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“Thank you for your assistance.  Your payment is being wired to your account,” Davie said.

“Thank you for your business,” Carson said.

Twenty-five thousand, after Carson asked for half.

It wasn’t worth it.  They’d burned so many resources, lost so much ground.  The Cabin, the cameras, properties.

Better to start anew.

“I’m hoping the fact we’re working so well together professionally means you won’t object if I keep using the trail cameras, for a few days?” Davie asked.

“No.  That’s fine,” Carson said.  “We’ll dismantle the setup in a little while, though.  Maybe a month.  But I don’t think either of us are expecting your daughter to still be around here then.”

“No.  It’s looking more and more like she managed to hitchhike with someone.  It’s the only explanation that fits,” Davie said.  He sounded so unbothered.  “A damn shame that it happened outside view of any of your cameras.”

“The cameras are for incoming problems.  Police and such.  We do offer services that keep people in, if we’d only known,” Carson replied.

“So our mutual friend has said.  Keeping people in custody.  It wouldn’t have fit, and I would have handled it better myself if I’d had any indication she was so unhappy.  Still, a shame,” Davie said.

Mia couldn’t help but read things into those words, and that tone.  A hint of menace.  A possibility of accusation.

Davie turned his head to look up at the trail camera.  She had let him know that was there.  He didn’t seem to care.  It was more focused on the gravel parking lot at the base of the cabin and the road out.  “We’ll shift focus on our end.  You can move on to other things, I’m sure.”

“A bit of a break after a night without much sleep and a day of high focus.”

“Good man,” Davie said, with an unexpected gusto that felt disconnected from the fact he’d lost his daughter.  Mia felt like he’d honed those words, perfectly measured them to deliver the message that he was a man in charge and the other person was lower than him but that other person had done so well.  “I hope we can work together in the future.”

It made Mia’s hackles rise.  The same way someone smiling at her too much made her suspicious of them.

“If you’re paying, we’ll deliver,” Carson said.

“Before we part ways for now, a question, I’m curious- you don’t have to answer,” Davie said.

“Yes?”

“Earlier today.  There was a call, your female partner at the old community center, to you, out on the road.  You left quickly.”

“There was,” Carson answered, unfazed.

“What about?”

“Verifying the camera was working, then lunch, Mr. Cavalcanti.  I’d set up the cameras, picked lunch up, dropped it off, we touched base, and then I got back to work.  I did joke around with some of your men while I waited.  Augustinha was one.  I didn’t distract them from watching traffic.  Is it a problem?”

“Ah, well, I would rather have had the cameras set up without breaks.”

“They were.  I went back out to do maintenance.  My partner had eyes on things throughout.”

“Ahh, now I feel petty, bringing it up.”  The man laughed softly.

“Not at all, Mr. Cavalcanti.”

“That should be all, then.  Good work, even if we didn’t get my girl.  Goodbye, Mr. Voice On The Phone.”

“Goodbye.”

The call ended.

Mia stood there, eyes on the floor, arms folded, back of her thighs resting against the folding table.

“He was aware of the call?  Listening in?” Carson asked.

“I think he’d have killed us by now, if so.  It’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, listening in on a call, SS7 security is garbage and lawmakers won’t do anything about it.  But considering the situation, his equipment, our location… I was okay calling you and saying what I did.”

“If you’re okay with it, I’m okay with it.  I trust you.”

“He knew the time and location of the calls.  That’s it.  Surprising but planned for.  I called him last night before I called you.  We kept up a working fiction around the timing and location of the calls.  I think we’re okay,” Mia said.

“Hm,” Carson grunted.

“I think you’d have a better idea than I do about what that bit at the end was, then,” Mia told him.  “I have trouble with reading people if we’re talking about the weather.  I’m not good with picking up on signals in situations like that.”

“I don’t know either, hon,” he said, as he glanced over the screens.

‘Hon’.  It was the words and things he didn’t think about so much that kept her sane.  The times he forgot himself, or the times he was sick, sleepy, or drunk and less careful with his words.  The solidity of his maleness under the covers.  Things that didn’t lie.  Not as much.

She wondered why her mind was going in that direction like this.  Was her period incoming?  No.  That always cranked her libido up to ten.  Maybe it was a consequence of spending the entire day with and around him.

Seeing him be dad-ish, too.

Mia mused aloud, to distract herself.  “Could be showing his hand to posture.  Trying to put us off balance to see if he could read something in us?  Seeing what we do if provoked?  A threat, because he senses we have her, or know where she is?  Or is it genuine?  Was he really fishing to see if we were unprofessional?”

“I don’t know,” Carson said.  He leaned forward, head tilted.  His tone of voice changed when he asked, “What about you?  Do you know?”

The teenager, sitting under the table, shook her head.

“Damn,” Carson said, with a casual ease.

Seeing him be gentle and dad-ish with the girl was definitely part of why Mia wanted to jump on top of him, she realized.  The relief that the window of danger was passing easing tension, leaving room for other things, while she still had residual anxiety.

The danger window passing meant she had to be more careful, she told herself.  Couldn’t be lax.

“I lived with him for most of my life.  One year where my mom had full custody.  Then he got custody and she got scared enough she ran.  I found her online, I got in touch.  She told me not to call her again.”

The girl’s face had fallen.

“That’s not okay,” Mia said.

