Page 26 of Fury
“Miss Fischer…oh…I…I’m sorry,” a light voice stuttered from the doorway.
“It’s fine Polly.”
“Poppy.”
“Shit,” she swore so lightly, just under her breath, but I was so close I caught those words. “Sorry. What is it, Poppy?”
“Your next appointment is here to see you.”
“Show them to one of the family rooms. I’ll be right with them. Fury is busy here.”
She shot me a glance. I should stand up; make like I was fixing something on her floor. But I didn’t care to help her out of this situation, and I was more than happy for this morsel of gossip to travel the office.
Heidi scowled at me again, pushing to her feet and now my face was just in line with the top of her thighs, my mouth right at cunt height. I grinned up at her as she glared down at me angrily. She was incredible whichever way she was. Mad, frightened, unsure, turned on. I’d seen it all and, fuck me, I was hooked like a druggy to his fix, one I hadn’t even had yet.
*****
“What are we waiting for?” one of the identical twins grumbled from the back seat of my truck.
“He should be home by now,” Magnet mumbled, not really answering the question.
“Maybe he’s snuffed it,” the carbon copy of the other shrugged in my rear-view mirror.
“We’re gonna have to go in, Fury. Carnage is right.”
“How the fuck can you tell these apart?” I complained, my eyes darting between the two. Never in the years I’d known them could I tell which one was which. I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, but I never did.
“Cade smells different to Caleb,” Magnet shrugged.
“Really?” I sniffed the air in the car, only smelling aftershave and soap, and the air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror, filling the truck with a new car scent.
Outside the rain smattered the windscreen, its rhythm swapping between a gentle pitter patter to the urgent footfalls of mice in stilettos escaping a predator, as the gusts of wind intermittently drove it from behind.
“No, Fury.” Magnet shook his head, a laugh made up of part-disbelief and half amusement. “I just fucking guess.”
“You get it right every time.”
“They don’t call me magnet for nothing, big fella.”
We sat in silence for another twenty minutes, with no sign of Beanz either inside the house or returning to it. There were no lights twinkling in the dark, no hint of life. He should have been home now, finishing work and lounging on his couch. But for the second night, our brothers had been camping outside his house, and he still hadn’t showed.
“He’s either dead, or he knows he’s in the shit and he’s avoiding us,” Caleb stated from behind me.
It wasn’t unlike Beanz to do a disappearing act when the shit hit the fan, or flatly ignore us. But this had been weeks now and there was no sign of him. No calls. No sightings. We’d left it for a while, but now even we were getting worried, and I was getting pissed.
“Right. Chaos, you go round the back with Magnet. Me and Carnage will take the front.”
“Why are you splitting us up?” The carbon copy sat to the left complained.
“What are you? Fucking eight? And if you really need to know, it’s the only way I’ll know which fucker’s which.”
The twins grinned at each other, communicating telepathically or in some other such twin shit.
“And if you even think about swapping places, I’ll bury the pair of you in the same grave.”
Car doors opened, everyone stepping out, and I kept a close eye on dumb and dumber to make sure they didn’t switch places. Caleb kept pace close behind, following me up the path of crumbling concrete, grass pushing up through every crack, and half covering the decorative stones that should have replaced the lawn. Squatting in front of the door, I pushed the flap of the letterbox open, shining a small beam of light into the darkened house from my mobile. The light caught on something just at the foot of the door.
“What can you see?” Caleb grumbled from behind me.