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“I don’t like these guys,” Valentina admitted.

The car moved slowly down the long road, trees close enough that the branches brushed the sides and roof.  The gravel of the roadway crackled under tires.  At the end was light, and men with guns, standing by the railings and the fences that bounded in various corrals and animal holding areas.

“Why not?” Carson asked.  “They’re capable.”

“Because they keep insisting on face to face meetings, and they don’t relax with the guns.”

A pinecone fell and hit the hood of the car.  It sounded like a gunshot hitting the car.  Because Valentina had heard that exact sound the last time she’d driven in the dark to a meet like this.  She and Highland had barely escaped the drones.

“They’re insecure,” Carson said.  “They dress it up, and they’ll have burly guys who normally help with the cattle and horses stand by with guns at their hips, but they’re as new to this as you are.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.  Because I don’t trust someone that’s new to this and nervous with a gun pointed at me.”

“Good.  You’re not meant to.  But while you’re not trusting them, don’t lose sight of other things.  Pay attention to what they want, who they are.  I’ll give you a challenge.”

“All of this is challenging enough.”

“I’ll talk to them.  You stand by, look at the people in the background.  Look at how they dress.  Age.  Then, when we’re done, tell me something you figured out about two of them.”

“Uh,” Valentina said.  “Carson?  Or am I supposed to call you dad, um, I don’t-”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” he said.  “If it lightens the mood and eases tension, call me Idiot.  Not in front of others, though.”

“I’m not going to do that.  I don’t think you’re an idiot.  And reading people like that is something only you can do.”

“Anyone can,” he said.  “Try.”

As they got close enough, Carson put his hands out.  He steered with one wrist on the top of the steering wheel, other hand out the window, fingers splayed.

Valentina followed suit.

Only some of the floodlights around the ranch had been turned on, and they were all behind the group of five men.  Six – there was one leaning against one of the railings that looked like it was made of pipe.  The setup of the lights meant it was hard to see features, and the five men standing out front cast long shadows.

Three of them had guns raised and pointed in their general direction.  Two rifles, one handgun.

“Why am I here?” Valentina asked.

“Because you opened contact with them.  It would be weird if you didn’t come.”

“What’s weird is I keep expecting them to wear cowboy hats.”

Carson laughed.  He did lower one hand to shift gears to park, then turned off the engine, before raising his hand, keeping it more in Valentina’s direction, empty, fingers splayed.

He opened his door from the outside.  “Hi Dane.”

“Hey.  What were you laughing about?”

“Valentina thinks you should be wearing cowboy hats.”

“I didn’t say they should be, I said I was expecting it,” Valentina told him.  She didn’t want to sound defensive, so she tried to look casual about things.

“I stand corrected.  Sorry,” Carson said.

“The sun isn’t out, so there’s no need for a hat to keep the sun out of our eyes, and it’s too hot.  Besides,” Dane said.  “We thought it’d send the wrong message.  You see cowboys, you think of someone that’s impulsive on the draw.”

“Don’t have to be worried about that if you’ve got your guns drawn from the start,” Carson said.

Dane looked back at his buddies.  Valentina could see more of his face, now that his head was turned.  She remembered she was supposed to be looking at others.

The moment she took a more serious look at the guy nearer to her, he moved his head, chin raising for a moment.  She responded with a nod, not sure what that was about.  Black t-shirt, jeans, big belt buckle, boots.  Teenager?  She’d seen his face better in a prior meeting.  He’d been young-ish.

The next guy reminded her of Bolden.  Like the weather and a lot of smoking and alcohol had prematurely aged him.

“We want a good distraction, one that requires more than one group working together to force the Cavalcanti family to react.  You guys play nice with others,” Carson said.  “Mostly.”

“Put the guns down,” Dane told the guys.

They lowered the guns.  Valentina felt a lot better.

“We deal, we don’t pick fights,” Dane said.  “Doesn’t mean we won’t defend ourselves if someone comes for us.”

“Three hundred thousand?” Carson offered.

“No, man.  I know we owe you guys, and the initial offer of money Valentina here made was a good deal at a time we needed it.  But…”

“Three hundred thousand and I can throw in a sweetener,” Carson said.

“Fuck, I- no,” Dane said.  “We were in a hole, that money got us out of it.  We’re good.  Even with that one job, we accepted because nobody should have to fire a gun.  And nobody didn’t.”

Dane’s farm here had a black market thing going.  Weed was a big part of it, with some plots in the forest, and one larger grow house on the property.  But the main stock in trade was horse piss.  Their machines had broken down and the raw horse piss wasn’t as profitable as what they got from refining it, which had forced them to go out on more of a limb, dealing with other black market sellers.

Valentina had paid them for help, and it might have saved them.

“I’m going to pop my trunk, get some bags,” Carson said.

“Any sweetener that could change my mind would have to be an interested woman, thirty to forty, who doesn’t mind a guy who smells like horse shit, and I’m not sure I want her if you’re pulling her out of the trunk.”

“I’d take her,” the aged-poorly guy chuckled.

“You’re willing to risk me or someone else here getting shot, to get her?” Dane asked.

“Dane, man, I love you, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, but this shit we do, this far off the beaten track?  The horses look good.”

There was some chuckling.  Including from Carson, who walked back, bringing a bag.  He emptied it on the ground in a spot of light between the long shadows the men cast.  Trail cameras.

“This is what we use, in places we do business,” Carson told them.  “We also have software the voice on the phone got from elsewhere and ad-hocked to our needs.  On top of the three hundred thousand dollars we’d pay you- that’s a hard number, by the way, we don’t have time to negotiate that, we worked out the maximum we’d be willing to give, that’s it-”

“Right.”

“-on top of that, we’d get you set up.  The voice on the phone is very, very careful and very good at what she does.  You’d get a phone alert every time someone comes onto the road to come here, and in a few strategic locations we worked out- alternate routes of approach, if they wanted to cut through the brush.  Twenty-five to forty minute heads up on any raids.”

“Excepting helicopters.”

“If they’re flying helicopters in and paratrooping people in, you’re already fucked,” Carson said, smiling.  “We’d be willing to get you set up with some emergency measures, to get you started on evidence wiping measures.”

