Shadow Memories: A Novel (The Singularity Conspiracy Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

stories.”
    “Cops aren’t messing around tonight.”
    Red and blue painted Pete’s Point. I checked my watch. Seven minutes since I’d left the trailer. Not bad. It’d taken twenty-seven seconds to pick and open the lock. They weren’t as fast as me, but then, I wasn’t as fast as I used to be. Going on the straight and narrow kills your skills.
    “Whaddya say we get out of here, grab a beer at the Lone Star?” I wasn’t eager to stick around. Bledsoe or Ramsky—I couldn’t tell who from this distance—had just poked his head out the door to see why the police had paid them a surprise house call.
    “We gotta make sure,” Johnny said, shaking his head. I wasn’t sure how our presence was going to seal the deal, but I’m a sucker for a bag of bills. I stayed put and watched the fireworks.
    Two cruisers peeled into the dirt, skidding to a sideways halt. Officers popped out from the steel-framed monsters like they’d been wound up in a jack-in-the-box. I counted three of them, pistols already drawn. I heard the fourth, though; he had a megaphone that could just about blow your ears off.
    “Jack Ramsky. Donovan Bledsoe. We have a probable cause to search the premises for the manufacture of methamphetamine. Come out unarmed with your hands in the air. If you do not comply, we will enter with force.”
    Somehow, with all the smoke billowing out of the top, the cops hadn’t had probable cause before tonight.
    One of the two men poked out the trailer door, and I could see the police tense up. I think he said something, then disappeared quick as he came.
    A standoff. Wonderful.
    The police didn’t seem too keen on moving from the safety of cover. After all, it wasn’t a stretch to believe that the two would-be chemists had a couple firearms handy for extenuating circumstances.
    Then the two men came barreling out the door, running straight through it Kool-Aid Man style. No guns, at least not from what I could see; these two cretins were trying to make a dash for it, even though the cops had the only exit off the Point blocked.
    I saw one of them cock his arm back and hurl something from the ledge—the cell phone, one might presume. I hoped that was the case; no need for the police to start wondering who their mysterious informant was. Snitch was never a good label to have, even on the outside.
    “They know there’s no way off this hill, right,” I said, turning to Johnny. His eyes stood open in rapt awe. This was better than he could’ve hoped for. At this rate, the two wouldn’t just be busted, but find a way to get themselves killed.
    Not that I relished the thought, but I didn’t think the world would be missing out on a cure for heart disease or something.
    The police, upon seeing that Ramsky and Bledsoe were unarmed, had moved up and pinned the pair against the cliff. It wasn’t far to the water below, but it was rocky as hell, and neither man seemed eager to test it for soft landing spots. Their arms flung up, and that would have been it, except meth labs are real unpredictable.
    The top of the trailer blew off about twenty yards in the air, a fireball erupting into the otherwise tranquil night. Ramsky and Bledsoe, being farthest from the blast, only fell down from the explosion, but the cops, they were stunned a bit. Flames and debris decorated Pete’s Point, a spectacle that I was sure could be seen for some miles.
    Not believing their good luck, Ramsky and Bledsoe stumbled and dragged themselves forward, leaping over the prone police officers. They were heading towards our little outcropping of trees, which fed into a thicker strand of woods. I’m not sure what their end game was—the explosion confirmed that they were playing Iron Meth Chef—but what was going down right at that moment, that was clear.
    They were headed straight for us.
    “Johnny,” I said, and I turned to him. Now he was frozen in a shitting-your-pants kind of way—not the kind of look you wanted to see when someone’s