*****
Legacy checked his watch. Even by breaking every traffic law in Summit County, it had taken him twenty minutes to make it to the access road that led to the next site.
The towering rocks, rich with metal ore, had turned their cell phones into fashionable pocket watches. Brent looked like he didn’t want an update; just another reason to pull the trigger – reasons like that weren’t in short supply.
The GPS didn’t recognize the twisting “road.” The triangle that represented their car drifted across a blank void like the computer itself had no idea what they were doing. They’d found a hole in the web of technology; exactly the kind of place Blade would covet.
He knew they were getting close. Legacy saw the rocky entrance to the clearing a split second before he had to execute a hairpin turn. He told his sullen passenger, “Hold on.” He bottomed out the car on the center earthen ridge between the tracks. It slowed them just enough to take the turn. They slid a moment; the wheels came in solid contact with the uneven ground and thrust the car up like it had been lifted upward by a giant hand. The roller coaster ride brought out the child in Legacy; he stopped the car and leapt out, practically skipping into the headlights.
There in the paired pools of halogen headlights was a crude parking lot, where a car very similar to theirs was parked alongside a cluster of jet black, chrome frosted, mint condition Harleys. Legacy pointed to the car and Brent understood almost simultaneously with being told. “Wagner.” Brent immediately fell in step. It was like having a puppy. A really deadly, smart and highly trained killer puppy.
Legacy remembered his first assignment paired with a tracker dog in Myanmar – it had been a humbling experience for him. He’d been at the top of the operatives list, and yet the dog ended up calling all of the shots on the mission. The dog exhibited perceptions that had impressed the young agent so much that he’d begun training with it on his furloughs. A particularly raucous game of ‘how much is he holding on the streets of inner city DC’ had caught the attention of a social worker working overtime in the neighborhood.
Legacy had just gotten done shaking down a low life called Misbehaving, Meese to his “friends”. His dog had found him.
“My dog thinks you’ve got more than Morgan over there, wave to Morgan.”
Meese lifted his hand and waved to his archrival pusher across the street, who smiled broadly, then returned to massaging his neck. He’d met Legacy a few minutes earlier. Meese pulled out three bags, one of which held cocaine. Legacy looked at his dog “How did you know he had coke?” The dog cocked its head and pushed his snout between Legacy and Meese. Legacy chose a spot on Meese’s neck and snapped his knuckles; stinging the skin, “Damn, what did you do” he sputtered craning his neck around. Legacy let him go and he hit the ground like a colostomy bag.
“I just injected you with an experimental drug that stays in your system for a month, anything in the narcotic family hits your system and your brain stops getting oxygen. A brain’s important –” He added. “Even for you.”
The younger Legacy actually was a bit of an idealist. His lesson for Meese didn’t end there. “If I hear you sell to children, even one, I’m coming back and giving you the booster shot for this every month for the rest of your life.” He turned to leave, and there was Judith.
“What’s going on here?” She always had a nose for injustice, although this time she’d initially misread the situation, thinking Legacy was part of some thuggery. Then, with a bright smile spreading halfway across the world she said, “Martin?”
Another voice shook him from his thoughts, and even though it was far closer it seemed hollow, unwanted, and it took a while for the sound to replace the “Martin” that sounded so full, so real, so needed.
“I don’t think they take to kindly to strangers.” Brent managed a bit of some smirk and swagger combination he’d seen in the movies.
Legacy realized he was standing in the doorway of the bar. Three men at a nearby table were the only visible occupants of the rotting wooden cavern. He saw that they were frozen in fear. Then something odd happened. Fear melted away, and they were barking with laughter at each other. They snorted and shoulder patted their way back into a grumbling chatter.
It was clear that they didn’t recognize either Brent or Legacy as a threat. Whatever they were expecting, it wasn’t them, and it was scarier than two military-trained killers. No emotion on their faces other than relief. Legacy couldn’t wait to meet the man who inspired this reaction, and it seemed like he must be coming to meet them soon.
Legacy recognized the three men immediately; Purple sat with an angry sneer on his face, back to the door. Brown had his fat ass hanging off both sides of a solid wood chair that complained every time anything on him shifted, which was often. Green sat facing the door, quiet as a math professor at a singles mixer. He didn't try to hide his nerves, staring at the portal through which the inconsequential Agents Brent and Legacy had passed. They didn’t matter at all. It was the next person who came through the door who very much did matter.
Brent turned to the trio like he was going to engage them in conversation. Legacy quickly steered him toward the bar. “It’s them. What time is it?”
Brent checked his phone. “Ten till.”
“They’re waiting for Blade, I can’t think why they expected him early unless something spooked them - “ A thousand things raced through Legacy’s mind as he scanned the place. Then suddenly urgent thoughts turned into urgent action. “Call in, and keep an eye on them.” Legacy was out of his chair, headed for the door.
Brent followed him, straining for a casual gait that his legs obviously had no idea how to produce. He saw what had launched Legacy into action. There was a table near the back where two chairs were drawn away like their occupants would return at any minute. In the ashtray, a thin plume of smoke rose from a cigarette that had nearly burned down to the filter. Even from ten yards it was easy to see the lipstick imprint drawn in an arc around the tip. It didn’t look like a shade that any of the men in the corner could pull off. He did know someone, however, who could.
Brent broke into a sprint as he left the building, catching Legacy at his open window as the car started. “Legacy.”
“Use the phone, call in, get helicopters floodlights and roadblocks, we still don’t know where Blade is, and if any of the other colors in that bar go anywhere, erase them.”
“It’s Wagner, isn’t it?”
Legacy punched the car into drive, his voice was stone cold, and it pushed Brent away like an icy hand on his shoulder. “Laura’s clock is down to nine minutes, Wagner can take care of herself.”
Legacy’s voice sounded convincing, but something in his eyes as he charged the trail ahead of him reflected in the rearview mirror. His worries were spreading out rather than consolidating, the opposite of what was supposed to happen.
Wagner knew who they were up against: an inventive, brutally efficient sociopath who had made a living out of the chaos of a shadow world he called home. He hadn’t yet felt danger recoil onto himself. People mistake criminals like this, thinking that their crime defines them. Their crime is the most recent symptom of their warped inner workings, it is their latest cruel art, but it is still a hobby compared to a highly elastic basic drive. At the core of the most feared modern predator is self-preservation. Wagner was in full assault mode with Laura’s life on the line. It was her anthem, but somehow, Legacy thought, in the chill of the thin mountain air, it rang like a death knell. If Legacy were emotionally capable of startling revelations, he would have leapt far enough out of his seat to eject when he came to the end of his bumpy journey of thought on the subject of Wagner. He wasn’t sure if he was careening upward to rescue Laura at all anymore.
The taillights curled red tracers like the tip of a sparkler, bouncing into the vast darkness of the quiet mountain. Gun to his head, he couldn’t honestly say what was at the front of his thoughts, rushing into the same d
anger at a pace that every other adversary of Blade used to run away from him. The trees, row upon row, gave the light more and more filter as the car climbed, until finally, from his vantage, there was no evidence that light or life existed at all.