“Are you staying in the area?” Dane asked.  “Because that takes time.”

“Are you interested?  Because it sounds like you might be.”

“No,” Dane said.  “Wait, I’ll rephrase.  I’m interested.  That’d be a load off my mind.  But not at that price.  Because that would be a load on my mind.”

“You had twenty, twenty-five men and women when you did that raid for us, right?”

“So?”

“Could we put it to them as individuals?” Carson asked.  “Let them decide on their own?  Payment would be prorated.  But if five joined, we’d give you one camera, ten-”

“No,” Dane said.  “And I don’t appreciate that line of talk.  Undercutting me.”

“Damn it,” Carson said.

Then the lights went out.  Machinery that had been humming inside the building behind the men went quiet.  The afterimages from the bright lights lingered, outlining people, tricking the eyes.  But they were only afterimages.

“Fuck!” one of the men shouted.  And there was something in the tone.  Alarm.

Magnified a thousand fold by the accompanying gun noises.  Running footsteps.  Something banged.

They’re going to shoot us.

Valentina took a step back, and fell.

“Not us!” Carson hollered.  “That’s not us!”

“It’s not!” Valentina added.

Which sealed her fate, she realized.  Because they could follow the sound of her voice, aim, and shoot.

“It’s not us,” Carson said, calmer.

They could’ve followed the sound of her voice, aimed, and shot.  But they didn’t.

A horrible sadness washed over her, with that realization.  Not that she was sad to have lived.  But the other realizations that came with it- what kind of life had she lived?  What was she doing?

Was it important?  They had other things to worry about.

“Why should we believe you!?” Dane called back.  He sounded further away.  He’d moved somewhere.

“Because it’s not us,” Carson said.  His voice changed, cracking a bit.  “Man, the Cavalcanti family took my daughter.  I want to get that sorted.”

“We have no issue with you,” Valentina said.  “Except maybe that you like pointing guns at us and you’re nervous.”

There was a long pause.

That wave of emotion hit Valentina again.  She drew in a deep breath, and it didn’t feel like she had enough air.  Her chest hurt.  Not now.

Too dark, too scary.

“I saw you guys on the news,” Dane said.

“Were we?” Carson asked.

“Do us a favor, turn on your headlights?” Dane asked.  “Stupid to have a conversation in the dark.  No games.”

“No games,” Carson said.

Valentina heard the car door open.  She squeezed her eyes shut, and hurried to wipe the moisture out of the corners of her eyes before-

The car turned on.  The headlights flicked on too.

A very different scene, when she could see their faces, and- and the teenager who’d given her the nod earlier was close, and he’d drawn a gun.  He held it at his side, finger off the trigger.  But he would’ve been pointing it at her, or in her direction, in the dark.

He would’ve been the one to kill her.

Dane had fairly soft features, softened by a well-conditioned beard, the outer edges of his eyes turned downward by the shape of the sockets.

A motion made Valentina flinch, and a half-second later, she wished she hadn’t.  The teenager had extended his hand.

She took it.  He very easily lifted her.

Leaving her struggling to keep it together, while standing in arm’s reach of him, aware that he could probably hear every breath- or failure to breathe.  Every bit of her expression.

“No cell signal.  That happened the last time we had a power grid knockout,” the aged-too-soon guy said.

“Protests were running through downtown earlier today, and Civil Warriors like targeting infrastructure.  Toss up, for whichever it is,” Carson said, sitting on the hood.

“When we get power again, look yourselves up.  Names and pictures for you.  Carson?”

“Yeah.”

“A Mia Hurst… the voice on the phone?”

Carson shrugged, then reluctantly nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Gio Cavalcanti.  Ripley Hurst.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re Gio?” The teenager asked her.

She swallowed, and at first, words didn’t come out, choked by the tightness in her throat.  She coughed, and it sounded like a fake cough.  “No.  Valentina.  Valentina Hurst.  The Cavalcantis destroyed my life.  I’m not taking the name, first or last, that they gave me.”

“They said Mia, our voice on the phone, kidnapped a child,” Dane said.

“You know they say a lot of things,” Carson replied.  “This is the kind of move they’re making.  Demonizing us, using media, using cops.  And it worked, some would-be good Samaritans got involved and gave her over into the custody of the police, who work with the Cavalcantis.”

He made it sound so natural.

Valentina felt her skin crawl.  Nothing had been confirmed up until now.  And she hadn’t pried.  But she’d known.  She could put the pieces together.  Even from the fact that Ripley didn’t resemble Mia or Carson.  Neither did Tyr.

She realized a lot of the men from Dane’s group were looking at her.

Probably easier to read me than to read him.

Fuck.

Breathing was still hard.

“We’re going to say no, Carson.  And don’t undercut me by trying to get people to join individually.  If someone joins, that risks bringing trouble back home to us.”

“Have you heard of the Woodsman?” Valentina asked.

“Hm?  No.”

Carson smiled.  “If cell service was working or if we had power and internet, I’d tell you to look him up.  Government claimed eminent domain on his land-”

“Wait.  I think I know who you’re talking about.”

“Yeah.  You think right,” Carson said.

“Okay, we don’t know him as The Woodsman.”

“What do you call him?”

“We don’t.  But we’ll toast him when the subject comes up.  A lot of people were pissed when farms and whole tracts of land were claimed by the government, and when they locked prices on beef.  Prices people couldn’t afford.  People fantasize about doing what he did.  Doesn’t seem real.”

“We call him Spence Bolden,” Carson said.  “Mia and I got him to safety after.  He’s helping us right now.  After, he’ll get a new name, new setup.”

“I wonder if he’d want to work with a place like this.  Guarding it,” Valentina said.

“I think that’s something we’d need to run by him, and negotiate with others,” Carson said.  “It’d go smoother if you all were working with us, I’ll say.”

“It’d almost be worth working with you to meet him,” the aged-too-soon guy said.

“No it isn’t,” Dane said, looking annoyed.  “No, Carson.  Good luck with your missing kid, but it’s a no.  Focus your energies and time elsewhere?  She deserves that.”

