by AJ Scudiere
"What?" Kayla's head jerked just a little. The shelter people thought she needed to be investigated?
"They do it with all people getting more than two pit bulls." Reggie volunteered. "I wondered about that last night and looked it up. They want to be sure you aren't starting an illegal dog fighting ring."
"Oh." She relaxed again, feeling like a spring bouncing back and forth. "I wouldn't do that."
"And now they know that." Ivy smiled at her. "And our dogs are safe."
Kayla leaned back and let her head rest against the seat. It would be okay. They would pick up the dogs, then take them to the nearby pet superstore, and get real collars and food and beds. Her credit card would get a bit of a workout today. Since moving into Hazelton House, she'd lost the nickels and dimes of her old life. Her puppies were going to run her a pretty penny, but she didn't care.
When they arrived, the four dogs were prancing around the office, waiting for her. Kayla hit her knees and started laughing as she was licked left and right. In the background she heard Ivy at the counter checking out the dogs.
The woman in the beige shirt nodded at Ivy. "I recognize you both from yesterday. But which one of you is Kayla Reeves? Legally I have to see ID."
Kayla held up her hand from where she still crouched on the floor, covered in dogs. "That's me." She stood to ferret out her ID. The dogs all followed her over to the desk, each of them trailing a cheap nylon leash. Kayla couldn't have been happier. She flipped out her driver's license, signed the paperwork and petted dog heads with her free hand.
It was Ivy who thought to question the clerk and managed to look completely confused, as though she had no idea who would do such a thing. "So who came and tried to pick up our dogs?"
The clerk shrugged. "Two men in jeans and T-shirts. I think they were in here yesterday, after you were. They may have overheard us running the check on you. That way they would know that y'all were getting four dogs and maybe thought they could get around regulations."
It all sounded very reasonable to Kayla, and very much like it could be ‘them.’ "What did they look like?"
The woman who ran the place looked at the deputy who sat in the corner chair, apparently just being there. "They were average height, one had dark hair, one blond." She shrugged, "You can look at the footage if you want. We got a camera." She pointed up into the corner at an unobtrusive video recorder, which Kayla and Ivy both absently looked directly into.
Sitting behind her desk, the clerk tapped at her mouse. Her system and monitor were less than state of the art, but seemed to get the job done. Before they knew it, they were watching grainy, jerky footage of the two men trying to pick up her dogs at ten a.m. this morning, the time the clerks had said yesterday the dogs would be ready.
Ivy pinched her on the arm while Reggie looked over the clerk's shoulder, but Kayla stayed silent. Though neither man obliged by turning around and looking into the camera, it was clear to all three of them that these were the two men who had kept them at the house. Reggie's eyes met hers; he knew, too. He recognized them. At one point, he’d hired them and trusted them.
Ivy played dumb quite convincingly. “That’s just nuts. We heard they make good family guard dogs.” She clasped her hands in front of her, and somehow it looked normal. “Thank you so much for not letting our dogs go to a fighting ring!”
“No problem, ma’am.” The woman replied about the same time as the deputy spoke up from behind.
“That’s our job. To keep the dogs out of illegal fighting scams.” He gave a short nod of acknowledgement. What exactly he was acknowledging, Kayla was unsure. But she nodded back and smiled.
After loading the dogs into the backseat, they took off for the pet store. This was the kind of shopping Kayla liked. They got no-tip bowls and four beds—Kayla picked out the type and Ivy chose the colors.
The stuff didn’t all fit in the trunk of Reggie’s sedan, so the dogs crushed into the back with two fifty-pound bags of dog food shoved into the footwells and grinned the whole way back to the plantation.
Evan and Reenie helped them unload animals and supplies and Reenie only flinched a little at the idea of the dogs in the main house on the pretty floors. But they’d had their nails trimmed and they didn’t gouge the wood.
Each of them took a dog by the leash while Reggie hung back, walking just behind the crowd as they fanned out over the plantation. Kayla and Evan made a sweep around the barn. When they got back to the main house, they could see Ivy, Reenie, and Reggie down by the front stone wall, and Kayla turned to her brother. “Evan, you’re holding something back. What is it?”
He nodded. Not a surprise.
Evan didn’t answer. Instead he held up his phone. He’d gotten another message—another picture from the same number as yesterday.
But this picture wasn’t of them.
This picture was of a live Robert Bell. Robert Bell, who was now decaying under the floor of one of the slave cabins.
30
Hazelton House
The dogs had barked nonstop the first few hours, driving Evan crazy. Then it had subsided to random single responses to squirrels and maybe deer. There were a ton of animals on the plantation even though they owned none other than the dogs.
Ivy and Reggie finally got their machines working. They all set a routine, where each of them built a Whitney Device each morning. Then they would scuttle the machine, taking pertinent parts with them, and go about the remainder of their work.
Reenie and Evan decided to get back on track with starting the museum. Though they wouldn’t be able to open without getting the issues with the Whitney Device and their safety resolved, there was only so much they could do about it. Kayla and Reggie were on top of getting the machine out to the general public. Ivy floated in between working with the device and the plantation.
