Scatter, p.7
Scatter, page 7
I got a handful of it and yanked hard, making man’s body, probably a good thirty pounds heavier than mine, jerk to a stumbling halt.
What he did then was a surprise.
There was a shuffle of his dress shoes that I recognized as a weight change—I’d seen Alvin Westor do it a hundred times when he was teaching me how to kickbox—and this old fat guy’s right foot was flying at my head in a roundhouse.
I avoided getting knocked out only because Alvin had pulled that move on me countless times. My upper body automatically leaned back and my right elbow windmilled after the passing leg, catching a tiny piece of it even as his hard shoe heel clipped my nose, sending my blood spraying.
Balding guy still finished his spin on both feet, but a little off balance. If he was surprised that I’d managed any kind of defense, he didn’t show it. He was too busy stuffing his glasses into his trench coat pocket, then sloughing that coat for more freedom of movement.
Which was fascinating in itself, the non-spinning, revved-up part of my brain thought. Taking off his coat and planning to obviously fight me here, in the middle of the day, on a fairly busy Capitol Hill street that was only a few blocks from the Seattle Police East Precinct? It didn’t exactly scream someone who was trying to hide his identity. I would have bet dollars to donuts that more than one of our gathering crowd of onlookers had whipped out a phone to record this now.
And yes, I’d look like an insane person once those videos hit social media. I could lose my chance to teach anymore at the UW. I could lose counseling clients. But I didn’t care. This guy had pushed me too far.
Nor was he backing down. His face was so red I expected to see steam shooting out of his ears.
He ran at me like a bull
I sidestepped and pivoted left to catch the back of his head as he passed.
Which he’d obviously expected, ducking and pivoting under my swing with his arms wide like a top, before slamming one fist up into my chin. His other hand simultaneously grabbed my nutsack through my jeans and lifted, throwing my brain-fuzzed body in the direction it was already going.
I vaguely heard the grunt of his effort as I flew and hoped he’d put out his back.
Then I smashed into the pavement of the street. A car honked and screeched somewhere. I flashed back to being a teen and having Dead Eyes of the Demon Monks kicking and beating me senseless.
Balding guy had dropped on top of me now like some kind of MMA fighter or, given his proportions, a past-his-prime WWF wrestler. He began slamming his fists into me—right, left, right, left—as I tried to roll and protect my head.
I was losing badly. The guy might look old and flabby, but there was clearly muscle, training, experience, rage, and…
“Assbag!” he growled at me in between thuds. “Scared little retard!”
Get away from this, Jackson! Come on!
But every time I twisted or managed a strike, he shifted and stayed on me, beating my ribs, my belly, then back to my head. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“I was supposed to just watch you!” he grunted, slamming a fist hard into my side as he almost fell down face to my face. “Turd!”
“Fuck you!” I shot back, spitting blood at him. I could only see black and red now because he’d closed both my eyes. Pain lanced through my chest and I felt panic kick in. Surely he was going to stop soon. He couldn’t kill me out here like this in front of everyone.
“You think I won’t kill you, assbag?” he sprayed down at me, like he’d read my thoughts. “Well, you’re wrong.”
Thud. Thud. Another rib cracked and lanced pain up through my throat and out in a bark of blood.
“Because we know what you can do! We know! So do it, you little creep! Do it! Do it!”
Thud thud thud thud. Pummeling my gut.
I’m going to die. Because they…know. But I can’t… I won’t… I…
I stumbled a little, disoriented, sure I was dying, beaten apart. Then I regained my balance and stopped. Looked around. Realized I could breathe without pain. I was wearing my mask. My groin and face were intact. I was on E. Pine, walking east to…right, to get to my car. On 14th. And... And?
It all rushed back to me and clicked into place.
Right.
You’d think I’d know the drill by now.
I’d just jumped back ten minutes in time from a murderous thug beating me to death. Which meant that at this very moment, that murderous thug, the balding man in glasses, was likely watching me, following me, close enough to be seen if I looked carefully. Because that was part of his frickin’ plan, wasn’t it? For me to see him just now and then? More often now, probably, since I’d been approached by Wilson and Dadashev and would be expected to understand what it meant to have the balding man following and watching me everywhere I went.
I kept walking without looking back, turning down 14th, wondering whether he’d make a scene if I didn’t look around or did and just ignored him.
Had it always been the plan to confront me at some point and see if the balding man could force me to make a jump? Why? Because maybe, despite what the balding man had said, they didn’t really know? They suspected. Maybe because of their history with Kenny. Maybe from some other intel. Maybe even from a careful consideration of everything that happened in the Demon Monks’ headquarters back in March. I’d had that strange déjà vu session in the basement that now made me think of the memories I had of the times I’d bought the same newspaper editions, each time being a timestream someone else had terminated or multiplied.
So had there been a second time traveler in the Demon Monks HQ? Maybe one secretly working for the CIA?
I stopped dead in my tracks about twenty feet from where I’d cross 14th to pick up my car. If the balding guy wanted to attack me, here was his chance.
Nothing happened other than random people passing.
