Arkdone scoffed, “Leave the technical side of this to me. My system has state-of-the-art encryption capabilities. No one will see or hear anything said unless they were invited to join us. Just be sure you have access to a laptop in exactly,” Arkdone checked his Rolex, “two hours. I’ll send you an email with a link inviting you to the meeting well before it is to begin.”
“Fine.”
“I have that press conference in twenty-three minutes after which I’ll catch a plane to join you and our people in Texas.”
“I’m still about five hours from landing. I have nearly three dozen soldiers with me to add to my 17th Company.”
“Brilliant. I’ll be in touch,” Arkdone grabbed his drink off the table and took a deep swig.
“As will I. Goodbye, Donovan.”
Click
40 It’s All in the Details
Arkdone refilled his drink and carried it into the next room where Adrian Roth had two laptops open as he screened multiple social networks. He was monitoring reactions to the news he leaked to certain outlets concerning the imminent press conference.
“Senator,” he acknowledged respectfully, though his eyes never left the screens.
“How’s the world taking the news?” Arkdone tossed back his drink like it was water.
“No surprises. The other camp is feeling pressure to make a similar announcement, but we’ve caught them with their pants down. They aren’t ready to name anyone as running mate. If we’re lucky, they’ll make a rash decision trying to look as put-together as our camp.”
“Excellent.”
“Sir, we’re on in seventeen minutes.”
Arkdone’s phone vibrated an alert. He glanced down at the device still in his hand. “Get Michelle Andrews on the phone,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.” Roth scrolled expertly through his contacts and put the phone on speaker. It only rang twice.
“This is Michelle.”
“Michelle, how many guests have arrived?”
“Sir, twenty-three guests are here presently. The remaining dozen are scheduled to arrive in an hour.”
“Gather everyone and meet the last dozen at the airport. I want everybody en route to Dallas immediately. We’re going to the Winter’s ranch.”
“Yes, sir.” Michelle received the news with no show of emotion. She would follow any order with absolute obedience. He was, after all, her controller.
“We’re aligning ourselves with Kenneth Williams and his soldiers this once in an all-guns-blazing final showdown with the Winter family.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Needless to say, I want every metamonarch suited up, armed and battle ready. We’re going to be getting our hands very dirty in Texas. Also, we’ll be video conferencing in exactly one hour, fifty minutes with all parties involved. We’ll need to get the link set up for him, but then Williams will host—informing all fighters of what they’re up against.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll arrive in Texas in approximately three hours. Stay in touch, Michelle.”
“Always, sir.”
Roth tapped the end-call button.
The conversation had garnered Roth’s full attention. He watched warily as his boss approached. “Two things, Roth: First I need to be in Dallas in three hours. Make it happen.” He started walking back to the bedroom. “Second, set up a secure video conference to take place midflight. Standby for the participants’ contact info.” He walked back into the room buttoning a fresh shirt, a new tie tossed casually over his shoulder. “Have Ermos ready us for immediate departure.”
Roth’s brows furrowed, but he knew better than to question Arkdone. All he said was, “Of course, sir.”
41 It’s All Open to Interpretation
The family was slowly drifting to sleep after flying ten of their sixteen total hours. That’s when they heard her.
Meg’s scream of rage reached her mother, brothers and Creed simultaneously causing all four to leap from their seats and look around the space frantically.
“Did you hear her?” Alik cried to the others.
“Yeah, I did,” Evan nodded, running his fingers through his hair.
“Focus boys,” Margo hushed them.
Meg knew she needed to warn them and had thought of sending Creed a message, but her emotions were running so hot, her concentration so intense, she connected with her family all at once.
Margo steadied herself with a hand on the headrest beside her. Theo was out of his seat and reaching for her, worry clear on his face, but Margo wasn’t with him in that moment. She was with her daughter standing in the kitchen of their family home.
Knowing the others were terrified, the four started relaying Meg’s thoughts as fast as they could translate.
Everyone on the plane was on alert, watching the four people touched by Meg’s psychic connection.
“Meg upset,” Creed closed his eyes to block visual disturbances.
“She’s in trouble,” Alik growled protectively.
“They’ve bugged the house. They know she’s there alone,” Evan groaned fighting back waves of guilt.
“She believes an attack is imminent and is preparing for battle.” Margo’s voice scratched with emotion. “She thinks it could all be over by the time we get there. She’s warning us.”
“She’s throwing supplies on the kitchen table. She’s not going down without a fight.” Alik held his head in frustration.
“She wants to take out as many of them as she can to shift the odds in our favor.” Evan white-knuckle gripped the seat in front of him, feeling sick to his stomach at what was happening to his sister.
Meg ended her connection by sending waves of love to them.
Margo, Alik, Evan and Creed each opened their eyes and shared tortured looks. Margo spoke first.
“Creed, go alert the pilots. We need to get to our destination as fast as possible, and start warming them to the idea that we may have to land as close to the house as we can on a two-lane road in the country.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Creed nodded once, raced up the aisle and yanked the pilots’ cabin door open, nearly breaking it off its hinges in his rush.
