I leapt from the car, desert eagle at the ready.

  What? It was my favorite gun ever. And I loved guns, so that was saying something. I may have saved a governor or two from a bomb or two… Okay, just one. But he’d owed me one after that. His words, not mine. I’d cashed it in right away, asking for a license to use and train with any kind of firearm the agency could procure.

  I’d been immediately denied. Best he could do was non-automatic, non-explosives. Which was perfect.

  Non-automatic, non-explosive sidearm of choice in hand, I made my way over to the sight of the explosion as fast as I could while keeping my corners covered.

  It didn’t take long to spot the epicenter of the blast.

  Half of the drive thru order window was just… Gone.

  What the hell could’ve done- “Oh my god.”

  I could only watch, jaw agape as Jameson’s allegedly shy, introverted sister screeched out of the parking spot and nearly ran over someone in a freshly stolen car. Bill’s car. That he brought from home. A pre-collapse relic only he knew how to drive. He called it his baby. So why the hell had he left the key in there?

  Suddenly far less lax about procedure, Bill was already chasing her after practically exploding out of the restaurant’s doors. He sprinted for the car even as it spun out into, and tore off down the street.

  I started to follow. But… Damn it, I couldn’t just abandon this.

  I felt bad for Bill, but… “PETERS, SHOOT THE TIRES OUT!!!”

  Thoroughly done with caution even as I distinctly didn’t hear the sound of a gunshot, I marched straight into the parking lot and followed the relatively narrow cone of arcs that could’ve possibly landed right where something obviously had.

  That led to one of three cars. One of them was clearly abandoned. Another was in a space labeled ‘MANAGER’, with the license plate ‘MCDRIVR’. The third was… Parked diagonally across two spots in the far corner of the lot.

  Once I got close enough to see through the poor tinting job on the windows, I instantly spotted the driver trying to hide under the dashboard.

  I rapped my knuckles across the roof. “Excuse me, sir or ma’am-”

  “DON’T KILL ME!!!”

  “I… Wow. Excuse me sir, I’m going to need a license and registration.”

  “What… You’re not…” He gulped. “Am I under arrest?”

  “If you want.”

  “Oh… No, I really don’t. Okay. What do I do to keep that from happening?”

  “License, registration, and, for the love of god, get up. And out of the car while you’re at it.”

  “You’re really not going to kill me?”

  “Depends on whether you run away right now.”

  “I… Are you telling me to run and never look back? Because I can do that! I promise-”

  “You run, I shoot. You no run, I no shoot. Simple enough?”

  “Y-yeah…”

  “Now, I’m obviously going to search your vehicle. You gonna cooperate or..?” I waved at him with the hand holding the biggest pistol he’d likely ever seen. That was my favorite thing about it, after all.

  But the kid just looked resigned now. “I guess…”

  I found it right away. A black briefcase underneath the false bottom of the trunk.

  That was when he ran.

  Taking a few seconds to aim, I shot his hat off at the rim.

  He stopped moving.

  I glanced over at a now thoroughly out-of-breath Bill. “Agent Peters, arrest this man.”

  He gasped for air while moving to do it anyway. “With what car?”

  “We’ll commandeer one of the ones responding to the explosion. Policy dictates there should be at least three.” I looked at the briefcase I still hadn’t moved away from. “Is this a bomb?”

  “What if it is?” The kid sounded like his life was already over.

  “Then you’ll be in way deeper shit if you don’t tell me right now.”

  “No.”

  “No, it’s..?”

  “Not explosive.”

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  “Good enough for me.” I opened the Christmas present and immediately spotted the issue. “Ah.”

  Bill winced from where he was cuffing the future prisoner and reading him his rights. “That bad?”

  I shut the briefcase. “Yeah.”

  And it was. A sniper rifle was one thing. Ammo for it was another. But the real problem was one of the components.

  A plain white cube. As non-descript as it was instantly identifiable. A BS Momentum Converter. A little device originally made to simplify engineering, it wasn’t long into the Collapse before someone realized that if you hook it up to a gun in just the right way, it became effectively automatic.

  If fired too often or too quickly, it was easy to overheat and eventually warp the gun. In the meantime, with enough prepared magazines, you could slaughter thousands. Just as even more had. Unknown millions dead. All thanks to the little white cube nestled in this briefcase.

  Naturally, possession of both a converter and the component to hook it into a sniper was incredibly illegal in Virginia. Far more so than the gun itself.

  This guy’s attitude made perfect sense. No two ways about it. He was going away for a looong time.

