I knew those blue eyes and the scuffle of blond hair. I knew that crooked nose and the scars. Some of the scars. There were more of them than when I’d seen that face last.
More than there had been when I looked into the shaving mirror that morning.
I said, “I don’t….”
It was all that would come out.
The face was older than mine. Harder, sadder, with deeper lines and more evidence of damage.
But it was my face.
He looked down at me with my own eyes.
There was such a look of deep hurt and enduring pain in those eyes.
“I’m taking it with me,” he said. “Once I’m gone you’ll have six minutes to get out. You’ll need four and a half.”
He smiled then.
There was no joy in it.
Not for him.
Not for me.
He turned and walked away. Within a few steps he was running. He rounded a corner and was gone.
I knew, with absolute certainty but with no understanding of why I knew it, that if I ran to that corner and looked around it, he wouldn’t be there.
There was a brief squelch in my ear and then Bug’s voice. “…To Cowboy, do you copy?”
I tapped my earbud but I had to suck some spit into my mouth and swallow it before I could trust myself to talk.
“Cowboy here.”
“Thank God! We were having kittens and—”
“Shut up, Bug. How do I get out?”
“Do you have the package?”
I hesitated, trying to construct a reply that would make sense. “Mission accomplished,” I said. Or something like that, I don’t really remember.
He gave me the route.
I ran it.
I got out.
Chap. 9
They grilled me for days about it.
Days.
No sleep. No easing up.
My boss, Mr. Church. Dr. Rudy Sanchez. Aunt Sallie. Others.
They asked me hundreds of questions. Or, maybe it was the same few questions hundreds of times. It blurred together after a while.
They hooked me to a polygraph.
Someone — it might have been Dr. Hu — slipped me a Pentothal cocktail and grilled me through the haze.
They kept asking the same questions.
And I gave them the same story every single fucking time.
After a while they stopped asking.
They let me sleep.
Eventually they even let me go home.
Tomorrow the interviews or interrogations may start up again. I’m not sure. All I know for certain is that the artifact is gone. No one has seen it. I suspect no one ever will.
Where has it gone?
I have no idea.
I really don’t.
What happened in the lab remains the biggest mystery of my life, and that is saying a whole lot.
I know what I saw. I know what I heard.
It’s just that I am absolutely certain, without any margin for error, that I will never understand it.
Not, at least, until I’m older.
As he had been.
Older.
Sadder.
Stranger.
I don’t believe in time travel, and I’m not sure I buy any bullshit about parallel dimensions. But, how else do I explain it? What else makes sense?
Nothing
Not a goddamn thing.
But…the device is gone.
Nobody has the weapon.
So…yeah…there’s that.
The Handyman Gets Out
Chap. 1
So, there I was.
Buck naked.
Duct-taped to a chair.
Couple of hard-cases with no-mercy eyes and a bag of tools. Big generator on a hand truck. Wires with clamps.
You get the picture.
There’s shit creek, and there’s me way the hell up it without a paddle.
I hate my job.
Chap. 2
Roll it back a few hours and I was fully clothed — an Orioles home-game shirt over jeans and flip-flops. Wayfarers up on my hair, cup of Starbucks cradled between my palms. Tickets for that evening’s game against Philly. I had a Franklin on the game, and the oddsmakers were telling me I was going to see Philly go home in tears.
Life was a proverbial peach.
I’d come into the Warehouse to clean up a few things in my office. Some after-action reports I had to sign-off on. Equipment requisitions. Like that. Nothing important. For once the whole world seemed to be taking five, sitting one out. I’d taken Junie out dancing last night and, though I’m not exactly going to get my own reality show, Dancing with Special Ops, I didn’t disgrace myself, break Junie’s toes, or reinforce the stereotype that white boys from Baltimore cannot dance.
Even my dog, Ghost, was off the clock. Junie messaged me a selfie of herself in an electric blue string bikini with Ghost standing guard in case anyone who wasn’t me got too friendly. They were at Ocean Beach with Circe O’Tree, Lydia Ruiz, and the new gal on Echo Team, Montana. Girls’ day out. No testosterone allowed. Except of the canine variety.
At this point all I had to do was turn off my laptop and walk out of the building, ideally dropping my cell phone in a trash can in the parking lot. Sunny skies, baseball, way too much beer. Only a bloody fool who doesn’t understand the way the universe works would even think about saying, “What could go wrong?”
I swear that thought didn’t go through my head.
So, I turned off my laptop, got up, switched off the office lights, and reached for the doorknob.
Which is when my cell rang.
I don’t have different ringtones for each person I know. I’m not thirteen. However I swear to God I can tell when a call is coming in from my boss, Mr. Church. Maybe I’m psychic. Maybe there’s a tremor in the Force. Not sure. But I knew it was him before I even looked at the screen display.
Did I consider letting it ring through to voicemail?
Sure. Every time he calls.
Did I do that?
No.
I don’t have that luxury. I can’t.
Besides, Church isn’t the kind to make social calls or to chat about last night’s episode of Game of Thrones. Not much for the small talk.
And I knew for certain that he knew I was taking the afternoon off.
On the other hand, as I dug my phone out of my jeans I cursed him, his entire family to the seventh generation, his DNA, and his houseplants.
I punched the button and said, “Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not.”
I sighed.
“Tell me anyway.”
Chap. 3
He told me.
“Myron Bishop wants to come in.”
I said, “Holy shit.”
Chap. 4
Half an hour later I was pulling into a parking slot at Mercury Tower in Baltimore. Still in jeans and flip-flops. This was a pickup, not a combat mission. Had my piece, though, ’cause I’m not an idiot. Beretta 92f snugged into a clamshell shoulder holster under the Orioles shirt, and a rapid-release folding knife clipped to the inside of my right pants pocket.
The tower was forty-one stories, built during the let’s-cover-everything-in-glass phase of the eighties and early nineties, so it was basically a featureless oblong that was a sun-glare hazard for miles. Lots of security. They had to buzz me into the lobby, then made me stand for five minutes at the desk. I can charm my way past most receptionists, but this one looked like they stuffed Clint Eastwood into a wool suit and wig. She was maybe six hundred years old. None of them good years.
She scowled at me like I was something the dog rolled in and demanded to see my I.D. I fished out a set that said I was “Jeffrey Book, Feng Shui Consultant.” I batted my lashes at her and said that Mr. Bishop was thinking about redesigning his office and I was here to help him balance the energies to encourage a synergistic flow.