What Happened to Lori Read online

  “Dead.”

  “Any health problems?”

  “No.”

  “Are you on any prescription medication?”

  “No.”

  Fabler became quiet. Presley had no idea what the man was thinking. She figured it could go either way.

  “When can you start?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Tomorrow.”

  “Do you own firearms?”

  Presley nodded. She had several guns, and currently wore an ankle holster with a .380 Beretta Pico tucked inside. Her legs were crossed, and drawing it from that position would take less than a second.

  “Any .45s?”

  “No.”

  Fabler stood up. “I’d like to start early tomorrow. 0600 work?”

  “Sure.”

  “I have three rules. First… you do, without question, what I ask. It may seem strange, but I have a reason for everything.”

  “You mean stranger than this already seems?”

  “A lot stranger. Our relationship will remain purely professional. I’m the boss. You’re the employee. That’s the extent of it. You always listen to the boss. Consider it a chain of command.”

  “What’s rule number two?”

  “You’ll have your privacy. Your own room, with your own bathroom. I won’t ever enter your room without permission, and you never enter mine without permission.”

  “That’s the rule?”

  “The rule is; you don’t go anywhere without being armed. Even the bathroom. You keep a gun on you at all times. Awake or asleep. In the house, or out in the world. And not that plinker you have on your ankle. I require you to carry a .45.”

  That was a heavy weapon, but Presley had no problem with that.

 

  “And rule number three?”

  “Those blue contacts you’re wearing. I never want to see you without them. Ever. If the house is burning down, and you’re getting ready to jump out the window, you put in the contacts first. Got it?”

  “Yes. How long is the job?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure, but I’m guessing thirty-six days.”

  “And then the job ends?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens next.”

  Bizarre answer. Fabler was obviously planning something. Which was okay.

 

  “I didn’t get your name.”

  “Frank Fabler. I prefer just Fabler.”

  “Marna Presley.” She risked using her real name because she expected Fabler to check her military record. “I prefer just Presley.”

  Fabler extended his hand. Presley took it, matching his firmness and intensity, wondering if she was making the biggest mistake of her life.

 

  GRIM ○ 11:50am

  Grim watched them shake hands, then Presley went back to her rental car.

  He set down his cell phone, thinking. While this new development might lead to finding out what actually happened to Lori, Grim couldn’t help but feel things had taken a turn for the worse.

 
 
 
 
 
 

  Life was a real kick in the nuts when it came to surprises. You think you know someone. You think you’re friends.

  But there are always secrets you hide from the world.

  Maybe they’re minor. You don’t publicly announce how often you pick your nose. Or masturbate. You don’t tell someone you’re dating about the third grade grammar school playground when you got so scared of a bully you wet your pants. You never confide in anyone about that time you had too many drinks at the local tavern, then the next morning found the front bumper of your truck missing without any memory of how it happened.

  And you wouldn’t ever tell anyone about the people you killed.

  Or that you had homicidal tendencies to begin with.

  But, then again, Fabler, like Grim, was army. Infantry. Trained to kill.

  And they had.

 

  Grim tortured himself with that for a few minutes, like he did every day.

 
 

  Grim laughed, glancing at Donny. “What if he didn’t do it?”

  Not the first time Grim ever had the thought. When Lori went missing, Grim had been on Fabler’s side. Sharing his pain. His worry. His loss. But Grim’s trust in Fabler eroded fast when his old friend and Army buddy expressed no interest at all in looking for Lori.

  According to Fabler’s bullshit story, he woke up one morning, and Lori was gone.

  Grim’s reaction was automatic. He called the FBI. Cops in neighboring counties. The media. He rounded up drifters and known sex offenders and local weirdos and questioned the hell out of them. Every free day, every free moment, Grim searched for his sister.

 
 

  Mistrust grew into full-blown doubt, and that became an overwhelming certainty when Fabler spoke the unspeakable.

  “Stop searching. It’s futile. She’s someplace you’ll never find her.”

  That led to a scuffle, and Fabler—the soberer of them—had soundly kicked Grim’s ass.

  It ended their friendship, and set Grim on his current path.

