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“Come on then, let’s head up before it gets too late,” I reply.
As we all head back to the truck, I can’t help but think that this is a waste of time, but if it makes Jensen feel better about Atlas’s sudden disappearance, then we’ll go.
We know where he lived because we dropped him off a couple of times, but honestly, we have never been inside. Hell, in all the time that we knew him, we only ever saw his uncle from a distance. I couldn’t point him out in a lineup, and actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I think that it was definitely for a reason.
The cabin where they were living is only just inside the town limits and is pretty much as far away from everything else as they could get it. I have to admit that I have lived here all of my life, and I had no idea that there were even cabins up here until Atlas said this was where he was living.
The driveway is long, winding, and very overgrown. If you didn’t know any better, you’d assume that the cabin had been abandoned for a lot longer than a couple of weeks. All of these things were signs that something else was going on with Atlas but we trusted that he’d tell us when he was ready and he is one of us so we were willing to wait as long as it took.
“Is everyone armed?” I ask in the silence of the truck.
“Always,” Jensen grins, producing a knife from somewhere unknown and spinning it in his fingers.
He really should cut himself a lot more often than he does.
Everyone else quickly replies that they’re armed as well. I’m not surprised; we never go anywhere without a weapon on us. It’s a lot better to need a weapon and have one than to need one and not have one, and because of the kind of people we are, we need weapons more often than we don’t.
“Good. They may have left willingly, but we don’t know if something happened first in order to make them leave.” I reply.
“Good point,” Riot agrees.
“The place looks abandoned,” Cash says as we pull up outside.
“It always has,” Jensen replies, not wasting any time as he hops out of the truck.
We’re silent as we approach the cabin, our eyes scanning our surroundings to make sure that we’re the only ones here. Not that any of us would turn down a fight; we’re all on edge. As he watches the front of the small cabin, Jensen bounces on his toes; he is more on edge than the rest of us, although he always is. I can’t remember the last time that darkness wasn’t in his eyes; even when he’s laughing and messing around, they’re still shadowed.
“There’s no signs of a struggle or anything like that,” Luc comments, his eyes sharp.
Riot is the first one to reach the door, and he jiggles the handle, “It’s locked, Jensen. You’re up.”
“On it,” he replies with a grin, his lock-picking set already in his hands.
Within less than a minute, he has it unlocked and is pushing the door open.
Without me needing to tell them, they all pull out their weapons before we head inside. None of us are willing to take the risk of being ambushed, especially since he left so suddenly.
The cabin is small, but then there were only two of them living here, so it didn't need to be big. The downstairs area is just one big room, with a kitchen at one end and a living area at the other. The furniture is still here, but there’s nothing else, no personal effects or anything like that, which makes sense because they left, and there’s no one living here anymore. The upstairs is just as empty as the downstairs, with two bedrooms and a bathroom, that’s it.
“The place is empty,” Cash says as we gather in the front room area of the downstairs.
“And clean,” Rafe adds, “and I mean a hell of a lot cleaner than it should be.”
“You think they wiped the place?” Riot asks, following Rafe’s train of thought quicker than the rest of us do.
“Well, we know that there was something going on with him,” Rafe replies with a shrug, his hands moving quickly as he signs, “Something more than just a shitty home life. He had skills that he shouldn’t have, and he was more than comfortable in our world, especially considering the fact that most of what we do isn’t legal. It’s not a stretch to think that he would need to wipe a place of prints before he left.”
Chapter Four
Trick
“There’s one way to find out,” Luc suggests, and we watch curiously as he heads into the kitchen and starts rummaging around. He comes back with some clear tape, a paintbrush that would be used to paint walls, not canvas, and cocoa powder.
“What the hell are you planning to do?” Jensen asks, still bouncing on his toes.
“Looking for fingerprints,” Luc replies like it’s a no-brainer. When we just look at him, he adds, “Baby powder is better, but I couldn’t find any of that; I think we’re lucky I found cocoa powder. I don’t know if it’s going to work with the paintbrush since it's so big, but the bristles are pretty soft, so I’m hoping it’ll work.”
We all just stare at him, and Cash asks, “Okay, how does it work?”