“It’s not like that.  I understand why she said it.  I cried.  A lot.  She cried.  She kept telling me that, saying no, and I said yes, okay, but I guess neither of us wanted to hang up.  Then a voice interrupted to say I was running out of minutes, it was a prepaid phone, and I got nervous and hung up.  She changed numbers, after that.”

Mia sighed, looking aside.

“Could you find her?  If I got enough money together, somehow, could you help us disappear?  Her, me, maybe my brother, too?”

In the course of the afternoon and early evening’s tasks, they’d explained enough for the teenager to know what they did.  The call on speaker had filled in some of the rest.

Carson glanced at Mia, eyebrow arched.

“I think, if I could find her, Davie Cavalcanti could and would, too.  So let’s hope it’s not possible.”

“Yeah,” the teenager replied.  She couldn’t hide the disappointment.  It was a hard fall from that kind of hope.

“We have to wrap up here.  I think, the way he operates, he’s going to keep a close eye on us as we wrap up and leave.  Then we get you situated.  You being safe is the best gift someone who loves you could get.”

“Yeah.  Okay.”

“First step, we get you out.  Stay put for now, while we get this figured out.”

The drones were staying out.  Mia packed up the non-essentials, including the I.D. stuff she’d been working with last night.  The hope was that Davie would wrap up his business, then withdraw the resources he was keeping over them.

He didn’t.

It was dark outside.  They’d been at this for fourteen hours.  Now the drones were black shapes against a black sky.

What are the chances they have nightvision?

“Did they see your face at any point?” she asked Carson.

“Wore my mask.  There was a lot of ash in the air, so I wasn’t the only one.”

She nodded.

“We could go out with one.  Trick is getting her out,” he said.

“We don’t have any large containers, do we?”

“You want to put her in a box?”

“I want to do anything that gets her clear of this,” Mia said.

“I can’t go in the trunk again?” the girl asked.

“You can, but the problem is getting you there.  I’m worried that he’s given up on finding you here, so he’s moving things around.  There’s a chance there are two or more drones up there, covering us from different angles.  Watching the car.”

Carson was nodding.

The fact the community center was littered with stuff helped.  Mia scouted, checking under tables, under old folding tables where the vendors at the flea markets or farmer’s market type events hadn’t cleared things out, the last go-round.

Hardback luggage case.  Mia put it down, stepped on it, and leaned onto it hard.

The hinge snapped.  Worn with age.

She checked others.  Too shallow.  Too brittle.  Coated in mold that had grown and then died, without nutrients or hydration..  She’d worry about the teenager’s health.  Coughing.

She kept looking.

Carson was on the other end of the community center, talking to the kid, while sorting out his own stuff.  Packages from the trail cameras.  The kid helped, flattening boxes.

Mia found a blue tote with handles.  She carried it over, judging the teenager’s proportions.  The kid was short-ish, for her age, a little wide in the hips and thighs – not because of weight, but because of how the weight she did have sat.  Bigger chest, too.  What a contrast from Ripley.  But Ripley was a contrast from Mia, too.

This would be a tight fit, maybe.

“Sit?  Let’s just see?” she asked, her mind already working through options, what they might need.  What could pass, if a drone saw.

The kid sat, ankles to ass, arms around knees, leaning forward, head down.

The lid could clip down, but it would inevitably pop open.

“Okay.  Out,” she said.  She offered a hand to help the kid extricate herself.

“Bigger?” Carson asked.  “I can dig around the other rooms.”

“No.  Let’s try this, but with modifications.  Dremel?”

Carson popped open the toolbox, passing her the dremel, hand trailing along the cord to help it unwind, then plugging it in.

Mia flipped the box over.

“What are you doing?” the teenager asked.  “Do you know what she’s doing, Carson?”

“I’ve learned to trust her.  She’s got a good head for this sort of thing.”

Mia used the dremel to cut eight slots into the base of the plastic tote, where it was thickest.  She got some straps out, used for securing loads, restraints, and things like this.  She fed them through the slots.

“Key thing here, is we want to check you can breathe,” Mia said.  “Carson, watch the cameras?  And make sure there’s no drones zipping down to peek through the windows?”

“On it.  Nightvision?”

“Sure.”

“This is going to be tight, it’s going to be hard, but we need to buy minutes.  You need to endure for minutes.  Then we have another ride, similar to the one that got you from the gas station to here, but less leg room.  Longer.”

She finished arranging the straps, then put some things down strategically for padding.

“Again.”

The girl climbed into the tote.  Mia moved the straps into place, forming an ‘x’ shape, and tightened them.

“Oof.”

Tightened them more.

She paused, watching, then looked around the box.  The plastic was blue, but turned white when stressed, which was handy.  No major points where plastic threatened to break or tear.

“Out.  Adjusting.”

The kid climbed out, and drew in a breath.  She looked a little spooked.

“Claustrophobic?”

“A little freaked.  By everything.”

“That’s understandable,” Mia said.

“A lot of it, it hasn’t touched me yet, exactly?  Like I jumped out a plane and I’m freefalling, but I almost can’t believe I did it.  But then having something to touch?  As a part of this?  It made it all feel real.  The danger.”

It had seemed real to the girl last night, when she’d been sobbing, struggling to breathe, her chest hurting from the panic attack.  Mia didn’t say anything, focusing.

