I answered him in a low, calm voice. “Hans,” I motioned with my head to the men watching us from across the room, “we’re not alone.”
A clatter followed by a loud crash came from the kitchen. Hans burst through the swing doors.
I was slow to react. When I went to follow him, I caught out of the corner of my eye, the three men hurrying over to me.
Two of them could have been professional football players, the other, lean build, ruffled blond hair, looked more like he belonged on a beach looking to catch some waves.
“Are you Greta?” one of them asked.
I nodded.
“I’m Matty. We’re friends of Jake.”
“Jake! Is he OK?”
Before Matty could reply, a bang and a clank sounded from the kitchen followed by a shriek. Matty and the other two rushed in with me right behind them.
The kitchen floor was cluttered with pots and pans. In the middle of the mess, Hans was on his knees cradling Betty on his lap. He looked up at us. “Call an ambulance!”
After Matty phoned for an ambulance, Hans explained to us that Betty had tried to throw a frying pan at him but slipped and fell and hit her head. He didn’t want to move her, so he stayed on the kitchen floor with Betty’s head resting on his lap. The anger in her eyes and scowl on her face from just a few minutes ago had gone. Now, she looked as frail and feeble as her advanced age would suggest.
“Stay here,” I said to Hans. “We’ll wait for the ambulance outside.”
The temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up. In all the commotion, I’d no idea what I had done with my jacket. Jake’s friend, Austin, a stocky, shaved-head light-skinned black man, lent me his. “Tell me what happened to Jake,” I said. “Is he OK?”
Matty shook his head. “It all happened so fast. We drove down here from Billings, North Dakota. It was going to be a surprise, but I kind of gave him a heads up yesterday. We arrived at 5 o’clock. I called Jake. He had us meet him at some kind of run-down movie studio.”
“I know the place,” I said.
“We talked for about ten minutes,” Matty continued, “when someone knocked at the door.”
Matty kept looking from side to side as he spoke as if the details of his memory were fleeing in all directions and he was frantically trying to catch them and gather them back.
Austin picked up the commentary for Matty. “Jake looked at us with a big beaming smile and said, ‘That must be Greta.’
“Before we could even ask who Greta was, outside, through a bullhorn, ‘This is the police. We have the place surrounded. Come out with your hands up.’”
Austin shook his head in disbelief, and the third friend, Cameron, picked up the story. “We hardly had time to react. Jake told us: ‘Find Greta at the lodge. Tell her the rucksack is in Betty’s oven. On the laptop, the file’s called Redemption and the password is Swan Lake.’” He lowered his head and looked at me with wide questioning eyes. “Does any of that make sense to you?”
The exhaustion, the hunger, the confusion, they all came over me at once, and I started to teeter. I stuck out a hand to brace my fall, and Matty caught me.
“I’ve got you, Greta,” he said.
I gripped his arm, thick like a tree trunk, but all the strength had gone from my legs and I couldn’t pull myself up.
“Do you want to sit?” Matty asked.
I gave no response.
Matty carried me down the walkway and set me down on a bench. “There you go. Are you all right?”
I shook my head and mumbled, “Betty’s oven. Redemption. Swan Lake.”
“Does any of that make sense to you?” asked Austin. “Jake said you would know what that meant.”
“Where is Jake now?” I asked.
“The police have him,” said Austin.
“Can we see him?”
“Are you his lawyer?” asked Cameron.
“Lawyer?” I shook my head.
“Then no,” said Austin, “we can’t see him.”
“But they have to let us see him, don’t they?”
Matty took a seat on the bench beside me. “Only his lawyer can see him. I don’t think he has a lawyer, though.”
“But, they can’t just take him away and keep his friends from finding out what’s going on,” I said.
“We can see him at his arraignment,” said Cameron.
“When’s that?”
Cameron bit down on his lower lip and sighed. “Usually, it’s the morning after an arrest. But, since today’s Friday, he won’t be arraigned until Monday.”
“So we won’t be able to talk to him until Monday?” I said, the information coming at me too fast and its implications too unfavorable.
Cameron shook his head. “It gets worse. He’s not being arraigned here.”
I looked at him with a furrowed brow.
“He’s being arraigned in Boulder, Colorado.”
“Boulder, Colo...”
Matty put a hand on my shoulder. “Greta, what did Jake mean by the rucksack’s in Betty’s oven?”