LITMIR.BIZ

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what could be our last Christmas on Earth," he replied quietly, without arguing. The President looked strangely at his collaborators who shrugged their shoulders, then returned to seriously look Dr. Hope because that was certainly not the answer he expected. Dr. Hope noticed it and nodded, he knew that the President was asking what humanity could work out about that specific problem and so he took a few moments to think about it.

      "We have to cross our fingers, it seems obvious to me ... at this point, I can't see what else we could do!" He declared at the end of his reflections; everyone present remained speechless.

      "Goodbye," he added, getting up, then put his hat on his head in an elegant manner and moved toward the door.

      It was almost three o'clock and James had not yet managed to sleep. He was just about to doze off when an unexpected distant rumble of a low-speed diesel engine got his attention. He opened his eyes cursing that noise, it awakened him just when he was about to fall asleep, then he got up yawning and looked out of the window wondering who could wander at that time of night. He looked carefully through the closed shutters, but the open space in front of the house was deserted, there were no lights of any kind, and he thought he had only imagined it. Once awake, he decided to look at Harry, slowly opened the door and found him blissfully asleep. He smiled smugly and went back to bed, ready to sleep, but as soon as he closed his eyes a screeching squeak made him alert all his senses again. He listened for a few moments without being able to catch other noises, then he thought that probably a gust had stirred the unstable walls of his tin shed.

      "Sooner or later I'll have to make up my mind and settle it," he thought, once again ready to fall asleep, but just a moment later he heard a new crunch. Eve grumbled something and changed position by pulling the sheet towards her.

      "Did you hear that too?" James asked her as he turned on the lamp, but she was sleeping soundly with her earplugs insert. He heard yet another unusual sound and at that point, he was quite certain that someone was rummaging in his tool shed, then got out of bed, took the torch and the semiautomatic from the drawer of the dresser and ran down the stairs. Once downstairs he put on a pair of boots at his feet, put on a sweatshirt over his pajamas and lurked behind the kitchen door, the best point from which he could observe the garden without being seen. He noticed a faint glow inside the shed and decided that he would exit the back door to walk around the house passing over the hedge that bounded the property, in that way he would arrive behind the shed without being seen. He would have lurked and would have surprised the intruder at the exit; whoever it was would have dealt with, he would have let him pass the desire to go and rummage into other people's houses. He walked those thirty meters behind the hedge with his heart in his throat, thinking back to all the strange things that had happened in those last days, and he repeated several times that he had to be very careful. Arriving at the shed he flattened himself against a side wall and patiently waited. Shortly after the door opened slowly and a shadow came out, James jumped on her, seizing her from behind and pinned her to the ground, with her arms crossed behind her back, like when he makes an arrest, and before the other could try to move he sat astride on her back.

      "Don't move," he growled in her ear, then he raised his arm to hit her shoulder with the butt of his pistol just to show immediately who was in charge. At that point, the intruder, frightened and put in inferior conditions, would have told what was she doing in there without resisting and without inventing stories. As soon as he began to lower his arm, however, he stopped because a light bulb had suddenly lit up in his head: when he had approached the intruder's ear he had the feeling of knowing her. The vague hint of a familiar scent, though almost completely covered by the smell of her sweat, had awakened a sensation in him. Also, thinking back, he realized that when he had belted her from behind he had touched something soft, something very similar to a breast.

      "James, stop for the love of God!" Shouted Helen, terrified.

      "Helen? What are you doing here?" He said puzzled lowering his arm.

      "Do you want to leave me now? You are hurting me!"

      James loosened his grip and moved to her side, she stood up rubbing her aching wrists and looked at him badly.

      "How could I know it was you?" He justified himself. "Luckily I recognized you at the last moment, otherwise I don't know what I would have done ... lately, too many strange things happened."

      "Don't tell me!"

      "Why, what happened to you?"

      "It would be faster to tell you what hasn't happened yet."

      "In the meantime, start by explaining why you came to rummage in my garage at this time of night," he asked her again.

      "Didn't Harry tell you anything about his little escape yet?"

      "Don't call it that, I still don't know what happened, but now I'm more than certain it wasn't an escape. And why do you ask me that anyway? What is so important about my son to push you here in the middle of the night?"

      "Nothing ... maybe I'm just becoming paranoid and now it's very late ... it's better if we talk about it tomorrow morning at the office, right now I should be guarding the police station and you sleeping with your wife," she replied pretending to leave.

      "Wait a moment! Eve has earplugs in her ears and will sleep for at least another four hours, and as for paranoia, it's the same thing I've been repeating myself since this morning."

      "I have to go back to the Station," Helen insisted, shaking her head without much conviction, she was still undecided whether to tell him about the two corpses and the probable connection with Harry's bike. But on the other hand, she knew that if she didn't do it at that moment she would still have to say it in a few hours, in the office.

      "Don't worry, what could happen at the Police Station? Nothing ever happens there."

      "You say? And then you'll hear what happened today," she replied, then she told him everything and when she finished she noticed that James was looking at her as he was looking at a Martian. "Are you saying that there were two corpses in a car in the woods up here, just behind my house, and that with all the people who walked around in the bush looking for Harry nobody saw them? And besides, if I understand correctly, do you think there is a possibility that those corpses have something to do with the temporary disappearance of my child?"

      Helen nodded confidently.

      "I think you were right a while ago when you said you were becoming paranoid," James commented, noticing the signs of fatigue on her face.

      "Then come and see," she offered, opened the shed and pointed to the bicycle.

      "It's unbelievable ... I have to go and tell Eve everything, maybe this time she will admit I am right," said James, seeing the luminescence on the handlebar.

      "No, don't do it!" Said Helen with an impetus that James judged to be excessive.

      "What's the matter with you? Why shouldn't I tell my wife what's going on?"

      "I don't know, but I think that for the moment it is better if we say nothing to anyone ... call it women's intuition" she justified herself to respond to his perplexities. James resumed examining the luminescent powder, hesitantly reached out a hand to touch it and she abruptly pulled his arm away. He frowned because now Helen was behaving in a really bizarre way, she sighed at his glare and took the bandage off her finger to show him the necrosis.

      "The other night I tried to remove that powder with this finger," she explained.

      "Damn, you have to show it to someone right away."

      "The finger can wait, now I have more important things to think about," Helen replied with a shrug.

      "I'm serious," James insisted, continuing to study her doubtfully, she got the impression that he was really worried about her mental balance.

      "All right, I assure you I will do it as soon as possible," she promised to calm him. "In the meantime, think about making the bicycle disappear. Harry shouldn't approach it for now."

      "You're right, I'll go right away and hide it in the woods and if he'll look for it I'll tell him someone stole it."

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