Safe Haven Read online

  “He designs video games,” Uncle Phin answered. “Now, are there any questions?”

  Malcolm nodded. “Sure. When do we get to meet him?”

  Uncle Phin gave them a small smile. “When he decides that you can. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be off now, gentlemen. Have a good rest of your day and, if you need anything, please feel free to ask him, unless you need to call me.”

  They said their goodbyes after that, and I watched the three men that would now be sharing my house bring in their duffel bags. There were three furnished bedrooms for them to use, in addition to the one my uncle slept in when he stayed over, but they surprised me by all piling into one. There were no cameras in the bedrooms, though, so I couldn’t sate my curiosity when I tried to figure out how three men were supposed to share one queen-sized bed. One was plenty big enough for me, and if I’d ever had another person to share it with, he could probably fit in there as well. But three men was far too many for one bed, in my opinion.

  I watched them come out of the room a half an hour later, while I was supposed to be doing some coding for Underworlds, and I saw them start exploring the house. One—CJ—stayed in the kitchen. He looked to be taking stock of what was in there. He even had a pen and a pad of paper, like he was figuring out what meals he could make from what I had between the pantry and the fridge. At least there was enough for me to fix what I wanted if he ate some of my stuff. I was good at improvising my meals based on what was available. I’d had to be since I didn’t really come out of my room to tell people not to touch my beautiful fillets of wild-caught salmon that CJ was currently eyeing.

  I was supposed to be working on the much-anticipated expansion of Underworlds, but, in my mind, the game was already complete. When I was seventeen, I had conceptualized Underworlds, a game where the player went to sleep and had to get through fifty-seven different worlds that existed under the one we all live in. Each level became progressively harder until the player met Saleen at the very bottom, then either defeated her to come back to the world we all knew or joined her to become one of her minions. When I was eighteen, I took a few hundred thousand out of my inheritance, that had been in a trust until then, and I hired a team of designers to build the game I’d been envisioning—at least a workable prototype of it. By the time I was twenty-one, it was ready to be unveiled at the world’s biggest online gaming convention. When we received an offer to be bought out, I decided to be a partner instead. I kept my team, they found their own employees and we made a lot off the sales of the games and the merchandise. I had been amazing and everything I’d wanted. It still was.

  But now I needed to come up with an expansion pack for a game that needed no expansions. It didn’t even have room for one, because everything was intact right there. I could have the players all go up fifty-seven worlds to eventually get to Heaven, but that would be Aboveworlds or Upperworlds—not Underworlds. My game was dark and tragic. The Upperworlds idea was full of bright things and angels. I really needed to come up with something, though, because I had already missed two deadlines as it was.

  Chapter Two

  By eleven I hadn’t thought of anything, and I was starving. I checked the cameras and found CJ in the lounge, Rex by the pool and Malcolm making rounds at the back of the house. If I hurried and was quiet, no one would notice me going downstairs and making a quick cheese and mayo sandwich then running back upstairs before anyone knew that I’d left my rooms.

  I walked quickly with Bandit hot on my heels and left the door open behind me so that no one would hear it close. After that, it was a quick shot down a flight of stairs. I knew where all the squeaky spots were. I was in the kitchen in under a minute and it sounded like everyone was right where they had been. The TV was on in the lounge, and I could hear Rex splashing around in the pool.

  It only took me another two minutes to make a sandwich. When I heard someone coming toward the kitchen, I darted into the pantry to hide, but I’d forgotten my sandwich. Everything I’d used was still out on the island.

  “Who’s there?”

  That had to be CJ.

  “I heard someone in here. Start talking or I start shooting all of the closets in this kitchen.”

  Which meant he’d ruin my kitchen and shoot me before he got to the third bullet. “It’s me. Please don’t shoot.”

  “Blake?”

  I tried not to shake as I saw him turn toward me through the slats in the pantry door. “Yes.”

