Free Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) by Joel Canfield Page B

think.
     
    As Jan took me where I needed to go – Jan was the name I gave the helpfully-efficient female voice of my phone GPS - I couldn’t help but feel like a shit for allowing myself to get mind-fucked by the rich hotness of Angela Davidson. When she casually indicated a guy like me was in her wheelhouse, it made me a little weak in the knees and almost hard between the balls. I knew now that she was most likely just warming me up for the bribe and I let my dick do the thinking instead of my head, as men sometimes do.
    I had to get better about this shit. Jules was going to need me and I should fucking be there for her. It didn’t feel good being alone out here and she seemed more and more like a good deal I shouldn’t pass up. I was suddenly more than ready to put her in my will, if I ever was fortunate enough to have anything to leave anybody.
    Maybe we should get a goddam dog.
    Enough with the Romantic Adventures of Max Fucking Bowman and on to where I was driving to – the residence of Colonel Curtis Allen, somewhere near beautiful Booneville, Kentucky, which, I had discovered when I looked it up, was named for Daniel Boone, noted frontiersman who, legend had it, had a run in with a bear at the tender age of three. Or - wait – that was Davy Crockett, wasn’t it? Which one had a coonskin cap? Maybe both of them? Didn’t the same guy play both of them on TV in the sixties? 
    Did I mention history wasn’t my strong suit?
    Anyway, Colonel Allen had literally put himself out to pasture, retiring with his wife to a modest home out in the middle of endless farmland, where I had managed to find him three years ago at the behest of (I now knew) General Davidson. Back then, I didn’t have to leave Roosevelt Island to find the guy, I just worked the internet, got a number and gave a call. He answered and my job was done. I just had to hand off his contact information to Howard and that was the end of it, I thought. Those were the days. Now I was headed to a town where, according to the last census, a staggering total of eighty-one people lived. I was pretty sure that added up to fewer bodies than were currently occupying the bottom floor of my apartment building.
    Back then, when I did reach Colonel Allen on the phone, I recalled that he was polite but not all that friendly. I believe I even got the distinct impression he didn’t want to be found - which is why, I guess, they had to hire the likes of me to undertake the hunt. This time around, I dug a little harder but didn’t find out much more about him. He abruptly retired from the service seven years ago, a couple years after Robert Davidson’s death (or not-death, depending on what you believed). He had been Robert’s commanding officer, but he wasn’t in Afghanistan when whatever happened happened - he was in the midst of transferring from Kabul back to a desk job in the States. It wasn’t clear if he wanted out or they wanted him out.
    Anyway, if he knew something, then he was worth the extra driving. And even if he didn’t know anything, he was at least on the way to Missouri, which was my next stop. That’s where my second potential lead was – Colonel Allen’s commanding officer, General John Kraemer, who I already didn’t like because his last name was a whole lot harder to spell than it needed to be.
     
    Wednesday morning.
    I had spent the night in Lexington to the north of Booneville. I had stopped there because I wanted to be sure I could find a motel where the rooms had doors on them. I woke up feeling sore and a little tense. I had talked myself into staying calm yesterday, now I had to reboot that dialogue, because I didn’t know what would happen when I actually started talking to my first lead.
    It took about an hour and a half to get down to the Colonel’s neck of the woods. I passed through the towns of Richmond, Irvine and Waco and wondered if Kentucky stole all their town names from other states. Finally, I was on State Route 28,