 
 
 

  There were several times that Grim almost lost his cool. He had recurring fantasies of beating the truth out of Fabler. Of getting that confession and putting a bullet in his sick skull.

  But the fantasies remained just that; fantasies. Grim had chosen a different route, hoping Fabler’s conscience would eventually force him to reveal the truth.

 
 
 
 

  FABLER ○ 10:34pm

  After screwing the final railing into the hallway wall, Fabler got on his computer and Googled Marna Presley. No hits that matched her. No Instagram, no Twitter, no Facebook, nothing in the news.

 

  Fabler wondered if she made the name up. Like she made up her MOS.

 
 
 

  An entire industry centered around hiring ex-military. The industry within the industry involved the personnel who were cleared to deal with classified information, which the Army provided to a few good men and women with the proper qualifications.

  Fabler checked clearanceemployment.com, where he was already registered. He found Presley’s resume without too much digging.

  Her address, as of last week, was Houston.

 
 

  Craigslist only showed help wanted ads locally, unless you specifically searched out of state.

 
 

  Fabler sensed the woman had
secrets. Big secrets.

 

  “She’s hiding something.”

  Fabler realized he was talking to himself. He wasn’t sure when he picked up that habit.

 
 
 
 

  Thoughts can become memories, if you think them often enough. The things you once imagined actually blur into things you think really happened.

 
 
 
  “Of course it’s crazy.”

 
 

  “Because I’m crazy.”

  Fabler had been having that thought, more and more. Distrusting himself. Questioning his own beliefs and memories.

 

  In prison, he’d read a few books about quantum mechanics. How reality was subjective. Certain subatomic particles only popped into existence when they were being observed.

 

  To someone with mental illness, that meant reality was, quite literally, insane.

  “If I am crazy, I truly see the world as crazy, because I actually make it crazy by observing it.”

 

  But Fabler couldn’t go down that rabbit hole. He had a plan. And the plan depended on the fact that he wasn’t nuts.

  “I can’t be crazy. I can’t be crazy.”

  Then Fabler deleted his online ad, picked up a screwdriver, and began to take off all the doorknobs inside the house.

  GRIM ○ 10:38pm

  “The psycho is talking to himself.” Grim glanced at Donny. “I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to you.”

  Donny stared.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the crazy one. You’re the one swimming upside-down.”

  Donny continued to look at him like that.

  “I don’t judge you. You shouldn’t judge me. Booze is my medicine.”

 

  Grim got up off the couch, took a few faltering, stumbling steps to his kitchenette, and noted he was down to his last can of flavored malt beverage. The previous tasted like artificial grape ass, but boasted a 10% abv.

 
 

  He cracked open the can, took a big sip.

 

  Two more sips.

 

  Grim finished the can. But he didn’t feel numb. He felt dull and sloppy.

 
 

  “I think I messed up.” Grim shooed away a green housefly and rubbed his eyes, pressing hard against the lids until he could see starry motes swim through the blackness. “I think I really, really messed up.”

  THE WATCHER ○ July 25, 2017 ○ 11:02+pm

  Variables quickly become infinite, and calculations impossible.

  The Watcher checks the batteries.

  “A window of time, even a relatively large one, is infinitesimally small compared to infinity.”

  A lot of it comes down to estimation, even utilizing ancient superintelligence.

  Bayesian inference, Riemannian geometry, Minkowski space, Schwarzschild metric, Bostrom’s existential risk, super-duper quadruple special relativity, 6-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold, Farnes’s dark fluid negative mass, Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector in a Type II Kardashev civilization…

  Science fiction nonsense. As improbable as a monster in the closet.

  And yet, the Watcher can watch.

  The Watcher can plan.

  The Watcher can make the impossible possible.

  The Watcher has a monster in the closet. And so much more.

 
 
 
 
 

  “Might as well be magic.

  “Maybe it is magic.

  “I could ask. But I will not get an answer.”

  A stomach cramp overtakes the Watcher, and he vomits mucus into the bucket.

  “Time is growing short.

  “This will be cutting it close.

  “And speaking of cutting…”

  The Watcher sculpts flesh, and the Experiment rolls its eyes back in agony.