“Hopefully third time’s a charm.  In?  But stand?”

She’d undone a lot of the straps.  The kid stood in the tote, and Mia took a strap, and fed it through the back loop of her shorts.    She went over shoulder, brought it down to lap, then rested it on the end of the tote.  She did the same thing, in reverse, with the other.

After some consideration, she created another slot with the dremel by the handle.

Straps stretched from the base of the tote up through back belt loops, to handle, forward, down, and formed a seatbelt across her lap.  It took some doing to keep the straps from cutting into mid-thigh.

Then down, through the base, across, and then back up to handle.

She closed the tote.  With the lid on, the dark straps at the handle were covered from most angles.  The straps kept the kid down enough she wasn’t pushing up on the lid.

“Can you breathe?”

“Some,” came the muffled reply.

“Okay,” Mia said.  She popped the lid, untightened the straps, then let the teenager out.  “Next go is the real one.  Go pee.  Hydrate, but not too much.  This will be a long ride.”

She went to Carson and watched through the cameras he’d pointed at the window, which were on a night vision mode.  Other cameras had been switched over when it had gotten dark.

The car.  It was parked on dirt road.  Behind it was a root, sticking up out of the ground.  Okay.

Taking this to another level.

She pried the case away from the back of a laptop screen, and moved coils of wire, extension cords, and other cables away from Carson’s packed up stuff and onto a table nearby.

The girl returned, and Mia ushered her into the box, making sure the straps were in place.

“I’m going to be rough.  It’s the kindest thing I can do for you, because they’re watching.  But if you’re worried you can’t breathe, then let me know.  Tap or flick the plastic twice.  Try?”

Two flicks.

“Okay,” Mia said.  “Head down.”

She tightened the straps.

That done, she put things on top of the kid.  Coils of wire, rolls of tape, cases of components.

The laptop lid she kept as a shield.  She attached it to the straps.  She tossed the rest of the dismantled laptop in there with it.

She stepped back, looking.  Then she looked at Carson.

“Looks good,” he said.

“Is there space for air in here with me?” the teenager asked.

“Not much,” Mia admitted.  “It should be fine.  Lift?”

Carson did, with a little grunt.  “Here we go.  How’s that feel, in there?”

“Okay,” the voice was muffled.

Arms taut.  Kind words.

Mia fidgeted.

She’d spaced out the slots, and the strapping helped distribute weight, so the kid’s body weight pulled on straps that were fixed above her, making it a bit of a basket, instead of all on the plastic.

“And move her around, bounce her as you walk?” Mia asked, watching for any signs of issues.  “Turn her ninety degrees this way?  And that way?”

“Don’t turn me upside down.”

“Shhhh,” Mia said.  “Okay.  Good.  It’s better I take her.”

“Why?” Carson asked.

“Because I’m a woman, and it’ll help convey the idea the box isn’t that heavy if I’m the one carrying it around.”

He put the kid down.  Mia picked it up, judging.  It felt worse to hold than it looked, from a few steps away.  The contents shook and banged against the sides in the spaces the teenager wasn’t occupying.

“Whatever you do, don’t react.  Don’t move, don’t make noise.  I’m going to be rough, throwing you around, it’s to help convey the idea there isn’t precious cargo in here,” Mia said.  “Whatever happens.”

“Okay.”

“Shhh,” she shushed the girl.  “From here on out, until I say.  Be quiet, be still.  Trust.”

“I’m not very good at trusting people.”

“Me either.  Maybe in a way, that’ll mean we end up getting along,” Mia said.

Mask on, hood of her jacket up.  She and Carson took out bags of trash first, then the tote- big things first.

When she reached the tree root she tripped.

‘Tripped’.

The tote fell, the contents spilled.  The girl, strapped in, didn’t.

“Shhhh-” she shushed.  “-ssshit!”

“You okay!?” Carson called out.

“Skinned my palms a bit.  Gravel in them.  I’m tired, didn’t see the root.”

“You’ve been staring at screens all day,” he said, brightly.  “Come into the light, let me see.”

She did, and they took a short bit, leaving the tote there on its side.

They brought other stuff out as they left, then Mia and Carson used the lights of their phones to make sure they got all the fallen things before righting the tote, refilling it, and replacing the lid.

She made a point of looking upset about the broken laptop, screen separated from its back cover.  While fishing around for wires and tape, Mia checked around the base of the car.  She didn’t think it was likely that someone had snuck in to drop a tracker on them, but she wasn’t ruling it out either.

“We had to put this on its side, it’s too tall for the trunk, right?” she asked.  For show.

“Yeah,” Carson said.

She wedged it in, tilting it, so the lid faced the car seats.

They didn’t rush, but they didn’t dawdle either.  Mia was aware that someone could, with very little pressure in the wrong directions, and a bit of constraint on movement, struggle to breathe.  Crucifixion could kill by suffocation, with only the weight of the body pulling on arms.  Babies had died because they were helpless and their own body weight created a depression in the mattress they weren’t strong enough to lift themselves out of, suffocating in a pocket of their own carbon dioxide.

This girl was a baby, here.

Trail cameras were given a last glance, then she put her things away in her bag, laptop ready to sit in her lap.

They drove out, Drone Man’s drones watching them.  The moment they were on the dark road, Mia counted.

