The gang parked their bikes behind the plaza adjecent to the vet's plaza, careful to position them on the side opposite to the approaching road. They didn't want any police cars to notice the presence of five bikes near the crime scene, what with the law breathing so heavily down their necks already. They then donned the masks that they'd become accustomed to keeping in their packs, several throwing over a second shirt or jacket to prevent anyone from seeing their distinctive clothing. As the others were pulling shirts and masks over their heads, Logan discreetly tucked his revolver into his waistband. The group then hurried their way to the vet's plaza.
"Wade, you go in first," Ronnie said, "with Shaun in tow just behind you, invisibly. You'll be his way into the store. Logan, Parker, and I will wait near the back door, which I'm sure any hostile would've locked. Shaun, once you're in, go unlock that door as stealthily as possible. Then, when the coast is clear near that door, push it open and we'll make our way in." The team nodded and split up, two filing to the front and three towards the rear.
Protectionizer gripped in hand, Wade pushed his way into the vet's office. He froze as a set of overhead bells jingled… so much for a stealthy entrance. He held the door open a moment longer than was necessary to allow for Shaun's secret entrance behind him, and then slowly closed the door to minimize the jingling of the bells. The waiting room was empty and nobody deeper within the office outwardly reacted to the sound of his arrival. He cautiously crept forwards.
At one end of the waiting room was a door to the rest of the office, which Wade knew had to be buzzed open by the receptionist. There was nobody at the reception window. It was open, at least, and fairly wide. With a sigh, Wade began to climb his way through.
On the other side of the window, he confirmed that the reception area was empty. He could press the buzzer to unlock the door, as he saw it labeled behind the counter, but he didn't want its loud sound to draw any attention, nor did he need to arouse suspicion by opening a door for seemingly nobody. He instead waited patiently for the telltale creaking and occasional sourceless rattle that told him Shaun had also climbed through the reception window. The two then made their way through the reception office, tiptoeing silently.
"We don't have any money here," came a faint voice muffled through several doors. Michelle Trent, both immediately knew. Wade nodded towards where the back door was located, signaling that Shaun head off to complete his objective. He himself set off towards that voice, trying to find its source.
* * *
As Shaun walked towards the rear door, he moved through silent hallways and passed darkened offices. The place seemed eerily empty of humans—but animals abounded. He soon walked into a room filled with stacks of dog cages, several of them currently occupied. A Great Dane at the bottom level immediately perked up as Shaun passed, though Shaun was still invisible. Perhaps the dog heard him, or perhaps the dog merely smelled the boy, but the large dog began to bark wildly and pace in his cage. Shaun immediately broke into a run for the back door and found it indeed locked… he turned the lock but didn't yet push it open or knock to signal the three outside. He instead perched there, silent, waiting for any sign of movement from within the office.
* * *
Back on the other side of the office, Wade stood outside an office door, ears attuned to the sounds around him. He had heard faint whispering and the clattering sound of rummaging search before the silence was suddenly split by the loud barking of a dog elsewhere in the office. Wade immediately slunk back and found a closet to position himself into as that office door swung open. He watched through the cracked door of the closet as a masked assailant stepped into the hallway, pistol trained on the ground as the figure moved towards the sound.
* * *
Shaun watched as a masked figure in a tactical vest assessed the room with the dog cages. He checked beneath tables, peered down hallways, and even opened a few cabinets to figure out their approximate storage space before deciding it unlikely that anyone could be hiding inside one. He then seemed to be convinced that the area was indeed empty, and perhaps just that the dog had been spooked by, well, whatever it is dogs can occasionally be spooked by. He then made his way back down the hallway he'd arrived from, never breaking that tactical searching stride as he retreated. Shaun checked over the door for a bell. Seeing none, he then quietly pushed the door open. Ronnie, Logan, and Parker immediately poured in. "One hostile spotted," he whispered. "Armed with a handgun."