  A few minutes later, I sat with Bill and the suspect on a curb while we waited for our ride out of here. “Peters, you know what I don’t get?”

  “Yeah, Williams?”

  “If she was gonna steal your car, why was she so helpful?”

  Bill sighed. “Dunno. Why’d you think I left the key in there?”

  “I was wondering about that.”

  “Other than the fact that I assumed you’d stay with her, I was trying to make it seem like this whole thing was just a friendly detour from a boring school day. She wasn’t in custody at all, she…” He sighed.

  “So what tipped her off?”

  “You think I know?”

  “It had to be after she told us the location, right? Unless…”

  “You think Simmons Marina is a mislead?”

  “Maybe…”

  “Or maybe that’s just what she wants us to think.”

  “Maybe…”

  “But then what’s she trying to distract us from? Good or bad or rotten or exactly what we need, it’s the only lead we have, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what if it’s not?”

  I shook my head. “You’re overthinking it. You know how to make bear soup?”

  “What?”

  “Step one of ten… Catch the bear. So let’s just put everything we have into that.”

  “Oh wait, I think I’ve heard this one. Because the other nine steps are just making soup?”

  I nodded severely. “Richmond needs that soup, Bill.”

  “Hey, no first names in the field.”

  “Virginia needs that soup, Bill!”

  “Not so loud-”

  “DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IS AT STAKE HERE??? BILL. AMERICA NEEDS THAT SOUP.”

  People were staring at me in alarm. I had a pretty big gun, after all. Yelling with that out in a fast food parking lot…

  I didn’t care. “I’m sorry. It’s just… We can’t afford to let the target slip through our fingers.”

  “I know that, Michael.”

  “Do you!?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “Then why didn’t you shoot your car’s tires!?”

  Bill’s eyes bulged. “But…”

  “Did you not hear me say it?”

  “I…”

  “I know how loud I yelled that order.”

  “What if I shot the gas tank?”

  “What if you did?”

  “Then it’d…”

  “Explode?”

  “Yeah!”

  “No it wouldn’t. I know you know that.”

  “What if I shot her?”

  “How long have we worked together, Bill? Your aim isn’t that bad.”

  “I… But my baby…”

  I sighed again. “That’s what I thought. Bill, I’m sorry, but assuming we recover it in working condition, you are hereby banned from driving that car while on duty.”

  “That’s…” He slumped. “Fair.”

  As much as I would’ve liked to keep chewing him out, I knew it wouldn’t be productive. Yes, she was a loose end. And we couldn’t afford one of those. Not today. But beyond that, she was a child. Whom we were currently responsible for, having summarily removed her from the legal custody of her school. Even if she hadn’t been part of an ongoing operation, she was still a civil suit waiting to happen. And we really couldn’t have that either.

  Peters eventually broke the silence, looking forlornly from where his car was formerly parked, to the spot inside where an unattended bag was still sitting ignored at the pickup counter. “Yeah, man… Sometimes, you get a chicken in your Egg McMuffin.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “MikeMuffin.”

  I wasn’t gonna crack. Not over this. I refused.

  Peters looked me straight in the eye. “Michael… Muffin…”

  I just sat still. Nope. And I knew the rule of threes meant…

  Bill kept staring into my eyes like a deer at oncoming headlights. “They call him El Muffin… Mike El Muffin.”

  My self-control shattered as I strained out a high-pitched squawk of a laugh. “You dumbass. Just keep an eye on the car’s tracker.”

  “She disabled it.”

  “Then try her cell signal.”

  “If she disabled that too, it won’t do anything but alert-”

  “How many criminals do you think actually do that?”

  Bill kicked a loose stone halfway across the parking lot. “I’m sure I have no idea.”

  “In my experience, it’s almost exactly 50%. And not by any particular pattern either. It’s just whoever manages to remember that we can track them that way. Apparently half of everyone just doesn’t think of it. The chance of getting heads is still worth the coin flip. Even if it comes up tails.”

  Bill mumble-grumbled to himself.

  So I made a show of extending an ear towards him. “What’s that, now?”

  He grumbled less and mumbled more. “Gotthesignal…”

  I smirked. “So it came up ‘heads’, then?”

  He grumbled some more.

  So I asked my next question in exaggerated Baby-Talk. “Ya wanna follow it, buddy?”

  “Yeah… Fine…”

  I leaned back and looked up with a smug grin as the first blaring police siren finally made its way into the McDonalds parking lot.

  The future prisoner sighed in relief. “Oh thank God.”