  He smiled and put his gun back in his holster. I didn’t realize how big he was until he was that close to me. He was at least a foot taller than me and he probably outweighed me by fifty pounds, all of it muscle. “Why are you hiding in there?”

  “Because I didn’t want to be seen.” I felt like such an idiot and my voice was breaking.

  “Why not?”

  I whimpered. I didn’t have a good reason that I could share, and I was shaking too much to be able to stand without leaning on the wall.

  “What do you need?” CJ asked.

  I didn’t know why he was asking me that, but I didn’t miss the soft tone of his voice or the compassion I heard in it. “Go back to the lounge and don’t turn around until I’m back upstairs. Please.”

  “Okay. And, Blake, if you ever feel comfortable enough to talk to us, we really would like to meet you.”

  I said nothing and, after a few moments during which I tried to regain my balance, he went back into the lounge and I heard him sit back down on the couch. As soon as I knew he was gone, I darted out of the pantry and grabbed my sandwich off the plate I’d made it on. Normally I would have put my dishes in the dishwasher so that I didn’t leave a mess everywhere, but, right then, I really just wanted to be back in my rooms. Bandit was screaming at me as I ran up the stairs. I stumbled on the top step and shoved my sandwich into my mouth so that I could lock the door to my rooms behind me.

  Once I was safe, I sank to the floor and leaned back against the door as I sucked in deep gulps of air and tried to get my panic under control again. I heard someone come up the stairs and I shrank back away from the door.

  “Blake?” It was CJ again.

  I tapped once on the door. Yes.

  “Are you okay?”

  I tapped again.

  “I thought I heard you fall.”

  “I’m okay,” I said as loudly as I dared.

  But he didn’t walk away like I thought he would. “If you need something, let one of us know, okay? I don’t know why you’re so afraid of me, but you don’t need to be. We’re here to protect you. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I tapped on the door and this time I did hear him go downstairs. I felt sick with panic as I went back to my desk and forced myself to eat the sandwich I’d made, even though I really didn’t want to eat it now. I felt like puking.

  Once I was able to get it down, along with half a bottle of water from my collection in the mini fridge in my office, I went back to work. Maybe Underworlds could have a side passage world that I could do another thirty zones in. The head of the company didn’t want a whole game completed at this moment. He just wanted a workable idea for the expansion that our whole team could get behind. If we went sideways instead of up or farther down in the worlds, maybe that would help. Or maybe if we did another Earth, like a parallel world… I needed help. I sent the ideas, as vague and useless as they were, off to my team.

  Then, as I waited for them to tell me whether or not they liked any part of what I had sent them, I found my attention drifting back to the men I was now living with. Rex had come out of the pool, and the three of them were now in the kitchen, standing around the island as they ate some pasta. It looked delicious and a far cry from my usual sandwich. I had a sudden urge to go downstairs and see if they would share their lunch with me.

  But that would require going downstairs and interacting with complete strangers. I knew they were here to protect me, but I couldn’t even be in the same room as even one of them without going into a panic. I t
ook one of my sedatives then stood to go to the window. The leaves were beginning to fall out there in the world I’d shut myself off from. Bits of red, orange and yellow dotted the front yard and the wide driveway. The community had a lawn service that would come and clean it all up and maintain the yard, but I sometimes wished that they were a bit slower about it. I remembered chilly fall afternoons when I was a child that were spent playing in piles of leaves, and I wished those kinds of happy memories on the children who I knew also lived in this neighborhood, even though I’d only caught glimpses of them as they’d walked to and from school.

  I’d been tuning out the conversations of the men downstairs but as I heard my name come up, I gave them my full attention. I went back to my computer desk and refocused on the camera feeds from the kitchen.

  “I met Blake today,” CJ was saying as I sat down.

  Malcolm stopped eating for a moment. “Oh? How did that go?”

  Rex nodded. “Yeah. Tell us. Is he grotesque?”

  CJ shook his head and took a big bite of pasta. “I don’t actually know. I only spoke to him through that pantry door.” I saw him nod to it. “He seemed frightened.”

