Writing

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

7. Candace

For a moment, she stared down at the first aid kit and heard Mike a few moments ago, screaming for it while Mr. Simms bled out. She looked up at Mike, but he was just sitting on the floor of the bathroom, staring at the wall. His hands were covered in congealing blood, his knees were stained with it. At some point he’d pushed a hand through his hair and touched his face, leaving behind gore.

She heard him screaming for a First Aid kit, and saw herself standing there, frozen.

She opened the kit and scrounged for some cotton balls. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she said. “We should—I should have helped you.”

He blinked and looked at her, for a moment seeming far away. Then he shook his head, looking down at his hands. “There wasn’t anything you could do. There wasn’t anything I could do.” He snorted. “I’ve been traveling around, apprenticing. I thought I was … I don’t know, it seems stupid now. I thought I was learning a little bit about everything. Spend a few months fighting wildfires, a few weeks working in a car repair shop. People are always happy to bend the rules and let you just hang around, doing free labor, especially if you offer them a lot of money.” He closed his eyes. “I should have done something better with that money. Donated it. Started a charity, a foundation.”

She closed the first aid kit and put it aside and grabbed a handful of paper towels instead. She dampened them and began cleaning his face. He opened his eyes and watched her, calm, unashamed. His eyes were brown and she liked them, the steady way they regarded her. “I don’t know,” she said. “Traveling around learning—it sounds nice. A good way to spend your life.”

“It’s selfish. It’s arrogant. It presumes me knowing things is somehow important to the universe.” He swallowed. “I … never wanted to feel helpless again. I lost someone, and I realized I had no idea what to do. I woke up and she was gone and I’d spent a decade doing nothing, being nothing. I guess I wanted to make up for that lost time and be everything, all at once.” He sighed. “It didn’t help Kevin Simms.”

“They didn’t let you help him,” she said, surprised at the bite of anger in her own voice. “They shot that poor man and then just stood there and let him bleed.” She paused and looked directly at him. “We have to do something. We have to get out of here.”

He nodded. “We don’t even know what’s going on. I wish you knew something about that facility down the road. Was lit up bright as Christmas when I drove by it, and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that’s where our new friends came from.”

She tossed the towels into the garbage and grabbed another handful. She knew she wasn’t really doing anything—he wasn’t hurt and could clean himself up—but she’d felt a need to do something for him, to connect with him somehow. “I don’t know anything. Maybe Jack does, he’s—” She hesitated to say older than me for some reason. “It’s been closed for years, even before I was born, I think. Padlock on the gates and everything. I don’t actually know who owns it.”

He shook his head. “When I drove past it just before I got here, it was definitely not empty. It was alive, and populated. Whatever was going on there is a big secret, and that makes me nervous.” He accepted damp towels from her and scrubbed at his face. “What I wouldn’t give for a working cell phone signal right now. I’m betting a lot of this stuff is classified, but we have a few names, a location—we might find out something that would help.”

She nodded, something nagging at her thoughts. “Or we might find out it’s happening everywhere, all over the place,” she said. “Martial law or something.”

He stared at her. “I hadn’t though of that,” he said.

“You know what’s strange to me,” she said, leaning against the wall. “They don’t have any walkie-talkies, radios, nothing. They have no way of communicating with the outside world.”

“They’ve got Raslowski’s laptops,” Mike said, turning to the sink and running the water. “He seems to be connected to something.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But he’s not talking to anyone else is he? He’s not passing information that we can see. And what’s his deal, anyway? He’s not a soldier, but they obey his orders, and—” She froze. “Wait!”

He turned to her, still crouched over the sink, his face dripping. “What is it?”

“The office computer!” She looked at him, eyes burning. “It’s ancient.”

He frowned. “Okay.”

“Like, seriously ancient,” she said. “It’s got an old dial-up modem in there. It’s the only Internet connection he’s ever had. Landline. Hardline.”

She thought of all the boring nights without customers, surfing the web in there and hating every moment. She turned off images in the browser and everything else, and eventually even downloaded a text-only browser, which at least allowed her to read the news at a decent clip. Jack McCoy was probably the only person in a hundred miles who hadn’t gotten a satellite dish.

