards away.
Jon breaks into a run, never taking his eyes off of the two people he’s wanted most to see as they do the same towards him. He somehow manages to avoid tripping on a small child dragging a rolling suitcase and flings himself into their arms.
For the first time in almost two weeks, he feels some of the tension leave his body. Martin is soft, Tim is solid, both of them are warm, and he’s safe here. The song the Primes danced to, the night the three of them moved into their house, floats through his head, and he clings to Tim and Martin and inhales the scent he’s come to associate with home. For a long time, they just stand there clutching one another.
“Melanie’s right,” he says at last. “Jet lag sucks.”
Tim and Martin both laugh, a little desperately. Jon laughs, too, and looks up. Martin has at least a day’s worth of stubble growing on his chin and Tim’s shirt is inside out. It looks like they just rolled out of bed and came straight for the airport, or…oh, God. “Tell me you two haven’t been sitting here waiting for me since yesterday.”
“We thought about it, but no,” Tim assures him. “The Primes called and said you’d be coming in this morning.”
“We got them one of those throwaway phones,” Martin adds. “Honestly, we should’ve done that a long time ago, but…it’s a long story. We’ll tell you about it when you’ve had a chance to get some rest. You look exhausted.”
“So do you.” Jon looks from Martin to Tim and back again. “I’m sure we can take a half-day without anyone getting too upset. Do you think Sasha and Melanie will handle things for us?”
“Sasha owes us,” Tim says. He eases back but keeps one arm around Jon; Martin does the same. Jon shifts his arms so they’re behind Tim and Martin’s waists. “She’s taken a fair bit of time off these last couple weeks—and it’s for good reason, so don’t think I’m saying otherwise. But she owes us. I’m sure she’ll hold down the fort for a couple hours.”
“I’ll text Melanie when we get to the car and see what she says,” Martin offers.
They walk out of the terminal together and to where Tim has parked his car. Jon half-expects they’ll talk on the way home, but they don’t; he really is exhausted and he can tell they’re tired, too, so the ride is made in silence. None of them speak when they get to the house, either. They just head inside, where Tim and Martin pull Jon into the bedroom and none of them really bother to change into their sleep clothes, just shuck their outer layers and collapse into bed together.
Jon is plagued by his usual nightmares, plus a couple new ones, but honestly, at this point he’s used to them. He wakes up abruptly, but not screaming, and is momentarily disorientated by the brightness of the room and the awareness of another presence in the bed before he registers that he’s back where he belongs, safe and secure between Martin and Tim. Well, between is stretching it a bit; among might be a better word to use. They’ve somehow managed to end up in a tangled pile of limbs and extremities. Jon’s cheek is pillowed on the soft, warm fleshiness of Martin’s upper arm, his neck fitting easily into Martin’s elbow, and one of Tim’s legs is hooked over Jon’s hip. He normally doesn’t like the sensation of skin against skin, or at least he hasn’t with anyone he’s ever been with, but this feels…right.
Something clicks into place, all at once, and it makes his breath catch in his throat. When he called to talk to Tim and Martin because he needed to hear their voices, he didn’t expect to get so relaxed and comfortable that he stopped thinking before he spoke, and as soon as he heard the words love you both slide out of his mouth he panicked and ended the call before giving them a chance to reply. He’s spent as much of the last three or so days as he can—when he can spare the brainpower for it—turning his feelings over and over and trying to analyze them. He doesn’t doubt he meant those words, but he’s been trying to parse out what he meant by them and what it means for them all. Everything he’s been through between then and now has meant he’s been a bit stressed, a bit on edge, and hasn’t really had a lot of time to think about it clearly.
Now, though, he thinks about the safe and secure feeling he gets when he’s in their arms like this, about the desperate way he’s mentally cried out for both of them every time he’s been in danger, but also about the moments of deep and utter happiness they’ve shared over the last year, the nights they’ve laughed so hard they start crying, the afternoons they’ve spent with Charlie in their kitchen. He thinks about falling out of Helen’s tunnels into their arms and the perfect moment of joy when he saw their faces in the airport. Most poignantly, he thinks of the yawning chasm that seemed to open up the minute he crossed beyond the security barrier when he left London two weeks ago—the empty blackness that separated him from Martin and Tim—and for the first time, everything coalesces into pure certainty.
Love you both. Of course he does. He loves both of them with a depth he’s never felt before, and it scares the hell out of him because he runs the risk of losing them both to what’s coming. At the same time, it fills him with a sense of utter peace, because he has them now.
