The Breaker

by Nick Petrie

  A body lay on one of the couches. It was Holloway. Blood everywhere. Edgar had been here.

  Peter scanned the room. On the right was a long dining area, then a huge kitchen. To the left was a long hall with an open door at the end. Out of sight down there, something made a loud clank. Then another.

  June pushed her hand against Peter’s chest, trying to get free. He gently lowered her legs and she swung down to stand on her own. She kept a hand on his arm to steady herself, but she stepped forward. “Hi, Spark.” Another cough. Her voice was ragged and rough. “My name is June Cassidy. We spoke on the phone? When you talked with Peter.”

  “I know who you are,” the creatures said together, drowning out the sound from Spark’s own mouth. “Why have you come to this place?”

  June coughed for a long moment, her hand to her throat. “Excuse me.” She wiped her mouth. Then a door closed to their left and they all turned.

  Edgar walked slowly up the hall, trailing a broken metal creature by its long arm like a tired child towing a stuffed animal. The claw was smashed and the creature’s sides were dented with curves the size and shape of a heavy barbell. Edgar wore a wet red shirt and a spray of blood across his cheeks.

  Then he saw June. His face lit up with a smile. “Hey, wow! I’ve been thinking about you.” The smile widened. “A lot.”

  June’s grip tightened on Peter’s arm. Her face was set. “I’ve been thinking about you, too.” She raised a hand and pulled the pistol from the holster velcroed to her vest. She hadn’t had a chance to use the weapon earlier, Peter realized. It was still fully loaded.

  “Aw,” Edgar said. “We’re old friends. You don’t need that.” He dropped the hyena’s arm and pulled a thin knife from his back pocket.

  June let go of Peter so she could get a two-handed grip on the gun. Then she took aim and pressed the trigger three times. Edgar stumbled. June corrected her aim and stepped carefully toward him and shot him three more times. He dropped to one knee. June stopped six feet away and emptied the rest of the magazine into his chest. Edgar fell flat and did not move again.

  June cleared her throat again, then spat on the floor. “Good-bye, Edgar.” She was not steady on her feet.

  She returned the pistol to the holster and walked back to Peter and reached for his arm. She was pale and shaking, but her hand was strong. She looked at Spark, who had not moved.

  “I am here, Spark, to ask you for an urgent favor. Your fail-safe, on your computer. It’s almost eight o’clock. Will you reset it for another day?” She looked at the hyenas gathered behind them. “Because I think it’s a bad idea for everyone in the world to be able to make these things. What do you think? Can we talk about this?”

  Spark pushed the goggles up on her forehead. She looked so young, Peter thought. So very sad, and so very tired.

  “I can do one more day,” Spark said. “I’d like to talk.”

  And reached for her laptop.

  72

  None of them wanted to stay in that strange place with two dead bodies and the host of hyenas, so Peter climbed the fence and retrieved the Subaru for the ride home. He retraced the path of the semi through the gravel parking lot and the open gate and across the cracked concrete plain where he saw them waiting for him in the gathering night, three unremarkable figures seeming small against the side of the huge building.

  Lewis climbed into the shotgun seat and June and Spark huddled together in the back.

  Turning onto the dark and empty road, Peter saw four shadowed vehicles appear around the distant curve ahead. They were in tight formation, coming fast with their headlights off. On one side rose the high grassy mound of the landfill, and on the other ran the overgrown chain link and volunteer maples rising up against the time-worn industrial buildings.

  Peter flashed his own lights, slowed to a stop, and stepped out of the car. The black government Suburbans came to a halt a few yards away. The lead car’s passenger door opened and Oliver got out with a sling on his right arm, two black eyes, and a limp. He met Peter on the centerline of the road.

  “I apologize for my tardiness,” Oliver said. “I was unavoidably detained.”

  “It’s done,” Peter said. “We’re going home. We’re taking Spark with us.”

