Hell Bound

Bucky was eager to get back to the book. He insisted that we needed to talk about it privately. And he wasn’t going to stop pestering me until we did. And he actually used those words. So I helped him up the stairs, and we returned to my bedroom. He sat down on the bed, breathing hard from his trip, and I sat down beside him. He immediately jumped into work. He opened the book, turned to a page, and showed me where the letters were bolded.

“It starts on page thirteen,” he explained. “Which happens to be the day of your birth, according to your birth certificate. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence. The first few pages spell out ‘Beata.’ Then ‘Weisberg.’ Then a few pages later, there are only three bolded letters. I, G, and H. Several pages after that, I managed to pick out the word Sokovia.”

“And the numbers?” I asked. He showed me where various numbers had been added to the ends of random paragraphs. They were nearly identical in font and would have gone entirely unnoticed by me if he hadn’t pointed them out. I stood up. “Let me get my laptop.”

I kept my computer in the spare bedroom where Graham was staying. I meant to take it out before I let him have the room, but I’d been distracted by finding Bucky covered in blood. I returned to his side a minute later, lugging the laptop with me. He told me the numbers while I typed them up. Then the two of us sat staring at the screen until the coordinates came up.

“Where is that?” I asked.

“Ohio,” he replied. I nodded slowly. “Middle of nowhere.”

“Only about an hour and a half from the town I grew up in, which is coincidentally in the middle of nowhere.” He glanced at me before going back to the book.

“There’s more in here, but it’s not as easy to decipher. He was good. All I’ve been able to get after that is a bunch of numbers and letters in a seemingly random pattern. I don’t know what they mean.” He showed me his notebook, where he’d written down the sequences he’d picked out so far. “It’s not uncommon for teams like yours to have their own codes and languages so they can communicate nonverbally or without being intercepted. The Commandos had a similar system, but this is unfamiliar to me.”

“You remember the Commandos?”

“I remember enough.” He flipped the page and handed the notebook out. “See if you can come up with anything.” I took it from him and looked over the code he’d written down. The sequence seemed far too random for anything to come to mind. It didn’t look familiar.

“I don’t think Russell ever showed us a code like this. If he did, I can’t remember it. But I can’t remember half my training anymore either. I was always told it was a symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Russell wouldn’t have given you a code unless he thought you could understand it. Or he’d given you something to decipher it with. Can you think of anything at all?”

“No, I don’t….” I paused and sat up straight. “My parents had a code,” I told him. I moved the laptop aside so I could face him. “When I was a kid, my mom had a code. I never learned it. But she used to write letters to my dad that way because he was always into puzzles and things. I remember her writing them during the day when we’d do our homework. I remember thinking it was weird that she had this code memorized, but he didn’t. Like it was constantly changing or evolving.” He studied my face for a moment. As if more clues would suddenly manifest.

“Or it was following an intricate, ever-changing pattern,” he decided. “Did you ever see your dad decode them?” I shrugged.

“Not that I can remember, but I wasn’t the most observant kid, surprisingly. I don’t know why I even remember the code thing at all. You don’t think we should ask her, do you?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t trust my parents either.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust them. It’s that they’re keeping something from you for a reason.”

“Why?”

“Parents are—unpredictable,” he explained. “They will lie, cheat, and lash out violently when they think their children are threatened. Most people react to situations predictably. But not parents protecting their children. If your mom had a code this complex, a code that evolves and changes as it’s being written, then she likely learned it from somewhere else. She has no military background and no offense, but I have no reason to believe she could come up with something like this on her own. She has no legal or biological contacts, according to her records. So either her entire life is fabricated, or someone taught it to her.”

“That’s only if it’s the same code. It could be something completely different. I was a kid. She could have been using a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring for all I know.” He looked confused, and I had to shake my head to get him to drop it. “It’s a movie reference. Forget it.”

“We can’t ask your parents because they’ll lie if they think it’ll protect you. And parents are the only creatures who willingly take their secrets to the grave. You can’t torture it out of them.” It sounded like he knew that from experience. I wasn’t going to ask.

“Then what do we do?”

“I think Russell is our best bet. If we can find him, he might be more willing to put things into perspective. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to make sense of this. There is a pattern. I can feel it. I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.” I looked over his handwriting. It was sloppier than I expected. Scratchy, more like it. Startlingly human for someone who’d considered himself a monster for so long. He’d written the code near the back of the book, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d written in the rest of it.

