Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) by Justin Robinson Page A

the best neighborhood in the world, but you’d think an altercation would have at least triggered a 911. I went to the door and listened. Nothing inside that I could hear. I tried the door. It opened.
    Into chaos. Oana’s house was trashed. Whatever had happened in here was brutal. Furniture was smashed, shelves toppled, her chess set had its marble board broken in half. In the opposite wall, I spotted a bullet hole. That made the lack of police even more suspect, unless the attackers had silencers on their guns. I liked that idea even less. I stepped inside, shoes crunching on glass from shattered picture frames. I tried to keep the emotion out of it, to just take in facts, but it was difficult. Oana had gotten her ass royally kicked saving Mina one time, and as far as it went, that meant I owed the little gymnast. And it looked like I was too late to repay her.
    In the wreckage on the floor, Oana’s medals from the Sydney games glinted up at me, as if to say, “She’d have taken us if she got away!” There was the gold, which she’d won as part of that unstoppable Romanian women’s team, her silver for the vault, and the big one, the bronze in the women’s all-around that said in 2000, she was the third best in her sport on the planet.
    My mind ran through a hundred conspiracies, trying to figure out who had a beef with Oana and V.E.N.U.S. There were the Guardian Servitors of the Anorectic Praxis, of course. The Knights Templar. New Camelot. The list went on and on, and I still didn’t know who might want Oana dead. Who knew what she had been up to in the year I’d been gone? And even before then, it wasn’t like we were confidants. Truth be told, I thought she was an annoyance right up until she proved to be the best ally I’d ever had.
    I went deeper into the house, seeing the same story throughout. It got a hell of a lot worse in the kitchen. On the white wall, over a calendar of puppies, was a spray of blood followed by a messy streak. It went from the doorway into the kitchen on a downward stroke, like someone had been shot, hit the wall, and had fallen.
    A strangled sob came from behind me. All three girls were in the little breakfast nook leading into the kitchen, tearing up as they stared in horror at the blood.
    “This isn’t a lot of blood. Nobody’s dead from this.” I tried to sound authoritative. It wasn’t too hard; I had a little experience, not in the investigation of murder, but certainly in the covering up and in the faking thereof. I was pretty good at those.
    I walked into the kitchen, the linoleum creaking with my steps. A wooden door with a broken window looked out into Oana’s backyard, a nice open area that ended when the ground dropped away. It was a pretty view of a hilly area of Echo Park. I thought maybe I should have a closer look.
    My foot creaked again. I looked down. Stepped. Stepped again. Frowned. I knelt and moved the knit rug away from the side of cabinets. There was a trapdoor beneath it, blood smeared on the handle. I allowed myself a smile. Oana had a way out. Of course she did. She was smart.
    The girls were comforting each other. One of the Emmas was going to pieces. I opened the trapdoor and poked my head in, shining the light from my phone inside. There was a cramped tunnel burrowing away into the earth, way too small for me or any other grown human being. For a tiny person like Oana, it was the perfect escape hatch: a place where the vast majority of pursuers could not follow. To confirm it, a few drops of blood shone on one of the wooden supports. In the business, places to hide small things like documents and Romanian bronze medalists are known as slicks, and that’s what this was.
    I closed the trapdoor and replaced the rug, heading for the back door. I went outside, where Oana had a comfortable porch set up in front of a cactus garden and her view. I went to the edge of the little cliff and looked down. About fifteen feet below, there was a shack with a dirt