Die Again To Save Tomorrow (Die Again to Save the World Book 2) Read online

  “This man needed justice, and we brought it to him.”

  The crowd leapt up with another standing ovation, and Martha smiled and stepped away from the podium.

  The police commissioner arrived back up on stage. “Officer Dragone, on behalf of the New York City Police Force, we’d like to present this award for Excellence in Service.”

  The commissioner handed Martha a plaque and an envelope. She smiled graciously and shook his hand as she took it.

  She stepped off the stage and returned to Table Eight amidst the cheering throng.

  The next speech involved the extensive police details of providing security for the upcoming U.N. meeting. The speaker joked that, of course, having the leaders of North Korea, China, and Russia in the same building was a splendid idea and nothing bad could come of that…

  With the ceremony behind them, it was time to blow off some steam. Rueben and Aki piled out of a taxi onto the sidewalk in front of a small joint called the Exit Bar.

  The Exit Bar was a square brick building with a highway theme. Outside, license plates and road signs decorated the front, and a restored truck from the 1920s sat on the deck with a century-old inspection sticker still on the window.

  With the rest of the group lagging in traffic, they waited outside, and Aki ran her fingers across the truck’s fire engine red paint job. “This is adorable.”

  The truck’s door had been left unlocked for guest photos, so Rueben winked. “Yeah, why don’t you get in it?”

  She raised an eyebrow and jumped into the driver’s seat. She struck a suggestive pose, and he laughed and snapped photos.

  He dug his hands in his pockets and looked over at her, dark folds of fabric on the brown leather seat and long manicured fingers around the wheel. God, she looked good in that truck.

  She caught him staring. “What?”

  He flashed her an odd half-smile. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. That was what. Her arched eyebrows showed she knew it, too. She just wanted him to say it. Women. When would he ever get them? Oh well, had to try to play it cool. He smirked and affected a concerned face. “Sorry, is that a…bug in your hair?”

  She batted at her hair. “What?”

  “Yeah, no, it’s on your dress now.”

  She wildly flicked at her dress, and he smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, it’s gone now.”

  She glared at him. “Uh-huh. I bet it is.”

  “It was a big one. Like, uh…”

  “Like, invisible? Nonexistent?”

  He laughed, and she got out of the truck and smacked him playfully.

  At that moment, Buzz, Martha, and Marshall arrived.

  Marshall stepped out, mumbling about the taxi driver running a red light. “These guys think they can break the law, and it’s okay if no one gets hurt. The law is the law, and you’re supposed to obey it.”

  Rueben and Aki rolled their eyes, and she leaned in closer to him. He fought the instinct to wrap his arm around her waist. Not that he didn’t want to. God, he wanted nothing more than to pull her close to him. But he didn’t know what they were, and the fear that he might have it wrong made him err on the side of caution. The way she had fake-come onto him at the dinner table in front of Marshall… Sexiest friend zone I’ve ever been in.

  Marshall rambled on. “It makes a mockery out of the law and the profession of good men and women who enforce it.”

  Aki pointedly ignored Marshall and wrapped her arm around Martha. “Well, this night is all about Martha. Let’s get this celebration on!”

  A cheer went up from the little band of partiers, and they all crammed in through the door.

  Rueben was the last to file in, and as he did, a strange voice came from the street. “Nothing is what time allows, but the world is the same. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hash Brown?”

  Turning, Rueben saw a man in shabby clothes with crazy hair and greasy fingers. Tucked under one arm was a bucket of Hurley’s chicken, a fried chicken fast food joint with a flashy logo and the slogan Best dang chicken in the galaxy.

  Rueben studied the homeless man. “You again. The guy who’s always eating a bucket of fried chicken.”

  “Infinite deaths become jumper’s doom. You’ve lived what you knew to do. What’s next is up to you.”

  He repeated himself twice, the third time in a sing-song voice. Then he went back to his chicken and ambled away down a darkened alley.

