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Gio had moved some plants aside on the short bookshelf that ran beneath a window, sat herself there, and watched over Mia’s shoulder as she worked.  There was a layer to it where it looked like common sense, like browsing Go Foto Yourself and MyFace pages, but there were other parts where she seemed to pull things together in a way that was almost magic.  She’d add a line to code in a window she kept as a narrow column on one screen, then run it, and the neighboring window would immediately go to a post.  A picture would get dragged into a document, joining a bunch of others.  She’d bring up another window, type something, check anywhere from one to twenty boxes.  Bam, new face from the family tree.

“I think that’s my aunt,” Gio said.  “Or aunt once removed?  I don’t know how that stuff works.”

“Is it?” Mia asked.  She used one of the windows from before, typing in a name.  All the big windows switched- each one to a different social media page.  A lot of the same pictures repeated on different pages.

Veneranda Pierucci?  One image was opened up large.  Mia looked over her shoulder at Gio.

“Oh,” Gio said, feeling heat on her face.  “No.  Sorry.  They look similar.”

“It’s fine,” Mia said.  She switched the windows back to where she had them before.  Then she paused, running fingers through her hair.  It was like she’d found her stride before and now she’d stopped, and she remembered that her head hurt and everything else.

Gio felt awkward.  She’d wanted to help and she’d hurt instead.  She’d been given some games and access to streaming services, with permission to rent whatever she wanted.  School had been hard, before Gio had gone into the basement and everything had fallen apart, and for weeks and weeks, she’d wished she could get a break, catch up on, like, everything.  Except it piled up, and her friends were talking about plans to go on a trip together, organizing who paid what, and assuming Gio would join in.

All she’d really wanted was a chance to laze around, sleep in, catch up on movies and shows, sunbathe by the pool.

Now she could do most of those things, and she was so restless she could barely sleep.

Mia had asked her to come in and answer some questions, and she’d ended up staying.  The longer she stayed, the more awkward it felt to leave abruptly, and interrupt everything.

Should she leave now?

“Do you know if Davie Cavalcanti interacted much with any politicians?  Military?”

“Um.  I think a few of the guys he’d usually have around as, like bodyguards, had some experience with that?”

Mia switched windows, then highlighted a handful.  She made the images big- three images in a line across the screen.

“Yeah,” Gio confirmed.  “Them.”

“I’m thinking about important men.  They might have been older.”

“I remember once my dad interrupted me while we were shopping, and told me to shake the hand of this man.  He said it might be the most important man I ever met in my life.  It was weird, him saying that in front of the guy.  Mostly I was annoyed because I was watching a cheesy movie on TV, and I missed something important.  And I never got the name of the movie, so I couldn’t look for it later.”

“Can you clarify, when you say ‘my dad’…”

“Oh,” Gio said.  “Davie Cavalcanti, I mean.”

The disapproval radiated off of Mia, even though Mia didn’t say or do anything.

“How long ago?” Mia asked.

“Three years, I guess?”

“Would you recognize him again if you saw him?”

“I… probably not?”

“If I gave you pictures to look at, could you try?”

“Yeah.”

Mia got a tablet, loaded up some pages, and showed Gio what to look through.  Gio ended up taking it to Ripley’s reading nook, moving some of Ripley’s things out of the nook, and settling in there.  The closest place that was comfortable.

Senators, governors, mayor, councilmen.  Layers of government she hadn’t even known existed, and she’d gone to a good school.

Then the various possible people in the military who could be involved here:  She scrolled to the middle of the list, hoping it would even out, but even then, there were Command Sergeant Majors, Gunnery Sergeants, Command Chief Master Sergeants, Sergeant Majors, First Sergeants, Senior Master Sergeants, Master Sergeants.  Enough to make her head spin.

For here, home, everything around, and everything that oversaw it.

Men with suits and ties, posing for a camera.  Men with decorated military jackets, doing the same.  All around the same age, with similar styles, because they were all well-trimmed, without major visible tattoos, for the most part.  The occasional photo of a man with a dog, a woman, or someone with a scar broke up the almost hypnotic monotony of it all.

⯁

She startled awake- someone had put a blanket over her, and moved the tablet to a nearby shelf.  She’d fallen asleep, tablet in hand.

She got up, and paused in the doorway.  Mia was there, sweating from a recent workout- she hadn’t used the machine in the corner of her office, but the beads of sweat reflected the blue-white glow of the screens.

“Sorry.  Passed out.”

“It’s fine.  Really.”

It was really hard to deal with Mia, because Mia was so tense, constantly, that it found its way into everything else about her, like how terse her words could be.  It left Gio feeling like Mia was a… a huge fist, clenched so tight it trembled, waiting for something to strike out at.  But it didn’t.

