“Well, it would have been nice for him to tell me that rather than ship me off to Siberia and lock me out of even a minimal news feed.”
“You can forget the general media,” Jack put in. “You’d never know we’d gone out from listening to them. We’ve fallen into a black media hole.”
Kris grabbed two of her suitcases that predated Abby’s steamer trunks and headed for the lodge before she risked another word. “It would sure be nice if all the people working in secret, including my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father, would let the rest of humanity in on what they’re doing to save us all before one of those humongous mother ships drops by to strip one of our planets bare.”
“Frustrating, isn’t it?” Jack said.
“Hey, we’re soldiers,” Colonel Hancock said. “‘Ours not to reason why,’ and all that.”
“Yeah,” Penny cut in. “But we’re also citizens and voters, and they’re treating all of us, in or out of uniform, the exact same way. Like mushrooms. Keeping us in the dark and feeding us pure cow manure. I, for one, am sick of the chow.”
That brought chuckles all around, even from Grampa Trouble.
25
Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile stood in the middle of the lake cottage as a forensic team began to process it. There was a lot of stuff here, but it didn’t tell him anything that he didn’t already know. The subject of his search had flown the coop and left not a trace of where she or her companions were going.
The car outside matched the video of the one leaving the Roost area. Its owner was even now talking to a pair of WBI agents, but Foile would bet money he could write the interview report himself. “Yes, I know Colonel Hancock. He was in town. I loaned my kids’ junker to my old Marine buddy. Is there a problem, Agent?”
The cottage had been identified by the process of elimination of all the motel, hotel, and other rental properties paid for by a credit chit bought with cash. They’d busted down half of the doors so paid for, interrupting quite a few adulterous trysts as well as several teenagers who begged not to have their parents informed.
Now they had the right one, and it was telling them only what they knew. Five individuals that field DNA tests identified as General Tordon, Colonel Hancock, Captain Montoya, Lieutenant Commander Longknife, and Lieutenant Pasley-Lien had been here and weren’t anymore. There were plenty of tire tracks in the mud in front of the cottage, but all the fresh ones belonged to the car that was sitting there.
“Damn, these folks are good,” Foile whispered to himself.
“They’re the best we’ve got,” Leslie said. “Usually, we’re rooting for them.”
“Today, we’ve got to catch them.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman agent said.
“Mahomet, I need to know every car that entered the local freeway at the closest exit and the next two exits in either direction. I want to know where every one of them went and who was driving them. You hear me?”
“That will tie up a lot of computer time, sir.”
“Time we don’t have, so get on it now and get all the computer resources the Bureau can beg, steal, or borrow.” Foile turned to his boss.
She nodded. “They are yours as soon as I get off the phone.”
“Good,” Foile grumbled. “Even good people make mistakes. That’s what we’re looking for, crew. Their first mistake.”
26
Kris found the lodge, like the cottage, small but cozy. It had a bedroom in back and a sleeping loft above. The rest of the place was taken up with a large room that doubled for kitchen, dining room, and living room. It had a woodstove that looked to be the only heat for the place. And it was cold, hardly warmer than outside.
“I’ll start a fire,” Jack offered.
“I’ll help you get firewood,” Kris said, and the two of them brought in a dozen logs between them. There was tinder in a box beside the fireplace, with long matches, so while Grampa Trouble supervised the storing of food and the distribution of suitcases, Kris watched Jack make a fire.
“Haven’t you ever made one? You said you spent a summer camping?” Jack asked after his second glance back at Kris’s intense face.
“Never. We used the cookstove. Part of keeping a light footprint on nature. The few times we did have a fire, I wasn’t around while the boys got it going. I figured they were pyromaniacs, and it wasn’t something I should watch. I thought they just tossed some logs in, added a match, and bingo, we had a cheery fire.”
“Shows what you know,” Jack said as he built a small fire with tinder between two logs. He then added a flat log as a kind of roof over the flaring tinder while opening the flue wide. “You do that to get the fire started. When it’s hot, we cut back and reduce the airflow. But now, we need a lot of air to get things burning.”
Kris watched intently as a tiny flame became a small fire, then grew to a roaring concern. She wished she’d seen this earlier. Nature was mimicking so much of her life: starting small, growing bigger, then a fire too hot for anyone to put out . . . or get close to.
Kris laughed at her foolishness. Mother Nature had been there long before she was born. She’d just witnessed a ritual that must have been repeated endless times from when the first man tamed fire until Jack showed her how it was done. Here was a lesson she wished she’d learned a long time ago. It would have put a structure around so much of what she’d done, from recruiting workers for one of Father’s campaigns to . . . her feelings for Jack.
Did they have a fire going between them that would never burn out? Kris found herself daring to hope so. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed talking to Jack, sharing her plans with him, until they were back together.
Having tasted how much she needed him, she never wanted to be without him.
While they’d been getting the fire going, Harvey had taken his leave, and Grampa Trouble had laid out fixings for sandwiches. “Come and get it,” brought everyone to the table. Once everyone had fixed their own sandwich and gotten a bite, all except Grampa, he cleared his throat.
“Seeing how I was so rudely interrupted last night at the Roost, and again at breakfast by Penny’s thorough briefing on police procedures, I would now like to finish what I started. While Al’s security is tight, it is not without chinks.”
“And you know that how, Grampa?” Kris said around a full mouth.
“I have my sources. Where it came from doesn’t matter. That I have it, and you can use it, is what counts.”
“It will matter, Grampa, if the very action of your getting the information has alerted security to the query,” Kris shot back. She’d done and been done to enough to know that you had to erase your footsteps just as fast as you made them.
“I agree with her,” Nelly put in.
“Kids, please don’t try to teach your old great-grandfather how to suck eggs. I was pulling dirty tricks on my enemy, or superior, long before either of you were hatched. And so was my info-warrior sidekick. What she got, she got, and no one is the wiser. Trust me on that.”
“We may be trusting you with our lives,” Kris said.
She didn’t think Grampa Al would actually harm her. But his automatics might not check her ident before they burned her and Jack. And there was that matter on Eden.
“Kitten, I know well what I’m risking. I’d love to go with you, but these old bones just don’t have that kind of fun in them. But, Granddaughter, I want to bounce your baby someday on my knee. Maybe even change a diaper or two. Who knows?”