by Gini Koch
Jeremy was up and concentrating. “He’s angry and he’s scared. He’s not coming back, though, I don’t think. It feels like . . . he has something . . . more important to do.”
The rest of us got to our feet. Jeremy helped his sister and Gower up, while White helped me. I looked around for the Poofs. Didn’t see any. Checked my purse. Harlie and Poofikins were in it, looking cute and also alert. Very alert. But none of the other unnamed Poofs were around.
Bruno strutted over. “You were my big, brave bird, weren’t you?” I gave him a nice scritchy-scratch between his wings, while I checked him for injuries. Bruno warbled at me, sharing that he liked the scratching, and the only injured party was Clarence.
“What are you petting?” Reader asked.
“Um, they’re invisible. Sort of.”
“Not any more,” Gower said. “Thank the big bird for me, will you?”
“Bruno can hear. Quite well. So, you can see him?”
Reader coughed. “Did you hit your head when Richard got tossed onto you? It’s a huge peacock, girlfriend. We can all see him.”
“You couldn’t before. I’ll explain Bruno and his flock later.” Besides, Bruno seemed agitated, as if he wanted to fly off but couldn’t. I checked on Bellie. She was perched on White’s shoulder, getting treats, and seemed calm. “We need to check on the Bahraini Ambassadress and the guys with her.”
“I’m fine, thanks to all of you,” she said as she and the others joined us. “My name is Mona Nejem. This is my driver, Khalid.” No last name given. Not a surprise, really. The younger man who looked like he was also Bahraini nodded.
“You’re with the Bahraini Royal Army, right?”
Khalid looked impressed. “Yes.”
“Dude, you’re in uniform. It wasn’t that hard to guess.” I looked at the other two with them. “You two, however, aren’t Bahraini. You’re Israeli, right?”
They nodded. “I’m Oren,” the smaller one said. “And this is Jakob,” he indicated the guy with glasses. No last names here, either. Again, not a shocker. Despite the bruising they were both starting to show from being used as two-thirds of Clarence’s punching bag set, an aura of readiness and competence radiated from es. both of them. They didn’t look distressed—they looked quietly pissed off, and like they were both plotting how to rectify what had just happened.
“They were trying to help us,” Mona said. “When they saw me being dragged away from Khalid.”
“Mossad isn’t always working against you, in other words.” All four of them, not just Oren and Jakob, jerked, and all four of them looked a little panicky and a lot guilty. “You’re all pals, aren’t you?”
“In a sense,” Mona allowed. “While our countries rarely get along, as I’m sure you’re learning, being here is different from being at home. There are many times when we who do these kinds of jobs have more in common with our counterparts from other countries than we do our own countrymen.”
“Not that the Ambassadress is in any way giving Israel even the tiniest bit of classified information,” Oren said quickly. “Or vice versa.”
“Our relationship is more friendly than antagonistic,” Jakob added. “Though not friendly in an inappropriate sense.”
“Do either the Israeli or the Bahraini Ambassadors know about this friendship?” White asked.
Oren, Jakob, and Khalid all put poker faces on. Mona smiled. “I don’t have to share every minute of my day with my husband.”
“In other words, Bahrain likely doesn’t know, and Israel might, but if either one does know, they’re pretending they don’t because it never hurts to have friends among your enemies.”
“Well put,” Khalid said.
While we’d been talking, Tito had done quick inspections on those who’d gotten manhandled, including me. “Everyone seems okay, but I really think we should have the Ambassadress and her guardians checked out a little more fully, due to who was hitting them and where. Internal injuries are possible, and I don’t have the equipment here to be able to confirm one way or the other.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back to our Embassy,” White said.
“Or any other Base.”
“Andrews,” Armstrong suggested.
“I agree,” Buchanan said. “It’s secure and has more than one gate, if necessary.”
“Really?”