The thing Gio was trying to figure out was… was there a line?  And if there was, should she push it?  Because knowing would help her decide… all of this.  It was a strange house with everything in strange places.  The individual family members were mismatched, the food they ate and the way they handled mealtimes felt alien, the way they approached routines, the things they treated as automatic and the things they didn’t, the meshing of normal and crime stuff, and how casually Gio was included in the crime stuff…

It made her feel like she could burst into tears.

It made her feel like it would be a relief if she said the wrong thing and Mia just snapped, and started hitting her with clenched fists, not stopping until someone got in the way, it would be a relief.  It would decide this, and Gio could know she had to escape this like she escaped her dad.

She looked at Mia, and those glowing screens.

Escape it somehow.

“Do you still need me to try and find the face?”

“If you could, I would be very interested.  Davie Cavalcanti knows about the place where we have our three guests.  He keeps surprising us with how many resources he has.”

Scary.  “Okay.  I’ll look.”

“Give me the tablet?”

Gio had to go get it.  She brought it to Mia.

“I pulled up some other faces, of men who were in the news in the last decade. Wealthy, connected, capable, dangerous, controversial.  Take a look.”

“I’m kind of interested to see how many I can recognize.”

“Let me know,” Mia said, with a small smile.  “Even if it’s not the person Davie Cavalcanti introduced to you as very important, if you think you saw them around the house, at parties, anything like that…”

“What if I’m not one hundred percent sure?”

“Let me know if you’re not.”

Gio retreated to the nook.

She was there another thirty or forty minutes, when Mia emerged from her room, stretching.  She went into the washroom.  Cranking on the shower.

It might have woken the kids up, because Tyr, underdressed, hair plastered into whorls around his head, came across the hall, passing by Gio and the reading nook, into Ripley’s room.

Ripley emerged, hand tugged by Tyr, who led her down the hall toward the bathroom.  Ripley looked like she was half asleep, rolling her eyes in a huge way.

“Is it-” Gio started.

Her voice seemed to startle Ripley, and really startled Tyr.  Tyr turned, and even with his hand loosely gripping Ripley’s, fell, eyes wide.

For a second, Gio thought he’d burst into tears.  Then a wicked smile spread across his face, the expressions of a mischievous cartoon imp and snarling dog merging at the intersection of five year old, before he flipped over onto hands and knees, threw himself to his feet, and ran the rest of the way to the bathroom, banging on the door as soon as he was there.

“Volume, people are sleeping,” Mia called out, through the door.

“I think everyone’s awake, unless dad’s sleeping somewhere weird,” Ripley said, peeking into the parent’s bedroom.  “Dad’s out, right?”

“Yeah,” Gio said, around the same time Mia said something she couldn’t make out, that sounded affirmative.

Mia gave the okay, and Tyr let himself into the bathroom.  Another one of those alien things, to Gio.  It felt weird to her to go to the bathroom in the same part of the house another family member was in, let alone take a whiz while a parent was on the other side of a shower curtain.

“Is he so afraid of the dark he needs his big sister, or not?” Gio asked.  “He got over it fast.”

“Who knows?” Ripley asked.  “Maybe he does it to be a pain in my skinny butt.”

“Maybe he wants the company.”

“Well, I want sleep, so he should wait ’til morning, if that’s what he wants,” Ripley grumbled.  Ripley had her hair in braids, though it was so short it was barely necessary or possible, and wore what she’d affectionately termed ‘old man’ pyjamas, with the folded collar.  It looked a bit warm to Gio for the hot weather but a lot of Ripley’s preferred clothing did.

“I was going to say, is it okay if I’m using your reading nook?”

“I’ll allow it,” Ripley said, with an air of authority.  “It’s fine.  You couldn’t sleep?  It’s… getting closer to morning.”

“Yeah.  I dunno.  I’ll sleep during the day, I guess.”

Ripley ventured closer, then, hesitant, put her arms out.

Gio leaned forward a bit, and, feeling awkward, hugged Ripley.

“I’m glad you’re here.  It’s cool having a big cousin.”

“We’ll do more shopping for your clothes later, okay?”

“Cool.”

Tyr emerged from the washroom.

“Wash your hands,” Ripley told him.

He reversed direction, went to wash his hands, and then returned to his room.  Ripley went to shut the bathroom door he’d left open, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated way, and then returned to her room.

“Try to get some sleep,” Ripley said, before starting to close the door.

“You really are an old man at heart huh?”

Ripley flashed a smile before the door shut.

Mia wasn’t long in the shower.  She came out, went to her room to change into more comfortable t-shirt and pyjama pants, then returned to her office.

