by Renee Hewett
Jimmy nodded, putting his face in his hands. “I know I really screwed the pooch on this one. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get you out of here, but I can’t get by them.”
“Are they armed?” she asked.
He nodded and uttered a muffled uh-huh.
“You understand that they probably want to kill my mom, right?” If the way they’d dispatched Kailee’s FUC agent was any indication of how little regard they gave to human life. “Is that what you wanted?”
“No!” Jimmy shouted, bringing himself to meet her gaze. “We just wanted to raise a stink to get her here and get her to agree to bring back the old machines.”
“That’s stupid,” Kailee said. “You know your co-workers like the machines, right? These new models make it easier for them to work.” Her mother had told her plenty, and she’d also seen the responses on social media.
“I don’t fucking know what I was thinking, okay?” Jimmy punched the wall, causing Kailee to jump in her chair.
She realized she might be giving Jimmy too much trust. Maybe he was just as unhinged as the cultists. She decided to change her tactic, allowing her fear to show a bit and taking on a softer, more vulnerable tone. “Jimmy, I believe you. I want to, at least.”
He shook his head and then brought his fist to his lips, as though that would help with the pain. “Yeah?”
Kailee nodded. “Yeah, just call my mom, okay? Let her know what’s going on, what part of the factory I’m in, how many cultists, whatever you know about the plan.”
“How am I supposed to call your mom? You got her number?”
No. Of course not. Kailee had never memorized a phone number, except her own cell phone. “MUFF has my phone. Can’t you get it from them? The number is in there.”
“Sure. Like that wouldn’t be suspicious. And you think I haven’t already thought about this? I even went to your mom’s secretary, and she blew me off because she said your mom is on holiday and no one gets to contact her.”
He was right. “When she finds out I’m missing, she’ll know something is wrong and come here. You have to meet up with her and let her know what’s going on.” It was a last-ditch effort, the last thing she could think of. Jimmy had been getting closer to the door, and Kailee knew that she was out of luck.
“I would, but it’s not going to help if she kills me first because she knows I’m part of this or if the cultists are watching me and take me or her out when I try to intercept. I’m sorry, Kailee. There’s nothing I can do.”
9
They drove through the night, past sunrise, until Dedra finally saw the Goosby factory come into view.
“Did they say ‘come alone’ in their message?” Andrés asked.
“No. They didn’t say anything other than get here.” Her pulse thudded in her ears as she thought about Kailee, inside that building with some creepy strangers. She hoped her daughter hadn’t been hurt. She hoped everything would be okay.
“Of course not. They don't consider us a threat. Or the cops or anyone. They’re full of themselves, and that overconfidence is always the undoing of a villain.” He reached over and took her hand, much to her comfort. “Come on. Let’s go get your daughter.”
“Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you waiting for the whole FUC team?” She was grateful that he was there with her, but it didn’t make sense, based on what she knew of Andrés. He’d been such a good agent when they were flying. Why would he change his ways now?
“I sent them a message, but I knew it was better for me to be here with you than it was to let you go off on your own or to try to make you wait for the team to assemble.”
“Even if you get in trouble with FUC over it?”
He reached over and took her hand, taking his eyes off the road momentarily to look at her. “I wouldn’t risk it for just anyone. You’re something else, Dedra. I want to be here with you.”
She squeezed his hand in thanks. “I just hope Kailee’s okay.”
“If your daughter’s half as savvy as you, which I’m sure she is because her mamma raised her right, then she’s holding her own, and we’re just going to swoop in and get her out.”
As Andrés pulled the car into the parking lot, Dedra saw that it was full of employee vehicles. That wouldn’t normally be surprising, as it was a weekday, but Dedra had expected the factory to be emptied by the dissenting workers and MUFF.
It put a snag in her plans. “I don’t want innocent people to get hurt,” Dedra told Andrés. “I thought we’d just be going in to face off with MUFF. We’ll need to evacuate.”
Andrés parked the car. “But we’ll need a cover story so the public doesn’t ask questions about why the factory shut down for the day. We can say someone reported bedbugs or something.”
“Bedbugs?!” Dedra screeched. “Are you trying to get us shut down forever?! You can’t tell the public that a bedding factory has bedbugs!” She’d rather burn the place to the ground than let the public think they had parasites!
“Whoa, hold on, okay?” Andrés held up his hands in front of him, as though protecting his eyes in case she turned goose and started pecking. “How about we say a small fire then?”
She sighed and forced herself to stop glaring at him. “Fine, let’s go.” She directed him to the administrative entrance.
“They probably have people watching.” She looked at him, wondering how obvious it was that she’d brought a special agent with her.
She didn’t think it looked obvious at all. Andrés looked like a normal cowboy. Nice ass-hugging jeans, plaid flannel shirt. Nothing 007 secret-agenty about him.
Nothing obviously shifter-like either, which was good. MUFF knew she was a goose, and that meant they might think Andrés was too. That would let his scrappy feline side have a bit of an edge if it came down to it.
Anyone observing them would likely think that Andrés was no one to worry about. Just her current boyfriend.
Boyfriend.
