The Bone Triangle (23 page)

He leaned toward me, studying my eyes. “Is she right? Are you planning a second attempt?”

I laughed. “Like I would tell you if I were.”

“Let’s talk about something else, then.”

“Let’s.”

“Have you ever wanted to know the answer to it all? Why these artifacts exist? Why this town is being invaded by things like the Beast?”

He had my attention now. “Of course I do.”

He nodded. “I can’t tell you the answers. But I can tell you where they are. Go up to Indian Springs sometime. Drive up the highway, then keep going.”

“You’re talking about the test sites. I’ve heard that theory.”

“It’s more than a theory.”

I nodded. “Right. Another attempt to get me out of town? Why would you want to do that?”

He glared at me for a second. “You want proof?”

“That would be nice.”

He put out his hand. “Give me that photo for second. The one you put a bullet into.”

I looked at him with distrust and reflexively put one hand to my chest.

“Come on,” he said. “If I try to run off with it, poison me or shoot me or something.”

Liking his idea, I retrieved his gun from the bed. I checked the magazine, making sure it was loaded and the safety was flipped off. I held it on him while I offered him the photo.

“Okay, okay,” he said, putting up his hands. “I’m not even going to touch it. Just flip it over and look at the back.”

I did, and didn’t see anything much. Maybe a smudge in one corner. “What’s this?”

McKesson rose and flipped on every light in the place. “Can you make out any letters? A date?”

“Merc-something. NV,” I said. “Nevada?”

“Mercury, Nevada,” he said. “Search the web. I’m sure you’ll learn interesting things.” He stood up and stretched. “I guess I’ll be going now. Thanks for the drink.”

I stood up, too.

He pointed at the gun in my hand. “That’s a police-issued weapon,” he said. “Hand it over.”

I shook my head. “I lost mine in Wonderland. You can go find it for me. When you do, I’ll trade you.”

He glared at me and walked to the door. “One more question,” he said, “about that liver thing…”

“What about it?”

“Where do you keep it when you’re not slapping it onto people?”

“Right here,” I said, pointing to his drinking glass.

He stared at the glass, then flicked his eyes back to my face. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope,” I said, and I plopped the liver into his glass. “See? It fits in there perfectly. It doesn’t get anything slimy while it’s in there. Specimens like this belong in glass jars.”

McKesson looked green all over again. I thought he was going to throw up, but he manned it down.

“You know that liver dates back to the nineteen fifties?” he asked me. “That it’s never rotted, for all these long years?”

“Makes a nice flavor-enhancer, too.”

“You really are a bastard, Draith.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

McKesson had given me one vital piece of information, whether he’d meant to or not. He’d told me where Meng spent her time these days. I wasn’t sure how I might be able to use that bit of information in the future, but I was glad to have it.

Detective McKesson himself was still something of a puzzle. I didn’t completely buy his story about playing a prank and planning to come back for us. I’m not sure if he’d
meant
to leave us there to die, but I certainly didn’t trust him anymore. In retrospect, I probably never should have. When it came down to defending Earth, we were both on the same side, I felt sure of that. But in any other situation, he was on McKesson’s side. I decided I would have to remember that before engaging in any future cooperation with him.

I spent an uneasy night in the hotel room after the detective left. I would have looked for a more secretive location to rest, but I needed sleep badly. When I finally woke up, the
blackout curtains were outlined with brilliant sunlight. The rays eagerly seeped through the crack inbetween the sheets of fabric.

I showered, dressed, and found breakfast downstairs. Eleven a.m. was checkout time. I was only a few minutes late. I headed for the mall at the base of the hotel and bought a fanny pack. I put the liver in there, wrapped in plastic. With that oddly shaped lump of meat strapped to my waist, I looked more like a tourist than usual, but that was probably a good thing.

The day cruised by in slow motion until Jacqueline appeared at my side. I’d just deposited the check her mother had given me in an ATM. She became visible and put a hand on my shoulder. It felt like a touch from a ghost, as no one had been there a second earlier. I startled and jumped.

“Where’d you come from?” I asked, smiling. It was good to see a friendly face.

She smiled back. “Out of thin air,” she said. She craned her neck, rudely looking over my shoulder.

“Is that your bank balance? That’s a minus sign, isn’t it? You owe the bank eight hundred bucks?”

I nudged my shoulder between her face and the screen. “Overdraft charges are hell these days,” I mumbled. “Your mom’s check will clear things up. That is, unless you’ve already taken off on her again and she stops the payment.”

“She won’t,” she said, shrugging.

“So, you did leave suddenly? Are you going back tonight?”

“I don’t know. I was just hanging around there until you healed up. Now look at you! The hospital people would never believe it. They would think you had a twin brother or something—there are only faint white lines for scars. How long until even those marks vanish?”

“A few weeks,” I admitted.

“Fantastic. What a great power. I wish I could do that.”

“No you don’t. It’s much less painful not to get injured in the first place.”

I started walking south, and she tagged along. I was glad to have the company.

“How’d you find me?” I asked.

“It wasn’t too hard. I heard about what happened in the Triangle last night on the news. After I saw the car all crushed in the center like an hourglass, I knew it couldn’t be a normal crash. I figured you were probably involved in that ‘freakish auto accident.’ So I waited until noon and drove down here to find you. I started where the accident happened, then drove along the Strip until I spotted you here at the bank.”

I wasn’t happy to learn I was that easy to find. I wanted Meng’s next assassin to work harder than that. I decided it was time to get off the Strip.

“You’ve got the car?” I asked.

She pointed. The red Mercedes was in the next lot. I asked her for a ride, and we were loaded up and driving within minutes.

