Safeguard E-Book

John A. Daly

• Herausgeber: BQB Publishing
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Buried in the past is the key to survival.

"John Daly has a magical writing style, and his books keep you up late at night turning pages." - Dana Perino, former White House Press Secretary

"Safeguard is a fast, fun page-turner whose twists and turns kept me reading well into the night. John Daly delivers his mix of wry humor with pulse pounding action that keeps you guessing til the very end. An entertaining, engaging read." - Megyn Kelly, journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author

Months after a life-altering revelation drove Sean Coleman from his mountain hometown of Winston, Colorado, the longtime security guard has found stable work as the sole caretaker of a retired nuclear missile site along the Eastern Plains. The desolate Cold War era facility now serves as a rarely visited museum and records archive, and provides perhaps the perfect job for a lonesome, headstrong man working to erase the painful memories of his past.

But as Sean soon discovers, the forgotten compound has piqued new, unwelcome interest. A mysterious group of armed individuals, frighteningly cultish in their methods, work to cut off communications with the outside world and take over the facility by any means necessary. Though their dark purpose is ultimately exposed, Sean suspects their charismatic leader is guided by even more sinister motivations --- motivations that can prove more deadly than anyone could possibly imagine.

What was supposed to be a lazy Monday evening turns into a savage battle of survival and a close-quarters race against time as Sean fights for his life, liberty, and the things he'd left behind.

Leseprobe

Safeguard: Book Four in the Sean Coleman Thriller series

© 2019 John A. Daly. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, digital, mechanical or photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except for inclusion in a review or as permitted under Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Act, without either prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Published in the United States by BQB Publishing

(an imprint of Boutique of Quality Books Publishing, Inc.)

www.bqbpublishing.com

978-1-945448-51-5 (p)

978-1-945448-52-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940434

Book design by Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.com

Cover design by Ellis Dixon, www.ellisdixon.com

Front cover photo by Erin Timm

First editor: Olivia Swenson

Second editor: Caleb Guard

Praise for John A. Daly and the Sean Coleman series.

Praise for Safeguard

Safeguard is a fast, fun page-turner whose twists and turns kept me reading well into the night. John Daly delivers his mix of wry humor with pulse pounding action that keeps you guessing til the very end. An entertaining, engaging read.

— Megyn Kelly, journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author

Praise for From a Dead Sleep

Some writers are thoughtful. Some have style. John Daly has both. When I read his work, it’s time well spent.

— Bernard Goldberg, New York Times bestselling author of Bias

An epic thriller with a memorable, unorthodox main character . . . a riveting read . . .

— Colorado Country Life Magazine

A fast-reading suspense book that surprised me so much, I had to finish it in one sitting.

— Alice de Sturler of the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases

A thriller that packs a punch! This was a very exciting debut novel from John A. Daly. This novel packs a lot of jaw-dropping action into its well-structured narrative—a narrative that gives life to the myriad of characters that inhabit its pages and provides plenty of plot twists and turns to keep you glued to the pages.

— Reading, Writing, and Riesling book blog

I loved this book. The suspense had me sitting on the edge of my seat . . . The author did a fabulous job with the setting details—I could picture every touch, smell, sight that the characters went through . . .

— Yawatta Hosby, author of the novel One by One

From a Dead Sleep is a page-turner, an exciting, well-written thriller with a solid back story and more than enough plot twists to keep you guessing.

— Marilyn Armstrong, Serendipity book blog

Praise for Blood Trade

“This book has so many twists, turns, mis-directions and layers of plot that I even forgot to eat where I was so involved. The characters are larger than life and when you think you know them there is another surprise just around the corner.”

— Best Selling Crime Thrillers

5 stars. “Blood Trade is an awesome read that keeps you on your toes. You never know what is going to happen next and each new piece of the puzzle that is revealed is something you’d never expect. This is not one of those “guess who did it” thrillers. You honestly can’t do that. You’ll have the ah-ha moments when your realize who did something, but you’d never guess it was that person before-hand.

John A. Daly is masterful at writing a good thriller and I can’t wait to read more thriller novels from him.”

— The Goth Girl Reads

“This is the first book I’ve read from John Daly, it is not the first in the series but I was not confused. This book could be read as a stand alone. The main character Sean Coleman is not your typical Hot guy that can’t do anything wrong. He has an alcoholic past, and the town where he lives doesn’t take him serious, and is just a joke to them. Thus making a Believable character with flaws, that is more real.”

