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  “I see why you didn’t want me coming in,” Frank smiled as he tossed off his coat.

  Amy wasn’t amused. She snatched the jacket from his hands with a grimace and wrapped it around her hips.

  “Now that we’ve handled that,” Frank said with a point to her legs, “This.”

  He pointed to the detonator and the mound of pentolite covering her breasts. Placing his hands under her arms, Frank hoisted Amy onto the desk. He flipped open a small utility knife from his pocket and leaned close, using the moonlight as his work lamp. He inspected the wires poking from the clay. He followed their paths into the timer. Cutting back a few strips of tape, Frank lifted the plastic timer and tilted it. He ran his fingers along the seam, then dipped the tip of his knife into the thin line where the two pieces of plastic met.

  “Hold your breath,” he whispered.

  He twisted the knife. The assembly popped open with a crack and the both jumped.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Amy breathed as she looked into the complex arrangement of green and gold circuitry inside the little black box.

  “Stay still,” Frank whispered, putting his hands firmly on her chest.

  The clock reached ten minutes and was continuing downward.

  Nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

  Nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds.

  Fifty-seven.

  Fifty-six.

  Frank stared into the circuit. Strips of black and blue and orange and gray and green and red wrapped over and under each other in complicated bundles and knots. His knife blade skated along the series of multicolored wires, seeking each one’s destination and each one’s beginning. His hands were still, precise, surgical.

  “Ready?” he asked as his blade steadied against the gray wire.

  Amy nodded.

  Frank took in a deep breath and Amy followed suit. With a quick twist of the blade, Frank cut the wire in two. Then he cut a second and a third. The clock froze. They both let out their breath in a blast of moist, hot air and smiled at each other.

  “Let’s get this off you,” Frank said as he helped her off the desk, lifting her up and setting her on her naked feet.

  “Eight minutes to spare,” Amy breathed up at him. “I’m impressed.”

  As he sliced at the layers of silver duct tape across her body, he said, “Remember Afghanistan?”

  She nodded.

  “Extraction was sort of my thing.”

  Pocketing his knife, Frank warned, “This next part is going to hurt.”

  He turned her around and gripped the tape. Amy bit her lips and Frank pulled back on the strip, hard and fast. Air hissed through Amy’s teeth as the glue tore at her skin. A band of red painted her flesh. Amy whimpered a bit and Frank met her ache by caressing her back, gently running his hand along the marks. Shivers ran down her body as she turned to Frank and handed him the brick of explosive.

  “Thanks.” She smiled.

  Her breasts hung naked in the moonlight. Her beautiful, perky nipples stood on end as she stretched herself onto her toes, causing Frank’s coat to fall to the floor. Her bare ass glistened in the light. Her calves tightened and her thighs stretched as she reached up and planted her lips on Frank’s. The sparkling veins of the Valley danced behind them as Amy kissed Frank deep and hard. As her lips parted, Frank met her tongue with his and Amy kicked Frank’s wool coat away. Pulling her lips from his, she wrapped her arms around Frank’s neck and hugged him tight. Frank leaned forward for a second kiss, but it wasn’t returned.

  “Okay, Mr. Black,” she said. She let him go and pressed two fingers against his lips. “That’s enough.”

  The silent office park outside burst into life with screaming sirens and flashing lights. A fleet of black-and-whites followed a train of red fire trucks and ambulances as they flooded down the drive. Amy pulled away from Frank and moved to the window. She stood with her naked body against the glass, looking down over the circle of the main entrance. News choppers were already whirring overhead. Officers and paramedics flooded the main lobby while fire fighters ran their houses over the fiery remains of the west wing. It wasn’t long before a pair of medics wheeled Dalton out on a gurney. Even from seventy feet up, it was obvious he was no longer whole. He grabbed at his missing hand, the tattered sleeve stained in blood. He writhed on the gurney as they lifted him into the back of an ambulance.

  Frank put his arm around Amy and pulled her to his side. Together they watched the city clean up their mess below. As they watched, Frank fished a smoke from his pocket and lit it. But, before he could take a puff, Amy snatched it from his lips.

  “I could really use one of these,” she exhaled as she put the cigarette to her lips.

