He waved his hands dismissively and sneered. Then he sighed and spoke softly.
“Look around carefully, Luke. Do you really know the people here in the room with you?”
In the silence that followed, I took a deep breath and slowly lowered the gun. My hands were steady. Good old Doc Wright, I thought. He always did have the ability to make me feel better. Over my shoulder I looked at Paul who was leaning on the door, hands in pockets. In the gloom his teeth flashed a grin. To the left of me, Brome crossed his arms on his chest. Doc’s face was the one illuminated most by the blue glow, and in his eyes a flicker of hope lit up.
“Give us what we need, Doc,” I said. “Or I’ll shoot you.”
His lips disappeared.
“Fine,” he spat. “I see you’re beyond help.”
He bent down to pick up the slender briefcase and put it on the desk. The locks clicked and my hand snapped up. I pointed the gun at his back.
“Not so fast,” I said. Those police dramas really stick with you after twenty odd years. “Step away from the briefcase.”
With an exasperated shake of his head, Dr. Wright complied. Brome walked over and opened the case. Evidently, there was no gun inside.
“It’s in the side pocket,” said Dr. Wright. After a brief search, Brome nodded.
“Good,” I said, stuffing the pistol behind the belt. “What time is Jane starting today?”
“What?”
“Jane. What time is she going to be here?” I pulled out a camera and took a few quick pictures of him, hiding it immediately inside my jacket. For a moment the flashes disoriented him.
“Nine. Why… What are you planning—?”
Paul, who had meanwhile snuck up behind him, grabbed his arms just as I placed a previously cut piece of tape over his mouth. He struggled and made sounds.
“Calm down. No one’s going to hurt you. We’ll leave you here to wait for Jane.”
Brome lifted the chair from behind the desk and placed it in the middle of the room. I checked Dr. Wright’s pockets, found a cell-phone and, with a certain measure of satisfaction, ground it to pulp under the heel of my boot. We sat him down in the chair. Paul was having a hard time holding him down while I applied the rest of the tape. The way he writhed and groaned and rolled his eyes, you’d think I was tying him to a stake to be burned. He continued to struggle even after we were done securing him.
“Calm down. In a couple of hours you’ll be free,” I told him again. He would have none of it. I shrugged.
Brome had just then put the desk-phone out of commission. We were ready to go.
Paul went outside. Brome and I paused in the doorway and looked back at the man taped to the chair in the middle of the office. He shook the chair and tried to shout something that sounded like the same phrase over and over through the tape. After a brief hesitation, Brome went back to him and pushed the chair over, so that Dr. Wright rested on his side. If anything, his struggles intensified.
We left him there. Outside, the sky was graying in the east. There wasn’t much time left. In two hours it would be over, one way or another. Brome went to get the “Yukon” we borrowed from the bartender. Paul and I jumped into Dr. Wright’s Mercedes. Now I needed to get my junk out of the garage.
.
Chapter Thirty-One
To get blood circulation going in his legs, Ted Boone was pacing the tiny guardroom when Dr. Wright showed up with a sidekick. On Ted’s portable the news girl had just managed to squeeze in a mention of that talk-show guy, Whales, getting into some new trouble. There had been an explosion in his building that morning, and Whales was seen leaving the building in distress at the same exact time. Then he supposedly broke into his wife’s house, but no one really cared. The whole morning had been about the Pope and the Antichrist. “He walks among us.” Eerie stuff, to be sure. Ted glanced at the clock. It was seven minutes to the end of the shift. Antichrist or Jesus himself, he was in a mellow mood, knowing that in half an hour his head would be slowly denting the pillow. He smiled widely in greeting.
“Haven’t seen you around these parts in a long time, Doc,” he offered. “And never that early, I’d wager. Aside from a couple of work junkies and poor slaves like myself, the place is empty. You hear about the Antichrist?”
“Yes, yes,” the man rasped. He raised his hand without slowing down. “Listen, I have a very urgent appointment.”
Only then did Ted notice that Dr. Wright didn’t look himself. Pale, hunched, sweaty, with eyes as red as Ted’s own, he clutched a square metal case to the side of his wrinkled black suit. The sidekick, also in a wrinkled suit that didn’t seem to fit him too well, gave Ted a slanted nod and stared straight ahead. These guys looked like not only they had heard about the Antichrist, they were about to meet him in person.
The pair halted in front of the glass door of the scanner and stood stiffly with their backs to him, waiting.
Ted checked the clock again. Six minutes. And that bastard Stauffer nowhere in sight. Hating every step, he walked up to the visitors from behind, keeping a very deliberate pace.
“What’s in the case, Doc?” he asked as he came around the side, hands hanging at his hips. Dr. Wright’s head snapped towards him, red, exhausted eyes rising slowly to meet his.
“Something you don’t want to ask questions about, Ted. Please, open the door.” There were resolve and menace in his voice. Ted didn’t recall hearing the like from Dr. Wright before, nor did he like it. On the other hand, he was a security guard. A security guard was not paid — and paid well — to hear things that soothe the ear. A guard was expected to defend the facility from reporters and other scum, not a regular who wore a VIP Visitor tag and shook hands with the Man himself. But there was something wrong. Something had gotten Dr. Wright real worked up. Also, the sidekick had no ID tag, VIP or otherwise, and no one had ever refused to open a metal case, which would otherwise set off the scanner automatically. Why me? Ted thought. Why not that stinking Stauffer?
“You know I can’t let you in without checking that box. Come on,” he said. The sidekick began to move. No, he remained in place, but he was moving. Dr. Wright, meanwhile, took a look around.
“Listen to this,” he finally said. “If I open this box, we’ll both be in trouble. If I stand here for too long because you won’t open the door, we’ll both be in trouble. If I make a phone call to you-know-who and explain why I’m bothering him at this early hour, we will both be in trouble, but one of us will be in bigger trouble than the other. Want to guess which one?”
Before Ted could respond, he continued.
“There’s another option. You open the door, let us in with the box intact on my responsibility and go home to sleep in five minutes. This day has started out rather disappointingly. I would hate to get into more trouble, but I have to deliver this box.” With that, he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and held it up.
All three were silent for the whole minute. The sidekick kept moving, right on Ted’s nerves. Stauffer still didn’t show up.