Die Again To Save Tomorrow (Die Again to Save the World Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  Martha cocked her eyebrow. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means he’s so paranoid about security, literally no one can live or even stay within a five-mile radius, or even have any kind of business within five miles. This is New York City—how do you have five miles of nothing?”

  They all laughed.

  “So the summit organizers finally found him a place upstate, but now the government has to bribe every mom-and-pop within a five-mile radius of the hotel, or the prince walks.”

  Rueben rubbed his head. “Jesus.”

  “So, the summit crew has been working on that, but of course, you’ve got the ‘Murica mom-and-pops that aren’t going to shut down for the week just because the government offers them a stipend. So, we have to send agents out there to ‘persuade’ them. That’s just one example of the crap I’ve been dealing with.”

  Rueben raised his beer at her. “Props.”

  She returned his toast. “The whole thing starts on Monday. I suspect we’ll all be doing overtime next week, so let’s make this weekend last for as long as we can.”

  Martha gulped her beer and set it on the table hard. “Forever, if possible.”

  While she talked, Buzz stared off with an odd smile on his face. “Crikey.”

  Rueben laughed. “For the hundredth time, Buzz, you’re American. Use American expressions, please. British or Australian ones don’t work without the accent.”

  “The Raider Warlock pinball machine! Those are collector’s editions. I can’t believe they… How did they....”

  Buzz jumped up and went to play the eighties collectible while Martha, half-drunk now, stumbled off to the bathroom.

  Rueben was still concerned about Marshall sitting by himself. They had invited him back over, but he kept refusing as Aki had predicted. “Leave him be,” she said, and even though Rueben agreed, he still felt for the old man.

  Everyone needed someone, and Rueben was the only one Marshall had. It had been fifteen years since Carolyn had left and five since Marshall left the police force.

  Marshall had been a hero then, and he’d had a hero’s send-off. Now all those guys were gone, and young ones who only knew of him if they’d read the history files filled the force.

  Rueben debated whether to talk to him again when he noticed his father staring at something at the opposite end of the bar. Suddenly Marshall rose and pushed his way through the crowd as if he’d seen someone or something, but Rueben saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were too many people standing and sitting and walking around in the bar. Maybe Marshall was tapping into his cop’s intuition and following up on a “lead.” Marshall did that occasionally, and it wasn’t uncommon these days for that intuition to amount to nothing more than paranoia. It was kind of sad.

  “Whatcha staring at?” Aki was a little tipsy now.

  Rueben shook his head back to reality. “You think it’s true that we end up like our parents?”

  “Eh, I wouldn’t know. Marge and Bob are hippies that moved to a cult in Sedona ten years ago. Changed their names to Sitar and Pegasus, and they don’t believe in clothing. I could be wrong, but I don’t see myself going that way.”

  “No clothing, huh?” Rueben smirked, steeling him for what he was about to say next. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you do that.”

  He hoped that was the right thing to say, and he relaxed as she smacked his arm. They both laughed.

  “Sitar and Pegasus. I wouldn’t have guessed they would have a daughter who works in the CIA.”

  “Yeah, I keep up with them using company intelligence.”

  He plugged his ears with his fingers. “La-la-la, I didn’t hear that.”

  “I told you my parents are nudists, and that’s the part you didn’t want to hear?”

  “What?”

  She laughed, then a shadow passed over her face.

  “You worry about them, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I could go to jail for checking on them with company intelligence, but it’s the only way I can keep them safe. They don’t talk to me because they disapprove of my involvement with the government. You know, according to them I’m very literally Big Brother.”

  She washed the words down with a long gulp of beer. “So, I keep them off the government radar when they pop up. And they do.”

  “They pop up, huh? What are they into, might I ask?”

  “Nothing major. They’re mild anarchists who wind up on watch lists every once in a while. You know, they follow all the wrong Facebook pages and will believe just about anything.”

  “Ah, yeah. Those types.”

  “Yeah. Those types.”

  “They weren’t always like that?”

