Expiration Date (18 page)

Jesus, you’re the smartest of anyone. Please give me a plan
.

Just like that, as clear as a father telling his son how to read traffic signs, an idea entered Kenny’s mind. He knew just where to go.

One after another, headstones completed their sober trek through Clay’s work area, affecting him more deeply than he’d expected. Life was so transitory, death so arbitrary.

Along the riverbank …

It was not my fault. It wasn’t! How could I have known what would happen?

The lunch bell rang. He punched out at the time clock—choosing to disregard the gloomy symbolism—and let Digs ride shotgun in the Duster down to the corner market. Clay bought a beer to accompany his lunch; Digs ate from a brown paper bag, patient and thoughtful, his manner communicating empathy with Clay’s struggle.

“Been there, pal.”

“Where?” Clay leaned against the store’s outer wall. “I’m fine, Digs. Really.”

“It’s botherin’ ya, plain to see. Nothing unusual about that.”

“Everything’s just dandy.” Clay pulled one foot up and tilted back the drink.

“You sure that’s a good idea on lunch hour?”

“I’m thirsty, okay? I don’t even like the taste that much. You’re right, though, about the job. People pass on. It’s part of life, but you just never realize how persistent it is, one order after another. Tombstone after tombstone. You work at a place like Glenleaf, and you hope that maybe just once you’ll have a slow day on the job.”

“It’s a busy place, that’s a fact. No such thing as dead time.”

“Funny. Ha, ha.”

“Bad pun, I know. Really oughta stop jokin’ about such grave concerns.”

Clay moaned, swirled the bottle. The liquid foamed like peroxide on a wound.

“Hey, don’t take it wrong, Ryker. Just my way of copin’. You know that.”

“I’m not sure I can keep doing this work.”

“Sure you can.”

“I don’t know. I’ve got other issues I’m dealing with.” Clay emptied the beer and set it on the ground. With the toe of his shoe, he traced graffiti on the wall. “You should see my little boy, Jason. Brown hair, thick like mine. And his mother’s big green eyes. I’d do anything to have him here right now.”

“I had a son.”

“Had?”

“Haven’t seen him since he was, oh, four years old. His momma up and left.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“But she had her reasons. See, Ryker, I have a record. Did time—seven years at the state pen. Been cleaned up ever since, collectin’ my paycheck and payin’ off my land. Got a trailer, some good acres of rye, and a fine view of the sun when it crests over the Cascades. Got nothin’ to complain about.”

“What’d you do? I mean, not that it’s any of—”

“You’re right. Ain’t none of your business.”

“So you haven’t heard from your son? Do you know where he is?”

Digs sucked in his cheeks as if trying to remember. “Nope. Haven’t heard.”

“That must be rough. Man, if something ever happened to Jason …”

“Know whatcha mean. It’s probably best that we can’t see into the future.”

“What if we could change things? If we could intervene somehow?”

“No.” Digs bent to pick up Clay’s abandoned bottle, tossed it into a dented trash can. “We’re only human, guaranteed to mess things up worse than we already have. Believe me, it’s best not knowin’. Easier to take it one day at a time.”

Clay was less certain. “We’d better head back. Lunch’s almost over.”

As he found his seat in the car, he couldn’t shake Henna’s words from the encounter on the Greyhound. Sure, knowledge could be seductive, but foreknowledge could arm you against impending doom. Wouldn’t it be better to have a little advance warning? Diseases could be averted, accidents avoided, lives spared … marriages saved.

Yep. Let Clay Ryker make the rules, and the world would be a safer place.

It sounded so simple.

“I’ll drop you back at the shop,” he told Digs. “Something I’ve gotta do.”

The Mario Brothers clock over the counter warned Clay he was well past his lunch break, and he knew he’d take heat for it when Mr. Blomberg returned from his trip.

Right now, Kenny Preston was his focus.

Nickel’s Arcade was a busy spot, with clusters of kids attached to the most popular games along the wall. Clay recognized a few of the games. Although he experienced a surge of adrenaline at the possibility of head-to-head competition, he saw nobody matching Kenny’s appearance.

Maybe he should give it a few minutes. See if the kid showed.

Clay inserted a bill into the coin machine, purchasing a game card. He checked out his options, headed for a virtual motorcycle race.

“You like playing games, I see.”

The female voice, cutting through the volley of human cheers and computerized noise, chafed at something inside him.

“I could say the same about you, Henna. Did you follow me in here?”

“Why do you treat me with such suspicion? So we grew up in the same
town, we shared a bus ride, our mothers both like Avon … Is there something else I’m missing?”

“You’re the one writing the notes.”

“What notes?”

“You paid the paperboy to stick an envelope in my newspaper.”

“Clay, don’t flatter yourself.” Henna chuckled and smoothed the front of her shawl. “If I wanted to write you a love letter, I’d send it through the mail. I’ll admit I used to have a schoolgirl crush on you, but I’m a woman now. Or haven’t you noticed? I was right about you. You’re a man with many burdens.”

