Placebo by Steven James

tried to kill him.
    Glenn headed down the mountain road.
    Whoever had been in that chamber had been quick. Strong. Had known how to fight.
    But who was he? Who was the woman?
    What were they doing there?
    RixoTray Pharmaceuticals?
    It could have been a lie, but it was a place to start.
    Glenn prided himself on being self-controlled, on viewing things objectively, but as he drove back to the motel to take care of the leg, he felt fire rise inside of him.
    He was a person who kept his word, so, yes, he would take care of the old man tomorrow afternoon at three like he’d been hired to do. But he wasn’t going to stop there. He would find that guy from the chamber and return the favor, wound for wound, as the Bible put it in Exodus 21:25.
    An eye for an eye.
    Or in this case, a stab for a stab.
    God’s kind of justice.
    Or at least Glenn’s kind.
    He found himself planning how things would go down: incapacitate the guy, cuff him, and then make him watch as he played with the woman for a while. At last, when he was done with her, stab him in the thigh—and if the blade just so happened to slice through his femoral artery, well, justice in real life didn’t always have to stick to the letter of the law.
    So, the plan for tonight: take enough OxyContin to kill the pain in his leg—God knows he had plenty of it on hand—then in the morning call his contact to identify the two people who’d been in that room. Tomorrow, after he’d completed his paying gig, he would deal with them.
    He glanced at his wrist to check the time.
    But noticed that his watch was missing.
    He let out a round of curses. It must have fallen off during the fight in the chamber.

The Twins
    I have the assailant’s watch in my pocket.
    I’d happened to lift it when I slid my hand across his wrist just before I shoved the blade of his knife into his thigh.
    Truthfully, removing the watch was pure instinct from all my years of sleight of hand and street magic, not something I’d consciously planned. During the fight, the last thing I was thinking was how I might remove the guy’s wristwatch, but in any case I have it now, and it might serve as some small clue that could lead us to identifying who our assailant was.
    After trying unsuccessfully to reach Fionna or Xavier, I pause beneath one of the path’s lights. Holding the watch in my shirt to keep from getting any more of my fingerprints on it, I carefully study it.
    It’s a Reactor Poseidon Limited Edition. Very nice. In my line of work you get to know watches, and even though Reactor is a small company, their watches are amazing. This one won’t even get scratched if you shoot it with a bullet. I couldn’t help but think that a regular street thug would have sold a watch like this for cash if he knew how much it was worth. So the guy we were dealing with might very well be better trained, more of a pro, than I’d earlier assumed.
    The watch is relatively new. No engravings. No unique identifyingmarks, which isn’t exactly surprising considering the craftsmanship and the durability of the materials.
    Who knows, Xavier is into CSI kinds of things and would probably jump at the chance to dust the watch for prints. I could get it to him as soon as we meet up again, tomorrow sometime.
    Inside the cabin I find Charlene at the table, flipping through the notes we’d used to prepare for this project. “Any luck?”
    â€œNo.” I show her the watch, and we discuss it but can’t come up with any other clues, and in the end I stow it in the bedroom and return to her.
    I point to the RixoTray research documents that she’d spread out around her when I was outside. “What about you? Did you find anything?”
    â€œNothing related to quantum entanglement or mind-to-mind communication research. But they are doing research on the temporal lobe—the language-recognition capabilities of the Wernicke’s