  PRESLEY ○ July 26, 2017 ○ 4:30am

  “Good morning. Today’s weather forecast is partly cloudy, with a high temperature of 72 degrees. Thank you for choosing the Wichita Stanford Hotel.”

  Presley hung up the phone and squinted at the bedside clock.

  0430.

  Early rising reminded her of being in the service. She half-expected to hear a bugle.

  Presley hadn’t unpacked after flying in the previous day, so she only had to change out of the t-shirt she’d slept in and put on her clothes; khakis, cotton socks, rubber-soled hiking boots, a sports bra, sleeveless undershirt, and a button down flannel top. She was careful not to prod any of her bandages, as the wounds were still sore; two had reopened because of the workout Fabler had put her through the previous day.

  After brushing her teeth and taking her morning meds, she left her room key and five bucks for the house cleaner on the dresser, and headed for the lobby. Once Presley returned the rental car, she could take a taxi or Uber to Fabler’s place.

  About to walk through the oversized revolving door and into the front parking lot, Presley realized she’d forgotten something on the nightstand.

 

  Presley stopped, mid-step, that hesitation enough for her to notice the sedan parked next to the car she’d rented.

  A sedan with two men sitting inside.

  The sun hadn’t come up, but she saw them because the passenger was staring at his cell phone, the screen light bathing his face.

 
 
 

  Didn’t matter at that moment. How Kadir and his partner found Presley wasn’t the priority.

 

  She turned and briskly approached the front desk, talked briefly to the clerk, then got a new key card and hurried back to her room to grab the contacts.

 

  In her line of work, Presley met a lot of unpleasant men. Most were alpha-male types. Many were sociopaths. Some were misogynists.

  A few were violent.

  Kadir was one of the violent ones. Though Presley hadn’t met him on the job, he was the kind of man that gave men a bad name. Poor impulse control. Self-absorbed. Lack of empathy. A grandiose narcissist.

  And he liked to hurt people.

  Presley wasn’t a natural born seductress. She learned the game and worked hard, acting flirty and getting men to like her, for the money.

  Kadir was a natural sadist. So being an enforcer was tailor made for him.

 

  Presley hurried down the hallway, exiting the fire door at the back of the hotel—

  —running right into Kadir.

  The man had six inches and eighty pounds
on Presley, but he still gripped a gun in his fist.

 

  “Going somewhere, hot mama?”

  Presley quickly recovered from the surprise. Her stomach clenched when she noticed his hand.

 

  “Some people don’t learn too good.” Kadir had a smile that looked like a grimace, and it wasn’t helped by deep acne scars and a round, fat face with hairy ears and bushy eyebrows. “But I like to help teach slow learners.”

  He raised his hand, flashing his ring. The three spikes on it had barbs on the ends, like little arrowheads.

  Getting punched with Kadir’s skull ring hurt more than a root canal.

  “We’ll go over the lessons, again and again. Over and over until you understand.”

  Presley blew out a breath and released the luggage handle, balling up her hands, hoping for an opening.

  “No no no…” Kadir raised the gun and pointed it at her head. “I’m not falling for any of your—”

  Presley slapped Kadir’s gun arm at the same moment she dodged out of the line of fire. Then she continued the momentum, her back to Kadir, and brought an elbow up into his nose, hearing it snap for the second time that week.

  Just as the gun boomed, Presley had his wrist locked under her armpit, and she put both hands on the 9mm, bending upward, breaking Kadir’s index finger as she tugged the weapon away.

  He squealed, bearing his weight down on her, and Presley felt an exquisitely sharp pain in her side.

 
 

  That pain paled to the agony that came a moment later when Kadir yanked the hand away, taking a piece of flesh with it.

  Presley snapped her head back, connecting with his jaw, then wiggled out of his arms and kicked him, hard as she could, in his balls.

  Kadir raised his hands to his jaw, but oddly didn’t react to the punt between his legs.

  Presley sprinted away, abandoning her suitcase, hauling ass down the hallway. She’d noted the fire exits in the building during yesterday’s check-in, and took a quick left toward the nearest one, sounding the alarm as she rushed through it, darting across the street into a strip mall parking lot. Presley ducked behind an SUV, putting Kadir’s gun into her waistband and pulling her shirt over it, trying to get her thoughts together, her breathing under control.