“So you don’t know about the notes? Or about Kenny Preston?”

“Kenny who?”

“Preston. Or as it says in the note, ‘pressed on.’ I’m not stupid, you know.”

Henna tilted her head, gave him a condescending look. “You really should’ve listened to me on the bus. You’ve missed your opportunities, and now you’re clamoring for direction.”

“You still haven’t explained what you’re doing in this place.”

A chubby girl with multiple ear piercings, the same girl Clay had met the previous night, latched on to Henna’s arm. “What’re you doing here, Mother? I thought you hated the noise. Oh, is this guy bugging you? He was here yesterday, nosin’ around.”

Henna etched her fingernail along Clay’s arm. “Seems to be a habit of his.”

Without another word, he watched them exit the arcade.

Kenny changed course, swerving around the bike rack in front of Nickel’s, coasting along Front Road, then up and over the train tracks with a burst of acceleration. The sun’s heat radiating from the rails was so hot he thought his tires would melt. Sweat popped out along his forehead, underneath his eyes.

Spymaster Kenny. Agent on assignment.

So as not to give anything away, he passed his destination and circled the block. Coming back around, he saw the coast was clear.

He hesitated at the edge of an embankment before plunging into the small ravine carved between housing developments on one side and the railroad on the other. Most of the year rain fed this brier-filled ravine, but the summer months dried it out for garter snakes, grasshoppers, and ants to explore.

Kenny loved it down here. His tires splayed dust and pebbles as the bike leveled out. He avoided a patch of broken glass, drove to the drainage pipe’s mouth.

With the bike parked in weeds so tall they tickled his shirt sleeves, Kenny edged into the orifice. Although it would be easier to walk on his knees, rough stones and corrugated metal discouraged it. His shoes scraped over a pile of trash, kicking the sound down the tunnel and through the welded grate at the far end.

This tunnel used to be his hideout. His safe house. For years, Spymaster Kenny had used this spot to avoid school bullies, win games of hide-and-seek, flee frustrations at home. Here, in the coolness, he’d practiced saying all the things he wanted to say to his father—words he might never get to express face to face. He had also spoken to his heavenly Father, voicing fears he’d never admit to his mom. She needed him to be strong.

Be strong and courageous
. Weren’t those the words God spoke to Joshua before sending him to conquer Canaan?

Well, here I am, Jesus. Ready for any assignment
.

Kenny dug the wooden tube from his shorts’ pocket. Turning the grimy treasure in his fingers, he wondered if it was worth anything. So smooth and symmetrical. He rolled the object against the cuff of his shorts, smearing grease and gunk into the cloth.

Oops. He’d have to shove these shorts deep into the laundry pile and pray the stains washed out, otherwise his mom would kill him.

Something stirred outside the tunnel.

He froze. He could feel the low rumble of a vehicle passing overhead. Dirt spit from the tunnel’s metal ribs into his hair. Time to scram, he decided. He’d conceal this thing and come back for it later.

He inched into the darkness. Was it still there? His secret hiding spot?

At eye level a bubble in the metal jutted into the earth. This manufacturing flaw provided a perfect spot for his secret objects, both real and imagined. He poked the wooden tube into the metal bubble. For now, the locomotive’s treasure would remain the spymaster’s secret.

He’d been told to rent a room here and wait. That’d been days ago.

Near the Portland airport, Dmitri Derevenko chewed on sunflower seeds while eying the ramshackle Val-U-Inn with a sign boasting Clean Towels, Hot Showers.

A humble step on his journey. He believed the Tsars’ bloodline remained intact, as well as a portion of Rasputin’s fortune, and he intended to find it. Once their coffers were filled, the Brotherhood would bolster an heir’s rise to the throne.

In the last year others had become unwitting allies in this dream of national resurgence. Viktor Vekselberg, oil and aluminum magnate and one of the world’s richest men, had acquired nine Fabergé eggs from the Forbes collection. He’d spent nearly a hundred million dollars to return Russia’s treasures to her soil, and in May the eggs had gone on exhibit in the Kremlin’s Patriarchal Palace.

Da, this is good for my people. We must never forget our past glory
.

Dmitri slipped through the hotel room door and turned the deadbolt. In the mirror next to the TV, he ran a finger along the angel-wing scar on his hip. The failure in his great-grandfather’s milky eyes still plagued him. Dmitri knew, like Jacob of the Bible, that his quest was far from over.

He must still wrestle with angels. And with demons, if need be.

He wondered when Fort Lauderdale detectives would discover his latest victim. Locating the .22-caliber bullet in the old man’s brain would be easy; finding a ballistics match would be the challenge. His was no ordinary gun.

Dmitri plugged in his laptop, holstered his cell phone on his belt.