Friday September 29 2006
Escondido
Dan withdrew his housekey from his front-door lock and swung the door aside. "Kay, sport. Go grab some stuff-"
His son pushed past him and disappeared down the dark hallway, headed for his room.
"-and put it on the coffee table." Dan flicked on the switch by the door, glanced around the foyer, and entered the furnished but silent house. It almost seemed a stranger's, he'd spent so little time here; just a place he went on leave, where Adrienne and Drew were waiting. He'd washed the occasional dish in the kitchen, but he'd never fixed a leaky faucet or painted a wall or even cut the grass. He might have selected it, and the decree might say it was half his, but in his mind the house was Adrienne's.
She was everywhere he looked – maybe one reason he spent so little time here. He'd insisted that the house be furnished and run solely on his salary, in hopes Adrienne would see they didn't need a second income, and he was pretty sure she'd acceded. But she'd followed her tastes, not his, in dressing out the place. Not that there was anything wrong with that; he thought the place looked just fine, luxurious even. But she'd never once asked his opinion about a color or fabric or stick of furniture.
He studied a wide floral border that ran along one wall of the dining room near the ceiling, wondering how long it had been there, and how many times he'd glanced at it without really seeing it. Close examination showed it to be painted, not a paper appliqué, and very detailed. It was done in at least six colors, and some of the details had to have been done with a tiny brush. It had taken time and talent to apply. He wondered if Adrienne had hired it done or if it had been a favor from a friend.
An exchange of favors, a voice very like his father's whispered.
He shook it off. As uncomfortable as Adrienne's job and her attitude about it made him, he'd never had any hard evidence that she'd screwed around on him. At least not until after she'd told him she wanted out of the marriage, and did that really count? He knew part of his perpetual disquiet about her had come from the ease with which she'd agreed to a date the night they'd met in the club. One of the Service buddies he was bar-crawling with had recognized her from her centerfold, and Dan had come on to her for the challenge and the bragging points. He'd bought her a drink to get her to sit with him on her break, something he never did with performers as a point of pride, preferring to charm them to his side. He'd worked hard on her for fifteen minutes, but hadn't gotten more than polite interest and maybe a little throwaway flirting. He'd finally told himself he couldn't expect any more from a professional female, especially one so sought-after, who'd doubtless heard every pickup line ever conceived. But, as she'd finished her drink and was about to go back on stage, he'd impulsively asked her out, sure she'd make some excuse – and she'd smiled and accepted.
The second date had been in his apartment, the last half of it in his bed.
He could have paid for his beer every night for a year telling the story, but he couldn't do it. It was all his. The sex had been great, but her voice and her smile and the touch of her fingers in his palm and the smell of her hair when she shook it out as she got in her car were the memories that kept coming back. He found himself thinking about her all the time, so much that thoughts of any other conquests, past or prospective, were crowded out of his mind. But he'd almost been afraid to call her again, especially as the days between stretched out. Finally, after a week of indecision, he'd gathered his courage and punched her number, not knowing whether to expect anger or a brush-off.
Instead, she'd sounded pleased and a little surprised to hear from him, acting as if the week between hadn't existed for her. They'd made a third date, and a fourth, and after a while, he realized he hadn't dated another girl since he'd met her. He presented her with a ring a month after he'd bought her that ice tea. They were married the day before he shipped out to Iraq.
Well, as the saying goes, we always marry strangers. Dan noticed the blinking light on the answering machine in the living room, and decided to clear it out.
Quite a few were hang-ups, probably automated dialers that had disconnected when they found no one at the other end to solicit. A couple were from his father. The rest were from Adrienne.
His ex's messages weren't demands for a return call. He'd called her every night during his stay at Central and chatted as she drove home. The machine had logged all her calls between eleven AM and noon, her usual waking time, as if she'd gotten up thinking of him. The first was on Monday morning, thanking him for Sunday and reminding him to set up another date. The rest were like a collection of audible Post-it notes: gushing over Drew and expressing her pleasure at seeing him again. Remarks about Caitlin, from her looks and personality quirks to her car and her clothes, all positive and affectionate, and endless admonitions to take things slow with her. A recommendation for a men's shop, now that he was "out of uniform". A bunch of other stuff, minutia that a married woman might fill her husband's ear with when they were together. He let it wash over him, just soaking up her voice and tone. It had been a long time since Adrienne had been relaxed and chatty with him; even months before the separation, most of their conversations had been conducted as if across a negotiating table. Maybe the divorce was the right thing for both of us after all.
