She allowed herself to enjoy the moment.
Sixty-One
Parker pushed the piece of paper toward Harley. She eyed it like it might leap off Parker’s big, oaky desk and bite her.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Parker’s office was stuffy and smelled like his musky aftershave. And coffee. There was a steaming cup of his at his elbow. The air-conditioning in the fibbie building was on the fritz. Parker still had his jacket and tie on, cinched up against his adam’s apple. The chill in his eyes was probably keeping him cool. Either that or the guy was a corpse, with formaldehyde running through his veins.
“It’s your special commission,” Parker said. He gave her a tight smile, baring his yellowed teeth. The smile didn’t go anywhere near his eyes though. They retained their glacial iciness.
Harley’s gaze dropped back down to the piece of paper, then to Graves, sitting stiffly beside her.
She'd only been out of the hospital a week. It had been a whole month since the final showdown with the Reaper. Three weeks of boredom and bad food and surly nurses. They'd been nice to Graves, though. Which had only been more aggravating. She'd spent so many hours watching TV soap operas she felt she needed a brain transplant. The only good part of the day had been the physical therapy. Her therapist was named Jonas and he looked like the cover of a romance novel. Unfortunately, it had been a gay romance novel.
But he still looked good. And he had soft, warm hands.
They had let Graves out a week before her and they moved in some asthmatic old guy who farted like a drunk trumpet every ten minutes. Graves promised to visit, but he only did once. When she asked him about the Reaper case, he got evasive and said they’d talk more about it later.
It had given her a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Had some of the clones escaped after all?
And now she was sitting in Parker’s office and he was giving her a very official looking piece of paper. She didn’t want to touch it.
Graves had picked her up from the hospital and took her back to her apartment. He didn’t linger. And he didn’t answer any questions. He made sure her fridge was stocked with cranberry juice and blocks of cheddar cheese. He was evasive when she asked if she still had an FBI job. He told her he’d call when he had something to tell her.
Then this morning he’d called and told her Parker had something for her. Wanted to talk to her.
She almost told him to tell Parker to shove it up his ass. But then, she figured she might as well tell the prick himself, in person. It was something to do. She was losing her mind in the apartment. It was going to be a few months before she could get back to her skip tracing work. Maybe Parker was going to give her some special fibbie disability money, since technically she was on the payroll when the Reaper tried to kill her this last time.
She glanced down at the piece of paper again. “So what, exactly, is a special commission?” she asked.
Parker smiled his mirthless smile. His teeth clacked as he ground them together. His hands were folded in front of him. But not in a gentle manner. No, the fingers were clasped against each other, the knuckles white. Alarm bells started going off in her head. Parker was under pressure from somewhere. She had to hope it didn’t spill over onto her.
“The special commission," he said it like there was a turd rolling around in his mouth, "The special commission is the FBI's way of thanking you for your service, brief as it was. It means you are still officially an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You will continue to receive a salary and medical benefits. Which for you, should be a significant benefit, given your proclivity for plunging headfirst into dangerous situations."
Harley kept her hands in her lap, not touching the document Parker had slid in front of her. Her arms still ached. It still hurt to grip things. The doctor had told her there might be some permanent nerve damage, but she was lucky. She still had full control of her fingers and wrist.
At least nothing got cut off after this last visit with the Reaper.
“So what’s the catch?” she asked.
Except she already had an idea what it was. The FBI wasn’t going to offer a free ride for nothing. And the thing most often purchased was…
“Silence,” Parker said, “We need to keep what happened with the Reaper quiet.”
Harley’s stomach twisted. That could only mean one thing.
“Some of the clones got away,” Harley said. So much for victory over the Reaper. Now he was like a cockroach, crawling behind the walls of society. Impossible to every fully exterminate.
“We don’t know that,” Parker said, “It’s possible, but we don’t have any evidence either way. Not yet.”
“Then why?”
“The doctor that saved you,” Graves said.
She swiveled to face him. “The guy in the Reaper’s trunk? What about him?”
“We don’t know who he is, and we can’t find him,” Graves said, “He disappeared after the chopper took off.”
“How could he have just disappeared?” she asked, “Weren’t there law enforcement types crawling all over the place.”
“There was a lot of confusion at the scene,” Parker said, “It wasn’t managed like it should have been.”
And heads had probably already rolled for that. But it still didn’t explain why they were upset about the guy. She gave Parker her pirate glare.
“What else,” she said, “Why are we having this conversation?”
Parker reddened, but he didn’t look away. “One of the sheriff’s deputies was found stuck to a tree with a sword,” he said. He pulled open a drawer and took out a small, plastic bag. It had a white card in it. Harley’s breath caught in her throat. “This was stuck in his mouth.”
He flipped it on the desk. It landed face up on her special commission paper. It had a stylized R and a scythe.
The Reaper’s calling card.
“And yes, the deputy was definitely killed after the original Reaper was dead,” Parker said. His tone was flat. “Someone stole the deputy’s cruiser. It was found a few hours later. There was no trace of evidence in it. It was cleaner than the day it had rolled off the factory line.”
“But the guy I killed, he was the real Reaper,” Harley said, “This is just another clone, right?”
“Some kind of clone,” Parker said, “From the descriptions we gathered, the person who saved you was physically quite different than the Reaper.”
Harley let it percolate through her brain. It wasn’t hard to put it together. If the Reaper could clone himself and put his memories in them, why couldn’t he clone a different body and put those memories in there, too?”
“Carlson Savoy studied medicine for a while in college, didn’t he?” she said.
Neither Parker nor Graves answered. There wasn’t any point.
“So he’s running around in a new body,” she said, “He got away after all.”
“We’re looking for him with every available resource,” Parker said, “It’s only a matter of time…”
She shook her head. A leaden pit formed in her stomach. All that work. All the death and pain. All for nothing.
“You’ll never catch him,” she said, “He’s too smart for you.”
But then she was never going to stop looking, either.
Sixty-Two
Craig Jenner shaded his eyes and looked out over the desert valley. The sun was going down over the jagged line of the Sandia mountains. The hot desert air seemed to suck the moisture from his skin. He made a mental note to invest in a large bottle of skin moisturizer. This was going to be quite the change from the cool and humid clime he was used to.
He looked forward to it, though. There was so much to do. New places to see.
Albuquerque was a small town, as cities went. He’d have to be careful. But then he expected to be traveling a lot. It was amazing the energy his young body had. He flexed his muscles and took a deep breath. There was so much he could do now. And he was free. Free of h
is old identity. Free of all those things that held him down. The old goals could be discarded. New, more practical ones, would be made. He could be more focused. He could take his time, do things with class and style.
Maybe he would start with the politicians.
No one liked them anyway.
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THE DEVIL’S ARMY
Copyright © 2019 by Jeremy Michelson
Cover design copyright © 2019 Jeremy Michelson.
Cover art by Sergey Khakimullin - Dreamstime.com
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This book is licensed for your person enjoyment only. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people, places or incidents is purely coincidental.
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