by Bob Mayer
From behind the big vase, Eagles muttered over the net: “I like the ones that are minty.”
The girl strode in with the confidence of someone used to interrupting and said: “Just kidding,” as she slammed the door shut behind her.
Moms stepped up. “Excuse me. Who are you?”
She ignored Moms, which made Roland take a step forward from his hide spot in a closet. That finally paused her for a moment as she took in the large man dressed in a hoodie and sweatpants that were strained to the breaking point.
“You know, you all look cray-cray.”
“What?” Moms said.
The girl scratched at an old mosquito bite on her arm. “Crazy.”
“We don’t fit in?” Moms asked, and the girl rolled her eyes.
“Hello. The whole place is crawling with new faces this morning. New guy on the gate, new guy delivering the paper, even new guy raking the sand trap.”
Moms had their cover story ready. “I don’t know about that. We’re a group of postdocs from the University of Colorado, and Doctor Winslow is letting us stay here so we can coordinate our research with his staff while he and his wife are on vacation.”
The girl pulled up the piano bench. “Yeah. Tell me another.”
“Excuse me, young girl—” Moms began, but the girl pointed.
“Your legs are hairy. You haven’t had a wax in a looooong time, if ever.”
Nada looked over at Moms’s legs, professionally this time, and the girl was right. Standing by the window he could see the light layer of hair that cancelled out the tennis skirt. Smart kid, he thought. He watched her dig at the bite on her arm and noted her fingernails were painted bright green. She chewed her nails and cuticles but she took time to personalize her nails.
“What do you think we’re doing?” Nada asked.
She looked up with the surprised expression of someone who was seldom asked her opinion. “Well. You’re in Doctor Cray-Cray’s house—”
“Doctor Winslow.”
“I meant the wife, Lilith. She’s a doctor, too. And you killed Skippy and—”
“That wasn’t your dog, was it?” Nada almost seemed concerned, which caused a surprised look to cross Moms’s face.
“Do you think I’d have a dog named Skippy? Hellooooo?” She shook her head. “Listen, I know this place sucks, but it’s my place and I don’t like weirdos dropping in — like literally dropping in — and killing dogs, even dogs who are cray-cray and—”
“Could you please stop saying that?” Moms implored.
“I love your lip gloss.”
Moms looked stunned for a moment.
“Just kidding,” the girl said.
Eagle was laughing now over the net, the concept of Moms wearing lip gloss tickling his warped sense of humor.
Moms forgot they were on the net. “What’s so funny?”
And Nada shocked everyone with his answer. “You’re too good-looking to be wearing lip gloss or worrying about waxing your legs.”
Moms flushed, everyone one beat off by the presence of the girl. Roland was hoping a Firefly in something really cool, like a six-hundred-pound bull, would come crashing through the front door right now because all this attention toward Moms was making him fidgety and killing things calmed him down. Except they did have the Wall up. Still, a man could hope.
“So we’re really not blending in?” Nada asked, to cover his gaffe.
“Yeah. And you killed a dog, so that’s like seven sore thumbs.”
“Seven?” Moms asked.
“I can count,” the girl replied.
“We saw you last night,” Nada said.
“’Cause I wanted you to, helloooo?” she said, and Nada looked helplessly at Moms. “I’m just guessing here,” the girl said, “but I think you’re a bunch of government dudes — and dudette,” she added, nodding at Moms, “and something really cray”—she caught herself—“odd is going on around here. Those people left here in a hurry last night and there was some screaming.”
“How old are you?” Moms asked.
“Sixteen. How old are you?”
Moms didn’t reply.
“So you’re thirty-five.”
Mom’s cheeks flushed and that’s how the team learned that Moms was thirty-five. They all owed Doc ten bucks.
“What do you think is going on?” Nada repeated.
The girl stopped scratching at her arm and started gnawing at a cuticle and Moms knocked her hand away. “Don’t do that.”
“No touching, bitch, I ain’t cutting myself.”