That reminded him that she'd said the papers would be ready for signature last week. But she hadn't mentioned them, either at night or on the machine. He briefly considered asking her about them, then decided to let her bring the subject up; after all, the divorce had been her idea.
There were no messages from Kat. It occurred that he'd never given her his home number. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket: as usual, he'd forgotten to turn it on when he'd removed it from the charger. It was strange, he thought, as he watched it searching for the nearest tower, that he couldn't establish such a simple habit. A lapse of this kind might have endangered his life during a tour; he'd always checked and rechecked his gear throughout the day there.
There were no messages from her on his cell phone either. It occurred to him that he'd never set up his voicemail. And, of course, the call log had no record of her number. He thought about calling, then decided Drew had been quiet for too long.
He found Drew on the floor of his room, surrounded by toys. His demand that they live within his income certainly hadn't been followed here; the room was a treasure house of kid stuff. But he'd never called her on it. If he'd learned one thing as an officer, it was to avoid unnecessary orders that were sure to be disobeyed; and if he was obliged to issue them anyway, not to press his people unnecessarily on their adherence. "Drew. Got your stuff picked out yet?"
"No. We going?" The boy's reluctance gave him pause. The little room in Dad's house must seem like a jail cell compared to this.
"Not yet." He noticed more fancy painted borders on the walls at ceiling and waist height, realistic dinosaur panoramas stretching across the wall with no repeat. He pointed at the artwork with his chin. "Who did the borders?"
Drew appeared to study them. "Mom. She was doing it all the time for a while. The dining room too." He smiled. "She let me help on the bottom. The red one's a brachiosaur, and the blue one's a T. Rex, and the green ones are velociraptors. I don't remember the other ones, but they're cool."
Dan followed the boy's fingers, thinking of Drew and Adrienne together turning the project into a little party, of her up and down on the ladder for days with dinky brushes and baby-food jars of paint. I had no idea she could do this. What a waste of talent.
The phone rang in the living room. He reached it just as the answering machine began its greeting message. "Hello?"
"Danny. I was just going to do a message."
"Well, now you can talk to me in person," he said, feeling strangely self-conscious, like a teenager calling the new girl in class.
"Are you staying there now?"
"Not really. I'm just here to look in on things and grab some stuff to take to my dad's. And check my messages," he added.
"I can't imagine what I must sound like on those. I know you're not there. It's just that lately you're the last person I talk to before I go to sleep, and I get up thinking about what we said the night before, and something comes to mind that I don't want to forget to say before I talk to you again."
"I don't mind." He looked all around the empty rooms, then up at the dining-room border. "It's… nice. Nice to be getting along, you know?"
"Yes." An uncomfortable pause. "Is Drew with you?"
"Yeah." He watched his son enter the living room, arms laden with books and toys. "Want to talk to him?"
"You have to ask?"
As Drew deposited his burden on the coffee table, Dan said, "Your mom's on the phone. Want-"
The boy grabbed at the phone. "Mom?" A pause. "Fine. When are you comin over?" Dan noticed his son held the phone with two hands, at mouth and ear. "Okay. I learned how to play Twister. Annie beats everybody, but I beat Grampa." He listened, then giggled, his face lighting like a halogen bulb. He never smiles like that for anyone else, Dan thought with a faint mix of guilt and jealousy. Not even Annie.
It didn't look like Drew would be ready to pass the phone back any time soon, so Dan wandered through the house, looking for items to take to his father's place and reflecting just how deep a man could get into it in less than three weeks.
He'd spent the last three nights in the little bar in Boulder, a regular hangout for Colby's 'first team'. Mike had introduced Dan to at least two members a night. Every man on the team appeared to be part of Colby's conspiracy. How active they were remained a mystery, but it was plain they were sympathizers and keeping 'the boss's' secrets, at least, and, by extension, Dan's. Dan suspected he was in it deeper than they, having already withheld knowledge of the Gens' whereabouts, warned them of impending IO plans, and even having diverted Jared's suspicion from the little pole dancer in San Diego who looked just like Roxanne Spaulding. But Dan suspected these men were prepared to go much farther than they had.
