Solar Reboot

by Matthew D. Hunt

  Again Cameron laughed, this time warm, genuine, pure enjoyment and not the release of tension. “I’ll get us some wine.”

  Bettie raised an eyebrow. “It’s eleven.”

  “I think society’s standards of acceptable behavior went out the window a long time ago. Don’t think I haven’t seen you sneaking Kahlúa into your coffee on occasion.”

  “Touché, and fill me up good, honey.”

  Cameron did, fetching two glasses of merlot that she filled very near to the brim. Once she’d handed one to Bettie, she started a fire in the fireplace, and then finally settled down on the chair beside the couch. For a moment they let the quiet stretch, both of them appreciating that it was no longer an angry silence.

  But, too, they both knew it couldn’t last forever, and Bettie was the one who finally broke it with a sigh. “So, can we talk about this without going back to hissy fits? For both of us, I mean.”

  “I can do my best.”

  “Appreciate it. I can’t imagine how worried you must be with Alex and Piper out there.”

  Cameron stared down at her glass and said nothing.

  “Sorry,” said Bettie. “Probably shouldn’t have led with that.”

  “It’s fine. It doesn’t get better just because we avoid talking about it. And it’s half the reason today’s so frustrating.”

  “And the other half?”

  Cameron took a deep sip of wine. “The other half is the thing you really want to talk to me about. So, let’s give it a whirl.”

  “It’s Wade. He’s bad news.”

  “He got angry.”

  “He murdered—”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Come on.”

  Cameron took another sip and used her free hand to rub at her temples. “I … listen, I realize the only people who know, were there, and one of them is dead. But I don’t know how to deal with that, Bettie. There have to be rules. People have rules. And we can’t—”

  “Ain’t you just tell me something about society’s standards and windows?”

  “Makes a lot of sense for drinking before noon. I’m less comfortable when it comes to criminal justice.”

  “And what about Hernando’s justice?”

  Cameron slowly shook her head. “I hear what you’re saying. But … okay, can I explain something and you promise not to get mad until I’m finished?”

  Bettie leaned back into the couch at that, her brows drawing close. “I can promise to try. And I can promise not to say anything, at least.”

  “Let’s say the worst is true. Let’s say Wade hated Hernando, and he planned to kill him, and he set it up to do it in the middle of the night, when no one was around to witness it, and he stabbed himself and cut himself to make it look like self-defense. Let’s say all that is true. I have no idea how to prove it, and then to deal with it, in a way that doesn’t open up even more problems and turn the cabin community into a lawless hellhole where anyone’s word is enough to get someone killed.”

  That sent Bettie into long silence. Cameron studied her, watching the gears whirr. Both took plentiful sips of their wine. Then Bettie’s eyes flashed, and she met Cameron’s gaze.

  “What if this was the service? What woulda happened then?”

  It took Cameron aback. She hadn’t thought of it like that. She tried to picture it—out on the forefront, very little logistical support from command, and a soldier found killed by another soldier. Even claims of self-defense wouldn’t stop an investigation. But …

  “There’d be inquiries, investigations. But according to procedure. The MPs would—” Bettie’s brow furrowed “—Military Police. Cops for soldiers. And they have rules and procedures that help them find the truth, hopefully. And I wasn’t an MP. No idea how to even start going about it.”

  “You could question people.”

  “You mean Wade. He’s already given his story, and I doubt it’s going to change.”

  Bettie studied her a moment. When she spoke, it was tentative. Almost nervous. “Can I ask something, and you promise not to get mad until I’m finished?”

  Cameron steeled herself. “I can promise to try.”

  “I think you might be better about thinking up a way to get to the truth, if it wasn’t Wade we were dealing with.”

  “Thought that might be where you were going.”

  Bettie sighed. It sounded like relief. “So you can admit there might be reason to think so. That’s more than I was expecting.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “He sucks up to you.”

  “He backs my calls. It’s a military thing.”

  “Is it a military thing when he smiles at you, and says things a man says when he’s trying to get a girl on her back?”

  A jolt of anger shot through her, burning in her chest. But Cameron was self-reflective enough to recognize it for what it was: a recognition of the truth. “I know Wade flirts. Always has. Doesn’t mean I return it.”

  “Never said it did. If I thought you were that type, I wouldn’t like you as much as I do.”

  Cameron rolled her eyes. “Flattery? Really?”

  “Ain’t a flatterer. But I also ain’t so crusty that I don’t remember what it was like when I was a younger woman. You don’t have to bat your eyes back at him to be influenced by the way he acts. It feels good when a man thinks we’re beautiful—especially a strong man, who knows his business and ain’t bad to look at himself.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me. I’m not a teenager.”

  Bettie pointed to the wrinkles on her face. “Compared to me, you’re damn right you are. And it ain’t just how Wade acts towards you—when you look away, he doesn’t. He’s always got his eye on you. Has since day one. I never brought it up because I know you’re smart. But the longer Alex takes to get here, the more Wade’s pressing things. And now Hernando … it’s like he’s testing his limits. Seeing what he can do to get you on his side, even against every one else’s best interests.”