— Vanessa Visagie, Vanessa Reviews

“The second in a series that will certainly continue, this book is a darned good read. The status of hero is shared by a super cop now living in a small community and his hapless (formerly) alcoholic brother-in-law. The main characters are well developed and the storyline good. This reader was torn between who to cheer for (the ‘goodies’ or the ‘baddies’) on several occasions and in many respects, the plot is quite unique.

An enjoyable read with characters that wouldn’t fit in with either the ‘gung ho’ or the ‘splendidly rich and beautiful’ crowd that usually populate American action stories and all the better for it!

This is a stand alone book despite being the second in the series. My enjoyment wasn’t marred by not having read the first and I will certainly go back and read the predecessor.”

— Mary Edgley, Goodreads

Praise for Broken Slate

(finalist in the 2018 Colorado Book Awards and 2018 CIPA EVVY Awards - Thriller Category)

“John Daly has a magical writing style, and his books keep you up late at night turning pages. Sean, the protagonist, helps you see the world through his eyes in a total escape from daily life. You won’t want to put it down.”

— Dana Perino, Former White House Press Secretary

“Crackling with gunfire and suspense, the opening pages of Broken Slate make clear that John A. Daly writes with assurance and style —and without fear or political correctness. This third installment in the Sean Coleman series brings us an engrossing thriller, centered around a deeply flawed but compelling character: an antihero for the post-9/11 age.”

— James Rosen, Fox News chief Washington correspondent and author of The Strong Man and Cheney One On One

“What a great f***ing book. Seriously . . . Sean Coleman is the kind of character that pisses you off---he’s emotionally broken, often thoughtless, and sometimes a jerk. He’s also loyal, honorable, and anything but a super hero. In short, John Daly’s Sean Coleman is a lot like you and me.”

— Terry Schappert, U.S. Army Special Forces, and host of Warriors, Shark Attack Survival Guide, Dude You’re Screwed!, and Hollywood Weapons: Fact or Fiction?

“High-octane indeed! A nonstop riproarer of a thriller with plenty of mystery, family drama, dysfunction, betrayal, and psychological issues to boot, Broken Slate is #3 in John A. Daly’s Sean Coleman Thriller series, a not-to-be-missed series that will really wake up a reader. So much adrenaline! Such convoluted past histories! So much to devour!”

— Mallory A. Haws, The Haunted Reading Room

To my wife, Sarah, whose love and support I am eternally grateful for.

To my children, Chase and Olivia, who are almost old enough to start reading my books.

To Ken Robinson, the late caretaker of Missile Site Park, who helped inspire a novel.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

About the Author

August 30th, 2002

Friday

Chapter 1

It had been overcast for most of the morning, but the swift arrival of a brown haze and low churning clouds had been tugging at Chuck Notestine’s gut for the past ten minutes. The sky didn’t look right. It didn’t feel right. A sinister chill filled the air, bringing with it an anxious silence that suggested something other than a common afternoon storm in Greeley, Colorado.

Rain began to spit from above, quickly evolving into dense drops that pelted Notestine’s face like a schoolyard bully looking to cause a scene. A sudden burst of wind screamed into him, knocking him back on his heels, and sending his clipboard to the ground. He lumbered off balance across dirt and grass, swearing. He found his footing just as a pair of tumbleweeds bounced off his body. He rose his arm up to protect his eyes when more began whisking their way past him.

Inside his trailer, just a few yards away, his radio let out a screeching, familiar howl that tightened his stomach. He swung his head toward the camper’s open door. It flapped wildly from the continuing gust.

“The National Weather Service in Denver, Colorado, has issued a tornado warning for the following counties,” came a monotone, automated voice through the speakers.

The rest of the message was lost on Notestine as he lifted his gaze over the roof of the trailer and the chain-link fence that wobbled behind it. Through tears drawn from the wind, he gasped at the sight of a hulking stretch of darkness that filled the southern sky. It began along the prairie horizon and stretched and widened its way up to the heavens. It hadn’t been there a minute earlier.

“Shit,” he growled.