They'd insisted he call Annie every night from the bar, and taken turns accompanying him to the pay phone, turning their heads away as he'd punched the number in. They'd spent a few minutes exchanging happy words with Annie, obviously smitten with her, and turned the phone over to him. He'd conversed with Kat most of the night, talking about a million things. As he did, he'd looked down the hallway to the bar, noting the looks of good-natured envy that passed among the senior men. Then they'd piled into someone's car for the trip back into Central. He'd stayed up to call Adrienne every night on her trip home, never missing the lost sleep till morning.
His classmates had been full of questions, of course. None of them were allowed off base yet. The senior men in their own team were friendly, but they weren't really mixing socially with the rookies, especially after hours. And Security and SS generally didn't rub elbows anyway. But even guys as new as his classmates could spot the qualitative difference between typical 'Gerry's Kids' and the Ops Director's watchdogs. Cummins, who knew Loud, had dropped a word in the others' ears, and Dan's need to evade uncomfortable questions during school hours about his new buddies and special privileges had come to an abrupt stop.
The looks and comments out of earshot, however, had redoubled. From "idle" remarks intended as conversation starters, Dan guessed that Jared had gossiped about Adrienne. Coupled with Cummins' secondhand story about Nicole Callahan's interest, he'd picked up an unwanted reputation as a ladies' man, predictably making him the subject of gossip and speculation among his comrades and Central's meager female population as well. A few had crossed his path in the hallways and the cafeteria and struck up conversations. Their tone, however, had made him think they were just curious, for which he was grateful. Or maybe they were just careful about challenging Nicole Callahan's prerogatives. But, of course, being seen with them just added more fuel to the fire. It was amazing, really, how much bullshit could fly from one end of a place like this to the other in just a couple days.
It's almost humorous, he thought. I haven't even gotten my tongue in my girlfriend's mouth, my ex is giving me dating advice, and the only woman at work who seems genuinely interested in sharing sheets scares me so much I'm avoiding her. I'm a player, all right.
He cleaned the perishables out of the fridge and cupboards and bagged them, grabbed the last of his modest civilian wardrobe, and began loading the car. Drew was lounging on the couch, still deep in conversation with his mother. When he came back in, the boy looked up. "Dad. Mom wants to talk to you."
Dan took the phone. "Hi."
"Danny, what's this Drew's telling me about you and Kat? You're not seeing each other this weekend? You're not fighting for real, are you?"
His son was watching him attentively. Dan shifted the phone. "No. I'm going to Pendleton Saturday with some guys from work."
"Somehow I don't think that's the whole story."
He shifted the phone again, picked up some of Drew's things off the coffee table, and walked out the front door, hoping the boy wouldn't follow. "We just agreed to take a breather for a while, is all."
"And how long is 'a while'?"
Until IO loses interest in this neighborhood and it's safe for her to stick her head up out of her bunker, or until she's caught. "Hard to say. We're still talking on the phone, Ren."
"So are we. You and me, I mean. And me and her. Sometimes she sounds so sad, Danny. It never lasts, but…"
Change the subject, right now. "Um, Sunday okay again?"
"Count on it. How about a pizza joint? You know, one of those kid places with arcade games and employees in dog suits?"
He smiled into the phone. "Sounds great." It occurred that she was calling on a Friday evening, and there were no background noises on her end. Another thought occurred. "I don't suppose you've got the night off."
A pause. "In fact, I do. One Friday a month, and this is it."
"You've got plans with Alan, I suppose."
"Actually…" another pause. "I think I'd rather talk about that in person. Tonight, or did I misunderstand?"
"No, you didn't. Usually Drew has Friday nights in with my dad and Annie, but she's not coming around lately either."
"I see." And Dan was sure she did, or at least that her suspicions were on track. "Where do you want to meet?"
"I hear Poway has some nice restaurants," Dan said, naming a resort town about halfway between his house and hers.
"It does. How about The Islander's, on Carmel Road?"
He got directions and agreed on a time and hung up. Then he called Kat as he was loading the last of the loot into the car.
