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Carson looked around, then looked up.  No drones.

Of course, if there were drones, there wouldn’t be many options, except to consider the rest of his life without arms, legs, eyes, eardrums, or genitals.

Coast clear.

That was good.

He kicked some boards aside, opened the hatch at the corner of the dilapidated property, then opened the back of the van he’d parked in the garage.  Valentina climbed out, then quick-walked over in the direction he indicated, climbing down the ladder.  He kept watch.

She’d changed her hair, dying it lighter, and altered her fashion style.  Makeup suggested different shapes to her cheekbones, and her eyebrows had been thinned out and reshaped.  Carson wasn’t an expert, and wondered if Davie would see her past the changes, but he could also see a situation where someone who had passing knowledge of her might go ‘Oh, that’s her!  No wait…’

Only to be followed by a secondary moment of recognition, maybe.

They still weren’t putting her face out there, though.

“Ventilation is one of the biggest issues,” Carson said.  He brought a bag with him, before closing up the van and locking it.  He carefully eased down the garage door, mindful of the trap Mia had built with the garage spring, then climbed down the ladder, closing the hatch overhead.

“Ventilation?”

“In underground bomb shelters like this, you can run into issues where breathable oxygen gets displaced.  You suffocate without feeling like you’re suffocating.  If ever you open the hatch, look down, and one of us is lying at the base of the ladder, don’t rush down to help.  Lock the hatch from the outside, get whoever isn’t down there.  If you can’t, investigate the ventilation from the outside, figure it out somehow.  It’s okay if you write us off as dead.”

“Uh huh?”

“Other than that, if the fans stop spinning, get clear.  Mia spent a long time building in contingencies, keeping things quiet enough from the outside, making sure nobody should be able to see anything, even with a thermal imaging camera.  Making sure the ventilation should stay running.  The trap at the garage door.  Do not fiddle with that, by the way.”

Valentina frowned.  “Yeah.  I remember the back of the car exploding.”

“There’s three sections downstairs, and three sets of double gates,” he said.  “Here, the hatch requires a code to exit.  1-4-1-2.  One of the rungs slides left and right.  Slide it left after punching in the code.  Remember that.”

“That’s really ominous to say, after I talked about explosions.”

He flashed a smile at Valentina.  “No explosion.  But it won’t unlock.  1-4-1-2, left.  The double gating limits the options of any escapees.  If they somehow get a look at the code you punch in there, they won’t necessarily know the hatch code or method.  Their shortest route to escape is four metal doors with four different codes.  Two between the cells and the central area.  Two between the central area and the outside world.  Hatch, which you just saw, and this door.  2-7-3-4.”

“I need to memorize this?”

He pressed a button.  The intercom panel by the keypad included a screen, which gave him a view of the activity in the next room.  He pressed the wrong button first, he always did by accident, buzzing the intercom to talk to the next room, then turned on the camera.  “No.  You can skip memorizing this, but then you’re stuck down here until one of us comes to get you, and if something serious happens, like your father finding us, you may be left down here for the rest of your life, which would be shorter if the ventilation fails, water runs into an issue, or there’s an issue with your health you’d need a doctor for.”

“So… yes.  I should?”

“Depends how much you want to risk a lifetime down here.  I guess, with time and enough energy, you could eventually get through the metal doors?  But more important- you see the screen?”

“I do.”

“Check.  Because all the security in the world doesn’t matter if the human part fails.  If they’ve escaped their cells and gotten this far, and they’re waiting on the other side of the door?  The number of keypads and doors doesn’t matter and if you don’t know the code, they won’t believe you.”

“I’m going to remember the code.  I’m getting your point.”

“1-4-1-2 and rung left, for the hatch.  2-7-3-4 for the door, between hatch and central.”

“Yep.”

He let her input the code.  The door opened.  “If a door won’t respond, it’s because there can only ever be one door open in this facility at a time.  Check the door you’ve come through, verify it’s closed and locked.”

He flicked on the lights.  “The lights take a little while to come on, don’t panic.”

The lights buzzed, flickered, and then came on with a seeming reluctance.

“Central area.  This is where you lounge and watch the feeds,” he said.

