by Bob Mayer
This sudden appearance—his casual approach—frightened her more in a much different way than the danger she had experienced just moments before. There was no anger, no rage, no passion emanating from Roland. Just cold efficiency.
He was nothing like Carl at all, she sensed.
But then again, he was.
Carl roared, sheer rage echoing through the forest, and Teri spun back to face the monster she knew. Carl flipped the knife from ruined arm to good hand and got to his feet. “You bitch!”
He lurched forward and Roland pulled the trigger. The bullet punched into Carl’s other shoulder, staggering him back several feet.
Dimly, Teri realized that Carl had yet to get close enough to her to reach her flesh with the blade. It was as if he were a puppet, being controlled by strings of lead. Carl dropped the knife and pressed his left hand against his head once more.
“Keep running,” Roland said to Teri as he passed her.
She didn’t move.
“Go run home,” Roland added, after passing Teri. He looked at Carl’s rage-filled face and knew he had a confirmed Sanction, the face matching the previous visuals, matching the file. The attack on the ex-wife had been the slamming of the gavel, proving Carl was not reformed as he had sworn so earnestly to the government shrink during the sessions before he went rogue; tapes Roland and Neeley had watched over and over.
“She’s scared, Roland.” Neeley’s voice was in his ear. “Be nice. Running is a bad word choice.”
“Nice is not something I’m good at,” Roland said to Neeley in another moment of profound (for Roland) insight, confusing Teri, who was not part of the other end of the conversation.
“Who the hell are you?” Carl managed to mutter, as blood dripped over his left hand on the side of his head, while his right dangled uselessly. He had a large hole in his shoulder, through and through, that hadn’t seemed to register in his consciousness yet.
“The Cellar,” Roland said, and something blossomed on Carl’s face. Something Teri had never seen there: fear.
“No!” Carl screamed. “I’m secure. I’m reformed. They need me.”
“Not really,” Roland said with simple Roland logic. “Or else I wouldn’t be here.”
“They need my information!” Carl’s voice dropped from scream to beg. “It’s important. They need to know about the Ratnik! About the Patrol! About Sin Fen.”
Roland paused at this unexpected tactic. “He says he has important information,” Roland said over the radio.
Neeley’s reply was cold and dry in Roland’s ear. “They always do. It’s too late for that.”
Carl took a step back.
Teri had never seen Carl take a step back.
“I’ll be gone. No one will ever hear about me again. I’ll disappear. I’ll do my duty.”
“You can’t change,” Roland said. “You can’t stop. It’s your sentence.” Roland knew Neeley could hear his words and his brain searched for something brilliant. “It’s inevitable.”
“I’ve got friends among the Ratnik,” Carl said. “I can get you in contact with them. They can make you rich. You’ve got no clue what’s happening.”
Roland was getting bored. “I usually don’t, but it usually doesn’t matter.”
Carl’s shoulders slumped in the face of Roland’s implacability. “Red Wings,” Carl said. “Operation Red Wings.”
That got Roland’s attention, because he knew about that. Everyone in Special Ops did. “What about it?”
Carl dipped his head and did the second thing Teri had never experienced: apologized. “I’m sorry. I wanted to go back and change it. Change what happened. Make amends. It’s too late. They won’t let me take it back. They won’t let me change it. I can’t take it back.” He looked up. “Do what you gotta do.”
“Later, dude.” Roland pulled the trigger. A dark hole appeared in the center of Carl’s forehead, right between his eyes. His head snapped back, and he abruptly collapsed, legs bending awkwardly beneath, dropping like a bag of sand, the way all suddenly dead people do. Nothing graceful about his death at all. Not movie dead, real dead. Sucky dead.
Roland fired a second time, the bullet entering the left eye, through the orbital socket (less bone in the way) and shredding the already dead brain.
Always double-tap.
A Nada Yada.
Roland finally turned to Teri. “You’re safe, Ms. Stevens. I’ll take care of all of this. Go home. You don’t have to be scared anymore.”
Teri couldn’t form words.
Neither could Roland any longer, having exhausted his meager supply of sympathy.
But then Neeley was standing there, tall and slim in her black pants and turtleneck underneath a black jacket. Her short black hair, with a tinge of gray, was plastered to her scalp by the rain. She smiled at Teri, much more reassuring than Roland with his gun and barbed wire tattoo.
“You have your life back, Teri,” Neeley said. “He’s been on your trail for seven days, ever since he learned you were up here. But we’ve been trailing him for eight days. He would have never gotten to you ahead of us. You’ve been safe. It’s over.”
“Eight days?” Teri managed.
Roland slid the pistol into a holster, the end cut open to allow the suppressor to pass through, waiting for the women to be done with the chitchat. The asshole was dead. What more did she want? A band to play? Balloons to fall out of the trees?
“We had to be certain,” Neeley said. “I’m sorry he scared you, but we had to be exactly right about this. A little scared is worth a lifetime of safety, isn’t it?”
For a moment Roland wondered who the “he” was that Neeley was referring to. Certainly not him?
Teri laughed, a manic edge to it. “A lifetime of safety?”