“Assuming you aren’t bullshitting, and you’re being honest when you say you didn’t kidnap her,” the aged-too-soon guy said.

He stared at Valentina, sparing only a moment’s glance for Carson, as he said it.

“Damn,” Carson said.

“Sorry,” Dane said.

“Sorry, Valentina,” the teenager told her.

Carson looked at Valentina, sighing, then motioned toward the car.  “You want to drive us out?”

She shook her head.  She wasn’t feeling up to it.  Still shaky and a little off.

So Carson circled around to the driver’s side, picking up the cameras.

“You guys are helping people, right?” Valentina asked.

“Trying.  When we started, we figured horse piss was liquid gold.  Just needed to get the right machines to process it.  But I guess, you know that saying, hard to argue against a position when it’s paying your bills?”

“Something like that,” Carson said.

The horse piss of pregnant mares had hormones in it.  The end product was terrible for the heart and for blood pressure, but with the big government bans, so sweeping that even a regular woman with dryness and burning down there couldn’t get anything in the way of hormone replacement therapy, yeah, it had been liquid gold.  Enough these guys could have thirty or so employees.

The bigger they got, the more terrified they got over what a crackdown would mean.  Or that someone else would try to come after them and cut them out of the market.

Dane went on, “When I was younger, we’d be out there, Civil Warrior.  Easy.  Now?  We’re… backup, a bit, for the other side.  Still not soldiers, for them or for you.  You might want to think about your part in that.”

“I put on a brave face, but it’s hard to think straight when a lunatic has my daughter.”

“Makes sense.  No hard feelings?”

Carson smiled.  “No, but not exactly happy, grateful ones either, you know?”

He approached the driver’s door.

“Carson,” Valentina said.

He looked over the top of the car at her.

“Two cameras?”

“That’s your judgment call?”

She nodded.

Carson dug into the bag, got two trail cameras.  “They’re pretty intuitive.  Look up the brand name, the website’s still up, I think.  You won’t have the software Mia put together, so you’ll have to use the regular old monitoring.  Here.”

The teenager was closest.  He took the offered cameras.

“Thank you,” Dane said.

“Bye,” the teenager said.

Valentina gave him a tight smile.

She got into the passenger seat, buckling up.

The lack of other lighting meant the group of men were cast in the red of the taillights as they drove away.

“Damn it,” Carson said.  The smile and casual demeanor slipped a bit.  He white-knuckled the steering wheel.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.  You did okay.”

“I almost had a panic attack.”

“That was a panic-worthy moment.  Bad luck, a random blackout right that moment.  Damn it.”

She swallowed hard.

“So.  Two observations?” he asked.

“That’s what you want to talk about?”

“What else?  We have a forty-five minute drive to get back.  So we can talk about things in any order.  Something on your mind?”

“I didn’t expect you to say yes to the camera thing.”

He settled deeper into his seat, driving them through the narrow road, branches batting at the sides of the car.  “From the time Ripley and Tyr were small, we thought we’d bring them in on this.  When we took you in, we meant it.  We’re open to you being involved.  So you get a say.  And we do what we do with you in mind, always.  I know Ripley’s a big focus right now, but you matter too.”

“Obviously she’s a focus,” Valentina said.  She had that moment of… weirdness.  Like she’d hit her head and one of the big symptoms was that she’d forgotten she’d hit her head, and a part of her brain was groping for something that it knew should be there.  She didn’t know how to deal with the fact that Ripley wasn’t theirs.  How to plug it into everything else she knew.  But at the same time, in either version of reality, amnesia or no, feeling like Ripley should be theirs or not, what she’d just said was equally true.  Just… in different ways.  Which was weird.

It was weirder that Carson and Mia were both so un-weird about it.  Unflinching, no wavering, no doubts.  It made that part of her that felt like there should be doubts feel more wobbly.  Tremulous.

“All these years, we’ve worked with some awful people.  But I think, for as long as I’ve been around, in the jobs we said yes to, and the jobs we said no to, we chose people who, if we ended up sitting down and trying to explain to Ripley, to Tyr, or to you, now… we could justify it.  That they deserved a second chance.  That they’d been wronged and we could right it.”

“Hmm.”

“If it wasn’t good, it was just, and if it wasn’t just, it was good, and if it was neither, like with the Ledbetters, there was a greater good in it.  So if you think it’s more right that we leave two cameras behind… okay.  That’s part of that.  We’d do the same if it was Ripley making the argument.  That was part of the idea.”

“Okay,” she said.

They turned a corner.  There was a large rock in the road that Carson had to drive carefully over, to not pop the tires or gouge the underside of the car.

“Do you think Ripley will?” she asked.  “Become… like you guys?”

“I think she would have loved a project like building and expanding the bunker you saw.  I think if we sat down with her and went over the files and all the names, the people we’ve worked with, she could have made peace with it.  Maybe she’d ask us to stop doing that.  And we would.  Maybe she’d be willing, or she’d want to be more selective, or change focus.  Helping get people who’re persecuted out, to safety, similar principles.”

“Maybe,” Valentina said.

“I think, and I don’t want to put words in her mouth, or jump to conclusions and stick her with a label while she’s still figuring herself out, because she knows herself better than any of us can, but I think she’d sympathize with those guys, because of who they help.  The trans people who need those black market hormones, when there’s no other way.  She’d like them, even if you didn’t.”

“I don’t-” Valentina stopped herself.  “I don’t like that they point guns at us as often as they do.”

“That’s fair.  You know, part of this, part of how we intended to raise Ripley and Tyr, was we’d prepare them.  Give them tools.  Keep them sharp.  Whatever the world ends up being, and it’s looking like things are going in scary directions, kids need to learn that, and most aren’t.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re our kid too, now.  So… in the interest of that sharpness?  Two observations.”

“Ugh.  Um.  The teenager.  That was closest to me.”

Carson smiled.

“I figured he might’ve been a high school dropout?  Given the age, and the intensity of the work, the location.  I can’t exactly imagine him commuting to school.”

“Huh.  I’m not so sure about that.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s it.  The blackout kind of distracted me,” she replied.

