The Hysteria
Author: Evan Ronan
Date: 2015-01-28 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Paranormal; Mystery; Fiction
Description: *Random, increasing violence plagues the town. People have gone missing. Bodies are piling up. Paranormal investigator Eddie McCloskey can’t trust anyone.* Something inexplicable is happening in this edge-of-your–seat supernatural thriller, which starts with suspense, sneaks in a few chills, moves on to thrills, and ends in a melee of outright screaming horror. A few highlights: The man's daughter isn't possessed. But Eddie can't tell him that. The people aren't actually missing. They're hiding. But Eddie can't tell the cops that. And Eddie’s got a personal issue: He’s forced to work with some
Publisher: Calhoun Publishing

Get a FREE BOOK of your choosing.

Go here: Evan’s Mailing List

Thriller writer Evan Ronan, author of The Unearthed, brings you the next edge-of-your-seat adventure in his paranormal series…

The man's daughter isn't possessed. But Eddie can't tell him that.

The people aren't actually missing. They're hiding. But Eddie can't tell the cops that.

He's in way over his head. But Eddie can't tell the deep-cover team of federal agents that.

Random, increasing violence plagues the town. The bodies are piling up. Eddie can’t trust anyone. Something inexplicable is happening.

And there may be no way to stop it.

This time, Eddie McCloskey might not make it out alive...

The Hysteria is approximately 74,000 words.

the hysteria

by evan ronan

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE BOY WHO KILLED

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

DANCE OF THE MISSING

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

THE HYSTERIA

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

THE REUNION

Thirty-Nine

Forty

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY EVAN RONAN

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) Training Stages I through VI. CRV is the process by which a person is capable of “perceiving” information concerning a site remote from him in location and/or time given only the geographic coordinates of their location.

Stage

Example

I Major gestalt

Land surrounded by water, an island

II Sensory Contact

Cold sensation, wind-swept feeling

III Dimension, motion, mobility

Rising up, panoramic view, island outline

IV General qualitative analytical aspects

Scientific research, live organisms

V Specific analytical aspects (by interrogating signal line)

Biological warfare (BW) preparation site

VI Three-dimensional contact, modeling

Layouts, details, further analytical contact

-From the CIA Remote Viewing Manual

(Feb. 1985)

THE BOY WHO KILLED

One

I said, “Where’s Eamon Moriarty?”

Sally Pastrana stopped ironing the button-down shirt. “I don’t know, Eddie.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

She went back to ironing.

Her living room was overrun by toy guns. She was on the bad side of forty but didn’t look it. In the other room her small platoon of kids were at war. They were all hers but you wouldn’t know it because her hips did lie. There were loud bangs and ear-splitting shrieks from the other room and furniture crashed.

Without much oomph, Sally said, “Hey, knock it off in there.”

I decided to go for a little humor. “You running a daycare?”

She shrugged. “I wish somebody paid me to do this.”

“Whose shirts are those?” I asked. An adult male was conspicuously absent from the home.

“Myron’s. I saw him last week. Ex-number two, possibly husband number four.”

“I need a graphing calculator to solve for X there.”

Not my best stuff but I thought it snicker-worthy. She didn’t laugh.

“When’s Myron coming home?”

“Three min, five max.”

I didn’t understand the urgency behind pressing his shirts then. You’d think with seven rug rats playing demolition derby in her house she’d reprioritize.

She saw me judging Myron. I know because she said, “Who are you to judge?”

“Takes one to know one.”

She stopped ironing and regarded me. “You were inside?”

I gave her my flip smile. It’s the only smile I really have. “Would you believe me if I told you I was innocent?”

“No.”

So that meant she was smart. I was glad she’d learned a thing or two marrying all these convicts. In every movie about the joint, someone’s been wrongfully convicted. I was inside about a year and during that brief stint, I’d not met one dude who wasn’t guilty of the crime he was convicted of plus at least three more, most of which were worse than the one he was in for.

“What did you do?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“I tore the tags off a mattress. Big no-no.”

My humor was lost upon her.

She shrugged and went back to pressing the shirt. She was a good ironer. The neck and the top of the back looked smooth. She replaced the shirt with a pair of khakis that were already wrinkle-free.

“I should call you Penelope,” I said.

“Yuck. I don’t like that name.” She didn’t ask me to explain the reference.

Something went crash in the other room. It sounded a lot like glass. Sally stopped what she was doing. Her eyes trailed up to the ceiling.

“That better not be glass!”

“It’s not,” two or three of the hell beasts said.

Sally either took their word for it or couldn’t be bothered.

I said, “You’ve got a big family.”

“One too many conjugal visits.”

Sally Pastrana fell into that strange female demographic who exclusively dated male prisoners. She’d met all three husbands after they’d been incarcerated. Just hours before husband one was released on parole, Sally filed for divorce. Husband number two was one of his buddies from the cell block. Bros before hoes wasn’t a rule in the joint, apparently. Husband number three was on another block because he’d been convicted of aggravated assault.

After sampling the prison population, she’d moved onto the male criminal/psychiatric population. And that was how she’d met Eamon Moriarty.

My brother’s murderer.

She’d heard about Eamon, who as a boy had either killed his older brother or allowed him to die and had definitely tried to kill his subsequent adoptive family. She’d driven up to Bayside, where he’d been held and treated for almost six years, and began a relationship with him. Soon she was visiting twice a week.

Eamon had left Bayside under mysterious circumstances. He’d been signed out in the middle of the night by some government officials. This had come as a surprise to all of Eamon’s treating physicians at Bayside. Now nobody knew where he was.

I had to find the little fuck because he’d killed my brother.

And Sally Pastrana was the only person I hadn’t talked to yet.

“Tell me about him,” I said.

She finished with the khakis and moved on to the next pair. She chewed bubble gum and her jeans were a little too small and too young for her. Her thong peeked out whenever she bent over.

“He was a nice, handsome young man. It’s just awful what happened to him.”

“You mean before he murdered my brother?”

She put the iron down again and looked up at me. “You know it wasn’t his fault.”

I choked down my anger. It wouldn’t get me anywhere with Sally. “How long did you two, uh, date?”

“Almost six months.” She turned off the iron and folded her arms. “Then he disappeared.”

“Did he know he was leaving?”

“What would you do if you found him?”

“Oh, you know. Catch up. Talk about old times.”

Her eyes were full of judgment, which I thought strange coming from her. “Would you kill him?”

“Sally, I don’t think that far ahead. I don’t even know what I’m doing after I leave here. I’m just making these questions up as I go along.”

“Don’t lie to me. What would you do?”

I’d settle my account with my brother’s murderer. “Look, Sally. This kid is sick. He’s a killer. He holds grudges better than the Greek gods. If he gets the chance he’ll kill some very good people. And me. I’m not so good but I enjoy being alive.”

“What were you inside for?”

“I was an addict. So—”

She cut me off. “So you know that good people make mistakes and you know that unfortunate circumstances force people into bad decisions.”

“I was a drug addict. He’s a killer.”

Her head only moved a couple inches from side-to-side, but the gesture was unmistakable. She saw little to no difference between me and Eamon.

Sally said, “How long were you in?”

“Long enough to see women like you do the walk of shame.”

“You have no right to judge me. Because I’ll bet you saw many women like me in there and I’ll bet you wished we were coming to see you and I’ll bet that, after the lights went out, you fantasized about women like me.”

The answer was no, but we were already off track enough. “Did Eamon say anything about leaving Bayside?”

“Why should I tell you if he did?”

Then my eyes fell on the freshly ironed pants and wrinkle free shirts and I finally made the obvious connection. “You don’t know where he is.”

She said nothing. Which told me everything.

I smiled. “Thanks for your time.”

Before I got out of the room, she said, “I know where he is, Eddie.”

I stopped in the doorway. “You’re ironing your ex’s clothes. You wouldn’t give that guy a second thought if Eamon was still around. And if you knew where Eamon was, why haven’t you gone to see him yet?”

“You don’t know that I haven’t.”

“Sure I do. You have a strange ethos, but that ethos doesn’t include two-timing your inmate boyfriends.” Her renewed interest in ex-husband number two, as laid bare by her ironing clothes he wouldn’t need or ever probably see again, had tipped me off.

Her face fell. “Okay. Fine. I haven’t seen him because I can’t.”

I didn’t move an inch. “What do you mean you can’t?”

She was quiet a moment and looked away before she spoke. “He told me he was going away.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t know where.”

“With who?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Why not?”

“He said he’d made a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“He didn’t say. That’s all I know.”

“Were these men from the government?” It was a dumb question. They had to be from the government because nobody else had the authority to move a prisoner-patient like Eamon Moriarty.

“I think so. But he didn’t say.”

“When did he tell you he was leaving?”

“About two weeks before he was gone.”

“Did he say anything the last time you saw him?”

“Just that he loved me.”

“He loved you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Yes.”

I asked her a few more questions but she didn’t know anything. And I didn’t like being this close to her. She had nice perfume on but it couldn’t mask the prison stink I was too familiar with. Nothing can.

“Did he give you a way to get in contact with him?”

“No…”

“But?”

“He said he’d find me if he could.”

“Those were his exact words.”

“Yeah.”

If he could. Not when he could.

“Okay. Thanks, Sally. I’d tell you to stay away from bad men but I don’t think you’d listen.”

“His father beat him, his mother didn’t love him—barely acknowledged his existence some days—and his big brother was a bully. He had no one to turn to.”

I had to walk away.

Two

“Two weeks before he left,” I said.

Dr. Gladman did some mental math. “Okay. So let’s say July.”

He typed something into his computer and I looked around his office. I saw the latest DSM-IV manual on a shelf next to a bunch of other psych texts.

Gladman pointed at his monitor. “He had three visitors in July.”

“Three?”

“Sally Pastrana came twice a week, his attorney on two separate occasions, and an undergrad psych major doing research for her thesis.”

I knew the attorney well, going all the way back to Eamon’s criminal trial. His name was Gordon Bell and he’d done his best to make me look like a fool when I testified.

“Who was the undergrad?”

“Name is Janine Poss. She’s a student at Bryn Mawr.”

“You met her?”

Gladman nodded. “I always interview Eamon’s visitors before they see him. Especially if it’s their first visit.”

Janine was the only wild card here. “You confirmed she was who she was?”

“Didn’t have to. I know the head of the psych department at Bryn Mawr. He referred Janine to me. He knew what she was working on.”

Another dead end. I’d been at this sporadically since my best friend, Stan, had called with the news of Eamon’s departure. I was being careful. I didn’t want the pursuit of Eamon Moriarty consuming my life. I could see that happening easily. I have an addictive personality.

I let out a big sigh. “So, doc, which side of the dissociative identity disorder debate are you on? Do you think it’s real or are multiple personalities patient-driven bullshit?”

He didn’t answer. Shrinks avoid questions better than politicians. “Eddie, I wish I knew what was going on as much as you do.”

“Two men show up, the middle of the night, flash some federal badges, produce a redacted Court order, and spirit Eamon away. I wonder what Gordon Bell would have to say about that.”

“Gordon Bell.” Dr. Gladman had had his share of run-ins with Gordon over the years, as the lawyer had continued to represent Eamon throughout the lengthy appeals process. “I’m glad to say I haven’t seen him in almost two years.”

“You stopped interviewing him when he came in to see Eamon?”

Gladman’s jowls shifted into frown position. “No.”

“But you just said he was here in July.”

Gladman shook his head. “I said Eamon’s attorney was here.”

Now I was confused. “Bell is Eamon’s attorney.”

“Was.”

“What?”

“I sent you an email in…” Gladman consulted his monitor again. Clicked his mouse a few times. “…June. He got a new attorney.”

“The one who came to see him in July?”

“Yes. Sheldon Weaver. He visited in June twice and then three times in July.”

“Do you have his information?”

Gladman rifled his Rolodex. Pulled out a card. “Sheldon Weaver, of the law firm Krone Johnson Weaver.”

I took the card. “A named partner.” I checked the address on the business card. “And you didn’t happen to videotape any of the lawyer-client conferences they had, did you?”

“Now, now, Eddie. You know I can’t. Attorney-client privilege.”

“Just thought I’d ask.” I held the card up. “Mind if I borrow this?”

***

I drove till I found an unsecured wi-fi connection. Still sitting in the driver’s seat, I googled the information I had on Sheldon Weaver and his law firm. I got exactly zero hits.

That was impossible.

I believed in the omnipotence, not necessarily the benevolence, of the almighty Google. If something existed, Google found it.

Absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence, but all the same the search engine hadn’t found anything. I didn’t know how to take that. All law firms maintained a web presence of some kind. Even if the internet generated zero business for them, they had a professional-looking page so they appeared respectable.

I called Stan.

“Jesus, Eddie, I’m just putting the kid down,” Stan whispered.

“Sorry. My psychic abilities aren’t working today.”

In the background, I heard the unmistakable cry of an infant. Followed by Stan cursing. Followed by Stan cursing me.

“Thanks a lot, Eddie.” Stan killed the call, and I waited. He always called back in a few minutes. I found a good jam on the radio. The phone rang before it was over.

“That was a close one,” Stan said.

“Almost a case of somnus interruptus.”

“Funny. What’s up?”

“A lawyer came to visit Eamon in June and July. His name is Sheldon Weaver. I can’t find him online.”

“That’s solid work there. The Staties should offer you a job.”

“Can you do a little digging?”

“In all my spare time.”

“You and I both know you live for the weird shit I ask you to do.”

“I’ll need a few hours.”

“Why? You just put the kid down.”

Stan laughed. “Okay, Eddie. You really have no idea how married, home-owning, parents fill up their time.”

It was meant in good humor but the jab stung me. The last serious relationship I’d had was with a TV show. Of course the network had prematurely cancelled it.

“I’m just funning you. Give me a call if you find anything.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I found the nearest mall and got lunch there and putzed around. My cell rang once. It was a number I didn’t recognize, which usually meant a prospective client trying to reach me. I was too wrapped up in the search for Eamon Moriarty so I let it to go voicemail.

I got back in my car and drove the hour and a half back to my apartment in Philly. I found a ballgame and decided to use all this pent-up energy in a productive way. I did a quick workout, mimicking the training I’d seen on the special features for the Spartacus series. When I was done, Stan still hadn’t called back.

I tried reading an old Robert B. Parker novel. I loved Spenser, but his adventures didn’t distract me from thinking about Eamon and the mysterious lawyer and law firm with no web presence.

The sun went west and the day petered out. The local sports station was playing a vintage Sixers game. I watched that for a little bit, went back to Spenser, then looked for a movie.

The number I didn’t recognize called my cell again. It reminded me I hadn’t listened to my voicemail earlier. The caller left me a second message. Persistent. I didn’t like persistent callers. They usually worked for the government and they usually had bad news for you.

I couldn’t settle on a movie. I turned the old Sixers game back on and watched Dr. J light up some lanky white dude with a thunderous dunk.

Finally Stan called.

I said, “I’m sitting in my apartment and starting to find meaning when I paste together random passages from the newspaper. Tell me you found something. Fast.”

“I know you’re lying because they don’t make newspapers anymore.”

“I was being hyperbolic to illustrate a point.”

“Hy-per-bol-ic. Got it. Sorry, pal, but I couldn’t find anything.”

“You’re joking.”

“For a change, I’m not. There are three Sheldon Weavers practicing law in the United States. They live in Oregon, Montana, and Texas. None of them are employed by a law firm matching that name. No law firm exists in the US with that name. At least none I can find.”

“Don’t spare me the bad news.”

He laughed. “Sorry, pal. But I don’t know who this guy is.”

“Well…shit.” I can be witty on command.

“Why don’t you come out for a visit tomorrow?”

Stan had married Moira, my first and only love. I hadn’t seen either of them in years. The last time I saw Stan, he was picking me up after I’d gotten out of the joint. Stan and I talked by phone and email. When I was stumped, I called him. I’d missed their wedding and still hadn’t gone out to see their baby girl.

It was easy to rationalize my behavior. It was easy to rationalize anything. I imagined our encounter would be more awkward than a racial joke in mixed company.

I really needed to get over it and go see them. But of course I said, “I got a new client hounding me. Let me see what’s going on.”

“Alright, see you in five years, dude.”

Three

“Mr. McCloskey, I’d like to hire you. I can pay you whatever you want. I’m well-funded and well-motivated. My name is Morgan Turner. I’d like you to begin immediately.”

The voice on the voicemail was smooth, high-class, educated, sure of itself. Morgan Turner sounded older than me but that might have just been because of his diction and perfect elocution. The second voicemail was along the same lines. He left me his numbers. All of them. Home, business, cell. And his email address. And he directed me to his business’s website. Probably to impress me.

Unlike Sheldon Weaver’s mysterious law firm, Morgan Turner’s business maintained a very active, albeit dignified, web presence. He was a financial planner and consultant. In Oregon.

I’d never been to Oregon. From what I heard I wasn’t missing much. Some wiseass in a bar once had pointed out my mispronunciation of the great state. He informed me the last syllable was pronounced -gin, and not -gone, and that anybody thinking otherwise was a plain fucking idiot.

I told him it was a fair mistake, given the vagaries of English pronunciation. He said I was a plain fucking idiot.

I asked him, How do you pronounce the words polygon and paragon?

He fumbled for an answer and eventually told me those words were different because they were from the math and sciences. Obviously.

I said, Fair enough but how do you pronounce the word spelled g-h-o-t-i?

Gotty? he asked.

I left it at that and went back to my pint. Those were back in my drinking days. Sometimes I missed the beer, but more than that I missed the bar banter with assholes like Mr. Oregon.

I called Mr. Turner back.

“How you doing? This is Eddie McCloskey.”

“Thank you for returning my call.” I heard him adjust the phone. “I’d like to hire you, Mr. McCloskey.”

“Eddie will do just fine, Mr. Turner.”

“So will Morgan.”

I’d already made a friend.

“What’s the job?” I asked.

“I need you to find someone.”

Not my usual thing but I had an aversion to turning down money. “Who?”

“My daughter.”

“Forgive the question, Morgan, but is your daughter still with us?”

“I very much hope so.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. You see, I specialize in—”

“Paranormal investigation. Yes. That’s why I’m calling you.”

“Did you try the cops first?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She’s a grown woman. Just because she vanishes one night…”

“How about a PI?”

“He didn’t find her.”

I was quiet for a moment. “Okay.”

“Okay you’ll take the job?”

“Sure.”

“That was easy.”

“That was but the rest won’t be. Let me ask, why did you call me?”

“Before she vanished I thought she was possessed.”

Four

Oregon was beautiful country. Lots of timber, big rivers bloated with salmon. We landed in Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford. I’d grown up near another Medford twenty plus years ago. But that was all the way over in New Jersey.

There was a driver in a black suit waiting for me holding a sign with my name on it. He told me his name was Strongbow. I tried not to hold that against him with my Irish heritage. He took my bag.

He led me away from the baggage claim to a new Lincoln parked very illegally right outside the gate.

Nothing but blue skies. But I knew better. The Pacific Northwest wasn’t going to fool me.

“Okay, how long till it rains?”

He smiled as he put my bag in the trunk. “Might be awhile. Medford sits in a rain shadow.”

A rain shadow. He had to be taking the piss, as the Brits say. “I mighta been born during the day, but I wasn’t born yes—”

He held up a hand. “I’m not kidding you. Look it up on your phone.”

“I still use a rotary. What’s a rain shadow?”

We got in the car. I stretched out in the back. It had been an eight hour flight from Philly. I could never sleep on planes unless I was drunk. And I didn’t drink anymore.

“Medford sits in the Rogue Valley on the good side of the Cascade Range. We don’t get a lot of rain because of that.”

“Learn something new every day. You work for Turner for awhile?”

“Couple years.”

“Just driving?”

He kept his hands on the road. Hands at ten and two. “What does that mean?”

“Sorry, East Coast humor.”

“Oh.” He made a left. “It’s a great job, and Mr. Turner takes care of me.”

But not well enough that Strongbow could call his boss by his first name. “You know his daughter?”

“I know all three of his daughters.”

The plot thickened. “How old are they?”

“Twenty-six, twenty-three, twenty.”

“I wish I was that sexually disciplined.”

Strongbow didn’t laugh.

“Mrs. Turner still around?”

“No. She passed away a few years ago.”

It was good to get the local guy’s knowledge. “So which daughter disappeared?”

“Daughter number one. Twenty-six years old. Megan. Long brown hair. She has that English rose look about her.”

I pictured her and in my mind she was lovely. “Married?”

“Divorced.”

“Her ex still around?”

“He lives in the area.”

“Was theirs one of those fabled amicable partings?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Turner.”

Strongbow was a model of discretion.

“She dating again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Attractive?”

“Megan is a very good-looking woman.”

“So probably dating.”

He said nothing.

“Any guys come around?”

“In my brief time here, I’ve seen a few.”

“Recently?”

“You’ll have to talk to Mr. Turner about this.”

“How about girls? Any of them come around?”

His eyes almost popped out of his head.

“As friends, I meant.” But I enjoyed getting the reaction.

“Megan was very popular but she’s very career-oriented.”

“And what’s her career?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Strongbow didn’t hesitate. “Talk to Mr. Turner if you want more details.”

“Okay.” I shifted in the seat. “The other two daughters around?”

“They are.”

I waited for him to volunteer information. He didn’t.

“What are they like?”

He’d kept his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel the whole ride and hadn’t taken his eyes off the road for a second. But now he looked at me through the rearview mirror.

“Melanie, twenty-three. Mia, twenty. Before you ask, yes, they’re very good-looking. You’ll get to meet them.”

The driver spoke and acted like ex-military. If it walks like a duck…

“Turner really likes M names, huh?”

Strongbow said nothing.

“So you were Army?”

“Hell, no. I was a Marine.” He gave me the jarhead stare through the rearview and his eyes bled Semper Fi.

“Officer?”

“Hell, no. I worked for a living. Did you serve?”

I smiled. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“What branch?”

“Let’s put it this way. My uniform was an orange jumpsuit.”

I saw him figuring that out. When he did, he said nothing. He just filed it away.

I let it go. “A rain shadow, huh?”

“Yes. A rain shadow.”

I checked the sky for clouds. Nary a one. “How far to the house?”

“About a half hour.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m gonna check my eyelids for holes.”

Thirty-three minutes later I was up again. It felt like thirty seconds to me.

Turner had a great house. It was postmodern, boxy-looking, with a lot of glass. It screamed money. I imagined there was an atrium with a garden inside.

I got out and went for my bag but Strongbow was having none of it. “Right this way.”

We crossed what could only be described as a concrete drawbridge up to the double doors. Strongbow led the way. I took in the grounds. In addition to the house, Turner had a lot of acreage.

We stepped into the foyer. Strongbow told me to wait there and took my bag down a hallway to the right.

I waited.

From the hallway to the left, Daughter Number Two or Three appeared. She was either twenty-three or twenty, I knew, but she looked older than that. I was thirty-five and I would have made a pass at a bar.

She bit her lip and looked at me. She was wearing an evening gown. I checked my watch. It was only three-thirty. Thank God. For a moment I’d been worried I was underdressed.

She walked over to me and felt the need to say something when I didn’t. “So you’re the ghost hunter.”

“You’re overdressed.”

Then she giggled and turned around slowly. She looked back at me over her shoulder and then her eyes rolled back like slots. She fainted. I grabbed her. Her body was slack. It was all so theatrical, it seemed rehearsed.

At that convenient moment a butler came in and found me propping the lady up. In grabbing her, I’d accidentally gotten a fistful of boob. It didn’t seem to bother him. He was a tall, thin middle-aged man. He had intelligent, cutting eyes that were as grey as his hair. He walked purposefully toward me and took the lady. Her eyes opened but there was nothing behind them.

“This started this morning,” he said. I took it he was referring to her medical condition.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Then he seemed to remember his manners. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. McCloskey.”

“Likewise, but call me Eddie, okay? I’m assuming that’s Mr. Turner’s middle daughter, Melanie?”

She was young, but not even the casinos would card her. She really looked close to my age.

The butler smiled slyly. “It is.”

Score one for my powers of observation. “So where’s Mr. Turner?”

“Standing right in front of you, Eddie.”

Oh.

Shit.

***

Mr. Turner was dressed like a butler. He had on a dinner jacket. But he obviously wasn’t a butler. You didn’t get to ten mil by waiting on people. You got there by being a genius, going to Harvard, or marrying a rich widow.

He led me through French doors. I offered to help him carry his daughter. He was struggling a bit. But he politely declined. He acted like this was old hat to him. He deposited the girl in a high-backed, cushioned chair in a study. It looked especially designed for the purpose of fainting daughters. He punched out a quick text—probably to the actual butler—then told me to follow him.

The house was just big enough to qualify as a mansion. But the size wasn’t the most impressive part about it. Design-wise it was the most interesting place I’d ever seen. Probably twenty years old and resembling a European villa. Inside, there was a lot of open space. Many of the walls fell short of the ceiling, making it airy. Arches instead of thresholds. He led me to the pool room. It didn’t smell like chlorine. It smelled like the sea.

Outside he had an infinity pool with a weir and catch. That was two more pools than I had but who was counting.

“Drink?” Morgan Turner said.

“No thanks. I’m a teetotaler.”

He poured himself one without comment or apparent judgment. Either he was a lush himself or had genuine sympathy for another human being.

Probably a lush.

“That was Melanie.” He sipped his G and T, then seemed to remember he was dressed like Jeeves. “I have a function this evening. Last minute. I’m more or less a figurehead at the firm anymore, but they still need me to attend these things.”

“What’s on the schedule tonight?” With a daughter missing, I wondered what could be so important. But maybe he needed something to keep his mind off the troubles.

“I won’t bore you with the details of local politics,” he said. “But I keep a pulse on all things I can. My firm employs a lot of people around here, so naturally I have to keep up appearances.”

I waited for him to say more but he didn’t.

I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you from your picture online.”

No hard feelings there. “Old picture. I have aged a lot in the last few years.”

So had his middle daughter. “You’ve had a rough go of it.”

“Strongbow must have told you about my wife. And now Megan and Melanie.”

I didn’t want to get the local guy in trouble after he’d fed me some info. “He only told me that Mrs. Turner had passed after I prodded him.”

He nodded and got a faraway look in his eyes.

I said, “Now what’s this about Melanie?”

“It’s Megan that’s missing.”

“I know, but you just said and Melanie.”

“Yes.” He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead as if to smooth it. “Dear Lord, I don’t even know where to begin.”

I’d already taken out my notepad. “Just start talking. It’ll all come out. If it doesn’t I’ll ask questions.”

“Before Megan disappeared, do you know what she was doing?”

Then I put it together. “She was fainting.”

Five

Turner said, “And not acting herself.”

“That’s why you think she was possessed?”

“She was possessed, Eddie. Or she suddenly developed a second distinct personality.”

False choice, but I didn’t call him on it. The client is always right. Until you can show them they’re indisputably wrong.

“Tell me about her. Strongbow said she’s very career-oriented.”

“Very. She works for the government in some capacity.”

That was vaguer than tea leaves. “That’s all you know?”

“Yes.”

He obviously had his own theories. This was a test of sorts. He wanted to see how my mind worked.

I didn’t like tests. But I also didn’t like not doing a good job.

“She has some kind of security clearance then, otherwise she would have been able to share her work with you.”

“My thoughts too.”

“Has to be federal.”

He nodded.

“DC?”

“She has an apartment there but she’s away for long stretches. She’s probably spent as much time here in the last few years as she has there.”

“She came back here recently?”

He sipped his G and T. “About a month ago. She said she’d taken a sabbatical. Obviously I have the room for her.”

I laughed. “Mind if I move in too? You’d never see me, I swear.”

He smiled but made no offers. Damn.

“How does it usually work? When she goes back to DC or goes away for a stretch?” I asked.

“She always tells me. There are no details, but she always tells me.”

“And this time?”

“This time, nothing. I went to bed one evening and the next morning she was gone. All her things are still in her room.”

“Car?”

“Her car is still here.”

“She say anything the night before she left?”

“No.” He folded his arms. “She usually sends me a code through email when she’s going to be away. She didn’t this time.”

“What’s the code?”

“A blank email with nothing in the subject line.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“What was her degree in?”

The change in gears tripped him up. “…Psychology.”

“She speak any foreign languages?”

I could see him thinking really hard about it. “She took French in high school.”

Not exactly a resume that would attract the eyes of Homeland, the CIA, or any of the other intel agencies. Not that I was plugged into their recruiting practices, but still. So who the hell did she work for?

“Okay. Let’s back up.” I pointed at the well-stocked bar. “You mind if I get a water?”

“Where are my manners?” He made a big deal out of pouring it himself for me.

“Thanks. So she came back about a month ago. When did the fainting spells start?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Syncope.”

One of my favorite diagnoses because it doesn’t tell you much of anything. “Transient loss of consciousness accompanied by a change in postural status.”

“Or as I like to call it, fainting.”

I smiled. “Did he say why it was happening?”

“Megan has low blood pressure. If she gets up or changes position too quickly, not enough blood—and therefore, oxygen—gets all the way up to her brain.”

I considered my anecdote about the giraffe being the animal with the highest blood pressure but thought better of it. I knew a lot of useless bullshit like that. It happens when you read too much. If only I could use my powers for good…

“How often was she fainting?”

“Once every few days. It was frightening. One time she was just standing in the kitchen and she went down without any warning.” He brought one hand down on top of the other. “Lights out.”

“You said she was acting differently too.”

“Not differently, Eddie. She was a whole other person.”

“How so?”

He considered his words before speaking. “Megan is a wonderful woman. A strong, beautiful, goal-oriented woman. Only twenty-six but wise beyond her years. Very warm, very caring, but also very focused. She could set her mind to a problem and block out all the noise and take as long as she needed to solve it. And she usually doesn’t need much time. She is the type of person who would have succeeded at anything. She’s just good at whatever she tries, and she’s good with people.”

I waited for it.

“But, when she had these episodes, she became…” Now he was really considering his words. “…remote. Withdrawn. She stayed in her room. When she interacted with us, she was flat. Hollow-like. Almost suspicious.”

“Suspicious?”

“It’s difficult to describe. She became very guarded. She rarely spoke. It was like she was pretending to be aloof but there were moments when she was really watching us, listening to what we had to say.”

“How many times did you see these changes in the last month she was here?”

He bobbed his head side-to-side. “Seven, eight times.”

People with mental disease were often drawn to the study of psychology. Probably explained why I was. But with my limited, amateurish knowledge I couldn’t pin a diagnosis on Megan. Dissociative identity disorder was rare and hotly-contested in the psychiatric community. My knee-jerk diagnosis was bipolar disease. But that didn’t work either. Turner had described her as focused. Not exactly an adjective fitting manic behavior. Depressed people were often distant, their affects suggesting hopelessness or apathy. So maybe Megan was depressed. But then she rebounded too quickly from it, seven or eight times in the last month, to a non-manic state. Also, the suspicion suggested paranoia or schizophrenia.

Either way, I decided to keep my amateur psychology to myself. Because I was probably way off.

“Tell me about her ex-husband.”

Turner finished his drink. I could see him thinking about another. “He’s a good man.”

I was taken aback.

Turner continued. “A really good man. They just weren’t compatible.”

“He’s still around?”

“Yes. He works in the finance department of one of the big insurers.”

Turner practically glowed when he spoke of his ex-son-in-law. Odd talk from a father about the man who’d divorced his daughter.

“I’ll need his information.”

“Strongbow might have it.”

So he was more than a driver. “Tell me about the guys that came around.”

“How do you know there were?”

Time for a bit of flattery. “I saw the family portraits in the hallway. Your daughters are all beautiful women.”

One corner of his mouth smiled. That was all.

“Megan has maintained several of her friendships from high school. Several of her visitors fall into that category. There was also a new man, whom I’d never met before.”

“I’ll need all the info, but who was this new guy?”

“His name was Anthony Bostwick. Early thirties, not a hair out of place, always well-dressed.”

“Who was he?”

“He worked for a software firm in the city. They’d met on one of those professionals-only dating sites, according to her.”

“But?”

He grimaced like he was about to say something distasteful. “Megan has never lied to me in her life. Not even in high school when you’d have expected her to. When I caught her behaving inappropriately, she always owned up to it and took her punishment. We’ve never kept anything from each other, with the exception of her work. But, there was something about that man.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t put my finger on it. He didn’t act like any software designers I’d ever met. I don’t know. I have a lot of connections locally and statewide. I put the feelers out and not much came back on him. Just his name and business.”

“How long were they dating?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it started before she came back or if they met a month ago when she got back. But I saw him, five or six times.”

I thought it all over. I had three pages of shorthand. I’d make sense of them later.

“Mr. Turner, I’m still confused that you asked me to find Megan. This isn’t what I do.”

“Are you refusing?”

The way he said it made it sound like he’d never been refused anything in his life.

“Not yet. I’m just trying to understand the thought process here.”

“If it’s money, I can—”

I held up a palm. “This isn’t about money. This is about me making sure I can be of service. You see, in the last few years, I grew this thing called a conscience.”

He put his drink down and wiped his palms on the bar towel. “Come with me.”

***

We passed the chair he’d deposited Melanie in. It was empty. But I could still smell her perfume.

He led me down the hallway Strongbow had taken. We took stairs up to a second story. We rounded a corner and there were a row of bedrooms. Megan’s was the last. He opened the door.

“After you.”

I didn’t know what I was going to find in there but I hoped it wasn’t sex toys. Awkward.

Megan had a four-poster bed that looked like it had never been slept in. Heavy drapes over the windows. Her own bathroom. A dresser, a bureau, a walk-in closet. Nothing jumped out at me as weird.

Then I took note of her bookshelves.

Not only was she a big reader like me, she shared my eclectic interests. Various tomes on the paranormal, including the classics and some new ones I’d heard of but hadn’t gotten to yet.

Then I saw it.

A copy of The Unearthed, non-fiction book co-starring Yours Truly. I picked it up.

“She kept tabs on you,” Turner said.

“Me?”

He nodded. “It’s why I called you.”

I said nothing and went back to looking at her collection. Many texts on psychology and paranormal psychology. The DSM-IV got its own shelf. Some medical texts too, like Gray’s Anatomy and Rosen’s Emergency Medicine. There were two books on remote viewing too.

Turner’s voice almost made me jump. “She was very interested in your field, Eddie. And she always maintained that this house was haunted.”

Ghosts didn’t kidnap people, though. Nothing in it for them. “What else did she say, about the haunting?”

Turner stepped into the room. He went to her bed and carefully touched one of the posters like it was an exhibit in a museum.

“That it was a benevolent spirit. She referred to it as…residing?”

“Residual.”

“That’s it. Though she later started to believe it was intelligent.”

“You think there’s a connection between this ghost and her disappearance?” I didn’t. At least not yet. Look for the rational explanation first, and always, and last.

“I’m not sure. I don’t know what to think.”

And then he was crying.

I’d seen clients break down before but it never got any easier. I gave him a moment. He needed more than a moment. I went to her bookshelf and inspected her literature more closely. He blubbered for another minute. I felt bad.

“Excuse me,” he said.

I faced him. “You said she studied psychology in school?”

He nodded. “She was always a great student.”

“Just curious. What was her senior thesis on?”

He used a handkerchief to wipe away the tears and blow out the crying snots. “She loved abnormal psychology. Her thesis is a bit esoteric so you’ve probably never heard about it. About fifty years ago there was a laughing epidemic in Africa, the village girls couldn’t stop. They were in hysterics.”

I knew all about it. But rather than impress him with my wide and deep reading habits, I filed that tidbit away and added it to my picture of Megan.

His eyes got that faraway look. “She’s a great person. Very driven, very passionate about life and work and family. She could have been anything she wanted and she ended up being exactly what she wanted. She could have coasted through school and sat on her trust fund but instead she signed up for dangerous work. She…”

He started blubbering again and I was almost there myself.

“Morgan, I don’t know if I can help you. But I’ll try my damnedest.”

Six

Chester Leonard was driving a new BMW convertible and was in the middle of moving into a new office building. A wall-length aquarium filled one side of the reception area. Movers carried brand new furniture in. The place was already overfurnished but respectable-looking.

Chester himself wasn’t. He was a big, heavyset man who didn’t carry the extra pounds well and had a tiny head and a weasely face. He was a low-talker of the worst kind. I had to ask him to repeat everything he fucking said.

“Yeah, I looked for Megan.”

He didn’t volunteer any more information.

Like Morgan Turner, Leonard’s online photo was embarrassingly out of date. On his website he looked about thirty-five. In person, closer to forty-five.

“Look, pal, I’m trying to help Morgan out and I don’t want to waste my time or Morgan’s money retreading already well-trodden ground.”

“You making a crack about my weight?”

“Jesus, no. So what’d you do? Who’d you talk to?”

He said nothing.

“Come on, one professional to another.”

He grunted, swiveled in his chair so he was forty-five degrees to me, steepled his sausage-like fingers. I could understand his reluctance. Nobody liked somebody else looking over their shoulder.

He started talking and I immediately cut him off and told him to speak into the mike.

He started again. “First, any more East Coast attitude out of you and you can take a hike.”

“Okay, fine.” I calmed down. Pissing this guy off wouldn’t get me closer to Megan. “Tell me what you know.”

He grunted. “One professional to another, my enormous ass. You hunt ghosts, apparently. I provide a real service. One professional to another.”

He was a big repeater, like he’d seen one too many David Mamet movies. “You didn’t provide much of a real service for Morgan, did you?”

Every once in awhile you come up with a good zinger. Most of the time, it happens after the conversation is already over. But sometimes, it comes to you at the perfect moment.

Leonard’s eyes bulged and his blubbery mass didn’t shoot so much as rise like a great whale coming out of the ocean. “For a man holding his hand out, you got a lip.”

“Cut the shit. I’m trying to find a woman. Now you can help me or you can be an asshole.”

He remained standing. “I spoke to her ex-husband. I spoke to her local friends. I tried IDing her employer but couldn’t get a beat on them. I spoke to her sisters. I checked out her usual haunts.”

“And, nothing?”

He shook his head.

“Not a single lead?”

He shook his head again.

“Nobody had any idea?”

“Do I have to shake my head again?”

I shook my head.

“Now you know what I know. So beat it. I have work.”

This guy and his cheap paperback talk were annoying me. But not as much as the fact that I didn’t believe a word he was saying.

Morgan Turner wouldn’t have hired some shlub. He’d have made use of his many local connections and gotten a referral on somebody quality. So this guy was quality. And yet, he’d produced exactly zero leads. I was staring at a paradox. Which meant this guy wasn’t quality, or he was lying to me.

Had to be the latter.

“Who chased you off Megan Turner?” I said.

He frowned convincingly. He was a good actor.

“Come on. Your secret is safe with me. One pro to another.”

He pointed at the door. The armpits of his shirt were sweaty.

“Nice new office here,” I said. “But I’ll bet you didn’t get it by being helpful.”

“I got it by outperforming asshat amateurs like you.”

***

I’m not a car guy, but I decided to enjoy my drive to the police station from Leonard’s office. Rather than have Strongbow cart my ass around, Morgan had offered me the use of one of his many expensive cars. I “settled” on the corvette. It wasn’t that comfortable inside but man was it smooth. And fast. I could almost see how some dudes got carried away with cars. Not me, though. I’d lost interest in motors when I was nine.

Drivers out here were unfailingly polite. No tailgating. Relative adherence to the speed limit. Signals used. Lanes not changed unless necessary.

They wouldn’t have lasted one minute on Girard Avenue in North Philly.

Mostly it was country driving. One lane roads. Strip malls separated by long stretches of forest.

The police station looked brand new and was big and modern-looking. The parking lot was half-full of a fleet of cruisers. I parked in Visitor Parking, feeling very important in my corvette. I went inside.

Where I witnessed administrative chaos.

The desk sergeant had a phone to his ear and a palm on his forehead. He didn’t see me come in and didn’t look up when the door shut. Behind him, a dozen uniformed cops were having a heated conversation. Past them, four suits were talking in an office.

Something, or a lot of somethings, was up.

“Help you?” The desk sergeant was now balancing the desk phone on his trapezius.

“Thanks, I was hoping to speak to the Chief.” Desk Guy made a face. “…Or somebody else in management.”

His frown became a scowl. “We’re a little busy, sir.”

“All the more reason I should talk to somebody.” I tried to lie convincingly.

He sighed. “Have a seat, sir. I’ll see if anyone has any time. What is the nature of your visit?”

“Wandering daughter job.”

I’d always wanted to say that.

***

Twenty-five minutes later, one of the suits came out of the office and locked eyes with me. I stood and he walked straight toward me like he was going to arrest me.

“Help you?”

He was tall, broad-shouldered, athletic-looking. He had a couple years on me but the age difference was negligible and only noticeable upon close inspection.

“Somewhere we can talk?”

He gestured with his head for me to follow him. He led me to an empty desk in the far corner of the open floor and sat on the corner of it.

“My name’s Eddie McCloskey. I’ve been hired to do a job and I just wanted to let somebody here know.”

“My name’s Quick.” He looked me up and down like I was part of some museum exhibit. “You private?”

“Sort of.” I looked around. “You guys seem busy.”

He said nothing. He wasn’t sure about me.

“Morgan Turner hired me to find his oldest daughter, Megan. She pulled a Houdini recently. Chester Leonard was on it but he didn’t find anything. Old man Turner called on me.”

“Why you telling me?”

So it was going to be like that.

“You’re the big fish. I wanted to let you know I was gonna play in your pond.”

“Courteous.” He warmed a fraction.

“And to see if you had anything on her. I could start from scratch but then I’d be wasting the client’s money.”

Quick nodded once. I was maybe okay with him. “When’d you get in town?”

“Today. Caught the red-eye from Philly.”

He chewed on that. “We looked into Megan. Not much to go on. And she’s federal. Frequently out-of-town last minute for work. There was no sign of foul play.”

I heard some yelling in the office behind me. Quick pretended not to hear it, just kept his eyes on me.

I said, “But her car’s still there.”

He shrugged. “The Federal government is well-funded. I think they can afford more than one vehicle.”

The office door behind me opened. I turned and watched two suits hurry out, while a Police Chief-looking dude watched them from his desk. His face was red, probably from all the screaming.

I faced Quick again. He watched me with something approaching amusement.

“You know her ex-husband?”

“I played ball against him in high school. Son of a bitch was good.”

“He’s still around?”

He nodded. Offered nothing more.

I considered asking him about Anthony Bostwick, but the information exchange was feeling too much like a one-way street.

I said, “Megan ever in trouble with the law?”

“I caught her jaywalking one time. But the DA didn’t think the case was strong enough.”

Why are all cops comedians?

“How about her sisters?”

Quick folded his arms. Way he was dressed and sitting on the corner of the desk, he looked like a school principal.

“Middle one is pretty tame. The younger one is wild.”

“How wild?”

He shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her friends.”

“Where can I find them?”

Really, it was exhausting having to ask the obvious questions sometimes.

“She’s in a sorority. She runs with that crew and also with some high school friends. Underage drinking, usual college stuff.”

“You don’t seem too concerned about it.”

“Some college kids want to goof around, it’s okay with me. Let the two-fives handle it.”

“Two-fives?”

“Campus security.”

I laughed. He didn’t. “What do you work?”

“Homicide.”

“Not too busy around here, are you?”

“I fill my day.”

“Care to elaborate?”

He didn’t.

We stared at each other. I settled on some spin.

“Something big’s going on around here, I can tell. I wouldn’t want to fuck anything up for you, asking around about Megan.”

He said nothing.

I hated having to establish my bona fides but sometimes you have to feed the monkey. “I’ve got a couple cop friends if that would ease your mind, Quick.”

He asked for their info. It was after five here, which meant it was after eight, eastern standard. I hoped he got someone.

Quick made me wait at the unmanned, empty desk for ten minutes while he made calls from his office.

He came back out, marginally friendlier. “Lieutenant Whitmore sends his regards.” He nodded at me. “So you’re an okay guy.”

“I’m okay. Can you let me in, just a little?”

“We’ve had some murders the last few weeks. Including one this morning.”

“Is that a lot for around here?”

He nodded. “Local guys with no known enemies and no known criminal connections.”

“Any ties to Megan Turner?”

“Not that I know of.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll show myself out.”

“Where are you going first?”

He’d gotten off his desk and put his hands in his pockets. Genuine interest.

He’d given me a little so I figured it was time for more quid pro quo. “You ever hear of a fella named Anthony Bostwick?”