  Frank smiled, and after a long silence, said, “I’m going to go get a drink. Interested in joining me?”

  She looked down on her body. Smoke escaped her lips and billowed around her.

  “You can just take me home, Mr. Black,” she said. “And your shirt would be nice.”

  Frank unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off.

  “Here,” he said, holding it up.

  She handed Frank her cigarette and backed into his shirt, allowing him to slide each sleeve up her long arms and onto her naked shoulders. She turned to face Frank, his smoke perched in his lips. Seeing the deep impression and singed Kevlar on his vest, she reached her hand out and caressed his chest.

  “That looks like it hurt,” she said.

  “It’ll leave a bruise.”

  With a smile she buttoned herself up and bent to the ground for Frank’s coat.

  “Where are your clothes?” Frank asked with one eyebrow aloft.

  She sighed and replied, “Don’t ask.”

  “Let’s get going,” she said as she wrapped the jacket around her waist.

  They went out the emergency stairwell in the executive lounge. It let out on the side south side of the lot away from the noise of the main entrance. They snuck around the building and toward Frank’s Ambassador on Oxnard. As they climbed down the stout hill of ivy and onto the rippled sidewalk, a flash of light gleamed across them and Frank’s car.

  “Amy Van?” a voice called out from the darkness.

  The light flashed back on, shaking as it approached them. Then an officer holding a flashlight walked into the yellow glow of the streetlamp overhead. His hair was short and gray and matched the broom of a moustache over his lip. The single silver woven lieutenant bar was prominent on the shoulder of his navy blue jacket.

  “Well if it isn’t Amy Van,” he said. “You look like hell.”

  “Good evening, Lieutenant Days,” she said, hanging on Frank’s arm while she tugged on the coat around her waist. Her face was twisted in exhaustion and Days must have sensed it.

  “Get out of here, you two,” he chuckled, waving his hand. “I won’t say a damn thing.”

  Lieutenant Days put his pinched fingers up to his lip and tugged an imaginary zipper across his mouth, twisting and tossing away an imaginary key. Amy bowed and Frank nodded as he eased Amy into the backseat. She immediately turned her nose up at the smell.

  “Yeah,” Frank sighed. “You’ll have to sit in the back.”

  Amy leaned forward to see the stain on the fabric. Noticing a crumpled white paper bag between the two seats, she fished it out and unfolded it. A green caduceus, two snakes wrapped about a winged staff, was printed all over the torn paper. She could feel there were a few items inside and shook them into her lap.

  The lieutenant was still standing in the street, clutching his flashlight and watching as Frank climbed into the front seat. Nodding to the officer, Frank closed his door and shoved his keys into the steering column.

  Amy held her clenched fist over Frank’s shoulder, saying, “I didn’t realize you were a stoner.”

  He held out his open hand and she let the contents of the weed bag fall into his hand. Frank looked down on the small, plastic grinder the package of rolling sleeves and the broken lighter. He picke
d the lighter out and turned it over in his fingers, inspecting the missing metal cap and the small metallic guard that should have been over the striker.

  Tossing it all in the passenger seat, Frank said, “That explains that.”

  Before Amy could ask, Days tapped on the glass. Frank dropped the window with a few twists of the wrist and Days leaned in, resting his elbows on the door.

  “You did good, Van,” Days said. “I’ll be putting in a good word for you.”

  Amy feigned a smile and Days backed away, tapping the vehicle as he moved up onto the sidewalk. Frank started the engine with a roar and adjusted the rearview ’til he could see Amy’s eyes. At first she stared into her lap, then as though she could feel him watching her, she looked up and stared back into his reflection. She looked at him with mascara-smeared eyes, her tired face framed by the blackness of night behind her. The occasional flash of emergency lights sparkled against the glass, lighting her up and causing her ruby red lips to stand out against the ivory of her skin. She smiled.

  Frank cooed, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 19

  Two months later...

  The clacking of hard-soled shoes upon stone tile resounded, reverberating off the metal bars of the cells with a faint ring on the end of each step. An officer in a tan uniform marched down the hall, his key ring jangling—a teasing reminder of freedom—as he passed each of the occupied cells. One side of the hall was doused in shadows, filled by criminals. The other bore thick pillars of dusty light that extended down from the windows high in the concrete walls.