Once again, Jimmy Haggen figured into it; he was like a form of mold that had gotten into every single nook and cranny of her life, taking root in microscopic ways. He was the one who, one night when Jack had gone on a run for lemons—the Great Lemon Emergency—had taken her in to Jack’s office and showed her the old box. It’s a fucking first-gen Pentium! he’d cawed. It’s fucking amazing it does anything!

And Jimmy had shown her how to make it go online, and made all sorts of tweaks trying to get it to run a little faster. He was the one who’d suggested she use the text browser, making inscrutable jokes about the Dark Web and onions. She wondered if there were any stories in her life that didn’t somehow involve James Haggen, and decided to table the thought for later contemplation when she wasn’t being held prisoner.

Mike’s smile came slowly, and then he nodded. “So not blocked by whatever’s killing our phones,” he said. “And maybe they overlooked it. We can call out.”

“And look everything up online,” she said breathlessly. “It’s slow as heck, but it works.”

“If they didn’t notice it.”

She nodded. “If they didn’t notice it. But I’ll bet they didn’t. Who would think of a landline these days? Or a dial-up modem?”

“There’s one problem: Hammond has set up in the office.”

She deflated, kicking herself. Of course, she knew that. The Colonel had been sitting in Jack’s office since she’d arrived, and called people in when she needed them.

He grabbed more towels and dried himself off. “That means we need to distract her, get her out of there for a few minutes. Then someone goes in and connects, does some searching. Or calls the police.”

She shook her head. “No way, Mike. Seriously—Mr. Simms is dead. Anyone playing around at distracting Hammond or sneaking into that office could get shot. Plus,” she continued, cutting off his response, “plus, the police around here is one guy named Werner who hasn’t so much as pulled his sidearm from the holster in fifteen years.”

Mike smiled. “My kind of cop.”

“It’s not worth it. There are too many moving parts.”

He shook his head. “We have to, Candace,” he said, his face intent. She liked the fact that he had not yet once called her Candy, which was usually irresistible to men of all ages and social standings. “We don’t know what’s going on, which means this could be a lot bigger than just us. It might involve who knows how many people—or the whole country, or the whole world.” He nodded. “We have to try this.”

“And what if it’s everybody? What if it’s everywhere?”

He nodded. “In that case, it doesn’t matter, does it? If it’s something like that, we’re totally screwed. There would be no place to go anyway, no other authority to appeal to.”

She had the sense that he was right, but she didn’t want him to be. She wanted there to be someplace to go, some authority to appeal to. She wanted to get to tomorrow, when she could quit her job and pack a bag and leave town like she should have last year, or the year before. She knew she might never be an artist, or be rich, but she would at least be somewhere other than this bar every single night.

It wasn’t fair. She’d seen a man die, and suddenly the possibility not just of her own death, but her own death in this goddamn bar was all too real. She wasn’t the morbid type: She didn’t spend a lot of time contemplating her own mortality. But now that she could see her mortality in a very real way, she felt a near-panic to break out. Dying in the woods twenty feet outside One-Eyed Jack’s would be better than dying inside it.

“All right,” she said. “How would we do it?”

Mike looked off to the side, thinking. She liked his profile. “You’ve signed on. How long does it take, usually?”

She thought, imagining the hated little box on screen, the odd electronic noises. “A minute, probably.”

He nodded. “Okay. We need to have a set of searches ready, mapped out. From most important to least.” He started to pace, taking two steps in one direction and two in the opposite. “Even if we manage to get Hammond out of the office, we’ll need to get you into the office. And even then we can’t be certain how much time you’ll have, so we have to have everything set from least to most important. And—”

“Wait—me?”

He stopped pacing and turned, taking her by the shoulders. “You know the system. The log on, everything. We can’t risk wasted seconds. It has to be you.”

She stared, fear dripping into her. She saw Simms lying on the floor, bleeding, the confused, terrified expression on his face. Her heart started to pound. She wasn’t built for this. She was just a waitress, a girl past thirty who’d stayed in her hometown because her father got sick and deferred any sort of dreams she might have had for herself. She had a high school diploma and a decent music collection and, everyone had always assured her, a good head on her shoulders. She wasn’t a spy. She wasn’t built to risk her life. She would crack, she would slip up, ruin everything, and get killed.

