by AJ Scudiere
As they came around the front of the house, Evan arrived with six large red fire extinguishers in the backseat. Kayla wondered what the bugs were picking up. She wondered if that guy was still bound in the basement at that stupid house. She wondered if Reggie was going to go back and check on the kidnappers, or if he’d called someone or if he even still trusted the someone he might call. After all Number One and Number Two had failed him.
Pushing her mind back to the present, she saw that the fire inspector was asking Evan questions, but he repeated much the same story she’d already told. No one seemed to smell the cordite or the lies.
In the end, the fire inspector stood at the front steps and scratched his balding head. “Looks like someone threw an ID—incendiary device—onto your front porch.” He pointed around the burn marks. “This is gasoline or the like. But it looks like a prank rather than a real attempt to destroy the house.” He scratched his head again.
As Kayla watched, Evan’s anger bloomed. “He sealed our front door shut with fire. That’s not just a prank!” The muscles in his jaw clicked. That was a bad sign.
“Yeah, well. He didn’t douse the house, didn’t seal the windows or even the back door—”
Evan cut him off, righteous anger probably ruining his ability to censor himself. “Oh, so that makes it okay?”
Kayla stepped in front of him, nearly running into Reenie in the process. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who thought Evan needed to shut his trap before he spilled all the beans and went to jail for shooting someone. Her brain scrambled ahead along the trail it was on.
“Ev.” She kept her voice soft, the sound echoed in Reenie’s own warning. But the fire inspector was talking again.
“Look, Sir, I’m sorry. I know you want something stronger than that. And I know there’s nothing right in this. But it’s arson, not attempted murder.”
With Kayla’s and Reenie’s hands flat against his shoulders as though they could actually hold him back, Evan nodded.
And like that, the encounter was over. They were told that there were businesses that did fire cleanup but the firefighters legally weren’t allowed to make any recommendations. Even then they admitted that they didn’t know anyone who specialized in fire damage to historic homes.
In a surprisingly short period of time, the hoses were rolled up and the trucks had trundled down the driveway.
Dark was falling on them, and Kayla wondered what was out there, watching them, listening in.
They checked the front door. Though the bolt turned and caught, there were several gaps where the fire had eaten down the wood. Drafts wouldn’t be a problem for a while given the season, but they safety dictated some action.
Evan and Reenie trudged down to the barn for a piece of plywood. Their intent to board up from the inside in order to do as little damage as possible and yet leave the outside of the house looking as intact as possible. Almost an F-you to the guys who had burned it. Though there were no faces or names for their attackers, Kayla knew who they were.
Dinner was late, a solemn affair of macaroni and cheese with veggies on the side. They had made it for her, Kayla knew. Everyone was trying to keep her as close to routine as possible, trying to keep her from freaking out and melting down.
She wanted to tell them she wasn’t that fragile, that she felt great and the changes to her routine were offset by a wild excitement that came from not knowing how each day was going to turn out, from knowing that she was doing well. She had escaped being kidnapped, found a new ally, gotten arsoned and put out the fire before any real damage had happened. She actually felt secure in their insecurity and desperately wanted to convince them all of that.
But they wouldn’t believe her. She’d flipped her lid a little less than a month ago and Evan had needed to talk her back to the world of the sane. She couldn’t blame them for not believing her, so she ate her macaroni then trailed everyone back to the big house to get ready for bed for the second time that day. At least it was dark.
Reggie answered his phone with, “Come around the back.” And he started walking that way.
Just as he opened the door to a man in a suit and tie coming up the back steps, Kayla saw the man utter “Shit.” And step down. He looked up at all of them standing in the doorway. “Crap.”
As greetings went, it wasn’t the best. But Kayla liked it. “That step is weak.”
He smiled at her, even as Ivy’s arm tightened around her waist. His grin was lopsided. “I think it’s actually broken now.”
Looking, Kayla couldn’t see the damage, but she believed him.
