by Lee Driver
“Twins also have the same DNA, Skizzy, so don’t start popping pills yet. Just keep on this other guy and see if we can I.D. him and the private plane.”
“Yeah yeah. It’s going to take me awhile.This facial recognition software I stole isn’t as quick as you see on television.”
“Skizzy, can you solder this back together?” Sara held up the black cord necklace. “I think if we keep using the metal clasps it’s only going to break again.”
“Let me see.” Skizzy took a seat at the work table and examined the multiple strands of wire under the leather wrap. “Yeah, but it might be best just to solder the thing onto Dagger then wrap the cord around it. That way he won’t lose it.”
Sara picked up what looked like a small pen light and pushed a button. Nothing happened. “What is this?”
“Detects bugs.”
“Thought you already have one of those that checks to see if someone planted a bug in your store,” Sara said.
“Not for the store.” Skizzy grinned, a self-satisfied smile that lit up his face. He plucked a round metal item from the top drawer and set it on the table. “Point it at that.”
Sara pointed it and pressed the button. A loud buzzing and whine was emitted from the instrument.
“That’s the tracking chip that was in that guy’s head, that Demko guy we tossed into the quarry,” Skizzy said.
“What are you going to do, scan everyone you meet?” Sara said with a laugh. She pointed the instrument at Skizzy and ran it slowly down his frame.
“If I have to. Gotta know who you’re dealing with. Gotta know who’s working for The Man.”
Sara turned and pointed the instrument at Dagger, running it from his ankles up to his head. When she pointed it at his neck, the buzzing and whine was loud and persistent. Sara was too shocked to move the instrument as it kept buzzing. Dagger was too shocked to pull the thing from her grasp.
Skizzy bolted from the chair, stumbled back, and fumbled in one of the drawers for a gun. He raised a shaky arm at Dagger, the gun pointed at Dagger’s chest.
Stunned, Sara pulled the instrument away and stepped in front of Dagger. “Skizzy, stop.”
“Move away from the enemy, girlie.” He clamped his left hand on his right to keep the gun from shaking.
“You know Dagger. You know there has to be an explanation. There must be a malfunction.”
“Quit hiding behind a skirt, you sonofabitch.”
“Sara.” Dagger placed his hands on her forearms and tried to move her aside.
“No!”
Dagger thought Sara was taking this protection thing way too seriously. “Skizzy, put the gun away and let’s think this through. It’s possible it isn’t working right. Why and when would I ever get a chip implanted?”
“Maybe in the military. I don’t know.” Skizzy’s eyes welled up and his hands shook so hard Dagger was sure he would drop the gun.
“STAND DOWN, SOLDIER!” Dagger shouted. Something changed in Skizzy’s eyes. He snapped to attention and dropped the gun to his side. “RELINQUISH YOUR SIDEARM.” Dagger nudged Sara and whispered, “Get the gun.”
Sara cautiously approached and pulled the gun from Skizzy’s hands.
“AT EASE, SOLDIER.”
Skizzy stepped to one side and clasped his hands behind his back.
Dagger eyed all the guns on the wall. Every one of them, he was sure, was loaded. His hand instinctively went to his neck.
“Let me look,” Sara said as she shoved Dagger onto a chair. “Skizzy, do you have a flashlight down here?”
Skizzy blinked several times as though awaking from a nap. “Next to the can of pencils.”
Sara grabbed the flashlight and snapped it on. She moved Dagger’s collar length hair aside and shined the light. There was a scar starting just above the hairline at the base of his neck and running at least two inches long.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her forehead against the back of his head. “It’s there, Dagger. A scar, almost identical to the one Demko had.”
CHAPTER 20
Dagger felt a cold chill race through his body. This couldn’t be right. “I need two mirrors. I have to see for myself.”
“Skizzy.” Sara looked at the squirrely guy. He wasn’t moving, or even blinking. Just frozen in place mouth breathing. “Skizzy, someone did this to him. We have to help.”