Gio spent a while browsing.  Just as it had been hard to find an excuse to leave the room earlier, she wanted to find something to bring before she could enter.  She looked through the figures from the news, the military people, the government people, and settled on a handful.

She knocked lightly at the door.

“Found one?”

“Found some maybes.  Two definites.  And one close.”

“Show me.”

Gio walked around the desk and handed over the tablet.  “This military guy.  Sergeant.  Or someone who looked a lot like him.”

“Not surprising.  He’s a relative of yours.”

“Oh.  This guy.  And this one.  I remember him and my- Davie Cavalcanti sitting in the living room, or he’d come to the door late at night.”

“Ex-police chief.”

Gio indicated another few pictures.

“Gang lieutenants that became lieutenants of the Kitchen.  Good to verify.”

“And this guy might look like the guy I was introduced to.  But I really wasn’t paying attention, and memories are funny.  Now I’m thinking, did I think of off-duty Santa without the beard?  Or was it a movie I watched, or something else?”

Mia brought up a series of pictures, and highlighted one.

It was him.  He looked like Santa Claus had gotten fired, shaved off his beard, leaving thick sideburns, still, had dressed in darker colors, and drank a lot, his nose covered in broken veins.

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

“Who is he?”

“Government.  Unabashedly connected to the Civil Warriors, but he gets seats at the table.  He talks to politicians, helps them run campaigns.  He talks to people like Davie Cavalcanti.  Which you’d think would mean Davie is trying to tie his gang to the group…”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

“Yeah.  This might be a puzzle that’s bigger than what I can tackle tonight.  I’m going to focus on getting Carson through things.  We’re moving our guests.  It’s going to be tricky.  If you want to help, we’d welcome it.”

“I want to help.”

“On that topic, if you could nail down a fashion and style that’s distinct from your old self… I’d like you to wear that style, and get used to it, so you look natural in it when you’re out in public, down the line.”

“I’ve got some things.  It’s on my phone.”

“Can I look?”

Gio browsed to the right set of images, then handed it over.

Mia looked for a moment, then turned to her computer.  She brought up Gio’s Go Foto Yourself gallery, typed in some code on a side window, and highlighted an image.

Similar looks.

“It’s scary how fast you can do that,” Gio said.

“It’s scarier if that summer day stuck in the memory of the man who escorted you and your friends on that shopping trip, and helps him connect your old self to Valentina Hurst.”

Valentina Hurst.

It was so weird to imagine.

“It’s so weird to like… spend all this time trying to hash out who I am, what I like, how I want to come across, and now I’m nuking all of that, throwing it away.   You could even say I’m running the opposite direction.  What if I never feel comfortable in my own skin?”

“Things can smooth out as you turn eighteen, nineteen, twenty.  Styles will shift.  This is doable, and it’s important, trust me.”

“I know.  But it’s hard.  It’s weird.  A lot of this is weird.”

She felt like she was badly understating how alien a lot of this felt.

“Yeah,” Mia said.  Her eyes remained on the screen.  Carson was out there, dealing with stuff, Gio supposed.  Mia ventured, “I’ve never been a mom to a teenager before.  I wish I could do more for you.  You being safe is the number one priority.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“This is what I do, Valentina.  I’m good at looking at all of this, seeing how the picture comes together.  I bring a picture together for my clients, I don’t just want to give them a name, a location, and say ‘good luck’.  I give them a life.  A second chance.  That’s what you have here.  You’re not running from Davie Cavalcanti and starting from zero.  You have a family here.  Security.  A safety net.  If you want to go to Edinburgh and study there, or go backpacking through Europe in your twenties, you can.  You might have an annoying expectation from mom, that you call once in a while… but that’s not so bad, is it?”

Gio thought of her mom.  That tearful conversation before they’d broken contact.

She’d been offered a deal by a woman who’d comforted her during a panic attack, in a campground bathroom in the middle of the night.  Was this worse than going on the run herself, going from bus station to bus station to cross the country, in hopes she could put enough distance between herself and her father?  Eventually getting caught when a camera caught her face and her father got notified by his extended network?  Where she’d eventually get taken home, taken to that basement, and gradually turned into a torso, blind, deaf, mute, and immobile?

“No.”

She hadn’t asked to be Mia’s daughter.  They’d never negotiated that point.  If she referred to her mom as her mom and rejected Mia, she’d be rejecting this deal.  It was one of the surefire ways she could imagine Mia getting angry.

“Are Ripley and Tyr yours?”

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to phrase that.  But it was four in the morning, and her brain might have been trying so hard to fight against saying one dumb thing it had steered into another.

“Of course,” Mia said, looking bewildered.  Then, with more emotion, “What kind of question is that?”