His eyes did something funny. “Yeah.”

“Know where I can find him?”

“In the morgue.”

Something in his voice told me that Anthony Bostwick, software engineer, didn’t work part-time for the medical examiner.

***

My first time in a morgue. Just one more thing to cross off the bucket list.

“Breathe through your mouth, shut off your nose. You’ll be fine,” Quick said.

He pushed through double-hinged doors and we entered a dim laboratory with a greenish, antiseptic glow. An Indian woman in scrubs labored over a high table, lab glasses in front of her eyes. She stopped what she was doing and took off the mask.

“Is it bring-a-family-member-to-work day?” she asked Quick, bobbing her head at me.

Quick chuckled. “This is my new best friend.”

“What’s his name?” She snapped off her gloves, tossed them in a can under the table. We were up close and personal now with the corpse. His skin was pale, almost translucent under the light. His eyes were closed, the skin under them looking hollow.

Quick turned to me. “What’s your name again?”

These two were a regular Martin and Lewis. “Magnum. Magnum, PI.”

“You got rid of your mustache.” The woman looked slight under her scrubs. She spoke with an English accent. “Where’s Higgins?”

“Robin Masters took him on safari in Africa.”

“This Bostwick?” Quick asked her. He’d had his fun and now he wanted me out of his police station as quickly as possible.

“The one and only.” She gave me a sly look. “You don’t look like a cop.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“He’s a dick. In more ways than one,” Quick said. “He’s looking for this man’s girlfriend.”

Ah, so Quick knew about the two of them.

“Shame I can’t get him to talk,” the ME said. “I’m Vargy. Short for my last name, Varghese. Nobody around here can get my name right.”

I smiled. “We all have our crosses to bear. How dead is he?”

Vargy looked at Quick, unsure how much to share. He said, “We found him this afternoon. We think he was killed last night or early this morning.”

“Found him where?”

“Sorry, Magnum, need to know basis only.” Quick folded his arms. “When’d Megan go missing again?”

He already knew, he was just testing me. “According to my client, two weeks ago.”

I watched him do some mental fact-checking. It jived with what he knew.

If they won’t answer one question, ask another. “So how’d Mr. Bostwick shed his mortal coil?”

Vargy grabbed the heavy linen sheet covering Bostwick and pulled it down to reveal his torso.

Up until this point I’d been okay. From the neck up, the corpse could have been a living, breathing man that was just resting for a moment.

From the neck down was a different story.

He’d been carved up. His innards were exposed, and some of them looked like they’d been…removed. Not professionally, mind you. The steady hand and sharp scalpel of Vargy, M.E., hadn’t done this to Bostwick.

“Disemboweled.” Vargy didn’t mind putting too fine a point on it.

I felt my lunch coming up. Time for a little humor. I looked at Quick. “You guys have ruled out seppuku, right?”

Quick almost smiled. Someday I’d get him to laugh. “This was definitely done to him.”

The walls were closing in on me. I had to get out of there. I thanked Vargy and told Quick I’d meet him in the hall. I found a bathroom and managed to get all my puke in the bowl.

Seven

Quick followed me back to Turner’s estate. Bastard tailgated me the whole way, like he was trying to get me to speed. In character, I did the opposite. Slowed down to a crawl. Didn’t bother him though. He kept his fender three feet off my rear bumper like we were the fucking Blue Angels. Prick was asking for it. I decided to test him. I made a call on my cell. I watched the rearview. He waved a lone finger at me but he didn’t pull me over.

“Morgan, it’s me, Eddie. I’m on my way back to your place with a cop named Quick. He’s going to grill you about Megan.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, McCloskey?”

I almost drove off the road, I was so surprised by the outburst spewing from the man who had been so professionally calm earlier, except the brief minute he’d shed some tears over his eldest daughter.

“I’m giving you a heads-up is what I’m doing. If you’re not home yet, I need you to meet us there.”

“Why the fuck are you bringing Quick here? What the fuck is going on?”

“He’s coming over because Megan’s boyfriend, Anthony Bostwick, is dead. Somebody went hari-kari on him.”

“I see.” Except he was still yelling. “When did this happen?”

I felt like asking to speak with the real Morgan Turner, not this pod person impostor. “Late last night or early this morning.”

“Fucking great.”

Click.

We were ten minutes away and I needed to rinse the bad taste of the last call out of my mouth. I called my oldest buddy, Stan.

“Eddie, it’s after 9:00 here.”

“Bed time?”

“If you ever have a kid, you’ll understand.”

“Guess I’ll never understand then. Hey, listen. This job I told you about? It just got a lot weirder.”

“I’ve got some dirt for you.”

I could always count on Stan to be proactive and research the people or town I was about to investigate. He liked to bitch about not having any time to do anything because of his toddler. But as a retired lottery winner, I knew he could find some time in his day if he looked hard enough.

“There’s been a few murders here the last couple of weeks,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re not going to believe this.”

“Stan, I’ve seen more weird shit in the last two years to fill a lifetime.”

“The killings out there? They happen in bunches.”

“Bunches?”

“Yeah.” I heard him tapping his keyboard. “Three years ago, there were three murders in a three week stretch. Two years ago, six murders in a three week stretch. Last year, ten murders over a month.”

“Yeah but what’s the average?”

“Excluding these clusters, you’re looking at three or four a year for the last thirty years. Don’t have good data before that.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You’re the PI. I’m just the numbers guy…unless you want me to come out there.”

“Oh yeah. I ask you to come out here, you get killed, Moira kills me. Sound about right?”

“I was just being gallant. I don’t want any part of this one, pal.”

I laughed. “There’s honesty.”

“I’m serious. I think you should get out of there.”

“Take it easy, Chicken Little. You’ve told me to back off the last two big gigs.”

“You’re in over your head—”

“That’s when I do my best work.”

“—you don’t track missing persons, Eddie. You ghost hunt and piss people off real good.”

“You forgot to mention I’ve served as an expert witness in a major criminal case.”

“Alright, I’ve said my piece. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Keep digging. Try to find more patterns.”

“That won’t be hard. It’s a suburb. All the dead people probably knew each other.”

We were pulling up to Turner’s mansion. “Thanks, pal. I gotta roll. How’s the fam?”

“Moira’s doing her first marathon next week.”

“You’re not running it with her?”

“I’ll be right there…on the sidelines cheering her on.”

“Thatta boy.”

***

The Turner mansion was lit up against the night. The forest was a dark hump that broke to a purpling sky. Quick parked six inches behind me. We got out.

“I don’t like how you called Mr. Turner on the way over,” he said.

No sense in lying. So I did. “That was one of my girls back east.”

He harumphed. At the double doors, he looked at me like I should just walk in. Instead I knocked. Morgan Turner, still in his penguin suit but with the bow tie undone, admitted us.

“Mr. Quick, good to see you again.” Morgan shook the cop’s hand and smiled.

We went down the long hallway into a study with a bar. Morgan was working on another G and T. He had the look of a man who could hold his bottle. Quick accepted a water and so did I.

Morgan sat on a long couch and put his feet on an ottoman. Quick stayed by the bar. I moved closer to Morgan to let everybody know where my loyalties were.

Quick said, “When was the last time you saw Anthony Bostwick?”

Morgan chewed some ice. “A day or two before Megan disappeared.”

The perfect elocution and manners were back. Gone was the asshole I’d just talked to on the phone.

“Have you heard from Megan?”

A tremor rippled across one side of Morgan’s face. “No, I have not.”

“Do you know how long they were dating?”

“Mr. Quick, I’m not even sure they were dating.”

“He was some kind of investor, right?”

Morgan’s eyes flitted over to me. “He told me he was a software engineer.”

Quick nodded. “Do you know where he is now?”

“I do not.”

“Do you have his phone number or any contact information for him?”

“I do not.”

Quick put his hand in his pocket. “Mr. Turner, I’m going to level with you. Anthony Bostwick was murdered within the last twenty-four hours. He had some kind of relationship with your daughter.”

“Do you think Megan’s been…”

“I hope not.” Quick looked at me. “This isn’t a double bluff, is it?”

I shook my head. “Right. Megan’s been hiding for two weeks so she could Dario Argento her maybe-boyfriend and to cover it up her old man’s hired not one, but two private eyes to find her.”

Quick smirked. “He only hired one private eye, Eddie.”

Morgan waited for me to say something.

“Quick, do you have anything else for my client?”

“Not at this time.”

***

“Motive?” I asked.

I’d walked Quick out to the cars and now we stood facing each other. The day had been warm but the night was getting cold.

Quick knew he was weak on motive, so he went with: “Opportunity.”

“You’re telling me she carved him up?”

“Part of the double bluff.” He hesitated. “Or not.”

“Megan Turner is a psychotic killer? Come on, Quick.”

“You and I both know she was acting funny before she vanished.”

I didn’t want to give him that. “Acting funny is one thing. Butchering is another.”

“You know what they always say, McCloskey. He was the nicest guy on the block, very friendly. You’d never think he was a killer.”

“You can’t have it both ways. She’s a killer in your book if she acts like a loon or doesn’t act like a loon.”

He gave me the once-over. “You’re over your head here, pal. No offense.”

“Taken. And what’s it to you?”

“I think you’re good people.”

“Quick giveth a compliment, Quick taketh away.”

“I don’t need to spell this out for you, but I’m going to anyway. This is an open murder investigation. More often than not, the killer has a relationship with the victim. Usually they’re romantically linked.”

“What comes after A, B, and C?”

He almost smiled. “No interference. And I want to be the first person hears what you have.”

“And vice versa.”

“Yeah, right. I’ll open the department up to an ex-con who’s currently operating as an unlicensed private investigator.”

“Can you let me in, just a little?” I said.

Quick was about to get in his car, but stopped. “Sure. We’re seeing all the usual random shit that suburbia sees. Somebody stole three school buses. Somebody else broke into the meat packing plant and carved up some beef but didn’t steal it. Last week somebody else hijacked a delivery truck and took all the driver’s food. It was a shipment of energy bars and drinks.”

I couldn’t make anything of that.

“That’s why we’re so busy,” Quick said. “All the usual stuff.”

***

Morgan Turner was all apologies. “Forgive my outburst earlier. I’m under quite a deal of stress.”

“No worries. Where can I get something good to eat?”

“In the kitchen. I can have someone make you something.”

“Thanks. You don’t mind if I set up shop in Megan’s room?”

He arched an eyebrow.

“I want to get a sense of who she was, if I inhabit her space, maybe it’ll help me find her.”

The eyebrow was still arched.

“I saw it on a movie once.”

“Very well.”

He thought I was making a joke.

***

Turner was right. His kitchen was a good place to get something to eat. A pretty young maid who was probably green card-challenged brought me chicken parm and a bottled water. I scarfed it down in the dining room by myself then retreated upstairs to Megan’s room.

The door was open, the room dark. I flicked the light.

Daughter Number Two was sitting on the bed.

“I’m Melanie.”

She stood. She was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and capri sweat pants. She could have passed for an Olympic volleyballer.

I said, “We met already. Are you feeling any better?”

She didn’t answer. I’d already put two and two together. She and dear old Dad had talked, he’d shared I was headed to her sister’s room, she’d waited for me. But had she come of her own volition, or had she been prompted by Turner? So far, each member of the family had shown erratic behavior and it was beginning to creep me out. Tonight, I’d sleep with the bedroom door locked and a chair against it.

Melanie fidgeted on the bed. “I’m fine. What are you doing in here?”

“What are you doing in here?”

She wouldn’t meet my eye for longer than a second. She clawed absently at the back of her arms. The skin was already fiery red.

“I’m here to find your sister.”

“She’s not hiding under her bed.” She got up and walked to the far corner of the room and would only look at me, briefly, from a forty-five degree angle.

“I’m not here to sniff her underwear.”

She didn’t laugh.

I said, “Is there something you want to tell me?”

She looked at me like a wild animal uncaged.

“Maybe you know something about your sister that could help me. Maybe you heard her say something or you saw something.”

She stayed as far away from me as possible as she went to the door. “You seem okay.”

“Thanks.”

“But stay the fuck away from me. I don’t like you.”

I smiled. “You don’t even know me.”

She scurried out of the room, throwing one last nervous look over her shoulder to make sure I wasn’t following her.

***

I went through Megan Turner’s things. Not her underwear. Not all of it, anyway.

I checked under her bed, searched her closet, looked through her books. There was a rectangular space cleared on her desk that looked laptop-sized. But no laptop.

I checked the empty roller skates box. It smelled of old rubber and old shoes. There was nothing in it.

Except a piece of drawing paper tucked under an interior flap.

I carefully slid it out.

It was a skilled drawing. The pencil had smeared a bit when presumably Megan had put it in here.

In the picture a dozen men and women danced in a ballroom. I could feel the music playing, definitely classical, by the grace of their frozen movements. And they were moving fast. There were motion lines around everyone, suggesting fluidity.

It was a very good drawing. We weren’t talking stick figures. We weren’t talking Degas either, but Megan had some talent.

Two oddities though.

They were in a ballroom, but they weren’t wearing gowns and tuxes. They were dressed willy-nilly, some in suits, others casual, some in workout gear.

And they all had glazed looks on their faces.

At first I thought Megan, amateur artist that she was, just had problems drawing faces. Maybe she was face blind—that was a thing I’d read about. Except the people all had the same face and the same drawn, distracted expression. It appeared intentional.

“Eddie.”

I only jumped about six inches.

Melanie stood in the doorway. She’d traded the sweat capris for teeny, tiny shorts. Her legs were longer than Moby Dick.

But there was something off about her. I couldn’t exactly place it. I noticed again that she looked old for her age. I knew she was early-twenties but she could have passed for early thirties. She had age lines and crow’s feet that were beyond her years. It made me think of her father, perhaps it was genetic?

“Your sister’s quite an artist.” I held up the paper. “Know what this is?”

She stepped into the room. To say she was a completely different person wouldn’t be that far off. She hit me with a smile that could knock down a skyscraper.

“My sister’s quite a lot of things.” She went to Megan’s desk, pretended to look at the things on it. “Would you forgive me for earlier? I’m under quite a deal of stress.”

“You sound like your father.”

She looked over her shoulder at me. It was cute. I pretended it wasn’t.

“Do you think you’ll find her?”

“Yes.”

She turned fully around, put her volleyball ass on Megan’s desk. Not that I was paying attention to things like that. “Why?”

“Because thinking the opposite wouldn’t get me anywhere.”

She tilted her head to the side.

I said, “Do you want me to?”

“Find her?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course.”

“Where do you think she is?”

“I think she’s with her ex-husband.”

“Why would she be with him?”

“She told me all about him.” She looked me up and down with x-ray eyes and I felt very exposed despite my loose jeans and button-down shirt. “He knew how to please a woman.”

“They continue with the fun after the dissolution?”

She shrugged, like it was obvious they had.

“But why’d she disappear to do that?”

“Because Dad.”

“Because the same old man who said nothing but good things about his ex-son-in-law?”

“Dad’s a liar.”

She got very European and invaded my personal space. I could feel the heat coming off her in intensifying waves.

“Melanie.” I side-stepped her. “If you know where she is, you need to tell me.”

She tried to crowd me again. I put my hands on her shoulders.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t like what you see on the menu?”

“She could be very sick, Melanie. We need to find her. If you can help, you need to.”

She tried to kiss me. I tried not to kiss her. I succeeded.

“What’s your deal?” she asked.

“Your sister’s missing.”

She gave me a good shove. I wasn’t expecting it so I stumbled back a couple feet but fortunately kept my balance. At the door Melanie threw me one last look. All the heat had morphed into anger.

“Stay the hell away from me, Eddie.”

“You know, you’re sending me mixed signals.”

“Fuck you.”

When she was gone, I went back to Megan’s drawing. I tried to divine some hidden meaning from the picture but found none. I scanned every inch of it, hoping to find something.

In the bottom right corner, there was a date tattooed on a woman’s bare leg. It was Friday of last week.

Eight

The next morning I took the chair away from the door and unlocked the knob. I hadn’t slept well, and not because of the time change. I’d spent most of the night listening for footsteps in the hallway and wondering if Morgan or Melanie or even Mia were lurking.

I found Strongbow in Turner’s detached garage. Turner had an exercise space sectioned off in the far corner, away from his personal armada of prohibitively expensive vehicles.

“Megan’s ex-husband. Give me the juice.”

Strongbow dropped off the pull-up bar. He’d worked up a good sweat and was looking very Marine. “James Witherspoon. Late twenties. Well on his way to his second million.”

Strongbow went to the wall where there was an oversized dart board. I didn’t know what he was doing till he picked up three knives off the window ledge next to it.

“You throw?” I said.

He nodded and took about ten paces from the wall till he was even with me.

“Got an address on this guy?” I asked.

Thump. He stuck the first knife a hair right of the bull’s eye.

“No.”

I watched him set up, eye the board, bring the knife up and—

Thump.

The second knife hit the bull’s eye.

I don’t like knives. Eamon Moriarty had killed my brother with a knife. Then he’d almost gotten me also. The sight of a blade sent a sharp pain through my gut. The stab wound still hurt, all these years later. In prison, somebody had tried to shank me. In my dreams, I can still feel the blade ripping into me.

I don’t like knives, don’t even like using them to cut bread.

Thump. The third knife hit just left of the eye. Strongbow went to collect them. I made a mental note: never get into a knife fight with Strongbow.

***

Turner was already out somewhere and I didn’t feel like waiting around. I called Chester Leonard.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Do you have an address on Megan’s ex-husband?”

“Yeah.” He killed the call before I could follow-up.

I tried Quick at the police station.

“What do you want, McCloskey?”

“Looking for an address on Megan’s ex-husband.”

“Can’t help you there. You’re not licensed.”

“Jesus Christ, Quick—how about a place of business?”

In the background, somebody was shouting about another body coming in. I heard a door shut and the background noise went away.

“Alright, you didn’t get this from me. But I’ll give it to you because we’re stretched a little thin here. I want whatever you get.”

***

“He’s…not here today,” the young, uncertain voice said. She sounded like she’d just graduated high school.

“Is it James or Jim?” I asked the assistant.

“He goes by Jamie, actually.”

“Can you give me his cell?”

She went quieter than a Swiss banker.

I said, “How about this? Can you call his cell and tell him who I am and that his ex-wife is missing and give him my number?”

“Uhhhh...”

“Look, Deb, I appreciate your loyalty to your boss but it’s real important I talk to him. We need his help. His ex is in serious trouble.”

“Oh.” She dropped her voice. “Jamie hasn’t been here the last couple days.”

“He call out?”

“The last two days, yeah. But not today.”

I paced Morgan Turner’s pool room, wondering how to get more out of Debbie Prince.

“Have you sent anybody out to his place?”

“I haven’t told Mom and Dad. I didn’t want to get him in trouble.”

“Mom and Dad?”

She lowered her voice. “That’s what we call the two Vice Presidents.”

I laughed. “They are going to start asking questions sooner or later.”

“Yeah…” She was worried. Uncertainty for her boss clearly translated into uncertainty for her.

“Look, I need to talk to him anyway. If you just give me his address, I can kill two birds with one stone.”

She hesitated.

“Let me give you a number of a cop who can vouch for me. Detective Quick. Q-U-I—”

“Okay, I’ll give it to you.”

***

I went downtown first. I wanted to get a feel for the area, what the people were like. I couldn’t learn any of that from Turner’s breakfast and tea room. The one percent didn’t teach you much about the other ninety-nine percent.

I feared we were too close to Seattle for the coffee to be any good. But it was decent at the corner bakery attached to a row of antiquing shops I wouldn’t be caught dead in. I scarfed down a pathetically small and overcooked bagel with something that purported to be cream cheese. Everybody in the shop was talking about North Korea—they’d threatened to unleash the might of their malnourished army against the South again, and there was talk of a missile strike against the west coast of the United States.

I yawned in the news story’s general direction.

I sat outside on the nearest bench I could find. I wanted to think a little bit. There were no clouds in the sky. Maybe they weren’t bullshitting me about the rain shadow.

Stan called. “Eddie, I just found something.”

“About time you did, how much I’m paying you.”

“Last I checked, you owed me about five grand, partner.”

He was kidding, but it was true. He’d helped me out after I’d gotten in trouble with the law and when I was hanging my shingle. Lottery winner that he was, Stan was well-heeled and his daughter would never need to work a day in her life. He didn’t care I hadn’t paid him back and would never ask for the money anyway.

But it still hurt like hell.

“Eddie, I’m just ki—”

“I know, pal. But you’re right: I do owe you and I’ll pay you back.”

“Dude—”

“I don’t get a pass because you’re my friend and you’re rich. A man pays his debts.”

“When’d you grow a conscience?”

“Somewhere between the felony and this morning.”

I felt like someone was watching me. I turned around on the bench. There were a lot of people milling about, some on their way to work. I was about to go back to my call when I spotted them.

A few guys openly staring at me from outside the bakery.

“Eddie, you there?”

They gave me a real creepy feeling. “Yeah…what’d you find?”

“Before, I just got you the numbers on the cluster murders.”

A middle-aged guy with a walrus mustache was watching me with open hostility. I stood up and started moving.

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t look at the names until just now.”

Mustache and a couple fellow starers broke away from the pack and matched my pace. They weren’t coming to say hi. Menace filled their eyes. They were acting like I was their mortal enemy.

It was times like this I really wished I carried. Maybe I needed to get my PI license after all.

“Lemme guess.” I looked over my shoulder. My followers were gaining. “Mrs. Turner is one.”

“Go to the head of the class.”

“How’d she die? Was she disemboweled?”

“No…she was shot. And that’s a weird thing to ask me.”

They were ten paces behind me. The car was half a block away.

“Thanks, Stan. Listen, I literally have to run.”

“Eddie, what the hell’s going—”

I put my hand at the small of my back like I had a gun concealed there. Then I whirled to face Mustache and his two friends.

“Stop.”

They stopped. Nobody said anything. One of them had come from the same bakery as me. He was about my age and holding out a plastic knife. The look on his face scared me more than the plasticware.

I kept my right hand behind me. With my left I killed the call to Stan and started dialing 9-1-1.

“What do you assholes want?” I said.

Mustache chewed his lip.

Plasticware sneered. “We thought you were somebody else.”

“Who?”

“Somebody who’d make trouble,” Mustache added.

“I’ll make plenty of it, you keep following me.”

They weren’t scared. Time for a little bluff.

“One step closer and I’ll shoot all of you assholes.” I kept my right hand behind my back but pretended to pull out a gun.

They stared me down the whole way to my car.

***

I found Jamie Witherspoon’s place fifteen minutes later. It was one of those expensive high-rise condos that overlooks a man-made lake festering with goose shit and sits near a park with lots of trails where mud run assholes try to pretend they’re Neanderthals.

I ghosted my way into the lobby by following a resident and putting on the I can’t find my keys face. From there, I took the stairs to four and hung a left and found myself in front of Jamie’s door.

I knocked. I waited. Down the hall, a door squeaked open. A pair of eyes on an old face watched me.

I knocked again. The door down the hall slowly shut. As I was leaving, I heard somebody inside moving around.

“Who the hell’s there?”

“I’m looking for Megan Turner.”

I sensed someone at the door. “I didn’t ask you that.”

“My name’s Eddie McCloskey. I’m working for her old man. She’s been gone for—”

The voice was edgy, nervous, going a million miles an hour. “Why’d you come to me? The police and the Feds have already been through here.”

The Feds?

Now I was intrigued.

“You were seen with her the day after she left Turner’s estate.”

Silence. I willed the lie to work, to make him open up.

“You should contact Ken Hernando.”

I repeated that name in my head.

“Who’s that?” I kept repeating the name. If I read a book or see a movie, I remember everything about it. Somebody mentions a name and it’s gone in fifteen seconds usually.

A longer silence.

“Who’s Ken Hernando?”

The deadbolt tumbled. The door opened toward me.

Jamie Witherspoon had seen better days. Better years, even.

He was late twenties according to Strongbow and physically fit according to my eyes, but he had an old face. He could have passed for late thirties. It reminded me of Morgan Turner. And of Chester Leonard. And of Melanie. Was there something in that Seattle coffee?

Jamie stood in the doorway in a bathrobe he hadn’t taken off for several days.

“What’s your name again?”

He didn’t really listen to my answer. When I was done, he poked his head a few inches out the door and peered down the hall in both directions.

Nobody was there.

He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me into his condo.

***

“Thanks for having me in.”

The condo was dark. The shades were closed in the living room. There was a light on in the bathroom down the hall. That was it.

The condo and Witherspoon were making me nervous. “You live alone?”

He didn’t answer the question. “You like knives?”

I was about to give him my knee-jerk answer. A knife had killed my brother. A knife had almost killed me.

But I thought better of saying all that. “Sure.”

He very slowly nodded as if fully weighing my answer and its veracity. We stood like that, five paces apart, in his ransacked-looking living room. My eyes adjusted to the gloom. I noticed a couple blades out on the coffee table. They were just kitchen knives, looked like an expensive set. But they had no business sitting unused on his coffee table.

“You’re looking for Megan?” he asked.

“Yeah. You two keep in touch?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think she likes knives.”

“Oh yeah?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were jumping all over the place.

“She have a bad experience with a knife? Somebody cut her or something?”

He still didn’t answer.

“Listen, your office is looking for you,” I said. “Are you okay, pal? You want me to call somebody?”

“No! Don’t call anybody.” He started pacing and absently scratching his head.

“How about Ken Hernando, maybe I should call him?”

His eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ve already been to see him.”

“You have?” I decided to put some suspicion in my voice and challenge him a little bit.

Big mistake.

Displaying remarkable agility, Witherspoon grabbed a carving knife off the coffee table.

Lucky for me I’d taken up krav maga not so long ago.

In class we’d learned about the two types of knife fighters. One type goes for the kill first, second, and last, slashing and stabbing with reckless abandon. The other type, usually the more skilled, keeps you at bay with the blade, making small cuts and patiently waiting for his big opportunity.

Witherspoon was no skilled fighter. He fell into the former category, but all the same, anybody with a knife is as deadly as a tall redhead.

He tried a backhand slash first. I bursted, catching his forearm before he could complete his swing and simultaneously put a hard jab just next to his eye. Krav maga teaches you a lot, but the most fundamental piece of advice is to always, always, always move from defense to offense as quickly as possible, if not simultaneously.

Witherspoon stumbled back but I kept hold of his arm and went in for the disarm with an elbow lock.

I thought he was dazed. Turned out I was wrong. With his free hand he produced another knife. This one was small and had a very short blade. It’d probably been tucked away in the pocket of his bathrobe. He’d been smart to go for the bigger blade first and keep this one up his proverbial sleeve.

I saw it coming. A second too late.

The knife flashed in front of my eyes and a second later I felt the sting on my cheek. I didn’t have time to survey the damage, just figured he’d caught me under my left eye as I’d pulled my head back.

A lot of fighting is keeping your mind on more than one thing at a time. My teacher loved to say, One day your training will save you or a loved one, I promise. And today he was right.

Witherspoon had put all his focus on the small knife he’d used to give me a new smile. He’d momentarily forgotten about the other one.

I hadn’t.

Defense and immediate offense.

I dropped to a knee and brought his locked arm down and used my torque to twist his hand so the first knife skewered his thigh.

He howled.

I exploded from the kneeling position and uppercutted him in the throat. When you put all your legs into a punch like that, it tends to work. I have no qualms about fighting ugly.

He went from howling to gagging. Part of me hoped I’d crushed his windpipe. But the other part of me realized I needed to get information out of him.

He was doubled-over, his mind divided between the knife sticking out of his leg and his difficulty breathing. I rounded behind him to take the other knife off him.

He spun and lunged again.

I was ready for it. I grabbed his knife hand but his momentum pushed me back. I didn’t have my feet under me enough. He walked me back and pinned me to the wall. I heel-stomped his toes. He wasn’t wearing shoes so it hurt like hell, but he fought through the pain, all the while breathing like he had asthma.

His eyes were crazy. I wondered how he could fight through this kind of pain when he couldn’t take a full, deep breath. Maybe he was hopped up on something.

I reached to push the embedded knife a little deeper into his thigh but found his free hand already there.

He was pulling the knife out.

Because he wanted to use it on me.

Fighting dirty had worked so far. I decided to keep going.

I bit down as hard as I could on the wrist of the hand trying to push the small knife into my face. At the same time, I wrestled the large blade out of his grip. I had no choice. It was do or die.

I chose do.

I gutted him with the big knife. The shock of it backed him up a few feet. He dropped the other knife and looked down at his gut.

“Don’t take it out…you’ll bleed to death,” I panted.

He took my advice. Instead of taking the big knife out of his gut, he knelt and reached for the small knife he’d just dropped.

The fucker was still trying to fight.

I took one big step and clocked him in the jaw.

***

“Tell Quick to come to Jamie Witherspoon’s place.” I gave the desk sergeant the address. “Yeah, I already called 9-1-1.”

Witherspoon was a bleeding mess. I’m not good around blood and honestly the sight of him gored was deja vuing the shit out of me to the point where I saw my brother Tim in Witherspoon’s place.

I had to get out of the room, get some air. The walls were closing on me.

I took the knives away and checked Witherspoon’s person to be sure he wasn’t concealing anymore. I didn’t check his ass. If he was hiding something in there, more power to him.

As soon as I stepped in the hallway, I heard my name.

“Mr. McCloskey?”

I turned and found a striking brunette in a black business suit standing beside a guy big enough to have played linebacker in the NFL.

“Who’s asking?”

I was watching Linebacker. They must have figured on that because the lady sprayed something in my nose and my legs went numb.

Nine

Linebacker and Ms. Kidnapper stood over me in an orange room. There was a funky pattern cross-hatched on the wall that gave the illusion of three-dimensions. The wall seemed to move and it was making me nauseous.

I was in a chair. But not restrained. I stood.

“The hell am I?”

“You’re with us,” Linebacker said.

I tried taking a step. Bad idea. My inner ear had gone on vacation, leaving me no balance. I nearly face-planted in the carpet. I managed to get on my hands and knees. I looked up.

Another bad idea.

The pattern on the walls had taken life. It was throbbing. I could taste bile in the back of my throat.

“What’d you give me?” I said.

Linebacker took a knee next to me. “Where’s Megan Turner?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

The brunette folded her arms. “Why were you talking to her ex-husband?”

It was hard to talk. Hard to think. But some things were starting to come together.

“You were the ones that scared that private dickless, Chester Leonard, off this case, weren’t you?”

They didn’t answer the question. They just kept going with theirs.

“Where’s Megan Turner?” Linebacker asked.

“You should know—” My stomach clenched, I felt the vomit rising.

“What did Jamie Witherspoon tell you?” Brunette asked.

“Everything, and nothing.”

“Where’s Megan?” Linebacker again.

I picked my head up off the carpet and screwed a smile on my face before I barfed. Linebacker was ready for it and hopped out of the danger zone.

Brunette didn’t even wait for me to finish puking. “What did Witherspoon tell you?”

I held up a finger. “Need a minute here, lady.”

I kept retching.

“Where’s Megan?” Linebacker.

“What did he tell you?” Brunette.

I shut my eyes, hoping that would be enough against the wobbly wall. After a couple aftershock retches, my stomach loosened up. I kept my eyes shut tight.

“Where’s Megan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. McCloskey, you’re going to tell us everything we want to know.”

“Let me outta here, you fucking Nazis.” I climbed to my feet but kept my eyes closed. It seemed to be working.

“Don’t step there—” Linebacker started saying before I wiped out presumably on my own puke.

I went down and hit the back of my head. Not hard enough to ring my bell, just enough to hurt. I needed to get out of this room. I needed information. I needed to get these people on my side. It was time to get creative.

I started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Brunette said.

“Because you’re federal agents and you have no idea how to find one of your own, Megan Turner.”

“Megan doesn’t work for—” Brunette started to say.

She was cut off by a gravelly voice coming through an intercom. “Why is that funny, Mr. McCloskey?”

“Because I know how to find her.”

***

Linebacker had to help me out of the room. He deposited me in a chair and some lights came up. After my eyes adjusted, I counted three doors in the windowless room. He gave me a towel, I did a perfunctory wipe of my face. Fortune had favored the blind—somehow I hadn’t landed in the vomit when I’d slipped.

A sixtyish man sat on the edge of a desk about five steps from me. He had enormous hands. He was movie star handsome, not a silver hair out of place on his head.

He said, “How can we find Megan?”

“I didn’t say you could find her. I said I could find her.”

He smiled confidently. “How are you going to find her?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got you at a disadvantage.”

He laughed. “Hope really does spring eternal.”

“You want to find Megan. You can’t. I know how. That makes me valuable to you. That’s why you pulled me out of Hell Room over there.”

I watched his eyes when I said Hell Room. They drifted a fraction to his right. Now I knew which door would lead me back into that torture chamber, in the event I had to effectuate an escape.

Not that I would physically be able to. I was weaker than a chemo patient.

“I’d say, at best, we’re on an equal footing here.” He walked over to me, bent at the waist, and examined me like he was a doctor. “Feeling better?”

“I’m fine, must have eaten something that disagreed with me is all.”

He laughed at my bravado. “Perhaps it was that poppy seed bagel with cream cheese.”

The nausea was dissipating. “This is where I’m supposed to be freaked out because you were following me, right?”

“You’re telling me you aren’t?”

I shook my head. “I had people watching my every movement for a year while I was in the clink. I got used to it.”

“Possession with intent. Early parole for good behavior.” He looked over his shoulder at Linebacker and Brunette. “We know so much about you, I think it’s time we introduced ourselves.”

“Right, like these names are going to be real.”

He ignored my barb. “My name is Patterson, everybody calls me Pater.” He gestured for the others to make their introductions.

Brunette looked at him incredulously for a moment. He gave her a hurry-it-up gesture.

She faced me. Her eyes were fierce. “I’m Manetti.”

“And what do they call you? Filia?” Patterson smiled at my Latin.

“No, Manetti.”

“Makes sense.”

Linebacker bopped his head at me. He was six-five, had a barrel of a torso and a face made of granite. “I’m Riehl.”

“As in, the Real Deal?”

He smirked. “I like that.”

I looked at Pater. “Who are you with?”

“The government.”

“If you want my help, you need to be more specific.”

“The federal government.”

Pater was a cool customer. “I want out of here, wherever here is, I want my car, I want guaranteed safe passage, before I tell you anything.”

“You have my word.”

“I don’t think you understand, Patterson. I know this is my only bargaining (...only) chip (...ing) so (...chip) I’m (...I’m) not (...not) going to (... going to) I’m not (...I’m) listen (...not) ...”

I didn’t understand how it was happening, but my words were echoing in my ears, almost as quickly as I could speak they were rebounding back at me. I tried speeding up, slowing down, keeping my cadence chaotic. Nothing worked. I couldn’t focus on what I wanted to say because I kept hearing what I’d just said. It was maddening. I degenerated into a babbling idiot. And eventually shut up.

“We don’t have many human resources on my team, but boy, we do get some cool hand-me-down tech from DARPA, Mr. McCloskey.” Pater smiled, proud of his federal government.

“I know a good attorney,” I said. “When I—”

“If you want to make a call on your cell, go ahead.”

I took my phone out. “No service.”

“Oh right.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I’ll have to take down the jammer.”

They had a cell phone jammer? I didn’t think those things were real. “Why don’t you do that. And while you’re at it, start giving me my constitutional rights back.”

“Eddie, no one is keeping you against your will. If you’d like to leave, there’s the door.”

He pointed at the door behind me, not at the torture chamber.

“You were never placed under arrest.”

“Bullshit, you knocked me out with something then put me in the vomitorium.”

“The chemical agent Ms. Manetti used on you in the course of protecting herself—”

“Protecting herself?”

“—from a known ex-convict who’d just come from a knife-fight will be long gone from your system by the time you can get any kind of meaningful blood test. It probably already is.”

“Yeah, but you put me in the puke room…”

“Nobody knows we’re here, Eddie. And if anybody were ever to show up, we’d know they were on their way. Plenty of time to leave no trace behind. No one will lay eyes on that room as it currently exists unless we want them to.”

“You’ve got somebody on the police.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got something better than that.”

“Something or someone?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he pointed at the door. “You’re free to go. Of course, you know we’ll be watching. So we’ll essentially find Megan when you do.”

I looked from Pater to the other two. “You’re not going to scare me off like you did Chester Leonard.”

Nobody said anything. Score one for Eddie. They’d stepped in when the private eye was looking for their agent and told him to take heel.

“Wait. If you didn’t want her found when Leonard was looking for her, but now you do…” More of the picture came together. “…Megan was undercover, wasn’t she?”

Pater looked at his two agents. Riehl nodded. Manetti looked as pissed as her official capacity would allow. She obviously didn’t approve of me being let in. She’d probably worked hard to get where she was, glass ceiling and all that, and here was this shlub ex-con who’d skipped tryouts and now was being considered for the starting lineup by coach.

I went on. “She was under when she disappeared from her house. You didn’t want Leonard finding her, ruining the operation, whatever the hell it is, but now she’s actually gone.”

Pater raised an eyebrow. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“You must think I’m a genius then.”

Manetti’s eyes shot daggers at me. Despite her olive skin, I could see the enraged blush on her face. Pater ignored her. Riehl seemed to be enjoying this, in a detached sort of way. But when it was game time, I knew he’d go cold and switch on.

I said, “I’d start with Ken Hernando.”

Manetti’s head snapped toward me. “Who’s Hernando?”

I shrugged. “Witherspoon mentioned him.”

Pater and Manetti exchanged a look, then Manetti left the room by the door Pater had just indicated to me. I couldn’t see much of anything in the next room. It was dark with maybe the light of a computer monitor hitting the wall.

“What do you think’s going on here?” Pater asked.

“I think I’m being Patriot Acted up the ass.”

Pater smiled. “I mean here, in this town, with Megan. What do you think is happening?”

I smiled right back. I had an idea. I hoped it was right.

“You’ve got a mass psychogenic illness on your hands.”

“What’s that?”

The nausea was gone. There was only the beginning of a dull headache. “Could I get some water? I tend to get dehydrated when I puke my guts out.”

Riehl disappeared behind me. I waited for him to come back with a bottled water before I said anything. I took a sip.

“There is no such thing as coincidence.” I smiled at Pater. “Over the years there have been cluster murders annually around here. One of the more recent vics was Megan’s mother. In her search for answers, Megan must have come across MPI. It sparked her interest and she wrote her senior thesis on the subject. She joined your team, she presented these cluster murders as potential MPI outbreaks, you thought there was enough evidence to investigate, and voila, here you are.”

Pater said nothing.

I kept on. “Definitionally, MPI is very similar to mass hysteria, though it’s differentiated by the fact it has no organic cause. And we have some very good examples of it in the historical record.”

“Tell me about them.”

He was testing me. I didn’t like tests but I also wanted to find Megan Turner and I figured I could do that better with Pater’s help. I didn’t want to let a little thing like ego get in the way of finding Megan, especially if the working hypothesis was correct and she was in the throes of an MPI.

I drank half the bottled water in one gulp. “My favorite example is the Tanganyika laughter epidemic. It’s part of Megan’s thesis. Girls between the ages of 12 and 18 broke into laughing fits, some of which lasted for two weeks straight. At one point, they had to close the school because nobody could focus on the lessons.”

Pater said nothing.

I decided to keep on impressing teach. “The laughing fit spread to a couple other schools and villages where some of the students lived. As abruptly as it started, it ended.”

“You’re a man that likes to read,” Pater said.

“I’m a man that likes to do his job. I want to find Megan. So do you. Let’s start helping each other.”

He ignored that. “What do they think caused the laughing fit in Africa?”

“I’m done with your little test, Patterson, or Pater, or whatever the hell your name is. You know who I am, what I’ve done. You can let me in so I’m playing with a full deck, or I’m walking and I’ll do it myself. What’s it going to be?”

Pater went back to the desk and sat on the corner. “There is usually an environmental trigger that causes MPIs. People in a unique setting, be it a school or an office, believe they’ve been exposed to something, either a germ or a poison. Someone begins to experience real symptoms. Others observe this and react, beginning to experience these same, very real symptoms.”

“I don’t think you can say usually. Nobody understands the illness and it seems to be a last resort diagnosis. If they don’t think it’s anything else, they call it MPI.”

I stood. My legs felt rubbery.

I said, “Most often the looming presence of extraordinary, systemic anxiety across a group is enough to trigger symptoms.”

Pater smirked. “So what’s causing this one?”

“You talk like you’ve ruled out an organic cause. How do we know it’s not something in the environment?”

Pater shook his head no. “We don’t. This is speculation.”

“In that case, I don’t know that I care. The trigger won’t help me find Megan.”

“But the trigger—”

I cut him off. “Won’t help us predict the symptoms or attendant behavior in any way. The girls in Africa suffered from anxiety and nerves due to political upheaval and social turmoil. So they started laughing. You can ID cause and effect after the fact but foresight is blind. And besides, we know what the symptoms are already.”

Pater held out a palm. “If we remove the trigger, the symptoms might resolve quickly and Megan will return to her old self. We won’t need to find her.”

“Yeah, sounds peachy, but I’ll leave that to you guys, the experts. It’s likely something you can’t fix, like the lunacy of the current North Korean leadership. In the meantime I’m going to look for Megan in case that doesn’t work out for you.”

Pater grew serious. “There are more people at stake than Megan here, Eddie.”

“I’m not the man for that job, Pater. I’m the man for the job I’m on. I’d love to save the world but I can only do it one person at a time. I have no background in psychology, epidemiology, sociology, predictive or regressive modeling. You don’t put a kicker on the O-line.”

Pater ignored what I’d just said. “Assuming worst case scenario, we think Patient Zero became Patient Zero three weeks ago. Our predictive modeling tells us we’re overdue for the spike. We’re headed for a major event, I’d say sometime in the next couple of days.”

“You talk like you know it’s going to happen here. But Megan could be anywhere by now.”

He nodded. “A reasonable assumption. But we are dealing with an unreasonable situation. We have reason to believe that Megan and her companions cannot leave this town.”

“Why?”

Pater said nothing.

I looked at Riehl. “Why do you think they don’t leave town?”

Riehl just stared back at me.

I shrugged. “Okay, don’t tell me. That just means I should get back to work ASAP. So are you going to help?”

Patterson narrowed his eyes and studied me. “There’s one more thing about the model, Eddie. All recorded MPIs come with a variety of symptoms, some of which don’t manifest until much later in the disease process. We may not have seen the worst yet.”

“So we use a two-pronged approach,” I said. “You look for the trigger, I look for Megan. Everybody’s happy, at the end of the day we can all sign each other’s yearbooks.”

“I agree a two-pronged approach would be for the best.”

I nodded at Riehl. “Great. I’ll take Riehl then. We’ll find Megan before you find the trigger.”

Riehl gave me a flip smile and exchanged a look with his boss.

Pater said, “You still haven’t explained how you’re going to find Megan. And I need Riehl to continue with the work I’ve already assigned him.”

“Which is?”

He didn’t answer. “Manetti will be your handler.”

“Handler my ass. She can be my partner, but only if the juice flows both ways.”

“I don’t want to be his handler or his partner.” Manetti stood behind me in the open doorway. “This guy’s Little League.”

“It’s always a good idea to introduce an element of unpredictability into the equation so your enemy has to be wary of the wild card,” Patterson said.

“You speak of the enemy like it has a brain. I thought this was an MPI,” I said.

“That’s our working hypothesis, but we’re not ruling anything out.”

Manetti stepped between me and her boss. “No hits on Ken Hernando.”

“Alias?” I said.

She laughed derisively. “If it was an alias we would have found it.” She looked back at Patterson. “If it’s deep cover, it’s deep deep cover.”

Riehl cracked his knuckles. It made a sound like walnuts getting smashed. “Or it’s nonsense. Just a code word for the initiated.”

“Could be both,” I said.

Patterson nodded. “First order of business is to run that down. Second is to find the man who laughs. Working assumption is they’re one and the same but we blow that up if it gets us nowhere.”

The man who laughs? This was getting better and better.

I said, “You want to fill me in?”

Manetti’s eyes narrowed. “Not really.”

I shook my head. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard, inefficient way. Or should I say the federal government way?” I turned to Patterson. “Or you can you tell me where you’ve already looked so I don’t waste my fucking time.”

He smiled. “Where would you look?”