Evan upgraded their phones to a single business plan with one-touch calling. It was more secure than a walkie-talkie line, but faster than dialing. This meant they could—within the borders of the Hazelton Plantation—roam free with a dog and a walkie.
Like prisoners, they checked each other out before leaving the house. Dog at side, phone on, a test run, a plan.
He was working in the barn, Faraday at his side, when Reenie’s voice came from the main house telling him that Marcus was on his way. They were now officially incorporated, so naturally there was more paperwork to sign.
Not moments later, Ivy’s voice followed. “Leaving Kayla in C.” Carriage House—they had made a code for each, not difficult to break, but something that didn’t have them announcing exactly where everyone was all the time. “Joining Evan at J.”
His eyebrows went up. She was headed his way.
After a moment, he stopped sanding and headed to the doorway where he could see her coming over the rise and down the hill to the barn, Newton at her side. Newton was either well trained or completely in love with Ivy; either seemed equally possible. He paced her, always in a perfect heel. Evan waved even as he wondered, Who would work so hard with a dog and then give him up?
Even before Ivy made it to the barn, the phone beeped again, Kayla’s voice ringing bell-clear across the waves. “Leaving C, heading to A.” She’d be in the big house with Reenie. Reenie would be designing marketing materials and Kayla would be gathering the drafts to show to Marcus Winter when he arrived.
The lawyer had been working for two days to the exclusion of everything else to get the patent papers ready.
Ivy came through the doorway; immediately Evan lifted his phone to report her arrival. That was another essential piece of checking in. If there was anyone else there to check you in, they had to do it. Kayla had added that rule to help prove you were where you were supposed to be. In addition to the GPS on the phone, they should know where each other was at all times. Of course, phones could be shut off and everything would be out the window. But as long as the phones were on, it worked.
It also meant anyone who could hack a phone system would know
where they were at every moment as well. But Evan had pointed out that these people already were keeping better tabs on them than they were themselves; the least they could do was keep up.
Ivy smiled at him as the dogs sniffed each other. According to Kayla, they had been housed together at the shelter; the caretaker reporting that they had become friends at first sight. So why they had to sniff each other’s butts now was a mystery to him. He was glad Kayla had claimed the dogs. He just had to make sure they got fed on a regular schedule.
“I came down to talk to you about not beveling the edges of these.”
Evan’s head popped up. Excellent, Ivy was talking about something that didn’t involve the machine or death threats or . . . hell, he didn’t even know if Kayla had told her about the man she shot while Ivy was missing. He stuck to the topic at hand. “Why wouldn’t we bevel them? This was a house with money. The rest are all beveled.”
“Sure, but this is a display in the kitchen area, and those items weren’t high-quality show pieces. This is the place to show off other furniture from the time, more the norm for the general population, and certainly not out of keeping with the set up that we have.”
He nodded, knowing he was going to have to do some re-planning.
Evan and Ivy worked through matching what she thought would be historically accurate for a kitchen house with what he had already constructed, and he found the work loosened the knots he’d developed—just a bit, but he breathed a little easier, and his shoulders relaxed just a bit.
He hadn’t received a picture since the one he showed Kayla. That helped, too.
Kayla was drawing schematics. She was going to post them on the web. Sell them to manufacturers. That helped, too. The further she could fling this thing, the safer they would all be.
Then his shoulders tensed again: the safer they felt, the more dangerous it was. They had to stay vigilant. He had to stay vigilant.
Ivy was heading back up to the main house and suggested he come with her. He had to head back anyway to sign the new round of paperwork Marcus Winter was bringing. He changed the topic on purpose.
“Have you said anything to Kayla?” He didn’t add “about your feelings” or “that you’re in love with her.” He didn’t have to. Ivy picked up on it.
“Not yet. I’m hoping for a good time.”
He’d done that, too, and had suffered through thinking there wouldn’t ever be a good time. But then he’d found it, right when he least suspected it. In the end, Evan had no advice, only his own opinion. “For what it’s worth, I think you stand a good shot.”
That earned him half a smile. “So she hasn’t said anything about me, that way?”
“No.” He wasn’t going to lie. “But I haven’t outright asked and she doesn’t volunteer things like that. Never has. Her last boyfriend she dated for six months and broke up with him before I even learned he existed. So it doesn’t mean anything. Kay doesn’t gush. You know that.”
She laughed. “But right now, it would sure be easier if she did.”
“She wouldn’t be Kayla if she did.”
Ivy elbowed him. “Don’t go throwing around logic when I’m waiting for the right moment to declare myself to someone who will be honest with me whether or not it hurts my feelings.”
She was right about that. Once Ivy opened the conversation, she’d be in it. Just as he was about to comment, the phone beeped again, Reenie’s voice coming through. “Marcus and Reggie are here.”
Ivy hit her button. “We are already on our way.”
Evan felt a tickle at the back of his neck and turned to look over his shoulder.
It was too quiet. Kayla didn’t like the silence.
She’d handed Marcus Winter her copies of the drafts of the machine this evening, and he’d driven off with them.
