Anomaly Flats (11 page)

His voice seemed far away now, as if it he were speaking from behind the sun. “Mallory.”

Now urgently, and from the dark side of the moon: “Mallory!”

Now frantic, and choked with dirt, from six feet beneath the soil: “Mallory!”

And then, the voice came from somewhere new. Somewhere right next to her. It rang with a sharp clarity that pierced her brain and made the gearshift vibrate. “
MALLORY!”

She gasped, and her eyes flew open. Her fingers were fingers again, and they were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. The gearshift stood straight and tall on the floor, where it belonged, and Mallory’s head was whole. The interior of the cab was free and clear of her viscous despair. The truck sat idling on the roadside; the cornfield waved starkly in the wind behind them.

“What…?” Mallory whispered, her voice trembling. She gazed at Lewis, regular, non-watermelon Lewis, with an ocean of troubled confusion.

“You’re all right,” he said, taking her hand in his. “Just take a minute. Take a breath.” And then, because it seemed to be in his nature and, Mallory supposed, because he just couldn’t help it, he had to add, “I told you not to listen.”

Mallory turned in her seat and looked back at the cornfield. The brown, dead stalks dripped their rotted juices onto the hard, dry soil. The crinkled leaves waved in the air, bidding her a silent and mocking adieu. “What…happened?”

Lewis adjusted his glasses on his nose. “The Fields of Insanity happened.”

Mallory’s world was wrapped in gauze, and she struggled to peel away the layers. “The…what?”

“It’s the corn,” he explained, patting her hand. “It…has an effect on people. That’s why no one eats it. That’s why it’s left on the stalk to rot. You can’t listen to the corn, it does bad things to you. Do you understand? Don’t ever listen to the corn, Mallory. And don’t ever,
ever
eat it.”

“The corn drives people insane?” She buried her face in her palms and tried to rub some sense into her brain. “Lewis, then why do you even grow it?”

“
I
don’t grow it,” he insisted, raising his hands defensively. “Farmer Buchheit grows it.”

Mallory exhaled, annoyed. “Then why does
Farmer Buchheit
grow it?”

Lewis shrugged. “Because Farmer Buchheit’s a real asshole.”

Mallory shook her head and tried to regain some sense of herself. “Am I going to be okay?”

Lewis crumpled up the corner of his mouth. “Do you
feel
okay?”

“I feel like someone scooped out my brain and replaced it with a ball of hash browns.”

Lewis squinted at her uncertainly. “You’ll…
probably
be fine?” he guessed.

“How’d we make it through? I stopped the truck…how’d we make it out?”

Lewis shook his head. “You didn’t stop the truck. You
gunned
the truck. It seems you have an incredibly powerful survival instinct. Which is good; that comes in handy around here.”

“But I thought I stopped the truck…” Mallory drifted, looking down at the gearshift and remembering, quite vividly, the painless sensation of the jagged metal pushing through her gray matter. She shuddered from the chill of it, and her mind slowly began collecting itself. Then Mallory gasped. “The clone!”

“He didn’t make it out unscathed.” Lewis pointed out the windshield. On the other side of the dirt road, down a ways, the RV rested awkwardly on one busted tire. The clone stood outside of the truck, his hand against the side of the Winnebago for support. His legs wobbled as he steadied himself, and he thumped the heel of his free hand against his temple. “The driver’s window tends to stick. It doesn’t always roll back up once it’s down. The voices must have been loud and clear.” Lewis smiled. “That’s what he gets for tossing my acid collection,” he said smugly. “The value of those ruined vials alone is—”

“My bag!” Mallory interrupted. Across the street, the evil clone had pulled open the RV’s side door and was digging Mallory’s purple Jansport out of the back. He tossed it onto the ground and unzipped it. He peered down into the bag, then looked up at the RV. Then he looked back down at the bag. Then back up at the RV…then back down at the bag.

A wide grin spread across his face.

He did a quick rummage through the Winnebago, making a frantic grab for an armful of vials and beakers and lab equipment. He dumped the small load into the bag, zipped it up, and slung it over his shoulder. Then he sprinted away from the ruined vehicle and into the neighboring field.

