Operation SK ✔️

Old Boxes

Caleb had his ears pasted to the door as he tried to eavesdrop into his father's conversation. It was a Sunday afternoon, and he had all the time in his hands.

"There's something wrong," he heard his father's exasperated voice.

He heard a muffled answer.

"No, I don't know! I'm hoping you can tell me that... We haven't seen each other since twenty years. You can't expect me to know anything. I left that work"

His father's voice was an octave higher than usual, and it gave Caleb chills.

His father wasn't one to be scared easily.

Caleb heard movements inside. The sound of footsteps wasn't as heavy his father's. All the late-night sneaking out had taught him to recognize at least that much. There was some more muffled conversation that he couldn't quite decipher clearly. He took it as a cue that the talk would soon be over and walked away. He sat down quietly in the living room and pretended to work on his laptop. He quickly slid his earphones in when he heard the click of the door opening. Teresa had taught him this useful trick.

He heard his father's heavy stomping come closer to him. A shadow crept over him, but he ignored it. He continued to act immersed in his pretence work.

"Caleb," his father grumbled at him.

Caleb was busy typing away with non-existent music playing in his ears.

"CALEB!" Zack Greene shouted impatiently.

Caleb slowly removed his earphones with a feigned surprise. There was no way he could let his father know he had tried to listen in. That would go against his plan of spying on in his father.

"What are you doing?" the old man asked sternly.

"No-nothing. Project actually," Caleb stammered.

Nice one. A twenty-three-year-old man doing projects is the lie you go for. How intuitive.

Beads of nervous sweat broke out in his forehead, and he mentally asked himself how Teresa did her job. She was a spy in layman's language, after all. Lying was her trait.

The six-feet tall man with short black hair (you could see streaks of grey lining his head now) wasn't curious any further. The always suspicious man had stopped being curious for a while now. His son exposed the cute, gummy smile at him. His light brown eyes so unlike him shined in the light of the afternoon sun. Zack Greene only grunted and walked out of the house. Caleb heard his father start the car and leave.

Just for confirmation, Caleb checked outside the windows. The car had gone.

"Time to work"

He ran into his father's room and looked about. It was a neat place, as usual. But it was too neat.

The bed looked to be made with extra care. There was not a single line of fold on the bedsheet. The desk was completely organized. Not a single strand of paper was lying astray. Even the carpet was placed at a 90-degree angle from where he stood. The whole room was a royalty compared to Caleb's own. Hell, he still had dirty laundry strewn about.

Caleb smirked.

"Dad why would you try so hard?" he scoffed.

He knew his father's mind well. He had turned extra careful just so that no one could leave the room undetected. A person sneaking around in here was likely to slip on the carpet and tilt it at an odd angle or leave a small, tiny fold on the bed. It was clever, just likely of his father.

Caleb walked carefully about the room. His observing eyes scrutinized every corner, and he licked his full lips out of habit. He saw nothing that hadn't been there since the past ten years or so. The desk, placed beside the window at the farthest corner of the room was dust-free. Touching it would be suicide because he would be unable to keep everything back into the exact place. He'd rather shove everything inside. A small, regular-sized bed was present next to the study table. There was nothing beneath it. The bed was pinned to the floor, with no space below it. There was a bookshelf at the opposite side of the study and three big cardboard boxes beside it at a corner. The boxes would probably contain old useless stuff that had to be thrown away.