Neeley reached out and touched her shoulder gently. Teri started; no one had touched her in years.
“You’re safe,” Neeley repeated. “It’s our job to make people like you safe. Forget all this and live your life. Go home. No one is coming for you ever again. Go. Now.”
Something in the way she said that last word finally evoked a response. Teri believed Neeley in a way she’d never believed Carl.
Teri took a step. Then another.
Wuthering Heights.
Teri began to run, mud splattering her rain pants. Just before she reached the turnoff for Oliver Twist, she looked over her shoulder. She saw Neeley watching her; Roland was kneeling next to Carl’s body. Neeley nodded. Then Teri was gone behind the trees.
Roland was confirming Carl was dead, not that the double-tap in the head left any doubts.
Another Nada Yada.
Roland then walked back along the trail, picking up the pistol shell casings along the way. He jammed the ghillie suit in a stuff sack and grabbed the rifle, retrieving its single expended casing.
By the time he got back to the corpse, Neeley had the body bag laid out next to Carl.
“Why did you lie to her?” he asked. “This was a Sanction. Not family court.”
“I was being nice,” Neeley said. “Might want to try it some time.”
Roland was referring to the fact that it wasn’t the Cellar’s job to go after wifebeaters. Carl’s fatal transgression had been freelancing for the enemies of the country after having been in the formal employ of the United States government. He’d sworn an oath and he’d violated it, much as he’d violated his marriage vows to honor and love his wife. Roland supposed if you broke one oath, it wasn’t hard to break others.
Another profound thought for the big man. He was on a roll.
“I can be nice,” Roland muttered, his feelings hurt.
Neeley paused and looked at him. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”
Roland flushed bright red, unseen underneath the camouflage paint.
“I’m hungry,” Roland said, for lack of anything else.
“You should be,” Neeley agreed.
Neeley knelt, putting her hand on Carl’s legs. Roland took
the shoulders and they rolled the dead weight, always heavier for some reason from living weight, into the bag. Neeley zipped it shut.
The rain came down harder, mixing the blood deeper into the mud.
Neeley grabbed the handles on her end. “Telling her she was bait and a test for a Sanction probably wouldn’t have gone over well.”
“Probably not,” Roland agreed as he took his handles.
“Thanks.”
Roland paused, puzzled. “For?”
“Being nice in your own way.” She was looking up at him and for a second Roland could have sworn her entire figure flickered, just like Carl’s had, but it was over before he could be sure.
And then she shocked the unshockable Roland by letting go of the body bag, standing up, reaching out, grabbing his short hair in her fingers, and pulling him close. Roland let go of the bag, surrendering easily to her clutches. She kissed him, hard, and Roland was too surprised to resist; not that he wanted to.
Neeley held on to him for several long seconds, and then let go. She blinked in confusion. “What just happened?”
And then it got even weirder as the body bag slowly deflated.
“What the frak?” Roland muttered as he reluctantly let go of Neeley, very reluctantly, and knelt next to the bag. He unzipped it.
There was no body inside.
It changed for Scout—now eighteen years old and almost two years past her first encounter, run-in, kerfuffle, whatever, involving the Nightstalkers—with a whiff of bacon. She’d only smelled real bacon outside the confines of her home; never inside. Inside it was always fakon, vacon, or one of the other imposters. If you gotta fake it, Scout had always reasoned ever since she was old enough to reason, which had been pretty dang young, then isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery, and one should go with the original? Her rail-thin mother, who counted each calorie as if they were mortal sins, did not see things that way.
Thus the mystery of the odor permeating the house.
For a moment Scout lie in bed, wondering if perhaps it was wafting in from the old house next door, the one with the barn where she stabled her horse, Comanche. Out of the old stone chimney. People with a barn and a stone chimney had to eat bacon.
But in this relatively new house with its fake gas fireplace, with Scout’s mother ruling the kitchen, with the aroma of honest-to-goodness real bacon filling the air, Scout questioned reality.
That’s a good trait, one the Nightstalkers had found valuable in the past and would need in the future.
If there was to be one.
But this was a new house, well insulated and sealed. She looked at the window in her bedroom over the pretty bench seat, and it was shut tight. It was late in the morning, actually past noon, so technically early in the afternoon, which made her feel a little better. Which further deepened the bacon mystery.
Scout had spent the evening and well into the night texting her sort-of boyfriend, Jake, a nice guy who she was sure Nada would not approve of. She wasn’t sure there was a guy Nada would approve of, but he wasn’t here in Tennessee and Jake was, so that ended that train of thought.
Bacon. How strange.
Scout got out of bed. Jake was sweet and nice and seemed to care about her and wasn’t pushing for sex, something she equated with a particularly long and troublesome root canal. They liked the same books and the same films and sometimes they wore the same T-shirts. They were as close as two people could get, Scout thought. But she’d awoken to the smell of bacon and her iPhone was still in her hand and, checking it, her last text to Jake had been I think you’re my Heathcliff, Cathy, and now she stared in surprise at his response: Hu T Fk Is This????