"Daniel. When did you get in?"
"Couple hours ago," he said, feeling vaguely guilty. It was the first time since Tuesday he hadn't called her by eight o'clock. "I've been busy."
"I understand. You've got family stuff to do, now you're home. How's Drew?"
"Missing you guys." He hesitated. We have too many secrets between us already. Don't add to them. "I'm taking him to see Adrienne. Late supper."
"That's great." Not a false note in her tone. Well, why should there be? They're friends. And she trusts me. Why am I feeling like I'm doing something slightly shady?
An old song drifted into his mind, Bob Seger maybe. "…if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with…"
She was still speaking. "So, what else are you doing this weekend?"
"Saturday, I'm leaving Drew with Dad and going off somewhere with a bunch of Director Colby's boys." He leaned against the old sedan's fender. "I think they're going to induct me with a blood ritual and teach me the secret handshake."
She giggled. "Get you drunk and tattooed, more likely. I've never met them, but Anna thinks they're sweet. She calls them 'the boys' .You should see her when she talks to them on the phone."
He smiled into the receiver, looking up into the hazy, light-polluted night sky. "And you should see it from this end. Unbelievable. The way she wraps them, you'd think it was… what do you call it? Allure?"
"Yes," she said cautiously.
"I know she's different, Kat. She told me about… the experiments. Said it was all engineering. I can't imagine what they did to her." And I can't believe they left her with all her marbles, even as level-headed as she always seems. At least when my father's not around… "Hard to believe a little selective breeding and some drugs can create people who can defy the laws of physics."
"There is no such thing." Suddenly, his six-years-younger girlfriend sounded like a schoolmarm. "Gen just proves we don't know as much as we think."
"Come on, now. Throwing cars? Gravity fields? Lightning from nowhere? I mean, what happened to 'equal and opposite reactions'?"
"Daniel," she said slowly, "How much physics did you learn in school?"
Uh-oh. "I advance-enlisted out of high school. My college courses emphasized language skills. The science classes were all applied subjects. You know, electronics and statics. Practical stuff."
"'Practical'. You mentioned electronics. Did you learn mathematics that involved the roots of negative numbers?"
"Um, think so," he said uncomfortably. "Didn't ever use it."
"You'd have to if you were designing circuits. 'Imaginary number' math was an intellectual exercise when it was invented hundreds of years ago. But it's essential to modern technology. So you didn't learn anything about quantum mechanics, or string theory?"
"No," he said, feeling like a kid who hadn't done his homework getting treated like a moron by the prettiest teacher in school.
"Then just take my word for it, Daniel. The accepted laws of high-order physics make no intuitive sense. Identical experiments sometimes yield very different results, objects at opposite ends of the universe experience identical or mirror-image effects simultaneously, and sometimes cause can precede effect. Einstein said that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine. All that the discovery of Gen means is that our present theories will have to be revised or expanded to accommodate our observations. It's not as impossible as it sounds. You were talking about keeping a balance before. For all I know, when I throw a car, the rotation of the Earth slows down by a millisecond a century. Or maybe, in a galaxy so distant its light won't reach us before the Sun burns out, a star is going nova a picosecond later or earlier than it would have. What Gens do is phenomenal in human terms, but on a universal scale, it may be next to nothing."
So would the Sun winking out, he thought, remembering Ivery's lecture.
Poway California
"You moved out?" Daniel glanced around and leaned across the table, lowering his voice. "Why?"
Adrienne shrugged. "Nothing he did. Really. But I'm spending a lot of time getting my club up and running. I'm starting to spend nights away from Alan's house. And I'll need to move once I open my doors anyway. It just seemed pointless to drag it out."
Dan glanced at a nearby table, where Drew was sitting alone, staring raptly up at a TV tuned to a kiddie show. "I don't think that's all there is to it."
"No, I suppose not." Adrienne took a sip of her cocktail, the only one she'd ordered. "He was just what I needed when I left you, Danny. He's kind, considerate, undemanding, and patient. I can't imagine him losing his temper with me. I've known him since before I met you. I'm sure it won't affect our business relationship, and we'll still be friends." She rested her chin on her fist. "And maybe that's part of the problem. Sometimes living with him felt like… being a live-in friend-with-benefits. No emotional investment. He made time for me the same way he scheduled appointments with his clients. He's a good man. But we were never going to love each other."