She leaned forward a bit, and Gio had to make herself stay put, because Mia was more a trembling clenched fist in that small movement than anytime tonight.  In the dimly lit room, Mia’s eyes had images of the computer screens reflected on them, dancing as her eyes searched Gio’s face.

“I meant are they- I know they’re yours.  I’m not saying they aren’t.  Are they yours, originally?”

“Honey, yes.  Absolutely.”

Maybe there was doubt on Gio’s face, because Mia reached forward.  Her hand grabbed Gio’s wrist.

Lines traced the divots between muscle groups in Mia’s muscular arm, moving as Mia changed her grip, so she was holding Gio’s hand, instead.  It turned Mia’s arm wrist up, so the lines weren’t as pronounced, the shape of her arm softer in the lighting.

“From birth to now.  With birth certificates, doctor’s appointments, school records, social security numbers and more.  You too.  There’s things to be finalized, before your fictional parents divest themselves of you, but that’s a formality that’s been slightly delayed by everything else going on.  You, Valentina Marie Hurst, are my daughter.  You’re family.  The paperwork confirms that it’s always been the case.  From birth to now.”

There was an intensity in the words, a conviction, that came through with enough force that Valentina, Gio, almost doubted herself and her reality.

“Come here,” Mia said.

Gio hesitated, but she wasn’t willing to go against that intensity and conviction.

She let Mia pull her into a hug.  One that was alien.

Except a lot of things didn’t fit about this new life, this new house, these kids she was treating as family, and how it was all put together.  She’d been feeling a kind of strain, like she was some stunt actress in a movie, each hand gripping the side view mirror of a different truck, feet dangling above highway, struggling to hold on, straining, as they barreled forward at top speeds, feeling moments of terror and having to do so much extra work every time one slightly pulled further to the side than the other, or lagged behind by a foot.  Mutilation or death waiting for her, if she slipped.

Every bit of weirdness was that truck pulling to one side, requiring that extra work, accommodation, adjustment from her.

Mia being a trembling clenched fist was one thing, and it was so hard to shake the feeling that fist would swing into her face, if she failed to adjust.

The hug was a kind of answer to all of those questions and worries.  Mia was a mom.  She’d said it in their first meeting.  She wanted to protect Gio.  She meant that.  It was release, a break from days of being suspended.  It came at four fifty in the morning, going by the computer clock, when she hadn’t been sleeping that well in the other hours, when she was tired, from it all.

She cried, and let the hug be a hug.  Mia was big enough that somehow, Valentina felt like she was very small again, half her actual age, which tore down her defenses further.

The tears became sobs, her whole body jerking, hands gripping t-shirt for traction, clumping fabric between fingers.

A whole lot of rationale, half-formed, running through her head, about the time, the suspension in an alien house, the accumulated stress, to try to desperately justify to herself why she was accepting a mom hug like this, betraying the woman who lived overseas, in hiding from Davie Cavalcanti, if that woman had even survived Gio’s last reaching out.

Which made her sob harder, groaning her pain through it all, because even while letting it all out, there was still too much there, inside her, for tears and sobs to vent.  Mia’s hand rubbed her back throughout.

Valentina.  That was the price.  Taking that name.

⯁

She dreamed of what Mia had mentioned.  A backpacking trip through Europe.  Stumbling through labyrinthine, dangerous streets with a heavy bag that made it hard to keep her balance- always feeling like she was tilting and on the verge of falling over hard.

When she was shaken awake, she stirred.  Her eyes went to the clock.  She’d only been asleep an hour or an hour and a half, passing out after emotionally venting, and she’d dreamed in that short period of time.

“Hands in plain view,” Davie Cavalcanti said.

Valentina’s blood ran cold.

“Yes,” Mia said, removing her foot from the bed.  “I have to disable something.”

She was on her phone, phone held at arm’s length, one hand held up in view, empty.

“Peeking through the windows to figure out if you should leave enough traps active to wipe out me and my men, so you can make a run for it?  With little Ripley and Tyr in tow?”

“Why would I?” Mia asked.  She was ignoring Valentina.

Davie didn’t know.  Valentina propped herself up, alert.

“Because you’re careful.  Because you’ve spent years covering contingencies.  You don’t merely lock your trunk.  You trap it.  Now, I’ve accounted for that.  I’m going to send someone to and through your door.  You’re going to nicely let them in.  You’re going to sit there on the couch while the rest of us come in.  Hands in view.”

“Or you attack the house.”

“I really don’t want to,” he said.  “But given how things have been going, I’d have to assume you’re under attack in some form.  We’d strain to keep you and those children alive, of course.”