  “No, they were once willing slaves to the ‘real world.’ Bob was a surgeon before he became Sitar and mom used to be a financial advisor.”

  “So money was never an issue for you growing up?”

  “Would you believe I had a trust fund? Ha. I guess maybe that’s one of the reasons why I was attracted to Mike. He and his family were pretty flush too.”

  “Right.”

  Mike Fury was her ex-boyfriend who was now in rehab for anger management. He had a complete meltdown at work and trashed the office in a fit of rage. Punched Sven, the head honcho in the face, too. It had been quite the spectacle.

  A spectacle that Rueben was the unwitting catalyst for.

  Wait, at least he had been in one version of the timeline. To prevent the microwave bombing of NYC, Rueben had warped backward to before Mike had his meltdown. Aki had still broken up with Mike, and he’d had taken it fairly well—all things considered. Instead of punching Sven, he’d chucked a coffee maker against the break room fridge. His punishment: mandatory anger management classes.

  Aki drummed her long, manicured fingernails on the table. “I wasn’t lying about what I said. Well, at least the first part. You are a hero, you know.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and his lips rose in a smirk. “Yeah? And the second?”

  She laughed, and her eyes twinkled. “You might have what it takes.”

  “I might, huh?” He switched to an Australian accent only slighter better than Buzz’s. “Does he have what it takes to traverse the land down under?”

  She snorted into her drink as she laughed.

  He continued his Discovery Channel narration. “Or will he be engulfed by the raging fire of defeat, never to be seen or heard from again?”

  “I guess we’ll have to see, huh?” She sidled up close to him, and he could smell her perfume. Her voice lowered. “We’ll have to tune in next week?”

  “I don’t know. I think next week might be too long.”

  “I don’t know. After Mike Fury, I think I might be over dating other agents.”

  Rueben tensed. Man, he hated Mike and how he and Aki had dated.

  Aki twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. “Oh, did I mention Mike is coming back to work soon?”

  “He passed all his anger management classes?”

  “Uh, most of them. I think. And just my luck, he got assigned to summit duty with me.”

  Rueben nearly spat out his drink. “Oh, uh, really? I’ve been meaning to challenge him at the shooting range.”

  Aki batted her eyelashes at him.

  “It’s a guy thing.”

  She nodded. “After working with you on the Pout case, you proved to me that you’re a badass.”

  Rueben cupped a hand around his ear. “Can you repeat that, please?”

  Aki snorted and smacked his arm.

  Rueben cleared his throat as if putting on airs, glad to be talking about anything other than Mike. “The badass thing is a fraud, really. I’m an ordinary computer geek. I mean, I know what HTML stands for, and I can write in binary code about as quickly as I write in English.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s geeky.”

  “Believe me, I know. So this is why I am most certainly not a badass.”

  “You’re turning on the charm here, aren’t you, Bina
ry Code?”

  “I’m just saying that the only reason you think I’m a badass is because I’ve lived a hundred lifetimes.”

  “What?” She doubled over laughing and snorted her drink. “You are a nerd! What kind of manga weird shit is that?”

  He laughed along with her because she didn’t know. She didn’t know that he was a real-life superhero who had died and come back to life more times than he could count. She didn’t know that he had only saved the world because he had so many chances to do it right. She didn’t know how many times he had tried to win her heart before she’d finally given it to him.

  She didn’t know he was in love with her—the real her—not the fantasy of being with the hottest agent in the CIA.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He smiled at her.

  “You are a badass.” She laughed. “How you singlehandedly took down Pout’s three truckers at that warehouse… But, what can I say? Some girls never learn.”

  He tried to think up a witty reply, but Martha screamed from the other side of the bar. Rueben and Aki jumped up and rushed through the crowd.

  “What’s going on?” Reuben gasped.

  A few feet away from him, a man in jeans and a white hoodie with stripes on the shoulders had Martha pinned against the wall, smashing her into the glass around the Kerouac poster. He had his forearm pressed against Martha’s throat, cutting off her air supply.

