Free Metro by Stephen Romano Page A

okay?”
    â€œWhat’s okay , man?”
    â€œHow’s your hand?”
    â€œI think it’s stopped bleeding . . . but . . .”
    â€œI’ll stitch you up later. Hang in there. Just hang in there , both of you.”
    Please.
    He takes a look around before he makes his move, scans the area hard and quick. The street snakes through a series of nice houses that look like they belong mostly to renters—one-story flats, duplexes with two and three units. There’s a dark-red Lexus Hybrid real close, and it looks brand new—maybe a graduation present from Daddy.
    â€œMark . . . please talk to me.”
    That’s Jollie, much calmer now, moving toward Mark, using her come-hither voice, the one she always defaults to when she needs something and knows just flatly asking for it won’t work. Her breath freezes in the chill morning, and she looks like a concerned china doll, round and pondering, with desperate eyes that give her game away.
    Mark loves her for that too.
    He puts his hands on either side of her face again, looking right in her eyes. “It’s going to be okay. We’re gonna be fine. Wait here.”
    â€œMark . . . this is just nuts . . .”
    â€œYes, Jollie. Yes, it is. But I promise it’ll be okay. Just trust me.”
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    H e gets into the Black Box, opening it carefully on the sidewalk curb next to the car, finds the two Markos 6G smartphones, and activates one of them. Dedicated satellite uplink. A new one of these comes in the mail every three months, FedExed to a secure address—they have to keep him up on the latest technology—along with the updates on what to do with it. Those instructions come from secure Internet links. You memorize code numbers and operational directives and then you forget about them. You go back to being Joe Stoner with the ordinary slacker life. You adapt and survive. The first order in situations like this is to come straight in. And kill anything that gets in your way.
    He sees Jackie’s face when he thinks that.
    He erases the image and it comes back again and he erases it again.
    Damn it all.
    He punches a series of numbers into the smartphone and talks to the satellite, and it tells him the shiny red Lexus is all his.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    T he drive that happens next is a lot calmer.
    No blurs, no tracers, no sirens chasing after them.
    They are three ghosts now, quiet and invisible.
    Mark heads for the address that blips in over the Markos—a safe place to land, it says. He tells Jollie and Andy again that everything will be okay, and they say nothing back there, silent as the grave of Elvis.
    Jollie is still making lists of possible scenarios.
    She makes Mark into the boogeyman over and over, then makes excuses and dismisses the reasons why—because, at the end of it all, she just wants to survive this night.
    And still she wonders:
    Is this when it happens?
    Is this how they finally break me?

II
    THE MAN FROM METRO

3
rainmaker
    T he bad lieutenant walks back to Jackie-Boy’s room and sits with him for a few minutes. The kid’s still passed out and the nurse on duty still says it’s touch-and-go. He’s not in a coma or anything—just really messed up and drugged out. The bad lieutenant checks his watch again. 5:30, almost dawn. Just a few hours since he made the call, and he’s still waiting. Damn, man.
    He thinks about lighting a smoke—what are they gonna do, arrest him?—but he thinks better of it and sits down with a sigh.
    He’s thinking about his great-great-grandfather.
    Sam Mudd, the conspirator, the asshole.
    The reason for the expression Your name is Mud .
    That always makes him smile, but it usually comes with a chill, because it’s a grim marker of how screwed up things in the world really are—as if he needs another reminder. He thinks maybe he does. Maybe just needs