“Of course.  Please.  Thank you.”

“Would you let us in?”

“I can.”

The hand that held the phone had two fingers free.  Mia flicked them.

Valentina got up, moving carefully and slowly to the door.

Mia stopped.  “Don’t hurt my kids.”

“I would never,” Davie said, his voice coming over speaker.  As he talked, Mia raised a foot, pointing her toe.

Valentina crept closer, wary of creaking floorboards and the nearby window with open curtains, leaned her chest into the bench seat, and reached out a hand.  Mia’s foot changed angle, guiding Valentina’s hand to a decorative dragon statuette sitting between two plants.  One of several spaced out around the window.

“Turn around?  I don’t like you being so still for so long.”

Valentina almost fell, scrambling to move, the hand closest to the bench holding the statuette.  She opened the door to Ripley’s room, slipped through, and eased it shut.

Don’t wake up.  Don’t react.  Don’t ask me anything.

Kids slept hard, though, and Ripley was still a kid.  The light coming from the hallway, landing across her face, didn’t even faze her.

“Just making sure,” Davie’s voice came through.

Valentina hadn’t imagined he’d sound so calm through everything.  Did he sound that calm and reasonable when he was having people’s arms and legs cut off?

Neither he nor Mia had said anything.

Ripley’s room was neat, old fashioned, with no clothes on the floor.  There were some toys from yesteryear along one wall, including an old fashioned dollhouse that came up to her bellybutton, currently with a stack of folded blankets on its roof.  The bookshelf overflowed- maybe the reason for the new bookshelf in the hall.  Stacks of books were at the foot of the bookshelf.  Valentina crossed the room with caution, so she wouldn’t kick something that would cause a racket, or topple a stack of books.

She reached the curtain just in time to see the door opening.  Light flooded the room.

He’s telling her to do something with writing.  In case anyone’s listening.

Valentina stepped between the curtain and the sheers, moving slowly so anyone outside wouldn’t see, and put the curtain around herself, and slid a stack of books carefully across the floor, so it might hide her feet sticking out the bottom.

Mia held her phone out with arm cocked, other hand extended straight, so the hand was in the shot.  Scanning the room.  A single light that indicated ‘recording’ shone out like  a really weak flashlight. Beneath the bed.  To the closet.  Mia opened that.

She approached the curtains, and pushed one aside.  Slight pause, then, camera light shining into the gap between the curtains and reflecting off the glass and into Valentina’s eyes, filtered by the sheers, Mia had to check the other.  Where Valentina was.  She kept the phone close to the first curtain as she moved to the other side of it, and ‘investigated’ it again, holding the phone at an angle.

Was he fooled?  The sheers would help obscure the surrounding window shape.

“The boy’s room now.  For your safety.”

“Mm.”

Ripley stirred a bit, face scrunched up.

Valentina followed Mia to the door, and ended up staying in the room for a second,  while Mia filmed herself closing it.  The camera was still watching in ‘front’ of Mia, instead of keeping her face on screen.

Mia paused at Tyr’s door, and cocked her leg, standing on the one foot, knee touching the bookshelf.

Valentina was only a few paces behind, ducking low in case things switched back to face cam, and keeping out of view of the windows She touched the spot Mia had indicated.  Then she touched the statuette there.  There was a pull.

Magnet?

She found the positioning that was strongest.  The bookshelf opened.

Nothing inside.  Which meant… she was meant to go inside.

She stepped within, and closed it quietly.  A space, about two feet by three feet, tall enough to stand in.  If she crouched, she found, she could see through a slight gap between the backboard of the bookshelf and the shelf.  A faint fan hummed.

Just her?

Was she meant to get the others?  How would that work?

She watched, mouth dry, afraid to even swallow wrong, or shuffle her feet.

Mia finished scouting Tyr’s room.

“Let’s check the other rooms up here, then we can go downstairs.  You can turn off any traps, let my guy in.  He can help sweep the place.”

“Mm.”

“You’re not very talkative.  Not a morning person?  Don’t worry, I cook a mean breakfast.”

“Sick.  Ongoing issue,” Mia said.

“Is that so?  That’s fantastic.  Well, obviously not fantastic, but I was so curious if your record of absences from work was legitimate or if you were very busy.”

“Mix.”

The voices got harder to make out as they got further from the secret door.

Mia went downstairs with the phone, and Valentina took a chance, opening the door.

While in the space, she wasn’t in a position to investigate it very well.  With the door open, she could check- no secret gun locker.  No radio or phone.

But, extending from knee height, going sideways, there was a narrow space that extended behind the bench seat in the window.  Light shone through it.  She crawled forward, awkwardly, because it wasn’t a space really big enough for her to do more than squeeze by.