  Cameron’s hand tightened on her wine glass, and she forced it to loosen. “If you think I’d chase a pair of biceps at the expense of the community, you don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”

  “I don’t think that. But maybe Wade does.”

  She took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. Forced herself to consider it. It was dumb. It was playing one person against the next, sucking up to someone with some modicum of power. It sounded like stupid, petty, high school politics bullshit.

  Her eyes popped open, and she felt sick with dread. It was the perfect description of life in the military. At least for some.

  Bettie must have seen the look on Cameron’s face, must have sensed she was making progress. “There’s another thing. Hernando had a phone, but it wasn’t on him when he died.”

  Back to this. “Bettie—”

  “No, hang on. I helped clean out his stuff. It wasn’t there, either. So I’ve been thinking about it, right? Two possibilities. Hernando had the phone on him when he died, and Wade took it. Or, Hernando hid the phone somewhere, and Wade wanted it. He tried to get Hernando to give it to him, and when Hernando wouldn’t give it up, Wade killed him.”

  “Or, possibility three: Hernando was pissed at Wade for siccing us on him just because he was Mexican, and he attacked Wade, just like Wade said.”

  Bettie tilted her head up just a bit. “First of all, Hernando was Guatemalan, not Mexican. Second of all, you just admitted there’s three possibilities. Not just one.”

  Cameron realized her glass was empty. She went and fetched the bottle to refill it, and then filled Bettie’s proffered glass. It gave her time she desperately needed to think of a retort. “What would even be on the phone? What, you think Hernando managed to get some kind of incriminating documents on Wade?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hernando had a laptop, didn’t he? Even if there was something on his phone, wouldn’t it also be on his laptop?”

  “Unless he was afraid of his laptop
being searched.”

  “Why the hell would he—”

  Cameron stopped short. Yeah, why would Hernando be afraid of his laptop being searched? Why would he be so paranoid as to copy the files onto his phone instead, and hide the phone so no one could reach it? What could possibly make him think he’d be under suspicion?

  “Fuck.”

  “Language. But you got it. You and Wade came after him for the camera. As far as Hernando knew, you were on Wade’s side. He wasn’t exactly the kind of kid who could trust authority figures after they ganged up on him. Both of us have some experience with that.”

  Cameron scrubbed at her forehead with the heel of her hand. She couldn’t believe she’d been led down this train of thought. Analytically, it still seemed crazy. But now she couldn’t stop seeing the connections between seemingly disparate facts.

  “Okay. What—I have to think about this. About the next step.”

  “Can’t we search Wade’s stuff for the phone? Or does that rule only apply to Mexicans, even if they ain’t really Mexican?”

  “Useless. If—and it is still an if—if Wade did get the phone from Hernando, he’d have destroyed it by now. Or hidden it somewhere we’ll never find it. We’ve got to look for the phone ourselves, on the chance Hernando hid it before he died. And in the meantime, I’ll keep an eye on Wade. See if I can catch any glimpse of something off, that Hernando might have stumbled on.”

  Bettie heaved a huge sigh and leaned back on the couch. “Thank you. Was that so hard?”

  “Hey, don’t jump to conclusions. I’m still betting this is all a load of bull. And if it is, if we don’t find anything, I’m dropping it. You understand?”

  “Perfectly.” Bettie smiled a huge gap-toothed grin and spread her hands. “Now, why don’t we get some knitting done? Everybody’s gonna need some sweaters with all this weather.”

  Cameron stared at her. The silence stretched for what felt like forever.

  “Knitting.”

  Bettie’s smile didn’t falter, even as she gestured out the window to the hand-sized snowflakes drifting down. “You got something better to do?”

  Cameron raised a finger. Her mouth opened. It closed again. She lowered the finger. She sighed.

  “I’m getting another drink.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Alex lost count of the number of times he whispered a quiet prayer of thanks for finding the horses. The snow piled up each night and melted away the next day, but always leaving a little bit more than there had been before. If they’d had to trudge through it, he doubted they would have made it even a few days. As it was, they let the horses take it at their own pace, only giving them occasional nudges to keep them headed the right direction.

  The endless flat plains of eastern Washington had been brown and dead with the earliest summer heat, and now the snow mixed with the dirt and clay to turn the whole landscape into a thick sludge that sucked at their mounts’ hooves. Alex kept them on the road as much as he could, only heading away from it when there were wrecks to avoid, or towns loomed up out of the ghostly white air.

  Eventually flatlands began to rise. First the land sprang up around them in abrupt hillocks and miniature plateaus, thrusting straight into the air like impacts from the fists of impossibly large subterranean monsters. Then, abruptly, the road began to rise, and the land with it. Now they were almost always headed up, except when the road had to navigate around obstacles, weaving its way through a countryside that seemed to be trying its best to put walls in the path.

  Some days after they had fought the convicts at the hotel, they reached the east bank of the Columbia River. They were at the very feet of Washington’s Cascades. Just across the water, which slushed against its banks at the edge of freezing, was a long line of high hills, not quite the foothills but close enough. It was like one final great wall trying to block their path.