You’ll figure it out, she heard her Dad say in his growly voice that strangers always thought sounded angry. You’ll be okay.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for just one moment. What was the alternative? If she didn’t do it, they would be right back where they began, sitting around waiting for whatever these people decided to do to them. And she doubted it ended with Hammond apologizing and ordering her people to leave without incident. And then she saw herself kneeling, hands tied behind her back, with a gun pointed at her head.

She opened her eyes. Mike was studying her, but with distance, holding back, giving her room.

“Okay,” she said. “How do you get me in there?”

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6. Mike

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

He was moving before he realized it, diving forward at a run and throwing himself down next to Simms, his knees soaking in the man’s warm blood. He could see Simms’ eye moving behind his thick glasses, looking around, wide and amazed. His lips, pale and wet, were moving as if he was asking a question.

Mike remembered a summer spent riding along with a volunteer ambulance corp in Ohio; it was amazing what a generous donation could do. No one had any objections as long as he agreed to stay out of the way, and during the down time he got an education in emergency first aid. He learned about the Golden Hour when it came to gunshot wounds: People who made it to emergency medical services within an hour of being shot had a much better chance of survival.

He looked up. The soldier at the door was still holding the gun in his hand. He looked at the man with the glasses. His face was cold and almost sneering.

“A doctor! A medic!” Mike shouted. “You must have one in your unit!”

No one moved. Behind him, he heard the other civilians yelling, but the soldiers and the cold, still man sitting at the table just stared at him.

“A first aid kit!” he shouted desperately, heart pounding. “Anything! Please!”

The man with the glasses turned back to his screens. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

Anger flooded into him. These bastards could have shoved Simms, pushed him around, even hit him, and he would have been cowed. Shooting him had been savage, unnecessary—cruel.

He tore off his jacket and then the flannel shirt he was wearing, fingers numb and clumsy, buttons popping off. He leaned over Simms; blood had welled up and stained his shirt just above his waist, and continued to pulse onto the floor with every heartbeat. Mike balled up the shirt and pushed it down onto the wound, applying pressure. Simms gasped and his whole body jerked, but Mike could recall his lessons from the EMTs: Direct pressure, slow down the bleeding. It was literally the only thing he could do without any sort of supplies—or a doctor.

“Come on Kevin,” he said, looking into Simms’ eyes. “We’re gonna help you. Just hang on, okay?”

Simms’ eyes were locked on his, watery and terrified. His lips kept moving, but Mike couldn’t hear what they said.

He remembered the only time he’d seen someone die while shadowing the EMTs. A heart attack. They’d wheeled him into the ambulance, and he’d been alive, and conscious, red-faced and weak, but there. And then he’d flatlined, his eyes rolling up, and they’d worked on him the whole drive to the hospital. And Mike had felt so useless, so stupid, just sitting there. And he’d thought that if he could just do something, anything, it would be better. Nothing, he’d thought, could be worse than sitting by idly and helpless while another human being died. It was even somehow worse than waking up and finding Julia dead, on her belly in her panties, her beautiful hair stringy and dirty, her skin marked by purple bruises, junkie marks.

Now he felt Simms’ life leaking away literally under his hands and he knew better. This was worse. An hour ago he didn’t know Kevin Simms existed. Now the man was dying right in front of him.

He tore his gaze from Simms’ glassy stare and looked around. “Jesus fucking Christ a man is dying! A man is fucking dying here!”

The man in the black-framed glasses didn’t look up from his keyboards, but he sighed in what Mike thought was irritation. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “He’s not in my calculations.”

Mike looked back at Simms, whose face had gone slack, his eyes staring fixedly up at the ceiling. His calculations? Something about the word drilled down into him, and molten rage boiled up. Without thinking Mike turned and launched himself, bloody hands and all, at the little man.

“Doesn’t—”

Someone punched him in the stomach as his legs were swept out from under him. He landed on his back, hard, head bouncing on the floor, and there was a gun in his face, the barrel an inch away. He froze and closed his eyes, waiting for the shot.

“Soldier, step back!”

The whole place went still. Mike opened his eyes and for a moment his field of vision was the gun barrel, nothing else, just the perfect symmetry of the weapon.

