How are we going with that cover story, Oz?
Nearly there. Implanted the search onto her personal holo and some message exchanges onto her personal accounts. Anyone checking up on her will see evidence of her lease being nearly up and her searching for a new apartment.
Great job.
Paige was ”umming” on the other end of the call. She clearly didn’t know what was going on, but had twigged that this was probably about Garet.
“Okay. So which mutual friend is this?”
Joel ignored the question, and continued with the script, knowing she’d get the message. “He says you’ve been worried about him, but that he’s fine. He’d like for you to take a look at this new apartment. Would you be okay to meet after work tonight?”
“Yes, yes, I can do that.” She hesitated slightly, no doubt wondering about her personal safety.
“We should meet somewhere like a bar, so you feel safe,” he continued. His voice was calm, balanced and soothing.
Molly was enjoying watching him handle the call. She wondered if his skill was a result of all those hostage negotiations and other badass shit he used to do when he was in the service. This wasn’t a part of his work that she had had the opportunity to see.
“May I suggest the Blue Rising Bar, a few blocks from your place of work?” Joel continued.
“Erm…yes. Sure. Hang on, you know where I work?”
“Yes, our friend told me so I can help you out.” Joel wasn’t fazed at all.
“Okay, fine. Say six o’clock?” she offered.
“Yes, great. I’ll see you then.” Joel clicked off, not wanting to get into any further conversation. They’d already agreed it would be Molly doing the meet and greet.
“That went well.” Molly confirmed, mostly for Garet’s benefit.
Garet started pacing again, having stood quietly captivated during the phone call. “She sounded okay, didn’t she? She didn’t sound like she was in trouble or anxious…”
“She sounded just fine,” Joel reassured him.
“It’s just…I don’t want to put her in danger by bringing her into this. Someone could be following her to see if she makes contact with me.”
Joel was about to interject and reassure him some more, but Molly couldn’t keep her mouth shut and turned to their client.
“Look Garet, she’s already involved. She’s already in danger. You saw to that when you asked her to give you access to the super-secret server. This is us working to get the intel we need to get you both out of danger. It’s the only way forward. And for all we know, they may already be onto her. In which case, having us looking out for her and involved in this op is the best protection she can get herself. Do you understand?”
Garet nodded.
Joel glanced at Molly a little uncomfortably. It was clear he disapproved of her directness with the guy who had come to them for help. At the same time, he couldn’t argue with her logic.
“Garet, we’re going to do everything we can to keep her safe.” Joel put a hand on his shoulder, and pulled out a chair for him at the table. Then, to Molly, he said, “Garet and I should have a chat about what this looks like, and settle his extraction bill.”
Molly took that as a clear sign that she was no longer needed, and realized too late she should have said something pleasant to Garet. Unfortunately nothing came to mind, so she left to go to her room to get some work done before she needed to get over to the bar in Spire.
She seriously needed to enhance her ability to connect with people. But dammit, sometimes they made a hash out of getting from problem to solution in the most efficient method possible. And that annoyed the ever loving hell out of her.
If efficiency had a middle name, she figured it wasn’t Molly, but if it had a second middle name, that might be her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A few hours later Molly emerged from her isolation tomb, dressed and wanting to refuel the car in preparation for her next drive to Spire. Bustling into the kitchen, she found Joel preparing food in the bowl that had been unofficially designated for the sphinx.
She raised an eyebrow, “So, we own a cat now?”
Joel spun around, as if caught red-handed. “Uhhhh, yeeeesssss.”
Molly cocked her head, about to mock him for his sudden attachment to a potential security threat. Realizing what he’d just said, she wanted clarification.
“We do?”
“Yeah, well, apparently, it doesn’t belong to anyone, and the landlady’s been worried about it not being looked after. She said that if it keeps coming back and wants to go with us when we leave, we’re welcome to it. She warned me that it’s never really stuck around in the past, but then, these sphinxes have a tendency to choose their owners.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “Oh, joy,” she said as she grabbed a glass of water.
“Why? What’s wrong?” Joel had stopped what he was doing and was looking at her in concern, as if he’d missed a major operational detail.
“Nothing.” Molly resisted the urge to screw up her nose.
“No, come on. There’s something. I thought everybody liked these purry creatures as pets. And in fact, you were the first one to feed it.”
