Robert Ferrigno - The wake-up

Thorpe lightly stroked her belly, watched her eyes.

"No answer?" Claire sensed the lies; she just didn't know what the truth was, and sooner or later, that would ruin everything.

"I'm just glad I'm here," said Thorpe. He kissed her neck, slid his hand across her hips, dipping lower, his touch feathery.

She groaned, pushed him away slightly. "Don't get me started. I have to give Pam a ride to the airport in about a half hour. She's going to New Orleans with this guy she met."

"I thought she was celibate."

"He's an attorney. I think they're having fun finding loopholes."

Thorpe pulled her closer. "Tell Pam I'll pay for a cab."

"Big spender. Don't let her find out; she'll want you for herself."

Thorpe shook his head. "I'm already taken." If it was a lie, it was a lie to himself as well as to her.

Claire kissed him. "Tell Guillermo you got word that Clark is making a move on him. He'll probably give you a bonus. Try answering your phone once in a while, Danny. Love and kisses."

Thorpe hit SEND, watched his e-mail to Hathaway disappear. He glanced out the window, the courtyard empty in the soft light of evening. He had slept all day after Claire left to take Pam to the airport. Claire was working this afternoon and tonight on stuff for her Psych 101 class. They would get together tomorrow, maybe go out for breakfast, see if he could persuade her to ditch class. He could still smell her on his hands, on his face. He didn't want to wash until he saw her again.

He called the Meachums' house, waited until the machine picked up, then began talking. "Ray? It's me, Frank. Call me at 555-0609. I've got good news." He had tried the same thing earlier, without response, but he wasn't sure where the machine was located in the house, wasn't sure Bishop could hear his voice. No sense for Bishop to stick around there until the Meachums got back. Bishop had put himself on the line; he could go home now.

"Enjoying the evening, Frank?"

Thorpe stared at the instant message flashing on-screen.

"It's me, Frank."

"I know who you are."

"I missed you. Did you miss me?"

Thorpe fought back his anger, thinking of himself standing in the projection room, hoping to get a glimpse of the Engineer. Thorpe had missed him all right, but not in the way the Engineer meant it.

"Not in a talkative mood today? PMS?"

"Could be. We should get together and discuss it."

"I would like that."

"How about…" Thorpe thought of his plans to spend time with Claire, but he put them aside. "How about tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's not good for me. Sorry."

"Pick a date."

"You're so abrupt. I don't remember you being so curt. We only met that one time, but you seemed like a man who loved the sound of his own voice."

Thorpe checked his watch. "I'm a busy man."

"Good for you, Frank. Idle hands are the devil's workshop… or something like that."

Thorpe looked up as the gate creaked. Claire had come back, was walking toward his front door. "Let me know when you want to get together," he typed.

"Don't go. You're always in such a hurry."

Claire knocked.

"Time is money." Thorpe looked toward the door, glad he had locked it.

"Don't I know it, and never enough of either, is there?"

Claire knocked again. "Frank?"

"You're not still mad about Kimberly, are you? Because if you want to talk about it, I've been told I'm a good listener."

Thorpe watched Claire leave. Halfway across the courtyard, she turned around and stared at his window, then walked quickly to her place. She knew he was there.

"Frank? You still there? Maybe we can work out our troubles together."

Thorpe watched Claire's door close. "I don't have any troubles."

"Then I envy you, Frank. I truly do."

"Got to go."

"Let's make a date. I'm going to be out of town for the next week, but why don't we get together on the eleventh?"

Thorpe was disappointed. A week was too long. A minute was too long. "Sure."

"Wonderful. How about 1:00 p.m. at Black's Beach?"

"The nude beach?"

"You're not shy, are you, Frank? Not ashamed of the body God gave you, I hope. This way, we can be certain we're equally unarmed. Ha-ha. So, one o'clock, Black's Beach. I'll be lying on a towel, facing the large set of rocks offshore. Pelican Rock, they call it."

"I know what they call it."

"We're going to have a swell time. I think we have a lot in common."

"I don't."

"See, that's something else we can talk about. I hope-"

Thorpe shut down the computer. It was only then that he realized how fast his heart was beating. Claire's lights were on, but he stayed where he was.

Thorpe knocked on the Meachums' front door this time. The curtains were drawn. He knocked again. "Ray?"

There had been too many unanswered knocks in the last twenty-four hours. First, Claire rapping on his door while he was busy with the Engineer last evening, Thorpe unwilling to let her in, as though the Engineer could see through the computer screen. Then afterward, he had gone over to her place, knocked, called out her name, but she didn't answer, either. He didn't blame her. Now it was Ray Bishop who wasn't responding.

Thorpe looked around. A man across the street was mowing his lawn with headphones on, grass spraying his shanks, oblivious to Thorpe and everything else. Thorpe went around back, uneasy now.

"Ray?" Thorpe knocked on the back door again. "It's Frank." Thorpe used a credit card to spring the lock. It was easy. He'd barely opened the door when he caught the smell and knew Bishop was dead.

Ray Bishop was sprawled beside the refrigerator, faceup, his head beaten in. Blood was everywhere-splashed on the floor, sprayed across the walls, dark fingers dripping down the stove and refrigerator like the hand of God. Not a forgiving God, though, but a raging, petulant God who smote believers and nonbelievers alike, women and children and tired old men who had turned their lives around.

Thorpe knelt beside him. Bishop's face was barely recognizable: swollen and bruised, crusted with black blood, his jaw shattered, the orbit of one eye caved in. A line of tiny red ants streamed from one of the baseboards, up Bishop's arm, and to the corner of his mouth. Thorpe flicked them away, but they kept coming, and he grew angrier, squashing them with his fingers, flattening them with his shoes, smearing them to paste. They would return-there were always more ants-but not for a while.

He kicked aside the blood-caked hammer on the floor, sent loose teeth caroming across the tile. Thorpe felt sick. He sat beside Bishop again, wondering what his last moments had been like. The knuckles on his right hand were raw-he had gotten a few punches in. It wasn't much consolation, but Bishop might have taken some small pleasure in that. He didn't go gently, and that was all Thorpe was hoping to ask for himself.

Vlad and Arturo must have come by a couple nights ago, right after Thorpe left… or maybe they had surprised Bishop the next morning, before Clark and Missy had had a chance to call them off. Thorpe was certain he had convinced those two, but Vlad and Arturo had already been told to kill Meachum, kill anyone else they had found there, and they had found Ray Bishop and pounded his skull apart. Bad timing.

Thorpe looked at Bishop's ruined face, forced himself not to turn away. "I'm sorry, Ray. I'm not sorry you were here… because you made that choice yourself, and it changed you, it changed you back, and I'm glad you got the chance, glad you took the chance, because there's not one in a hundred who would have done what you did." Thorpe's vision was blurry, hot tears running down his face, his voice a hoarse whisper. "I'm just sorry I wasn't here with you when they came."