“He liked you.”

“What?  No.  You’re not sure about the other thing?  I’m very not sure about that.”

“He looked gutted when he thought you were a Cavalcanti, and relieved when you rejected it.”

“I didn’t see that.”

“You weren’t looking.  Part of it, reading people, is you need to put yourself in a position where you can.  Where you stand, approaching the room in a way where people won’t think you’re a danger if you take a serious look at them, looking for details, being disarming.  He made sure to say your name when saying goodbye.  As if it was important.  In another situation, if we weren’t rushing out of there, if there was any excuse where you’d stay, he’d be asking you to have a cold beer and a long sit somewhere with a view, the two of you.”

“I- really don’t believe that.”

“It’s true.  That boy is fit, he’s serious, he’s caring enough to want to help you up, he’s trusted enough that Dane there wanted him in that select crew of people backing him up for a meeting he was nervous about.  I’d guess he has no shortage of girls his age, some older, maybe, some younger ones with crushes, all interested to some degree.  And I’d bet a hundred thousand dollars, Valentina, he’d turn down those other girls to spend an evening with you, a cold beer, and a view, talking.  Especially after the cameras, even if you weren’t doing it to win him over.  Or even more, because of that.”

“I’m… not worth that.”

Carson puffed up his cheeks, before deflating them with a slow exhalation.  “You are.  And I’m willing to stake a hundred thousand dollars that boy thinks so too.”

She almost believed him.

“You’re better than you think, Valentina.  More capable.  I don’t know how much of what I know I can teach, I rely on instinct, but I think you’re a good student.  If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.  If you don’t want to come to this sort of event, or help us with the situation, we won’t hold grudges.”

“I feel responsible.”

“Don’t.  You’re still young.  You’ve done a lot.  You saved us.  If you want to back out, let us handle it, go back to shows and books, preparing for a fall semester at high school, somewhere safe…?”

“Might be hard, if our faces are out there.”

“We’ll manage.”

They’d escaped the woods.  Now they were on a rural road, with a clearer view of… everything.  The rural areas around the city were on and around the mountains, and sloped down that way, so they had a good view.  The city had gone almost completely dark.  The only lights were ones, presumably, that had backup generators, and a few places here or there where there were fires.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“There’s no rush.”

“I don’t know if Mia wants me back in the middle of things.”

“She does.  She’s willing.”

“But she keeps- she’s made it very clear that she has all these rules, and protocols, and things she wants to teach Ripley and Tyr.  And I did… very different things.  She’s frustrated with me.”

“She’s driven by fear, Valentina.  Those fears came to life.  As a result, she isn’t communicating well.  Her focus is on Ripley.  Understandably.”

There was that weird feeling again.  An unsure feeling that felt unsure if it should even be unsure.

“What drives you?” she asked him.

“Mia.  The kids.  That includes you.”

“But obviously less, right?  Than Ripley and Tyr?  You haven’t spent years getting to know me.”

Why was she saying this?  Why was she risking that he’d say yes, that he’d step away, and that she’d be left with nobody, no one to go to, with her face on the news.

“I’d take a bullet for you, just the same,” he said.  He considered.  “It’s patchwork, maybe.  Part of the reason might be because I don’t want to disappoint Mia.  But… that’s a bridge the real feelings will grow over.  I think you’ll understand and pick up on how I work better than the other two could, and I’m excited to see that, little shadow.”

Little shadow.  With tone and facial expression, he made it feel like a superpower, not a curse.

They’d been driving back and forth, so there was lots of time in the car to recap, and to dump her thoughts like this, and she’d told him what she’d told Highland.  That she felt like she was a shadow of the people around her, picking up aspects of them.  That maybe she could grow from there, like Highland said.

“We’ll talk to her,” he said.

“That’s… terrifying.  The idea of having that talk.”

“We’ll talk to her,” Carson said, insistent.

Valentina could very easily imagine that topic being raised and it sparking off an already agitated, upset Mia.  Her blowing up.

That might get someone who was already a perpetually clenched, trembling fist, to be swung at someone.  At her.

But Carson wanted to, and his instincts were rarely wrong.  Except…

“Maybe, when having that talk, be careful?”

“About?”

“Partway through that talk we had, a few minutes ago?  You referred to Ripley in the past tense.  Then you went back to present tense, then kind of back to past tense again.  I can imagine her not taking that well.”

“Right,” was his response.

His hands gripped that steering wheel, white-knuckle.

The conversation died there.  Carson drove faster, onto streets with no lights.

⯁

With cell towers down and the city blacked out, communication was hard.

They pulled up to where Mia was holed up, and she stepped out of a recessed doorway, one bag at her side, strap across her body, two more bags in her hands.  Carson popped the trunk.

“Were you waiting long?” Carson asked, taking a bag from her.

“Twenty minutes,” she said, leaning in to kiss him.  Perfunctory.  She was all business.  “I had a sense of your schedule, and I saw where you were before the power went out.”

“Dane’s horse piss hockers said no,” Carson told her.

“Okay.”

“We’re not pulling together the numbers we need.  We might need to reconsider.”

Mia slammed the trunk of the car.

“Think about it,” Carson said.

“Let’s check on the others,” Mia said.  She turned to Valentina.  “How are you?”

“Spooked.  The power cut out at a bad moment.  They thought it was us.”

Mia looked over at Carson.

“It got hairy for a second there,” Carson said.

“A group tried to take one of their family members hostage, before.  And another group traced their truck back to the general area.  They realized at the last second, called the contact about that.  He tapped me as a resource, to help handle it.  They have good reason to be nervous.”

“Take the passenger seat,” Valentina said.

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t mind the chance to lie down.”

“Okay,” Mia said.  She touched Valentina’s shoulder, giving it a light rub.  “Is Carson teaching you?”

“A bit.”

“Okay.”

That was one of the moments it just felt a lot like Valentina had messed up a lot of things while flying solo, and Mia was disappointed, hoping she’d be better.  Valentina met Carson’s gaze for a moment.  He held her gaze for a second, head tilting slightly in acknowledgement, while Mia got into the car.