Everyone tensed and the girl noted. “Cool. So you’re in charge. Love that.” She leaned forward and parted her blue hair a bit. “My curling iron did that to me this morning.”
They could all see the angry-looking burn hiding in the blue. Then she held up her hand, the one she’d been chewing, and said: “And Skippy bit me. He’s, was, a mean dog, but he never bit me before.” There was an angry gash, half-concealed with an inadequate Band-Aid.
“Doc,” Nada said into the throat mike. “Down here with your kit. Eagle, take upper rear over-watch.”
The girl continued. “Granted, Skippy was a ditz of a dog, but I’ve always been good with dogs and he nipped me last night.” She swooshed the wound with her little green-painted fingers.
Other than Eagle leaving, no one was moving and she looked about. “Helloooo?”
Doc came in with his med kit. “Let me take a look at that.”
The girl stared at him dubiously for a moment. “You really a doctor? I mean a doctor who, like, treats people rather than makes things in a lab? ’Cause we got lots of doctors around here who wouldn’t know the right end of a scalpel.”
“I’m a real doctor,” Doc said, and everyone on the team was surprised he didn’t add in the usual about his four PhDs on top of his MD.
“What about your curling iron?” Moms asked.
“It isn’t my curling iron anymore. Am I getting warm?”
Moms nodded and Roland reached behind him and pulled out his golf bag of weapons and began strapping up.
“Whoa,” the girl said as Nada and Moms pulled guns from under their shirts and chambered rounds. “Liftoff.” She smiled. “Just kidding.”
“Where are your parents?” Moms asked as Doc worked on her burn and bite.
“At work. Helloooo? The mortgage is ten grand a month. Where do you think they’d be?”
“Why aren’t you in school?” Nada asked.
“Spring break?”
“Seriously,” Nada said. “Is it spring break?”
“Yeah, you’re a bunch of grad students for sure. It’s summer. Fourth of July soon?”
Nada sighed. “So there are a bunch of kids home without parents around?”
The girl laughed. It was the youngest thing about her, the laugh. “Helloooo. Swim practice, Bible camp, violin, piano, dressage, traveling soccer and baseball and dance team? Nobody here but me. All the mommies and daddies are at work to pay for all the nannies driving everyone everywhere all the time.”
“Why aren’t you practicing something?” Moms asked while Nada was on the net, telling Eagle and Mac to come down and prep for a Firefly swat.
The girl did a remarkable series of three backflips across the marble floor, ending up in front of the piano. She leaned over and started to play. It wasn’t perfect, but the message was clear: don’t have to practice when you can do. Her green-tipped fingers were flying across the ivory as Eagle and Mac came down, golf bags on their shoulders, weapons in hand. Roland had his flamer on his back and machine gun in hand.
“Can you play the violin?” Doc asked.
“Can you?” she asked him, not missing a stroke on the keys.
Nada started to laugh and the team turned toward him because Nada never laughed.
“She’s our Asset,” Nada said. “Our Scout.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “I love love love that movie.”
“What movie?” Mac asked as he checked the
fuses he was putting in the pockets of his golf shorts.
“Really?” the girl said. “Scout and Boo Radley and just nothing?”
“And Atticus,” Eagle threw in.
“We get it,” Moms said, trying to get the derailed team back on track. “The curling iron.”
“You want me to get it?”
“NO!” Everyone said it at the same time, causing the girl to actually pause in her playing.
“So, we all cross the Rubicon?” the girl asked.
Nada looked at Moms. “I like her.”
Moms gave him a look.
“I mean, she’s young,” Nada said, “but she knows the area and is quick and—”
Scout slammed the lid over the keys and sang at the top of her lungs: “Love it, love it, love it, the lady is in charge. The boys have to ask.” She turned toward the front door. “Let’s go to my house.” She looked over her shoulder at the group, loaded with weapons, explosives, and flamer. “Might not want to walk across the street like that.”