I got a lot of sighs and “when will you read the briefing books” looks. Buchanan just grinned. “Yes, really. Every U.S. military facility has at least one gate, some have more. Most friendly nations have them too. And by friendly I mean friendly to American Centaurion.”
Truly I was the last to find out anything. Oh, well, the excitement of regular surprises overruled the “fun” associated with the briefing books. “Super, so Andrews it is. We have a limo nearby, hopefully it’s safe.”
“We have limos too,” Reader said patiently. “Or did you forget that?”
“I’ll hurt you later, James.” Now that the adrenaline rush was dying down, I knew I needed to focus and think. The first thought that came to me was the fact that I had AWOL Poofs. I used to thin mesk the Poofs ran off when they felt outgunned. But experience had shown that they tended to run off when they felt they were more urgently needed elsewhere. So, that begged a question. “Where are the other Poofs?”
“Do you mean the big fluffy animals with huge teeth?” Mona asked carefully.
“Yeah. I sense a major debrief coming on, but guys, before we do that, I think it’s an important question.”
Reader shook his head. “Worry about the Poofs later; they can take care of themselves. We have a known traitor who’s working with known terrorists on the loose. We need to track him down and confine him.”
“That didn’t work last time.”
“They used specialized equipment then,” Gower said. “Alpha Four disabled it.”
“Disabled and unable to be reconnected aren’t the same thing.” The nagging grew stronger. We were missing something. I was missing something, and it wasn’t just Jeff and Chuckie. But they were a part of what I was missing, in that sense. And, as so often happened, I knew I had everything I needed to put most, if not all, of the puzzle together.
“Let’s get everyone to a hospital or some semblance of safety,” Reader said. “And then we can worry about your theories.”
“No. James, we need to stop and think. Someone went to a hell of a lot of trouble to prevent me from knowing anything and, therefore, to prevent all of you from talking about it with me.”
“Missus Martini is correct,” White said. “And she’s considered number one on our enemies’ hit list, meaning we need to stop pretending security clearances matter right now.”
“Oh, they matter. They just don’t matter in terms of all of us at the moment.”
Armstrong cleared his throat. “If it helps at all, I firmly support Ambassador Martini being briefed on anything necessary. We have proof the HSAC test she was given was falsified, meaning our enemies wanted to keep her out of the loop. Let’s not allow that any longer.”
Had to hand it to Armstrong. He’d moved himself into our camp with ease, and he’d done it without coming off as a total jerk.
However, the senator’s ability to be a good politician wasn’t the issue of the moment. It was part of it, of course, but not what mattered right now. Think, think. I needed to think. Took the time while my brain was coming up with nothing to send the picture I’d taken of Clarence to Christopher, with an urgent request for him and Serene both to read it.
The key was probably ACE and what he’d been trying to get me to figure out. “Paul, is ACE uncomfortable?”
“No. He feels . . . distracted.”
“Wonderful.” Had a feeling ACE was being distracted by the real problem, not the fake ones. Got a fast reply from Christopher. “Well, this is interesting, in that ‘oh crap, this sucks’ sort of way. Christopher can’t read the picture of Clarence I took.”
“How can that be?”
Tim asked. “Isn’t it almost impossible to hide anything from him? Pictorially, I mean.”
“No. Not with a major Surcenthumain boost. Christopher can hide his emotions from Jeff now, so can Serene. And the bad guys knew Christopher would be a threat, so they figured out how to block him.”
“Kitty, we’re wasting time,” Reader said. “Richard, I want you sequestered somewhere.”
“Why?” Jennifer asked.
Everyone stared at her. Other than me and White. We shared the We Got One! look. It was nice to find someone who was on our wavelength.
“Because they’re always after him,” Jerry replied.
“No,” White corrected. “They’re always after the Pontifex.” He looked pointedly at Gower. “Paul, I was tossed aside by Clarence.”
“And it was only because Jennifer and Bruno got you away from him that Clarence didn’t grab you, Paul. How’d you know what to do?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “The parrot was screaming for help, so I figured you guys needed me. I took in the scene, and it was clear the target was the Pontifex. The current one,” she added.
