Page 30 of Pretty Nightmare

Well. That’s probably not true. Yet.

He’s been in school this whole time. I don’t care how fucking smart you are, you don’t just wake up one day and say, I think I will become a skillful reconstructive surgeon and make copies of people using a knife.

It takes time. Lots of time.

In fact, Donovan kinda chose to walk away from all that too, didn’t he? I mean, if he really wanted to make copies of people, he’d be in LA working hard on making that happen. Not here, kissing Core McKay in the kitchen last night.

Just to be clear, I’m not thinking about McKay. I don’t care who he kisses.

Again, I feel like I’m missing something.

Think, Adam. Think. You have lots of things at your disposal. There is an answer to this out there. And it’s probably available to you. If you know where to look.

That’s the problem. I don’t know where to look.

I checked all my father’s documents after he died. The ones he bequeathed to me and the ones he didn’t. I hired a fucking munitions guy to blow open the hidden safe in his office at the New Orleans house. Dude did a damn good job, too. Didn’t burn a single thing inside.

And I did find a lot of things in there. Lots of very helpful things. But certainly not everything.

There was enough there to make contact with about forty teams. Which I did. Right on the spot. I called them up and told them to move on. Get on with their life. I was setting them free.

Of course, that’s not how it ended up. After Indie tried to kill me that first time, and after I recovered, I got back in touch. A lot of them were already dead or missing. They figured out how to get new names and identities and disappeared.

I didn’t think that was strange back then. Only people like me, and McKay, and Indie stick around after the jailer leaves you a get-out-of-jail-free key. Hell, even Donovan moved on. Mostly. He came back regularly. A lot, actually. But he was building something real out in LA. And when Indie went missing, he just slipped into that other life like a cottonmouth sliding into the Old Pearl River.

Never even looked back until Indie reappeared in McKay’s driveway.

But there has to be more. And Carter has this information. And if he had access to it, my father had access to it too.

So where could he be hiding secrets after his death?

Could be just about anywhere, I suppose. On some island somewhere. Some house I never knew about. Maybe he had a mistress and she’s holding on to the secrets I need? Hell, that shit could be buried at the bottom of the ocean.

This thought exercise is nearly futile. Nearly. But not completely.

Because of course, I am hiding things as well. Lots of things. And while I do tuck them away in nice safe places, none of them have been left with a mistress, or in a secret house, or at the bottom of the ocean. They are somewhere I can get to them. Easily. Quickly. And without much fuss.

And if I died today no one would know about that secret place. Not even Maggie, and I tell her almost everything.

So if I think about where I hide my secrets, and then apply that to my father, who taught me most everything I know, then that means he’s hidden these things somewhere personal.

But where?

A place that’s not in danger of being sold, that’s where. So not some random house with a mistress inside it who might decide she’d like a different life and start over by selling everything.

Not a bank. That’s too risky. Even the secret ones.

Not with a trusted friend. When you’re the king, or hell, even a couple rungs down from the king, you don’t trust people with secrets like that. Not anyone. Not even your Maggie. Not even your McKay.

And my father didn’t have a Maggie. That I know of. Or a McKay. That I know of.

But there must be a place and this place has to be in New Orleans. It has to be. My father was partial to that city. And that old French-Quarter house too. It is his one true home.

But I scoured that house. I spent months—hell, nearly a year—after he died, looking for secret places. And I found plenty of them. But they were mostly hiding money. Or gold. A few files filled with incriminating evidence on people he had been blackmailing over the years, but who were all dead now. Shit like that. Which might have been lucrative secrets at one point in time, but not anymore.

They were not the secret.

Not the one I’m looking for.