And why, he asked himself, does that leave me feeling... complimented?
Saturday September 30 2006
Escondido
Sarah was in her room, dressing after her shower. She hadn't wanted to put the oversized sweats she'd worn from bedroom to bathroom back on, sure they were perfumed with Bobby's pheromones, and so had traveled the hall in a damp towel. She had just unwrapped and was about to let the towel fall to the floor when her door clicked open.
She snatched the towel back up and covered her front as she spun to face the door, possibilities flicking through her mind. Not Bobby. He'd never come in without knocking. Anna either.
Roxanne came in and swung the door shut behind her as she glided to the sitting- room couch. She plopped down, disappearing behind the divider half-wall. "We need to talk, Sis," she said, giving the last word a little extra emphasis.
"I'm dressing right now, Roxanne."
"That seems like a lousy excuse for avoiding a conversation. Funny. I go in Kat's room all the time, and she doesn't think a thing about changing her undies in front of me. Even now that we both know we're not blood. Girl needs a serious lingerie upgrade too, by the way. You've shown your butt to every guy in this house, so what's the problem?"
Sarah considered. She'd always shared a bedroom with her sister until she'd come to Darwin; modesty with Beth had been excess baggage. "Well, come in here then. I feel like I'm talking to a wall." She dropped the towel on the floor and stepped to an armoire. She opened it just in time to look in the mirror on the door and see Roxanne flop down on the big bed. "I'm not usually body-conscious. I thought you might be uncomfortable, considering."
"Considering you're gay, you mean." The girl propped her elbows on the bed and put her chin in her palms, crossing her ankles a foot over her butt.
Sarah selected panties and stepped into them. "Do I need to ask what you want to talk about?"
"Nope. How long have you known?"
Bra next. She picked something modest that she seldom wore, since she wasn't going to leave the house. "That I was Stephen Callahan's daughter, or that you were too?" She adjusted the neck strap and reached behind her for the back straps.
"Either. Both."
Sarah fumbled with the unfamiliar clasp in the middle of her back, her arms bent almost double behind her. Knew there was a reason I never wear this thing. Designed by a man, I'll bet. "Both, the day Anna came home from Phoenix with Mr. Lynch. She told me. We told Kat just before Chula Vista."
"So you all kept it from me for five frickin months. Why?"
The damnable clasp kept slipping out of her grip just as she was about to hook it. Her fingers kept getting in the way. "Unh. No excuse, really. I told Caitlin and Anna it was my job. Just didn't think you'd take it well. You two are so close."
Roxanne slid off the bed. "Let go. Let me do it." She swiftly hooked the ends together, and Sarah exhaled in relief. Then the girl wound her arms around Sarah's waist. "You're such a doof sometimes."
Sarah froze. "Somebody walks in, they might get the wrong idea." But her hand found its own way to the tiny ones clasped over her navel and covered them.
"Screw em." The younger girl laid her cheek against Sarah's shoulder blade. "I liked Kat as soon as I met her. We were BFFs before we ever compared birth certificates. I kept thinking that finding out we were sisters should have changed the way I felt about her somehow, but it didn't. I thought it was just because we never knew each other growing up, you know? But… she just never fit the picture that comes to mind when I imagine an older sister. It's all too warm and friendly and polite." Roxanne's grip tightened for a moment. "You and me, we shop and gossip and talk about everything. Argue about everything, too. I borrow your jewelry without asking and you use up my shampoo. When you get bossy with me, it's different from when Kat's hovering over me. Sometimes you make me so mad I want to take a ball bat to you, but if I stop talking to you, it hurts all the time until we make up."
Sarah nodded. "That's how it is with my sisters. My other sisters."
"Your mom ever mention him?"
"No. No way."
"Mine either. But she would have if she'd known, I think." The arms around Sarah's waist tightened again. "Just realized. All the attention Matt gave you. He knew, didn't he? But he never treated me like that."
"He didn't know about you. IO didn't either. They took that name on your birth certificate at face value and never ran a DNA test."
"Well, that explains the guilt."