His heart pounded while his head swiveled like a weathervane back and forth across the acreage. He glared past cement blocks and ventilation pipes that pointed up from the ground. The pine trees just inside of the west fence were now arched like bows, their tips penetrating the barbed wire up top. The tall grass to the north danced like waves in an ocean, obscuring his view of the back part of the property. He wished he had mowed it all down with the tractor a day earlier, as he had planned.

“Avalanche!” he cried out, freckled hand cupped to his mouth. His eyes scanned the area. “Here boy! Avalanche!” He let out a loud whistle that was barely audible over the elements.

The wind strengthened, shoving him a few steps to his side as the steel lid of his barbeque pit toppled past him. The rain came harder and faster, and within seconds, small pellets of hail began bouncing off the ground. He couldn’t believe how quickly the situation was going to hell.

When a chunk of ice caught him square on the forehead, he let out a grunt and turned back toward his trailer. The colorful awning in front of it had collapsed and was now wrapped around the picnic table where he normally enjoyed his morning coffee. The door pounded the trailer’s sidewall as items crashed to the floor inside. Notestine was tempted to rush in and grab some cash and keepsakes before it was too late, but his seventy-one-year-old legs and the approaching blackening void convinced him otherwise.

The widower had survived Vietnam, two heart attacks, and a head-on collision in ’89 that should have killed him. He sure as hell wasn’t going to cash in his chips for Mother Nature—not with one of the safest strongholds in the state buried just a couple hundred yards away.

“Avalanche!” he wailed as he made his way onto an old cement walkway riddled with cracks.

With his arms folded over his head to protect himself from the increasing hail, he brushed past a return-air box and some ducts. He slid his way around the corner of an enormous horizontal steel door raised a couple of feet off the concrete. It stretched out for a hundred feet, and by the time Notestine had reached the opposite corner, he found himself hunched over and desperately out of breath.

“Avalanche!” he called out again, his voice waning.

Through the maddening shrieks of the wind, he thought he heard a distant bark. When he faced to the northeast, he caught a glimpse of something white and stout barreling through long grass and shrubs. Notestine’s eyes swelled and his lips formed a desperate grin.

“Here boy! Come here, boy!” he yelled, waving his arms frantically.

His loyal companion of the past two years emerged from the grass, continuing his sprint toward his master. Blowing debris and hail peppered the pit bull’s body as it galloped across the sidewalk. When Avalanche reached Notestine, the dog went to its hind legs and placed its front paws on the man’s sternum. His long tongue jetted out between pink jowls, aiming for his master’s face. Notestine spun away, letting the dog drop to all fours. He turned his focus to the top railing of an outside metal staircase a few yards away. It led down a steep, concealed hill.

“Come on!” he yelled to the dog.

The sound of marble-sized hail striking the metal door rang out like a carnival shooting gallery as the two left the cement. Avalanche jogged alongside Notestine until they reached the top step. The man’s hands went to the rails, but when he turned his head to take another look at the twister, his eye caught the top of a light-colored, hardtop camper on the other side of the west fence.

“Oh God,” he gasped.

He had seen the camper hauled in by an early ’70s Chevy pickup that morning, while he was replacing trash bags in the campground—one of his duties as the site caretaker. But with the rest of the park empty, he had forgotten about it.

Notestine prayed that the truck’s driver had left, and that only a vacant camper remained, but with wavering tree limbs hindering his view, he couldn’t know for sure. He was about to take his first step down the stairs when his conscience began pounding him as hard as the hail.

“Dammit!” he snarled, turning back toward the camper. He placed both hands to his mouth and yelled, “Tornado! A tornado is coming!” He could barely hear his own voice. He knew anyone inside the camper wouldn’t be able to.

He blew air through his nose before nodding his head and squaring his jaw. “You stupid son of a bitch,” he muttered. He then made his way through the wind and hail toward the fence.

When he reached the fence, he peered through an opening between some swaying pines on the other side. With a better view of the campground, Notestine spotted the pickup parked right in front of the trailer. The driver hadn’t left.

Avalanche let out a loud yelp, and Notestine spun his head toward him. The dog’s head was lowered and his tail was wedged between his legs. The hail was bouncing off his body, but the dog refused to leave its master.

“Avalanche, go to the tunnel!” Notestine commanded. “The tunnel!”

