Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 3-1

Drayden - Chapter 3

I’m stopped in Reginald’s car outside a building looking at a jpeg image of Carnegie Mellon’s campus map I downloaded onto my smartphone. I pinch the screen wider to get a closer look at the engineering building where my brother likely had an office — Hamerschlag Hall. Outside the car window is the same building. It’s nearly midnight, and I’m happy that only a few students are milling about. I take my foot off the brake and leave the parking lot because my brother’s car around here does not feel inconspicuous. It was too clean, too black, and too expensive not to notice. And, I get that feeling again that I’m being watched. It’s the same feeling I had when I was inside Reginald’s condo, and it makes me shiver because I’m not used to being paranoid. I look back at the building and see one student, a young Asian man with bleached hair, staring at me as I turn onto the street. I shouldn’t have driven this car here. That was dumb, and I’m not dumb. My brother had said to be quiet. He had told me it was dangerous. And now here I am cruising in his shiny car attracting all sorts of unwanted attention. I watch the student with the bleached hair turn away and open the back door of the building and go inside. I drive to find another lot to park in and wonder if that student knew my brother.

My brother. My full brother. Of course he was. Anger at my complete ignorance to buy into my mom’s lies courses through me. I should have known he and I were full blood. I shouldn’t have trusted mother. No, not at all. Looking back, it was no excuse to say I had been young and naïve because I had seen her course of lies countless times with the men she had lured in with her beauty. Reginald and I looked too similar to not be full brothers. No one parent could have lent so many similarities. Our shoulders were the same, broad and strong, with lean, muscular arms, and lean, muscular legs that made us durable runners. We even had the same dark hair, full and thick, wavy throughout — the kind of hair that always looked better with a little length. Our faces had similarly broad jawlines, and our eyebrows were full and expressively arched. His face was a bit thinner, and his skin tone got more golden tan than mine in the summer sun. I was about an inch taller. And we were both smart — the smartest in our school by far. Mother had said my father was an engineer and that Reginald’s was ‘good at math.’ I remember that like it was yesterday. Now that I know the truth, I realize there was no distinction in the lie. You can’t be good at engineering without excelling in math. Reginald’s father who had been good at math was no different from mine who had been in engineering. He was the same man. My brother and I were so close as to be nearly identical, and yet, I had bought the lie; he did not.

I drive the car until I’m off-campus entirely and I park on a side street in front of a house that’s catty-corner to the edge of the university. I grab the near-empty backpack and begin my stroll across the campus and worry again that I may have drawn unwanted attention to myself by driving Reginald’s car. At least the little brown book and the laptop are well hidden. Now I just have to find the gray steel box my brother had told me to collect and move forward with finding his killer.

I walk quickly, but it still takes me ten minutes to get across the campus and back to the engineering building. During my trek, I can’t shake the feeling that somebody's watching me. My heart quickens, and it won’t slow. It’s a level of paranoia I’m not used to, and I can’t shake it. I look all around and see nothing suspicious. I’m close to the building and hurry to the main door and go inside and around the corner into the doorway of a closed office and wait for a follower. I’m peeking around the corner and wait a full minute, but no one else comes in. “You’re imagining things,” I mumble to myself. The inside of the atrium is silent. I think I’m the only one on the floor. I finally move from out of the small hiding place and hurry across the main floor and tug on locked doors, all while looking behind and around me for anyone who might be watching. I run up the main stairwell three steps at a time to the second floor and hurriedly check all the doors. Outside of the fourth door, I see his name etched into a placard: Reginald Routton/Nanotechnology. There’s a dim light on through the frosted glass, and then a shadow suddenly moves from inside, and I quickly get out of the way and stand with my back tight against the wall. My heart races. The adrenaline courses through me. Someone is snooping around in there.

I make a fist and grit my teeth and prepare myself for confrontation. My mom always hated how I rush into things, and I think about that before taking a deep breath and turning to the door and reaching for the doorknob. I open it and go inside, ready for anything.

Sitting behind my brother’s big metal desk in my brother’s green leather desk chair is the same young Asian man I had seen entering the building when I first drove past. He looks of Japanese heritage, his age hovering somewhere between twenty-three and twenty-seven. His bleached hair parts cleanly and not a single hair’s out-of-place like he had just left a modeling shoot or a boy-band concert. I hadn’t startled him in the slightest. It was as if he was expecting me.

“Who are you?” I say. My voice comes out aggressive. Every drawer of my brother’s desk is open. Papers that had probably once been stacked neatly — because my brother was particular like that — are disheveled and scattered everywhere. Behind the desk, a metal filing system is still closed, but the fluorescent light on top of it is knocked down, and a metal stapler lays sideways. The chair swivels slightly toward me which allows me to see him full-on. My knees bend a little, and my body balances itself, ready for him to try to escape. I can fight if I need to. I have a quick left jab that usually catches my opponents off guard, and I have a strong right hook that, when placed correctly, usually does a good amount of damage. Despite that, I look at the confidence of this guy and wish immediately that I had brought a weapon.