“Known friends, associates, old places of employment, local motels, local short-term residencies. With your resources you can look for an electronic trail. I assume that’s turned up nothing.”

He kept that smile in place. “We’ve already run all those dead-ends down.”

“I thought you were short on people, long on expensive hand-me-down DARPA tech.”

“My personnel are my best resources, tech included.” He smiled appreciatively at Riehl and Manetti. “I can say with absolute certainty that Megan Turner has not stayed with any of her friends, relatives, or associates in the last two days. And if she does, we’ll know about it pretty quickly.”

“You questioned all these people?”

“Only some.”

“You bugged up their places, you’ve got recording devices?”

“No.”

I couldn’t help but be intrigued. “I’ll bite. How can you say that with certainty?”

The smile slid off Riehl’s face. He looked from his boss to me and back again.

“Pater,” Manetti said. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“I know you disapprove.” He smiled at her. “You’re always the voice of reason. But I’m going to ignore you for the moment because I’m terribly interested to see what happens. Everything is a social experiment.”

“That’s what you’re always saying.” Manetti shook her head.

I was on my guard. Door number one led to the vomitorium. Door number two led to an adjoining room where Manetti had used a computer. I’d been thinking door number three led to the outside world, but now I had a bad feeling about it. Like I wanted to see, but didn’t want to see, what was behind it.

“Social experiment?”

“Try to remain calm,” Pater said.

“I am calm, can’t you read my blood pressure?”

Pater pointed to door number three. “Eamon Moriarty is in there.”

Ten

Before anybody could stop me, I burst through door number three, ready to kill or be killed.

It was a large room. A glass partition divided it in half. And separated me from the boy who’d killed my one and only brother. Except the boy was no longer a boy. He was a young man.

Eamon Moriarty.

He was tall. Broad-shouldered. Handsome. He had brooding, intelligent eyes that held steady against my glare. He didn’t move a muscle as I rushed the glass. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

He wasn’t scared of me.

There was a transparent door carved into the glass partition. It was locked. And I couldn’t break it down.

I gave up trying to get in. And looked at him.

We studied each other through the door. He was nineteen or twenty, no boy left in him now. The softness had gone out of his face. He was all angles and hard edges and there was no innocence in the eyes, if there had ever been any.

“I never thought I’d see you again.” His voice was a baritone. I could see a little bit of his uncle in his face, the man who’d almost killed me on a wintery day not so long ago. Some resemblance in the mouth and the eyes.

“I’m the ghost of Christmas Past, motherfucker.”

He nodded, grew thoughtful. “For what it’s worth, Eddie, I’m very sorry about what happened.”

I almost broke my hand trying to force the knob. “You’re sorry.”

“I was just a boy. A wounded, tortured boy with a lot of problems. I needed help.”

“This isn’t endearing.”

He went on. “I know that doesn’t take away any of your pain, but it’s the truth. If I could undo what happened, if I could go back in a time machine, I would. It haunts me every day. It will haunt me for the rest of my life. But that must be nothing compared to your hell.”

“Why don’t you open this door, and I’ll show you my hell.”

“I can’t open the door, only Pater can.”

I looked over my shoulder. The three federals had come in. Manetti had her gun out, angled at the floor. Riehl spaced himself, forming a triangle with Manetti.

Pater approached, much to the surprise and consternation of his two agents. This guy was always doing the opposite. It made him predictably unpredictable. I made a mental note.

Pater came up to the glass and gave me one of those paternal looks. “Eddie, why don’t you listen to what Eamon has to say?”

“I’d be happy to. But I can’t hear him that well through the glass. Can you open the door?”

“Eddie,” Eamon began. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you feel.”

“Sure you can. You let your own brother die, didn’t you?”

His lip twitched. It was the first trace of real emotion, the first sign of human-ness. “I only have myself to blame for that. I’m forced to live with it.”

“You’re not forced to live with anything. Anytime you want to punch your own ticket, go ahead.”

“But you have me to blame for Tim’s death—”

“Murder.”

“—and so you must feel an obligation to see vengeance is done, if not justice.”

“Keep talking, you’re just digging your own grave.”

Pater clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Eddie, there is no way I will allow you to harm Eamon.”

I shoved his hand away. “I’m not going to kill him. I’m just going to kick his ass till he can’t breathe anymore.”

The initial shock of seeing Eamon was wearing off. I realized I wasn’t getting any closer to him. Manetti with her piece drawn was ready to put two in my back. Riehl had about seventy pounds on me and at least eight inches more of reach.

And Pater had all that second-hand DARPA tech. There were probably a half-dozen ways he could incapacitate me with impunity.

So I screwed up a smile and imagined I was Philip Marlow. “There is no such thing as coincidence, Pater.”

“Sometimes there is.” He smiled back. “But not in this case.”

***

Megan Turner had always harbored an interest in the occult and paranormal and had gotten her hands on The Unearthed while finishing her undergraduate thesis. That goddamned book continued to haunt me, no pun intended. After reading it in one sitting, she’d looked me up online and found my fledgling practice.

Not long after graduation, she’d landed a spot on Pater’s ragtag team of Mulder and Scully wannabes. Using her newfound government connections, she’d looked into my investigations and taken an interest.

“She took that same interest in Eamon.” Pater looked at Manetti and Riehl. “Would you both give us a moment? We have some issues to work through.”

Manetti wanted to object but bit her tongue.

Riehl winked at me. “Let me make something clear. You’ll be dead before you even think about trying anything.”

They left me alone with Eamon and Pater.

Behind the glass, Eamon took a seat at a desk. He had a few furnishings. It reminded me of Hannibal Lecter’s set-up.

I said, “Why’d you spring Eamon from the shrink tank?”

Pater motioned with his hand. “Eamon is hardly sprung. He has been remanded into my custody and does not go anywhere without supervision.”

“Yeah. For how long?”

“Until such time as his treating physician declares him ready for outpatient care.”

I spoke to Pater but I looked at Eamon. “Don’t forget to drop me a note when that’s about to happen.”

“Eddie, let’s have a seat.” Pater gestured toward a couch against the wall.

“I’ll stand. Tell me why he’s here.”

“He’s here to help us, and in so doing he is here to make amends.”

Eamon watched us from his desk. The kid hardly moved. It was creepy, made him seem alien.

“How can he help you?” I said. I was starting to get an uneasy feeling.

Pater’s eyes flicked from Eamon back to me. “Have you heard of RV?”

“Sure, it’s a horrible movie.”

Nobody laughed.

I continued. “I assume you mean remote viewing. It’s the idea that we can use our minds to see or sense a distant object or location. The government funded research into it when they found out the Soviets and Chinese were dabbling.”

“That’s exactly right. Joseph McMoneagle was Remote Viewer Number One and actually assisted the Army on a number of missions.”

“Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Pater.”

He grinned. And waited.

Until it hit me. Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing to see.

“You thought Eamon could remote view.”

He nodded.

I looked at Eamon through the glass. His eyes were still deadly sharp, appraising.

I said, “That’s what he was doing, with his old house. He just didn’t know it.”

“He was doing it subconsciously,” Pater said. “Or so we think.”

“That what he told you?” I kept my eyes on my brother’s killer.

“It’s the truth,” Eamon said. “The dark part of me had separated from my conscious mind and continued to reside in my house, even after the Rossellis moved in. When you and Tim pushed against that darkness, it was forced back to me. The psyche is like energy. It can’t be destroyed, only—”

“Bull-fucking-shit.”

Eamon Moriarty’s family had lived for a short time in the same town where I’d grown up. They made local headlines and got some national attention when mom, dad, and Eamon’s brother William ended up dead one night. The prevailing theory was that dad had offed mom, brother William had killed dad, and William had succumbed to injuries sustained in the fight before the police could arrive.

Just one little problem with that scenario.

The deadly fight had started around eight-thirty, eight-forty-five and only lasted a few minutes. Eamon did not call the police until nine-fifteen.

After what became known as the Moriarty Massacre, Eamon had gone to live with his uncle in a neighboring town. A new family, the Rossellis, had moved into the Moriarty house and right away experienced paranormal phenomena. Led by my brother Tim, our paranormal team discovered that the activity in the house was at least in part being caused by Eamon through possibly psychic means. Some experts referred to it as the world’s first “living haunting.”

Eamon had been a minor when he killed my brother. He’d been declared insane by the court and remanded into the care of the state’s criminal psychiatric facility.

“Eamon maintained a presence in the Moriarty house after he’d moved away,” I said.

“You’re absolutely right. So we don’t call what he has remote viewing. We call it remote presence.” Pater looked through the glass. “There are times where Eamon can influence a distant environment through psychic means.”

“And you decided to harness that ability?”

“Because he’d made real progress in therapy and has shown genuine remorse. And he continues to make amends by helping us. My team is small, our budget severely hamstrung by all the defense cuts. Eamon’s human tech as we call it compensates greatly for our limited resources.”

“Ever hear of what happens when you let the fucking genie out of the bottle?”

Pater gave Eamon a look. “You have no idea how much he’s helped us in such a short time. With his unique skills, we were able to complete two very dangerous investigations successfully, quickly, and without casualties. He was the sine qua non for both.”

“Or hear what happened when Faust made his deal with Mephistopheles?”

“Eddie,” Eamon said. “I understand where you’re coming from. But I’m here to help. It doesn’t absolve me of guilt but this is my penance. I’m just asking for a second chance.”

“A second chance with Sally Pastrana.”

For a moment Pater’s placid smile slipped but he quickly screwed it back into place.

I said, “Eamon’s squeeze. He plans to find her. Didn’t he share that with you, Pater?”

Patterson frowned.

Eamon looked as innocent as a baby. “I told Sally I’d find her if I could.” He looked at Pater. “Meaning if the terms of my supervision were ever loosened. I had to leave things vague because I couldn’t share the details of my release.”

Pater kept his eyes on Eamon. “You and I will have to have a little chat.”

Eamon suddenly had the look of a kid being called to the principal’s office.

Pater turned back to me. “But on to more pressing matters. How do you intend to find Megan?”

I wagged a finger at him. “Hold your question for now, I need some answers first. So Eamon’s how you know Megan hasn’t been staying with friends or known associates? Because he can remote view the places you think she might go?”

“That is correct.”

“You’re going to elaborate on that a bit for me.”

“Periodically Eamon will tune in, as we call it, to these locations.”

“Can he tune in anywhere he wants?” I wasn’t thinking about Megan so much as I was myself at this point. I didn’t want this psycho following my every step in his mind.

“There’s a process.” Pater folded one leg over the other and went more mysterious than the Sphinx.

“Walk me through it.”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

I looked at Eamon. “If you really want to help, you need to answer my question.”

Eamon got up from his desk and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“Eamon… “ Pater looked real worried.

Eamon tugged off his button-down shirt and began untucking his undershirt.

“Fine, Eamon. This is your decision.”

Eamon pulled his shirt up. Fresh red welts decorated his stomach. He held his shirt up for a long moment, like showing me his wounds would make me feel sorry for him.

It didn’t work.

I looked at Pater. “Did you do that to him?”

“He didn’t.” Eamon approached the glass, stomach still exposed. “Sometimes, pain is the only way.”

Eleven

“Is that your penance?” I was wondering if Eamon had turned into a religious nutter.

“Not how you’re thinking,” Eamon said. “My remote viewing—”

Pater did something and white noise came on. I couldn’t hear what Eamon was saying in his room.

Pater had to raise his voice to speak over the white noise. “That’s all the information we’re providing on Eamon’s process.”

In his half of the room, Eamon had stopped talking and was now watching us intently. I wondered if he could read lips then I realized he didn’t need to. He could probably tune in to our half of the room and listen.

I got up. “Are there any dance halls around here?”

“No.”

I was thinking about that drawing I’d found in Megan’s roller skates box, with the people dancing in the ballroom. The significance hadn’t struck me at the time, but my conversation with Pater had stirred a few ideas up.

Pater said, “Why do you ask?”

“How about night clubs?” I looked through the glass at Eamon. “Any nearby, and can he tune in?”

Pater smiled. “Why do you ask?”

“You already know why. I’m thinking of the dancing manias of the Middle Ages. They’re believed to have been caused by MPIs. These manias cropped up over the course of hundreds of years throughout Europe. During the Dancing Plague of 1518, hundreds of people danced for days, many collapsed eventually from exhaustion, and some even died from the exertion.”

“Beware of a well-read man,” Pater said. “Let’s step into the next room where I’m sure Agent Manetti is waiting to tell me I’m doing this all wrong.”

He said it endearingly, without malice.

I pointed at Eamon. “There’s no way he can get out of there, right?”

“No. And if he did, we have ways of incapacitating people quickly. As you yourself learned.”

I gave Eamon the one-finger salute as Pater killed the white noise and we left the room. Manetti and Riehl were waiting for us.

”I’m not working with this convict.” Manetti took a long look down her short nose at me.

“That’s ex-convict to you.”

Pater gave her a stern look. “Is everything all set?”

Manetti spoke through gritted teeth. “Yes.”

Pater turned to me. “We’ve cleared everything with local LE. That’s—”

“Law enforcement, got it.”

“I had a conversation with Detective Quick and explained to him your cover story.”

“My cover story?”

Pater smiled. “Try to stay up with us, Eddie. If you’re going to be on this team—”

Manetti’s eyes bulged.

“—in a temporary capacity you need to be sharp. Now, your cover story is that you’re hired by Mr. Turner. But in truth, you’re working with us.”

“And who’s us?”

***

“How are you going to find her?”

This from Manetti after fifteen minutes of radio silence in the car together. She was driving, sticking to the speed limit. If she wasn’t such a bitch she’d be drop dead. Probably thirty and would look thirty for another fifteen years. I lazed in the passenger seat, the window cracked for fresh air. We were alone.

“All in good time,” I said.

“Bullshit.” She came to a complete and dead halt at a stop sign. She wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in South Philly. “You have no idea. You’re all talk.”

“Why don’t you take the hard-ass down a few notches, you don’t have to prove your toughness to me.”

“How dare you—”

“Isn’t that easier? You don’t have to try so hard because you know I already consider you an equal. We can cut through the bullshit and find your friend.”

“You sexist bastard.” Her knuckles tightened against the steering wheel. “If I was a man acting like this you wouldn’t think twice of it.”

“Wrong, I’d think you’re an asshole who was so worried about posturing that he was in serious danger of losing sight of the mission. Why are you so threatened by me?”

“I’m not. I just can’t abide people who are in way over their head and think they’re not.”

“Then you can abide me, lady. I know I’m out of my element. But angst and self-doubt aren’t going to help.”

She didn’t believe me for a second.

I sighed. “Me working with you is just smart business. We increase the chances of finding Megan. Take your ego out of the equation and you’ll see that.”

“You’re talking to me about ego? A few years ago you were on parole for possession with intent, had no college degree, no career, and were basically a drifter.”

“Yeah, but that was three whole years ago.”

“And now you’re an expert on missing persons?”

“Come on. You gotta admit me figuring out this was an MPI was a nice bit of Sherlockean logic.”

***

Manetti badged the patrolman standing outside Jamie Witherspoon’s door, then ignored the police tape and stepped inside.

I didn’t get a good look at her badge.

“Shut the door,” she said.

The patrolman didn’t even turn around to look at me when I closed the door. He’d been briefed, probably by Quick.

“What are we looking for?” I said.

“You tell me. You’re the expert.”

“He was off, Manetti.”

“Must have been to let a guy like you in.”

I ignored the gibe. Looked around. The place smelled like stale sweat, body odor, blood. There was nothing on the coffee table except the kitchen knives.

“Megan’s room isn’t like this,” I said, thinking out loud.

“What’s that?” She wasn’t really interested. She was looking at his books on the end table.

“Nothing.”

She didn’t follow-up. I kept my thoughts to myself.

“Find something there?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She held up a Dan Brown novel. “Witherspoon has bad taste.”

“I’m going into the bedroom.”

“Try not to fuck anything up on the way there.”

I tried not to and hopefully succeeded.

Witherspoon’s bedroom smelled even worse than the living room, a combination of body odor and seminal fluid and sweaty clothes. The bed sheets hadn’t been changed in awhile.

He’d painted a circle and bull’s eye onto the wall and there were nicks and holes in it.

Target practice.

I didn’t see any darts around. But I did see a few throwing knives on his computer desk.

“Jesus.”

Manetti was in the doorway, her nose crinkled up from the smell.

“Either he had an orgy in here or he had no sense of smell,” I said. “I know a guy who can’t smell, it’s possible.”

She came into the room and her eyes honed in on the knife wall.

“Throwing practice,” I said. It reminded me of Strongbow.

Manetti went to the computer desk and brought Witherspoon’s PC out of hibernation.

There was a Word document open.

I read it over her shoulder. It was a list of names. I didn’t see Ken Hernando on there. But I did see one I recognized.

Megan Turner.

“Other than Megan, do any of these ring bells?” I said.

Manetti didn’t answer.

“Hey, partner. Any names on here ring a bell?”

She kept her dark eyes on the screen. “Almost all of them do.”

“So who are they?” Ten names. Six women, four men. It was moments like this I wish I had a photographic memory.

“They all have connections to Megan.”

“All of them?”

“That’s what I said.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

She got up and moved back. “A lot.”

I let that go. “Hold on a minute, couldn’t Eamon have read this list with his RV abilities? Why are we the first ones finding this?”

She paused, a little too long. “The computer has probably been asleep for awhile. Kind of hard to read a Word document on a black screen, isn’t it?”

“It hasn’t been asleep forever.”

“Eamon isn’t checking every place he can constantly.”

Every place he can. There were some limits to what he could do. I needed to understand what those were. Because after this job was over, I’d still have to deal with the not-so-little shit in the future.

At least, I planned to.

“But Eamon can tune in here. That’s how you were waiting for me in the hallway.”

“Wrong. We had a tail on you.”

If she wasn’t lying, that added at least one more person to their team, someone Pater hadn’t introduced.

“Oh so that’s who that was near the bakery.” I was fishing here. “He did a piss poor job of tailing me for a federal agent.”

I watched her face closely when I said he. Manetti didn’t flinch, didn’t give anything away.

“You think you’re smart, huh? We’re pros, McCloskey. You’re just—”

“Little league, I know. When are you people gonna stop jerking me around?”

She ignored me and used her phone to take a picture of the list. She tapped a few keys, presumably sending it to her team. She called Riehl and told him to scrape the picture for the data.

“You guys are a well-oiled machine,” I said.

“That’s right.” She looked at me. “And we’re not missing any parts.”

“Send the list to me too.”

She put her phone away. “Unnecessary.”

“Did you forget I’m the one that knows how to find Megan?”

“So why aren’t we doing that right now?”

“I have to get back to Turner’s place first. Pater wants me to stay under, I gotta stay under. That involves checking in with the client. And other things.”

She eyed me like I was a criminal. I was used to the look, because I used to be a criminal.

“Send me the list.”

***

Back outside, I discreetly checked my phone to make sure Manetti had emailed me the list. There was a text waiting for me from a withheld number. I opened it and saw the picture of the Word document.

Manetti said, “Let me tell you something you don’t seem to appreciate, McCloskey. We’re in the weeds here.”

“I have eyes.”

“But not a lot of brains.”

I walked her to her car. Not out of chivalry or manners. This chick could get her own fucking door.

I wanted more info.

“I’ve been in the weeds before. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“It’s your first day in the Big Leagues.” Again with the baseball analogy. “We’re running out of time. You better be ready for it.”

“Awful pessimistic.”

“Pater’s predictive modeling has never been wrong. Neither has he. I wouldn’t bet against him.”

“He’s not infallible.”

“No, but the system we have is tight. If our team is on the ground, it’s because there’s a high likelihood of an event.”

“Circular logic. It’s going to happen because you’re here.”

“We’re here because it’s probably going to happen.”

“Same difference.”

We stared at each other. She had not an ounce of respect for me. I was okay with that. I was used to being underrated and actually preferred it. I was pretty sure she was mashing her teeth. I tried a different tack.

“Your team’s low on resources. You could use somebody who’s good in a storm.”

“You have no idea what you’re into here.”

She got in her car. I motioned for her to roll down the window. She rolled her eyes at me instead.

I raised my voice so she could hear through the glass. “Since the shit’s going to hit the fan, can I get a gun?”

She pulled away, almost running over my toes.

It’s difficult when you’re an ex-con, but one of these days I really need to buy a gun.

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS

Twelve

Nobody answered at Turner’s place so I went inside. It was after eight, the foyer was lit up but empty. I went down the hall to the study where I knew Turner liked to hang. I was making enough noise to wake the dead. I went in.

Morgan Turner shrieked a primal scream and next thing I knew he had a frigging machete in hand.

There’s a first time for everything. Unfortunately, this was a second time for me. And it was just as scary this go-around.

I froze, put my hands up.

He stopped short, blade held high over his head like a samurai sword. Turner studied me for a crazy minute, like we’d never met. His whole body was tensed like a long bow about to loose an arrow. The almost coppery blade had a weak glint in the light of the chandelier that cost more than I’d ever made in a year.

I really needed a gun or life was going to get very short.

“Morgan, it’s me. Eddie. Are you okay?”

At the sound of my voice his body relaxed and his eyes went less-insane.

“Where the hell have you been?” Turner asked.

“Private investigating.” I left the door to the study wide open in case I had to skedaddle. I tugged at my ear trying to make the move look completely natural. The deer tick-sized microchip glued to the back of my ear called Manetti’s cell phone and streamed audio to her. I didn’t relish the idea that the feminazi was my only safety net.

But it was better than having no safety net, especially since it was Jekyll and Hyde with this family.

Turner got a faraway look in his eye then seemed to remember he was holding a machete. How one forgets something like that, I don’t know. He put it back in its place, in a knife cabinet along with several antiquey-looking things that could have been described as sabers. I’m not a weapons nut. I’ve fired three guns in my entire life. The last was a shotgun I used to send a friend into the afterlife. The one before that a .45 I’d shot at the ground to scare somebody. And the one before that? My Nintendo Zapper for Duck Hunt. I was pretty good at that game.

Turner put a smile on his face. The weird part? He seemed genuinely happy to see me.

“I’m sorry, Eddie. We’re all on edge right now with Megan gone and Melanie…”

“Is Melanie around?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Any changes in behavior tonight, or outbursts?”

He frowned like he had no idea what I was talking about.

I moved between him and the machete. “Why don’t we sit down and I’ll give you a status update?”

“Detective Quick called…” His voice trailing off told me everything I needed to know.

“Come on, let’s talk.”

***

I filled him in, leaving out the part about Pater and Megan’s colleagues. I could see him doing some mental math, measuring the hours I was gone against the time elapse of my account. I could tell it wasn’t computing.

“He’s dead.” Turner pondered the loss of his ex-son-in-law with a lot more sorrow than I expected. “And…explain how it happened?”

I’d already explained how it happened. It was bothering me I’d iced a man I didn’t know, even though it was in self-defense. I didn’t care to relive it. And it was starting to feel like Turner was fishing.

“He came after me, I had to defend myself. It was a hell of a thing.” I hoped that would be enough.

“Why did he come after you? I just don’t understand.”

I’d made this clear too. Turner was fishing.

“He was off.”

“Off?”

“Okay, Morgan. He was psychotic.” The more information Morgan wanted, the less I wanted to provide. “He hadn’t been to work in days, wasn’t answering his phone, and wasn’t making any sense when I talked to him. And then, he just flipped out.”

“Did you…shoot him?” he asked.

“I don’t carry a gun.”

He was visibly relieved. “That’s good. That’s very good. I don’t like guns.”

I didn’t know why that was good. I didn’t know why a frigging machete was better. With a gun killing somebody could be impersonal compared to the intimacy of cutting some poor shlub down with a blade.

A maid I’d never seen before popped her head into the study. She was Mexican and had a round face and could have been twenty-five or forty.

“Mr. Turner, I’m going home now. Can I come back for your room tomorrow?”

“Do not worry about my room, Juanita. I’ll take care of that for the next few days.”

She gracias-ed him and left as quietly as she’d come.

Turner didn’t look like the type to keep a messy room. Nothing was out of place in his house. And he had a lot of house and a lot of things.

“What set him off? Exactly.” Turner paced in front of one of the many fireplaces in the house.

One of my rules is never lie to the client. The exception to every one of my rules is unless you fear for your life.

“Morgan, he wasn’t making any sense, he just came after me.”

Turner folded his arms and looked into the dead fireplace. With his back to me, he said, “Did Jamie mention Megan?”

“No.”

“Did you?”

“That’s why I was there.”

A pause. “Did he mention anyone else?”

You mean like Ken Hernando? “No.”

Another stretch of silence. I could hear a grandfather clock at the other end of the study ticking. Outside the darkness deepened.

Daughter Number Three came in. Mia. She didn’t look like Turner and had short, stylish black hair. She was wearing khaki pants and a sleeveless top.

“Who are you?” she said. A little nervous.

“Mia, this is the man I told you about, Eddie McCloskey.”

“I’m going to find your sister.” I smiled.

She considered this and clearly wasn’t sure about me. “Dad, could I talk to you in private? I think someone was in my room again.”

Turner gave me a sharp look.

“Wasn’t me. I can’t even find the bathroom in this house.”

Turner nodded. “Would you excuse us?”

I excused myself, rather than them. I went around the first floor, still trying to familiarize myself with the layout. I was Theseus without his string. Eventually I came to the pool room. It looked out to the backyard. Strongbow was out there, captured in the flood lights.

Speaking of target practice. The guy had a long bow and was shooting at a target quite a distance away. I watched as the great mass of muscles in his back rippled from the pull and loosing of the next arrow.

I met him out there. “Nice night for a long bow.”

He didn’t know if I was kidding. He didn’t care either. “Find Megan yet?”

“Not quite. But I know how.”

He untensed the bow and held the arrow away and looked at me. “How?”

I didn’t trust anybody, not when there was a possibility of an MPI affecting anybody and everybody. “If I tell you, it won’t work.”

He grunted and went back to long bowing. “Mr. Turner is under a lot of stress. If I find out you’re taking advantage…”

Thwack. The arrow missed the bull’s eye about six inches to the right.

“You getting ready, in case the French decide to wage war again?”

“No. Just getting ready.”

When no explanation came, I said, “For what?”

Thwack. This arrow hit the bull’s eye. He leaned the bow against a metal stand next to him and turned dark eyes to me.

“For anything.”

“Define anything.”

“Anything is pretty self-explanatory.”

He went to retrieve his arrows and I left him alone.

***

At 9:30 I went to Melanie’s door and knocked. There was no noise coming from the room but I could tell she was in there. The room hummed with that sense of being occupied.

No answer.

“Melanie?” I knocked again.

A sound like somebody moving on a bed. “Come in.”

“It’s Eddie. Are you decent?”

“Decent enough.”

Uh-oh.

I went in. She was on the bed like I’d pictured. Wearing sorority shorts that probably had Greek letters across the ass and a diaphonous white t-shirt. In her lap was Megan’s empty roller skates box.

She held up Megan’s drawing of people dancing in the ballroom. “I found this.”

“What is it?”

She saw through my acting. “She drew this recently.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I think it can help us find her.”

“I didn’t know you were actually looking.”

“Of course I am.” She put the drawing down and came off the bed. She was ninety-percent legs. “What a thing to say.”

“My mouth has a mind of its own.”

“I’ll bet.”

So we were back to this again.

She approached and I could feel the animal heat coming off her. She tipped her head back to look up at me. “What do you think it means?”

“It’s just a drawing.”

“You don’t believe that for a second. A picture is never just a picture. So why are you lying to me?”

My turn to be evasive. “You recognize the room? Looks like a dance hall or maybe somewhere you’d have a wedding. Any ideas?”

“I thought it was just a drawing.”

“In case it isn’t.”

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen this place before in my life.”

“Recognize any of the people in the scene?”

She frowned like she hadn’t thought of that already. She went back to the bed, made a big show of bending at the waist to reach for the picture. I saw every square inch of her legs and a little of something else.

She slinked back to standing position and surveyed the picture. “They look familiar. But I can’t place them.”

“You think Megan was trying to draw people she knew?”

“Maybe.”

“She always been an artist?”

Melanie put the drawing back on the bed and sat down. Her legs parted, just a little bit, not too much to be porn-worthy but just enough.

“Megan’s never drawn anything in her life.”

“Not even stick figures?”

“When she was about three.”

“Where do you think she is?”

“If I knew that, you wouldn’t be here.”

Up until this afternoon’s weirdness, I’d put Megan’s odds of being alive at fifty-fifty. Not too many people up and cut off ties with their family and friends with no explanation. But now with MPI as a possible, maybe likely, cause of everything, I’d increased her chances to seventy-five/twenty-five.

But that was cold comfort. Sure, it was more likely that Megan was alive but now I didn’t just have to worry about her and maybe the one or two people responsible for her disappearance.

Now I had to worry about the whole town.

Because MPI doesn’t just affect one person.

It affects a larger group. In the case of the laughing girls in Africa, the MPI plagued whole communities, both those afflicted with the illness and those having to deal with it. With the dancing manias of Europe, it traveled from one area to another, ultimately touching thousands of people.

More specifically, I had to worry about this family. They were acting batty but I didn’t have a baseline. Maybe they were always like this, hot and cold from one moment to the next.

But I doubted it.

“I never got to tell you, but I’m sorry about your mother,” I said.

“Why are you talking about her?” Those legs opened another inch.

“I didn’t have the details until this afternoon. It must have been very difficult on the family.” I still didn’t have all the details and was hoping for more.

She said nothing. I kept my eyes well above her equator.

“They never found the guy that did it?” I said.

She shook her head no. I waited for her to volunteer more.

She didn’t.

“It happened in town, right?”

She didn’t answer, just tilted her head to the side and looked me up and down.

“Do you think Megan’s trying to find the person that did it? Maybe that’s why she dropped off the grid?”

I didn’t think that but I was trying to get her to open up.

“She would have told me.”

“Why?”

“We’re close. We tell each other everything.”

“Everything?”

She nodded. “Until a couple weeks ago. We stopped talking. It was like she didn’t trust me.”

“You work at your father’s office?” I knew this from Strongbow.

“Intern. In the mailroom. That’s what a bachelor’s degree gets you these days.”

“He’s probably going out of his way not to show favoritism, you being his daughter and all.”

Her legs had an R-rating. Before she inched them to the X-rating level, I got out of there.

***

In my guest room I turned on the local news for some background noise. The blonde from a box reporter was talking about several attacks in town, three people had been rushed to the hospital, one was in critical condition.

Pater’s words struck me. We had twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours until a major event if his predictive modeling was accurate and our working hypothesis turned out to be correct.

I called Manetti.

“I heard it all. That family is cracked,” she said. “No wonder they hired you.”

She hadn’t heard it all, just the conversation I had with Turner. I’d switched the transmitter off after that. Pater hadn’t shared everything with me so I wasn’t sharing everything with him.

I was adopting the federal government model.

“You want to know how we’re going to find Megan?” I said.

“I think I’ve asked you that already.”

“Melanie is exhibiting the same symptoms. We’re just going to follow her.”

“That’s your plan.”

“Elegant in its simplicity.”

“We would have thought of that had we known about her symptoms.”

“I didn’t claim to be a genius. I just played the only card I had to get out of the vomitorium. You would have done the same thing.”

“Let’s get another thing straight. We’re not following her. We’re not a team no matter what Pater says.”

“You’re absolutely right, actually. Because you’re going to follow her.”

She laughed incredulously. “This gets better and better. What exactly are you doing while I’m doing all the work?”

“Run down the names on that list you found on Witherspoon’s computer.”

“You’re not in charge here—”

“It’s not about me being in charge, Manetti. Melanie knows who I am, what I look like. She doesn’t know you. Ergo, you should be the one to follow her.”

She couldn’t argue with my logic but she didn’t like it either. “I’ll run it by Pater.”

“Good. You do that.”

I hung up and finally cracked my laptop. The thing was a dinosaur—already six months old. Turner had wireless so I punched in the password.

I searched the names on Witherspoon’s list. Three of them had graduated high school with Megan, four more were around her age, one was a teacher, another was a lawyer her father’s age. I pegged him as a friend of the family.

The last one was the oddity. Fifty-five year old widow by the name of Dorothy Young. Maybe another friend of the family but I didn’t see any obvious connections to the Turners. She had endured two tragedies. Her son had accidentally killed himself while playing with her husband’s hand gun. Two years later, her husband had taken his own life. Since then she’d become a staunch anti-gun proponent, leading the local political rallies against the Second Amendment.

I called Manetti. Riehl answered her phone.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you again tonight.”

“Feeling’s mutual. What can you tell me about the list of names?” I asked.

“All known friends and associates except one.”

“Dorothy Young?”

“Did you ask old man Turner about Dorothy? I hope not.”

His saying old man reminded me of the youth of Turner’s online picture compared to the man in the flesh I knew. It made me think about Chester Leonard too, and how he’d seemed to age exponentially compared to his online portrait. And then it made me think of Melanie, and how she looked older than her twenty-three years.

“I’m smarter than that.”

“So you can use Google.”

I’d been hoping Riehl would treat me differently than Manetti. But apparently I was going to get it coming and going from this team.

“You wanna go see her first thing?”

“You and me?”

“Yeah, it’ll be ebony and ivory.”

“Funny.” He gave me her address. “Meet you there.”

“What were you up to tonight?”

“Let’s meet at 9.”

“Eamon still in his little room?”

“He’s watching you right now, actually.”

I thought he was lying. But an iceberg slid down my spine and I couldn’t help but look around the room, as if that would help.

I held up my middle finger. “Ask him what I’m doing now.”

Riehl chuckled. “See you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be the good-looking Irish dude in the corvette.”

Thirteen

At 4:30 in the morning somebody knocked on my door. I was having a dry dream about a girl named Ana, whom I’d met not so long ago on a big job in northeastern Pennsylvania. She’d been interested in romance but I’d nobly turned her down because I was ten years her senior and she was a sweet, innocent young woman who didn’t need to deal with all my problems immediately after getting out of a bad relationship with a depressed deadbeat loser. It was the right call, but that didn’t mean I didn’t regret making it. I still thought of her often.

Ana and I were walking hand-in-hand along an icy lake shore, not talking but communicating plenty. She gave me a funny look at the sound of the knocking, like she couldn’t figure it out either. The dream world dissolved and transformed into my guest room at Turner’s place.

It was dark, just some silvery moonlight coming in through the window and hitting the floor in front of the TV.

I rolled out of bed and went to the door.

The somebody knocking was Mia, youngest of the three Turner girls.

“Melanie snuck into my room earlier.”

I was still half-asleep. “When?”

I didn’t want her to come in. If Turner found her in here with me, not only would I not get paid. I might get dead.

But she pushed past me and shut the door quietly. “Earlier this afternoon I think.”

Mia was twenty but looked fifteen. She didn’t have her father’s height like her sisters. She was dressed like she was going hunting in camo pants and a form-fitting black athletic shirt.

“How do you know?” I found my jeans and pulled them on. She was unfazed by seeing me in just my boxers. I keep in pretty good shape. Women used to swoon. She didn’t. It made me feel old, not for the first time.

She spoke in a whisper. “I set up a cam.”

“What was she doing?”

“Just…looking around.”

“For what?”

She ignored the last question and went to the window to peer out, almost like she was expecting to see someone wandering the grounds.

“What was she looking for, Mia?”

Mia watched out the window for a moment before answering. “I don’t know why I trust you.”

“Is Megan coming?” I said.

She didn’t answer. Translation: yes.

“When is she getting here?”

Her right hand went behind her back. She tried to make the move look casual but she was no trained magician. Either she had a gun or a blade. Those seemed to be the only two options in this crazy fucking town. She was young, petite, probably not trained. But anybody with a weapon can be dangerous.

Especially when you’re not armed.

“Mia, I’m here to help.”

“Then don’t try to find Megan.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer.

“Are you fainting too? Just like your sister?”

“Like Megan. Yes.”

There was something in the way she said it. “But not like Melanie?”

“Melanie isn’t fainting.”

I filed that away and it jived with my recollection. When I’d met Melanie in the foyer, I’d thought she was play-acting. “Your pop is paying me but I’m really working for Megan. I want to help her.”

“She went somewhere to be safe.”

“She told you that?”

Mia nodded. Her hand was still behind her back.

“What else did she tell you?”

She did something weird. Her body twitched and she stamped her foot twice. It wasn’t loud enough to wake anybody.

“She told me to watch out.”

“For who?”

“For them.”

She was quick. Really quick. Maybe she’d played sports in high school, or college.

But she had to get into the kill zone before delivering the blow. I just had to block her attack.

I grabbed her hand and put a foot behind me for leverage. She was quick but slight. I maybe had a hundred pounds on her. I could have snapped her wrist but figured that wouldn’t endear me to the man writing my checks.

A blue arc of electricity flashed inches from my wrist. She was holding what I took to be a taser. I didn’t know much about tasers but I’d always thought they fired some kind of projectile. Maybe not this one.

We stayed like that a moment till she let go of the trigger and the blue arc vanished.

“Give me that thing and sit down. I want to help you, Mia. In any way I can.”

The tension went out of her body and I took the taser out of her hand.

She said, “It’s okay. We can trust him.”

For a split second I thought she’d gone batty and was talking to herself. But then with that undefined sixth sense we all have, I realized we weren’t alone.

Before I whirled something bit into my neck and sent a current through my body. Somebody else with a taser. The floor didn’t give when I hit it. I couldn’t focus on anything but I sensed Mia stepping over my body and slipping out the bedroom door.

Someone else loomed over me. She crouched so our faces were a yard apart. She had brown, sun-bitten hair. Taser in hand, ready. Her eyes were fierce, but not crazy.

“Don’t try to find us,” Megan Turner said.

Then I blacked out.

Fourteen

It was still early when I came to, around five. I didn’t know it then but I was in for the most brutal, violent, life-changing twenty-four hours of my life.

I put on fresh jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. I had an idea I’d be running around all day. It turned out later to be a good decision. I could have done with a shower but I had more important things to do and Megan’s showing up last night to spirit Mia away all but confirmed Pater’s predictive modeling for me.

A major event was right around the corner. This was way bigger than the Turners, though all I still cared about was Megan. But either way I needed to get out ahead of it.

I tiptoed through the house and went in Megan’s room. It looked the same. I did a quick spot check but nothing looked like it had been disturbed. Megan’s roller skates box had been put away.

I grabbed her laptop and put it in the corvette out of sight. Pater and company had admittedly impressive tech but far as I knew there was no way to search a computer’s history remotely unless Megan had been working on a secure shared server. It was worth looking at.

I went back into the house and made a pit stop in Turner’s study before finding Strongbow, exactly where I knew he would be, exercising in the garage.

“You’re up early,” he said.

He was doing sprint intervals on Turner’s probably ten thousand dollar treadmill. His shirt dripped with sweat. He’d been turning the wheel for forty minutes.

The guy was in Olympic shape.

“I need to see the video from last night.”

“What video?”

“All filthy rich people have CC feeds set up in their mansions.”

He dialed the treadmill down to what was a jog for him, and what would have been a sprint for me, if there was a bear chasing me. He wasn’t breathing that heavily for just having run his ass off for forty minutes. “Why do you need to see it?”

He was just doing his job but so was I. “Because I said so.”

“I’ll have to ask Mr. Turner.”

“You’ll have to show me the video after you ask him anyway.”

Pissed off, Strongbow hit the STOP button on the mill and hopped off. He grabbed a towel and started mopping his face. “I’m not waking him up to ask. You can wait.”

“Megan was here last night.”

He stopped toweling, his mouth open.

“I’m just trying to find his girl,” I said.

He closed his mouth and got a determined look on his face. “Come on.”

I followed him back into the house, down a couple halls, to a tiny, almost hidden door carved into an unsuspecting wall. He pulled down his t-shirt at the neck to reveal a keychain. He took it off and fished through the keys till he found the one he wanted.

Without a word he unlocked the door. It was a tiny room with a long table holding three monitors on one side and a fridge and open door to a half bathroom on the other side. The monitors were cycling through the CC feeds that appeared to run throughout the house.

“What time?” Strongbow sat in front of the far monitor and I took a seat next to him.

“Less than an hour ago.” I held back the part about Mia.

Strongbow went to work on a keyboard. The three screens jumped and new images popped up. The time display on the screen read 04:00:00. Strongbow set the feed to play at quadruple-time.

“The cams are motion-sensored. They’ll pick her up. If she was here,” Strongbow said.

“She was here.” I pulled my shirt down at the back of my neck to show him the electrical burns.

“Did you black out?” His voice was clinical.

“Yeah.”

“Pussy.”

I put a rain-check on my bitch slap because I needed intel from him. Marine or no, he’d hear about it later.

“I’m just kidding,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I mean it.” His eyes darted from screen-to-screen as the fast-forward spooled. “Some of those tasers are strong enough to put down wild animals.”

“There!”

He paused the feeds. Megan Turner was just a dark smudge in a hallway captured on the top-right of the middle monitor. Strongbow slow-played the feed and she came down the hallway in a slow-mo hurry and in a crouch. She was holding a gun in one hand and flashlight in the other.

We lost her in the one screen and it was another ten seconds before she popped up in another.

“She knows where the cams are,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter. You can’t beat them. There’s too many and they’re motion-sensored and the pattern is too random.”

On another job, a client had figured out how to beat a similar setup and walk through his place undetected. Megan Turner was a lot smarter than that knucklehead and understood tech better having worked with Pater.

But I kept that to myself. “No pattern is too random because it’s impossible to achieve true randomness.”

I’d read that somewhere.

Strongbow was unimpressed. “She’s outside of Mia’s room.”

I put on my poker face as Megan slipped inside Mia’s room, gently closing the door behind her. They were in there for almost five minutes before Mia snuck out, alone, and made her way to my guest room.

Son of a bitch.

Mia had come to my room knowing full well that Megan was already in the house. The charade of looking out the window had just been to get me away from the door and keep me focused on her while Megan approached.

They had been—

“Megan’s coming out now.” Strongbow pointed across the table at the far right monitor as Megan slipped out of Mia’s room.

“She’s following her sister,” I said.

“You didn’t say anything about Mia.”

“I don’t answer to you.”

He hit PAUSE and looked at me. I could tell those eyes had seen horrible things and in that brief moment they actually were windows to his soul. He was a proud and unrepentant warrior, he would always serve his king, and his personal code allowed him to do terrible things in the service of his master. I divined everything I needed to know from him in that fiery cold look and could tell he wouldn’t think twice about gutting me if I crossed Turner.

“You’re here to solve a problem, not be one,” he said.

I leaned forward and got my weight on my toes. “I needed to see this tape as soon as possible. The full debriefing can come later.”

“It better come sooner, rather than later.”

He hit PLAY and we watched as Megan came down the hall to my door. She put her ear against it and waited.

I realized she was waiting for the signal. I remembered Mia in the room now, making an awkward move and tapping the floor with her foot. At the time, I’d thought it a side effect of her illness, the same illness that had apparently taken Megan away.

The same illness that apparently Melanie didn’t have. As Mia had said, Melanie’s not really fainting.

“What happened in there?” he asked.

“Megan zapped me.”

He wanted more of the story but I clammed up. Thirty seconds later, two-thirds of the Turner sisters appeared in the hallway. They went back the way they came.

We followed them from screen to screen till finally they disappeared from view altogether.

“How’d they get out?” I said.

Strongbow shook his head. He backed up the feed and darted his eyes from screen-to-screen. But they were nowhere to be seen.

“Megan knew how to get in and out.” I stood.

“Where are you going?”

“To find her.”

He cuffed my arm. He could have broken it, his grip was so strong. “You have some explaining to do.”

“Mia came in. She wasn’t making any sense. Next thing I know, I’m getting juiced from behind.”

“What were you two doing? You were in there for almost two minutes before Megan came in.”

“She was talking. I was trying to make sense of what she was saying. Though she did mention you.”

His eyes narrowed. “What did she say?”

“That I shouldn’t trust you.”

I jerked my wrist and broke his hold. The move surprised him. It was a trick I’d learned on the playground twenty-five years ago. All you had to do was move in the direction the grip was weakest as quickly as possible.

“Now you know what I know,” I said. “When Turner wakes up, tell him.”

I left Strongbow in front of the computer monitors.

***

I drove to the abandoned office complex where Pater and company had set up shop. Riehl met me outside. He wore a long-sleeved polo over a pair of khakis. He had on those cross-trainers designed to look like dress shoes.

