Minutes to Burn

He'd stopped by to say good-bye to Jacqueline before leaving on the mission.

Her Haldol dosage had been increased again, the antipsychotic med-ication making her face fight itself-stretching, biting, popping like a carnival clown's. She'd stopped washing again; he'd noticed a thin line of dirt at the base of her hairline.

As soon as Derek had gotten within her reach, she'd dug a finger painfully into his ear, searching for bugs. She'd twisted her nail so hard he'd had to check his ear for blood. She believed they were planting bugs on their minions-a conviction exacerbated or maybe even caused, he feared, by the penny-sized transmitter that stood out from the curve of his left anterior deltoid. She thought he'd been bugged under his skin.

He had stood in the small, sterile hospital room, gazing at the woman who was his wife with tragic disbelief. In the hospital parking lot, he'd sat in his wife's old Subaru, pressing his forehead to the top of the steering wheel, a keen sense of loss moving inside him like a sharp-bladed tool. He hadn't been in his wife's car since Before; he'd only driven it that day because he'd banged his truck against a tree the night before coming home from a bar. Her car had echoed with memories of the unintelligi-ble cooing, sounds that wouldn't quite form themselves into words or laughter. Before driving off, he'd ripped the bright pink-and-white cush-ioned car seat from the upholstery and hurled it away.

It had been a long road since the wedding five years ago. Jacqueline had been nineteen years old then, just a baby, her rich brown hair pulled back in a French braid. She used to wear a pair of round glasses that made her look like a librarian. Bad genetics, his friends from the teams would joke, referring to her bad eyesight, but they wouldn't have joked if they'd known how right they were.

Since her father had asphyxiated himself on the fumes of his '77 Dodge Ram in the garage two days after she'd turned eleven, Jacqueline had been raised by her mother alone. By the time Jacqueline began high school, her mother was already having delusions, and around Jacque-line's sophomore year, she'd started hearing the voices of the three mon-keys and was moved to the Whitehill Psychiatric Institution. Jacqueline had been raised in Utah by a stern spinster aunt.

It had been difficult for Derek to admit that his wife needed to be institutionalized. He'd fought the reality for months and it had cost him everything. He'd never forget the morning he finally drove through the wrought-iron hospital gates and left her there with the battered brown suitcase she'd packed with three dresses and a rain slicker when she'd fled Utah for college. Now, one continent and nearly four thousand miles away, the images still maintained their vise-grip on him. It felt pretty barren now, his life, and it didn't look as if it would be changing anytime soon.

He was snapped from his thoughts when the building lurched, throwing his chair to the side. He grabbed hold of the balcony railing to steady himself, but it pulled free from the stucco and plummeted to the street. He staggered inside the hotel room, falling over and banging his head on a cruise box. His Sig Sauer fell from his belt. One of the walls was undu-lating so fiercely, he thought it might buckle. Pulling himself to his feet and wiping the blood from his forehead, he fought his way to the weapons box, the floor shuddering beneath his feet. He double-checked both padlocks, then turned, lurching out into the hallway in time to see Tank rush Rex to the stairs. The woman from next door flashed down the stairs to safety, the baby cradled to her chest.

Rex was grinning a madman's grin. "Feel those compressional waves?" he yelled.

Derek pointed Tank down the stairs and Tank yanked Rex along with him. The stairs seemed to be swaying from side to side. The three men crashed through the lobby and stumbled onto the street. The quake finally subsided.

"Here," Rex said, pulling them into an arched stone doorway across the street. People ran past in both directions. Shattered glass was strewn across the sidewalks, and a few fingers of asphalt had risen in the street, but no buildings had gone over. The hotel guards were arguing with a construction worker at the end of the block.

Derek felt for his gun and noticed it missing. "Fuck!" he barked.

Eyes glowing with excitement, Rex didn't seem to hear him. "We're practically sitting on the epicenter," he cried, banging his fist into his palm. "Those roller coaster waves-those are the shear waves. Usually there are all sorts of heterogeneities by the time they reach you, but those fuckers were clear as day." He leaned out the doorway to look up the street, but Derek forced him against the wall, his forearm pressing into the top of his chest. "That must've been a six!" Rex crowed, straining to see over Derek's arm.