He wishes they could just stay like this a little longer, but an alarm he hasn’t realized someone set goes off and both Martin and Tim stir with varying noises of dismay. They’ve got to get up, got to get to the Institute. Still, Jon clings to them both for a moment more before, reluctantly, he climbs out of bed to go take a shower.
Tim drives them to work, and none of them argue.
Sasha meets Jon with a huge hug when he walks in. Surprisingly, Melanie offers him one, too. It’s a bit stiff, but it feels genuine, and Jon takes it willingly.
“I’m sorry you’re trapped here,” he tells her. “But for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here.”
Melanie shrugs. “My choice. Maybe one I shouldn’t have made, but still…my choice. Glad I can help. Now tell me what I need to do.”
Jon’s more grateful to her than he can express. Looking around at the Archives, at the assistants, at his family, he can see now what he wouldn’t let himself see before: Sasha’s hunger, Tim’s exhaustion, Martin’s strain. They’re all on edge and they’re all walking a fine line. Melanie hasn’t fallen as hard as they have; she’s still just a regular assistant. Still a bit of an outsider looking in. She’s far enough away from all of this that she can…well, she can’t walk away, but she’s at least not having her soul sucked out of her body with every step she takes. And she’s choosing to be here, choosing to help. She’s someone he can trust to protect his people without reservation or hesitation.
And if what the Primes have said is even half true, which it seems to be, she can probably handle herself almost better than the rest of them.
“For starters, I’d like to hear what you’ve been up to while I’ve been gone,” Jon says. “Then, perhaps, I can tell you what I’ve been up to. We—we need to make plans.”
“War room or downstairs?” Sasha asks. “Either one should be fine. Elias left sick about twenty minutes ago, so we can all convene without him knowing.”
Jon is startled. “How do you know?”
Melanie looks gleeful. “Sasha went up to tell him you were back and that you’d be in later today and all that, and while she had him distracted, I distracted Rosie and mixed laxatives in with the creamer she was putting in his coffee. A lot of laxatives.”
“The whole building heard him, practically.” Sasha smirks. “Rosie wanted to call him an ambulance, but he insisted he’d be fine to get home on his own and that he just needed rest or something like that. I didn’t read his mind,” she adds, evidently catching something in Jon’s expression. “Or hers. Manal told me.”
“See, this is why I drink tea,” Martin says with a straight face.
Jon is torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to scold them both for recklessness. Instead, he says, “If you’re sure…let’s go ahead and do this up here. The seating’s a bit more comfortable.”
Melanie turns on her heel. “I’ll go get them.”
Jon ducks into his office only long enough to grab a couple of things, then joins the others in the War Room. There are a couple of additional pins on the board and a new color of string; considering it stretches from London to Beijing to start bouncing around the States, Jon guesses it’s tracing his journey. The whiteboard has a list of the most common names and places they’ve seen in the statements, with tally marks indicating how many statements they’ve come up with for each, but Sasha begins erasing it with the explanation that they’ve already made a more permanent copy of those notes. They’ve also set up a secondary tea station in the room itself, which Jon appreciates, since it means Martin doesn’t have to be out of his sight for the length of time it would take him to brew tea for them all.
God, the separation anxiety is terrible.
Melanie arrives with the Primes just as Martin finishes up the tea; Jon Prime crosses over to where Jon stands, smiling wanly, and pulls him into a hug. “I hope your trip went better than mine,” he murmurs in Jon’s ear.
“I doubt it,” Jon mutters back. Jon Prime sighs regretfully and lets him go.
He gets a hug from Martin Prime, too, and then they all settle into seats in a rough semicircle around the boards and single desk. Jon brings the mug of tea to his lips and inhales for a moment. Jon Prime is right, it doesn’t taste as good when Martin doesn’t make it. “Right,” he says at last. “Fill me in. What have I missed?”
“Not much, honestly,” Tim says. “A few live statements, Elias being a dick, and…whatever that mess was on Tuesday. But we haven’t been able to find much about the Unknowing.”
Jon is instantly on edge. “Tuesday? What happened on Tuesday?”
“Pick something,” Melanie mutters, with just a bit of an edge to it.
Martin sighs. “Peter Lukas was here.”
“What?” Jon barely manages to stop from dropping his mug. “I-I thought—I thought the deal was that he had to stay away from you.”
“The Institute doesn’t show up in those pictures in the Light, apparently, so there’s no way for the Keeper to actually know he violated the contract,” Martin says. “Unless someone tells him, which, well, if I can figure out how to find him, I’m going to. I got it on tape, at least, so there’s evidence. But yeah, apparently he had a meeting with Elias and made a trip down here first.”
