Free Keeping with Killers (The Salingers Book 1) by Adam Nicholls Page A

lock.
    'How long has it been here?' asked Greg, his voice getting louder as he caught up.
    Blake pulled the lock to the side and a regular-sized doorway opened up, revealing the first few metal steps into darkness. 'Only the family knew about it. He suffered from depression and liked to come down here for a break from society. This would be his hiding place where he could collect his thoughts until he was ready to–what?'
    Greg was smirking at him. 'The basement is news to me, but I knew about the depression excuse. It was the lie he was most ashamed of.'
    Fucking hell! The more this man spoke, the more Val Salinger became a stranger. Everybody has secrets - he understood that - but was anything about his heritage true?
    'Forget it. Follow me.' Blake descended the stairs, yanking on a light cord which lit up the steps like an underground base. Blake had never been any farther than halfway down, and still felt as though he was breaking a rule.
    When his foot came off the bottom step and hit the concrete floor, he looked around in amazement. The well-lit room was almost as large as the entire house. All along one wall was a work bench, which held stacks of boxes similar to the one he had found in his father's trunk. He approached cautiously, hearing Greg stepping in behind him.
    'I'm guessing Daddy kept his secrets bottled up in here.'
    Blake ignored him, trying to take everything in. It was as if a handful of items from every imaginable scene had been thrown in here. A dirt bike sat in one corner, stripped as if somebody had been maintaining it and then given up at the drop of a hat. Along the far wall, metal shutters encased something; something that Blake could only assume to be a stash of weapons. Right now, he would rather not find out. 'It's like… a work station.' He turned to Greg. 'And you had no idea about any of this?'
    'I figured he had somewhere to shut off and focus on his works. Every agent has a kind of retreat or safe house. Hell, I have sixteen of them.' He held a power tool of some sort up to the light, examined it with a look of bewilderment and then dropped it back onto its metal tray. 'He was quite the engineer, you know. Knew how to take something ordinary and make it… well, extraordinary.'
    Blake thought back to his youth, trying to pair up his father's personality with the man that he was learning about in this secret basement. Had he ever been a tinkerer, of sorts? Blake had always been able to carry his technology over and ask for his help, and sure enough, it would come back within a couple of hours working better than it ever had. Even his first car had seemed far more powerful than it ever should have done; he had almost crashed it into the bush on its maiden voyage, a memory he would never forget.
    'Kid, this has your name on it.' Greg held an envelope between his two fingers.
    Blake snatched it immediately, but hesitated to open it. It looked older, tainted, like it had been stained with wet teabags. His name was scrawled across the front in black cursive–his dad's writing, he had no trouble in recognising. He slid his finger under the flap, about to tear it, and then stopped. He felt eyes upon him.
    'Well, aren't you going to open it?'
    He didn't want to, really, not here, but what choice did he have? The letter was clearly old, so there couldn't have been any troubling news inside. He tore the paper open, carefully unfolded the ragged letter and looked it over:
     
    My dearest Blake,
     
    I write to you from 1993, at the height of my career.
    Right now you are only a boy, and I watch proudly as I see you fighting to achieve your dreams. If you grow to be a better man than I am, no matter how easy that may seem, it would please me more than you could ever know.
    By now you may have been informed of my death and, if The Agency have done their job correctly, you have been financially compensated and informed of my past. I needn't stress the importance that it remains a secret, and nobody