The Stone

Penrose paid them no attention. He kept his eyes locked on Zach, eyes that were wide. He had an aroused expression on his face that made Zach’s stomach do flips. “I had to be sure,” Penrose said.

“You don’t touch me during this interrogation,” Zach yelled. “You don’t touch anyone! That clear?”

But Penrose was silent. Finally, he leaned back in his chair. “How is your son, Agent Shepard?” Penrose sat folded his hands.

Zach tensed. He kept his features under control, all things considered, but the tension was tight in his neck. But then he relaxed. “Please, Penrose. Nice trick. You had a 50/50 shot of guessing…”

“Toby. Sometimes you and your wife—your ex-wife—call him Bubba or Tobes. Toby Scott when he’s in trouble.”

Zach lost the ability to breathe momentarily.

“A soccer player with games every Saturday, has a yellow Mongoose Legion bike that you bought for him to ride during your last visit, and you were barely able to get him to put down the game controllers on his X-Box long enough to spend that quality time together that you crave oh so much.”

Zach pounded the table. “You leave my son out of this, you sick son of a bitch.”

But Penrose didn’t even flinch. “And your ex-wife. Aubrey. A pretty woman that you couldn’t keep hold of. It’s hard to do when you’re so married to your job. It’s no surprise, really, that they both left you.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Zach said. He regretted saying it even before it left his mouth, but he was powerless to stop it.

Glenda put a hand on Zach’s shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said. She tried to pull Zach away, but Zach wouldn’t budge.

“How do you know them?” Zach demanded. He leaned forward even as Glenda pulled him by an arm.

Penrose grinned. “You just told me,” he said. “And now they all know.”

Zach froze again. “Who? Who knows? What do they know?”

“Your role in all of this,” Penrose said.

Zach didn’t understand.

“I still have one more job to do before my role in all of this is over, Zachary Shepard, to secure the way for her majesty’s arrival,” Penrose said, almost in a whisper.

The click was almost lost. It was the glint of metal falling to the table that Zach noticed first. The handcuffs that kept Stephen Penrose locked down clattered to the metal tabletop. And Penrose moved fast. He held his now-free arm to the side, and a blade filled the space beyond the palm of his hand. A sword.

Somehow Zach saw this play out almost in slow motion. A ripple worked over the whole of Zach’s body. The blade that Penrose now held arced toward Zach, aimed for his neck.

But Zach had time. A strange amount of time. An inordinate amount of time. The realization came to him almost as if he thought of it while sitting quiet on Sunday morning: This is how he killed them, the victims in La Jolla and Seattle. A sword that came from nothing.

Zach ducked. The blade passed over him, and as soon as it did, time reasserted itself with the sound like a recording speeding up again. Zach shoved himself back, his chair tipping over to the floor and spilling him out backwards so that he rolled over and into the wall opposite where Penrose sat.

Penrose was on his feet. “Clever, Agent,” he said.