Garza took it, then knelt by his daughter, semi-conscious and babbling in Spanish. "What happened?"
"She'll be okay. She stabbed me. Where the hell are your guards?"
Garza shook his head. "They should be here by now. Dozens of them."
No one moved on the lawn, and he heard no footsteps. "Do you have somewhere to hide?" Garza nodded to a door behind Matt.
Matt yanked it open. Wine cellar. "Get in there. Don't come out until I give the all-clear. Where's your security feed?"
Garza shook his head as he cradled his daughter in his arms. "Off-site. Helicopters will be coming."
Matt ducked into the cellar with them and pulled out his phone. He called Conor. It picked up on the third ring. Conor said nothing, so Matt kept his voice low. "Flynn. What's your status?"
A sloppy gurgle answered him, almost a voice. It sounded like Conor, but low, guttural.
"What the hell is going on?"
The line went dead. He tried Jeff. The phone rang once, and Jeff picked up. "Mexican military choppers are inbound on your position. A lot of them. What's your status?"
Matt hesitated. "I think Flynn bonked out."
"That's ridiculous. He passed his psych screen two days ago, same as the rest of you."
"Fire the goddamned shrink. And get me an evac." He hung up the phone and turned to Garza, who sat on the floor with his daughter's head in his lap, stroking her hair. "Do you have any weapons down here?"
Garza patted the pistol, on the floor next to him. "Just this."
"Keep it," Matt said. He stepped out the door and closed it behind him with as much stealth as he could manage. Crouching low, he peered through the dining room. Outside in the grass, a uniformed man lay on his back, but with his head face down. He saw no sign of the other guards he'd seen on the way in—the heat of the day obscured Matt's infra-red vision, and even with UV augmentation he couldn't see more than a few feet into the foliage.
He grabbed a pair of chef's knives from the kitchen, each one a nine-inch blade of razor-sharp steel, and crept from room to room, searching the house for any sign of Conor. Chunks of meat lay scattered across the side veranda in an ocean of steaming blood, with only a single hand to identify it as human. Or humans. He closed his eyes.
Breathing in the next room, sharp and frantic. The scent of jasmine mingled with blood and sweat and urine, and under that, aftershave. Conor always used classic Old Spice.
Matt opened his eyes. Muscles taut, he turned the corner.
Conor crouched naked over a crying woman, one hand on her shoulder, the other easing a ropy coil of intestine from her abdomen. Words Matt didn't understand crisscrossed Conor's body in a red-brown tattoo, a jumble of runes and letters—Roman, Gaelic, Cyrillic, Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabic . . . .
For the moment, the woman lived, her entrails intact. If he could stop Conor, she might survive.
"Conor," he said. "Can we talk?"
The woman continued her sharp, short breaths as Conor pulled another foot of bowel from her stomach. She would have been pretty, with chocolate skin and stunning eyes the same tan as her silk sundress. Instead she looked broken, covered in blood, face bathed in terror and pain. Her eyes rose at his voice but looked through him.
"It was an ambush," Conor said. "They were going to kill us." He didn't let go, and Matt couldn't risk violence while he still held her. His neck twitched. "Try. They were going to try."
"Fair enough. But you got them. It's over."
Conor didn't move.
"You want to get going?"
"No," he said. "I'm busy." He turned to smile at Matt, his face dripping with blood and offal. "There are three left." He let go of the woman, and Matt lunged.
The whispers clawed through his mind, pushing him to rejoice in murder but warning him of every strike before it came. He stepped over Conor's sweep, blocked the heart strike with his left hand, and slashed his right across the naked man's throat. Conor's blood drenched Matt in sticky, salty heat. The impact of Conor's fist carried him through the wall, his ribs on fire. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet, then dove sideways without looking, striking out with his left hand.
Conor sailed past, into a table. The knife ripped out of Matt's grip, the hilt buried between Conor's ribs.
Matt winced as he caught the blade an inch from his face, all four fingers cut to the bone. His left foot crunched into Conor's throat, and the man stumbled back, no longer bleeding. The blade slid out of Matt's hand and clattered to the floor. He flexed his fingers. Stiff and unresponsive—the nerves would need another moment.
