Dead Six

“Why did you do that?”

“I was thinking about releasing this whole thing to the news. But I don’t know if that would do any good. So I’m giving it to you instead. If you do go public with this, make sure they think I’m dead. Okay?”

“I will,” Bob answered solemnly.

“We were serving our country,” I said quietly. “A lot of my friends died taking the fight to the enemy’s doorstep. And they sold us out and left us to die. Somebody needs to tell the world what happened. Most of us didn’t have any family at all. But some did. Their families deserve to know how they died.”

Bob gave me a look that told me he respected what I said. He’d been a soldier. He understood. I got out of the car, pulling most of the food with me.

“Valentine, wait,” Bob said, quickly shoving the thumb drive in his shirt pocket. “What if they don’t kill you? What if you’re captured? They’ll find out everything. Everyone that’s helped you, including me, will be put in danger.”

I looked at the ground for a moment. I really didn’t have a rebuttal to that. Bob didn’t want to let me go, but I’d made it clear that he couldn’t stop me. Had I really thought this through? Where would I end up if I went down this road?

My expression hardened as I buried my self-doubt. I didn’t have a choice. Bob was right. I couldn’t run forever. I wasn’t going to run off with him, either. He struck me as a sincere man, but also a lone nut who was short on friends. At least if I went my own way, I had a say over where I ended up.

That’s what I told myself, anyway. Bob wished me luck. I nodded and turned away, not looking back as he drove off.

LORENZO

Somebody was singing.

I awoke in a strange hotel room. There were bandages on my head, arms, and the back of my legs. My lungs ached and I could still feel the smoke in my sinuses. An IV bag was hanging from the wall light above me. I tracked the tube down and it disappeared under the gauze on my forearm. I hurt everywhere and my eyes grated in my sockets as I scanned the room. Reaper was asleep on the other bed, his arm wrapped in white and strapped across his torso. The kid was snoring.

I could hear the shower running. The singing was Jill. She was off-key and loud, but she sounded happy. It was a good sound.

The scarab. There was a momentary flash of panic. It was gone. I’d sacrificed so much to get it. . . . The last I’d seen, it had been in the basement of a building collapsing in flames. Then I relaxed. It didn’t matter now. Eddie was dead. I was free. I’d never even known what it was, except that it cost too many of my friends’ lives. Hopefully the fire had destroyed it, and if it hadn’t, then it could stay buried in the desert forever.

I had never even known who it was for. Whoever the important man was that Eddie had been getting the scarab for more than likely didn’t know anything about me . . . Probably.

The hotel door clicked as somebody used a card key to open it. Instinctively I looked around for my gun. It was nowhere to be seen. I relaxed as I realized it was Valentine. He entered the room with a fast-food bag in one hand and one of those cardboard drink trays full of sodas in the other. “Yo.”

“Hey,” I responded. “Where are we?”

“Vegas. Wanna hit up a strip club?”

“Only if we can’t get Siegfried and Roy tickets.”

“What? Siegfried and . . . No, man, one of ‘em got eaten by the tiger. Long time ago.”

“No kidding? Leave the country for a while and everything goes nuts.”

“Tell me about it. Everybody is okay. Hawk’s back at his place keeping a low profile. We figured that Quagmire might be a little hot, so we came here. There’s no place to disappear like Vegas. Since they grabbed Jill they never saw Hawk with either of us, so he should be in the clear as long as I don’t contact him.” Valentine set the food on the table and pulled up a chair. “Your little buddy’s been busy, going hog-wild over that computer he found. He passed out about an hour ago. He takes his Internet very seriously, doesn’t he?”

“That’s a bit of an understatement. How’s Jill?”

Valentine nodded in the direction of the bathroom. “She’ll be fine.”

I had to smile. “I think she’ll be okay. So what’s our situation?”

“Jill insisted that I bring you here, and she’s hard to say no to. Your brother’s a decent medic, and he got you patched up before he had to go. Apparently some terrorist shot down an airplane in Quagmire with a surface-to-air missile. The terror alert is at red level right now.”

“What’s the world coming to?”

He looked exhausted. “Jill filled me in on Big Eddie. So your boy is dead. That’s two Montalbans I’ve either killed or helped kill. How weird is that?”

“What are you going to do now?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“I don’t know,” he stated flatly.

He might not know, but I knew where his road would lead. I had seen this kind of attitude before, depressed, violent, hovering on the fine line between homicidal and suicidal. Valentine had a weight on his shoulders, and I didn’t know if removing it would free him or destroy him.

It wasn’t in my nature to offer, but I did anyway. I’d been surprising myself a lot lately. “You want help?”

“What? No.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

“You won’t see me again,” he said, “but there is one thing. Listen to me. Your two friends here, Jill and Skyler? You get them out of this life. Look at me. Whatever it is you see? That’s their future unless you stop now. You know as well as I do that once you get in, you don’t get out.”

I glanced over at the bathroom door, then back at Valentine. I cringed at the thought of Jill becoming . . . like him.

“I gotta go. Your gun is in the drawer. I got you guys some food. I hope you like burgers.”

“Only communists and hippies don’t like burgers. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“No, I meant . . .” I shrugged. I couldn’t have done it without his help. “You know.”

He gave me a small nod in acknowledgment. “Just remember what I said.”

We were no longer enemies, but we certainly weren’t friends. “You want to stick around and say good-bye to Jill?”

“I need to go. Besides, all she does it talk about you. I’m kind of sick of it. I honestly don’t know what she sees in you.”

“Well, I did take a guy’s head off with piano wire for her.”

Valentine shrugged. “Girls like romantic gestures like that. Look, I gotta split. Take it easy.”

“Watch your back,” I told him.

“Watch the news.” He didn’t look back.