by Jake Bible
“You’ll be in a Dim box,” I said. “You don’t need to sit.”
“Is that so? Because I heard through the grapevine that you outfitted an entire living room set for that restaurant owner lady you fancy so much.” He snapped his fingers and two of the dopplers went back into the warehouse then returned with the folding chair. “Ah, that will do nicely.”
“I can make the box snug so you won’t need a chair,” I said. “You’ll feel like you’re floating.”
“I prefer a chair.”
“But you don’t need one.”
“Yet, I prefer one.”
“I prefer you don’t have one since that’ll make the box bigger and that becomes a problem.”
“Oh, Chase, are you too weak to handle a slight adjustment to the size of one of your special black boxes? How precious.”
“I’ll show you precious, you sanctimonious prick.”
“Whip ’em out, boys,” Harper said. “I’ll eye the measurements from here and tell you who wins.”
“Always a delight, Harper,” the One Guy said and set the folding chair down directly in front of the recliners. “Now, Chase, since the chair issue is settled, shall we get started?”
“Not yet,” Lassa said. “I want you out of the Dim while we drive around Asheville for about thirty minutes. With you still exposed, we can check to see if anyone is following us via a tracking hex. When I give the signal, Chase puts you in the box, we drive around a little more to see if that shakes any tails. If we’re good then we leave town.”
“You’re the professionals,” the One Guy said as he sat down. “Speaking of, has anyone informed Special Agent Ducheré of this little plan of ours?”
“I’ll call her before we leave town so she knows we’re on the way and can have your new digs in DC waiting and ready. Then we toss cell phones so we can’t be tracked.”
“You people are so smart. I could make you incredibly rich if you ever wanted to put that brain power and your skills to work for me exclusively.”
“Hard pass,” Harper said as she latched the weapons crate shut and plopped down in one of the recliners.
“Too bad,” the One Guy said.
“Get comfy, folks,” Lassa said as he jumped down from the back of the truck, one hand pulling the sliding door’s handle with him so it descended most of the way. “And please don’t kill each other.”
“No promises,” Harper and I said in unison.
The One Guy laughed hard.
Then Lassa closed and locked the rear door and we were plunged into darkness.
Harper cracked some glow sticks and tossed them randomly around the cargo area. The dopplers stood there like an eight-year old’s worst nightmare, their blank faces illuminated by bile green light as they waited behind the One Guy.
After a couple of seconds, the truck rumbled to life then jolted before it began moving. The sound of gravel changed to the smoothness of asphalt and we were on our way.
“Not that I am questioning you, but using outside contractors for the protection hexes? Is that really wise?” the One Guy asked.
“Yeah,” Harper replied.
“Despite the risks it poses? I mean, I’ve had dealings with the folks in the hollers and hills. They aren’t always meticulous. I see that the walls are armored well, which is a plus, but armor won’t stop magic.”
“That’s why we have hexes,” Harper replied. “The hexes will hold.”
“You aren’t concerned?”
“Yeah.”
“Um, is that a yeah you are concerned or a yeah that you aren’t concerned?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Harper, I regret I’ll be in a Dim box instead of getting to sit and chat with you the whole trip.”
Harper rolled her eyes, but didn’t respond.
I got comfortable in my recliner and pulled out my phone.
“Time to talk to Ducheré again,” I said. “This should be fun.”
“Mr. Lawter,” Ducheré snarled when she answered. “That ghoul driver of yours was very good at slipping away from my agents this morning when you left your place. Care to tell me what the hell is going on? Last evening’s phone call was less than satisfying.”
“I’m doing what you want,” I replied. “Maybe not the way you want, but it is what you asked us to do.”
There was a pause. “So you are taking the One Guy to DC for us after all?”
“Not for you, no.”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Lawter. Explain.”
“We’ve been hired to do a job. So happens that job is exactly the job you wanted done. Two birds, one stone, and all that shit.”
“All right. Good. Send me your route and I’ll provide an escort and DEX backup.”
“Nah. Not gonna do that. Like I said last night, you can give me a destination and we’ll take care of the rest.”
“I’m sorry?”
“No need to be sorry, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Harper laughed at my snark.
“Mr. Lawter. I have to insist you send me the route. Otherwise you are interfering with a DEX operation. That is a very serious issue and the government does not mess around when it comes to operational interference.”
“Not doubting that, Ducheré,” I said as the truck took a hard right.
I glanced at Harper, but she seemed cool about it. I wrinkled my brow and she held up a walkie talkie and smiled. I nodded.
“Mr. Lawter, I am insisting that you cooperate.”
“I know you are. I can hear the insistence in your voice. But, the reality is”—
“The reality is that your business partner, Ms. Spaglioni, is still here in Asheville. If you are not willing to be cooperative on your own then perhaps I can give you some incentive to change your mind. I’ll be in touch, Mr. Lawter.”
She hung up.
I pulled the phone away and stared at it for a few seconds.
“What?” Harper asked.
