Tether

by Jeremy Robinson

  “What do you need the map for?” he asks, when I move to the blinds and slowly twist them shut.

  “I have no idea.” I turn to watch Rain, as she approaches the map. “We’re clear.”

  With the suddenness of fireworks, Rain’s brilliance bursts into the room. Randy stumbles back, but he catches himself on the doorframe, averting his eyes from the light.

  Rain places her fingertips against the map.

  “She’s going to catch it on fire,” Randy says. He’s clearly freaked out, but still a concerned home owner at heart.

  “It’s not that kind of light,” I say, stepping closer, as Rain’s hands move over the paper.

  “What the hell kind of light is it?” Randy asks. “It looks like what we saw last night.”

  I nod in agreement. “That’s exactly what it is.” It’s not an answer, but I think he understands that I don’t really have an answer. Not yet.

  “I can feel them moving,” Rain says, her voice desperate. Pleading. Channeling what she feels. All the light in her body pulses and concentrates, first in her arm, then in her hand, and finally a single luminous finger, which is resting on Boston.

  She closes her eyes.

  Her hand moves across the map in a way that reminds me of a Ouija board, like some force other than her muscles is guiding her. Her fingers come to a stop. A spasm runs through her arm. The light extinguishes.

  Rain opens her eyes. “They’re following a tether.”

  I step closer. “They’re?”

  “I felt three.”

  “Three of what?” Randy asks, but neither of us answer him. I’m more interested in where this…tether...leads.

  I get my answer when Rain lifts her finger from the map, revealing the text underneath, resting beside a red thumbtack.

  Chicago.

  25

  “Chicago?” I ask. “What’s in Chicago?”

  “The fuckin’ Bears,” Randy says. “And the Bulls, obviously.”

  The Chicago Bulls, under Michael Jordan, is the only non-Boston sports team I’ve ever heard Randy speak positively about.

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t remember,” Rain says.

  It’s not much of a lead, but it’s something. And if Rain is right, we need to warn the city. I head for the door. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Randy says, following me out into the hall. “You’re not even gonna tell me what this is all about? I mean, it’s chaos out there, right? I know you’re not a bad guy, but you’re mixed up in it.”

  “Better if you don’t know anything,” Rain says. “In case you’re questioned.”

  Randy crosses his arms. “I know how to keep a secret.”

  “Not from these people,” I say. I’m guessing that people who hire assassins, wouldn’t have a problem with torture.

  “I should probably knock him out,” Rain says.

  “What?” Randy is aghast.

  “So they don’t know you helped us.”

  Randy takes a step back, reassessing Rain. “Look, lady. I can handle myself, and no one knows you’re here. Just go the way you came, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  Rain looks to me.

  “We’re not knocking him out,” I say, despite knowing, in my heart, that she’s right. But he’s not wrong either. If we leave his house without being spotted, he’ll be equally safe, sans a concussion. “But, you can’t stay here.”

  “Can’t leave my house unprotected,” Randy says.

  When he says, ‘house,’ what he’s really saying is, ‘My memorabilia collection.’

  “No matter how much that Tom Brady helmet is worth, it’s not as valuable as your life,” I tell him.

  “Not sure about that,” he says.

  He’s half-joking, but he needs to sober up. “The people looking for us are killers. They already sent an assassin for us.”

  “An assassin?” He’s not buying it. “How are you here, then?”

  The twisting emotions on my face take all doubt away when I say, “I shot him. I killed him.”

  Rain puts her hand on my arm. “You saved my life.”

  “Oh, God… Holy shit.” Randy double-takes his house like an assassin might have followed us here. And it’s not an unreasonable assumption. Which is why he needs to leave.

  “Be with your family,” I tell him. “They need you more than they need a baseball bat signed by Jim Rice.”

  “Wade Boggs,” he corrects, and then he nods. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll just—”

  Motion in the living room window draws his eyes. A black SUV drives past, slowing to a stop. A moment later, Garcia walks casually away from the crime scene, glancing back at the vehicle. Then she’s eyes forward, her pace a little too quick.

