Free Prologue by Greg Ahlgren

“Anyway, it all worked out. Wolfe covered one of my classes. Would have covered all three if her schedule had allowed it. She’s a good egg. Then, after taking my head off, Johansson covered a second one. She grumped like hell and I limped through the third class until the end of the semester. By then Beth was gone.”

Paul turned to Lewis. “When I look at Grace I can see Beth so clearly. It’s scary how much she looks like her mother. I guess she’s the last link I have to Ithaca . Amanda and I didn’t make it and Chuck and Beth are dead. Grace is what I’ve got left. Things don’t work out like you think they’re going to when you’re 25.”

Paul sat staring at the far wall. He started to take another swig of his beer but the can was empty. He threw it against the wall. Lewis watched wordlessly.

“Okay, I’ve decided what to do about Amanda,” Paul said suddenly.
“Be still my beating heart,” Lewis said, packing up his tools.
“I’ll pretend Grace is working on a summer school project about 20 th Century America. I’ll ask her what was the one event she’d nail as the turning point between free America and Soviet America.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lewis said. “Then what?”
“What do you mean, ‘then what?”
“After she tells you, do we bring her in?” Ginter asked.
“Bring her in? Why would we do that?”
“Guidance. There’s a lot more we could learn, Paul.”
“It’s risky. Too many people in the know,” Paul said quickly.
“It’s even riskier going back without knowing what the hell we’re doing,” Lewis said. “In Special Ops we learned that over half of every operation is intelligence. Put the best guys with the best equipment in a situation with skimpy intelligence and they’ll get their clocks cleaned by tribesmen with spears.”
“You think we need to bring her in?”
Lewis wiped his hands. “Let’s see if you think she’s trustworthy first,” he said.
“Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
“Three heads are better than two.”
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
“Don’t let your meat loaf.”
Paul laughed. “Your–all right. You win. Hey, when are we going to take this tin can out on the road?”
“Soon,” Lewis said, turning off the garage light and holding the door for Paul. “Soon.”
“It’s just that…” Paul said from the alleyway.
Lewis stopped. “Yeah?”
“Amanda was always out for Amanda. That’s why we didn’t get married, I think. You get the sense that she’s really working for herself in everything.”
Lewis shrugged. “Aren’t we all?”
“But it’s like… ah, it’s hard to explain, but if she joined in with us she’d expect her objectives to dominate.”
“See what they are,” Lewis said. “If she’s the fire-eater you remember that shouldn’t be a problem. Do you trust her?”
Paul thought for a minute. “I did. We’ll see if I still do.”
Paul went home. Grace was at another sleepover and Valerie had said she had stuff to do. Paul had come home early after work and found her getting dressed upstairs. He had his own meeting with Lewis and hadn’t argued.

The house was in darkness. He went around turning on lights and then pulled down all the shades. There was fried chicken left in the refrigerator. He reached for a Tab but then grabbed another beer and plunked himself down in front of the TV.

When the TV came on it was turned to Fox news. He decided against listening to more neo-Soviet propaganda and flipped to a movie on one of the nostalgia channels. At one point he thought he heard Val’s car come up the street and muted the volume but the car pulled into a neighbor’s driveway. He realized when he un-muted the television that he hadn’t been paying attention to the plot.

Amanda Hutch. Was it really 28 years ago..?

“Don’t you want to sit in the bar?” he had asked her.

The Thursday night crowd at The Chestnut Tree, just off the Cornell campus, had been unusually sparse, and Amanda always preferred the