The walls were steel sheets stretched between steel struts.  The floor was textured steel, with some mats thrown down over them.  Some concrete had leaked through seams.  Cushions had been thrown down onto an arrangement of more welded pipes and struts to form a couch and chair.  Bookshelves were inset into the wall, loaded with books and DVDs, and, opposite the short entry tunnel, with the ‘couch’ facing it, there were a series of screens.

“I think Mia always had it in the back of her head that if something went terribly wrong, this would be a place to retreat to.  It’s an insight into her.  What would she want and need to live down here for a while, if she was avoiding someone like your father?”

Or Io.

“She called him Davie, to me.  When asking for details.”

“Opsec.  Good to get in the habit of using the right names and phrasing.  I should be doing the same,” Carson said.  He smiled.  “We all should, actually.”

“It felt like more than that.”

“It’s Mia.  It’s more than that.  If you want insight into who she is… this is a great little window.  Books and DVDs on the right side here?  Hers.  Copies of her favorites, and some she hasn’t seen and won’t see, because she’s saving them, here.  Sometimes if she’s doing a maintenance check, she’ll update.  Put in ones she anticipates more, bring a stack back home.”

“Huh, weird.”

“She has a section for me.  Remembers movies I liked, picks ones I might like.  I won’t even know she’s thinking about me until I see something like this.  The same goes for Ripley.  And Tyr.  Things for them that reflect how she imagines they might grow up.  How she wants them to grow up.  It’s worth a look, if you’re restless and pacing around down here, but don’t want to go up.”

“Am I staying down here?”

“You can.  You can ask for a pickup.  We’d take you back to the house.  Obviously, things are limited.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll either handle the Davie situation, or we’ll run.  Until then, it’s awkward.  We’ll do our best to make you comfortable.”

“But I’m basically a prisoner, too?”

“Maybe,” he said.  He settled, hands and butt resting on the back of the couch, while he faced the spooked teenager.  “You could say it’s two walls erected by us, trying to give you some form of shelter, and then two walls of knives, erected by your dad, pushing you into that corner.  Prisoner?  Hostage of circumstance?”

“When I was imagining running, I thought I’d be homeless,” Valentina said.  “Going from place to place, trying to survive.  Trying not to give him any way to find me.  Seeing stuff on the cameras, the drones… I don’t think I would have made it.”

“You would have had a bit more of a head start.  He didn’t realize you were gone,” Carson said.

Valentina was quiet, eyes scanning the space.

He stuck out a foot, and prodded Valentina’s leg with his toe.  “Hey.  He didn’t realize you were gone.  We told him, to build trust so we could then use that trust to lead him off track.  If it was you alone, you’d have gotten further.”

“I was already really tired.  And scared.  No money.  I kept thinking about what I’d have to do to get money.  Being homeless?  I don’t know… anything.  How to do laundry, how to cook.  My idea was I’d get to Canada and fake amnesia.”

She laughed, briefly.

Carson settled down some, relaxing posture, getting more comfortable.  This was what she needed, more than information about this space.

“I was homeless once,” he said.

“You?”

“Got out of school.  Tried working, it didn’t work out.  Then I went with the flow.  Spend time around people, and you find there’s a lot of people with ideas.  Or looking for connection.  So you say yes.  Someone’s talking about wanting to go plant trees in the Rockies, they don’t want to do it alone?  Yes.”

“You did that?”

“Yeah.  Well, only for a short while.  But then I worked at a sketchy lumber mill.  Then a volunteer project where the supplied room and board.  Someone likes an apartment, they don’t want to rent it just themselves?  Offer to stay for three months, you’ll pay your way, and then they can keep you there or kick you out after finding someone else.  You’d be surprised how far you can get, giving people permission to do what they want to do.”

“You do that with Mia?”

“I do it with Ripley.  I do it with Tyr.  I’m doing it with you right now.”

“Is this-?  Oh.  I guess.”

“It’s more doable than it seems.  Scary, absolutely.”

“But you ended up homeless?”

“Yeah.  For a bit.  Some things fell through.  I disappointed some people and burned bridges.  I wasn’t able to leapfrog from person to person, and in that weird lonely, dry patch, I found out that when you don’t know anyone, it’s harder to meet new people, and when you have no property and no steady history of income, it’s hard to find work.”

