Page 234 of Johnny

And if they do fuck with me. Or my brothers, or anyone else I know. Then… then I’m gonna go

looking for the guy called Nick and see if we can come to some mutually beneficial agreement.

“Come on,” I say. Taking Megan’s bags and her hand so I can lead her towards the entrance. “I’m

ready to blow this town and retire.”

Two weeks later my phone rings and I turn over in bed, reaching across Megan’s naked body to

fumble through the nightstand drawer where I keep all my burner phones at night. I have about half a

dozen phones in there at the moment, so it takes me several tries to find the right one.

“Oh. My God,” Megan moans sleepily. “What time is it?”

“Shhh,” I say. “Just go back to sleep. It’s early.” Then I get up, pull on a pair a sweats real fast, and

snap my fingers at our new puppy, Jasper, so he can come outside with me while I take this call.

It’s not actually that early. Almost nine AM. But it is Sunday. And we were up pretty late last night.

I’m kinda getting the hang of this retirement thing.

“Come on, Jas,” I say. Whisper-whistling to him. He’s a four-month old Labrador retriever and he

has taken to his new cushy life on the lake like… well, a retriever takes to water.

I smile as he runs around the yard sniffing everything he can boop his little snoot against, and then

open the flip phone and accept the call. “Clark, my man. This had better be good because you woke us

up.”

“Johnny,” he says nervously. “Sorry about that. But I just finished translating that letter you gave me

a couple hours ago and I figured you’d want to know what it said right away.”

I think my heart skips a beat or seven. Because if this was just another translation of the Epic,

Clark would not be so wound up.

“What’s it say?”

“I think you should just… read it yourself. And also, I’m sorry dude.”

“Why?” I say. Trying to breathe.

“I don’t think… well, actually. I think… well. Man….”

“Clark. Just spit it out.”

“It’s… very personal. I had to improvise some of the words. Ancient Akkadian cuneiform and

English, not exactly word for word translation, if you know what I mean.”

“Got it,” I say.

“And if reading this overstepped any of your boundaries, I just want you to know…”