  Fuck, Rueben thought, is that the guy from the surveillance cams with Alister Pout?

  No time to think about that now. “Get off her!” Rueben yelled.

  He grabbed the man and attempted to pull him off her. In the last few weeks, Rueben had been training hard. Jujitsu, target practice, and boxing. The aim: should his powers ever be needed again, he’d be able to save the world with far less dying.

  That was the hope, at least.

  Training or not, he could hardly grip the breadth of the man’s massive forearms. They were rock-hard.

  Rueben threw a punch at the man’s lower back, aiming for the kidneys as Martha had instructed him during the Pout combat training. He figured the man’s hoodie would be soft. It was, but some kind of metal armor concealed beneath it was hard. Rueben’s knuckles popped, and he staggered back a step.

  Damn, who was this guy? And what was he wearing—

  Hoodie Man threw an elbow, and Rueben fell into the wall beside Martha.

  The assailant continued to apply pressure to Martha’s neck until her eyes rolled up in her sockets. Then he released her, letting her drop to the bar’s floor. He turned to face Rueben, his face concealed by his hood and a pair of sunglasses. The man drew a silenced pistol from under his hoodie. “You want her? Come here and face me.”

  Everyone in the bar screamed and ran for cover, hiding under restored cars or booths.

  Someone yelled, “He’s got a gun.”

  The phrase resonated through the bar, and panic ensued.

  The bartender tried to step in. “Sir, if you don’t put down the gun—”

  “What? You’re calling the cops?” The gunman scoffed. “At this hour, it’ll take them ten minutes to get here.”

  “What is it that you want?” Rueben asked the man.

  The man in the hoodie laughed as he stood next to Martha’s unconscious body. “A lot. I want a lot.”

  “Huh?” Shock started to grip Rueben as he tried to determine if Martha was still breathing or if she was dead.

  Her assailant turned on Rueben with a huffing intake of breath. He jerked the silenced pistol at Rueben’s chest and in a cocky voice, said, “You want to fight, kiddo? Let’s see how much you’ve learned.”

  Chapter Three

  Friday, May 19, 10:41 p.m.

  Buzz was the first to react. Without warning, he pulled out a homemade taser. “Take this, fucker.”

  Rueben was genuinely shocked.

  The last fight they’d been in, Buzz had hidden in a closet and had been nearly traumatized by being held hostage. Things had changed in the last three months.

  Go, Buzz.

  With a confidence Rueben had never seen, Buzz shot the taser at the man, who grunted and recoiled.

  Unfortunately, Hoodie Man quickly recovered. He tucked the gun back under his hoodie with one hand while reaching into his pocket with the other, and with one quick lunge, he punched Buzz in the chest. It didn’t look like a particularly hard blow—as far as punches go—but Rueben saw the air knocked from his buddy’s lungs as it propelled Buzz backward. He collapsed onto a booth table like a martyr.

  “Buzz!”

  Then Rueben noticed the futuristic gauntlet on Hoodie Man’s fist. In the fleeting glance he got of it, it resembled a metallic-colored thin nylon glove. For some reason, it reminded Rueben of the hard metal body armor or whatever was under the gunman’s hoodie.

  Who the hell was he and what beef did he have with Martha?

  Rueben tried to focus and remember all his combat training as he prepared to rush the assailant. Before he could act, Aki planted her stiletto into the man’s side with a swift kick. It clicked as it connected with the armor beneath his hoodie, and it threw her off. The man whipped around, and without hesitation Aki delivered a sharp left hook to his jaw, followed by a quick knee to the groin. The man fell back into a shiny stack of Goodyear tires, and they scattered and rolled. He quickly recovered and pushed Aki hard against the open door of a VW bus, and she rebounded to the floor in a heap as the door slammed closed.

  Crap. Had Aki hit her head on the door? Was she okay?

  How were they supposed to fight this man?

  Rueben frantically scanned the bar for his dad but didn’t see him. If anyone else was going to bullrush their attacker, it would be Marshall. His bite really was as bad as his bark—at least it had been during his father’s days on the force.