In a flash, the dog turned and bolted toward the stairs. He flew down them effortlessly, quickly leaving Notestine’s sight. A memory of Avalanche as a puppy comically falling down those same stairs flashed through his mind. The incident was how the dog had earned his name.

Notestine swallowed and rifled through his jeans pocket as he let the wind shove him into the fence. He pulled out a ring of keys. His hands shook as he sorted through them. When he found a small copper key, he placed it in his mouth and held it in his teeth. The rest of the keys dangled in front of his chin.

Covering his head with one arm, he used the other to grab a handful of fence. He pulled himself along it as the sky darkened and the wind roared like a train engine. Notestine refused to look to the south again. He feared what he would see.

When he reached a padlocked gate, he pried a family of tumbleweeds from it and stripped the key from his mouth. He poked it into the lock. With a quick twist and the lift of the latch, the gate swung open and slammed wickedly against the other side of the fence, knocking from it a sign reading, “No Trespassing. Government Property.”

The wind ushered Notestine past an overturned bench and the tall, steel flag pole that he attended to every morning and evening. The American and Colorado flags hoisted high above were ripping free of their hooks. Wooden planks that made up the walls of a small outhouse to his right moaned from strain. Loose shingles from the building’s roof were ripped free and carried high into the air.

Notestine kept his legs moving to prevent himself from falling. He crossed a dirt road, where airborne gravel assaulted his backside. When he reached a picnic shelter at the edge of the campground, he threw his arms around one of its metal pillars. The shelter was cemented into the ground, making it a useful crutch for Notestine to steady his body against. The wobbly roof above gave him some relief from the hail.

Breathing hard and tasting blood in his mouth, Notestine angled his eyes toward the camper. As he had noticed that morning, the twenty-foot travel trailer had an unusual look to it. There was a customized extra axle and dual wheels at its rear, as if to haul extra weight—something he had never seen before on a camper.

Through flying trash and dirt, he spotted a male figure in a hooded sweatshirt hunched on his knees between the back of the truck and the trailer. The man was small in size—his arms and legs so short that he almost looked like a kid. A glimpse of a mustache from between the edges of his hood, however, proved otherwise.

At first, Notestine believed the man was clinging to the truck’s trailer hitch for dear life. The man’s moving arms revealed that he was working hard to attach the hitch to the trailer. Exhaust was pumping from the truck’s tailpipe before disappearing in the wind. He was trying to outrun the tornado . . . with trailer in tow.

“No!” Notestine yelled, waving one arm as best he could in the wind, while holding on to the pillar with the other. “It won’t work! Come inside!”

Whether it was Notestine’s subdued voice or the movement of his arm that caught the man’s attention, the hooded stranger was now staring back at him. The man pulled himself to his feet by the rim of the truck’s tailgate and waved Notestine off with his arm. A torn-off tree branch bounced its way across the ground and struck the man in the shoulder, knocking him down.

“Dammit,” Notestine growled. He let go of the pillar and lumbered his way toward the man, the wind and the debris it carried trying their best to veer him off course.

There was so much hail on the ground that it felt as if he were crossing over snow. Its descent from the sky had begun to let up, but with the wind only worsening, Notestine knew the situation couldn’t be more dire.

By the time Notestine reached the man, the stranger had pulled himself back up to his feet and was desperately hugging the sidewall of his truck. Notestine joined him. The wind had knocked off the stranger’s hood, revealing the round face of an Asian man with dark eyes, angled eyebrows, and long salt-and-pepper hair.

“You can’t outrun it!” Notestine yelled at him, spray flying out of his mouth. “If we don’t get inside the silo right now, we’re both dead!”

“No!” the man yelled back. “I need my trailer!”

“You’ll die!” Notestine screamed. “The tornado will crush your truck and trailer like a beer can!”

“I can’t leave it!

“Forget it! It’s not worth dying for!”

At that moment, something about the stranger’s face rang familiar to Notestine, as if the two had met before. The thought quickly fled with the sick, deafening howl that blasted through air above. Both men’s heads spun to witness a horrific sight to the south: long steel arms from a heavy-duty farm irrigation system tumbling toward them across the prairieland.

Notestine grabbed the man by his sweatshirt. “Inside! Now!”

