Lali kept her head stuffed in VR for almost the entire drive. Shane once told herself she’d never stick screens in front of her daughter, but her boss, Teddy, had given her the set, and Shane had to admit it was a godsend in a situation like this. Shane, meanwhile, listened to the scattered FM stations, and by the time they were in Wisconsin, thin flurries had begun blowing over the windshield without sticking.
ACCORDING TO NPR: “The FBI has been unable to paint any kind of picture of the group’s organization. The bombings, spread out over a period of seven years, have been geographically diverse, beginning in the Rocky Mountain states and Great Plains, but now migrating east. Additionally, the four people arrested in connection with the recent attacks all come from disparate corners of the country, and the FBI has been unable to establish a relationship between any of the suspects. This leaves a durable mystery at the center of the investigation, one that law enforcement is eager to unravel.”
Far off the highway, down an obscure road between pine trees hardened by December cold, she squeezed into a yard beside two vehicles and a box truck that said FORD CUSTOM FURNISHING.
The two-story cabin, chocolate wood and dirty glass, looked like a piece of petrified mahogany grown right out of the forest floor. A plume of smoke curled from the chimney and drifted over the trees. A firelight glow beamed from the bay window into the dusk. She roused Lali, who’d long ago fallen asleep, her booster seat a mess of applesauce pouches and graham cracker crumbs. Shane grabbed their bags, and they climbed the steps to the porch, Lali rubbing sleepy eyes. She eased the front door open with a reedy “Hiii” as Lali shuffled in behind her, one hand tightly gripping the butt pocket of Shane’s jeans.
Inside, warm light bathed the wood of the walls, floors, and ceiling. Across from the cushy furniture in the living room was the kitchen where Allen, Murdock, Kai, and Quinn colluded over pasta. Their chatter ceased abruptly. As Shane set her pack on the floor, a swarm of emotions passed over their faces. They’d surely watched Shane’s car approach via a surveillance camera perched in a tree, but now they all stared at Lali. Allen was the first to speak.
“Hey there,” he said, unloading his big, kind smile on her daughter. “Who’s this?”
“This is Islali, but she likes Lali. Do you want to say hi? These are Mama’s friends.”
Lali clung to the back of her leg, wrecked from the long day of travel. She peeked one eye out and stuffed a fist against her lips.
Kai took a step forward from behind the island. Because they were all so quiet, his voice boomed: “Lali, you remember me, right? We’ve hung out before! Badman Kai, remember?”
Lali nodded twice. Murdock looked irritated but not enraged. That specific what-the-fuck simmer belonged to Quinn, who gazed at Shane like she might bolt across the living room and plunge the knife she was using to slice cucumbers into Shane’s chest.
“Can I have a hug or at least a high five or something?” Kai begged. Lali repeated the nod and then left her grip on Shane to dash across the room to Kai and give him a bear hug. “Aw yeah, that’s better!”
After a few minutes of stilted how-was-the-drive chat, Kai suggested, “Hey, Lali, why don’t you let me show you the bed you and your mom are going to sleep in? How ’bout that?”
Lali was already following him. “What about a fort? Can there be a fort? Like, um, pillows and stuff?”
“Genius,” said Kai.
When the two of them reached the second floor, staring only at Quinn, Shane said, “I know.”
Quinn snorted and shook her head in disgust. “Are you out of your motherfucking mind, Shane?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You brought your fucking daughter.”
“She’s here. It’s done. Get over it.”
Quinn started laughing. “You are a piece of work, lady. Honestly, I’m kind of speechless.”
“She’s what—six years old, Quinn?” Allen stood with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a beer. “What’s she going to remember? Where’s the harm?”
Quinn looked to Murdock, who sat on the kitchen counter. He’d gained more weight in the two years since she’d seen him in Tennessee. He wore a Nittany Lions sweatshirt and a bright red MAGA hat.
“Not ideal,” he said, and swigged from a bottle of Coors.
“That’s an understatement,” said Quinn.
“Look, I didn’t have a choice. The woman at her daycare was going to take her, but she’s having surgery, and there’s no one else I trust or even know well enough.” She felt herself preparing to launch into a disquisition of how she spent more on childcare than rent and food, how the supplemental allowance they each got wasn’t enough, and how she’d even thought of asking her boss if he could look after Lali, but what if something happened? What if Lali got sick or broke an arm and suddenly he had to get in touch? The lies would pile up and become dangerously convoluted. The two times she’d run operations since having Lali, she’d relied on Kai to come stay at her place, but in these circumstances—a meeting of the Principals—that obviously wasn’t possible. All of this died in her throat, however. Instead, she just said, “I brought her VR. She’ll be in that the whole time we’re working.”
“Uhhh,” said Quinn. She splayed out her hands like she could zap entitlement from her fingertips.
“It’s the kind for kids, so it’s not networked,” Shane quickly explained. “She’ll sit around and watch cartoon bugs splat into windshields. Relax.”
Quinn shook her head and aimed her knife back at the cucumbers. Shane felt like the dumbest woman and worst mother humanity had ever coughed up.
“It’s been a long day. We were up at five to catch a Greyhound. I need to pass out.”
Allen rubbed his smooth, pink head. “Want some portabella pasta first?”
Lali wouldn’t eat anything with mushrooms and instead had cheddar Goldfish and a juice box before Shane put her down. At least she was out as soon as her head hit the pillow. They ate at the oak dining table, Shane wolfing down three helpings and chasing it with Diet Pepsi.
“The next target. We should get a jump on that, but it’s also valuable to talk about the people who got picked up.” Kai was finished and had set his fork in the center of a plate scraped clean by a slice of buttered bread. He wore a dark blue sweater, lovely against his skin. He looked healthy and well rested. “They’ll all be doing significant prison time.”
“The lawyers have the prosecutors jammed up,” said Quinn, unworried. “The sentences will get sliced away bit by bit. None of them will get time like Kroll.”
“Maybe we should feel empathy, if not guilt, for the people we’ve led to prison,” suggested Allen.
“Tabitha and Newman were the fault of Second Cell,” said Shane. “That’s ultimately with me. I’ll debrief Jansi before the next op. They made avoidable mistakes.”
“Mmmph,” said Murdock. He drooped in the dining room chair. “I disagree, Professor. Feeling guilt for patsies doing what patsies are supposed to do ain’t exactly a productive use of our limited time here. Crying over spilled milk and all.”
CAUGHT Allen had followed the news at home while pretending to not care in front of Emmy. The FBI had picked up Mitchell C. Tabitha of Oregon, Daniel P. McCulloch of South Dakota, and Marie K. Newman of New Mexico. All of them had pieces of the IEDs, scraps of material (wiring, nitromethane, cell phones, detonators, and the vans), traced back to them by TEDAC. None of them had planted a bomb, though. None were good for so much as a speck of insight into even the lower ranks of their operations. John G. Gerald of Coshocton, Ohio, on the other hand, was a link closer than Allen would have liked. “You believe this, Allen?” his wife demanded. “They’re railroading these poor people!” Allen shrugged it off like there was just too much to be outraged about these days.