Valentina climbed into the back.

“Our faces are on the news,” Carson said.

“I saw.  You were just about to pull in, I didn’t want to distract.”

Mia passed her phone back to Valentina.  There was no service, but she apparently had the image up from before, or she’d transferred it over from the laptop.

A surveillance video of herself.  Her new self.  Hair shorter, lightened, clothes different.

It didn’t feel like her.

“I vetted the anarchist radio crew,” Mia said.  “Stop at Charla and Anmoore.”

“Right.  I was wracking my brain.  Have we worked with them?” Carson asked.  “Or did you work with them before I was onboard?”

“They aren’t in the app you made for me,” Valentina said.

“No.  They were never caught.  They never needed to run.  Guerilla group, started out with an underground radio station, moved on to podcasts, investigative work, and exposes.  They keep the radio station going, moving from place to place.  I think they recruit from the university.”

“And?” Carson asked.

“They said they built what we need.  They want a bit of money on delivery and assistance down the road.”

“Sounds good,” Carson said.

“They mentioned the broadcast.  They didn’t ask about Ripley’s origins.”

“They probably will,” Carson said.

“Mm.”

“Thought about what you’re going to say?”

Valentina watched what she could of the pair.  The sides of their faces.  The slices of expressions in the rearview mirror.  Valentina could see one eye and eyebrow for each of them, reflected.

There were locals out on the road and sidewalk on one of the streets.  A power pole lay across the road, wires torn and fallen.  It looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to it.  People were pissed.

It meant a detour.

“This blackout might last a while,” Carson said.

“I don’t like being disconnected,” Mia commented, quiet.  “If cell towers are down, that means enough damage was done that they couldn’t use the backup batteries.”

The words ‘boo’ and ‘hoo’ were spray painted in white along the faces of houses down the street they took as a detour.

“Do you know what ‘boo hoo’ means?” Carson asked.

“No,” Valentina answered.

“That’s Civil Warrior language.  Dogwhistling.  It means something to them, not to others.”

“I know dogwhistles, yeah.”

“Think ghost, Klan hoods.  And the similarity to words like bugaboo, jigaboo, peekaboo.”

“Right.  Yeah.”

“They really want a race war.  They started out saying it was inevitable, with the differences between races, and now they’re trying to provoke it.  A solid chunk of them, anyway, with the rest not really pushing back against that.”

A stop sign had been spray painted white, with the word ‘boo’ on it.  Others at that intersection had been taken down, poles torn out.

“Did they sweep through?” Carson asked.

“Yeah,” Mia replied.  “About an hour after you left.  I watched through the window.”

Carson slowed as they reached their destination, a five minute drive from where they’d been.  Multiple houses on the street had been targeted, doors broken down, windows shattered.  Cars had been trashed along the way.  The spray paint had been used liberally, on the houses, cars, and surrounding objects.

“It doesn’t feel right to not check if people are okay in there,” Valentina said, as they drove past those doors.  A big metal box that had the cable or phone connections for the area had been demolished, technical components strewn across the road.

“We need to focus on Ripley,” Mia said.

Carson parked.

The anarchist radio crew emerged from one of the raided houses.  A group of seven.  They looked older than university students.  The youngest two carried bags.

“I wouldn’t have asked you to come if I’d known this area was this bad,” Mia said.

“We have to ask.”

“The news broadcast?” Carson asked, in turn.

“Yeah.  They say you kidnapped a kid.”

“And you need clarification before you’ll finish the deal?”

“We want to know we’re doing something good if we’re giving you this.”

Carson turned to Mia.  “Want me to explain?”

“No, I can.  What the news didn’t say was that she was left in a hot car in the way of traffic for what would have been thirty minutes.  She would have died.  It didn’t feel right to give the child back, knowing it might happen again. That it might have been intentional.”

“Intentional?”

“I don’t know,” Mia said.  “Honestly, it was a life-defining moment, one I’ve thought back to over and over again.  I don’t know what thoughts I had then, and what I’ve inserted, in the years since.  But she was fighting with her boyfriend, ignoring her baby.  She was tired and frustrated.  I wonder now if a part of her left her baby in those circumstances because that would have been a way out.  For twenty to twenty-five minutes I was there.  She didn’t call the police for another five to ten minutes after that.  I saw the report.”

“And you didn’t-” someone said, at the same time another jumped in with, “There had to be a better way than-”

Mia stood there, unflinching.  A muscle in the side of her neck was twitching.

“You didn’t reinvent that timeline, thinking back to the event over and over again?”

“No.  I’ve wondered, but looked at the times.  The timesheet I signed with movers, before.  The search history on my phone, after I drove out of the neighborhood and parked for a short while, figuring out what I needed to do.  The time stamp of when the woman called the police.”

“There had to be a better way,” the other guy said.

“She would have died,” Mia said.  “I waited, then I went to get things she might need.  Now, within a day of being back with the woman who left her in the car, she’s in mortal danger again.  She worked with the Cavalcanti crime family to take the child back and bit off more than she could chew.  Valentina?  Would you get something for me?  Trunk of the car?”

“We don’t really focus on crime families or any of that.”

“Good,” Carson said.

After dealing with the horse piss farmers, who were so gunshy, these guys seemed really cavalier about Valentina popping the trunk open.  “What am I getting?”

“Bag with the green in the liner.  Files.”

Valentina unzipped it.

“Davie.”

“Yeah.”

Valentina opened it to double check.  There were some images in there that were in picture frames in her house- in the house she’d grown up in.  Family.

She brought it over.  She knew what Mia was showing them.  So she averted her eyes, closing them for good measure.

“What the hell?”

The kaleidoscope of images and blurs that played against Valentina’s eyelids momentarily lined up with the scene that flashed through her mind’s eye.

She felt that unsure feeling again, but it was different this time.  Aimed in a different direction.  She could remember the man with no arms or legs.  Hugging him.  The loneliness, the impulse, the feel of that hug, when the person had no arms or legs to hug back with.  A chin digging into her shoulder.

The scene was so vivid it felt like it could be real, and the lack of touch made her feel that unsure wobble again.  Like there were things missing or out of place, that should be there.  Connections and key memories lost in a head injury she’d forgotten she’d suffered.