  Randy leans to watch the SUV park in front of his house. “That’s them, isn’t it?”

  “Could be,” I say, and then I point to Garcia. “She’s with us.”

  “And she is?”

  “FBI,” I say.

  “You could have told me you were working with the FBI,” he says.

  “We abducted her,” Rain says, much to Randy’s horror.

  “But she’s working with us now,” I clarify, moving toward the back door. “And that’s our cue to leave.”

  Randy gives me a firm handshake and claps my shoulder. “Stay safe, buddy. I’ll leave in a few minutes. We took a bus to Revere this morning. I came back with her sister’s car. So I’m good.”

  I feel bad that I hadn’t even considered how Randy would leave Cambridge while everything in the city is powerless, but I’m grateful he thought to explain.

  “We’ll catch up when this blows over,” I say, but it feels like a false promise.

  “See you around, Phillips,” he says to Rain, and then he closes the door behind us.

  “Does he think my name is Phillip?” Rain asks, as we climb the first fence.

  “Phillips,” I say, and I drop down into the Henderson’s back yard. “It’s a lightbulb brand.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Ha. He seems like a nice guy.”

  We crouch-hustle across the yard. “He is.”

  “Hope they don’t kill him.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and I quicken my pace.

  I’m proficient at fence-vaulting by the time we reach the last yard. We cover the distance in half the time it took us to reach Randy’s house. But Garcia still beats us with enough time to practice the death glare she levels at me when we casually walk out into the open and climb into the Mini-Cooper’s back seat.

  “Are you two stupid?” she asks after Rain closes the door behind us. “Did you not see them?” She hitches her thumb up the road. Two bona fide Men-In-Black-looking dudes stand in the road, questioning a police officer.

  “We had a situation,” I say.

  Garcia raises an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.

  “I was glowing,” Rain says.

  “Glowing…”

  “We need to go to Chicago,” I say.

  “Chicago?” Reggie says. “What for?”

  “Since I can’t actually summon a cloak of invisibility,” Bjorn says, “I think we need to get the hell out of here.”

  When he puts the car in drive, Garcia says, “Slowly…but not too slow. Like you live here.”

  “Right…” Bjorn starts a lazy three-point turn and ends up completing it in two, thanks to the Cooper’s size and turn radius.

  My body relaxes as we coast away from my house. It’s only then that my mind clears enough for me to remember why we’re here. “Did you get it?”

  Garcia hands my phone back. Despite knowing it’s dead, I try the power button. Seeing Morgan’s final goodbye is going to hurt. A lot. But it’s a pain I’ll be spared a little while longer.

  “Give it here,” Reggie says. “I can fix it. Need the screwdrivers. They don’t know about the screwdrivers.” She looks up at Garcia, who’s now frowning at Reggie. Her self-conversations are disconcerting, until you learn that she’s a genius.

  “In the glove
box,” Bjorn says.

  Garcia retrieves a set of mini-screwdrivers, amused by their size. She smiles at Bjorn, “Sorry, Bjorn, I’m not buying it. No way you’re descended from Vikings.”

  “That’s what I said,” I say.

  She hands the tools back to Reggie. “Go nuts.”

  Reggie turns her lap into a makeshift workshop, disassembling my phone with the efficiency of someone who has done it before. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’d used iPhone parts for her creations. She’s a regular Dr. Frankenstein of robotics.

  “So,” Bjorn says. “You know that black SUV from the house?”

  He doesn’t need to answer his question for us. Rain and I spin around to look out the small rear window. Garcia adjusts her side mirror.

  “They must have seen you,” Garcia says.

  “Or the FBI agent, who’s been reported as abducted by terrorists,” I point out. She doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t dismiss it, either.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Rain says, and then to Bjorn. “Take a left.”

