Hard Wired

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  She heard the typing stop. Uh-oh.

  Leaning back out of view, poised to run back to her room, she tensed. And when she heard glass clink against ceramic, she let out her breath. He was only refilling his coffee, not coming upstairs. She felt a tinge of sadness that he wasn’t coming up to check on her. She didn’t want him to, she so much as told him so, but still, it would have been nice if he did.

  Anyways ….

  The sound of typing carried out of the kitchen and up the stairs again, signaling her that the time was now. She crept back to her room, threw on her dark brown jacket and her shoes and then grabbed her phone and EB and the stolen set of keys from Bobseyn’s downstairs office. She closed her door behind her as she crept to Dent’s room, where she popped the screen on the window, then hopped out onto the wooden overhang that ran the entire length of the rear porch. It took some frustrated finagling, but she managed to work the screen back into position and made her way to the ledge of the overhang.

  Scooting out on her butt, she took two steadying breaths and pushed off. She landed in a controlled tumble in the grass six feet below and came up with what she thought of as a dancer’s grace. After a quick swipe of errant blades of grass and leaves, she headed off away from the house, back to where she knew, from her earlier exploration of the place, Sheriff Bobseyn kept his toys.

  The moon was close enough to being full so she didn’t need to use a flashlight as she crossed the lawn. Which was good, considering she hadn’t planned that far ahead to have brought one with her. She did have matches though. She wasn’t a complete idiot. This whole sneaking around thing was more Dent’s specialty, but she’d picked up enough to manage on her own.

  And that was precisely why she was doing this, without his knowledge. The man was loyal to her to a fault and he would kill to keep her safe. He had killed to keep her safe, but this, here and now, was different. The people he planned on taking out were being used by someone. She didn’t think they were acting on their own impulses. She should know. She was able to make people do things they didn’t want to. Maybe nothing as drastic as killing someone else, but she knew the power of messing with other people’s emotions. And if that’s what was going on here, some eTech facility forcing people to commit murder, then she wanted to find out the source.

  If she could find out the source, find out who was running things, then she could get back, tell Dent, and then he and the Sheriff could go in with a warrant or whatever it was that police normally did to stop the bad guys. She’d rather the innocent people being manipulated be stopped with paper, not bullets.

  She slid down a short decline where the grass ended and trudged up the other side of a small hill that was more rock than dirt.

  If she could convince Dent that someone was behind it all, she could save lives. Because when Dent got all protective over her, he didn’t think twice about his actions. Sometimes she thought that Dent tried too hard to protect her, like he figured the more blood he shed, the better he was at protecting her.

  Well, what Dent didn’t realize was that he was the one who needed protection. One day he’s going to wake up and all the death he’d dealt out would hit him, and she prayed that she was there to help him through it. But until that day, she would make sure he didn’t go overboard, until that day, she would do her best to protect him from himself, and protect others from him.

  She owed the big guy that much. And so, when she finally reached her destination, she had a determined air about her. She patted her front pocket just to make sure she still had the keys with her.

  Opening the wide wooden door to the large shed, she let out a small, nervous laugh. It was there, still half covered by a sheet. She’d never driven one of these things, but she’d seen it plenty of times in movies. Now all she had to do was roll the ATV out of the shed, down the slope to the dry river bed, and then fire it up. It had to be easier than driving a car.

  Right?

  XXX

  Dent left Bobseyn’s house around ten in the morning, a slight kink in his neck from sleeping on the downstairs couch to keep an eye on the broken front door. He cleaned up, jumped in the sheriff’s Cherokee, and headed back to the hospital to have a chat with the man.

  When he’d left the house, Fifth was still up in her room. She’d been upset the night before, asked to be left alone. So that’s exactly what he’d done. He’d left a pot of coffee on and a clean mug on the counter next to the machine for her. Hopefully that would be seen as an apology on his part, though why he needed to apologize was beyond him.

