I arrived at Dr. Bickel’s safe house midmorning. I was beyond exhausted; I was teetering on the ragged edge of a breakdown, physically and emotionally.
After evading Cushing and her soldiers the night before, I had pushed on until I reached the downtown area and mingled with crowds of partiers and bar hoppers. I wandered down Central until I was beyond the nightclubs and foot traffic. Once I was the lone heat signature on the street and no longer felt safe, I ducked into a twenty-four-hour pancake place, found a corner to collapse into, and slept.
I awoke, stiff, bleary-eyed, and lightheaded. It was very early morning, and the breakfast rush was just starting. A kink throbbed in my neck.
The clock on the restaurant wall told me I’d slept a solid six hours, but the fatigue reaching its fingers deep into my bones persisted. Had it been only yesterday when the nanomites drained me in their attempt to keep me quiet about them? Had it been only yesterday when I defied them and told Zander and Abe everything? When I begged Abe to take Emilio in? When Cushing and her swat team stormed the cul-de-sac and my house? Not once but twice?
I struggled to my feet and slumped against the wall. After the dizziness passed, I helped myself to a large coffee in a to-go cup, left two crumpled dollar bills next to the cash register, and jostled by a couple of high school students as they came in.
No one saw me sitting outside against the restaurant’s east-facing wall, sipping my coffee while warming myself and massaging the knot out of my neck. The coffee helped wake me up a little, but the caffeine did nothing for the black depression swimming around in my gut.
Here I sat, no better than a vagrant on the street. Pursued. Hunted like a criminal.
Alone.
I’d never felt so . . . forsaken.
My fingers picked at the chain around my neck, and I pulled the cross hanging from it into my hand. Its smooth, polished surface comforted me—and reminded me of Emilio and the hours he must have spent carving it, rubbing it until the wood glowed.
All while perched on the curb outside his uncle’s house.
Just a child.
Alone and neglected.
Yeah, you have it so rough, Gemma. Quit whining and get moving.
The last of my coffee swirled at the bottom of the cup. I downed the dregs and crushed the paper. When I felt that I had some wits about myself, I trudged toward a transit stop. Two transfers later, I stepped off a bus a few blocks from my new digs.
So weary! Three blocks seemed three miles.
I stumbled down the alley, over the wall, to the back door, and performed a cursory check for recent footprints or other signs that Cushing had found my hiding place. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I let myself in. I closed and locked the door behind me.
Safe. Safe for the moment.
I glanced around the simple kitchen and sighed. After all my careful preparations, I had brought nothing with me, not one thing: no spare clothes, no personal items, no food. No treasured keepsakes. Just what I wore—Uncle Eduardo’s baggy old shirt over worn jeans and t-shirt—and some wadded-up cash in my pocket.
I wonder what Cushing will make of my bug-out bags and the chunk of change I left in them?
I was grateful for the few dollars in my pocket; I was more grateful for the large stash of bundled bills I’d hidden in the wall behind the kitchen stove here in Dr. Bickel’s house. Yeah, I’d lost my shopping bags and would have to jury-rig another set, but what were my handy-dandy bags in comparison to my freedom?
Still, I felt their loss. Those items would have lent familiarity and comfort to this foreign place where I’d gone to ground.
With growing pessimism dogging my steps, I wandered through the house and took stock: typical single-floor, one-bath, three-bedroom, ranch-style home, circa 1950-something—so archetypical of the “mid-century modern” look that was coming back into vogue. Thick, lined drapes covered every window, blocking all but the brightest of outside light—and, I figured, blacking out interior lights, too. Dr. Bickel had prepared this place to hide in, after all, had the circumstances dictated.
The shotgun kitchen was clean and functional but dated like the rest of the house. It included an old-school microwave featuring real numbers that flipped over when you turned the timer knob rather than a touchscreen digital readout. Bifold doors near the back door hid an aged washer and dryer. I say “aged,” because they looked exactly like the washer and dryer Aunt Lucy owned when I was a kid—and that set had seemed ancient back then.
Dr. Bickel’s appliances were at least twenty-five years old, but they still looked new. Like they’d been set in place decades ago and were still waiting to be used.
Yeah. Weirder and weirder.
The tiny bathroom echoed when I stepped inside. The room had no window and, like the kitchen, the enameled fittings were an outmoded pinky-flesh tone and the tub’s tiles were plain white interspersed with a smattering of faded turquoise ones. Dr. Bickel had not stocked the bathroom—it contained not a single item: no hand soap, no towels, no bathmat, no shower curtain.
No wonder it echoed!
Oh. And no toilet paper.
Thanks a lot, Dr. Bickel. Were you planning on grabbing a roll or two before you ducked in here to hide? Or did you leave an old Sears catalogue handy?
The smallest bedroom was unfurnished; the largest had an empty dresser and a single bed. I stared with longing at the bare mattress. A pillow and folded sheets and blankets waited on the bed. I pounded the pillow, shook fine dust out of the sheets and blankets, and—sneeze, cough—made up the bed, after which I checked out the last room.
Dr. Bickel had, at one time, used the middle-sized bedroom as an office. The room contained an old desk, a chair, and some discarded office supplies. I could tell where a computer and printer had sat at one time—a power strip and some cords lay scattered under the desk; even spied a few five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks in the trash.
Wow. Way old school.
I picked up a cheap extension cord from the office floor. I went back to the bedroom, plugged the cord into a wall outlet, and collapsed into the bed with the cord’s other end clutched in one hand. I stared at the ceiling in the dim light, declining the invitation to give in to despair—but only because I was too tired to indulge in full-blown depression. Besides, the hopelessness would be waiting for me when I woke up.
I will have plenty of time to wallow in self-pity.