“You ran background checks on my family, didn’t you?” I asked.

“You’re connected to a woman who died the day before you were born. I thought it might be important to find out how a seemingly random infant got involved.”

“And what did you find?”

“A few things. Some irrelevant and others not.”

“For instance?”

“Your father’s father owned a newspaper company in Southern California. He was a member of a secret organization that disbanded in the late 1940s. That’s why they relocated to Ohio. It’s possible they used codes to communicate, but….”

“You think it’s connected?” He shrugged. It was obvious that he didn’t. So I didn’t know why he’d led with that. Unless he was trying to push me to uncover it myself so he couldn’t be blamed for speculating.

“Could be,” he decided. “But I don’t think it’s your father at all. I think the connection is with your mother.” My mom was the sweetest little old lady on the planet. She cared more about houseplants than politics. I couldn’t imagine how she would have made unusual connections from her little cozy sitting room in Ohio.

“Why?”

“The name Weisberg again. And—she had a younger brother who seems to have dropped off the face of the earth somewhere around nineteen-eighty-four.”

“Right before Russell’s alias appeared.”

“Correct.”

“So let me get this straight. You think my former commanding officer is actually—my uncle?” He didn’t say anything to that. He was staring at the wall. His eyes had gone dark and calculating again, and his jaw was tight. I got the feeling that wasn’t what he was implying at all. But I was on the right track. “You don’t think he’s my uncle,” I stated. He shook his head slowly.

“Biologically? No. Legally? Maybe.”

“Then say what you’re thinking.” He turned back to me. Eyes full of an emotion I couldn’t read.

“I don’t want to say it because I know you’ll avoid dealing with it again.”

“Just say it.” He took a deep breath and straightened out his features. Like sliding on an emotionless mask.

“I think he’s your father.”

I was silent for about half a second before I shut the laptop and went to return it to Graham’s room. I didn’t really want it in there, but my heart had dropped into my stomach, and my only instinct was to run away. I had to leave. I had to get out. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I was perfectly happy with the parents I already had. I didn’t want to disrupt anything that was fine as it was.

“Goddamn it,” Bucky said from behind me.

I could understand why he was frustrated. He was keeping his theories to himself to avoid my emotional responses. He knew as well as I did that I’d shut the idea down and get far away. But I didn’t know what else to do. He was saying something that could potentially uproot the only stable thing in my entire life.

I set the laptop down on the desk, which was piled high with books Graham was collecting. I tapped my fingers on the lid a few times before turning back around. Bucky was right where I thought he’d be. Standing in the doorway, bare-chested and ready to talk. I should really get him a shirt. Anything to keep my mind off of what he was trying to suggest.

“She died the day before you were born,” he reminded me.

“Yeah, so?”

“Exactly twenty-four hours. That’s not a coincidence.”

“It could be.”

“There’s no record of your mother giving birth to you. Just a birth certificate. No record of doctor’s visits, nurse’s logs, or any time spent in a hospital. There was plenty of paperwork on your sister. High-risk pregnancy. She saw a doctor at least once a month. Sometimes more. She spent four days confined to a bed to recover. With you? You just appeared out of nowhere.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It was the eighties. And you said yourself that someone was tampering with my records. They could have hidden that information.” I went to pass him, but he was blocking the doorway. I forced myself to look at him, but I couldn’t get my expression to go any warmer. I was biting the inside of my lip and trying very hard not to scowl at him. I knew he was just trying to help, but it felt like a personal attack. Going right in for the core of my heart and yanking it out.

“Why would they hide information like that if it didn’t mean something?” he asked. “If it was just a regular birth, there would be no need to keep it secret.”

“You think this Beata woman was my mother?” I asked. He nodded slowly. “And she died the day before I was born. How would that work?”

“No,” he said slowly. “She died the day before your birth certificate was fabricated.”

My chest felt heavy, and I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to run away. Not just to another room but somewhere far off. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I couldn’t lose my parents. They were the only good thing I had left besides my sister and a raccoon.

“They would have told me,” I tried.

“Not if they thought it would put you in danger.”

“I just—I need to be alone.” He moved out of my way, and I returned to my bedroom. But I didn’t invite him back in. I shut the door, so he couldn’t follow after me. I was sure Graham could help him back down the stairs.