When he woke up, he was in an office prison. The door to the outside was lined with bars. A pretty young girl stood across the hall, wearing a blue costume of some sort. It was hard to see since one of his eyes was swollen shut.
“Poppy? Where did we end up?”
The bird was silent.
He tried to scoot off the cot, but the droopy thing wrapped around him like a taco shell. Or, more likely, he simply lacked the strength to free himself.
“Poppy, I need help,” he slurred.
Perhaps minutes or an hour later, he woke up on the gray industrial carpeting of the floor. From there, it was a lot easier to get to his feet, though he used the metal bars to steady himself as he searched for his friend.
“Poppy, where did they take you? Come back! I’m sorry!” Whenever she disappeared, it was usually because he’d done wrong.
The pretty girl was back at her door. “Excuse me, mister, are you all right?”
His green-and-red bird wasn’t on her shoulder, which was a good sign. If Poppy had abandoned him for some stranger, he was going to be boiling mad. Yet, his bird friend wasn’t up or down the hallway either.
“Sir?” the girl pressed. “Who did you lose? Maybe I can help you find him.”
“Well, duh!” he barked, pissed she would imply he’d lost anyone but also wrecked to learn she didn’t even know the sex of his bird. “You couldn’t help me find him. My bird is a her, you stupid normal. Not that you would know the difference if you saw her. No one ever sees her.” He remembered that much. Anyone he asked about seeing his bird always gave him the same look. Often, they ran the other way.
“Oh,” the girl replied unhappily.
He dared not let go of the bars or he’d fall to the ground. For the first time, he noticed the ugly white-and-orange outfit he wore. He held on even tighter. “Poppy! I need you to come back! Get me out of here! Don’t let this bitchy woman hurt you.”
“Hey, watch what you say to me. My name isn’t bitchy woman. It’s Tabitha.”
Tabitha? What kind of name is that, he wondered. If he found Poppy, he intended to ask her if it was even a legit name. “I’m Dwight. If you’re the one who hurt Poppy, I’m coming through both these cell doors and I’m going to burn you where you stand. I did it to Bernard and the other Bernards. I can do it to you, too.”
The girl scoffed at him, then pulled a food tray into her room, out of his sight. Her disappearance suited him fine, as it gave him time to study every possible hiding spot where Poppy might have gone. He yelled for her. He paced, hoping she would appear. He closed his eyes, wishing her to reveal herself.
Eventually, he opened his eyes and saw the girl in blue, along with a golden man with white hair. They stood in the hallway, outside his door. “You two! Have you seen Poppy?”
The white-haired man tisk-tisked and glanced over to the woman. “It looks like your neighbor is going through alcohol withdrawal. Such a nasty thing.”
She seemed disgusted and sympathetic at the same time. He vaguely recalled the same queasy glances from tourists back in San Francisco. Sometimes, rarely, he found genuine concern in the eyes of those people. That was when he knew he was going to get a large payday from them.
“Mister, all I want is my Poppy.”
The man came to his cell door, unafraid of Dwight. He spoke with a haughty better-than-you tone he also recognized from high-brow tourists. “My name is David. You should know, all I want is the six men you killed. You have committed the ultimate crime against the Legion, and you will suffer greatly for it. The sentencing is in a few hours…”
Mentally, he prepared a list of cuss words he was going to wield against the blurry man standing outside his door. After impressing and shocking him with his command of English language cursing, he’d stick his tongue out and blow spit at the guy. It would be glorious…
But the golden moment passed in a heartbeat. His stomach didn’t want to play nice, and it wouldn’t give him more than a few seconds to prepare for what was heading his way. Dwight did what came naturally to someone suffering withdrawals so soon after consuming too much liquor.
He puked.
CHAPTER 3
Westby, MT
It took ten minutes for Ted and Emily to clean out Mr. Patriot’s gun safe. As he suspected, the person who lived in the house took great pride in two things: his truck, which was a pristine late 80s lifted Ford 150, and his guns, which were a mix of well-treated rifles, automatic shotguns, and factory-fresh Beretta handguns. He also had a drawer full of knives.
“I told you this house would have what we needed,” he bragged, though Emily had already stated multiple times how impressed she was with his selection. By the time they stood there loading the guns into the back of the silver SUV, she feigned being tired of his playful crowing.
“You found something?” Meechum said as she walked up with Kyla, apparently ready to move out.
“He found the jackpot,” Emily said sarcastically. “Though he’s kind of shy about explaining how.”
The Marine’s eyes lit up. “These M9s are like the ones we use in the Corps. I trained Kyla on these…”
Ted cracked up, happy to let his guard down for five minutes and have some fun. More importantly, the discovery had done a little to soothe his pain at losing his own firearms. “I think this guy owned a gun store.
