Waiting for a Miracle

Chapter 4

It was two days before I needed to see Wallace again. Or rather it was two nights, as I’m not really a day shift kind of guy. Anyway, I had a crisis in the lab that I felt he could help me with. The crisis was also partly his fault, and so 3 AM found me outside his front door, pounding on it like a madman. I am a madman of course, but that’s completely beside the point.

The porch light went on and I sighed with relief. A sting of guilt lanced my neck as Wallace’s wife opened the door, and I ducked my head and hunched my shoulders.

She looked at me in anger until she recognized my suit. Then she slammed the door in my face without so much as an “oh my God, please don’t kill me!”

I considered blasting through the door with a laser and killing her for being rude. I let the notion go, having a hunch that doing so might upset Wallace. I waited on the doorstep, listening to his wife wailing at him not to answer the door.

Wallace opened the door after many assurances that everything was all right. He stepped outside dressed in a pair of flannel boxer shorts and a muscle t-shirt, which I presumed were his pajamas. Out of his normal clothes he was muscular, a delightful discovery made more evident when he stretched his arms back behind his head.

Yawning, Wallace rubbed his eyes. “It’s kind of late Duggan. What is this about?” He stifled another yawn behind a loose fist. “Did you find him already?”

I shook my head, the action simultaneously answering his question and clearing my mind of a dirty thought. “No, but I needed to see you anyway. I have a major problem with the advice you gave me. Leona was alright with a small kiss the last two nights, but tonight she demanded that I give her a real kiss. She said she wasn’t happy with just a peck on the lips, and she completely trashed my lab when I refused to give in to her.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem alright. How long will it take to repair your laboratory?” Wallace asked.

He’d already deduced that I couldn’t search for Miracle Man without my lab.

“One day, and the nanites can operate independently until then. The problem is that they’ll try to report back to my server in the lab once they’ve finished their search for him, and Leona trashed it. She’s still in my lab, so I can’t make repairs on anything either. She’s really pissed off at me right now, and I need you to talk her down.”

Scowling, Wallace asked, “Why do I have to do it?” His rising voice revealed his fear more than his face did.

“Because it was your idea that I give her a small kiss in the first place,” I replied testily. This wasn’t helping, so I took a deep breath to calm down. “I’m sorry. You’re just trying to help, but I don’t know what to say to get Leona to realize she’s keeping me from finding the big guy. Maybe you could do it, but she just throws things at me and swears like a drunken sailor. I’d be willing to pay you a hazard rate of four times your usual fee.”

“Fat load of good it’ll do me if I die,” Wallace muttered. He made a pathetic defeated whimper and stepped back into his house. “Let me get dressed,” he said and shut the door, closing it at a much slower speed than his wife had.

Twenty minutes later we were sorting through the mess in my lab, searching under the larger chunks of debris for Leona. I caught movement in the rafter from the corner of my eye and spun to look at it. A miserable groan rose from my throat at the sight of her pants hanging from an I-beam.

“She’s naked,” I commented as I directed Wallace’s gaze up to the trail of clothing hanging in the rafters.

The trail ended with her panties, and Wallace’s gasp told me that he’d found her before I did.