“You’re early.”

“Things have escalated.”

He looked down at what I was holding. “What’s that?”

“Megan’s laptop. You guys need to scrub it. Where’s Manetti?”

“Getting ready to follow Melanie.” He cracked a smile. “She’s not too happy about the assignment.”

“She’ll get over it.” I smiled back at him. “I need to talk to her though.”

“Let’s get inside.”

We got in the elevator and went up to the third floor into the main room where Pater and I had talked yesterday. Eamon’s door was closed. So was the door to the computer room.

“Eddie, you look like you didn’t sleep too well.” Patterson smiled like he knew something.

“Yeah, Megan dropped by for a visit before spiriting her youngest sister away.”

Riehl and Pater met eyes.

I pointed at Riehl. “I gave Riehl Megan’s laptop. You need to scrub it.”

Pater nodded. “Good idea.”

“And I need Manetti to answer her fucking phone for a change.”

Pater folded his arms. “She’s on Melanie right now.”

“That’s what I’m calling her about.”

“What about her?”

“You going to make me say everything twice? You’ll hear when I tell Manetti what she needs to know.”

“You better take it down a notch,” Riehl said. “You’re not in charge here.”

“Yeah, Julius-fucking-Caesar over here is and can’t seem to make up his mind whether he wants to let me in or not. Maybe I’ll just knock off, go back to the East Coast. I don’t need this shit.”

“You won’t leave,” Pater said.

“Oh yeah?”

Pater nodded. “Right. You see things through. You have a compulsion to set things right.”

“I’m an ex-convict just looking to get paid.”

“Bullshit,” Pater said. He must not have cursed much. The look on Riehl’s face was priceless.

Pater went on. “If that were the case you would have walked from your last job, after you helped that good-for-nothing redneck get acquitted. But you stuck around and when push came to shove you blasted one of the few good friends you had on this Earth to hell with the man’s own shotgun.”

Pater’s face had gone red. Riehl didn’t know what to do with himself.

Pater’s slippery smile returned. “Now stop acting like you’re a mercenary. You know you’re not, I know you’re not. All this playacting is an insult to my appreciable intelligence.”

I tried taking all that in stride. Normally words didn’t bother me. I’d been called a lot worse in my day, at the playground, at the pub, in prison. Usually words were just banter, exchanged by two guys to fuck with each other as a prelude to something else. They meant nothing.

But they bothered me coming from Pater’s crew. Because I was trying to help these daft federal dipshits.

I forced calm over myself. “Megan doesn’t want to be found.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her words last night after she zapped me. She doesn’t want me to find her. If she’s good, and she must be if she’s with you people, then she knows I’m working with you, or at least suspects. Which means that little injunction applied to your team as well.”

I folded my arms and decided to underscore the point. “She. Doesn’t. Want. To. Be. Found.”

Pater nodded. “I was afraid of that. But it explains a lot.”

“Yeah. It explains why you can’t find her. She’s using your playbook against you.”

“Right.” He took out his phone and speed-dialed. “How goes it?” He listened for ten seconds. I spent that time eyeballing Riehl, letting him know I wasn’t intimidated.

For six-five, two hundred and sixty pounds of solid muscle, he wasn’t that big.

“Good. Stay on her. Now Eddie would like a word. He has some information.” Pater handed me the phone.

“Manetti, where are you?”

I heard the whine of an engine and the whir of high-speed traffic.

“On Melanie. Remember?”

“Where is she heading?”

“Looks like to work.”

“Okay. Stay on her but the equation has changed a bit.”

“I don’t take orders from you but tell me what you know.”

“You know how old man Turner told me she was fainting, just like Megan?”

“Yeah.”

“Mia says that isn’t true.”

“Turner’s lying to you.”

“Or Mia is.” I looked at Pater, who was watching me with his mouth open. “I don’t know who to trust but I do know that Mia and Megan don’t trust their own sister.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know it doesn’t but I wanted to give you the latest.”

“I should come off Melanie then.”

I hit the speaker button. “I’ll leave that up to Pater. I think you should stay on her and see where she takes you. But it looks like Melanie isn’t on good terms with her sisters.”

Pater said, “Stick with her. Eddie has a point.”

“But Pater, it doesn’t make sense. If she’s not under the MPI, then following her is a waste of time.”

“There’s something else going on here,” I said.

Riehl shook his head. “What?”

“You people are the experts, figure it out.”

“Keep me in the loop. We’re getting close to the office.” Manetti hung up.

Nobody said anything. Pater had a faraway look in his eyes, whereas Riehl busied himself by cracking his knuckles.

You have to keep moving forward. That’s one of the few things I’ve learned in this life. “I want to pay Eamon a visit.”

“Why?”

“Smooth things over. I’ve had some time to think about things. We’re all working together here to help Megan.”

Pater considered it. Riehl shook his head.

***

Eamon was exercising.

He was doing hand-stand push-ups along the wall. He didn’t stop when he saw me. Instead he pumped out three more without apparent effort then limberly lowered his feet to the ground and hopped up. His face was red from the blood rush.

He met me at the glass partition and picked up a couple dumbbells and proceeded to do jump squats. He could have given Strongbow a run for his money in the CrossFit games.

“I came here to talk, not watch you try to impress me.”

He grunted, “I’m on a circuit. Can’t stop.”

The computer monitor in his side of the room was counting down from five minutes.

“This is important.”

“I’m prone to depression…exercise is good for that.” He was breathing heavy and had to stop talking between a couple jumps. “But you know that.”

“Finding Megan today is more important than your fucking routine.”

He finished his set of jump squats and laid down on the floor to do leg raises. “You didn’t come here to…talk about Megan.”

“I did, asshole. So shut up, stand up, and fucking listen to me.”

He actually did.

“First things first. You guys need to find dance halls, places where they’d have wedding receptions.”

He was still breathing heavily. He rolled his head and cracked his neck.

I said, “Big places that are out of the way.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not just Megan hiding, and you know that from Pater’s predictive modeling.”

“You can’t hide a large group of people in one place that’s still in operation.”

“They could be separately together. Maybe they’re all using false names and checking into the same motel.”

He shook his head. “Pater’s way ahead of you, Eddie. We’re running queries against that.”

“Check abandoned buildings with big, open spaces then.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing?”

“I think you dipshits have been playing with fire. The original plan was for Megan to go undercover as herself to test her MPI theory. Which was pretty fucking risky considering you had no idea what the trigger is, leaving her susceptible to it.”

“Leaving us all susceptible to it.” Pater had come into the room. “You don’t win the game from the sidelines, Eddie. You have to get out on the field, you have to get your hands dirty. If we don’t solve the problem, more innocent people will die. We take big risks because we’re fighting for a bigger cause.”

“What brought you out here originally? It had to be more than just this vague theory that something might happen.”

I had given my back to Eamon and I sensed him pacing on his side of the partition.

“Esther Lee. She ran a drycleaners with her husband. She was closing up shop one night by herself. Someone gutted her. They left the cash register alone, didn’t look for the safe, didn’t take anything. They just disemboweled her in the front of her store and left her there.”

“She have a gun on her?” I asked.

“Her husband’s. They kept it near the register.”

“What else?”

“Stan Woloski. He runs a cherry farm. His wife found him on his tractor, his intestines in his own lap.”

“Any chance it was the same person?”

“Slim. The killings were around the same time but the loca morti were forty-five minutes apart. Different instruments were used on Ms. Lee and Mr. Woloski. There are no ties between the two victims.”

“Anybody else?”

“Those were the first two. We were on a plane twelve hours later.”

“How many more?”

“At least four, possibly nine.”

“Possibly?”

“If we include gunshot victims with no apparent motive, the victim pool increases to nine.”

That didn’t jive with what Stan had told me earlier. “How did you keep all these things out of the papers?”

Pater smiled. “We have our ways.”

Which explained why it was a madhouse in the police station yesterday. “It’s escalating.”

“That’s what we keep telling you,” Eamon said.

I ignored Eamon and asked Pater, “Any closer to finding the trigger?”

“I won’t know how close we are till we’re sitting on top of it.”

“I’m here to help Megan,” I said. “That’s it. When I get her to safety, I’m gonna bounce. You understand that?”

“I do.”

I faced Eamon. “I came in here because I wanted to call a temporary truce.”

“Temporary.”

“That’s right. Temporary. When I find Megan the truce is over. You’ve got these people fooled but I’m not buying the self-reformed act.”

“Eddie. I know you’ll never understand or forgive me. But I am truly sorry about your brother.”

My blood was boiling. I got out of there before I did something violent.

Pater followed Riehl and me into the lobby. “Eddie, we’ve got fifteen, sixteen hours till all hell breaks loose if the model is correct.”

“I told Eamon where to look.” I nodded at Riehl. “Let’s go.”

Fifteen

I followed Riehl in the corvette. On the radio, they were talking about the biggest storm of the year going to hit that night. They expected flash flooding.

“Rain shadow my ass.”

Riehl slowed ahead of me. I spotted the house we wanted.

Dorothy Young’s front door was open when we parked in front of her ranch house set back from the road. It was already 9:30. I could hear that clock ticking in my head.

The neighborhood was quiet. A couple in their sixties a few houses down watched us from across the street. Their mailbox had their last name on it: Taylor. I had them pegged in two seconds. They were the couple that snooped and watched and knew everything about everybody.

Dorothy’s lawn had just been mowed. Riehl and I went up the steps to the door. It was open.

“I take lead, you follow,” Riehl said.

“Sure thing.” Before he could take his lead, I knocked on the door. “Ms. Young?”

No response.

Riehl tensed beside me. “Don’t showboat around me. I’ll put you down in two seconds.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

My eyes adjusted to the dimness of the house. There was a suitcase packed and a large purse stuffed to the brim sitting in the foyer in front of the coat closet.

“Ms. Young?”

Nothing.

We stepped into the old, creaky house. Though it was a bright day, the house was gloomy because it sat nestled in a copse of trees.

“Ms. Young? Are you here?” Riehl said.

Nothing.

We moved through the foyer. The house had an open floor plan. I could see into the kitchen and down a hallway that led to bedrooms. The house was spotless and completely in order, not a pillow out of place.

“Ms. Young?” I said.

Hearing no answer, we went into the kitchen. There was a fresh bowl of fruit on the table. The kitchen looked to the backyard. There was a huge garden, a hammock bolted between two old sycamores that were shedding. The shed was big and its door was open. In front of the shed, a patio table.

There was something shiny on the patio table. It looked sharp.

A knife.

My mind jumped back to yesterday’s madness, with Jamie Witherspoon almost gutting me with a blade.

“Car’s here.” Riehl pointed over my shoulder through a different window. “She didn’t go anywhere. Let’s check the rooms.”

Riehl drew his piece. I wondered at the legality of the action but now wasn’t the time to dispute the finer points of constitutional law. I stayed a step-and-a-half behind him as we tracked down the hall.

The first room was a guest bathroom. The shades of the bathroom were drawn and like in every bad horror movie the shower curtain was wrapped around the tub. Riehl gestured for me to check it out.

“You’re the one with the gun,” I whispered.

“Time to earn your keep.” Son of a bitch winked at me.

I stepped into the bathroom and tore the shower curtain aside, not worrying about the noise. Nobody was in there.

“Asshole.” Riehl continued down the hallway and I followed. The next room had belonged to a child and was filled with toys that looked fifteen years old. Pictures of Dorothy’s dead son lined the dresser. I poked my head in and saw a pair of ice skates poking out from under the bed.

“Check it,” Riehl said.

“You fucking check it. I’m going on.”

Riehl shut the door to the room and we went on. The next room was an office. One look in and you could tell nobody was hiding in there. I shut that door. There was a laundry closet next to the office with a washer and dryer and next to that, the door to the master bedroom was open.

“Ms. Young?” I didn’t like the thought of going into her bedroom. I didn’t want to find anything in there, living or dead.

Riehl read my mind. “We’d smell the blood by now if there was any.”

The room was dark. All the shades were closed. I heard a fan whirring. “After you, Shorty.”

He grunted a reply and with gun extended went into the bedroom. I gave him a moment and went in after him.

The first thing that caught my attention was a huge trophy on the nightstand that displayed two plastic figures dancing. Taped to the front of the trophy was a flyer about the event, the Dance-Till-You-Drop Marathon from two years ago held at a local skating rink. Dorothy Young’s name was on the flyer, listed as the coordinator. Looked like she wasn’t just in charge, she’d actually taken home the gold. It reminded me of the dancing manias of the Middle Ages.

You could have bounced a quarter off the bed. Some clothes were neatly folded on one side of it.

“These outfits didn’t make the cut,” I said.

Riehl ignored me and walked to the master bathroom. He poked his head in, flicked the light on, didn’t see anything.

“She’s not in here.”

The bedroom was as spotless as the rest of the house. Next to the nightstand were two books, a novel that showcased some bodice-ripping lovers and the Bible. If I had to put money on it I’d say the Bible was probably a lot more sordid than the romance novel.

I opened her closet. All her clothes were neatly hung, her shoes were lined up in a couple stands. The only thing that looked out of place was the box of rollerblades. I opened it and peered inside.

“What are you doing?” Riehl asked.

“Looking for clues, big fella.”

I closed the empty box and then slid the closet doors shut.

Riehl put his piece away. “Let’s get a look at the shed.”

We went back down the hallway in the quiet house and found the door to the backyard in the living room. I stepped onto the porch.

Before we took another step, Dorothy Young came out of the shed holding a pair of menacing garden shears. She put them on the patio table next to all the other blades that were glinting in the sun. She hadn’t noticed us and went back into the shed.

I let Riehl take the lead. “Ms. Young?”

She poked her head out of the shed. She had white hair and would have been pretty but she was scowling.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Agent Riehl. This is Special Consultant Eddie McCloskey.”

Special Consultant?

Riehl went on. “We’d like to ask you some questions. Could you come out of the shed?”

She didn’t move a muscle. All we could see was her head. “About what?”

Riehl eased into his shooter’s stance but kept his hands at his waist. “Could you come out of there?”

Dorothy’s eyes flicked back and forth from Riehl to me before her head disappeared back into the shed.

“Ms. Young?” Riehl’s hand went to his hip.

She popped out of the shed, humming a Fleetwood Mac tune and now wearing a floral gardening hat and handling a pair of shears like they’d been dipped in shit.

She walked to the table where the other blades were and examined them with a wrinkled nose. Her face was pinched tight, like the sight of all that metal was making her sick.

“Ms. Young, could you put those—”

The shears clattered when she dropped them on the table. Dorothy backed away from all the tools like she didn’t trust herself near them.

She weighed a hundred-twenty pounds max, had probably never thrown a punch in her life, and gardening had been her most vigorous exercise the last twenty years.

But she had me on my toes.

“Could you come over here?” Riehl asked.

She moved that distrustful look from her shears to Riehl. Finger-by-finger, she tugged off her gardening gloves and put them into her back pocket.

“You’ve been through my house already?” she said.

“Ma’am, please step away from that table.”

She did. It was like she wanted to get away from the blades but didn’t want any parts of us either. As she approached, she hardly gave me a second glance. Her eyes were glued on Riehl.

He said, “Thank you. We’re conducting an investigation and had some questions. Do you know Jamie Witherspoon?”

Dorothy Young’s mouth opened but no words came out. Her eyes went backwards and the strength went out of her legs.

I grabbed her before she broke a hip. Riehl stayed where he was, hand at his back. Dorothy’s eyes were lifeless but she was breathing.

“Help me prop her up,” I said.

Riehl shook his head. “This could be an act.”

Before I could argue, Dorothy’s face grew animated.

“Oh, dear me. What happened?”

“You fainted,” I said. Or in medical terms, syncope.

“I’m so sorry, I have low blood pressure.” I helped her back to her feet then gave her some space.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” I asked.

“Happens from time to time, I must have overexerted myself in the shed, you know.”

Or she was fainting just like Megan.

Dorothy seemed to remember Riehl was there too. She forgot all about me and stared at him like she’d seen him before but couldn’t place him.

“Can I get you something? Maybe water?” I asked.

She didn’t take her eyes off Riehl. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”

“Ms. Young,” I said, trying to snap her out of her fixation with Riehl. “Do you know Jamie Witherspoon?”

“The name is familiar. Who is he?”

“He’s Megan Turner’s ex-husband.”

“Oh…Megan…” Her eyes were nervous, her body fidgety.

I decided to play a flyer. “Yeah, the Taylors, live down the street? They said she was here recently. When was that?”

Dorothy forgot how to talk.

I said, “When was Megan here?”

“I don’t know what they’re talking about…”

She was lying and everybody knew it.

She said, “They’re the ones on the street that like to stick their nose in because…never mind them. I haven’t seen Megan but I did just see her father.”

“Where?” Riehl said.

“Fundraiser the other night. We had a record attendance.”

“Where?”

“In town…actually, outside of town. Did you know they redefined the town limits after the county’s zoning board…” She realized she was rambling. “We had the Dance-Till-You-Drop two years ago at the old skating rink. After the rezoning, the rink is outside town limits now so we have to go elsewhere. If we have it again.”

Something set off an alarm in my head, but before I could grab onto it, Riehl asked a question.

“What kind of fundraiser?”

Dorothy scratched absently at her thigh till she left angry red claw marks on her white skin.

“For stricter gun control,” she said.

“You don’t like guns, do you?” Riehl said.

Given her family’s tragic past, Riehl was being a touch insensitive. I’d never lost a child to an accidental discharge and even I was ready to deck him.

Riehl’s hand was creeping toward his hip again.

I moved forward so I was sort of between them. “Ms. Young, did you say Morgan Turner attended a fundraiser for gun control?”

She looked me dead in the eye. “I like you, you’re okay.”

“Ms. Young?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

What the hell was old man Turner doing there? With all the guns in his study, new and antique, you could have called the room an armory. He was tied into local politics but an anti-gun rally didn’t fit his demographic, or the demographic of the people that worked for him. His attendance didn’t compute.

I said, “Did you talk to Morgan Turner that night?”

“He talked to me.”

“What did he say?”

“Just that he wanted to see me, and everybody else.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. He’s been at a lot of public events recently. He was mad about the rezoning, though.”

Her comment about Turner being out-and-about reminded me of my first meeting with him. Turner had been getting ready for something tuxedo-worthy. Strongbow had alluded to his boss’s non-stop schedule. All of that pretty strange considering his daughter was missing.

“Is he interested in office?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you think he meant, see everybody?” Riehl asked.

“Everybody at the fundraiser, I suppose.”

“Was it his first time at one of those?” Riehl asked the million-dollar question.

“This one, yes. But like I said, he’s been out and about a lot recently.”

“Was his daughter Megan there?”

“I told you, I haven’t seen her.”

“Did he talk to anybody else?” I asked.

“He talked to everybody else. What did you say your name was again?”

“I’m Eddie McCloskey.” I decided to switch gears on her. “Are you going somewhere?”

Behind me Riehl moved so he had an angle on her.

She smiled at me. “No, why do you ask?”

“The bags in the foyer,” Riehl said.

“Oh those. Those are from my last trip.”

“When was that?”

“Oh…last week.”

“Where did you go?” Riehl’s voice was rising.

“Out of town, just a short trip. I went to the beach.”

“Ms. Young,” I butted in, “did you ever meet Jamie Witherspoon? Megan’s ex-husband.”

“Maybe? I don’t remember him if I did.”

“He knows you,” Riehl said.

“Maybe he shares my opinions on gun control? I’ve been vocal on that issue for a long time.”

“He wasn’t at the fundraiser,” Riehl said.

She shrugged non-committally, but her eyes were deadly serious.

“How about Ken Hernando?” I said.

She didn’t blink. “Who’s that?”

“How about Esther Lee or Stan Woloski?” Riehl said.

“I knew Esther and had met Stan once or twice. They both had children in school the same time I did.”

“You really don’t like guns, do you?” Riehl asked.

Her whole face twitched. “N-n-n-no, I don’t. And I don’t like you much either.”

“Where’s Megan Turner?” Riehl said.

“I don’t know.”

Riehl grimaced. “We know she was working with Jamie Witherspoon and we know Witherspoon is connected to you.”

I didn’t follow the leaps in his logic but I didn’t need to. He was just fishing, trying to get her to think we knew more than we did. But his question set me to thinking, about Witherspoon and Megan and Melanie and old man Turner and Dorothy herself, and for a brief, sublime moment, I almost saw the whole picture in my mind.

It was right there, just beyond the horizon.

Before I made the connection, though, Dorothy Young shot Agent Riehl in the chest.

Sixteen

Riehl fell backward like he’d been hit by a cannonball and clutched at his chest as he went down. I got my bearings before his ass hit the ground and fell into a diving roll. The gun I’d borrowed from Turner’s study, an old-fashioned revolver, fell out of my pocket as I somersaulted toward the patio table.

“Don’t!” Dorothy yelled.

I didn’t have time to figure out who she was yelling at. I’d lost my gun and had to go for one of the tools on the table. I picked up the shears and threw the table on its side and dove for cover as a bullet tore through the wood.

“I thought you were okay,” Dorothy said.

She was apparently talking to me.

I said, “What?”

“I don’t understand…I thought you were okay.”

I had no idea what she was on about but now I heard Riehl’s ragged breathing. I looked out around the side of the table and saw him sprawled on the walk, hand to his chest. There was no blood. He must have had some new micro-thin vest on under his clothes, courtesy of DARPA.

Dorothy pointed the gun at me and approached the table. “Eddie McCloskey, I heard you were okay.”

I ducked my head back out of her line of sight. “Megan told you I was okay.”

She stopped moving.

I said, “I saw her this morning.”

“You saw her?”

Ten seconds ago I almost had this thing figured out, now I was stuck behind an upended picnic table holding a rusty pair of gardening shears and making this up as I went along. If she was yapping, she wasn’t shooting. So I had to keep her talking and maybe I could get something out of her.

“She came to see me.” I wasn’t about to let the facts get in the way of a good story. “With her youngest sister, Mia.”

Riehl was still groaning. I didn’t want Dorothy finishing the job. At the same time, I didn’t want to hurt her.

“Were they here too?” I said.

“Why did you grab the shears?” she said.

My instinct told me to drop the shears. My brain told my instinct it was stupid.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said.

“But he’s—”

There was a quick rush of air then Dorothy gasped and was choking. I dared a peek from around the table. What I saw next was just one of the many horrors I’d see that day that I’d never forget.

Dorothy Young had fallen to her knees. A knife was embedded in the hollow just below her throat. Her old, wrinkled hands dropped the gun and went feebly up to the knife as blood pumped with each heartbeat out of her.

It was so much blood.

And though Dorothy had taken the blade in the throat, seeing her like that reminded me of my brother dying at Eamon Moriarty’s hands.

***

“She was coming for you,” Riehl said. “You were a dead man.”

“She was talking to me.” It was the first thing I’d been able to say since Dorothy’s death. My voice sounded unlike my own.

“She was lulling you.” Riehl groaned as he peeled off his black micro-vest. I could see where the bullet had punched him, the vest was an off-white color at the point of impact.

“Maybe, but she was talking.”

“That was a righteous kill. And by the way, you’re fucking welcome.”

I decided to play nice. “Thanks, man. I’m sorry…I’m trying to sort out what the fuck went wrong.”

He tapped the side of his head. “Her wiring is what went wrong.”

“This could happen to us, you realize that.”

“I do.” He tossed the vest aside. His chest was massive and already bruising from the gunshot. “But like Pater said, we signed up to take big risks.”

“Why’d you use a knife?”

“I lost hold of my gun when the bitch shot me.” Riehl was still having a hard time talking. He examined his chest. “She was coming at you. I had to do something.”

I should have felt for him. The guy had nearly gotten plugged but I couldn’t muster an ounce of sympathy. The last thing in the world this felt was righteous to me. Dorothy had been off her rocker and we’d killed her. I hadn’t thrown the knife but I felt responsible. She was dangerous and maybe there’d been no other way once she pulled the piece and shot Riehl point-blank. But I couldn’t help feeling that we’d bollixed this, somehow serving as catalysts to her meltdown.

“We fucked this,” I said.

“Don’t turn into a weepy-eyed navel-gazer on me.” Riehl retrieved his gun out of the hydrangea next to the walkway. “It was her or us. And we learned something. Next time we go into a situation like this, we know what to expect.”

I’d also learned a few other things but I kept them to myself. I’d been close to solving this mess. So close. Then Dorothy had shot Riehl in the chest and I’d lost the thread. Now I just had to wait for my brain to remake the connection. I needed those same synapses to fire in the right combination again and I’d have it.

The sirens wailed in the near distance. I forced myself not to look at Dorothy, who’d slumped to one side in death and had bled out all over her own patio.

***

“Dorothy Young, the same woman who’s been trying to get the Second Amendment repealed for the last twenty years, had a gun on her person and tried to shoot you?” Detective Quick said.

“When you put it like that,” I said.

Riehl eyed the cop. “The situation has been explained to you, detective. You know our working hypothesis.”

Quick looked over his shoulder at the murder scene. “Yeah, sure. But why were you out here?”

“We had reason to believe Ms. Young had information relevant to our investigation,” Riehl said.

“Don’t fucking try to stonewall me, you federal asshole. This is my town and your boss promised full cooperation.”

“We discovered a list on Jamie Witherspoon’s computer,” I said. Riehl shot me an incredulous look. “Dorothy Young’s name was on it.”

“When exactly were you going to share this piece of information?” Quick looked from me to Riehl.

Riehl kept his eyes on me. “Why exactly are you sharing it now?”

“Because I trust Quick, he trusts me, and it’s the right thing to do. If the fucking bureaucrats cooperated more across agencies, this country would be much safer. Didn’t you guys learn anything from—”

“Take your fucking pie-in-the-sky politics and shove them up your ass,” Riehl said. “You have no idea how to operate in the real world.”

He cuffed my arm and pulled me aside.

Quick said, “You two aren’t going anywhere till I tell you.”

Riehl ignored the detective and moved us out of earshot. “These people could all be affected. We can’t share what we know at this point. We’re too far along the curve in the model. From now on we assume the worst.”

“That includes us too, dipshit. We’ve been exposed to the same environmental conditions.”

“Not as long as they have.”

“That might not even matter.” I looked over his shoulder as they wheeled Dorothy Young’s body away. “Don’t pretend you didn’t just have a pissing match with local LE.”

Riehl was about to say something but his phone was buzzing. “We have a call. We have to leave.”

I shook my head. “Let’s talk to Quick, pool our resources. Take your ego out of this.”

“You don’t understand. We have to take this call.”

“Why?”

“It’s from Eamon.”

Seventeen

The cops had the street blocked off in both directions. I followed Riehl to our cars. Some clouds had moved in from the horizon and a breeze kicked up. The rain was coming. Riehl was still grabbing his chest where he’d been shot.

“You okay there, big fella?”

“What are you, my mother?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“We aren’t friends, Amateur Hour. I got a kick watching you maneuver your way out of the vomitorium and onto the team but Manetti was right. You aren’t up to it and you’re reckless.”

“Let’s take the call from my car. Yours is a piece of shit.”

“Like that’s actually your car.”

We got into the corvette. A couple uniforms watched us from Dorothy Young’s front stoop. Quick came out the door and said something to them. The sixtyish couple across the street were standing at the edge of their front yard, watching the cops.

Riehl speed-dialed Eamon and put it on speaker.

“Agent Riehl?”

“We’re here, Eamon.” Riehl shot me a look. “Both of us for now.”

Eamon said, “I got a hit.”

***

I found the strip mall and parked far from the stores, close to the street. People were coming out of the organic food shop armed with smoothies. There was a local fashion store next to it with no business. Manetti was leaning against a black van, arms folded. She’d be gorgeous if she wasn’t a Class A bitch.

I parked and we got out.

“You okay?” Manetti asked Riehl.

“Not the first time I’ve been shot.”

“Hopefully the last.”

The sentimentality ended there. They went back to business immediately. They were driven, professional. Even though they’d given me attitude the whole way, I appreciated their commitment and self-sacrifice, all of it unsung. If they did their job well, nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. They were heroes. I respected the hell out of them, even if I didn’t like them.

Riehl said, “How are we going in?”

“The warehouse is a quarter click back the way you came.” Manetti bobbed her head in the direction. “Through the forest so they don’t see us.”

“Where’s Melanie?”

“I left her at the office. Nothing doing.”

“Alright. What did Eamon see?”

Manetti held her closed fist out. I offered my palm and she dropped a black strip the size of a pinhead into it. “Ask him yourself.”

“In my ear?”

Riehl pointed. “Peel this off, stick it on the back of your earlobe so no one can see.”

I followed his instructions. “Eamon? What are we walking into?”

His voice was clear through the transmitter, like he was standing next to me. “My connection is bad, but I saw five people.”

“Armed?” Riehl asked.

“With blades.”

I was playing a serious game of catch-up constantly with these people. “How does this work? Do you have a…live feed right now?”

“Intermittent.”

“What are they doing? What are they talking about?”

“I can’t hear them per se.”

“Speak English.”

Manetti shot me a dirty look. “Pater, is Eamon on the loop right now?”

I rolled my eyes. “That order goes for everybody: speak English.”

“Yes.” Pater’s voice was calm, his diction pitch perfect. “The feed is intermittent, like Eamon says, so we don’t have a whole picture. But we think someone mentioned Ken Hernando.”

“Wait.” Eamon’s voice was strained, like he was in the middle of lifting weights. “Someone might have said M-W-L.”

Riehl turned to me. “That means—”

“The man who laughs, caught that one. How about the rest of it? What is the loop, what’s the feed?”

“Sorry, Taxpayer.” Manetti smirked. “That’s classified information.”

I shook my head. “Okay, five people carrying blades. What else? Men, women? Ages? Where are they in the warehouse? Are they waiting for someone? What are they doing? Are they watching the doors? Did they post sentries? Are they expecting a fight? Who’s in charge? Are they just sitting around a table?”

Pater came on. “I’ll fill you in on the way. For now, Eamon needs his whole concentration.”

***

We rounded behind the strip mall. An employee was smoking behind the organic food store. If his customers saw him, they’d…consider filing an anonymous complaint with the boss eventually. He watched us with no apparent interest as we passed the dumpster and rounded into the woods. I brought my finger to my lips, making the universal sign of silence. He flipped me off and tossed his cigarette away before going back into the store.

Patterson said, “Five unsubs: three men aged anywhere from twenty-five to forty, two women who are in their twenties.”

“Do you know who they are?” I said.

“Unsub means unknown subject,” Manetti said.

“Have a primer ready for me next time. So Eamon doesn’t see Megan and he doesn’t recognize these people either?”

“He hasn’t had a chance to memorize the faces of all thirty thousand people living in the area, Eddie,” Manetti said.

“Then how are you going to figure out who they are if they don’t ID themselves in the convo?”

Nobody answered.

“What’s the setup?” Riehl stepped over a fallen tree. He’d put a new micro-vest on and was checking the action on his gun.

“They’ve been here for thirty minutes. Two of them are sitting in one of the old offices and the other three are acting like guards. My opinion: they’re waiting for someone.”

I couldn’t get over how old Eamon sounded.

“How did they arrive?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I tuned in after the program had started.”

I said, “How many cars do they have?”

Pater jumped in before Eamon could answer. “Eamon’s range within this space is limited to the main floor and some rooms on the second story. He can’t see outside at all.”

“How did you know about this place?” I said. “What does it have to do with anything?”

“Megan told me about it,” Manetti said.

Riehl held up a closed fist. We stopped. They crouched, I followed suit. We waited like that for thirty seconds. I peered between Riehl’s body and an oak tree and could just discern one side of the abandoned warehouse.

“Somebody’s making the rounds.” Riehl owled his massive head around and spoke softly. “One of the men. Let’s get cozy. Ten paces in and hunker down, then proceed from there.”

“Hold on. I want the fucking back story here. What is the significance of this place?” I said.

For once, Manetti didn’t give me shit. “Ten-thousand foot view: this place used to wholesale carpets and upholsteries. It closed twenty plus years ago and once abandoned it became the spot for high schoolers. Megan used to come here with her friends.”

I didn’t like that. “Megan has a lot of fond memories and it’s out of the way. So you brought Boy Wonder Eamon out here to make a connection and you’ve been monitoring it ever since…”

“What’s the problem?” Riehl asked.

I could feel my mind trying to remake that connection from earlier. “Megan wouldn’t come here.”

“There are persons of interest in that building,” Manetti said.

“Yeah, but not Megan. And we’re not going to find her here. If she was hiding she wouldn’t go to the one place that’s been an open secret for twenty years, where anybody could find her or where she could easily bump into some upperclassmen looking to get hammered and screw.”

“Amateur Hour,” Riehl said, “we know she’s not here. Other people are here. With knives. It’s worth investigating, don’t you think?”

“What is your wider point, Eddie?” Pater sounded sincere.

“Something else is going on. I don’t know what that is but we don’t have the whole picture.”

“You’re really good at stating the obvious,” Manetti said.

“No, Agent Manetti. Eddie has a very good point. Megan wouldn’t come here.”

Megan wouldn’t come here…and with that, the right sequence of synapses fired again and my mind remade the connection from earlier.

I knew what was happening.

Problem was, I had circumstantial evidence at best and I didn’t entirely trust Pater and his team.

“Fair enough,” Riehl said. “Megan in her right mind wouldn’t come here. But she’s affected. And we’ve got a real-time play to make here, Pater.”

“Agreed. Move in and observe.”

Manetti was watching me. “You look like you just swallowed the canary.”

I opened my mouth wide.

She shook her head. I wondered when she’d last laughed at anything.

We went on, ever more slowly till I could see the entire side wall of the warehouse. The parking lot was long and wide, sized to accommodate delivery trucks, and completely overrun by weeds and grass. The wall facing us was riddled with holes and weather-beaten.

We crouched in the brush, about fifteen paces short of the tree line.

Riehl dropped his voice to a whisper. “Probably takes that guy three, four minutes to make his rounds.”

We waited to time it. The sentry came out from behind the other side of the warehouse a couple minutes later. He wore a heavy black overcoat. He was working on a cigarette. His walk was slow, deliberate. His eyes were active.

I dropped my voice. “I know this guy. Yesterday morning at the bakery. He and two shlubs chased me to my car.”

“Yeah, I heard they threatened you with plasticware and you ran off,” Riehl said.

“We know who they are,” Pater said through the earpiece. There was a short pause. “Peter Holyoke, Dan Chesley, Harvey Dosh. They’re late twenties.”

“This dude looks like he’s forty,” Riehl said. “Blonde hair, hasn’t shaved.”

“Sounds like Holyoke,” Pater said.

The guy wasn’t in bad shape, but Riehl was right. It had something to do with his face. He looked much older than late twenties.

“No priors, stable employment since graduation, no known criminal associates,” Pater said.

I said, “Absolutely no reason in any of their records why they’d be here in the middle of the day, playing soldier and spy.”

“Except one.” Manetti looked over at me. “It pains me to say this, but McCloskey’s right. MPI is a last resort diagnosis. But it’s a diagnosis all the same.”

“We need eyes and ears inside that building,” I said.

The sentry stopped at the corner of the building nearest us. His eyes scanned the woodland and seemed to settle on us. He stayed like that for an eternity of seconds. Then he took a last drag on his smoke and tossed it away before proceeding with his route.

I waited till the guy had marched the length of the side wall facing us and rounded the next corner. “You guys are all teched-up, don’t you have some kind of long-range listening device we could set up right here?”

“The office is in the middle of the building, too many walls and other obstructions between us,” Eamon said.

“And you can’t hear them, and you can’t really see them either?” I said.

“I see three people at the table, two have their back to me. They’re not talking.”

“Where’s the fourth?” Manetti had her gun out now. She tucked a loose strand of her black hair behind an ear. Her eyes scanned the building.

“…I don’t know,” Eamon said. “Can’t see him or her anywhere.”

“This place have a basement?” I asked.

“There is a sub-level,” Pater said. “It runs the expanse of the first floor.”

“Are we doing this?” Riehl asked.

“They could have eyes on this side of the building,” Eamon said. “Just give me another minute to see what I can see.”

“Won’t help us if you can’t locate and rule out the fourth unsub.” A little piece of me died when I fell into the federal jargon. “But you can help us another way.”

“How?” Eamon, Manetti, and Patterson all said at once.

I wasn’t dying to sneak into the warehouse where five people suffering from MPI, also armed with blades, were trying to meet in secret. But all the same it was the only play we had, and we weren’t any closer to locating Megan.

“Pater, you said Eamon’s ability was more than just remote viewing. Let’s see what he can actually do.”

***

“Go now!” Eamon said through the earpiece.

We went fast and we went silent across the blacktop and rounded the corner to the rear of the warehouse. There were about a hundred cigarette butts on the ground there. We found a doorway that had been missing its door for awhile.

“It worked,” Eamon said. “They’re still distracted.”

“What are they doing?” Riehl said.

“Trying to figure out what fell still. They have their backs to your direction.”

“Do you see the fourth—”

“He just came into the room.”

“The sentry?”

“No. Must still be making his rounds.”

We slipped inside and got out of the doorway and congregated in a short hallway near a broom closet and a bathroom that smelled like it was still in use. We had line of sight to maybe the middle of the warehouse, no eyes on the office where four of the unsubs were, though. Being a warehouse, it was mostly an open floor plan, what few interior walls remained were either down or coming down. Our line of sight was obstructed by a multitude of crap. Old carpets, display stands, a couple couches and some desks, somebody had even left a golf cart. Some of the carpets still hung on racks that were ten, maybe twelve feet off the ground. The racks followed a circular track around the open floor in the same way clothes hung in a drycleaners.

We’d let the sentry continue his perimeter sweep until Eamon was sure he could do what I wanted him to. Then, timing it as best we could, we waited till the sentry had crossed in front of us and to the rear of the warehouse. Once Eamon got the okay, he’d focused all his energy on an object outside the office, an old painting can. With a telekinetic nudge, he’d managed to tip it off the workbench. The three unsubs were spooked and came out of the office to investigate. The fourth came from wherever he’d been to see what was going on.

At least, that had been the plan. We were relying on Eamon for intel so he could have been making it all up. I didn’t like the idea of empowering him but things were moving fast and we needed to get inside undetected. The goal was to find Megan first, I could deal with Harry Murderer later.

Manetti motioned and we followed her. She and Riehl were smooth. They had trained enough that there was no training in their movements. Riehl moved as fast as a guy half his size. Manetti was just as quick.

Adrenaline had taken the edge off a little. I was doing my best to keep up and fortunately, there was no time to think as we went down the hallway.

Riehl went left, Manetti went right and I followed her. We tucked ourselves behind an empty bookcase along the wall. I could just see the corner of the main office. The warehouse seemed as big as a football field. I couldn’t see any of the unsubs yet.

“They’re coming back to the office,” Eamon said.

Manetti held up a closed fist. We waited.

Eamon said, “No sign of the sentry yet.”

“How do you get into the basement?” Riehl’s voice was faint as a whisper.

“Hold on.” Eamon went quiet. “I don’t know.”

“I heard something,” Riehl said. “May be people downstairs.”

Manetti wasn’t fazed by the presence of additional unknowns in the basement. I wondered how much Riehl and Manetti were getting paid and knew immediately it wasn’t enough.

“They’re back in the office,” Eamon said.

“Can you hear anything?” Pater said.

Per standard operating procedure, we were only to answer if the answer was yes. Nobody said anything.

“What are they doing in the office?” I asked.

“Nothing, it looks like they’re waiting.”

“For what?” Pater said.

Nobody said anything. Manetti opened her fist and bobbed her head. I followed her in a crouch around the bookcase. She slashed right to hide among the hanging carpets. There was an oversized desk in the middle of them with more carpets piled on top. We hid behind it. The office was glassed on all sides and I’d seen two of them, wearing black trench coats like the guy outside.

But I couldn’t hear anything.

Someone’s cell phone rang. At first I feared it was one of ours. But then somebody in the office was speaking. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The conversation was over quickly.

Then the man who’d been on the phone said, “They’re coming.”

Manetti shot me a look.

“Get ready to evac,” Pater said. “I’m setting the number at ten.”

Ten meaning if the group swelled to ten people, we should immediately get the frak out of there.

“Negative,” Riehl whispered.

“Negative,” Manetti said.

“Eddie, I want you out of there if—”

“Negative,” an alien voice full of courage said. I realized it was my own.

“Your orders are to stay down if there’s shooting. No heroics,” Pater said.

We waited. Waiting was bad because my mind started thinking again. It had a lot of questions for me. Like, did I need stitches where Witherspoon had cut my face? And more importantly, what the hell did I think I was doing in here?

I wasn’t trained for this. It took everything I had just to keep up with this team.

There was a tapping noise over the ear piece. Riehl sending everybody a message: he was in place, could hear them, was ready to rock and roll.

Silence.

Manetti and I weren’t in the best spot but beyond the desk there was fifteen feet of open floor. We hunkered down among the hanging carpets. The smell of must was overpowering.

The unmistakable sound of a car engine getting louder. It was coming fast. Then the brakes squeaked and the engine’s hum decreased till there was no movement. Doors opened. People talking outside for a moment. Manetti was perfectly still next to me, barely breathing, gun in hand, calm before the storm.

Then another sound, like a trunk being opened.

Muffled screaming.

I could feel Manetti tense next to me. Some more shouting, back and forth, till suddenly there was an awful quiet.

Dragging.

They were dragging somebody toward the warehouse. The four unsubs in the office were moving away from us. Manetti thumbed her safety off. We listened and followed the sounds of their steps away from our position.

A track door screeched open. Murky daylight poured in.

We listened.

“Basement?” somebody said.

“Not yet. Get him in the office,” a woman said.

I recognized the voice.

Riehl whispered over the line. “Eamon?”

“…Four more, dragging somebody unidentified…I don’t have great eyes in there.”

“Remember, team. Better them than you as far as I’m concerned,” Pater said.

“That might be Megan,” Eamon said.

“Being dragged?” Pater said.

Next to me, Manetti fidgeted. First sign of nerves I’d seen in her.

“No…” Eamon said. “She was the one that just spoke…”

“It’s not Megan.” I had to break radio silence. “It’s Melanie.”

***

“I need visual confirmation,” Pater said. “And stay off the air till you get it.”

Manetti turned in her crouch so she was facing the office. Her gun was no longer pointing at the ground but in front of her. Almost imperceptibly she rocked on the balls of her feet.

The juice was running through me too. I took out the gun my client had unknowingly leant me. Manetti’s eyes went wide. To a cop, there’s nothing more dangerous than an armed taxpayer. I gave her a wink.

The gesture didn’t calm her down.

“Confirmed,” Riehl whispered. “Melanie.”

“Hold,” Pater said. “Let’s see how this plays out.”

“I know who they have,” Eamon said. “Nikolas Mobray.”

The name registered.

Eamon said, “Number eight on Jamie Witherspoon’s list of ten.”

Patterson chimed in. “Didn’t show up for work this morning, could have been missing since last night.”

I covered my mouth and spoke into my shoulder. “How about the rest of the people on the list?”

“Three others didn’t show up for work today.”

I felt like asking when he was going to share that with the team.

“Things are moving fast,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s not even noon yet.”

Fair enough.

They had dragged poor Nikolas Mobray into the office. We held our positions.

“Wake him up,” Melanie Turner said.

“Smelling salts,” Eamon said.

I heard a sharp intake of breath then a short barrage of confused, waking sounds. Then Nikolas Mobray realized what was happening.

“You keep coming after us, you’re all going to fucking die!” he shouted.

Somebody hit him.

Mobray screamed.

Somebody hit him again.

“Stop! Please! Stop!”

Manetti was like a coiled spring next to me. The potential energy in her was building. We held our position.

I pointed toward the office.

She shook her head.

Eamon said, “They haven’t gotten serious yet. Only a few hits. If they wanted they could have done a lot worse.”

“Hold,” Patterson said.

Fuck radio silence. “We have to go in.”

“Where is she?” Melanie roared. “Where the fuck is she?”

“You’re all dead! All of you!”

“Where the fuck is she?” Melanie said.

“Who?”

“My goddamned sister!” Melanie said.

I was getting ready to make a move when I heard somebody else say, “Bastard fainted again.”

I settled back in among the hanging carpets. Manetti motioned for me to stay put. I shook my head. If things got dicey again, I was going in.

“Eddie, don’t be a hero,” Eamon said. “Be smart. Work with the team.”

My skin crawled at the thought of his remote viewing me.