"Guilt?"
"Yeah. The dirty feeling I got whenever I thought about laying hands on him. Not that it stopped me." She shifted slightly. "They didn't check. Doesn't that seem strange? They were so by-the-numbers about that stuff."
Sarah had a suspicion about that, but she hesitated to throw it out between them with no way to prove it one way or another. "It would be an easy assumption to make if Caitlin's father had a certain reputation. His name was on the birth certificate, after all."
"Well, sure, but still."
Sarah took a breath and made a decision. "Or… if Roxanne Spaulding wasn't Alex Fairchild's first illegitimate."
"Unless you've got a name to go with that idea, stop right there. This family gets any bigger, we're gonna need our own directory." Roxanne's hands slid off her, and a moment later she felt a sharp slap on her right glute. "Better put some miles on the treadmill, girlfriend. You're spreading out."
Sarah picked out a tank and smiled at Roxanne's reflection as the girl returned to the bed. "Fat chance. Pun intended. A little exercise wouldn't be a bad idea, though, what with the forced seclusion and all."
"You'd think Bobby'd be giving you plenty of exercise by now." Roxanne's reflection grinned at her a moment before settling into graver lines when Sarah didn't respond. "Not, still?"
Sarah shut the armoire and opened another. "Not." She opened a drawer and picked out a pair of cutoffs; the house was plenty warm, especially upstairs. "But we're still sleeping together. Just sleeping."
"I don't know how you do it, honestly. It'd break my heart every night."
"It did mine, too, for a while. It's just amazing what you can get used to. Maybe someday."
"What about Bobby? He knows, right? I mean, he's got to. Doesn't it drive him insane?"
"I didn't tell him till last week. Up till then, he just thought he was sharing his bed with a crazy lesbian." She slipped on a pair of footie socks. No other footwear was necessary; in Anna's house, they'd stay clean forever. "And Bobby's grip on reality is iron."
Roxanne crossed her ankles in the air again. "Do you suppose they were all horn dawgs? The Twelves, I mean. Guys are what they are. They find out they've got built-in girl catnip, they'll bang anything tasty that comes their way, don't you think?"
Sarah briefly considered voicing her suspicions about Luis Scajola's parentage, then decided against. She wasn't sure Roxanne would be able to keep them to herself, and Sarah couldn't see any good coming from spreading them around. Bobby's relationship with his father was fragile enough; the abandonment issue was healed over, she thought, but the scar was deep. Learning that John Lynch had sired a child out of wedlock who'd grown up not knowing his biological father might be enough to open it again. And, Daniel's presence in her emotional picture notwithstanding, everyone knew how stuck Caitlin was on the boy. Sarah's redheaded sistah was just getting over her fruitless double crush on Bobby and his dad; there was just no telling what it might do to her to learn she'd gone hopeless over yet another Lynch male. "I don't know. But if they were, they averaged more careful than Alex Fairchild and Stephen Callahan. There were about sixty Twelves, and they've sired ninety-odd kids since they turned Gen. That puts our father and Caitlin's a little ahead of the curve." Unless there are more like Luis that IO never found.
The top row of drawers on the armoire was very small. Sarah opened one and withdrew an item she'd noticed but hadn't yet worn: a peridot pendant strung from a slender silver chain. She studied the sparkling yellow-green stone and wondered once more whether it was the one Roxanne had given her for her seventeenth birthday. Had Anna smuggled it from the beach house before its destruction, or duplicated it for her shikasin to ease the shock of the team's narrow escape? It was a token of love, either way. She slipped it around her neck, and the stone hung cool against her skin for just a moment before it warmed. "I wonder what he looked like sometimes. How they met. If my father knows. My next sister was conceived less than three months after I was born. Seems like Mother was eager to prove something to her husband."
Roxanne flowed off the bed and took Sarah's hand, tugging her away from the armoire and its mirror, forcing her to look at the girl directly for the first time since the little pixie had entered the sleeping area. "Come with me."
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see." Roxanne led her towards the bedroom door and the hallway. "Keep it down, okay? We don't wanna get caught."
Wednesday October 4 2006
"She's late. Are you sure about this?"