But she hadn’t hurt her head.  It wasn’t her head.

It was her life.  It was the world around her.

“That’s the work of Davie Cavalcanti.  The man who has custody of my daughter.”

“The girl you took.”

“She is my daughter.”

“She’s a good mom.”

Valentina realized she’d spoken.  All eyes were on her again.

“Can you put that away?” she asked, motioning in the direction of the file folder.  “I’ve seen that in real life, I don’t want to see it again.”

“I’m sorry,” Mia replied.

“She’s a good mom,” she told them.  “Involved, caring.  I don’t know if what she did is right, but they lived good lives, up until things got complicated.  Davie Cavalcanti, the man I considered my father, is a monster.”

One member toward the back of the group moved over, took one bag from the hand of one of the younger members, then did the same with the other.  A woman, forty, hair in a messy bun.

“I don’t think this is right,” someone said.

“I don’t know if it is either,” the woman replied.  She put the bags down in front of Mia.  At five foot two, shorter than Valentina, she really had to look up at Mia.  “Get mad at me later, Tio.  Part of the reason I’m doing this is I don’t want enemies, and I don’t want to be out on this street any longer than necessary.”

“Thank you,” Mia said.

“Don’t thank me.  It makes me want to pick up those bags and change my mind.  There had to be a better way than what you did.”

“Maybe there was.  I saved her, then I focused on taking care of her.  Then things had been set in motion.”

“I know that feeling.  Doesn’t mean I agree with what you did.  I fuck around, push back against government.  You had a kid.  Stakes are higher with that.”

“You’re the first people who aren’t involved and who aren’t family, that I’ve told,” Mia murmured.  “I hoped that when it came down to it, people would understand.”

“I might understand more than Joe Public, doesn’t mean I agree or think it’s right,” the woman said.  “I really think you should drop the topic.  I’m about to change my mind.”

“Anything I need to know about these, then?”

“Two broad spectrum jammers, industrial size.  Power supplies built into the base.  When we tested it, my old car speakers were making noise, rebroadcasting it.  I think the coils resonated.  There’s panels on the front.  Left is minimum, right is maximum, for bandwidths masked, you might get something five or ten percent stronger, reaching a bit further, if you narrow it down.  I taped a page with the most commonly used bandwidths to the side.”

“What do we think the range is?”

“A little under one mile for one.  I had two of these guys drive out.  We were going to do more checking and see if the combined devices work nicely with one another after I tweaked it, but the violence around the protest was getting bad.”

“That’ll do,” Mia said.

“I’ll get the money?” Carson asked.  “Cash?”

“Yes.  I portioned it out into the small bag.”

Carson handed over the money, some final details were exchanged.

This was only one piece of what they needed.

“Let’s check on the hostages,” Carson said.

⯁

It was a rare scenario, when Valentina knew before Mia or Carson did.

Because she saw Highland, when neither of them did.  Mia was focused on moving forward.  Carson was, in that moment, focused on Mia, getting things out of the car, watching their surroundings, checking that Highland was doing the same.

They were all tired.

And Highland…

“What happened?” Valentina asked.

Carson looked at her, then at Highland, who stood in the doorway, at the top of the concrete steps.

“Highland?” Mia asked.

The man winced a little.  “Let’s have the conversation inside.”

“That bad?” Valentina asked.

But he was already going up the stairs, inside.

“Danger?” Mia asked.

“No,” Carson said, at the same time Valentina thought it.  But he put a hand on his gun all the same, leaving bags behind, to follow.

Mia put a hand on Valentina’s arm.  “Wait.  Let Carson check.”

There was smoke in the air from stuff going on elsewhere in the city, and the blackout persisted.  More spots of fire had opened up here and there.

Carson appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“Come in,” Carson said.

The house felt weirdly quiet, and dark.

Valentina stopped in her tracks as she saw the empty bathroom at the end of the hall.  The delivery guy was gone from the living room.  Mia’s hand gripped Valentina’s shoulder tighter.

“They escaped?”

“Benito Jaime and his licensed marshal friend came through.  The angel of death let it happen.  Convinced Bolden.”

“Where are they?  Those two?” Mia asked.

“The angel of death left.  Bolden’s upstairs.  He hurt himself, trying to stop them, before the doctor told him to let them go.  She tended to him before she left.”

“And you?” Mia asked.

“Let it happen,” Valentina said.

“I let it happen.  I’m still loyal, Mia.  But the kidnapping?  The way we were holding them, when there was no point?”

“They were leverage.  They were noise,” Mia retorted.  “They were something that could drive wedges into the family, between Davie and other key people.”

“They were young girls who barely had anything to do with-”

“No!” Valentina cut him off, and she tensed, whole-body, said it too loud, because she’d tried to speak louder as the words left her mouth, and hadn’t calibrated it.  It was loud, in the empty house.

“I know you have a grudge, you made that clear when you cut the one girl’s face open.”

“No, you don’t know.”

“I’ve been betrayed and failed too,” he said.  “The direction my country went, and the way it tried to use me.”

“No, that’s not- it’s not the same.  Because-”

“I think it’s more similar than you know.”

“No!” she raised her voice again.  She realized, on the second time, why.  Because she needed to not be drowned out.  She needed to be heard.  “No, because… at the end of what you went through, you said no, you didn’t like that.  You stepped away from it all, left things behind.  You could.  You became a hired gun and a fixer, holding onto good parts of yourself.  I read your file.  Mia’s words.”

He glanced at Mia.

She’d added that because she knew the weight and importance he put on Mia.  What she meant to him.

“And I… what she put me through, what my family did, I couldn’t.  I became someone who could and would cut Addi’s face.”

“I think…” he said, slowly.  “I think that’s a good reason to separate you and her.  Send her back.”

“No consequences?  She gets to keep… being what she is?”

“It’s better if she does than if things carry on like they were.  If we can’t get Ripley out-”

“We’re going to.”

