The Things We Bury - Part 2: No Big Apocalypse [Completed]

Chapter 2: Unlikely Keys (Parts 6 & 7 of 7)

An irrational panic rose in his bloodstream as he entered the crowded restaurant. R.J.'s nerves were overworked and ready to boil over at the slightest complication. The room wasn't even that full. Bodies pressed in along the corridor that ran between the bar and the tables. But the tables themselves were mostly empty. Only a few small groups sat, sipping wine and cocktails, while gripping greasy napkins filled with discarded hors d'oeuvres forks and screaming conversations to one another.

It was the noise that was the real problem. In the stark space, the high-volume chatter created a static that threatened to overwhelm him. Individual voices were lost and it became a mechanical hum like a great beast of an engine, groaning in a mash of pistons, cogs, and steam.

It mirrored the fevered buzz in his ears, when he was leaving The Music Box. It started the moment he detoured from his usual route to the elevator and hurried down a deserted corridor to the seldom used radiology lab. No one was around but R.J.'s heart beat with a body shaking rhythm as though the entire resources of the DTAA were at his heels ready to nab him.

His trembling fingers almost dropped the petri dish when he pulled it from his pants' pocket. Visions of it shattering disastrously against the floor or rolling down the hallway with him comically chasing after it filled his mind.

With the full expectation that the action would cause the bunker to go into lockdown with blaring horns and flashing red lights, R.J. took a deep breath and held the chip to the sensor panel.

Jamie's chip. The ghost in the machine.

He waited a tense second for doom to crash down around him. A bead of sweat fell from the edge of his eyebrow and he could swear he heard it splash against the tiling.

The imperceptible hope that he almost refused to acknowledge was met with the sound of the lock releasing. Unable to believe that good things could happen to him, R.J. tried the door. It opened into the dark lab. He immediately shut it and felt the lock move back into place.

Taking a similar deep breath, R.J. entered the crowd. He could see Nikki at the far end of the bar. She had a bottle of wine in one hand and seemed to be having a heated discussion with a creepy looking guy with long stringy hair. He was out of place in the hipster crowd. Nearly everyone in attendance must be a food blogger or a neighborhood regular, filling the room with far too many lumberjack shirts and beards for the hot Arizona climate.

But this guy looked off, with his pasty skin and black concert T-shirt. Could this be some type of shake down? Some degenerate stalker?

"Excuse me," R.J. said to a girl in horn-rimmed glasses and a peasant dress, who he'd bumped into while passing. She glared at him and he quickened his pace to fight through the gauntlet and reach Nikki.

The metal-head was moving off and Nikki turned to a balding man with a wiry red goatee. She poured him some of the wine.

R.J. was just close enough to pick out the sound of her voice in the turmoil by watching her lips.

"It's one of the new style Zinfandels," she said with a smile. "I'm really getting into them. The food pairing possibilities are endless, but I like this one as a sipper."

She seemed entirely unaffected by the confrontation. Perhaps he had misunderstood. Maybe it was just a dispute over tastes in wine. He was too paranoid. He was seeing threats everywhere.

Like with the teller at the bank. He had been certain that the middle-aged woman was reporting him to the authorities despite the fact he'd been careful to only withdraw nine grand—that guilty looking set of numerals that seemed to shout out his attempt to avoid the full ten thousand that would legally need to be reported to the authorities. But as he waited there, his palms greasy with sweat on the marble counter, he was sure she was turning him in. The longer she was gone the more convinced he was that she wasn't just calling her manager or the IRS but that she was actually a DTAA agent setting him up.