In one fluent move, the man snapped his arms upwards, freeing himself from Notestine’s grip. Before Notestine could process what had happened, he found a pistol pointed directly at his face. Behind it were the man’s narrow, unflinching eyes.

“What are you doing?” Notestine cried. He staggered back a few steps along the side of the truck, eyes wide and mouth open.

“I’m leaving.” He spoke with an eerie directness and calmness that seemed miles apart from the current situation. “Because this trailer is worth dying for.”

With that, he turned and pried open his truck door. When it swung open, he leaped inside.

“Fuck!” Notestine shouted, backing away from the truck.

The stranger put the Chevy in gear just as a large object struck Notestine from behind. Notestine felt as if he were floating outside of his body for a moment. His teeth rattled in his mouth as he dropped to his knees. More objects rained down on his body, and he covered his head with his arms as golf-ball-sized hail began to bounce off the ground beside him like rubber balls.

A new explosion of wind shoved him forward to his stomach. He raised his face from the blanket of ice beneath him, watching the taillights of the stranger’s trailer leave the dirt road loop that hugged the campground. The camper bobbled though long grass and scrub, and just as the truck pulled it down into the gully below, he watched the back of its shell drop open like a drawbridge whose chains had snapped, exposing some type of construction equipment. Both the truck and trailer were gone from view a second later.

The earth below Notestine trembled, and a relentless, earsplitting whistle echoed off the insides of his head. He felt himself being dragged along the ground, and he fought to grab onto anything he could. His shoes were pulled from his feet, and his fingers raked through soil, grass, and ice until they found the metal base of a mounted charcoal grill whose top had snapped off. It only stuck out about six inches from the ground.

It was too late to run. Too late to take shelter. The only chance he had was staying flat and saying the quick prayer that flowed from between his lips. His hands clutched the grill’s pole as his shirt was ripped from his body and his flesh stretched from his bones. When the wind twisted him onto his side, he angled his eyes up at the sky. It was nearly black, full of nebulous clutter that expanded with each passing moment.

A long plank of wood crashed to the ground beside him before being carried off again. Mangled water pipes cartwheeled past his head. A rush of air slid under his body and flipped him onto his back, stripping one of his hands loose from the pole. He forced his eyes open against the wind and watched as objects fell back to earth. The last thing he saw was a sink basin from the outhouse, half a second before it crushed his skull.

May 26th, 2003

Monday

Chapter 2

With a flashlight clenched in his trembling hand, a stalky eight-year-old boy with short, dark hair and rosy cheeks stood in front of his uncle’s Ford pickup. Its thirty-year-old engine ticked in the cold night air. The boy placed his free hand over one of the truck’s large, round headlights. It was lit, but he couldn’t feel its warmth. His eyes slid over to the tall, thick pine trees a couple dozen yards away. His spread fingers cast distorted, sinister shadows across their branches.

A gun shot rang out, and the boy’s head whipped toward a familiar wooden home to his left. The echo of the blast rattled through his head as breath visibly poured from his mouth. He clicked his flashlight on and heard his own heartbeat as he raced to the front steps of the building. When he reached them, he saw that the front door was half open. He aimed his flashlight through the doorway, revealing the details of a shag rug on a wood floor. At the far corner of the rug was a dark red stain that glistened under his beam.

The boy swallowed. “Uncle? Are you okay?” he shouted though the door, his voice cracking. “What happened?”

When he received no answer, he bit his lip and slowly began climbing the stairs. The planks beneath his feet groaned from his weight, and though there were only three steps, his legs were heavy as if he were climbing a fire tower. He reached the top and pushed the door wide. Its hinges cried.

A gurgling sound rose from the floor a few feet away, and when the boy guided his flashlight toward it, he saw the wavering soles of a pair of cowboy boots staring back at him. The boy gasped. He jogged forward, his legs pumping but his body making little progress. He felt as though his feet were being swallowed by quicksand. He finally snarled and lunged forward. He fell to the floor in a heap, his flashlight exploding into pieces beside him.

Though the beam was gone, the room was now brightly lit. The man on the floor just inches away wore jeans, a flannel shirt, and a belt buckle the size of a boxing champ’s prize. A tall straw cowboy hat sat on the floor, blocking the man’s face from the boy’s view.

As the gurgling noise continued, the boy’s hand went to the hat. His fingers formed around its crown, and the boy pulled it toward his own body, exposing an elderly man’s face. It was Uncle Zed.