* * *
Nora set down her binoculars and picked up her walkie talkie. "All units, the trap has sprung. I repeat, the trap has sprung. One entered front, three in the rear. I want both exits blocked off. Gomez, get yourself and Michelle barricaded with Lawson." Across the parking lot, undercover squad cars flicked on their sirens and moved in. Two drove behind the plaza and pulled to a sudden halt near the rear exit, tires squaling on the asphalt. Three more drove to the storefront and set up horizontally facing the waiting room, the officers climbing out and using the cars for cover as they trained their weapons on the building. Seated next to Nora, Jackson Trent, Senior, began to clap his hands wildly.
"Now that's a goddamn show," he said. "I told you this'd get them, did I not?"
Nora shook her head, impressed herself at how well it had all panned out. She and the department had unilaterally rejected the Trents' proposed sting operation this morning, feeling it was a wild longshot. That had all changed after the odd encounter at the Trent residence this morning. The room's state meant that someone had been searching through Skinny's bedroom, and, while Nora wasn't sure if she believed anyone had turned invisible (despite what the Trents swore happened and what she herself had seen), it did align closely with the original account of what had happened at Johnson's General. That last parallel set goosebumps across her skin. People couldn't just turn invisible, right? But still, the web of connections began to make her head spin: an attacker materializing out of thin air in a robbery linked to Trent Junior… an invisible intruder searching the Trent house… now, masked men showing up to the Trents' place of work after broadcasting its distress on radio (including a fake sewer line break, to give the masked men hope that they'd beat the police). It seemed undeniable now that they had a team of vigilantes on their hands, and perhaps a team that possessed some hard-to-explain abilities. She removed the bullhorn from her back seat and began to walk towards the office. "You sit tight now…. could be dangerous."
* * *
Wade watched from his cover as the masked assailant ran into the office where Michelle had been and slammed the door shut, locking it immediately. Wade then heard the wailing of sirens and squealing of cars as they pulled into position around the office. Shit, he thought. This is definitely not good.
Staying low, he made his way towards the back of the office, towards the barking of the dog he had heard earlier. There, he found the rest of the gang pacing nervously. "It was a trap," Parker replied, stating the obvious.
"We locked this door," Shaun added.
"Attacker was probably police, all things considered," Wade said. "He's barricaded himself in an office with Michelle. He's armed, too. Front door has a bell, so we'll hear anyone enter, but we have to be watching that inner office door so he can't exit and get to us," Wade said. The group nodded and they moved down the hall, taking position at an L-shaped juncture where they could see to the back door near the dog cages and down a second hall to the office door where Michelle and the police officer were barricaded in.
"What's our play?" Logan asked.
"DON'T ATTEMPT TO FLEE. WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED," came an amplified voice from outside the building. Parker's stomach dropped. "Shit. I know that voice."
The voice outside began to boom once again. "IN THE MEDICATION FRIDGE, YOU WILL FIND A WALKIE-TALKIE. GO PICK IT UP AND SWITCH IT ON. IT'S TUNED TO THE RIGHT CHANNEL."
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The gang all turned towards the fridge nearby. Wade was first to walk towards it, opening the door and indeed finding a walkie-talkie stashed inside. He shrugged and put on his deepest, gruffest voice as he switched it on. "Smokey, this is Bandit. Come in, over."
The radio crackled before Nora Campbell's voice answered back. "Bandit, this is the Boone PD. You and your small team are surrounded with agents posted at the front and rear entrances. Let's chat."
"Chat away," Wade said.
"We've got two agents inside the office with weapons and a dozen more trained at the doors. We don't want anybody getting shot. If you all walk to the front office with hands on your head, we can take you in and nobody gets hurt."
"Let me run that by my team." Wade said. He waited a half second before replying. "Yeah they didn't like that option very much. Got other suggestions?"
"We know you guys were here to help. Here, and at the general store. You won't be in much trouble… just let's talk back at the station."
Wade lowered the walkie-talkie. "Damn, she's connecting dots. What's our move now?"
Parker waved his wrist forwards. "We leave, now, using this. They'd never see us."
The group all looked at Parker's Time Watch and realized it was simple… they just had to go back to some hour in the middle of the night and then they could let themselves out the empty office. At that moment, the door to the inner office kicked open, and not one but two police officers moved into the hallway, gun drawn. One spoke into a radio on his shoulder: "moving to intercept now. Overheard one saying they had means to escape unseen. Will apprehend with minimum possible force."