  All Rueben saw were people hiding and taking cover under tables and behind counters. These patrons were drunk, trapped, and scared. A couple of college-age party girls hiding in the Mercedes booth looked like they were about to have a nervous breakdown.

  “Get these people out of here,” Rueben yelled to the bartender.

  “The cops are on their way, sir. I’m going to need you to calm down.”

  Rueben pointed at Hoodie Man and Aki, who had stood up and now tried to engage the gunman again in close combat. Whew. So she wasn’t dead. But she was outmatched, and it would soon show.

  Aki glanced Rueben’s way. “Try to get these people out of here. I’ll try to hold him off.”

  Rueben didn’t want to leave her fighting this man by himself. But she was more experienced than he was. He shoved a finger at the bartender. “I know the police are on their way, but this guy’s crazy. Is there a back door? Help me get these people out of here.”

  The bartender and bar manager looked at each other and shrugged.

  The bar manager clapped his hands. “Okay, all of you, let’s make our way back through this way.”

  Rueben and the waitstaff started gathering the patrons and ushering them through the employee areas and out the back door.

  He was about to go to Aki’s aid when he noticed one older woman crouched in a corner, visibly shaken. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to leave,” he told her. “It’s not safe.”

  “I was in the first tower,” she whimpered.

  The first tower? His eyes widened. 9/11. PTSD. He had been too young to remember that, so he didn’t know how to handle it. He followed his instincts and got down low with her.

  She burst into tears. “I can’t…I can’t do it again.”

  His heart broke for this poor lady. He spoke in a soft, gentle tone. “This isn’t a terrorist attack. This is a drunk man in a bar, and there are plenty of ways out. You don’t have to be afraid.” He offered his hand. “Come on. Take my hand. I’ll get you out of here.”

  She grabbed it, and he helped her up. He ushered her through the crowd and out the back door with the others.

  As they herded the stragglers out into the night,
Rueben ran into Marshall. Rueben met his dad’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

  Marshall glanced down at the ground, then back up at Rueben. “Uh, yeah. I…I’ll help get the rest of the people out the back.”

  Rueben nodded and flew back through the Exit Bar. After checking on both Martha and Buzz to make sure that they were still alive—they were—he rejoined Aki, never gladder for all the combat skills he had packed away back from the days when Martha and Buzz used to kill him repeatedly.

  Aki was holding her own, considering her blood alcohol level at the moment, but she was slowly losing ground. Rueben saw her energy fading as she and Hoodie Man dodged blows. The man still wore the metallic gauntlet. Rueben figured that if it struck Aki, it would neutralize her just like Buzz. Sweat dripped down her forehead, and she panted harder.

  Rueben rushed in at the man, but he easily sidestepped him and tossed Rueben sideways onto a table in the center of the room. It buckled under his weight, and he groaned as he connected with the floor and rolled off it.

  The man in the hoodie, acting as if he’d just swatted a fly, directed his attention back to Aki. “You getting tired yet, Princess?”

  “Never!” She spun-kicked him right in his abdomen.

  Her kick deflected and clanged off his chest. A brief look of confusion appeared on her face, but she hid it quickly enough.

  What the hell was this guy wearing beneath his hoodie? And who the hell was he? Some futuristic soldier or an armor-plated knight from the past? It made no sense.

  Not at all slowed by her kick, the man chuckled and threw Aki against the brick wall.

  She rose with scrapes on the side of her arm and a small tear in her dress hem. She punched him again in the jaw and drew blood.

  Rueben clambered to his feet, suddenly realizing that he still hadn’t gotten a good look at the gunman’s face. All throughout the fight, his hood shrouded his sunglasses-covered face.

  The gunman wiped the blood off his lips. “It just occurred to me that you think you can beat me, Lucy Liu!” He licked his lips with lust.

  Rueben cringed. Sure, Aki was of Asian descent and the same age as the Charlie’s Angels actress in her prime. But, wasn’t Lucy of Chinese ancestry?