The man’s desperate eyes glared at the boy. He wore a beard of blood that began at the bottom of one of his long, silver sideburns, and disappeared behind the other side of his chin. A hole was at the center of his neck, and his mouth hung open. The gurgling emitted from somewhere in between.

The boy’s eyes welled up with tears.

“Shhhh,” Zed managed to say before the word he was trying to utter came out. “Sean.”

The boy rose to his knees, and he leaned forward above the man’s face. Their eyes held firm, exchanging a lifetime of loss and regret.

“Dad?” Sean answered.

The violent blare of a car horn suddenly pulled Sean’s attention toward the front door. The doorway was no longer there, nor was his old home.

When he pulled himself upright in his bed, naked under sweat-soaked sheets, the bright sun poured in through a dirty window above a small sink. It burned his eyes, and he lifted his large forearm to block it. A wave of pain throbbed through his skull while a dog barked continuously outside.

He twisted his head toward the opposite half of the sagging mattress. A pair of brown eyes, narrow in concern, glared back. They belonged to a woman, probably in her mid-thirties. She had dark skin and long, disheveled hair. Her thin eyebrows curved inward above her purple eyelids and round face.

“I’m not your dad,” she said matter-of-factly.

Sean nodded, eyes adjusting. “Yeah. I noticed.” His voice was dry and coarse, and he let out a cough.

When the horn outside screamed again, he realized that the clamor hadn’t been part of his dream. The barks of the dog persisted.

“Jesus,” Sean grunted, rubbing his face with the palms of his hands. He glanced around the small musty room, fighting for his bearings and searching for his alarm clock. It wasn’t on the nightstand next to him, where it usually sat. Instead, there were three empty beer bottles.

“They’ve been yelling and honking for the past five minutes,” said the woman, her Spanish accent stronger in her irritation. She lay under the covers, bare shoulders and arms exposed.

Sean smelled beer on her breath. Or maybe it was his breath. “Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?” he asked.

“I tried!” she snapped, her face leaping into a scowl. She sat up with one of her arms pinning the sheets against her chest, seeming to take Sean’s statement as an accusation rather than a question. “You were out cold. Hell, I thought you might have even been dead. Your eyes were half open and shit. It was fucking creepy. Do you always sleep like that?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to get a good look at myself when I’m asleep.”

She rolled her eyes and plopped back to the bed.

“Sean Coleman!” The man’s agitated voice sounded somewhere well beyond the narrow walls of the trailer. “Cub Scout Pack 202! Our tour was supposed to start at nine!”

“Ah, shit!” Sean moaned.

He clenched his teeth and crawled out from under the muddled sheets. The bed groaned. A spell of lightheadedness forced him to ease back down for a moment, his hand clenching his forehead. The horn wailed again.

“Keep your shirt on!” Sean yelled so loudly that the woman next to him jumped. “I’ll be there in a second!” The dog continued to bark. “Shut up, Avalanche!”

Sean lowered himself to the linoleum floor, sifting through a pile of unwashed clothes at the base of his bed. He grabbed a pair of underwear briefs and some jeans with a foreign stain along the back thigh. He shook the jeans until he heard the jingle of metal from inside one of the pockets, and then laid them on the bed. He hastily slid on the briefs, hopping up and down before grabbing the corner of his kitchen stove for balance. The jeans went on next; they felt tighter around his waist than he expected.

“That’s pretty nasty,” said the woman.

Sean rose his head to her.

“That big scar on your stomach,” she said, pointing with her chin. “Is that from a knife? Shit, there’s one on your shoulder too. I didn’t notice those last night, what with all the . . .” She waved a vague hand. “What happened to you?”

“I’m clumsy,” he answered, in no mood to share stories from his past.

He pulled a black short-sleeve collared shirt from a hanger on the handle of a tiny closet. The emblem on its chest pocket read “Weld County.” He slipped the shirt over his head and pulled it down over his bloated stomach.

He quickly checked himself in a mirror beside the closet, cursing under his breath as he combed his hair with his fingers. It was a matted mess, longer than the crew cut he used to keep. It was grayer too, but with enough dark remaining to keep most people from mistaking his forty years of life for fifty. The three-day stubble on his chin and neck would have gotten him in trouble with his boss if he were there, but this morning he only had to cater to kids.

