Here we go again. David signaled the bartender for the tab. “Ruby, this is Adam, the new kid. Adam, this is Ruby. She eats men for breakfast, so keep your distance.”
“Don’t you listen to him,” Ruby said on the heels of a throaty laugh, shifting her weight so her body now leaned against Adam. Her green eyes glittered with amusement while she ran her fingers over the ridge of Adam’s ear. “He’s just mad because I won’t give him any loving.”
David bit back the rebuttal perched on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he said, “He’s had a rough day, Ruby. Give him a couple days to acclimate before sinking your claws in, okay?” He shot her a silent warning and she dropped her hand to her side.
Applause erupted on the far end of the bar, where Martin had just pulled off some sort of intricate trick shot to win the game.
“Well, I guess I’ll go see what Martin is up to,” Ruby drawled. She shot David a dark look before blowing a kiss to Adam. “See you later, boys.”
Adam watched with expressed interest while Ruby sashayed across the bar, commanding the attention of every red-blooded male in the room. It didn’t take long before she had a drink in her hand and a man by her side. “Wow,” he murmured, “That’s one heck of a woman.”
“You can say that again.”
“So why did she call you Soldier Boy?” Adam asked a few minutes later when he swiveled back around to face the bar.
“For the obvious reason.”
“You were in the military?” Adam shifted in his seat and braced his forearms against the rail. “What branch?”
“Army. 7
th
Infantry Division.”
“When?”
Damn, he was hoping to avoid this conversation until at least the end of the week. Talking about his past wasn’t anywhere on his list of favorite things. It always led to memories he had no interest in revisiting. “It’s not important.”
“Oh, come on. Now I’m curious,” Adam persisted, perking up for the first time since their afternoon reaping. “Were you in Iraq?”
“No, I served before then.”
“Desert Storm?”
“You’ll need to go back a bit further.”
Adam’s brows furrowed. “Vietnam?”
“Close, but no cigar.” David’s gaze slanted over to Adam, his lips fixed in a solemn line. “I was one of the Chosin Few.”
It took the kid a few beats to catch the reference. Then his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. “Holy shit, you fought in fucking Korea?”
“You got it.” A forgotten soldier from a forgotten war, who was later forgotten by everyone he’d ever known and loved, his lasting impression on the world a rectangular granite slab with his name and rank carved on it.
David could almost hear the gears clicking in Adam’s brain while he mulled over this latest revelation. Then the full weight of the knowledge hit him like a ton of bricks and his features blanched.
“You’ve been doing this shit for sixty years?” Adam’s eyes widened with horror, and he looked like he might hyperventilate. Or puke. At this point, it was hard to tell the difference. “Oh God. I can’t do this shit for sixty years.”
“Yes you can,” David said, his voice clipped. “But I doubt you’ll have to.”
Adam shot him a confused look. “Why?”
“Because you only have the blood of one on your hands,” David said by way of explanation. “You won’t have to serve as long to clear your tab and move on to the next realm.”
“Why?” Adam asked with unmasked curiosity. “What did you do?”
David slammed back his drink, but it did little to quell the pain he felt inside. Images of the dead lingered in his mind, reminding him of times he’d rather forget. “Nothing I plan on talking about.” He pulled out his wallet and slapped two twenties on the bar. “It’s late, and you’re drunk. And we have an early start tomorrow.” He slid off the barstool and motioned toward the door. “Time to call it a night.”
chapter 2
“Rise and shine, Newbie,” David said as he walked past Adam’s rumpled form. “Time to face another fun-filled day of death and dismemberment.”
He’d given the kid an extra half hour to sleep off the booze from the night before, but now they needed to get moving. When Adam mumbled something incoherent and burrowed deeper under the covers, David gave the end of the couch a solid kick. “Come on, get your ass in gear. We’re rolling out in twenty.”
The covers shifted and Adam’s head popped out, squinting like a mole under a floodlight. He pushed himself up to a seated position and swung his legs over the side of the couch. Teeth gritted, he cradled his head in his hands and groaned. “Just kill me now and get it over with.”
“Too late. And you’re not getting off that easy.” David moved to the kitchen and poured two cups of coffee. In a rare act of mercy, he brought one over to Adam. “Here, it’s good and strong. It’ll help with the hangover.”
“Thanks.” Adam accepted the mug and took a healthy swig. “You got any aspirin?”
“Bathroom. Medicine cabinet, bottom shelf.” He watched while the kid gingerly eased up from the couch and lumbered toward the bathroom, coffee mug in hand. “And if you think you’re going to puke, do it now. I’ll kick your ass if you blow chunks in my ride.”
Adam glanced back over his shoulder, his expression saying, “Drop dead,” but instead he uttered, “Thanks for the compassion.”
David could have sworn he heard a muffled, “asshole” right before the bathroom door slammed shut.