Twenty seconds out, blind spot on the road.

She angled her chair back until the headrest was sitting on the back seat, reached up and back, and pulled down the armrest.  She used her feet to scoot up and further back, reached through, and grabbed the lid, pulling it free.  She passed the teenager a box cutter.  “For cutting straps.  Only if you have to.  Stay put, keep your head down, okay?”

“Yeah.  You scared the fuck out of me.  When you dropped me.”

That wasn’t staying quiet.  Still.  “Sorry.  I said I’d be rough.”

Mia pushed the armrest back up, pulled herself back down to her seat, raised the chair back to the same angle it had been, and opened her laptop.

They pulled onto the main road.  The same one Carson had added more cameras to.  That their client was no doubt watching, or had someone watching.

She could see on those same cameras, two turns back, that Drone Man followed.  He parked when they reached a long, straight section of road, waiting until they were so far away he was unidentifiable by even eagle eyes, before he kept going.

“He’s going to follow us until he can’t, huh?” she asked.  “Someone in the driver’s seat, Drone Man in the passenger seat?”

“I guess,” Carson said.  “What’s the battery life on those electric batteries he’s using?”

“Hours.  And he got a resupply late this afternoon.  It might’ve been spares from the other drone person.  If we try to evade or obstruct him, that’ll look worse.  So let’s do business as usual.  But cut through the spear, cut west past-”

“-the airport.  I got you.”

The spear was a major north-south road in the city.  The moment they reached the northmost part of it, Mia’s eyes widened.

Plumes of smoke.  Multiple fires.

“I guess we haven’t been paying attention to the outside world, huh?” she asked.

“I was listening to the radio some, when I was driving back and forth.  Talked about it with some of his people.”

“The suspended elections?”

“Yeah.  That’s a chunk of it.”

Wildfires to the north, a few days of being choked by residual ash and smoke, and now a city burning to the south.

It didn’t change what they were doing.

They were past where any trail cameras were set up, so she leaned back to pull the back seat armrest down, leaving a gap that led through to the trunk.  “Managing?”

“My legs are so restless.”

“Bear up, okay?  We’re close to being free and clear.”

It took a bit to get there, with roads closed, and other roads questionable to go down.  Crowds- of protesters, of counter-protesters.  People taking advantage.  Police.

Airports were restricted spaces for flying, which meant no drones.  They also had lots of ways to break line of sight and get lost in the crowd.  Carson pulled into the parking area and drove to the top level, where there were less cars.

“Park so the rear is angled-”

“Yeah.  Yeah, got it.”

The window of the parking garage gave a good view of the city, tinted orange.  Mia took a few seconds to take in the view, before scanning the surroundings.  No cameras with a great view of here.  Nothing outside that the naked eye could see.

She popped the trunk.  “We’re coming back.  It may seem like an unreasonably long time.  Stay put.  And wait until you get the confirmation from us that things are clear before you move, talk, or do anything.  Okay?  We’re close.”

“Yeah.”

“How’s the restlessness?”

“I’ve dealt with worse things.”

Mia thought of the guy who’d been the girl’s brother, in her prior life.

“Yeah.  We’re getting another car.  Back soon.  Do not get out.”

Mia reached under the trunk, to where some mechanisms were exposed, and pulled some cartridges free.  She slid them into a back pocket, attached a connecting wire, and then shut the trunk.

“Should one of us hang back, watch the car?” Carson asked.

“I’m using your logic from earlier.  It’s better we pretend it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah.  Okay.”

They headed down two levels, then got in line by the car rental place, just across from the parking garage.  Flights had recently gotten out, so the line was long.  Half the people had masks on.  She and Carson kept theirs on, to obscure their faces.

Carson put his arm around her.  Absently, like he wasn’t thinking about it.

It was almost enough to make her relax.

The text came in.  Gibberish, but gibberish she could read.

She pulled away, out of the half-hug.

Across the street and up two flights of stairs, as fast as was possible.

A bit of gunpowder, a lot of rock salt.  She’d pulled out cartridges, but it had still done a number on Drone Man, who lay by the back of the car.  Short range blast, it meant the salt penetrated skin.  At the shins, it had flayed a good bit of flesh away, enough there was basically no skin, and there were trenches cut through meat.  The trunk sat there, open.  Bottom of the tote aimed at the opening.

Muted, with a reduced charge, it wouldn’t have sounded a lot different from a slammed car door.  She hadn’t heard it across the street, but she wondered if she had hearing damage from the gunshots the last Friday night.  Mia’s fingers traced the parts of the bumper that had caught some of the salt, paint chipped.

“Agh,” drone man gasped.  “Oh fuck.  My feet.”

She’d thought she’d done a better job angling things.

Shock had hit first, Mia guessed.  It had started to wear off by the time she and Carson got there.  Drone man lay there, groans getting more and more pained as the extent of the damage sank in.  The kid who’d driven drone man here, presumably, was standing off to the side, not even sure what to do.

Carson played into that, approaching him.  “Do not draw that gun.”

“My fucking feet.”

A lockpick lay on the concrete.  A rake.  Rakes didn’t work on a lot of modern car doors, but he’d managed, she supposed.

Or he’d given up on it and tried to force it.  Either way, he’d gotten it open.