The last thing I remembered before sliding off a cliff into oblivion was the tingling sensation of electrical current pulsing through my hand as the nanomites fed.
***
General Imogene Cushing walked the length of the table and considered the “take,” the various objects her people had retrieved from the home of Gemma Keyes. The array of belongings spread out on the table seemed an odd, eclectic collection.
“What are these?” She pointed to two fabric grocery bags and addressed the three agents hovering nearby.
The two men slanted looks at each other and then at the third agent, a woman. Agent Janice Trujillo sneered at the men before answering Cushing. “We found these bags and the laptop in the dining room after the second team went in, ma’am.”
“They weren’t in the house during the first raid?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Really, Miss Trujillo? How interesting.” Cushing fingered one of the bags. “And what do you make of these, er, sacks?”
Trujillo swallowed. “They are ordinary, reusable shopping bags, ma’am, but the straps have been lengthened so that, we assume, Keyes could carry them over her shoulders.”
“And all these items were in the two bags?” Cushing eyed the bags’ contents, including a large amount of cash, laid out on the table in a neat line. “Even the money?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What do you deduce?”
“The bare essentials, ma’am: clothing, toiletries, food, water, cash, cell phone. Everything she would need on the run.”
“What of the phone?”
“Never used, ma’am. No incoming or outgoing calls. Ever.”
“And yet she left all these things.”
“I believe we surprised her with the second raid—as we’d intended.”
Cushing held herself erect; her silvered hair sat at the nape of her neck in an elegant, knotted braid, not a strand out of place. She was polished and commanding, the epitome of a career military woman. However, she was not a tall woman; Cushing was, in fact, short and somewhat rounded.
Those moderating factors, nevertheless, did nothing to allay the anxiety in the room: Every agent under her authority knew that Cushing suffered no fools.
“Ah. We surprised her, did we? And yet she was, somehow, able to wipe and destroy the hard disk of her laptop in a matter of minutes? Or seconds?”
She spoke her question with mild curiosity, but the strain around her grew.
Agent Trujillo focused her sight on the wall over Cushing’s shoulder rather than risk being snared in the net of Cushing’s deep, beady eyes—much as a doomed deer is caught by the headlights of an oncoming truck.
“Yes, ma’am, she was, and the forensic team has not been able to ascertain the, uh, method by which she destroyed the hard disk.”
“Oh?”
Tensions ratcheted up another notch.
“The disk was burned, um, melted while inside the laptop, and yet the laptop’s case bears no evidence of a point of entry. The forensic team says they are, um, stumped as to how she burned the disk without leaving an entrance point.”
“What could melt a hard disk in this manner, Miss Trujillo.” General Cushing did not ask; she demanded.
“Our technicians suggest a tiny, focused laser would do similar damage, ma’am. Again, however, they are unable to ascertain how a laser could be brought to bear on the laptop without melting the plastic case surrounding it.”
“And they could pull absolutely nothing from said disk?”
“Nothing, ma’am, not even fragments. One of our technicians suggests that the disk was degaussed prior to it being melted.”
“Harrumph.” Cushing’s glare could have blistered Trujillo had the younger woman’s eyes not been fixed on that invisible point somewhere over the general’s shoulder.
Cushing turned on her heel and picked up the offending laptop. She turned it over in her hands. “A laser, you say.”
“One possibility, ma’am.”
“You have another possibility in mind, Miss Trujillo? Care to share?” Cushing barked.
“N-no, ma’am.”
“But if a laser did this, then how did it leave no mark on the outside?”
Trujillo realized that Cushing was speaking to herself and, wisely, made no answer.
Cushing set the laptop down and placed a hand upon one of the grocery bags. She muttered under her breath, “She had these bags packed and ready to go, but she left them—and yet she took the time to burn the hard drive on her computer, to wipe it first and then melt it? How? And why? What was on the laptop that was of more importance than survival gear? Than this money?”
Cushing’s focus shifted. “Where did the cash come from, Miss Trujillo?”
“The forensics team is working to track the serial numbers, ma’am, but none are sequential. The team did detect trace amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine on the plastic wrapping and on the bills themselves.”
“Drug money?”
Trujillo nodded. “That would be my assumption, ma’am.”
“Gemma Keyes and drug money? Absurd.” But Cushing replayed her conversation with Gemma’s twin sister from the night of the raid.
Gemma’s sister had smirked and said, “Whatever my sister’s involvement in your ‘serious national security incident’ might be, I can guarantee that it is minimal—at best. She is not what you’d call the sharpest tool in the shed.”
And Cushing had replied, “I believe Gemma likes to give that impression, Miss Keyes. However, I’ve become convinced that she is, ah, sharper than you credit her.”
Cushing’s upper lip twitched. Yes, Gemma Keyes, you are sharper than even I had believed. Where are you, dear Gemma? What are you up to? And how did you manage to escape my agents not once, but twice?
Not for the first time did Cushing’s puzzlement turn to the interviews of Gemma’s neighbors from that same night. Of particular interest were the comments of Gemma’s next-door neighbor, the ever-so-helpful Mrs. Calderón: “Why, I haven’t seen Gemma in weeks, even though I know she is in there. She ignores me and will not open the door when I knock and ring the bell . . . she picks the mail up after dark and she puts the garbage out during the night before collection day and puts the can back the night after . . . .”
At Cushing’s frustrated growl, the three agents stood straighter, but the general did not notice.
I am missing something. It is right here, in the evidence, in the melted hard drive, in the witness statements.
Her upper lip lifted in what might have been construed as a smile by those who were unacquainted with Imogene Cushing.
The three agents exchanged covert looks: They knew better.
It was not a smile; it was a predator’s snarl.
Cushing’s mouth curved more, and her eyes narrowed. It is only a matter of time before I put the pieces together, Miss Keyes.
~~**~~