  A few men jeered in the darkness, reaching their orange-clad arms through the bars and flipping the bird to the young Latino guard. He responded with a smile as though it had happened a thousand times before because it had.

  From the corner of one of the cells, a convict shouted from atop his chrome toilet, “Pig shit!”

  To which the guard just laughed and clutched his nightstick, tilting it back and forth on his belt as a reminder.

  The officer walked to the end of the hall and halted; the jangling of his keys ceased, the clacking of his shoes stopped. He stepped out of the lit half of the hallway and into the shadows.

  Standing against the prison bars, he tapped on the cell door and barked, “Dalton. Visitor.”

  He tapped twice more.

  Jim Dalton had already gained twenty pounds since the night with Frank, a beneficial side effect of incarceration. His gaunt cheeks had filled out, swelling with fat beneath his once-sunken eyes. His thin chin was covered in a wiry beard that matched the gray stone walls that kept him. His orange jumpsuit fit snugly around his chest, rolling with the new roundness of his stomach. He sat still, staring into the lines of grout that weaved between the cinder blocks. His slippered feet were pressed flat into the cold floor. He held his right arm in his lap, the cinched end of his sleeve pointing out at the guard.

  Dalton stroked the nub that once carried his hand and asked, “Is it Mr. Black?”

  “How’d you know?” the guard quipped in disbelief as he slipped the shackles through the bars.

  Dalton answered, shaking his handless wrist, “It burns.”

  Then he stood and shuffled toward the guard. Turning his back, he offered his wrists behind him. The guard clasped one cuff on Dalton’s wrist, above his remaining hand. Then, pulling it tight across his back, he clasped the other cuff to Dalton’s bicep, above the elbow.

  Holding the chain through the cell door, the guard called out, “Open E36.”

  The heavy gate popped ajar and the guard eased it open, motioning for Dalton to enter the hall. Freeing the chain from the cell door, the guard finished the shackling by locking the remaining cuffs on Dalton’s ankles.

  The two men headed back the way the guard had come, Dalton’s feet struggling to take full steps against the pull of his chains, clanking as he shuffled forward. They passed through the first security gate, pausing for a camera, and then through a second. On the other side, they emerged into a stark white hallway lined with numbered doors made of cheap wood paneling.

  Six doors down, they entered a room on the right. Inside was a small, brown folding table and three chairs, one on either side of the table and another beside the door. The carpet was somehow just like the stone in Dalton’s cell, the same gray, just a little bit softer and a few degrees warmer. In the corner, Frank Black stood, smacking his jaw up and down on a glob of nicotine gum.

  “What’s up, Doc?” Frank mocked with a grin.

  Dalton remained silent as the guard led him to his seat. Setting Dalton in his chair, the guard removed the shackle from his right wrist, freeing his handless arm and shackling the other to the table. Frank sat across from him. Dalton stared with a cold gaze into Frank’s smiling eyes.

  Leaning forward on his palms, his elbows tucked beneath his chest, Frank inspected the doctor, looking him up and down.

  He breathed in a deep breath, taking in the musky prison scent, and said, “I see prison has taken a liking to you.”

  He reached across the table and flipped at Dalton’s collar. He smiled when Dalton didn’t respond.

  Leaning back in his seat, Frank unbuttoned his coat and said, “I got to ask, Doc. You seen your daughter? Has Felicia contacted you?”

  There was a long silence before anyone spoke.

  Then, Dalton said, “Scopolamine, Frank. It’s a mind control drug. Even if you did find her, it’ll be long gone. You can’t prove that it was or wasn’t in her. I’ll testify I brainwashed her. That I was controlling her and telling her what to do. I’ll claim to the end that I drugged her. She won’t serve any time. None. Not a day past arraignment. The psychosis of her terrible father will sway a jury, Mr. Black. I’m the bad guy.” He shook his cinched wrist. “I’m the villain here.”

  Frank leaned back in his chair. He tipped it up on two legs then crashed it back onto the floor.

