The Masked Family

Chapter 7

Chapter 7Wheeling, West Virginia, 2006Celeste brushed her fingertips over the super-hero costume laid out on the bed in Cary's trailer. Her latest thought was the same as the first one that had run through her mind when she'd walked into the place.

I knew it.

The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach grew stronger. Something about the way the costume was spread out on the mattress pad made her throat tighten.

Cary's in trouble.

Celeste jerked her hand away from the blue tights and red cape and stepped back from the bed. Wide-eyed, she looked around the stripped-down room; nothing was left but the costume and the bed with its mattress pad.

Nothing and no one was left.

The last time Celeste had been here, the place had been full of junk and life and noise. If anything, the single-wide trailer had seemed crowded, what with Cary, Crystal, Glorianna, and Nate all sharing the space.

Now it was the opposite of crowded. It hardly seemed like the same place. Cary, Crystal, Glorianna, and Nate had disappeared and taken everything with them.

And no one told me. No one said a word.

That was what made it scary. If it had been business as usual, there was no way Cary wouldn't have called and told Celeste.

Unless he couldn't call. Unless something's happened to him.

Cary was always unconventional...often unpredictable...but never unreliable when it came to Celeste. Without fail, he had kept her in the loop every time something big had happened to him.

But not this time.

Cary's in trouble.

The big questions, of course, were why was he in trouble and where was he now. Celeste wouldn't be able to help him if she couldn't find him.

And she wouldn't be able to find him if he'd left no clues behind.

Hunkering down on her hands and knees, Celeste looked under the bed. She saw nothing nearby, but on the other side of the bed, a piece of carpet curled up in the air.

Celeste got to her feet and walked around the bed. In the corner of the room, she spotted the curl of carpet, riding up over a square of plywood twelve inches on a side. The square sat cockeyed over a square hole of the same size, as if the piece of wood had been pried up, then dropped haphazardly not quite in place.

Frowning, Celeste squatted by the hole. She lifted the carpet, then pushed the plywood square aside and peered down into the gap.

Nothing. She reached into the hole and fished around, but it was dead empty.

Someone had beaten her to it. She wondered, though, if that someone had found the other hiding places Cary must have staked out in the trailer.

I'll bet you missed one.

For the next two hours, she went over every inch of the place. She tried every spot that she knew from experience might likely hold a hiding place.

She yanked up every loose patch of carpet and looked for more secret panels cut from the plywood floors. She pulled out the drawers in the bathroom and kitchen, searching for envelopes taped to their undersides. She checked behind and below the refrigerator and stove. She pried at the paneling and woodwork to see if any of it would easily break free.

But she didn't find Cary's secret plan until she went to work outside.

In the dim light of dawn, she walked the trailer's perimeter, examining the siding and the latticework skirting. She had gone almost the whole way around when she finally spotted the vertical cuts in the skirting...two of them, spaced four feet apart.

Jamming her fingers into the holes in the latticework between the cuts, she tugged. A four-foot-wide section pulled free of the skirting.

Celeste set the panel aside and leaned down, gazing into the space under the trailer. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something small and furry scurry away, but she forced herself not to look in that direction.

Instead, she looked up at the underside of the trailer. It was a good thing she did, or she would have missed the plastic box.

At first, in the dim light, she thought it was just part of the trailer. The box blended right in, attached to the trailer's underside and just as white as the surface it was stuck to.

The box was rectangular, two feet long by one foot wide. It was shallow, less than six inches deep, and mounted at the trailer's midline.

Celeste got down on her knees and crawled in after it. Reaching up, she took hold of the box with both hands and pulled. When it came free, she saw that it had been suspended from a lid that was screwed to the trailer's base.

When she lowered the box, she saw that the only thing inside was a spiral-bound notebook with a green cover.

She backed out through the hole in the skirting with her find. When she got out from under the trailer, she could read the title scrawled in Cary's longhand over the notebook's cover.

Secret Plan.

On the way to Akron, Ohio, Celeste called all three numbers programmed into her cell phone for her sister, Paisley. Paisley's home, cell, and work all came up the same: no answer.

She left a message on Paisley's home answering machine and cell phone voice mail and resolved to try again later. She didn't mention the one question she wanted most to ask, though.

Why are you the first stop in Cary's secret plan?

It was hard to imagine Paisley and Cary having anything whatsoever to do with each other. The two of them hadn't been on speaking terms for decades.

One thing was for sure: the plan was definitely secret, even to someone who'd managed to find its hiding place. Each step was based on a clue that wouldn't make sense to anyone outside the Nuclear Family...and the clues seemed to have been fine-tuned further, designed to be deciphered by specific members of the family. Even an insider like Celeste didn't understand many of the clues, though she recognized certain references throughout.

Luckily, the first clue was one she could figure out on her own.

Go to the one who worships Belgian waffles.

Celeste had known the answer right away. One of the Nuclear Family kids had loved Belgian waffles more than the others, to the point of obsession.

That was why Celeste was heading for Paisley in Akron, Ohio. She'd combed every inch of Cary's trailer, inside and outside, and the secret plan was the only clue she'd found. She just had to hope it was pointing her in the right direction.

Not that she could convince herself that her doubts were unfounded. For one thing, given the rift between Paisley and Cary, how likely was it that the two weren't just talking, but cooperating? Not only were they not on speaking terms, but the plan was just the kind of thing that Paisley would have thought was ridiculous.

For that matter, if Cary was following the secret plan, why had he left it under the trailer? How could Celeste know it wasn't a decoy, leading her off in the wrong direction while Cary ran headlong into disaster elsewhere?

She couldn't. All she had to go on was a gut feeling that she was on the right track.

That and a note scrawled in Cary's handwriting on page one of the secret plan. Gut feeling aside, every possible reason and rationale aside, that note itself was enough to make her follow the plan.

And do it fast.

My last chance.

Trust no one and hide where I can never be found. Only the Nuclear Family can find me.

Only they can save me.