Vice

by Elana Johnson

  “And that one’s Frogger or Gill or something like that.” Vice pointed to the screen. “Look at his nose.”

  “Frogger,” Electron confirmed. “He’s been…two out of the three times.”

  “What do we think he is? Can you get closer on the armband?”

  Electron started clicking and moving the angle of the camera, and Vice focused on the live feed.

  “Dents and dings are done,” House said from the doorway, and Vice turned toward him for a sec.

  “Come in and close the door,” he said, and House did.

  “What have you got?”

  “They went northeast,” Vice said.

  “Guys,” Electron said, leaning away from the computer.

  Vice turned to the monitor where Electron had been working. It took him several long seconds to piece together what he was looking at.

  “Does that say President?” House asked at the same time Vice sucked in a breath.

  “Yes,” Electron said. “That’s what it says.”

  “Frogger is their President?” Vice asked. “Are we sure? Maybe he’s just borrowing a jacket.”

  “No way,” House said. “Can you imagine wearing Maverick’s jacket?”

  “In no known universe,” Vice murmured, leaning closer to the monitor. “He’s their President? He looks like…not the President.” He didn’t have anything commanding about him, not the way Maverick did. He wasn’t the tallest or the broadest, and Vice couldn’t imagine how he could command an outlaw motorcycle club.

  He switched his attention back to the live feed, and no one seemed to be deferring to Frogger for directions. He just worked like one of the men, and Vice didn’t hate that.

  Yes, you do, he told himself. He hated everything about what these men were doing in his town, including the fact that he had to stew about what they were doing in his town.

  A boat pulled up to the dock, and it looked like the same tiny fishing boat as the other times. Frogger wasn’t the one who spoke to the guy driving it, and he handed over his fishing pole and took the bag of whatever the Breathers wanted across the border.

  “Is that a purse?” House asked. “Have we seen that bag before?”

  “I’ll check it out,” Electron said, switching from the image he’d been studying.

  “A purse?” Vice asked, trying to see, but the man in the boat had already stored it at his feet. He couldn’t even imagine how cold it must be on the lake this close to Christmas, but it had been a dry year so far. Very little snow had fallen since the storms in November, and as a result, the lake was still passable.

  “It looked like a ladies purse,” House said.

  “I think he’s right,” Electron said, pointing. “See that glint on the metal? That’s from a designer label.”

  “Can you find out which one?” Vice asked, though he wasn’t sure why it mattered. He didn’t have any police software or know-how to identify who bought specific brands of purses.

  “Louis Vuitton,” Electron said. “That’s so odd.”

  “Those aren’t cheap,” House said. “And they’re transporting weed in that?”

  “Is that what we think they’re doing?” Vice asked. “It’s not a lot if it is.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Vice looked at Electron, wondering if some of their speculations could be vocalized. “Cash,” they said together.

  “You think they’re laundering money.” House wasn’t asking.

  “You can transport a lot of cash in a small space,” Electron said. “And they’d want to make sure they have enough people to ensure the shipments get on their way.”

  “And see the boat driver? He’s handing back a tiny bag. Look at that. It’s like a lunch sack.”

  Electron started manipulating the last thirty seconds from the feed, and he said, “It’s actually a food bag from a restaurant in Canada. Tim Horton’s.”

  “What in the world are they doing?” House asked. “Bring me a doughnut and coffee from Tim Horton’s? Oh, and here’s some cash we need you to hide. I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I,” Vice said. “But it’s interesting.”

  “And that’s it,” Electron said. “They’re not staying for eight hours. They’ve made exchanges like this three times now, and then they leave. In and out in under an hour.” He sat back as the bikers left the view of the camera.

  Vice’s nerves settled somewhat, but they stayed in the control room, as they’d dubbed it, because he didn’t truly rest until the Breathers had left town completely. “They probably just changed up the dock in case we were watching them,” he said.

  “Probably,” Electron said. “I want to see who’s out front when they come in. When we ride together, the Boss leads us, you know?”

  “Good idea,” Vice said. He could zoom in and move the frames around too, but Electron was ten times faster than him, and Vice helped himself to another handful of potato chips while he waited.

  “Frogger does lead them in,” Electron said. “I’m going to go back and look at last week. Watch the live feeds, would you?’

  “Haven’t looked away,” Vice said. He could chew and watch at the same time. And talk. “House, have you decided about a date for Christmas dinner?”

  “It’ll just be me,” he said, his voice clipped and tight.

  “How’s the job at the hospital?” Vice asked next. House had just started a week ago, and he’d talked a lot the first couple of days. Since then, not so much, and Vice worried that his friend wasn’t happy.

  “I’m settling in,” he said with a sigh. “I’m trying to figure out my schedule so I’m not so tired.”

  “Six a.m. comes early,” Electron said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Do you go to work that early?” House asked.

  “I’m in by seven-fifteen,” Electron said. “School starts at seven-forty-five.”

  House grunted and folded his arms, watching all the feeds with Vice. “Apparently, I’ll do three weeks on the same schedule and then switch. I just learned that today.”

  “Yeah?” Vice asked.