“What did you do?”

“Found a woman.  She had money and a hole in her heart.  The kind of person who always has to be in a relationship.  From there, met people.  Spent a while building houses with people before a government bill passed.  It was meant to reclaim any space on a reservation without a house on it.  Things didn’t get that far though.  Government fell apart.  The first time.”

“Oh.”

He’d dropped a lot onto her, and decided to give her time to recalibrate, take in that information, and maybe imagine herself doing the same.  Maybe she could, maybe she couldn’t.

“I think the bad parts of any of that would be worse for me,” Valentina said.  “Because I’m younger, weaker.  Because I’m a woman.  I think with all of that, it wouldn’t always be some lonely man, it’d be more like a pimp, and I’d be… a girl with a mediocre body who does that.”

‘Mediocre body’.  He’d only just started to run into this with Ripley.  The big, tricky catch with it all was that it shouldn’t matter to society, and he could argue about that endlessly, but there was also the fact it did matter to her, enough she’d raised the idea.  Ripley’s insecurities mattered to her.

But it was so hard to talk about it, too.

“Please take this in the spirit it’s meant, I have eyes for only my wife.  But you’re not mediocre.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Valentina said, skeptical.

It felt a bit different from when he tried to tell Mia something.  Like she’d believe him if he told her.  But that felt weird too, because if he was the only source for that kind of validation, especially when she was in circumstances like this…

He didn’t like to live a life of regrets, but he’d fumbled his way through early relationships in a way that made him wonder how the women thought of him in retrospect.  He didn’t want to be that.

A sort of intentional element he’d forced into place, to be mindful of, when he normally went by instinct.

Valentina ventured, “I guess part of what gets to me, even now, even sleeping in the bed you guys provided me, I worry what if that ended up being my only option?”

“I think you’d surprise yourself.”

“But- okay, maybe.  But what if I didn’t?  And then how different am I from the girl my fath- Davie took into the basement, to scare into doing what he said?  Could something like that happen to me?”

Carson nodded to himself.  “Yeah.  That makes sense.  Not so nice to think about.  I’m going to think on that.  And hope that we can… put distance between you and that scenario.”

“That’d be good.”

“I’ll mention it to Mia.  We can teach you laundry, cooking, essential things.  So you’re more independent.”

“I’d like that.”

“But I’m not homeless,” Valentina said.  Was her brightness forced?  “I’m here.”

This is still the honeymoon period, he thought.  Which was ironic because he’d never had that patch with Mia.

“I can teach you this?” he offered.  “You did ask, and we came all this way.”

“Okay.  Yeah.  For sure.”

One hand on the back of the setup, he hurdled over the couch, sitting down.  The coffee table had a catch, which, when released, let him slide off a top layer.  “Mia put this on after I spilled a drink on… this.”

A laptop had been disemboweled and inset into the coffee table, which was bolted to the floor.  Wires ran from it to the inside of the coffee table.  Everything bolted and locked on, sturdy, built to last.  The lid of the laptop, when closed, was flush with the top of the coffee table.  Mia had wanted everything hardwired.

“I’ve made some dumb mistakes in the past.  Few things have got her that upset.  I could miss an anniversary and she wouldn’t blink, I don’t think, but getting this wet was an event.“

“Don’t miss anniversaries.  Even if she seems okay with it.”

“I’ve done okay,” he said, smiling.

It was different, having a sixteen year old in the household.  Having her be a part of all of this.  Up until now, the spilling of the drink had been exclusively between him and Mia.

He found himself slipping more into the ‘talking to a friend’ mode more than the parent mode.

The butchered laptop was the central console for the cameras.  He brought up the images.

“To our right is another short hallway, two more metal doors, two more security panels.  And them.”

Four cells, one of which was under construction, hidden behind steel and struts.  Three were occupied.  The computer heard what they said, if they tried calling out, and appended it to logs at the bottom of the screen.  He quickly glanced through.

