Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“I’ll give you the code to the door downstairs, Col.” Amon is punching in his code as he says this.
“This is some door you’ve got. Are those shutters over the windows?” Lowyn is craning her neck to see around the porch.
“Stained glass on the inside, solid steel on the out.” And with this statement, Amon opens the door. “After you.”
He waves us through, so we enter. Then he closes and locks the door behind us.
We get about ten paces in—past the leftover, broken-up statues in the inside vestibule—and enter the nave.
“Wow.” Lowyn is looking around. “This is really nice, you guys. Are all these pews original?” Then she’s looking down at her feet. “Slate floors, my God. They’re incredible.”
“She’s gonna be just fine in here, I think,” Amon says.
“You gonna be fine, Low? It’ll only take about fifteen minutes, I think.”
She’s already let go of my hand and has started walking towards the nearest pew. They are all crowded with junk for her to pick through. “Better than fine, boys.” She waves us off. “Go do your thing. I’ll be right here when you get back.”
I follow Amon down the middle aisle of the church, then into the back, where we find the stairs that lead to the bunker. “There’s a brand-new door down here too,” Amon says.
And even though I can recall two small windows on the way down the last time I was here, there are no windows now. Just bricks. “Shit, you guys have been busy since I’ve been gone.”
“Feelin’ guilty for slackin’ off?”
“Not a bit.”
Amon laughs. “Nor should you.” He stops at the new stainless-steel door and looks over his shoulder at me. “I told you when we started putting this together last year, I’m gonna handle it. You do your thing, Ryan, Nash, and I will take care of the rest. How’d you like Mercy?”
“The dog? Yeah. She’s no trouble. She did her thing without comment. Well, she did shoot me a look once.”
Amon is smilin’ as I talk about his dog. “What kind of look? Rolling her eyes kinda look?”
“Maybe more like… ‘Yes, sir.’ But with a mocking tone behind it.”
His whole face lights up when you talk dogs with Amon. And his eyes get all excited. “Yup,” he says. “That sounds like Mercy.” Then he opens a black box sitting on a table just next to the door. “Put your phone in there.”
He drops his in, I drop mine in, and he closes the lid.
Then Amon opens the door, waves me though, closes it, and turns to me. “The whole room is secure. You say whatever you want in here, Collin. You know we don’t have permission for this, and it’s never gonna be accredited, but Ryan did it right. No one’s gonna hear nothin’. I’d stake my life on that.”
A SCIF is a room you use when you absolutely want to make sure no one else will ever know you said a thing. It’s built special with electromagnetic shielding. What’s said in the SCIF stays in the SCIF. Unless someone blabs, that’s it. But neither of us will be blabbing about nothin’. And maybe what Jim Bob told me earlier doesn’t exactly warrant this kind of security, but then again, maybe it does. And it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
“I trust ya. And anyway, this isn’t that big of a deal. I just need to tell someone something, and you’re my someone.”
Amon shoots a finger at me. “Got it, Sarge. Let’s hear it.”
“Don’t call me Sarge. Not in here, not out there.”
“Sorry. Habit.”
“And that’s Master Sergeant to you, soldier.”
“Well, excuse the fuck outta me, Master Sergeant.” He salutes me and clicks his fuckin’ heels, eyes going serious as he stares off in the distance.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Amon relaxes and punches me. “All right. What’s up?”
So I tell him all about my little meeting with Jim Bob this morning. The little bits and pieces I was given, anyway.
“Well, of course I knew he was holding out, ya know,” Amon says. “I knew there was something about your sister in the whole you’ll-learn-the-truth-at-the-end-of-your-contract bullshit. But what it all means?” He scoffs. “I don’t know. And that shit about the cross having four points? What the hell? Is it code? Is he talkin’ in some code?”
“I don’t know, Amon. But it’s weird, right?”
“Agreed. It’s weird. But…” He pauses to think a little. “In the grand scheme of things, is it any weirder than everything else around here?”
I blow out a breath and huff. “Well, someone tried to kidnap my sister and I blew his head off over it, so I would not exactly call that normal weird.”
Amon looks past me for a moment, like he’s thinking about something. Then his blue eyes lock with mine. “I’ve thought about that, ya know. How that guy came into your house and grabbed your sister like that. And I’ve got four little sisters myself. So back then I would think… what would I have done? And ya know what, Collin? It would’ve ended the exact same way. Even if he did put his hands up. Fuck. No. No one gets to come into my house and touch my sisters. I don’t know if you did the right thing, but it doesn’t even matter. People wanna fuck around and find out? Good. Let them. This is what happens when they step over the line. And now everyone around here knows exactly where they stand with you.”