Upset, Jon reaches over to touch Martin’s arm lightly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ll admit it was a bit rough, but that’s just because I was already kind of…not at my best. I took a live statement two days in a row,” Martin admits, wincing under Jon’s look. “But anything he did to me, I got over pretty quickly.”
Jon doesn’t like the emphasis Martin places on the word me, but when he turns to scan the others, he realizes the one who looks the worst off is Martin Prime. Jon Prime meets his eyes, and his lips flatten. “Peter Lukas trails the Lonely after him. I wasn’t here,” he says softly. “Martin woke up alone and…”
“It was a bit touch and go,” Martin Prime says. “But we’re all right.”
“Where were you?” Jon asks his counterpart. It’s not like him to go haring off around London, especially during the day.
“Hill Top Road. Your team found a statement I remembered…when Martin brought it to me the first time, I remember being tempted to investigate but feeling very strongly that I shouldn’t. I had the same feeling this time, so I went,” Jon Prime answers. “I thought I might get some…useful information.”
“Did you?”
“Not about the Unknowing.”
Jon waits a second, but it’s obvious Jon Prime isn’t going to say further, and he decides not to push him. Sasha evidently comes to the same conclusion. “I feel bad that I missed all of this, but I was out for the afternoon. My uncle called and wanted to talk to me, so everyone told me to just go.”
“Is everything all right?” Jon asks.
“Depends on your definition of ‘all right’,” Sasha replies. “He’s being released next week. Which is great, and I’m actually quite excited about it. But he also—he had a statement.” She points at the shelves. “Tape’s in there if you want to listen to it later, but short version, the Corruption killed my parents and grandparents. Uncle Wade and I probably had a lucky escape ourselves.”
“Sasha, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Anyway, that was basically all that happened with us while you were gone. What about you?” Sasha pushes her glasses up her nose with her middle finger. “Did you learn anything useful while you were gone?”
“Maybe? Not by actually following Gertrude’s path, though.” Jon takes a sip of tea to brace himself, then sets it on the desk and takes a deep breath. “Did Martin and Tim tell you about what I found in Chicago and Pittsburgh?”
“Fat lot of nothing,” Melanie says. “Except for the fact that Gertrude Robinson managed to not actually get charged with anything after being arrested.”
“Essentially, yes.” Jon glances from Martin to Tim and back, knowing they’re going to be upset. “As you know, then, I planned to take the bus from Pittsburgh to D.C., then fly home. I should have been home yesterday. But…well, the bus I was on made a stop to allow us to stretch, and I was…accosted.”
“Jon,” Tim says, “did you get kidnapped again?”
“Only a little,” Jon protests. He knows how feeble it sounds, but it does at least get a surprised laugh out of Martin. “I’d—I’d had a feeling I was being followed since I landed in Chicago, but by the time I got to Pittsburgh…I’m sorry I didn’t say anything while we were on the phone on Monday, but I-I didn’t want to worry you two unnecessarily. But by then I was sure. I had hoped the cop that was stalking me would be left behind, but no, he was still after me when the bus stopped.”
“You got kidnapped by a cop?” Martin’s voice rose a bit in pitch.
Jon shook his head. “No, by someone chasing that cop. Alleged cop, anyway. You recall that statement last year, the—the anatomy professor with the students with the strange names?”
“Wh—oh, yeah, the Stranger statement. First live one after…” Martin waves a hand around the room, indicating the Primes, the timeline on the whiteboard, and his own scars.
“Well, apparently one of them was hiding out as a Chicago beat cop. Must have recognized me, or at least spotted the Eye’s influence on me. But he didn’t actually manage to get to me. I got kidnapped—or escorted, as she would have it—by Julia Montauk.”
Sasha’s eyes widen. “Robert Montauk’s daughter?”
Jon nods. “She’s working with Trevor Herbert. The vampire hunter. He’s still alive…somehow. They’re over in America hunting…monsters. Mostly.” He shivers slightly, remembering the smug sneer on the man’s face: The line gets blurrier every day. Could he…no. No, he won’t think about that.
Martin and Tim both reach for Jon’s hands at the same instant. He clasps them both, grateful for the connection. Melanie frowns. “Fill me in. Who are these people?”
“Robert Montauk was a serial killer, but he was also working with the Dark,” Sasha tells her. “Julia Montauk was, well, his daughter. She gave a statement a few years back. Trevor Herbert was a man who spent basically his whole life hunting vampires. Or at least that’s what he calls them. There’s this whole…thing. We thought at first he died of lung cancer, like, literally in the middle of making his statement, but apparently he survived.”
Melanie taps her finger on her mug. Her eyes go vacant for a moment. Before Jon can continue, though, she turns to Jon Prime. “So is he part of the End or the Hunt?”