  “Understood. Ms. Cassidy just sent me an update. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “I need you to do something tonight,” Peter said.

  “The FBI is my next call,” Oliver said. “Your record will be wiped clean, including with the locals.”

  “That’s not it,” Peter said. “Kiko Tomczak, Spark’s friend. Did he make it?”

  “I’ll find out.” Oliver stood regarding Peter for a long moment. Despite the broken arm and the limp, despite the implacable calm that Oliver wore like a fine suit of clothes, Peter could see the kinetic readiness that lay just beneath. “Mr. Ash, I believe you remain a patriot. Am I wrong?”

  Peter shook his head. Suddenly he felt a thousand years old. “I don’t want to hear your sales pitch, Oliver. We’re going home.” He turned to walk back to the quietly idling car.

  Oliver’s voice followed him through the night air. “The world is a dangerous place, Mr. Ash. We need all the help we can get.”

  Peter just raised a hand in farewell, got back behind the wheel, and drove away.

  73

  JUNE

  It was a cool, clear October evening, a good night for an outdoor party.

  Peter had fussed over her all morning, until she’d finally had enough and shooed him off to the kitchen, where he spent the afternoon making carnitas and black beans and cilantro rice and cinnamon ice cream.

  June went for a long bike ride, then checked in with Spark, who had installed herself in Kiko’s hospital room at Froedtert while she negotiated with Longview about setting up a lab at their Northern California facility. June was happy to hear that Spark was driving a very hard bargain.

  At exactly five o’clock, Dinah and Lewis knocked on the door with two hungry boys, three bottles of red wine, and a bag of gorgeous fresh peaches that Lewis had somehow conjured up from somewhere in South America. Peter walked across the street and came back with Fran on his arm.

  Despite everything, June had tried to invite Dean Zedler, but after his classified conversation with Oliver, he’d stopped answering her calls. All she got was a single text message. Whatever you’re into, it’s out of my league. Regrets and good luck. DIZ.

  They filled their glasses and assembled giant platters of food and carried everything through the sliding glass doors to the big deck cantilevered out over the ravine, where they sat around the bonfire that the boys had made. Mingus got his own plate. The flames flickered and danced and made wild shadows against the house and trees and the darkness beyond.

  When the ice cream was gone and the bowls and plates were stacked in the dishwasher and the few remaining leftovers were put away, Peter handed out striped Mexican blankets from the chest and they all went back outside again. Mingus leaned against Fran’s knees while she sipped at a glass of good scotch and told stories about her late husband, the bank robber. Dinah and Lewis snuggled up against each other and drank wine from the neck of the bottle like teenagers. The boys threw a lighted Frisbee back and forth in the street.

  June curled up on Peter’s lap in the oversized Adirondack chair he had built, leaning into his warmth, his strong arms wrapped around her. Her neck was bruised and it still hurt to talk. The doctor had told her there was no permanent damage, and June hoped he was right. She wondered how long it would take for Edgar to stop showing up in her dreams.

  She still had Oliver’s black phone in her pocket.

  * * *

  —

  We’re out of wine,” Dinah announced. “There’s more back at the house.” She held out her hand for June. “Come with me?”

  They walked up the driveway together, arm in arm. Di
nah said, “Do you think you’ll stay in town?”

  “I don’t know,” June said. “We’d like to, if we can.”

  “I hope you do.” Dinah pulled her to a stop. “Peter’s good for Lewis. And you’re good for me.”

  “We are?” June sighed. “That’s nice of you to say. But it seems all we do is bring you trouble, this time especially. We put both you and Lewis at terrible risk.”

  Dinah smiled, her teeth bright in the night. “I know Lewis loves me and those boys without reservation. That man would do anything for us. But he’s got some demons in him, too. Maybe it’s the hard way he came up, the things he had to do to survive. Maybe he was born that way. But I also know he’s got to find himself a righteous fight every once in a while. To prove to himself that he’s on the side of the angels. And with Peter, he can do that.”