  “Of what?” Malcolm asked him.

  “That was the strangest part of it. He acted like he was afraid of me. He asked me to go back into the living room and turn away. As soon as I did, I heard him run up the stairs. Do you think his uncle was wrong and that us being here is too much for him? Should we let his uncle know that we would like to resign from this position once he has someone in place to take over for us? I don’t want to think of Blake being afraid of us all day and night, living in a constant state of fear of the people who are supposed to be protecting him most.”

  I frowned down at my hands where I’d laid them out on the desk. CJ had a point in that I was afraid, and if I could be less afraid, then things might be easier on me. But what none of them realized was that I hadn’t come out of my rooms for Robert in close to a year. But he hadn’t wanted to interact with me, either. He hadn’t even addressed me at all for the first few weeks. He had protected me just fine, but he’d hadn’t ever acknowledged me during that time, not at all like they were doing.

  It would take me a long time to get used to them, but I was certain that I could. And, I had to admit that their casual touches were enlightening. I’d missed seeing people around me be affectionate. It reminded me of the kind of love my parents had for each other. If I went down to just having one bodyguard again, I wouldn’t see. Though I was afraid of them, I didn’t want them to go.

  I pressed the button on the intercom on my desk twice to tell them no.

  “Blake?” Malcolm asked.

  I pressed it once. Yes.

  “Did you need something?” he continued.

  I pressed that button twice. No, I didn’t need anything actually. I was weighing in on my opinion about them all leaving. But, as I was quickly beginning to realize, pressing buttons wasn’t going to work with these three like it had with everyone else. They actually wanted to have a conversation with me instead of treating me like they would Bandit.

  I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. They’d gone back to eating by the time I had worked up the courage to talk to them. “I…” I licked my suddenly dry lips and noticed that they all put their forks down to pay attention to me. “I don’t want you all to go. I am afraid, but that’s normal—for me.” I was trembling as I sat back, putting distance between myself and the com again. I’d said what I needed to and I couldn’t have said a single syllable more, even if it was to save my life. I couldn’t speak, and I didn’t want to, either. I needed space and fresh air, but both of those things came with dangers I couldn’t make myself face. So I sat there in my chair in front of my desk as panic gripped me and turned my body into lead against me.

  “Are you sure?” CJ asked.

  He was looking at the intercom like he would expect an answer and was prepared to sit there and wait for me to say something. I pressed the button once. I was sure.

  “I’m sorry that I thought you might have been grotesque,” Rex said.

  I didn’t have a button to tell him that it was okay. Maybe I was grotesque. He had no way of knowing. There were certainly no pictures of me or anyone in my family in the house where any of them could see. The walls just had landscape paintings on them, and most of those were of ocean scenes.

  “It’s okay,” I quietly said into the intercom.

  “If you’re sure,” Rex said, hesitating.

  I nodded, even if none of them could see me do it. Then I pressed the button once. Yes, I was sure. I wanted them to stay. I would be safe with them—I was sure of it—even when I also felt terrified of them.

  “Okay, then we’ll stay. Do you want to come down and join us for some ice cream?” Malcolm looked right at the intercom while he was talking to me. It was a bit unnerving.

  I pressed the button twice. Just because I didn’t want them to go did not mean that I was ready to hang out with them in any sort of capacity.

  Rex did bring me up a bowl of ice cream ten minutes later, and, once he was down the stairs and out of sight of my door, I opened it up just enough to take in the sweet treat.

  * * * *

  Sophia arrived an hour later, when it wasn’t even her usual day to come clean what little mess I made. I heard the doorbell ring, and I saw the guys get off the couch they’d been sitting on together, as they gathered around the door with their guns drawn. I’m sure poor Sophia nearly had a heart attack when they opened the door and she saw them like that.

  “You three must be Blake’s new bodyguards,” she said once she’d recovered. “I’m Sophia.”