This snapped Skizzy out of his trance. “Mirrors, yeah, I’ve got some.” He produced two hand-held mirrors. Skizzy held one behind Dagger’s neck while Sara pulled Dagger’s hair to one side. Dagger held the other mirror and turned it to see the reflection in Skizzy’s mirror.
Sara was right. It resembled Demko’s. Anger swelled. Who the hell did this? He saw Sara’s reflection in the mirror. Silent tears were streaming down her face.
“Are you going to die?” she whispered.
“Better question is, why hasn’t he died yet?” Skizzy whispered back. “When’s the last time you were in the hospital?”
“Haven’t been.”
“Prison?”
“No.”
“Military?”
“I…” Dagger knew he went through Special Ops training and Navy Seals, but when? “I would have known.”
“Right. Put you to sleep and you don’t know what the hell they are doing.”
Dagger could picture his field training, parachute jumping, reconnaissance. But why couldn’t he place a timeline on any of it? He clawed the back of his neck, trying to feel what was under the skin. “I have to get this out.”
“Not here you ain’t.”
Dagger pulled out his cell phone and scanned through the numbers. He punched the one he was looking for. They emerged from the bunker and waited for Doc Akins in the back room of the pawn shop. Very few people knew about the bunker downstairs and Skizzy wanted to keep it that way.
Twenty minutes later a tall man with silver-streaked hair entered the pawn shop. One could have easily mistaken him as a college professor with his wire-rimmed glasses and preppy attire. He placed his black bag on the kitchen table and opened it. “Going to give me a little background info? Not necessary, but might help.”
“Yeah, especially if you don’t want to blow up,” Skizzy snarled.
“What?” Doc’s wire-rimmed glasses almost popped off his nose when he turned his head. The streaked hair gave him an older, more distinguished look than his thirty plus years. His lanky body towered over Skizzy.
“Don’t listen to him,” Dagger said. He gave him an abbreviated version of Skizzy’s paranoia and the detector Skizzy had invented that discovered something in Dagger’s neck.
“Would have been easier if I could have just X-rayed you at the office,” Doc said.
“I’m not sure what an X-ray would have done to it.” Besides, he wasn’t too keen on stepping outside. What if someone were able to track him? But again, why hadn’t they by now or were they just keeping track of his whereabouts and waiting for… what?
Doc jammed a needle into a vial. “Let’s freeze this first and then we’ll open you up.”
Dagger felt a sting in the back of his neck. Thoughts of Demko floated through his head so he tried to shove those aside. “How are the cats and dogs?”
“Doing good. Have a lot of animals up for adoption if you want to add any to your house.” Doc Akins’ medical license had been suspended when he had admitted to giving marijuana to cancer patients to ease their nausea during chemo treatments. He decided to change to a veterinary practice. He also taught part- time at the local college.
“It would be nice to have a kitten,” Sara said.
“Kittens grow up to be cats,” Dagger replied. “Although it would be a nice snack for Einstein.”
Skizzy laughed at that, a nervous laugh but at least the nutty guy wasn’t spouting off about Dagger blowing up in his pawn shop.
Doc was cautious when making his incision. Dagger didn’t feel anything but saw Sara and Skizzy edge closer
as though curious exactly what was in his neck.
“Just dab the gauze to keep the blood flow down so I can see what we’ve got,” Doc told Sara.
Dagger could feel something touching his neck and unconsciously clenched and unclenched his fists. What if whatever Doc was doing triggered something? His mind raced again, trying to figure out when a chip had been planted. He had never been in a hospital, that he knew of. Skizzy had created such an elaborate background on Dagger that even Dagger wasn’t sure where the truth started and the lies ended. How could this have happened?
“Well, well,” Doc said.
“What is it?” Sara asked.
“No flashing numbers on it. Not like that other guy’s that had a timer,” Skizzy added.
“What other guy?”
Dagger winced. He was hoping not to get into the details of Demko. Skizzy was usually tightlipped around people outside of his small circle. Given the unusual circumstances of Demko’s death, Skizzy suddenly acquired diarrhea of the mouth.
