Book II Chapter 12

Tom hovered over the neighborhood where the loft that was his San Francisco home was located, trying to discern through the darkness which building was his. The vampire costume he wore had been such a rush job that Mike and Pablo had not been able to fit it out with much equipment, including the GPS that helped him navigate. In fact, the only thing the pair of techs had been able to install was a simple two way radio. The lack of his usual electronic resources left him feeling uncomfortably exposed.

“Lights, Tinker,” he said, and immediately the six foot square landing pad started blinking over to his left. With a thought he moved his floating body over to the correct rooftop, then slowly lowered himself to land a hundred feet down in the center of the pad. He grunted softly as weight returned to his body, the sudden change sending a sharp pain through the pectoral muscle where the little drug dealer had stabbed him. He ignored the pain, as he stepped from the lighted square and made his way the short distance across the rooftop to the loft’s door.

“Good job tonight, Flyboy. We saved some girl from getting date raped, and we recruited a new source of info on the slavers. It’s still early, you want to change into the suit and go on patrol for a couple of hours?”

“Not tonight, Pablo. I’ve been wearing this mask and all this damned leather for over four hours. I’m going to get a shower and write up my after action report, then hit the sack.”

“Slacker. Okay, I’m going to stay up for awhile and see what I can find out about those names Bennett gave us. Call me when you get up, Rockstar and I’ll probably have something for you by then.”

Tom nodded absently, even though the other man could not see it, as he moved through the apartment turning on the lights. He tossed the mechanical grippers and their concealing gloves onto the couch. They had worked well tonight, but he made note to talk to Pablo about the fit. Perhaps they could incorporate something like them into the costume, maybe built into the regular gloves? Could Murray make the framework smaller and lighter, without losing any of the strength? It would be well worth it if they could

He slipped off the leather overcoat, wincing at the pain, and then tossed it on the couch. Without the usual sensors from his regular outfit Murray was unaware that he had been hurt, and he intended to keep it that way. He was irritated, though, because he had intended to go back out tonight, but the wound felt just serious enough to slow him down in a fight. He still felt the constant need to work off some of the heavy emotions that had been bedeviling him these past days, but he realized that tearing this wound open would only put him out of action and further sideline the investigation.

Tom unbuttoned the silk shirt, now stained with his blood, and dropped it on the floor on his way to the bathroom. He washed his hands carefully, then removed the special contact lenses that were part of the costume and put them to soak in their little plastic containers. He waited until he was standing before the mirror before he peeled off the mask, gritting his teeth against the pain when he raised his arms to do so. He wet a wash cloth, then tenderly cleaned the blood away to examine the wound.

Not too bad, he decided. The leather coat had blunted the force of the blow, and it hadn’t gone into flesh more than an inch or so. He washed it thoroughly with alcohol, then took a quick shower. He cleaned the wound again with hydrogen peroxide, spread some antibiotic ointment on it, then covered it with a large bandage. He rotated the arm a couple of times, testing the range of motion and flexibility, and decided it wasn’t too bad after all. He started to put away the first aid equipment, when a thought made him pause.

It had happened again tonight, on the rooftop, when Bennett had stabbed him in the chest with that ridiculous stick pin. Just as it had that night in Hyster’s bedroom. Time had seemed to, what, shift? Slow down? Yeah, something like that. Bennett had stuck him, and damn, it had hurt, but then suddenly it hadn’t. Or it had, but it had been as if the pain were distant, separate from him. Less distracting and more manageable, which was good because that was all that had allowed him to laugh out loud, instead of screaming.

And everything had slowed! People, falling objects, the whole world was moving at a fraction of normal speed. Like the cheesy special effect they use in the movies, during the most dramatic point of an action scene.

But didn’t they base that effect on some sort of real event? He’d read about it a thousand times in books. Bullets start flying, adrenalin kicks in, and then everything seems to slow down. Hadn’t he experienced something similar in some of his fights? The night he took out that street gang outside of the Reisbach’s dojo, the moment when he jumped off of that burning building with that little boy in her arms? Yeah, maybe. But these last two times, they had been different. Way different. How…?

Tom looked at the tube of antibiotic jell in his hand, then held it up at eye level. He stared at it, concentrated, thinking about Hyster’s place and that empty rooftop. Trying to will it to happen again, now. He could hear the sound of his own heartbeat, growing louder in his ears, felt his focus sharpen until the yellow tube became the very center of everything. When everything suddenly seemed to come together and the moment simply felt right, he released the tube and watched as it floated, tumbling end over end and as slowly as a soap bubble, to eventually end its slow motion fall with an echoing soft clatter on the cold tile floor.

Tom blinked, and the world suddenly shifted gears again as time returned to normal. He took a deep breath, feeling a brief dizziness, then turned off the water that was still running softly in the sink. He bent down and picked up the tube of jell, staring at it for a moment before putting it back in the medicine cabinet. He turned out the lights and closed the bathroom door behind him, his brow furrowed in thought.

Okay, definitely something new. Some new manifestation of the superconductors tattooing his back. And by the looks of it, it was probably something he could use. To slow down his perception of time, maybe speed up his responses, to give himself time to actually think during a fight, instead of just reacting. Damn, what an advantage that could be!

Tom hurried out of the bathroom to the big walk in closet in the master bedroom. From it he drew the outfit that they had created for him to fly in. He took it back and dumped it on the bed, then started getting dressed, his earlier decision not to go back out completely forgotten. He had to get out and try this new power, field test it, see if he could find some action somewhere. He carefully avoided thinking that this might also be another good excuse to go out and break some heads.

He had just gotten on the dark cargo pants and was lacing up the black boots when a sudden buzzing sounded through the loft, coming from the com system that linked to the door out in the parking lot. It kept buzzing, again and again, as whoever it was punched the button repeatedly. Tom frowned, grabbing his robe and throwing it over his shoulders. He strode out into the living room and across to the freight elevator where the intercom was, then flipped the switch that turned on the surveillance camera. His eyebrows rose in surprise when he saw who it was, then toggled another switch to turn on the sound.

“—ow you’re in there, Tom, I already talked to Uncle Pablo. Now open up, dammit! Tommy? Tommy?”

Tom shook his head. Christ, he really didn’t need this right now. He honestly thought about just ignoring the buzzer, but if he did that he knew Holly would just call Murray and ask how to override the system. But besides that, no matter how mixed up he had been feeling this past week, he had never out and out lied to Holly to avoid her. Stretched the truth, maybe, but never lied. He reached up and pressed the button that activated the lock, watched as she pulled open the door and hurried inside.