“The Hunt,” Jon Prime says, looking surprised. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought so, but the whole cheating-death thing made me wonder, that’s all.”
“A lot of—of avatars have cheated death, in one way or another,” Jon Prime says slowly. “But it’s their patrons, I suppose, keeping them alive. One more favor.”
Melanie hums. “’S irrelevant, I guess. Anyway, I’m up to speed now. Go on. You got kidnapped by a Hunter and—the daughter of the Dark?”
“She’s with the Hunt now, too. I got their statement while we waited for Max Mustermann to—well, regrow a body.” Jon shudders a bit again. It was all a bit grisly. “They obviously didn’t know anything about the Unknowing, but I was hoping Mustermann would.”
“Did he?” Martin asks softly.
Jon sighs. “Mostly what we already knew. He didn’t even know when it was set to happen, just ‘when things are ready.’ I’d have tried more questions, but Trevor and Julia decided they weren’t going to get anything else useful out of him and dispatched him.”
Tim sighs, too. “So you got a net total of…nothing.”
“Not quite. Julia and Trevor offered me a—a thank-you of sorts, for helping them catch Mustermann. Apparently they’d been after him for some time.” Jon lets go of Tim and Martin’s hands and reaches into his pocket. “I made a deal at the time. Bring this back to England, promise to dispose of it after, and I’d get all the information I needed.”
Jon Prime chuckles slightly. “That sounds familiar.”
Jon pulls out the folded page he’s been carrying for two days. Martin eyes it apprehensively. “Jon…what did you do?”
Melanie leans forward. “Is that—leather?”
“Technically, I think leather has to be tanned first. It’s just skin.” Jon studies it. “There’s a book—Mary Keay had it. It’s got pages on it with—it’s hard to explain, but the pages are sort of…possessed by the spirits of people who’ve died. Technically, mostly people she murdered. Gertrude Robinson knew how to do it too, and…she bound Gerry into it. Uh, Gerard Keay.”
Sasha’s eyebrows shoot up. “Gertrude Robinson murdered Gerard Keay?”
“No.” Jon reconsiders. “Not technically, but I’m inclined to hold her responsible. She had to have known how little time he had left—his cancer was incredibly advanced when he was admitted to the hospital. But I-I don’t think violent death is necessarily a prerequisite for being bound into the book, just…fresh death. I wouldn’t know.”
“You’re right.” Jon Prime massages his temple with one hand, eyes closed. “I would rather not know those details, but unfortunately I do.”
Martin Prime slides a hand between Jon Prime’s shoulder blades and rubs gently; Jon Prime leans into him and sighs, almost inaudibly. Martin studies the page in Jon’s hand. “So what did he tell you? I—I’m guessing you…summoned him.”
“Nothing yet,” Jon answers. “Like I said…he promised to tell me everything he could if I would just bring him back here, and then burn the page after we’re done.”
He unfolds the page, takes a deep breath, and begins to read aloud. As the last time, the air grows thick and heavy, and the words taste bitter on his tongue. He aches with sympathy for the dying—technically the dead, but reading it, he feels there, the same way he does when he reads the statements.
“‘And so Gerard Keay ended,’” he concludes, lowering the page. And just like last time, there the figure is in front of him, with no clear idea of when he appeared or how he got there. Martin makes a strangled noise of surprise. Jon can’t help but smile a bit as he makes eye contact with the specter. “Welcome home, Gerry.”
Gerry grins and makes an ironic little half-bow. “Archivist.”
“My friends call me Jon.” Jon waves a hand around him. “And speaking of…this is my team.”
He introduces each one of them in turn, including the Primes. Gerry is particularly startled to see them. “Time travel? I didn’t know that was possible. How’d you do it?”
“Spiral,” Martin Prime says succinctly. “Not the best option in the world.”
Gerry studies Martin Prime for a minute, then gives Jon Prime a meaningful glance with a raised eyebrow. Jon Prime rolls his eyes, but there’s a fond smile on his face as he kisses Martin Prime’s temple. Martin Prime relaxes a little, and it occurs to Jon, all of a sudden, that he’s jealous, at least a little bit.
Turning back to Jon, Gerry folds his arms across his chest. “All right. I suppose you’ve got questions.”
“Just one,” Jon answers. “How did Gertrude plan to stop the Unknowing?”
He knows what the Primes did, but he’s hoping against hope Gertrude might have had a different plan. Blowing up a factory will work, but he’s afraid to let Tim get that close to an explosion in the name of revenge. Unless there’s a way to do it long-range…
“Don’t know,” Gerry says casually.
