#youlikeit - BLACKBIRD book 1

15. the blackbird

**picture: Congress St. bridge, Boston

Brock left his room at eight the next morning. At the hotel's front desk, when he tried to complete his check-out, the morning receptionist asked him to give her a moment. She reached under the counter and handed him a box wrapped in black paper, with a tiny white ribbon.

Brock frowned. "What's this?"

"I don't know, sir. The night shift received it for you."

Brock scowled, inspecting the package. There was no message, nothing to indicate who this came from. Maybe Cooper had decided to send him a bomb, to make sure he wasn't coming back to Boston any time soon?

Oh, well, Brockner, feeling funny this morning? An anonymous package left in the middle of the night for a federal agent was no joke.

"Excuse me," he muttered, and went in no hurry to the couches, with his briefcase and his duffel bag. And the box.

He sat down and took another minute to inspect it again, too intrigued to open it in a rush. What was this? Who could've left it for him? He didn't know anybody in Boston outside the field office. And he didn't really know anybody at the field office either.

He grabbed an edge of the paper carefully and tried to see what was in there. It looked like a box. Black, or maybe navy blue, and there was something golden too. What on God's green earth?

Then he found the sticker. Black and white, like the wrapping, but the letters were too tiny for him to read without his glasses. He removed it without ripping the paper and took his time to unwrap the box.

And then he needed twice as much time to snap out of his surprise, when he found the Blue Label Johnnie Walker box. What the hell!? He turned it in his hands and found the small white envelope stapled to the top. There was a card inside. He took it, narrowing his eyes, not knowing what to expect.

Black ink. A smooth, slightly rounded handwriting, right-atilt. A woman's handwriting. "To Agent D. Brockner," and the signature.

The receptionist saw him put the box in his bag and approach the front desk again. She'd seen the expensive present, but the man's face said nothing. As if carved in stone, he had hardly blinked. He finished his check-out and strode out, where he got into a taxi and left.

Brock leaned in the backseat of the taxi and his fingertips tickled until he slid his hand into the pocket of his suit coat, where he'd kept the card that came with the present. He looked out the window as they drove down the Seaport Boulevard, the morning sun shimmering on the water.

Off its own will, not consulting his brain whatsoever, his hand came out of the pocket with the card and his eyes turned to it again.

When they entered the tunnel under the channel, the taxi driver turned the radio on to listen to the morning news. Everybody was talking about the boy caught trying to sneak a bomb into his school. The driver glanced at Brock in his rearview mirror. His passenger was looking down at something in his hand.

And the driver couldn't tell for sure, but he seemed to be smiling.

Keep reading the next episode:  BLACKBIRD 3 - moving on