Angie could feel Ham freeze behind her.
"Wait a minute," he growled, but she reached back to silence him with a squeeze to his wrist.
"Charlie Harper," she indicated the driver with a wave of her hand, then stepped aside to point to Tyler, "Ham Tyler. We're the advance team for Old School."
Charlie Harper was, clearly, stunned. "Well I was expecting two but... I didn't know you'd be traveling with the boss! In fact I thought you..."
"Obviously I am not, and neither are you. Dead, that is. As for anything else, all bets are off. And he's not my boss, he's my husband."
"Well I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Tyler, hard to think of my little girl as married."
Tyler ignored the outreached hand, and greeting.
"I've heard some about you, Harper," he glowered. "You still like to beat up little girls, or you only partial to your own?"
"Now, now..." Charlie offered in a halting voice," we've all done things we wish we didn't, right Angie?"
"True," she agreed stiffly," but I'm the wrong one to ask for absolution. Let's just get us to the hotel, right?" She still had a firm grip on Tyler's arm. The shock of this dysfunctional "reunion" was beginning to wear off and was being replaced by something resembling a strategy. As they slid into the posh back seat of the stretch limo she leaned closer to the still-tense Tyler.
"Downshift Ham, it's okay. I have an idea."
The limo was opulent and the back seat shut off from the driver's seat with a one way window, and soundproofed according to the notice posted on the rear of the front seat. Tyler was still wound up tight.
"Look, Tyler," Angie told him sotto voce despite the notice, "I know you want to beat the shit out of that sorry excuse for a father. I want to beat the shit out of him, and I probably could, given my training. Right?" She shook his arm and tried to get even the grimmest smile from him. No dice.
"Okay, then listen... we had nobody inside the Visitor organization right? So who better than dear old dad, who I'll bet is dying to patch things up. He was always good at 'I'm sorry' in between beatings. I'm betting he's dry... I could tell that bloody-eyed boozy-sweat style a mile away. He's clean and dry and primed for use. As in intel."
Tyler was pulled reluctantly from his red haze. "You think fast, don't you?" Her expression hardened. "Okay, okay, I sell you short sometimes. But do you really think he'll be a good source?"
Angie thought about this for a bit. "Well my bet is he's our assigned driver. He may not be full Visitor insider, but you know how scuttlebutt travels through the rank and file. I'm thinking he'll be a rich vein to tap and I know just how to turn on the faucet."
"You weren't kidding... you know how to beat the shit out of him." He didn't know whether to be impressed or taken aback.
"Whatever works."
On the other side of the glass partition Charlie Harper was still trying to get his head around the fact that his daughter, who he assumed had been killed in the city's destruction, was alive and well and married to the mercenary long known (since before the first invasion) as The Fixer. The last time he'd seen her was from about fifty yards away, a quick glance as he was negotiating with the Visitors who'd come to do business with Harper Auto Repair and Sales. They'd brought a number of vehicles 'recovered' - aka commandeered from human victims - that they wanted to have reconditioned top to bottom. To be taken back and used by their own operatives as they blended in to spy on the city's remaining occupants. It was an arrangement that had been going on for some time, and this deal would be the last.
Angie had been a regular, if reluctant, presence at the garage as she dutifully made the bi-weekly payments for the little car that Charlie had found for her. He knew she was in a hot spot at the library but whatever else she was up to he chose to ignore. That at least he figured he owed her, and he never mentioned Angie or her job to his customers. He also never told Angie that he was doing business with the customers that she referred to as "the occupiers".
That last day he saw the look on her face, disgust but no disbelief. An "It figures, Daddy" look that he was left to believe was her last living opinion of him. Well maybe now he could improve on that, now that they were on the same side.