Cost of a Secret

A/N: I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long. Things have been crazy lately in my personal life, but I'm doing a massive chapter dump here. Three chapters will be posted, including this one, so keep an eye out for them.

Chapter 21

Planning

Roy relied on the few contacts he already had in Eastern Command, combined with those that Lieutenant Everett—whose name Roy had to finally learn after spending an hour rehashing the raid—to subtly evacuate the blocks surrounding Karen’s home. Liam’s former principal and teacher had made calls to speak to parents attending the school, asking the parents and their children to come so that the houses would be empty. The lieutenant had a few friends who managed to come over, looking fairly innocuous as they explained the situation and got the various families out of their homes. They also ensured that no one called Karen to warn her about what was going on.

Actually, when most heard what it was Karen had done, they were horrified and wanting to find out how they could help.

The units waited until it was dark, positioning themselves around the house and leaving Roy to go in alone, or at least to appear to do so. The various alchemists on the mission—Ed, Al, Armstrong, Lawson—were all heading down to the cellar, but only once it was obvious that Karen’s attention was on Roy, not on them.

Roy tried to think of how he would react if he had come alone, if he didn’t know there were countless others there as back-up, if he hadn’t had Ed and Riza to calm him down on the ride. He needed Karen to believe that he didn’t have help in this. She would try to take him on, he didn’t doubt it, but he still had the advantage of surprise.

“We’re sure that she’s here?” Riza asked Lieutenant Everett.

“While she managed to get off of the train without difficulty, neighbors have seen movement, and they believe they may have seen the boy,” he answered with military efficiency.

“Then I need to go,” Roy said. He took a deep breath and tried to steel himself for the confrontation and for the state he might possibly find his son in. His movements were slow as he walked through the yard. If he didn’t have others, he might have tried to sneak up to the house, get to one of the windows and rescue Liam again. It made more sense than going to the door and knocking. Doing that would definitely make Karen suspicious, despite the fact that it would provide just the distraction that Ed would need.

Roy opted to go toward a darkened room in the house, on the first floor. The window wouldn’t be hard to reach, and if she had locked it, he could always rely on his alchemy to undo it.

He made little noise in the yard, but with each branch he accidentally trod on, with each rustle of grass, he felt as though he might as well have signaled an alarm announcing his arrival.

And yet, no one came, no one noticed.

Reaching the blue house with its white trim, he placed his gloves to the window frame and tried to make it budge, but with no luck. She had locked it. To make matters worse, the old glass pane rattled in its wood encasement with each attempt he made. His gloved hands gave up, and they reached into pockets, looking for a small piece of charcoal or pencil to make a circle. White paint chips fell off the equally white fabric and stuck to his uniform pants. The house wasn’t in a state of disrepair, but he certainly couldn’t call what Karen had done thus far as good upkeep.

Charcoal found, he scribbled the circle onto the window ledge. More paint chips fell as the black markings were etched onto the wood. It crossed his mind that the loose paint was hazardous to having a child in the location, but he mentally reminded himself that paint chips were the least of his worries when it came to Liam’s safety.

He pressed his hand to the now-completed symbol, charcoal marking the white gloves slightly before the circle activated and the window became a gaping opening in the wall. It was still a bit below Roy’s waist in height, but he could get through it.

Roy began his attempt at a quiet climb into the house once the window was gone. For the moment, he was grateful that Ed wasn’t nearby to see him. While Roy had a sort of smoothness to his movements in daily life, in moments like these, the climbing, jumping, fighting ones, it was Ed who held a grace all his own. The years of training in martial arts let the blond man move like a cat when he wanted to. He could have cleared the open window by placing both hands at the remaining frame and swinging his legs up inside effortlessly.

As it was, Roy was scrambling and hoping not to fall on his face inside. Admittedly, if he did fall, that would make for the perfect distraction to get Ed and Armstrong inside, but Roy really didn’t want Karen to catch him scrambling on the floor of what looked like her dining room.

He slowly headed into the darkened room, moving around the dining room table and chairs. The area hardly looked like it had been used, though Roy knew that at one point, she had once been big on gathering around a table for dinners.

He couldn’t be sure how she got to this point, what had driven her here, but he knew that he’d played a part in it.

********

“My parents were very big on family values,” she said before she pressed her lips to his, talking and moving tantalizingly close to his own. “Very big on all of that stuff.”

“Stuff?” he asked, inwardly cursing himself for trying to draw a conversation out of the brown-haired woman when what he wanted out of her was anything but.

“Marriage, family, settling down, family dinners, going to service on Sunday…” She began undoing the buttons on his white shirt as his own hands fumbled to pull off the black skivvy from beneath her uniform coat. He cursed the person who allowed women to wear the things. They were damned obnoxious when trying to get in a bit of extracurricular activities.