The boys scrambled down the hall towards the back door, diving for cover on opposite sides of the room with the dog cages. They heard footsteps and shouting as the police officers advanced, yelling "DO NOT MOVE. STAY ON THE GROUND, HANDS ON YOUR HEAD."
Separated from each other, the boys would be unable to flee using Parker's Time Watch. Their tests had found they needed proximity or contact, but crossing the room would put them in line-of-sight of the advancing and armed officers. Logan set to work right away. He unlatched the nearest dog cage and allowed the Great Dane to lick at his face. He then oriented the dog towards the hall with the shouting police. He grabbed a glowing red battery from his side pocket and loaded it into the Empathizer. With the gadget's distinctive hiss, the dog took off in a blind, frothing rage, ignoring the cowering figures and charging at the shouting, intimidating persons in the hall.
Logan heard the police yell and he heard the gun discharge, something that set his ears ringing. He then heard a thud as one officer fell to the floor, likely tackled by the giant dog. He next heard snarling and the squeal of an injured dog, but it seemed the second officer couldn't immediately shoot without risk of harming the first. Without losing a moment, Logan did the same with the next dog in line, a small white Maltese. He worked his way down the line, finding a Golden Retriever and a Chocolate Lab. After being pumped with a red, each one ran off to join the snarling melee. With that final dog, Logan was out of angry batteries in easy reach, so he summoned his courage and sprinted across the room to the side Parker crouched in. Just behind him, Wade sprinted across the hall as well, a single shot ringing out and striking the boy. He was torn off his trajectory and tumbled sideways as he ran, but he continued holding the Protectionizer and slid across the squeaky, polished floor to tumble into the rest of the boys. All five linked hands and then Parker smashed the display of his watch face into the counter, sending off that blinding flash and gut-wrenching falling sensation that marked a leap through time.
* * *
"What's happening in there," Nora asked, unease rising. She heard shouting on her comms line and now had just heard a single shot fire. Moments later, a second rang out, and then a third. "Dogs attacked like they were possessed," a voice finally said through the radio. "Bit up Gomez pretty bad, we need a medic in here. One dog dead, the other three scattered at the last gunshot. I think I shot one of masked guys, but the bastards somehow got away."
"Got away?" Nora asked, eyebrow raised. "How the hell could they have gotten away? We have both exits covered. What, did they leave through a goddamn tunnel?"
"You'd better get in here and see for yourself," the voice replied. "Room's confirmed clear of hostiles."
"Shit, shit, shit!" Nora said to nobody in particular. How quickly her mood had risen today, and now how thoroughly and effectively it had been dashed.
With her weapon drawn, and with Coulter and four other officers flanking at her side, she made her way into the office. One room at a time, they cleared their way through the office, establishing that indeed, somehow, the attackers were nowhere to be seen in the front half of the office. As soon as she arrived to the room with dog cages that featured the store's rear exit, stepping over the body of a single dead dog, she lowered her weapon and whistled. "What the Christ happened here?"
Ash, or soot, or something black and fine coated most of the room, centering in a small nova to one side of the room. The room smelled of cordite and dust, not uncommon for an enclosed space where a gun had just discharged, but beyond that there was a smell of something foul to the air, a smell that reminded Nora of a pot of milk that had boiled over and burned to the stovetop. She wiped her fingers along the wall and the thin layer of powder lifted easily. "We'll want samples for forensics, of course," she said. "None of our two in here saw what happened?"
"No ma'am," the one called Lawson said. "Gomez and I were fighting off the dogs just down the hall there. We saw two bolt across the room and fired to subdue."
Nora's stomach dropped. Parker.
"You fired despite a lack of clear and present danger from the intruders to the officers?"
"They somehow sent the dogs after us," Lawson objected. "We were in harm's way, and we fired at the ones responsible, the invaders wearing masks." His eyes held a second message: you're only so defensive of them because of your son's involvement.
Nora bit back her reply, not wanting to prompt yet another argument of impartiality.
"…I thought I contacted one, but no blood," Lawson added, changing the subject.
