Down the Rabbit Hole

Extended Warranty

"I realize this is all my fault". Aida's eyes were the turquoise color they always turned after she'd been crying. The rivets of mascara had dried on her cheeks and looked like soot on her pale skin.

He was as unmoved by her admission, as he'd been by her tears. He fought the urge to reach for her. Aida was a world-class manipulator but he was done with all of that now. Instead, he looked over her shoulder at the sedan in his driveway and the shadowy figure in the driver's seat. Aida was speaking again, mumbling something about "being so sorry" and "never wanting things to end up like this." Lyle wasn't listening. He was staring at the mysterious chaffeaur, a fire rising slowly in his gut. He stepped around Aida, stalked up to the driver's door and threw it open. Lyle had already guessed who Aida had recruited to help extradite her from his life but seeing his best friend and adopted little brother behind the wheel still sent him back on his heels in shock. Rodney's face flushed, and his features reformed into a mask of guilt.

"Nice." It was the only word Lyle could manage before slamming the door in his face. He turned to Aida, the rage filling his mouth with a heavy, sour taste.

"At least you are keeping it in the family, Aida."

When she opened her pink mouth to protest, Lyle he held up a hand. "Enjoy your life, enjoy my little brother but keep your eyes on your valuables Honey. Rodney has sticky fingers and he'll gamble away anything he doesn't manage to snort up his nose."

Lyle turned away and walked inside the house without another word to either of them. Inside, he walked through rooms that had been half-emptied to the bedroom he and Aida had shared for three years. Her side of the closest was a collection of empty wire hangers, the floor littered with tissue paper and a few empty shoe boxes. He knew the pain would come later, after the bright, hot light of her betrayal faded. He was prepared to grieve but not just yet. He dropped to his knees on the closet floor, moving aside the debrie, his fingers traveling to the back left corner, feeling for the loose floorboard. Lyle lifted it with his fingertips, pulling it up and out of the way. He removed the narrow metal box from the space below the floor and pulled it onto his lap. In Aida's haste to pack, she'd missed it as she had for the last three years when the box had been safely concealed in the floor beneath her collection of hundred dollar heels.

The metal lid creaked as it opened. Inside, wrapped in bubble wrap, was the metal badge and dark metal service revolver, the only remaining evidence from his former life and the link to an identity he left nearly ten years ago in the dust and rubble of the world trade center.