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Did you know a doorknob is a lethal weapon? I didn't until I nearly had a heart attack seeing the one to Blake's door turning as someone
probably that under-fleshed bogeyman I'd been battling tested it from the hallway. I quickly hung up the phone. I had few choices. I couldn't get out by using the balcony, because Blake didn't have one. I
doubted I could make it back to my room fast enough and, besides, I didn't want to run from him. The logical, intelligent, calm, rational, no-nonsense me the one who gets up in the middle of the night with sick kids,
the one who looks under the bed so she can swear to a frightened child that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of, the one who promises to make things better with a kiss and a bit of good old-fashioned mom advice
she wanted to stay. You know, sometimes I really hate her. The get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge, I-saw-too-many-scary-movies, jumps- whenever-her-kids-sneak-up-from-behind-and-say-"boo!" me wanted
to put those Nikes to work and run like the devil was on my tail. But the logical me, the one who knows the Bloody Bones stories are nothing but the product of a great imagination and maybe too much spicy food right
before bedtime, said "What, you're going to run from a figment of your imagination?" "Figments of my imagination don't try to kill me," I told myself. "OK, so you're smarter than a hallucination. What
if this guy has Blake and is torturing him? What if Blake's lying in a pool of blood, weakly calling your name, begging you to help him? Could you turn a deaf ear? Could you leave your partner to a fate worse than
death? (Although I have to admit I can't think of many fates worse than that, except maybe to be dead and naked.) Could you leave him in the lurch and a lot of other clichιs I won't go into right now? I thought about
it. Could I? Could I really turn tail and run? I really wish I'd stop asking myself these questions. But since I put it that way no, I'm not going to run. I'm going to bravely stick it out right here. I'm going
to face down whoever or whatever is turning that doorknob by waiting for it right behind the door. OK maybe not the bravest thing you've ever seen, but I'm being plucky, not stupid. Only the Terminator and Bruce
Willis stand their ground when bad guys are coming straight at them. And that's where I hid. Of course, all of this flashed through my mind on fast forward, thanks to the adrenaline rush, and I had
the presence of mind to have my gun out and ready even though it didn't seem to do a whole lot of good when fighting mythical figures. But you never know. The knob turned and the door started opening, very,
very slowly, like it always does in movies and, yes, time seemed to stand still. But as soon as the door began to swing open, I reared back with my foot and kicked it hard. It bounced once against whatever was on the
other side of it, then flew back my way, so I kicked it a second time, then moved fast from behind it. I would have been in a great defensive position if I hadn't heard some very familiar cursing from the vicinity
of the just recently kicked door. I reached over and pulled it open. Uh-oh. It was Blake. "Your nose
isn't broken," I said for the fortieth time. Blake sat on the examining table in the Service's medical section, Mexico City. His face was pretty battered looking, I had to admit. I kicked that door a whole lot harder
than I thought I could. Fear inspires me. Blake shot me a dirty look. He had a bloody nose and the beginning of a couple of black eyes. Plus there was a large knot on his forehead, right where the
door caught him on the second bounce. "It feels broken," he said. He talked like his nose was stopped up. "I said I'm sorry, Blake. How many times do you want me to repeat it? Besides, how was I to know
it was you on the other side of the door?" "Oh, I don't know. It's my hotel room and I had the key whatever would make you think it could be me trying to get into my own room?" The doctor had patched
him up and was busy getting some pain pills together, after which the two of us would head back to the hotel to finish what was left of our stay there not. You really think we could sleep after everything that had
happened? "How do I look?" Blake asked me. "Terrific," I said. The doctor handed him a small mirror. He gasped. "I look like I've been in a car crash," Blake said. He turned and gave me another
one of those looks. "Well, at least your nose has stopped bleeding." Hey Miss Glass Half Full, that's me! Mr. Glass Half Empty said something not very polite, then climbed off the exam table.
"Where's Eddie?" Blake asked. "In the conference room, waiting for us," I told him. Five minutes later we were reformulating our plans for the next morning. We decided to bunk right there in one
of their extra rooms. I'd packed our things and brought them with us, so there was no need to return to the hotel. I was relieved that both Blake and Eddie seemed to accept without question my version of what
happened in the hotel room. I really thought they'd simply push a button that would drop me out of a trap door and into a nice padded cell. But they surprised me. What they didn't do, though, is
offer a good explanation for what I was fighting in that hotel. I think that like me they may not have had a good explanation. Or at least not one that looked sane in the light of day. Blake took a couple
of pills and went to sleep and I stayed up and helped Eddie with the gear we'd need. We packed guns several of them, including a couple of sneaky little weapons designed by the Service's version of "Q" in the
James Bond Movies. One was a fountain pen that shot a puff of gas, another was a compact that, when thrown, turned into a small grenade. We also had two small, portable machine guns that broke down and went into secret
compartments in the doors of our Jeep. The Jeep was pretty neat. It had a global tracking system, but this one was attuned to the Service's headquarters. They could track us wherever we went, as long as we were
in it. It also had a built-in weapons system, including a pretty nifty grenade launcher that Eddie assured me could take out a building from a thousand yards away. He ran me through the operations end of everything,
showed me how to release the machine guns and put them together, and handed me the maps and guidebooks. Later, we drank a cup of coffee and went over our plans. Blake was still asleep and we decided it was best
to let cranky sleeping partners lie. We'd pull out first thing in the morning and head south, hoping to pick up the trail of stories and rumors about our old friend, Mr. Death. I looked at the clock it was
nearly midnight and we planned to leave at five in the morning, to avoid as much of the early morning Mexico City traffic as possible. Suddenly, I was tired. Eddie and I said goodnight, and I retired
to my tiny cubicle with its single bed, only to toss and turn the entire night. You'd think I would have slept better knowing that the skeleton couldn't come after me here at headquarters, but I didn't. Nope. Too busy
thinking about what was going to happen the next day. We'd be on our own no headquarters, no help within hundreds of miles. Just us, a bunch of ancient ruins, the jungle and something that may or may not
be alive and real. Bloody Bones
or something worse, much worse, was out there. And I had the distinct feeling it knew we were coming and was ready for us. At the time, I didn't know just how right I was. |
