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“THAT’S ENOUGH,” I cut her off, and I should have done it sooner. “You’ve more than made your point. Thanks for bringing his coat . . .”
“Before you boogie on out of here,” as if Scottie hasn’t been rude enough. “Did you by chance have words with Butch? Because he’s in one of his funks. I mean, he was fine until he ran into you at the Gantry and you were short with him?”
“Not now,” I warn her. “It’s not a good time for this,” not that there ever is when it comes to hearing such horse crap, and I shut the windows in her face, shoving off.
“She doesn’t respect you the way she should,” Lex announces, his astuteness unnerving, and I’m not sure I appreciate it.
“The person she’s most unhappy with is you,” I’m driving toward the main gate, the black Suburban nowhere to be seen anymore, and I wonder when I’ll hear from Dick again.
“You don’t have to put up with the things you do,” Lex renders another opinion as if he’s the expert.
“That’s presumptuous considering you know nothing about how I spend my days,” I reply. “You have no idea what I do and don’t put up with no matter what you might think you know about me.”
“You’re a captain in charge of cyber investigations. Plus, a scientist who’s probably going to be an astronaut,” he says, and he’s been talking to my father, I suspect. “The other officers, even Deputy Chief Lacey? You shouldn’t let them treat you the way they do, is all.”
“When people are stressed, they aren’t always polite,” is as much as he’s going to get out of me. “I pick my fights, having learned the hard way that it’s usually not a good idea to throw your weight around.”
“Tell me about it,” he says, studying the overhead panel that looks like a large sunroof but is part of the Retractable Attack Turret. “You have to be careful about acting very smart, about being really good at stuff.”
He twists and turns in his seat, looking back at the overhead storage box, making connections that remind me of his good and bad potential.
“What you did today hasn’t earned you any friends,” I reply.
“Big deal. I don’t care,” he fingers the sensor-laden upholstery next. “I’m used to being by myself. I didn’t grow up with people around me like you did. I don’t need anyone.”
“Everybody needs other people.”
“There’s no point in needing something you can’t have,” he says matter-of-factly. “The older kids at school don’t want me around. They think I’m a pest, a freak, nothing but an annoying tagalong, and I can understand it,” he echoes my own experiences. “I’ve never fit in anywhere and guess I never will.”
“Right now, people don’t know what to think of you, Lex. Myself included,” I tell him the truth. “No matter your excuses, you violated our trust. You deliberately exploited a backdoor cyber vulnerability at a highly sensitive government installation,” and as I say it ART confirms in my lenses that the software glitch has been fixed.
The malware has been neutralized. Lex is shut out of NASA’s servers and anything else he shouldn’t access. His clever gaming algorithm won’t work anymore. Neither will the thumb drive Vera gave him, and I tell him so as we exit the Langley campus.
“You’re going the wrong way,” he sounds uneasy as we pass the speedway where Carme and I have been behind the wheel in our share of stock car races and truck rodeos.
“Nope,” I reply, headed in the opposite direction of his mobile home. “We have a stop to make.”
“Where are you taking me?” he asks anxiously, probably worrying about jail again.
“I don’t know about you but I’m starved,” I reply. “I bet you could eat a little something?”
Wondering what he’s had today besides the sandwich Fran got him, I’m feeling guilty as I think of Mom and how well fed I’ve always been.
“I don’t have any money,” Lex’s attention is back out the window.
“Is there anything you can’t eat? How does Bojangles’ sound?”
“I can’t afford it,” glumly.
“I have a food budget for prisoners. At the moment that would be you. I’m bound by the Geneva Convention to treat you humanely, and that includes fried chicken.”
“Ha ha,” but not as hollowly this time, his mood lifting.
“How about your grandmother? Maybe we can pick up something for her?” I suggest, and he nods his head.
“She doesn’t eat anything with heavy metals like mercury in it,” he says. “Same with shellfish, anything that she calls a bottom-feeder.”
“I think we’ll be safe then,” I reply.
It’s 6 o’clock on the nose, and business will be slower than usual around here as long as the government remains shut down. There are only 4 cars in the drive-through line, and I pull in behind a pearl-white Jeep Cherokee that gives me an eerie feeling. It looks very much like the one I saw parked outside the Hampton Hop-In during the blizzard.
Creeping closer to the illuminated menu, I’m unhappily aware of the dark displays inside my truck, of the muted audio and other limitations. I don’t like it when I can’t talk to ART as if he’s next to me, and it’s amazing what we get used to in short order. I’m finding it increasingly anxiety provoking when I don’t have multiple data sources to monitor at once.
I hate that I can’t ask my invisible assistant out loud to run the Cherokee’s tag. Instead I have to stare at it long enough for ART to inform me in my lenses that the pearl-white Jeep with tan interior is a 2014, which is old for a rental. The company, Catch-A-Ride, is Virginia based, the driver listed on the contract, Beaufort Tell, age 44.
The billing address for the credit card is a seafood distribution company in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Probably someone here on business, a “salesman,” ART shows me, and Beaufort Tell’s photograph on his driver’s license looks like the clerk I saw inside the Hampton Hop-In.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this car before,” I comment for ART’s benefit, not Lex’s, and I’m shown a traffic video of a pearl-white Cherokee driving along I-64 East outside of Richmond yesterday morning.