  “You made your daughter kill?” Frank asked as he pushed his elbows into the table and perched his hand on his chin.

  “Yes,” Dalton breathed.

  “You forced her to steal and blackmail and kidnap?”

  Dalton nodded. “I did.”

  Frank smiled.

  “You made her spread her legs like a filthy whore and take men inside her? Made them fill her up. Let them fuck her for your twisted little game?”

  Dalton’s jaw tightened beneath his beard. “Sure, Frank. Yes.”

  Frank leaned closer, his eyes widened as he taunted, “You like the thought of having the man who unplugged your wife all up in the last bit of her for weeks? You like the thought of my dirty hands on your little girl, Jim? Undressing her and bending her over?”

  Dalton said nothing. His brow creased. The veins in his neck and forehead shifted and swelled and pulsated. He twitched in his seat.

  Frank flashed a quick grin and nodded as he lifted himself from his seat. He straightened the lapels of his jacket and pushed his chair back. Standing over Dalton, he looked down on him and flashed another grin.

  “That’s all I needed,” he said, turning to the guard in the corner.

  The guard stood and opened the door for Frank, allowing him out of the small visiting room.

  As he exited, he turned back one last time, saying, “You’ll be in here till you die. You’ll either have no visitors, no one will ever care enough to come see you rotting away. Or, she’ll come. She'll come to see her father. Either way, I’ll get what I want. Eventually.”

  With that, Frank dipped into the hall, smacking his nicotine gum.

  His voice loud and raspy, Dalton called after him, “You’ll never find her, Black! You’ll never catch my little girl. You remember that, Black! You’ll never get her. You’ll never finish this.”

  There was a pause and a grunt as the guard jabbed Dalton in the ribs.

  Then Dalton cried out, “Nothing is ever finished!”

  Frank poked his head back in the door. He grinned wide and large, reminding Dalton, “You’re right.
”

  He chewed loudly on the glob in his mouth. “Campbell woke up. So you didn’t finish that. Did you, Jim?”

  Dalton was hunched over on the floor. As he frowned into the short, gray carpet, he grabbed at his swollen belly, holding the bruised ribs beneath his skin.

  The guard yanked him to his feet and Frank beamed one last grin, saying, “It’s finished, Jim.”

  Then he disappeared behind the door.

  ***

  It was late afternoon when Frank pulled into the back lot of his apartment. The air was thick with charred lamb and the smoke only made him want to run to the liquor store and buy some cigarettes. He shoved a stick of gum in his mouth and chomped down on it instead. Tired, and still irritated from his visit to Dalton, Frank lurched across the parking lot to his apartment. His black coat was draped over his shoulder and he was practically licking his lips in anticipation of a good glass of scotch.

  Dragging himself up the stairs and onto the balcony, Frank pulled out his keys. He slipped them in the knob, turned, and raised his eyebrow when the usual click of the lock didn’t sound. With a shrug, he let himself in and tossed his coat over the couch as he shut the door. Moving to the bar in the corner, he ducked below and pulled out his bottle of Laphroaig.

  “Fuck,” he breathed as he turned it over in his hand.

  It was empty, all but a few drops that had collected at the bottom. Frank tossed the useless bottle in the trash with a sigh and reached back in the bar. This time he frowned as he uncapped the bottom-shelf Kentucky Straight and picked up a highball glass. It was no single malt but it would do. Definitely a far cry from the good glass of scotch he was seeking. A two-finger pour later, Frank shoved the little bottle in his pocket and strolled across the carpet. Drink in hand, he kicked off his boots and unbuttoned his shirt. With a sip, he set the glass down, slipped off his shirt and tossed it to the floor, going to work on the straps that held his vest in place. He hung the Kevlar in the closet, then knocked back the rest of the deep brown bourbon.

  It was out of the corner of his eye that he noticed it, just as he made his last swallow, a smear of red stood out on the mirror beside him. He turned. Lipstick letters scrawled across the glass. Frank recognized Felicia’s handwriting right away. Then he saw the lipstick on his highball glass and he knew she had wasted his scotch. Frank hitched back his arm and fired the empty glass into the mirror like a baseball.