Two men were so close to the girl, who was doing her best to stay quiet, while someone groaned and shouted his agony.

She bent down, picking up drone man by the neck with one hand, and marched him toward that slot-like opening in the wall of the parking garage, burning city behind him.  His eyes were on the ground, as he struggled to get feet under him, when everything from the knees down was shredded or filled with coarse salt and minerals.  Those eyes flew up to try and meet hers, with her tinted face mask, as he was pushed partially out the window.  She held him far enough out that if she let go, he’d fall.

“We’re with Davie Cavalcanti!” the driver shouted.

“Oh,” Carson said, like that was a surprise.  “If he had an issue, he could have communicated with us.”

“Not like that, I don’t know.  Don’t kill him.”

Mia pulled drone man further inside.  She held him so that he had to stand on those legs or otherwise hang from her grip.  He put a hand on the windowsill to prop himself up, and she pulled him slightly away.  He groaned and gasped as he accidentally put weight on his legs.

“What were you doing?” Mia asked.

“Taking a peek.  Gathering information, seeing if we could identify you.”

“On his orders?” Carson asked.

“He asks people to do it for pretty much anyone we work with.”

“That does make me feel better,” Carson said.  “Digging for information?  If I search you, your car, this car, I’m not going to find something else?  Weapons?  Bomb?”

“We were supposed to put a tracker on your car, if we couldn’t track you with the drones.  That’s it.  We were going to put it inside something of yours, so you took it back home or to your headquarters.”

“And you didn’t get that far, huh?”

“No.”

“Hon, I think they’re being reasonable,” Carson said.

“We are.”

A man lost so much blood when this much of him was in tatters from the knees down.  It was getting everywhere.  A spreading pool.  The shins were really the worst part.  The hit to the feet had mostly just sent the shards of salt straight down into flesh, leaving scattered puncture wounds.

She dropped him, went to the trunk, glancing at the tote, and pulled on gloves before opening a fresh package of straps.  Same kind she’d used for the kid in the tote.

A basic tourniquet.  One for each leg.  Cinching them tight made all the hurt come back fresh, apparently.  “Get him to an emergency room.  You picked a shitty night to get yourselves hurt, but they should expedite something this dramatic.  He should be fine if you get him there fast.  If there’s one upside to the protests, they might not have the time to ask questions.”

“Fuck.”

“Your boss knew we use traps for our security and that of our clients,” she said, straightening.  She was covered in blood, now.  “He should have warned you.”

“Yeah.”

The single syllable responses weren’t great communication, but they did convey that they had control over this situation.

“If we didn’t respect him?  If we weren’t being safe, just in case anyone tampering had some association with him?  These cartridges-” she pulled them out of her back pocket.  “-would have been aimed at your stomach and groin.  Perforated intestines, kidneys, major arteries if you’re lucky.”

That got her a wide-eyed nod.  Even less than a single syllable response.

She let them go.  Drone man left, carried to the other car by the driver.  Mia waited until they were gone before relaxing some.  She bent down and checked around the base of the car.

A tracker, attached to the base of the car with a magnet.  She showed Carson.

“What a fucking liar, that kid.  Said he didn’t get around to it,” he said, a bit indignant.

“Leave it, you think?” she asked.

“Losing the car?”

‘Might as well.  We’re losing a lot of things.”

“I’ll go get the rental, then.  You want to get cleaned up?” he asked.  “Or try, anyway?  So we don’t scare the babysitter?”

She nodded.

Carson went back down to the rental car place.

Mia dug into the back for needed supplies.

“Did you make noise?  When the shot fired?” she asked.

“No.  I don’t know.”

“Hopefully he didn’t know either.  He wasn’t looking in your direction, and he wasn’t in a state to be clever.”

“Oh.”

Bottled water.  Wet wipes.  A change of clothes- she changed right at the end of the top level of the parking garage, keeping the car between herself and anyone who might come up the ramp and see.

“What happened?”

“I’ll answer for you in a minute.  Rushing to get stuff done, so we can get you out of plastic containers and car trunks, okay?”

“Okay.”

She had a cooler of ice in the back that was mostly ice water- she’d brought it in case they needed to carry another dismembered head or something.  She rested it on the window, moved the vehicle, then dumped it, jumping out of the way while water splashed onto the pool of blood with occasional fragments of clothing and bits of shredded skin in it.

It didn’t erase it, but the blood that settled into the grooves of the textured concrete didn’t draw the eye quite so much as the puddle would on its own.

She set about removing the trap she’d rigged inside the back of the car, inside the door of the trunk.

“Need water or anything?”

“I want to be done with this.  I want my mom.”

Mia wondered if she was on the right course here.  This had felt like a better idea last night.

“What happened?”

Right.  She’d said she would explain.

“I rigged the back to shoot anyone who climbed out.  It’s why I said not to leave,” Mia said.  “They tried, they got shot.  Most of the time, I think it’s fine.  They were the ones who overstepped, took it too far.  But I don’t have a good read on your dad and how he might respond.”

“Nobody does.”

The car settled as Mia rested on the back seat, feet on the floor of the parking garage.  Just to sit.

“But he might respect you.  Which isn’t the best thing, because-”

“He’d want to keep me?  And Carson?  Make us his,” Mia guessed.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Mia sighed.  “Have you picked a new name yet?”

“Valentina?”

“Why?”