“Son of a bitch!” Mallory screamed. She stomped down on the brake and clutch and turned the key in the ignition. The engine clicked, but didn’t turn. “No, no, no, no,” Mallory prayed as she tried a second time, then a third. “
No!
” She slammed her hands angrily against the wheel. “I’m gonna kill those motherfucking magnetics!”

“It’s not the magnetic field. This truck is too old to have an alternator,” Lewis pointed out.

“Shut up. Fix it.”

Lewis tilted his head. “Fix it?”

“Fix it!”

“Did I not mention that I’m not a mechanic? I could swear this has come up before.”

“Argh!” Mallory threw off her seatbelt, launched out the door, and took off on foot after the clone. “Give me back my goddamn bag!” she screamed.

Lewis gave a low whistle as he watched her go. “She sure likes that backpack,” he said to the empty cab. Then he jumped out of the truck and ran to catch up.

Fortunately for Mallory, the clone had the same genes as her good-for-nothing scientist companion, and she could tell he was laboring under the weight of the bag. She was maybe only 100 yards behind, and gaining.

The original Lewis was faltering somewhere behind her. She was pretty sure she heard him collapse, wheezing, into the tall grass, but she didn’t bother looking back.
Serves him right,
she thought.

Evil Lewis’ pace slowed even more as he approached a makeshift plank bridge on the far end of the field that crossed a familiar-looking stream of neon green plasma. He unzipped the backpack as he neared the center of the bridge and dug frantically through its contents. He pulled out something that was too small for Mallory to see. Whatever it was, the clone crouched down and smeared it on the bridge, right in the middle. Then he stood, zipped up the bag, and ran across to the flat land on the other side of the creek.

Mallory pushed herself harder. The clone was closer now, only 50 yards, and she could catch him. She
knew
she could catch him. She could drive her sturdy legs faster, force her sturdy lungs to breathe, and choke the living shit out of that evil bastard with her sturdy fucking hands.

She sprinted up the bridge and was nearing the spot where the clone had paused when she heard Lewis’ screaming voice behind her: “Mallory,
stop!
”

Stop? Was he insane? The only thing standing between her and that evil little twerp was half a bridge and a bit of grass. She couldn’t stop. She could catch the clone, reclaim her bag, and plunge his little head into Plasma Creek so he turned into a walking dandelion that would ripen in a week and blow away in the wind to nothingness. That, she could do. But stop?

No.

She couldn’t stop.

But then the bridge made a really good case for stopping by exploding right in the middle.

The force of the explosion lifted Mallory off her feet and tossed her through the air as if she were a pebble. She was so stunned at this sudden change in both events and trajectory that she didn’t even think to scream until she crashed down on her shoulder and skidded for ten feet in the hard earth. Then she remembered to scream. A lot.

“Mallory! Are you okay?” Lewis asked, jogging up to her prostrate form, gasping for air. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m hurt
everywhere
!” Mallory screeched between strings of expletives. “I’m going to kill that little fucking clone. And then I think I’ll kill you. And then I’ll kill him again.
Harder
.”

Lewis stood up and put two fingers to his neck to check his pulse. “I told you to stop,” he pointed out between breaths.

“You’re gonna be so much less smug when I murder you,” Mallory decided. She struggled to sit up.

“You should rest for a minute,” Lewis said, though he reached down and helped her into a seat anyway. He inspected her carefully. “Are you burned? You don’t look burned.”

“Should I be burned?”

Lewis shrugged. “That depends on which explosive cream he used.”

“Explosive
cream
?”

Lewis blushed. “It’s my own invention,” he said modestly.

“Congratulations, Oppenheimer; you’re a monster.” Lewis frowned. Mallory gave herself a once-over. She didn’t
seem
burned. “I think I’m okay.”

Lewis nodded his agreement. “He must have used the cold fusion cream,” he murmured.

Mallory coughed. She wasn’t exactly a physicist—and was not entirely sure she could even
spell
“physicist” if it came down to it—but she’d done well enough in science class to know there were at least two things distinctly wrong with Lewis’ statement. One was that she was fairly sure that cold fusion
fused
things, which was the opposite of exploding them. But it was the second thing that really made her suspicious. “Doesn’t cold fusion…not exist?”

Lewis nearly squealed with delight. “Not usually, no. But with the help of Anomaly Flats, I have unlocked the secret!” He beamed, and he clearly expected Mallory to share his excitement.

Instead, she just shrugged.