Eamon said, “Work with the team. Put your trust in somebody else.”

Sage advice that I would have trouble taking from anybody, especially from the evil little shit who’d murdered my brother.

“Where’s Hernando?” one of the women asked.

“Not here,” Melanie said.

“He was supposed to come,” somebody else said.

“Well, he didn’t. He sent me instead.”

“We have to find them. Before it’s too late.”

“Thanks for pointing out what everybody already knows.”

“Where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

“He’s busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Doing something else.”

“Like what else?”

They were almost ganging up on her. Melanie held her verbal ground. Her voice didn’t waver when she answered.

“He’s out trying to find her, just like we are.”

“He’s got a lead?”

“Probably.”

“You don’t know? You’re supposed to be—”

“We don’t have time for a conference call to discuss every fucking development. Now wake him the hell back up.”

“We have to get serious.”

“I am serious.”

“Deadly serious.”

“Give me a blade.”

I heard the susurration of metal sliding across metal.

“Now wake him the hell up. He’ll be talking in less than a minute.”

“If he doesn’t, can I cut him?” one of them said.

“Can I?”

“Let me!”

“I’ll do it!”

“I should be the one, I haven’t got to yet—”

Then they were arguing about who should slice up Nikolas Mobray. Their voices had taken on an eerie quality, childlike in their bickering if you ignored the subject matter. Like they were arguing about who got what toy.

“I’m going to do it! I was supposed to last time and—”

“After Ken Hernando, I’m in charge!” Melanie said. “I said I’m going to do it, so I’m going to do it!”

Mobray was waking up by himself, without the salts this time. “Why are you all yelling? Where…”

“You know where you are.” Melanie chuckled. “You know why you’re here. You know what we want. You know I’m about to gut you. You know everything you need to make an informed life-or-death decision. Now tell us what we want to know.”

“You’ll gut me anyway.” Mobray’s voice was proudly defiant. “Whether I tell you or not. So you might as well get cutting.”

Manetti and I exchanged a look. She motioned toward the office. I nodded and came out of my crouch and took out my gun. Manetti showed me where the safety was and I flicked it off.

Riehl whispered, “Call it, Pater.”

“Eamon?” Pater said.

“It’s not that simple.” Melanie started laughing. “I’m going to cut you a little bit at a time…” She was laughing so hard now she could barely speak. “…one little slit, here and here, till you…” She was in hysterics. “…till you tell me…”

“Now,” Eamon said.

Eighteen

We went hard. We went too fast for me to process what I was actually doing. Which was for the best.

I followed my instructions. I stuck with Manetti but spaced myself five feet from her so nobody could easily take us both out with one gun. With my new working theory I wasn’t too scared of these people having guns but better to be safe than shot to shit.

We descended on the office. Riehl came from the rear wall of the warehouse and he and Manetti were shouting orders. They assumed shooter stances and angled their bodies so they presented less of a target.

The ten people in the office had been hovered over Mobray, who was on his back on the lone table in the tiny room. Now they were screaming at us.

“Hands up! On your fucking heads!” Riehl said.

I was expecting a fight. I was surprised.

At the signal from Melanie, everybody put their hands on their crowns.

“Come out of there,” Manetti said. “Keep those hands where they are, kneel on the ground here.”

“I have bad knees,” one of the men said.

“The Constitution doesn’t give a shit about your knees,” Manetti said. “So I don’t either.”

Inside the office, Mobray had slid off the desk and was unsteady on his feet. He eyed us not like the saviors we were but like we were no better than Melanie’s people. Just like Dorothy Young, his eyes locked onto Riehl.

One by one they stepped out of the office.

Riehl said, “Outside, everybody.”

Manetti shot him a quick look.

“Too many bad angles in here, too many places we can’t see. Outside there’s nowhere to hide.”

I got the sense she didn’t want to disagree with him in front of our prisoners.

She nodded. “Let’s go.”

***

Outside they lined up on the pavement. It was overcast and the wind was picking up. Storm coming.

Mobray hovered by the door. “I’m not going anywhere near them.”

Riehl cuffed his arm and I saw him do something with his hand. Mobray reacted like he’d been pinched where Riehl was holding him.

Riehl played it off, kept his hand on Mobray’s arm. “With me over here.”

Mobray gave Riehl a long look. Then he nodded at me. “Can I stand next to him instead?”

“No,” Riehl said.

“Let him come over here.” I wasn’t digging this whole set-up now.

Riehl’s eyes bulged. “You’re not in charge here.”

“That’s right.” Manetti was talking to me but looking at Riehl. “Mobray should stay with—”

“Eddie is correct,” Pater said. “The witness trusts him for whatever reason. We need to use that.”

Riehl gave Mobray a good shove.

Mobray hustled over to me. “Who are you people?” His eyes darted from Melanie’s group to Riehl, back and forth.

“We’re the good guys.” Manetti leveled her gun on Melanie. “Who’s in the basement?”

“Bad people.” Melanie smirked.

“How many?”

Melanie shrugged.

“How many?”

“I don’t know, Officer. Or is it Agent?”

“It’s whatever I want it to be.”

“Maybe I’ll just call you Manetti.”

Manetti wasn’t fazed. “Congrats, your sister told me about you because we were close. I’m real scared.”

“If that’s what you want to believe…”

“How many down there?”

“I lost count.”

Manetti smiled. “Thanks. With that comment I can pin anything I want on you, even murder if I find any corpses.”

“Good luck with that.”

Manetti looked at Riehl. “Be right back.”

“Okay.”

Manetti looked back at me. “Keep an eye on Mobray, Rookie. Riehl can handle them.”

“Yeah.”

Manetti disappeared inside the building. I turned away from Melanie and her people and dropped my voice.

“Any time you want to call this in, Pater,” I said.

“Not yet.”

“If you need the number, I have it. It’s 9-1-1.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option right now.”

Mobray’s eyes kept ping-ponging from Melanie’s group to Riehl. I could tell he was listening to my half of the conversation, though.

Riehl said, “Stay off the air.”

“I want an answer, or I’m calling.” I had my free hand on my cell phone.

Pater said, “Predictive modeling, Eddie. We’re too far along the curve now. Anybody we call could be affected at this point. We’re effectively on our own till proven otherwise.”

“We might be affected,” I said. “Better to have more people in this.”

“I agree with Eddie,” Eamon said. “For what it’s worth.”

“In that case I’m changing my opinion.”

Pater said, “More data is coming in. Almost too quickly now. We don’t have the time to walk through it but you have to trust me.”

“Why? You don’t trust me.”

“You’re right. I’ve never worked with you before and I just don’t know you well enough.”

“Bullshit.” My voice wasn’t soft anymore. “You know everything about me. Which is a hell of a lot more than I know about you. Time you acted in good faith, asshole.”

“Twenty minutes ago there was a shooting inside the police station,” Pater said. “A detective opened fire on a suspect who’d just been brought in by somebody else.”

“Then call somebody you know and trust. Get them down here.”

Mobray was rubbing his shoulder where Riehl had cuffed him.

Pater said, “I’m ahead of you. My people are en route. For now, we’re on our own.”

“Not good enough.”

Pater kept his cool but said, “Agent Riehl, you are authorized to use non-lethal force to keep Eddie from contacting the police.”

Riehl kept his gun trained on Melanie but shifted his gaze to me. I saw it in his eyes. He had no problem plugging me if necessary.

Mobray got close to me and gave Riehl his back. He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at Riehl and shook his head.

He whispered so softly I could barely hear him. “Your friend is one of them.”

I looked over Mobray’s shoulder. Riehl’s gun was pointed at Mobray’s back now. Which could have been explained away.

If I wasn’t already thinking the same thing about Riehl myself. “I figured as much.”

Riehl said, “On your knees, Mobray. Right where you are. Eddie, get over here.” He’d heard me but he hadn’t heard Mobray fortunately.

Mobray shot me a pleading look as he took a couple knees. I patted his shoulder as I went by.

Through the headset, Manetti said, “Found the door to the basement. I’m going in. Is there anybody down here?”

No response on the headset.

As I approached Riehl, he pulled zip-cuffs out of his belt at the small of his back. “I only have four. Use them on the men first.”

“Sexist bastard.” I took them from him. “So I just pull…”

“They’re supposed to be idiot-proof.”

I was playing dumb, staring at the zip-cuffs as if I was trying to read hieroglyphics.

To cuff these people, I had to use two hands. Which meant I had to put my gun away.

I didn’t want to put my gun away.

I said, “You know how to do this, and I don’t. I’ll cover you.”

He shook his massive head. “And if they get unruly, you’re going to shoot them all? No fucking thank you. Now cuff them.”

“Whatever you say.”

I rounded behind the line of suspects. “Everybody on your knees, just like poor old Nikolas Mobray over there.”

They all did. Except Melanie.

I walked up and got close. I still had my gun out. I let her know it by poking her back. “On your knees.”

“Why? You’re not going to shoot me.”

“No, but I’ll be very unpleasant and maybe use harsh language.”

She looked over her shoulder and gave me a look so sharp I felt it three days ago. “You’re supposed to be working for my father.”

“You’re not your father.” I heeled her knees so they buckled and she went down.

“When my dad finds out—”

“He’ll take the T-bird away,” I said.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Melanie said. “No. Idea.”

“I have a pretty good idea, appearances to the contrary.”

Riehl said, “I said do the guys first.”

“I heard you. I’m just not following your orders.”

“Eddie—”

“Melanie’s in charge of this group. She’s getting cuffed first.” I still had my gun out.

Manetti’s voice came back on, tense and pitched. “Guys, there are bodies down here.”

“How many?” Pater said.

“Three. So far.”

“Disemboweled?” I said.

“And then some.”

Pater said, “Pictures, Manetti. Get them to me as quickly as possible.”

“Roger that…” She wasn’t rattled exactly but her voice was hesitant. “Give me a minute.”

Riehl motioned with his gun. “Okay, asshole. Get her cuffed then use the rest on the guys.”

They were getting bolder. All their heads were turned, watching me over their shoulders. All but Melanie. She was looking at Riehl.

“You got them?” I asked Riehl.

“I do. Hurry up.”

I looked once more at Mobray. He was shaking his head and mouthing, Don’t do it.

My world was suddenly an infinite number of moving parts, all of them either bumping into each other or overlapping. Melanie in front of me, caught but not cowed. Riehl with his gun in my general direction. Mobray either telling the truth or trying to shake me. Manetti finding bodies in the basement. Pater not wanting to call local LE.

And Eamon.

Eamon watching, listening. He said earlier he couldn’t remote view outside the warehouse. But who the hell knew. Did he see me right now? Did he see how stiffly Riehl was standing there?

“How old are you, Riehl?” I asked.

“Old enough to party. Now cuff her.”

“Because you look older than your age, I’ll bet.”

Riehl said nothing.

I put Melanie’s body between me and Riehl. If he shot her the bullet might get me too. But at least he’d have to think about shooting her first. Which he wouldn’t do if my suspicions were correct.

“Hands behind your back, Melanie.”

She reached behind her. I safetied and put my gun away and zipped the cuffs on her wrists till they were tight.

“What are you doing?” Melanie said.

“I’m cuffing you.”

It took me a moment to realize she wasn’t talking to me.

“Shut up,” Riehl said.

“Hey… ” Mobray said.

“Put the gun down,” Melanie said.

Melanie’s friends were no longer looking at Riehl. They’d all turned to face me.

I got my gun back out. I had no idea how many bullets were in a full clip for this weapon. I thumbed the safety and took a step back from Melanie.

“All of you turn the fuck back around,” I said.

They didn’t. Instead they rose in unison.

“Agent Riehl, you are to use lethal force if necessary,” Pater said.

“Fair warning: I’m going to use lethal force if necessary too,” I said.

“Put the gun down,” Melanie said to Riehl again. “You don’t even like holding it. I can tell.”

Mobray got up and darted into the trees.

The men and women facing me exchanged looks, each one daring the other to make the first move. I knew there was nothing I could do that would stop them. They were sick. They couldn’t be reasoned with. I knew that for damned sure after listening to them bicker over who got to carve Mobray up.

I knew it was about to get ugly. I knew it would turn into them or me.

“You’re one of us,” Melanie said to Riehl. “You don’t have to hide it. We can all tell, and we’re here with you now. It’s okay.”

I took five big steps back and swept the gun across the line of suspects. “Next person that makes a move is getting one in the kneecap. And my anatomy sucks so you might get it in the chest instead.”

“Manetti, we need you topside now,” Pater said.

“Can’t hear y…what th…”

“Manetti, do you read me?”

Riehl reached behind his ear and peeled off the micro-receiver and threw it across the parking lot.

“Riehl, you know what’s happening.” I wanted to aim my gun at him but the others were right in front of me. And closing.

I said, “Riehl, you know you’re not yourself. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“How can I stop myself?” he said.

“If you can’t, I will.”

Riehl stood there, a confused almost pained look on his face. Then he brightened. Like he’d had an epiphany.

“You’re right, Amateur Hour. I know exactly what’s happening, now.”

Riehl threw his gun away.

Nineteen

“What’s happening?” Pater said.

“Riehl turned,” I said.

Ten people faced me, including a linebacker-sized federal agent who probably knew how to kill me with just the thumb of his non-dominant hand. I was screwed. I was dead. They weren’t afraid of my gun. I could maybe kill three or four of them if I started shooting now. Problem was, that left six or seven.

I wasn’t trained for this. I got the horrible feeling I was going to die in front of an abandoned warehouse in a parking lot overrun by weeds in fucking Oregon of all places.

Riehl took out the knife he’d used on Dorothy Young and cut through Melanie’s zip-cuffs. She brought her hands around front and rubbed her wrists. Riehl lined up alongside her.

“Eddie, we don’t want to hurt you,” Melanie said.

“Right. You want to take me out for coffee.”

The woman on the far right lunged. I shot the ground in front of her and she jumped back.

“Not another fucking step.”

“That clip holds nine,” Riehl said. “You’ve got eight shots left.”

“Okay, so which eight of you are going to die?” I was regretting my decision to fire a warning shot now. They weren’t stopping.

Riehl said to Melanie, “We need to hurry. The other agent is coming.”

“Back. All of you.”

They were close. I knew they were about to spring.

So I sprung first.

Shooting your client’s daughter tends to sour the relationship with your client. So instead I put one in Riehl’s chest, around where he’d been shot earlier. He fell backward again, landed on his ass. I hoped that show of force was enough to dissuade the others.

It wasn’t.

The flanks moved in at the same time. I’d told myself I’d shoot them all in the leg, but the only real shooting practice I’d ever gotten was in the arcade. I’d shot two men in my life and both times it had been at point blank range.

Here, there were multiple targets and I had exactly zero margin for error. If I hit somebody in the femoral artery they’d bleed out. If I missed the leg altogether, I’d bleed out.

The choice was them or me. And in my personal microcosm of the animal kingdom, that was no choice at all.

I drilled the man on the left first. Melanie took off running. I ignored them and spun back around to shoot the woman on the other flank. I took her point blank in the gut. Before she could grab the gun I was whirling again. Seven of them left, excluding Riehl, all closing on me fast.

I went mad dog crazy and started shooting. They were so close it was hard to miss. Somebody was screaming in the earpiece but I couldn’t hear them.

One of the men grabbed me and I shot him in the gut. He spiraled away, clutching at his stomach. Another loon got in point-blank range and I shot her between the eyes.

The gun clicked empty and when the proverbial dust settled three were still vertical, and Riehl was climbing to his feet. Melanie was gone.

“You’re dead,” Riehl said.

Heart in my throat, I did my best to be witty. “All men are condemned to death with a temporary reprieve.”

“Your reprieve is over now.”

“Riehl!” Manetti shouted from the doorway. It froze the three goons in place.

Not Riehl, though.

He spun and in the blink of an eye threw his knife at Manetti. I thought Riehl got her. He was so fast. But Manetti got out of the way like she’d been expecting it. Great reflexes, good training, whatever it was it saved her life. The knife flew harmlessly through the doorway.

Manetti poked her head out the door as the pod people came after me. We were bunched, Manetti couldn’t fire and Riehl was barreling toward me. I suckered the guy on my right but then the others got my arms locked.

“Leave him!” Riehl said, a split second before he broke my nose.

***

Eddie.

It was Tim, my brother, talking. I hadn’t seen him in almost seven years in real life and in almost a year in my dreams.

Eddie, get up.

He was hovering over me. His face pinched with worry. All he’d ever done after Mom and Dad died was worry about me. It had aged him beyond his years. He had died an old thirty, paunchy and bald, leaving behind a good fiancee.

No, not died. He’d been murdered.

You need to get up.

“I know.”

You know where Megan’s hiding.

“I don’t.”

You do.

Tim put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re running out of time. They’re dancing.”

“I know they’re dancing. I just don’t know where.”

“They’re dancing, Eddie. You know where they are.”

“I don’t.”

“You have—”

Tim’s voice changed into Manetti’s voice.

“—to hurry.”

I woke up.

***

My nose felt like it was in two pieces and there was blood all over my shirt.

“—to hurry. Get up. Come on. We have to move.” Manetti tugged my hand.

“Give me a second.”

“Now!”

My whole head throbbed. I couldn’t breathe through my nose and the blood was running freely.

“Get up, Minor League!”

That got me moving. “The fuck did they go?”

“Forget them. We’re going after Mobray.”

“Mobray?”

“Riehl tagged him. We can track him.”

I remembered Riehl cuffing the meat of the guy’s arm and Mobray reacting like he’d been pinched.

“Come on.”

I went on.

There was blood down my throat. Riehl’s punch must have laid me out so the blood from my nose had collected. I hacked and spit it up as we hurried through the woods. I was barely able to breathe but I kept up with Manetti. No mean feat.

“Pater, where is Mobray?” Manetti said.

“We’re looking.”

“Riehl’s gone.”

“Unfortunate.”

“How long till we all go?”

“Maybe we won’t.”

The maybe was cold comfort.

We reached the back of the strip mall. The same employee was behind the organic food store, smoking another cancer stick. He wasn’t surprised to see us.

Manetti was all over him. “Did you see anybody come out of these woods?”

He smiled like he’d been waiting for her to ask so he could use a line. “Yeah. You two.”

She kept her gun pointed at the ground but loudly clicked the safety off. “Anybody else?”

All the fake bravado leaked out of him. “Yeah, yeah, another guy. Was that gunfire? Somebody called the cops.”

“The other guy. Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.” He realized the front of my shirt was covered in blood. “Dude, your nose is bleeding.”

We hustled around to the front of the store. Outside patrons milled, still excited by the sound of the gunfire. They saw us and whispered loudly.

“Police en route,” Pater said. “Sixty seconds out.”

“We’re out of here,” Manetti said. “Both cars. Got a line on Mobray?”

“We’re looking.”

I got in the corvette and she jumped in the grey van. I followed her out of the lot. I heard the sirens, coming fast.

We could still talk through the earpieces.

I said, “You let Riehl go.”

“He was Spec Ops. I didn’t like my chances one-on-one.”

“But you had a gun.”

“That might have evened us up.”

“Would you have used it?”

She was out of the lot in a hurry, headed away from the sirens. My front bumper was glued to her ass.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Would you have shot him?”

“If I had to.”

“You had to.” She hit the gas and so did I. The van wasn’t as slow as it looked. “You chose to let him go.”

“I chose Mobray.”

I would have done the same thing but wanted to understand her thought process. “Why?”

“…I don’t know. I just did.”

“You didn’t want to shoot Riehl.”

“He’s sick. He’s not himself.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“The hell you aren’t.”

The telephone poles whipped by as we ate up road. I couldn’t hear the sirens anymore but my eyes kept checking the rearview. It wasn’t my first car chase, but it was the first time I was the chaser.

“We got a ping,” Pater said. “Direction you’re heading, about a mile up the road.”

Manetti floored it. I didn’t have to because I was in a ‘vette and she was in a kidnapper van.

“I’m not judging you, Manetti,” I said. “You have loyalty. You’re human.”

I dared to look at my face in the rearview. My nose was normally pretty straight. Now it had a distinct bend about halfway down the bridge.

The sight of it made the pain worse.

My mouth was painted red, my teeth blood-stained. My head beginning to pound.

“Jesus.”

“What?” Manetti said.

“I’m not movie star handsome anymore.”

“You never were. Get over it.”

“How are we following Mobray?”

“Wi-Fi radio-frequency ID,” Pater said. “Agent Riehl planted it on Mobray.”

“Minutes before he turned,” Manetti said.

“He was already affected. The disease process is probably more akin to a spectrum and Riehl had crossed his own Rubicon,” I said.

“Because you have your medical degree,” Manetti said.

“That’s how basically all disease works. You’re sick before you know it.”

“Mobray is still a mile ahead of you,” Pater said. “Police are now following you too.”

“Where the hell’s he going?” Manetti said.

“Riehl was already on his way. I know because of what happened at Dorothy Young’s place.”

“That was a righteous kill,” Manetti said.

“Not saying it wasn’t.”

“So say what you’re actually saying.”

“Dorothy reacted violently toward him because she knew he was affected. And his actions proved her right.”

“She pulled a gun on him,” Manetti said.

But not on me, exactly.

How much to share? Riehl had just turned, maybe Manetti and crew were next. Maybe they were too far along, sick but not showing yet. There was no telling. They’d been here longer than me, maybe the MPI was correlated to exposure to the local environment. I didn’t trust anybody but myself at this point.

And, crazy as it sounded, maybe Megan Turner too.

“Got anything smart to say?” Manetti asked.

“Mobray is slowing down,” Pater said. “Looks like he’s going to the Rogue Valley Mall.”

Eamon spoke. I’d almost forgotten he was there. “The police are at the warehouse now.”

“Any chance you have one of those Wi-Fi things on Megan’s person?”

“Gee, why didn’t we think of that?” Manetti said.

Pater calmly said, “We believe Agent Turner removed the device before she officially went off the reservation.”

“Why is Mobray going there? Is there anything happening at the mall?” I said.

“There’s a big sale,” Pater said.

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.

Twenty

My whole fucking head was throbbing when we stopped. Manetti was out of the van and fussing over me. It was weird, out of character for her.

“Let me see,” she said.

“It’s fine, let’s go.”

“Can you breathe through your nose?”

“I have a mouth.”

“Move your hands.”

“You have any training to do this?”

“No, it’s just my feminine side coming out.”

“About as often as Halley’s comet.”

“Shut.” She pinned my nose and yanked. “Up.”

There was a crunch and then somebody screamed. It wasn’t her.

People in the parking lot were starting to slow and watch us. Her with her gun holstered, me with my blood-soaked shirt.

She said, “You need to go to the ER.”

“I’d be a sitting duck in a hospital in this crazy-ass town. Let’s go.”

“You have to if it doesn’t stop bleeding.”

“You have to have some gauze in the back of that van.”

She found the first aid kit and jammed two strips up my nostrils. It hurt and didn’t help with the breathing issues. She handed me a couple pills, I swallowed the painkillers.

We locked eyes for a moment. Her expression wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. I’d gone up in her book, maybe only a notch but it was something.

“You did okay, Little League,” she said.

“Don’t.”

“They were righteous kills.”

“I said don’t.”

I didn’t want to be absolved. Not just yet, anyway. I wanted that leaden feeling of guilt in my stomach. It was proof I was human.

“You did what you had to. You’re alive because of it.”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe I’m still alive too because of it.”

Her face softened. The lines around the eyes disappeared. Her mouth slitted open.

I said, “Are you saying thanks?”

“I am.”

I nodded. “That goes a long way.”

“Good.”

But it didn’t go all the way. The image of me putting a bullet between that sick woman’s eyes kept replaying. I pictured her body going limp and collapsing on itself. I’d dropped others too but could even now barely put the entire flurry of gunfire together. One moment I’d been acting with thought, the next I’d switched to autopilot. The last thing I’d fully experienced before the melee was putting the barrel against her forehead and pulling the trigger. After that, it was the survival instinct override.

Jesus.

“It’ll hit you later.”

“It’s hitting me now.” I was happy, almost giddy. And I wanted to punch someone. And I wanted to invent a time machine so I could go back and not kill that woman.

Manetti put a hand on my shoulder. “Pater, where’s Mobray?”

“The mall is two levels,” Pater said. “I have bird’s eye so I can give you a direction only.”

“Eddie, are you—”

“As long as I keep moving I’m good,” I said.

Manetti nodded. She understood. Her eyes got a faraway look, just for a second, but I knew she’d done terrible things herself.

“I need a gun or a reload.”

“Eddie, not in a crowded mall.”

“Crowded with potentially sick people. Give me a fucking gun.”

“Manetti,” Pater said.

“I’m getting it.” Manetti went to the van one more time.

***

“Your nose is busted and I don’t want you shooting anybody unless you absolutely have to. If you see Mobray, let me know and I’ll come help you,” Manetti said.

“Yeah.”

“Excuse me, ma’am, is everything alright?” one of the makeup ladies behind the counter asked. She was wearing a suit and three pounds of blush.

“Federal agent.” Manetti badged her. “We’re here on official business.”

“Oh my.” Makeup Lady shrunk a few inches. “Would you like me to call security?”

“No.” Manetti held out her phone. It displayed an image of Mobray. “Have you seen this man?”

“No. Should I call the police?”

“Definitely not.”

She was puzzled by this. Her hand was under the counter but through the glass I could see her reaching for her phone.

I said, “Don’t touch that fucking phone.”

Nothing like tough talking an old woman who worked in a mall.

Makeup Lady’s hand shot back from the phone.

We left the department store and entered the mall proper. We were in an atrium with potted plants and couches. A couple rug rats were playing ninja warrior on the furniture, hopping from couch to couch. A staircase ahead rose and doubled back on itself.

Manetti said, “I know you’re not one hundred percent but stay frosty. We lose him and we’re back to the drawing board.”

“I told you before, I’m a good man in a storm.”

She had that sharp look like she was about to say something snide. But she didn’t.

“I’m starting to believe it. Don’t let us down.”

“I’m the guy that gets the job done, Manetti.”

She nodded once. I’d gone up another peg. Then she made a beeline for the staircase. Mall patrons ducked out of her way as she took the stairs two at a time.

I scanned the immediate area. There was an indoor miniature golf place and a recently closed bookstore filled with empty shelves. My head was still pounding.

“He’s in the middle of the mall,” Pater said.

“I don’t know where the middle is,” I said.

“Keep walking. And go about halfway.”

He was trying to take my mind off the killing. “I’m in no mood for humor.”

I kept walking. As people came out of stores they caught sight of me. Blood-stained, crooked gauze-filled nose, looking like all nine circles of hell rolled into one. Mothers pulled their little ones close. Seniors shuffled out of my way and rasped very indiscreetly about me.

But it wasn’t just me they were staring at. It was each other. People went out of their way to get too close to each other. The air was charged. With unease, uncertainty. On any normal day, this was a cozy place where you were likely to bump into someone you knew and the store owners only had the occasional kleptos to worry about.

I passed a dollar store and a play area for kids filled with dollar rides. Each step sent a jarring reverberation of pain shooting into my head. I needed those meds to kick in fast. I was close to useless.

“What the hell are you looking at?”

I stopped in my tracks, spun. The last hadn’t been directed at me. Some video-game junkie with ridiculous hair and a t-shirt two sizes too small had gotten loud with a muscle-bound broad who looked like she’d broken five thigh masters.

“Excuse me?” Her voice was husky, either from smokes or a vestigial pair of balls.

“I said. What the hell are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

I knew what was happening even if they didn’t.

“Pater, things are accelerating,” I said.

“We know. More police activity. The emergency lines are blowing up.”

“Get away from me, you weirdo,” the woman said.

The gamer ambled away but didn’t take his eyes off her for a good ten feet. Then he broke into as unathletic a run as I’ve ever seen, headed for the department store and presumably the exit.

I walked on. “Is Mobray still not moving?”

“He’s held pretty steady,” Eamon said.

“You have any access to this mall?” I said.

“No. You’re on your own in there.”

Fine enough by me.

I kept going, past a candle shop and several clothing chains. I could smell the food court up ahead.

“Food court in the middle of the mall?” Manetti asked.

I looked up and saw her moving close to the railing above. Her eyes were on the stores though.

“Uh…yes. He’s close,” Pater said.

I slowed and became very conscious of the gun at the small of my back. It was still lunch time, there was a lot of traffic in the food court. Our man was stationary. I figured he was eating.

That made little sense in the rational world. Anybody who’d narrowly escaped being tortured and group-murdered wouldn’t immediately drive to the mall for a slice of pizza.

But we weren’t in the rational world. Time and space still existed but this was a separate reality where men and woman attempted to kill each other for no reason.

“No way he’s just eating,” Manetti said.

“Great minds,” I said.

I thought I heard her chuckle. “So where is he? I’ve got a hipster furniture store, antiquery, and one of those early Americana places with a lot of useless, expensive knick-knacks. I don’t see our guy.”

I turned to the food court and started down the aisle. Four kids kept running up to the bakery for sample chocolate chip cookies. There was a yogurt and smoothie stand wedged between that and a burrito place. I kept my eyes on the eateries and the tables as I swept along the perimeter, pretending to look for a place to eat. I passed a Japanese/Chinese place and rounded in front of the exit. Nobody was outside except a few teens who must have skipped school just to smoke cigarettes.

I went along the other side of the court. There was an ice cream place doing a business and a fast food joint not-so-slowly killing its patrons.

The tables in the middle of the court were about half-full. In the middle of the room a group of seniors played a game of bridge and argued loudly about the rules.

I didn’t see him.

“He still here?”

“Yes. You have to be close.”

“He’s not in the food court. I’m checking the john.”

I did. He wasn’t in the men’s room. No ladies were screaming and running out of the women’s room so I figured he wasn’t in there either.

“He’s not up here. I’m coming down,” Manetti said.

I waited, watched. Stalked. There was a hum in the air, beyond the running of all the machines and refrigerators in the food court.

Manetti met me by the entrance to the food court.

“Where the hell is he?” she said. “Pater, any movement?”

“No, still in the same posi—”

A woman screamed.

Everybody in the cafeteria looked up.

I saw the screamer. Manetti did too. The woman was running blindly toward the cafeteria, looking over her shoulder.

She ran right into a trash can and spilled.

“Ma’am, what’s the matter?” Manetti helped her up.

“We need help, we need help.”

There was blood on her hands.

People were getting out of their seats and scurrying away.

I looked up and saw the woman bodybuilder from earlier, walking quickly back the way we’d both come.

“She put a knife in him—I don’t know why—”

“Who put a knife in who?”

She answered by pointing behind her. “In the store. I don’t know why.”

“What store?”

“Sports, sporting goods…” She pointed vaguely behind her. “Are you the police?” She seemed to realize I had a broken nose.

“Not exactly, listen—” I said.

“Oh my God are you like her?” She put her hands over her mouth and her knees started shaking.

“No, just listen. What did the woman look like?”

“Tall, very butch.” She puffed her chest out. “It doesn’t make sense…”

“Manetti, I know who she’s talking about, I saw her earlier and I just saw her running.”

Manetti said, “Is the man still in the store? The man who was stabbed?”

“Ye-yes…he’s bleeding, there’s blood everywhere…”

She turned into a babbling mess.

Manetti and I left her there and hurried. We had our guns drawn. People were getting out of our way.

I knew what the woman looked like. She didn’t. And we needed to get to both of them. That way, if one of us wasn’t successful the other would be a failsafe.

“I know what the woman looks like, you go after the guy.”

“For once we agree.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

She said, “Go get her.”

“Alright. I’m hoping it’s not Mobray that just got stabbed.”

“The way this thing is going.” She took off running, screaming Federal Agent! as she cut through the gaper delay in front of the sporting goods store.

I went the other way.

Lady Schwarzenegger had ten seconds on me, which is an eternity when you’re talking about a short foot race. She was probably outside the mall by now. But she was also our only suspect. Melanie and company had gotten away or were dead. If I could get this woman, Pater could lean on her and we could maybe find the Man Who Laughs, or Ken Hernando, or both if they were the same.

I sprinted. There were people bickering all around as I zipped down the corridor. Someone had knocked over one of those wooden stands where eastern Europeans tried to sell you overpriced perfume and cologne. An old man was on his ass, looking confused and holding his temple. Two little girls were screaming for their mother, who was herself yelling at one of the vendors in the middle of the mall.

I could hear Manetti talking. “Where is he? Everybody shut up! Where the hell is he?”

I was almost to the department store, still sprinting, when Ms. Universe came barreling back toward me.

She ran like a bodybuilder. Not well. But she was moving fast and she was solid mass. Instead of shooting, I went for the tackle. It was like colliding with a metal wall. I took her down but I went too.

She was dazed long enough for me to put her in an arm bar. I pulled with my arms and pushed with my legs and I could feel the tension down her limb.

“Stop!” she yelled.

“Why’d you do it?”

“I don’t know—”

Crunch.

“Owwwww! I had to!”

“Who’s Ken Hernando?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’d you get the blade?”

“It was just there…in the store.”

Crunch.

“Bullshit.”

“Okay, okay! I had it! Stop!”

“Who’s the man who laughs?”

“Who?”

“The man who laughs.” I pulled just a little harder and felt the cords in her arm strain against my pull, close to the tearing point.

“I don’t know, you hear things.”

“I don’t hear things.”

It was all my strength to keep her arm locked. I tugged a little harder, something popped in her shoulder.

“Shit!”

“The man who laughs, who is he?”

“Ken Hernando! That’s all I know!”

All this time, I heard Manetti talking through the earpiece but didn’t catch a word of what was said.

“Hey!”

A burly man came running at us from the department store. He had something in his hand. I let Ms. Universe out of the arm bar and rolled. I got my gun out and trained it on the other guy.

“Stop!”

He didn’t.

“Stop!”

He jumped.

I didn’t want to kill anybody else. I wasn’t going to shoot this guy, who might not have understood what was happening. Or who did understand but was sick in the head.

I rolled out of his way, he hit the floor hard, and I got to my feet just in time for Ms. Universe to take a swing at me.

I couldn’t get out of the way so I brought my arm up. She got me in the funny bone and my arm went numb. She moved in with a flying knee, a move she could only have learned in a women’s self-defense class. I saw it coming and angled myself out of the way.

The other guy was getting up and more people were getting curious. There had to be more crazies waiting in the wings here, ready to pounce.

I was out of options.

Ms. Universe grappled with me and damn she was strong.

But I still had the gun.

She tried to get me in a headlock. I got a close-up shot of the veins popping out of her arms.

Krav maga teaches you a lot of things. It had taught me how to defend against a gun if I wasn’t armed. But it hadn’t taught me how to use a gun, and when. I had no training for this, nothing to guide me except instinct.

I shot her in the meaty part of her thigh away from where I knew the femoral artery to be. Blood sprayed and she fell, screaming.

I brought the gun to bear on the other guy. I was amazed at how steady my hands were. No tremors. The adrenaline wasn’t shaking me up. It was focusing me. And then the realization: under the right set of circumstances, I could kill. Even though we were talking self-preservation, it was a sobering thought.

I tasted bile in the back of my throat.

But my hands didn’t shake.

The man’s eyes were slits. I saw what he was holding.

A switchblade.

“You’re one of them,” he said.

Some strange voice came out of me. “Drop the fucking knife or I’ll shoot you.”

Manetti spoke through the comm link. “Eddie, you okay?”

She’d heard the shot. Everybody must have heard the shot. It hadn’t seemed loud to me, though.

“I’m good,” I said. “Just got some company.”

The man brought the knife up.

“Don’t.”

Slowly, he brought the knife back. Like he was going to throw it.

He was testing me. I don’t like tests.

“Last chance, then I pull the trigger and kill you dead.”

He was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt. He was around my age. He wore a wedding ring. He would be bald soon, maybe in a couple years. If he didn’t die before then.

His hands were remarkably steady too, as were his eyes. They lasered in on me like they could see nothing else.

He had the knife almost behind his head, his body coiled, his arm tensed and ready.

We stood like that, ten feet apart.

In the earpiece, I heard Manetti.

“Mobray, it’s okay…we just want to help Megan…help us, help her…”

My nose was pouring blood again. Ms. Universe was dragging herself across the ground. There was a lot of blood around her.

“Put it down,” I said.

The guy holding the knife flinched a microsecond before the throw.

I put a bullet in him, center mass. The gunshot echoed down the corridor. The knife skittered across the floor. He slumped to his knees and stared dumbly at the hole in his chest leaking blood.

The crowd frenzied. They ran in different directions, yelling, bumping into each other. The screams echoed around us. But five seconds later the space had cleared.

The man was still on his knees, his hands clutching his chest.

“Eddie, you okay?” Manetti said.

Again that alien voice spoke. “Yes. Better get over here when you’re done with Mobray.”

She lowered her voice. “I’m coming now. He’s seen better days.”

“Watch your ass,” I said. “These people are starting to come out of the woodwork.”

Ms. Universe tried to get to her feet and fell in a heap, screaming.

“Mobray’s bleeding out,” Manetti said.

“What the hell was he doing in there?” I kept the gun roving back and forth from the man to Ms. Universe. The guy wasn’t really moving anymore. He sat slumped, head down like he’d fallen asleep.

“Looking for rollerblades.”

I couldn’t tell if she was kidding.

“I’m not kidding. EMT is taking him out now.”

“He wouldn’t tell you where Megan is,” I said.

“No. He told me she was safer if we didn’t find her.”

“Pretty much what she said to me.” The picture of this mess was becoming clearer in my mind.

Ms. Universe had given up on screaming. It wasn’t getting her anywhere. Now she was moaning, the knee of the shot leg hiked up to her stomach. She was muttering for help. The cords in her neck pushed against her skin as she gritted her teeth.

I went over to her.

“Mobray. Did you know him?”

“Who?”

“The poor son of a bitch you just gutted. Did you know him?”

She frowned. “Why would I know him?”

“Yeah, why would you?” I knelt so I was closer but kept out of limb’s reach. I still had my gun in my hand and I wasn’t worried about shooting her other leg.

Manetti was coming down the hall, a couple rent-a-cops in tow trying to keep up.

“You weren’t looking for him?”

Ms. Universe was still confused by my questions. “No.”

“Then why?”

“What do you mean?”

Manetti reached us. She immediately started barking orders at the brave gawkers crowding us, pushing them back, widening the circle.

“Why did you stab him?”

She picked her head up an inch off the ground. “I think you know.”

“Why would I know?”

The rent-a-cops had their pieces out and were shouting questions at me. Manetti set herself up between them and me and ran interference.

I poked Ms. Universe’s leg with the gun. She screamed.

“Why’d you come back this way? Why didn’t you just leave the mall?”

“There were more of them in there. They knew.”

“You two aren’t going anywhere,” Rent-A-Cop A was saying. Rent-A-Cop B was standing there, uncertain how much authority he actually possessed.

“Actually, we’re leaving now,” Manetti said.

Twenty-One

I laid down on the couch in the Fed’s outer room. Pater brought me some water and more painkillers. My nose felt like it had exploded. I could have shut my eyes and napped for a year.

Except I kept thinking about the woman, and now the man, that I’d killed.

I didn’t even know her name. Somehow that made it worse. One second, she was alive. The next, dead. Because I’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

It helped a little that she would have killed me. But only a little. Now Current Eddie was second-guessing Earlier Eddie, wondering if that guy had made a mistake, acted too rashly. I played the scene out in my mind a thousand-million times, thinking about what I could have done differently.

It was after 3:00. Damned clock was still ticking and we weren’t any closer to Megan Turner or Ken Hernando and things were getting worse by the minute.

Pater continued to monitor the police activity. The emergency lines were ringing off the hook. Local LE was already stretched too thin making all the house calls.

Manetti had her feet up on Pater’s desk. She was chewing on an energy bar. “You should eat something.”

“Not hungry,” I said.

“Eat before you’re hungry, drink before you’re thirsty, sleep when you can.”

“Your motto?”

“Something every agent, soldier, or cop is taught their first day on the job.” She tossed me an energy bar. “You don’t know when your next meal is coming, so eat when you can.”

I opened the wrapper. The bar was a diluted brown, almost gray. I forced it down. It almost came back up.

Pater looked perfectly calm. Unflappable. He went to the desk and powered on a projector. It was synced to a laptop in front of Manetti. Pater brought it out of hibernation.

“Time for a slide show,” he said.

“What’s this?”

“Basic reproductive rate.” Pater offered a grim smile. “Eamon, I’m sharing my laptop.”

“I’ve seen it already.” His voice was small and petulant. It reminded me of the boy I’d once known.

“Chin up in there, Eamon. It’s not like you’re in danger inside your cage,” I said.

“Riehl is a good guy. He was my friend.”

“I wouldn’t worry about him. If anybody can survive this…”

“Eddie’s right.” Manetti took her feet off the desk. “Riehl will come out the other side.”

“If we don’t have to kill him,” I added.

“Nobody’s killing Riehl,” Manetti said.

The image from the projector flashed on the wall. I saw a pretty basic spreadsheet filled with numbers and the letters C, P, D, and Ro.

Pater jumped in. “Agent Manetti, your loyalty is commendable. But Eddie has a point. We might have no choice but to kill Agent Riehl. If necessary, can you pull the trigger?”

“You know I’ll do anything to complete the mission and protect taxpayers. But let me make this clear to all in the room: killing Riehl is a last resort option. Anybody that jumps the gun will have to answer to me.”

She addressed the room but everybody knew she was talking to me.

I said, “Take it easy. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I’d have to kill anybody for the rest of my life. I’ve already put two very sick people down in the last four hours. It was necessary, I had to do it, but it’s sitting worse than that energy bar. I’m not looking to repeat the experience of killing anyone for the rest of my days.”

Even as I said it I had that feeling there’d be more bloodshed before day’s end. Manetti seemed to accept my explanation, though.

Pater said, “New information has come to light. The predictive model has changed accordingly.”

“What does that mean?” Manetti said.

“It means what we thought was our worst case scenario is actually closer to our best case scenario.”

Everyone went quiet.

Pater motioned to the spreadsheet projected on the wall. “Ro stands for the basic reproductive rate. It’s calculated by multiplying these variables together. C stands for the number of contacts the infectious person makes per day, P stands for the probability of transmission per contact with the infectious person, and D stands for the duration the infected person is contagious to others.”

I had questions but I let him keep going.

“Multiply these variables and you get Ro. Another way to look at Ro is the number of expected secondary transmissions from a single case of disease.” He walked to the wall and pointed to the first row. “With smallpox, Ro is usually between 6 and 7. That means one contagious person can be expected to infect 6 to 7 people on average.”

“But the data we have on MPI isn’t solid,” Eamon said, almost like he was prompting Pater.

“That’s right. We don’t understand the disease process or if it follows the basic pattern of infection. So we built in worst case assumptions and extrapolated Ro for several different models against the local population. We arrived at a total number of infected, or affected, of around eight hundred people.”

“That’s all?” I said.

“Eight hundred is a small army,” Manetti said.

“Fair enough. So why don’t you think that’s accurate now?” I asked.

“With Ro, we follow the disease from person to person.”

“And here you don’t know if that’s the case.”

“Correct. MPI could spread from person to person, or environment to person, or both.”

“My guess is both,” I said.

“And even if it’s not, even if it’s solely transmitted from the environment to person, we don’t have a model for that,” Manetti said.

“Toxic spills help a little, some pollutant in the water or food or air…but nothing is on a par with MPI. Except MPI,” Pater said.

“Worst case?” I said.

“Triple it. Call it twenty-five hundred.”

“Any modeling that predicts how many affected will fall into each group?”

Pater shook his head.

***

Eamon was reading at his desk. Of course the book was The Count of Monte Cristo.

“Are you trying to be a walking cliche?” I said.

He nodded at me absently and put the book down.

I stopped short of the glass partition and folded my arms. “So you and Riehl were buddy-buddy, huh?”

“That man was as close to me as anybody could be.”

“Which is to say not a lot.”

Eamon’s face was devoid of anything human, relatable. I half-expected there to be a lizard hiding under his skin.

“How many friends do you have, Eddie?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms too. “How many?”

“Only a few, but I’d trust them with my life.”

“Yes? And how often do you see them? How often do you and the boys go out for drinks?”

Truth was, never. My closest friend, Stan, I hadn’t actually seen in years. We called each other every now and then. Most of the time I called him when I needed help on a case. I was a loner that filled his days with work, exercise, more work, and reading. The only place I met new people was at the gym.

