Placebo (28 page)

8:39 a.m.
Lancerton, Maine

Adrian Goss had slept in a little and was still a bit groggy as he walked toward the woodshed.

Behind him, smoke curled from the cabin's chimney, wisped into the crisp Maine day, and wandered toward the steel-blue sky like a slowly uncurling snake.

He trudged through the mud and thought of the wood stacked by the side of the shed, of splitting it, and he thought of his wife, who would be home anytime from working the graveyard shift at the hospital.

And he thought of his son.

It would be his birthday next week, turning eleven, and Adrian had decided to buy him a football—real pigskin. Official NFL size and weight.

Eleven next week.

A fifty-year-old guy with an eleven-year-old kid to raise. Not ideal in some regards, but not that unusual. Besides, love can overcome something as trivial as the age span between a father and his boy.

Adrian passed the 1972 Chevy Impala chassis in his yard and the thick stump he used to balance the wood on when he chopped it, pressed open the shed door, heard the harsh squeal of the hinge.

Oil it.

He'd been meaning to.

Yes.

Later.

He stepped into the woodshed. Light filtered through the cracks between the boards that made up the walls. The shafts of light seemed like giant slivers that he should avoid but would never be able to if he was really going to cross over to the other side of the shed.

Yes. Oil the hinge.

His thoughts seemed to blur together. Strangely, as if they were sliding over each other. Layers of ideas. A mesh that was impossible to sort through.

Shadow and light. Just like the shed.

A birthday present for his son. Eleven.

For a moment Adrian stared at the dust filtering through the slanting light and tried to remember why he'd come into the shed in the first place. He blinked and looked around.

It was something to do with his wife. Something to do with her and the argument they'd had last night.

His eyes landed on the shelf. A chain saw, tools, grease for the lawn mower. Spark plugs. A small metal oil can.

Adrian felt light-headed, like he had in high school after that tackle against Woodland in the state semifinals, when he'd had to sit out the rest of the game because he was seeing two of everything. That running back—what was his name? Terry something. Or Tommy. Something like that. Number eleven.

No, wait. His son was Terry. Yes. His son.

Adrian walked toward the shelf, braving the slivers of light, but they passed across him like they didn't care, like they weren't interested in eviscerating him, in slicing through his flesh and meat and bone.

At the shelf with the chain saw. Paused—

No, the game wasn't in the semifinals. They didn't make it that year.

Reached for the oil can.

No.

He came in here to get something for his son.

No, it was somehow about that argument with his wife.

Yes. About the house. The wood, the stove, and outside there wasn't enough wood around, so why couldn't he have split more of it, because when she got home from work in the morning, what was she supposed to do, chop their wood too?

No, he'd told her, of course not. He would do that. He would take care of it.

He passed the oil, the chain saw, went to the southwest corner of the shed, toward the axe.

Southwest corner? Why would he even think of it like that? He'd never called it the southwest corner before.

The shed's angled sunlight brushed against his face in between the flutters of velvety black shadows. It didn't hurt at all. Not one little bit.

He blinked and tried to collect his thoughts again. Something wasn't right. Something wasn't clicking. There was the high school football game and his son's birthday and the wood to be chopped and the number eleven, the number of the player.

No, that's what Terry was turning on his birthday, and Adrian still didn't have a gift for him.

Light and shadow and light.

Toward the axe.

His son's birthday, yes.

He lifted the axe, swung it gently. He was a man used to hard work, and the axe felt comfortable in his hand. At ease, as if it were an extension of himself. Another limb with a sturdy-bladed end.

Something for his son.

Adrian was aware of the sunlight becoming alive, crawling against
his skin. Every particle of dust, friction, friction, flowing sandpaper coursing through the air! Rubbing. Troubling!

Split the wood.

Split.

Adrian left the shed, shut the door behind him. Heard it creak.

Fix that. Oil it.

After Terry's birthday.

The azure sky above him seemed to stretch forever. Beyond forever.

He went to the woodpile, axe in hand, sunlight falling all around him.

Azure? Where did that word come from?

After he turned eleven.

Trish had argued with him last night and accused him of being lazy.

Lazy.

He wasn't lazy.

He positioned the wood upright on the stump. He would show her. Prove it.

She was always doing this. Always nagging him, getting on his—

He would show her.

He raised the axe; yes, yes, he would prove it to her.

Adrian felt the muscles in his shoulders and back flex, his forearms tighten as he gripped the axe handle with a stranglehold, raised the blade above his head, and then, slicing through the sunlight, shredding it and leaving it hanging in tatters around him, he swung the blade down. It struck the log but did not cleave it in two.

Swing through the log. Don't aim at the top of it, aim at the stump. Swing through it.

Through it.

Focus not on connecting with the top of the log, but rather the stump on which—

On which.

The log rests.

He tugged the blade free, repositioned the wood, heaved the axe
backward over his head, then brought it forward again, harder than before.

Vaguely, he heard the axe connect with the stump. The two split logs dropped to the sides, but for some reason they did not bleed. For some strange reason he thought of this, of how nice it would be to see them bleed.

In the sunlight.

But they did not.

Blood could be used to oil that hinge on the shed.

He tossed the split logs aside and grabbed another log off the pile.

His wife accused him of being lazy.

He would need blood to fix the woodshed.

Behind him, from the end of the long driveway that wound along the edge of the woods, he heard the sound of a car's engine and the crunch of gravel. Trish. Coming home from work.

The graveyard shift.