  He was going to do what needed to be done. The people at The Ranch had come after Fifth, now he was going after them. The sun rises, the sun sets. Plain as that.

  He parked the Cherokee in an “Emergency Vehicle Parking” spot near the hospital’s front entrance and hopped out. The Cherokee was the sheriff’s official vehicle so Dent’s parking there was perfectly logical. Besides, his need to speak with the sheriff was urgent, possibly even considered an emergency, so he was covered on both ends if someone questioned his choice of parking space.

  The wide glass doors slid open with a whisper and a rush of cool air and he entered the hospital. Less than six steps into the sterile, climate-controlled lobby, he saw heads turn and eyes track his movements. A male nurse behind the reception counter grabbed a phone off the wall, punched a few buttons, and Dent watched the man’s lips move and listened as his voice came out over the hospital speaker system.

  “Security, front lobby. Dr. Palto, security, front lobby, please.”

  Dent ignored the call for help and strode past the nurses’ desk, his goal the elevator lobby just ahead. Two female nurses hustled out from behind their posts and stood in the hallway, barring his advance. Together, the two maybe weighed as much as him. What they had hoped to accomplish here, he had no clue. He simply turned his shoulders as he approached and shoved his way between the two. High pitched words peppered his back but that was all they could do to him.

  Up ahead, emerging from a door just before the elevators, a security guard heeding the call for assistance came to stop in the hallway, one hand on his belt with the tools of his profession, the other up and palm out toward Dent in the all-American sign of “Halt where you are.”

  There were two ways to go about this, Dent thought.

  He could knock the upraised hand aside and deliver a quick right into the guard’s neck, dropping him on the spot. Then it would only be a matter of stepping over the stunned man’s body. But that would make getting to Bobseyn that much more difficult. Or he could try doing what Fifth would do — talking.

  He stopped before the guard, his chest less than a hand’s span form the upraised palm, letting his eyes travel from the guard’s hand to his face and back again.

  The security guard must have ran through the possible outcomes of an encounter with Dent and wisely let his hand drop to his side, less threatening now, but close to where his Taser was strapped to his utility belt.

  “You can’t be here after the incident from last night,” the man warned him in a steady, baritone voice.

  “I need to speak with Sheriff Bobseyn.”

  “Not possible, buddy.”

  “It is possible,” Dent said, thinking the man would take it as a warning if he tried stopping him. “I’m working an investigation with him at the moment.”

  But the guard held his ground. “Didn’t look like it last night.”

  Dent shrugged, saying, “It was a difference of opinions. And I’m here to talk, that’s it.”

  Dent felt more than heard at least two people approach him from behind. They stopped, likely waiting to see the outcome of this conversation, waiting to see if their help would be needed.

  To let the guard know he was aware of the others behind, Dent offered, “You and your friends can go with me.” He let the threat of what he hadn’t said, that he would be going up to see the sheriff with or without the guard’s approval, hang in the sterile air of the hallway.

  Ha
nd reflexively closing around the handle of the small club at his waist, the guard reached a decision. “Fine,” he said to Dent, and then looked past him at someone.

  “Room 207,” a female voice said from behind Dent, and the guard nodded.

  “We’ll take the stairs,” the guard decided. “The elevator would be a little too cramped for my liking.”

  Dent shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. As long as he got to the sheriff, the guard could have the entire staff follow for all he cared.

  About five minutes later, Dent read the black-on-chrome plaque: 207.

  The room was a double-occupancy room, but Bobseyn was the only occupant at the time. Dent looked at him as he walked in. The man looked much healthier than he had last night, whether it was from superb medical care or simply that the light in the room was natural sunlight filtering in through the windows and not the harsh fluorescent glow of the nighttime lighting.

  Bobseyn had his eyes on the door before Dent had even walked through and acted as if he had been expecting this visit. He waved the security detail away, all three of them, and the men dutifully left, but positioned themselves just outside the open door to Room 207.