"She's not late, Ferris." Jeffrey shifted in the parked car's passenger seat. The vehicle was in a slot near the center of the little shopping mall's lot, surrounded by employee vehicles. He scanned the storefronts with a pair of sport glasses. "There's a thirty-minute window. And you know we can't be sure. But she's been coming every other day for a week, and she wasn't here yesterday."
"Where'd the lead come from? One of the storekeepers, you said?"
"Yeah. He thought she was a hooker working the neighborhood and called the cops. The complaint included a real detailed description." He offered her another pair.
"Oho." She took the glasses from his hand, careful not to let her fingers linger on his overlong, and looked at the two entrances to the lot. "The longer he stared at her, the more outraged he got, huh?"
"Something like that." Once their eyes were set firmly to their binoculars, he said, "How was your ski weekend?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"No."
Her inspection moved from the entrances to the rest of the team. Two Suburbans packed with men were parked near each entrance, ready to seal them off. An ambulance idled near the back of the lot with its lights off, and a tilt-bed car-hauling truck sat next to it. "Never touched a ski. I went with my sister, who got hammered all three nights and basically acted like a college kid on spring break. She just got divorced, and she's trying to prove something, I guess." She ducked her head to get a look at the strip's roof, but the sharpshooters were too well concealed to spot. "I listened to her maunder on about her ex and evaded a dozen questions about my job. We spent most of the time shopping or in the lodge. And flirted with every man at the bar who gave us a smile."
"That last must have kept you busy."
Agents surrounded the lot, but none were nearby, and they were alone in the car. She dropped her right hand to her lap, holding the glasses to her eyes with just the left. Without moving her shoulder or upper arm, she placed her free hand on his thigh. He didn't move, but said quietly, "Don't."
She returned her hand to her lap before raising it back to the glasses. "Sorry."
"Me too. But if we're going to keep working together…"
"Charlie to Alpha. Inbound, east entrance."
A blue Mini two-door wheeled into the lot. Ferris saw two faces behind the windshield as the little car traveled halfway down the lane that fronted the retail strip. It pulled into a slot across from a convenience store and parked. The passenger door opened.
"Bingo," Jeffrey said.
"I see why he mistook her for a hooker." Through the field glasses, Ferris examined the Queen of Clubs' leather mini and embroidered hose. The girl's black leather jacket was open at the front, showing a pink camisole underneath. She tucked a strand of purple hair behind an ear adorned with three earrings and swung the door shut.
"In the file, there's a picture of her greeting the Dean when she arrived at Darwin, dressed just like that. At fourteen."
"Hmp." Ferris watched the girl strut across the lane to the sidewalk. She was wearing ankle boots with what looked like four-inch heels. "It's a wonder she didn't get knocked up before she was recruited. She's really just going in for cigarettes?"
"One pack. Sometimes she buys a couple of sodas or something, too, but she's here for the smokes."
"Why the hell doesn't she just buy a carton once a month or so?"
"Maybe she's trying to quit."
"Is that Rainmaker in the driver's seat?"
"Looks like. Trail, or take em here?"
"Take them here," she said firmly. "Then follow their back trail to the nest."
"Okay. I'll start a camera backtrack, for starts." Jeff sent a text on his PDA, fingers deftly manipulating the keys. Ferris pulled her attention from his hands and focused on the storefront that Spaulding had entered.
A few minutes later, the girl came out, purchases in hand. As she was about to step off the sidewalk, she paused and scanned the lot, taking in all the unusual vehicles.
"Uh oh." Ferris keyed the general frequency. "Look sharp. Queen of Clubs seems suspicious."
Their quarry stepped quickly across the lane to the waiting car. It idled for a moment more, then shifted into gear and began moving, but not towards the driveway it had entered. It cruised along the storefronts, apparently heading towards the north entrance instead.
"Another errand," Jeffrey said, "or leading us off?"
"Doesn't matter. Phone jammers?"
"On since they pulled in the lot."
The Mini swung between two rows of cars, pointed towards the north entrance. "Do it."
"Coming your way, Fox," Jeffrey called into his wrist mike. "Don't let them out of the lot."
