We’re not under any delusions that we could actually stop her, though. The goal would be to simply slow her down, so people could evacuate. We’ve laid down wider highways leading away from all the highly populated coastal areas, built underground bunkers for those that can’t get away and deployed a growing fleet of buses, helicopters and jets, whose sole purpose in life is to assist in evacuations. Someone suggested building a massive wall around the country, but that’s obviously a horrible idea. And while the expense has been vast, the value of human life cannot be quantified in dollars.
“How long has he been standing there?” Rich Woodall, aka ‘Woodstock,’ is our fearless helicopter pilot. He’s an old vet. Fought in three wars. Flew birds for the U.S. Marine Corp for twenty-five years. At first glance, he’s not the kind of guy you’d want flying for you—messy gray hair and mustache, wild blue eyes and a surly personality, but he can fly like a bastard, and he’s willing to get up close and personal with a 300-foot tall behemoth. He’s whispering, but I can hear him just fine.
“Thirty minutes,” Watson replies. He’s not so good at whispering, and Woodstock shushes him even more loudly. Watson’s also the last person you’d expect to find in an elite government agency. Picture Chunk from The Goonies, all grown up, but how you imagined him, not how he actually turned out. Watson’s a good guy. The kind of friend everyone should have. And I owe him for setting me up with Collins. He’s a little OCD and can’t stop himself from timing people. Sometimes I stand here, just thinking about stuff, to see who will break for the bathroom first.
“Leave him alone,” Cooper says from the far side of the room. Her voice is muffled by whatever book, diagram or directory she’s got her nose buried in. “He’s thinking.”
“About what?” Woodstock asks.
I actually hear Watson shrug. He’s a bit...portly, and the shrug manages to push some air from his lungs. Poor guy. If we ever had to evacuate, he’d be the snack that slowed the monster down long enough for us to escape. “Ashley said he didn’t talk much on the way home. Called him a brood, which is actually an alien race in the X-Men comics, but I don’t think that’s what she meant.”
I hear the high-heeled clack of Cooper’s approach. Without seeing her, I can visualize her dark power suit, tightly tied-back raven hair and her thick-rimmed glasses. I’m dressed in my usual summer-time uniform of brown outdoorsy sneakers, cargo shorts, an orange t-shirt and my red beanie cap. My winter uniform includes the addition of a red hoodie sweatshirt. But let’s be honest, sixty percent of men under forty-five in New England wear the same uniform—minus the beanie—like we’re all part of some secret club that has little fashion sense and really warm legs. Or maybe we’re all just lazy douche bags.
Cooper is still kind of a stick in the mud and a scrooge with regulations, but she’s transformed herself over the past year. She nearly died when Nemesis self-immolated in Beverly harbor. Although we were far enough away to avoid being burned, the shockwave shattered the windows—which are now two-inch-thick tactical glass—impaling Cooper. After physical therapy, she kept the same workout schedule, and she now has a sexy librarian look about her. If only Watson could get moving, he might have a chance. The affection is there. The attraction...well, he’s a grown-up Chunk. “Leave him be,” she says, shooing the duo away. “You know he’s—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, lifting my hand in a backwards wave. “I’m done thinking. Anyone catch the Sox game last night?” When I turn around, my team is looking at me like I’ve got Nemesis drool on my face. “What?”
“You haven’t said a word since arriving,” Cooper says.
“Allow me to translate,” Woodstock says, wandering back to his station, which is basically a lounge chair when he’s not flying. He kicks back and crosses his legs. “She expected you to have come to some kind of conclusion or insight while starring off into the blue.”
“How poetic,” Cooper says. She’s not entertained, by either of us.
Watson comes through for me. “Five to three. Sox over the Yankees.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard. On to the—” I search the room—a 1000-square-foot space on the fourth floor of the brick mansion that serves as our home and headquarters. There are ten work stations, most of them unused, and a large, ornate staircase at the back of the space. What once was a highly organized office of mostly nothing, has become a partially organized (thanks to Cooper) mess of case files, sent to us from every conceivable law enforcement agency, local and federal, going back fifty years, long before the inception of digital storage. But there’s one thing missing. “Where’s Collins?”