“Granted, it doesn’t behave
quite
like it should,” Lewis continued. “It’s terribly unstable. It does more explosion than fusion, as you’ve seen. Actually, it hasn’t done any actual fusion yet at all. I’m working out the kinks. But still! We were in theoretical territory until now. Who really knew
what
should
happen when someone achieved cold fusion? Oh, Mallory, you should see the process! I’m a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize when I publish my notes to the scientific community. Just you wait! Won’t it be wonderful?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty wonderful that your clone used an explosive that you accidentally created to nearly blow my head off instead of using it for cold fusion.”

Lewis frowned. “We’ll discuss it later,” he sighed. “When you’re feeling better.”

“Can we just get my bag back, please?”

“Um…” Lewis glanced nervously at the bridge, then back down at Mallory. “I think we may have to put this little chase on hiatus.” Mallory struggled to her feet and looked at the bridge. The explosion had blown one end of it clear across the far side of the bank. The other end had plunged into Plasma Creek and had resurfaced as a baby panda that bobbed happily down the creek. As for Lewis’ evil clone, he was busy disappearing over a ridge in the distance.

“What about the…whatchamacallits?” Mallory asked.

“Whichamacallits?” Lewis asked back.

“The thingies—the beams of light that make people burn. Why isn’t he running into those?” The thought of him escaping certain disintegration made Mallory’s heart sink, until she realized what would happen to her backpack if the clone were caught in one of the beams. She felt a little better about the lack of vaporization then.

“Ah! Those. We’re too far north,” Lewis said. “There haven’t been any reports of that sort of thermonuclear activity in this part of the creek.”

“Well, we can’t lose him, bridge or no bridge. He’s on foot, I can catch him.” Mallory stepped up to the stream and considered the distance between the two banks. “And I can totally jump that,” she decided.

“It’s ten feet,” Lewis pointed out uncertainly. “At the very least.”

“So what? I can jump it. I’m positive.”

“Mallory—” the scientist began.

“No! Listen to me, Lewis. That bastard clone has my backpack, and I need it back. Do you understand me? I don’t just
want
it back; I
need
it back. Without that bag, this whole fucking misery has been for nothing, and that is
not
going to happen.” She took a few steps back. She swung her arms and worked to loosen her legs. “I can do this,” she reminded herself aloud, taking a deep breath. “Totally easy. I can do it.” She braced herself to begin her sprint.

“You know, we
could
just grab him at dinner,” Lewis said.

Mallory stopped and looked at Lewis. “Say what?”

“I said, you can either try to make an impossible leap and wind up plunging into a river of plasma that’ll turn you into some sort of clump of rotting weeds, or you can wait a couple of hours and grab him when he goes to dinner tonight.”

Mallory squinted, suspicious. “Where’s he going to dinner tonight?”

“Chick-fil-A.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because it’s Friday,” he said with a little smile. “
Everyone
has Chick-fil-A for dinner on Friday.”

Mallory screwed up her face in disgust. “Ew. What is that, some sort of weird, communal death-by-grease ritual?”

Lewis turned and started walking back to the broken-down vehicles. He couldn’t fix the Chevy, but he knew how to change a tire. “Nope,” he said, nodding for Mallory to follow. “Not a ritual. It’s the law.”

Chapter 12

“So let me get this straight. You eat at Chick-fil-A on Friday nights, or else you go to jail?”

“Yep,” Lewis said, putting the Winnebago into gear. “Tuesday lunches, too. If you take lunch anywhere else on Tuesdays, you go straight to the hole.”

“The hole?”

“The hole.”

“What’s the hole?” Mallory asked, buckling her seatbelt.

“It’s…pretty much what it sounds like,” Lewis said sadly. Then he added, “But deeper.”

“Is it even worth asking why?” Mallory sighed. She rested her forehead against the cool glass of the RV window.

“Because the Chick-fil-A is owned by the mayor. And she likes us to spend our money there.”

“And surely an evil clone wouldn’t dare get on the wrong side of the law,” Mallory chided.

“You haven’t seen our jail,” he said. “Trust me. He’ll be there.”

As they drove back down Cumberland toward the downtown strip, Lewis laid out a plan. The dinner rush usually picked up around 6:00. He felt sure that the clone would either arrive extremely early or extremely late, in an attempt to avoid detection.