At the base of that space was a plaid blanket, a pillow, a refillable container of water, and some fantasy novels, along with a little book reading light.  Halfway across that space was a vent with a fan.

This was Ripley’s space.

Valentina settled, sitting, legs in that space, feet on either side of the vent, back to the side of the secret compartment, and pulled the door closed, carefully.

She could hear Mia downstairs.  The vent looked down into the front hall, but she could hear some faint activity from the direction of the kitchen.  More in the living room.

Men came in.  Davie sent in some people before he entered himself.

Dad.

“Do you think I could borrow your kitchen?  I’ve been up all night, fretting.  Trying to figure things out.”

“Make yourself-” pause.  “Make yourself at home.”

“It’s been a week, hasn’t it?  Sabotage, kidnappings, mischief.  And here you are.”

“Some work for you, some for others, my health hasn’t been good.  I overworked.”

“I see, yes.  I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing you of anything, but there’s only a few people who could do what my enemies have been doing.  I thought I should have a conversation with you, see if you couldn’t help me narrow down this problem.”

“Timoteo Alt- Altamirano.”

“Hm?”

“It’s him.”

“There’s a very big issue with that reasoning.”

“Dead man’s switch,” Mia said.  “He act- actv- activated people, friends.  Some are clients of ours.  Some not.”

“Ahh, that’s a theory.”

“I think… fact.”

“Very curious.  Interesting.  On the one hand, I do really like that theory.  Things make sense.  On the other… if you knew that, why not tell me?”

“Complicated,” Mia said, getting the pronunciation slightly wrong.

Had she regressed in the last hour, because of stress, or was she playing it up now?

It would be risky to play it up with Dad- with Davie.  He could see through that kind of thing.

“Complicated to not let me know those things, haha!” Davie said, with enough force and volume in his cheer it sounded a bit threatening.

“Quiet, please.  The kids.”

“If I believed you,” Davie said, his voice still level, calm.  “I’d feel very insulted, that you didn’t share.”

Valentina hated that voice.  It made her want to shrink into herself.

“They’re clients.  We promise new life, nonnt-” Mia paused, took a breath.  “Non-interference.  You don’t get prefr- preferential treatment as a client.”

“I’ve given you a lot of money.  Promised more for future projects.”

“Principles.”

Davie chuckled lightly.  “Speaking of.  I had the hardest time finding pictures of your kids online.  Finally found some of them at other children’s birthday parties, and one event at school.  Mention of principals made me think of that.”

“Told them no.”

“The school?  It’s a bastard, isn’t it?  Keeping kids safe?  You haven’t heard anything about my girl?”

“No.”

“Are you positive your children are still safe in their beds?  Maybe it’s a good idea to have my men go and check.  Make sure.  Woah-ho.  If looks could kill.”

“No need,” Mia said.

“I disagree.  For your safety.  Primo?  Cam?  The two rooms at the end of the hall upstairs.  No need to wake them up.  Keep an eye out.  I do want a better look at your space, Mia.  That setup.  Can I call you Mia?”

“If you want.”

The conversation moved out of earshot.

Valentina could peer between the back of the bookshelf and the shelf to see the two people come upstairs.

One immediately rested some weight on the bench seat, which made some faint traces of sawdust come down, illuminated by the light that made it through the vent.  If Valentina had been lying down, it would have been right in her face.

He was opening the window.

She could hear the flicking of a lighter.  The cigarette smoke.

She could also see the vague movements of light and shadow.  At least seven people downstairs, plus Mia and Davie.

Cool air came in from the window, finding its way into the uninsulated space.  She was glad for it, in a way, but really, she was sweating, feeling stifled, and now had goosebumps and slight shivers instead.  Like her body had the worst of both worlds.

There were enough people that the house was busy.  Another soldier came upstairs, had a conversation in low voices with the other two.  All seriousness.

She couldn’t make out full sentences, but people had died tonight, apparently.  People they knew.  So they were tense, unhappy.

There was so little information that she would’ve fallen asleep, if her nerves weren’t so on edge.  That feeling that had caught her when she was trying to sleep was catching her again.  Restlessness, to the point she felt like she’d lose her mind if she stayed still.  A suicidal impulse to move that would reveal her location, entirely in her mind.

She forced her thoughts toward that dream of Europe.  The mazelike streets.  Mind over body.

The streets were shaped like letters.  Each letter touched.  Her name.  Valentina.  Two diagonal streets, one touching on a side road, what would the A be?  Tall buildings on either side, a plot in the middle.  A garden?  A fountain?  She tried to visualize it.  The ‘l’ of Valentina could be a straight road.