“We need to get Paul to safety.”
“I’m fine, Kitty. I have ACE.”
Part of what was going on dawned on me. “No, Paul. If they can kidnap you, then they have ACE.”
Yi
CHAPTER 54
THERE WAS MORE TO IT, but getting Gower to safety was probably Job One. “We need to get Paul to the Dome.”
“I need to be here,” Gower argued.
“No, you don’t,” an authoritative female voice said. It was an authoritative female voice I knew really well.
My mother strode onto the scene. She was dressed for action—black pants and shirt, bulletproof vest with Federal Agent on it, and black cap with P.T.C.U. embroidered. She was also armed to go bear hunting.
Kevin was with her, decked out in the same garb. Between the two of them, I was fairly sure they could take on a small nation. Buchanan seemed to naturally fall into line next to Kevin, so both of them were behind but flanking Mom. With him along, I knew they could take on that small nation and win.
I trotted over and gave her a hug, weapons or no weapons. “Mom, I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Malcolm called me, kitten.” I got her breath-stopping bear hug. “Your father and I missed you and Jamie.”
“We missed you guys, too. A lot.”
“We’ll do a family reunion soon, but not now,” she said as she released me. “Anyway, Malcolm said we had multiple situations that were going to require authority to resolve.” She looked around and took in the scesaid ne. “Mona, how did you get involved in this?”
I wasn’t even surprised that my mother knew the Bahraini Ambassadress. She probably knew every person involved in D.C. politics including the janitors who cleaned the office buildings and the guys who drove the street sweepers.
She also knew Oren and Jakob, because I saw them pass a tiny sign to her, and she passed one back. I’d been looking for it, because I figured the Mossad had their own version of the Secret Handshake. What was really interesting was that Khalid passed a sign to Mom, too—a different one—and she passed a different counter right back.
“It’s a long story,” Mona replied. “But I’m more interested in the one your daughter is trying to tell.”
Great. Time to table my interest in my mother’s various kick-butt connections—I needed to pull it all together for everyone. If only I actually knew what “it” was. Oh, well, this meant that it was really time to do what I was good at—wing it while honing my Recap Girl skills.
“Okay, there’s lots of crap going on, but most of it, if not all of it, is being done to distract us from what the bad guys are really doing.”
“Which is?” Mom asked.
“I’m not totally sure. Yet. But I know Chuckie’s a target, and so is Paul.” So was ACE, but I didn’t want to say that aloud right now.
“Kitty, we need everyone focused on this event,” Reader said.
“No, we don’t. Well, we did . . .” I looked at Mona and her retinue. “You know, Clarence is enhanced.”
Buchanan was murmuring to my mother, so I assumed he was catching her up on everything that had happened so far. Fine, I was starting to rock and possibly roll as well.
“We know,” Tim said. “But that just makes it more imperative that we catch him.”
“So, we have a superenhanced A-C, one with no talents originally, I might add, who’s good enough now to block Christopher. For all I know, he blocked Jeremy, too.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not really. I read him. He was emotionally clearest to me when he was running away from us, by the way. But I have to be honest—if he’s good enough, he might have been able to fool me. You know, focus on one emotion to hide another one.”
“Mister White, make a note—I want Jeremy and Jennifer assigned to us somehow. Moving on, my point is that Clarence is now definitely an evil supervillain, and he’s more on the Juggernaut side of the house than, say, the Lex Luthor side—the big muscle carrying out plans versus the guy creating said plans. He’s strong enough to toss Jeremy like he was a rag doll—when he wanted to. But when we arrived, what Clarence was actually doing was playing around.”
“I wouldn’t call getting hit constantly playing,” Jakob said.