Melanie throws up her hands dramatically. “Great! Just great. Big help.”
“Hey, now,” Gerry protests. “Okay, I don’t know exactly, but…Gertrude reckoned it couldn’t be stopped ahead of time. It could be delayed, but nothing we could do would actually stop it properly. Even the Dancer could be replaced. But once it starts, it might be vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable to what?” Melanie presses.
“I dunno.”
Melanie lets out a string of profanity that would have had Jon’s grandmother washing his mouth out with soap and salt water. Sasha hides a laugh behind a cough. “Seriously, she never said?”
Gerry’s eyes twinkle. Jon’s pretty sure he’s enjoying teasing them. “She did say she had something that might disrupt it.”
Sasha rolls her hand in a go on gesture. “What?”
“Not long before I went into the hospital, she told me that if something got her first, I was…” Gerry pauses, and there’s a flash of pain in his eyes. Jon realizes he really, truly did care about Gertrude, in his own way. “There’s a storage unit on an industrial estate up near Hainault. She said she rented it under the name Jan Kelly, and hid the key somewhere in the Archives.”
Jon remembers the key he found under the floorboards with Gertrude’s laptop. “Oh. Uh, I think I found that, actually.”
“Well, it’s in that storage unit,” Gerry says. “Whatever she thought might disrupt the ritual, stop the Unknowing, that’s where it is.”
“But you don’t know what it is.” With a sinking feeling, Jon realizes it has to be some kind of explosive.
“No,” Gerry answers. “When I asked her, she said she’d show me when we got back to London. Mind you, she had this weird look in her eyes, like it was some kind of joke.”
Melanie sighs. “So we’ve got a net gain of…a storage unit.”
“Hey, at least I know where to go now,” Jon points out. “It’s something, at least.”
Gerry looks around at them, then turns to the Primes. “Did it work when you did it?”
“It did,” Jon Prime says quietly. “But we lost a lot in the process. We were hoping there might be another method.”
“I reckon if there was, Gertrude would’ve had more than one plan set up,” Gerry says. “She was like that. Never put all your eggs in one basket unless you only have one basket, or you’re damned sure of it.”
“Or you don’t have that many hens,” Sasha says.
Jon sighs and nods. “Thank you, Gerry.”
“Sure. Glad to help what I could.” Gerry studies Jon thoughtfully. “Don’t forget what you promised.”
“As soon as we’re done here.”
Gerry nods. “I think I’m ready to go now. Thank you. For bringing me home.”
“Of course. Uh…I dismiss you,” Jon says, a bit awkwardly.
Gerry sighs in relief and smiles. He gives a wink and a thumbs-up to Martin and Tim, and then he’s gone.
Jon sighs, too. He folds the page back up, then goes over to the metal trash can in the corner, drops it in, and fishes out the spiderweb lighter he keeps finding in his pocket even though he has definitely quit smoking. “Right,” he says, mostly to himself, then lights the page on fire.
None of them speak while the page crumbles away to ashes. Once it’s done, Tim exhales heavily and slumps in his chair, rubbing at his temples with his eyes closed. “Christ, that hurt.”
“Hang on.” Martin grabs Tim’s mug and brushes a hand gently against his cheek before hurrying over to the tea station.
Jon barely stops himself from dropping the trash can and hurries back to Tim’s side. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
“I’ll be okay. Just—lot of power, you know? It’s getting harder and harder to stop from seeing the marks without trying, and the—the page itself was bad enough, but watching it burn—I don’t know why, but it was painful.” Tim takes a few deep, slow breaths. “I’m okay, Jon, honest.”
Jon doesn’t move from Tim’s side until Martin comes back with the tea and slides it into his hands. After a few moments of inhaling the tea, with Jon on one side of him and Martin on the other, Tim finally looks up and manages a smile. “Sorry for worrying you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tim.” Jon takes a chance and brushes the hair on the back of Tim’s neck lightly. “How are you feeling?”
“Bit drained,” Tim admits. “Should be okay tomorrow.”
Jon Prime sighs. “Tim, if you’re using your abilities…whether you mean to or not, you’re going to need a statement to really recover well.”
Melanie half-rises from her seat. “I can go try and grab you one. Then you can, I don’t know, read it while we go look at this storage unit?”
“We can do that later,” Jon says, waving her to sit down. “Look at the storage unit, I mean. As for the statement…” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the tape Tim locked in his desk drawer weeks ago, the one labeled in Gertrude’s distinctive handwriting with nothing more than a date and location. He holds it up to show everyone. “This is the statement we’re pretty sure is my father’s. Anyone who wants to can leave…but I think it’s time we listen to it.”