“I never gave a damn,” she said. He was glad, because a small part of his mind was telling him to run away, that she might try to tie him down with talk of marriage. “Live while you can.”

Her lips were on his ear, and holy shit if she wasn’t good at that. “I like the way you think,” he said in a low moan. She was fantastic with her lips, and she was only nibbling on his earlobe. She wasn’t even anywhere that would be normally considered erotic.

“This is just a one-off,” she said, as though Roy would need reminding. He was usually the one reminding his bed partners that he wasn’t looking for a relationship. “I just need someone to blow off some steam with, nothing more.”

Roy nodded. He understood that much, and he felt the strangest twinge at the mention of being just a release, despite the fact that was entirely what he wanted. He would have the reconsider the way he approached things in the future, he thought.

“Like I said,” she repeated as she unfastened his pants. “There are some things I think are good ideas when it comes to family, but I think my parents underestimated the need for good sex.” She looked him in the eyes and grinned. “And from what I’ve heard, you are the best.”

“I aim to please,” Roy said as his hands finally removed the tight black material from her upper body and resumed kissing her again.

********

It had been an odd conversation to have over sex, and one that she would repeat later when she realized she was pregnant. Roy knew that, on no uncertain terms, she would want some sort of compensation for the fact that she was going to be caring for their son. However, he hadn’t known the extent of what she would feel he owed her.

Apparently, it was blood.

He looked for any sign of struggle, any sign she’d hurt Liam, but he found none. The house looked in perfect order, if a bit underused. It had the air of someplace that had been closed up for a few weeks. There were some small changes, shoes with fresh dirt on them, a small coat draped over the top of the coatrack.

There was actually some care taken with Liam’s things, and Roy hoped that it was a show of her treatment of the boy himself.

He moved through the house slowly, the sitting room looking as unused as the dining room. The radio looked untouched despite the fact that Liam had a few radio shows he followed religiously and Karen had always enjoyed music. There were signs of a happier life, photos of the two of them together, a framed painting Liam had done in class, books for leisure reading, etc. All looked entirely normal, and as though they should have had a happy life.

Roy stepped into the kitchen, noticing a tray with a half-eaten sandwich and a bowl of soup. A small cup sat on the tray as well, and if Roy was guessing, he would say the food had been for Liam based on the portions. It gave him hope that his son was okay.

He had to have hope for that. If he didn't, there was no reason anymore. If he failed his son at this, none of the reassurances from Ed or the rest of the world—no matter how much he genuinely appreciated them—would be worth it. He couldn't let Liam down.

A squeaking door brought Roy from his thoughts and he immediately raised his hand to torch the person coming from the basement door. The only thing that kept him from doing it the moment he heard the noise was the chance it might be his son.

"I don't think so, Roy," the voice said, and with a clap of gloved hands in a movement almost similar to Ed's, Roy found himself doused in water and thick, humid air.

********

Lt. Colonel Armstrong led the way into the side entrance beneath Karen's home. Ed couldn't explain—and didn't really attempt to either—how he could sense it, but he could tell there was residual alchemy here. This wasn't the work of equipment and manual labor to create this underground cellar, which meant there were far more possibilities for how it could have been laid out. With alchemy creating rooms in solid rock beneath the home's foundation, it could be a labyrinth that went beyond the scope of just Karen's property. It could even be multiple levels without even touching property boundaries.

Major Lawson was making surprisingly quiet, if slightly slow, work of the metal door to the eastern entrance.

“I’m going to go in first,” Lieutenant Everett said, quietly.

“You’ve never gone up against any of these before,” Ed whispered back at him. “You shouldn’t be in the lead.”

“Of the group of us,” Everett told him, gesturing to the four alchemists as well as Havoc and Hawkeye, “I’m expendable. If someone’s going to be a human shield, better it be the one you can afford to lose.”

“Hey, if you’ve got a death wish, take it somewhere else,” Havoc told him.

“And you are fairly prepared for what is inside,” Hawkeye added. “You have been involved in every talk.”

“Which means you aren’t just a human shield,” Ed hissed. “And these things might not be easily taken down by bullets.”

“And that just goes to show that you are a lot more important than I am,” Everett said. Havoc and Hawkeye did not look pleased at that, as he’d essentially called them expendable as they were not alchemists like Armstrong, Lawson and the Elrics.

“You want to stop arguing about who’s going to play the fleshy body armor and get started into the warped zoo?” Lawson asked in his normally blunt way.

Ed nodded and followed behind Everett and Havoc as they walked in. The other three alchemists stood in line with Ed and Riza took up the rear.

They made their way into the darkened area slowly. The acrid odor of animals and filth wasn’t quite overwhelming, but there were times when it nearly became so. They could also hear the sounds of voices, the clipped, harsh language unique to Drachma. Ed didn’t speak the language, but the implication was clear enough.

It definitely went beyond just Karen Tyler.