Ghost Guard by J. Joseph Wright

Author:J. Joseph Wright
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: JK Wright Publications
Published: 2013-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

TEN

TREY MCCOLLUM DIDN’T USUALLY feel the need to smuggle personal items past security at The Tower. Not that the biggest government data center west of the Mississippi didn’t allow an occasional pocket Rubik’s Cube or Magic 8-Ball past its gates. Still, there were no guarantees. He knew the guys at the gate—Mick, Rico and Wendell—were notorious for stealing stuff from analysts. And this was special. This was a genuine Koosh Ball, given to him by his three-year-old son.

“Have a good day, Mr. McCollum,” Rico waved. Trey waved back and, as soon as he was around the corner, flipped the bird while slipping the Koosh from his cuff.

“Not getting this one!” he flicked the ball up and caught it. Cameras were watching him, but the people watching those weren’t at the security gate. They were upstairs, and the men upstairs could care less about Koosh balls.

He tossed the bundle of stringy rubber again, this time high above his head, gathering it skillfully behind his back. If he wanted, he could have quit his job as an intelligence analyst and played Koosh ball professionally. Easily.

When he got in sight of Room Eleven, he saw the woman he was there to relieve, Deeanne Snow, or Dee. She was hunched over a computer screen, cheeks resting on her palms, thick reading glasses catching the light in such a way as to shroud her eyes, hiding the fact that she was fast asleep.

Trey, knowing he had her dead to rights, snuck to the lock control pad, tapped the entry code quietly, then tiptoed in after the door clicked open.

“Wake up!” he tossed the Koosh. Dee flinched to an upright position, and at that moment, watching the ball on its arched trajectory, Trey’s skin tingled at a sudden, electrified gust. A small snap of what Trey could only describe as a current of energy enveloped the Koosh. Just before landing on Dee’s shoulder, it vanished from sight.

Dee saw none of this. Her heart was racing. For a second there she thought she’d been caught sleeping again by someone who mattered. When she saw who it was, and that he didn’t matter, she only shook her head.

“Late again? What’s the excuse this—” she forgot all about that idiot Trey when her main screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Activity all over the board. “What the hell is this shit?” she banged on the back of the flatscreen. The figures kept coming.

Trey saw none of this. His heart was jumping from his chest. The Koosh ball. It was gone. Not under Dee’s chair. Not under the table. Not anywhere it should have been.

“Where’s my Koosh?” he muttered aloud, paying no attention to Dee. He was in a state of shock, probing with his feet at anywhere the ball could have rolled. Though he knew it didn’t roll anywhere. He would have seen it. It simply ceased to exist, right in midflight.

“To hell with your Koosh!” Dee snapped. “We’ve got a problem here!”

And as soon as she said it, the real troubles began.

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