BooksBarbecue
Back Stop at Nothing Save as PDF
Contents ( 98)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. EPILOGUE

Wheldon took out a folded sheet of paper from inside his long coat and put it on the tabletop. He flashed the light from his phone on it to show her.

Ruby swallowed as she looked at her photo from her military ID.

“You tell me,” he said.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s the FBI wire on you. You’re a hot commodity.”

“Oh, no, no, no… Am I like on the news now?”

“No, not yet. That’s an interoffice sheet. They want to bag you discreetly, if they can.”

“AWOL?” she said as she read the charges. “Bullshit! I’m on leave! And ‘Suspicion of Terrorist Activities’! Are they crazy?”

“Yep, that’s how they do it. If it’s a national security top secret matter, they just go to their rigged secret court and get one of their cronies to rubber-stamp it. They don’t need probable cause or to show any evidence. They just say it’s a sensitive security issue and, boom, they get the warrant.”

“I can’t believe this. Are you being watched, too?”

“Off and on,” Wheldon said. “They don’t seem to like me or my YouTube channel very much. Weird.”

The waitress brought her coffee.

“How the hell do you know all this stuff?”

“I told you I used to work in the State Department. I still know a few people, good people, who have had it up to here with what’s happening.”

“What is happening?”

“We’ll get to all that. We need to get out of here first. I have a friend. You can crash on her couch. You’ll like her. Everybody likes Rebecca.”

“Then what?”

“Then tomorrow, we talk. Trade notes. Figure out your situation. How does that sound?”

“Honestly, sort of crazy,” Ruby said as she stared at her very first personal WANTED poster there on the paper. “Five seconds ago, I was at my sister’s house feeding my new niece. Now the FBI is after me, and I’m here in New York with a conspiracy theorist.”

“Not theorist,” Wheldon said, smiling as he dropped a couple of bills on the table. “Analyst, Ruby. The conspiracy is real. As you know yourself now.”

Ruby took a sip of her coffee as Wheldon stood and yanked open a door beside their booth.

“Are you ready?” Wheldon said.

Ruby looked out the door. Beyond it there was a bunch of garbage bags and beer case boxes and a set of metal fire escape–style stairs heading up. A frigid ear-nipping wind rushed in.

“No, but let’s do it anyway, I guess,” Ruby said as she finally stood.

39

When Reyland woke it was around midnight and there was a sound of violins.

When he opened an eye, up on the big wall-sized screen, he could see men in Civil War uniforms being carried on stretchers. Scarlett O’Hara appeared, looking to and fro, and then the camera panned back to dramatically reveal a sepia-colored train yard filled with the dead and dying as the music turned to a sad strain of Dixieland.