Which made me think that the balding guy hadn’t attacked me because of a plan. He’d attacked because I’d confronted him, thrown him off-balance, made him improvise. He might have actually been trying to beat me into jumping out of desperation so that my whole bit about getting him on camera would be wiped out when I jumped everything back ten minutes.
If he was that easy to throw off his game plan, the dude was as emotionally weak as me. That didn’t fit my vision of a CIA operative at all.
But if what he’d said about knowing I could time travel was true, that was even more disturbing. Because, for all my suspicions, I couldn’t be sure exactly who “they” were or how many of them there were.
All I knew was they knew my secret.
And given that the mysterious “they” could easily be one of the groups Kansas had said were interested in Lena’s time travel research, it was important she understand how serious their interest was.
I had to let her know.
6
Set adrift
If I needed any more indications from the universe that Lena and I were somehow made for each other, I received a text from her while I sped to my office to meet my one o’clock client.
Your training session with the boys tomorrow is canceled. Please come by my 3rd floor business park office tonight at 7 pm. Same access code as last March. We need to talk.
Okay, so the tone was more peremptory than friendly. She also surprised me by still having access to the “3rd floor business park office,” by which I assumed she meant the medical clinic in Building #4, out in the hills and forests past Redmond, heading for the foothills of the Cascades. But she was thinking of me as I was thinking of her, and she didn’t bother repeating an access code she knew was forever in my memory once read.
Yes, I heard the possible five-alarm-relationship-fire in the message, but I’d frankly taken in enough difficult stuff this day already and wanted to believe I was due something better.
I screeched into my parking space and texted back:
My last client’s at 6. Make it 8?
Even make-up or break-up sessions have to wait sometimes.
When 6 p.m. rolled around and I ushered my last client out, I was emotionally exhausted and the skin around my upper cheek bones ached where my mask had been pressing tightly for the last five hours. Quite apart from my confrontation with my balding stalker and what it might mean, I realized that even a single jump back in time now was enough to trigger all the PTSD garbage my physical training had mostly managed to sublimate.
It had taken twice my normal emotional reserves to push that down and be fully present for each of my clients this afternoon.
I’d helped them lay down, at least for a while, all their anxieties and questions, their jealousies and anger, their stumbling lost-ness that was such a key element of the human condition. Even Cassandra, whom I was seeing twice a week for the first while, managed to disgorge much of her rising fear over the coming Asian apocalypse and walk away cleansed. Or at least heard.
And I, after giving myself a cursory sponge bath, locked up the office and all the secrets that had been shared therein, and set out for Lena’s business park office like a freshly washed young swain en route to see the object of his ardent desire who’s been so long absent from him in both body and spirit.
Thick clouds hid the moon and stars, so I plunged into darkness as I left the city and entered the hills.
I let my GPS guide me, though my memory of each final turn leading to the gated entrance and rows of dark buildings jumped out to me with a rush of excitement and nerves. I’d been here only thrice before, but those times had involved many firsts, both good and bad—kissing Lena, watching Lena die, jumping back in time, having Lena try to suffocate me, figuring out how my time traveling worked.
The parking lot lights were on and the gate was open when I drove in. I thought maybe Lena had left the gate open for me, but saw quickly that it wasn’t so. In front of Building #4, there were five vehicles parked, and I recognized the four rugged one as belonging to Alvin, Big, Doc, and Smiley. I didn’t recognize the fifth, a sleek Lexus sports car that looked so deep red in the low light it could have been dripping blood, but I assumed it was Lena’s rental. She was obviously renting from a very upscale place when she deigned to come up to Seattle these days. Family money.
I pulled up and parked beside the Lexus, got out, and found that the old code I had for the building did indeed still grant me access.
I went up to the third floor, entered the wide-open medical clinic that took up most of that floor, and saw the entire Lead the Way team and Lena waiting for me in a standing semi-circle in the main room like this was some kind of intervention. None of them masked. The LTW team never wore masks. It was one of those strange contradictions for Alvin, who seemed so smart and level-headed in everything else.
Then again, Lena wasn’t masked. I wasn’t masked. Elizabeth Chan, who stood demurely a little to one side and behind Lena like a secretary ready to take notes, wasn’t masked.
It was like we all felt in our guts that this was the end of the world somehow, so we might as well take our last breaths freely.
I walked in past the stacked chairs, line of rolling carts and empty hospital beds and came to a stop some five feet from the group.
“Hi guys,” I said. Then I waited, saying nothing. Giving them nothing. This was their show.
After a full minute of silence, in which I think they thought I’d break into some kind of apology, plea for understanding, or “aw shucks” dance of confusion, Alvin finally spoke.
“We think your training’s over,” he said with his usual flat delivery. Flat affect. Hooded eyes. Skinny body with the slightest of slouches that let his hips just forward. He really did look like an upright eel. An upright eel in his usual pseudo-combat fatigues like the rest of his team, their tight gray tee shirts emblazoned with Lead the Way Security on their left upper chests.
Lena, dressed down tonight in some kind of black pantsuit and draping scarves that hid the shape of her body completely, brushed back a stray hair from her face. She didn’t have her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail like she did when working. Nor was it loose in wild curls around her face, like when she was laughing or making love. It was just back in a plain hairband. Her makeup was minimal.
