cleaned up and ate some breakfast. And maybe they’d never get around to asking Kate, anyway. There was no reason for them to, unless she volunteered the information. He’d chance it, if he could decide where to go to have a look at the contents of the disk.
The office was out. He was on a rotating schedule and it was his day off, and he never went there when he was off. His coworkers would be suspicious. At any rate, he’d have to show it to someone there, to see if they had the hardware to download it, and then he’d have to ask someone in the office for help if it proved to be too technical for him. He had a couple of hacker pals, but Ron didn’t really want to implicate them. Where, then?
“Kate,” he said. He could take it out to Holcomb’s compound. He knew he had seen some impressive computer equipment there. In Levin’s lab and in a room he’d passed on his way to Holcomb’s office. Surely Kate would give him a hand if he told her what was going on. He’d do it.
Ron went to his desk, where his own computer sat, an ancient 486 that had become obsolete years ago, and of no use for downloading this type of software. But he found a small envelope of thick paper that accommodated the bare disk, and he dropped it in and sealed it shut. He took a pen and scribbled a D on it, and dropped it in the top drawer.
After securing the disk, he went back to his bedroom and began to assemble his clothes for the day. He picked out some denims and a white cotton shirt. It would be sufficient if he were going back out to Holcomb’s compound. He thought of the place sitting there, so close to Salutations, but so isolated from everything, all of that wilderness looming just beyond. Thinking of that, he got a pair of lightweight hiking boots out of the closet and drew some good thick socks out of the drawer. That would do it.
Quickly, he went to his bathroom and took a hot shower. He didn’t linger, as he normally would on a Saturday morning, enjoying the warm water as it washed away the sweat and dirt of the previous hours. For now, all he wanted was to get clean and get out of the house and over to see Kate. In a few minutes he was done, had draped a towel around his hard waist, and was headed back to his bedroom.
And, intent merely on getting out of the house, he did not see the men hiding just beyond the doorway, waiting for him to emerge. Ron walked out, turned toward the bedroom, and was knocked instantly to the floor by the power of a strong sap-carrying right at the base of his skull. He went down, the towel still tight around his waist, his cheek meeting with the hardwood floor. The breath whooshed out of his lungs in a prolonged oof.
Before he could do much more than acknowledge that he’d been struck, Ron felt rough hands grip his wrists and peel him from the floor as two men stood him up, slamming him against the wall. Almost immediately, a fist plowed a vertical furrow into his stomach and he doubled, going down again, this time to his knees. He felt a couple of woody splinters driving into the flesh just at the top of his shins. “Oog,” he said.
The men grasped him by the hair and pulled him up that way. His scalp screamed in agony. He almost forgot the pain in the back of his head, in his gut, and in his knees. And he did forget when one of his so far unseen assailants slapped him expertly across the front on his face, splitting both of his lips. Wincing, Ron could taste blood.
“Don’t look at us, boy. Keep your eyes shut.”
Ron did not have to be told again. He could feel what might have been a gun barrel stuck in the base of his throat.
“Now, where is it?” The voice was calm, smooth.
Ron swallowed. “Where is what?”
The same hand slapped him across the lips again, and Ron tasted a new trickle of copper as the blood burst through his clenched teeth and onto his tongue. “We’re not here to play games, son. Just tell us where it is—keep your fucking eyes shut!—and you’ll live through this. Now,” a fist smashed