He stood waiting as the freight elevator whirred, saw Holly slowly coming into view as it rose. Her hair was mussed, and any makeup she had started the day with was now just a memory. She looked tired, but also… angry? Defiant?

“Tom,” she said, as the freight elevator closed behind her. “We’ve got to talk.”

Ah, Christ, she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He felt his face stiffen into a mask, and when he opened his mouth to talk he was almost sure that nothing showed. “Didn’t we just do this same scene three weeks ago?”

“Yes. Yes, we did, but it’s not the same now, and you know it. Last time it was me who had screwed up, but this time it’s you, Tom. Everything is going to hell again, only this time it’s you who has to fix it.”

“If you’re talking about the bandage, it’s nothing. That little vampire freak Bennett jabbed me with a lousy stick pin. I’ve already taken care of it.” Tom’s mouth hardened, as he deliberately misunderstood what she was talking about. He realized that he had made a mistake mentioning the wound, though, as Holly’s eyes widened and she stepped forward. Dammit, he did not want to talk about any of this now!

Holly reached out suddenly with one long, slender hand, and brushed the edge of Tom’s bathrobe away. He pulled back, but not quickly enough to keep her from seeing the new bandage on his chest. “How…? Uncle Pablo didn’t say anything about this!”

“I wasn’t wearing a camera so Murray never knew, and I just, just didn’t bother telling him. It wasn’t worth it.”

“Which is why you’re trying to hide it now, I suppose?” her voice rising with the accusation. “And… you’re wearing half of your flying outfit! Pablo said you were in for the night, but you were going to go out again, weren’t you? Only this time without any backup!”

“Holly…”

“This is just like you did before, with that pimp Snakeman. You told Mike that you wouldn’t go out without one of us covering you like that ever again. It’s not only dangerous, it’s stupid, and you agreed never to do it again. Tommy, you promised.”

“Holly… look, I’m not going out, you’re right and I know it. We do need to talk, but not now, okay? It’s late, and I just got back from taking the run on that freak, and I’m beat. We can do this some other time—“

“Oh bullshit!” Holly snapped, stepping forward and glaring at him. Tom fell back, startled, the sudden flash of anger shocking him.

“Wha—“

“Don’t try that crap on me anymore, Tommy. I talked to Mike, and he told me how you only need four hours of sleep a night now, which means that you’ve been conning me all week long with that same line. I’m not buying it anymore. Now I’m telling you that we need to talk, and we’re going to talk, even if we have to stay here all night.

“Look,” she began, her tone softening. “This past week, you’ve been doing it to all of us, not just me. Closing yourself off, shutting us out. You won’t talk about anything, except for Committee business and this child slavery case. But you won’t tell us about what’s really going on inside, what this whole business is doing to you. We know it’s tearing you apart. If you don’t talk about it, we’re afraid—“

“And what if I don’t want to talk about it?!” Tom snapped, moving away, letting his own feelings spark into anger. “Christ, what is it with you people. You, Mike, even Pablo. Every damned body telling me I need to ‘talk about it’. That I need their help to deal with this. Is Dieter going to be next?

“Well news flash, Holly, I am dealing with this just fine. I know what I’ve done, and I know what I have to do, and that does not include having some stupid Oprah moment beating my breast and sobbing my eyes out. So the whole lot of you can just back off, and leave me the hell alone!”

“But you’re not dealing with it! You’re throwing everything you have into this case, just to keep from having to deal, and when that’s not good enough you go out looking for fights or something else just to keep yourself from thinking about what happened to Mingyu.”

Tom started to respond, but instead turned away from her, fuming. That had stung. He had no answer to her accusations, they were all right on the mark, and they both knew it. But knowing the truth didn’t change any of the turmoil he felt, and having to face it was only serving to enrage him even more. He felt her hand on his arm, but shrugged it off abruptly, then strode purposefully out of the room. A moment later, he heard her footsteps following.

“Damn you, Tom, you cannot walk away from this! Don’t you see, you’re doing the same thing you did when we were broken up. Going out with no backup, taking stupid chances, risking your life for no good reason. You did that then because you were mad at me, and now you’re doing it because you’re mad at yourself.”

“And if I am?” he answered, as he took the robe off and grabbed up the long sleeved black shirt from the bed. He pulled it on as he talked, his movements as sharp and angry as his tone. “Maybe that is the way I’ve chosen to handle this. Maybe getting into fights and working off some steam is what I need to do to sleep at night. And yeah, so what if it is stupid and dangerous? If that’s how I choose to handle this, then that’s my decision. Not yours, not Mike’s, and sure as hell not Pablo’s.”

“ ‘Your life, your neck, and your choice,’ ” she said, quoting. “Oh, yeah, I know how that goes. That’s the line I used to use whenever Poppa got on my case about the reckless stunts I used to pull. And it’s what I said after the stupid, idiotic thing I did when you took me flying and ended up dunking me in the bay.

“But you remember what you told me last time I came up here and said we needed to talk? When I came back here crawling with my tail between my legs, because I knew I had been wrong? You told me it wasn’t my life to risk anymore. You said it was yours, and everybody else who loved me. Well, then that means that your life belongs to us, too. You can’t cut us out of it and then throw it away on some insane, suicidal dance with death just because you think you fucked up. You don’t get to do that anymore, Tommy. None of us do.”

Tom stood, holding the bullet resistant black hoodie, trying to keep his arms from shaking. Damn, damn, damn, but he did not want to do this! This was what he had been avoiding for days, suddenly shoved in his face and down his throat. There was a small part of him, a tiny voice that kept shouting that Holly was right, that he needed to face this. But the roaring in his ears easily drowned that out, and the desperate feeling of being trapped was making the expansive loft feel like its walls were closing in.

“This conversation is over,” he said, as he pulled the hoodie on over his head. It made a great reason for not looking at her as he talked. “You can let yourself out.”

He tried to go around her, but Holly easily sidestepped into his path. He scowled, and tried to push past her, but Holly reached up and shoved, her hand against the new bandage over his wounded shoulder. Tom stumbled back, gasping at the sudden sharp pain.

“You’re hurt, and right now you have a chip on your shoulder the size of a two by four,” she said, her own fierce scowl matching his. “You’re not going back out tonight, Tommy, you’re going to sit here and we are going to work this thing through, whether you like it or not!”