“Are you sure?” Mallory asked. “If it were me, I’d go in when it was slammed. Try to blend in with the crowd.”

But Lewis was adamant. “Not a chance. He wouldn’t risk bumping into me and causing a scene.”

“But wouldn’t he know that you would know that he would want to go early or late, and then
not
go early or late because he’d know you’d be there to catch him either early or late?” Mallory was starting to get the hang of clone-think. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

“No,” Lewis insisted, “because I know that
he
knows that
I
know that he’d want to go early or late, and he
knows
that I know that
he
knows that
I
know that he’d want to go early or late, so he’s much more likely to reverse-double-cross himself by trying to double-cross-reverse me. You see?”

Mallory groaned. “Sure,” she said. “So, what, we stake out a fast food joint for the next two or maybe seven hours and hope he shows?”

“There’s a great spot right behind the used grease dumpster,” Lewis beamed.

“Ew…they have a separate dumpster for it?” Her face paled at the thought of a dumpster filled with plastic bags full of used grease.

“Well, yeah. So you don’t put grease in the spare-chicken-part dumpster,” Lewis said, laughing a bit, because this was clearly the most obvious thing in the world. “Otherwise, the town mutants would get grease-flu when they swarmed the dumpster and fed on the spare chicken parts after dark.”

They drove the rest of the way pretty much in silence.

X

“So. This is what chicken grease smells like.”

Lewis made a surprised noise somewhere behind his nasal cavity. “Have you never smelled chicken grease before?” he asked.

Mallory sank down in her seat and pulled the collar of her t-shirt up over her nose. “Not in such…quantity,” she said. The pungent smell stung at her eyes, and they glistened over with tears.

“But look at the vantage point,” Lewis said, nodding toward the restaurant. They had an excellent view of both the side and back doors of the Chick-fil-A. They could see the employees in their chicken-stained red polos, wiping off tables and sweeping up floors and generally busying themselves in preparation for the mandatory dinner rush.

“Why are the employees all muscly bald man?” Mallory asked. Something stirred involuntarily in the depths of her stomach as she watched a sweaty lunk with fading blue tattoos shake a pan of dirty water down a drain.
Stop it, ovaries,
she silently cursed herself, embarrassed on behalf of her biological clock.

“Prison work program,” Lewis said.

“They let prisoners work at Chick-fil-A?”

Lewis nodded. “They insist on it! It actually solves a few problems at once. The mayor is firmly against paying a living wage, and the prisoners would do literally anything to get out of the jail for a while.
Literally anything
, Mallory. Our jail is terrible.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Lewis gestured to the men working inside the restaurant. “This seemed like a decent solution for everyone.”

“Are they violent?” she asked, working hard to keep a small hint of excitement out of her voice.

Lewis shrugged. “Some of them, sure.”

Strangely, this did little to dilute her estrogen levels.

She gave her head a good shake and tried to focus. They had no clear view of the front of the building from this angle. “What if the clone goes in the front door?” she asked.

Lewis chuckled. “The front door? No one uses the front door. You get sliced in half by a giant saw blade if you go in that way.”

Mallory coughed in surprise. “Seems like a strange way to run a business.”

“It keeps the foyer clean,” Lewis explained. “People tend track in a lot of mud.”

A speaker just to their left squealed. Mallory jumped a mile. “Christ!” she said, putting a hand to her chest and catching her breath. “Does any place in this town
not
have a loudspeaker?”

Lewis looked at her strangely. “No,” he said.

The now-familiar female voice crackled to life:

“Attention, Anomaly Flats: Next week, all water at the Anomaly Flats Island Adventure Water Park will be replaced by five metric tons of loose gravel as part of an ongoing experiment by a clandestine research group that you should never, ever inquire about. The water park will operate normally, at regular business hours, but with loose gravel instead of water. If you were planning on visiting Island Adventure Water Park next week, you should not change your plans. Anyone who has been planning on visiting Island Adventure Water Park but changes their mind because the water slides, lazy river, and wave pool will now be filled with loose gravel will be visited in the night by the clandestine research group and surgically removed.”

The speaker squawked and screeched, and then cut out completely.

“They sure know how to keep up morale,” Mallory grumbled.

“Yes,” Lewis agreed. “Isn’t it
fascinating
?”