  On the other side of those hills was the road that led to Cameron. But before that they had to ride south, along the river to the town of Wenatchee, the closest bridge that would take them over the river.

  But they had another problem.

  On the morning of the day that would take them to Wenatchee, Piper shook her last bottle of Insulin, the last one she’d had in her pocket when the convicts stole the rest in Alex’s pack. Now she was empty—not even enough moisture on the inside of the bottle to form a single drop.

  “I’m out,” she said.

  “I know, sweetheart,” said Alex. He was checking his horse’s saddle before mounting up. “We’re almost there.”

  “No, Dad. I’m totally empty.”

  Alex yanked on the saddle strap. The horse shifted, and he splayed his hand across its coat, trying to calm himself. “I know,” he said quietly.

  Piper didn’t produce insulin on her own. Zero, zilch. Before the end of the day she’d start having headaches. Next—maybe tomorrow—would come abdominal pains, nausea, vomiting. Probably some blurry vision before a coma, and then total brain death.

  They were four good, fast days away from the cabins. Piper didn’t have half that long. And she knew it as well as he did—maybe better. Doctors always read kids the riot act on what would happen if they missed their doses, or else you had them doing stupid stuff like skipping out to try and feel “normal.”

  “We’ll look for something in Wenatchee,” he said. She gulped, and he caught her gaze so that she was looking into his eyes. “Hey. We’ll find some. I promise.”

  Piper stared at him a moment before nodding. “Okay,” she whispered.

  Wenatchee didn’t have much of a northern border. They kept following the road, and then, rounding one snow-covered hillock, there were abruptly houses all around them. The horses picked their careful way down the street, with Max snuffling along at their heels.

  No houses had their lights on. No one was out to observe them pass. The town was deserted, or everyone was staying away from the strangers riding through. Either way, Alex was relieved not to have to worry about threats.

  Until he noticed the prison van.

  It was off to the side of the road, halfway hidden behind two trees on the edge of someone’s yard. The only good news was that it was covered by about as much snow as all the other vehicles around. The convicts must have reached this place the day after their fight with Alex and Piper, and abandoned the van then. Maybe they’d moved on by now.

  Then again, maybe not.

  He pointed the vehicle out to Piper. “We can’t stop here.”

  Her eyes widened as she whirled to him. “Dad—”

  “There’s a smaller town just past Wenatchee. Cashmere. We’ll look there.”

  “Smaller? But what if they don’t have any insulin?”

  Alex’s jaw worked, chewing the inside of his cheek. Wenatchee was far more likely to have some available. But Cashmere wasn’t some Podunk four-home town. They’d have more than one pharmacy, some drug stores. And Wenatchee seemed more than large enough for the convicts to want to stay here—tons of abandoned homes to choose from for shelter, and doubtless lots of food in the supermarkets and restaurants, for hard men who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty.

  “Not in Wenatchee. It’s not safe. Cashmere will have insulin.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “They will.”

  For just a second he thought she’d argue further. But she shut her mouth with a click and looked away.

  “They will,” he said again.

  He hoped to god he was right.

  * * *

  It took them less than two hours to pass through the town, but it might have been the most frightening part of the whole journey. Everything was dead quiet—made more so by the snow as it fell and piled on the ground, killing hoofbeats and the soft pad of Max’s feet on the ground. No lights shone from the homes. No vehicles moved, no people around to move them. If anyone was there, they were hiding, watching Alex and Piper pass and hoping not to be noticed.

  But that line of thinking led
Alex to suspect eyes in every corner, every shadow of the homes they passed. They were small houses, the kind you found in any small town in America, but fear turned them into cavernous, gaping faces that watched the travelers with malice.

  Halfway through the town, they reached the east end of the bridge. Alex stopped, and Piper did the same a moment later. The sound of the river was a gentle, lapping monotone, a gentle splashing against the mud of the bank. There were no vehicles on the bridge—a narrow strip of white across the black water, that was all. Still no one in sight.

  Alex nudged his horse forward.

  If anyone was watching, they’d surely see the two of them now. The bridge was in the middle of the town, and their dark shapes would stand out against the snow and the stormy sky. But there were no challenges, no shouts, and no gunshots—something Alex half expected—and soon they’d reached the other side. He loosed a long sigh of relief as his horse’s hooves touched the opposite bank. Just a mile more, and they’d be in open country again, and then soon to Cashmere.

  Footsteps crunched on the snow.

  Alex reined in the second he heard them. Piper was a little slower to react, and by the time her horse stopped, the sound was gone. Max drew closer, his head lifted, ears perked.

  “Dad?” she said. “What is it?”

  He stared north, where he’d heard the sound. Buildings pressed close to the road here, a little strip mall with a diner and another building with a sign declaring Doghouse Motorsports. He thought the sounds had come from the diner, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

  He heard the sounds twice more before they reached the town’s border, but nothing more. He never took his hand from the grip of the pistol in his belt.

  * * *

  Open country eased Alex’s nerves, but not by much. Now there were high hills on both sides, and little ridges running beside the road. If someone was following them, they had plenty of places to hide while keeping the trail. The only advantage now was that Alex had about twenty yards to see them coming, instead of only five.