  “Yeah,” House confirmed. “So I’m doing the six to three shift right now. Then I’ll do two p.m. to eleven. And then eleven p.m. to seven a.m.”

  Vice looked away from the monitors. “That’s terrible. You’ll miss stuff here on that last shift.”

  “You’ll keep me updated,” he said, shrugging. “I need this job, and it pays way better than the library, and I don’t hate it.”

  “You actually like it,” Vice said, watching House for his reaction.

  “I mean, it’s a job.” House lifted one shoulder, his tell that he didn’t want to admit how much he liked the job.

  “You get to wear a uniform,” Vice said, turning back to the screens. “And be all official.”

  “No weapons though,” House said.

  “Are you kidding?” Electron asked. “You’re huge, House. Your hands and arms are the weapons.” He chuckled along with Vice and House.

  “I bet the beard scares people straight,” Vice said.

  “A little,” House admitted.

  “There they go,” Vice said. “Right back out.”

  “Who’s leading?” Electron said, sliding his chair back in front of the east road live feed. “Frogger. I can’t believe we didn’t see that before.” He pointed at the screen he’d been working on. “He leads in and out every time.”

  “Fascinating,” Vice said. “I guess we were focused on Fire?”

  “Something.”

  The alarm on Vice’s phone went off, and he glanced down at it. He needed to call Felicia, something they’d agreed he’d do every Wednesday before he left the club. She didn’t need an update on the Breathers, which was good, because Vice couldn’t really give her one.

  But he liked to hear from her every night to make sure she got home from work safely.

  “We’re done for tonight,” Electron said, yawning. “I have to give a test in the morning, and it’s the l
ast day of school before Christmas break. I can go over the tapes more fully in the next few days.” He stood up, and he was no lightweight.

  Vice wondered what his students thought of his facial hair and tattoos, though he tempered his rough look with glasses and a shirt and tie.

  He did the Sentinel handshake with Electron and pulled him into a one-armed hug, patting him on the back a couple of times. “Ride safe,” he said.

  House repeated the gesture with Electron, and the three of them left the control room. Vice tapped to call Felicia while he let the others go ahead of him. “Hi there,” he said when she answered. “How’s the store tonight?”

  “So busy,” she said a little frantically. “We have shipments every day this week and next, and wow. I have no idea who’s eating all of this, but we can barely keep the shelves stocked.”

  “But you’ve got some canned pumpkin for us, right?” Vice asked.

  “I hid three,” she said with a giggle.

  Vice laughed too. “Great. I’m headed home, but text me when you get home too, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, and he heard someone call her name. “Gotta go.”

  “Bye,” he managed to say before the call ended. He sighed as he reached for his helmet, and he felt the weight of House’s gaze on the side of his face.

  “I heard that,” House teased.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you should try going out with someone, and then you’d sigh like that too.” Vice gave him a piercing glare, but House only laughed.

  “At the library, I only ran into moms there with their kids,” he said, straddling his motorcycle. “And at the hospital, I only run into sick people. No, thanks.”

  “That’s so not true,” Vice said, getting on his motorcycle too. “There are tons of doctors and nurses at the hospital. You’re telling me they’re all married or committed?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” House said coolly.

  “And I rest my case,” Vice said.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “I’m not saying you should go out with Julie, because I don’t think you should. But I’m saying she’s surely not the only single nurse in the hospital.”

  “I see your point,” House said. He fired up his bike and nodded toward the road ahead of them. “See you at home.” He took off in the next moment, and Vice watched him go, a flare of love for his biker brother moving through him.

  “Help him be happy,” Vice said to the dark, winter night. “Whatever that looks like for him.” He started his motorcycle too and followed House down the road at a slower pace. He didn’t need to get from point A to point B like the world was on fire the way House did.

  As he made the quick drive, he thought about what he should get Felicia for Christmas.

  “You better hurry up,” he said to himself. After all, the date was only a week away, and he better figure something out fast.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lucas stretched his arms in the security uniform he changed into at the hospital. The shirt wasn’t quite big enough for his wide shoulders, but if he swung his arms out and then in, he could usually find a comfortable enough position for the shirt to lay.

  He’d been at the hospital for almost two weeks now, and he sure did like this job more than any other he’d had. He worked the security desk for half of his shift, always with another guard, and then he and his partner for the day would go out on the roving assignment. They basically just walked the halls and monitored the elevators and parking lots to make sure people knew not to cause a problem.

  He hadn’t been involved in anything major since starting, and he liked the guys he worked with. He enjoyed sitting at the security desk and taking any calls that came in, directing the roving guards to any issues, and answering questions from anyone who mistook the security desk for the information desk.

  He’d learned a lot about people by sitting behind the desk, from the stress a body could carry to the way some humans possessed incredible strength. He’d only been sitting at the desk for two days before an older woman had shown up with a paper plate of cookies.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” she said. “You must be new, and this isn’t an easy job.” She tapped the plastic-wrapped cookies. “I made these for you.”

  “Wow, thanks,” he’d said. She’d smiled at him and walked away, her step sure. He’d asked the man at the desk with him, a long-time Forbidden Lake resident Noah Gilbert, who she was.