“You know Riehl well?” I said.

“I know this team well.”

“Riehl knows where we are. Will he come after us?”

Eamon thought about it. “No.”

“That’s what I think, but I want to hear why you think that.”

“He is with Melanie’s people. Though they might have us outnumbered, they do not use guns. We do. It’d be like target practice if they tried to get in here. Not to mention, Pater has a lot of tech here. Tech you haven’t even seen. We could take them down if we wanted, easily.”

“Twenty-five hundred of them?”

“Not that many. But enough to dissuade the rest.”

I shook my head. “They’ll keep coming. Witherspoon kept coming. The man in the mall kept coming.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I’m not saying he’s coming, I don’t think he is.”

“Why not?”

“Because they don’t need to. We don’t know anything they don’t. They’re probably closer to Megan than we are, they are a network of people working together. Coming here is walking into a gunfight for no reason. They won’t come here.”

“They’re not acting rationally though.”

“Some of them are.” I wondered why I was talking it out with Eamon Moriarty of all people. “Melanie is. Some of them can control themselves, pretend to be normal. Maybe they can guide the others.”

“Why are you talking to me?”

I sat in the chair. We studied each other through the glass partition.

“I want you to tell me something.”

He watched me with curious eyes.

“What’s it like, going around every day knowing you’re a murderer?” I asked.

He actually smiled. “You are asking because that’s how you see yourself now.”

“Wrong, dipshit. I’m no murderer. I acted in self-defense. All the same, it’s burning me. So I’m wondering, if I feel this bad and I’m innocent, how must you feel when you’re guilty as hell?”

“I know you don’t want to hear this, Eddie, but in a way, I’m innocent as well.”

“Because you were a kid when you killed my brother?”

“Because I didn’t understand right from wrong. My age had nothing to do with it. Because all my life I’d been mistreated by my family and I wrongly believed my new family would do the same. Because I was only trying to get away when you and your brother came into the house. Because a lot of reasons.”

“None of them are good enough for me.”

“I know.”

“Don’t forget it.”

“Eddie, as mad as you are, you don’t scare me.”

“Then you are still crazy.”

“Don’t mistake me. I’m not afraid of you because I don’t think you’d actually kill me if you had the chance. You’re a good person.”

Not more than four hours ago, I’d learned that I could kill. I’d feel bad about it after, but when it came to pulling the trigger, I could do it if I felt justified. Maybe all we need are the wrong circumstances, or someone to push us into that dark place where Eamon had lived most of his childhood.

I said, “Do you still think about them? Your family?”

He nodded slowly. “I wonder what they’d be like if they were still alive. But I don’t miss them.”

“What about your adoptive family?”

“I miss Chefaun. She was a good person. Maybe if I’d just had a little more time with her…”

“You ever talk to her?”

He shook his head. “She came to see me a few times, early on. But after awhile that stopped.”

“She couldn’t deal with you anymore.”

“Too much heartache.” Eamon looked away. “She and Sean split not long after Stephen died.”

“You mean after you killed him.”

“Yes. That.” He was still looking away. “Then Sean self-destructed.”

“I know.”

“Did he try to have you killed? When you were in prison?”

I nodded. “Didn’t work out so well for the other guy.”

“Or Sean.”

“He blamed me for his son’s death, just as much as he blamed you.”

“He was a time bomb.” Eamon finally looked at me again. “If it wasn’t his son’s death something else would have set him off eventually. The man had a terrible temper.”

“Anger is a brief madness.”

Eamon shook his head. “Not in his case.”

I stood. “You’re wrong. He was an asshole but his son’s death sent him over the edge. You just need to believe that anything could have done that to Sean so you can sleep at night.”

I headed for the door, tired of all this reminiscing.

***

“What do we know?” Pater said.

Manetti was at the desk again. I went back to the couch and laid down. The headache was still there, most of the pain was in my nose again. It only hurt when I breathed.

“Two scenarios. There’s one MPI causing a group of people to react in very different ways. Or there are two simultaneous MPIs causing two very different reactions.” I looked over at Pater. “Any closer to finding the trigger?”

He shook his head and paced the room. “Either way, both reactions are violent.”

“In different ways and in different degrees,” I said.

Manetti nodded. I could tell this was no revelation to her. She’d been thinking the same thing. “Some people like knives, some like guns. And the two kinds don’t like each other very much.”

“The people who like guns are the ones who faint,” I said. “I don’t think the others faint.”

We sat there and ruminated. Though the door was closed, I could feel Eamon’s presence in the other room. He was listening because the comms were still functioning. But he hadn’t said a word.

“Megan’s group, the gun group, they’re hiding.” Pater kept pacing. “The other group, Melanie’s group, they’re not hiding.”

“So who are the good guys?” Manetti said.

“There might not be any,” Pater said.

I’d been holding back but I saw no point now. Things were moving too fast. We needed to pool our knowledge or we weren’t getting the job done and Megan and everybody else might die.

“Megan’s group is better than the other.”

“Dorothy Young tried to kill Riehl,” Manetti said.

“Because he was one of the knifers, and she knew it somehow. Maybe they can pick each other out of the crowd, that’s why Megan’s group has to hide. More importantly Dorothy didn’t try to kill me.”

“How can you say that?” Manetti stood and stretched.

“Dorothy wasn’t even interested in me. Until I got behind the picnic table and grabbed a pair of shears to defend myself. She was struck by that. She said she thought I was okay—meaning, she didn’t think I’d be the kind who liked blades. After that, she was trying to decide if she had to kill me or not.”

“Not exactly self-defense,” Manetti said.

“Not exactly. More like a preemptive strike. But I have more proof, in the form of Megan and her younger sister, as well as Jamie Witherspoon.”

Pater folded his arms. “How do you mean?”

“Megan could have killed me, but she didn’t. She didn’t see me as a threat. They incapacitated me and left. What that tells me is Megan’s kind only kills the other group when the other group is a threat.”

I let them think about that for a second, then added:

“The other group doesn’t operate like that. Melanie and her crew were ready to gut me. Jamie Witherspoon came after me even though it was obvious I was on a fishing expedition with my questions.”

Pater and Manetti exchanged a look.

I said, “It’s all a matter of degree. That’s why I’m saying Megan’s group is better than Melanie’s. They don’t want to kill anybody who’s not affected.”

“But they will if they have to,” Pater said. “We have to assume that.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

Manetti sat on the edge of the desk. For once, she looked tired. “The disease process affects everybody differently too. Melanie and her group are able to control their impulses, work behind the scenes in concert. Ms. Universe, on the other hand, just couldn’t help sticking a knife in Mobray even though she’d never met him before.”

Pater nodded. “I think Melanie and her friends are farther along in the disease process. The woman Eddie shot in the leg hadn’t grown accustomed to her impulses yet and couldn’t control them.”

“Either way, the behavior falls along a continuum.” I closed my eyes. “Megan and her people are hiding to protect themselves.”

“Continuum…meaning any one of us could already be sick and just not know it yet,” Manetti said.

“You people keep telling me it comes down to a choice. Either we can run or we can push on.”

“It’s a good theory, Eddie.” Pater rubbed his chin. “One group is trying to find and kill the other. But it’s possible they’re both just scheming. Are you willing to bet your life on your theory?”

“I’m hoping I don’t have to.”

“We know Melanie’s group is looking for Megan’s,” Manetti said. “But we don’t know if the reverse is true.”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” I said. “I think Megan and her people just want to disappear till this thing blows over.”

“Will it?” Manetti asked Pater.

“I’m ninety-nine percent certain it will. All MPIs end, just like any other disease. As to when, though, I can only guess. If the cluster murders we’ve seen here over the past several years are symptoms of the same phenomena, then this will be over soon, a week at most, maybe a couple days.”

“How close was Chester Leonard when you scared him away?” I said. “He must have been pretty close to blowing your operation. Where was she going then? Where was she hiding?”

“First places we looked,” Manetti said. “And he wasn’t close. We didn’t have to scare him away.”

“What?”

Manetti cocked her head. “You said we scared him away. We didn’t. We didn’t even talk to him.”

That was bothering me. All along I’d been thinking that Leonard had been in danger of blowing Megan’s undercover operation and that Pater and company had told him to take a hike, this was federal business. But they hadn’t.

Leonard had just stopped looking for her.

Which didn’t make any sense.

Morgan Turner had hired Leonard to find his daughter. Morgan wouldn’t have taken no for an answer after such a short search—

I stood. The wheels were turning but I didn’t have whatever was stirring my brain up yet.

I said, “Start from the beginning. Your team came out here. The plan was for Megan to pretend like she was home, taking time off from her important job in D.C. She was looking for affecteds, though. What is she doing in that time?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Pater said. “She’s frequenting her usual places and looking for signs.”

“What makes her start fainting? Was that an act or was it real the entire time?”

“We don’t know. But at some point it became real. Then one day she stopped checking in.”

“Then Chester Leonard is hired and starts looking for her.”

“Right.” Pater watched me.

“And he couldn’t find her so he just…” I kept running into a roadblock with that fact. “She pulls a Houdini, then comes back later for her youngest sister…wait, how are Megan and her people communicating?”

Nobody said anything. They could tell I was on a roll and didn’t want to stop me.

I asked the room, “Megan’s people. How do they find each other, how does she bring them to safety?”

Pater shook his head. “We don’t know.”

“You scrubbed her laptop. Did you get into her email?”

“We did. We found nothing, not even any correspondence that could have been coded. There was nothing out of the ordinary. She even sent her typical blank email to her father. She always sent him one when—”

I stopped pacing. “When she was about to go away for a job she couldn’t discuss.”

Pater’s eyes went wide.

Manetti sat forward in her chair. “What?”

“That’s not what Morgan told me,” I said.

“Interesting,” Pater said.

I had an idea. “We might be able to stop this whole thing from going down.”

Twenty-Two

“We’re not separating at this point,” Patterson said. “Everyone stays together.”

I looked past Patterson to Eamon’s door. “With things about to go downhill, you wanna let him out?”

“We need all hands on deck,” Patterson said.

“I agree,” Manetti said. “You’re always telling me to put my personal feelings aside. This is the right call, Eddie.”

“Ignoring that the kid knifed my brother, we can’t play any wild cards now.”

“Patterson played you.”

“Except I’m no wild card. And things weren’t as dire twenty-four hours ago.”

“You need to give Eamon a chance, Eddie. He can rise and be a good man,” Patterson said. “It will help you get past this.”

I didn’t want to get past this. I wanted to settle my account with my brother’s murderer. I’d lived two lifetimes since Tim’s passing, the first as a convict, the second as an ex-addict trying to start a career and make a name for himself. But never had Eamon strayed far from my thoughts.

“Where’s your other agent?” I said. “If we’re all going to be together I want to meet them right now, not later.”

“There is no one else,” Pater said. “I lied.”

“Why?”

“To keep you on your toes.”

I watched him for a good five seconds. There was no lie hiding on his face. Manetti met my gaze with no problem.

“Eddie,” Eamon said through the earpiece. “I won’t let you down.”

“Don’t worry about letting me down. Because I’m not and will never be in your corner. Think about your team, these people that have given you a second chance.”

I let that sink in before adding, “I’ll be looking for a reason, Eamon. Any reason. Give me one and I’ll shoot first and not bother to ask questions later. Nobody’s going to miss you.”

***

It was 5:00, just a little bit of day left and the clouds were heavy and the sky dark. The closeness in the air anticipating a violent thunderstorm.

I called Stan from the road.

“Eddie, how goes it?”

It was 8:00 back home. I wondered if he and Moira had put the baby down for the night. If she was fussing. If they’d stay up late now that their child was down for the night and could enjoy just being a couple for a few quiet hours and not worry about being parents. Or if they’d go straight to bed, exhausted from the day’s work.

Our lives couldn’t have been any different.

“Busy. What’s up with you?”

He lowered his voice. “I’d hate to bother you with my shit right now.”

“Go ahead.” It’d be nice to hear about someone else’s problems.

“It’s Moira’s brother again. This time he’s joined some cult. Some occult group. He hasn’t been in touch with anyone for a week. Fucking guy…”

Eddie hadn’t known Moira’s brother. The kid was a few years younger so they’d never had occasion growing up to be around each other.

Stan was still talking. “…says he doesn’t want any part of the family. It’s a paranormal cult, communing with the dead. You believe that?”

I wanted to keep making small-talk, but all of a sudden I just couldn’t. This desperate situation was catching up to me and I needed to decompress with somebody I trusted.

“Stan.” I didn’t know how to say it. Words were always an approximation. “Things are moving fast out here.”

“Too fast for you?”

The corvette was eating up road. Manetti, Pater, and Eamon were behind me in the van. The more I thought about it, the more I liked Eamon being out of his cage. I could keep an eye on him. We had just a few minutes till we reached Turner’s estate.

“No easy way to say this so I’ll just say it. We’re stretched too thin, I’m in over my head, and people are dying.”

“Whoa, Eddie. Slow the hell down,” Stan said. “Who’s we? Who’s dying?”

Did I have enough time to tell him? And if I did, would it make sense?

“The locals out here are suffering from mass psychogenic illness. They have a compulsion to kill each other. We’re caught dead in the middle of it.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t even know what that means.”

“There’s no time to explain.”

“You took the time to call. Explain.”

“M-P-I, look it up. These people out here have it, and they’re killing each other. There is no making any sense of it.”

“Eddie. Just leave.”

A bigger part of me than I cared to admit wanted him to say that. “That’s not the answer.”

“The hell it isn’t. You don’t owe those people anything. It’s highway time.”

“I have to stay.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you but it sounds crazy. Hokey. Maybe even too noble.”

“You fell in love.”

“No. But there is a woman.”

“Break it down for me.”

“There’s a mess out here and nobody else can clean it up. Maybe I can’t either. But I’ve got a shot. Maybe I can save some lives. And the woman I’m looking for, she’s worth it. She’s worth it, Stan.”

“Your client’s daughter?”

“Megan. She’s a millionaire’s kid, she’d never have to worry about working a day in her life. Her children’s children are taken care of. But she went to school and applied herself and then signed up for dangerous, behind-the-scenes work for the government. She could have spent the rest of her days sipping margaritas out by the infinity pool but instead she chose to put her life on the line for people who’d probably never even know it. While I was busy smoking up and getting arrested and serving time. And now she’s sick, now she’s in trouble, now she needs help. And maybe I can help her.”

“Sounds like it’s more about you than it is her.”

“Maybe it is. That doesn’t change it for me. Maybe that’s all the more reason.”

“If it’s redemption you’re looking for, you already have it. Think of all the people you’ve helped of late.”

“I’m staying.”

Stan sighed. “M-P-what?”

“Mass psychogenic illness. It affects a population—”

“Maybe it’s affecting you too.”

I’d thought about that. Was that why I wanted to stay? Because I couldn’t leave?

How would I know if I was affected? How did they know? I already had an aversion to knives ever since Eamon had put one in Tim and me. That hadn’t gone away, which meant at least I wasn’t part of Melanie’s group. But did that mean I was sick like Megan’s people?

Stan said, “If it’s touched you, you’re not thinking straight.”

“It’s possible.” The madman doesn’t know he’s lost it until well after he’s lost it. “But there’s nobody else. If I go I leave behind two good people to clean up the mess. I’ll feel a coward.”

“Feelings can get you killed. You need to shut them off and think with your head.”

“I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry, Stan. For all those years when I was a shit friend, and for missing your wedding and for not meeting your daughter yet.” My voice was thick. “For how bad I was to Moira. Just in case.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“I mean it.”

“All that shit’s water under the bridge,” he said.

“It’s not to me.” I looked in the rearview, wondering how much I should tell him. “I found Eamon too. He’s with me now.”

“What? Eamon Moriarty? How?”

“It’s too long a story, but I want you to know he’s out. He’s working with this team of federal agents. Just…I wanted you to be aware.”

“He won’t come after me or Moira.”

“I know.” I wasn’t so sure of that. Anything was possible with that kid. We were getting close to Turner’s place. One more bend in the road then I’d see it, crested on the hill.

“Stan, I gotta go.”

“Eddie.”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to meet my daughter. Promise me that happens.”

“When this is over, I’ll come out.”

Didn’t hurt to make the promise. If I lived I’d keep it. If I died, I’d never know Stan was mad at me.

***

Turner’s door was ajar. We were past the point of knocking. I pushed it open and went in. I had my gun in my pocket, safety off, fully loaded. I had my micro vest on underneath a fresh t-shirt Pater had given me. I’d ungauzed and regauzed my nose but it looked like hell. My right eye was turning black.

“Morgan?”

The lights were on. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Nobody was in the foyer. I hadn’t seen Melanie’s car in the garage but that meant nothing. She might have left it wherever and was now slumming it in the Saab. I had to assume she was here.

And that Strongbow was here. And that he too was affected.

The wrong way.

I crept through the foyer, checked the study and found nobody. I went through the downstairs, every few moments whispering my position so Manetti and company knew where I was in the house.

I found two place settings of chicken and peas in the dining room. The food was half-eaten and lukewarm. The knives were still on the table. No drinks though. They must have taken them somewhere.

If I was a rich millionaire and wanted to enjoy a glass of fine wine, I’d set up shop by one of my pools.

I tracked my way to the natatorium. The pool lights were on but that was it. The room opened to the backyard. In the distance the sky sparked with lightning. Thunder came about five seconds later.

“Storm’s finally coming,” Turner said.

He was lounging in a reclining deck chair. He wore a suit and white dress shirt with no tie. A glass of wine sat on the end table next to him. He was shoeless and had one ankle crossed over the other.

“I’d say it’s been here awhile.”

“It doesn’t storm here much,” he said. “There’s a—”

“Rain shadow. I know.”

I watched him. He watched me. We were separated by about twenty feet of space. I came into the pool room and closed the door behind me.

I was acutely aware of the blade sitting next to his glass of wine. It looked like a hunting knife.

“Interesting meteorological phenomenon,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s right. A rain shadow. Strongbow told me all about that.” Outside the sky grew darker. Thunder continued to rattle and hum. Lightning flashed along the horizon. “Speaking of which, where is Strongbow?”

He put his hands behind his head. Not a care in the world.

He said, “Have you seen Melanie? She never came home from work.”

“You know I have.”

He frowned but it was all an act. “It’s not uncommon for her to go out after work. She exercises a lot, has a group of runner friends, and she’s…let’s just say she has a lot of friends. The social butterfly out of my three daughters. She loves shopping as well. That girl takes after her mother. Always bringing some new outfit home.”

“About her mother. How did she die?”

He looked away from me. My eyes followed his but all I saw was the pool extending into the backyard and the sheltering sky. No Strongbow.

“She died in a terrible accident.”

“Car wreck? Or something more terrible?”

He went quiet.

“Did you kill her?”

He said nothing.

I let him see my gun but I didn’t point it at him. “Mr. Turner. Morgan. You’re not well.”

“I feel great.” His eyes roved back toward me and they twinkled with mischief. “You have no idea.”

“You don’t look well. You look ten years older than you are. So did Chester Leonard when I met him. So does Melanie.” So did Riehl but I didn’t mention him. Always good to have something in your back pocket, like your alliance with a deep cover team of highly-skilled federal agents.

“Some people don’t age well.”

“You’re my client, Morgan. You put your trust in me. It goes beyond money. It means I have a duty to protect you. That includes from yourself.”

He said nothing.

“You’re not well. You need help. You need my help. You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”

He swung his feet off the recliner and put them flush on the ground so he was sitting sideways in the deck chair. He ran his fingers along the blade.

I said, “Leave it.”

He rested his palm on the handle.

I still had my gun out. Each heartbeat sent a fresh sliver of pain through my nose.

Morgan put the back of his head on the rest. “Have you found my daughter yet? It is why I’m paying you handsomely, after all.”

“I’m glad to say I have no idea where she is.”

“I will find her. If you’re not up to the task I’ll hire someone else.”

“I’m not looking for her anymore.”

“You don’t want to be paid?”

“I’m looking for other people now.”

“Why would you look for other people?”

“You know who they are.”

“You’re not making any sense, Eddie.”

“You’ve been a busy man. Local politics, all these meetings.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why would a man armed to the teeth attend an anti-gun rally?”

He said nothing.

“Because you were looking for a certain kind of person, one who doesn’t like guns.”

“That’s who usually attends those rallies.”

This next thing I wasn’t sure of but I put it out there anyway. “You get the giggles a lot from what I hear.”

“I have what is known as pseudobulbar affect. It causes me to—”

“Laugh a lot.”

“Right. At the strangest times.” My mind jumped back in time a few hours. Melanie had laughed a lot also, as she got ready to disembowel Mobray.

I said, “You’re not laughing now.”

“I’ve learned how to control it over the years.”

He sat so still in the relative darkness of the pool room, his face lit up from underneath by the pool lights. I’d been paying so much attention to him I hadn’t seen what was on the seat next to him. Megan’s roller skates box.

“Call it off,” I said.

“Call what off?”

“Your search for Megan. And for the others with her.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Eddie.”

“You hired me to find her. The real you, the healthy you wouldn’t want me to find her right now. So I’m not going to. And I’m not going to let you or anybody working with you find her.”

“How do you propose to stop me?” He snatched the blade quickly and laid back down on the deck chair.

I pointed the gun at him. “I’ll shoot you. I’ll take you in. Without you, your people won’t know what to do with themselves.”

“Eddie, I’ve been sick for a long time. Off and on. It doesn’t get any easier as time passes, but after awhile you become accustomed to the sickness. You can control yourself in ways you wouldn’t have thought possible during your first bout. Eventually you can pretend like you don’t have it. There are others like me out there.”

“They’ll listen to you. Call it off.”

He held the blade up and poked one finger with the tip of the knife. “You do not understand. There is no command structure. My orders won’t have any force. They’re compelled. We can only herd them so much. After a while, the need overwhelms us.”

“We won’t know until we try, will we? Call it off now.”

“No.”

“I know everything, Turner. I know why you brought me out here. It wasn’t because Megan had read a book about me and followed me online. That was just a smokescreen. You brought me out here because Chester Leonard had already started to turn and Megan’s people could see him coming a mile away. You brought me out here because the sickness is linked to a person’s length of exposure to this area, so you figured I’d have less chance of turning either way and not being able to help you. Megan would trust me if I came to help because I wouldn’t be one of you.”

He was smiling and crying at the same time. “You won’t believe this, but part of me is actually glad you haven’t found her.”

“Call it off.”

He flipped the knife from one hand to the other. His dexterity was impressive. “We’ll find them. It is only a matter of time. They never leave. They can’t.”

“Drop the knife.”

He grabbed the knife by the blade, holding it in the perfect throwing position.

“Drop the knife or I fucking shoot you.”

He laughed. “You have it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Everything I need to have figured out.”

“Eddie.”

Manetti appeared on the pool patio in the backyard and padded quickly inside. “I don’t see Strongbow anywhere.”

“Where’s the rest of the team?” I said so Turner knew we weren’t alone.

“Team?” Turner said.

Manetti formed a two-point cover on Turner. “Out and about.”

Turner said, “You must be Agnes Manetti. It is an honor…”

I didn’t know what was weirder. Manetti’s first name or Turner’s reaction.

Turner stopped talking and buried his face. The knife fell into his lap. He made some weird, choked noises and his body shook.

Manetti said, “Take your hands away from your face. Eddie, keep an eye on the perimeter.”

I got why. Turner’s strange reaction might have been a diversion. I swept the patio and backyard but saw nothing, nobody. But Strongbow was out there. He had to be. When I looked back, Turner was just taking his hands away from his face.

He was laughing so hard he couldn’t open his eyes.

“Ken Hernando, nice to meet you,” I said.

Turner kept laughing his ass off.

“You’re the man who laughs,” Manetti said.

“That’s right…but I don’t laugh all…the time…”

“Your network.” I put my gun back on Turner. “We want the names.”

“You are…fucked…you have no…idea…”

I looked at Manetti. “I can’t shoot my client. But maybe you can put the fear of God in him.”

“Pater, I need immediate evac with an extra package,” Manetti said.

“Start moving him in sixty seconds,” Patterson said through the earpiece.

“Names,” I said to Turner.

“You’ll get them when…you…you interrogate me.”

“No time like the present.”

“You think…there’s a list?”

“List, no list, I don’t give a shit and you know who they are. Start talking.”

“We don’t need…to remember…we know who we are and…who they are.”

Turner’s face had gone from red to purple and he could barely breathe. His pulse throbbed in his neck. He grabbed the knife out of his lap.

Manetti said, “Put the blade down or I’ll shoot you.”

“No, you won’t,” Turner said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Strongbow coming at us from the backyard.

Twenty-Three

Manetti did too.

We both turned our guns on Strongbow, leaving Turner unguarded. Before I realized the mistake, Turner’s knife was flying toward us.

Manetti squeezed off a shot but I lunged into her so the knife would miss. The blade zipped past us harmlessly but Manetti’s bullet missed Strongbow. We landed in a heap at the foot of the pool.

Strongbow was alongside the pool and closing fast. I’d watched him hit the target earlier with his throwing knives from a good thirty feet. He was well inside his kill zone.

From the ground I fired. Strongbow recoiled and went down.

I got to my feet in time to stop Turner’s charge. He had another knife. He was within arm’s length so I didn’t have time to bring the gun around. I grabbed his wrist. He grabbed mine. His blade stopped six inches short of my neck. He kept my gun pointed away from him.

We danced like that as Manetti scrambled to her feet. I heard her gun firing but had no sense of what Strongbow was doing.

My gun was pointed away from Turner’s head, inches from his ear.

He tried to force the knife. I held his wrist tight.

He was still laughing but not as hard. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

“You’re right.”

I pulled the trigger.

The blast of the gun inches from his ear rang his bell. I let go of my gun, which confused him, and I took advantage. I came inside his reach and pivoted and flipped him over my back. He landed with a smack against the concrete of the patio.

He still had the knife.

I still had his arm.

I twisted and I felt something pop in his shoulder. Then he was screaming. I got the knife away from him.

“Eddie!”

Strongbow was grappling with Manetti. She had a knife and he was pressed against her. One side of his torso was blood-soaked. I must have winged him.

I broke into a dead run and put everything I had into my kick. I connected with Strongbow’s bad side. He grunted from the pain and went down on one knee. I kicked him again. He fell but hung onto Manetti.

She brought a knee up and jawed him. His head snapped back and his eyes went backwards. He slumped to the ground.

“Get away from him!”

Turner had my gun. He had a loose grip on it like he was holding a dirty diaper. His hands were trembling. It was everything he could do to hold the gun. The barrel wavered. He couldn’t keep it on me. He didn’t even try to put it on Manetti.

“You’re not going to shoot me.” I wasn’t so sure. I’d gambled by dropping my gun. Maybe I’d pay for it.

“Get…” He took his eyes off me and looked at Manetti for one second and broke into hysterics again. “…away from him.”

Behind us Strongbow was moaning. Manetti and I spaced ourselves so Turner couldn’t hit us both easily. I decided to test him.

I kicked Strongbow in his bad side.

“D-d-don’t!”

I kicked Strongbow again.

The gun went off. It surprised Turner more than us. The bullet hit the floor six feet shy of me. Turner shook even worse.

I walked right up to him and ripped the gun out of his hands. He was still laughing.

“Now tell us who your people are, and what they’re doing,” I said.

He couldn’t talk. He was crying he was laughing so hard.

“Eddie, he’s got a knife!”

The voice wasn’t Manetti’s. It was coming from the house. Eamon had opened the door to the pool room and was charging forward. Turner’s hand had disappeared behind his back.

Turner lunged. I reacted.

Badly.

DANCE OF THE MISSING

Twenty-Four

Turner was on the ground, bleeding out. Pater had taken the knife from him.

My voice was thin, weak. “Call an ambulance.”

“Already have,” Pater said. “Local emergency services are bombarded this evening. Too many calls.”

Turner picked his head up and motioned for me to get closer. I handed my gun to Pater, not Eamon, and kneeled.

“I’m glad…you shot me…”

His eyes were having trouble focusing on me. His voice was soft.

“Morgan, tell me about your people.”

He chuckled. “Too late.”

“Do you know where Megan is?”

He shook his head. “…will find her…before you.”

“They won’t.”

“We have a lot more looking for her than you.”

“How many?”

“A lot.”

His eyes drifted from mine. I shook him.

“Where are your people?”

“Few hours, getting…ready.”

“Where are they?”

“I love Megan…so much.”

He was done laughing. He was done everything.

The life went out of him. I grabbed the back of his head and lowered it to the floor gently.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Manetti.

“Strongbow,” she said. “Before the ambulance gets here.”

***

I kicked the Marine in the side. Nothing makes you feel less human than hitting somebody when they’re already down.

He moaned and opened his eyes.

“Names.”

I heard the sirens in the distance.

I kicked him again.

“Names.”

He shot up and tried to tackle me. I jumped back and kicked out in the same motion. My instep connected with the side of his head. He didn’t black out again but he was dazed. He tried to push himself up off the ground.

I wound up and kicked him in the side again. If the feds had any problems with my interrogation they weren’t voicing them. Years ago, right after I was arrested, there was no bigger fan of the Constitution than myself. Now here I was ignoring it. I felt low, the worst kind of low because I was wailing on somebody that was sick. Somebody that, a few years ago, had served his country presumably well.

But we were out of options and out of time.

Pater and Manetti didn’t stop me. Eamon stayed in the corner, as if distancing himself from the scene would absolve him of responsibility.

“Names! Where are they?”

The sirens were loud.

“Fuck you, convict,” Strongbow said.

I wound up to hit him again but Manetti stopped me. “That’s enough.”

“If they find Megan before—”

“EMTs are here.”

I heard them.

Strongbow gave up trying to get to his feet. He pancaked on the floor and grunted from the force of the fall.

Five seconds later the emergency crew hurried into the room. Detective Quick was in tow.

“Jesus. You people could fuck up a wet dream.”

***

They wheeled Strongbow out on a stretcher. He was in and out. Quick led me away from the feds.

“Start talking,” he said.

I saw no reason to keep anything from him. I told him about MPI and our theory of two disparate groups, one intent on killing, the other intent on defending themselves with violence if necessary.

“Your theory fits the facts. I got people with no interpersonal history going after each other. Families…”

“What are you doing?”

“Mayor called a curfew, staties are coming in but it’s a disaster. Streets are a mess. Lot of people missing.”

“How many?”

“Officially? A lot. Unofficially? More.”

“Hundreds? Thousands?”

“Say a couple thousand to be on the safe side. But that’s a wild guess.”

“Have you crossed paths with Chester Leonard?” I said.

“I hauled his fat ass down to the station. Got him in a cell. He went after his sixty-year-old neighbor. She locked herself in her house and called us.”

“Mind if I talk to him?”

He looked over my shoulder at Pater and Manetti. “I or we?”

“Come on, Quick. Move past that. It’s a shit show and we have to work together or more people will die.”

His eyes turned hostile. “Yeah, it’s a shit show. How long have you been sitting on this working theory of yours?”

“Things are moving fast,” I said but he saw through the evasion. “We didn’t have ti—”

“Time to make a five minute phone call? Bull-fucking-shit.”

“The truth is, Detective Quick, we couldn’t trust you.” Pater came over and stepped between us. “Not you personally, but the town in general. If MPI is the correct diagnosis, the disease is likely tied to exposure to something in this local environment.”

I saw him working it out. “You’ve been exposed too, why should I trust any of you?”

“I’ve got the least time with boots on the ground,” I said. “You can trust me.”

“Come on.”

Twenty-Five

Manetti was in the corvette with me. “You think Quick is okay?”

“Maybe not, but we need to talk to Leonard.”

“Anybody on the team worrying you?”

“You mean other than Eamon?”

“Yeah.”

I was thinking about her wrestling Strongbow for the knife and wondering why the hell she hadn’t tried to put him down with her gun.

“He locked me up before I could get to my feet,” she said, as if reading my mind. So she wasn’t really asking me what I thought of the team. She was asking me what I thought about her.

I followed Quick at breakneck speed around a curve. Pater and Eamon were a quarter mile back in the van, struggling to keep up.

Back on a straightaway, I took my gun out. “Take it.”

She hesitated long enough to get my pulse racing.

“Eddie.”

The way she said it put me on edge. I took my eyes off the road and looked at her.

She smiled and took the gun. “Safety’s off.”

I smiled too but I was watching her. She took the gun without apparent unease, safetied it, checked the action.

“You could have shot yourself,” she said.

“Better to be lucky than good.”

“Tonight we’re going to need both.”

Fifteen minutes of driving and we’d seen at least five cruisers zoom by and a couple ambulances too. The town was coming apart at the seams.

Manetti gripped her armrest as I powered through a curve.

I said, “You worried about Pater?”

“No. You?”

“I’m worried about everybody.”

“Except me.”

“Even you, darling. Even me.”

Quick blew through a red light. Brakes screeched and people screamed as I followed him through the intersection. We were coming to the middle of town where there were a lot of older shops and restaurants.

It was starting to rain. The thunder booming still in the distance. The wind buffeted the car.

A few people were on the street. A uniformed cop ran limping down the sidewalk, his shirt untucked, chasing after a soccer mom who was a block ahead and looking over her shoulder.

“Who’s the good guy?” I said.

“Don’t know.” Manetti looked at me. “Bitter pill to swallow, but we can’t save everybody.”

“I know. Doesn’t make it easier.”

We cruised through another red light. There had been a car wreck at the intersection. A pickup had somehow T-boned a parked car. An EMT crew was tending to the driver.

Manetti said, “Eamon saved your life.”

I said nothing.

“Turner would have killed you.”

“I would have handled him.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

“My wider point stands. Eamon didn’t have to warn you.”

“It’s called self-preservation.”

“Eddie.”

“Turner kills me, maybe Strongbow recovers and occupies you, that means Turner is one step closer to Eamon.”

“Pater was there. Eamon was safe.”

“Under normal circumstances that makes sense. But maybe Eamon’s thinking the same way I am. He figures nobody can be trusted, not even Pater.”

“He’s been locked away for a long time—”

“Do you have any brothers?”

“—getting the best treatment—”

“Any of your brothers dead?”

“—Eddie, he’s made a lot of progress. He saved my ass on our last mission. And I’ve got a great ass. And, he’s really watched out for Megan.”

“His wiring’s all fucked up.”

“Yours isn’t?”

“Sure it is. But not bad enough to kill anybody in cold blood.”

“I just watched you constructively waterboard a lamed Marine.”

I gave her a look.

She held up a palm. “Not saying I wouldn’t have.”

“Quit using litotes and speak plain. Would you or wouldn’t you have?”

“I’m not sure my statement qualifies as litotes.”

“Answer the question.”

“Would have. Absolutely. No fucking questions. And that scares me.”

“It shouldn’t.”

We were coming to the police station. The parking lot was a zoo.

“Why not?”

“It means two things. First, you’re human. Second, you’re not one of them.”

“The knifers?”

“Yeah.” I slid through the turn into the parking lot. “They don’t turn on each other like that. It means you’re okay.”

She gave me a weak smile. “So you do trust me.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

***

Chester Leonard was wearing a different, ill-fitting double-breasted suit.

They had him in a cell, alone. He sat on the edge of the uncomfortable-looking metal cot and swiveled his head owl-like to look at me.

“Detective, can we have a little chat with Mr. Leonard somewhere more private?” I asked Quick.

Quick shrugged, all part of the ploy, and unlocked the cell. The door swung open with a metallic groan and I motioned for Leonard to follow. He was uncuffed. We were armed but not holding. Leonard slowly got up and stared at us through the open bars for a moment.

“Leonard, we don’t have all day,” I said.

He followed us into one of the interrogation rooms. Quick closed the door behind us and we sat down at the table, all friends, one professional to the other.

“We know everything,” I said.

“Then why you talking to me?” he said.

“We want your help.”

“Take your East Coast attitude and stick it up your ass.”

I took out my gun. He sat up straight in his seat, posture suddenly better than a West Point cadet.

I showed him and Quick the revolver. Quick nodded, like he was appreciating the weapon. I stood up and walked to the other side of the table.

Leonard leaned away from me but didn’t get out of his chair.

“You don’t like guns, do you?” I said.

“I don’t like using them if I don’t have to.” There was sweat sticking to his upper lip. “I used to be a cop, and all good cops think like that.”

“Put out your hand.”

Leonard took his eyes off me and looked at Quick. “I’m not doing a damn thing this two-five is asking.”

Quick looked at me. “Two-five?”

“Half of a five-oh,” I said.

“Ah.” Quick smiled and stood. “Mr. Leonard, I think the arresting officer did not properly frisk you. I believe I see something in your hand. Please hold it out for me, open, with the palm up.”

Leonard shook his head and looked seasick.

“Or you can tell us about your friends,” I said. “Their names and where they’re hiding.”

Leonard was still shaking his head and giving me a long look when he whispered, “Emergence.”

I knew what it meant but I wanted him to explain it to me. “What?”

“They’re not hiding. They don’t have to. They’re all in plain sight. You just can’t see them.”

I sat on the corner of the table and kept my gun in my hand, pointed at him.

“Go on.”

“My job was to look for them before they knew what they were.”

Quick said, “Turner has been paying your expenses for awhile.”

He nodded.

Quick said, “For how long?”

“A long time now.”

That explained the affluence in an otherwise middle class job. Turner had paid for Leonard’s new BMW, his new office…probably a lot of other things too.

I said, “Define them.”

“Huh?”

“Who you were paid to look for.”

“Both kinds.”

“What do you call them?”

“Knifers and gunners.”

“That what Turner called them?”

“That’s what I called them, before.”

“Before what?” I said.

Leonard said nothing. He looked from me to Quick.

“And now what do you call them?” I said.

“Now?” He thought about it. “It’s just us and them. No need to give it a name.”

“And you took the job, just like that?” Quick folded his arms. “In no universe does that make any sense.”

Leonard shrugged. “I wasn’t doing anybody harm. I was just looking.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Quick said.

“Believe whatever. I haven’t hurt anybody.”

“Yet,” Quick said.

“Plenty of other people have gotten hurt. Some dead,” I said.

“That’s not on me.”

Quick said, “You knew what you were getting into. You’re not smart like me, but you’re not dumb like him.” Quick motioned to me.

“When he first came to me, I thought Turner was looney tunes. I was reluctant to help because I don’t take a client’s money if I can’t help them—”

“Yeah, yeah. Spare us,” Quick said. “So what changed that oh-so-noble mind of yours?”

“Turner took me out and showed me first hand.”

“Showed you what?”

“Them.”

“Which ones?”

“Both.”

“Bullshit.”

Leonard said, “The first couple years, there weren’t many. This year was…extra busy.”

Pater and Manetti were listening through my earpiece.

I said, “How busy?”

“I lost count.”

“What exactly were you looking for?” Quick said.

“Emergence,” Leonard said.

“Somebody’s gonna explain that to me, might as well be you,” Quick said.

Leonard shrugged.

We’d get there. I knew we would. But first I said, “Turner used you because you weren’t affected.”

He nodded. His many chins flapped. “That way I could approach either side and not be seen as dangerous.”

“Then you changed,” Quick said.

He nodded. “Right. Then my mission changed.”

“To what?”

He shook his head.

I touched his hand with the gun and he shrieked.

I took the gun away. “Talk.”

“You can’t do this to me.”

“Right now we can do just about anything,” Quick said. “You’re not feeling well, you’re very sick. I’m not sure your memory of this conversation will be very reliable.”

“You can’t do this.”

I poked Leonard in the jowl with the barrel. He fell out of his chair and tried to get to the door but Quick was there, forcing him back to his seat.

Quick said, “When you come out of this and start to feel better, you’ll wish you helped us.”

Leonard sat back down. I gave him some room and stood behind him, putting my back on the two-way mirror.

Leonard said, “It was my job to help these people.”

“How?”

“They—we—can be reasoned with to a point. My job was to find them and steer them.”

“Define steer.”

“Keep them out of trouble, offer help.”

“Money?”

He nodded. “Turner’s money.”

“He was the silent partner.”

“Right. I was allowed to tell them they had an anonymous benefactor.”

“Ken Hernando.”

“Yeah.”

Quick leaned back and let me run with it.

“How did you keep them out of trouble?”

“The urge is overwhelming. We need outlets.”

When I asked the next question, I looked at Quick. “Like mutilating racks of beef?”

Leonard nodded.

Quick shook his head. I’d solved one mystery for him. The knifers had broken into the meat packing plant and carved up the beef. He’d mentioned two other random things to me also, something about school buses and I couldn’t remember the other thing. All of the sudden, all these random acts seemed part of some larger, but still inexplicable, pattern.

It brought me back to something Leonard had said.

“Emergence?” I said.

“There are two kinds…” He looked like he didn’t know where to begin.

“Strong and weak,” I prompted.

“Yes…I was to look for larger signs…complex behaviors that had arisen out of the process—”

“Illness is more like it,” Quick said.

“Give it a name, whatever you want to call it.”

“That is what I want to call it,” Quick said.

“Anyway…emergence.” Leonard stopped talking and seemed to fall into a trance.

“Hey, Leonard. We’re waiting.”

When he started speaking again he was back to low-talking. I told him to sound off like he had a pair.

“A symptom here or there doesn’t mean shit,” Leonard said. “I was looking for complex behaviors that arose out of the simpler things.”

“You couldn’t see the termites,” I said. “So you had to look for the termite cathedral.”

Quick looked at me. “Translation.”

“The affected know they’re affected and can somehow tell when others are. When Leonard started snooping for Turner originally, he wasn’t sick yet so he didn’t have that built-in radar for locating friends and enemies.

“So what if someone liked knives? That wouldn’t be enough. Leonard needed to find more complex behavior.” I thought of Turner. “Maybe this same person that liked knives had suddenly started attending anti-gun rallies.” Then I thought of Witherspoon. “Maybe the person attending anti-gun rallies was now calling out of work and not bothering to clean his apartment for weeks at a time.”

“He looked for patterns of behavior to weed them out,” Quick said.

Leonard nodded. “And I was good at it. Wrote the book for Turner.”

“What was the end game?” Quick said.

“Turner told me we were witness to the world’s greatest social experiment and that we’d be famous one day.”

“You believed him.”

“I had no reason not to.”

I said, “What about when some of these people turned up dead?”

“I didn’t look back in time at the already IDed. My job was to find the new ones.”

“You expect us to believe that mountain of bullshit?”

Leonard shrugged.

Quick said, “How does the disease work? Is there a period of dormancy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know what causes it?” Quick said.

He shook his head. “Something local.”

“Speaking of your playbook,” I said. “Where is it?”

Leonard tapped the side of his head. “And no, you can’t see it.”

Quick and I looked at each other.

Quick said, “We can’t waste any more time.”

“Agreed.”

Twenty-Six

I touched Leonard’s arm with the gun.

He fell out of his chair screaming.

Quick got on top of him. The heavyset private detective tried to roll out from under him. I jumped on Leonard too and we pinned his arms and legs.

I had a free hand.

I used it to put the gun in Leonard’s face.

The gun wasn’t loaded, but I didn’t need to tell him that.

“Where are all your friends?” I said.

He was screaming between gritted teeth. The sight of the gun point blank terrified him. Sweat slid down his face, burying itself in his jowls. His eyes were wild.

“Talk!” Quick shouted.

“Okay! Okay! Okay! STOP! STOP! STOP!”

I stopped. But we both stayed on top of him.

Leonard was breathing heavy like he’d just had to chase a bus. “We’re drawn to parks…you’ll find some of us there.”

“Doing what?” Quick said.

He looked at us like we were the crazy ones. “Playing frisbee.”

“Where’s Megan Turner?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you know where she is?”

“No! We don’t! We just know they like to dance.”

“Where are they dancing now?” Quick said.

“We don’t know!”

“Where have you looked?”

“Everywhere in town! They can’t leave town!”

I said, “Why not?”

“There is no why! Or why not!”

“How many are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many?” I jammed the gun into his neck.

“Two thousand, maybe more.”

***

We put Leonard back in his cell.

He was a sniveling, crying mess. Quick slammed the bars and locked them. The police station was abuzz. Uniforms ran in and out of the building while the phones blew up. In the front by the desk sergeant a man started screaming and it took four cops to pin him down.

Quick and I went to the office where Manetti, Pater, and Eamon were waiting. Quick shut the door behind us.

“Coming apart at the seams,” Quick said.

Thunder boomed and I felt the rattle of the earth being zapped. The lights in the station blinked a few times then came back up to full power. I could hear the rain hammering the building.