“Who is this?” Evan’s harsh voice came over her shoulder just a moment before his arm did. He pushed her out of the way, gently, but a push nonetheless.
Reggie softly moved, forcing Evan to step back and exhibit at least the movements of a politeness he didn’t feel. The older man gestured the other closer but didn’t let the man any farther than the back door. “This is Marcus, my IP lawyer. . . . Is it all right if we all have a discussion? Maybe find a table and chairs?”
Evan was still leaning forward, blocking the way, his face near Reggie’s. “You don’t let people into my house. You don’t have that right.”
Reggie nodded only once, not as tall as Evan, but not cowed by his height, his strength, or his anger. “I didn’t want the bugs to pick up anything. Not even that we have a lawyer at the house. It’s your decision.”
Kayla’s mind swirled with possibilities that were better off answered. “What’s the lawyer here for?”
Evan looked stern. Ivy and Reenie looked curious. Kayla figured she knew where this was headed but she wanted to hear it from Reggie himself.
Another short nod was all that preceded his voice. “I didn’t move fast enough to protect Edwin. And while I’m not stupid enough to think that some papers on file will stop any of these people, I do believe that if we can take away their gains, then we can help slow it down. And maybe they’ll stop on their own.”
“How do we do that?” Kayla asked before Evan could. Evan would be snide, operating from his current anger. And he had every right to it. Kayla knew how that felt, and she knew that righteousness made it that much harder to let go. So did helplessness. Evan had suffered from both this past week and opening his home to a lawyer brought in by the man he still wasn’t convinced had nothing to do with his sister’s kidnapping was stretching him pretty thin.
Reggie did the smart thing and acknowledged them both. “We incorporate and we file for a patent.”
“You don’t get her patent.” Evan was already a dog in the fight.
Reggie, genteel as ever, clasped his hands behind his back, rocked slightly on his heels, and nodded. “I don’t want the patent. I don’t even need to be part of the company. But I’m going to fund it if you’ll let me, and I’m going to make you big enough that you’re harder to hurt. That was always my intent from the beginning.”
“Bullshit.”
“Evan!” Kayla blurted it and was surprised to again find herself in accord with Reenie, who was wrapping her arms around brother-dear and pulling him back.
Evan shook his girlfriend off. “Look, if that’s what he wanted in the beginning, why didn’t he just show up on our doorstep and ask? Why the photos and the sneaking around? He’s in with the people who bugged the place and took Kayla and Ivy—” here he stopped and looked pointedly at the two women, as though they needed a reminder—“and now he wants to write up a contract?”
Another nod from the distinguished older gentleman.
Kayla had to admire him. He only ever admitted that Evan was right, that his points were valid, then calmly made his own. The fact that he’d done the same this morning with a gun trained on him for more than an hour only solidified her belief that at least he believed what he was saying. He believed that Marcus Winters, appointed lawyer, was here to help.
“I had to check you all out. I didn’t know if you were going to even get the thing to work, or what your intent
ions were for it. For all I knew, you were going to sell to Big Oil the moment you had a chance.”
Reenie looked back and forth, the idea of restraining Evan all but gone from her thoughts. “Is that even an option?”
Reggie nodded. “Absolutely. All you have to do is let them know you’re interested. They’ll tie you up ‘til kingdom come. Kayla will never patent anything again, and they’ll own this patent and all the rights associated with it. But they’d rather pay you than kill you.”
Reenie seemed to consider that, so Kayla stepped in. “But in the meantime we watch them jack up prices while we know there’s a better way. We watch them get rich off our enterprise and we do what?”
Reggie shrugged. “I guess run the plantation. But they may take that from you, too. At the least they’ll want the Whitney history out of here so no one ever makes the connection.”
Reenie frowned. “Why would they care about the plantation?”
“They won’t want anything about the existence of the device getting out. You’ll likely have gag orders that you’ll agree to as part of the settlement. Your relatives knew Whitney. The plantation leads to Whitney, Whitney leads to the device. And the device is already embedded in urban legend—”
“What?” This from Evan, but he was the only one who was surprised.
