Page 58 of In the Nick of Time
“You alright?” Doug asked. “You’re being remarkably quiet.”
“Yeah, just really tired.”
“Hmm.” Doug eyed him. “Maybe using your subpower like that took it out of you?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I guess. And I’m hot, dirty, was forced to lie in a coffin, and still haven’t had any coffee this morning. Is it still morning? Did we save the day before noon?”
Doug—who, after flailing around in the dirt with an evil villain, somehow managed to hardly have a hair out of place—chuckled and then frowned.
“I don’t know if we saved the day. We still don’t know where Agent Carroll is and Porkpie Man isn’t talking about what may have happened to the other agents.”
They both glanced over at The Undertaker. Doug went and flipped him onto his back.
“They’ll go easier on you if you just confess everything right away,” Doug said. “Where are the missing agents?”
The Undertaker just lay pathetically in the dust and lava rocks, glaring at them but not saying a word. Nick understood the urge to kick somebody while they were down. The jerk had kidnapped him!
“Fine, have it your way. We’ll find them and your flunkies. Watch him, Nick. I’m going to take a look inside. I’ll be right back.”
Nick and Tim kept watch over Porkpie while Doug searched the house.
“Agent Carroll isn’t stashed here,” Doug told them when he returned. “There’s no sign of her or any other agent ever having been inside. The rest of the place is empty and clearly uninhabited. I suspect the structure was merely where The Undertaker did his personal dirty work.”
Doug assured The Undertaker that SPAM would get him to talk eventually, but Nick knew that Carroll and the other agents needed to be found sooner rather than later. She’d already beenmissing too long. They couldn’t wait for The Undertaker to spill the beans.
However, if Nick had one skill, it was getting under people’s skin. He was a world record holder for annoyance. Maybe he could get him to say something.
“Pork Pie here knows more than he’s letting on.”
“He’s not letting on anything,” Doug said with a grimace, turning to look back at the house as if he could make Agent Carroll magically appear.
“I think he’s got a keeper,” Nick guessed wildly. “You know, someone tougher and smarter who’s calling the shots, and he’s scared of them. Poor Pork Pie, can’t even be a proper villain all by himself.”
“It’s The Undertaker, not Pork Pie,” the villain spat.
Doug spun in a slow circle to stare at their prisoner. “He speaks.”
Pork Pie snapped his lips shut and went back to glaring at them.
“I have a question, Doug.”
“Yes?” Eyebrows were raised—a very sexy look, in Nick’s opinion.
“Isn’t this the part where the villain tells us his evil plan?”
Doug slowly nodded. “Normally, yes. But we had him all trussed up before he could say anything. They don’t like to confess unlesstheyhaveustied up. But, no worries, we have some tricks up our sleeves—so to speak—that will make it impossible for him to keep his dirty little secrets.”
From afar, Nick heard tires crunching on gravel and then a very shiny black Lincoln Escalade rolled around the corner soon enough and stopped. The doors opened simultaneously. Nick wondered if the agents practiced that move but decided not to ask. In less than ten minutes, Pork Pie had been whisked away and Doug, Nick, and Tim were on their way back to the Strip.
“Oh my god,”Nick gasped, “I need coffee. There’s a drive-up. Please, for the love of everything that’s holy, stop.” He’d rifled through the glove compartment and dug out his emergency stash of Hot Tamales, but they’d melted into an inedible blob and even Nick couldn’t bring himself to try and eat them.
“Yes, please stop. If I hear Agent Sedgewick complain one more time, he’ll regret what might happen to the seat back here,” Tim said from the back.
Nick saw Doug’s smirk before he veered into the espresso stand.
“Your wish is my command.”
“I don’t think so, but thank you for stopping,” Nick said. “Like, I might even worship you—but just for this, not any other weird stuff.”
