3:21 a.m. (Henry Bins 3)

By Nick Pirog

* JUST OPTIONED BY SONY PICTURES FOR TV DEVELOPMENT *

HENRY BINS IS ONLY AWAKE FOR ONE HOUR A DAY.

Henry Bins has traveled 3000 miles.
To see the sun.
June 21st.
Fairbanks, Alaska.
Sunrise is 3:07 a.m.
Thirteen minutes later.
800 people will be dead.

Selected Praise for the 3 a.m. series

"The most interesting premise....EVER." -Ruth.D

"If I had to choose one series to take with me to that desert island in the middle of nowhere, this would be it." -MsRee

"What an amazing series. So unique and interesting!" -Linda33

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Pirog
• Release date: Dec 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310577949

Nick Pirog

Nick Pirog is the bestselling author of the Thomas Prescott series, the 3:00 a.m. series, and The Speed of Souls. He lives in South Lake Tahoe with his two pups, Potter and Penny.

Book preview

3:21 A.M.

NICK PIROG

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Cold Open Publishing

Copyright © 2010 Nick Pirog

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

CONTENTS

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Author’s Note

3:34 a.m. teaser

:00

:01

:01

June 18th

Alexandria, Virginia

It had become part of my routine. Sometimes it was only a glance, other times I would pick it up, walk around the room with it, spend a couple minutes toying with the notion of opening it. But when you are only awake for sixty minutes a day, those couple minutes are a precious commodity. Those are two minutes I’m not kissing Ingrid or rubbing Lassie’s belly or playing cards with my father or making trades or running or showering. Two minutes I’m not living my life.

But I could never bear to open it. I could only postulate the words and images that lived inside the red folder.

Honey, we need to go. It’s a twenty-minute drive to the airport! Ingrid shouts from the living room.

I gaze down at my cell phone.

3:32 a.m.

The Potomac Airfield is located ten miles away, on the other side of the river. It would be much easier for everyone if we arrived before 4 a.m., though I am certain Ingrid made arrangements for a wheelchair to be waiting.

Just in case.

I’m coming! I yell, my eyes still locked on the folder lying on the middle shelf of the four-foot tall safe in my closet.

It had been eight months since the President of the United States handed me the red folder. When he handed it to me, he said, I have to warn you, there are things in there you can’t unsee.

He read it.

He knew.

Knew what my mother had done to me.

But it wasn’t my mother who concerned me.

It was my father.

If what Director LeHigh had said was true — that my mother was an acclaimed CIA torture specialist and the reason I was only awake from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. each night wasn’t because I had some one-in-a-trillion sleep disorder named after me (I’m Henry Bins and I have Henry Bins) but because she had conditioned me through sleep amplification — then where was my father when this was all happening?

Yes, my mother might be alive, but I hadn’t seen her in thirty years and I had no intention of ever seeing her again. But my dad was my rock. He taught me everything I knew, made me into the man I am today. What if he allowed her to do these horrible things to me? What if he’d been lying to me for thirty years?

Don’t bring it.

I turn around.

Ingrid stands in the doorway of the large walk-in closet. She looks good for having been awake for going on twenty-seven straight hours. She wears a typical outfit for summer on the east coast: dark blue jeans, a gray University of Maryland T-shirt, and white and purple Nikes. After helping me pack last night, she headed into work early, then spent the next twenty hours trying to wrap up two open cases and all the paperwork that accompanies a week-long vacation as a homicide detective.

This is supposed to be our time together, she says.

I nod.

She’s right.

Although we’d lived together for going on seven months now, we only saw each other three or four hours a week. She couldn’t control when or how long she would be away working her next case, and sometimes three days would go by without the two of us seeing each other. The unique circumstances of our relationship seemed less challenging on paper than they proved to be in reality. And with everything that transpired in the fifteen months we’d been dating — Jessie Kallomatix’s murder, not to mention Ingrid colluding with the President to help me expose a CIA secret prison on American soil (and getting me tortured in the process) — it seemed like there was always someone else in the room.

I shut the door to the safe and give the dial a quick spin.

You’re right.

She smiles, then shouts, Viva la Mexico!

We’re going to Alaska.

"Viva la Alaska."

I laugh and pull her into my arms and give her a long kiss.

Come on, she says, giving my butt a slap. I don’t want to have to drag your ass onto that plane.

I nod and we exit the closet.

Where’s Lassie? I ask.

He’s sulking. I don’t think he wants to go. I think he’d rather go to your dad’s and hang out with Murdock.

Lassie is indeed sulking. He is on the kitchen table, his black and tan body liquefied. His tawny eyes are half open.

Dude, what’s your problem?

Meow.

I told you. Murdock is sick. He isn’t going to be any fun. Actually, Murdock isn’t sick. He’d become increasingly aggressive with some of the neighborhood dogs and the vet attributed this to the vast amount of testosterone in the one-hundred-and-sixty-pound English mastiff’s softball-sized testicles. He was getting neutered tomorrow and my dad didn’t want him chasing around Lassie while he recovered.

Meow.

I don’t know, the flu or something. You can stay over at my dad’s for a month when we get back.

He glares at me.

Alaska is going to be great.

Meow.

No, we aren’t staying in an igloo. It’s summer there too. It’s supposed to be really nice.

Meow.

Can you ride a moose? Well, if we see one, I’m not gonna stop you, though I’m not sure if they have them in Fairbanks.

He sighs.

But what they do have . . . I flip open the laptop and scroll through the pictures I’d downloaded. For the past month, I’d spent a couple minutes each day reading up on, and looking at, pictures from Alaska, aka The Last Frontier. I click on one of the pictures, then turn the laptop toward Lassie, . . . is arctic foxes.

Lassie’s eyes open wide.

Now, go pack.

Ten seconds later, he has his favorite jingle ball in his mouth and paws at the front door.

::::

Alaska is going to be so much fun in a body bag.

Ingrid gazes at me with pursed lips, which eventually turn into a smile. She slows down but still manages to get us to the Potomac Airfield with three minutes to spare.

A man in a golf cart waits for us, and we load our bags into the back. We’re only half in when he zooms toward the jet sitting on the tarmac two football fields away.

It is 3:58 a.m.

The chartered flight plus a week’s rental at one of Fairbank’s most luxurious cabins wasn’t cheap, but my last trade — loading up on corn futures — paid for the trip.

I can see the wheelchair waiting for me outside the small thirty-passenger jet.

I won’t need it.

At exactly 3:59 a.m., the golf cart pulls up to the plane. The man says he will take care of our luggage and the three of us jump out and clamber up the wheeled steps of the plane. The pilot nods his cap at me and gives Lassie a quick rub on the head.

We hurry down the aisle and fold into two of the