  “I was turning left anyway,” he says, panic rising.

  “When I tell you, gun it,” Rain says.

  We take the left turn, and suddenly there’s a house between us and the SUV, which is a good hundred feet back.

  “Now!” Rain says.

  To say the Mini’s engine roars would be a gross overstatement. It whines. Loudly. But it also accelerates, probably a lot slower than it would without four passengers, but fast enough.

  “Turn right!” Rain says.

  Tires squeal as we round the corner, putting an extra layer of shielding between us and the SUV.

  “One more turn,” Rain says. “Next right.”

  The turn is just ahead. We’re nearly there.

  The roar of an engine—a real engine—pulls my attention back to the rear window. The SUV charges up behind us on a collision course. The beast of a vehicle has no trouble closing the distance. And if it hits us…

  “Bjorn…” I say.

  “I see it!” He cranks the wheel hard to the right, and we squeal around another turn, narrowly missing the curb. I think it will be impossible for the much larger, much faster SUV to make the turn at speed, but the driver is a pro. The big vehicle drifts around the corner, taking it faster than we did, narrowing the gap.

  Out of the corner of my eye, as we blow through the stop sign for my street, I see a car barreling toward us, and Randy behind the wheel. Despite there being no real danger of a collision, he slams on the brakes, blocking the intersection. He gets out of the vehicle to shout at us, flipping us the bird as we peel away. When the SUV screeches to a stop behind him, honking its horn, he turns around and starts shouting at them, which in this part of the world is pretty standard behavior.

  I lose sight of Randy and the SUV when we take another turn. Twenty more turns and ten minutes later, I’m pretty sure we’ve lost them. But how long until more vehicles join the search? Or helicopters?

  “Got it,” Reggie says, turning on her phone, which now contains the solid-state drive from mine. It starts up like new, loading as though it was my phone. Reggie wastes no time opening the Photos app, scrolling to my videos, and playing the most recent file.

  Without warning, I’m propelled into the past, reliving my final moments with Morgan. While I’m somewhat traumatized by the fear in her voice, the chaos all around her, and the knowledge of how the call ends, Reggie views it through a different set of eyes. “Fascinating…” she says, as what I now think is the scientist’s soul being sucked from his body stretches out behind him. “Don’t say that in front of him.” Then she turns to me. “Sorry.” And then turns to Bjorn. “Take us to Logan.”

  “What’s at Logan?” Garcia asks.

  “Uhh, planes,” Reggie says, like it’s the dumbest question she’s ever heard. “We’re going to Chicago, right?”

  “What’s in Chicago?” Garcia is close to losing her patience.

  “SpecTek’s original lab,” Reggie says, “and maybe a better understanding of this.” She hands the phone forward and hits play for Garcia. I can’t see the video from the back seat, but I can still hear the audio and the pain in my voice.

  I tear up when I hear Morgan say, “Baby, you can do it. You can live. You can be bold. You don’t need me. Never have.”

  Trying not to be reduced to a blubbering mess, I turn my eyes to the window and my mind to the near future instead of the recent past. But I don’t know which is worse, because I’m pretty sure answers aren’t the only thing we’re going to find in Chicago.

  26

  “How is this possible?” I ask, standing in front of a private jet parked inside a hangar at Logan airport. The plane is sleek, shiny-new, and it sports a wavy blue design on its side. It shouts wealth and power. When we approached the gate, I was sure the TSA would search us, ID us, and arrest us, but Reggie’s ID—not Garcia’s—was enough to get us whisked past security.

  What Garcia did do with her knowledge of FBI protocols, was call in a very convincing and anonymous tip about a terrorist threat to Chicago, citing the destruction in Cambridge and Boston as proof of what was coming. The general public might not know the extent of what happened in Boston, but the FBI certainly does. If they believed her, hopefully they’ll get enough people out of the city to limit the death toll, should Brute or Wisp make another appearance.

  “This is a Cessna Citation X,” Garcia says. “It’s one of the fastest private jets in the world.”