“Yes, Chase, what?” One Guy asked with mock helpfulness. “I don’t believe you got in the last word and from the look on your face, Special Agent Ducheré’s last words troubled you.”
“It’s all good,” I said. It wasn’t. Her threat bugged me. Also, I didn’t get the final destination. But I’d get it later. No doubt about that.
The truck began to dip and curve. Harper’s walkie made a quick squawk then went silent.
“Cell phones gone,” Harper said as she stood up and held out her hand. “No exceptions.”
I gave her mine then she stood in front of the One Guy. He held up his hands.
“Didn’t bring one. I had a feeling we’d go silent and didn’t want to waste a perfectly good phone.”
“I’ll have to check,” Harper said and gestured for him to stand up. The dopplers moved an inch closer and Harper held up a finger. “One Guy?”
“Relax, gentlemen,” the One Guy said as he stood and spread his legs while holding his arms out. “We have hired these fine professionals to do a job. We will cooperate and let them do that job.”
The dopplers didn’t exactly relax, but they didn’t get pissy as Harper patted the One Guy down.
“He didn’t lie this time,” Harper said when she was done with her search.
“Miracle of miracles,” I said.
“Gotta check your goons, too,” Harper said.
“They’ll allow it,” the One Guy said as he sat back down.
The dopplers did and all Harper found were enough sidearms to give the NRA a tingly feeling in their bathing suit area, but no phones.
“Are we done with the groping?” the One Guy asked as Harper walked to the back of the truck, lifted the sliding door a couple inches, and tossed our phones outside. “Because
I am so looking forward to this trip. Taking a ride inside a Dim box. Once in a lifetime experience.”
“I’m glad you’re so stoked about it,” I said and looked at Harper. “We ready?”
Harper clicked the walkie twice and waited. She received two clicks back.
“We’re ready,” she said. “On I-26 right now. About to pass Weaverville.”
Haute Café was in Weaverville and they made the best pastries in the country. That made my stomach grumble.
“Jesus, Chase,” Harper said. “We got plenty of snacks. Tame that tummy, man.”
“Tame that tummy,” the One Guy parroted. “You two and your banter. Always so touching.”
“Suck it, fuzz face,” Harper said.
I held out my hands and black smoke began to pour from my palms.
“Oh, before you tuck me away, I do have a couple of items I’d like to discuss,” the One Guy said.
“Discuss them with yourself,” I said as I formed the first panel of the box I’d stick the asshead in.
“No, Chase, I believe you’ll want to hear this,” the One Guy said and hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the dopplers. “They have strict instructions to make sure that when we reach DC, you let me out of this box. If you do not, they will kill you.”
Harper snorted, but I held up a smoky hand and she went silent.
“Expected that. What else?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing except that if anything happens to me, regardless of whose fault it may be, then Ms. Spaglioni will not be long for her undead life. I have contingencies in place. Many, many contingencies.”
“Everyone thinks Sharon is my Achilles’ heel,” I said. “You think I don’t have contingencies in place too?”
“Such as that abomination of a ghost?” the One Guy said. “Shapeshifters. Nothing but dimensional trash. Worse when they’re dead.”
“Careful,” Harper said.
“You talk a great game, One Guy. You do,” I said. “But talking a great game and playing one are two different things.”
“Yes. Yes, they are,” the One Guy said. “So do not play with me, Chase. Do the job you were hired to do and don’t even think of double-crossing me. Accomplish those simple tasks and Ms. Spaglioni stays out of the game and your little ghost friend gets to go on suffering his life debts to you.”
“Can I put you in a box now?”
“Do we have an understanding?”
“When haven’t we ever not had an understanding?”
I could see the pain on the dopplers’ faces as they tried to work out the double negatives of that sentence across their brains. It looked like they were going to collapse from the strain. The One Guy looked over his shoulder and shook his head.
“One more thing, Chase. Please don’t break my employees with mind tricks. They have been told that if they become too confused to know whether or not to trust you then they can err on the side of caution and kill you. Let’s keep the plan, and the rhetoric, simple, all right?”
“Box or no box?” I replied.
He grumbled a little, which meant I was getting to him. Yay for me.
“Box,” he said finally.
“Good.”
I finished making the panels and set them around his chair. All the while he stared up at me, those eyes locked onto mine. I tried to ignore him, but the One Guy knew how to get under my skin too. That stare was one way. It always had been.
“And we’re done,” I said as I held the last panel in my hand. “Try to get some sleep. Dim boxes are great to nap in.”
“What a lovely idea, Chase. I may take”—
I didn’t hear the rest as I sealed the box tight. Sound doesn’t penetrate Dim boxes, coming or going.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was very tempted to banish the box into the Dim. Way less energy and work on my part if it’s tucked away there. Keeping a Dim box active takes a lot out of me. Also, for shits and giggles, I so wanted to see the looks on the idiot dopplers’ faces when I went against their boss’s orders.
Harper put a hand on my shoulder and I sighed.