“The hell you say,” he growled, moving forward again. When Holly put her hand up to block him, he reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her to the side. He knew it was a mistake the moment he made it.

With the speed of a natural athlete who has been training for most of her life, the tall blonde woman grabbed his arm and whirled, twisting, and tossing him across the room like a bag full of wet laundry. The move was so fast, so unexpected, that Tom barely managed to will his power to catch himself in mid flight. But Holly had anticipated him, and had not just flipped him but actually threw his body against the hard, unyielding floor. He hit with a resounding thud, that shook the windows of the loft and painfully exploded the breath out of his lungs.

Stars bursting in a red and white blazed across his vision. He tried to sit up, only to find what little breath he had managed to draw once against forced out when Holly leapt on his chest and bore him back to the ground. His head thudded back against the floor, increasing the starry vista behind his eyes, as two slim but incredibly strong hands grabbed him by both ears and twisted.

“YEEOWWW--! H-Holly!” he gasped out, scrambling to grab her wrists. He succeeded, but Holly’s grip only tightened, making him hastily reconsider the impulse to pull them away.

“Don’t even think about doing that levitate and twist move, either. You might end up dumping me on my ass, Tom, but I swear I’ll take your ears with me! I said you’re not going back out tonight, and I meant it. We are going to talk, you and I, and we’re not going to stop until we have worked out what’s wrong. Now do you have a problem with that?”

Tom hesitated, until Holly gave her wrists an extra twist, bringing another gasp followed by a hasty but sincere “Yes!” from him. Slowly, she eased her grip on his offended ears, watching him closely as she gradually rose to a sitting position. She let go of his tender lobes, her hands drifting down his shoulders to rest lightly on his chest. It rose and fell as he breathed in. She looked at him for a long moment, then said softly, “Mingyu Tanchez.”

Immediately she felt him stiffen beneath her, saw his face go as still as stone. She waited for him to say something, but when he did not she continued.

“She’s dead. They murdered her, this Dark Wing gang, or whoever is running them. They enslaved her, and after you rescued her they shot her down while she played in the front yard of her new home. They killed her, but you blame yourself. You think that if you had run the evidence when you first got it, back when this all started, then you could have busted these guys, and Mingyu would still be alive today. Therefore, she’s dead because of you. Am I right so far?”

Tom’s answer was to close his eyes and look away, an expression of pain and deepest sorrow on his face. She let him wallow in it for a time, then leaned forward and spoke deliberately into his ear.

“Well guess what, Ace. You’re probably right. It is your fault she’s dead.”

Tom caught his breath and gaped at her, stunned. She… she thought he was responsible, too? Holly had caught him completely by surprise, and he couldn’t help staring at her as if she were some stranger. He had absolutely no idea what was happening here, or where it was going.

“Maybe you could have done it,” she continued, as if oblivious to the shock she had caused. “Maybe, but I don’t think so, Tommy. These people are big, and organized, and totally ruthless. In those days you didn’t have the training you have now, or the weapons, or the Committee to back you up. And you didn’t have the intelligence contacts to the police we now do. I honestly don’t believe you could have pulled it off back then. God, I’m not sure we can pull it off now.”

She drew a slow breath, watching her lover’s face closely, seeing the first chink in the walls he had built around himself begin to form. Deliberately she pushed again, trying to bring those walls down.

“And Tom, San Francisco is only one of the cities the Dark Wings operate in. There’s absolutely nothing to stop them from picking up and moving to somewhere else. Seattle, Houston, Chicago, anyplace big enough to hide in and find customers for what they sell. Even if you somehow managed to make things too hot for them to operate here, all you would have done was to chase them out of our town, and into somebody else’s. Same problem, just different faces on the victims.

“And one last thing to think about. If you did manage to chase them out, they would probably have to leave very fast. I don’t see any reason for them to burden themselves with forty extra liabilities. And we’ve all seen how these people handle witnesses.”

The words, in their enormity, took a moment to register in his mind. When they did, Tom felt something indescribably cold wash over him. The truth of her words was undeniable, to the Wings the life of a child meant nothing, so why would forty lives mean any more? In his ignorance, he could very well have caused a lot more than one innocent death.

A feeling of utter hopelessness suddenly grew in the pit of his stomach, spreading out to smother him like the dirt of a grave. God, what was the use then? Try to save one child, and doom dozens more. Shut the Wings down here and they move somewhere else and it starts all over again. Tell me, God, what the hell is the use?

His body started to shake, as long repressed emotion began to rise, drowning him. From a distance he felt Holly lean forward and lay her body over his, as if to cover and shield him. She placed her hands on the sides of his face, and made him look at her through eyes that blurred and burned.

“You can’t do this anymore, Tom. You’re wallowing in guilt that you don’t really deserve, while trying to get yourself killed as some sort of sick penance. But we don’t have time for that anymore. Those children need us. We have to stop the Dark Wings, and soon, or there’ll be a lot more Mingyus out there.”

Tom closed his eyes, and took a ragged, shuddering breath. Then he nodded, and closed his arms around the warm body pressing against his own. He let Mingyu Tanchez go, mourning her, and swearing that she would be the last child victim of the Dark Wings he would ever have to bury.

He felt hot tears on his cheeks, and knew that they were not all his own.

*****

“Tachy psychia,” Dieter said, nodding. As he did so he watched Tom Blackmore through speculative eyes.

“Tackey what?” Mike asked, puzzled.

“I’d say Gezundheit, except it’s such an old joke, and besides I don’t think it really applies here,” Murray put in.

The current meeting of the Planning Committee was again taking place both in the San Francisco loft, and via computer hookup with Pablo Murray’s workshop in Sacramento. Tom and Holly shared the sofa, while Holly’s father sat comfortably across from them in a lounge chair. Tom had hooked the loft’s computer to the big screen digital TV, and now Mike and Pablo’s slightly larger than life faces looked out at the other three, their voices piped through the stereo system’s speakers.

“Poppa said ‘tachy psychia’. It’s a neurological condition that occurs during times of great stress or danger, part of the fight or flight reaction. I think he means that’s what Tommy was describing,” Holly answered. She was sitting on the couch with her legs drawn up under her, leaning against Tom, who had his arm around her shoulder. The other three members of the Committee had noticed the new change between the couple, or rather their return to normal, but other than raising eyebrows and exchanging grins, they had wisely chosen not to make any comment.