A few early dinner patrons began filtering into the parking lot and sitting down to their chicken sandwiches and oversized Cokes, but they were older, much older, and the evil clone wasn’t among them.

“So here’s a question,” she said, leaning back against the dumpster. The grease smell wasn’t so pungent, now that her nostrils had gotten a good dose of it. “Since Evil Lewis is your clone, isn’t he off the hook if
you
go in for dinner? I mean, they’re going to be on the lookout for Lewis Barnish—”

“Burnish.”

“—Burnish, sorry. But they’re not going to be looking for
two
Lewis Barnishes, right?”

“Burnishes,” he stressed.

“Get over it. You know what I’m saying, right? They’re not going to be all, ‘Oh, look, only one weird scientist came to dinner today, that’s suspicious; shouldn’t there be a second genetically-identical weird scientist that no one knows exists except for the weird scientist, the weird scientist’s clone, and a super-hot tourist?’”

“Actually, they will. The mayor tracks everyone in town by heat signature from her fleet of drones. If they find his heat signature on the other side of town, he’s dead.”

“I thought you said he’d go to jail.”

“You think my genetic duplicate would survive more than three hours in a prison? Especially
this
prison? Mallory, you haven’t seen our jail…”

Mallory laughed. “I think your genetic duplicate would be lucky to survive more than three
minutes
in prison.
Any
prison.”

“Well, that’s…hurtful, mostly. But you see my point.”

“But what if he risks it? What if he decides to take advantage of the rest of the town being empty to pull off some next-level evil clone shit?”

Lewis raised an eyebrow. “Next-level evil clone shit?”

Mallory shrugged with her palms. “You know. Sinister things. Like rig elections. Bomb buildings. Drown old people in ice water. Throw away their medicine. I don’t know—what do the town’s evil clones usually do?”

Lewis squinted one eye, poked his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, and tried to remember. “It’s been a while since we’ve had one. I guess the last clone would have been Evil Lori Koppel. She set fire to the fire department and bulldozed the original bowling alley. Before that, Evil Mason Crosby poisoned the town’s water supply, and before that, Evil Mary Twixby brainwashed all the children and led them on a death march over the Lava Cliffs into Sputtering Volcano. That’s why everyone in town is sterilized now,” he added. “Just in case.”

“Wow,” Mallory said, admittedly impressed in spite of the horror. “That’s quite a mixed bag.”

“It is,” Lewis agreed. “You never really know what you’re going to get. But don’t worry. He’ll come. He will. I know it. I
feel
it.” He paused, and a heavy silence fell between them. “I would come.”

Mallory started to respond, but movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. A lone male walked up to the side door of the Chick-fil-A, wearing a pale blue bow tie, a green-and-yellow-checkered shirt, and a white lab coat over a pair of pressed khakis. “Lewis!” she exclaimed, grabbing him by the arm. “It’s him!”

“Ow!” Lewis pulled his arm free and rubbed it tenderly. “Not so hard.” He adjusted his glasses and squinted at the man approaching the restaurant. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Are you kidding me? It’s
you
!” Mallory leapt to her feet and started out from behind the dumpster, but Lewis grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.

“Wait!” he hissed. “I don’t think it is.”

“
What?
” Mallory hissed, exasperated. “He’s wearing your
exact same outfit.
”

“Yeah, but look…that guy has a mustache.” Sure enough, the man walking into the Chick-fil-A had a long, droopy mustache balanced precariously above his upper lip. “He’s also wearing a bandana around his neck, and a sombrero.”

“So what?” Mallory said, throwing her hands into the air. “The mustache is
clearly
fake.”

Lewis frowned doubtfully up at her. “And the sombrero? You telling me that’s fake, too?”

“It’s a goddamn
costume
, Lewis!” she hissed.

“I don’t think so,” Lewis said, shaking his head. “I’d never wear a false mustache. It scares me too much. When I first arrived in Anomaly Flats, I grew out a beard. I thought, new life, new look! But facial hair changes you, Mallory. I believe that, in a very real sense. I grew that beard, and I literally didn’t recognize myself in the mirror.” He lifted his eyes, and they were clouded over by the pain of the memory. “It’s a terrible thing to not recognize yourself.”

Mallory clenched her fists. “Look, I’m going in there. He knows where my bag is, and I’m getting it back. Are you coming with me or not?”