“Alik, Farrow, you two get to work devising plans—start with a map of the ranch and use what we know of the enemy.” She rummaged through her bag and produced a notepad and pencils. “Start with us landing on that mile long flat stretch of road perpendicular to our gravel drive.
“Yes, ma’am,” Alik nodded as he reached for the supplies she offered. Farrow’s eyes were wide as she moved to lower a seatback tray to use as a workspace.
“Evan, I need you to brainstorm with Theo and me. We have to get Meg help now. She’s right. This could be all over long before we get there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Cole, Sloan, Kylie—take care of Danny and Maze, keep the coffee coming and if you think of anything that could help—even if you think it’s just a stupid idea that surely we’ve already thought of—share it. Meg is alone and fighting not just for her life, but for ours. We are not going to let her down. This isn’t just another battle. Meg believes this is the final battle.”
Everybody in the cabin looked around solemnly for a moment before they hurried into action.
Evan made his way to his mother’s side. She and Theo were near the front of the plane so it was easier to stand in a loose circle.
“Evan, can you use your precognition to see what we should, or rather, will do?” Theo asked.
Evan was shaking his head doubtfully. “I haven’t had time to study the nuances of the rebooted gift, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that. I have to be touching someone to get a vision of their immediate future.”
“Then take my hand,” Margo reached out to her son.
He hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Margo frowned.
“My visions have caused a lot of hurt in the past; I’m worried my interpretations will be wrong and cause more pain.”
“Ju
st tell us what you see, Evan. We’ll help with the interpretation,” Margo reassured. Her hand still hung in the air between them.
Evan watched her fingers for a moment before taking a deep breath. He reached out and took her hand.
A scene lasting no longer than ten seconds fluttered into view then disappeared.
Evan scowled.
“What is it? What did you see?” Margo pressed anxiously.
“Nothing, Mom. I saw nothing but you sitting right here on the plane. Your purse was in your lap and you were holding your cell phone. Theo was beside you there and you had the same look of worry on your face that you do now.”
“Is that all?” Theo asked carefully.
“That’s all.” Evan cursed under his breath and ran his fingers through his already tousled, shaggy hair.
“Evan, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve only just gone through your healing and your body has been through so much as it metamorphosed. Maybe the visions part of your evolution is still under way,” Margo suggested gently.
“I’ve thought of that, but no, Mom. The evolution is complete. I would have all the symptoms of illness if I were still transforming. That’s how it worked for Meg and Alik, remember?”
“Maybe it’s just different with you.”
“Why do I always have to be so different?” Evan muttered rhetorically and flopped down in the nearest seat. Absently, his left hand felt for the case holding his research still nestled deep into the pocket of his jeans before rubbing his left palm on his thigh habitually.
Margo had been watching her son and now exchanged worried looks with Theo. “I’m sorry, son. It wasn’t fair of me to ask you to see into my future and put that pressure on you before you’ve even gotten a chance to learn what you can do.”
She stepped closer to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. His muscles stiffened at her touch, but Margo refused to let go until he hugged her back. With a sigh, he reached up around her and gently squeezed his mother in a typical teenage boy way. Margo was smiling when she stepped back. She cocked her head like he’d seen both she and Meg do a thousand times, and smiled.
“We’ll get through this, Evan,” she nodded reassuringly.
“What makes you think so?”
“Oh, lots of things, but mostly my faith.”
Evan’s eyes darted away, uncomfortable. Since the fire, he’d pushed away from his faith and hadn’t wanted to think too hard about why. Even the miracle that took place through Danny in the salt lake hadn’t sparked a reconnection.
“And by the way Evan. Your vision wasn’t useless.”
“No?”
Margo shook her head. “See, I don’t have a cell phone. I left it on the bedside table back in our yellow house.”
42 “A signature always reveals a man’s character, and sometimes even his name.” ~ Evan Esar
Knowing she needed to access the garage, Meg invested her time in carefully searching the space for spying devices. Finding none, she hurriedly gathered all the weapons and armor she could from the gun cabinet and suited up for battle.
As she took inventory of weapons and ammunition, she wracked her brain to remember tactical strategies she’d learned from studying with her mom and brothers, but the truth was, it was never her expertise.
Evan was the techie—computers, devices, wiring, explosives—anything hard or soft wired was Evan’s area. Alik was the strategist, the memory keeper with dozens of tactical combat strategies successfully used in campaigns around the world, both real-time and historically, indexed in his eidetic memory.
Damn, I wish my brothers were here, she moaned inwardly.
She carefully packed her work into a satchel, slung it over her shoulder and dashed out the back door into the garage. Her next task was to protect the house’s power source.
She got right to work heavily fortifying the solar power’s control box and battery located at the back of the house. She used reinforced metal sheets to cover it, then covered it with brush for camouflage. Just as she was finishing setting trip wires in a twelve-foot radius around it, she stood abruptly and narrowed her eyes at the nearly dark northern sky.