“Trust me. I don’t care how well trained you guys are, and I know you’re the best of the best, so to speak. But Clarence is enhanced.” I turned back to my guys. “Remember Moira, James? She almost killed you with one punch. I can’t believe that Clarence isn’t able to do that these days, especially since he was movi뀀d back tng so fast they couldn’t see him, meaning he’s taken a lot of that drug so he’s closer to Jeff and Christopher’s levels.”
Reader’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”
“He was moving at the fast hyperspeed, but we were all able to catch him and stop him. Richard, Jeremy and Malcolm all had him, but he still got away. And yet he struggled like two big A-Cs and one big human on him were difficult to manage—right up until what he wanted happened.”
“Which was?” Tim asked.
“You guys showed up from wherever you’d been. He wants Paul, because Paul’s the Pontifex and because of ACE, I’m sure. How did you guys know to show up?”
I got “really?” looks from all of them. The flyboys laughed. Reader sighed. “You broadcast a ‘help me’ emotional signal. The empaths with us mentioned that this was even better than the one you did when Mephistopheles was going to town in the Science Center, much more refined, clear, and accurate.”
“Funny you mention that, because you know LaRue and Ronnie Junior still want to follow in Daddy Mephs’ footsteps.”
“Playbook,” Buchanan said. “You’ve done it before and they know about it, so they knew you’d do it again.”
“I agree,” Armstrong said. Tito nodded.
“I as well, Missus Martini.”
“Okay, great. So they’ve been anticipating our moves because they know us. Clarence was a traitor from at least the time I showed up, probably longer, and he’s part of the extended Martini family and used to work for the Diplomatic Corps, so he knows all they did, too.”
“Your moves,” Tito said. “They’re anticipating you more than anyone else.”
“Maybe so, but I’ll bet cash money they’re busy anticipating as many of the rest of you as they can.”
“So, maybe they anticipated you’d call for help in some way and we’d come running, but why pull us all away here?” Tim asked. “I mean, if Paul was the only goal, why not do something to make you want to get him to you alone?”
I could feel it. Tim’s question was dead on for what was happening. But I didn’t have answer yet. “What were you all doing, before my emotional cry for help rang out, I mean.”
This question made them all uncomfortable, and some of them looked downright worried, my mother included. I took the logic leap. “You were trying to figure out where Jeff and Chucki
e disappeared to, weren’t you?”
Reader nodded. “Trying to determine how long they’d been gone, who’d seen them last, where we could look to determine if they were okay or not.”
“They’ve been gone longer than you realize, they saw Clarence last, is my big guess, and I doubt they’re okay, in that se
nse.” They all looked uncomfortable, still, and none of the flyboys were making eye contact with me. Whatever news they had clearly wasn’t good. “What?”
Silence.
“I want to know. I’m a big girl, and I’ve been aware that they were 뀀1" facin danger and missing longer than any of you. Tell me whatever it is you don’t want to tell me.”
“Do it,” Mom said quietly. The news moved from not good to potentially catastrophic. I steeled myself.
Reader came closer to me and took my hand. “Kitty . . . once we realized we couldn’t find them, I called Christopher. He filled me in on what he was doing and said he’d been spending his spare time at the Dome searching for both of them.”
“And?”
He swallowed. “He can’t find any trace of either Jeff or Reynolds. And by any trace, I mean he’s looked to the extent of his range.”
Unlike Serene, Christopher’s range wasn’t fifty miles. His range wasn’t even Planet Earth. Christopher’s range went to the outer reaches of the Alpha Centauri system.
Meaning Jeff and Chuckie were really gone. Or they were dead.
Yi
CHAPTER 55
“OKAY. Back to the current situation.”
I could tell I shocked everyone. “You’re handling this . . . very well,” Reader said.
“Look, I want to freak out, but I’m trying to think ahead here. Malcolm’s right, and those of us on my team all discussed this earlier—they know us, so they’re anticipating what we’ll do. My natural reaction is to move Heaven and Earth to find Jeff and Chuckie. But if I do that, I think we all lose. And by lose, I mean likely die.”