  “You knew I’d be coming,” Dent said in greeting.

  “I suspected,” Bobseyn told him. “Of course, the call for security over the hospital’s speaker system was a huge clue.”

  “Oh.”

  Bobseyn let out a heavy breath, wincing just slightly, and adjusted himself to sit straighter in the bed. There were no tubes connected to him now, only a small heart monitor clipped to the middle finger of his right hand on the other side of the bed. Through a wireless connection, it relayed a steady, quiet rhythm that told the world the man was alive, that his heart was still beating.

  “Where’s Kasumi?” Bobseyn asked.

  “Sleeping.”

  The blankets shifted as Bobseyn brought his hands up and out to rest on his stomach. “She’s … something, isn’t she?”

  Dent stared down at the man.

  Bobseyn sighed, looked around his hospital room. “I didn’t tell you,” he began talking softly, “I spent plenty of time in places like this when I was younger.”

  “Get shot much as a kid?”

  The sheriff smiled, but the rolling of his eyes told Dent it wasn’t a true smile. He turned his left hand and arm, exposing the underside of his wrist. A puckered scar looked up at Dent, perhaps just under an inch in length.

  “I was bipolar as a child,” Bobseyn confessed.

  “Was?”

  “Well, kind of. Guess I still am. Always will be.” He unclipped the heart monitor from his finger, laid it to the side. The machine on the other side falsely proclaimed that the sheriff was no longer among the living. He gave it a quick glance, dismissing it as he looked back to Dent and tapped a finger to his temple.

  “I got some eTech wired into my brain. Long story short, pills and talking to professionals didn’t help. In one of my darker moods ….” He rubbed the scar on his wrist. “Anyway, they opened my skull up, stuck in a moderator. Keeps my moods from elevating too far in either direction.”

  “And this has to do with me how?”

  “No, not you, Dent. Kasumi. I’ve been subject to medical eTech procedures enough to know when something’s messing with me up here.” Another temple tap. “Your girl, unbelievable as it is, can get in here. I’m sure if I wasn’t hardwired to a moderator, I’d have no defense against her. My guess is you got something wrong with you too, something hardwired up there as well. Am I right?”

  Close, but not exactly. “Nope,” Dent answered.

  “Hmm.” The man stared up at Dent, maybe unwilling to accept the answer, but Dent didn’t care.

  “So you’re familiar with eTech, then,” Dent commented. “You must have suspected The Ranch of employing it in some form.” A statement, not a question.

  “eTech has its place,” the sheriff stated. “It always will, in my eyes. As long as it’s used correctly.”

  “They abused it.” He stepped closer to the bed. “Why didn’t you do something once you figured it out?”

  “Cherry. I lost her to them.”

  “I went through your laptop last night. I read the emails. Things got sour between the two of you years ago. Emails went from lengthy to short to practically nothing more than text messages. And then they stopped all together — hers not yours. You kept sending. She stopped responding. Until last year. Said she was going to The Ranch, that the people there accepted her.”

  Bobseyn sucked his teeth as Dent recapped what he’d read, clenched his jaw and grabbed a handful of blanket.

  “Then you know,” Bobseyn said finally. “She’s happy there.”

  “Forced into being happy.”

  Bobseyn tapped his temple again. “Does it matter?”

  “Using eTech to get people to turn over everything they own to The Ranch matters.”

  But the sheriff gave a weak shake of his head, apparently not convinced.

  “They’re killing those who don’t bend to their will, Bobseyn.”

  “They didn’t before. Something triggered it.”

  “No,” Dent countered. “This is what happens when you experiment and tamper with people’s emotions. One day you’re smiling, the next you’re swallowing rat poison. You can’t control the outcome. And now these people have to be stopped. Happy or not, people are being murdered, and now these devotees have attacked Fifth.”

  “My daughter—”

  “Is involved with them.”

  “She would never do anything to harm someone,” Bobseyn defended his daughter with a raised voice.