“That was a command, son.”

The gun disappeared, and the soldier—the same one who had shot Simms, he saw, a tall, lanky man with a crooked nose and a monobrow that made him seem perpetually angry—stepped smartly back, holding the gun by his thigh.

Mike twisted himself up on one elbow, his abdomen still aching from the punch. Colonel Hammond stood in the doorway that led to the office and bathrooms. She looked angry. Mike revised, his brain jerking and kicking back into motion. She looked apoplectic. Her face had flushed, and she stood ramrod straight, her body almost vibrating with tension and anger.

“Holster that weapon, Musgraves,” she snapped. “Then remove your holster and hand it to King. Don’t speak a fucking word, soldier, or you will regret it. King, you are detailed with Musgraves’ weapon. Do not let it out of your sight.”

Mike watched the monobrowed soldier wordlessly holster the gun, then unsnap the holster and hand it to the other soldier who’d been guarding the front door, a woman with densely curly black hair. She took it wordlessly, not looking at him, and buckled it over her own.

Hammond remained where she was, looking over the whole place, nostrils flaring. Mike thought the only sound in the place was the Colonel’s breath whistling in her nose. His own heart was beating wildly, all over the place, without rhythm. Sweat had soaked through his shirt, and his pants and arms were covered in Simms’ blood.

“Next member of this unit who discharges their weapon,” Hammond said in a steady, acidic tone of voice, “without my direct order will also regret that decision.”

She let that hang in the air.

“King: Detail someone to deal with the body. Show some respect.”

Mike blinked and turned his head. Simms stared blankly at the ceiling. He was dead.

Then she looked at the skinny little man in the glasses, who’d continued to work at his keyboards as if nothing had happened.

“Dr. Raslowski,” she snapped. “My office.”

She turned and walked back down the hall. Raslowski kept tapping at his keyboards for a moment, as if he hadn’t heard or didn’t intend to obey. Then he suddenly shoved the table violently, making all his equipment jump, and leaped up, striding quickly through the room. Mike thought he looked like a little boy who’d been reprimanded in school.

He stared around. The soldiers had their eyes on distant points, their faces expressionless. The bar patrons and employees were pale and shaken, staring back at him. He closed his eyes and thought, Raslowski. Hammond. King. Musgraves. Four names was a paltry list of new data for Simms to have died for, but he was determined to make it count.

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

5. Candace

He came to save her from the Most Boring Mole Ever and she was eternally grateful. The guy—Andy, if that was his real name—seemed nice enough, although his eyes went and lingered places on her anatomy she didn’t appreciate. She had a sense that he was the sort of young kid who got a little drunk and made passes at waitresses like her, then grinned and was sorry-not-sorry when he got called out on his shit. He was also, she thought, the sort of guy who thought he was a lot more charming than he really was, as he seemed instantly convinced she was really into him.

She kept a smile on her face. She’d been through this a million times: Tourist hunters in town for a night or three, mistaking her professional politeness for attraction. She had a collection of matchbooks, business cards, napkins, and other trash with phone numbers. She didn’t know why she kept them.

“Jack says there’ll be sandwiches,” Mike said, suddenly appearing next to her. “Couple of minutes.”

“Thank god,” Andy said, smiling. “And beer, I hope.”

She thought his smile was good, but calculated. She was trying to watch him like a disinterested observer. To judge his performance, and she thought it was good—if she’d hadn’t remembered checking the bathroom earlier in the evening, if the place hadn’t been so empty, making it easy for her to note the sudden appearance of an unfamiliar face—she might have been fooled. Mad One Jack’s never got crowded in the way she saw bars on TV get crowded, but there were a few nights every week when there were a couple dozen folks moving through the place, mostly travelers stopping off for a beer and a bite. The town was ten miles east and population less than a hundred, so off-season the bar was usually pretty dead.

Did Hammond decide on the mole strategy without knowing the situation? If she’d known how empty the bar was, she would never have imagined the ploy would work. She thought that indicated the Colonel and her crew, whatever they were, had put this operation together quickly.

“Do me a favor,” Mike said to Andy. “Check on Jack in the kitchen, see if he needs any help?”