  Rueben knew he shouldn’t engage the man, but this was certainly odd. Did the man’s words mean anything? What had Buzz said about those like the Chicken Man? He was part of the extreme minority of the population that experienced déjà vu-like symptoms, possibly due to remembering discrepancies from timeline variations due to Rueben’s time warps. So, in other words, Rueben’s time-warping had caused the poor bastard to go crazy.

  But the thing about infinite deaths… “Hey man, you know, don’t you? You know who I am? What I can do?”

  The man stopped mid-step and turned his head toward Rueben. “I’ve seen you. Many different versions of you. I like this one the best.” The homeless man took a bite out of a chicken leg and wandered off again, but not before adding, “He’s coming. And he is the worst of you. Be ready, or don’t. Either way, you’re going to die…and die and die and die.”

  Chapter Two

  Friday, May 19, 10:05 p.m.

  Rueben stood there before the door to the bar, angled away and facing the dark alley. The Chicken Man’s words seemed too important to ignore, but Aki was inside.

  How did the saying go? Hos before crazy homeless bros. Not that Aki was a—

  “What was that about?”

  Rueben turned toward the door where Buzz stood peeking back at him. “Eh, just a weird homeless guy. Creepy.”

  Buzz’s eyes twinkled as if he knew something Rueben didn’t, or maybe he was intrigued. “Infinite deaths? Jumpers?”

  “Maybe he likes frogs. Come on. He’s only one of those people who remembers fragments of my time warps. I’d rather not bother him.”

  “Because…you made him crazy? You feel guilty.”

  “I feel thirsty for a beer. You in?”

  Buzz gave a nerdy laugh. “Dude. It’s always beer-thirty in my mind. You know I do my best thinking with an elevated blood alcohol level.”

  “Yeah, and it worries me sometimes.”

  Buzz slapped a hand on Rueben’s shoulder. “What is it that teenagers and reality stars are saying these days? YOLO?”

  “Um. Something like that. Come on. Tonight’s about celebrating. First beer’s on me.”

  They both went inside. The lights were low, and the chatter was loud. The overpowering sound of a breezy Gin Blossoms hit—Allison Road, to be exact—seemed to fit with the highway theme.

  The bar was full but not too crowded, and they made their way through booths made out of restored VW van seats against vintage motel signs on the walls. Rueben also noticed framed, oversized posters of road trip novels such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

  The ladies and Marshall were already ahead, chatting away, but Buzz seemed a little ill at ease.

  Rueben slapped his buddy’s shoulder. “You’re quiet tonight, Buzz. I thought you said it was beer-thirty.”

  “I prefer fine wines in my company or in the company of choice others.”

  “In other words, you can’t pick up a girl.”

  “Not to save my life,” he replied quickly. “Terrifies me.”

  Rueben wrapped his arm around Buzz’s shoulders. “Look, Buzz, I can tell you after living a hundred lifetimes that you’ve gotta just go out and do it. You embarrass the shit out of yourself, learn from it, and try again.”

  “First of all, you haven’t lived a hundred lifetimes. You’ve only lived eighty-three, and they weren’t lifetimes. They were the same week, played over and over again. Of course, you mastered it.”

  “Your point?”

  “You are not a wizened sage qualified to dispe
nse advice to lesser mortals.”

  “Fine. But the statistical probability that I will go home alone tonight is…eh…” Rueben glanced back at Aki, who chatted with Martha as they all made their way to a table. “Fifty-fifty.”

  “You delude yourself. Eighty-twenty.”

  “Eighty-twenty? In my favor?”

  “You wish.”

  Buzz glanced back at Aki, who now posed with Martha beside life-sized figures of Bonnie and Clyde. It appeared they’d roped Marshall into reluctantly snapping the photo. Heaven forbid he have some fun.

  She laughed, and even Marshall cracked a smile. Rueben watched her pose for multiple shots like a glamor model. Her short bobbed black hair shone under the low light of the bar, giving it an almost purple glow. “Actually, I’d say more eighty-three to seventeen.”