"You can't win," Matt said, buying time. Conor's augmented reflexes were no match for precognition, but he out-muscled Matt by a good ten percent and healed just a shred faster.
"No," Conor said, his naked, tattooed, blood-drenched body whole and unblemished. Matt wasn't sure if Conor was agreeing with him or not.
The window shattered as he carried Conor through it, jamming a shard of glass past his eye and into his brain. Conor's fist broke his jaw even as Matt brought the second knife down. The steel split Conor's skull. He twisted it sideways, pulled it halfway out, and jammed it in again.
Conor bit through his sleeve and tore a chunk of his bicep off with his teeth. Matt grunted as Conor grabbed his left thigh, crushed his femur with a punch, and tore his leg off above the knee. Everything went numb.
Conor laughed and spit a chuck of meat into Matt's face.
Matt dug his fingers into either side of the knife, then pulled. Conor's skull came apart, revealing pink-gray jelly glistening with blood and cerebral fluid. Conor jammed his fingers into Matt's stomach and tore out a chunk of viscera. Matt brought his palms together, pulping Conor's brain between them.
The world faded to red, then black.
Chapter 6
The world reverberated, impossibly loud. Matt's leg spasmed with searing pain, and his stomach burned. He tried to sit up, to move his arms, to lift his head. Strapped down, he couldn't. He opened his eyes. A Hispanic man in a blood-streaked white coat and earmuffs with a microphone smiled down at him. The man's lips moved, but Matt heard nothing over the thundering rotors of the helicopter.
Akash's voice rang in his ears. "Look, I'm not saying it doesn't suck, but there's no way they could let you back. They banned Ethridge for life, and all he had was what, a little adrenal boost and level one musculoskeletal? And he wrecked people. Even if the league allowed it, you'd kill someone. Everyone."
Matt shook off his confusion and realized he had headphones on.
"I'd kill a normal, sure," Garrett's voice responded. "But how cool would a gridiron full of augs be? Can you imagine the playbooks? The hits?"
"Guys?" Matt asked.
Akash appeared over him, a smile on his face. "Hey, look who's awake!"
"Is the woman—"
"Housekeeper. She'll live, we think." His smile disappeared as he transitioned from down-time to go-time. "Your guts are good. Jaw feeling better?"
Matt relaxed with a deep sigh, opened his mouth, and flexed it side to side. The muscles pinched, too tight, but everything seemed to be in working order. "Yeah. How's my leg?"
"Still knitting. We had to keep cutting off the muscle until the bone healed."
"But—"
"You're fine. Give it an hour or two, eh?"
Garrett broke in. "Glad to have you back, Sergeant."
"Thanks, Garrett." He locked eyes with Akash. "Flynn?"
His smile vanished. "Dead. Very dead. Bonked, did he?"
Matt gritted his teeth against the millions of needles shredding his thigh. "Yeah. No. He went crazy, but it wasn't . . . normal. He spoke to me."
He blinked, and Blossom appeared, scowling at him. "Once a bonk snaps, he doesn't talk. Just kills."
"I know, but he did. It wasn't a psychotic rage. He was downright calm." In his mind's eye, the woman's intestines spilled out on the floor into a circle, cut by a line. Did it happen that way? His enhanced, eidetic memory fuzzed on the
detail.
Her frown deepened. "What he say?" She unbuckled his head strap and pulled the steel-reinforced leather off of him.
Matt cracked his neck as she worked on his torso restraints. "He said it was an ambush and they were going to kill us."
"Was it?" Garrett asked.
Matt thought for a moment. The guards hadn't been tense, nor had Onofre. "No. Even if Garza had augs on standby, there's no way he'd plan an ambush with his daughter serving coffee."
"Don't sit up yet," Blossom said. "We're keeping your leg secure for a half hour." She looked down at it. "Maybe longer. Don't wiggle."
He lay back, and tears sprang unbidden to his eyes.
"I know," Akash said, patting his shoulder. "He was my friend, too."
* * *
When they touched down in Texas, Matt could put weight on the leg, but he didn't get off the plane. Instead he brooded out the window, his dark thoughts at odds with the clear blue sky. Conor's psychological break bothered him, but somehow less so than Garza's statement that Dawkins had been an ICAP agent.