  “Her husband has been in the hospital for months,” Noah had said, watching her walk away too. “Her name is Myrtle Legacy, and she never misses a day of visiting him.”

  “Why is he in the hospital?”

  “He’s been in a coma since an accident on the lake.”

  “Wow.” Myrtle turned the corner, and Lucas could still feel the power in her spirit. He’d seen her several times since, and now he moved out from the circular desk and hugged the woman whenever he saw her.

  “You’re with me today,” Noah said. “And we’re roving first.”

  “Sounds good,” Lucas said, shoving his phone in his back pocket. He’d pick up a radio from the security hub, and then he and Noah would be walking for the next two hours. He’d get a fifteen-minute break, then another two hours until lunch.

  He wasn’t sure what type of human ate lunch at ten-fifteen a.m., but it had been him the past couple of weeks. By eleven, he’d be behind the desk, where he’d stay until three, with another fifteen-minute break in there.

  At the hub, he checked out radio six and nodded to the security team lead at the hospital, a man named Rudy Butler. He and Noah stepped through the plastic doors that led onto the first floor of the hospital. The security department was tucked into a corner of the building, behind the much busier emergency room. A long hallway led him and Noah to the ER department, which always had a sense of urgency in the air.

  The first two hours passed quickly, with Noah telling Lucas about something crazy his brother had done. Lucas liked Noah a whole lot, though they seemed to come from completely different backgrounds. Noah still talked to his parents, for one. And he seemed to enjoy his time with his family for another.

  Lucas reminded himself that he had a different breed of family, and he sure did like spending time with his Sentinels brothers.

  Noah’s radio chirped, and Rudy said, “We have a complaint on the third floor. Please proceed to Nurse Station Four on the third floor.”

  “Copy that,” Noah said into his radio. “What kind of complaint?”

  “A patient says his wallet has gone missing.”

  “Copy that.” Noah led the way toward the elevator bank that would take them up to the third floor. Lucas’s pulse bounced in an irregular way, because this was literally the first time he’d ever been dispatched to an incident. Or a complaint. Whatever this was, it wasn’t him walking slowly into the cafeteria, surveying the people there, and then continuing down the hall to the gift shop.

  He stepped onto the third floor, his senses heightened. But there wasn’t a brawl to break up or anyone talking in a loud voice. He and Noah approached the nurse’s station, where a group of people had clustered together.

  “Got a call about a complaint?” Noah said, making it sound like a question.

  “It’s room thirty-two-seventeen,” a man said, an air of importance about him. “But the patient didn’t have a wallet.”

  “We’ll talk to him,” Lucas said, because he didn’t need this guy interfering in anything. Wasn’t that why the patient had called security in the first place? He glared at the guy, who puffed out his chest, and walked down the hall toward the appointed room.

  Noah knocked on the door and entered first, only to find a woman standing there with a wallet in her hand. “I told you we’d find it, Mister Potter,” she said in a falsely cheery voice. She wore pink scrubs and thick-soled tennis shoes, and she turned to face the two security guards at the same time she handed the wallet back to the patient.

  “He just misplaced it,” she said. “He does
that sometimes.” She put a bright smile on her face an started to leave. Lucas wanted to stay, though, and find out if her story was actually true. Thankfully, that seemed to be protocol, because Noah asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Melinda Apgood.”

  “Thank you, Miss Apgood.” Noah waited for the nurse to leave, and then he said, “Did you just misplace the wallet, Mister Potter?”

  “I thought I’d put it on my tray,” he said. “And then it wasn’t there. But that nurse found it in my pants.” He certainly seemed confused to Lucas.

  “All right,” Noah said, turning back to Lucas. “Thoughts?”

  “He seems a little out of it,” he whispered. “And he got the wallet back.”

  Noah nodded, thanked Mr. Potter, and they left. Uneventful, and Lucas’s adrenaline started to wear off immediately. “We don’t owe them any explanation,” Noah said as they walked back toward the cluster of nurses. “We’ll just thank them for allowing us to talk to Mister Potter, and we’ll be done.”

  “Okay,” Lucas said out of the side of his mouth as they approached the nearly circular desk that was obviously the hub of where the nurses kept their records in this section of the third floor.

  “Thanks for your time,” Noah said, saluting with two fingers. Lucas felt the weight of several pairs of eyes on him, and he deliberately made his face as stern as possible.

  “Noah?” someone called just as the elevator had arrived.

  Lucas put his hand over the door so it wouldn’t close. Noah turned back to the woman who’d followed them to the elevators. “I’ll be a second,” he said. “See you in fifteen at the desk?”

  “Sure,” Lucas said, getting the hint. His friend wanted to talk to this woman alone, and Lucas wasn’t going to argue with that.

  It was time for their fifteen-minute break anyway, and Noah could do what he wanted. Lucas used the restroom, washed his hands, and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked official and intimidating—and he liked it. He ran his still-damp hands down the sides of his beard to shape it just right, and then he left the bathroom.

  He’d only taken one step when he heard the distinct sound of someone crying. This part of the hospital was relatively quiet, and he turned toward the waiting room. It was empty except for one woman, who had curled into a ball, her head resting against her knees as she wept.