“But you had everything to do with me,” I remind her. “And I’d just left the Air Force and started with NASA. I’d just started working with you in protective services, you’re my neighbor, my friend, my family. What happens to you, Easton and Tommy happens to me. It happens to all of us.”
“I remember having a funny feeling when I saw his driver’s license,” she means the hitman’s fake one with his bearded photograph and Hank Cougars’s information. “It doesn’t really look like the man I remember. But it bothered me, and I guess now I know why. Except I don’t understand why Neva would go to so much trouble.”
I’m not going to remind Fran of the consequences. She doesn’t need to hear how much time and effort I’ve spent on her raging phobias while helping her hide them from everyone. I won’t mention how often I’ve turned the other cheek when she’s insensitive, rude, and at times barbaric.
These past three years it’s almost as if she’s done everything she can to run me off, alienating plenty of people including Carme, and at times Mom, Tommy’s cousin. But most of all him, the long-suffering husband, driven to renting a getaway in Williamsburg, and at the end of the day, Neva knew what she was doing.
29
“NEVA understands love and human decency well enough to use them as weapons,” I explain as I slide into the blast-resistant driver’s seat, open the window, and turn on the heat.
“Sort of like planting that phone on a 10-year-old if that’s what she did,” Fran’s demeanor has turned as hard as steel. “Creating diversions, ruining lives, well may she get back as good as she gives.”
She calls Neva a few choice names that don’t bear repeating, and in my SPIES I can see my messages, and still nothing from Lex.
“Time to go home,” I fasten my seat belt.
“I’m not leaving until everybody clears out,” Fran says. “Still no luck finding the Cherokee, by the way.”
“I’m guessing it’s out of sight in a garage somewhere,” I suggest.
“You probably won’t be up by the time I get home. The babysitter dropped off Easton at your parents’ house a little while ago for a sleepover. He’s watching TV with George,” she’s looking at everything but me the way she does when she gets emotional.
“A lot of trauma for one day,” I say kindly. “And when’s Tommy coming home?”
“Next weekend maybe. Or whenever I’m not a grizzly bear with PMS, as he puts it,” and for an instant it sounds like she might cry.
“You gonna be all right?”
“I’m fine,” in a dead flat tone, and she steps back from my window. “See you in a little while,” turning her back to me, Fran watches where she steps, headed back toward the trailer.
I drive off, and ART turns on the displays and audio as law enforcement vehicles continue arriving at the trailer park. No doubt there will be quite the investigation into the hitman’s illegal weapons, and at least I can trust that Fran will keep it to herself about the 42 journals in my possession.
At almost 11:00 p.m. the winds are calm, the moon and stars showing. The temperature is 8.8°C (48°F) and the roads have cleared considerably. As I approach Lex’s street, I decide to make a wellness check, parking where I did before.
I’m unable to tell from the gift wrap–papered windows whether any lights are on. But I can hear the TV playing inside, and I rap on the aluminum storm door. Nothing, and I try again, louder. Still nothing.
Then, “Who is it?” Nonna’s distrusting voice.
“It’s Captain Chase again, sorry it’s so late. You don’t need to open your door,” I don’t want her having another spell.
“I’d rather not.”
“Best to leave a shield between us.”
“I agree.”
“I was driving by, are you and Lex all right?”
“He’s in his room out like a light. I couldn’t sleep, got up a bit ago to watch TV.”
“Sorry to disturb you,” and I tell her good night, oddly disappointed that I didn’t see him.
But it’s good to hear that Lex is sleeping as he should be at this late hour. Back inside my Tahoe, I stop at Commander Shepard Boulevard, waiting at a red light as a Hampton Roads Transit bus glides past. I’m reminded of what he said about running errands, taking care of everything, a little man who never really had the chance to be a normal boy.
“Are there any updates I should know about?” I ask ART, and I’m back to multitasking, monitoring flat-screens, and data in my SPIES. “Anything earthshaking in the past few hours?” and he replies by displaying the Langley sitemap.
As late as it is, I’m surprised there are any outside contractors left on our campus, some of them the same engineers I saw at the Gantry earlier. Other ID numbers lighting up are from NASA and the military, a total of 8 people working in the hangar where the test model was hauled late afternoon. Dick isn’t among them.
“What’s going on in Building 1119-A?” I inquire.
I fully expect ART to reply that he’s not authorized to show me. Instead, I’m connected to a live video feed from inside the spacecraft test model. Snap the crash test dummy is decked out in a launch-entry pressure spacesuit made of an iridescent-blue smart material, the soft hood equipped with a visor.
My purloined mannequin has assumed the position, on her back, knees bent, strapped snugly in a carbon fiber seat liner, her artificial arms folded across her zipped-up torso.
It occurs to me ironically that considering my implanted intricate network and all that goes with it, I may be more of a full-scale anthropomorphic test device than she is.
It’s hard to tell very much else about the spacecraft itself since none of the avionics and other bells and whistles are present. But based on openings in the test model’s aluminum sides and flooring, I suspect there are atypical components including ports for deploying miniprobes and satellites, and other autonomous devices.
I’m seeing real estate for powerful engine pods and thrusters. I recognize the slots for retractable landing skids like we have on many of the drones we build in the autonomous incubator and test on our ranges.