“Feeding a starving animal is not the same as wanting to adopt one into the family…” Molly blurted out, then regretted the comment.
I don’t see what the problem is.
No one asked you, logic puzzle!
She took a deep breath. “Okay, these things, they’re the equivalent of the cat in this system. And everyone knows the situation with cats.” She told him.
Joel looked lost.
She looked at her friend, “Seriously?” She took a moment to collect her thoughts and then explained. “A human is a slave to a cat. No one ever owns a cat. A cat owns a human. That’s just the way it is.”
Now it was Joel’s turn to cock his head, waiting for more detail.
“You’ll see!” Molly landed the comment with humor, and though Joel was captivated by the prospect of have having a pet join their team, he wondered if her words were in fact laden with prophecy. He hated the idea that maybe she was going to be right.
He set the food carefully down on the floor in front of the waiting sphinx, and noticed how he suddenly felt like a server at a restaurant delivering food to a waiting patron.
Damn, she was right!
She flipped a hand out. “Anyway, whatever. If you want to keep it that’s fine with me, as long as I don’t end up having to take care of it.” She glanced at the sphinx before opening the fridge to find a quick bite of food before she had to fly.
“Why do I have a feeling you’re going to be right about this?” Joel asked, suddenly concerned he’d landed himself in something that he couldn’t back out of.
“I’m right about most things, you know.” Molly grabbed a couple of things, closed the fridge door and smiled at him.
Well, actually…
Shush, Oz!
Molly shifted into business mode. “Hey, while I have you, can we talk about our next steps?” Joel could tell that she processed information differently when she was thinking about operations and techie stuff. Her face was just…different, and she felt more serious and distant.
“Not a problem.” He folded a tea towel and laid it on the counter top, then leaned on it with his arms crossed to give her his full attention.
She grabbed utensils. “Okay, as you know, Oz has been looking into the process of buying a ship for off-world. But we need a legal entity to take possession of it once we find one. And that’s going to take about fourteen days to set up and verify through the various channels.”
“Even with Oz’s ability to hack into things and put you at the front of the queue?” he asked.
She put the food on a plate while she was talking. Sitting down at the table to eat, she continued.
“Yes, even with that. Some of the verifications need to happen manually, so we have no control over that.” She thought for a second. “Besides, w
e’re trying to discourage him from doing things that are unethical.” She smiled slightly before taking a bite of leftover pancake layered with cheese and gherkin.
Joel was marginally impressed that she’d considered that, but wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t just a ploy. She was leading up to something, he could tell.
“Okay, so what’s the ethical workaround?” He asked.
“Well, I wondered if you would be okay with us operating through your company, to take possession of the ship at least. And as we develop the other pieces of the plan to take this operation off-world and build a base to deal with bigger stuff, I can set up a new entity to do that. It’s just we’re against the clock now, if we want to disappear efficiently and effectively.”
She stopped talking and took another bite of food, watching Joel over her bizarre sandwich.
Joel thought for a moment. “I mean yeah, sure. Anything you need. This whole thing is moving fast though, and I’m just not sure why it’s important that we get off-world so quickly. You really think that we’re in that much danger?”
Molly nodded and stacked some more cheese onto the next piece of pancake with her fingers and took a bite.
“I do.” She swallowed. “I think that we could probably hide for a few days by getting out of town, but that we’ll have to keep running. Remember, everything down to our vehicle, our money, and even our holos, can be tracked wherever we go within the reach of the Central Planet’s XtraNET.”
She watched Joel’s reaction carefully, wanting to make sure he understood.
“But not only that, since talking with Mac and hearing about the Syndicate, I think we’ve begun to go up against some damned powerful and determined people. These last two cases have been for a good cause, but think realistically about the future.”
She paused to take another bite of food, letting Joel chew on the tactical aspects of the bigger picture.
Joel considered it from his experience during the last couple of years. He reached up to scratch his chin. “You’re right. When you put it that way, if we’re going to be doing this regularly and pissing off high level assholes, there are going to be some pretty annoyed people sending thugs against us.” His eyes unfocused for just a moment. “We can’t do it from within the system. Hellz, we don’t even have prints in the system and eventually that can bite us in the ass. Finally, we can’t build the kind of operation we need while we’re on the run.”