Pater said, “Detective Quick, may I propose a joint effort?”

Quick smirked. “I was asking for that two days ago, asshole.”

Pater didn’t apologize, nor did he come back with anything. He just moved forward. “Our model projects that the knifers are greater in number than the gunners. You have more resources at your disposal than I do. I would suggest you and your men go to the parks and start looking for these people, while my team and I continue to look for Megan.”

“How can I trust you?” he said.

“You can trust me.” I took out the gun and waved it around.

Quick put his heel on the desk and hiked his pant leg. He had a switchblade strapped above his ankle. He offered it to me.

I felt the normal mistrust and unease around knives. They brought back bad memories. My brother Tim had died in my arms, a knife plunged in his midsection.

I’d taken a blade too. It had come perilously close to my aorta. In my worst dreams I can still feel it going in, just a little pain at first then a flood of agony.

And the one who’d put the knife in me was standing five feet away in the same office.

Eamon watched me curiously.

Was my unease at baseline? Or was it indicative of something more, the disease process lurking…

I took the knife and held it up. Quick watched me. Pater and Manetti watched me.

Eamon watched me.

I gave the knife back to Quick. “I told you, you can trust me.”

“How can we trust you, Detective?” Manetti said.

I jumped in. “Quick was fine when we were barnstorming Leonard a few minutes ago.”

Quick held the knife out for all to see. His hand didn’t shake. There was nothing in his face except grim determination.

“I’m good. Eddie’s good. If everybody else passes, we have a deal.” Quick put the knife on his desk.

The rest of the team was able to pick up both the knife and the gun they were carrying.

Quick put his switchblade away and opened his office door. “I’ve got thirty uniforms. If they can hold a gun and a knife, I can trust them. Is that about the size of it?”

“It is,” Pater said.

“Find Megan and her people. When you do, get them far away from here. I’ll round these other folks up. But that’s putting a band-aid on it.” Quick folded his arms. “How long does this last?”

We all looked at Pater.

“It could be over tonight. It could be over in a month.”

Quick nodded at me. “Keep in touch.”

“You too.”

***

We were in the van. Pater in the back with Eamon, Manetti in the driver’s seat. I was riding shotgun.

We were still parked in front of the police station. It was raining so hard we could barely see.

“Emergence,” Pater said.

“What do we know about Megan’s people?” Manetti said. “Let’s start talking.”

“Guns,” Eamon said. “They like guns.”

“Tasers,” Pater said.

“They know each other, and they know the knifers,” Manetti said.

“They faint,” Eamon said.

“They’re dancing,” I said. “They like to dance.”

“We checked all dance halls, big places where they could do that sort of thing in large groups,” Manetti said.

I wouldn’t let it go. “Megan drew that picture of people dancing. Dorothy Young held that old-fashioned dance contest last year…they’re dancing somewhere.”

“That would be in keeping with the dancing manias of the Middle Ages,” Pater said.

“Yeah, but where?” Manetti said.

I pictured Megan’s drawing in my mind. Tried to recall the details of the background again. Maybe it would lead us somewhere.

But all I could remember were the people dancing. They each wore the same vacant, soulless expression. And they weren’t dressed like they were in a ballroom. They were dressed casually.

And they were moving fast.

I remembered the motion lines around all the people, like they were spinning furiously on the dance floor. Their speed was exaggerated though. Nobody could dance that quickly. In the drawing, it was almost like they were running with their arms around each other, not dancing. Megan had kept the picture in her roller skates box.

Roller skates.

I’d seen a similar, empty box at Dorothy Young’s house. And she’d mentioned that place where they’d held the dance marathon.

Now it was obvious.

“They’re at a skating rink,” I said.

***

Manetti rode with me in the corvette. The rain was coming down sideways. The wind tried to push us off the road. The speed limit was fifty but it was worth our lives to go forty.

I was going forty.

“How can you see?” Manetti said.

“I’m using the Force.”

Manetti was working the GPS. “We’re getting close.”

“Lights out before we get there, right?”

“Right.”

The wipers were no match for the deluge. They just pushed the water around, not really clearing the windshield.

It was after nine and the full weight of the last few days bore down on us.

“You know, one of these days, the guy that hires me is gonna turn out to be on the level,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Long story.” Too damned long, too damned infuriating. Some of my clients had turned out to be assholes. I needed to hire a screening service.

“Guys that hire you are underestimating you,” Manetti said.

“Story of my life.”

“I did too.”

“Don’t get all mushy on me, Agent Manetti.”

“I’m not apologizing, just stating a fact.”

“Good. I was afraid we were gonna talk about our feelings.”

“It’s an advantage, to be underestimated. You should use it.”

“I do. It’s no advantage upfront when I’m negotiating fees.”

“Fair enough. But you’re a guy that doesn’t worry about money.”

I laughed. “I worry about money all the time. I’m doing okay but a few dry months and I’m living paycheck to paycheck.”

“What I meant is, you’re worried about doing the job right first, and the money second.”

“Especially now. Because I won’t see one red cent on this job.”

“Pater can work something out. And stop thinking about Turner. It was righteous.”

“That’s just a word.”

“An accurate word.”

Accurate, yes. But enough? “I know, but it only goes so far.”

“It doesn’t get you where you need.”

“Close, but not enough.”

“Close is all you can get sometimes.”

“This isn’t horseshoes and hand grenades.”

“Half a mile, take it slow.”

I eased down to twenty-five miles per hour. The windshield fogging now, on top of the rain. Manetti let go of the oh-shit bar. She was soaked. Her long black hair was plastered to her and dripping. She was checking the action on her gun.

Helluva woman when she wasn’t trying to prove so damned much.

She pointed to a sign I couldn’t even read. “We are officially outside of town.”

“I know. It’s the only thing that doesn’t make sense about this place.”

“So how did Megan get them to come here?”

“If they’re here.”

“I hope they’re here. We’re out of time.”

“The skating rink is a good place to hide, being closed five years.”

Manetti said, “I have a feeling you’re right about this.”

“Yeah, it feels right.”

We looked at each other. She had to be thinking the same thing I was. If this felt right to us, maybe we were just like Megan and her people. Maybe we too were drawn to this place.

“It’s up here on the right,” she said.

In the rearview, I couldn’t even see Pater’s van. I pulled off the road onto the soft shoulder and put on my hazards so they didn’t drive right into the back of us. Through the downpour I could just make out a big old sign.

Eastman’s Skating Rink.

“It sits off the road a little bit,” Manetti said.

“Good.”

“Big parking lot.” She looked at me. “We have to cross a lot of open space to get to the building.”

“They won’t see us coming in this downpour.”

The wind rocked the corvette.

Pater spoke through the earpiece. “We stopped about two hundred yards behind you.”

“Okay. I’m going inside. Everybody wait out here,” I said.

“Eddie, this is no time to be macho.”

“If I’m wrong about Megan and her people, I don’t want anybody getting killed.”

Pater said, “You’re willing to bet your life on this?”

“You asked me that before. I was hoping I didn’t have to. But I guess I do.”

Manetti said, “This is bullshit. I’m going in with you.”

“No w—”

She jumped out of the car.

***

Pater had night vision goggles for us. Of course he did. We had them on and were watching the skating rink.

We stood inside a thin stretch of trees surrounding the parking lot. We stuck to them as the rain hammered everything. My feet were sinking in the mud.

“Looks quiet,” Manetti said.

It was a wide, two-story building and it was dark. The front doors were boarded up. There was a long row of windows near ground level that were boarded too. No light from inside. There were no cars in the parking lot. No signs of any life.

“Now what the hell do we do?” I pulled off the goggles.

“I thought you were in charge.” She flicked a smile my way.

I gave her one right back. “I thought I wasn’t.”

The rain had drenched us. I was sunk up to my ankles in the mud.

“Guess we go up and knock,” she said.

“And hope I’m right about Megan’s people.”

We came out of the trees and ran hunched against the wind across the parking lot. I didn’t slip, though I tried to plenty of times.

Nobody shot us. Nobody came out to greet us. If there were a hundred people in that building, we wouldn’t have heard them it was raining so hard and thundering.

We got out of the rain and hovered by the entrance. All four doors were boarded up. Manetti reached for her piece. I shook my head.

She gave me a look.

“Leap of faith.”

“My ass.” She took her gun out. I couldn’t blame her.

Before I could reach for the door, it opened toward us. I had my palm on the handle when I heard a familiar voice.

“Hands up.”

Megan Turner was armed with some kind of assault rifle. So were the three ski-masked people with her.

“I hope you’re right,” Manetti said.

Megan studied her partner for a long moment. Looked her up and down. Then she turned back to me.

“I told you not to look for me.”

Twenty-Seven

Megan knew where to find our earpieces. She took them off and handed them to one of the men behind her. He stepped out into the rain and melted into the parking lot.

“Inside.”

She’d disarmed us already. The lobby was dark. There was a light on somewhere behind the counter where people used to get their skates and pay. Dusty arcade machines hunkered in the corner.

The place smelled like old sweat and musty leather. I couldn’t see anybody else but I knew we weren’t alone. That sixth sense we all have was firing on all cylinders. There were people in here, hiding.

“Stop.”

We stopped.

Three more armed guards showed up. They wore camos, like Mia had early this morning when she and her sister had paid me a visit. Was that really just this morning? It felt like a week ago.

Everybody except Megan was wearing a ski mask. Four of the guards circled Manetti and led her away.

“Hold on, where are you taking her?” I said.

“With me, McCloskey.” Megan nodded in the opposite direction to the small cafe. Two of her guards nudged me along. I went. They had the guns, they had the power.

And I held onto the small glimmer of hope that I was right: Megan’s people, the gunners, only killed in self-defense.

“Here.” Megan pointed to a booth. Her two guards forced me to sit down. They didn’t have to try too hard.

“Where are you taking Manetti?” I said.

“How did you find us?” Megan asked.

“Little bit of reasoning, little bit of luck.” I looked around. I could feel so many other people in the rink but I couldn’t see them. “If I can find you they can find you too.”

I leaned on that word for more reasons than one. To let her know I understood the ball game. But to also let her know where I stood in the us vs. them hypothetical.

“Where’s Pater?” she asked.

“In a van down the road.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Scout’s honor.”

She brought up a walkie-talkie. “Check the road again.”

“How many people do you have here?”

“Who else with Pater?”

“Eamon. How many people are here?”

“Where’s Riehl?”

“He turned. The wrong way.”

She looked like her father. I wondered if she knew he was dead, that I’d killed him. And how she would take that.

I assumed blood was thicker than disease.

“What’s going on in town?” she said.

“Chaos. The police department is trying to keep it all together. They’re searching—”

“Parks, I hope.”

“Yeah. They’re doing the best they can.”

“Not too many people playing frisbee in this.” She looked over my shoulder a moment. “How many people know where you are?”

“Pater, Eamon, Manetti. How did you get them to come here? It’s outside town limits.”

“When did you last see my father?”

I looked at the guards. They’d given us a little space and had their rifles pointed away. But they were hanging on my every word.

“Few hours ago.”

“How was he?”

“Sick.”

She nodded. “Strongbow?”

“Sick also.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the hospital.”

“He was one of them.”

“How does it work? How do you know when someone’s affected? Is there a latent period while the disease builds inside? Once you have it, do you always have it? Is it seasonal, is it dormant…what the fuck is it?”

“Us versus them.”

“Come again.”

She folded her hands on the table. I could barely see her in the darkness. The dull glow of a single bulb well behind us cast a weak glow.

“Us versus them, Eddie. Best I can figure, the sickness or the disease or whatever you want to call it, it plays on that primordial urge deep inside.” She tapped her chest. “We all have it. We try to train it out of ourselves but you can’t make yourself unhuman.”

“You sound like you’re condoning it.”

“It’s a force of nature. It’s elemental. I can’t argue with a hurricane.”

“But you can do something about it.”

She raised both arms. “Exactly why we’re here. I don’t want to kill anybody. I don’t want anybody to be killed. So I found as many as I could and brought them here. Others, they just came without needing to be told.”

“Emergence.”

“Yes.”

“Leonard told me about that.”

“Where is my father now?”

Oh boy.

She jumped all over my hesitation. “What happened?”

“I killed him.”

For a moment she was still. Not even breathing. Her palms flattened against the table. One of the guards stood, but Megan raised a hand and he stayed where he was.

I said, “Self-defense. He was going to gut me.”

She nodded twice. It took her a long time.

“We went there to get info out of him. The situation went left. It was him or me.”

She nodded again.

“I chose me.”

Her voice was thick when she spoke next. “Who was with you?”

“Manetti. Pater and Eamon showed up at the end.”

“Was he laughing?”

The question threw me for a loop. “Yes…he started laughing when…”

Megan leaned forward. She was letting me put it together.

“When Manetti showed up.” I stared at her in disbelief. “Your old man laughed around people like him?”

It explained why I never saw him around Strongbow.

“Agnes may or may not know it yet, but she is one of them.”

“That’s impossible. She passed the gun and knife test.”

“You made her hold each.”

“Yes.”

“To answer one of your earlier questions, you’re sick before you know it. The disease is latent and the symptoms do not manifest themselves right away.”

“You can tell just by looking at her?”

She nodded.

“How?”

“I can’t explain it to you, but you will soon see for yourself.”

“What?”

“Because, Eddie, you’re one of us.”

***

It all made sense. Or rather, it made as much sense as it was going to.

“Dorothy Young…she said as much when we visited her.”

Megan leaned back and folded her arms. She was letting me get there on my own.

“That’s why she trusted me and why she didn’t trust Riehl. She shot him and in the scuffle I picked up a pair of shears…it confused her.”

Megan said nothing.

I said, “You can tell just by looking at me?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“There is no how. I just know.”

“How does it work? You have to explain it to me.”

“None of this will make sense, but here goes. The sickness affects everybody differently. Some people can spot others very easily, some cannot. My father’s people, them, they can tell us a lot earlier than we can tell them. We’re in great danger.”

“The three guys yesterday. They followed me out of the bakery. They could tell.”

“So did Jamie.”

I nodded. “Hold on, what are you doing to Manetti?”

“Tying her up. We only kill in self-defense, unlike them.”

“I want to see her.”

“In a minute. First I want you to tell me why Pater isn’t here.”

“He is. He’s in the van outside.”

Megan Turner shook her head and I knew we were in fucking trouble. “We haven’t seen a van.”

“Hold on, he passed the gun and knife test too.”

“So did Manetti.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know she’s sick yet.”

“The disease process accelerates the farther along it gets.”

“Megan, this was thirty minutes ago, max.”

“We think there is a period where they know they’re sick but can still handle firearms.”

“Quick. I’ll call him.”

“I don’t want you to call him.”

I shook my head. “I mean the cop, Detective Quick.”

“I don’t want you to call him either.”

“But you’re not going to stop me.”

She said nothing.

Before I could take out my phone, the front doors kicked open. For a moment, I heard the thunderous downpour. Then the doors slammed shut and all I could hear were footsteps and someone being forced toward us.

Megan’s guards stood and formed a wall in front of us. I turned and saw two men dragging a scared-looking Eamon Moriarty toward the cafe.

“Tell her,” one of the guards said.

They pushed Eamon forward. He looked from me to Megan.

“Megan, I’m glad we found you, but you’re in serious danger.”

Megan asked, “Where’s Patterson?”

“He’s one of them. And he knows you’re here.”

***

Megan snapped her fingers and a few seconds later, the track lights around the skating rink came on. The lights pulsed and moved around but there was no music.

Megan said, “Okay, everybody, this is the real deal. Let’s get warmed up.”

They came out of the woodwork. Young, old, middle-aged, meek, proud, male, female. They filtered into the rink and partnered up. Many had guns strapped to themselves. A few skated solo. They did laps, slowly, deliberately.

I watched them dance.

“How…”

“We don’t know how. Some of these people couldn’t skate to save their lives before all this. Now they’re suddenly experts.”

They were all graceful, even the one heavyset dude who had to be tipping the scales at three hundred pounds.

“Can they all shoot?” I asked.

She held up her hand, palm pointed at the floor, and made the so-so gesture.

I pointed at Eamon. “What about him? Is he us or them?”

Megan studied him. She frowned. “Neither.”

“That about sums you up.” I turned to him. “Never really belonged to anything.”

“Fuck you, Eddie. I didn’t have to come here. I was out of the van and could have escaped. I came here instead. I chose to risk my life to help.”

Megan’s guards had to restrain me.

I said, “Right. Pater was probably trying to shoot you and you knew this was the only place you could find protection.”

“Eddie, take it—”

“Megan, take this fucking kid wherever you have Manetti and tie his ass up. He can’t be trusted.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“You can’t trust him!”

“We need all the help we can get right now. And I know he’s not with them.”

“Doesn’t mean he’s with us.”

“You heard him. He could have run. He didn’t. That makes him okay in my book.”

“You’re taking his word for it.”

Megan nodded. “I’ve worked with him. He’s loyal.”

“His loyalty, if he has any, lies with Pater.” I glared at Eamon. “Even if he’s not one of them, he could be here for Patterson.”

“We need him.”

“He doesn’t get a gun.”

Eamon said, “You want me to use harsh language? These people are coming to kill us. All of us.”

I ignored him. “You give him a gun and I walk. Your choice. Do you want him or me shooting?”

“Whether you stay has nothing to do with Eamon and we both know it.” Megan smiled a grim smile. “Besides, it’s all academic. We already don’t have enough guns to go around.”

I took out my cell.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling Quick. He can bring home the cavalry.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Nobody stopped me. I brought Quick’s number up and hit SEND.

Nothing happened.

I went through the routine again. Still nothing happened. I got an error message on the second try about there being no signal.

“Give me a fucking break,” I said.

Megan came over and checked the phone. She took hers out and glanced at the screen.

“Nobody’s making any calls, Eddie.” Megan folded her arms.

Then I remembered. “Patterson has a cell phone jammer.”

Twenty-Eight

“I’m guessing this place isn’t rigged for wi-fi,” I said.

“I told you not to come looking for me,” Megan said. “Now you brought them all here.”

“I would have found you anyway,” I said. “If I’m affected like you say I am.”

“More likely Pater or Manetti would have gutted you.” She folded her arms. “Like I said, the knifers can spot us early, much earlier than we can spot them.”

Megan leaned against the railing separating us from the rink and watched her people. Her words were harsh but her tone wasn’t. She wasn’t faulting me. She was just laying out a chain of events, cause and effect.

“You knew they would find you,” I said.

“Sooner or later this had to happen.”

“Fate?”

“I don’t believe in fate. But yes. Since there’s no other word for it.”

I watched the skaters too. They were weaving complex patterns out there, no longer content to just do prosaic laps. Some cut across the floor at a diagonal. Others spun in and out of traffic with no problem.

There were no collisions. Everything was smooth. It was like watching the gears of a Swiss watch move in intricate harmony.

I said, “Can we get all these people out of here? Do you have vehicles?”

She shook her head. “Not enough.”

“So save who you can. Send the able-bodied out on foot.”

“You wanna make that call? About who gets in the car and who doesn’t?”

“Leaders have to make difficult decisions.”

She shook her head. “We’re strong here. If we go our separate ways they’ll tear us apart. They have to cross a lot of open ground and the entrances are choke points.”

“Okay, Leonidas. Time you brought me up to speed on logistics. What have you got?”

Megan kept her eyes on her people. “What you see is what you get.”

“This is all?”

She nodded. “Plus twenty on guard duty.”

There were about a hundred people on or around the rink.

I said, “They might have a thousand. Maybe two.”

“Come with me.”

She walked out onto the rink. The skaters were moving so fast it was like Megan had stepped out into traffic on the interstate.

But there were no collisions. Her people danced and slid right by her like they’d been expecting it.

“I’ll take the long way,” I said.

***

“What’s this?” I said.

“The back door.”

I’d followed her down a narrow hall, past the bathrooms to a fire door. She pushed it open and held it like that. It had no handle on the outside. Nobody was breaching the rink here unless they blew the door.

Outside, the rain pelted and the storm thundered. I couldn’t see more than twenty feet out.

Megan said, “You have ten seconds to decide. Stay or go.”

I was tempted. I’d done what I’d been hired to do. I’d found Megan. I’d figured out what was going on. I didn’t owe anybody anything. I had a life to live. This wasn’t my fight. Et cetera.

But no matter what I tell myself, no matter what I say to the client or my friends, no matter how much I try to shrug problems that aren’t mine off, at the end of the day, the job is not just the job. The job is figuring out how to solve the larger problem. How to fix things and make the world if not right at least a little better before I ride off into the proverbial sunset.

Walking away now wouldn’t get it done.

“Why not show me your plan first?” I already knew the answer. I wanted to see how honest she would be.

She didn’t disappoint. “Uh-uh. I don’t want you leaving after I give you the plan.”

“Why not?”

“In case they capture you.”

“Why are you offering me this?”

“Because I respect you.”

Outside the rain pelted the pavement. The trees bent to the gale. The sky lit up with snapshots of lightning.

I looked out into the darkness. The knifers were out there. I couldn’t see them but I knew they were there.

Megan said, “You didn’t know what you were getting into when you came out here. My father tricked you. You went above and beyond to rescue the damsel-in-distress and now there’s a very good chance you might die because of it. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

“Make the same offer to your people?” I asked.

“They chose to stay.”

“They like their chances better together.”

“They do.”

Megan let go of the door and it started closing.

I said, “What’s the plan?”

***

“Our shooters will be up here,” Megan said.

We’d climbed a metal ladder in the boiler room up to the roof. The roof was flat and there was two inches of water everywhere. The drains weren’t big enough to handle the downpour. All around the roof there was a four foot high wall. Someone had built covered areas using tarps where the shooters wouldn’t be pelted by the rain too much. Megan’s team was now sliding those into place. They had wisely positioned the shooters at the four corners of the building and then spaced out the rest to cover as much area as they could.

Megan’s people were carrying spotlights up to the roof. There were about a million extension cords they had to rig against the wall so they weren’t sitting in the water.

“How many guns?” I said.

“Thirty-four rifles, nineteen shotguns, forty-five handguns, fifty baseball bats.”

“Bats?”

“Gotta use something when the ammo runs out.”

“Speaking of which.”

Megan shivered against the wind. She had a short jaw and a button nose. Her hair was soaked from the rain. If you can look younger than your years at twenty-six, Megan was doing it.

“About twenty-five hundred rounds all told.”

“Which means we can’t miss.”

“We don’t plan to.”

“Can any of your people still handle a blade?”

“About fifteen. We’re checking them every five minutes till the big show.”

I gave her a look. “You’re wrong about me being sick.”

“I can’t be.”

“I’ve never liked knives. Not since that fucking kid downstairs murdered my brother and almost punctured my aorta. Maybe that’s what you’re seeing in me, not the actual sickness.”

“I’m not wrong about you. It’s only a matter of time before you can’t even touch one.”

The rain didn’t let up. Megan’s shooters were appearing on the roof now, hefting their rifles. They went to work setting up, arguing about who got the corners.

I said, “So everybody will be on the roof.”

“No. Shorter range firearms will be used from the first floor.”

“How?”

“Windows. Shootouts.”

“And when they get inside?”

“They won’t.”

“Of course they fucking will. What’s the plan then?”

“They won’t.”

“Dynamic systems theory. Things break in ways you don’t expect and can’t foresee.”

“Okay, Michael Crichton.”

I had a chuckle. “I’m serious.”

“Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

She got in my personal space and dropped her voice. “When they get in, all hell is going to break loose, okay? We all know it.”

“Megan!” one of the shooters said.

We sloshed our way over to him. He was manning the shootout in the spot equidistant from the corners. The middle man. He pointed out at the thin tree line separating the parking lot from the road.

“How many?” Megan said.

He handed her binoculars. She glassed the trees.

“Well?” I said.

The shooter folded his arms. He was wearing a rain poncho over his camos. He had long hair and a beard. He gave off an ex-military vibe despite the grizzly man appearance.

“I saw a few. Five, maybe ten.”

I said, “You know how to crowd count?”

He smiled. “Yeah, one of the great many things Uncle Sam taught me.”

Military. That was good. “Teach me.”

Megan answered instead of him. “Jacob’s method. Calculate square feet, figure a minimum space of two square feet a person. That gets you a good estimate for capacity crowd.”

“How wide is the lot?”

“I don’t see anybody.” Megan gave the binocs back to the shooter. “At its widest, six hundred feet.”

I did the math.

Megan gave the shooter the nod of respect and we walked back to the middle of the roof.

“What happens when they get inside?”

“Before that, our people all get to the roof.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“The ladder is the only way up. It’s a choke point. We kill them all in the boiler room. Death from above.”

I couldn’t believe we were game-planning the death of hundreds of people. But we had no choice. I knew they were coming. I knew it.

I said, “And when they get up here?”

“What the hell do you want me to say, Eddie?”

“How are we getting our people off the roof?”

“We have rope ladders. Won’t do us much good, though, unless they’re all downstairs.”

“Megan, it’s a fine plan and the best you could do with short notice.”

“The plan is shit and we both know it.”

I said, “What about the syncope?”

“What about it?”

“The fainting.”

“I know what syncope means.”

Megan’s shooters had settled on their positions and now more people were coming up with the rest of the ammo.

Megan motioned toward the ladder. I followed her down, happy to get out of the rain. The thunder boomed and rattled the building. The rink lights dimmed then came back up.

I saw Mia Turner on the other side of the rink. She had a team of folks distributing water bottles and what looked like energy bars. Then I remembered what Quick had told me: somebody had hijacked a delivery truck. It had been Megan and her people.

Stocking up for war.

I followed Megan into the old manager’s office. She shut the door behind me.

I said, “The fainting. When does it happen?”

“At the worst possible time, usually.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

She made a face. “Most of us faint when we’re around them.”

“No…” It made sense. Megan had been fainting around her old man and her sister.

“We’ve tried to desensitize ourselves.” Megan opened the cabinet by the desk and pulled out a bottle of hooch that had to be ten years old. “Found this. Wanna bite?”

A nice Irish whiskey. The kind of drink I would have fallen into and taken days to climb out of in years past.

“I’m dry.”

Megan smiled. It was the first time I saw her smile and it made her beautiful, in a girl-next-door way. “I know you are. I know a lot about you.”

It almost sounded like she looked up to me. It’s true what they say. There is a first time for everything.

And a last time…

“You’re the hero,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. I respect the hell out of you. You could have done anything with your life. You could have done nothing. You chose this and because of it your life’s on the line.”

She actually blushed. “The feeling is mutual.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Megan said, “You’re the guy that always defies the odds, for better or worse.”

“Usually for worse.”

“I’m glad you’re here. We could use a good man in a storm.”

“Literally.”

She was kind enough to laugh at the weak joke.

I said, “How did you desensitize yourselves?”

“We grabbed one of them, kept him tied up in another room, practiced getting closer and closer.”

“Did it work?”

“Worked for me. And nobody fainted around Manetti.”

She tilted the bottle back and drank. She put away a couple fingers with no trouble. Her college days weren’t that far behind her.

“You’re asking all the tough questions,” she said. “And I’m tired of answering them.”

“Any chance you have smelling salts?”

“Now why didn’t I think of that?”

She reached into her pocket and threw a few packs on the table.

“Okay, then. One last question. How do we get out of this?”

She took another sip of the whiskey and said nothing.

“Good answer.” I took the bottle from her. It had been so long since I’d had a taste that the smell of booze was turning my stomach. But still, that bastard weak part of me wanted to hit it.

Megan was right. Us versus them is in our blood.

But there’s something else in our blood that’s just as powerful and even more destructive. Self versus self.

“No judgment, Eddie,” Megan said.

She watched as I didn’t drink and put the bottle away and closed the cabinet. “Where’s Eamon during all of this?”

“Next to me. I’ll need a gopher.”

I pulled up my shirt so she could see the nasty scar in the middle of my stomach, just between the ribs.

“He did this to me. Don’t forget that.”

“He was a different person then.” Megan gave me a sly look. “So were you.”

“People don’t change.”

“You did.”

“Most people don’t change.”

Megan shook her head. “What’s taking them so long?”

“They’re getting ready.”

“Yeah, but how?”

Neither of us knew.

I said, “How’d you get your people to come here?”

She didn’t answer.

I said, “The rink isn’t in town. But they don’t leave the town…unless I’m wrong about that.”

“You’re not.” She smiled. She was waiting to see if I could figure it out.

“So they think this is still the…” Then it hit me. One of the many random bits of information I’d picked up since I’d been out here.

“This used to be part of the town.” I remembered what Dorothy Young had told me. “The county redrew the lines.”

She nodded.

I said, “You thought of this place.”

“It was my one good idea of the year.”

“Something’s bothering me,” I said.

“Just one thing?”

“This morning, you could have taken me when you and Mia came to my room.” Was that really this morning? “I was already affected.”

“You were affected but you didn’t know it yet. Sometimes it takes a few hours, sometimes a few days. I couldn’t be sure how you’d react to this.”

Somebody knocked on the door. It was Eamon.

“Speak of the devil.”

Eamon ignored me. “I need a knife.”

Megan had her gun out almost as fast as I did.

“I need to hurt myself.” He was still talking to Megan like she was the only one in the room.

He could barely stand still, rocked his weight from one side to the other. All nervous energy. But he didn’t look nervous. He looked ready to rock and roll.

“What good will it do?” Megan still had her gun on him.

“You never know.”

“I need more of a reason than that.”

Eamon grimaced. “Distraction, misdirection. I can help. You two won’t give me a weapon. You have to let me help in some way.”

“The fuck are you two talking about?” I said.

Megan lowered her piece. “It’s not what you think, Eddie.”

“How about a lighter, or a book of matches.” Eamon darted his eyes over to me.

“What do you need a lighter for?”

Megan stood and pulled a cheap butane lighter out of her pocket. “You don’t have to do this.”

Eamon’s face grew tight and determined. “I have to do something.”

“Define something,” I said.

Eamon didn’t speak and Megan just watched him. He held out an arm and put the lighter underneath it.

I said, “What the hell are you doing?”

He kept on ignoring me and flicked the lighter on. A tiny jet of flame licked his skin.

Eamon squirmed against it.

Much as I wanted to see him dead, I had no stomach for watching his self-torture. I took a step toward him but Megan came around the desk and stopped me.

“Let him.”

“Let him what?”

Eamon was on the verge of tears, the flame still burning his forearm. His arm shook. His face twisted into a grimace.

“Enough!” I said.

Eamon killed the flame and examined his arm. A red welt had formed.

“Somebody talk,” I said.

Eamon’s voice was ragged and he shivered with pain. “This is how I do it. How I tie myself to a place.”

“What are you…”

Then it clicked.

“Pain,” he said.

When Eamon was a boy he’d endured both physical abuse from a bastard older brother, emotional abuse from a distant mother who didn’t love him, and psychological abuse from an almost inhuman father.

Pain.

It was the only thing his family had ever given him in abundance.

On that night, many years ago, when Eamon’s family murdered each other, he’d suffered another indelible blow. He’d watched it happen.

Leading up to that moment, they had tortured him. He had probably wished them dead. But at ten years old, he wasn’t prepared to watch them die.

So much pain in that house. So much of it his own. The emotion had endured.

My brother Tim used to explain residual hauntings in terms of thermodynamics. Emotion is energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.

Eamon’s energy had transformed into something else. It had forever psychically linked him to that house.

Pain.

He was tapping into that ability right now. By hurting himself, he was tying himself to this skating rink, the same way he and that house had co-existed all these years.

“You did this at all of the sites you visited?” I asked.

“We used small voltage electrical stimulus.” Eamon looked at Megan. “But yes. Emotion does the trick too but…physical pain is easier to deal with.”

“That’s how you could see into that warehouse earlier.” I pictured Eamon roaming the area with Pater, going to places where Megan might or would be, slowly electrocuting himself.

“It was my choice, nobody else’s,” Eamon said. “Pater didn’t want to allow it at first. But I found some tech that wouldn’t leave any permanent damage and that was that.”

Was I wrong about Eamon? Maybe.

He’d chosen to hurt himself to help others.

The cynical part of me said that was just a symptom of his broken wiring, another reason not to trust him. How can you put your faith in a masochist?

“Thank you, Eamon,” Megan said. “For all you’ve done. And for all you’re going to do.”

She actually hugged the kid.

***

Manetti was tied to a chair in the store room. She wasn’t happy about it.

“Get me out of here. I’m fine.”

“Manetti. Agnes. You’re a hell of a woman and a hell of an agent. And if I’m assembling a team I want you on it. But not tonight.”

Manetti squirmed against the ropes. “Megan’s wrong. Give me a gun.”

“The gun test doesn’t work.”

“If they get in here, I’m a dead woman tied up.”

“I can’t let you go. I’m sorry.”

“You fucking asshole.”

“I know.”

Manetti was working herself up into a rage. “Eddie, you are killing me if you leave me in here.”

“You’re one less person we have to fight if I keep you in here.”

“Let me go.”

“I let you go, I’m killing you. That parking lot is about to become fucking Gallipoli. If you turn into one of them, you’re going to get brained.”

She slumped back in the seat. Not in a defeated way, more to conserve energy.

“I don’t want to die, Eddie. I’m twenty-eight.”

“I don’t want to die either and I’m thirty-five.”

“You’re not funny.”

“You’re right. I’m not funny. I’m scared shitless at what’s about to go down.”

“In over your head, as always.”

“Pretty much.” I got closer. “I have one last request.”

She tensed. “What’s that?”

I stepped closer. “There’s a good chance I die tonight. It’d be nice to kiss a pretty woman one last time.”

“I just threw up in my mouth.”

I bent so our faces were inches apart.

“Try Megan.” Manetti squirmed. “I think she has a crush on you.”

“I don’t want to be that creepy older guy.”

“I’m only two years older than her.”

I laughed. “Besides, it would be me taking advantage.”

“This isn’t?”

I looked deep into her eyes. I had no romantic feelings for her, but goddamn I wanted to kiss her.

I said, “I’m asking you. I’m not going to mouth rape you.”

Manetti threw her head forward and we locked lips. I nearly lost a tooth. There was no spark between us but there was a lot of animal passion in the kiss. Two people close to death, trying to squeeze one last drop of pleasure out of this life.

I reached into her pocket and she didn’t notice. I held the kiss a little longer while I took my hand out. I’d gotten what I wanted.

Then I came up for air. “Not bad.”

“You’re a lousy kisser.”

“Said no one, ever.”

Manetti rolled her eyes. But she was smiling.

“Ball-buster to the last you are,” I said.

“Let me out of here.”

I winked at her. “No can do, Agent Manetti.”

“Don’t kill Riehl,” she said. “He’s done so much for this country, you have no idea.”

He would be the first one I’d kill. “I won’t.”

“Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s so much else I want to do with my life. So many things…”

“I’m going to save the fucking day.” I didn’t believe it for a second.

“Don’t let them…torture me.”

“I won’t.”

“You’re making me a lot of promises.”

“It’s what I do.”

Megan appeared in the doorway. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of us.

“Eddie, it’s go time.”

THE HYSTERIA

Twenty-Nine

I followed Megan to the rink. Her people were glued to the walls of the first floor, weapons ready. They were positioned by the windows along the front. Mia was helping a small team finish the barricade at the front door. They’d strewn tables and chairs and any other garbage they could find in front of it.

Megan gave her a little wave and that was all.

Eamon met us outside the boiler room. I saw more burn marks on his arm.

“Making sure I was linked to the entire space,” he said.

“Make sure you stay linked to Megan here. Or I’ll think you’re trying to escape and will have to shoot you.”

Megan led the way up the ladder to the roof. She pushed open the hatch and the rain pounded us the last few rungs. We kept the hatch open and Megan shouted down.

“Generators!”

The jennies kicked on with a sputter and went to work. The spotlights along the roof wall came to life. I stepped beside the shooter I’d talked to earlier. He stayed in his stance, hands on his weapon and eyes down the rifle’s sight line.

The rain was intense. The wind gusts made it worse. The wind sheer would probably affect our bullets.

The spotlights were just enough to cut through the torrent of water and extend to the end of the parking lot. There was a line of them, the knifers, from one end of the pavement to the other. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the rain.

Their blades glinted in the light.

Six hundred feet divided by minimum two square feet per person meant the line was about three hundred long. Simple math.

There were more in the tree line and beyond but they were moving all around. I couldn’t get a good count.

“They’re back here too!” somebody shouted.

“Everybody hold your position!” Megan said.

We ran to the other side of the roof. Behind the skating rink was a long, wide field that had known neither mower nor plough in years. It was overgrown with weeds and grass.

“Surrounded,” Megan said.

“Doesn’t matter if they can only get in one way,” I said.

“I’m going to direct traffic,” she said. “Can you shoot?”

“It doesn’t matter if I can shoot or not. You need me to.”

“Give me the amateur.”

This from the shooter positioned in the middle of the front wall. Megan grabbed the last rifle off one of the box units on the roof and handed it to me. I set up against the roof wall to the shooter’s right so he could keep a better eye on me. I settled in under the tarp.

The rain wasn’t letting up. The parking lot was sloped and the downpour was running toward the skating rink. The drains along the curb fronting the building couldn’t handle the volume. The pool of water was collecting.

“Use the wall as a tripod,” the shooter said.

I put the rifle on it and snugged the butt of the gun against my shoulder.

“Widen your stance.”

I did. “What’s your name?”

“Dyer.” He flipped me a little salute. “Keep your breathing steady. In and out, in and out. Shoot while you breathe out.”

The line of knifers was swaying back and forth and making a lot of noise like a bunch of Zulus. There were so many more in the tree line.

“Can you feel your heartbeat?” Dyer said.

I listened to my body. Thump-thump. “Yeah.”

“This is advanced but if you can do it, do it. Try to shoot between beats.”

“Maybe I should try with my eyes closed too.”

He laughed. “You hit anybody I’ll consider it gravy.”

“You military?”

“Ex. Marine.”

Just like Strongbow, who I hoped was still at the hospital. “Maybe you can change my opinion of leathernecks.”

“Semper fuck you.”

Talking about the military also reminded me of Riehl. He had to be out there. He was a hunter, he was a killer, he was a goddamned six foot five inch X-rated nightmare. I had no intention of honoring my promise to Manetti. I’d put one in his brain and not lose much sleep over it. With the sickness gripping him, Riehl was a hurricane. You can’t reason with a hurricane.

“What are they waiting for?” Megan said. She was standing behind us and glassing the line of knifers.

“Don’t know. Do you see your sister?” I said.

Dyer shifted next to me.

Megan scanned the line of knifers again through her binoculars. “No.”

“She’s out there,” I said. “Be ready for her.”

“I’ve been ready for her for awhile now.”

Lightning forked the sky and there was hardly a pause before the thunder boomed.

“That was practically across the street,” Dyer said.

“What are they waiting for?” Megan said.

“Give the kill order. I’m getting antsy.” In truth, I didn’t want to kill anybody else. But I knew that was useless thinking. It was them or me. And every organism chooses me.

“Not yet.” Dyer kept his voice low. “Our shooters aren’t the best. Wasted ammo.”

“Then when?” I said.

“Soon as they reach that last line of parking spaces. Then we unleash hell,” Dyer said.

“What are they waiting for?” Megan said again.

We were about to find out.

Thirty

I heard engines roaring in the distance over the crash of thunder. I strained my eyes to see but I didn’t have to. My ears told me the story. Some very large vehicles were coming down the street.

Then the road behind the trees lit up, silhouetting all the knifers hiding beyond the parking lot. There were so many.

“They’ve got buses,” I said.

I remembered Quick telling me about the stolen buses. They’d taken them for transport.

The first school bus made a wide turn into the parking lot.

Dyer said, “Tires and windows!”

Everybody started shooting. The windshield spiderwebbed and then shattered a second later. But I couldn’t see the driver.

One tire blew out but the bus kept coming. It picked up speed and hurtled toward the front door beneath us.

The second bus turned into the lot and the driver gunned the engine.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” somebody on the rear wall shouted.

I was already out of ammo. I reloaded. Megan had three gophers on the roof, waiting to supply the shooters with ammo. Eamon was helping them.

The whole building shook when the first bus crashed into the front door. No barricade was keeping that door in place.

“They’re hiding in the brush back here. About halfway. They have long sticks!” somebody shouted on the rear wall.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off the front parking lot as the second bus made a beeline for the row of panel windows along the front of the building. Dyer went to work on the driver’s window. Again, it shattered but I saw nobody.

“Have to be hiding behind the dash!” I said.

“We need to hold fire,” Dyer said. “This is all wasted ammo.”

Megan was behind us and heard him. “HOLD! Everybody HOLD!”

The gunfire stopped.

“Brace yourselves!” Megan said.

The second bus slammed into the front of the building.

Megan said, “Anybody in those buses other than the drivers?”

“Can’t see anybody!” the shooters on our flanks said.

Splash. Splash.

Something was landing on the roof. I looked behind me.

In time to see a man get skewered by a javelin.

It hit him in the shoulder and he pirouetted backward, making a splash in the overflow on the roof. Lightning lit up the sky, long enough for me to see the dark swirl of blood in the water.

“Cover!” I said.

But there was no cover to take. Nobody had anticipated spears.

Splash.

Splash.

A javelin thunked against the wall between me and Dyer. Against the stormy night sky, it was impossible to see the incoming projectiles.

“Parking lot!”

There was nothing to do except hope I didn’t get impaled. I picked up my rifle and secured it against the roof wall in my spot. Behind me, somebody took a spear badly. I heard agonizing screams that I would hear for the rest of my life in my worst nightmares.

Assuming there was a rest of my life.

The line of knifers were running toward us. Not in a straight line but in an intricate pattern that reminded me of the skating I’d seen thirty minutes ago downstairs. They zigged and zagged and looked like they would crash into each other at every turn, but nobody went down.

They reached the last row of parking spaces.

“Fire!” Megan said.

We did.

I put my sights on the biggest and slowest ones I could find. I didn’t expect to hit the fast ones. I fired and nobody went down.

“Remember to shoot when you’re breathing out!” Dyer said. He fired in a steady pattern. His rifle tracked slowly and he pulled the trigger again three seconds later.

I took his advice and resighted one of the slower runners. He was a big man, probably two hundred and seventy-five pounds. He wasn’t moving fast. I put my sights on him, breathed out, and fired.

I saw the red mist snipers talk about and the big man went down.

Another javelin hit the wall next to me. I forced myself to ignore it and kept my aim true on my next target. She was a she. From a rainy football field away, I couldn’t see any details. But she was definitely somebody’s daughter and she might have been somebody’s mother.

I pulled the trigger and she went down. I couldn’t process the true horror of what was happening.

Bodies were collecting in the wake of the first line.

Then the second line of knifers formed at the end of the parking lot. Three hundred more about to come our way.

“Bus!” Dyer shouted.

The emergency hatch on top of the second bus opened. The hatch opened toward the roof so I couldn’t see what was happening until it was too late.

A spear shot out of the second bus and hit a shooter in the corner of the roof.

The first bus’s engine revved and made a dozen horrible mechanical sounds. I thought the engine was wrecked, but the bus started backing up. Smoke poured out of the hood.

It backed up and turned so it was broadside to us, about ten feet from the building.

Megan stepped between me and Dyer. “That bus breached the front door.”

Another spear shot out of the second bus and nearly got somebody in the neck.

The survivors of the first line were inside one hundred feet and bounding toward the broadsided bus. I targeted a fast-moving guy in a trench coat, breathed out, and fired. I hit him in the leg and he face planted on the pavement.

The second line of knifers was moving fast too.

“Everybody move to the front of the roof!” Megan shouted.

Our other shooters followed her orders. Soon we were shoulder-to-shoulder on the front wall.

“What’s going on behind us?” I said.

Megan said, “Spears have stopped. I have Eamon keeping an eye. There’s only a couple hundred hiding back there. All the action’s out here.”

She forced a space between me and Dyer and drew her handgun.

“Can they get up the rear wall?” I said.

“Not without a ladder or a grappling hook.”

I looked over my shoulder. Eamon was on his knees, his head barely above the roof. He was keeping watch.

“Get somebody else back there too. I don’t trust that fucking kid,” I said.

“Everybody else is busy, Eddie! You have to learn how to deal with this.”

I went back to shooting. Every second or third shot, I mowed some poor sick person down. Best I could do with no training and the weather and absolute terror gripping me.

