by Lucy Kelly
*****
Two weeks later around the same time Laura was shopping in Montana, all of her brothers had returned home. None of them had difficulties getting their orders changed. That in itself made Doug suspicious, but he had no proof that anything hinky had taken place, just a feeling. They were just sitting down to lunch and another brainstorming session when all of their cell phones chimed at nearly the same time. Josh was the first to realize what was happening.
“She’s sent another email!” he said as they all quickly dug their phones out of various pockets.
Hi everyone!
I wanted to let you know I’ve made it to the house safe and sound. It’s been a really exciting trip. I’ve only been driving at night so I’m perfectly well, no worries there. The house is perfect and the views are great, even if I can only see them on a computer monitor. I have room for all you guys and I’m looking forward to having you visit for Thanksgiving. I’ve been learning to cook and by the time you come I’ll be baking pies, I promise. I miss you all a lot and that part has been really hard. This is something I had to do, I know you don’t understand now, I’m hoping I can explain it all when the time comes.
Love you! —Laura
“Well, that gives us a pretty large area to search if it took her two weeks just to get there,” said her father.
“You don’t want to let her have these six months?” asked Aaron. He’d had a lot of time to think during the past two weeks of worry. Maybe they had been a little overprotective. He hoped his sister hadn’t felt like a prisoner.
“No. There’s something else going on here. If she just wanted to move out, I don’t think she would have gone so far away. Then there was her comment about hoping she could explain it to us. As if it wouldn’t be up to her. No, we keep looking.”
All of the Donahue men exchanged looks and nodded. They would not give up.
Chapter Six
“Come on into the back,” Laura said to Mara.
She unlocked her chair from its position behind the wheel then turned and opened the door that separated the camper from the cockpit of her vehicle. Shutting the door again after Mara entered.
“I need to be able to shut out all natural light,” she explained, pushing back the hood and pulling off the ski mask and goggles. “Oh, that feels so much better, I was getting very warm under there.”
Mara got her first look at the young woman and was surprised at her beauty. Generally shifters were a beautiful species, with their toned bodies and strong bone structures. Here was a young lady as delicate as a fairy, long shining hair almost white in color, sharp features most likely due to lack of nourishment and skin so pale, it almost made her believe in vampires. This was skin that had never seen the kiss of the sun.
Before either woman could say anything there was a knock on the side of the camper.
“That’ll be the guys. We need to let them know how you want them to proceed,” she said.
“Let me go into the other room for a minute, then you can open the door by pressing that button over there and tell them we’ll be with them in a few minutes,” Laura explained as she maneuvered her chair to another door.
Mara waited until the second door had closed before pressing the button Laura had indicated. When the doors opened like the louvered doors on a bus she stepped onto the platform that Laura would normally roll her wheelchair onto.
“Call the alpha, we’ve all been invited for dinner after we help her move her things into her house,” she said in a voice so low only the shifters’ hearing could pick it up.
“Sure thing, Mara,” said Ben.
After hitting the button again to close the doors she called out to Laura to let her know it was safe. Laura opened the door and waved Mara over.
“I’ve called the tram down the mountain. When they were enlarging the natural caves to make my home I had them use the rock they pulled out to create the foundation bed for the tram system. When it reaches the bottom, if the guys will load up the groceries, I’ll go up with them and start putting them away. Then they can use the tram to move all this stuff.” She waved at all the boxes stacked around the room and secured against shifting with webbing.
“That tram system is ingenious and the wooden walkway running alongside is nice too. Why did you put the walkway in if you have the tram?” Mara asked.
“The tram can be claustrophobic and during summer months my chair can go up and down the walkway if I’m not in a hurry. Or someone can keep pace with the tram and talk to me. My brothers used to do that a lot with my chair lift back at my father’s house. Here are the keys to the RV so you guys can lock it up when you’re done. Don’t forget to bring the clicker up to the house after you close up the garage.”
“Since you don’t have any other vehicles in here yet, why don’t I have the guys pull the truck inside and then we can shut the door against the sun? I’d like to introduce you to them and you can show them exactly what you want moved?” Mara suggested.
“That’s a great idea, we’ll do that. The side door leads to a covered corridor from here to the tram and walkway. I figured in winter it would make it much easier to get around. The chair isn’t rigged for snow. I have a snow-cat on order being modified for hand controls. It’ll have a plow attachment so I’ll be able to get into town.”
“It seems you’ve thought of everything,” Mara said, giving her a searching look.
“I have to be able to convince my brothers that I’m completely self-sufficient or they’re going to try to move in and take care of me again. Aaron is nearly thirty-seven and he should be married with a family of his own. I’m a burden,” she said simply before moving her chair away from the door.
When Mara would have said something Laura waved her off, she didn’t really want to discuss it with her new friend now. She still had to come clean about knowing they were shifters and give them all the intel she had accumulated on their enemies.