“So.  Normally our setup is different.  Squat toilets, essentially holes in the floor, water from overhead serves double as flush and shower.  Each cell has a grate with tracks inset into the floor slides between a space in front of the door to a space over the toilet, so you don’t have to stand on or in the toilet to shower.  Took those out.  Or covered them up.  Mounted a regular stainless steel toilet over the hole.  No showers- covered that up too.  Televisions behind plexiglass, which gets pretty beat up.  We’d sometimes reach out to contact people to let them decide their programming for the next while.”

“What do I do?”

“The original idea with the grate system was that we’d only give them food and supplies if the grate was by the door.  There’s a slot there, we slide it in, under the grate.  They can’t grab for us or try to hurt us with the grate in the way.  That’s gone.  It’s too identifying.  So you’ll want to be careful.  Cells are to the right of this room.  There’s a separate area to the left, with bunks, a larder, a small kitchen area.  Make them lunch when the time comes.  Dinner, if you decide you want to stay here overnight.  Keep an eye out, to make sure there’s no medical emergency.”

“Suicide?”

“Or self-harm.  Or something else.  Feces smeared on walls, themselves.  We’re not nearly that far along yet, though.  It’s going to be tough.  In our experience, people without TV will get bored and restless.  Some might act out like that.  Faster than otherwise.”

“You’ve done this a lot.”

“Less than we’ve helped people disappear.”

“What’s the longest you’ve kept someone?”

“Forty-one days.”

“Did they lose it?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “I think most people would.  It was the point.  We had a tape playing a recording from a former target of his on loop.”

“Can I, uh, punish them?  Like-”

She trailed off.  He was frowning a bit at her.

“-to stop them from doing something?” she said, with less enthusiasm, wincing some.

“There’s a means of talking to them.  Type here, it’ll speak to them in a computer generated voice.  Gets pronunciation wrong, sometimes, but it’ll do.  Your best bet is to call us.”

Valentina pulled one corner of her mouth back.

“Why?  You said you had issues with Addi?”

On screen, Addi was up, pacing, checking the walls with care- where wall met ceiling- one loop.  Pushing against the panels that had been welded there, to see where there was wobble.

“When high school started, word got out that my dad was in organized crime.  It was her.  It killed my social life.  I lost friends, people joked about it.  A guy showed interest in me and it turned out he wanted to work for my dad or something?”

“That’s not how it works.  What an idiot.”

“I know.  It was her.  Never confirmed one hundred percent, but the way she lorded it over me, looked at me?  Her dad worked for my dad.  The bitch.  And I couldn’t say or do anything about it because if I outed her, I’d be confirming what she said, and my dad might actually kill her.”

“Refuge in audacity?”

“I guess?  Also, shit, sorry.  Davie, not my dad.”

“Better if you figure that out here than out in the world.  There’s a little while before a slip-up like that could cost.  You can’t punish her, Valentina.  It’d make people wonder, might help them draw a line from all of this to her.”

“You’re framing Davie Cavalcanti, right?”

“Yes.”

“Can you frame it so, like, he pretended his daughter disappeared, and she was really handling the prisoners?”

“The way we do things, it’s better to not try to create a narrative like that.  If they find a hole in the story, it calls everything into question.  Our narrative is simple, we’re not even spelling it out.  Our hope is that Davie has laid enough groundwork that he tells the story, and we get them looking in that direction.”

“So no revenge?”

“Not at this point.  If it really is that much of a priority, we can talk about it.  We all have our odd bits.  But think hard.  Is it something you have to do?  Does it have to happen, even if it brings Davie Cavalcanti closer to your trail?”

She sighed.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Have you ever hated anyone?  Because I don’t even hate my- Davie.  He scares me, I don’t understand him, but I can see where someone would grow up in an intense situation like the Crazy Kitchen gang, doing wild stuff from really young, and become him.  But I hate her.  And a few of her friends.  Nothing made her this way, there was no reason to.  She saw an opening with enough… clearance.”

“Plausible deniability.”

“Yeah!  That’s it.  She saw a chance, she had power, and then she pulled some shit.  And she wasn’t ever sorry.  I suspected, from things she said, then she acted so smug.”

He stood, approaching, and offered a hug.

She took it, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Watching her twisting in the wind, wondering what’s going on and not getting answers?  That’s going to be more satisfying and more effective than any taunting you could do.  Trust me.”

