The List - A Thriller
Page 30
“Hey, I got you guys something. This is for you, Tom.”
Bert handed him an envelope. Tom dumped the contents onto his palm. It was green, with hooks.
“A Luny Frog. Thanks, Bert.”
“You probably need to clean it. There are still some small bits of… uh… Anyway, you should clean it. This one’s for you, Roy.”
Bert took a DVD out of his pocket. The Love Bug.
“Slug bug yellow no hit backs!” Bert whacked Roy in his good arm.
“No fair,” Roy laughed. “Beating up on a cripple.”
Bert’s face became serious. “How are you doing, Roy?”
“Because I was on vacation when it happened, I only got partial disability. Gonna walk with a limp, probably for life. They say I could come back to work in a limited capacity. But pushing papers—I dunno. It ain’t for me.”
Bert stared at Roy, hard. “You know, I’m going to need a lot of help on the ranch.”
“You’re serious? Me and you, in the desert, chasing giant chickens around?”
Bert nodded. “Eating jumbo omelets.”
“Might be something to consider.”
Tom noticed that the small hospital room was becoming a bit cramped, but he felt his heart rate increase when one more person joined them.
“Oh my God, is that Abe Lincoln?”
Joan came into the room, and Abe gave her a big hug.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Arc.”
Joan closed the door and faced them, looking serious. “I’m glad you’re all here. We need to talk.”
Tom noted the manila folder Joan was carrying, with CLASSIFIED written on the side.
“Is that from Stang’s?”
“Yes. It’s the only file I managed to save. You all need to look at this.”
Bert opened the file and flipped through it. As he read, his face became progressively grimmer.
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Roy said. “Spill.”
Bert held up a paper. “This first page. It’s a list of the ten clones Dr. Harold created. Me, you, Abe—the others with numbers on their heels.”
He handed it to Tom. “Yeah. These are the ten. So?”
Bert handed him the next page. Tom stared at it. The first name that stood out was Jerome Huntington, the crazy Navy SEAL Stang had working for him. Printed next to his name was “clone of GERONIMO.”
Tom scanned down the page, seeing many other famous names, some of them real doozies. And just like the first page, there were numbers next to them. Eleven through twenty.
“Let me see.” Roy took the paper and read through it. “You mean to tell me there are ten more clones of famous people running around?”
“Nine more.” Tom frowned. “Minus Geronimo.”
“Nine more?” Abe reached for the page. “Tell me one of them is Marilyn Monroe.”
“So what do we do about this, Tom?” Bert asked.
Roy nodded. “Yeah, Tom?”
Tom shook his head. “The FBI can take care of it. I’m done. I did my part. This is no longer my business.”
“There are some very bad people on this list, Tom.” Joan put a hand on his shoulder. “Who knows what they could be doing in the world?”
Tom couldn’t believe that came from Joan.
“Don’t you want to go back to living a normal life? A safe life?”
“Can anyone in the world be safe with number 17 running around?”
“Number 18 is even worse,” Bert said. “And 20 is pretty bad too.”
Tom’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not our fight.”
“You know,” Abe grabbed his lapels and rocked back on his heels. “There were a lot of people who didn’t want to stand up to King George in 1776. A lot of them said it wasn’t their fight. But a few of them did. One of them was a guy named Thomas Jefferson.”
Tom sighed. Corny as it sounded, Abe was right. Ultimately, it didn’t matter why Tom was the way he was. It might have been genetics. It might have been the way he was raised. It might have been something totally unique to him. Tom had no choice but to follow his nature, wherever his nature came from.
“Okay,” he said, standing up and taking Joan’s hand. “Who should we try to find first?”
Jack Daniels thrillers
Whiskey Sour
Bloody Mary
Rusty Nail
Dirty Martini
Fuzzy Navel
Cherry Bomb
Shaken
Shot of Tequila
Banana Hammock
Jack Daniels Stories (collected stories)
Serial Uncut with Blake Crouch
Killers with Blake Crouch
Suckers with Jeff Strand
Planter’s Punch with Tom Schreck
Floaters with Henry Perez
Truck Stop
Symbios (writing as Joe Kimball)
Jailbait (with Ann Voss Peterson)
Wild Night is Calling (with Ann Voss Peterson)
Shapeshifters Anonymous
The Screaming
Other works
Afraid
Endurance
Trapped
Origin
The List
Disturb
65 Proof (short story omnibus)
Crime Stories (collected stories)
Horror Stories (collected stories)
Dumb Jokes & Vulgar Poems
A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
Visit the author at www.jakonrath.com
CODENAME: CHANDLER
She’s an elite spy, working for an agency so secret only three people know it exists. Trained by the best of the best, she has honed her body, her instincts, and her intellect to become the perfect weapon.
FLEE
Then her cover is explosively blown, and she becomes a walking bulls-eye, stalked by assassins who want the secrets she holds, and those who’d prefer she die before talking.
Chandler now has twenty-four hours to thwart a kidnapping, stop a murderous psychopath, uncover the mystery of her past, retire five highly-trained contract killers, and save the world from nuclear annihilation, all while dodging 10,000 bullets and a tenacious cop named Jack Daniels.
Buckle up. It’s going to be one helluva ride.
To purchase FLEE by J.A. Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson, visit the Kindle Store and purchase a copy today.
For most couples, a quiet dinner for two at Auberge de la Reine Blanche on the Île Saint-Louis would be just the thing to smooth out the complications in a romance. But for gorgeous Mossad operative Delilah and trying-to-retire contract killer John Rain, nothing is ever easy, and when Rain sees a crew of hard-looking men setting up outside the restaurant, he realizes someone has been bringing her work home with her. Is it a hit — or something even worse? When it comes to killing, business and pleasure are the most dangerous mix of all.
To purchase PARIS IS A BITCH by Barry Eisler, visit the Kindle Store and purchase a copy today.
By Blake Crouch
For fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris, picture this: a landscape of American genocide…
5 DAYS AGO
A rash of bizarre murders swept the country…
Senseless. Brutal. Seemingly unconnected.
4 DAYS AGO
The murders increased ten-fold…
3 DAYS AGO
The President addressed the nation and begged for calm and peace…
2 DAYS AGO
The killers began to mobilize…
YESTERDAY
All the power went out…
TONIGHT
They’re reading the names of those to be killed on the Emergency Broadcast System. You are listening over the battery-powered radio on your kitchen table, and they’ve just read yours.
Your name is Jack Colclough. You have a wife, a daughter, and a young son. You live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. People are coming to your house to kill you and your family. You don’t know why, but you don’t have time to think about that any more.
You
only have time to….
RUN
To purchase RUN by Blake Crouch, visit the Kindle Store and purchase a copy today.
Copyright © 2009 Joe Konrath
Cover copyright © Carl Graves
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joe Konrath.
Edition: October 2011
The formatting and interior design of this ebook was done by Rob Siders at http://www.52Novels.com.
The cover art was done by Carl Graves at http://extendedimagery.blogspot.com.
Print and audiobook versions of The List are also available.