Mara saw a flash of something cross Laura’s face and she knew then that what she’d already learned was most likely only the surface of Laura’s personality. There were hidden depths. Hopefully they would learn all they needed to know at this dinner. She hoped the alpha didn’t find it necessary to kill the young girl who had already known so much pain.
*****
It took about four hours to get everything up to the house and halfway unpacked. Mara helped her with the kitchen and bedroom, and when Laura discovered Ben was a bit of a geek, she had him help her set up the house mainframe computer. She didn’t think she’d get all the house systems up and running the first day so this put her ahead of schedule. She had programmed an artificial intelligence she called Maggie House to run all the internal systems. Maggie would keep the temperature and security systems up and running at the proper levels. She would answer the door and deal with visitors. They had discovered an underground river that mimicked the nearby creek only it was much deeper. The underground cavern had a waterfall that fell into a deep pit that fed the underground water table. So instead of hooking up generators, her architect and engineers had set up a small hydroelectric plant in the cavern.
She was generating her own electricity, enough to power a city. Heat and power were covered, along with access to water. The only other issues she and the architect had had to work out were air ventilation and plumbing. The plumbing was complicated as an internal septic system was also put in place with a small water treatment plant. All those caverns under her land were coming in very handy. She would have to have engineers in to service the equipment twice a year, but that was a small price to pay for being so autonomous in the middle of nowhere.
When she was aware of the extent of the cave system, she had her people modify her plans, adding to them. They had given her a brainstorm and she felt it would be a gesture to the local shifter community that she was sincere. It meant she needed to use up an extra two and a half million dollars on the build but she considered it money well spent.
“This is a sweet system. I d
on’t know what half this shit is,” said Ben with some awe.
“Thanks, I designed a lot of it myself. I’ve been in this chair since I was seven so I’ve had a lot of time in my head to work on stuff. If you want to work on a barter system, I’ll trade your strong legs for some of my knowledge. Wanna be a part-time helper? If not, I can always pay you for your time,” she said in a rush.
The young man’s cheeks turned ruddy. He knew this woman wasn’t his mate but he still felt protective of her. It was almost unheard of for a shifter to be crippled in the way Laura had been at such a young age.
“I would be privileged to be your helper, but I would need to check with my al…elder family members first.”
Catching the slip of the tongue she slowly nodded her head. It was the first concrete evidence that she was right in her conclusions about the three people being shifters. She pretended not to notice.
“Okay, that’s fine. Why don’t you go get a second chair and I’ll start the system and run it through all the necessary check routines. You can watch and if you have questions, I’ll answer them as they come along.”
Ben nodded eagerly and went to get a chair from the dining room. Laura was taking a huge risk, this was the first time she’d let anyone see everything she was capable of doing with a computer. But if she was going to earn their trust, it was important that she not hold back from them. It was the reason she told Mara up front about her family and their connection to the government and military. She knew in their culture those connections might be held against her so she put it all out there.
She’d had the entire house pre-wired before the sheetrock went up so connecting in hadn’t taken them long. She didn’t use Wi-Fi for her main connections, too much of a security risk. The electricity was all connected up and the power levels were more than enough to run the entire house. She had a separate Wi-Fi router, which was only good internally. The house was shielded from outside access. It couldn’t be used to access the web, but she could run any system in the house from her chair with a computer tablet if she needed to. It was a failsafe in case Maggie House had a bug.
By the time Ben got back with the chair, she was already logged in and had started running her checks. This specific computer would be running the house solely. She was setting up the rest of the equipment in her office. This room was the terminal room for Maggie. She’d based the image of Maggie on an actress named Juliet Mills from a 1970 TV show called Nanny and the Professor.
“Hello, Laura is that you, dear?” Maggie said through the speakers, making Ben jump a little in his chair.
“Yes, Maggie, it’s me. Are you completely functional?” she asked.
“Let me run a diagnostic…please check the sensors in quadrant two. I think there might me a loose connection,” she said in her soft voice with its British intonations. Laura had recorded and isolated Juliet Mills’ voice from all the episodes of Nanny and the Professor and she thought she got the voice just right.
“Okay, continue your diagnostic while I check that out.”
She wheeled around to a metal cabinet in the corner. Opening the doors she pulled out a mini mag-lite and lit up quadrant two. After tightening the loose connection she closed the cabinet and went back to the monitor where codes were streaming across the surface.
“Maggie, I think I’ve repaired the problem in quadrant two, give it another check for me please,” she spoke aloud, the microphone built into the system picking up her voice easily.
“Thank you, dear. Everything is ship shape now. I’ve set the house temp to a comfortable seventy-two degrees. If I have any problems I’ll ring you,” said Maggie’s disembodied voice.
“Okay, Maggie, the house is yours.” Turning off the monitor Laura turned to Ben. “Any questions?”
He stood up carrying his chair back out, Laura following behind. They went back in the direction of the kitchen since it was time to start dinner preparations. “Only about a million of them! I hope I get a chance to learn from you.”