“Haven’t you heard that Whitney made a ‘free energy machine,’ and that he hid the designs?”
It was Winters who nodded. Kayla hadn’t, but she didn’t get time to ponder that as Winters nearly spat out, “Is that what we have here?”
No one answered him.
He looked from face to face, each as impassive as the next, and when everyone remained studiously blank, he grinned monkey-wide. “Holy crap.”
That went well, Kayla thought. By not answering, they’d all answered him. But her thoughts were interrupted by Marcus Winters, setting down the briefcase he’d been quietly holding and popping it open. He pulled out a tablet and with a swipe of his finger he opened some program. But then he stopped, wiped his face, and put the device back. He grabbed a notepad and pen. He held them up. “This is unhackable and never connects to the Internet. How many patents can we file for this thing? We need to patent the shit out of it and build a company to protect it right away.”
When no one spoke, Winters did again. “You have to sell to Big Oil or patent, or you’re all going to be dead soon.”
27
The Main House
“I’m sorry.” Evan watched as Reenie, ever polite, questioned Marcus Winter. “Did you just threaten us?”
“No, ma’am.” He still stood there in the rear parlor, pen and paper in hand, ready for any notes they might give him. “I’m only stating the facts as I know them.”
Reenie squinted at him, and Evan considered pulling her back, but then again she was asking all the same things he would. Reenie’s eyes hardened. “And how do you come by these facts?”
“If you have a computer handy you can look up Carlos Tuanama.” He spelled it for them as Reenie pulled her phone from her back pocket, indicating that yes, she did have a computer handy.
Watching Winter’s face for any signs that she’d thwarted him, Evan was hard-pressed to see anything but grim reality.
“Tuanama owned a large section of oil-rich land in the Andes. Tell me about his daughter.”
Reenie waited a minute then spoke softly. “She went missing six years ago, was ransomed, then a month later her body was found.”
“That’s his oldest daughter. Tell us about his wife.” Marcus Winter’s voice was soft, and Evan read that as meaning he didn’t like talking about this. Or maybe Winter was a solid actor and he just wanted them to think that.
Reenie sighed and spoke again, even though Kayla and Ivy were now hanging over her shoulder reading off the small screen with her. “Same.”
“You can look it all up. But the same thing happened to each of his family members, one by one. Then Carlos himself disappeared.” He pointed at the phone as though they should double-check that, too. Evan preferred analyzing the lawyer for tics, signs, tells. But he couldn’t find anything he could use.
“The thing is,”
Evan’s head jerked at the sound of Standish’s voice joining in. “Carlos wasn’t ransomed; he wised up and went underground. He somehow got his hands on evidence linking the hitmen to one of the big players in International Oil, and he brought that man to court here in America. Where—after multiple threats and attempts on his life—Carlos disappeared again. This time, each of his surrounding neighbors was sent one of his body parts.” Standish ducked his head and tucked his hands behind his back. His usual “delivering important information” stance, Evan noted. “At least, that’s what we believe. Only a few of them reported it. But there are still many missing parts to be accounted for, and the neighbors all started selling quickly.”
Standish looked pointedly at the lawyer. “Tell them.”
Something passed his features. Clearly, he wouldn’t voluntarily reveal what Standish was pushing for. “I know about this because I helped on Tuanama’s case. I was junior lawyer.” Winter’s jaw clenched. “When Tuanama went missing, I took copies of the documents and posted them on the web—”
“I remember that!” Ivy was shocked and she looked to Evan, who offered a slight nod. He, too, remembered the leak of the documents, but had no evidence that the man standing in front of them was responsible.