“My daughter is correct. Tom’s description of time seeming to slow, as well as the increase and sharpness of his hearing, are classic symptoms of tachy psychia.

“When the human animal feels itself in imminent danger, the adrenal gland begins to dump massive amounts of epinephrine and dopamine into the bloodstream, which increases overall body performance. You become stronger, faster, and have more resistance to pain. Your senses become sharper, and more focused. Glucose is also released, for greater energy. And, often, the brain starts functioning at such a higher rate that time itself seems to be moving in slow motion. Is this what you were describing, Tom?”

The flying man frowned, then nodded. “Sort of. Definitely the time distortion part of it. And the hearing… some things, the louder noises, they were all muffled. But other sounds that I normally couldn’t hear at all were clear. I’m not sure I can speak for the resistance to pain, though. Maybe,” he said, thinking about the stab wound in his chest.

“Sooo… you think what Tom experienced is something normal?” Mike asked. “Not some new power he’s developing?”

Dieter spread his hands, his equivalent of a shrug. “I really can’t say, Mike. I can only say that this is what it sounds like to me, a simple phenomenon well known by most professional fighters. You might have also heard athletes talking bout ‘being in the zone’? This is what they mean, tachy psychia is the very peak of human performance.”

“It doesn’t quite sound like the same thing to me, though,” Tom said, frowning in thought. “What other symptoms are there?”

“Hmmm, bronchial tubes dilate, to allow better absorption of oxygen. Pulse increases, usually between two and three hundred beats per minute. Your eyes become highly focused, enabling you to see incredibly fine detail, but you also experience acute tunnel vision, with almost no peripheral vision at all.”

“Fine motor control goes, too,” Holly put in.

“Yes, any physical activity that requires concentration, in fact. Including abject thought and planning. In effect you become a reacting being, acting almost completely out of instinct and training. All in all, it’s a very disorienting experience, especially the first few times it happens.”

They both looked at Tom, who was still frowning, but then shook his head. “No, that’s different, very different from what happened to me. First off, I was never scared. At Hyster’s place I was angry, and on the roof last night with Bennett it was a shock when he stabbed me, but I never had any reason to be afraid. And last night and this morning I was perfectly calm, and in complete control. It wasn’t anything like what you described.”

Dieter looked a question at him. “Last night? This morning?” Holly was also waiting for his answer, so he shrugged and addressed it to her.

“Last night just before you came over, I tried willing it to happen again. And it worked. Everything began to run in slow motion, and the smallest sounds were so loud it was like I was in an echo chamber. But my heart wasn’t racing, and I had no trouble thinking clearly. And then this morning while you were making breakfast I tried it again, and it was even easier to get there than before.”

Dieter stared at him for a moment, a look of slowly growing comprehension on his face. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, beginning to radiate a suppressed excitement. “Tom…are you saying that you can call for this condition, simply by willing it? Can you show us now?”

“Yeah, sure,” he answered, lifting his arm from around Holly’s shoulders and standing up. He dug into a pocket, then brought forth a handful of change. “Remember that exercise for speed and dexterity, where you had me toss a bunch of coins in the air and see how many I could catch before they hit the ground?”

He looked at the money he held in the palm of his hand, showing the others that there were a half dozen coins of various denominations. He watched them, moving his hand up and down slowly as if trying to judge their weight. Then suddenly he snapped, “Fifteen cents!” and tossed the coins into the air in a widening spread.

The others all watched carefully, Mike and Pablo through the webcam back to the workshop in Sacramento, Holly and Dieter from their seats only a few feet away. And yet they all almost missed it, it happened so fast. Tom moved, his body lunging forward, his hands two flashing blurs. When he stopped bare seconds later, he was bent half crouched over the coffee table, his arms outstretched, his hands bunched into closed fists. A single penny could be seen sticking between the third and forth fingers of his left hand, but otherwise none of the other coins were showing. None had hit the table they had just been tossed over.

Tom took a deep breath and straightened, a fine gleam of sweat on his forehead. Slowly he opened his clenched fists, holding them out where the other four could clearly see. His left hand was filled with coins, while his right hand held only two; a dime and a single nickel.

Fifteen cents.

Tom looked around, feeling four sets of eyes glued to his every action. With a studied casualness he transferred all the coins to one hand and slipped them into his pocket. “Well?” he asked, only partially successful at hiding a grin.

Everyone started talking at once, with the exception of Tom and Dieter. The old German was examining his protégé, giving him a look that was pure evaluation. Tom could almost hear the clockwork wheels whirring inside the older man’s head, as he ran through combat scenarios and possible uses for this new ability. Holly babbled in his ear, mostly wanting to know why he hadn’t told her about this before, while Mike and Pablo where frantically typing away at an unseen keyboard, probably trying to rewind and view the recording of Tom’s demonstration. Altogether, the response was everything he could have hoped for.

Dieter finally spoke. “Holly, settle down. If you want to be of help, please take Tom’s pulse rate before it has time to normalize. Also, check his pupils. Tom, could you please describe what you just experienced? What is it like for you, when you will this change to come?”

“Well, I… my heart pounds. That’s the first thing I notice. I can hear it, like a drum. Then I guess the thing with my senses, when they start to focus. That’s when I think I notice things slowing down, but not just for the rest of the world, but for me also. It’s like, like I’m moving under water, but the rest of the world is moving in quicksand. Do you understand?” he asked, trying to explain something he still had no frame of reference for.

“I think so, Tom. Holly?”

“A little fast, Poppa, maybe eighty five to ninety beats per minute. And his pupils were a little bit dilated, but they’ve already gone down.”

“Hmmm. That is… interesting. I’m not sure what this means, or just how useful it will be, Tom, but it does open some intriguing possibilities. I think we need to study it some more, for instance I want to see just how fast your reaction time is actually increased. Pablo, do you think you and Mike can come up with a machine that can do that?”

In his workshop in Sacramento, Pablo Murray and Tom’s brother stepped away from the microphone on the webcam and held a brief discussion. They finally seemed to come to an agreement, and brought their conclusions to the others.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Murray said, “In fact, you guys already have the basic equipment we’ll need. Remember those Slam Man dummies you use for practice?” he asked, referring to the manikin shaped upright punching bags with the blinking lights. The Reisbachs used them in all of their Martial Arts Schools, and Tom himself kept one there in the loft.

