The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set

by Ernest Dempsey

  Dak spun the chair around with the greatest of caution so that Will faced the shore.

  "Going in backward, okay?" Dak asked.

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "Not really. These caster wheels won't roll very well in the sand. So, I'm going to have to drag you."

  "Dak..." Will faltered.

  "Don't even try to give me some sob speech about how I don't have to die and how I've done enough. Just save it."

  Dak pulled before Will could counter. The water rose up to the back of Dak's knees, slapping against his jeans. He kept his muscles tight as he pulled the chair, plowing the wheels into the sandy beach beneath. Every step brought Will several inches deeper until half the cylinder holding the seat was submerged.

  "Almost there," Dak said over the sound of a crashing wave. The surge of water hit him in the back. He could have been knocked forward by the powerful liquid wall, but he braced his right leg at the last second and steadied his arms to keep Will from moving too much. Dak's body broke a portion of the wave, but not all. Will was struck by some of the water and felt his torso lurch toward the shore. He squeezed the seat with every last ounce of strength. His forearms tightened, and he thought he might be dethroned a split second before he was consumed in fire.

  Then the wave passed, dying out as it reached the shore.

  Will slumped back in the seat, momentarily relieved.

  Dak smashed that relief with a sledgehammer. "We're going to have to time this just right!" He yelled over the ocean. "We need to get between the waves to get this deep enough!" He pointed at the chair, noting the cylinder was almost there.

  "Okay!" Will shouted back. "When are we going?"

  "Now!"

  "What?"

  Five

  Nazaré

  Dak strained against the weight of the chair as it protested his efforts. The water and sand made moving the thing all but impossible. But as he plunged deeper into the sea, the task eased with every step.

  "Hold on!" Dak shouted above the sound of the waves.

  "Do you really think you need to tell me that?" Will yelled back.

  He clung to the seat beneath him. The water was nearly up to his knees now, and both men knew that if this harebrained plan was going to work, it would have to be soon.

  Dak looked back over his shoulder and saw the next wave building. The water beneath him sucked back out to sea, lowering enough that more than a third of the piston's cylinder remained exposed. The oncoming wave continued to rise, swelling higher and higher until it dwarfed him by three feet.

  In less than ten seconds, the wave would be on them, and this time there was no way Dak could keep Will from being blown off the chair.

  Knowing it was now or never, Dak pulled through the fire in his arms and legs. His fingers almost felt numb, like the first time he'd been put through a marathon round of pull-ups. They remained curled, almost gnarled, on their own, as if he'd lost all control. Now, though, Dak kept control through it all, dragging his friend deeper into the sea.

  Will looked back and saw the incoming wave. To the man in the office chair, it may as well have been a tsunami.

  "Dak," Will said, elongating the name.

  "I know, Will. Just… another… few feet." Dak gave one last, hard pull.

  The chair dragged through the water, its wheels plowing into the sand until suddenly, the weight lightened. The chair felt lighter, and Dak realized the seat was causing the chair to float.

  Two seconds before the wave smashed into them, Dak shouted, "Now, Will! Jump!"

  Will slid forward, planted his feet in the sand beneath the churning water, and leaped as far as he could.

  The last thing Dak saw before the wave slammed into his back was the completely submerged cylinder as it drew back into the wave to join the liquid wall as it charged toward the shore.

  Dak's limbs went limp. He exhaled and then sucked in one long breath before his world was swallowed by saltwater.

  Everything around him swirled and twisted. He felt invisible forces tugging at him from multiple angles—the strongest of which pulled him away from the bending, shimmering light above. On a normal day, Dak could easily hold his breath for ninety seconds. After the exertion of dragging his friend across the sand and into the ocean, however, he'd be lucky if he could manage for half that.

  A powerful current jerked him downward. His shoulder hit the sandy bottom with a thud. Then the tide ripped him forward, rolling him along the ocean floor like an underwater tumbleweed.

