Endings by Linda Richards (e ink manga reader txt) 📕

squeezing stops right away, but doesn’t disappear. I can feel him waiting.

“Gun is in my purse,” I choke out. It is heartbreaking to me, this giving up of the Bersa. But better my heart break in this way than my arm.

He lets me go and scoops up my bag in the same motion. With the Bersa in his hand, I imagine I see a smirk, but in the next instant it is gone so quickly I wonder if I didn’t imagine it in the first place.

“Handy little gun,” he says grudgingly.

I keep my mouth shut. It doesn’t seem like anything I could say at this point will move this situation ahead. I am silent and watching. There are a number of ways all of this can go. Mostly none of them are good.

“Who are you here with?” Now that the gun has been secured and tucked into his waistband, I am no kind of threat. He looks around in comfort, trying to see whatever accomplices I might have. Clearly, I can’t have done this thing by myself.

“I am alone,” I say. It’s not quite the truth, but I don’t think the dog counts.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I AM SCRAMBLING through my brain for ideas, but nothing is coming. I want to say something that will make it all better. Will make all the bad stuff go away while also making him give me my Bersa back. I am scrabbling and scrambling but I know I don’t have much time and no big ideas are coming to me.

“Are you a terrorist?” His face has no expression when he asks. Whatever else he is, he is a trained soldier. And me? I have never felt more alone.

“Do I look like a terrorist?”

“I don’t know,” he says. Clearly, all of this is outside of his experience. As well it should be to a nearly forgotten soldier playing security guard at a shut-down military base and airfield in rural California. “I don’t think so. No.”

“I’m not a terrorist.”

“I don’t think a terrorist would say they were one,” he says as though considering. I search his face for a trace of humor at the words, but I don’t see any. Instead, he looks like he’s trying to work something through, but nothing is lining up.

“I’m not a terrorist,” I repeat, but I see the growing doubt in his face. He is younger than he should be to be posted out here by himself. And there is the faint hint of a gin blossom growing on both cheeks, probably, I think, the result of too much time spent on his own with nothing for company besides a bottle. If I weren’t in such a weird predicament, I’d feel sorry for him.

I see him trying to process who I am and how I fit into his reality while he also figures out what to do. This is outside of the routine. Beyond the every day.

“Well, I’ll have to report you,” he says, as though talking himself through what should be done next. “Even if it was a blowout.” He eyes me suspiciously, but I can see him adding things up in a way that doesn’t compute. One-plus-one-equals-six or something like that. All of the pieces together don’t come to the right equation.

“There’s nothing to report,” I say. I can’t afford the connection to my real identity or for weight to be put on the identity I carry. I can afford no connection. “I … I just got lost.”

If I have any hope of this being easy and him just letting me go and forgetting he ever saw me, it goes out like a blown-upon flame with his next words.

“Let’s get to the office, and we’ll figure out what to do.”

With his van offline, we are forced to walk, and I trudge next to him towards an office in one of the hangar buildings. I have to trot to keep up with his long-legged stride. I shake my arm out a bit while we go. It seems likely to me I will bruise where he was holding me. Or worse.

When he pulls open the big barn doors, I am met by the smell of dust and disuse, abandonment and forty-year-old motor oil. It’s not a scent I’m moved to dab onto my wrists.

In the office, he indicates I should take a chair while he goes to the desk and fires up his computer. The computer is not as old as the rest of the stuff here, but it is clearly not this year’s model. I am trying to think fast, but I am running out of steam. As lame as it is, I am in a military installation and there is only so much I can do.

“They’ll probably have me put you in lockup.”

“I can’t be in lockup,” I say. “Please.”

“Look around,” he says, waving a hand airily. “You’ve broken into a United States military base. Do you think I can just let you go?”

I see his point. See the precariousness of my situation. But still.

“I understand, truly. But it would be just so much better if you did not phone this in. Please.” His face is implacable, and I decide I have nothing more to lose. I will try the truth, or as close to it as I can get. “I am hunting William Atwater.”

“The murderer?”

“Yes. Last seen driving a white van.”

“Ah,” he says. I see a light dawn. Whatever he makes of my statement, I know he believes it.

“Right. I thought you were him. And listen, it’s really important I find him. I think he has a little girl with him. I’m … I’m trying to save her.”

I’ve hesitated because, out loud, the words sound ridiculous, even to me. Who am to I think I can stop a murderer? I see I have his attention though. Even if he doesn’t believe me, it’s an interesting story, and he’s got nothing but time on his hands.

“It’s a U.S. military base,” he repeats needlessly. “You know I can’t just let