THE PRIVATE STASH
The Deferred Bill
The house was dark. Angela and Jackie were asleep, safe in the warm, quiet world I had bled for. But I was in the living room, staring at the lie on my lap. The newspaper. The headline that wasn’t there: “EVELYN REED: A DECADE OF SILENCE”.
This wasn’t a glitch. It was a leash.
The “Eye” isn’t done. This isn’t a reward. It’s a trade. It had taken the P.I. but left the ghosts. It left the loose ends. The Controller, that bastard on the TV, was rattling my chain. Him and his mechanical twins. They thought I was just a rat in their maze, happy with my slice of paradise.
The bill wasn’t paid. It was just deferred. And the interest… the interest is going to be hell.
Well, the bill collector was at the door. But I’m not having it this time. The Controller said it himself: this is a two-way street. I can “guide the story.” I can tug at the script. He wants to dig up this ghost? Fine. We’ll dig.
Evelyn Reed. The case that haunted Frank Vance. He died thinking we failed. But we weren’t just looking for a missing girl. We were looking for a poet.
That’s it. The bedroom. That line scribbled in her notebook… ‘The sun-drenched cage of a Paris morning.’ We thought it was a schoolgirl’s dream. It wasn’t a dream. It was a plan.
I walked down the hall and stood over Jackie Angel’s bed. This is the stake. This is the only thing that’s real. The Controller thinks this bill is “deferred”? I’m paying it. Right now. In full.
I leaned down and kissed her forehead.
The world tore. The smell of my “safe” suburban home vanished, replaced by the sharp, acidic smell of stale coffee and Frank Vance’s cigar smoke. Static roared in my ears and then… silence.
I snapped my eyes open. I was in the passenger seat of my old sedan. Frank was at the wheel, looking bored.
“You been asleep, Jack? You mumbled something about an angel.”
I blinked, the two timelines merging in my head. I was here. I’d made it. I turned to my old partner, my voice rough with an energy I knew Frank had never heard before.
“Paris! Frank, we’re going to Paris. I know where she is.”