  “Somebody up there is.”

  “What if she resents me for going against them?”

  Dent shrugged. According to the emails he’d read last night, Cherry resenting Bobseyn was a forgone conclusion before The Ranch had even set up shop.

  Bobseyn looked away, out the window, distracted by something Dent couldn’t see. When he finally looked back, his eyes looked heavier somehow.

  “Kasumi?” he asked.

  Dent raised his brows.

  “You’d do anything for her?”

  That was easy. “Yes.”

  “Just as I would for my Cherry.”

  Dent grabbed onto that statement, and used it against the man. “Then go with me. For Cherry.”

  “You’re going—”

  “Whether or not you do, yes.” He tried making his voice softer as he added, “It would be easier going in with two.”

  But the sheriff wasn’t buying Dent’s fake attempt at camaraderie. “You’re not here to save people from being murdered,” he said. “You’re here to shut down the eTech.”

  “Yes.”

  Sighing and wincing, Bobseyn threw the blankets off himself and swung his legs over the side of the bed closest to Dent. He steadied his head in his hands for a moment before looking up.

  “Grab my clothes,” he snapped.

  Dent complied, going to the narrow closet near the door. “You’re going to help me take them down?”

  “No,” Bobseyn replied, taking his shirt from Dent’s hand. “I’m going to make sure people don’t get hurt. People like my Cherry.”

  It didn’t matter the reason, as long as the man came along as back-up.

  The sheriff struggled through his shirt, moving carefully, gingerly, so as not to rip the stitches in his arm.

  “You going to tell Kasumi?” Bobseyn asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’d try to keep me in line, probably insist on going with us.”

  Bobseyn was working his legs into his pants and stopped, shooting Dent a pointed look. “Must be hard having a conscience that’s so vocal as she is.”

  “Yeah, and I’m not looking forward to having another one.” He sent the pointed look back at the man.

  “Hey,” Bobseyn said, shrugging carefully, “That’s the price you pay when you surround yourself with people who actually c
are.”

  XXXI

  “You’re Cherry,” Kasumi blurted out to the blonde woman walking next to her.

  The pretty blonde slowed her steps. The two men walking with them looked back and Cherry waved for them to go on ahead. They seemed hesitant, but when Kasumi gave them an innocent smile, they continued on, leaving the two girls to chat somewhat privately.

  Cherry looked down, though she wasn’t that much taller than Kasumi, and said softly, “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  Kasumi beamed up at her. “I saw your picture at your dad’s house.”

  Looking carefully at the men up ahead, Cherry asked, “How do you know my dad?”

  “He’s … friends with my dad,” Kasumi half-lied.

  “Oh.”

  Then, because she could tell these things, Kasumi added, “He misses you, you know?”

  Cherry smiled. “I don’t think so. But it’s nice you think so.”

  It’s funny, Kasumi thought. The words themselves sounded sad, but the woman didn’t appear to be so.

  “Speaking of missing,” Cherry said, “What brings you out here on your own? Won’t your dad be missing you?”

  Kasumi looked back the way they had come, where Cherry and the two men had found her after she’d given up on the stupid ATV when it had finally run out of gas. She sighed.

  Last night’s little adventure had turned out to be quite a fiasco.

  First, starting the ATV had been a bit trickier then she’d expected. Unlike a car, apparently just turning the key didn’t get the thing going. It took her a few minutes to figure out that there was a “start button” to push, and then even longer to figure out that there was no gas pedal. When she’d found that she had to twist the handle to get it going, it had been by accident, and it left her flat on her back as the thing lurched forward under her.

  Once she did get going, it was a matter of finding the paths that had the least amount of hills. The ATV had a single headlamp, but it wasn’t very bright and she had the distinct feeling the thing wasn’t designed to be driven at night. The shadows created from the headlight seemed deeper and darker than the other shadows around her, making even the smallest of dips in the dirt paths look like chasms.