In the corner of the mirror, he watched the woman lower her arm to the floor to pick up a lace bra. Her black wavy hair dangled over the edge of the bed.

“I’m gonna need a ride home,” she said, nursing a yawn.

“I can’t do it right now.” He leaned forward and pulled a pair of beige work boots over his bare feet. “This will take about an hour.”

The woman quickly sat up. “I don’t have no hour.” She placed her arms through the bra and secured it in the back. “I need to be at work by 10:30. That means taking a shower, clean clothes, and makeup first.”

“I said I can’t right now, Maria,” he growled, twisting his head back toward her. “I’ve got my job to do.”

“Who’s Maria?”

Sean’s shoulders lowered. “Sorry . . . Anna.”

“Try again, asshole.”

“Goddammit, we just met last night,” Sean said. “Cut me a fucking break, all right?”

The woman tightened her jaw and shook her head, taking her eyes off Sean to lift up the blanket. She searched under the sheets for the rest of her clothes. She seemed to find them, her body soon shuffling and contorting under the covers.

“Listen,” Sean said with a tilted head. “There’s a phone on the dresser. If you can’t wait for me, call a friend to pick you up. But if you do that, you’re going to have to wait for them on the other side of the gate.”

The woman’s head popped out from under the covers. Strands of hair hung in front of her face, but the anger in her eyes couldn’t be hidden. “What?” she barked.

“I’m the only one who opens that gate. Facility rules. Government rules. And if I’m down below when your friend shows up, I won’t be around to do it.” He reached for a bottle of aspirin on a countertop next to him.

“So you’re kicking me out? Right now?” Her voice rose so loudly that Sean worried the people outside would hear it.

Sean tossed a couple of aspirins in his mouth and swallowed them without water. “No. In five minutes. Make the call if you’re going to make it.”

Before the woman could respond, Sean turned and unlatched the trailer door, pushing it open and closing his eyes when his face again met the wicked glare of the sun. He lowered his head and stepped outside, skipping a steel step. His scalp, at the top of his six-foot-five, 245-pound body, clipped the top of the doorframe, drawing a grunt from his mouth.

The dog had started barking again, and Sean yelled, “Quiet!”

He used his hand as a sun visor until he could better focus on the world, trudging across dirt and grass to a narrow paved road. The road led about thirty yards to the south, up to a tall chain-link gate with large metal signs mounted on the other side. The gate connected with a stretch of fence that enclosed roughly four acres of the thirteen-acre property. Barbed-wire angled outward from the fence’s top bars.

On the other side of the gate were a couple of parked cars. Next to them were two men and seven or eight boys of different shapes, sizes, and ethnicities. The boys wore blue uniformed shirts and yellow neckerchiefs. None of them could have been older than ten. They wrestled and chased each other between the cars as the two men—one of average build, and the other obese—glared at Sean through stone faces.

“This is gonna suck,” Sean muttered, reaching back and scratching a recurring itch at the base of his skull. He didn’t like it when kids came to the facility. They were distracting, and they tended to touch things they shouldn’t.

As Sean approached, a white pit bull with a pink snout and red collar trotted up to him from the gate. Its tail wagged and its tongue dangled from its mouth. Sean had inherited the dog from the previous caretaker—an old man who’d been killed in the adjoining campground back in late August when a freak EF3 tornado passed through.

He was the only fatality that day, despite a lot of building damage and some overturned train cars in Windsor, a small town a ways to the northwest. First responders found the dog sitting next to its owner’s body. They’d identified him as “Avalanche” by a silver tag on his collar.

Sean admired loyalty, and after some dark family revelations from the year before had prompted him to leave his mountain home of Winston, he was ready for some of it in his life. Having heard the story of Avalanche from the county supervisor who’d hired him, Sean agreed to keep the dog rather than let it be taken to the pound. Considering the breed’s rap for being unpredictable and aggressive, the dog may have been euthanized.

As it turned out, Avalanche wasn’t the least bit contentious—an animal so friendly around people that he only barked when he wanted attention. He wasn’t a great watchdog but tossing him a tennis ball or a Frisbee from time to time helped drive away some boredom. Avalanche was low maintenance, and Sean liked that.