The labyrinth could be deciphered.  She had to trace each shape in her mind, give it dimension, detail.

Once she was done with Valentina, she thought of Ripley.  Lots of side roads and detours.  What would a ‘Ripley’ neighborhood have in it?  A workshop.  Bookstore.

Tyr?  Short, it had to be dramatic.  What were the wildest things she could find in a short side street in the Hurst neighborhood?  The cigarette smoke of the man sitting on the bench seat at the window filled her space.  She made it a part of the mental tapestry.  Lots of smoking in some parts of Paris.  Everything needed French names.

“Good morning, honey.”

Davie was in the living room.  Mia sat across from him, her back to the wall that separated living room and front hall.

“How was your night?  Would you like coffee? Breakfast?”

“Is everyone safe?” Carson asked.  He’d come in.

“Yes,” Mia said.

“Stay where you are, please,” Valentina’s fath- Davie said.  “No cues or hints.  Forgive me for being paranoid, I do want to have a good business relationship, but as they say, you should trust but verify.”

“I don’t object,” Carson said.

“Where were you?”

“Working with a client.  A small one, because my wife is feeling under the weather, I didn’t want to lean on her too much.”

“Name?”

“We don’t share.  We’d give you the same courtesy.”

“She said the same thing.”

“Policy.”

“Policies and principles,” Davie said.  “I do like you two.  But some people hurt the Cavalcanti family, recently, and it traces back to you, in a way that seems very unprincipled.  Bad policy.”

“How?” Mia asked.

“Well, for one thing, they’re using a bunker that you set up.  Want to know how I know?”

“Satellites,” Mia said.

“Yeah.  Wow, you’re on the ball, even when not at your best.  I went looking, used satellites and AI, some stuff I didn’t even understand, but my acquaintances do.  Bam, twenty-two bunkers set up in the last twenty years.  Took barely a minute to pull up the images of the spaces being prepared and dug out.  With the state of things, it makes a lot of sense.”

“It does,” Carson said.

He’d settled into a chair, Valentina was pretty sure.  Casual.

“Even got a shot of you two outside, last year.  Renovating?”

“Extending.”

“And the girls were there.”

“I know,” Carson said.  “I checked in before I came home.  A group of people tied to the contact- Timoteo, we think they might have gone rogue.  Some of them saw the bunker.”

“You didn’t change the locks?”

“Codes?  No.”

“What time did you show up there?”

“Not sure.  I parked on a side road, cut through the woods, found the location burned.  There was a car.  I poked around.”

“We sent some people to investigate, too.  Cameras, dogs with the scent of the three kidnapped girls, drones to sweep the area.  Soldiers.  It didn’t go well.”

“We can give you some names and information.  Because it was our bunker they used,” Carson said.  “Men we call Bolden, Highland.”

“Killers.”

“Among their varied skills.”

“And you are innocent, I suppose.  If I brought those bloodhounds in and they smelled the girls on you, it’d be because you poked around?  Handled things?”

“Could be,” Carson said.

Davie chuckled, low and long.

“He’s in a good mood, considering the situation,” Carson told Mia.

“Mmm.”

“This isn’t a world where having excuses helps,” Davie said.  “Reasonable doubt doesn’t win you a way out like it does in a courtroom.  Instinct matters.  Power matters.”

“Yeah,” Carson said.

“Do you know where Gio is?”

“Nope,” Carson said.

“No,” Mia said.

“Do you know why I’m doing what I’m doing?  The assets I’m accumulating?  My objective?”

“You’re allying with local government,” Mia said.  “Military is being deployed against ins- insurgent Americans, but it’s not enough and it’s polt- politically complicated.  It stirs up shit at the same time it cleans up messes.”

Mia was struggling as she finished saying that, like she couldn’t coordinate speaking and breathing at the same time.  Carson added, “I’m not as filled in, but I assume they give you resources, permission.  A cut.  You become their answer to the Civil Warrior issue, and the leftist pro-democracy riots.  Your gang can distract things, target revolutionaries, derail protests, shape the narrative.”

“More or less.”

“You already wanted complete and total control,” Mia said, measuring out words, halting through some for difficult strings.   “They want control.  If you can get it, there’s polt-political power int- in it.  Others will want in.  Want same.”

“Drones, satellites, soldiers… brought in a lot of extended family, friends, some retired gangsters.  Losing as many as we have tonight, it hurt.  But we’re still the dominant power.”

“You want us,” Carson said.

“I think I’m a savvy man,” Davie said.  “My brother, he’d handle this.  Your answers are good, but ‘good’ isn’t enough.  So he’d bring your kids downstairs, and kill them.  Or tell you how your daughter will be put to work as soon as she’s old enough.  Maybe your son too.  Nicholas would make you confess your sins that way, then hurt you to drive the point home, for anyone in a position to tell tales about how the Cavalcanti family handles problems.”