“Are we!?” Highland asked.  “She’s in the Cavalcanti compound.  An organized crime family has her.  They’re baiting you.  This blackout?  It’s a mercy, because it means they won’t be trying to communicate with you, sending a news station a severed arm or an eyeball in the mail with a message!”

“Enough,” Carson said.

Mia had never been more of a clenched fist of a person than what Valentina was seeing right now.

“Am I the only sane person here?” Highland asked.  “Am I the only person looking forward?  How does this end?  Because you can’t gather an army that outclasses what’s out there!  I notice a distinct lack of cowboys accompanying you, so that didn’t pan out, the others are focused on their own thing!  The city’s blacked out, power won’t be on for days, that means Mia can’t do her thing!  You can’t even access the funds that would buy more help!  So how does this end!?”

“What did you get?  The girls were let go?” Mia asked.

“Benito Jaime and the marshal took them.”

“And what did they get?  What changed?” she pressed him.

“We’ll see.”

“Will we?” she asked.  “I thought you were better than this, Highland.”

“I should be the one saying that to you.  I’m trying, so hard, to have faith in you.  I’ve heard you out about the kidnapping of Camellia Teale.  In order for me to not be horrified, I need you to not be the kind of person who keeps four more kidnapping victims.  One of which was a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.  That’s the price.”

“You said before you thought you owed me.”

“That doesn’t outweigh- it doesn’t change that.  There’s no amount I could owe you, that would make that okay.”

“They had medical care, their safety was guaranteed.  Now, if we did attack the Cavalcantis, they have an even higher chance of getting hurt.”

“There’s more to it than that.  The psychological aspect of it.  The delivery guy.  I- all I could think of, every moment, was what’s next?  What follows?  What’s the next step?  What’s the best case scenario, what’s the worst?  I’ve spent a lot of years doing what I do.  I’m good in the field.  You say you admire how my brain works.”

Mia was silent, staring at him.

Horror had bubbled up inside of Valentina and now it was lodged in the places it had bubbled up to.

Highland went on, “The way my brain works, I can’t help but do the… the math of it, I guess.  And the math is ugly.  I can’t see a way to get Ripley out, and I can very easily see a situation where you hurting the three captives becomes a way to drive in those wedges you talked about.  Or where Valentina has another episode, when those of us hanging back here aren’t keeping a close eye on her.”

“The situation wasn’t that bad,” Mia said.  “We’re still a long way from getting that desperate.”

“Yeah,” Carson murmured.

“I’ll go back to what I asked you before, because we got sidetracked,” she told Highland.  “You said you owed me.”

“I did,” he said.  He almost seemed to relax a tiny bit, returning to familiar ground.

“What are you going to owe me, or what are you going to do, if we do the math, if we work out strategies, find the right people, and it turns out the hostages were a key piece of that plan?  As resources, information, or leverage?” Mia asked.

“I don’t see that happening.”

Mia didn’t respond, only staring at him.

“Carson,” Highland said.  “I’m asking for sanity, and an objective take here.  You have to know, it didn’t make sense.”

“The savvy thing to do would be to communicate that with us before,” Carson said.

“And we’d be right here, having this conversation, but I’m willing to bet there’s next to no chance they’d leave here okay, afterward.  I’d miss my chance to get them out.  And I’d be losing faith in Mia.  I’d be worrying about that girl…”

He looked at Valentina as he said it.

“…and what she might do.  I’ve seen soldiers who wrestled with pain and darkness.  I’ve dealt with my own.  She says it’s different, but-”

“But?” Valentina asked.

“I think if it is, it’s different in a scary way.  For me to be okay with Mia being a child kidnapper, I need her- I need you both to be better.  To be more.  And it seems like really good fucking common sense that if someone’s fighting that scary kind of darkness, you don’t put guns in her hands, you don’t leave blades in arm’s reach, and you don’t put vulnerable people she’s mad at, that close to her.  The hostages made sense at first, but the Cavalcantis didn’t bite.”

“Yet,” Carson replied.

In response to that one word, Highland’s entire way of holding himself momentarily collapsed, in a moment of frustration, like he wanted to sigh, throw his hands down, turn around, fall into a sitting position, or shout, and he did a fraction of all of those things, adding up to a single inarticulate action.

He looked between them, searching, maybe, for the face that might be most responsive.

He settled on Valentina.

“At what point do you have people- hopefully intelligent people, working for you, saying ‘this is wrong’, or ‘this feels bad’, and listen?”

“You?”

“Or the angel of death.”

Or the horse piss cowboys?  Or the anarchist crew?

“When they’re using that intelligence to give me a solution.  My daughter is in the hands of a man who butchers people.  Who would send a body part in the mail as a message, by your own admission,” Mia said.

“And I am so, so sorry,” Highland said, his eyes glittering with moisture.  “But I don’t think she’s okay, Mia.  I think we all know Davie Cavalcanti is the type of monster who would get his kicks over you arriving on the scene to find her in pieces.  There’s no reason for him to hold back.”

She shook her head.

“If you want a solution, if that’s what fixes this, I’ll give you my best shot.  Walk away.”

“I don’t think there’s a decent parent in the world who could.”

“You’re up against someone who relishes the challenge and knows the leverage he has.  A person like that, he wants to snatch her away from under your nose, lives in the moments.  So… let him get bored.  Take a year, or two, or three.  He’ll hold onto her.  Keep her miserable.  Maybe.  He’ll be looking for you, all the while.  With considerable resources.  The moment you’re on his radar again, he’ll act, hurt her.  That’s the contest, the challenge.  Make it a game, then win.”

“Leaving her in his clutches.  That’s insane.  Based on even more insane conjecture.”

“Valentina?” Highland asked.  “He’s your dad.”

All eyes were on her, now.

“I don’t think he’s that big on the game.  But I think he’d hold her to have her.  And I do think he’d wait.”

“Do you love her enough to let go of her, walk away?” Highland asked.

Mia shut her eyes.

There was a thump at the stairs.  Carson drew his gun, turning-

He stopped before aiming all the way there.  Because if he’d turned all the way, he’d have been shot.

Bolden, standing in the stairwell with a crossbow.  Standing on legs with holes in them, still.

“Highland.”

“Bolden.”