But was he? She couldn’t help wonder as they walked into the building together. He wasn’t here on FUC orders. He was there for her. He’d said she was special. She felt the same way about him. Like this could be something long-term if they both wanted it to be.
But did she? After Norbert died, she thought she’d spend the rest of her life alone. Sure, she had diversions, like Rod, but she never thought she’d connect with someone.
But she felt she was connecting with Andrés. Like he was a kindred spirit.
Maybe it was just her imagination, but she thought Andrés’ determination to take down the bad guys and save Kailee matched her own level of intensity. Like he cared because she cared.
And they felt like a team. It was something she might be able to get used to with Andrés.
If they got out of this alive.
Still not knowing what to expect—but reasoning that MUFF and company would at least want to talk before they shot—they made their way through the factory. The place felt like home to Dedra. Really, she’d known this place her whole life, versus the house she currently resided in, which had been for only the last ten years.
And someone is daring to try to fuck with it.
She was fearful for Kailee and wanted to figure out where she was right away, but she knew she couldn’t make any wrong moves that might set them off and get her daughter hurt. So they went to the main office area first.
“Dedra! Hey.” Her assistant, Betsy, greeted her. “We didn’t expect you—”
Dedra cut her off. “I know. I’m back on some issues. Is everything okay here?” It was looking like a regular working day, except for the fact that Betsy was blaring a KPOP station that Dedra didn’t normally allow on—or at that volume.
“Yeah, so far as I know.” Betsy turned down her music then seemed to remember. “Oh, I did hear some noise about Jimmy and a few other of your dad’s best workers raising a stink but nothing worth calling you back from vacation.”
That was good news. It meant that people weren’t being
harmed and no real damage was being done. “How many of them? And what are the other workers saying?”
“Um, three that I know of, I think. Oh, and yesterday a few others started walking around all creepy-like in black robes. I don’t even know who they are. Security was going to ask them to leave today, but we were giving them time to just get it out of their system and leave on their own. Ignoring them because it’s like they’re daring us to do something so they can act out, you know?” Betsy shrugged and scrunched up her face, as though saying, what can you do?
Dedra thought it was probably good that security, or other employees, hadn’t confronted any of them about it. That might have triggered them to violence. She exchanged a look with Andrés. “Betsy, I’m back because some stuff is going on, and it’s all going to be fine, but I need everyone to go home today.”
Betsy’s face paled. “We’d lose a whole day of productivity.”
Dedra pursed her lips together and nodded. “I know, but I want to make sure everyone is safe.”
The assistant balked even more. “What’s going on?”
Andrés covered for her. “The city is looking into some potential blockage in the area, just some sewer cleanup, but it might be stinky. Not a safety problem at all.”
Dedra was impressed at the story. “Just call out the non-hazardous evacuation code to send everyone home, okay?”
Betsy still looked suspicious but did as she was told, picking up her phone and using the internal comm system to call out the announcement.
While she did, Dedra turned to her locked office door, punching in her code and using the palm-print ID panel to let herself in. She closed her door behind her while she accessed her safe. Inside, she found her loaded gun, a spare burner phone that was fully charged, and an old paper address book. Turning to the desk, she found a few numbers in the book to save on the phone. Then she tucked the gun into her waistband and the phone in her bra and returned the book to the safe.
In the reception area, she saw Betsy was already gone. Andrés was facing the window. She followed his gaze to see the stream of people heading to their cars. “Seems like you tell people to go home and they don’t dawdle.”
“Of course not.” Dedra wondered what kind of jobs Andrés had had in his life if he was surprised by the speed in which people would go to play hooky.
When the trail of staff leaving the building dwindled, Betsy’s phone rang. “Hello,” Dedra said into the speakerphone, holding back from shouting, Give me my fucking daughter back, you fucking walking corpses.
“You’ve made it here. Good.” Dedra didn’t recognize the voice.
“What the hell is this about?” Dedra asked. “Where is my daughter? What do you want from us?”
“You’re going to bring back the geese,” the voice said.
“What?” Dedra tried to wrap her head around the words.
“The geese. You fired them all. Where are they? We demand they be reinstated.”
“What?” Dedra asked again, her brain trying to wrap around what was being said. “The geese? I don’t have any geese.” The fuck?
“That’s bullshit. Your company bragged about your specially engineered Canadian goose down. Your goose down.”
That was true in so far as they’d used specific farmers and bred them for generations. But they were no longer being bred. “They’ve all been placed on nice farms to rest out their days.”
“You better hope that farm isn’t a euphemism for murder!” the voice hissed at her.
“It’s not. They’ve literally been re-homed on farms.” She shook her head and shrugged to Andrés and saw he looked as confused as she felt.
“Farms where they’ll be eaten!” The voice turned shrill.
“No… they’re much too old for that, and geese aren’t a common table item.” Pushing her confusion aside, she cross-referenced the number on the caller ID to the factory directory, figuring out that they were in the main floor supervisor's office.
“And once they die, then what? Too bad, geese? You think because you’re a shifter, you’re the only one who matters?”