She was still stunningly gorgeous, but her expression and serious attire warned me not to respond like a lover or even a man right now.
“It’s pretty clear you’re no longer taking your training seriously,” Lena said.
“You think so?” I said.
“And if you don’t care about it, I’m not sure why I should be paying for it, or Shadow’s team should be sacrificing themselves on your behalf.”
“Ah,” I said. “Of course.” I didn’t mention how she’d tied my commitment to training to our being together, and to our mutual sharing of thoughts, feelings, and personal journeys. Nor that Alvin had, in fact, been providing his training services to me on an “as-available” basis, working around their other paying gigs because they’d provided my training without cost. This because Lena, coming from a wealthy family, had bankrolled their startup when Alvin and the others had left the Ranger corps six years ago.
“Do you feel you got any value from it?” Lena asked coldly.
Given that I regularly expressed my appreciation to each of the guys at every session, save this last one and the couple where Alvin had literally tried to kill me, I knew this was coming from Lena’s dark place, not that of Alvin and the others.
Certainly not from Doc, Big, and Smiley, who were all shifting uncomfortably where they stood, like kids watching their parents fight.
Alvin’s eyes narrowed the slightest bit, which I knew meant he was trying to assess me right now. For all his coldness and somewhat sociopathic devotion to testing Lena’s theory about me, I’d found Alvin to be a remarkably straight shooter. He was highly skilled and had always given his best to our lessons, even when his sub-mission for Lena made him rougher than was called for.
I sighed and gave him a little head nod, hoping it let him know I understood his position and forgave him for it. Which I only realized just then that I did. Because I’d finally understood, here in the public exhibition of Lena’s emotional darkness, that Alvin couldn’t have done anything but what he had for Lena. Her intensity demanded either devotion or complete rejection. And to reject Lena Cortland would be to reject such a fascinating force of will, a presence destined to achieve great things, that a wise man would rather bear her storms than cut himself off from her power.
“I actually feel,” I said, “like the training with you guys has made all the difference in the world for me.
“Big, for the calm that you managed to wash over me even as you were teaching me how to strip, assemble, load, and fire an M16, an M4, an HK MP5, the Sig Sauers, the Glocks, not to mention the grenades, bayonets, and types of wrist restraints, thank you.
“Doc, for patching me up again and again, teaching me the proper way to prepare tea, how to work out the stiffness in my muscles and joints, doumo arigato.” I bowed after that one. How could I not?
“Smiley, for letting me beat you in the occasional footrace when I know you can run circles around me any day of the week, for teaching me how to push past my physical boundaries every time we met, for giving me the lightness of heart to find humor in pain, thank you, buddy.
“And Shadow, Alvin, thank you for your instruction not only in the physical arts of self-defense, but in the mental attitude of looking for the intentions of those around you to separate friend from foe and to predict the actions of both. I may never reach your level of perception or planning, but I’d like to think I’ve absorbed at least some of the attitudes.”
I bowed to Alvin as well. Just because. Respect.
I looked at all of them again, one after the other, feeling a sudden certainty that if I ever saw them again, it would be in circumstances that would make my next words critical. “I feel like each one of you men offered a true part of yourselves to me over the past nine months, and I will never forget. I consider you my friends, and if you should ever need me, I will do my damnedest to answer your call.”
I put my fist briefly across my heart and was gratified to see the gesture returned, even, in a smooth, subtle way, by Alvin.
Lena was looking almost wildly between the guys and me. Behind her, Elizabeth looked like she was attempting to hide a smile.
“That’s it?” Lena said both to me and to the guys. “You’re all bro’s now for life and the shit that’s gone on means nothing?” Her eyes blazed, and she looked directly at me. “You are a liar. An unforgivable liar.”
I wanted to nod, because of course she was right. I’d lied to the guys about my power so that Lena had been left sounding crazy and diminished. And though I’d offered to apologize directly to her alone about it and explain why I had to do it to survive, it was obviously too late now. Nor was it something I was going to do with the guys here.
It just wasn’t their secret to know.
Hell, it shouldn’t have been anyone’s secret to know. The people who somehow did, beyond Lena, were already trying to abduct me for it and maybe use me to mess up the world. I wished I could share that with Lena.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” was all I could give her.
Behind her left shoulder, Elizabeth caught my eye, raised her eyebrows, and gave me a slow, smirking shake of her head that told me I’d handled that badly.
She was probably right.
As it was, all I could find it in myself to do as the LTW guys nodded to me and filed out, was stand there and nod back at them, avoiding Lena’s eyes. Last to go was Elizabeth Chan, who gave me another pitying smile and head shake as she passed me.
When they’d left and Lena was still there, I turned hopefully toward her, thinking we might talk. If nothing else, I had to tell her about the CIA’s interest in me and how that might spill over to her, too.
“I need you to leave,” Lena said. “I have to be the last out to lock up.”
“No. Please. We really need to talk. There’s stuff I have to tell you. About me. About your work.”