“I guess.”

“I’ve got to go see to some things, and I’ve got to drive back.  Let me quickly run you through some things that might set off alarms.  If they flood a cell, you might get this alert…”

⯁

Carson cheered.  Mia was just as loud beside him.

Tyr ran with little sense of how to run, as if moving legs up and down faster would get him where he wanted to go, instead of shifting gait and widening his strides.  There were enough kids like him, though, that he wasn’t at the bottom of the pack, and it seemed he had enough of a reputation as a bruiser, accidental or otherwise, that other kids noticed when he appeared beside them, and faltered a bit.

He wasn’t a bully- he was friendly to everyone.  But his idea of friendly was similar to a big puppy in a group of very timid kittens.  No idea of the comparative power he had.  It was hilarious to see.

Parents were gathered at the outside fence, looking in, cheering for kids who did their activities.  There were some overly expensive hotdogs and other basic lunch things for those in attendance, too.  Ripley was over there eating one with a friend.  There were about fifteen volunteers from around Ripley’s age there, for a job that might’ve taken two dedicated ones, which gave them a lot of freedom to skip a bit of afternoon class, eat, and cheer for younger relatives and neighbors.

By accident and exhaustion as much as anything else, Tyr found a longer stride, and covered more ground, to a point that seemed to surprise him.  Which led to him losing that stride.  It did spook the girl in fourth place and the boy in fifth place, as they ran their race around the schoolyard.

“So funny,” Carson commented.

“Do you think you could try teaching him to run?  When things are quieter?” Mia asked.

“Yeah.  I’ll take him to the park sometime.  Look at him.  He’s going to crash so hard later, going all-out like this.  Wake up sore and cranky.”

“We’ll take it easy tonight.  Get takeout?” Mia asked.

“Sure.”

Mrs. Scalf was watching.  He didn’t make eye contact, but instead put his arm around Mia’s shoulders, squeezing.

When he’d showed up alone to school events before, like the book bonanza, Mrs. Scalf was among the women who’d blatantly hit on him.  Like vultures on a carcass, when the threat that had originally downed it had moved on.

He mentally put her in a similar bucket to the gang members.  Viewing it all as a hierarchy, where they saw themselves as prettier or better than Mia on some level.  More deserving of him.

He liked subtly screwing with them, by not getting even blatant hints, and making more public displays of affection toward Mia when they were around.

The crowd winced as Tyr took a dive, and two more kids fell, trying to avoid him or tripping over him.

Mia and Carson might’ve been the only ones not to react like the crowd did.

“Just get up,” Carson said, under his breath.  “You’ve gotten up from worse.”

Tyr did, and resumed running like nothing had happened.

One of the other kids who’d fallen walked across the track- almost in the way of the last place finisher, who might’ve collided with her if it wasn’t for the fact they were practically walking.  The girl went to where her mom was watching, crying.

“Sorry!” Carson called out.

The dad waved him off.

“I sometimes imagine who he’ll be,” Mia mused aloud.

“Six inches taller than you, capable of tearing a car tire in two with his bare hands?”

“No, seriously, though.”

“It might be good to instill some empathy.  If someone gets hurt around him-”

“Which happens a lot,” Mia muttered.

“-we, yeah, happens a lot.  It’d be good if he was gentle with those people.  I remember a guy I was drunk with getting hurt.  Giant of a guy carried the guy to where he could get help, like it was nothing.”

“I like that image for Tyr.  He might not be tall, you know?  Could be he got a headstart and that was that.”

“I can see it,” Carson said.  Because I remember his bio dad.

Maybe the mental connection to the bio dad got them thinking along the same lines, because Mia turned her head to look around the same time he did.  Natalie was cheering for little Sterling Teale.  A man was beside her, young-looking, brown-skinned, with hair styled to be intentionally messy.  It looked like the heat was getting to him.

They stayed for a bit, and then Ripley waved them over.  Mia waved back, and they started walking around.

Tyr was lying on the grass by the water station, spread eagle, chest heaving.

They were on their own for a short stretch.

“Benito Jaime.  Ben for short.  True crime investigator, journalist,” Mia murmured.

“Hmm, looks young.”