“Of course,” Carson said.  “And you?”

“I want security.  I’d like to hire you on.  But before we get that far… I stepped down, recently.  Took a break, at my brother’s insistence.  He wanted to see if things kept moving after I sat back and stopped giving people orders.  They did.  It didn’t take much to convince him.  He trusts me.  He wants what I’m working to build as much as I do.  Knows about it.  Now, I trust you, I want a good business relationship here, but…”

“Trust but verify,” Mia said.

“It’s only fair if you get benched for a while too.  We’ll leave your kids out of it.  If they’re a bit bewildered and confused that mommy and daddy are away, well, that seems to be happening more and more, isn’t it?  The three kidnapping victims would have felt the same.”

“Might raise problems,” Carson said.

“Child services?  They’re a bit overtaxed, but you’re right.  I’m sure you can recover, once you’ve won over my trust, helped us with this situation, and done some Cavalcanti exclusive work for us.  Then you can come back, come up with some excuse about why you left two children at home alone.  Or fudge paperwork.  Consider that whole situation, your kids in limbo, a motivating factor.”

“No,” Mia said.  Her voice was darker.  “There are contig- contingencies.  In case Carson is hurt and I’m too sick to act, or accident.  The babysitter will be texted.  People will be made aware.”

“You and Timoteo, so similar.  Dead man’s switches rigged.”

“We were friends.  Never met face to face.  But friends.  Shared notes.”

“Friend enough that you’re mad, too?  Organizing kidnappings?”

“No.  We don’t get involved.  That interferes with the business.”

“Then it’s settled,” Davie said.  He gave no indication he believed them.  It was like the lies and things they’d done to hurt the Cavalcanti family didn’t matter, because he was taking them with him.  He’d twist their arms to get them to help.

Valentina watched and listened- insofar as there was more than the occasional half sentence to listen to, as they went through the house.  Into Mia’s office.  Got computers, books, devices.

“Fourth bedroom?” Davie asked.

“Mine,” Mia said, at the same time Carson said, “Hers.”

“I don’t sleep well when I’m sick,” Mia said.  “Migraines.  I need a fully dark room, no tossing and turning.”

“I see.  We’ll see what we can arrange at your destination, just in case.”

Mia also wanted to look in on the kids, and Davie didn’t let her.

There wasn’t a moment that Mia looked at Valentina, the bookshelf, moved a finger, or anything.  Carson either.

They collected things, then they left.  Valentina could faintly hear the car door slamming.

Taken to become Cavalcanti assets.  It wasn’t out of the question that her fath- that Davie would smile and make nice, acting like there was a plan, only to dismember them the moment he had them secure, removed from the traps around the house.

Valentina emerged.  She was crying at the sense of loss, and the impending feeling of being overwhelmed.

As if to taunt or fuck with Carson and Mia, they’d left the front door open.  Valentina closed it.

She got some water, and tended to her hair, which had been plastered to her head, neck, and shoulders with sweat – she patted it with paper towels, then combed it.  Goosebumps prickled her skin throughout, cold air from the open door.

She could smell them.  The soldiers.  The gunpowder and gun oil.  Aftershaves.  Cigarette smells- they hadn’t smoked inside, as far as she could tell, aside from the one guy leaning out an open window while keeping watch.

Was she meant to leave?  Take the kids somewhere safe?  How or where?

Trust them to get out of this?  Or save them?

Was she supposed to babysit her two ‘cousins’?

What about the three prisoners?  Carson had moved them?  Was she meant to help with that?  Relieve whoever was handling it right now?  Communicate with them?

Every passing minute on the clock made her more anxious.

The clock hit seven.

The kids were woken up by their alarms.  The deadline had been reached.

“Mom’s not up?” Ripley asked.  A sleepy Tyr followed behind her.

“Mia and Carson had to go help my mom,” Valentina lied.  “She hasn’t been doing well with… stuff.  There was an issue.  So they both left.  It’s up to me, you guys, and your babysitter to muddle through.”

“Oh,” Ripley said.

“Chance to get to know each other.”

Ripley smiled, faltering, then closed the distance.  She hugged Valentina.  “I’m sorry about your mom.”

Valentina had needed that hug.  She was reeling, still, convinced that whatever she did, it was the wrong decision.

No, maybe there was one clue.  Carson had said, when showing her the ropes at the bunker.  That she should expect resources.  A ‘dead man’s switch’, they’d called it.  Information and tools.

She had to wait it out, until that switch flipped and she had what she needed.  Then she’d see what she could do.

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