Dieter raised an eyebrow quizzically, while Tom nodded in quick understanding. Being a techie like Mike and Pablo helped him to see the potentials a little bit faster than his fighting instructor, but only by about three seconds, and then the big German was nodding also.

“Right, so those bad boys are designed to test a fighter’s speed, aren’t they?” Mike said, eagerly explaining. “They’re made to flash lights in various sequences, and record when they’re struck. It shouldn’t be too hard to reprogram it to run a sequence and show the response times. We have Tom run through it once at normal speed, and then again in high gear for a comparison.”

“Yeah, and we can have Dieter and Holly also run a sequence to give us a professional fighter’s response time for a baseline comparison, too,” Murray added.

“Sounds great! When do you think you guys can get down here to set this up?” Holly asked.

There was a brief discussion regarding the logistics of the future tests that they planned to conduct on Tom and his new found power, followed by a longer one about what the new ability could mean to their mission. It ended with Tom, Dieter and Holly moving furniture and clearing a large open area in the loft’s living room, where they fell to testing what Tom could do when in ‘high gear’, as they chose to call it. He would shift, then toss objects and catch them, move across the room and back again in a blur, and even dodge Dieter’s and Holly’s attempts to grab him with ridiculous ease. After only twenty minutes, though, Tom had to call a halt, saying that he was getting light headed. He sat down on the couch, breathing deeply but not too heavily, his face sheened with sweat. Holly fetched him a tall glass of cold water from the kitchen. As he drank it gratefully, Dieter summed up what they had learned from the experimental session.

“It’s amazing, Tom. You are a little uncoordinated, but you are already one of the fastest men I’ve ever seen. Your speed seems to impart more strength, I definitely felt it when you were blocking my punches. I’d warrant you can probably strike much harder, too. It would appear that you have gotten all of the benefits of tachy psychia, and almost none of the drawbacks.”

“What drawbacks, Coach? I thought you said this was the ‘peak of human performance’. What could be the downside of that?”

“It’s a trade off, Tom. For one thing it can be very disorienting, especially the first time it happens. It’s actually one of the biggest killers on the battlefield, and the main reason that almost thirty percent of all combat casualties occur during a soldier’s first engagement with the enemy. It’s the main reason your Army drill instructors did their best to terrify you in basic training. They wanted to get you used to following your training, when every fiber of your being is screaming at you to run.”

“Huh. And I always thought it was because they were psychotic.”

“That, too. I believe it was one of the criteria for the position. But there is more than just the disorientation. As I said before, in tachy psychia everything is a trade off.” Dieter started ticking the points off on his fingers. “You become stronger and faster, but you lose all fine motor skills. Your sight sharpens, but it also becomes so focused you develop severe tunnel vision. Your mind works so fast that time seems to slow down for you, but you lose the ability to think complex thoughts and must fall back on instinct and training.

“And yet, you seem to have none of the disadvantages. Except for the tunnel vision, but that can be compensated for by training yourself to keep scanning your eyes back and forth, and not remain fixed on one spot. The potential uses for this new power are overwhelming!”

Tom shook his head, sighing. “I’ll take your word for it, Coach. Right now I think we’re going to have to put this on the back burner until Mike and Pablo can get down here and we can set up some experiments to find out my limits. I don’t want to try this out in a real life or death situation until we know what we’re dealing with.

“Look, I’m supposed to call Benny in another half hour. So is there any more business to take care of before we call it a day? Any new developments on the Dark Wing case?”

On the big screen Mike and Pablo looked at each other and slowly shared a smirk, as if that had been a question they had been waiting for. It was a look of infinite, oh so pleased with themselves they could hardly stand it smugness. Inwardly Tom rolled his eyes. When those two weren’t fighting each other, they made such an effective team it was scary.

“Oh, I don’t know if you would call it something new on the case,” Mike began, glancing at his partner in crime. “The dwarf and I downloaded all the files the cops had regarding, well, just about everything concerning the Dark Wing case, and everybody involved. Surveillance reports, arrests, histories and affiliations…”

“We got personnel reports, too, on Molly and this Lieutenant Burke guy. Then we wrote this program that took all the solid facts, you know, names, dates and places, things like that.”

“Waitaminnit, ¬who wrote the program?!”

“Picky, picky. Okay, Rockstar here wrote the program, even though it was my idea. It took all of these salient facts from hundreds of pages of records, and it compared them, looking for relationships. You know, who went to the same school or knew the same people, that sort of thing. That’s pretty basic, but we also incorporated wider parameters, so that it showed relationships farther removed, up to three points of separation. If one suspect knows somebody else, and that somebody else is related to another guy, and that guy knows this guy, etcetera. It took a huge amount of data, but we kept downloading and adding more and more files, ‘til finally a pattern started to show.”

“Actually, about a dozen different patterns began to show up, but most of them were either coincidence or not important. You get that much data together and you’ll get a lot of garbage, believe me. But some of it is pretty interesting. For instance, I think we found out why Molly’s Lieutenant Burke has decided to keep us a secret, all to himself.”

“Ya see,” Pablo put in, grinning, taking up his share of the story. “It all goes back to this guy called Walter Tibbs…”

*****

John Burke pulled into the driveway of his small, modest house, turning off the lights of his car and letting the motor die with a sigh. The engine continued to diesel for several seconds before dying, and Burke made a mental note to take it in and have the timing checked, see if the idle was set too high. Of course, he wasn’t that good with these newer cars, i.e. anything built after the year 2000. No telling what the problem could be. Whatever it was, it would probably cost more than he’d feel comfortable paying right now.

He climbed out of the car, taking his briefcase with him, slammed the door and hit the remote to lock the doors. It was a nice neighborhood he lived in, but he was still a cop and he never took something like that for granted. It was dark out, he was getting home late again, as usual. It wasn’t just the hours, it was also the fact that he had a forty five minute commute each way to get to and from work. It was a pain in the ass, but the days of a cop living in the same district he worked were long gone.

As he passed it by he looked up at the metal basketball hoop hanging from the garage, naked and rusting. He thought briefly about replacing the net, but then sadly decided, why bother? On his more and more infrequent visits his sixteen year old son Aaron seemed more inclined to spend his time on his damned X-box rather than doing things with his old man. Maybe he should just take the damned thing down.