Jeff boarded, and Matt let him get situated before weighing into him. Jeff put his bags in the overhead compartment, then spoke as he flopped down.
"That was a hell of a thing, huh?"
Matt looked out the window. "That's one way to put it."
Jeff patted his shoulder in an odd echo of Akash's gesture. Is that what you do to the traumatized? Pat their shoulder? "Well you just relax, buddy, and we'll deal with the debrief stuff later."
Akash checked his brace. "You'll be right as rain in no time. We can probably pull the brace off mid-flight." Considering how much his leg itched, Matt figured it had to be healing in record time. That, or it'd fall off any second.
Garrett tossed a pair of ICAP-issue urban camouflage pants in his lap. "Then you can put these on, and stop showing off to the world." He sat next to Akash.
"Thanks." Matt rolled his head to the side so he could look at Jeff. "So Garza said something that's got me . . . I don't know." Jeff raised his eyebrows and smirked, so he just blurted it out. "Was Dawkins ICAP?"
All talk on the plane stopped. Jeff opened his mouth, closed it, then licked his lips. "Uh . . . what makes you ask that?"
"Was he?" Blossom asked from behind them.
Jeff's eyes widened. "No, no of course not." He patted Matt on the shoulder again. "Why, did Garza say something like that, buddy?"
Matt hated it when Jeff patronized him. "Yeah. He said something about us 'bringing him back into the fold.' Just before all hell broke loose."
Jeff grinned. "He's just messing with you, man. Just because he's willing to cooperate to get his brother back doesn't mean he likes us any. He knows we'll bring him down when the time comes, so he's getting his licks in where he can." He shifted in his seat. "Excuse me, I got to hit the head." Jeff got up and walked to the front of the plane, where he slipped into the bathroom.
Blossom sat next to him in a flash, her gaze boring holes in his head. "He said that. Garza."
Matt nodded.
"Did you believe him?"
Matt shrugged. "I think he thought it was true."
"What would make him believe that Dawkins was ICAP?"
He shrugged again. "I don't have any answers. That's why I asked Jeff."
Akash half-turned in his seat, and kept his voice low. "Sorry, but anyone else not quite buy Jeff's ignorance act?"
Garrett scowled. "Why would he lie? He's always got that used-car-salesman smirk, makes it seem like he's hiding something, but there's nothing here to hide. If Dawkins used to be ICAP, that'd be just one more reason to take him down, yeah?"
"I guess so," Matt said. "Still, it's a pretty weird thing to say."
Jeff came out of the bathroom, hand in his pocket. Matt couldn't quite shake the notion that his question had prompted Jeff to make a phone call.
* * *
He walked off the plane in Tennessee. His leg itched like hell as he drove home in the dimming light, and he went easy on the old truck's accelerator. He rounded the bend, pulled into his driveway, and killed the engine. Monica met him at the door with a cup of tea in her hands and a broad smile.
"I'm sorry, mister, but my husband won't be back until Tuesday, and he don't like me letting strangers in the house."
He quirked a grin. "Can't say I blame him, ma'am. If I had a wife as beautiful as you . . . ."
She looked delicious in a threadbare SheDaisy T-shirt as old as the hills and sheer enough that it'd cause a scandal if she wore it into town. Her athletic legs were still firm under the yellow stretch pants but showed traces of pregnant pudge.
She raised an eyebrow and affected her best Scarlett O'Hara as she set her cup on the end table inside the door. "I am immune to such flattery, sir." She stepped forward, pressing her chest into his, then slid her hands into his back pockets. Nibbling his chin, she pulled him inside. "Well, maybe I won't tell him, just this once." She had his shirt off before he'd taken three steps, and dropped to her knees to undo his belt. If any part of his injury still showed, she didn't react to it.
When they'd finished, Monica's skin glistened, and she collapsed beside him, panting. She tickled the sparse tuft of hair on his chest, and he felt her heart racing as he rested his hand on the growing mound of her belly. His heart thundered on at its steady pace, an atomic clock of augmented meat. He hadn't even broken a sweat.
"Well," she said. "This is a nice surprise."