She mocked you last night. Accused you of being lazy. But you're not lazy. You're a hard worker. You're—

Anger fueled the force of his next swing.

The two split logs flew to each side of the axe head as it hewed the log and sank into the stump beneath it.

But once again the split logs did not bleed.

The car stopped beside the house.

He wrenched the blade free.

Your son doesn't turn eleven until next week. You can pick him up at school today when you're done here. Pick him up early. Bring him back home.

He would need that blood to fix the woodshed door.

A car door slammed.

Eleven years old. Next week.

“Hey,” Trish called. “How's it coming?”

Adrian turned toward her and realized that she was mocking him even now. It was her tone of voice. It was all there in her tone of voice.

You need to oil that hinge.

“It's coming,” he heard himself say, but it wasn't really like he was saying it, instead it was more like he was somewhere else nearby hearing another person talk to his wife.

The axe felt comfortable in his hand.

An extension of himself. Another limb. With a bladed end.

Blood in the sunlight.

He walked toward her.

Oil and blood.

And then the door to that troubling woodshed would never bother him again.

“Hello, honey,” he said. “Welcome home.”

8:51 a.m.
2 hours 4 minutes left

“Well?” Daniel asked his brother. “Do you think it worked?”

They were both easing from their trancelike states in the dimly lit research room at the RixoTray R&D facility. No one else was there with them. This was one experiment they'd been careful to conduct on their own.

After what happened in Kabul, they'd decided they needed one more test. After all, it was essential that they see this through, finish their mission successfully, and neither of them felt quite ready to do that yet. What they were attempting was unprecedented in their field and would change the landscape of espionage and covert warfare forever. It wasn't something they could fail at, not when so much was at stake.

“We should check the news,” Darren said. They both rose, he went to the computer on the desk. Daniel made a few phone calls, including one to their contact, the one who'd salvaged things in Kabul. The one who'd told them about the man in Lancerton.

Riah was the kind of person they were confident could help them. Not only because of her expertise in deep-brain stimulation but be
cause of who she was inside—how much like them she was. Even though she might not've been aware of what she was really capable of, they could tell. It'd become more and more clear to them over the last few months.

She would be here soon and they wanted to tell her everything.

True, they would have to kill her when this was over, just to be safe. But she could be of use to them in the meantime in completing their assignment.

The two brothers hadn't yet decided which of them would eliminate Dr. Colette. That little detail was still up in the air.

At the FedEx Office, I buy two clipboards, one for me, one for Charlene. No government inspector impersonation kit would be complete without them.

“You do know,” Xavier tells me, “we'll probably get in big trouble with this.”

“I'd say almost certainly.”

“Too bad there isn't any fine print somewhere, a way to skirt around possible prosecution.”

I kick that around for a minute. “You know what, let me get in touch with my lawyers. They might be able to come up with something that Fionna can add to the forms, noting that we're there for entertainment or educational purposes only, or that by allowing us to access the facility, the guards release all liability. Something like that.”

Xavier looks at me skeptically. “You really think your lawyers can come up with something that'll cover our butts?”

“Hard to say, but that's what lawyers do best. And my lawyers are very, very good at what they do.”

“Well, you pay them enough.”

“True. And it's not like the guards would take the time to try to translate the legalese double-talk.”

“No one reads fine print on forms like that anyway.”

“That's true too. They don't even read iTunes updates.”

“I do.”

I pause. “I know. But honestly, regarding a waiver, when you know what you're doing, you can create a disclaimer big enough to cover your butt even if you were to steal the moon.”

“Steal the moon?”

“I don't know. I was trying to think of something big.”

“You keep using analogies like that and you're going to start giving Fionna a run for her money.”

Now he was just being mean.

I gesture toward the cards he's holding. “The lamination machine's over there in the corner.” Then I fish out my phone and make the call to the law firm.

Riah arrived at the R&D facility and passed through security.

She was still uncertain what all this was about, but she sensed that helping the twins was a good thing, the right thing, to do.

If that was indeed the case, it looked like she would get a chance to help the government stop terrorist threats by working with Daniel and Darren to do whatever it was they actually did when they thwarted that potential suicide attack in Kabul.

“We let him do it,” they'd told her last night.

How did they “let” the suicide bomber do it?

She wasn't sure, but obviously it had something to do with her research and Dr. Tanbyrn's findings.

Hundreds of people might've been killed at that mosque, and if she could assist in stopping things like that, help to remove terrorist threats, that was probably an honorable, perhaps even, in one sense, a noble thing to do.

Preemptive justice?

One way to look at it.

She was obviously no expert on morality, but even she could antici
pate that if the man in the video had been shot or arrested, insurgents would've claimed that he was an innocent civilian who'd been unjustly killed or imprisoned by imperialist Americans. After all, news is all about spin, almost never about truth. Scratch away at the surface of what people say and you'll always find an agenda lurking beneath the words.

That was one thing she'd learned about human nature. One thing she knew for sure: you can't take what people say at face value.

And spin like that would put more American soldiers at risk.

Yes, if there really was a way for her to help the twins eliminate threats without endangering the military's intelligence assets or personnel, it would certainly help the war efforts, probably save lives, and—

It would be the right thing to do. A way to serve the greater good.

So, yes, the greater good.

As she walked down the R&D facility's east corridor toward research room 27B for her meeting with the twins, she became more and more curious about what exactly she could do to help them kill.

Or eliminate targets.

Whichever term you preferred to use.