Page 112 of Shrapnel

Noah stopped the moment they got to his room. Jackson looked over his head to see why he wasn’t salivating over all his stacks of paper.

The room was covered in Legos. Perfect little bricks set upright and evenly spaced. Like a minefield of colorful plastic.

Jackson grabbed Noah, dragging him behind him and pulling his machete out in one clean move. His mouth was dry. Scanning the room, he checked all the exits and windows first. Nothing was amiss. He knew for a fact those windows were locked. From the inside. And White Sand Mesa had a sophisticated alarm system. There was no way someone got in without him knowing.

Noah was staring at the Legos. “He was here.” His eyes were wide. “I remember. I remember his face now. It was Mateo! He was just a kid, but he was the one who gave me the Legos.”

“Great,” Jackson ground out. “Put that with information that would have been helpful two months ago.”

He nudged one of the bricks with the tip of his blade. It slid across the floor. There was no booby trap.

Noah grabbed his phone and dialed a number. “Lock it down! We’ve had an intruder. Check with the gate guards and all CCTV cameras.”

He swore, kicking at the toys until the plastic bricks clattered against the back wall. “How did he manage this?”

It was a rhetorical question. Jackson looked at the murder board. More important than getting into White Sand Mesa, how much did he see? It was safe to assume Mateo knew what they knew. If he was smart, he would leave the country. But Jackson suspected this whole effort was not about getting away with murder. He wanted Noah to find him.

“Sir,” a breathless White Sand Mesa guard ran up to the room. “The guards at the gate are dead. Murdered with a bladed weapon.”

“Fuck!” Noah raked his fingers through his hair. “How the hell did he manage to get past us?” he asked again.

“There’s something else…” the guard looked hesitant.

He led them to a linen closet off the main hall. One Jackson had only looked into as a precaution when he first came to White Sand Mesa. The door was open, linens spilling into the hallway. He got within fifteen feet of the closet and smelled the familiar iron punch of blood.

A bloodied dress shoe was upended in the hallway. Noah pulled the door open and gagged. Nestled amongst tangled sheets, Harvey was gasping for air. His throat had been slit so deeply Jackson could see the white flash of vertebrae. His fingers were limply wrapped around his bleeding throat, frothy red bubbling between the gaps in his fingers.

Noah cried, dropping to his knees and shouting for help. Jackson didn’t move. Harvey could be in an operating room right now and he would still die.

The man grasped at Noah blindly, holding his hand briefly before his entire body slackened. Muscles losing the fight against life. His eyes were unseeing and slowly the fountain of blood burbling from his neck slowed.

“Harvey! Goddammit!” Noah shouted, his wet hand still grasping Harvey’s. His eyes were vacant, like he couldn’t process enough to cry.

“The gate guards were killed the same way,” the White Sand Mesa guard said as he shifted on his feet. He looked over at the machete in Jackson’s hand. Two more guards ran up, looking between the three.

Noah set Harvey’s hand down, pausing to pull at his clenched fingers. A bloodied scrap of black fabric fell out. They stared down at it. Jackson thought it looked familiar, but it was difficult to see with all the blood.

Smoothing it out with trembling fingers, Noah’s breath hitched. It was a patch ripped from someone’s jacket, the bloodied threads loose on the edges where it had been yanked off. With the blood gone, Jackson recognized it as a bull. The mascot for his regiment in the Army.

He had that exact patch on a jacket.

The color drained from his face.

Noah stood slowly, his blank eyes seeing right through him. “Take him.”

Jackson didn’t fight. He let the White Sand Mesa guards wrestle his blade from his hand, wrenching his arms up behind his back until his shoulders screamed in protest.

The guards dragged him away, struggling under his weight. Noah was left alone in the bloodied hallway.

21

Daddy Said Go for the Throat

It was cute.

That was Jamie’s first thought the moment he set his sights on The Laughing Fox bakery. For a known front, they certainly did a decent job making it look legit. A large plate glass window gave prospective customers a glimpse into cases of backlit baked goods. From across the street Jamie could see the bakery had leaned into their kitschy old timey theme—decorated in scarlet and gold, with glittering foiled letters and clean white tiles. The bakery wouldn’t have looked out of place in a tourist town set against a beach front or nestled between two antique shops.

As it was, The Laughing Fox was the only occupied building on the block. The only lights on were upstairs. Two small windows were illuminated, occasionally darkening as a figure blocked the light. No doubt this was some kind of office. Renard’s attempts at legitimacy were…cute. He’d come a long way from squatting in boarded up duplexes and oil slicked warehouses.