ASK YOUR MOTHER

A faint click came from the wall beside Noah's cheek.

He turned his head.

Under the lip of an old service panel, a little speaker vibrated.

"Don't answer out loud."

His father's voice. Small enough now that it seemed to come from inside the wall.

"I can see your shoe. Move it back."

Noah pulled his foot beneath him.

Beyond the pallet, Derek nudged a fallen bottle with his boot.

"You got awfully quiet, Bennett."

The ceiling speakers hissed.

"You're shooting inside a locked store, Derek. Think about what happens next."

Derek backed away from the pallet to look up at the camera. Noah heard his father breathing through the little speaker too. He was doing both. Talking to Derek overhead and whispering to Noah beside the wall.

"Gray door," the whisper said. "Twelve feet to your right. Not yet."

Noah looked.

The door was closed. There was no handle on this side, only a rectangular metal plate.

His hands started shaking again.

"Listen carefully. When it opens, you're going to come straight through. You don't stop. You don't look back."

Derek fired into the camera.

Plastic scattered against the tiles.

Noah jerked so hard his shoulder struck the pallet.

"I hear you," Derek said.

For a second Noah thought he meant the whisper. Then the man moved toward the ceiling camera at the next aisle.

"You can't watch everything."

The little speaker crackled.

"On the light, buddy."

Buddy.

His father had called him that while teaching him to ride a bike. He had said it after Noah broke a window with a baseball. There had been no buddy at the funeral, nobody who said it in quite that way.

A thin green line appeared beneath the gray door.

It opened.

Noah ran.

Derek shouted. A shopping basket struck Noah's ankle, or he struck it; he would never remember which. He crossed the light and hit a narrow corridor at a stumbling sprint.

"Keep going."

A second door stood open at the far end. Noah went through it just as heavy feet entered behind him.

The door slammed.

Something struck its other side.

Noah fell against a stack of folded delivery crates. A bolt slid home behind him. He turned and saw a solid metal door with a small square window set high in it.

Derek hit it again.

"Open it!"

There was a crash, then a gunshot that sounded different through the wall, duller but still close enough to make Noah crouch.

"Stay down."

The voice no longer came from a speaker.

A man stood in the doorway to Noah's left.

His father was thinner. That was the first thing Noah noticed. His coat hung wrong across his shoulders. There was a white line beside his mouth that hadn't been there before, and his hair had grown over his ears.

But it was his father.

Noah stared at the familiar hands. The missing corner of one thumbnail. The watch Noah had chosen for his birthday because its face glowed in the dark.

"Noah."

Ethan came toward him and stopped before touching him.

Behind the locked door, Derek shouted something Noah could not make out.

"Are you hurt?"

Noah looked down at himself, as though the answer might be written on his sweatshirt.

"My knee."

Ethan crouched. The torn fabric showed a red scrape. He looked at Noah's hands, his face, the bruises rising along his arm.

"Anything else?"

Noah shook his head.

Ethan reached for him.

Noah moved backward.

His father's hand stopped in the space between them.

"Were you there?"

"Where?"

"At your funeral."

Ethan's face changed.

"Did you watch?"

"No."

Noah had imagined that answer might make it better. It didn't.

"They put your picture next to the box. The one from my birthday. They cut me out of it."

"Noah—"

"Aunt Rachel said it was a good picture."

His father sat back on his heels.

"I didn't know they used that one."

"I couldn't remember if I was supposed to say anything. Everybody kept looking at me."

He could hear himself talking too fast. He couldn't stop.

"Then Mr. Haskins said you were watching over me, and I thought that was stupid because you always told me not to believe people who said things they couldn't prove."

Ethan's eyes filled.

Noah had never seen that before.

He hated him for doing it now. He wanted to hit the coat, push him away, make him stand in front of a photograph for six months and answer questions about being brave.

Instead he stepped forward so suddenly that his father barely caught him.

The coat smelled of rain and old coffee.

Noah pressed his face into it.

"I called you."

"I know."

"I kept calling."

Ethan's hand closed over the back of his head.

"I know, buddy."

They stayed there until the voice at the door grew quieter.

A woman in a dark jacket came into the room. She carried a radio, not a gun in her hand.

"Ethan. Medical team is coming through the bakery. The second man surrendered. Customers are moving."

Noah loosened his grip enough to look at her.

"Special Agent Brooks," she said. "Tessa. You're Noah?"

He nodded.

"Your aunt's on her way."

He looked sharply at his father.

"Does she know?"

Ethan hesitated.

"About me? Since tonight."

Noah let go of his coat.

Brooks watched them for a moment, then said, "Voss is contained between the two security doors. We'll bring him out from the other end."

A man behind her held up a ring of keys.

"Office is clear. Safe's still closed."

Ethan stood too quickly. Noah caught his sleeve before he could leave.

His father looked down at the hand.

"You can come to the office. It's beside this room."

The manager's office smelled of toner and instant noodles. A framed photograph of Alan with two teenagers stood beside a computer. Behind a loose filing cabinet was a wall safe.

Ethan worked the keypad. Noah stood in the doorway with Brooks.

Inside lay a phone, an envelope, and a small brass key.

No book.

Ethan stared at the empty lower shelf.

"It was here this morning."

"Who confirmed?" Brooks asked.

"My contact."

From the corridor, Derek's voice rose.

"Missing something?"

An officer was moving him past the office, wrists secured behind him. Without the mask, he looked exactly like the restaurant photograph, only older.

Noah stepped behind Brooks. Derek saw it and smiled.

"Ask your mother."

The office went silent.

Noah glanced at his father, waiting for him to dismiss it. Ethan did not move.

"My mother's dead," Noah said.

Derek's smile widened.

"Then who do you think locked those doors?"