  “As opposed to your one-hundred percent?”

  “Oh, now you’re cruel.”

  Rueben slapped him on the back. “Come on, man, let me help you.”

  “I’m flattered, but I’m not your type.”

  Rueben laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  The photo op was over, and Rueben and Buzz followed the migration toward a table.

  They found the Route 66 booth. According to a placard on the table, the bar’s owner bought it from a liquidated mom-and-pop diner that had gone under when tourism lagged along Route 66 due to increased urbanization.

  Aki sighed. “All the political shit I deal with daily, the last thing I want is to come to a bar to deal with it. I want to numb my brain and not think about how the entire world as we know it is a bunch of bullshit.”

  Buzz raised an eyebrow. “So I take it the CIA killed Route 66?”

  Rueben and Aki groaned, and Rueben smirked at Buzz. “Don’t try to divert the subject. You know what you’re here for.”

  Aki glanced back and forth between the two of them. “What’s going on?”

  “Buzz needs to get laid.”

  Buzz looked miffed. “Excuse you!”

  The ladies now appeared intrigued.

  Marshall scoffed and snapped his fingers toward a waiter.

  “Christ, Dad, this isn’t France in the 1900s. You might as well yell, ‘Garçon.’”

  “There you go again, thinking you’re hot shit cause you can remember some trivia fact from a history class.”

  Rueben mouthed his next line with him. “Damn Columbia education.”

  Buzz stiffened. “Pardon me, sir, but Columbia is a world-class institution.”

  “What would you know about the world? You can’t even get a date without a username and password.”

  Everyone laughed, but Rueben knew the comment wasn’t a jest. Marshall was being Marshall.

  The waiter arrived in time, an energetic post-hipster with a scruffy beard, gauged earlobes, and no discernible work uniform.

  Between them all, they ordered enough drinks and food to cover the table. The soundtrack switched to Tom Petty, and a group a couple of tables over cheered. A few of them started dancing. Aki raised an eyebrow at Rueben, and he made the famous John Travolta sideways-peace-sign-over-the-eyes dance move. She just laughed.

  Martha started in on Buzz’s problem. “So, what’s your opening line?”

  “I prefer not to disclose my strategy.”

  “You don’t have one,” Aki supplied.

  Everyone laughed.

  “Jesus.” Marshall scoffed as he nursed his beer. “And I thought my love life was in the shitter. You kids are in the prime of your lives, and none of you know the basics of getting somebody to go to bed with you. I don’t know how your generation is going to reproduce.”

  “Hey.” Aki sat up straight and wagged her finger at Marshall. “We’ve heard about enough out of you. If you can’t be nice, go home.”

  Rueben’s mouth dropped. She had not just said that. Marshall made a face but said nothing.

  The waiter arrived with drinks and appetizers. The hungry group dug in, reaching over each other for spinach artichoke dip, mozzarella sticks, and onion rings.

  Marshall grabbed his beer and silently wandered off to another table.

  “You’re my straight-up hero,” Rueben told her after Marshall had left.

  “It needed to be said. Now, back to Buzz.”

  Buzz chugged his beer and winced. “I’ve not had enough cheap beer to have this conversation. What is this stuff?”

  Rueben rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Stop pretending you’re a hardened bar snob. I’ve seen you get hammered on the cheapest shit every college bar had to offer.”

  “That was four years ago. I’m much more seasoned now.”

  “You’re twenty-three. You’ve only been legally allowed to drink for two years.”

  Martha frowned. “You’re only twenty-three?”

  Rueben sighed. “He graduated high school at twelve and went to college at sixteen. He graduated at nineteen—double or triple major. I don’t even know.”

  “I detest the sarcasm,” Buzz said.

  “Detest all you want. I’m okay with that.”