He recognized the question in her cautious statement. "Yeah. We finished up in Mexico faster than we thought." She didn't reply, so he added, "I have to fly to D.C. tomorrow morning for a meeting, but I'll be home in the afternoon. Not sure what the schedule is from there." He felt no need to tell her that the 'meeting' consisted of Conor Flynn's autopsy.
"If you want to come to Momma's on Sunday, she could use a hand with that gutter after service."
He kissed her nose. "Can't promise, but I'll see what I can do."
She squeezed him, then lay cradled under his arm, the tension draining from her. As her breaths turned to soft snores, he stared at the ceiling and fought off dreams of Conor, laughing at him as he tore his skull in half.
The whispers startled him from sleep, and he opened his eyes to an empty ceiling. He reached over to an empty pillow.
Monica screamed.
He rolled off the bed and raced to the bathroom, leaping over Ted as the Basset sat up in the hall. Monica stared into the toilet with tear-filled eyes, the water pink. Her hand, slick with blood, grabbed her abdomen. She winced and hunched over. "Nonononono . . . ."
He swept her pajama bottoms from the floor, grabbed a roll of toilet paper out of the cupboard, and cradled her in his arms. "It'll be okay." He carried her outside, set her in the truck, jammed the stick into reverse, and gunned the gas. He buried the speedometer, with only an occasional sniffle from Monica or growl from a passing car to break the drone of the engine. They were halfway to the hospital before he realized he wore only his boxers and that he'd left his phone and wallet on the nightstand.
There were two people in the Emergency Room when he carried Monica through the automatic doors: a black triage nurse and a bleach-blonde secretary, both of whom sprang to their feet. He stepped to the nurse. "I think my wife is having a mis—"
"Don't you say it," Monica snapped. "Don't you fucking say it."
"—a problem with her baby."
The nurse nodded to her right. "Room one." As she followed them in, Matt heard over the PA, "Doctor Savard to the ED. Doctor Savard to the ED."
He set Monica on the bed, and the nurse shooed him out of the room, after drawing the curtain to block his view. Monica's blood streaked his forearm. Numb, he went into the bathroom and scrubbed it off, watching until the last pink streak swirled down the drain, then took a seat in the waiting room. A long hour went by, worse than the wait before a firefight. After another forty-five minutes, he stood as a middle-aged woman in a white coat came out. Gray streaked her blonde hair,
which she'd pulled up in a bun held with chopsticks.
"Mister Rowley?" She offered her hand. He shook it. Her smooth hands had not a trace of callous, and her fingernails were painted a green so faint it almost looked natural. Her green eyes locked onto his, though she had to crane her neck to do so. He sighed in relief the moment before she spoke, her voice a pleasant Mississippi drawl. "Everything's okay. The baby's fine, your wife's fine."
"What happened?"
She sat down, and motioned to the empty chair beside her. He fell into it.
"Well," she said. "Your wife had what's called a subchorionic hematoma. The symptoms are a bit like a miscarriage—vaginal bleeding, mild cramping—and it some cases it can lead to an increased risk." His heart caught in his throat. "This hematoma was small, and carries little elevated risk."
"Little," he said.
She nodded. "Yes. Really no more than a normal pregnancy. We're going to keep her for observation overnight and recommend limited bed rest for the next week. No heavy lifting, no exercise, but she can move around the house a bit."
"Can I see her?"
Her smile softened. "You can, but we had to sedate her, bless her heart. She'll sleep some hours now."
"You're sure she's fine? And the baby?"
"I'm sure. A bit shook up is all."
"I have to catch a flight at eight. Do you know when she'll wake up?"
She patted his wrist. "Oh, well after that. Why don't you go on in, give her a kiss, and get on home? We'll call you when she wakes up. She's in good hands here."
He exhaled, and only then realized he'd been holding his breath.
* * *
The morgue smelled of polished steel and bleach. Conor Flynn's body lay on the cold metal slab, his head an unrecognizable flap of skin and cartilage. The coroner, an obese man with a bad comb-over, took pictures of the red-brown tattoos that covered the body, a stark contrast to Conor's pale skin. They looked amateur, almost primitive. Matt didn't recognize a single word. Given the look on his face, Jeff didn't either.
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