“I’m sure something can be worked out,” she said, moving to the refrigerator. All of the counters and appliances were down on her level. The walls were covered in art instead of cabinets. She had a large pantry with easy access shelves and a walk-in refrigerator set up to her specifications. In addition to her kitchen, she also had a catering kitchen at normal scale and there was a third commercial kitchen several levels down. It was part of her large addition in the caverns. She was looking forward to explaining it all to her new, hopefully friendly, shifter acquaintances.
While Laura worked in the kitchen, Tom and Ben unpacked all of her office equipment. They didn’t hook up anything, just arranged it in an orderly fashion on the long conference table at one end of the room. There was so much stuff that even Ben was unsure what to put on the desk. In the bedroom Mara was putting away all of Laura’s clothes. She set aside a bag of dirty laundry to take into the laundry room off the kitchen. She was just finishing when Ben came to the door.
“Mara,” he said in a low voice. She looked up and then followed him out of the room. When they got to the office/conference room he stepped to the side and waved his arm over to the corner. Stacked up were thirteen aluminum briefcases, all of them were locked. She walked over to them and stretched out her hands. The words of a revealing spell ran past her lips and she jumped back—evil!
“This is bad, this is really bad. Damn, she seemed like such a nice girl too. Chances are good she’s with the Shayatin or The Society, both were made up almost entirely of humans. It’s a good thing the alpha will be here later, he’ll be able to pass judgment.”
They both heard the whirl of Laura’s wheels rolling over the hardwood floors well before she arrived at the door to the office. By the time she got there, they were all over by the conference table acting as if they were placing the final pieces of equipment in order. But Laura didn’t have a genius IQ for nothing. One quick sweep of her eyes and she knew the gig was up.
“It’s a good thing dinner is almost ready. Your Alpha is going to be here soon right? I can tell you guys need to hear what’s up right away. Don’t touch the cases okay, those are for your Alpha. He should be the one to decide what happens to their contents. I feel like there’s some really bad shit in there. I tried to purify it as best as I could for the journey. Tom, bring that laptop on the end along with the power cord and one of the portable mouses too. Ben, did you happen to come across a small red box filled with flash drives?” she asked, trying to read their shocked faces. He just nodded.
“Good, bring that too. That’s also for your Alpha.” Finished speaking, she turned her chair and headed back to the kitchen, praying she’d make it there alive. She talked a good game, but she was shaking inside.
Chapter Seven
Alpha of the Montana shifters, Marshall Connor parked his pickup outside the massive garage at the end of the road. He smelled snow in the air. At this elevation they could have snow sporadically into May. Not enough for skiing, just enough to turn the roads into dangerous icy shit. They’d had a streak of sunny days though, so he guessed they were due.
He went around the side of the garage and over to the walkway. As he went up the mountain he looked over the tramway to his left. The tramway was surrounded by a low wooden wall, then about every eight feet a support column held up a peaked roof. He supposed it would keep the snow off in winter. When it passed under trees, the tramway was covered in plexiglass and when it was in the open, the roof was made of corrugated green plastic painted to blend into the surroundings. He could see why it was as open as possible, it would be like a long dark tunnel otherwise and really claustrophobic. This way the trip up or down would be bearable.
The garage had been built at sixty-four hundred feet up the mountain, the house nearly another two hundred feet up. He hadn’t been up this way so he was surprised at how the finished product blended in so well to the surrounding forest. It consisted of wood, stone, and glass. The central portion looked like a greenhouse only
there were metal shutters closed over all the windows and part of the roof. Margie had mentioned something about her growing plants indoors, with that much glass she’d need to burn a lot of fuel to keep it warm enough in the winter months. She didn’t sound like a very smart human, but she was definitely a rich one to have accomplished all this. He walked the rest of the way to the front door and rang the bell.
“Hello, this is Maggie House. Have you come to call?” said a voice to the right. A panel slid open and he saw a screen and a camera lens.
“I’m expected for dinner,” he said.
“Alpha Marshall?” At his nod she continued, “Welcome, come right in,” just as the door clicked open. He walked through but no one was there. As he stepped forward the door began to close again. Looking around he could see the mechanism that opened and shut it. Then the voice came again.
“If you’ll step through the foyer, there is a staircase to the left, or if you prefer, the elevator is straight ahead,” the voice said with a soft British accent that actually sounded vaguely familiar. He took the stairs down and they left him at the end of a hallway. He could hear voices coming from a room off to the right up ahead.
“Your last dinner guest has arrived and should be here momentarily, Laura. Is there anything you need me to do?”
“I think I have everything under control, Maggie. I remembered to turn off the burners on the stove and I’m ready to serve. Thank you for your help, I couldn’t remember all the ingredients. I guess I’m more nervous than I thought.”
“I was glad to help,” said Maggie just as Marshall stepped into the kitchen.
“Laura Donahue?” he inquired.
“Hello, I hope you’re hungry, there’s a lot of food.” Just then Mara appeared in the doorway behind Marshall.
