Verna walked into my office without knocking, and that was the first thing that told me this wasn't going to be a normal day. She was beautiful in the way that makes you suspicious—dark hair, dark eyes, a dress that said she knew exactly what she was and used it like a weapon.

"Jack Callahan?" she said.

"That's what it says on the door."

She placed a locked steel briefcase on my desk. It was heavy, the kind of heavy that makes you wonder what's inside. The kind of heavy that makes you think about money.

"I need you to deliver this to three people," she said. "One each day, for three days. You don't open it. You don't ask what's in it. You deliver it, collect the envelope I've placed inside, and bring it back to me."

"How much?"

She named a figure. It was enough to pay for my brother's treatment for a year. It was enough to keep the creditors off my back for six months. It was enough to make me do something I shouldn't do.

I took the briefcase.

The first delivery was to a man named Garret, who ran a film studio in Hollywood. He opened the briefcase, looked inside, closed it, and looked at me with eyes that said he knew exactly what he was looking at and didn't care.

"You understand what this is?" Garret asked.

"I understand it's not mine to understand."

"It's a bargaining chip. That's all it is. But the people who want it... they'll pay. Or kill. Sometimes both."

The second delivery was to a senator's aide, a thin man named Hargrave who met me in a parking garage at midnight. He opened the briefcase and saw the same thing Garret had seen—schematics, calculations, something that looked like a plan for a device that could read minds on a planetary scale.

"It's not a device," Hargrave said, laughing. "It's a metaphor. A very expensive, very dangerous metaphor."

The third delivery was to a woman I hadn't met—a Russian defector named Katya, who lived in an apartment in downtown LA and spoke with an accent that was either real or perfectly rehearsed. She opened the briefcase and saw nothing. The schematics had been replaced with a single sheet of paper that read: "The signal was a lie. The weapon is real. And you are the weapon."

By the time I got the third envelope, I had enough money to save my brother, enough money to disappear, and enough danger to make sure I'd never sleep soundly again.

Verna was gone when I returned the briefcase. My office was empty. The money was on the desk, in an envelope, with no note.

I lit a cigarette. The rain continued. The briefcase was empty now, and so was I.

—THE END—