The light above the door came on automatically when he approached, which saved him from having to fumble with his keys too much before unlocking the deadbolt and stepping inside. He felt the familiar release of the tension that he had been carrying all day as the door closed behind him, and sighed. He hung his coat in the hall closet without switching on the light. He picked up the briefcase and took the three steps across the foyer to his living room and was reaching for the light there, when a sudden illumination flicked on in the small kitchenette.

Shock lasted less than half a second, before John Burke dropped his briefcase and was leaping across the room. He landed in the floor behind the couch, putting it’s bulk between himself and the kitchen, even as his hand scrabbled for the gun at his belt. He popped up over the edge of the couch with his weapon drawn, his belly muscles as tense as steel at the anticipated gunfire that, he was just beginning to notice, still hadn’t come.

Time passed, seconds marked by the muted sounds of his own harsh breath and the bass drum pounding of his heart. There was a sound of clinking glass and the faint hum of an electric motor, confirming that the light was coming from the open door of his refrigerator. Burke rose slowly, still crouched, his pistol leveled on the entrance to the other room. He was about to move forward, when the tense silence was broken by a voice, calling his name.

“Hey, John, where the hell is your bottle opener? And what’s with this domestic shit, don’t you have any Tuborg?”

Burke froze, his eyes widening in disbelief, as the mystery man he and Molly Wu had been playing tag with for weeks sauntered out of his kitchen, holding two bottles of beer in his hand. He set them down on the small kitchen table, then started rummaging in one of the counter drawers.

The veteran cop rose, slowly lowering his revolver, his arms and legs beginning to shake just a little from reaction. He switched the gun from his right hand to his left, then fumbled angrily for the wall switch. The overhead lights came on, confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that his intruder was indeed Hugo Danner, AKA Freddy the Fed, Aka the Spook, AKA a dozen more street names he didn’t want to think about just now. Here, in his house. In his FUCKING HOUSE!

Danner had found the bottle opener at last, and quickly popped the tops off the two beers. Burke’s professional side noticed that the mystery man was again wearing the same outfit as their meeting at the parking garage, including aviator sunglasses and the thin leather gloves. So, no fingerprints, but maybe some DNA if he could just get a hold of that bottle…

Burke shook his head, angry at the distraction, which was only lessening his feeling of violation. He sure as hell wanted to stay mad at this slick maybe-Fed who had broken into his home, but the twenty year veteran knew he also had to maintain at least a semblance of control of this situation. So when the tall man with the pea coat and mirror shades sauntered into the living room and handed him one of his own beers, he accepted it and took a slow, deliberate drink. He was a little proud that his teeth were barely gritted, as he asked, “So what the hell is the Federal Government doing in my house?”

Danner grinned, taking a draw on his own bottle before replying. “Haven’t you heard? Big Brother is in everyone’s home. Don’t act so surprised, John. Besides, I figured it was easier to do it this way, rather than set up another meet and try and dodge your surveillance teams again. Believe me, you do not want them hearing what we have to talk about tonight.”

Danner stepped across the room to the sliding glass doors, that overlooked the now dark patio and backyard, turning his back on the other man and his drawn gun. Burke looked at the pistol, then almost reluctantly holstered it. He followed Danner into the living room and stood next to him at the glass doors, watching the night, then taking a deliberate sip of the cold beer. When he thought he had proved his point, he asked, “So what’s so important that you get to break into my home and raid my refrigerator?”

“The Dark Wing Boyz,” Danner said, turning to glance at him. “We found their local representatives, or at least two of the top guys.”

“Oh, yeah? That was fast work.”

“We’re motivated. None of us like baby rapers, and some of my guys have kids of their own. You know two operators called Taktarov and Delger?”

Burke frowned. “Vaguely. I haven’t worked vice in years, but they’re supposed to be players in the kink trade, I think. Are you saying they run the Wings?”

“Only here, in San Francisco. Ricardo Wing still seems to be the main guy. Here’s how it works.”

Danner went on to explain the operation, from the loose coalition of human traffickers that sold some of their clients into slavery, to the guys like Taktarov and Delger who ran ‘stables’ of child prostitutes in their particular city. When he was done, Burke could only shake his head, swearing softly.

“It’s like a franchise operation. Menu’s and home delivery, for Christ’s sake. We suspected something like this was going on, but… And you say there are forty kids in this city alone? We had thought no more than ten or twelve! Just how big is this operation?”

“The information you gave us suggested about half a dozen cities across the west and southwest U.S. If it’s the same sort of setup as here, maybe two hundred and fifty to three hundred kids so far. But that could be just the tip of the iceberg. You called this a franchise operation, and that’s pretty accurate. If it keeps working out the way it has, they’ll have no problem getting others set up in every major city in the country. Hell, those numbers could double with New York alone.”

“We have to stop this. I’ll contact vice, get them to bring the two Russians in. We’ll sweat them and—”

“No, no way,” Danner said, shaking his head. “You can’t do that, not until we find out where they keep the children. The word we have is they have no compunction about getting rid of any kids that became a problem. They’ve been operating like that in this city for over a year, and no unexplained bodies have ever been found, have they?”

Burke scowled. “There’s always bodies in this town, and a lot of them never do get explained…”

“There were sixty nine murders in San Francisco last year, down from ninety six the year before. How many of them were unknown children between the ages of six and thirteen who had been repeatedly molested sexually? Not that many, and most of them were eventually solved or at least identified.

“There’s a big turnover in this business. Okay, some of them get sold, mostly to kiddie pimps in other cities. But there must have been some of them that died since they came to this town, and yet they’re not showing up. They’ve got some way of making the bodies disappear, which means if things get too hot for them… Those kids are the only evidence against these bastards, Lieutenant. Everything else is hearsay. You getting the picture?”

Burke took a deep breath and held it, then let it out slowly. Yeah, he got the picture. Saw it clearly in his head. Dead babies, littering the streets of his town like so much trash. A nightmare for anyone, but a particular one for a man like him, a man with a badge. Their twisted, brutalized bodies lay there in his imagination, dead eyes staring at him. Pleading with him to save them…

Danner’s interruption came as a relief. “Before my people and I decide what to do, we have some questions that need answering.”

“You and your people? That sounds as if I don’t have any say in what’s going to happen.”

“Very little. Tell me about Walter Tibbs.”

It was the last thing he had expected to hear, and it felt like somebody had just stabbed him in the gut with an icicle. “Walter Tibbs?” he said, making it a question.

“Don’t lie to me, John,” Donner answered, in a soft, no nonsense voice as cold as stone.