“You- you said there should be no why.  No meaning, no connection.  I like the sound of it.  A character in a show I liked a few years back was named it.”

“Val?”

“Valentina, full.”

“Okay.”

Carson pulled up.  Mia replaced the lid to the tote for the transition. then helped Valentina climb out, to lie across the trunk of the rental.  Luxurious by comparison.

“I’ll take the car out in the direction of the protests, leave it on, keys in the ignition.”

“So much DNA, it’s useless for identifying us?”

“The way things are going, if it’s not on fire by the time the night’s over, I’ll be surprised.”

“Let me get the other traps out,” Mia said, moving over to where she could access the airbag, to remove the grapeshot.  “We’ll get you home in thirty minutes, Valentina.”

⯁

Sore, a bit bleary-eyed, and reeling in general from the prior day, Mia was slow to move in the morning.  She hadn’t slept much- when Carson had gotten back, late, she’d crawled across the bed to him.  He hadn’t said no.

She’d made it up to him by letting him sleep in.  She’d skip work to sort the Valentina situation.

In a few years, she’d be 40.  She was starting to see where her limits were, and how they were shifting.  That nights like this would get harder and harder.

Adjustments would have to be made.

She put the stuff out for breakfast, including leftover pineapple carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, because Ripley would actually eat it, instead of downing a bowl of bran flakes and eating nothing else, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Rip ate a bit more.

Of course, it couldn’t be easy.  The weather was going to be hot and Ripley’s favorite lightweight coveralls had been left on the bathroom floor by the hamper, so they weren’t washed.  An angry Ripley was an amusing sight, clearly mad at herself because it was her own fault, but she was unwilling to admit it.  She struggled to find a way to articulate it, and mostly just threw doors open, slammed them, went through laundry, threw down handfuls of it with as much force as she could muster, which wasn’t a lot, huffing and puffing throughout.

Mia got her to not slam doors, at least.  For Carson’s sake.  And Valentina’s.

Mia helped her sort out her options, while trying to keep Tyr on track to get ready on time.  She laid out some options.

Ripley opted for less lightweight coveralls.  She’d rather sweat, apparently.

Well, lessons would probably be learned.

Mia stopped in her tracks as she stepped into the hallway, and saw Valentina there.

“Uh,” Ripley said, bumping into Mia from behind, looking past her.

“You’re up.  I thought you’d sleep in.”

“I smelled food?”

“Hungry?” Mia asked.  She really would rather have seen Valentina sleep in, stay out of the way, and let certain things get sorted, first.

“Didn’t eat a lot last night.”

“Yeah.  You’re right.  Sorry, I should have sorted you out better.  Were you hungry last night?”

“Some.”

“Who’s she?” Ripley asked.

“Valentina,” Valentina said.

“She’s your cousin,” Mia said.

“I have a cousin?”

“Her mom is going through a tough time,” Mia said, “If you want something like pancakes or waffles, eggs, bacon, or any of that, I can prepare it when I finish dropping the kids off.  There’s options here to tide you over.”

“Can I cook?”

“Can you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then feel free.”

“I have an aunt?” Ripley asked.

“We have an aunt?” Tyr asked, with exaggerated emphasis on the last word.

“You have an aunt.  You have cousins.  Your aunt’s going through a tough time-”

“I have cousins?” Tyr asked, in that same tone.

“-and we’re keeping this on the down-low,” Mia said.  She walked around the table, and strategically covered Tyr’s ears as she said some of the next bit.  He fought her.  “Because the normal way for this to go is that we’d have to get certified as kinship foster parents, which means she’d go to other foster parents in the meantime.  Does that make sense?”

“Kind of?”

“If people found out, she’d have to go somewhere else until we took some classes and got paperwork done, which could take weeks or months.  So we’re fudging it until everything’s in order,” Mia said, pulling a hand away to press a finger to her lips.  “Even from Josie.”

“Okay.  Why are you telling me to keep it secret but Tyr is hearing some of it?”

“Because Tyr might say a lot no matter what I tell him to do, but every kid his age overshares.  So long as words like-” she covered Tyr’s ears, “-foster parents don’t leave his lips and raise any alarms, I think it’s fine.”

There was no reason to expect pertinent information to filter upwards from a class of kids who were regularly telling teachers random tidbits about their lives with little sense of what was important or not.  The teachers wouldn’t have a direct enough connection to Davie.

She didn’t overload Ripley with information.  She sorted out lunches, made sure Tyr was tidy enough.  Then she asked, “Any questions?”

“Can I bring a piece of carrot cake into the car?” Ripley asked.

“You can.  Just be careful about crumbs.”

“Go get your books and things.”

Ripley did.

Tyr went to go say goodbye to Carson, a brief interruption in the sleep-in.

Leaving Mia with Valentina.

Valentina looked wary.

“Eat, take it easy.  You’re safe.  Stay inside, get yourself sorted.  If there’s any shows you’ve been meaning to catch up on or try out, binge.  I’ll build you a new identity.  It’s tricky, this way, but I think I can build a connection.  For the time being, you’re-”

“Your foster kid?”

“Family.  Staying with us because your mom’s struggling.  We’re going to pick up and leave, soon.  It can’t be so soon that Davie thinks we’re running from him, but soon.  Then you resume life, like this.  Normal, everyday.  New name, new hair, new presentation.”

