Brian Freeman - Marathon

Her menu sat in front of her, unopened, as she composed her latest tweet. She always considered it a challenge, fitting pearls of wisdom into 140 characters. It was like changing the world one little sound bite at a time.

Her long fingernails made it difficult to type on the phone’s keyboard.

@dawnbasch tweeted:

Another Muslim suicide bomber. As expected.

When will we face the truth about the Religion of Peace?

#islamismurder

#noexceptions

Dawn put her phone faceup on the table. A few seconds later, it began to vibrate again and again. Retweets. A tiny smile played across her bright red lips. Word was already spreading. More deaths meant more anger, but anger was essential if anything was going to change.

She mourned the deaths of the innocent. The spectators at the marathon. The police. However, sacrifice made people understand the stakes. Injustice led people to take up arms.

“What can I get you, ma’am?”

Dawn looked up into the smiling face of the waitress standing beside the booth. She was young, in her early twenties, probably a college student at UMD. Pretty girl. Dark skin, dark eyes, thick eyebrows. Her black hair made a V on her forehead. She wore the restaurant’s uniform, but she also had a scarf wrapped around her head and pulled back around her neck.

Dawn smiled back. “I’m sorry?”

“I said, what can I get you, ma’am?” the waitress repeated.

Dawn looked down at the phone on her table. She was getting a phone call, and she saw on the screen that the caller was Lieutenant Stride. Another policeman, blind to the threat in front of his eyes. Another government stooge who invariably chose peace over freedom. She had no interest in talking to him.

With the tap of a finger, she declined the call. The phone kept vibrating. More retweets. More patriots.

“What can you get me?” she said to the Muslim girl. “Well, first of all, dear, you can get me a different waitress.”

Maggie stared into Wade Ralston’s eyes, and she knew the truth. This was never about terrorism. This was murder, evil and simple.

She put her hands up slowly. As she did, she measured the distance between herself and Ralston, gauging the likelihood of his getting off a good shot or of her being able to take him down before he fired. The fluorescent light gave her a flicker of darkness every second, but it wasn’t much.

Next to her, Travis’s face was blank. He still didn’t get it. “What are you doing, man? What’s with the gun? What’s this about?”

“I think this is about Wade killing his wife and her lover,” Maggie said, never taking her eyes off Ralston. “He tried to blow you and Joni up, Travis. Is that right, Wade? Was that the plan?”

Ralston blinked through his sweat. “Yeah. That was the plan.”

Travis looked back and forth between them. “ What? What are you talking about? What is she saying, Wade?”

“She’s saying I was the one who blew up the marathon, you moron,” Ralston told him.

Blink on. Blink off. Light. Dark. In the next flash of shadow from the flickering fluorescent light over her head, Maggie took a quick step forward.

Travis shook his head in disbelief. “No way. No way, man. You killed Joni? How could you do that, you son of a bitch? And Shelly? She’ll never walk again. All because of you? ”

“Maybe you should have thought of that when you were sticking your dick between my wife’s legs,” Ralston fired back. “The two of you, acting like I didn’t know. Throwing it in my face. Did you really think there wasn’t going to be some kind of payback?”

“You wanted me dead, too,” Travis murmured, his eyes wide.

“Damn right I wanted you dead. The bomb was supposed to blow both of you to ribbons. The two of you gone, and me on my way to Key West with half a million dollars in insurance. I couldn’t believe it when I woke up, and there you were, barely a scratch on you. Like I said, you’re a lucky man, Travis, but your luck is about to run out for good.”

Darkness.

Another step forward.

“You built the bomb here?” Maggie asked, stalling for time, trying to get close enough to jump across the space and grab the gun.

Ralston grinned. He was proud of himself. “Yeah. If some teenager in Boston could build a bomb, I figured, how hard could it be? And nobody would ever be looking for a runner, right? All I had to do was rewire my athletic tracker to send the signal. Soon as I got close, soon as I saw Joni and Travis, I pressed the button. I wanted to see their faces right before the end. Boom .”

“You’re sick, man!” Travis shouted. “You’re a sick, sick bastard!”

“You think you’re so innocent, Travis? You burned up that building. You killed those people.”

“You said I had to do something!”

Ralston laughed. “Yeah, I knew if I pushed you, you’d do something stupid. Stupid is your middle name, Travis. I figured, having you rot in prison for the rest of your life, squeezing your ass cheeks shut, that might be okay. But no, it’s not enough. I missed you once with the bomb. I’m not going to miss again.”

Flicker, flicker, flicker. Maggie inched forward.

“What about Eagle?” she asked. “Why was he involved?”

“You know about him?” Ralston’s eyebrows nudged upward in surprise. “One crazy homeless guy gets popped, I didn’t think anyone would make the connection.”

“You sent him into the shop and paid him to distract the staff. That’s when you planted the bomb.”

Ralston cocked his head. “Yeah, I knew I could set the bomb off in the middle of the race, but obviously, I couldn’t plant it. It had to be ready to go before the marathon ever started. And I didn’t want Eagle around to talk about what he did. Even a shit-faced drunk like him might have put two and two together after the bomb went off.”

“And the marathon camera?” Maggie asked.

The light went off. It stayed off a fraction of a second longer this time. She assessed the distance. Assessed how far she could jump.

Ralston shrugged. “The marathon people like to show off their camera. I’ve known about it for years, ever since we started zapping their bugs. I figured I’d wear a disguise on Tuesday to plant the bomb, but I didn’t want anybody getting curious and taking a close look at the pictures. The safest thing was to make sure the camera went down. So I stopped by the marathon offices on Monday evening and left a little present behind. Mice. I knew they’d be calling the next day, soon as one of the little guys took a run across somebody’s desk. And they did. So I crawled around the office on Tuesday afternoon, and it was easy enough to disable the cable to the camera.”

Maggie shook her head. “And you didn’t care about murdering total strangers when the bomb went off?”

“Collateral damage,” Ralston replied, “but necessary. If you take out a big insurance policy on your cheating wife, and she and her lover boy are the only ones who die, the cops and the insurance company take a long, hard look at you. But a terrorist attack? They just cut you a check.”

He chuckled to himself, as if he couldn’t stop admiring his perfect plan.

“So what are you gonna do now, Wade?” Travis bellowed. “You gonna shoot me? Is that how this works?”

“No, the sergeant here is going to shoot you. But too bad for her, you’ve got enough left before you kick it to land a shot between her eyes. Of course, no one will know that she actually took the bullet in her brain first.”

Maggie knew time was running out.

Ralston squinted at her, and his gun arm tensed. The barrel was aimed at her head. He wouldn’t miss.