“I copy,” Jonathan said. “We’re still ten to twelve miles out. What’s the situation?”
Venice keyed the mike and then released it as she watched Jolaine turn and offer her hands to the guard behind her. “Stand by,” Venice said. “I need to pay attention to the keyboard and screens for a few minutes.”
Multitasking was one thing, but she sensed that what was coming was going to require intense concentration, and she was right. As Jolaine moved her hands behind her on the left-hand side of the screen, the man in the uniform applied handcuffs to someone on the right. The actions were too perfectly choreographed to be anything but two angles on the same action.
“I think they’re moving her right now,” Venice said into the microphone. “I see them applying handcuffs. Yes, they’re moving. Stand by.”
Venice watched the hallway feed as the guard ushered Jolaine out. With Jolaine’s cell now empty, Venice killed that image from her screen, and watched as the PC was led directly toward the camera. She understood that it was a mistake to ever look in a PC’s eyes, even through a television screen. They eyes were a person’s window to emotion — their window to personhood — and Jonathan had told her a thousand times to keep the emotion out of 0300 missions, rescue missions. Until they were safe, PCs were merely objectives — pawns worth dying to protect — and as such, it was a mistake to get involved in the emotions or the injustice of their situation. Jonathan’s theory maintained that sympathy got in the way of sound decision making.
Still, Venice saw the terror in Jolaine’s eyes, and her stomach tensed. They disappeared as they crossed under the camera, and Venice jerked her head to the thumbnails on her other screen, scanning for the movement that would match the images she’d just seen.
This time, she saw them twice, in adjacent thumbnails from the front and the rear. They appeared to be approaching an interior guard station of some sort. The man in the uniform kept his hand on Jolaine’s arm, just above her elbow, and Jolaine moved with a mechanical stride, her head cast downward. She seemed to be dreading what lay ahead.
The uniform had a brief discussion with whoever was in the booth, and then they started moving again, disappearing from view.
Venice felt as if she was getting the hang of this now. Her eye caught the movement in the next frame right away as Jolaine and her escort headed down yet another hallway that was remarkable only for the fact that it was so unremarkable — no doors, no other people, no anything. When they turned the next corner to the left, Venice picked them up in a screen that looked like a waiting room. It was too Spartan for the public, but it certainly was not intended for the incarcerated. The chairs looked too comfortable.
From those too-comfortable chair arose a matching pair of men who had to be affiliated with a federal law enforcement agency. Venice had no personal frame of reference, but she’d seen enough of these guys over the years to assume that they slept and showered in their suits, and somehow ended up always looking pressed and neat. There was a brief discussion between the guy in the uniform and the men in the suits, and then the suits took custody of Jolaine.
Venice clicked a freeze-frame — essentially a photograph, courtesy of the security feed — to capture the moment, and then watched them leave with Jolaine sandwiched between them.
“Two men in suits have just taken custody of Jolaine,” Venice said into the radio. As she spoke, she clicked a freeze-frame that nabbed all of the faces.
“Any idea where they’re going?” Jonathan asked.
“Give me a minute,” Venice said. At her core, Venice was a law-and-order gal — the kind of person who would stand ten minutes in a grocery line because her basket had sixteen items instead of the fifteen that limited access to the express lanes — but this business of breaking into computer systems and seeing things that she wasn’t supposed to see was the thing that made her life worthwhile.
As the threesome approached the limits of the picture frame, Venice scanned ahead on the other thumbnails. She expected that the next element would be to step out into the night, so she concentrated on those images.
And there they were.
Venice keyed her mike. “Scorpion, they’re exiting the jail now. They’ll be on the road in a minute or two. What’s your position?”
“We have no chance,” Jonathan said.
Venice heard the frustration in his voice, and she shared it.
The feds — whoever they were — had parked close to the jail building, in the turnaround apron in front of the main entry. They led Jolaine to a standard nondescript Ford sedan — it looked black, but at this hour, any car might look black. Venice watched as one of the suits put his hand on the back of her head and pressed her into the backseat and then moved to the shotgun seat up front.
They sat there for maybe ten seconds, and then they started moving. They’d be out of frame in just a couple of seconds, and if that happened, Venice feared that they’d be lost. How do you find a nondescript Ford when that’s the only identifier you have?
Her eyes scanned the other thumbnails. There had to be another image. She only needed one more—
“Yes!” she shouted, and she clicked the freeze-frame.
“Good news,” Venice said into the radio. “We got a license plate number.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Markhams put Graham on edge. They were too… nice. They were so intent on being cheerful that they never asked a question about him, not even how he was doing, the gold standard for meaningless questions.
After Deputy Price handed him off, all the Markhams talked about was how safe he was, and how happy they were to have him as part of their family. He didn’t bother to tell them that he had no desire to be part of their family. He didn’t want to be part of their neighborhood or their tribe, or even their thoughts. He wanted life to be what it was thirty hours ago, and the fact that that was not possible didn’t do anything to change the reality of the wish.
“Let us know if you need anything,” Peter Markham said. “I know this is a tough time, and we want to make it as easy for you as possible.”
“I hope you like dogs,” Anita Markham said. “We have a poodle who loves people.”
Graham considered lying telling them that he was deathly allergic to dogs just to mess with their heads, but decided not to. They meant well, and while his Stranger Danger Spidey-senses were going crazy, they seemed like nice enough people and they were trying their best to help him.
But he was scared — more scared than he’d ever been of anything at any time in his life — and he knew that it was a mistake to trust anyone.
Except, sooner or later, you had to, right? He was only fourteen years old. He knew he was smart and he knew that he could be tough when he had to be, but there was a whole lot of the world that remained out of reach for someone his age. He couldn’t drive and he couldn’t earn a living. Where would he live—how would he live — if he didn’t ultimately trust someone? He’d have no choice. The question would be deciding who that trustworthy person would be. So far, all he knew for certain was that he wasn’t allowed to trust any of the people that everyone else was supposed to depend on. According to Jolaine, the police were his enemy, and so was the FBI. Who else? And if those people were the enemy, how was he supposed to decide who were his friends?
Was it safe to assume, just because the Markhams had picked him up, that they were automatically on the trustworthy list?
For the time being, it didn’t matter. He was in their backseat and the car was moving. Unless he wanted to take a header out the door onto the road, he was pretty much stuck with one option, and that was to enjoy the ride.