Burke sighed. Damn, these guys were good. But then, that’s what he needed, wasn’t it? “So how much do you know?”

“Captain Walter Tibbs, SFPD, Special Liaison to the mayor’s office for Police Affairs. He and his partner Steven DiLorenzo busted Taktarov and Delger eight years ago when they first came to this town. The two Russians were running some sort of protection shakedown on street level pimps and whores. The case was thrown out when the evidence against them went missing from the evidence room. Later they listed Taktarov as a confidential informant, and it looks like they’ve been running interference for them ever since.”

“Nothing unusual about that. Cops turn snitches every day. We compromise somebody low level, then go easy on ‘em in exchange for information. We couldn’t operate without C.I.s, which is why we go to such lengths to protect a good one.”

“You’re right, that is the way it usually works. Except Tibbs and DiLorenzo have been protecting two very big players for eight years, and yet they’ve attributed almost no information from them in the past six. So what are they getting from the Russians that’s worth that kind of cover? I think we both know the answer to that.”

The maybe-Fed was quiet after that, giving Burke an opening. But the big cop stayed silent. Burke continued to stare out the window into the night, but he could feel those eyes weighing him from behind their mirrored lenses.

“We wondered about you. Despite what you told Molly Wu, you never reported us to your superiors. Not your Captain, who you should have, or anybody above him. That made us really, really curious.

“Then we found out about the link between Tibbs and DiLorenzo and the Russians. And we also found that you had once accused Tibbs and DiLorenzo of killing your partner, Edward Manz. That’s when everything began to make sense.”

“You seem to have it all figured out now, don’t you? You have access to all the files, it looks like.”

“And the files aren’t worth shit, and you know it. DiLorenzo is dead, killed in a liquor store hold up two years ago. But that still leaves Tibbs, and if we’re going to keep doing this then I need to know what’s between the two of you. I’m not going to risk my people on some wild assed personal vendetta.””

For a moment the living room and it's mysterious occupant faded, and Burke found himself back in a stinking alley behind the fish market. Gunfire lit the narrow space with harsh strobe effects, the deafening roar echoing eerily. The hot burning air on his left cheek telling him how near he was to death, the sudden fountain of red on Eddie's chest and throat. Holding his partner as he bled out on the filthy street, trying to staunch the gushing river of blood, shouting at him to hang on. The light leaving Eddie's eyes when he couldn't...

Burke turned away, again looking out at the dark, lost in shades of the past. This was an incredibly personal thing that a stranger was asking him to expose, but he knew he would do it. He had no choice.

"Ten years ago. I was just starting plainclothes, and Eddie Manz was my first partner. He taught me a lot, kept me from stepping on my dick too much those first six months. We were working vice, and found a family of Greeks who owned a fishing boat, and were using it to smuggle drugs in. They were using a string of street whores to distribute for them. We contacted Narcotics, since it was more their case than it was ours, but they were short handed that week so they let us in on the investigation.

"The Greek's boat had just gotten in that night, and Eddie and I were going to watch them unload, see if we could spot them moving the drugs. We stopped for coffee at this dinner near the wharf, when Tibbs and DiLorenzo came up and joined us. Tibbs said they were just passing by when they spotted our unit, and it wasn't until later that I realized just how unlikely that was.

“I hardly knew those guys, they were two senior Inspectors, and I was some kid just out of uniform. But Eddie knew about them, or at least he didn't trust them completely. When Tibbs started asking about our case Eddie was evasive, didn't want to give away any details, but I was too damn stupid to take the hint. I started bragging, telling how we found out about the Greeks all by ourselves, how we were going to follow them that night with their shipment, and bust them the next day. Eddie kept shooting me looks, wanting me to shut up, but I was just too—”

Burke stopped, letting the pain and recriminations wash over him. He looked at his half visible reflection in the plate glass, saw the lines that etched his face so deeply. He looked old. Christ, he was only thirty six, when did he get so old?

“After awhile DiLorenzo got up and said he had to use the bathroom. But when I went for cigarettes a few minutes later, I saw him in the back talking on a payphone. Afterwards he and Tibbs seemed in no hurry, and tried to keep us there with small talk, but Eddie wasn't having it. He finally hustled me out to the car, where he gave me hell for talking too much about an open case. I didn't know why he was so upset, to me we were just shooting the shit with a couple of other cops, but all he would say was that it was bad procedure. We set up on the wharf where the fishing boat was, but something was wrong. The ship was riding low, it hadn't been unloaded, but the hatches to all the holds were open.

We checked it out, and there was no one onboard. It looked like the entire crew had suddenly stopped in the middle of unloading the catch, and had just left. Eddie cussed, and then glared at me. Somebody had tipped the Greeks off, and although he didn't come out and say it we both knew who it had to be. Eddie dragged me back to the car and we took off, heading for the office and small warehouse the Greeks ran their business out of.

“We parked around the corner and came in on foot. The three Greek brothers were there, loading a pickup truck with records and what later turned out to be five keys of Mexican black tar heroin. We were being careful, but I guess they were pretty on edge. The eldest brother spotted us, and shouted “It’s them!” and started shooting. The others joined in, and everything went to hell.”

“And when it was all over two of the smugglers were dead, and so was Eddie Manz,” Danner said.

Burke continued, as if he hadn’t heard the other’s words. “I told the review board everything, even filed a report with Internal Affairs. But I didn’t have any proof, not even Eddie to back me up. It was just the suspicions of a distraught kid who had just lost his partner, against two senior investigators. Nothing happened, there wasn’t even an investigation, and everyone told me to forget about it.”

“But you didn’t forget, did you, John? You couldn’t. In fact, I bet you kept tabs on those two all these years.”

“As much as I could. I almost had enough of DiLorenzo to bring to IAD, but he died first. He bought expensive cars, gambled, obviously lived beyond his means. But Tibbs is a lot harder to prove anything against. He lives well, but he married money. The wife was actually disinherited, but it’s easy to pretend one of the relatives is still providing her income, and I can’t prove otherwise.”

“So when we came along, you saw it as a golden opportunity to start an investigation against the man who got your partner killed. Which is why you never told anybody up the ladder about us. So how did you know Tibbs was connected to the Dark Wing Boyz?”

“His reports to the Mayor’s office. I’ve got a friend who works over there who gets me my own private copy. The facts and figures themselves are usually pretty accurate, but Tibbs always left out or downplayed certain things. We’ve known for years the Dark Wings were getting to be major players in this town, but his reports always made them look like small timers.”

