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“HERE, maybe you can hold this for me,” I give Fran a pry bar while I hang on to bolt cutters, and tuck a flat-blade screwdriver, the evidence bags into pockets of my cargo pants.
“How are you doing anyway?” she looks me over as she smokes.
“I’ll be better when I know what’s inside this mother,” I don’t want to talk about myself.
“Well, you vanished for the better part of a week,” she says. “And the few times we talked on the phone or texted, you weren’t nice and wouldn’t tell me crap. Like you didn’t know me,” and it must have been Carme who did that.
While I was restrained in bed and anesthetized, I wasn’t contacting anyone. It doesn’t please me to know that my sister doesn’t seem to care if she reflects poorly on me while taking my place. She’s been cold to a lonely 10-year-old, flirty with Davy Crockett, and ungracious with Fran.
“Since the cyberattack, you can imagine how stressful it’s been,” I find myself covering for Carme’s behavior yet again. “It wasn’t my intention to be unfriendly.”
I shoulder my backpack as ART kills the engine, and the headlights go out, casting us into total blackness. Flashlights on, we set the fire selectors of our MP5s on three bursts instead of two, adding an extra round for good measure. Fran takes a last puff of her cigarette, drops it in the snow, stepping on it.
“Let’s do this. A high recon first, circling the perimeter,” I tell her, and we start walking, gun barrels pointed in safe directions, our black-gloved fingers above the trigger guards.
We’re ready for trouble that I don’t expect, knowing the hitman is dead, everything quiet at the moment, no urgent news updates in my earpiece or SPIES. I’m not getting any alerts that Carme may have a problem. Or Dick does. Or that either of them is up to something I should be concerned about, not that I’m told everything.
There’s nothing in the headlines about Neva Rong although ART informs me that after her chartered helicopter picked her up at the OCME, it flew her to Dulles airport outside Washington, DC. Meanwhile, a private jet owned by Pandora took off from Norfolk with no passengers aboard, and I suspect the plan was for Vera’s body to be in the baggage compartment, headed somewhere to be further picked apart.
As for what’s going on at home, the most recent message from Mom indicates Dad got in a little while ago. She can’t wait to see me, is fixing a celebratory dinner for our reunion, as if she wasn’t seeing me the entire time I was held hostage at Dodd Hall when in fact she was one of my wardens.
A vat of her chili is simmering on the stove, she teases me, also coleslaw with honey and celery seeds, her homemade sourdough bread, and I feel starved as I’m reminded of Lex. Maybe I can take him a care package tomorrow, it wouldn’t be any trouble, and Mom always cooks enough to feed an army.
He texted me a moment ago to say thanks for the fried chicken, that Nonna has gotten over her energy disturbance and gone to bed. All is quiet on the western front, in other words. But if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s never to rest on your laurels or get too comfortable. About the time you do, you lose an engine in your aircraft, someone pulls out a gun or steals your invention.
“What we do now is look around, get the lay of the land,” I explain to Fran, our lights shining on snow that’s marred only by animal tracks. “Watch where we step and look for anything off-nominal.”
Including booby traps such as improvised explosive devices and pressure cooker bombs, anything the dirtbag might have rigged up to keep people like us away, I think but don’t say. My sensors aren’t picking up on explosives or warning transmissions that might indicate something deadly underfoot, and ART is updating the features-integrated map in my smart contact lenses, helping me make sure where we’re stepping.
He alerts me in my earpiece of another wireless device, this one on the west side of the trailer, attached to the siding at the roofline. I’ve counted 4 of the battery-powered cameras so far, and continue to wonder if anyone besides the hitman might have the ability to monitor them.
“Whoever he was, he was watching his property,” I point up at the camera as Fran and I walk past. “All the more reason to suspect he was doing illegal stuff inside,” not letting on that I know it for a fact.
“You don’t have your fish finder out like you usually do,” she observes, her uneasy eyes everywhere as we head toward the woods. “You’re not carrying one of those antennas and turning around in little circles like you’re doing some kind of weird war dance.”
“The data is now downloaded directly to an app on my phone,” I tell her the truth sort of.
“Let me guess. Something your sugar daddy gave you while you were holed up for the better part of a week,” the green-eyed monster in her is forever threatened by Dick. “Being briefed, debriefed or whatever morning, noon and night, both of you shacked up over there doing your important stuff like it’s Camp David. You going to tell me what that was really about?”
“It’s about NASA having the worst cyberattack in its history,” I give her my origin story exactly as Dick scripted. “And sure, I’ve got updated software and equipment, the Tahoe for example that I’m beta testing. There’s a lot I can tell with improved technologies.”
“Including if we should be breaking down the door of this friggin’ dump,” Fran responds. “Not only do I worry about homemade bombs but he could have a meth lab in there. We could be talking about toxic, volatile chemicals. He could have been another Unabomber for all we know.”
Translated, phobic Fran doesn’t want us to be the first ones inside the trailer. But that’s too bad. She’s not the investigator, I am, and at the moment we’re not calling anyone. Once that happens, I lose all control of the scene.
“Even as we speak, I’m screening for explosives, drugs,” I reassure her, and it’s true except my spectrum analyzer can’t do what I just said.
The one inside my backpack doesn’t scan for terahertz radiation. It’s not going to detect fentanyl, methamphetamine, stockpiles of incendiary devices and ammunition, and therefore can’t tell us if we’re about to be poisoned or blown up. But built into my systemic network and CUFF are ion-mobility spectrometer chips that recognize smokeless gunpowder, distilled petroleum and other dangerous chemicals.
Based on what I’m picking up, the trailer is filthy with all of the above. I’m not surprised considering what was inside his Denali, the weapons, loaded magazines, body-disposal tools, the cement-boot anchors. Fran knows nothing about all that because Carme and possibly others made sure of it.