When the dog reached Sean, it did a one-eighty and began walking beside him in the same direction. The canine’s eyes bounced back and forth from Sean to the scout pack.

Sean nodded to the men as he approached the gate. They didn’t return the gesture. He pried a ring of keys from the front pocket of his jeans and stuck one of them into a padlock that hung between the gates. As he released the lock and pulled up on a throw cane bolt, he heard one of the boys reading the largest sign secured to the mesh.

“This area is a former Atlas E . . . inter-continental . . . ballistic . . . missile silo.” The boy annunciated slowly and carefully. “The area—”

Another scout, apparently too impatient to cater to the first one’s heavy delivery, took over the narration. “The area is open to the public on a contacted tour basis. Arrangements for tours can be made by contacting the Weld County Buildings & Grounds Department.”

“Which is exactly what we did,” added the man of average build, who was still glaring at Sean. “For nine o’clock this morning.” The man wore glasses with thin frames, and a red Budweiser baseball cap.

Sean glared back as he swung the gate open inward. “I’m letting you in, aren’t I? Let’s not get hysterical.”

“Hysterical?” the man said, jerking his head back. With an inflating chest, he opened his mouth to add more, but a scout with large freckles and raspberry blond hair interrupted him.

“Does your dog bite, mister?”

Sean lowered his head to the boy. “Only if you touch things you’re not supposed to.” His face was deadpan.

A couple of the other scouts laughed. The adults didn’t.

“Seriously though,” said the obese man. He wore a long Colorado Rockies baseball shirt and a dark goatee. “Is the dog safe? He looks like a pit.”

“That would be because he is a pit.”

The man’s face stiffened.

“The kids will be fine,” Sean added. “As long as they keep their hands off the equipment.”

The truth was that Avalanche couldn’t have cared less what anyone touched, but Sean had used the warning on a number of occasions to keep order and save himself some stress throughout the tour.

Sean opened the gate. Its hinges creaked as he stepped backward and pulled it open wider. He guided the group in with his hand. “And if everyone does as they’re told on the tour, you’ll all get a souvenir at the end.”

Several of the boys cheered. A couple dropped down to their knees in front of Avalanche, who proceeded to lick one of their faces. It prompted some laughs.

“Real killer,” said the large man in the Rockies shirt. A smirk had loosened up his face.

The other man wasn’t amused by the display, his face turning sourer. He’d likely caught a whiff of the alcohol on Sean’s breath.

Sean reached into his pocket and pulled out a nearly expended roll of white mints. He twisted the top one free of its foil and popped it into his mouth. “What are your names?” he asked, his eyes shifting back and forth between the men. “I left the paperwork inside.”

“Mike,” said the larger man, extending his hand. Sean shook it.

“I’m Mike too,” said the other, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“All right,” Sean said, nodding. “Big Mike and Budweiser Mike. Got it.”

The loud slap of a door swinging shut drew all eyes to the front of the trailer. Sean’s overnight guest had emerged. She walked toward the group with tense purpose in each step. Her hair shone from wetness, and she wore a red sleeveless top, leather miniskirt, and high-heeled shoes. A black purse dangled over her shoulder. Both scout fathers turned to Sean, their faces tense.

Sean met their glares. “A different tour . . . from last night,” he muttered.

The woman made her way toward the gate, whisking past the group without making eye contact with anyone. She had just about reached the entrance when she stopped and spun around to face Sean. Her nostrils flared as she bit her lip.

“Sofia!” she stated loudly, placing her hands on her hips.

“What?” Sean asked.

“My name. It’s Sofía.”

Sean cocked his head and let out a sigh. He then turned to the spectators. “Boys, this is Sofía. Sofia, this is Cub Scout Pack . . .”

“Two-oh-two!” one of the boys responded with pride.

“Hi Sofía,” a few of them greeted in unison, their wide eyes scrutinizing her appearance. Some of the boys giggled.

Sofia rolled her eyes and shook her head. She turned and made her way through the open gate. Once out, she spun around to deliver a closing remark, but Sean was already latching and padlocking the gate behind her.

She gasped and threw her arms up in the air. “Well, I guess it’s goodbye then!”

“Guess so. Goodbye.”

Sean turned his back to her and rejoined the group. Her huffs and puffs could barely be heard by the time Sean had begun his official introduction.