Our Honored Dead (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 4) by Lawrence Kelter

hands before replacing it in his blue and white Igloo lunchbox. The lunchbox bore the name: Little Playmate. It was the lunchbox his seven-year-old son considered dorky and would no longer take with him to school. It was hardly a man’s lunchbox, but Brian wasn’t throwing anything away these days. Lunchboxes, plastic bags, Poland Spring water bottles; he used and recycled everything until they were completely shot. Divorce had taken everything from him, all except for his son Alex, whom he saw every other weekend.
    When did everything get so bad? He had three minutes left to revel in the solitude of leave me the hell alone . He had three precious minutes left to purge his mind and forget about child-support payments and threatening letters from his wife’s attorney.
    Good thing that I’m so small, he mused. It doesn’t take much to fill me up.
    They were just kids when he and his wife first met on summer break after high school graduation. He was naïve and she was clueless. They were both lonely. She became pregnant with Alex before the fall. The fall , he thought. It was a metaphor for his life.
    His electronic Timex watch beeped. He stood as if by cue and walked to the door of the employee cafeteria. The sign on the wall read: Vicor Pharmaceuticals, Employee Suite. A packet of salt had been left behind on one of the lunch tables. He put it in his pocket. Nothing goes to waste.
    He had been checking the inventory of the clinical test medications once per week, but the company’s compliance department now felt the routine insufficient. He was now required to check the inventory twice each week. It was an extra two hours work, which had to be completed within the confines of his regular shift. “Good going, compliance department,” he said aloud.
    It was 9:30 p.m. The building was usually dead silent at that hour, but Spano heard noises coming from within the storeroom as he approached. He swiped his security pass to enter the room. He immediately saw torn cartons of drugs on the floor. A towering shadow rose over him. He had to crane his neck in order to see the face of the behemoth that stood before him.
    “Hey! What the hell are you doing in here?” Spano said. “You’re not supposed to—” A huge hand grabbed him by the throat and choked off his words. He tried to grab his attacker’s arm, but it was too thick for him to get his hands around. He couldn’t breathe. In the next instant, he was suspended in the air, his eyes level with the wires that had been torn from the ceiling security camera. He felt lightheaded. His son’s face flashed before his eyes, and then he heard a snap. His world went black.

Chapter Twenty-three
     
    “How do you feel?”
    I had been watching Gus sleep for the past few minutes. Frankly, I was admiring him and thinking about how his strong jaw and thick, brown hair might translate if we had a little boy. I watched as he opened his eyes to greet the morning. He stretched in response to my query, testing his injured back.
    “I think it’s a little better.”
    I stroked his hair. “I guess Tully’s weed did you some good.”
    “It definitely helped me relax.” A hint of embarrassment was present in Gus’ response. He obviously felt guilty about toking with Tully. He must have been in great discomfort to do something like that, even though it was at the end of our shift. I wasn’t going to take him to task over it. I gave him a mental get out of jail free card. I hated the idea of him filling his lungs with smoke—especially now with the boss succumbing to the ravages of lung cancer. One free pass, mister, that’s all you get.
    I snuggled next to Gus. I heard him sigh, and then his breathing became heavy. Before I knew it, he had fallen back to sleep. I peered over his shoulder and out the window. I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed, but my mind was already back on the clock. I began to think about our visit with Tully and the meager amount of new information we had