"You can't eat it," Jim said. "But you could piss on it if you wanted to. I would definitely excuse the mess. Totally."
Using his knife, he pierced the stiff, thick paper and opened a slit that stretched wide, pouching out and revealing...
A laptop the size of an old-school VHS tape.
He took the thing out and let Dog have a sniff-spection of it. Evidently, there was an approval, because Dog gave it a nudge and curled up with a yawn.
Jim opened up the screen and hit the power button. Windows Vista loaded, and what do you know, when he went into the start menu and called up the Outlook that had been installed, he had an account. And his password was the same as his old one.
In the in-box, he found a welcome e-mail from Outlook Express, which he ignored, and two from a blank sender.
"God, Dog, every time I try to get out, they keep pulling me back in," he said, not even attempting an impersonation of Al Pacino.
Jim opened the first e-mail and went right to its attachment - which turned out to be an Adobe file of...a personnel report that was a good fifteen pages long.
The picture in the upper left-hand corner was of a hard-ass Jim knew, and the details included the guy's last-known address, his vital stats, his clearances, his honors, and his deficiencies. As Jim scanned and absorbed the intel, he was mindful of the time clock in the lower portion of the screen. It had started at five minutes, and quickly was down to two, and when the three digits separated by a colon read 0:00, the attachment was cyberdust, as if it had never existed. The same outcome occurred, only immediately, if he tried to forward, print out, or save the file.
Matthias was sharp like that.
So thank f**k for photographic memory.
As for the report itself? On the surface, it appeared as if there were nothing out of the ordinary; it was just your garden-variety rundown on a black-ops guy who was like the e-file - nothing but ether until he disappeared entirely. Except then there were the telltale three letters at the end next to the word status.
mia.
Ah, so that was the assignment. In the military branch Jim had been in, there was no such thing as MIA. There was AD, OR, or PB: active duty, on reserve, or pine box - the last being a term of art used unofficially, of course. Jim was OR - which meant that technically he was liable to be called back in at any moment and had to go or the letters dead were going to appear next to his status. And the truth was, he'd had to blackmail Matthias the f**ker to even get into the reserves - although given what he had on the guy, he should have been able to stay there. If he hadn't had to resell his soul.
Well...the assignment was clear-cut: Matthias wanted this man killed.
Jim quickly rescanned the report until he was certain he could close his eyes and read the text and see the picture on the backs of his eyelids. Then he watched the clock zero out and the thing disappear.
He opened the second e-mail. Another e-file to crack and another ticker in the bottom corner that was triggered when he did. This time he just had a picture of the guy, only now the face was battered, with a split in the forehead that had let loose a tidal wave of blood. He wasn't a victim, though. Hisknuckles were wrapped for fighting and there was red chicken wire behind his head and shoulders.
The image the solider was a scan of a flyer for an underground mixed-martial-arts fighting group. Area code was 617. Boston.
The name the soldier was going by was both cheesy as f**k and pretty goddamn accurate, assuming he hadn't changed: Fist. His real one was Isaac Rothe.
This file lasted only a hundred and eighty seconds, and Jim hung out, staring at that face. He'd seen it a number of times, on some occasions right beside him while they worked together.
Dog nuzzled his way into Jim's lap and curled up, putting his face on the keyboard.
Yup, Matthias wanted the guy dead because Isaac had bolted from the fold - so it was a standard job and standard rules applied. Which meant if Jim didn't do it, someone else would - and the chaser would be that Jim woke up dead in the morning, too.
Pretty damned simple.
Jim ran his hand down Dog's flank and worried about who would feed and care for the little guy if something bad happened. Shit, it was weird to have something to live for...but Jim just couldn't deal with the idea of the animal lost and alone, hungry and scared again.
Lotta cruel motherfuckers in the world who couldn't care less about a scruffy ugly-ass dog with a limp.
And yet the idea of killing Isaac was repugnant. God knew Jim had wanted out of the service bad, so he couldn't blame the guy for leaving: A life that was led in the gray borderlands between right and wrong, legal and illegal, was a hard one.
If only the idiot had had the sense not to do anything with a public presence, even an underground one.
Then again, they would have found him eventually. They always did - The twin sounds of Harley engines pulling up to the garage brought both his and Dog's heads around, and Dog immediately started wagging his tail as those growls silenced down below. As boots came up the stairs, the animal leaped off the bed and headed for the door. The knock was loud and it struck only once.
Dog paddled at the door, his excitement making him appear even scruffier than usual, and before the poor thing expired from ecstasy, Jim got up and walked over.
As he opened the door, he met Adrian's cool eyes. "What do you want?"
"We need to talk."
Jim crossed his arms over his chest as Eddie knelt down and showed love to Dog. Given the way the animal reacted, it was hard to believe the bikers were playing on Devina's team, but just because they weren't pally-pally with her didn't mean they were legit: All Jim had to do was think of the shadows he hadn't seen and the confusion in Chuck the foreman's voice when he'd been asked about the pair.
Made a guy wonder just what the f**k was standing on his doorstep. "You two are liars," Jim said. "So that makes talking kind of pointless, doesn't it."
As Dog rolled over onto his back so Eddie could do some serious belly rubbing, Adrian shrugged. "We're angels, not saints. What do you want from us."
"So you do know those four English whack jobs?"
"Yeah, we do." Adrian glanced pointedly at the refrigerator. "Listen, this is going to be a long conversation. You mind beering us?"
"Do you exist?"
"Beer. Then talk."
As Eddie got to his feet with Dog in his heavy arms, Jim held up his palm. "Why did you lie."
Adrian glanced over at his roommate; then looked back. "I didn't know whether you could handle shit."
"And what's changed your mind."
"The fact that you figured out what Devina is and you didn't bolt. You believed what you saw on that pavement on the hospital."
"Or didn't see, as was the case."
Jim stared at the two of them, thinking that clearly they'd been following him - and maybe Devina had sensed them instead of him in the parking lot of the hospital.
"No," Adrian said, "we masked you so she didn't see you. That's what she was picking up on when she looked around. There are advantages to her thinking you're on your own and you're clueless."
"You guys read minds, too?"
"And I'm full aware of how much you don't like me at this moment."
"Can't be a new thing for you," Jim said, wondering if he was ever going to work with people who weren't ass**les. "So...you two are here to help me."
"Yup. Just like Devina's going to have people helping her."
"I don't like liars. I have too much experience with them."
"Won't happen again." Adrian ran a hand through his ridiculously gorgeous hair. "Look, this isn't easy on us...To be honest, I had my doubts from the beginning that bringing you on was a good idea, but that's my damage. Bottom line is, you're here and that's that, so either we work together or she has a serious advantage."
Well, hell...that logic was pretty damn unassailable.
"I kicked all the Corona the other night so I only got Bud," Jim said after a moment. "In cans."
"And that's just what an angel has a craving for," Adrian shot back.
Eddie nodded. "Sounds good to me."
Jim stepped to the side and opened the door farther. "Are you alive?"
Adrian shrugged as they came inside. "Hard to answer that. But I know I like beer and sex, how 'bout that."
"What is Dog?"
Eddie answered that one: "Consider him a friend. A very good friend."
The animal...or whatever he was...gave a shy wag like he understood every word, and was worried he'd offended, and Jim felt compelled to lean in and give his chin a little scratch. "Guess I don't need to get him vaccinated, do I?"