Fifteen minutes later the rookie emerged, clean-shaven and hair still wet from the shower but appearing slightly more human and a little less green around the gills. He set his empty coffee cup on the kitchen counter before moving back to the couch to lace up his shoes.
“Feeling better?”
“Define better.”
“You still feel like heaving half your body weight?”
Adam shook his head and winced. “Already did.”
“Good, let’s move. We’ve got a busy day, four stiffs on the schedule.” David rinsed both mugs and loaded them into the dishwasher.
“Four?” Adam paled.
“Yeah, but between the two of us, it shouldn’t be too bad.” Besides, it wasn’t like they had much in the way of alternatives. Reap or damnation? When you boiled it down to the bare essentials, there was little left for debate. David stuffed his wallet in his back pocket and picked up his keys. “Two for me, and two for you. First stop’s at the railroad tracks down on Colonial. Give you three guesses how this one’s going to play out.”
Here we go again.
Sarah’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, her knuckles turning white from the tension. It was bad enough she was twenty minutes late for work. Some idiot tried to beat the train near Colonial and the resulting wreck had shut down traffic in both directions. To make matters worse, now she had to contend with the Bambi Brigade, the latest, most rabid group of animal rights activists.
She slipped her car into first gear and cautiously navigated through the mob of protesters picketing the front entrance of Cava Technologies. She took deep breaths to keep her blood pressure level, trying her best to ignore the signs that read, “Cava Tech—Stop the Cruelty,” “Animals Have Rights,” and, “No Torture.” One protester was decked out in a full-sized pink bunny costume, while another wore a white lab coat splattered with what was supposed to be blood.
Lovely.
Long ago, she’d given up all attempts at reasoning with animal rights fanatics. How many times could she debate the necessity of using animals to forward the advance of science, to one day provide a cure for AIDS, cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease? Of course she didn’t enjoy using animals in her work, but computer models and cell cultures only went so far. Before a drug received approval for human application, its safety and viability had to be tested on animals.
Unfortunately, the activists didn’t see it that way. They saw Cava Tech as the evil empire of biomedical research, cackling with glee as they sliced and diced their way through the animal kingdom.
“Morning, Ms. Griffith,” the security guard said when she pulled up to the gatehouse, his thick southern drawl dragging out each syllable. He frowned at the protesters when one of them shouted, “How can you live with yourself?” “Looks like we’re in for an exciting day.”
“How long have they been camped out at the gate?”
“They were already here when I clocked in at six.” After scanning her ID, the guard pressed a button and the gate began its slow roll open. “Don’t you worry. I’m sure the news vans will show up any minute. Once these jokers get their fifteen minutes of fame, they’ll start clearing out.”
“I hope so. Good luck,” Sarah said before rolling up her window and leaving the protesters in her rearview mirror.
“Can you believe those people?” Sarah asked Jackie, her friend and assistant, when she entered the central office a few minutes later. After stashing her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk, she began the daily ritual of clipping her security badge onto her lapel and pulling her dark brown hair into a ponytail. “I barely got my car past that mob at the gate.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Jackie replied. She finished the last bite of her bagel and tossed the wrapper in the trash. “The guy in the smock threw himself on the hood of my car when I came in.”
The mental image brought a smile to Sarah’s face. “Is that where the blood came from?”
“I wish.” Jackie snorted. “For the record, it’s not blood. It’s syrup and food coloring. Took me forever to wash that crap off my car.” She swiveled around in her chair and typed in the password to access the data files for their current project.
“Has the Hartwell lab finished their analysis yet?” Sarah asked as she shrugged into her lab coat. “Their results should have been available yesterday afternoon.”
While the latest round of tests looked promising, her team couldn’t move forward until the secondary lab confirmed their results. If the drug worked during both of the preliminary in vitro trials, they could proceed with the first round of animal testing. And if that proved successful, the human trials could begin.
It would be a huge step toward the fulfillment of her dream—to discover a viable long-term treatment for dementia-related illness. So far, there was no known cure, only treatments to slow the progressive decline. Sarah was determined to change that. If successful, the new drug could dramatically improve the quality of life for countless sufferers, her grandmother included. Not to mention it would ease her own worries about the ticking time bomb buried deep within her family’s DNA.
“Not yet,” Jackie replied with a shake of her head. “I’ll shoot Donovan a quick e-mail. Maybe it’ll light a fire under his ass.”
“I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll have to take it to Angelo.” Which was something she hoped to avoid at all costs. Being in the same room with her boss gave her a major case of the heebie-jeebies. Most of the time she avoided contact with him; the last thing she wanted was to owe him a favor. God knows what he’d demand in return.
Jackie sent out the e-mail before spinning back around in her chair. She flashed Sarah a mischievous grin, the one that always meant trouble. “So, did you see the story on the
Today Show
this morning?”
“Which one?”
“The one about the hunters in Oregon. They found Bigfoot tracks while they were out in the woods tracking deer. How cool is that?” Jackie’s eyes gleamed with genuine excitement. “The guys from Monster Chasers are flying out to verify the find.”
