“No, it's from Noah.”
“Noah? Now this I have to see,” he says, as perplexed by this whole situation as I am.
We both walk inside where Seb is waiting.
“Dima said to go meet him down at the holding pen,” Seb says and with that, a coldness covers my body. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?
As if on auto-pilot, I take the long walk to the holding pen, Jules is with me and I’m actually glad he is here. We open the large black door into the pen, where I see Dima and Lev standing, chatting, which then stops when they see me. My eyes then land on the box that's on the floor in between them. Not a cardboard box, this is a heavy wooden box.
“What’s going on?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the box.
“Noah called me earlier and said he was sending a package. Two guys turned up with this note for you,” Dima says, and I grab the note from him.
When I open it, it says: Got bored so I killed the demon for you.
A sinking feeling hits me and I’m a little afraid to open the box as we all know what happens when Noah is bored.
“Are you gonna open it?” Lev asks.
“Why don’t you open it?”
“I’m not opening anything that fucker has sent.”
“Jules, you open it,” I ask, and he rolls his eyes.
“Wow guys, such a bunch of hard asses.”
Jules crouches down and unclips the box and opens it.
“Who the hell is that?” he asks, and with his hands pulls out….a severed head!
“I told you that guy shouldn’t be on the streets,” Lev says.
“Why would Noah send you a random head?” Dima says. It says a lot about us that we’re more concerned by the reason why, rather than the fact we have a decapitated head in the room with us.
“Oh wait, there's a folder in here,” Jules says as he lifts out a plastic folder with my name on it, he passes it to me and I open it.
My eyes widen as the first thing I see is police records with the man’s name. Holy shit.
Mr. Stuart Morgan.
My old foster dad? How the hell did Noah know who he was? I never mentioned his name. I scan through the documents and see he was only released from prison a week ago. An assault on his neighbor, homophobic of course. I see nothing changed. From the court paperwork, it looks like the guy was lucky to survive.
“Well, who is it?” Dima asks.
“Mr. Morgan. The foster parent I had.”
Dima looks at me like that makes sense, dots connecting from the conversation we had before I went to Brazil. Nobody knows the full story. Only Carlos, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.
“Was he abusive?” Jules asks, and I just nod. They take the hint and don’t probe anymore.
I don’t know what to do with myself. Am I happy? I’m not sure. I’m definitely in shock as my shoes have turned to concrete, preventing me from moving. Jules lifts up the head and takes a closer look before turning it to face me.
“Is it the right guy?”
I tilt my head, comparing him to when I last saw him. He’s obviously aged a lot but that's definitely him. The crooked nose is a feature I didn’t forget.
“Yeah.”
