“Blog?”
“Draith’s Weird Stuff,” she said. “You post photos of creepy things every week. You’re an underground hit, you must know that.”
I smiled weakly. “I didn’t realize.”
“You should be the one explaining this crazy crap to me. I never believed in any of it until I began seeing it with my own eyes. I thought you must be trying to sell health supplements and dating sites on your blog, so you made it all up. Now, I know you were telling the truth. Don’t you believe your own stories?”
“Um,” I said, having no recollection of having written articles about the supernatural. “I suppose it’s different when you are staring them in the face.”
Holly nodded. “OK. I guess I can understand that. But you should at least try, don’t you think?”
I nodded, then lifted the sunglasses to my face. I paused.
“Open it!” she urged.
I stared at her. “No,” I said.
“What?”
“You want this safe open more than I do. But I’m not going to do it. Not until you tell me your story.”
Holly made a sound as if she were strangling. “What can I tell you that you don’t already know?”
“Start with how you know me. Besides reading about me online.”
“That night,” she said, looking down at her hands. “The night Tony died. You were in the accident.”
“You remember any details?”
“He almost ran me over with his Cadillac.”
I took out Tony’s wallet and eyed the photograph on the driver’s license. I’d never taken the time to look at it before. Light brown hair, swept to the side. A single earring gleamed beside a crooked smile. So that was Tony. There was some familiarity to the tiny square headshot. I recalled liking him.
“I don’t remember the accident,” I said. “There were head injuries.”
“I’m not surprised about that,” she said. “I’m surprised you made it at all. I can hardly believe you are walking and talking. When I first saw you, you scared me. You were really messed up after the wreck. You were ejected and broken up. That was less than two weeks ago.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Look,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it. I swear. But you have to open this frigging safe before we get caught in here.”
I realized she had a point. “You promise?”
“I said so.”
I nodded and turned back to the round, flat door of the safe in the floor. We were both down on our knees. I had no idea what the combination was. None at all. I gave the dial an experimental spin and tugged at the handle. Then I spun it in the opposite direction and tried the handle again. It didn’t even click or rattle. It was like tugging on a lamppost. The handle didn’t even move fractionally. Nothing.
“What the hell are you doing?” Holly hissed.
“If this works, I want it to be a clear test. I don’t want to be telling myself afterward that it opened only because the combination had already been dialed and all I had to do was twist the handle.”
Holly made a sound of exasperation.
I took a deep breath and put on the sunglasses. I didn’t feel any different with them on. But the room did look darker, just as it should have. I reached down and tugged the handle.
I hadn’t really expected that it would open right away. I had expected that I would have to give the dial a spin or two first. Maybe the dial would click itself into precisely the right spot when I spun it at random. But that wasn’t how it happened. It was easier than that. The handle twisted and I heard a clinking sound.
“I think it’s open,” I whispered.
“No shit,” Holly said. “Lift the door up, man.”
“What if there’s something bad in there?”
She looked at me as if I was crazy. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” I felt a chill. A creepy feeling, as if I had just invoked an unknown power. I didn’t like the sensation. It was exciting, but also frightening.
Sighing loudly, Holly placed her hands over mine and tried to force my hand to lift the door open. I resisted, and the door stayed closed. She wasn’t very strong. She made a sound of vexation and sat back on her haunches.
“What’s wrong now?” she asked.
“I wasn’t ready yet.”
She crossed her arms, waiting. After another few seconds, I faced my demons and yanked the door open.
Holly whooped. She shoved her hand deeply into the safe and pulled out three wads of money. They were thick packets of twenties, hundreds of them in each wad, folded over once and wrapped neatly with thick blue rubber bands.
I reached out and took one of the wads from her. She frowned, but then shrugged. I hefted the wad in my palm. Three thousand, I figured. Maybe four.
“For expenses, Tony,” I said aloud to no one. “We’ll call this full payment for investigating your death.”