She didn’t remember that from last night, and it puzzled her and disturbed her. Not at all like Jake. But then again she’d been gone for three months. And she’d lied to him about where she’d been, and she knew she wasn’t experienced enough in the Nightstalker world to carry off the lie to someone she was close to.
Foreign exchange had sounded good, but Jake had asked too many questions last night. She couldn’t tell him, ever tell him, where she’d really been. Training. Training. Training. Fort Bragg, Quantico, Langley, the Hangar at Lakehurst, and other places. A bewildering journey through the shadow world where instructors who knew her only as a number taught her skills, some of which she’d never known existed, never mind thought she needed.
It had been exhausting, and she’d only returned home yesterday.
The bacon worried her.
Scout carefully opened her door. It swung easily on hinges she kept oiled. She padded lightly down the hall to the stairs. She descended carefully, avoiding the one where the metal rod that went up the handrail was loose and rattled slightly every time someone hit the stair. A great early warning device up or down, but it made her question her father’s focus to not have fixed it since moving in almost a year ago.
There was, of course, the possibility that a marauding gang of breakfast makers had found their way out here to this thumb of land outside Knoxville, Tennessee, surrounded on three sides by the river of the same name.
Stranger things have happened, and Scout had personally witnessed some of them from the invasion of the Fireflies into her gated community back when they lived in North Carolina, aka the Fun in North Carolina, to the Portal opening just twenty miles downriver from her new home here in Tennessee at Loudoun Dam, aka the Zombie at the Dam.
She didn’t understand a lot of it, and Googling the events had turned up no answers. The Nightstalkers had good Cleaners coming after them, spinning cover stories, which, no matter how far-fetched, worked because they were more believable than the truth. They were much better at lying than she was, but she imagined if she had a few more years’ experience in that world, she’d become pretty good herself.
Scout paused just before the bottom of the stairs as she heard a noise, a sound she’d never heard before.
Her mother was singing. So much for the breakfast-making hooligans. Her mother was singing something about blackbirds singing in the dead of night, which seemed a bit redundant to Scout. She was sure Eagle could tell her about the song and the band and all of that, but right now it wasn’t important. This morning, check, this afternoon, was going weird in a major way.
Scout peered around the corner of the hallway into the kitchen. Her mother was at the stove. She was using tongs to pull long strips of bacon out of a frying pan and lay them on a plate covered with a paper towel. She seemed very happy, which was as odd as the bacon and the singing.
Scout put a hand over her mouth to squelch her surprise. She remained still, bathing herself in the aroma of the bacon and the surprisingly nice sound of her mother’s voice, but more than anything, enjoying the warmth of happiness emanating from her mother.
“Greer, darling,” her mother called out, surprising her. “Grab a plate.”
For once, use of her real name didn’t bother Scout in the least. How had her mother known she was watching? Another mystery to pile on the others. Scout walked into the kitchen. “Bacon, Mother? ‘A moment on the lips—’ ”
“Hush, dear,” her mother said. “Your Nana was the best cook ever. She taught me so much.”
Then why have I never had any of it? Scout thought. Before now, she amended, looking at the crisp strips of bacon. Her mother hadn’t been any different when Scout was dropped off at the front door last night. A perfunctory “How was Europe?” and that was that.
Her mother was expertly breaking eggs into a bowl with one hand while retrieving the last of the bacon with her other. Scout did not recall working at a Waffle House listed on her mother’s résumé.
Scout sat at the counter, on the opposite side from where her mother was working. She had her iPhone out, hidden underneath the marble ledge, and began writing a text, her fingers flying over the tiny keyboard with the experience of an eighteen-year-old. It didn’t take long to write, but she paused with her finger over the key.
She wasn’t texting Ja
ke.
“What’s the deal, Mother?” Scout asked.
Her mother turned from the stove, looking truly puzzled. “Why food is love, Greer. And I love you so much and I am so glad you’re home!”
That caused Scout to hit the send button on the text.
The Loop on which she’d sent the last message to Nada after the Clusterfrak at the Gateway was no longer working, having been compromised during the Zombie at the Dam incident. With the blessing of Moms, Nada had given Scout his private cell phone number so they could communicate directly if something out of the ordinary happened, if need be.
The need be now.
And then Scout got a plate. Just because reality had taken a bit of a lurch didn’t mean she was going to miss the first real breakfast her mother had ever made.
It changed for Nada, team sergeant of the Nightstalkers, the most experienced member of the group, a man who’d stared death in the eyes and French kissed the Grim Reaper (figuratively, although stranger things have happened on Nightstalker missions), with irritating voices singing “It’s a Small World,” the whiny tune echoing in his head as his niece Zoey tried to spin their teacup faster and faster.
Definitely down a rabbit hole of dubious merit.
They’d gone from hell to a deeper hell, was Nada’s estimation, walking from It’s a Small World to The Mad Tea Party. He was not the type of person Disneyland had been designed for, and he was a bit disappointed Zoey was attacking each new ride with such zest. Of course she was just a kid, but still. He expected better of someone who shared his bloodline.
As they spun about, Nada wondered, how small was the world really?
And why did Disneyland bother him so much and on a deeper level than irritating songs?
Little did he know, he was about to find out the answers to both.
And the answers were not good.