“I don’t know if you realize it, soldier, but you’re damn accurate about the direction things were going…”

“Yeah?”

“…and you’re not seeing how this is going.  This conversation was about to end with you dead.  Or chained to pipes and a toilet with a blindfold on, like those girls were.”

Highland looked at Mia, rigid in her fury, at Valentina…

Valentina thought about it, and she wouldn’t have said no.  She’d have felt like there was an iota of justice in it.

His expression changed by fractions as he kept his eyes on her.  Before he turned to Carson.  Who smiled, hard to read.

“She’s not going to leave her kid for years, Highland,” Bolden said.

“It would make me no better than her,” Mia said.

“The job’s done, Highland,” Bolden said.  “They pay you yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, because the blackout means they can’t pay you right now.  Like you said.  I’d give you a good reference but I don’t intend to be findable or reachable after all this.  If they let me limp away, after I didn’t stop the doctor and then let you go, here.”

“We’ll let you limp away,” Mia said.

“So gracious of you,” Bolden said.  “Highland?  Get enough of a head start that they won’t want to give up the precious time they need for saving the kid to chase you down.”

“We wouldn’t chase him down anyway,” Carson said.  “That’s a strange mental picture.”

Bolden considered that, then turned to Highland.  “Get a head start.  If only because you’re the kind of idiot who’ll think of something they want to say, turn around, and come back to say it.  You’re very smart in a lot of ways, I’ll give you that, but you’re an idiot like that, like she’s an idiot about her kids.  Get far enough away before that thought crosses your mind.  How’s that?”

Highland hesitated, then went.  He didn’t go to pick up bags or any of the odds and ends he’d bought.  Straight down the stairs.  The front door banged.

“Now,” Bolden said.  “Are you going to retaliate against me, or can I go upstairs, take some painkillers, and wait until my legs stop hurting?  I’ll get out of your hair later.”

“Are we the retaliating type?” Carson asked Mia.

“Not in a big way,” she said.  “I’ve let people die the hard way after they refused to play ball.  But that’s more standing back to let it happen.”

“You would’ve held him.  Or hurt him,” Bolden said.

“He would’ve kept interfering,” Carson said.  “Something stirred his morals.  His compunctions, even.”

“It was Benito, saying what he said at the schoolyard.  You said-”

“He talked about Camellia.  Your role in it.  You were his morality, maybe,” Carson said.  “Interesting.”

The entire tone of conversation felt surreal.  Disconnected from everything.

“We won’t hold you, or hurt you, or kill you,” Carson said.  “Just stay out of our way if you aren’t going to help?  We’ll pay if you do help.”

“I’ll stay out of your way, then,” Bolden said.

He half-turned, then seemed stuck.  His leg visibly trembled, as he put weight on it.  Like it’d snap in two near where the bullet holes had gone through his calves.  Beads of sweat littered his head and neck.

“Don’t shoot me in the back,” he said.

“We won’t,” Carson said, like it was a bit funny.

Back turned, one hand on the railing, Bolden got up the stairs, each step like climbing a mountain.

At the last moment, before he stepped out of view, he said, “Moses is upstairs.  Brought a shawarma for one of the injured.  He’s staying out of this.  He’s still working for you.  You haven’t paid him for the work since the kidnapping, yet.”

“Acknowledged,” Carson said.  “He’ll be paid.”

“He said the Civil Warriors are going hard against the Cavalcantis,” Bolden said.  He groaned as he took one step, bumping a picture on the wall or something, that clattered, as he turned the corner.  Then he was gone.

Leaving the three of them there.  The house wasn’t empty, but it felt that way.

“I’m going to go and ask Moses,” Carson said.

“You were nervous about going to see the cowboys,” Mia said. “Did that work out?”

“I think so.”

“Carson and I had three seconds of conversation about that.  You know you can walk away.  Quit.”

“I know.  I don’t-”

Valentina felt agitated.

Too many different points of view and strong personalities.  Too many latent threats.

“I wanted to say thank you.  For what you said to the anarchists,” Mia said, touching Valentina’s shoulder.  She kissed the top of Valentina’s head.

“I don’t remember what I said.”

“That I was a good parent.  That you didn’t know if I was right or wrong.”

“I would’ve thought you hated that.”

“No. I sometimes don’t know.  But you’re here and that means a lot.  It won’t mean less if you’ve reached your limit.  We will figure something out.”

She sounded less sure than before.

They’d lost allies.  People were saying ‘no’ to giving help.

“Carson said you’re driven by fear.  He’s driven by love, I think.  Whatever love looks like, for him.”

“That makes sense.  Anxiety, more than fear.”

“I’m angry.  But it’s not a hot anger. It’s a dark anger.”

“I’d understand if you don’t want to touch or provoke that.”

“No.  I don’t, um, I don’t want Addi to be okay, at the end of all of this.  I don’t want her to get away with only a scar.  After what she did.  I don’t want my dad to be okay at the end of it either.  I’m really scared, but I want to be there, to make sure of those things, more than I’m scared.”

“Okay,” Mia said, smoothing Valentina’s hair.  “Getting Ripley out is the first priority.  Just like it would be if it was you in danger again.”

“Of course.”

“We’ll see if we can help that happen, along the way to rescuing her.  Something worse than a scar,” Mia said.  “Your father too.”

Valentina felt that wobbly feeling again, but it was at the core of her.

“When the time comes, I’ll ask if you want to do it.  Think before then.  Make sure you’re sure.”

“I think I need to.  To put that life behind me.”

“Okay.”

It took a minute.  Carson came back down the stairs.

“I think Benito leaked something to provoke them.  I’m guessing he knew people who knew the Civil Warriors through the licensed marshal.  They’re pissed.”

“Then we don’t need as big an army,” Mia said.

“But we need more than just us three.  We’ll round up our guys, Moses is getting sorted, he’ll come, and I think we should talk to the journalist.  If he’s gung ho enough to throw himself through a second floor window, let’s make him useful.”

“It’s something of a plan,” Mia said.  “Let’s expand on that.”

“You coming?” Carson asked Valentina.

“I need to.  Yeah.”

---

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