She admired the dim smile Mike put on his face, looking for all the world like an idiot. Andy nodded.

“Sure,” he said, and walked off.

She watched that dumb smile fade. “Who are you?” she asked, and was immediately embarrassed.

He smiled. “Thanks for the distraction. I know it was kind of a shitty, sexist thing for me to say, but I honestly didn’t have a better idea.”

She shrugged. “I’ll take it as a compliment. I always used to tell my Dad my job was hot waitress.” She bit off the second part of that sentence: Wishing he was still around for her to gloat about being right.

He smiled, then leaned in and filled her in on the plan, such as it was. She liked the way he smelled. He wasn’t wearing any sort of cologne, it was just him: Sweat and something else, something sexy and interesting.

“The best thing to do with a spy,” he said in a low, intimate voice, “isn’t to stonewall. Spies get suspicious when they’re not hearing anything. The best thing to do is to feed them something totally useless, but busy.”

She nodded. “Sandwiches.”

He grinned. “Yup, we all just had a big, serious discussion about sandwiches.”

“That was smart. Where’d you learn to think like that?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been … I guess the best word is studying. I’ve been taking classes with people. Experts. Anyone with a skill or a point of view. I travel to them, spend some time with them, try to learn something new. Sometimes it’s a waste of time. Sometimes it’s just fun. Sometimes I learn something really amazing.”

She raised an eyebrow, thinking this was the weirdest thing she’d ever heard … but kind of cool, too. “So you’re just traveling around with your black no-limit credit card, studying the world.”

He laughed, face reddening, and she liked that he was awkward about it. “I, er, came into some money. All right: A lot of money. I was really young and my parents were both dead.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, worried that she’d put her foot in it.

He waved her off. “It was a long time ago—now. Back then, I was sixteen when Mom passed and it was ugly. Anyway, my grandfather on Mom’s side was rich, like, epically rich, and he’d always intended to leave everything to me because he hated my father. So when he passed away, I inherited … well, a lot of money and I was twenty years old.”

“Jesus.” She tried to imagine herself suddenly wealthy at twenty. What would she have done? Given Dad the retirement he deserved, certainly. Would she have gone to school, become an artist? She thought so, but twenty seemed so long ago, like a different country.

He was looking around, watching. She was amazed at how easily he’d taken charge, someone none of them had met before, someone none of them knew. She trusted him, though. Something about him seemed reliable, real. Like he was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of guy.

“Anyway, I wasn’t ready for it. I spent ten years partying. Like, seriously partying. Heavy stuff. I should have died a bunch of times. I built up this group of … well, I called them friends but they were just leeches and enablers, really. Had a ball, for a while. Met a … ” he hesitated, looking down at his shoes for just a moment, but she thought it looked incredibly sad. “Met a girl,” he finished quietly. “She was messed up, like me, but we loved each other.” He suddenly looked up at her, directly into her eyes. “She died. And it was my fault. I mean, I didn’t kill her or anything, but it was the way we lived, the way I lived. I loved her, but I loved the party more, and so she died.”

Without realizing it, she’d reached out and put her hand on his arm. The pain in his face was real.

“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat and smiling. “I sobered up after that. Checked in with my finance guy, and was surprised to learn I was still pretty rich, though I’d blown a huge amount of it. I was thirty-something and I’d spent most of my youth in a haze, and I realized somehow I’d felt sorry for myself because my parents had been taken from me. I felt like an idiot, suddenly, and so I decided I needed to clear my head. I needed to grieve for Julia, I needed to do something, learn something, broaden my horizons. So that’s what I’ve been doing for a year and a half now.” He looked around again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just dump all that. It just came out. What about you? What’s your story?”

She tried to put an expression of self-mockery on her face. “Oh, you know: Just a small town girl, living in a lonely—actually, you can’t even call this a small town, we’re like fifty people living in the woods with a road and a post office—”

“Yeah, I passed through town—what is it, population seventy, there’s a feed store and a diner.”

She nodded. “Yup. So, micro-town girl thinks she’s going to be an artist. Wins an award in junior year of high school, but forgets that her graduating class is twenty kids, so the competition ain’t so hot. She figures she’ll take a job waitressing at Mad One’s because that’s what her mama did and that’s just what girls do around here, but she’ll do it for one year and save up and head out for New York City to attend art school.”