Marcus’s voice was full of regret this time, but aside from the pause, he didn’t acknowledge their interruption of his story. “I was threatened. Slapped with so many lawsuits I could never unbury myself, though only some had actual merit. I received threats, and then . . . my mother died a concerning death, though I can’t prove anything. I was living with her as her caretaker at the time, she was elderly, and I was the likely suspect. I was jailed and bail was set ridiculously high.”
“What?” Ivy again. But Evan knew what was coming.
“I was cleanly framed. I have no idea if the lawyers took advantage of my mother suffering a natural death or if they actually killed her. The DA decided to make an example of me, and they tied me up for months. When I got out, I ran. I tried my luck with Standish here, thinking he’d either send me back or help me out. He’d helped Carlos. . . . and here I am. You can look up the lawyers in the Tuanama case.”
There was a silence for a moment, during which Reenie worked on her phone. She then held up the screen showing them all in tiny detail a clear picture of the legal team. Winter was there, listed under a different name, lighter hair, different cut. But it was him. Over the top of the phone, Reenie’s eyes locked with Evan’s. And he asked the question he thought had to be asked.
“So you’re yet another person with a target on you and you’re aiming that target at my house, as though we don’t already have enough red laser dots on us?”
It was Kayla who answered for Winter. “They can’t find him.”
Evan asked, “And you know this how?”
“Because he’s alive. If they could find him, he’d be gone. But he’s here.”
Reenie watched it all and didn’t like it one bit. “Can we just scuttle the machine?”
This time she looked to Kayla; the machine was Kayla’s project, patent, baby. But it wasn’t worth their lives. Was it?
Kayla was shrugging. It was clear to everyone that she didn’t want to abandon it. Her sense of worth was tied to the future she could see. And she could see well beyond this machine. She could probably calculate the percentage loss of their carbon footprint just in the time they’d run the three Whitney Devices here on the plantation. And she could surely see the impact of having the machines out there, running constantly.
That was the thing about Kayla and Charles and her other friends like her. To an Aspy, the end goal was everything. If it was growing a business then everything worked toward that singular focus. For Kayla, the goal was that tomorrow be better than today. It had been cars and safety mechanisms for a while
. Then it had been conversions for motorcycles for clearer emissions. She’d always had to see a positive end in order to work.
The irony was that she didn’t see the people right near her sometimes because she was too busy striving for her bigger goal. That they all might wind up in real trouble to bring the machine to light could just be chalked up as the cost of business.
It didn’t matter. Marcus was shaking his head. “Scuttling the machine doesn’t mean anything.”
The four of them looked to him, but only Standish stood unconcerned. He already knew what was coming and Evan hated being in the group that was last to the fountain.
Marcus continued, although he did seem a bit contrite. “Whoever they are exactly, they know the machine is here. And they’re well aware that at least one of you contains the knowledge to build it. I’d argue that their knowledge was imperfect, in that they took Ivy first and tried to get her to build it. But now they know for certain.”
“How does Winter here—” Ivy started but let the protest fade off.
Standish put his hand up, as though holding the younger, probably stronger woman at bay. “I brought him entirely up to speed. He needs to know what he’s dealing with in order to help.”
Marcus barely acknowledged the blip in the conversation. “Once they realized Ivy couldn’t build it, they went next to Kayla.”
Kayla nodded.
Evan’s heart pinched. But it pissed him off sometimes that she saw some things so much faster than others did yet couldn’t seem to grasp when Reenie was being sincere. He tried not to show his irritation but failed. “What, Kay?”
Ivy frowned at him.
That was good. She understood that he was being pissy to his sister. And she didn’t like it. She’d been on Kayla’s side now for several months. Kayla needed that. And he hoped the other woman wouldn’t burn out on it the way he sometimes did. He hoped she wouldn’t wind up carrying the baggage of butting heads with those she loved, just because she defended someone they didn’t understand.
Luckily, Kayla didn’t pick up his ire at all and simply turned to explain. “They screwed up in taking Ivy . . . but they didn’t screw up again. They beelined for me the second time. So whatever they didn’t know before, they know now.”