  Dak's vision blurred. Everything spun around him. The flickering sunlight overhead twisted and curved under the rippling surface. The surface, Dak thought. I have to get to the surface.

  He kicked his legs, but the fatigued muscles flopped impotently in the water. His arms felt like socks filled with pudding. Dak's lungs tightened with every passing second. He didn't have long before he'd need to inhale.

  With the last gasp of strength he could summon, Dak shot his right hand toward the surface. Something slapped onto his wrist and pulled him up. When his head breached the waters, he spewed air out of his lungs and inhaled deeply several times. As the salt water cleared his face and eyes, he saw who held on to his arm.

  Will squeezed Dak's forearm tight until Dak felt the sand dragging beneath him. He regained his orientation and stood up.

  They were chest deep in the water, now deep enough to catch the next wave in. As the waters swelled again, the two men started swimming toward shore. They body surfed to shallow water and came to a stop.

  Dak had never been so glad to see and feel wet sand, and for a moment, he was overwhelmed with gratitude for making it out of that scenario alive.

  He glanced over at Will and nodded. His friend returned the gesture. Then after a few seconds of silence, Dak started to laugh. It began as a chuckle that crescendoed into a series of booms.

  "What is so funny?" Will asked. His face twisted in confused disbelief.

  Dak snorted. "Just the visual of you in that chair. We must have looked ridiculous with the paddle board, the chair, all of it."

  He pressed the back of his hand to his lips to quiet the laughter.

  Will merely nodded and bit his lower lip. "I still can't believe that worked."

  "Me, either," Dak agreed.

  Will's head froze and he lowered his eyebrows. "Wait. What?"

  "Speaking of," Dak detoured. "Where is that chair?"

  He looked past Will and got his answer. Two hundred feet down the shore, the chair tilted over at an angle, gradually burrowing into the sand with every wave that splashed by. A sparse collection of onlookers stood along the beach, away from the water, pointing at the oddity.

  "Oh. There it is."

  Dak pointed to the floating furniture. Will rolled his head the other direction and looked, just as the chair exploded in a fiery blast. Water and black smoke shot fifty feet into the air. The people on the beach screamed and retreated with reckless abandon, running toward the street.

  Dak winced. Will snapped his head back around, glowering with accusation. "I thought you said the water would diffuse that thing!"

  "Yeah. I mean. I did, it did," he corrected. "Honestly, I wasn't sure it would work at all. Or for how long."

  He shrugged at his friend's silent fury.

  "Anyway," Dak continued. "Glad you're okay. Now, we need to figure out where Bo Taylor went."

  Six

  Istanbul

  Bo sat at a street-side table under a red and white umbrella. He sipped a cup of Turkish coffee, never taking his eyes off the building across the street. A young man in a black apron appeared for the third time to ask him if he'd like anything else. Bo's head only twisted an inch to the side, still keeping his eyes on the apartment building on the other side of the street. He knew the waiter would keep coming back, probably hoping to free up the table for the next customer.

  "I'm fine," Bo said. "But I'll tell you what..." He reached into his pocket and fished out a wad of cash, thumbed through and
found a couple of hundred euros, then held them out for the server. "Take this and bring me another coffee every thirty minutes. Other than that, I'm not to be disturbed. Understood?"

  The young man took the money from his hand with a grateful reluctance. "Yes, sir. Of course."

  The waiter turned and hurried back inside the café with more money than he would have made in two or three shifts.

  Bo sighed, exhaling through his nose at the irritation. He couldn't complain. Good service was hard to find these days. If he wasn't staking out the building opposite, he'd probably have been kinder to the young man. Circumstances as they were, however, he needed to focus. The stop-and-go traffic on the street in front of him was more distraction than he cared for. The only distraction he permitted was to check the news reports coming out of Portugal during the last hour.

  The headlines were easy enough to discover with a quick search. "Bizarre Explosion Rocks Nazare," "Two Men Seen With Office Chair Prior To Blast" were a couple he'd noted.