Signatures
Her psychic senses zeroed in on a cluster of unfamiliar signatures roughly a quarter mile away, to the north. She held perfectly still, opening her senses completely to allow as accurate an interpretation of the interlopers as possible.
She dropped the wire cutters and spindle of wire to the ground as she rolled her shoulders back, forcing herself to relax.
She immediately recognized them to be metahumans because of the complexity of their auras, but unlike the typical soldiers whose colors were dark shades of putty—bland, heartless—these signatures had color. Certainly not as bright as her brothers’ or Creed’s, but they did have color. She frowned at the difference.
One signature stood out brighter than the rest. It started as a lighter shade of violet in the center but as it burst outward, the color graduated to a deep purple.
Knowing she was running out of time, she felt a surge of adrenaline. Crouching she swiped up her tools and carefully placed a covering of fallen leaves on the wires. She hurried around to the garage and yanked the heavy, metal door down. She reached up and disabled its emergency access before tossing down her tools and hurrying toward the circuit breaker on the wall. She slapped the main lever down, opening the current and flipped all switches on except those marked “barn.”
Inside the now brightly lit house, she moved from kitchen to lab double-checking that every door was bolted and every window was locked behind closed wooden blinds and drawn drapes—trying to ignore the sensation of being watched by hidden cameras. She took a moment to shove heavy furniture in front of the larger panes of glass in the great room, hoping to fortify those structurally weaker spots.
When she was satisfied, she ran back to the kitchen, sprang onto the kitchen table and jumped up to grab the frame of the skylight above. She held fast with one hand, unfazed by the weight of her body plus the satchel full of weapons. With the other hand, she reached up to unlatch the window and push it open. Gracefully, she pulled herself up and through the opening, stopping only to close the window behind her.
She paused for a moment to look north. Though muted, she could distinctly see a glow of artificial lights approximately 1.5 miles away. She sighed deeply, but set right back to her task of double-checking the integrity of the zip-line bolted into a load bearing beam before grabbing the other end of the cable and quickly tying it around her waist. She tossed the remaining bundle of cable down to the ground and leaped off the roof, landing in a crouched, catlike pose.
Meg raced the distance between the house and the barn, dragging the line behind her. Without stopping, she leaped up the side of the two-story building and caught herself as she climbed—instinctively locating finger and footing edges—until she reached the roof. Running on the balls of her feet, she made her way up the gambrel truss to the barn’s apex. Barely winded, she got straight to the task of pulling the zip-line taut and bolting it into a rafter.
Satisfied with its safety, she moved toward the crow’s nest and gracefully slipped into one of the four window-sized openings. Completely hidden from view, she settled in and looked over the land behind her, though she didn’t use her eyes—she used her mind.
43 17th Company
The private plane landed at a small, unassuming airfield south of Dallas in a town called Lancaster under the watchful eye of Ernie Messelton, airport traffic controller. Once the bird had landed safely, he only half watched it taxi to the hangar. He was more concerned with the coffee grinds floating around the top of his last cup of coffee.
“Josephine! You didn’t put the filter in the coffee machine right, again!” he hollered to the next office. After twenty-two years of working together at the airfield, Josephine got away with a lot more than anyone else there. Though he blatantly saw her roll her eyes and smack her gum, he couldn’t imagine being at the control tower wit
hout her.
“Hell, it’s not rocket science—it’s just coffee!” he muttered under his breath.
He poked a chubby finger into the nearly black liquid and frowned at the granules dodging his advances when something on the ground caught his eye.
Ernie watched as three large military-looking, tarp-covered cargo trucks pulled into the hangar.
“Hey, Joe. Where was this plane’s origin?” he nodded down to the hangar. “You know, the jet that just parked?”
He heard a clattering of keyboard keys before she responded. “The log says they started in Nuremburg, Germany, but stopped at Baltimore International to refuel before coming here.”
“They passed customs, right?” Ernie squinted his middle-aged eyes into the artificial lights that had kicked on since the sun set. He was trying to get a better look at the large black cases being transferred from the bird’s cargo hold to the trucks. The “passengers” looked well-organized and extremely efficient as they worked. Military.
Josephine didn’t answer right away, so Ernie glanced over his shoulder at her. He caught her shrugging and nodding. “They must have. We would’ve been contacted by the Feds by now if they tried to sneak past. Internationals don’t mess around.”
Ernie nodded, but continued to watch. Something about what he was seeing looked shady—he just couldn’t figure out what.
Within twenty minutes, the trucks were fully loaded with cargo and passengers. Ernie watched them exit his airfield as efficiently as they’d arrived. Their private jet was requesting permission to take off before the southbound trucks were even out of sight.
Whoever they were, Ernie recognized a well-funded campaign when he saw one. He also knew he was nicely compensated for his discretion. He walked a fine line, but he prided himself on his professionalism.
“As long as they weren’t using my field for drug running,” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t think of anything worse than that. After helping the empty jet exit his airspace, he stood and stretched.
Winter's Legacy: Future Days (Winter's Saga Book 6) Page 18