“He and another investigator found the Oral Lake sniper.  Turned out to be teenagers younger than Valentina.  They gave the information to police, police didn’t follow up.”

“Strike?”

“Around the start of the first big one.  Vigilantes went after the kids.  Then the partner got frustrated, or felt responsible.  Sold all the tapes, investigation notes, everything, to a streaming service.  Natalie’s new friend got a share, but… they parted ways.”

“And from what you said, he was upfront about wanting to do another?

“Hmmm.  Okay.  When did you realize he was that Ben?”

“When we got here and they were together,” Mia murmured.  “I’ve looked at a lot of Bens.”

“This isn’t the direction you want to look, Ben,” Carson said.  “You’ve been anticipated, you’ll run into a lot of dead ends and stumble onto landmines.”

“I wish that was true,” Mia said.

“Hey, Mi?” he asked, shortening her name.

“Yeah?”

“Proposing an idea.  Shoot it down for me, okay?”

“Okay.”

It was their method, whenever they had an idea for a safety measure.  Or if they were justifying buying a firearm, or changing plans.  Normally it was Mia with the ideas, Carson as the moderating force.

He ventured, “What if I dismembered him?  We could tie it back to Davie.  Arms, legs, eardrums, eyes?  I could conceal my identity.”

“They’d notice the tools are different.  Knife type, cut length, cut depth.  Method of getting through bone.”

“Hmm.  You can’t find out that stuff from the report?  So I can match it?”

“Not what I can access.  Could you even keep someone alive?”

“I find I surprise myself, so maybe?”

“It takes a lot.  Doctors on call.  Probably doctors doing it all in the first place.  Blood transfusions to keep them going.  Medication and careful attention to avoid them going into shock,” Mia said.  “Which might be inevitable.”

They were running out of clear fence.  Another thirty seconds of walking and they’d be in earshot of other adults.

He made her stop, and put arms around her shoulders, while she was facing him.  “That’s a no, then?”

“No.  Thank you for being willing to kill and dismember someone for me,” she said.  “But there is the fact it’s morally wrong.  I don’t think he’s a bad person.  We’re not evil people, ourselves.”

“No.  We’re not,” he agreed.  “We’re cautious people, though.”

“In the interest of being cautious… are you going to be okay later?” she asked.  “With new work?”

“Yes.”  He gave her a peck on the lips.  “Valentina wants revenge.”

“Against Davie?”

“Addie, old schoolmate.”

“That’s complicated.  And Addie’s young.  Old enough I’m not going to…”

“Yeah.”

“But I’d feel bad.  What kind of revenge?”

He still stood there, arms around her shoulders.  They didn’t have long before some other parents who were walking around the perimeter fence reached them.  “I don’t think she’s articulated it yet.  When we were talking, she said it might be a good plan to threaten one of the girls with Davie-style punishment.  Get them scared, tie it to things later.”

“A little clumsy.”

“She’s young.”

“I worry.”

“I know.”

“We’re laying it all on the line for a near-stranger.”

“We are.  But you did that for me, once.”

“Reluctantly.”

He kissed her, a peck on the lips.  He was aware of a certain someone approaching, off to the side.

“Ewww, gross.”

Ripley.

“We wanted to check in with you before we go.  I do have to work at the hospital now and again, even with family stuff going on in the background.”

“Right, family stuff,” Ripley said.  The tone and volume might’ve gotten some peopel’s attention.  Maybe they thought ‘divorce’ or something else.  But then Ripley smiled.

She was thinking of Valentina.

If Valentina decided she’d rather stay at the bunker, it’d probably crush Ripley.  She’d mentioned her cousin right at the start of this kindergarten activity afternoon thing.  She’d been good about not mentioning it in front of others, as requested.

“Come buy hotdogs!”

Maybe that was a bigger reason to have a bunch of kids manning the station, handling orders and bringing people food.  Parents seemed to feel obligated to participate, even when a basic frankfurter and coke was eight dollars.

It worked.  Carson waited in line.

“They’re looking at us,” Mia murmured.

Natalie Teale and Ben the journalist-investigator.

They were.

“Well, you said she was short tempered, and you had a tiff with her.”

“Not even a tiff,” Mia said.  “She got upset.”