  The side hatch opens, stairs extending down. A handsome pilot—who looks like he spends equal time at the gym, the hair salon, and the beach—stands in the open hatch, smiling at us. “Good to see you again, Dr. Adisa. We received your itinerary. We’re fueled up and ready to go.”

  “Thanks, Chuck,” Reggie says.

  “No luggage today?” Chuck asks.

  Reg shakes her head. “Day trip.”

  “Very good,” he says, and he slips back inside.

  Somehow Reggie arranged all this from her phone, even after swapping out hard drives. While I don’t understand the technical aspects of her phone hacking, I don’t doubt her ability to do it. But the plane? The security pass? Captain Handsome? It baffles me. So I ask again, “Reggie, how is this possible?”

  I’m not sure she’s going to answer, but everyone—including Bjorn—waits to hear it.

  She sighs. “I own a few dozen patents.”

  That’s not really shocking news. I mean, a few dozen is a lot, but Reggie is an inventor. Patents are part of the job.

  “Most of them are leased to corporations,” she says.

  “What corporations?” Bjorn asks.

  “The kinds that require NDAs,” she says. “But they’re…not small.”

  “So, you’re rich,” Garcia says, and motions to the plane. “Really rich.”

  “She lives in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Salem,” Bjorn says to Garcia, with a nervous chuckle.

  “She drives a Prius,” I add.

  “Drove a Prius,” Reggie says, and she starts up the stairs into the plane. “I don’t believe in leaving a big carbon footprint.”

  “Says the woman with a private jet,” Rain says.

  Reggie stops in the door. “I don’t own it. I just…have it on retainer.”

  She disappears inside. We stand there, baffled for a moment, and then Bjorn heads up, followed by Rain.

  Garcia gives me a side-long glance. “Carbon footprint, my ass.” Then she heads up and inside the plane.

  I used to spend days alone, just writing, by myself. For the past 24 hours, I haven’t been alone other than the two times I’ve used the bathroom. So I take a moment to re-center.

  I try to clear my mind, but I end up thinking about what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, all the things we don’t understand, where we’re going, and what we might find in Chicago. My thoughts are a chaotic jumble that quickly overwhelms me. As my chest tightens toward a panic attack, I close my eyes and picture Morgan’s face. />
  I hear her voice. You can be bold.

  It’s like she knew I’d be faced with this moment.

  Be bold.

  It’s like a whisper in my ear. Like she’s right here with me, still…even though she’s God knows where. Literally.

  Unless the dead assassin was telling the truth… That she’s alive. That SpecTek is trying to control her. But that doesn’t feel true. As much as I feel her with me, I feel that she is gone. How could anyone survive that explosion? They couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  He was just screwing with me, I decide, and I feel a measure of peace return. There is nothing worse than not knowing. She’s gone, and it’s time to listen to her advice. I take a deep breath, hold it, and let it out slowly, repeating the process five times.

  When I open my eyes, I feel centered. Not exactly confident, or bold, but on task.

  “Hey, asshole.” Garcia stands in the open door. “You coming or what?”

  I can’t help but smile. Our resident FBI agent is pretty, but tough and merciless, in an old-school Boston kind of way, though her accent, tinged with Latina flare, is hard to place. I suspect she might actually be a New Yorker.

  She waits for me at the top of the stairs. “Thanks,” I tell her.

  “For what?”

  “Believing us,” I say. “For seeing this through, despite—”

  “Being knocked unconscious and abducted?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  She hesitates. “The truth is, I know who you are. Who you were, I guess. You did good work, back in the day. I’ve been in Boston for eight years. You covered cases I worked on, and you even kept a few guys from walking. I know you’re a good guy. If you weren’t at the center of all this, I’d have already locked up your sideshow friends.”

  “Thanks…I think.”

  She smiles. “Just keep in mind, the moment I get a whiff of B.S. from any one of you…”