Well there's a familiar story, Nora thought, remembering back to the thief Valerie's recounting of her failed robbery. "Well none of this makes any God-damn sense. We've got masked men pinned here in the back of the office, where you two officers can see the only exit they're near. Tame pet dogs start attacking, as though on command, and then all four of them just simply disappear in a cloud of black dust?"
"There was a bang and a flash of light," Lawson said.
"Of course there was. A bang and a flash," Nora repeated, letting the absurdity of the situation hang in the open air. "So, what, do we suppose Montgomery Scott just beamed them up to the USS Enterprise? Just help me to understand how it is exactly that they vanished from a sealed box?"
Lawson was silent, a deep frown on his face.
"Where is Trent?" Nora asked, looking around the room.
"She's in her office with Jones… I think he's taking her account of events," an officer replied.
"This might be above our paygrade," Coulter replied. "Do you think we should phone the Bureau?"
"Starting to wonder that myself," Nora replied. "Let's search the place first. See what we can't find."
* * *
Under the shade of a tall and proud hickory tree sat a 1979 Mercury Cougar XR7. In it, Horace puffed at a cigar held loosely in his lips as his eyes traced the names of the businesses across the street. Laundromat. Real estate. Ah, there it was… Best Friends Veterinary Office. The letter, in its sagacious knowledge of the present, had promised quite the show for Horace. So far, things had been relatively still and boring, but he could see now that the situation was rapidly changing. A masked figure approached the front door and made his way in. Horace stubbed out his cigarette in the ash tray of his car and leaned in. In the fronts of several parked cars, he saw silhouettes waiting in a tense silence. Ever the hunter, Horace knew a bear trap when he saw one. The bait had been set, and now the boys placed their paws on the center pad… the jaws were tense, waiting to snap shut.
It wasn't just his observations that tipped him off… from the letter, he knew quite directly that the vet's office was a trap. He also knew that the boys would escape, if only narrowly. What mattered the most was that this single incident was Horace's green light, so-to-speak. Inaction and silent spectatorship could now switch to active, decisive action to carry out the cripple's plan, and Horace intended to linger in this town no longer than was necessary. He saw the cop car belonging to the police woman he'd met, and any police attention was a bad thing when considering the work ahead of him.
He thought then on the cripple, Jim Duncan. Horace had always thought of his family's ward as something like an uncle, though the man's strange temperament and frightening condition alienated him to most of the DeLange family. He couldn't walk, of course, and had been pushed around in a rattly wheelchair for as long as Horace could remember. His voice was a chilling, wheezing thing, owing to the grevious wounds he'd sustained to his neck and jaw. Most of their communication had been done with Horace speaking and then waiting patiently for Jim to write his reply… it was faster that way, and obviously less painful for the man. Most people saw his scarred face and neck and thus only saw a monster in that decrepit chair, and only Horace had seemed to harbor more curiosity than animosity towards the old man. The two had become fast friends as a result.
Before long, Horace was often volunteering to push the man's chair, a responsibility that Muriel seemed grateful to hand off. The two would discuss world politics and philosophy, with Horace quickly discovering a profound wisdom to the man that he had never before even glimpsed sight of. They would walk through parks and talk of wars and of elections, of discoveries and theories, and Jim Duncan proved himself time and again a person of impeccable foresight. Horace still had several sheets of paper from the two's many deep conversations, and he knew that handwriting like a man knew the voice of his dearest friend. There was only one topic that seemed off-limits: Jim's accident or his past preceding it. For decades, Horace had simply accepted that he might never learn that chapter of his "uncle's" story.
Strangely enough, it was a journey to the movie theater in 1973 that provided his wedge in. Horace was lost in the memory. He was outside the theater and watching rain come down around the hazy streetlights. He was in the car, and heard the rain's pattering against the car's roof… As he'd watched Jim write those letters still burned into his mind, his heart had raced and the humid car compartment suddenly had felt very warm indeed. A great and terrible favor, he had written. How little Horace had known then.
Horace was snapped back to the present moment as he watched cars suddenly spark to life and storm forwards to seal off the front and rear exits of the vet's office. He watched the police take aim at the store as Nora stepped forwards, bullhorn in hand. He shook his head, impressed at yet another accurate prediction from that slip of paper, which he gingerly folded back up and tucked away in his glovebox.
It was time to begin.