Sarah stared at her friend with open disbelief. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why an educated woman like Jackie believed in such ridiculous stories. She had a subscription to the
Sun
and bought into every tale from the outer limits: Bigfoot, Chupacabra, UFOs. Heck, she even believed in Swamp Cabbage Man. “How can you believe that garbage? You’re a scientist, for Pete’s sake!”
“True, but that doesn’t mean I’m closed to the possibility of paranormal phenomena. It could be real, you know.” Defensiveness brought out the New York in Jackie’s voice. “There’s thousands of acres of forest in the Pacific Northwest that haven’t been explored. It’s possible something might be living out there that hasn’t been discovered.”
Fox Mulder, eat your heart out.
Sarah leaned a hip against the desk and folded her arms across her chest. “Oh please. Think about it, Jackie. For a species that large to survive, it would require a huge area and large enough numbers to sustain a genetically viable population. We’re not talking one or two. We’re talking hundreds, if not thousands. Do you honestly think something like that could run around undetected? And what about the lack of physical evidence? Scientists have unearthed the bones of animals that went extinct millions of years ago, but we can’t find one Sasquatch skeleton?”
Jackie put her hands on her hips and blew Sarah a raspberry, which looked really odd coming from a plus-sized woman in lab gear and goggles. “Killjoy.”
“Realist and proud of it, thank you very much.” Sarah adjusted the fit of her own goggles before tugging on a pair of clear plastic gloves. “Dig deep enough, and there’s a scientific explanation for everything.”
“Not everything.”
“Everything.”
“You know, one of these days you’re going to come face to face with something you can’t explain through the scientific method.”
“Aside from the male psyche, I seriously doubt it.”
It took David and Adam over an hour to reach the site for their final reap of the day. By then, the sun was beginning its descent over the horizon and mosquitoes were swarming the outskirts of east Orlando, better known as Bithlo by the locals. Sparsely populated and heavily wooded, it still held the flavor of a slice of Orlando long since forgotten by tourist traps and outlet malls.
“Christ,” Adam muttered when David’s sedan rolled to a stop along the soft shoulder of a rutted dirt road. “I didn’t realize we were driving out to the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“Death goes everywhere.” David cut the engine and hit the release on his seat belt. “And so do we.” And sometimes the job took them to shit holes that made this place look like Disney World. “You got the coordinates?”
Adam patted the front pocket of his shirt. “Right here.”
“Good. Don’t forget the GPS.” While David could operate through senses alone, it would take Adam weeks, if not months, to achieve a comparable level of skill. Until then, he’d have to rely on maps or GPS to get him where he needed to go, especially in remote locations where street names weren’t the norm.
Together, they maneuvered through the dense scrub until they reached a modest clearing ringed with overgrown pines. In the center stood a dilapidated mobile home, its roof partially collapsed and the exterior covered with thick layers of dirt, rust, and algae. Dim light shined through the only window not boarded up. Beside the trailer was a homebuilt shed, the unpainted plywood warped and faded. A large pit bull mix was chained to a nearby tree, sleeping, while cars in various states of disrepair littered the remaining area, an iron graveyard of Detroit’s finest.
“Hey, there’s a road right over there.” Adam pointed to the far end of the clearing. “We could have used that instead of hacking through a quarter mile of brush.”
“I know,” David said as he slipped behind one of the battered cars for cover. “But then we’d have no way of knowing if we could get back out once we’re finished.” He’d learned that lesson a long time ago, the hard way. His focus stayed on the clearing, sizing up the area with predatory interest. “Always plan your way out before you go in, kid. It’ll save you a lot of trouble in the long run.”
With a shrill creak, the trailer door swung open and a couple of good old boys in faded jeans and ratty T-shirts emerged. The taller one held a can of Black Label beer in one hand and a plastic shopping bag in the other, while his short stubby companion carried two large jugs filled with a pale, murky liquid. They were arguing over the upcoming game between the Georgia Bulldogs and Florida Gators as they approached the shed and unlocked the double doors.
“How do you think they’re going to die?” Adam whispered. “I put dibs on gunshot wounds.”
“Out here, it’s a definite possibility.” David watched while the men tugged the doors open. The inside of the shed resembled a lab of some sort, packed with an odd assortment of beakers, plastic tubing, and five-gallon buckets. Along the back wall, homemade shelves housed a motley collection of glass bottles. “What the hell is all that for?”
The scent eventually drifted over, a sickeningly sweet chemical odor that both enticed and nauseated.
“Meth lab,” Adam said with a scowl. “We used to find these all over Chicago, in everything from college dorms to million-dollar homes.”
“And they use drain cleaner to make it?” David’s upper lip curled in disdain. Most of his drug experience dated back to the sixties, during that brief stint where he buried his disgust and self-loathing under a heavy haze of heroin and alcohol. Good thing he was already dead; otherwise, the addiction would have killed him long before he finally kicked it.