He smiled. “So far so good. What happened?”

She smiled back. “You mean, why is that girl still waitressing here instead of opening a gallery show in SoHo or at least married to some rich tourist who came through laying all the local waitresses?”

His smile kinked up. “Aside from the fact that I’d never use a word like laying, yeah, pretty much.”

She shrugged. “Well, Dad got sick. I stuck around to take care of him. His retirement dried up, and I started working extra shifts to pay bills, and when he died there was debt. Just nothing but debt. And I’ve just about cleaned it up, and was making plans to finally do something, take off, when this happens.”

“About to make a break for it, literally soldiers show up to stop you,” he said, sounding amused.

“Yes! Exactly! Not to sound all self-important, but it’s like the universe doesn’t want me to leave.”

“Maybe so you could meet me.”

She could tell, the moment he said it he wished he hadn’t, and an awkward moment welled up between them. She’d never felt this comfortable with someone this quickly, and he wasn’t even trying. She’d seen guys try. She’d seen them try so damn hard, and this was the opposite.

Suddenly there was a commotion, and they both spun to see the tourist, Simms, standing near the front door, looking agitated.

“You can’t just hold us here without some sort of authority!” he was saying, sounding more exasperated than afraid. Two soldiers stood in front of him, impassive. Nearby, the nerdy-looking man with the glasses took no notice, working on his laptops. “Jesus, we’re American citizens and this is native soil. You haven’t shown us any sort of authorization. I think you’re just trying to intimidate us.”

Glen Eastman started towards him. “Mr. Simms,” he said in the sonorous voice Candace remembered so well from her school days, being ordered to do laps, “step back here and let’s talk about this.”

“Dude,” Jimmy Haggen said drunkenly from behind the bar, where he’d set himself up as the unofficial bartender. “Let the tourist go if he wants to go!”

Simms waved a hand impatiently behind him. “I’m walking out this door. Anyone puts a hand on me, they’re going to be hearing from my lawyer.”

“Right on!” Haggen cheered, enjoying himself. Candace felt a wave of revulsion. It had been nearly two decades, but she still couldn’t believe she’d dated him.

Suddenly, the man in the glasses spoke. His voice was high-pitched and breathy. “Mr. Simms, no one will lay a hand on you.” He turned around in his seat and stared at the balding man with a blank, flat expression. “We will shoot you if you try to walk out that door. Do you understand?”

Simms turned and looked back at the other detainees for a moment, his expression uncertain. Then he set his mouth firmly and turned back. “I’m going out that door, and you have no right to stop me, mister.”

The man in the glasses nodded. He gestured, and one of the two soldiers unsnapped his holster and drew his weapon, a black automatic pistol. He held it down by his thigh, his finger along the side instead of on the trigger, but Candace still jumped at the sight of it, adrenaline dumping into her veins. She was used to guns; she’d grown up with them and had been on more hunting trips than she could remember, but there was something about a handgun that was somehow more threatening than a hunting rifle.

“Kevin,” Mike said. “Come on, buddy, they’re serious. Step back and let Mr. Haggen pour you a drink.”

“Fuck that!” Jimmy shouted. “Stand up, Kev! Show ?em who’s boss!”

“Jimmy, shut up!” Candace hissed.

Simms hesitated, and half turned back, shaking his head. Candace felt herself relax. Then, suddenly, he pushed aside one soldier and made a run for the door.

Everything happened in a blur. She saw Mike take a step forward instinctively. She heard Glen shout something. Her whole body tensed up, and she watched the second soldier raise his sidearm just as Simms pushed past him. She heard the shot, louder than she would have thought possible in the stillness of the bar. She saw Simms flail backwards as if he’d been shoved by some invisible giant.

Someone was screaming. It took a moment to realize it was her.

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

4. Mike

Colonel Hammond glanced up, studied him for a moment, then waved him into the office. It was a tiny, cramped space; a small metal desk and filing cabinet filled it almost completely, so that anyone seeking to sit behind the desk had to maneuver their way there very carefully, bending into ridiculous poses. He tried to imagine the Colonel making herself look ridiculous in order to sit there and couldn’t; she didn’t look like someone who took being made ridiculous lightly.

