Red Entaries

Twenty

"Now we go to Taklamakan Desert to find Dirge Hold and after you hand over the ransom dia to the Harbinger, I'll handle the rest." Joanna nodded.

"So, then we part ways," Trev said.

"It's for the best," Jo said

"No!" He said, inhaling deeply, and he thought about all the lonely times when he hoped to find the right girl.

"This is my chance to be a hero too...besides..."

Joanne broke in: "Are you willing to put your life at stake?"

"Yes, for you Joanna."

She blushed.

"We can meet at the New York Airport in twelve, zero, zero hours," she said. "Then buy our passports for a casual flight to China."

"No," he said. "I don't fly in those, but come with me, I have a surprise to show you."

It was a quick jaunt about fifty meters south heading towards the east side factory. They commandeered a night black vehicle with tinted windows with a Lunar Life Corp logo on its interior backside windshield, now gone. Grabbing a clean rag off a workbench, Trevor wiped off the secret grate where Cliff's workstation was, and Joanna began to open it adjacent to the inside corner wall. She breathed heavily. There was a fog of dust, and the corridor was dim with only a small brim of sunlight.

Trevor thought: The Love Bug of spaceships.

The secret grate was now nearly open.

The small spaceship had a twinkling blue starlight finish and its bright lights turned on like a new creation. Lights bleeped on systematically around the spacecraft, not a map to the Moon, but a dream Trev's great grandfather once had where the starting base would be a Moon colony, many, many leagues away mining nickel encrusted rock, a miner's game; and columns of platinum, gold and silver to make devil eyes weep.

Trevor could imagine his great grandfather working on this boyhood dream of a spaceship. He kept it fresh as a daisy blue flower by a service bot, even after his passing and safe as a space trip dream. The garage was Trahern's wonder and dismay, why it was hidden all these years, and alive as his breakthrough's new bloom. Trev's legacy was pollinated with faith.

"What do you think Joanne?"

"It's nice," Joanna said, "you sure it's not just for show?"

"Let's find out," Trevor said. The Love Bug danced on the waters on the straight from New York to China. They passed the middle states from Pennsylvania to California and the North Pacific Ocean from Japan's Tokyo, Kumamoto to finally China's Taklamakan Desert in a short time by seven-thousand three-hundred seventy-seven miles. She purred beautifully.

Jo called the Harbinger to let him know the ransom dia was on the way, he was delighted, naturally. The Mob Boss told her where they would meet, an abandoned bunker in the middle of the desert. Joanna also notified her FBI Boss that the transaction was about to take place.

Next, Joanne and Trevor talked about when they were thirteen.

"After me and my sister went on a gun run, I convinced her we should do some more jobs for the Mob, I was raped by the Mobsters several times, but I never let them touch my sister. Eventually we saved enough wages to get out of town. I always wanted to be an FBI agent and my sister wanted to work with the Moon's colony. We both got to do what we wanted, but there's one thing, we never got to re-bury our parents like a king and queen in a different location. Neither I nor my sister had the guts to come back to Dirge Hold. Jo felt a huge burden release from her." Trahern began to talk.