  Martha gasped and pointed at the overhead television. The news channel broadcasted the latest on the Alister Pout scandal.

  A talking head spoke as the black-and-white captions followed. “The investment mogul is expected to get a sentence of two hundred years.”

  The camera cut to a press conference with Pout’s legal team. “We are going to fight this sentence. Mr. Pout is not guilty, and we have the truth on our side.”

  Martha laughed. “The truth? The truth is you maimed and butchered people all over this city, masterminded a plan to hijack an experimental microwave bomb, and we caught your ass.”

  They all cheered and raised their glasses in a toast.

  Aki sipped her drink and dipped a chip in the spinach artichoke dip. “This guy gets better and better every day.”

  Rueben saw Marshall sitting alone, hunched over his beer in a corner. He sighed, grabbed a plate, and heaped a handful of fries on it. He took it over to Marshall’s table. “Here, Dad.” He set the plate down.

  Marshall glanced up at him as though he wasn’t quite sure if he could trust the gesture.

  “No one should have to drink alone.”

  Marshall started to growl something under his breath but stopped mid-sentence and said, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Rueben sat and sipped his beer. There was a long, awkward silence, and Rueben sensed his dad wanted to say something.

  After two false starts, Marshall said, “So you helped Martha, huh?”

  Rueben nodded and perched precariously on his chair.

  “Should have been a cop. You might have had what it takes.”

  Rueben couldn’t believe his ears. An actual compliment. “Thanks, Dad,” he started. “You know—”

  “Then again, you have flat feet and the constitution of a gerbil, and who orders French fries at a bar? Peanuts, son. Peanuts,” Marshall growled.

  “There he is,” Rueben muttered, and he took the offending plate of fries. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to celebrate. You want to sulk.”

  Marshall reached out and grabbed the plate. He gulped back his thanks, but Rueben saw it.

  Rueben smiled and went back to his table. As he was about to sit, he felt a tiny sting on his neck. “Ouch.”

  When he reached up to feel it, a fly buzzed away from him. At least it looked like a fly or maybe a horsefly. It was hard to tell but what else could it have been? Those things could bite.

  Oh well. He sat and turned to see what his friends were talking about now.

  Aki was saying, “You would not believe how much work it is.”

  “What?” Rueben joined the conversation.

  “The summit. I’m doing pre-security checks.”

  Rueben noticed that the TV was showing news coverage of the upcoming World Leaders Summit on Monday.

  “You know,” Aki continued, “only the event of the decade. Every world leader in one building. And it just
has to be here in New York.”

  An exterior shot of the United Nations building downtown flashed across the TV. The World Summit had been in the national news media for months, and now it was all going down in three days. The main topic on the agenda: global peace and the looming threat of violence between certain neighboring countries, some of which had nuclear capabilities.

  The entire CIA was overwhelmed with working all these angles on the conference. Nothing bad would be allowed to happen at such an important gathering on US soil. In addition to making sure the United States was clear of espionage and domestic and international terrorism at large, Rueben had been working on ensuring that air travel was secure for the event.

  That meant securing private airports and staggering and scrambling dignitaries’ travel plans, including staging decoy flights with full press at both public and private airports all week.

  Aki was leading the entire operation, including working with the FBI and other intelligence and security agencies to ensure that the security at the event was clean, and there was no access to the buildings or hotels any time in the past week.

  On the clandestine spy front, that included paying off hotel and business owners all over the city to shut down their businesses. She was far more senior than he was, and he didn’t envy her one bit on this event.

  “I’m up to my ass in security protocols for these guys,” she said. “The prime minister of this, the president of that, the king of this, the queen of that…and everybody is convinced that they are the biggest security risk on the planet.”

  Martha frowned. “Well, they aren’t wrong, are they?”

  Aki sipped her cocktail. “Not exactly, but it’s a pain in the ass. The prince of Saudi Arabia stipulates that ‘no public affairs shall be conducted anywhere within five miles of where the prince will reside.’”