“The old me disappears totally, huh?”

“If you want to leave, if you don’t want this… that’s your choice.  I’m hoping that all the trouble we’ve gone through buys your loyalty.  That you won’t say we had a part in it.  It wouldn’t achieve anything, except hurting us.  Hurting those kids.  Hurts our chance to help someone like you, in the future.”

“Okay.”

“You want to leave?”

“No.  No.  I- that all sounds okay, I guess.”

Not excited, but that was understandable.

Mia stopped in to pull Tyr out of bed with Carson, sending him to the front door to get boots on.

“Keep an ear out?  In case she needs something?  I won’t be long.”

“Okay,” he said.  He groaned.  “I’ll probably get up.”

“That’s good.”

“There’ll be a honeymoon period, you know?  Where she’s grateful, she doesn’t have a sense of us.  She’s a bit scared of us.”

Mia frowned a bit.

“You blew a guy’s legs off in earshot of her, hon,” he said, smiling.

“Uh huh.”

“Stuff’ll leak through.  Clues about what she’s been through.  Even in the honeymoon.  More later.  She’ll start testing boundaries.  It’s what kids do.”

“I know.  Yeah.”  They’d talked about it before, figuring out Tyr and Ripley.

“Then she’ll go full teenager on us, probably.  We can look forward to that.”

He stretched, almost writhing on the bed.  In the process, he reached out, taking her hand.

She gave it a squeeze.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Was it?

“She’s your niece, by the way.”

“I heard,” he said, smiling.

Mia went and prepared the kids for school.  To Valentina, she said, “Need anything?  Carson’s going to be up soon.”

Valentina shook her head.

Mia offered a hug.

After hesitating, Valentina accepted it.  The result was awkward, stiff.

Later she’d be a teenager.  Mia wondered when there’d ever be a natural-feeling hug between them.

When she ended the hug, she saw Valentina looking past her, to the kids.

Studying them.

Then she looked at Mia.

Had she figured it out?

Something to talk about later, maybe.

Mia got the kids into the car, then drove them to the school.  She was a bit later than usual, so she got the clog of cars at the entry to the parking lot, moving at crawling speeds, awkward, getting in each other’s way.  Kids and parents walking this way and that.

It suited her okay.  It meant she could keep an eye out.

There it was.  The green car.  ‘Io’ and the faded bumper sticker.

The reason Mia had started work at the hospital.  Through that, everything else.

⯁

Mia gathered her things, walking past the living room, where her mom sat, watching her.

Boots, summer shoes.  Jackets, coats.  She gathered them up into her arms.

She had more bags than boxes, because bags were easier to carry.  The downside was they collapsed on themselves, and when her arms were this full…

Her mom didn’t lift a finger.  Didn’t say a word.

She did a walkthrough of the house.  “Can I take these plates?  You never use them.”

“Which ones?”

She brought one through.

“Yeah.”

She got the DVDs from the shelf in the living room.  There was a console with a wand remote and accessories that she’d been encouraged to use as part of her therapy, to improve her coordination through activity level, aim, and all that.

She didn’t want to take it, but there was a kind of ruthlessness at play here.

Excising herself from this house.

Every picture of her.  Every article of clothing.

Her mom remained on the couch, eyes tracking Mia when Mia was in plain view, eyes on the screen otherwise.  A big woman, at nearly four hundred pounds, tall.  Mia, driven to a certain level of anxiety by an eternal restlessness, had the height but not the weight.

Her dad had gone to work without so much as a word.

Over a late morning and afternoon, Mia collected everything.  The movers came, and her mom got up to get food, then sat back down.  Mia took things to the curb to speed things up.

When the movers left, she did a final check, threw a few odds and ends into her luggage, then went to the door of the living room.  Her mom looked over at her.

“I guess this is goodbye,” Mia said.  “Thanks, I guess, for letting me stay until I was done school.”

“Figured I had to.”

Mia shrugged one shoulder.

“I’m supposed to say something, huh?” her mom asked.

“You could.  No pressure.  I’ve left my contact information on the fridge.  If you need anything-”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.  Still, maybe keep it for a bit.  You gave me a place to stay for school.  Maybe if you need help with a nursing home…?”

“I don’t plan to make it that long.”

“Okay.  Well, just in case.”

“I miss that girl, you know?  She was such a good kid.  Light of my life.  Beautiful.”

Mia fell silent.

“I kept thinking she might come back.  That you’d… get better.  That the light would come back through.”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

“And there’s… you.  Who are you?  What’s with you?”

Mia wasn’t sure how to read the tone or emotion in that last word, but she was sure she’d digest it for a long while, in a lot of awful ways.

“It’s not like I forgot everything.  I still have the memories with you, you have the memories with me.  As for the rest, the differences, you’ve had longer to get to know me than you did to get to know the old Mia.”

Her mom didn’t have a response to that.

The crowd on the TV was very excited about the product being sold in the infomercial.

“Okay then.  I’m going-”

“You scare the shit out of me.”

The applause continued, the host talking over the noise.  A product, white and glossy, rotated on the screen.

Her mom’s eyes bored holes into her, heavy bags beneath them.

Mia, wordless, composed herself, then got her things.