“Do you not understand that the geese weren’t employees, shedding their feathers year after year? They were bred, yes, but each year they were, um used. Get it?” Dedra couldn’t understand what their problem was.
“All that matters is that they lived! And now you’re not breeding them anymore, which means they’re gone! But no matter. They’ll be brought back to their righteous glory once we kill you and your daughter. The factory will be ours, and we will reinstate the geese, ensuring their proper value to mankind is preserved and they never have to worry about extinction again.”
The caller hung up. Dedra looked at Andrés and shook her head. “What in the actual fuck?”
10
Andrés walked with Dedra down to the main factory floor. Now that the factory was empty, they felt they were able to seek out the cultists and dissenters.
“Yeah, MUFF is a little bit… different,” he told her. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. Quite the opposite. They can get wound up and do terrible things without thinking first.”
“Then we’ll have to get them first.”
He liked the cold rage look on her, but he just hoped that meant she would think before she acted. They didn’t need both sides going off.
As they walked through the doorway of the main floor, Andrés saw figures moving from the opposite end, toward them. “Any idea why they think that killing you would let them have control of the company?”
“No,” Dedra answered. “But I would shoot them right now if I knew Kailee would be okay.”
“You’re packing?” He’d wondered if that was what she’d done when she went into her office.
“Yeah. Aren’t you?” she replied.
“Of course.” And plenty of other tricks up his sleeve.
“Here she is, destroyer of non-sentient geese!” one of the black-robed figures leading the group called out. As they got closer, Andrés got a good look at his face and identified him from the mission file. His name was Brain.
Beside Brain was another black-cloaked figure. The group also had two plain-clothed men, a plain-clothed woman, and a blonde who had to be Kailee, being held by the third black-robed person.
“And here he is, the biggest living dummy I’ve ever seen,” Dedra replied, seeming absolutely fearless, though Andrés saw that her eyes were locked on Kailee.
The girl, who could have been a clone of her mother, looked unharmed and, if anything, annoyed. Andrés laughed to himself. The resemblance wasn’t just in the platinum hair; it was also in the way they both looked like they wanted to beat some MUFF.
“Don’t bother, Mom,” Kailee called out, her voice steady and confident. “These ding-dongs don’t understand that the geese are better off now that they aren’t being bred to be plucked!”
“They’re out of jobs! They served an important purpose in building up this country, and now you’re trying to wipe them out of history!” The woman MUFF member, Vergie, if Andrés remembered correctly, reached out and smacked Kailee across the face.
Everything fell apart then. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Andrés saw the woman closest to Kailee and Vergie—she wasn’t in a robe so she must be a factory worker—shove Vergie one way and Kailee the other, away from the group. Vergie and the factory worker struggled to one side, but Andrés saw Kailee get a safe distance away.
At the same time, Dedra pulled her gun, but with both figures on the ground, she didn’t have a target to shoot.
At the sight of Dedra’s gun, Brain and Elon, the other cultist, pulled out their weapons…
But Andrés had to do a double-take to process what the fools were wielding.
Brain had a huge, rusty medieval sword, and Elon, a flail. Brain shouted while pointing his sword at Dedra, circling her as though he was readying for attack. “Animals shouldn't be replaced by non-natural fibers. We want the geese treated humanely, and putting them
all out of jobs isn’t fair!”
“I swear to the fucking goose god,” Dedra muttered, looking at Andrés. “I knew these guys were out there, but this is more birdbrained than I’d anticipated. Do we just kill them?”
Before he could answer, there was a commotion in the air. Shit!
A larger-than-normal goose was flying at them then circling above them, squawking, kicking heads, hitting faces with his wings, and shitting as well.
At least most of it got on the MUFFs.
“Lenny, wise Lenny! We’ve got her for you! We’ll get her to sign over the factory, and your will shall be done!” Brain dropped his sword then followed it to the ground, genuflecting for the bird that had literally shit on him.
Dedra shot a fist in the air and grabbed the thing by its neck. Andrés had no idea how she’d been able to do it without getting injured.
“Look at you! You hurt geese!” Brain screamed at her, following it with a maniacal laugh. “We have proof! Our mission has been fruitful!” Andrés knew that Brain was referring to the MUFF mandate that they bring back proof of atrocities against non-sentient animals or face punishment by their leader.
“That’s not a goose. That’s my uncle Lenny!” Dedra shouted. He could see the fury pooling in her cheeks.
The stupid thing quacked.
“Clearly it’s a goose!” Brain proclaimed, motioning with wide-open arms.
While they fought, Andrés fiddled with some items he always kept stashed in his pocket. A paperclip. A rubber band. This and that.
“Lenny, I will shoot you if you don’t change right now!” Dedra still held the gun on Brain but gave Lenny a good yank and a mean side-eye that suggested she might make good on her promise.
With everyone focused on Dedra and Lenny, Andrés took his chance, using his pocket slingshot, and one of his favorite little potions, and launching first one then the other.
He made contact with the hilt of the sword and the handle of the flail, where the cultists both held on. Neither noticed the projectiles coming at them, but they sure noticed when the liquid from the vials started expanding.