Lewis frowned. “No, Mallory,” he decided. “We can’t risk giving up our hiding spot in case the
actual
clone is watching!” His grip on her elbow tightened. “We need to stay here.”

Mallory crouched down and leaned in close to the scientist. “Listen, Barnish—”

“It’s Bur—”

“I DON’T CARE WHAT IT IS! You’re going to let go of my arm right now, for two reasons: One, because that’s the evil clone, and I’m going to go stop him; and two, because I haven’t peed once all goddamn day, and if you don’t let me go into that restaurant, I’m going to let my bladder explode all over your face. Got it?”

Lewis let go of her elbow and scooted farther away, as if something from inside of Mallory might drip onto his shoes. “Geez, you could have just said you had to go…”

“I. JUST. DID.” Mallory turned and marched over to the Chick-fil-A. She pushed open the door and was greeted by the harsh, sickly-sweet smell of fried things and cheap cheese. The restaurant looked like every other Chick-fil-A she’d ever been in, except that this one didn’t have computerized cash registers, of course. Instead, the counter was lined with four old-fashioned registers that dinged and clanged and popped little currency flags up and down like prairie dogs. The poorly-disguised evil clone was standing at one of these registers, placing his order with a bemused and sweaty man behind the counter, so Mallory figured she had some time. She hurried to the bathroom, which was remarkably clean for an establishment with a janitorial staff composed entirely of male criminals.

On her way back out, she crept slowly down the little hallway and peeked her head around the corner.
Shit
, she thought. The clone was no longer at the counter. She did a quick scan of the restaurant, but he was nowhere to be seen. From her post near the door, she could see out the windows of the restaurant…and the clone wasn’t in the parking lot, either.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Well,” said a sharply familiar voice in her ear. “Look who came to dinner.”

Mallory whirled around and threw her closed fist instinctively at the Evil Lewis’s face. He caught her at the wrist and yanked her in close, so that the lid of his sombrero crushed against her forehead and the hairs of the ridiculously oversized mustache tickled her chin. “Looking for me?” he asked.

“I want my bag back, you little twerp,” Mallory seethed. She pulled her hand back, but the evil clone’s grip was strong, much stronger than the real Lewis’. Even so, Mallory’s anger was undeterred. “
Now
.”

Evil Lewis made a grand show of pretending to consider this option. “Nah. I think I’ll keep it,” he decided with a wicked grin. “It’s just filled with such
wonderful
things…”

Mallory stepped in even closer and grabbed the clone by the lapels of his lab coat. He gave a little yelp of surprise. “Listen to me, you little nerd: I
made
you, and I can
end
you. Tell me where my bag is right this second, or I swear to God, I will rip your face off your skull and use it as a dust rag.”

Evil Lewis giggled. “First of all, a strip of face would be horribly ineffective as a dust rag. I mean, just think
about it.”

“Oh my God...you even
dweeb
like Lewis,” she said, disgusted.

“And second of all, I’d proceed very gently if I were you.” With a huge, deranged grin plastered across his face, he slowly grabbed hold of one flap of the lab coat and lifted it gingerly. Beneath it, he wore a vest made of dynamite sticks bound together by electrical tape. The dynamite was wired to a small detonator that he held up in the other hand. “We wouldn’t want there to be any accidents.”

Mallory’s heart froze. She loosened her grip on his lapel, and he squirmed out of her clutches.

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve done all day.” He closed his lab coat and un-crumpled his sombrero. From around the corner, a burly male voice called, “Order 52!” Evil Lewis licked his lips. “That’s me,” he said. He gave her a wink. “Chow time.” Then he skirted around the stunned Mallory and made his way to the counter, tucking the detonator into his coat pocket. He picked up his grease-soaked bag and tipped his huge hat to the man behind the counter. On his way toward the door, he stopped at the hallway and smiled up at Mallory. “Don’t even think about following me,” he said, his voice taking on a hard edge that belied the dumb grin on his face, “or I’ll blow the bag to kingdom come.”

“You wouldn’t,” Mallory challenged, summoning up at least a semblance of stubbornness. But she felt pretty certain that he very much would.

“Try me.” Then he walked to the exit, squeezed the giant sombrero through the doors, sauntered out into the parking lot, and disappeared around the corner.

That,
Mallory decided,
did not go well.