The team scrambled to jam everything back into the golf bags, tennis racket bag, and shopping bags (eco-friendly, they boasted) that Eagle had uncovered in the garage. When they were done the team stood in the foyer and Scout shook her head. “Better, but not going to fly. You look like a bunch of government people hiding your weapons in a tennis racket bag, golf bags, and supermarket bags.”
“What do you suggest?” Nada asked, earning him a hard look from Moms.
“I go over there with one of you to protect me from my curling iron — I cannot believe I just said that last part — and I open the garage, and the rest of you drive from here to there in your big black gas-guzzlers. It’s not far. I think you can make it without getting lost.”
Moms sighed. “All right, Roland, you escort—”
As soon as Roland stepped forward, Scout was shaking her head. “No, no, no, and no.” She wrapped her arm around Nada’s bicep. “I prefer this gentleman.”
Roland frowned, Moms sighed once more, and Eagle laughed again.
“He ain’t no gentleman,” Mac said.
“He’s been nicer than any of you,” Scout said, the seriousness of her tone causing everyone to shut up for a little bit and feel the truth.
“I don’t fit in here,” Nada said.
“We meet anyone, I’ll take care of it,” Scout promised.
“Tell them I’m the new gardener?” Nada asked.
Scout laughed. “I can do better than that.” She tugged on his arm. “Come on, before that curling iron burns down my house.”
Moms opened her mouth to say something, but Scout already had Nada out the door, the heavy wood slamming shut behind them.
“Well,” Moms said.
“I’ll get the SUVs ready,” Eagle said, heading for the garage.
“I’ll load the gear,” Roland said, gesturing for Mac to help.
“I’ll help load, too,” Kirk said.
Moms was left standing alone in the foyer, staring at the closed front door.
* * *
Nada walked across the street next to Scout. He noticed that while her house was on scale with most of the others — ridiculously large — the one to the right of hers was on a scale all its own, at least twice the size. Looking more closely, he also noted a lot of things that troubled him. A small security camera was tracking them. As if on cue, the sprinklers came on. All of them, surrounding the house in a wall of water.
“Yeah,” Scout said, “that’s been the real problem until you people arrived. Bluebeard’s house.”
They reached the porch.
“Wait there,” she said, pointing at a swing. Before Nada could say anything, she disappeared inside the house, returning a few seconds later with a garage door opener. She sat down next to Nada.
“I watched them build that thing.” She pointed at the mansion, more a fortress. “I could sit in my room in the day and on the roof at night and watch. And a lot of stuff was done on it at night. Stuff Bluebeard didn’t want anyone to know about.”
“Who is Bluebeard?”
“The cray-cray who built it and lives in it. But he’s gone a lot. He’s gone now. He took off with his friends in two SUVs just after you guys arrived, so that was also weird.”
The garage door opened across the street. As the black SUVs rolled down the driveway, Scout opened her own garage doors. In ten seconds the team was across the street and in the safety of another garage. Scout hit the remote and the doors rolled down.
Nada stood.
“Where are you going?” Scout asked.
“To join my team,” Nada said.
“They can’t handle a curling iron?”
Nada considered that. Sometimes the Fireflies went into the deadliest creatures or things and sometimes it was like they’d simply bounced into something and gotten stuck. A curling iron didn’t strike him as a particularly deadly event, although the burn on Scout’s head was not to be discounted. She was lucky the Firefly hadn’t shot enough juice through her to kill her.
The earpiece crackled on the team net.
“Nada?” Moms asked.
“I’m keeping front security,” Nada said. “We’ve got four more Fireflies free, don’t forget.”
“I don’t forget.” Moms’s voice was a bit harsher than normal.
“Tell me about Bluebeard and the house,” Nada asked Scout.