“Yes?” she said, glancing down at the file she’d been reading.

Mike took his own moment to study her. She didn’t look well, he thought. Stress, maybe. Or a guilty conscience. She was flushed, and had dark bags under her eyes. He thought she looked exhausted, and tense. He tried to keep his eyes and ears open, seeking every possible detail—they were at a severe disadvantage regarding information, and if they were going to survive, or escape, they would need to know a lot more than they already did.

“You asked for a liaison,” he said. “I’m it.”

She looked up again. “Congratualtions, Mr.—?”

He smiled. “Don’t pretend you don’t know all our names.”

She nodded, leaning back. “All right, Mr. Malloy. What can I do for you?”

“Let us walk out of here? Tell us what’s going on? Explain your legal authority for detaining us?”

She stared back at him, expressionless. He sighed. “Didn’t think so. The owner wants permission to go in the kitchen and make up something to eat for anyone who wants it. He’d be happy to rustle up something for your people, too, if you can let us know which government agency or Joint Chief to send the invoice.”

She didn’t smile. After a moment, she nodded. “I’ll detail two guards to supervise. Only McCoy in the kitchen, no one else.”

He nodded. “What about our families, jobs, et cetera? We all have people who will miss us.”

Hammond shook her head. “Actually, you don’t.”

Mike had known this was a bluff in regards to himself. He’d been drifting for a year now, no permanent address, his most frequent contact being his attorney and his broker, neither of whom he counted as a friend, and neither of whom would expect a call from him at any specific time. He was surprised at how certain she was of the others—surely one of them had someone who would check on them—but she did have dossiers on all of them. He shifted his weight but didn’t pursue it further.

“Anything else, Mr. Malloy?”

He hesitated, but shook his head. “No. Thank you.”

He turned and one of the soldiers escorted him out. In the hall he glanced into the bathroom, another soldier standing outside it on guard.

At the bar, the skinny guy named Jimmy was pouring shots and handing them off. Everyone was gathered there, even the fat bald guy with glasses. The soldiers stood around the perimeter, watchful. Mike noted the presence of Bathroom Guy, but said nothing.

“Bad idea,” he said, joining the group.

Jimmy smiled. “My specialty.”

“We should stay clear and sober. We don’t know what’s going on.”

Jimmy lifted the shot glass and toasted him. “Fuck you.”

Mike took a deep breath. He had a pretty good idea he could take on Jimmy, if he had to, but the last thing they needed was a brawl. He glanced at the bald tourist and held out his hand. “Mike Malloy.”

The bald man jumped a little, surprised to be brought into the conversation. He reached out and shook; his hand was clammy, his grip soft. “Kevin Simms,” he said, smiling nervously. “Jesus, I picked the wrong place to get dinner.”

Mike nodded, let go, and dismissed him: A tourist hunter, probably more interested in getting away from his wife (the wedding band on his finger was plain and lodged permanently on the sausage-like digit) than any actual sport. He turned to Bathroom Guy.

“Mike Malloy.”

Bathroom Guy startled a little, then smiled sheepishly and shook hands. “Andy Powell,” he said. “Jesus, huh?”

Mike smiled, nodding, and putting everything he had into putting on a friendly demeanor. “You said it.” He turned as naturally as he could and touched Candace on the shoulder, enjoying the contact with her, no matter how brief.

“Got a sec?” He said, smiling and staying relaxed.

She stared at him a moment, then suddenly loosened and smiled. “Of course!” she said, and followed him to the back end of the bar, away from everyone and as far from the groups of soldiers as possible.

“I need to ask a kind of ridiculous favor,” he said, watching her carefully. He didn’t know her, though he felt instinctively like he did know her, somehow. He wasn’t sure how his next suggestion was going to go over. “I need you to, um, distract him.”

She raised an eyebrow and leaned in. But she seemed amused instead of angry, which he took to be a good sign. “Distract? The guy from the bathroom?”

He nodded. “Andy. Look, I know that’s … weird, but we need to be able to talk without a spy standing right there, and we also need to keep the fact that we know he’s a plant secret. I know I’m making … a couple of big assumptions here, but there’s no time for a long think on the subject, you know?”