Doc’s scalpel hovered as Skizzy got into the details of the timer, how Demko exploded and a portion of the chip and timer separated from the body. Skizzy pulled Demko’s tracking chip from his pocket and showed it to Doc.
“Doesn’t resemble this one at all. This one is long and narrow, like a fuse for your car lights,” Doc said. “Matter of fact…what on earth?”
“What?” Dagger tensed. He saw Sara and Skizzy move even closer. “What is it?”
“The damn thing is connected to your brain stem somehow. A researcher friend of mine read where they can insert a computer chip into a petri dish of neurons and it just adheres, they become part of it. Then it gets inserted into the brain.”
“I knew it!” Skizzy shouted. “Told you they can do this.”
Doc straightened. A look of concern clouding his face. “Except he read it in Future Science magazine. The article was on genetically engineered soldiers.”
You could have cut the silence with a knife. Sara slowly sank onto a kitchen chair. Skizzy wrapped his arms around his chest as though artificially cocooning himself from his surroundings.
Dagger tensed even more. His dark eyes appeared darker with the irises turning as black as the pupils. “It’s impossible. I haven’t been to a hospital much less a doctor’s office.”
“The bizarre thing about this,” Doc said, “is that there is a lot of scar tissue here. This chip has been in your head for at least twenty-five years.”
The silence dragged on. Only the sound of the scalpel against metal could be heard.
“Twenty-five years?” Sara finally whispered. “You would have been five years old.”
“Damn. Big Brother has been busy for longer than I thought,” Skizzy added. “Holy sheee-it.”
Dagger could feel his pulse pounding in his ears. Twenty- five years? What the hell?
“Got the cover off but it didn’t open anything. It’s a cover on top of another cover. Everything is entwined,” Doc said. “I wouldn’t try to disconnect anything if I wanted to.” He cleaned off the slender metal lid and handed it to Dagger. “It has some type of serial number on it. I’d like to take it to my researcher friend in California. I wouldn’t chance shipping it to him. I’d rather fly out there and meet with him personally.”
Dagger wrote down the numbers off the metal. “Get on the first flight you can, Doc. I’ll pay for it. Let me know immediately what your friend says.”
“Will do. Let me stitch this back up. The stitches should melt but keep the area covered with gauze for at least ten days. Change the bandage every day.”
Dagger stared at the two lines of numbers: 41-30-31 and below that 100-47-30. It didn’t sound like a serial number. Not one letter in the bunch but for some reason he thought he should know what they meant.
“Skizzy said they weren’t anything alike.” Sara’s attempts to ease Dagger’s mind were proving fruitless. They were seated at a back booth at The Joint, a restaurant owned by a former Joliet prison warden. You had to have a sense of humor just to order. The Sizzle was the best filet in town and on the menu it was suggested that you not order the High Voltage steak.
“At least he fixed your necklace.” Sara was having a hard time coaxing words out of Dagger. He said very little since leaving Skizzy’s and just kept pulling out the piece of paper and studying the numbers he had written down. “Now that he soldered it on you won’t ever lose it.”
Dagger instinctively reached behind his neck. He was beginning to get feeling back where Doc had made the incision. Rather than take pain pills, Dagger was on his second VO and water.
A waitress in a short orange jumpsuit deposited their plates on the table. The top three buttons on her jumpsuit were unbuttoned, revealing an abundance of skin. Dagger barely noticed her.
“Anything else I can get you, handsome?”
Dagger shook his head but winced at the movement. He shoved the piece of paper into his shirt pocket, not even glancing at the blonde babe leaning over his table.
“The name is Roxy if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” Sara replied although Roxy never paid Sara one ounce of attention.
