Lost Contact (The Bridge Sequence Book One), Nathan Hystad [primary phonics books .TXT] 📗

mirror as I attempted to lane-change around a particularly slow semi-trailer. The dark BMW was still trailing me. It’s nothing. Just someone from the big city visiting relatives.

“Meet me at my place at five. We’ll chat then.” I hung up before Marcus could ask any more questions, and instead of listening to talk radio for the duration of the trip, I set it to some soothing classic rock. I drummed my fingers to the beat of an old Journey song, and kept an eye on my speed as I anxiously drove for Boston. By the time I’d entered the city limits, there was no sign of the other car, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Something really had me on edge.

Marcus was already waiting for me as I pulled in front of my brownstone. Amazingly, there was an open parking spot three units down, a benefit of everyone leaving town for the weekend. Marcus sat on my front steps, scrolling on his cell phone, and I shoved the box at his chest. “Do you mind?”

He grunted, and I retrieved my keys from my pocket, unlocking the townhouse door. I loved everything about my home, and had lived here for the past decade, long before I’d even considered a job in the city. My parents had met in Boston and spent their first five years struggling in a small apartment downtown while Mom worked two jobs, Dad finishing his final dissertation at Harvard.

The place was stuffy when I entered, and I kicked off my shoes. The snow hadn’t hit Boston yet, but it would only be a matter of time. I opened the front window, cool air passing by the white curtains, and I dropped my keys in the bowl on the foyer table.

“What’s in this?” Marcus asked, setting the box on the kitchen table.

“Shoes,” I reminded him.

He rolled his eyes and took off the laced boots, tossing them to the entrance. He ditched his jacket near the door, and I groaned at his taste in attire. It was nearly impossible to see Marcus in something other than a comic book or science fiction t-shirt.

Marcus was digging into the books, flipping through the empty one. “What’s a Bridge?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out. I need you to locate someone named Hardy.” I sloughed my jacket off and rolled up my sleeves.

“Hardy? Never heard of him. Where do I start?” Marcus opened his laptop and starting making quick work of the search.

“My dad mentions it in his journal. Hardy had theories about a Bridge. Something with a symbol. They found the first Token, and it mentions five more in existence,” I told him.

“We know there are six. We’ve chased down every angle from your dad’s records and come up empty-handed each time. Do you remember this summer?” he asked. “The AK-47s ring a bell?”

I placed the food order on the app and cracked a couple of beers, passing one to Marcus. “Here’s what we have. Dad and Clay knew there were six of these Tokens. What if they collected all six? Used them to create this… Bridge.”

“Then what?” Marcus asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. That’s why we have to find Hardy. He was ahead of them, so he had more details than Dad did. They were using his leads, which tells us he had a theory on the Bridge.” I took a sip of the IPA, my tongue tingling at the hops.

“Locate Hardy, find out what the Bridge is and where it leads.” Marcus smiled, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Not seeing much on Hardy. But I’ll run it through my database; should get a hit if there’s ever been mention of him in any collegiate-published papers or museum archives.”

Marcus was a genius at information gathering, and he held more research details on his personal server than anyone else I’d ever heard of. He liked to keep it low-key, not often sharing the resource with anyone but me.

By the time the noodle delivery guy arrived, we’d drunk the first beer, and his program beeped, indicating there were over two hundred hits. Most of them were references to a man from the eighteen hundreds, Jeffery A. Hardy. His work had revolved around the study of migrating Neanderthals, and that didn’t seem like a match.

“How’s the food?” Marcus asked, slurping a noodle. It spilled on his keyboard, and he wiped at it with a napkin, shrugging.

“It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had. Who’s next?” I asked. “Anyone from the sixties or seventies?”

Marcus’ eyes grew, and he clicked over a search result. “Brian Hardy. He worked at Columbia for a few years in the late sixties. Says he was let go after an incident, but the file was redacted.”

“You got all that from your server?” I was surprised at the level of detail this kid was able to access.

“You think I half-ass anything? It’s why I was your favorite student,” he told me.

“‘Favorite’ might be a stretch. How about ‘most determined’?” I smiled at his frown.

“Same thing. Brian Hardy. This has to be the guy.”

I leaned over his shoulder, staring at the screen. There was noodle slop dripping from the top of it, and I used a sleeve to wipe it. “For someone so invested in his computers, you might want to take better care of them. Where’s Brian now? And don’t tell me he’s dead.”

“You’re not going to believe this,” Marcus said.

He paused, wagging his eyebrows for suspense. “Cut it out. What’s so special about him?”

“Him? Not a lot. Looks like he never took another teaching job after Columbia, but he’s done work for some pretty powerful collectors.” Marcus switched browsers, pointing to the website.

“Hunter Madison…” The man was a billionaire eccentric who was into collecting anything and everything involving ancient cultures, particularly those centered on visitors from the stars. Not many people outside the circle knew of it. On paper, he was an investor, owning majority shares in at least seven Venture 500 firms. I was aware of