“Because he followed through on every swing. Which is why I stroked you as hard as I did. Didn’t mean to. I was just trying to be like Tony.”

“Imitation is the highest form of flattery.”

Sheen smiled, but there was no warmth behind it.

“We had to make sure you weren’t spying on us,” he said. “You can’t imagine how many of our competitors are constantly probing us, trying to gain proprietary information. Some try to pass themselves off as innocent vendors and private subcontractors. Others as friends of friends.”

“How long have I been in here?”

“A few hours. Hope it hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience for you.”

“Being clubbed in the head, hog-tied, then locked in a self-storage unit isn’t inconvenient, Ray. It’s felony battery and kidnapping.”

Sheen offered another soulless smile. “So, I understand you’re looking for a Castle Robotics employee named C.W. Lazarus.”

“Know him?”

“Can’t say I do. I don’t recall anyone by that name ever having worked for the company.”

He was almost certainly lying. Liars commonly try to avoid appearing dishonest by implying—“Can’t say I do”—instead of making direct statements—“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“So who is this guy Lazarus, anyway?” Sheen said.

“He’s the guy who made my airplane crash. He was also involved in the murder of Janet Bollinger, but I’m still working out that part.”

Sheen signed and stood. He looked over at Jervis, who was rubbing his left shoulder and wincing in obvious pain, his head shiny with perspiration.

“You told me you just wanted to scare him a little,” Jervis said.

“It’s too late for that.”

“I didn’t sign up for this, Ray. Cut him a check. Just pay him off, for crissake.”

“He already knows too much,” Sheen said. “Don’t you, Mr. Logan?”

“First of all, whatever it is you think I know, I can guarantee you it’s not as much as you’re assuming. Secondly, I recently met a very attractive San Diego County sheriff’s detective. I’m sure she’d be pleased to sit down with the three of us and sort this mess out — unless, of course, you just want to pay me big bucks to keep my mouth shut.”

“You seem incapable of keeping your mouth shut,” Sheen said.

He had a point.

Jervis clutched his chest, his face twisted, and he made a sort of repetitive grunting sound, like a pig rooting.

“I t-think… I t-think I’m having a h-heart attack.”

And then, apparently, he did.

Knees shimmying like a newborn colt, he staggered, then fell, crashing into the Plymouth’s rear bumper and shattering the glass of the left taillight with his head while Sheen just stood there and watched.

“Frank, you OK?”

“You need to get him to a hospital.”

“Christ.”

Sheen quickly re-taped my mouth, rolled the door back up and looked outside to make sure the coast was clear. Then, with considerable effort, he dragged Jervis to the yellow MINI Cooper convertible I’d seen parked outside Castle Robotics, muscling him into the passenger seat and hustling back to the storage unit.

“I’ll be back.”

Take your time, Terminator.

He pulled on the chain, turning off the overhead light, then rolled the door back down as he exited, bathing me once more in blackness. I heard the padlock latch outside, followed by the high-compression whine of the MINI’s engine, racing away.

Soldiers and Marines are taught to “adapt and overcome” in combat. More elite warriors learn that prevailing on the battlefield often takes more than mere resourcefulness. It requires complete situational awareness — the ability to instantly assess one’s tactical environment, to inventory any and all available resources that might be used to crush his enemy. To hone this skill at Alpha, we played a game called “Remember or Die.” The course instructor was a fiery little Army private turned Delta Force operator with chronic bad breath named Oren Ernstmueller who’d once escaped a Viet Cong jungle camp after slitting two of his captors’ throats with nothing more than a sharpened lens from his eyeglasses. One at a time, over and over, Ernstmueller would lead us into rooms cluttered with incongruous objects. Cleaning supplies. Ammo boxes. A chess set missing two pieces. A dead crow. Photos of naked women. He’d pull off our blindfolds, give us five seconds to memorize everything in the room and the placement of each item, then slap the blindfold back on. Woe unto any go-to guy who missed the details of a single object, or got its specific location wrong.

“When your ass is on the line,” he’d bark, his halitosis melting your face, “all you got to go on is knowing who’s who and what’s what and where’s where. The more you see and remember, the easier it’ll be for y’all to make it through any shit storm and come out smelling like a rose.”

Nobody ever accused Oren Ernstmueller of being a poet, but he was one outstanding self-defense instructor. Thanks to him, though enveloped in blackness, I could still see in my mind what was what and where was where. My memory was all I had to work with if I hoped to live — that and the shattered taillight of a vintage Plymouth coupe. As fast as my bindings would permit, I rolled and inch-wormed my way toward the car.

Broken glass littered the floor below its left rear fender. I groped around blindly for a shard from the shattered taillight, accidentally stabbing myself in the palm of my right hand.

“Son of a…”

I grasped it as best I could, the glass slick with blood, and began working blindly at the duct tape binding the wrists behind my back. I lost all track of time as I poked and pulled, struggling to free my hands. Every other jab seemed to produce a painful new wound, but it was either that or die.

I still had a long way to go when I heard the MINI Cooper coming back.

My wrists came free just as Ray Sheen’s car pulled up outside the storage unit. Like a man possessed, I tore through the tape binding my ankles, flung open the Plymouth’s passenger door, and, groping in darkness, found an ignition key on the floorboard. Amazingly, the seventy-year-old engine fired up like new. Then I smashed down on the accelerator, blasted through the metal roll-up door, and made good my escape.

Actually, that’s not what happened. That’s what I wished had happened.

My mouth, wrists and ankles remained taped as Sheen rolled up the door of the storage unit and strode in, leaving his car engine idling. Clearly, he was planning to stay only long enough to haul me off and do to me whatever he was planning to do. Everyone says a highlight reel of your life is supposed to flash before your eyes when death comes calling. But there were no highlights in my case, only lament. Who would take care of Kiddiot? Who would fly the Ruptured Duck? Who would make love to Savannah?

Sheen grabbed me by the shoulders and began dragging me toward his car as the glass shard from the broken taillight slipped from my grasp. Without seeming to notice my bloody wrists, he stuffed me into the Cooper’s tiny backseat. I had to bend at the knees to fit. Then he ran back, rolled down the door to the storage unit, locking it, and jumped in.

After a series of sharp turns, we accelerated onto a freeway. The car crossed under a sign that told me we were eastbound on Interstate 8. He turned the radio on and dialed in a news station. The top story detailed a Predator drone strike on Al Qaeda’s latest second-in-command.

“That number two guy gets blown up all the time,” Sheen said.

I wanted to say, “If I was the number three guy, I’d definitely turn down the promotion,” but it’s hard to say anything when your lips are literally sealed.

The digital clock on the car’s dashboard read 11:23 P.M. I strained to free my wrists, twisting and pulling at the tape binding them. By the time I looked up again at the clock, it was nearly midnight.