  She wrapped her arm tight around June’s. “It scares the daylights out of me, every time. When he’s gone, I don’t want to know what he’s up to. I mean, I don’t even want to think about it. But when he comes home? It’s like he’s washed clean.”

  June thought of Peter that afternoon, cooking up a feast. Raggedy-ass jeans, soul music on the radio, dancing around the kitchen with a spatula in his hand, the most beautiful man in the world.

  He’d looked very different when he’d chased Edgar up the street after the van crash. Utterly focused, filled with intent and purpose and a fierce kind of joy. Holding that goddamn crowbar like a flaming sword of vengeance.

  Then she remembered the look on his face in South Chicago when she’d woken up on the floor in his arms. Tears streaming down his cheeks, terrified that she might die, the depth of his relief when he saw that she would live.

  And she was alive. She was so goddamned alive that it almost hurt. She loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone or anything, and sometimes that hurt, too.

  There was no helping it. She was his and he was hers. That’s just the way it was and the way it was always going to be. No matter what.

  She had no idea what the hell they’d do next. Did it matter?

  Wasn’t that the whole point of the adventure?

  * * *

  —

  They found two more bottles of wine and walked back, still arm in arm. When they came around the corner of the garage, June found Peter standing in the flickering firelight, watching and waiting for her to come home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It seems a little hard to imagine now, but when I began the book that would become The Breaker, COVID-19 did not yet exist and a wave of social justice protests had not yet taken over the streets of many American cities.

  When I wrote the first chapters, I was thinking about the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in America, and how the desires of an absurdly small number of people can have a radical effect on the world. Despite everything that has happened in the world during the time it took me to finish the book, that idea—that obsession—seems more valid than ever.

  The tech industry is the most vivid example of this phenomenon. Tech innovation drives social change at an ever-increasing rate, often without regard to the downstream effects. Facebook’s former internal motto, “Move fast and break things,” became something of a slogan for the tech industry at large.

  Not long ago, most of us thought of new tech as an unalloyed benefit that would move human society forward. Lately, however, the shine has gone off the chrome. Some of those downstream effects have proven to be particularly ugly. Consider the hot mess that is present-day social media, or the way online retail is rapidly hollowing out brick-and-mortar stores and our communities. And the pandemic is only accelerating those trends.

  All of which is in the news every day, it seems. I’m a news junkie and a big believer in being informed, but when the world seems to have gone off its rails, I need diversion more than ever, and that’s where so-called speculative fiction comes in.

  I first discovered the adventures of Tom Swift, teenage inventor, in elementary school. Tom Swift led me to the pulp fiction chronicles of Doc Savage, then to the lean, elegant tales of Ray Bradbury. Bradbury really raised the bar for how speculative fiction can reflect and comment on human nature and the world we’re living in today.

  If you like this kind of thing, there is a lot of great work out there. Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter is among my recent favorites, as is Tom Sweterlitsch’s The Gone World. Both books provide both a respite from and a way to think about our current times. Plus anything by William Gibson, although Neuromancer is the place to start if you’re new to his work.

  Which is another way to say that I wrote this book to distract and entertain myself, and also to help me think about what’s really important. I hope it does the same for you.

  Thanks to my family for their patience and kindness during the challenge of writing this and every other book. Thanks especially to Margret, who is stuck with a zombie husband whose body inhabits the house although his mind is often elsewhere for weeks or months at a time.

  Thanks to my son, Duncan, for inspiring and helpful conversations, along with his insight that making art is an extreme sport. Thanks also to my brother, Bob, for sharing tidbits of his work life over the years. He’s not the supervillain in this story, but he could totally reach supervillain status if he put his mind to it.