“Maybe she’s the sort who holds a grudge, then.”

They got their hotdogs, which were admittedly pretty good- how could it not be?  Tyr found them, and he and Mia each gave him some of theirs.

He wasn’t quite done when a text came.

“I’ll see you.  Have a good afternoon at work, don’t dwell too much on the little things.”

“Good luck,” Mia told him.

He found himself happy, as he walked two long blocks over to the main street where a number of stores and fast food places were.  Two stores down, Max Highland had parked.

She’d said thank you.  She’d actually seemed grateful for his offer.

He knew she was grateful, for much more than that.  But it was a rarity that he didn’t need to read between the lines.

He got into the car.

“As we discussed?” Highland asked.

“Please.”

Highland checked the coast was clear -it wasn’t, with some high schoolers cutting across the parking lot, in what Carson assumed was a late lunch break- then pulled out.

Part of what he’d outlined to Valentina was the number of provisions being made.  That Valentina was, as of last night, part of a chain of custody, as Mia had termed it.  That if one of them was disabled, there would be instructions and options.  Provided Valentina didn’t forget codes and lock herself down there, there was mail she could look out for and instructions she could follow.  Some of it was how to claim money, a new identity, and disappear.  How some money should go to Ripley and Tyr.

Some of it had to do with the prisoners.  How to extricate them.  Because Mia was a bit of a softie.

There were contingencies here too.  Because this plan had to move forward at this rate.  So people like Highland were now scheduled to get a message about the kidnapped girls if Carson and Mia went radio silent for a week, so he could retrieve them.  Depending, he’d carry out some stages of the plan.

Now they were bringing someone else into play.  Very different from Highland.  Highland was a professional, an ex-soldier.  Give him a job and he did it.

“Apparently this one’s dangerous?” Highland asked, as if reading Carson’s mind.

“In a way.  It’s a bit of a drive, too.”

⯁

All this while, they were operating under the assumption that the Cavalcantis were on maximum alert.  Two daughters of the family were taken.  The lawyer’s daughter gone.

Davie had asked them to disappear someone tonight.  Then he’d canceled.  Then he’d asked again, about someone else.

It was hard not to read something into that disorganization.

It felt like busywork.

He’d have to handle this, then go straight to that.  Mia would work, then get things underway.

Another person the contact had moved to the outskirts of the city.

“Spence Bolden.”

“Why does that sound familiar?”

“Because he was on the news at one point.  Government claimed eminent domain.  Bolden said his family had owned the land for forever.  He said ‘over my dead body’, and then refused to die.”

“Did they get it?”

“They got it.  But he made them pay a price.”

“I might not have been here when that happened.  You miss news while deployed.”

There was no real trail through the woods.  Not human made or human-maintained.  Some that animals had forged.

Everything looked so dirty.  The smoke from the wildfires had reached this place.  It gave it a grit, a griminess, and it cut into the green-ness of it to make it dingy in color.

Carson pulled his guns out, then laid them on the car seat.  “You too.”

Highland complied.

Carson and Highland walked for a minute.

“Captain?” Highland asked.

“Yeah?”

“Hold up?”

Carson stopped in his tracks.  Then, after a moment’s consideration, he raised his hands.

“Something’s…”

“It’s probably him,” Carson said.  “Bad feeling?”

“I guess.”

After a pause, Highland raised his hands.

We’re going to feel really goofy if fifteen minutes pass and it turns out Bolden isn’t anywhere near here.

“I’m telling you his original name because you were going to recognize him, anyway.”

“Even if I was overseas?”

“His face floats around, it appears places.  They’re still looking.  But the way he operates, he’s harder to find.”

Borden’s land had been forest.  He’d lived a spartan life, going into town two or three times a year to get essentials, like shirts and jeans that would last, replacement tools.  He forged a lot of his own tools, though.

He’d had to abandon it.  But with their help, he’d moved here.

Long minutes passed.  Carson didn’t budge, hands still raised.

“Is this worth it?” Highland asked.

“Better he finds us than we find him.  And he should find us.  Unless he’s injured, or has health conditions.  None of which was mentioned on the phone.”

“Okay.”

