Page 16 of The Burnt
Chapter Seven
It was nine-thirty at night when Charlie mounted the stairs to the office. The lights were off. Charlie went up to the third-floor apartment but Declan wasn’t there.
“Where are you?” Charlie said to himself. Maybe Declan had gone to Bar-None.
Charlie would give it ’til midnight before he’d call Mickey at the bar to find out if Declan was there.
His stomach grumbled. Dinner at the Black Bean had made up for the attempted meal at Carp Diem, but he still needed more food to soak up the wine. Charlie began rummaging through Declan’s cupboards. All he found was protein powder, beans and some oatmeal. How could Declan survive with no snack food? Not even a bag of chips!
Charlie opened the fridge and found nothing more than eggs and milk. It would have to do. After all, desperate times called for desperate measures. He opened up the milk carton, put it to his lips and took a huge mouthful of curdled lumps of soured milk, then gagged and spewed it into the sink.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
Charlie ran to the bathroom, flushed his mouth out with cold water, then rinsed with mouthwash. It became clear that if he wanted a snack, he’d have to go to the corner store and pick up some real food. He wiped his face dry with a towel.
A creaking sound came from the other room.
“Declan?”
There was another creak.
Charlie cautiously walked back into the main part of the apartment, but nobody was there.
“Jesus! Get a grip. It’s just the building. Old buildings creak. I’m drunk and imagining things. I just need a little more food to help me sober up.”
Charlie headed to the stairs, stopping to pick up one of Declan’s dumbbells just in case someone was hiding down below. The first weight he reached for was too heavy to lift. After trying several, he settled on the smallest. It was light enough to manoeuvre, but heavy enough to knock someone out.
He crept down the stairs and into Declan’s office, listening closely.
Nothing.
He looked at Declan’s desk. It was clear of any clutter. Or it should have been. Ithadbeen when he went upstairs… Hadn’t it?
Sitting on the desk, right under the beam from the track light, was the framed photograph of Freddy Whitcher.
That wasn’t there before… Was it?
He walked around the desk and there was another creak.
Charlie looked around, then down. He was standing on a patched piece of flooring. He wiggled, and the floor creaked again.
“You are such a child.”
Charlie reached for the photo, planning to put it back on the credenza where it normally sat. He wondered when the picture was taken. Freddy looked so formal. It must have been a school photo.
As Charlie looked up, he caught a reflection in the glass, like someone was passing behind him. He gasped and spun around, tightening his grip on the dumbbell.
There was nothing.
He had to get out of here. He was imagining things. Charlie turned to head back upstairs to return the dumbbell when he heard another creak coming from the stairs leading to the third floor. He dropped the dumbbell and high-tailed it out of the building.
He felt better being out in the frigid air even though he had left his coat behind.
Charlie turned to the right toward the nearby convenience store. He bought a bag of all-dressed potato chips, then went back out into the cold, munching on the snack as he headed back to Declan’s. As Charlie approached the street-level door to the office, he walked straight into a man’s chest. The chip bag was crushed and erupted all over both of them.
Charlie looked up. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Hey, Charlie,” the other guy said.
