Three Rivers (18 page)

Griffen looked down at the lockbox he'd dug out from underneath his mom's old deck. His classes didn't start until the next day and Althea had to go to work, such that he was left with no more excuses.

Griffen knew he couldn't keep hiding from his childhood home and the torturous memories that permeated each square inch of it. He had to come to this spot, the place where he and Jack had spent so much of their time together growing up.

His mother still lived in the same 1920s era row house he'd grown up in. He'd tried to persuade her to let him buy her a beautiful mansion in Sewickley Heights out of town but she wouldn't hear of it. He'd even tried to persuade her to move to one of the homes on the other side of Mt. Washington where Jack's mom and Althea lived. She could drink a glass of wine and look out over world famous views of the city, without having to step on floorboards that had once supported his father's angry steps. No longer clean a kitchen where she'd gotten icepacks for another black eye received at the hands of the cruelest, most bitter person they'd ever known.

But she wouldn't hear of it. This was her parents' home and the place where she'd raised Griffen. He could never persuade her to leave.

She'd finally caved on letting him pay to have it updated and remodeled, with top of the line security installed. Even though she let him get their old deck refurbished, it still looked the same as when he and Jack would sit underneath it for hours on end, hiding from his father, laughing, talking about girls.

How many times had they pulled away the lattice until they could squeeze through so they could play here after school? They'd both grown up on Mt. Washington, except Jack had been on the good side, not the poor side where Griffen lived. Jack looked out at a city with everything to offer, while Griffen and his mother simply saw patchy pieces of brown grass and his father's empty beer cans. Life for them had been bleak and poor.

So much had changed, so much had been lost.

Jack was gone.

Griffen's bastard of a father was gone.

But this box and all it represented of his friendship with Jack still remained.

Griffen reached into his pocket and pulled out his keychain. It was still on there, the tiny padlock key. He and Jack had both had one. His hand was shaking and his eyes were blurry with tears as he pushed it into the lock, praying it would still work, yet praying that maybe it wouldn't. Before he could second-guess his courage, he heard a soft click and the lock popped. He removed it and flipped open the lid.

Through tears, he felt a smile form at the contents. When they were little, he and Jack would hide candy here, baseball cards, little pieces of buried treasure they would find when they played pirates. As they got older, they would hide beer and other contraband in this locked steel chest. In it he found
Playboys
, pictures of the two of them together, some of the old candy and baseball cards they'd been too sentimental to remove.

Griffen's breath caught when he came upon his own handwritten scrawl in several spiral bound notebooks. These were the stories they wrote together for over 10 years. Griffen flipped through the notebooks. They were exciting stories, developing in sophistication as each scribbled year on the top right corners reflected how they were getting older. The stories were exciting, but they were also thoughtful and emotional, so different from what he'd made his millions writing.

They'd had to hide them, knowing Griffen's dad would make sure to beat the shit out of him whenever he found out he was wasting his time writing when he should be practicing football.

Dear ole Dad had been a star in high school. A quarterback phenom, but everything stopped short for him his senior year when he knocked up Griffen's mom and blew out his knee. He'd lost his chance at a football scholarship, settling instead for whatever factory jobs still remained after the steel industry had already deserted Pittsburgh.

Maybe he'd been something once, maybe he'd been charming, but all Griffen knew was an angry, frustrated monster.

The smell of the wood, the dirt, the way the sun shone against the house all took Griffen back to a place he hated. He twisted a notebook in his hands, the memories beating him like so many punches and belt whippings from his dad. The pain still felt real, so fresh. All he had to do was look at the dip of the backyard into the hill and he felt his father's hot drunk breath against his hair.

"Come here Nick, you little pussy."
Griffen could still hear his hot slurs.
"Want to keep writing your stories like a little girl?" Then the smack, so hard the pencil and paper flew out of his hand.

"No, dad, I don't need it. It's homework. Please stop."

"Fuck you, you pussy, our only way out of here is football. Get the ball and get back to practicing. And get my drink while you're at it you little shit."

Griffen shook his head. How could he stop the painful memories?

Griffen felt the bile rise in his throat when he saw a story with dark splatter marks all over it — the paper crinkled where the liquid that made that imprint had dried. He swallowed, remembering it was blood. He'd managed to keep his dad's brutality a secret for so long, hide the bruises, make the excuses.

He and his mother were pros at it, especially when hiding the wounds from each other. Griffen wanted to protect her, but he couldn't beat the bastard. So all he could do was hide from her what his dad was doing to him and let her hide her wounds right back.

But Jack knew. He handled it for so long by having Griffen stay at his house. But it all came to a head one fateful night during their junior year. They had just won the state championships. They had the world in their hands. Jack was varsity quarterback, throwing to his best friend. They were going to meet up with Teri and Susan to go to a party celebrating their big win. Jack had snagged a bottle of bourbon from the restaurant and it was going to be a great night. They just needed to stop by Griffen's house for a minute so he could grab a clean shirt.

"There you are you piece of shit." His dad was staggering already and stank. "I watched the game. Watched you fuck up, you little shit. You jumped your route. Almost blew the whole championship."

"Mr. Tate, you're tired," Jack said calmly.

"Fuck you. My son should've been the quarterback. That's where the money is. You spoiled little shit — you have to have everything. You're not even going to play in college, you brainy little asshole."

"Mr. Tate, please, Nick's a great tight end."

"Bullshit. He's a pussy." Griffen's dad was swaying on his feet now. "Just like his mom, worthless."

