Yay! The next installment of Aitch. I hope you are liking these. I had some computer and time issues, but we're back baby! If you get a chance, check out Jennette McCurdy on Twitter and Miranda Cosgrove as they embark on their music promo tours!
Emergency crews surrounded Bushwell towers. Two pumpers, a ladder truck, four paramedic vans, the fire chief's pickup truck, and an assortment of police cruisers, all their lights alive and flashing like a rock show.
Nobody really noticed the extra police cruiser slip past the uniformed cordon that barricaded the area off from the rubberneckers and flash media. Sam steered the cruiser all the way up to the front lobby entrance of the building, where emergency people were coming and going. A group of concerned people stood off to the left, people Sam had seen on many visits to the home of Carly and her random brother, Spencer, who she spied right in the middle of the group holding up burned oven mitts in a defensive stance against the people around him.
She launched herself from the vehicle and ran over to Spencer, pushing roughly through the mob around him, and yanking him away, snarling out inaudible words to the mob that recognized the blond and knew better than to get in her way, surrendering the mop haired artist to the custody of the teen anger management reject.
"Get outta my way, lady...step aside...move your ass or I'll kick your ass...move people...hey! Lose some weight...jeeze...nice PJs...you - move it...GAHH!"
The police watched the scene with mild amusement, knowing that it was better not to approach a mad Sam without suitable tactical backup.
"Spencer!" Sam yelled, when she had dragged him far enough away from the crowd.
"Sam!" Spencer shouted with joy, oblivious to the sour looks behind him and the agitation of his sister's best bud and the obvious crisis brewing around him. "What are you doing here?" I haven't seen you in...um..." Spencer lifted a hand to count his fingers to discover a toasted oven mitt. "Oh...yeah..." It all came flooding back...for a moment.
"What happened?" Sam was avoiding the question he asked. She gave him a shrewed look when Spencer hid both hands behind his back. "Spencer," she drew out long and slow... "What did you do...?"
"It's not my fault," Spencer whined and Sam wondered again how it was that this man had been in charge of Carly for so long. "I didn't touch it."
Sam looked at him curiously. "Touch what?"
"The package that came for Aitch," he said. "Well, I touched it, of course, but only to take it from the delivery guy to the table. Then it caught on fire...," he finished sheepishly.
Sam raised an eyebrow. "By itself?"
"Yes?" Spencer said in a question.
Sam rolled her eyes. "What the hell happened?"
"Nothing!" Spencer exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air to punctuate his outburst, striking Freddie in the chin and sending him flying back onto his ass when he came up beside the older Shay. "Other than..."
Sam gave Freddie a wicked grin, then turned her attention back to Spencer, as Freddie was rubbing his chin and struggling back to his feet with a helping hand from Aitch.
"Other than what?" Sam prodded.
Spencer turned to see Freddie. "Freddie!"
Sam whacked Spencer on the arm and drew his attention back to her. "Spencer! Focus! Other than what?"
"What? Oh..." Spencer had a guilty look, like the boy that had tried to steal a cookie but instead knocked down the cookie jar and tried to glue the shattered pieces together so nobody would find out what he had done, but the house burnt down. "Um...well...you know how I hate not knowing what is in wrapped birthday gifts?"
"Yeah," Sam and Freddie said in unison.
"Well...I borrowed this medical scanner -"
"Wait! What? From who?" asked a flustered Freddie with shock and awe, since you didn't just borrow a medical scanner.
Spencer blinked, derailed. "Oh...you know my cousin Socko?"
Sam and Freddie nod.
"He got it from his sister's ex, Ray."
Aitch shook his head and turned to walk away, but Sam grabbed his elbow and made him stay, giving him a look of sympathy and Freddie mumbled something along the lines of: "Of course..."
"Anyway..." Sam encouraged, moving her hand in a rolling motion to get Spencer to continue.
"I put it over the package, you know, to see what was inside... I switched it on and then...poof!" Spencer made an explosion with his hands.
"Poof?" Aitch asked with a frown.
Sam tilted her head to look up at Aitch. "It caught on fire," she said with a half grin.
Aitch smiled and heard his name from behind him.
"Aitch!" the voice called out as a small, round man in a rumpled overcoat made his way over to the tallish man in the leather jacket and hospital scrubs. "Aitch!"
"Hey, Mitch!" Aitch narrowed his eyes, suspiciously. "Wait a minute...why are you here?"
Mitch shook his head sadly, casting a quick glance at Spencer and Sam and pulling him away from the group a few feet. "Why do you think? Come with me. I have something upsetting to show you."
And with that, Aitch let his friend lead him away, past the emergency crews and into the lobby of Bushwell Towers, past some firemen discussing something with the manic doorman, up eight flights of stairs because the lifts were offline, and down the hallway into the Shay apartment and the assailing smell of smoke and water.
"Gah! What a stench!" Sam exclaimed, waving a hand under her nose to clear the smell as she walked past Aitch and Mitch and into the apartment, over to where the remains of a burnt package sat in a pool of flaky black liquid drooling down the sides of the counter.
Aitch shrugged at Mitch and followed Sam in, trailed by the short round supervisor.
The scanning machine was a mass of burnt plastic and metal and wire smashed on the kitchen floor. The package was still slightly smouldering. Black water soaked it thoroughly, leaking out over the charred melomite counter surface, down the sides to puddle on the floor tiles.
The trio surrounded the package and the exposed remains of an explosive device with burned wiring and electronics around a smoked glass sphere in the middle and melted clay that could have been an explosive substance before the fire.
"Hunh..." Aitch grunted, after studying the burnt wreckage. "Interesting..."
Mitch looked at the components and nodded in agreement. "Un-hunh..." He looked up to meet Aitch's eyes. "What do you think?"
Sam looked from Aitch to Mitch to the package and back to Aitch, wondering what they were agreeing on. It looked like a destroyed bomb to her. "Um...I don;t see it..."
"See what?" Aitch mumbled absently.
"Whatever you two are humming about," she answered with exasperation, feeling left out.
Aitch made a thin line with his lips. "That's the problem..."
"Hunh?" Sam hunh'ed.
Aitch pointed at the melted clay bricks with melted wires sticking out of them. "No detonators. No explosive. No bomb."
"All show? Why?" Sam was studying the device with greater clarity now. She had learned a lot from Aitch about identifying bombs and even defusing processes of explosives that she had a good grasp on what she was not seeing. She pointed at the glass sphere. "What's that?"
Aitch rubbed his chin. "A glass sphere," he replied.
"Yeah, that's helpful." Sam rolled her eyes.
"Message probably," Aitch admitted.
Mitch piped in with: "Question is...what's the message?"
Aitch shrugged. "Save a lot by switching to Geiko?"