CHAPTER 65

Luc didn’t like waiting.

He wished Agent O’Dell had allowed him to bring Scrapple along. He didn’t like being without the dog. They went everywhere together. And he really didn’t like hearing Scrapple’s howl of abandonment coming from the living room window as they drove away.

He tried to see beyond the trees. He tried to look down the path where Agent O’Dell had disappeared. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t driven up, or at least, walked up the driveway. She was being very secretive for someone who kept telling him not to worry. She reminded him of Julia. Before she moved to D.C. his daughter had always been going off checking stuff, stuff she probably shouldn’t have been poking her nose into. Maybe that was just what law enforcement people did. Maybe it was in their blood. Although he and Julia did share some of the same blood.

He scratched his head, pushing back the beret and looking again to see if he could make out where in the world Agent O’Dell was now. He held up the cell phone. She said fifteen minutes. Well, it was close to that now, wasn’t it? He glanced at his wrist, only to remember that he had stopped wearing watches long ago when he could no longer understand them. Numbers had become useless to him. He couldn’t even write out a check anymore. They probably would have shut off his electricity months ago if he hadn’t had the foresight to set up all the automatic withdrawals for his bills. Hopefully the money wouldn’t run out before his time ran out.

He looked out the car window again and this time felt a slight panic as he tried to remember why he couldn’t recognize anything. Oh, jeez! Where the hell was he? He twisted around in the car, trying to find something he recognized. Then he held up the black object in his hand. He was holding it so tight it had to be something important, but damn it, he couldn’t remember what the hell it was.