Griffen could still feel the heat, the anger, boiling through his body.

"Don't you fucking talk about my mother, don't touch her." He ran to him and tackled him with all the force of his shoulders and hatred. "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch."

"Oh, the little shit grew some balls." It was like he enjoyed it. His dad pushed him off and kicked him in the stomach until he felt like he could taste his liver. His dad punched him so hard, cursing him and spraying hot, drunk spit in his ear. Griffen heard something out of the edge of his brain. He knew they were words but it was so hard to hear through the pummeling fists and kicks.

"Mr. Tate, stop it. You'll kill him."

But Griffen didn't feel pain now, just warm blood across his teeth. This is how it ends he'd thought. He felt more shame than pain.

"Griffen, get up, stop him!"

But Griffen was so warm, he'd been here before and he knew the best thing was to curl in a ball and wait for the end.

Then he heard it, "Mr. Tate, I said you need to fucking stop." Suddenly, the kicking stopped. Griffen rolled on his side and enjoyed the moments of relief. Then he started coughing till blood came out. The sight drove Jack wild. "You fucking bastard." Jack plowed toward Griffen's father, pushing him straight off the deck. His father fell on his back and huffed but Jack was on him, punching his face, his body, everywhere. "You touch him or his mom again, I'll fucking kill you." Griffen's mother came home and saw them at that moment. The blood drained from her face, from her body.

"Mom. Police. Please," Griffen had gasped out.

Griffen fell into blissful unconsciousness and never saw his father alive again.

Griffen raised his left hand to run his fingers across the jagged scar by his left eyebrow — the only physical reminder of that awful night. He only missed a week of school but he wondered if he or his mother ever recovered emotionally.

There was protection from abuse orders, ordered probation, but eventually his dad died a quiet and ugly death, drunk and shivering by the banks of the Ohio River, almost two years later. The important thing was Griffen knew that Jack had saved his life and he'd done nothing for him in return. And now he was fucking dead.

What a world. Jack was the greatest person he'd ever known, while Griffen's dad was a fucking monster. Yet they were both the same thing — dead.

Griffen's heart twisted and split in his chest. This box was all he had left of Jack. Jack was everyone’s golden boy, the hero, and he lived up to that image when he saved Griffen’s life that night.

Yet Griffen had abandoned Jack when he'd needed him most. He ran away from the painful memories of his dad, only to create new terrible ones of his own by deserting the only true friend he’d ever had – his brother, even if not by blood.

You don’t deserve happiness or love,
Griffen thought to himself.

Dad was right,
you’re not good for anything, and you proved that when you failed Jack
—
ignored him and left him to die, because your crappy book and money were more important to you.

All Griffen had left were these trinkets, these stories he and Jack wrote together, and an unending supply of guilt to remember Jack and all he’d done for him.

You fucking failure
, he thought
. It should be Jack here crying over this junk, not you. He’s the one that should be alive making Althea happy and laughing with Johnny. All you are is an intruder, that’s good for nothing besides fucking and misery. You break everything you touch. Just like your old man did. Jack is just one more in a long line of lives destroyed by us Tate men.

Griffen opened his mouth on a roar and upended the lockbox with a furious thrust of his arms. The contents flew everywhere and immediately Griffen regretted it. He took a breath and started to fill the box back up.

Get your shit together. This is all you have left of him, don't fucking ruin it.

As he grabbed the last few baseball cards, something plastic and metallic caught his eye.
What the hell is a flash drive doing in here?

Jack must have placed it there recently since the technology didn't exist when they were in high school. Griffen pocketed the flash drive and wiped a shaking hand across his face. Whatever was on it was Jack's before he died and he would never have put it in here if it wasn't important.

He breathed in, locked the box, replaced it in its hole and left.

Griffen groaned in frustration. He'd spent most of the last hour trying to explore the contents of the flash drive, with little to no luck. It was heavily encrypted, with multiple forms and layers of security that were way beyond him. Luckily he knew someone who could help.

"Hey Trey, what's up?"

"Griffen? What's up, man? Aren't you in Pittsburgh or something?"

"Yeah. I'm here for a couple weeks. I have an exciting challenge for you."

"Hmm, your challenges usually involve avoiding the business end of a gun at some point. Is this Mexico all over again?" Trey asked with a laugh.

"Hopefully not," Griffen chuckled out. Trey had helped him on his second book, as well as secret consults he did to support other investigative journalists behind the scenes. Some situations had ended up a bit hairy, but Trey liked danger, so he wasn't worried. "I've got this flash drive. I can read some of it but the rest is so heavily encrypted I can't make a dent."

Trey was the best analyst he'd ever met. A hacker when he was younger — he'd been picked up for it as early as 14, a prank that led to one of the most major overhauls of a leading operating system in history. He'd cleaned up his act and gone legit but still had the spirit of a rebel. Not unlike Griffen.

He was the perfect person to get to the bottom of this mess. Third in line of some seriously respected geniuses — great minds behind some of the first computers, Griffen suspected he was loaded with family money. Yet Trey preferred to hole up in Brooklyn, generally operating on the right side of the law.

"Where'd you get it?"

"It belonged to a friend of mine that died."

"That sucks."

"Yeah. He hid it in a lockbox only we knew about."

"Why?"

"I think he knew it would be safe there."

"Was he another writer?"

"No. He was an associate professor in the
CMU Robotics Institute
."

Trey whistled, "Impressive. Sounds cool. Send it on up, man. I just wrapped up reverse engineering some virus software, I'm definitely ready for something a lot more fun."