Metal bars separated the booths. Waitresses sported orange jumpsuits. Waiters and bartenders wore black and white striped prison garb. Beer on tap was dispensed from huge hypodermic needles. Inebriated customers didn’t dare argue with the bartenders when they cut off their drinks because Warden Cleaves Jones didn’t hesitate to call the cops rather than a cab to drive the drunk home. Jones wasn’t about to lose his license much less his business due to a lawsuit. Warden Jones was inconspicuous. Slight build, a bald spot ringed with gray, banker’s bifocals resting on his nose. He sat at the end of the bar nursing a glass of fresh squeezed lemonade. He could see the entire restaurant through the reflection in the mirror in back of the bar. Most patrons thought the picture on the wall of a burly guy with tattoos and sporting a scar above one eye was Warden Jones. Few people knew Jones was the mousy guy who looked more like the dreaded tax man.
Dagger picked at his steak. “They are just watching and waiting, Sara.”
“You don’t know that. Now eat or drink or do something other than agonize over something you can’t prove.”
Dagger dropped a large dollop of sour cream into his baked potato. He cut into the steak although he could probably have used his fork it was so tender. “It explains why Demko snapped. Maybe his neurons recognized my neurons or whatever.”
Sara laughed. “I’m sorry. That sounds so sci-fi, Dagger.”
“My whole life is one science fiction novel. I’m beginning to question everything I ever knew about myself.”
“Thought you made it all up anyway. Were you really in the Marines and attended the Police Academy as your resume states?” Sara watched as his gaze lifted from his steak to her face. “It isn’t real?” She gasped.
“How do I know if this damn thing in my neck has created an entire past for me? I’m probably one minute from being incinerated like that car BettaTec destroyed which, not much to my disappointment, included Mitch Arnosky.”
Mitch Arnosky had been a thief who almost succeeded in ruining Padre’s career. It was during this case that Sara and Skizzy learned about BettaTec, a company that had something to do with Dagger’s past, a dangerous company with laser defense satellites capable of being directed at anything and anyone that proved a threat to them. When Skizzy had tried to hack into their system, it tried unsuccessfully to locate who was doing the hacking. Skizzy cut off communication but not before the BettaTec satellite had destroyed one ranger station in Norway and a lab in New Zealand. Skizzy had masked his IP address so he couldn’t be traced but when the secondary servers started to explode, he knew someone was trying to trace his signal. To the locals, it looked as though lightning had destroyed the affected areas.
“Demko was only looking for a P.I. to probably steal the flash drive. When he didn’t succeed, they sent his twin,” Sara surmised. “Demko has nothing to do with you
, Dagger.”
Dagger set the knife and fork down and grabbed his drink. “Wish it were that simple.”
“Of course it is. What proof do you have otherwise?”
Dagger’s grip around the glass tightened. Sara thought for sure the glass would shatter any moment. He quickly set the glass down and reached for the gun at his waist with lightning speed as a shadow appeared at their table.
“Mind if I join you?” Padre set his beer down and slid into the booth next to Dagger. “I do hope that isn’t a gun you are reaching for.”
Dagger relaxed and reached for his glass. “Sorry. Little jumpy these days.”
“Understandable.” Padre looked around the restaurant, taking in the décor and dress of the wait staff. “The theme of this place is sick. But I love it.”
Sara asked, “How did you know we were here?”
“Who else drives a Lincoln Navigator with a license plate of BITE ME?”
Dagger’s lips curled in the first resemblance of a smile Sara had seen all day. “Guess I’ll have to be less conspicuous next time. What brings you out on a night made for crime and passion?”
“Following the crime, dreaming of the passion.”
Roxy sidled up to the table. “Did you need a menu?” she asked Padre.
“Just another beer, sweetheart.” He cocked his head as he watched her walk away. “Did you know Roxy served three years for check fraud?”
“Really?” Sara wondered if the owner knew that.
“The owner hires a lot of ex-cons. Pays for bartender school to give them a skill. Some start at the bottom, work their way up. He’s got a pretty good thing going on. Very low repeat offenders.”
Roxy returned with a beer. Padre hooked a thumb in Dagger’s direction. “Put it on his tab.”
“Sure you don’t want a steak, too?” Dagger said with sarcasm.
“Nah. Wife has ravioli in the oven.” He cocked his head to look at Dagger’s neck. “Cut yourself shaving?”
Dagger’s hand instinctively went to the gauze bandage. “I had a growth removed.”