  The articles didn't provide any information, though, on whether there had been any casualties. The reports were still coming in. Bo assumed Dak and Will had somehow managed to escape unscathed. He wondered why the two decided to take the chair down to the beach. That particular curiosity itched at Bo's brain for minutes. Dak must have been trying to save anyone who might have been in the building, Bo reckoned.

  He'd rigged the bomb to blow with a shift in pressure less or greater than five pounds, and most attempts to bypass the current in the wiring would have the same result.

  There were, of course, ways around every explosive device, but Dak wouldn't have access to those means—not on such short notice.

  The only explanation that made any sense was that he'd tried to get the bomb as far away from the building as possible, potentially saving a few dozen or more lives.

  Still, with every subsequent search, the updated articles detailing the events on the beach in Nazare suggested there were no injuries, and more disturbingly, no deaths. Were the Portuguese media outlets covering up the real story? Would it hurt tourism too much to have two Americans die in an explosion? Is that why they're sweeping it under a rug?

  Those thoughts rattled Bo's mind as he raised the coffee mug to his lips and took another long sip. The Turks liked their coffee strong, almost bitterly so, and they didn't typically use cream or milk in it—at least not the Turkish people he knew. And there were several. Some utilized sugar to smooth out the taste, and he'd done so liberally.

  He peered over the mug's rim at the apartment building. Even if Dak had managed to survive the ordeal in Portugal, as he suspected, that would make this chapter of their story all the sweeter.

  Bo had never met Nicole, but he'd seen pictures. The woman mesmerized him, even just the images of her. Dak spoke of her sparingly, but when he did, Bo knew this woman still held his heart in a steel vault, unwilling to let it go.

  She was beautiful, of that no doubt existed, but beyond her exterior beauty, Dak spoke of her spirit, her untamed passion to squeeze every drop of juice from the lemon of life.

  That particular piece excited Bo the most. After all, the best hunt was always feral game.

  He caught a glimpse of a familiar face gliding down the sidewalk. It blinked in and out between the pedestrians walking in the other direction. Bo perked up and leaned forward, peering at her through the aviator sunglasses perched on his nose. He let them slide down a little and gazed over the rims at the woman as she gobbled up the sidewalk with long strides.

  She walked with the purpose of a businesswoman about to engineer a hostile takeover. Bo knew that wasn't her, though. Dak had been elusive about her career, but he knew enough. She could be dangerous if he wasn't careful. That cautionary thought only heightened his excitement. He was going to enjoy this.

  He stood and slung his backpack over the right shoulder and walked to the sidewalk, where he turned and quickly scurried down to the crosswalk. The city street was too busy for him to cross here. Traffic started and stopped too frequently. He doubted he'd be hit by a car with the log jam going on, but the honk of an irritated diver's horn would startle his quarry. She would look to see the source of the trouble on the street and then spot him.

  Not that she'd know who he was or why he was there, but the element of surprise was his primary advantage at this point. Getting her alone, in her building, was the goal.

  The light changed and the walk signal illuminated on the street sign opposite where Bo stood. He hurried through the intersection and veered left as the woman slowed, nearing the entrance to her apartment building.

  Bo cut left again onto the sidewalk, twisting and sliding past the oncoming pedestrian flood until he could see the woman just ahead. She'd already unlocked the front door, and while Bo certainly had his methods to break into people's homes, doing it the easy way would be preferable.

  She stepped in through the apartment door as he cleared through the last of the people. The door inched its way toward closing. If he didn't move fast, he'd miss it.

  Bo stumbled toward the steps and rounded them in a flash, his left leg whipping out behind him before planting it on the second step and vaulting his weight toward the closing door. At the last possible moment, Bo reached out and grabbed the edge of the door a split second before it closed. He felt the cool air of the entryway lobby against his knuckles, and with it, a tendril of relief.