Her car, used, was a piece of garbage.  The day was hot, a heat shimmer seemed to extend up to the sky, which didn’t feel like it should be as blue as it was.  Being as hot as it was, car being so shit it didn’t have air conditioning, she drove with the window down.

She wasn’t even out of town when she had to park to rest her forehead on the steering wheel and have a cry.

She stopped to wipe her eyes and fix her makeup.

Back to driving.  Leaving town.  Starting a new chapter of her life.

She wasn’t fully out of the city when she had to slow to get around a car that had parked with its butt-end sticking out of a driveway.  If she’d been going faster, she might have clipped it.

A green Ion.  Inching around it, being very careful not to scuff her already scuffed car, Mia had a view of the bumper sticker and the logo with the letter chipped off.  Intentionally, it looked like.  And badly.  The effort had gouged paint and a bit of rust was blooming from that point.

She heard crying.  Shouting.

She steered around, then parked at the next available spot, further down the street.

“-p the fuck up!  I feel like my internal organs are going to fall out if I sneeze, and you’re tired?”

The door was ajar on the far side of the car.  Mia circled around.

“You’re being a bitch!”

The crying increased in volume when she opened the door.  It had been open, she guessed, then blew shut with the wind.

A very small baby, sweaty, a bit blotchy, sat in a car seat, wearing a blue onesie with sweat at the collar.

“I am going to be a bitch, I am going to escalate in bitch!  I will be a fucking god-bitch if it gets you to be the dad you promised me you’d be!  I need to go to doctors, I need money, I need help.  Start by doing one of those things.  One!  Change a diaper!”

“I don’t know how.”

“Then it’s time to learn!  Because we have a baby!”

“Hello!?” Mia called out.

“Are we even sure it’s mine?”

“Are you going there?  Are you really going there?”

“I am raising the question.”

“You are fucking flailing to dodge responsibilities, and the fact you went there is the trashiest fucking thing, you absolute shit.  Fuck you!”

“Hello!?” Mia called out.

The baby was warm.  Not dangerously warm, but warm.

There was water in the cup holder.  Mia let herself in, got some, and wet a cloth, pressing it to the baby’s head, smoothing hair back.  The water was a bit cooler, at least.

The walled enclosure around the front lawn and the breadth of the car made getting past to go to the door difficult, and she didn’t want to leave the baby.

The horn?

She imagined people coming out to respond to the horn.  Having that anger directed at her.  Anxiety surged.

She’d probably break down, sobbing.  She’d had a crying fit over nothing, not that long ago, in her car.  Then she’d be a weirdly proportioned woman sobbing, standing by a stranger’s car.  She’d fumble to explain herself.

Easier to wait.

To listen as parts of the argument repeated themselves.

She pulled the baby out of his car seat, and used the wet cloth again.  She bounced him around to let him feel the breeze of movement.

The crying eased up a little.

“You’re a joke!  You’re pathetic!  I deserve better than this!”

“Do you?”

Ten minutes passed.  Then close to fifteen.

She had to get to her destination ahead of the moving truck.  It had been the cheapest option, arranging things this way, and she didn’t have a lot of money.

She returned the baby to the car seat, sorting out the seat belt.

Then, looking around, she returned to her car.

She stood there, by the hood, watching, wondering if someone would step outside.  If she could explain.

She had to go.  The movers.

She drove off.

⯁

“It’s every parent’s first fear.  On this warm summer day, new mother Natalie Teale drove to her boyfriend’s house in Trorough with her one month old child in a rear-facing car seat…”

Mia felt sick, watching.

“According to her, she wasn’t gone for long.  She turned her back, stepped away for a second, leaving the car running.  Then tragedy struck.”

The news channel was doing dramatic stings and painful pauses, as if everything was a soundbite, to be used later, as if the viewers wouldn’t pay attention if there wasn’t something to grab it every few seconds.  For Mia’s already jangled nerves and messy emotions, it was pain.

“I turned my back for fifteen seconds,” Natalie Teale said, as the camera showed her, speaking through tears.

“Well, we know that’s a lie,” Mia said.

She turned to the baby she’d re-situated in the car seat, who was sleeping well.  Fed and changed.  A girl- as she’d discovered, despite the assumption that had come with the blue onesie.

Mia stroked the little baby’s wispy hair.

“What do you think about the name Ripley?”

⯁

She pulled into a parking spot.  Ripley went to get out, and Mia tugged on her arm, pulling her closer, then giving her a one-armed hug before letting her go.  She took a minute to get Tyr sorted, then let him run off to the playground, dropping his bag at the halfway point in his excitement.

Natalie Teale was there again.

No parent approached her.  None knew what to say.

She’d fucked up.  She’d lost her child.  And to parents in this kind of community, that was a reminder that they could lose theirs.  So they’d pity her, but they’d look down on her.  They had to.

Mia had to thread a needle of a different sort, here.  To not look like she was avoiding the woman, but not be too approachable.  She’d read about people returning to the scene of the crime or trying to involve themselves in investigations, and while she was tempted to penetrate that huge blind spot that was any potential investigation, it exposed her in a bad way.  Made her suspicious, to certain mindsets.

Easier to hang back and-

Natalie looked over.

Needle not threaded.  Too close.  Or maybe she’d conveyed the wrong signal.

Then the woman walked over, casual, to start a conversation, and Mia couldn’t run without sending the wrong signals.

---

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