“I’ve rarely seen him,” Scout said. “Just his SUVs, with tinted windows, right into the garage and out. Like you guys. He doesn’t have a mailbox, which is kind of weird, too. I told my parents and they told me to mind my own biz. I even told the dummy who runs the security thing and he told me Bluebeard paid his fees just like everyone else, more in fact, so pretty much the same. When they were building it, I saw them put in, at night, a safe room deep in the basement, except I don’t think it’s a safe room. And I also saw them unload a couple of really big safes, which is just plain weird.”
“Safes?” Nada stared at the dormer windows along the second floor and could swear he saw the silhouettes of gun mounts inside. He scanned the yard and noted small mounds around several struggling trees that didn’t seem to be getting much attention. The landscaping was very different from all the other houses on the street. Switching from considering a house in a gated community to a firebase inside a larger defensive complex, Nada could swear those mounds were laid out with a perfect firing pattern for a series of Claymore mines. If they went off, anything on that lawn would be sprayed with hundreds of small steel ball bearings. A perfect kill zone.
“Did you see who put in the bushes?” Nada asked.
“The shrubbery?” Scout said. “Nope. People here make some weird demands, but who plants shrubbery in the middle of the night or when no one is around?”
Scout pulled a crumpled pack of smokes out of her pants and lit up, just before Nada yanked it away.
“You’re too young to smoke.”
“When is old enough?” Scout shot back. “It hasn’t been ten hours since you killed my neighbor’s dog. And you’re looking at a minefield over there, aren’t you? I saw the people he hired to put in the shrubbery.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“Because no one ever believes me.” Scout said it simply. “They were the ones you hire off the corner at the gas station, not landscapers. And they did a lousy job, but they put in those bushes—”
“Shrubbery,” Nada interrupted, and she laughed before continuing.
“In the middle of the day in the exact spots where he had little stakes with red flags on them. I’ve lived here long enough that the placement made no sense from an aesthetic point of view. So I watched that night, and old Bluebeard crept out in the dark and he buried things in each of the mounds at the base of each.”
“Claymore mines most likely,” Nada said.
“You really think he put mines in?” Scout was surprised. “Even I started doubting me. ’Cause that’s real cray-cray.”
“Why do you call him Blueb
eard?”
“Why not? Not like we’ve ever been formally introduced.”
Nada pulled two bent cigarettes from the pack and lit both, handing one to Scout.
“For Chrissakes, Nada.” Moms stood in the doorway.
“Did you get it?” Scout asked.
“We got it.”
“Did you destroy my bathroom?”
Moms grimaced. “There was some damage, but we’ll have Support here in less than an hour to fix it just like new.”
Scout smiled once more, transforming her into someone almost charming. “Why ask for the moon when we have the stars.”
That brought the hint of a smile to Moms’s face. “All right. If she knows this place as well as she knows her movies, she’s an Asset.”
“What’s the movie?” Nada asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Moms said.
“Now, Voyager,” Eagle announced over the net, because Eagle always had to fill the information void.
Moms tugged on the skirt once more.
“The skirt’s not too short,” Scout said. “You’re too tall for it. Doctor Cray-Cray was like five-six.”
“Got an extra cigarette?” Moms asked, sitting on the other side of Scout on the bench. “Kirk got himself a little burned, but nothing bad. New guys always screw something up on their first Firefly mission.”
Nada shook one almost bent in two out of the pack. He carefully rolled it between callused palms, lit it, then handed it to Moms.
“Two down. Four to go,” Moms said. Then she took a deep drag as the garage door opened and the team shot across the street and disappeared into the other house.
“Do I get paid?” Scout asked. “’Cause I really, really need a job, ’cause I figure I have to buy a new curling iron, you know? I’m so tired of babysitting.”
“People let you watch their kids?” Moms asked.
Nada took a last puff on the cig and then field-stripped it. “I’d let her watch my kids.”
“You don’t have kids,” Moms said.
“I’d let her watch Zoey,” Nada said.
“From what you’ve said of Zoey, she and Scout would get along just fine,” Moms said.
“Do I get a gun?” Scout asked, and Nada and Moms said in stereo: “No!”
CHAPTER 15
