Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Left Behind

Max couldn’t sleep. He often woke up before the dawn, listening. That was said to be a sign of depression, but so was oversleeping.

The house was quiet without Garry there, with no hope of Garry ever being there again. Gandolph the Great had truly died and wouldn’t come back, as Gandalf did in The Lord of the Rings.

Max nursed his whiskey, relaxing in the big lounge chair, feeling his frame settled into the upholstery as all of one piece, not leaning away from a twinge there, an ache here.

Whole.

That was the physical accomplishment. The next step would be mental in two stages: truly accepting Garry’s absence and teasing his own memories into the present. He shut his eyes, wondering what person, what place would undam his barricaded mind.

His thoughts jittered away from anyone he’d been emotionally connected to in the recent past. The issues were too delicate. Molina. Maybe that was his entry point. Their edgy, distant association invigorated him.

Max was disturbed to consider she had become more like a boss, more like a superior, and therefore more like his mentor. Why not? She was a leader of men. Max quirked a smile on the crystal rim of his glass. And she owed him. Falsely accused, poor boy, he was. He sensed something sheepish in her attitude toward him. Now that he’d been chased and half-killed by ex-terrorists, she’d come around to Temple’s view of him.

Stubborn woman.

Not too sure which one he referred to.

Max smiled. That little redhead had faced off the tall police lieutenant and held her ground. It was like a Yorkie and a bloodhound match-up.… No, Molina was more like a Siberian husky with her icy blue eyes and fierce competitive stance. He wished Rafi Nadir good luck with getting any concessions from Big Mama Molina.

Yet, she was vulnerable. Her daughter.

Max was alone now. No one to be vulnerable about. Just as well.

A soft scrape in the entry hall brought his lazy eyelids full open, and his nostrils too.

He sensed a shift in the air-conditioned atmosphere. The big machine cozied up against the house exterior still operated, heaving like an iron lung against the heat.

But something was moving at the edges of the house, the door, a front window, the hallway hatch into the attic.

Max looked up. Squirrels in the attic? Rats? Assassins?

He pulled back a fabric protector over the chair’s broad arm, revealing a control panel.

He’d discovered it when his restless hands had detected a too, too solid bit of piping on the upholstery. His fingers did a light braille dance over the various buttons. Was it like riding a bicycle or playing the piano? Did his fingertips do the walking and rewire his brain?

He hoped so because an enemy was paying him a visit.

And still he spared a smile for Garry Randolph, Gandolph the Late Great. He remembered Garry showing him the security panel embedded in the chair arm. “You’re the captain of the starship Enterprise in this baby. You control the security shutters, the lights, air. You can lock anyone out, or keep anyone in.”

Max nodded and set his whiskey glass on the side table. It was time to fly this thing.

First, he turned off the air-conditioning.

The instant silence was deafening. A shuffle down the hall stopped a millisecond too late.

He used the control to lower the lights on rheostats all through the house. Only the highest points of the furnishings, or a face, would be visible now. Anyone moving in this house would be walking on water, an unperceived pool of darkness hiding unanticipated objects.

Max’s fingertips hesitated over the unseen control panel, waiting for an intuitive action.

So far muscle memory had guided him through without a misstep. Not so for the intruder.

A careless limb banged into the living area’s archway.

Max could feel the pain of a hit shin or elbow pulsing mutely in the hall.

He waited about a minute, then shut the interior metal shutters while simultaneously pushing the lights up to maximum.

His eyes were squinted and his nerves tense against the sudden clangs and floodlights, but his visitor was not prepared.

The slight figure in ninja black from head to foot teetered as if on a tightrope.

Max lifted the small Walther PPK from the control compartment. It glinted like black ice on asphalt in his hand.

“You’ve made yourself too easy to find,” she said, her voice not familiar.

“Yes,” he answered with satisfaction. “I wonder who you finally followed to get here. No, don’t tell me.” He put up his free hand. “I love a mystery.”

“I’m not carrying.”

“No, not a gun in all that spandex, but a blade or blades, that’s something else. Please sit down. On that chair by the archway.”

“I’m my own best weapon, don’t you remember that?”

He didn’t answer as she pulled the ski mask off to free her hair. For a moment he flashed back. A dead face on the dark ground beside a totaled motorcycle. Dead white skin, dead black hair. Not really her.

“Your career,” he pointed out, “has been hard on body doubles.”

She shrugged. “Risk of the trade.”