My heart hammers, my pistol aimed, finger on the trigger, ready to double tap, two rounds center mass . . .
“Sisto?” the familiar voice is dampened by the wind, close by at 2 o’clock.
I don’t move.
“Sisto, it’s me!” sounding closer . . . closer . . . Calling out my childhood pet name that almost no one knows.
Gun rock steady. I barely breathe.
“Calli? It’s Carme, your better half ! Who else would say that, right?” her alto voice with a Virginia lilt, the same as mine.
I don’t answer, not ready to trust anything or anyone. So much can be faked these days with voice cloning and other software I know more about than most.
“Calli?” nearing the back of my truck.
“STOP!” I warn at the top of my lungs. “NO SUDDEN MOVES!”
“Okay. Not moving suddenly or otherwise. Put down your gun and walk out from behind your truck, Sisto.”
Wiping my watery eyes on my sleeve, I’m blinking hard, trying to see, my heart drumming in my throat.
“What’s happened?” I shout. “Who got shot?”
“The guy that’s parked on your ass. Stand up slowly,” she demands, and I can tell she’s not moving anymore. “For God’s sake don’t shoot me. You don’t want to explain that to Mom. And Dad doesn’t need any more bad news either . . .”
“All right! All right!” I answer over the rumble of engines, the rushing of the wind. “I’m coming out slowly! There, I’m lowering my gun down by my side,” standing up, I halfway expect it to be the last thing I ever do.
Squinting in the glare of headlights, I don’t see her at first. Then I see her in swirling snow not even 3 meters (10 feet) away, waiting by the open driver’s door of the SUV hemming me in, a silver Yukon Denali driven by whoever my sister just killed. She watches me, standing as still as a living statue, phantomlike in a peculiar hooded ultrablack bodysuit, booties and gloves.
She’s holding her Bond Arms Bullpup 9 mm pistol with its quick-detach suppressor, and an assault rifle that looks military. Walking toward her, I realize that the Denali’s interior light has been turned off the way cops, criminals, and other streetwise people do when they don’t want to be an easy target.
I hope like crazy that Carme didn’t shoot someone she shouldn’t have, an undercover agent, an intelligence operative, a spy tailing me, maybe thinking I’m the other twin, an outlaw on the run. Most people get us confused with each other, even family and other intimate relations do. I might have been taken out or hauled off to lockup because someone assumes Carme and I are doubling for each other, trading places.
For all I know, the man in the Denali was after me because he thought I was her. And how often is this going to happen from now on?
“Do you know who he is?” I reach my sister, and she seems impervious to the cold while I’m trying not to shake and shiver.
“I know what he is,” her eyes are constantly moving. “A meat puppet,” her term for primitives, those disconnected from the source. “An attack mongrel sent by the adversary as a special thank-you.”
“For what?”
“For screwing up her little plan earlier this morning,” and my sister is talking about Neva. “You thought fast enough to restore communications with our astronauts before the situation became critical. Gotta admit you were pretty impressive,” and it seems an odd time to be paying me a compliment.
“A thank-you intended for whom? Me? Or did he have us confused?” I holster my Glock, digging out my tactical light and turning it on.
“I wasn’t the initial target,” Carme says.
“How can you be sure?” I illuminate a beefy left hand hanging below the open driver’s door.
“He didn’t know I was here. But he knew you were coming. If it had been his lucky day, he would have taken out both of us.”
Silvery rings on the dead man’s fingers shine in the intense beam of my flashlight. Steamy blood drip-drips from the driver’s seat, instantly cooling and coagulating on the red-spattered snowy pavement.
“A name would be helpful,” I bend down to get a better look at the oversize rings.
A winged skull with ruby eyes . . .
A coiled snake . . .
A gothic wedding band . . .
Carme leans inside the Denali, peering at the man she killed.
“Don’t know him,” she says as if she might. “Let’s see if he’s got an ID of some sort.”
Checking pockets with her eel-skin-like gloved hands, she produces a wallet. Removing a driver’s license from it just long enough to look, she returns it, tucking the wallet back where she found it. My sister steps back from the open door as if shooting someone to death is all in a day’s work, and she has no concerns about it.
“A Texas license, name on it is Hank Cougars, 37 years old,” Carme says. “But it’s not who this dude really is, and it’s also not for me to follow up on. The Virginia tag on the truck was stolen from a car in long-term parking at the Richmond airport. Some poor fool who’s traveling and has no clue,” and I can’t figure out where the hell-o she’s getting her information.
“You got any idea how he might have known that I was on my way here in the middle of nothing? When no one else is on the road? Because this isn’t random,” I elbow the driver’s door open all the way.
“Nope, it’s definitely not random,” she says as I think of the Tyvek protective clothing, face masks, nitrile exam gloves and other forensic gear stored in the back of my truck.
I already know I won’t be needing such things anymore, not for the expected reasons of properly preserving evidence the way I’ve done until now. I work my hands into black leather tactical gloves that won’t help much in the extreme cold. But they’re better than nothing.
00:00:00:00:0
PROBING INSIDE the Denali with my flashlight, I try not to brush against the dead man slumped back in the seat.
The two wounds in the middle of his forehead are almost perfectly round. The angle dead on, one small hole slightly higher than the other, as close to causing instant incapacitation and death as one can get, a kill shot my sister calls a snake eyes.