“He’s covering for them. Okay, so when we came along, you threw the human trafficking thing at us hoping we’d expose Tibbs. You hoped we could do what you couldn’t.”

“Yeah.” Burke paused, then added, “And it worked too, didn’t it? I never knew about the Russians, you found them and now you’ve connected them to Tibbs.”

“We haven’t connected anything. This is all supposition and you know it. We still need hard proof, not a bunch of educated guesswork.”

Burke looked at him for a moment, then said, “You said ‘we’. Does that mean you’re still on the case?”

Instead of answering right away Danner paused to take another long drink from the beer bottle, and then another, making Burke wait before he replied. “Yeah, we’re still in. One way or another, we’ll see it through. But things have changed now, John. We don’t have anything to prove anymore. You do.”

Burke glanced at him, a frown forming between his eyes. “Prove? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it says. When we came to you, it was with an offer of our services. We said we could help you catch the bad guys and serve the public trust. We proved it by giving you the stash house for the Trojans, and proved it again by taking them down for you without a single shot being fired. And now we bring you the names of two of the top straw bosses of the Dark Wing Boyz, involved in this human trafficking crap, and information on how they operate. None of which you could have gotten for yourself. As far as I’m concerned, our credentials speak for themselves.

“But now I find out that your number one suspect is one of the top cops in this entire city. Special Liaison to the Mayor’s office, no less. And your only witness, a nine year old orphan girl, gets gunned down in broad daylight. Probably because your man sold her out. Suddenly I’m feeling very leery about us getting involved with you people, you know what I mean?”

John Burke, Lieutenant, San Francisco PD, felt the back of his neck burn with anger and humiliation. His pride was deeply stung by the mystery man’s insinuation, but at the same time he couldn’t deny his words. Through gritted teeth he finally said, “So just what are you saying, Danner?”

“What I’m saying, Lieutenant, is that if we are going to work together on this, then from here on out I’m in charge. If I ask you for something, then it’s not a request. If I say I need something done, then you do it, no questions asked. I won’t abuse the situation, I’m not going to make demands that aren’t reasonable or necessary, but what I say has to go. Do you got that?”

Burke’s anger had just been scaled up to a full blown fury. The fucking nerve…! “You actually expect to use my police department… my people… as your own private little resource?! What the hell makes you think I’d ever even consider something like that?”

“Because if you don’t then this so far profitable arrangement ends. We’re out, and you never see me or mine again.”

“Yeah? So what about this, ‘one way or another, we’ll see it through’ bullshit?”

“Oh, we’ll still finish the mission. But we’ll do it by ourselves, without any help from you or the rest of the SFPD. We’ll find the kids and put an end to the Wings, and along the way we’ll probably take down your man Tibbs, too. We’ll take him down, but you won’t have a thing to do with it. Not a damned thing.”

For a second Burke went incredibly still inside, but that was just the calm before the storm, the moment before reality finally set in. A sense of total outrage suddenly blazed up inside of him, a denial that screamed NO so loud that it echoed inside his head like the pealing of an enormous bell. The gut level reaction was so powerful it caught him completely by surprise, leaving him shaken, and shocked to find his hand instinctively reaching to draw his service revolver again.

It seemed that the Federal cowboy knew just which of his buttons to push. It was only then, when the prize that he had hungered ten years for had been held out to him and then snatched from his grasp, that he realized just how much he needed this. Not just to see Tibbs being brought to justice and his name smeared with the filth of his lies and betrayals, but to have his be the hand that did it.

Burke ground his teeth hard enough to make them groan before he answered. His impulses were torn, he didn’t punch Danner in the face, but he didn’t completely surrender, either. He preserved some of his dignity by taking the middle road, and not actually promising anything. “Just what sort of demands are you expecting to be issuing here?” he asked.

“Information, mostly,” Danner said, ignoring the bitterness and resentment in Burke’s tone. “I might need to know something fast, and I won’t have time to go through channels or dig it up on my own. Besides, we both know how much doesn’t make it into the official records. You know this town, you have connections and sources I couldn’t get no matter how long I stay here. In return, we’ll give you anything we find out, if we decide that you need to know it.”

Burke thought about it, and nodded, grudgingly. Sharing information was pretty much what they had already agreed on during that first meeting, although having Danner and his people decide what to tell him went against the grain. Usually, that was the position he liked to play. Still, he had little room to complain, considering their recent security record.

“Okay, I can live with that. At least for this case. If we ever work together again, though, that arrangement goes out the window. Now what else?”

“Molly Wu. I want her on call twenty-four seven until this job is done. I’m going to need her when we take down wherever they’re keeping those kids, and I need her to know that she comes when ¬I call, not just you.”

“The hell you say! No way am I going to allow you to put one of my people in danger, just on your damned say so.”

“She won’t be in any danger! Look… There are going to be no arrests, no warrants, no reports, nothing, until we find those kids and get them to safety. Their lives are my number one priority, and they better be yours, too. But when I do get them out, we’re going to have forty abused and traumatized children on our hands, most of whom won’t speak any English. According to her personnel jacket, Inspector Wu is fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese. Plus she’s a woman, someone who those kids will probably trust more than any man. When this goes down I’ll need her, and I’ll need her fast. I won’t have time to go through you, which means you have to tell her to drop whatever she’s doing and come whenever I call.”

Burke considered the man’s words, struggled with them, but in the end he could find no fault with his reasoning. The welfare of those kids did come first, and he was abruptly ashamed to realize just how little he had been thinking about them. He wanted Tibbs bad, but damnit, not at their expense.

“Alright, I’ll tell Wu in the morning. As long as she’s not involved in the actual takedown. Anything else?”

“No. Glad we had this meeting of the minds, though. I’ll be in touch.”

Danner reached out and flipped a wall switch next to the sliding glass door. Outside the porch lights came on, brightly illuminating the small concrete patio, but also throwing the rest of the yard into total shadow. Without another word the tall man in black opened the door and slipped outside, still holding on to his bottle of beer, passing through the patch of bright light and then completely disappearing into the gloom.

Burke blinked, then reached out and flipped the outside lights off, peering into the gloom. He knew there was only one exit from the yard, a side gate with a rusty hinge that squealed like an angry cat whenever it was opened. He heard no such sound, no crinkle of footsteps on the dry grass.

Yet there was nobody there, the yard was completely empty.