Tick Tock

thinking—”
    “Well, it doesn't show.”
    “—and I don't think you're in any danger from it—”
    “You don't think I am.”
    “—because, according to the message that the thing apparently typed on my computer, the deadline is dawn.”
    “How exactly am I to take comfort from this?” she asked.
    “It's got until dawn to get me—and I've got until dawn to stay alive. At that point the game ends.”
    “Game?”
    “Game, threat, whatever.” He squinted through the windshield at the silvery skeins of rain falling beyond the underpass. “Could we get moving? Makes me nervous to sit here so long.”
    Del released the handbrake and put the van in gear. But she kept her foot on the brake pedal and didn't drive out from under the freeway. “Tell me what you mean—game.”
    “Whoever made the doll is willing to play by rules. Or maybe they have to, maybe that's what the magic requires.”
    “Magic?”
    He locked his door. “Magic sorcery, voodoo, whatever. Anyway, if I make it to dawn, maybe I'm safe.” He reached across Del and locked her door too. “This creature it isn't going to come after you if it's been sent to get me and if it has only a limited amount of time to make the kill. The clock is ticking for me, sure, but it's also ticking for the assassin.”
    Del nodded thoughtfully. “That makes perfect sense,” she said, and she sounded sincere, as though they were discussing the laws of thermodynamics.
    “No, it's insane,” he corrected. “Like the whole situation. But there's a certain nutty logic to it.”
    She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “One thing you've overlooked.”
    He frowned. “What's that?”
    She checked her wristwatch. “It's now seven minutes past midnight.”
    “I hoped it was later. Still a lot of time to get to the finish line.” He looked over his shoulder, across the cargo hold, at the back door of the van, which wasn't locked.
    “And dawn is in… probably five and half or at most six hours,” Del said.
    “So?”
    “Tommy, at the rate you're going, the creepy-crawler will catch you by one o'clock, tear your head off—and still have four or five hours of spare time on its hands. If it has hands. Then it'll come for me.”
    He shook his head. “I don't think so.”
    “I think so.”
    “It doesn't know who you are,” he said patiently. “How would it find you?”
    “It wouldn't need to hire your silly detective,” she said.
    Tommy winced because she sounded like his mother, and he never wanted this woman, of all women, ever to remind him of his mother. “Don't call him silly.”
    “The damn thing will track me the same way it's tracking you right this very minute.”
    “Which is how?”
    She tilted her head in thought. The fluffy white pompon dangled. “Well… by the pattern of your psychic emanations, telepathy. Or if each of us has a soul that emits a sound… or maybe a radiance that's visible in some spectrum beyond those that ordinary humans are able to sense, a radiance as unique as a fingerprint, then this thing could home on it.”
    “Okay, all right, maybe it could do something like that if it was a supernatural entity—”
    “If it was a supernatural entity? If? What else do you think it is, Tommy? A shape-changing robot they send out from MasterCard to teach you a lesson when your monthly payment is overdue?”
    Tommy sighed. “Is it possible that I'm insane, tenderly cared for in some pleasant institution, and all this is happening only in my head?”
    At last Del pulled back into the street and drove out from under the freeway, switching on the windshield wipers as heavy volleys of rain exploded across the van.
    “I'll take you to see your brother,” she said, “but I'm not just dropping you off, tofu boy. We're in this together, all the way… at least until dawn.”
     
    In Garden Grove, the New World Saigon Bakery operated in a large tilt-up concrete industrial building surrounded by a blacktop parking lot. It was painted white, with the name of the company in simple peach-coloured block letters, a severe-looking structure softened only by a pair of ficus trees and two clusters of azaleas that flanked the entrance to the company offices at the front. Without the guidance of the sign, a passer-by might have thought the company was engaged in plastic injection moulding, retail electronics assembly, or other light manufacturing.
    On Tommy's instructions, Del drove around to the back of the building. At this late hour, the front doors were locked, and one had to enter through the kitchen.
    The rear