The second bus started backing up and turned its side toward us. Smoke poured out of its engine also. The driver nudged the nose of the bus against the rear of the other one. Both buses were about twenty feet away from the front door. The wind pushed the smoke from their engines toward our building.

Perfect. A fucking smokescreen.

The buses formed a line that was about eighty feet long. A lot of people could take cover under, inside, and behind them.

I nudged Megan. “Let’s take out all the windows. I want that smoke to get inside.”

“Good idea.”

I took my time and hit every window I looked at. So did she. By now a third line of knifers was coming out of the woods and sprinting across the parking lot.

We kept shooting. There were a lot of bodies in the parking lot. Many of them moving slowly, crawling. Their fallen comrades formed roadblocks for the next wave of knifers and slowed them down.

Dyer stopped shooting. “Take a breather, everybody!”

Thirty-One

Megan echoed Dyer’s order. Everybody stopped firing. My shoulder was beginning to ache from the rifle’s kick.

The knifers had congregated behind the buses. We’d spent a lot of ammo trying to hit them as they ran across the parking lot. Now they were hiding, out of our line of fire.

“There’s twenty feet between those buses and the front door,” Dyer said. “If they want to cross the kill zone, let them.”

Megan ran to the hatch and shouted down. “How’s the barricade?”

I couldn’t hear the response but Megan relayed it.

“Barricade is being refortified. We’re okay.”

“How about behind us?” I said.

Somebody on the rear wall answered. “They’re still out there, taking cover.”

“How many?”

“Call it a hundred.”

Quick mental math. We’d seen three lines of knifers cross the parking lot. Nine hundred people. We’d killed a lot of them. Maybe most of them. I did the grim math.

Two to three hundred in front of us, one hundred behind us.

More still along the road and in the tree line.

“Can they get into the rink from behind us?” I was thinking about that back door Megan had shown me.

“No,” Megan said.

“You’re sure?”

“Asked and answered.”

Dyer picked up on what I was thinking. “Move all the shooters to the front here. If they’re out of spears behind us, I don’t give a shit about them.”

Megan shouted the order. The shooters from the rear wall filled in the gaps along the front wall.

Megan said, “Good, clean shots. Waste anybody that comes around those buses.”

We waited. The smoke was still coming out of the engines. I kept one eye on the buses and the other on the tree line. If I had time to stop and think, I wouldn’t have believed what was happening. Or what was about to happen.

Two squads came out from the sides of the bus line. We started mowing them down. Another group broke from the tree line for the buses because we were concentrating on the foreground.

One, two, three, four…I lost count. I was on autopilot, like in a video game. They just kept coming out from behind the buses. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The butt of the rifle kicked my shoulder with each pull of the trigger.

The rain kept pouring.

“Everybody stay calm!” Megan shouted. “They can’t get in so even if they get to the buses we can pick them off when they come out.”

We focused on the knifers coming out from behind the buses. Let the others get close because it was easier to snipe them that way. Slow, methodical shooting. The bodies piled up. Lightning lit up the sky. The rainwater flooding the parking lot was filled with blood.

I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. And I didn’t want to.

“Jesus, that one was a kid!” somebody shouted.

I didn’t look. I couldn’t look.

“That kid was coming to kill you!” Megan said.

They kept coming. The next squad had crossed the parking lot and were crowding behind the buses. We could see their heads.

“Opportunity.” Dyer angled his rifle upward and snapped off three shots.

I brought my gun up too but he tapped my shoulder.

“Focus on the killing zone. I’ll get them.”

I did.

Dyer went to work on scoping the knifers who were too many to hide behind the bus. They fell one-by-one.

And they started to panic.

With nowhere to hide they all flooded around the buses, desperate to get inside the rink. Another line formed at the end of the parking lot but we ignored it.

Because there were hundreds of murderers moving as one big crowd toward the entrance.

It made the killing easier.

“They’re close!” somebody shouted. I heard the panic in his voice and didn’t understand it. We just had to hold them off. Even the world’s worst shooter could hit them now. They were too many, they were stuck in a choke point, they weren’t retreating.

Megan said, “Relax! Everybody, relax!”

Why were they so worried? Megan ran off and came back with the news the barricade was holding. We were winning. We were going to win. Without guns, the knifers couldn’t breach the rink. We were working through our ammo but nobody was panicked yet.

It was all going so well.

Until it wasn’t.

Thirty-Two

Dyer was the first to faint.

Then it was like dominoes.

“They’re getting too close!” Megan said.

All at once the shooting stopped. It seemed like I was the only one firing my rifle.

I said, “Check the barricade!”

But Megan didn’t answer.

I peeled my eyes away from the parking lot and saw her on the ground. She was face-up in the water. And then I realized the larger problem.

Many of the people that had fainted were face down in the three inches of water on the roof.

I slung the rifle around my shoulder and took out the smelling salts. I pulled one man out of the drink. He was choking, half-awake.

“Somebody help me!” I yelled.

But there was no one. They’d all fainted.

Fortunately it was only fainting. Syncope is defined as a transient loss of consciousness with a rapid onset, brief duration, and spontaneous recovery.

So they all came to. But half of them had water in their lungs because unconscious people don’t hold their breath.

The man I was helping hacked and threw up. He didn’t sound good but he was breathing. I used the smelling salts on Megan. She shot up like she’d been zapped, her eyes wide.

“Everybody fainted! Help them!” I said.

“Where are you…” She wasn’t quite with it yet.

“I have to make sure we’re holding downstairs.”

She came back to the moment and stood up. Half her shooters were nearly drowned. The others were just coming to.

“Are they just going to keep fainting?” I shouted at Megan. “Or is it one-and-done?”

“I don’t know.”

I put my rifle against the wall. It wasn’t good for close-quarters shooting. I’d use the handgun for that.

I hoped I didn’t need to.

***

I gripped the rails of the metal ladder and didn’t bother with the rungs. I slid down the ladder to the ground floor. I heard gunfire. That was good. At least some people were still shooting.

The door to the boiler room was still closed. I didn’t bother checking on Manetti, figured she was still in there. I hustled to the rink.

There were about six people on their feet. Two of them were shooting handguns through the slots in the boarded-up windows. The other four were at the barricade. Three of them trying to hold it in place and Mia shooting through it.

I had the smelling salts out and went person-to-person. I woke up ten and ordered four to work on the barricade, the other four to get back to shooting, and the remaining two to come with me.

I didn’t know them. They didn’t know me. But they listened.

“Stay on the other side of the rink so you’re not so close to the knifers. Your job is to keep from fainting and wake the others up when they do.”

They nodded. I didn’t know if it’d work but it was something.

We had six guns firing again on the ground floor. Over the downpour I heard the screams of the wounded and soon-to-be-dead outside. It was a slaughter.

The rest of them were waking up. More guns fired.

I went to the ladder. Megan was on the roof, looking down.

I gave her the thumbs-up. She reciprocated.

I decided to check on Manetti. Better to be safe than sorry. I went down the hallway to the boiler room and opened the door.

The chair was empty.

Manetti wasn’t in there.

Thirty-Three

Manetti didn’t jump out from behind the door, or land on top of me. She wasn’t in the room.

She wasn’t in the room.

She wouldn’t have gone up to the roof. And there was no place to hide in the rink area. She had to be in the back.

By the fire door.

My stomach dropped.

We’d pulled our shooters off the back of the roof so they could focus on the parking lot out front.

The rear was unguarded with a possible breach.

“Mia!” I shouted.

She stopped what she was doing and looked over her shoulder. The barricade was holding, somehow, against the sheer weight and press of the enemy outside. Probably because the knifers along the face of the building were getting killed and forming a wall of corpses their comrades had to get over before moving in.

“The back door! I need your help!”

She didn’t hesitate. She just processed the information and jumped off the barricade with her shotgun and hustled.

I had my piece out as we slipped through the doorway leading into the back rooms. It was dark. I didn’t remember it being dark.

The door was open. The rain was slanting in through it, slicking the concrete floor.

I charged.

And ran into Manetti’s foot. She planted her instep in the middle of my chest and knocked the wind out of me.

Mia didn’t hesitate. She fired, the boom from the shotgun deafening in the tight space, the flash briefly illuminating the store room. I saw Manetti in that split second. She’d crouched so she was out of the line of fire and she lunged into Mia.

I got up. It felt like I was trying to breathe through a crushed straw. Manetti and Mia were tangled. I decided to go for the door first and help Mia second.

I got in the doorway and reached for the handle.

There were three of them right there, only a few feet away. The first one collided with me and the other two piled inside.

I pulled the trigger twice. That got them off me. My brain quickly inventoried the scene. Two of three were shot, the other was underfoot, Manetti and Mia were struggling, the door was still open.

I couldn’t get to the door in time. More of them flew inside. I did the opposite of what they expected and let them come in. I wanted them out of the doorway. They were already inside. I couldn’t let any more in. A handful was okay. A horde would tear us apart.

They all had blades and they all came at me once. I started shooting. I had no choice. I was afraid one of the bullets would go right through them and hit Mia. But I had to take the chance. I had to shut the fucking door. Or everybody was dead.

The bullets didn’t deter them much. They were shot but they kept coming and one of them fell in the doorway. The other two were right there. One of them slashed at me and the blade just caught my forearm. I put the gun against his forehead and pulled the trigger.

He fell backward and the other one tripped forward. He slashed at me as he was going down but I jumped out of the way. He fell and landed in the doorway. I stepped on his neck. I put all my weight into it. His scream came out a weird strangled gurgle. I tried to shut the door but his head was in the way.

I couldn’t slam the door. It had one of those mechanical devices that forced it to close slowly until the last few inches. I crowned him a few times but there was little force behind the hit.

And the rest of them were closing fast.

The nearest one had a fucking kitana blade. She raised it above her head, samurai style, and brought it down through the small opening of the door. I got my hands out of the way. The sword buried itself in the back of the head of the guy on the floor and blood sprayed.

I shot Ms. Toshiro Mifune. She did what I wanted her to. She fell in front of the door and created a roadblock.

I didn’t want to pull the sword out of the guy’s head so instead I jumped on the safe side of the blade and forced it the rest of the way through. The guy’s crown slid off him. There was about a four-inch drop from the bottom of the door to the ground. The sword fell with the top of the guy’s head out of the way.

I heard gunfire above. Maybe Megan had checked the rear of the building and seen these knifers coming. They were sprinting toward me and they fell and splayed as they were shot. Death from above.

I got the door shut just before one of them reached it. It latched and I heard the desperate pounding on the other side as the gunfire continued.

I turned to help Mia. She was a tough girl but she was dancing with a highly-trained federal agent. If she was still alive, that would be a win for her.

Bad timing. Manetti elbowed Mia’s nose and got loose of her. I had a second to brace for the impact as Manetti plowed into me. I tripped over the dead men on the floor and fell backward.

My shoulder blades hit the bar on the door and the door opened.

I slipped outside and Manetti was on top of me and the knifers were right there.

***

The door was open and they were trampling over me, their eyes on the bigger prize of breaching the rink. There were loud bangs and I realized Mia was firing. The bodies fell on top of Manetti and me. I couldn’t move with all the weight bearing down.

“Eddie, I don’t want to kill you,” Manetti said.

I didn’t have my breath so I said nothing as, inevitably, Mia ran out of ammo and the knifers pushed in. I heard the rifles firing from the roof above and realized I was either going to get stabbed intentionally or shot accidentally if I didn’t take action.

I wrenched my hip and threw Manetti off me. I got to my feet and got some space between me and the crowd.

“ROPE!”

I remembered Megan had rope ladders up there. It was my only chance. Most of the knifers were going for the door but a few had spotted me, the easy kill.

The rain was still coming down hard.

With the spotlights on the roof I couldn’t tell what they were doing. I just heard the guns and didn’t see the rope.

A middle-aged man whose gut was as wide as his shoulders came at me with a paring knife. I shot him in the neck. I was going for the head but you take what you can get. Blood fountained out of his throat.

More knifers peeled away from the main group at the back door and flocked toward me. I got off three shots before the gun clicked empty. I was dead. Unless—

The end of the rope hit the ground next to me. I grabbed it with both hands and hoped like hell someone was going to pull me up. I was good at climbing ropes…back in high school. That had been half my life ago.

The knifers were two steps away.

Somebody on the roof read my mind and I was pulled up. I felt the blades swiping at my feet. I was heaved all the way up to the roof with three big pulls. I grabbed the ledge and threw one leg over it and vaulted.

The water on the roof had grown another inch.

Megan helped me up.

“Your sister!” I said.

“I know.” She looked tentatively at the roof access that was still propped open. I knew what she was thinking. Hero or not, there was a small, calculating part of her that was weighing options. We could go down there like she wanted and help her sister, or we could close the door and settle in on the roof.

We eyed each other for a second. That was all the time we had. But we communicated our mutual understanding all the same. Then she nodded.

Megan called out four names, including Dyer’s. “You four stay topside. Everybody else, get downstairs!”

Thirty-Four

I was downstairs before anybody else.

Somehow Mia had gotten out of the store room and now she and three others were trying to close the door as blades slipped through the two inches between the door and the frame.

One man put his shotgun in the opening and pulled the trigger.

“Hold the door!” I yelled.

He heard me above the blood-curdling screams and gave me room. I charged down the hall, hoping my human battering ram technique would work.

Mia and the others strained against the animal force pushing the other side of the door. I got up a good head of steam and threw my body into the door.

It worked. The door shut.

One of the men gripped the knob. It was turning in his hand.

“Where’s Megan?” Mia said. “We need the keys!”

“We need help out here!” somebody down the hall shouted.

“Get Megan!” I shouted back. “We need the keys to lock the storeroom!”

I couldn’t see the person at the end of the hallway, just a silhouette. I knew it was a man. One moment he was standing there, trying to comprehend the situation based on my orders. The next, a machete cut him down. And a knifer took his place.

They were inside.

“Hold the door! I’m getting the keys!” I said.

***

My gun was empty. But like my krav maga instructor always says, a man is never defenseless.

The knifer charged. So did I. One of the things I took away from my short stint in the joint: you always move forward. Always.

He hacked as we met about halfway down the hall. I saw it coming and grabbed his wrist before he could complete the arc. I turned and hoisted him over my shoulder. He flipped and landed badly on his back. I wrenched the machete out of his grip and brought the blade down to his throat. Blood sprayed. I wished I’d used a gun. I would have preferred putting one in his brain so it was lights out immediately. But now I got to watch the poor bastard squirm and grope at his neck for a few dying seconds.

I tried not to comprehend what my eyes saw. If I lived through this, I might not live through this.

I left him to die and went down the hall. I was still holding the machete. Megan was wrong. I wasn’t affected. I’d just used the blade to kill someone and I was still holding it with no problems.

I reached the end of the hall and stopped dead. The skating rink was total carnage.

The knifers had breached the front door. Megan’s people were still trying to close the barricade again but with one look I knew it was useless. The knifers were getting in. Just as many of them inside as us.

Megan stood in front of the barricade and barked orders to close the gap and kept shooting the enemy as they came over the wreckage. She couldn’t get them all. There were too many and they were leaking inside.

And the gunners were passing out. The enemy was too close now, much too close. I watched for a brief moment as it seemed like half our people fainted. The two guys I’d charged with keeping everybody awake were doing their best but they needed help.

I gripped the machete tightly. In close quarters, it would be almost as good as a gun. But then I realized the problem.

Everybody with a gun would be shooting at anyone carrying a blade.

A man is never defenseless.

I dropped the machete and found the nearest baseball bat. It was all I had. And I had to get to Megan.

I pushed through the scrums, avoided hacking blades, and cracked some skulls. My nose was bleeding badly again and I couldn’t breathe through it. The blood ran into my mouth.

I got to Megan at the barricade.

“I need the keys! They’re coming through the storeroom!”

She put a bullet through some knifer’s head as more of them came up over the barricade. The dead man slid down the pile of debris and nestled among the other corpses at the foot of the garbage.

“Back pocket!” She picked off somebody else, but she was only getting one out of every two that scaled the barricade.

I found the keys in there and turned to go back to the hallway.

From the barricade, though, I saw our people retreating to the rink. The knifers poured out of the hallway in hot pursuit. The store room was lost.

“They’re in!” I shouted.

Megan took her eyes off the barricade for a second and looked over her shoulder. “Form up! NOW!”

***

The gunners formed two lines at Megan’s command. They concentrated all their fire. The gunfire was deafening. Their bullets tore up the interior of the building around the hallway.

The knifers kept coming.

I took a handgun from Megan and joined the front line. Most of the others were firing at will, spraying their ammo. I took good shots, trying to kill each time.

The knifers piled up in the mouth of the hallway.

A perfect chokepoint.

They had to climb over the bodies of the fallen to come at us. I ran out of ammo and hurried back to help Megan. Along with five others she was trying to hold the barricade. More of them were getting through, which forced Megan and company to turn from the barricade and defend their backs.

“Got another clip?” I asked.

“No!” she said.

I still had my bat. “Focus on the barricade. I’ll take care of whatever gets through.”

“You better, or we’re all dead.”

I made good on my word. The knifers that had gotten inside were as tired as I was. But their hysteria wouldn’t allow them to rest and gather strength. I was smarter. I bided my time and let them make a lot of weak swipes and then I closed. I cracked skulls and busted kneecaps. My mantra: one swing to drop them, the other to finish them. No wasted movements. I had to conserve my energy because we had no idea how long this would go on.

I was fending them off so Megan and team could focus on keeping more out. I got slashed a couple times. I barely felt the cuts. Adrenaline is the best drug.

From time to time I gauged the battle lines. Mia was out in front. The knifers were piled three or four bodies high in the mouth of the hallway. We were turning the tide again. The knifers were growing cautious, hanging back now instead of just rushing blindly into a firing squad.

Mia saw her opportunity and ordered the lines to close on the hallway. Twenty gunners moved as one and leaned on the dead bodies in front of them to take their shots.

Megan and her crew were holding the barricade.

I was down to my last knifer. She came at me underhanded in a stabbing motion and I batted her wrist as hard as I could. She dropped the knife and howled. The pain froze her in place.

I brained her in the back of the head. The strength went out of her legs and she went down.

“We’re holding!” Megan stopped what she was doing at the barricade and turned to gauge how the firefight in the hallway was going.

She pointed. “They’re holding too! Look!”

I turned. A few of the shooters had stopped firing and were just holding their weapons out in front of them. At first I thought Megan was right. I thought they weren’t firing because they had run out of people to kill.

But then I saw Mia come up out of her stance and I realized what was happening.

“They’re out of ammo.”

***

Slowly, the shooting petered out. The relative quiet was overwhelming. I could hear muted gunfire from outside. Dyer and the others on the roof hadn’t run out of ammo yet.

The knifers waited. The most dangerous ones were left. They were left because they had some measure of control over the disease and didn’t feel compelled to run into almost point-blank gunfire.

They waited. They were testing Mia’s firing lines.

Two more shooters used up their ammo. Now only one person was still sighting down his rifle. He tracked his gun back and forth. A knifer came out of hiding down the hall.

The rifle jerked with his final shot and I heard the click. He was out.

“We’re all out too,” Megan said. She climbed atop the barricade and used the butt of her rifle to push a knifer back outside. The man tumbled down the slope of debris. But more were coming.

“I can see at least fifty out here,” Megan said. “How many that way?”

I ran to Mia’s side and looked over the pile of dead bodies down the hallway. The knifers were starting to come out. They lined up outside the storeroom, two-by-two.

“At least thirty this way!” I said.

“And probably more we can’t see!” Mia shouted.

We were out of bullets. Our guns were useless. But we still had fight in us. I looked around and did a head-count. We had twenty-five people still standing.

Mia lowered her voice. “If any of us faint, it’s over.”

She was right but I ignored her. I raised my voice so the knifers could hear me too.

“Let them come!” I felt what could only be described as bloodlust. The violence had driven me mad. “Let them climb over their dead friends. We’ll fucking kill every one of these fucks that tries to get in here!”

For a breathless moment, the knifers waited. Watched.

Then they started making noise. Not words, but guttural sounds. Inhuman. Animal in nature. The din swelled and they were all screaming.

I gripped my bat. I was ready. Let them come.

They charged up the slope of dead bodies toward us.

Thirty-Five

The knifers were moving faster than I thought possible. They ran across the bodies and before they reached us they launched into the air.

They came down on us hard. Our front line stumbled back into the second line and then all was chaos. About ten people must have stepped on me but I pushed them away and got to my feet.

Something sliced my back. I felt this cut. It was deep. It turned me around and I fell into the wall. I whirled with the bat and landed a glancing blow on someone’s shoulder. More of them came at me. I swung wildly to keep them at bay. I caught another in the temple and forced my way out of the scrum.

The rink was overrun. They outnumbered us two-to-one and more of them were pouring in from the hallway.

The gunners fell.

Mia and two others were in the middle of the rink. They stood back-to-back and kept the knifers at bay. But they weren’t scoring any kills. It was strictly defense. In sports, they say defense wins championships. On the battlefield that isn’t true. It was only a matter of time before they were taken.

There were eight of us left. Against a horde of about seventy. It didn’t matter if there weren’t any more outside. We couldn’t hold against these numbers.

I retreated into the arcade. A half dozen knifers were slowly driving me into the corner. Once I got there, I was dead. I wanted my life to flash before my eyes so I could relive everything one last time. But it didn’t. Instead I stood there, scared shitless with a bat in my hand.

I rounded behind a pool table. They were taking their time, moving as one unit. There was no sense in exposing themselves. No reason to take any risks.

They had me.

I tried to think of all the important things I’d done in my life and all the important things I still wanted to do. I knew there were a lot but I couldn’t come up with any in that moment before death. All I could think of was Stan and Moira and how I’d never get to meet their beautiful baby girl.

I saw Manetti and Riehl join the other knifers in the rink. I wondered if Eamon had been killed or if he’d somehow escaped. I didn’t want to die not knowing the answer to that question. But it looked like I would.

The knifers were five paces from me as my back hit the wall. This was it. Lights out for Eddie. So long, you ultimately cruel world.

“Everybody get down!”

There was a glass window in the arcade that opened to the entrance of the building. Megan jumped off the barricade and shouted.

“Get down! Now!”

Her command momentarily distracted the knifers coming at me. They all swiveled their heads to the right.

Four armed men came over the top of the barricade. They had assault rifles. It was Dyer and the other shooters from the roof.

And they still had ammo.

They squeezed their triggers and mowed the knifers down. I hoped Mia had dropped to the ground to avoid the friendly fire. I took advantage of the distraction to smash one skull and push my way out. Somebody slashed my leg but I kept going.

I made it to the barricade so I was behind Dyer and his team. He tossed me a handgun and I went back to the arcade and I shot every son of a bitch in there dead. When I came back out, Dyer and the shooters were out of ammo.

There were bodies and blood everywhere. Mia and Eamon picked themselves up off the floor of the rink and joined Megan and the rest of us. Eamon was holding his flank. Blood trickled over his hand. Somehow he’d survived.

Mia was dinged up but not cut. Megan had a gash above her ear that was bleeding bad. I wondered where their sister Melanie was, and if she was already dead.

Dyer was unscathed. He dropped his rifle and unhooked a tire iron from his belt.

My back was on fire from the big slash. The cut on my leg made me limp. But I was still breathing.

The knifers were picking themselves up too. Manetti and Riehl were on the far wall. Neither of them looked like they’d been hurt in any significant way.

“It’s highway time,” I said.

Dyer shook his head. “There’s about fifty hanging back by the road.”

“Doing what?” Megan said.

“I guess waiting to see what happens in here.”

I figured Pater was back there because I didn’t see him in here. There were twelve of us, about twenty-five of them.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Dyer said.

“Just one more big push,” I said.

He looked at me and nodded.

We formed a line and the knifers did too and we faced each other from across the skating rink. Death was everywhere. The crush of bodies either dead or twitching on the floor between us. The metallic odor of blood in the air.

It was hell. Pure, fucking hell.

“We can take them,” Megan said.

Everyone charged.

The last full measure.

Thirty-Six

They were more tired than we were. They’d had to sprint across a parking lot and then push their way in and then crawl over the fallen and they’d had to kill with blades, not guns.

But they outnumbered us.

And we were exhausted too.

There was no grace to the violence. We swung and we jostled and we threw. Three people slipped in the blood and went down. Megan executed a vicious roundhouse to someone’s leg which forced their knee sideways. The man only had a second to scream before Megan brained him with her bat.

Manetti and Riehl hung back and let the others come at us first.

A man and a woman approached me. They were both around forty. The woman wore a dress and the man a suit.

“You kill him, honey,” the man said.

“No, babe, you kill him,” the woman said.

They were a couple. Still had their wedding rings on.

“Or how about I kill you both,” I said.

They didn’t hear me. They laughed giddily and their eyes twitched and they couldn’t keep still. They had the bloodlust.

Just like I did.

The man surged forward with a knife and I blocked with one hand and crowned him with the bat. His eyes rolled back and the strength went out of his legs.

His wife didn’t hesitate. She had a serrated knife and cut into my blocking arm. The blade tore through my forearm. I swung wildly with the bat and missed worse. She jumped out of the way with a dancer’s grace and lunged at me. I snapped my head away and the knife whizzed by my neck. I punched her in the nose, dazing her, then I batted the side of her head as hard as I could.

She went down.

She and her husband were unconscious but still alive. Before I finished them off I figured it’d be a good time to take stock.

Megan and Mia were still fighting. I turned in time to see Dyer get knifed in the back. It was a bad injury, but I couldn’t tell if it was life-threatening. I didn’t see Eamon. I turned back around.

Riehl and Manetti were coming for me.

***

Riehl had an overhand grip on a Ka-Bar. Standard military issue. He’d probably been carrying it ever since he’d joined Spec Ops. The Ka-Bar looked like a natural extension of his person, like another appendage. He stepped over a couple corpses. All two-hundred and fifty pounds of him wanted to kill me.

Manetti got on my other forty-five and formed a two-point cover on me. She was holding a Bowie knife. A gash on the middle of her forehead was bleeding down her nose.

I didn’t want to kill them. But I would try.

They had years of training and experience on me. Riehl had known combat. And it was two-on-one. If I got them separate, I might have had a fighting chance. But they were too smart for that.

“Where’s Pater?” I said.

Riehl smirked. “Out of your reach.”

“So no harm in telling me.”

He shook his head.

They took a step closer.

“How about Melanie?” I said.

Manetti’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll see her soon.”

Translation: Melanie was dead.

They took another step. Any closer and they would have to make a move. I had the bat out in front of me. Any closer and I would have to make a move.

We stood like that. I heard the others fighting. I hoped Megan and Mia and Dyer were still alive.

Manetti and Riehl shared a look. They would close any second. I had to take the fight to them. I brought the bat up—

And someone pushed me.

I was nudged backward. I tripped on a dead body and lost hold of the bat. It hit the bloody rink and rolled away.

I scrambled to my feet and got my bearings. Riehl and Manetti hadn’t closed. They’d been just as surprised by the shove as me.

But who the hell had pushed me?

Everyone else was tied up fighting. And the push had come from in front of me. But no one else had been in front of me except Riehl and Manetti.

Who were now smiling wickedly as if they were in on some joke together. Their eyes drifted past me. I looked over my shoulder.

And saw Eamon halfway up the barricade.

He was watching the three of us and I realized what he’d done. Using his psychic link to this place, he’d pushed me so I fell. Giving Riehl and Manetti the perfect opportunity to kill me.

“When this is over, I’ll find you, asshole,” I said.

He scrambled on hands and feet over the barricade and slipped outside. Eamon Moriarty had escaped, but not before disarming me so I could be killed easily.

Good thing there were plenty of other weapons around. I didn’t need to fear getting shot now because I was holding a blade. There were no bullets left and Megan and her people knew I was okay.

The dead man sprawled next to me was still holding a carving knife. I went to grab it but my fingers recoiled at the handle.

My stomach lurched and a wave of nausea hit me. I pulled my hand back and felt a little better.

Riehl and Manetti were watching me with sly grins. They knew. Megan had known. Probably everyone else too.

I was affected.

I crab-walked back and scrambled to my feet. Riehl and Manetti resumed their steady approach, high-stepping over the corpses littering the rink.

“Now you know,” Manetti said.

I was sick.

And Riehl looked different. I couldn’t decide how. He was the same, but different. Maybe it was the eyes. They had a wild, animal intensity to them.

Manetti was different too though not in the same way. Her difference was in how she moved. More graceful now, animal-like.

Before I had wanted to defend myself.

Now I had to kill them.

I didn’t want to. But their deaths had become a biological imperative. Us versus them and self against self were on a collision course and the crash would result in death.

There were no weapons in easy reach. Well, none that I could use. The guns were out of ammo and the blades were off-limits.

I had to take on two highly-trained and exceptionally lethal federal agents unarmed.

“I’m going to kill you both,” I said.

“We’re going to enjoy watching you die,” Riehl said.

As they neared, I started to feel lightheaded. My knees went weak, like I was going to faint. Quickly, I grabbed my pack of smelling salts and whiffed. My vision immediately sharpened.

“Don’t pass out on us,” Manetti said.

I turned sideways to both of them and snuck my trailing hand into my back pocket.

A man is never defenseless.

Thirty-Seven

Good thing I had an ace up my sleeve.

Riehl and Manetti came at me the same time. I did the opposite of what they expected. I closed on them so they’d worry about accidentally slashing each other.

Manetti tried to take my head off with her Bowie knife but I ducked out of the way. Riehl scored a weak cut on my shoulder but by then I’d pulled Manetti’s knockout spray out. I’d picked her pocket during our kiss in the boiler room. It was a little smaller than a key fob. I put it in her face and hit the lone button on the middle of it.

It sprayed a fine mist.

Manetti wrenched her head back but she was too late. The mist glazed her upper lip, a perfect shot right under her nose. Her eyelids fluttered and she went down.

Spinning, I brought the thing around to spray Riehl. But he chopped my elbow and then I felt a hot flash across my stomach.

Riehl completed his swing and I saw my own blood on his Ka-Bar. He wasted no time and slashed again. I jumped away and he missed by an inch.

Riehl didn’t wait for me to recover. And I didn’t expect him to. He was already stepping into his next attack. I’d learned the same mentality in krav maga. In a life-and-death situation, you end the fight as quickly as possible.

Outmatched and out of luck, I gambled. I couldn’t go toe-to-toe with this natural born killer and expect to walk away. I had to end the fight immediately. The only way to do that was to be bold. Bold would either get me killed or save my ass. At least I’d go on my own terms.

I let Riehl think he was going to score another slash. At the last second I bent backward like I was doing the limbo and heeled Riehl’s trailing knee, the one without the weight on it. There was a crunch and Riehl’s leg bent the wrong way.

He didn’t yelp but I knew he was in serious pain.

I brought the sprayer to his face but he had the presence of mind to swing the knife again. He slashed my forearm and I dropped the sprayer.

I stomped with my heel again, this time on his leading instep and the blow stunned him. I brought my foot up and connected with his balls and this time he made some noise. He brought the knife up for a killing blow but I did the opposite again. Instead of waiting to defend myself I attacked.

I snapped my head forward as hard as I could. I head-butted him in the chin and then for good measure I drove my fist into his nuts and made him sing again.

Riehl toppled backward but I wasn’t about to stop there. I ground-and-pounded him till he dropped the knife and then I kept raining blows till he couldn’t even hold his hands up anymore.

I had to kill him.

I had to.

He lost consciousness. He was mine to kill. I put my hands around his neck, thumbs to his Adam’s apple and took some deep breaths to gather my strength. I stole a quick glance around the rink.

Megan and Mia were squaring off against the one remaining knifer. Dyer was holding, but barely. A few other gunners were still vertical. Manetti was out cold.

We had done it.

Riehl was mine. I had to kill him.

But I didn’t.

Because I didn’t want to.

Thirty-Eight

“Now you understand,” Megan said.

Together we climbed up the barricade and looked out into the darkness. The rain had finally stopped. The parking lot was awash with blood and bodies. There were still more out there but they weren’t coming.

“I wanted to kill them,” I said.

“But you didn’t want to.”

“Yeah.”

Megan turned back to the rink. We had tied up Riehl and Manetti. Riehl was still out of it and Manetti squirmed against her ropes. Mia stood guard over them with a baseball bat.

“I think it’ll be over soon,” Megan said.

“How do you know?”

She tapped her chest. “I can feel it slipping away. Can’t you?”

All I felt was raw. I couldn’t process much of anything.

“All these people,” I said.

Hundreds, maybe a thousand, dead.

I felt arms around my neck and next thing I knew Megan was hugging me. She sobbed into my shoulder and I hugged her back and let her cry. If I’d been able to feel anything I would have cried too because the death all around us was utterly meaningless.

There was a loud clang and I realized Mia had dropped her baseball bat. She fell to her knees and her shoulders slumped.

“Oh god…oh god…”

She kept saying that, like all the terrible things she’d been forced to do that night were finally hitting her.

Megan unburied her face and wiped under her eyes. “My sister is dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I shot her.”

“I’m sorry.”

She stared right through me, then her knees went weak also and I had to catch her. Just like I’d had to catch Melanie when I’d first gone to their father’s house.

Mia had stopped talking and now stared blindly at a spot one foot in front of her on the floor.

“Eddie.”

I looked over at Manetti. She wasn’t squirming against the ropes anymore. And she looked…herself again. Whatever I’d seen in her before was gone. Same with Riehl.

“We killed so many…” Manetti squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to erase the fresh memories of all the killing. “I killed so many…”

The hysteria was over.

But maybe the nightmare was just beginning.

THE REUNION

Thirty-Nine

The weather had finally turned. The radiator in my apartment worked well, if you were hovered over it. I wasn’t. So I was wearing a sweater and a jacket as I set up the camera attached to my laptop.

I didn’t sleep again last night. So I looked like hell. I surveyed the damage, most of it recent, in the bathroom mirror. The scar under my eye from Witherspoon’s knife was fresh. Other cuts too, but those were hidden. The most noticeable change was the nose. Riehl had broken it and it was crooked now. If I put on forty pounds of muscle I could have played for the Flyers.

I hadn’t seen them in years. I wondered what I’d look like now. What they looked like. I’d seen their pictures on Facebook, of course, but seeing them live would be different.

I tested the camera about a hundred times. I checked my image on the laptop. What would I look like to them?

A message popped up and I clicked the link. The screen went dark for a second as the program linked. I took a deep breath.

Then the screen came back to life.

Stan’s ugly mug filled the screen.

“Eddie!”

He looked good. He worked out religiously so he hadn’t aged a day.

“Stan, good to see you, pal.”

“Good to see you too, finally.” He smiled.

“Where’s the rest of the fam?”

“Moira’s getting the little one up now. Of all days she decides to take an extra long nap.”

“Of all days.”

Stan moved to the side of his camera’s field and I caught a glimpse of the house. Overrun by toys, dolls, and bouncers.

“See what you’re missing?”

I laughed.

Stan said, “Did you take up hockey?”

The nose. “No, your Mom got too excited last night.”

On paper, we were mid-thirties. In reality, we were still a bunch of seventeen-year-olds.

“Very original, less than a minute in and you’re trotting out the Your Mom jokes already.”

“I’m not myself.”

I hadn’t meant it any sort of way. But Stan’s face fell.

He said, “You doing okay?”

“Yeah. I think I’m down to three night terrors a night now.”

I laughed. He didn’t.

“I’ve read the stories,” he said. “Sounds like nobody can agree on what caused it.”

“Yeah.” They’d left a lot out of the official news reports. But I didn’t want to share or talk about it. All I’d done was relive it, night after night. Since the hysteria, I lived in constant fear that whatever it was would switch on inside me again. Would switch on in others.

That was why I was “visiting” Stan and Moira by video. I didn’t trust myself and didn’t want to be around the people I loved yet. Even though Pater had assured me I’d be fine.

“People are leaving in droves,” Stan said. “I can’t even imagine what it was like.”

“You don’t want to.”

Stan brought me up to speed on local news. Sheriff Charlie Waite was still coaching basketball on the side for the local community college. Local author Evan Ronan wanted to talk to me about the trial I’d been involved with in upstate New York a few months back. The guy was always looking for a new idea for a book.

Then I heard Moira in the background. “Massive blowout in her diaper. And then of course she won’t use the changing table anymore.”

Stan gave me a look through the camera.

“Is he on?” Moira said.

“Believe it or not.”

The baby started wailing and Stan left the screen. I heard Moira handing the kid off to Stan. Then Moira got in front of the camera.

“Hey, Eddie.” She smiled warmly.

“Hey there.”

She squinted to see me better. “You look different.”

“Broken nose.”

“Did you take up hockey?”

“You guys are turning into one person.”

She shrugged. “That’s marriage.”

Then the screen jumped as someone adjusted it. Stan appeared, holding their little girl.

“Meet Madison.”

I took her in. She was cheeky and her eyes were slits.

“Guys…she’s amazing.”

“Isn’t she?”

They gave me her entire history. I soaked in the details about their beautiful baby girl. She was a great sleeper, or had been, but now she was teething and teething caused diarrhea for some unknown reason. She was too big for her size two diapers but not big enough for size three. She had tiny feet and hands, though she was in the seventy-fifth percentile for height and weight. She knew baby sign language. I didn’t know there was such a thing, but she could signal with her hands when she was hungry. They shared all the little, personal details of their child and the challenges of parenthood and I took it all in, hanging on their every word and I felt a lightness in my chest that had been M-I-A for a long time.

“You two are the luckiest people in the world,” I said.

“Sometimes,” Moira said.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Stan said.

“Dude, you won the fucking lottery.”

“Language!” Moira yelled.

Madison giggled.

It was the first time I’d ever gotten a baby to giggle. It was magical.

Eventually Madison got fussy and Moira took her to play in the bouncer. It was just me and Stan.

He said, “When are you coming out?”

“I can’t be near her,” I said. “I don’t trust myself. Not yet.”

“We trust you.”

“Thanks, but I can’t.”

“Figured as much.” He smiled. “So I’m going to send you something.”

“What?”

He held something up in front of the camera.

A photograph.

It was an old photo of Stan, me, and my brother standing in front of the Moriarty house, site of the team’s last investigation together. Tim looked young. All my life he’d seemed so much older, but now I was older than he had been in the picture, and older than he’d ever be.

I didn’t remember posing for the picture or ever seeing it. Stan and Tim were dressed sharp like always. I was in baggy jeans that probably hadn’t seen the washer in months and a black t-shirt from high school. And my hair was out of control, all over the place.

Then Madison got fussy again. Stan and Moira tried to get her to calm down but she was having none of it.

Stan shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, man, but it looks like we’ll have to cut this short.”

“No worries.”

“It was good to see you, pal.”

“You too, buddy.”

“Come out soon.”

“I will.”

And that was that. I sat in front of the laptop for a long time after, thinking about my friends and their beautiful daughter. And wondering but also not wondering why I felt this big hole in my life.

Forty

I was in the car when my cell buzzed. The number was restricted.

“Domino’s Pizza.”

“Hello, Eddie.”

I smiled and banged a right into a strip mall. I had somewhere to be, but it was worth taking the few minutes here. I found an isolated spot and parked.

“Good afternoon, Agent Manetti.”

“Pater asked me to call.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Okay. He didn’t. But did you get the—”

“Already called my bank, asked them about the large deposit. They confirmed it.”

“You earned it.”

“Yeah I did.”

“Yes, you did.”

I chuckled. “High praise coming from you.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“I won’t.”

We were quiet for a stretch. A few cars passed on the street.

I said, “You guys figure it out yet?”

“Working hypothesis: the MPI was caused by local social, meteorological, national political, and international militaristic current events.”

“So you have no idea.”

“We will.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Are you looking for Eamon?”

“You know I am.”

“He was affected, just like Riehl, just like Pater, just like me. Just like you.”

“Nice try, but Eamon wasn’t. I saw him after I’d fully turned and he wasn’t giving off any vibes either way.”

“He’s troubled.”

“He’ll be more troubled when I find him.”

I heard her shut a door. I wondered where she was, if they had an office in some undisclosed location. Or if they’d set up shop somewhere temporarily, just like they had in Oregon.

She said, “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. I can’t explain it.”

“You weren’t yourself. But you were enough yourself.”

“Sounds about right.”

She was quiet.

I said, “How’s Riehl?”

“Back in action. He doesn’t make a great patient.”

“Any hard feelings there?”

“From him? No. But…”

“But?”

“Next time you see him, he’ll want to spar. Be ready.”

I groaned. “Thanks for the heads-up. How are you holding up?”

“Busy. Busy is good.”

“I’ve gotta get busy myself.”

She grew serious. “Eddie, don’t go after Eamon.”

I said nothing.

“One professional to another, don’t go down that rabbit hole.”

“You think I’m a pro?”

She laughed again. “I’m serious. Keep moving forward. No detours to find Eamon Moriarty. Nothing good will come of that.”

“Noted.”

“And Eddie.” She paused a beat. “It’s going to take some work to get through this.”

I knew she was right but I said nothing. I wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating much either. I was having trouble focusing. All those things probably added up to a diagnosis that required attention.

Manetti continued. “And it will take a lot of time. You don’t have to process it all at once. What we saw…what we did…your brain has to work through it, piece by piece.”

I said nothing.

Manetti said, “Get help if you need it. Trust me on this. I’m speaking from personal experience.”

“I will,” I lied.

“And keep your cell handy,” she said. “There’s always trouble brewing and Pater likes you.”

“In that case, I’m ditching this thing first chance I get then.”

She laughed. “See you later, Amateur Hour.”

“Stay out of trouble, Agnes.”

I knew I wouldn’t.

We hung up and I forgot about my next appointment. It was a cold, grey day that matched my overall mood. I sat in that parking lot for a long time, trying to take some meaning from what had happened.

Eventually, I boiled it down to this: I’d survived.

I’d fucking survived.

***********

UXORI MEAE

Please leave me a review!

I take reader feedback very seriously and use it to improve my craft. Also, it is virtually impossible for an indie writer to get noticed on Amazon or elsewhere without reviews. More reviews leads to more sales, which make it possible for me to write more books in this series. And as many of you already know, I have a habit of giving away complimentary copies of stories to people who are kind enough to leave honest reviews.

SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER AND GET A FREE BOOK

Join my Mailing List and get a free book of your choosing. You’ll also get news about my latest releases, upcoming titles, and special offers. I will respect your privacy, won't spam you, and won't share your email with anyone. Happy Reading!

NEWSLETTER SIGNUP HERE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Mass psychogenic illness (MPI) is real and fascinating. The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic, where children laughed uncontrollably, occurred in 1962 and reportedly lasted for months. This and other examples of MPI, such as the West Bank Fainting Epidemic in 1983, show us how weirdly wired and fragile a species we are. Wikipedia is a good place to start if you’re interested in learning more.

AND THANKS

I also wanted to take this opportunity to say thanks for reading. In keeping with what I’ve done so far, the next three books in this series will all be a little different than everything that has come before. I’m excited to see where Eddie goes next. It’s a lot of fun to write a character that changes, pretty significantly, over time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan Ronan's stories don't always fit neatly into one genre but that’s what readers like about them. He reads widely and tries to write as widely. His paranormal thriller series, The Unearthed, features his favorite protagonist, Eddie McCloskey, a man who's constantly underestimated and always finds a way to beat the odds through a little hustle, a little brains, and a lot of hard work.

Evan also writes in the YA, historical fiction, sci-fi and mystery genres and writes in other genres under different pen names as well. He lives with his family in New Jersey, in the same town Eddie McCloskey grew up in.

For more information, visit his website: www.ronaniswriting.blogspot.com.

ALSO BY EVAN RONAN

THE UNEARTHED SERIES

The Unearthed

The Lost

The Accused and the Damned

The Hysteria

The Traveler

The Dream Machine (in the works)

The Missing (in the works)

#8 (in the works)

TOMAHAWK AND SABER SERIES WITH NATHANAEL GREEN

Language of the Bear

Through the Narrows

#3 (in the works)

SHORT STORIES

Morale Was Down

Effective Immediately

Not Safe For Work (coming soon)

In The Blood

In The Blood #2

In The Blood #3

In The Blood #4

Frontier Justice

Harm

OTHER BOOKS COMING SOON

Undo (YA / sci-fi)

OtherWorld (middle grade fantasy)

The Eighth Man (sci-fi noir)

THE HYSTERIA. Copyright 2015 by Evan Ronan. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place 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 the author or publisher.

Edition: January, 2015