"Roger, firing," the team's sniper replied, and Ferris heard a chuff and saw the rear passenger window shatter. The car lunged forward at an angle and crunched into the trunk of a parked car. She saw the airbags go off, pinning the Specials to their seats. The little engine howled - the accelerator stuck, apparently, or maybe a spasm in the driver's foot – and the tires screamed as the Mini tried to push its way through the obstacle.
Team members from all over the lot sprang into action. The Suburbans at the entrances rolled across and blocked them while other agents sprinted to the car. Still others moved to the sidewalk to reassure witnesses - and get their names. As she rushed up to the car, Ferris could see the Specials behind the deflated remains of their airbags. They behaved as if they were underwater in the dark, unsure of the direction of the surface and running out of air. The little purple-haired girl turned to the passenger window with blind eyes and smashed her face into the glass, smearing it with blood.
One of Ferris's men reached through the shattered rear window with a Lethe dispenser, but then paused, seeming uncertain. Ferris knew what his problem was: the neural grenade in the car was messing up his grip on reality. "Burton!" She said. "Tap her and get out of there!"
He shook himself and carefully pressed the injector to the girl's neck, and she slumped as if she'd been switched off.
A second agent smashed the rear driver's-side window and did the same to the Indian girl. Then he reached over her sagging shoulder, pushed aside the airbag, and switched off the engine. The scene fell almost silent.
The agent reached around the driver, tangling his hand in her long black hair, fumbling for the inside latch. He finally found it and the doors unlocked with a pop. "Queen of Spades, Queen of Clubs. Two down, five to go."
The man on the other side opened his door and caught the little brunette as she spilled out, her lower face bloody and dripping, nose askew. "Shit. Not everything's going our way." He pulled her from the car and laid her gently on the ground.
Ferris reached a finger into the man's shirt collar and touched the band of cool metal inside. The finger tingled. "Burton, get your C-collar checked out when we get back."
The ambulance rolled up without lights or siren from its parking spot on the other side of the lot. The two 'paramedics' who got out and opened the rear doors to assemble their equipment were agents with med training, one of them an honest-to-God PhD. "Collar them," she said to them, "first thing. Before you move them."
A few people appeared at store windows, and a couple stepped out. A stare from the agents dressed in their Secret Service costumes sent them back inside. A police car bumped over the curb and rolled into the lot, lights flashing, as the Specials were being loaded onto the gurneys and wheeled to the ambulance. Another followed close behind.
"Guess they didn't get the memo." Ferris turned toward Jeffrey, but he was already walking toward the cruisers, reaching for whatever ID he intended to show them. Two agents followed close behind. She returned her attention to the car. "Anything?"
"Rental papers in the glove box. Ballpoints and change, stuff like that." The agent picked up the neural grenade and it immediately slipped from his deadened fingers. "Still live. Shoulda known better." He produced a pair of ratcheting pliers and a special tool from his pocket, picked up the grenade again with the pliers, inserted the tool in one end, and gave a twist. "Safe." He took the grenade in hand and stuffed it in a pocket. "Papers say the car was picked up eight days ago in Temecula." He flipped the key on to read the odometer, then glanced at the rental papers again. "Sixteen hundred miles? Shit, they must have been driving all over So Cal."
"Get the black box and transponder." Many rental agencies installed electronic 'babysitters' on their cars, devices which would record abusive driving such as hard cornering and braking as well as jackrabbit takeoffs. And, of course, a GPS unit to record its travels. Combined with the camera backtrack, they should soon have location of the safe house, as well as the whereabouts of any other of their quarry the girls had dropped off on the way to the store. "Might as well check the address on the IDs and rental papers, just to be thorough."
A 'paramedic' approached her with two large plastic toolboxes. "All in here, everything but their fillings. No weapons, no trackers, no bugs. The tall one has an IUD, though. We left that alone."
"Really." She frowned. "Get it out. Quick. And check the other one again, head to toe and every opening."
The man looked at her strangely, but she cut him off before he could speak. "Sarah Rainmaker is a lesbian."
He got it, nodded, and left. Jeffrey returned, pocketing his ID, as the cruisers shut off their lights, turned, and exited the lot. "They got the memo. Somehow they thought 'all local law enforcement' didn't mean them. A call to their shift commander took care of it."
"Get this car's movements traced. Like, yesterday. I want an address for the others before they know these two are out of play."