Ah, the good ol’ days. When he’d had the energy to spare on shit like being cranked over something he couldn’t change.
Now? He wasn’t much older, but he was definitely wiser. Or tired-er, as the case was. So yup, standing at the counter, he just sat back and watched the jittery show, feeling nothing at all. It was simply one more thing to endure, and, given the à la carte menu of physical crap he had to deal with, not worth getting worked up about.
And hey, who needed an electric toothbrush now, right? Fuck Oral-B.
When he finally hole-in-forty-seventh’d things, he added some soda and turned away from the little setup of squat crystal basins, bottles of Seagram’s, and the amber anchor of his favorite brand of whiskey. In the midst of the professional-grade kitchen, he’d come to think of the modest stretch of alcohol and accoutrements as his personal bar, a pocket of cocktails in the midst of a setup Gordon Ramsay would have gotten a case of the hot cross buns for. From the Viking wall ovens and sixteen-burner gas top, to the pair of Traulsen refrigerators and the three deep-bellied sinks, you could feed an army out of the square footage.
And as he thought about the owner of the conference-center-sized house, he reflected, not for the first time, that C.P. Phalen was the only private citizen he knew in the continental United States who could really live up to that hyperbolic vernacular: “army.” As in uniformed, professional, armed men in squadrons who were a point-and-shoot for whatever she wanted. There were no women in the ranks, and after having watched C.P. in action for the last six months, he had a feeling it was because she liked to be the only female anything in the room. But whatever, it was her gig, and like everything else on the estate, went by her rules.
Bringing the liquor to his mouth, he took a sip and knew he was going to pay for the tipple later. His digestive track was iffy on a good day, the rotating wheel of constipation, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting the kind of game show he played on a regular basis. But fuck it. Sometimes, he just had to mimic the habits he’d enjoyed before his own personal time bomb had gone off. The rogue experiences were always more appealing in theory than fact, but they were a compulsion he needed to scratch, even though he knew things were going to turn out badly.
Shoring up his energy, he started for the sliding glass doors that opened out onto a terrace the size of a soccer field—
And made it about five feet.
The walking cane he’d begun to use was back where he’d left it, leaning up against the stainless steel cabinet, the hook of the grip linked onto one of the pulls. For a split second, that old familiar fury at how much he had lost hit him, but the flash of anger burned out fast because he just didn’t have the resources to hold anything for very long, whether it was an emotion or something as basic and physical as his balance.
Or even a rocks glass.
Shuffling back over, he locked his hand around the crook, and fell into what had become his new-normal of walking, the cobble, cobble, cobble together of swinging legs and arms kind of seasonal given that it was November: Gobble, gobble, gobble.
Maybe he should have put pumpkin into his Jack Daniel’s.
At the slider, he hung the cane on the wrist of his left hand and opened the sheet of glass. Minding the lip at the base of the frame so he didn’t catch a toe and die facedown on the flagstone in a shatter, he stepped out into the cold, moonlit night.
Upstate New York was beautiful in the fall, but it was no longer autumn, the chill in the air having gone from the nip of a golden retriever puppy to the chomp of a Belgian Malinois—and nature had responded accordingly. On the far rim of the meadow behind the mansion, everything was off the tree branches and browning to a crinkle on the ground. Funny, with time running out, he was noticing the seasons more.
The spring, the summer. Now the fall. Would he see another snowfall?
He thought of the scans that had been done on him. He had the feeling Lydia was getting the results right now because she’d made some deliberately offhand comment about going down to the lab “for a quick sec.” Like she had any other reason to take that elevator deep into the earth? No doubt it was a pregame for when they broke the bad news to him, but like he didn’t already know? He was living in his body. He knew his breathing was worse, and when he sorted through the symptoms he’d been dealing with, he was pretty damn sure that some of the fun and games was the cancer getting a further jump on him rather than just side effects from the pharmacy’s worth of shit they’d been pumping into him.
Closing things up in his wake, he looked past the discreetly lit terrace and winterized pool to that ghostly tree line. It was about a hundred yards away.
It might as well have been a matter of miles.
Going on a catty-corner angle, navigating by the heavens’ blue light, he eighty-year-old’d it over the cropped grass, all of which had turned a uniform brown, none of which was disturbed by any weed growth. C.P.’s lawn was kind of like him, medicated for better performance, although in its case, the metastases were kept at bay.
Maybe he just needed some Miracle-Gro.
Halfway to goal, he took a breather, bracing himself on the cane, opening his mouth, panting in a way that, as recently as the spring, would have only come from a full-out sprint. Glancing over his shoulder, he considered giving the security detail a little wave. The estate was up-the-ass with high-tech infrared cameras, no privacy to speak of inside or outside or anywhere—but he didn’t think anyone was going to come rushing after him like he was a toddler who’d wandered off. He’d been doing these after-dark wanders for the last couple of weeks. If someone had had a problem with them, he’d know about it by now.
Did the men who watched him hobble off feel sorry for him? he wondered. Was he a cautionary tale to all of those who were where he had been as recently as April?
He’d been a highly trained soldier, too. He’d had weapons and strength and cunning—and a secret mission. Granted, he’d worked for the government, and been sent here to wipe out C.P.’s lab… but then just like the way his body’s cells had betrayed him, he’d learned that all was not how it seemed on the surface.
And now that laboratory was fighting for his life.
Like a camera lens being focused, the house in his rearview suddenly registered with clarity. The massive stone structure was gleaming in the soft illumination of its security lights, the multitude of windows and doors covered with a reflective film that meant there were one-way mirrors all along the various elevations, nothing but the dark, barren landscape projected back at him, all that white furniture and art hidden from view.
The people, too.
As he scanned the glass panels, he wondered who might be looking back out at him and his conscience squeaked a protest somewhere below his conscious thoughts. What the hell was he doing, sneaking out to the woods again? Especially considering what he was bringing with him.
Turning back around, he kept going, and when he finally reached the trees, he penetrated their ranks in a random location so he didn’t create a trailhead that might show in the daylight. And then, as he continued along, he did what he could to leave the foliage undisturbed. Just like the whiskey and soda in his hand, and what was in the pocket of his jacket, this whole covering his tracks thing was a holdover from his old life, the one he had lived for twenty-nine years, five months, and twelve days.