Lost Game Notes (Novel)

Chapter 20: Not Thinking Straight

Alex's insides twisted and churned, begging for nourishment, but the impulse to close his eyes and let his worries wash away was stronger. He trudged up the dark stairway to his room, not bothering to check if Lawrence was in his bedroom; his car wasn't in the park.

He entered his room, barely taking the time to shrug off his backpack before stumbling to his bed. His toes connected with a hard object underneath the framework, and growling he dipped his hand underneath to find it. His fingers grazed the object, and he tugged. An album came up with a jerk, and several loose photos fluttered out.

He fumbled to flick on the lamp, and golden light spilled over his feet and shone against the surfaces of the photos. Alex moved like a zombie, shoving the photographs back into the album. One caught his halfway closed eyes. He scooped it up and stared and the boy gazing back at him. He was so innocent, so chubby and small. Smiling. And that had been him.

Alex propped the photo against the lamp on his bedside table and deposited all three albums on his desk, vowing to put them away tomorrow. He collapsed unto his bed and breathed out a heavy sigh, then slumped against the mattress and closed his eyes.

Several minutes later, the soft baby face still floated in his mind, evoking a distant feeling he just couldn't place his finger on. Then the image of Kamila's face pushed forward. The shadow that flitted past her face when she had seen that very photo.

Alex opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows, suddenly aware of the golden light still emanating in soft rays from the lamp. The sensor picked up on his motion and the light became brighter, glinting off the photo beneath.

"What is it with you?" He snatched the photo off the bedside table and searched the baby's eyes. "Come on, Alex. Tell me."

The baby didn't even blink. Alex had a feeling that maybe he should... Okay, he should have learned his lesson by now, but that wasn't he case. He flipped the photo over. Scrawled in one of the corners was a number six, and drawn right under that was what looked like a crooked drawer. Red ink circled the drawing twice.

Alex gripped the picture. A drawer. That was all. No where's and what's. Just a drawer.

What do I do with this? Alex wondered.

Then he saw the drawer was, ever so slightly, crooked.

Alex crossed his room to switch on the light. He would search for any crooked drawers. He knew Dawn wouldn't endanger him and hide valuable information in some flimsy place, or drawer. He just hoped Lawrence wouldn't come home just yet, otherwise it would seem awfully strange, him rummaging through the house at such an hour. That would only arouse Lawrence's suspicion further, and that was the last thing Alex wanted now.

All the drawers in his room, he found, were straight. He stopped at his bedroom door and listened carefully, hearing nothing but the soft tick of a clock somewhere in the house. He ducked into Lawrence's room and switched on that light, and, spotting his reflection on the window, went to tug the blinds down. He scrunched his nose at the pungent scent of ink. Ink and paper, and the toxic charm of whatever perfume Lawrence used.

Alex ran his fingers over the oak desk, glossed to replicate the smoothness of marble. He wondered what secrets the clunky structure held. Possibly some answers to the questions he had. Still, Alex knew better than to rifle through the papers carefully displayed on the desk like a house of cards.

He stepped back and studied the desk. The drawer at the bottom that was askew. Slightly. That must be the one. Alex squatted to study the drawer. The wood was crooked, alright, jammed in place. A little gap the size of his finger ran through the side. So he stuck his finger in and pulled. After two tries, he stuck a bruised finger in his mouth and settled on looking for another option. A pencil came next. He stuck it under the gap and lifted. With a sound little snap, half of the pencil disappeared.

Breathing a curse, Alex yanked on the drawer, by the handle. It slid right out and thudded against his ribs. He winced but hardly felt the pain, distracted by the glare of red in the back, tucked behind stacks of papers and folders. He dipped a hand in and tugged on it. It came loose; a crumpled, creased newspaper clipping tied together by a piece of red string.

Alex sat back on his heels and tore the string away, unfolding the paper to stare at the bold letters:

Two cars crash on road 99. One victim, Olivia Brooke, died on impact. Other victim has been declared missing.

He already knew his mother had been involved in a car crash. He had guess she had died on impact. But what with the other victim? How could a person, probably mashed beyond recognition, go missing? A queasy feeling hit the bottom of Alex's stomach. He didn't like this new development.

Deciding to distract himself with the task of searching for some clues, Alex jumped up and went hunting for Dawn's journal, after having closed the drawer and disposed of the broken pencil.

It was a good thing he had remembered to place the journal back after flipping through. He did tend to forget those important things. He performed the necessary steps and fished the journal out of it's abode, musing over the fact that he knew of Dawn's secret hiding places.

He flung himself unto the flowered sheets of Dawn's bed and flipped it open. He thumbed through slowly, searching the pages of unintelligible scrawl and punctuation for something comprehensive. After going through three times, his patience wore off. He caught the page that a newspaper clipping identical to the one he had was pasted unto. At the side was what looked like Dawn trying to make sense of it all, a jumbled web of red and black ink, arrows and exclamation marks.

"Who does she think she is, Sherlock Holmes?" Alex mused to himself, his voice an low croak in the silence of the room. But what could he say? Dawn did own the entire collection by Arthur C. Doyle.

What he saw next, scribbled at the bottom of the page, shook his entire universe and reassembled the truth as Alex knew it:

Conclusion: assassination

All at once, an overwhelming surge of fear and anger and shock paralysed him, at the same time a short buzz in his jeans pocket went off.

With trembling, numb hands he pulled his phone out. His glazed eyes did not register the time, 11:45. Right below a short message was displayed, sent six seconds ago from an unrecognizable contact. It read:

If you want to see Dawn alive, come to the park in five minutes. Come alone or else your dear sister dies. Do not underestimate. Bring the eight thousand.

Jude.

Alex barely took time to digest the words. Breath hitching, heart lurching, he leapt to his feet and stumbled into his bedroom, pausing only to holster his pistol and grab the money from behind the slat on the wall—he didn't need it anyway.

The words of he message banged in his head like African bass drums, and the crooked path his mind took was:

Get Dawn, kill Jude.