It was exactly what he was supposed to do, but she hadn’t liked it. It was eight p.m. when he left. Ivy had cooked dinner for all of them, Reggie staying until the last minute. The conversation at the meal felt stilted to Kayla so she figured the others had to be positively nuts from it. She’d asked Ivy later and confirmed it.
But then Winter handed Reggie the incorporation documents to file with the county. And the lawyer got into his car and headed up to Washington, D.C. He didn’t trust the mail service and didn’t want to wait to get the patent filed. He wanted a receipt in his own hands.
All of that made sense. Kayla didn’t trust the post office, but the problem was that she didn’t quite trust Marcus Winter either. And if he wanted to file the patent in his own name, he had all the documentation to forge it.
She rolled around in the bed, crossing over onto Ivy’s side as she did. Half the time, one or the other of them was on watch. Since she didn’t sleep well without Ivy beside her; she didn’t sleep half the time. So she rolled back to her own side, wondering what Ivy would think if she came in and found Kayla in her space.
Since real rest wasn’t on the menu, Kayla ran down the next day’s plan. She would draw up how to hook up the battery and gas generator to the machine. She’d test it on Reggie and Ivy. As the last two to finish construction of their own Whitney Devices, they were the best guinea pigs for her plan. If they could follow the instructions, anyone could.
She and Evan had talked about how to get the device out to the public. She’d been serious about posting it on the web, but knew only a few would be willing to construct something that seemed to run on so little. The solution had been to give the machine an apparent energy source.
It had taken a while, but she and Evan worked out a hybrid system that used a minor amount of gasoline on a small side generator. This was hooked up to the machine, which was also hooked to a rechargeable battery of a significant size. People were familiar enough with hybrid cars to believe in the gas-to-battery-and-back scenario she proposed. She declared her machine ninety-seven percent efficient, and adjusted the shadow constant to fit.
They hoped it would be enough to be enticing, making people want to download the schematics and build one. It also had to be within the realm of the believable, or else only a few people would even be willing to consider it. Her strength would come in numbers. So she had to ride that fine line between the real truth and getting the machine out there.
Kayla had no idea how long it would take to reach some kind of critical mass; they were in danger every moment until they reached that point. But that was a thought for another day. She rolled over again and tried to sleep.
Sleep still evaded her, and she planned the next morning and how she was going to build—or have the others build—several machines around the place and hook them up as the power source. She hadn’t figured out a good way to get one working out at the barn. It was too far away, there was no way to police it, someone might take it at night, which defeated everything they were working for. Having Evan reassemble it every morning and disassemble it every time he left was a self-defeating move.
She got up, first sketching out and then trashing an idea for a mobile unit. Kayla was sliding back under the covers, and thinking that Ivy had about five more minutes on shift when she heard Goodall growling from downstairs.
Loud barks erupted as all four dogs raced to the back entry of the house, letting the intruder know they weren’t welcome. Next came the distinct sound of Ivy pounding down the hallway toward the noise.
Kayla’s own feet were on the ground, her hand automatically sliding under her pillow for the twenty-two there. Not as proficient a weapon as Ivy’s nine-millimeter, but useful nonetheless.
She followed Ivy’s path and arrived moments after Ivy had flung open the back door. Holding Curie by the collar, she let Goodall and Newton head out. Faraday had turned to look at Kayla and she grabbed him, too, imploring him to stay, praying he didn’t realize that he was stronger than she was.
Evan and Reenie nearly barreled into her as they arrived, Evan barefooted and Reenie sliding on her socks. She’d need no rethink her footwear.
They all looked at each other, wondering who knew what.
Ivy spoke first. “Someone was there.”
Kayla yawned her way through the day.
They’d all stayed up the night before, checking windows in every room on every floor. Never moving anywhere without being part of a pair or without each pair having a dog at their side. They didn’t find anything that had been touched—not that they could tell.
In Kayla’s mind, that made it worse. If they knew, they could make a decision, maybe get back to sleep.
But thirty minutes after dashing out the door, Goodall had returned, panting but seemingly happy. Newton followed less than three minutes later. They inspected both the dogs, but found nothing of interest: no marks, no muddy paws suggesting where they had been.
All of them weary to the bone and too wary to do much, they headed back upstairs.
Evan’s watch had begun, and Kayla was finally able to curl up and get some sleep.
She slept more soundly than she’d expected and was surprised to find herself waking up in a tangle of arms and legs with Ivy. But the interruption and the hard time getting to sleep had taken their toll.
Ivy spent the morning painting one of the second floor bedrooms for display. She’d gone to see Evan in the barn and consult on the remaining pieces he was building. They ate lunch all together, with Kayla reporting on her progress building the machine outside again.
“I’m through assembling the machine, and the hookup of the gas generator and battery combo. But I have to house it to keep anyone from getting in without at least alerting a dog, and that’s going to be a bitch.”
Ivy chewed her sandwich thoughtfully, so Kayla wasn’t surprised when she asked, “Can we set it up so people can put power back onto the grid?”
It was Evan who answered. “Nope, not in this incarnation. The sixty-cycle problem isn’t too big a deal here, once we get it. But on the grid, we’d have to phaselock and that’s way too much to deal with now.”