  “It’s not your usual day. You’re not scheduled to be here until Friday,” Rex said, not lowering his gun.

  “Yes, but I wanted to come check on him since it’s his first time being with new people in eight years. Blake! Let them know that I’m not going to murder you, so that I can come in and make sure you aren’t being dangerous to yourself.”

  I wasn’t completely sure on that one actually, but I pressed the button on the intercom once anyway. I hoped they understood the message that I was trying to send them about Sophia being okay to come in. They moved aside, giving her a little path that she could hardly squeeze through without brushing up against both Rex and CJ. From the smile on her face, I didn’t think she minded the contact at all. I wondered at what it must have been like to do that so easily, to be around other people like it was normal.

  She didn’t have any of her cleaning supplies with her today. Instead, she marched right up the stairs and sat down in front of my door. She knocked on the wall, just once, and I went over and knocked back. I had my phone with me, so I could see the guys standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at her.

  “Blake, sweetie, are you okay?”

  I knocked once.

  “Use your words. The men aren’t going to harm you.”

  With a sigh, I banged my head against the wall. Use my words? Take that.

  “Blake…”

  Uh-oh. That was the tone she used when she was getting irritated with me, which meant she’d spend extra time cleaning my room. I hated when she did that because it felt like such an invasion. It made my skin crawl, but Uncle Phin said I had to let her in there. I didn’t have to be in there with her, and I never was, but I had to give her access to my bedroom.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest. “Hi.”

  “There’s a good boy. Now, have you come out of there yet today?”

  Just the once, but that was enough to answer her honestly. “Yes.”

  “And have you eaten anything? You know you need to eat with your medications.”

  I smiled down at my knees. My mom had been kind and sweet, not pushy like Sophia. She treated me like a kid she had to baby, and that worked for me a lot of the time because to me she was like a grumpy aunt who pushed me because she loved me. “Yes.”

  “What did you eat?”

 
I wanted to tell her that I’d had food and leave it at that. But I knew that wouldn’t be good enough for Sophia. “Yogurt, a sandwich and ice cream.”

  “And what are you eating for dinner?”

  I wasn’t sure how to get the guys from looking into the kitchen long enough for me to have something substantial for dinner. I really liked cooking, but I couldn’t cook and not be seen at the same time. “Not hungry,” I lied. Well, it was only a partial lie because I wasn’t currently hungry, but I would be hungry later. I just couldn’t think of anything that would be safe to make.

  “Blake—” Sophia warned me again.

  “They’re all down there,” I told her quietly. “At lunch I was nearly seen. I can’t make myself dinner. I’ll order something and someone can bring it up to me.”

  I heard Sophia’s loud sigh, even through the door. “Okay, if that’s how you want to be. Though I know how much you like to cook, so I think it would be a real shame if you didn’t make dinner for your new friends on their first night here. It might even help you get out of your shell some. You can’t stay a hermit forever.”

  Yes, I could. I heard her moving away from the door and I looked down at my phone to see the four of them crowding around the island.

  “How often does he come out of there?” CJ asked her.

  Sophia waved her hand toward my door. “That boy? A few times a day, if you’re lucky. I know he comes down because I find the dirty dishes and the crumbs on the island that he leaves behind, but I’ve never actually seen him.”

  Malcolm frowned at her. “But haven’t you been working here for years?”

  “Fifteen of them, to be exact.”

  Now Rex was staring at my door, too. I felt like he had X-ray vision and could actually see me from how hard he was staring. “And you’ve never actually seen him? At all?”

  Sophia shook his head. “No. I haven’t. But, despite his strange ways, he’s a good, sweet boy. He loves his cat, and he is a great cook. Sometimes he’ll leave me cookies or cheesecake bars that he made the night before. Robert always used to walk around the house doing patrols or staying in a whole other area of the house between six and eight so that Blake could come down and cook. Maybe you three could do that—just for a little while, until he gets used to you.”