  Thanks as always to the many veterans who have generously shared their experiences with me, either in person or online. Peter’s post-traumatic stress is getting better, but plenty of veterans aren’t so lucky. As many have told me, the war never goes away. However, Peter’s experience in quieting the white static is rooted in simple techniques that have proven to be very effective in the real world: meditation, exercise, and a veterans’ group where you can share your story.

  Thanks to multi-award-winning journalists Raquel Rutledge and John Diedrich—Raquel especially—for a tour of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and for sharing their mindset and experiences as investigative and crime reporters. Thanks to Dan Egan, whose book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is a modern classic, for our conversations about writing book-length nonfiction. Any errors or diversions from good journalistic practice are mine alone. If you, like me, feel that high-quality news is important, please subscribe to your local newspaper, which does important work on stories that will never reach the national news media.

  For those checking my facts, please note that I’ve omitted the wide hallway between the elevators and the Journal Sentinel’s newsroom in order to streamline the story. I’ve also tweaked the geography of Bayview and the delivery area behind the Milwaukee Public Market for similar reasons.

  I’ve used a few real names to amuse myself, but the characters depicted are not those people. Especially not New York Times bestselling author Graham Brown, although he remains both elusive and mysterious. His work with Clive Cussler is outstanding, but I’m especially fond of his early solo novels—start with Black Rain.

  Thanks to my mother-in-law, Frances Anderson, who never did anything to deserve her unrecognizable portrait in this book. She is nothing like the character that bears her name except for her good humor, her definite opinions, and the fact that she is, at the time of this writing, ninety-seven years old.

  Thanks to Robert Crais for supplying a spectacular metaphor. I’ve been reading his work since The Monkey’s Raincoat and remain an unfortunately ardent fanboy.

  Thanks to Marc Cameron for letting me pick his brains about federal fugitives and the U.S. Marshals. If you haven’t read Marc, try Open Carry, the first in the Arliss Cutter series.

  Thanks to Adam Plantinga, author of 400 Things Cops Know, which I highly recommend. Our conversation helped form Sergeant Threadgill.

  Thanks to Timothy Grundl, PhD, cyclist, scientist, and inventor, for details on getting doored on a bike and developing an invention, along with other crucial science bits. All mistakes on both fronts are mine alone.

/>   Thanks to Miriam Delgado for the excellent Spanish-language cursing.

  Thanks to Eric Gardner for the untucked white dress shirt and the homicidal grin.

  Thanks to singer-songwriter John Gorka for his song, “Edgar the Party Man,” which begins, “My name is Edgar. . . .” The murders are my own.

  Thanks to Markus Schneider for the tour of the Milwaukee Makerspace, which is the inspiration for the South Side MakerSpace in this book, including the stuffed animals and the toaster oven.

  Thanks to Josh Hintz, of Var Gallery and Studios and Var West Gallery, for providing a template for the fictional Walker’s Point Gallery and Studios. At various times, both Margret and I have had space at Var and are grateful for the company of artists.

  The portraits featured in the gallery scene are by Steve Burnham. If you’re interested, find him on Instagram at steveburnham_mke.

  Thanks to Kiko Ojeda for sharing parts of his story with me. He is not the Kiko in this novel, but his name was impossible to resist.

  Thanks to Brooke Harrington for her book Wealth Management and the One Percent. It’s a fascinating guide to the mindset of the ultrawealthy and the tools they use to hide their wealth.

  Despite my comments above, I don’t consider the technology in The Breaker to be particularly speculative, as almost everything noted in the book is real, or on its way to being real. Thanks to the MIT Technology Review, whose pages I scoured for ideas to steal in fiction.

  My apologies to Boston Dynamics, maker of Spot and other robots. These products do not appear to be designed for world domination—yet—but the demonstration videos set my imagination wild.

  A note on fire extinguishers: no, you shouldn’t spray someone with a fire extinguisher, certainly not an extended blast, not unless they’re trying to kill you. The chemicals are fine powders and can lodge in the lungs. But it’s better than hitting someone in the head with the canister, right?