“It’s funny,” he added. “I knew when we first talked about this that we might be biting off something large. But I was more excited at the prospect of having something worth fighting for; I mean, changing the world, one brick, one case, at a time. That’s pretty powerful shit. But I guess I was so high on the possibility of what we might achieve that I didn’t really think through the risks.”
Molly smiled sympathetically. “You’ve just been out of practice for so long.” She winked at him.
Joel bobbed his head in agreement. “You jest, but it’s true. I got caught up in the emotion of it.”
Molly’s heart tightened. “You’re still on board, right? You don’t want to change your mind?”
His looked over to Molly and winked. “Can’t get rid of me that easily. Just because I was one of the most successful independent…. Well, shit. I can’t sell that. So I was doing ok, bringing in some money and dying one day at a time finding lost husbands who seemed to be occupying someone else’s home at night. Do you know how much that sucks the soul out of a person, to always be looking at the underside of people’s moral ass all the time?”
Molly’s relief was evident in her face; Joel noticed especially that the skin around her eyes relaxed.
“Let me tell you something…” Joel pulled out a chair and sat down at the table with Molly. She had finished eating and pushed the plate an inch away to give him her attention.
“I got into the military because I wanted to change the world. The thing that’s great about the service is that you’re given the skills to not be powerless anymore. And you get put with a team of people with the same skills, and together you’re sent on missions. Some gigs change the world for the better. Others help maintain the status quo and the balance of power. The trouble is, you don’t get to choose.”
Molly was now listening intently.
“So then, you left because you wanted to be your own boss?” she asked.
“No, I left because I want to help change the world. Being the boss doesn’t appeal to me. Being a leader is just what I do when I have good people around me that want to pull in the same direction. But I got out because with each mission there at the end, I didn’t know if we were the bad guys or the good guys any longer.”
Joel took a breath, and released it, along with what seemed like a ton of tension.
“I guess, as I’m talking, I’m realizing that I am with you because I know that even though we might fuck up and have the wool pulled over our eyes, our intention is in the right place. Your intention is in the right place. In the right direction. And as such, Ms. Bates, I will follow you off-world, or to another system, or to the damn Pan Galaxy if that is where this effort to make a fucking difference takes us.”
Molly felt tension building in her throat. She tried to remain neutral, but this sentiment was a little overwhelming. She attempted to speak, but her voice got caught.
Joel noticed her eyes welling with tears.
He shook his head, a small grin forming around his lips. “Molly Bates getting emotional. Never thought I’d see that! Man, if the old squad heard about this, they’d never believe it.” He was talking lightly, as if trying to lessen the intensity of the conversation.
“Okay, here’s the last thing I want to say, and then I’ll shut up.” His voice was the gentlest she’d ever heard it. “Molly, you saved my life.” He paused, his eyebrows furrowed together, “Well to be fair, you killed me first, but then you raised me from the dead. I suppose I’ll be able to get free beers on that story for a long time. At least some good will come out of it.”
She snorted, then slapped a hand over her nose.
He grinned. “You’re a leader through and through if you let yourself be. And yeah, sometimes your methods are a little intense, but there are going to be times where that intensity is going to save lives.”
He pointed to her and then himself, “We’re going to need that. So, I guess what I’m saying is…I owe you. But more than that, I want you to lead this effort. I want you to take charge of this whole bigger picture thing. I can’t do it. It’s not me. You’re the driver behind this whole initiative. But as long as you want to lead, I will be there to support you. Every. Step. Of. The. Fucking. Way.”
Molly had tears streaming down her face. Still unable to speak, she nodded, and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
Joel got up and found the paper towels on the counter. Peeling a couple sheets off, he handed her the towels to wipe her face.
“Just don’t ever expect me to give you advice on girly shit or anything. I am not into that kind of support…” He winked, and she giggled through her tears.
After the hug she thanked him again, still too overwhelmed with her own emotions to really respond.
“I’ve got to get the car refueled before my trip to Spire,” she said finally, swapping out her old paper towels for a few new sheets.
“Sure. Go do what you gotta do. I’ll be here.” Joel lightly punched her arm and Molly left, looking forward to the long drive ahead to get her shit together once more.
Awakened Page 14
