The door opened, closed. There was a flash of light outside, and Miguel sighed with relief. After a minute or so of peace, he stood up and left the place too.

#

Jane sat in the center of the room and looked at the pieces of paper in her hand, and on the desk in front of her. The piece in her hand said ‘VAULT’ in large, capital letters, and had five lined sentences below it in neat, cursive writing. Four of the lines had been crossed with a single, deft stroke. There was one line of text left, and it held her attention:

Load up and get out.

She sighed. The radio was quiet, and that was a good sign. She heard on the police band about Miguel and Russ’ smoke bombs, and the others weren’t due to call in for another half hour. All was going well.

Then why were the prickles on the back of her neck?

She had to go to the bathroom. She looked at the clock, nodded to herself. Carefully, she put the radio, notes and the small vial of crystals into the safe under the desk, closed the door and spun the lock. She stood up, and looked at one of the loose papers on the desk- the one from the Army about the ETs. She opened the drawer, put the paper in gently, face down, and shut it.

Down the hall. To the bathroom. She was washing her hands when her back stiffened and her eyes narrowed.

The first time she’d felt that, she’d been eight years old and a rattlesnake had gotten into her sleeping bag. The last time she’d felt it, she found out Aces n’ Eights had been cheating on her with a guy.

Both times, either she’d been or was about to be hurt by someone or something being where they shouldn’t.

Her hand went to her hip. She looked into the mirror; she hadn’t taken her blue rocks today, and her hair had already started to gray. With her left hand [her right was firmly on her pistol, and it’d take the force of the Almighty to move it before she felt the all-clear], she quietly reached into a door of the vanity and pulled out a pair of glasses. She perched them on her nose, stooped her shoulders and watched herself in the mirror as she suddenly began darting her head and eyes back and forth. She drew her gun and held it with both hands, looking like a rookie at her first rodeo.

She opened the door, poking her nose out and the gun, too. Walking with the bent, hesitant steps of an old woman, she took step after step down the hall towards the living room, and turned on the lights.

Nothing.

She walked a few more steps to the kitchen, and turned those lights on too.

Still nothing.

“I have a gun,” she said in her best, quavering old-lady voice. “And I . . . I’m a pretty good shot, too!”

“Really?” she heard the voice behind her say.

She spun around, waving the gun with uncertainty. An old woman, visibly terrified for her life.

“Madam, Miss- Jane Cobb? You’re going to need to put that weapon down. If you pull the trigger, you’ll miss me, but you’ll put a hole the size of two fists in the wall, and the kickback just might end up breaking your nose.”

“You . . .” she said, her voice going up into an old-woman’s screech, “you get out of my house, young man! Right now! You take yourself and your black mask and your crazy outfit, and you just . . . just get out!”

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The Dark walked forward slowly. “I’m not here to hurt anyone, Miss Cobb. But I need you to lower your weapon.”

“I’m not Jane Cobb!” she said, her voice getting shrill. “Cobb is my landlady! You want her, I’ll give you the address my son sends the rent checks to. But you first get out, and don’t come back until you learn how to knock! You may be one’a those costumed young people, but I know my rights! Now get the hell out, or I just might get a lucky shot off with this Magnum P.I.!”

“That’s- dear lady, it’s a forty-four magnum. Magnum P.I. is a TV show about a private investigator.”

“She’s at- hang on, just stay there. You promise to go if I give you her address?”

The man, all in black with a cape and dark cowl and what looked like a fedora, raised his hand with three fingers extended. “Scout’s honor,” he rasped into his voice modifier.

Still wobbling with the gun, she hobbled slightly over to the end table, pulled it out inefficiently, rifled through some crumpled papers and plucked a post-it from the pile. “Here,” she said, extending it with a trembling hand. “I know all you people can do what you want, but I’m warning you! Next time any of you come into my home, I’m gonna shoot first! You got me? Now get out!”

The Dark looked at the paper in his hand, then back at her. His face, covered by the black cloth mask, was inscrutable.

“Thank you, I’m sorry. I was expecting someone else. Good night.”

“See yourself out, sonny.”

He left, through the front door. The lock turned from the other side. Dang, he was good.

She waited for a few seconds, then a few minutes.

She wanted more than anything to call up someone, anyone on the team, through the comlink. She didn’t. As a bounty hunter in the 50s and 60s, she’d caught more than a few bail jumpers just that way, by dropping in on their parents or girlfriends, and then tracing the call made by her quarry as soon as Jane had left.

She went back to the room where she’d been calling the shots, pulling the strings, and making sure everyone had been keeping their heads.

That was my role in things, she thought to herself, ever since I’ve been a little girl, back on the Texas prairie.

She flopped down on the couch and exhaled loudly. She sat quietly for the next few minutes, then stood and holstered her pistol with the smooth, easy movements of the professional she’d been for over a half-century. Ears still cocked and ready for any stray noise, she walked quiet as a cat into the kitchen, then as if by magic found the bottle of whiskey in the cupboard and a shot glass.

Using only her thumb, she popped the cap on the bottle and poured a finger’s worth of its contents into the shot glass. She sniffed the alcohol, tossed it down in one shot, and then chased it with a long drought from the whiskey bottle, her small adam’s apple moving in and out like a tiny, dignified accordion while the burning alcohol flowed down her throat and into her gut.

She guzzled until she needed to breathe, stopped, took a deep breath and then waited. After the long, wet belch rose from the depths of her guts, she gave a satisfied sigh and walked back into the living room.

She flopped onto the couch and looked around the room, happy now that the room had begun its familiar wobble, which would soon devolve into a spin. “Gone away,” she said to the empty air. “They’ve all gone awayyyyy…”

She stopped as her eyes landed on the cover of the discarded comic book on the floor, her mouth sneering at the perpetually smiling visage of Aces n’ Eights, the COWBOY super hero!

“Crock o’ shit,” she said. “I bailed yuh out’ve how many jams with my shootin,’ an’ it was you the y put on TV! You! Iss you, who got on Jack Parr, Mike Douglas an’ Joey Bishop! Alla talk shows…you, fuggin’...if’n I was on with Mike Douglas, know whud I’d say? Ah’d wait ‘til he said ‘tell me about what it was like growing up,’ and I’d say…well, start with…

My Pa...

TO BE CONTINUED....