He was embarrassed. For a moment she just stared at him and he wondered if he was going to get slapped in the face, or dressed down for assuming she was the only one who could “distract” Andy, and was already scrambling for the words to explain that he’d come to her because she was the only one he trusted at the moment, for reasons beyond his ability to explain. Then she smiled and nodded.

“Absolutely.” Then she winked. “Watch the master work.”

She turned and walked around him. He realized his pulse was pounding, and he felt an odd wave of affection for her. He’d met Candace Cuddyer an hour ago and she’d become his favorite person in the whole world already.

He watched as she rejoined the group at the middle of the bar, jostling Andy as she did so. She turned and touched his arm, apologizing, and then they were talking.

Mike smirked to himself. It was just that easy. As he watched, she expertly kept pushing him further and further away as she talked, all simply by moving in subtle ways, invading his personal space. Silently tipping his hat to the Master, Mike walked back to the rest of them, and leaned in close so he could speak low.

“We got a few things to discuss, quickly,” he said, but was immediately interrupted by the older man in the fishing vest—Candace had introduced him as Glen Eastman, he recalled.

“What about him?”

They followed his gaze to the short man in the glasses and the slicked-back hair. He was seated at one of the tables and had two laptops open, the tablet held in one hand as he tapped at the keyboards with the other.

“That’s it,” Simms said. “He set himself up, and hasn’t moved.”

“What she say about food?” McCoy asked.

“Go ahead,” Mike said. He thought: Okay, McCoy’s super practical, Eastman’s already pissy about everything, and Simms just wants to please. He pushed people into quick little boxes, fully prepared to move them if proved wrong. “She said she’d have two grunts stand guard over you.”

McCoy nodded. “I’ll make up some sandwiches. Whatever else is going on, we gotta eat.”

Mike thought that was sensible enough, and nodded. McCoy moved off. Mike looked at Jimmy Haggen, then dismissed him and caught McCoy by the sleeve. “What about weapons? Aside from that accident waiting to happen you had earlier. Anything else in this place?”

McCoy nodded slowly. “There’s a pump-action in the office,” he said, hesitated, then nodded decisively. “That’d be all of them. Aside from my hunting gear.”

“Weapons?” Simms said nervously, smiling around as McCoy walked away. “Are we crazy? The place is crawling with soldiers! You want to pull out a goddamn shotgun?”

Mike didn’t look at him. “Mr. Simms, I’m just taking stock of our resources.”

Jimmy raised another shot glass. “Thank goodness you’re here to be in charge,” he said, and downed the shot.

“He’s got a signal,” Eastman said suddenly. He was looking at the man who’d come with Hammond.

“Satellite,” Mike said. “They’re blocking normal data networks. His must be … ” he trailed off.

“Military?” Simms asked.

“Corporate?” Glen offered.

Mike shrugged. “Not blocked,” he said after a moment.

“Could we find out the password? Use it?”

Mike shook his head. “I doubt it. It’s probably not a normal cell phone connection or WiFi connection, and it’s likely encrypted with a baked-in hardware key.” They all stared at him. “I invested in a lot of hardware companies,” he said by way of explanation.

“Oooh la la,” Jimmy said, grinning.

“Listen,” he said, ignoring Haggen and watching Candace chatting up the Bathroom Guy. “What we need right now is information. We don’t know anything. Why they’re really here. Who they really are. We have no connections to the outside world. We need info. So what I’d suggest is simple—be nosy. Wander, pretend you don’t understand where you’re not supposed to be. Eavesdrop, keep your eyes open.” He pulled out his own phone and glanced at the time. “Let’s meet back at the bar in half an hour, report anything we can figure out.”

Eastman and Simms nodded crisply; he thought Simms looked pleased, but Eastman looked irritated. He took a chance and looked at Haggen, who had the blurry look of the drunk.

“You want to help out?” Miked asked.

Jimmy shook his head and didn’t look at him. “You take point on that shit, boss,” he said. “I don’t do as I’m told.”

Mike wanted to hit him. This was not the time for childish bullshit. But he would be just as bad as him if he fell for it, so he looked at Simms and Eastman. “All right, let’s go see what we can find out.”

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