He surprises me with a disarming smile. It’s as if we’re best buds running into each other at the local pub.

“You’re Reginald’s brother!” He says with a slight Japanese accent and a giddy smile as if he had been looking for me.

“That’s right.” His smile tells me to trust him but his eyes reveal something else, and the drawers and the papers and the stapler remind me to be wary. I wonder if he knows my brother is dead.

“The resemblance is uncanny,” he says with the smile never going away. “Except for the hair, of course. I’m Tengen. Your brother and I were close.” He nods his head as he says this as if that positive reinforcement will make me believe him. But I definitely need more proof.

“You said you were close. Then you know.”

“Yes, I’m very sorry,” he says, breaking eye contact with me for the first time and looking down toward the floor.

“He never mentioned you,” I say while taking a step inside, still blocking the exit, still ready for anything. I look up at the pulled-out drawers. His gaze follows mine.

“We were working on a project together. I'm looking for some of our notes but can’t seem to find them.” He sighs as if all hope is lost. “It’ll take me months to recalculate everything.”

He looks up at me, and there’s an instant where our eyes lock before he looks away again, and at that moment I sense a lie. I’m ready to tackle him if he panics and makes a run for it.

“You seem determined,” I say, lifting a mess of papers from Reginald’s desk.

“He was supposed to give them to me yesterday. And then a faculty member told me what had happened — that he had been…killed.”

“Uh huh. What were you and my brother working on?”

“He didn’t tell you? Oh, it’s very exciting! He is — he was a genius. Pure genius! But you knew that. He took the field of nanotechnology to places it had never gone before!”

I wanted to say: Well now he’s not, so get the hell out of here. Instead, I asked: “So who would want to keep him from doing that?”

“I don’t know.” He sighs the deep sigh again. His head lowers, and he stares at the floor, but I’m not buying it. “It is terrible. So much work wasted.” His eyes are moist when he looks up. “I’m very sorry about your loss.” He stands and offers me his hand. I ignore it. I’m the best in the world at getting under people’s nerves, and this is step one. If I’m going to get any information out of this guy, then I have to push buttons.

“Sit down,” I say. His smile fades, and his hand drops as he realizes I’m not as nice as my brother. Reginald could win over anybody; I could just as easily make anybody want to punch me.

He doesn’t sit, and I don’t budge from my place in front of the door. I calculate my chances against him and like the math. He’s almost my height but leaner and less muscular with shoulders that are less broad. My joints are slightly more robust, and I have at least twenty pounds on him, which gives me the edge in case he runs at me.

“Were you planning on picking any of this up?” I ask as I look around at the mess.

“These papers are meaningless. None of them matter,” he says. The friendly tone in his voice is gone.

“They seem to matter to you. Otherwise, why make such a mess tossing them around? I’d guess they mattered to my brother or he wouldn’t have printed them.”

He grins. It’s a cocky grin and one I don’t at all expect. This guy has no fear. He’s not afraid of me at all.

“Every single one of these papers has no relevance to what Reginald had set his focus on. They are a diversion,” he says.

I look into his dark and fearless eyes and think they’re almost too black to be true. They don’t blink while mine are tired and dry from my long day.

“Here’s my take,” I say. “You trash this place because you’re looking for something my brother didn’t give you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t sift so deep into papers that don’t matter.” I pick up one of the sheets on the floor and scan it quickly before crumpling it into a tight ball. The topic was ‘Biometric Person Authentication’ — and I think about how I know absolutely nothing about that as I throw it hard at his face. It bounces off his chin, and I’m surprised that he doesn’t flinch at all. Instead, he holds my eye contact as the ball of paper rolls back to me and stops when it touches the toe of my right shoe. Step two of getting under his nerves leaves me wondering about my plan. The energy in the room feels lopsided, and I don’t like it.

“You are understandably upset about your brother’s death,” Tengen says. A hint of anger brews deep in his unblinking eyes. “You’ve had a long day, and it’s probably best I leave you here alone.”

I can’t believe the ice in his veins. If someone had thrown a piece of paper at my face, I would have responded much differently. My reaction would have involved less talk and more instantaneous violence. He’s too cool. Nobody is this cool. I don’t let my guard down.

“I went to his condo. Somebody tossed everything around there also, but something tells me you already knew that.” I wait for a response, but he gives me nothing but that dead, unblinking stare. This guy is used to confrontations, and I’m second-guessing my calculation of beating him up easily. Somebody this cool has had training.

I bend down and pick up the ball of paper at my feet. He shakes his head at me, warning me not to toss it. At most, we’re separated by four feet. This time I’m aiming for his nose or his eye, and after that, I’m ready for the attack. I’ll punch him quickly with my left when he charges and then knock him to the ground with my right. And then I’ll get real answers out of him.