“He was a one-man army.  Knew his woods like the back of his hand, So, justifying it by the murders he’d committed in the early phases, they sent an army of officers after him.  One man army against forces like that?  They only need one bullet to land.”

“What ended it?”

“He did.  He backed off, let them have the land.  Took a lifetime of skills in hunting, pathfinding, tracking.  Started smuggling.  People and product.  This is right after the dog caught its own tail.”

“Ahhh.”

“Big ban on illegal entry, crackdown on migrants.  A lot went to shit.  Businesses that leaned on that, many in the south, started to run into serious problems.  High demand, Bolden had the people to fill it.  Big money.  Earned a couple hundred thou, you’d think some of that goes to living expenses, right?”

“He kept all of the earnings?”

“Went right back to the people he was working with with pretty much every dollar left unspent.  Said he wanted help.  Set them onto the people who were building on ‘his’ land.  Then he hunted the leftovers.”

“He wasn’t our first choice,” Carson said, quiet, hands still raised.

“You mention that now?  What was the problem with the first choice?”

“Happy where he was.  No money troubles, no restlessness.  He might’ve intuited it was about the Cavalcanti family, and gotten scared.  He said no.”

“Are you scared of the Cavalcanti family?” Highland asked, raising his voice to be heard.

Carson hadn’t heard the approach.  But Bolden was there, approaching them from the side and a little bit behind, holding a crossbow.  He was skinny in a way that suggested bad health- a man who lived off the land when the land didn’t always provide.  Short blond hair that was a little wispy, a bit trailing off from the center-front of his hairline, looking a lot like corn silk.  Deep-set, large eyes, the lines of his skull visible around eye, cheekbone, and cheek, skin tight and surprisingly light in tone, without a tan, but with an uncharacteristic age to it.  It was like his hair was too young and his skin was too old.  He wore light warpaint, and camouflage clothes that blended into the woods.

The overall ‘skull’-ness of the man and the attitude made Carson think of a chihuahua.  Except Chihuahuas didn’t rack up newsworthy body counts without ever firing a gun.

“You talked to my employer on the phone?” Carson asked.

“I did.  I remember you.  You covered up my tattoo.  Wasn’t that important, my face is recognizable, but it was a nice break.  I still like it.”

“I’m glad,” Carson said.

Bolden had known about them through a friend of the contact, by way of the smuggling.  It had been an odd job.  Mostly handling backend stuff like buying a property and ensuring everything was legitimate enough that Bolden wouldn’t have anyone disturbing him.  Or evicting him with claims of eminent domain and a pittance of money.

“So?” Carson asked.

“Cavalcanti family focus is elsewhere.  They’ve been using routes I set up and arranged in the first place.  I met with suppliers, put my neck on the line, and that’s gone, now.”

“Apparently.”

“The guy who sent me to you all those years ago, he took notes and sold it to them?”

The contact?  “We don’t know who stole your supply routes and suppliers.  Maybe those people found the Cavalcanti family.”

“Doesn’t matter, I guess.  The past.”

Did that make this a no after all?  Had they intruded too far into the territory of a territorial man?

“You’re paying?” Bolden asked.

“Yes.”

“I have gout.  Fatty foods, foods preserved in brine and salt, I guess.  I can’t move very fast.  I can still do the work.”

“That’s fine.”

“The job?”

“Find their drug supply, make shipments disappear.”

“Bolts nocked or put away?”

“Nocked.  But if there are bodies, I’d rather disappear them.”

“Who handles that part?”

“Us.  We do.  Up to a limit.”

“I don’t like limits,” Bolden said.  He hadn’t smiled in the time he’d walked up to them.  He might not have blinked.  The pain on his face was evident whenever he took a step.  “If I see someone and it might be complicated to let them live?  I don’t want to spend a moment wondering and get myself shot.”

Carson nodded.

He’d had only passing interactions with this man.  Mia had warned him.  They’d talked to people who had information, and people who could get things done.  Bolden was both, and in some capacities, he was information nobody else had, or a source of potential unlike others.  Mia had put it simply: that if they went this route and they convinced him to join up, the job would probably get done, even if it was a tough one, but also, as a price, people would probably die.

The trick would be making sure it was the right people.

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