  He looked into the lobby, but the woman was gone. The stairs and the room beyond were vacant. And there was no sign that anyone was on the elevator.

  "Where did you go?" he hissed.

  Seven

  Istanbul

  Bo stared into the lobby, scanning it for any sign of the woman. If he lurked much longer, he'd arouse suspicion from passersby. Step inside, and he could be walking into a trap.

  Trap? What was he thinking? The mark didn't know she was being followed. He was 99 percent certain she hadn't seen him approaching on the sidewalk. That wasn't a hundred, though, and there was always that one percent that gnawed through the best-laid plans.

  He made his decision and stepped through the door, silent as a gentle breeze, and eased the door shut behind him.

  Bo stood in the lobby, his hand shifting to the pistol concealed in his gray button down jacket. He drew the weapon and leveled it at his waist, then froze. He listened intensely and heard the sound of footfalls ascending the stairs. It was the repetitive click of shoes on steps, and he knew from the sound they were women's shoes—the kind he'd seen his target wearing the second before she disappeared into the building's entrance.

  He snapped into action, padding quickly over to the stairwell. He wrapped his hand around a black metal knob on the railing and propelled himself upward, taking two steps with every stride. Bo carefully placed his feet on the edge of each step to keep his movement silent. His jeans rustled slightly, but by keeping his legs wide, that inhibited most of the sound to a nearly unnoticeable swish.

  At the second floor landing, he paused and listened. The clicks echoed down from overhead. He pressed upward, continuing his ascent, his ghostlike movements drawing him nearer to his mark by the second.

  Then, beyond the midway landing between the third and fourth floors, he caught sight of the target. Her red dress fluttered for a second, and he knew he had her. As he rounded the next corner, he skidded to a halt, freezing his place.

  She'd stopped halfway up the next flight of stairs. Her laptop case hung from her left shoulder and her head drooped, as if she stared idle at the next step.

  Was she taking a break? Had she heard him? Bo gripped the pistol in his hand and trained it on the target, aligning the barrel with the middle of her back. He narrowed his eyes, curious as to why the woman stopped. If she knew he was there, why wasn't she saying anything? As the seconds ticked by, her intentions blurred further.

  A sniffle broke the silence, and she wiped her nose with the back of her free hand. Was she crying? The question hung in Bo's head. He didn't move, bare
ly breathing through his mouth as he waited to see what she did next.

  She whimpered. The pathetic sound bounced off the hard walls, reverberating through the stairwell in both directions.

  What was she doing?

  "What are you doing here?" she asked, choking on the sobs she couldn't hold back any longer. "Why do you keep doing this to me?"

  Bo frowned at the question. He didn't understand. Had she seen him? And if so, how did she know who he was? And what did she mean, keep doing this? He hadn't done anything to her. Not yet.

  "I told you to leave me alone, not to come back here. So why? Why do you do this? I was moving on with my life. I got a great gig here, started all over again. And you keep popping up, carving out fresh wounds. Do you have any idea what you've done to me, how this hurts all the way down to my core? I loved you. More than anything."

  She paused, and the crying resumed for almost a minute.

  Bo didn't know what to do. He always knew what to do. Her emotional breakdown, however, threw his plans into a tailspin. It didn't change his intentions. He was still going to do what he came here to do.

  He inched one step closer to her, keeping the pistol aimed squarely at her spine.

  "You told me you wouldn't come back, that you'd let me be. I can't go through this again. You know that. So why are you here? I thought you were supposed to be disappearing. You said that being here would put me, could put me in danger. If you truly cared about me, you wouldn't be here."

  Bo realized who she thought he was. She hadn't seen him. She thought he was Dak. He hadn't realized the depth to how badly his ex-teammate had screwed things up with this woman. From the sound of it, she didn't realize how much ending the relationship had hurt him too.

  This was too perfect.

  "Well? Are you going to say anything or are you just going to stand there?" Her head drooped. "Answer me, Dak? Why did you come here?"