“One thing,” I said. “Why did you wait until noon to look for me?”

“I know you pretty well by now. You never wake up much before noon, do you?”

I shook my head. “Gives me a headache.”

“Yeah, you like to stay out all night and sleep all day. Which of your toys has that effect?”

I looked at her with a sudden jerk of my head. I frowned as I thought it over. Could she be right? The artifacts often had negative side effects. The ring, for instance, made people nearby suffer bad luck even as the bearer enjoyed good
luck. I thought about my objects. Could one of them be turning me into a night owl? If I had to guess which one it was, I’d say it had to be the photograph or the sunglasses. I’d had them both since the beginning, and my sleeping habits predated the other objects in my possession.

A new unpleasant thought chased after the first one: what was the negative side effect of the liver, if any? For all I knew, it was something awful. Rostok hadn’t mentioned any associated risks, but it wouldn’t have furthered his goals to do so. I felt like a man living under a raincloud. In more primitive times, I guess people would have called me
cursed
.

“Where do you want me to drive?” Jacqueline asked brightly. “We could go to the mall and catch a movie.”

“I thought you were banned from the mall.”

She made a face. “Not
that
mall.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Let’s go up to Indian Springs.”

She looked at me in surprise and disappointment. “Up near the government sites? That will take an hour.”

“Have you got somewhere better to go?”

“Sure, if you want to be bored by history. Let’s just go to the Atomic Testing Museum. That’s right here in town.”

I shook my head. “That will be picked clean.”

After a brief attempt to talk me into a shopping trip, she wheeled us up onto the highway and we headed northwest. I wanted to go right
now
, because I figured things might become more exciting in Las Vegas by nightfall. I wanted to be back to town by then.

We drove the entire way with the top down, despite the blazing sun and hot roads. About ten minutes into the trip, Jacqueline sprayed something into my face. I coughed and frowned.

“What the hell is that?” I demanded.

“Sorry! It’s just sunscreen. See? You really need some—you’ll burn otherwise. I can tell just by looking at you.”

I relaxed. She sprayed herself in the face next.

“See? Not nerve gas—
sunscreen
.”

I chuckled. “Sorry. I guess after fighting a couple of assassins in a row, I’m kind of jumpy.”

“It’s okay, I understand.”

We drove on, and the drive went by quickly. I’d forgotten how easily time slid by when you had a vivacious girl in the car with you. When we finally reached Indian Springs, we’d been driving for about forty-five minutes. We hit a small-town grocery store, where I bought a backpack, some crackers, and a lot of water bottles. Jacqueline watched me with growing concern.

“There’s something I should tell you,” she said. “I hate camping.”

I smiled. “I’m not surprised.”

I checked her feet and bought her some hiking shoes. She liked the shoes but not what they indicated.

We followed the highway west, and when we were close to the Mercury exit I told her to pull over and park the car on the side of the road.

She looked around the desert landscape, then at me with big eyes. We were surrounded by rugged mountains, scrub brush, and a whole lot of nothing else.

“Where the hell are you taking me?” she demanded.

I climbed out of the car and trudged forward. I examined the desert to the north. I didn’t see much. I knew there were a number of facilities out there, but I couldn’t see them from here. When Jacqueline came to join me, she put her butt on the hood of her car and crossed her arms.

“I’m not walking out into the desert with you. That’s not going to happen. I took some field trips in school up
into these mountains. It totally sucked. Nothing but snakes, spiny bushes, and crunching dirt that coats your shoes with yellow dust.”

I nodded. That did pretty much sum up the area. I looked at her and realized two things: First, I needed her to come with me. Second, I was going to have to give her a good reason to come along.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photograph I’d held on to throughout many bad days. I showed it to her.

“Who’s the baby? Is that you?”

“I think so,” I said.

“I thought you didn’t know who your parents are.”

“I don’t,” I said. “But I think they come from a little town just north of here.”

She looked at me and then the picture, frowning. “You look happy. What happened to them?”

“Maybe I’ll find out. But I need you to help me get there.”

“What town? I don’t see any town.”

“It’s up north a few miles. Past those hills.”

She put her hand up to her eyes, staring north. “That looks like quite a hike. Let’s just take the highway.”

I shook my head. “I’ve investigated this place online. I even tried to sign up for the tour the Department of Energy supposedly gives. They stopped doing that a few years back. They closed the base up and aren’t letting anyone in anymore. Only government people.”

She looked at me, then back at the desert. “Let me get this straight…you want me to walk with you for miles into some kind of secret government installation? We’ll be arrested.”

“Not if we’re invisible. Even if they do find us somehow, we’ll play the dumb tourists out for a hike.”

She chewed her lower lip. “I don’t like it.”

I showed her the picture again. “I’ve studied this artifact closely. I found a faint stamp on the back that says it was developed in Mercury, Nevada.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “That seems pretty thin.”

I shrugged and started walking up the highway. She followed after a few minutes, mumbling about my state of mind. I reached out my hand to her, and she took it. I stopped and gazed back along the highway. I waited until there were no cars in sight.

“Now,” I said.

She made a huffing sound, but she did it. My vision dimmed then returned. We were now invisible. Together, we walked up the highway. After about half a mile, I pointed to the sign at the exit. The sign read
MERCURY
, painted with white on green. Below that was a blue sign that read
NO SERVICES
. Last on the post, tacked onto the bottom, was a warning of sorts. The sign was orange, with black print:
NO ADMITTANCE.

“That’s weird,” Jacqueline said next to me. “I don’t like it. They certainly don’t want anyone taking this exit. What’s down there?”