“I wasn’t going to,” I said.
“Relax and grab something to eat,” Harper said, ignoring the half-lie. “Your job is only to maintain the box and chill out. Leave everything else to me and Lassa.”
“Fine,” I said as I plopped down into my recliner and reached for a cooler.
Time to see what road snacks were packed for me. I was goddamn starving and we’d only gone maybe a mile after I closed the box. Gonna be a long trip.
14.
WITH A COUPLE pounds of salty snacks in my belly, I relaxed into the recliner and cracked open a beer. My metabolism from working the Dim made it hard to stay buzzed, so one beer wasn’t going to even register on my senses or slow my reaction time. Drinking was more for taste and also for show. I sipped at it casually as I eyed the dopplers.
“Do you guys eat?” I asked. “Because I’ve never seen a doppler eat.”
“Chase,” Harper warned. “Let’s not poke the morons.”
I almost replied, but shrugged instead. She was right. We had a long journey and whether we liked it or not, we were stuck with the dopplers the entire ride. The problem was that dopplers bugged the living shit out of me.
“No,” Harper said, smacking my arm and causing me to spill some of my beer. “I can tell you’re getting into one of those moods.”
“What moods?” I asked, all innocent and full of shit.
“The pick and pick and pick until someone snaps mood,” Harper said. “Let’s get your mind off the lugs and focus on our route.”
“Whatever,” I said and set the beer down then turned to Harper. “Enlighten me.”
She unfolded a map, since neither of us had phones, and held it out.
“Asheville here. DC here,” she said as she managed to keep the map from folding in on itself while also tracing a finger along a highlighted line. “We’ll be going this way. Staying off the interstates once we get up into Tennessee. That I-26 to I-81 interchange gets dicey. One of those crappy cloverleafs that freaks everyone out because getting on and off is like a mad race.”
“I hate that interchange,” one of the dopplers said.
We both turned and looked at them, but it was impossible to tell which one spoke.
“Uh . . . what?” Harper asked. They didn’t reply. She looked back at me. “You heard that, right?”
“I heard it,” I said as I studied the dopplers. “That was a very undoppler thing to say.”
We waited, but none of the morons spoke again. Back to the map.
“We’re gonna lose time here as we backtrack a little down to 394 then connect with 19,” Harper explained.
“We’re not staying on 19 the whole way, are we? That’d be a little obvious.”
“Ya think, Chase? Would it be obvious?” She thumped me in the forehead with a quick flick of her finger.
“Ow.”
“Shut up and pay attention. We take 19 until we connect to 16. It’s a shitty little highway that winds up through the West Virginia mountains. We’ll make a couple stops along the way there. This truck guzzles gas, so not much of a choice.”
“You have a plan for when we need gas? We’ll be sitting ducks.”
“I have contacts along the way. They don’t know what the job is, but they do know to make sure each stop is secure when we get there. No questions asked on their end and no surprises on our end.”
“Cool. Then from 16?”
Harper spoke and pointed at numbered highways on the map for a while. “We’ll wind up merging onto 219. Not an interstate, but there will be traffic.”
“You want us in traffic?”
“I want to flush out anyone that may be on our tail. The cov
er of traffic is a good way to do that. Lassa agrees.”
“I defer to your infinite wisdom.”
“Blow me, smart ass. We’ll follow 3 when it splits off and follow that into Virginia. At that point we stop and assess from there. We’ll have a few options to choose from to cross Virginia and into DC. We can mix it up as we head to the Beltway. The trick is that Virginia, no matter what highway you drive on, will get denser the closer we get to DC. There’ll come a point where backroads won’t matter and we may want the congestion of an interstate to use to our advantage.”
“Put some cover around us.”
“Exactly. And as much as we want to keep Ducheré in the dark, the closer we get to DC the more likely it’ll be she’ll have agents waiting along the road no matter which one we’re on. We only have so much wiggle room on this, Chase.”
“Got it. Plan sounds good.”
“Except for one issue.”
The words weren’t Harper’s. The doppler had spoken again.
“Okay, I’m calling bullshit,” I said and pointed at the idiots. “Which one of you has grown a brain? Come on. Out with it or I swear I’m letting Harper toss you all out the back of this truck.”
“I’ll do it,” Harper said.
“She’ll do it. Speak up or become intimate with road rash.”
One of the dopplers rolled his eyes, and I aimed my pointing finger at him.
“You. What the hell? Dopplers need two brains.”
“Technically, yes. But there are ways around that. One of those ways is transference of consciousness, Chase. You didn’t think I’d really step back and trust you.”
“Oh, sweet hell no,” I said. “No, no, no, no.”
“That’s a lot of no’s, Chase,” the doppler said.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten then opened my eyes and looked at Harper.
“How?” I asked her.
“Not sure,” she replied, her eyes studying the doppler in question. “Had to have happened before you closed the Dim box, but I would have picked up on a hex being worked inside the truck. The hillbillies’ hexes should have triggered a warning, at the least.”