Total Mayhem Page 6

  Lovemaking. Not just sex. Real, caring mutual exploration and ecstasy, though neither of them had dared to call their relationship what it was. Once the L-bomb was dropped, there was no going back, so why take the risk?

  As she watched him dress at 3:00 A.M. so he could be clear of the house before Mama or Roman woke up and then make the eighty-plus-mile commute to Fort Meade, it all felt so undignified.

  “I’m sorry it has to be like this, Derek,” she whispered as he pulled up his very brief blue briefs.

  “I know,” he said. Muscles rippled on his wiry frame as he worked his arms into his purple shirt. A puckered scar marred his otherwise perfect midsection. She’d asked him about that, but he’d dodged the question. “You need to convince your boss to hire me. Then, when I sneak out, I only have to go a short distance.”

  He pulled his carefully folded suit pants from the chair where he’d placed them four hours ago.

  Official records showed Derek to be a data analyst or some such for the National Security Agency, where he tracked down secrets. But in his spare time, he was feared by the Hackersphere as TickTock2, one of the most brilliant hackers Venice had ever met. She’d caught him one time with his cyber-knickers gathered at his ankles and challenged him on it. Then he’d struck back. He’d been able to figure out what, exactly, the covert side of Security Solutions did for its clients. When the dust had settled on the tit for tat, each could out the other as felons.

  Back then, when they first met, she’d never have believed that their relationship would evolve into what it had become. Truth be told, Venice thought he’d be an enormous asset to the company, but Digger was a hard sell.

  “Give it time,” she said. “He’ll come around one day.”

  He buckled and zipped. “He doesn’t approve of my sense of style, does he?” Derek’s sartorial esthetic ran toward ultramodern, with suit trousers and jackets that were studiously too short. If he wore socks at all with his always out-there dress shoes, they were of a color and pattern that had little relation to the rest of his ensemble.

  “I think you look hot as fire,” Venice said. “At least you have a sense of style. That’s hard to find in a cyber-stalker. But Digger is what you might call old-school.”

  “You know it’s illegal to use appearance as a reason not to hire someone.” He sold that with just the right smile.

  Venice laughed. “You might want to leave a farewell note before you file that lawsuit,” she said.

  He put on his shoes. Nope, no socks. “Does your mother know that we’re . . . spending time together?”

  “Her name is Mama,” Venice said.

  “Even to me?”

  “To everyone,” Venice said. “If she knows—and I think she does, because she knows everything that goes on here—she hasn’t said anything about it.”

  “Shall we tell her?”

  “Not at this hour,” Venice said. “I think we should wait until there’s something real to tell her. The good news for you is that Oscar Thompkins knows.”

  “Who’s Oscar Thompkins?”

  “He’s in charge of the mansion’s security team,” Venice said.

  Derek smiled. “Good to know I won’t get shot in the hallway. One day, we need to discuss why this place rivals the White House for physical security.”

  “We had some trouble a few years ago,” Venice explained. “Two of the students were actually kidnapped from the dormitory.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Yeah, that was a scary time. The story had a reasonably happy ending, but it changed our thinking in a big way.”

  Derek slung his suit jacket around his shoulders and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “Resurrection House is for criminals’ kids, right?”

  “Exactly,” Venice said. “We realized that every one of those poor boys and girls has some kind of a price on their heads, if only as a means to hurt their parents.”

  “But why all the security here in the mansion?”

  Venice chuckled. “When Jonathan Grave starts on a security binge, he just keeps going.”

  “Who pays for it all?”

  “I’ve never asked,” Venice said. “I figure it’s none of my business, but the smart money says it comes out of Digger’s pocket.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, a little bit.” She sat taller in the bed as Derek approached for his good-bye kiss.

  “We need to do this again,” he said.

  She smiled. “Soon.”

  “Busy tonight?”

  “I have to help Roman with a history project,” she said. Roman was her only child, and he was having a tough time navigating his first year as a teenager. “It’s not enough to write a paper anymore. You have to do a diorama with it, too.”

  “He doesn’t go to school here, does he?”

  Venice bristled at his tone. “This is a perfectly fine school,” she said. “Our teachers do great work here.”

  Derek cocked an eyebrow.

  “No, Roman goes to Northern Neck Academy. But it’s only because of the transient nature of Rez House’s student population, not because of any quality issues.” Maybe this one cut a little close to home since Mama was the de facto mother to all the students, and the administration had recently been beaten up pretty badly by state accreditors.

  Derek kissed her. “Duty calls,” he said. “From a long, long ways away.” He winked.

  After the door latched behind him, Venice lay back into her pillows and wondered if, in fact, he was the one. If Derek Halstrom—no less than TickTock2 himself—might be the one to make her little family feel whole again.

  She was reaching for the bed stand light when a yell pierced the otherwise silent house.

  “Zulu, Zulu, Zulu!” someone hollered. The adolescent squeak was unmistakable. The voice belonged to Roman, and Zulu was the established family emergency code word.

  Venice threw her covers off and wrapped herself in a robe as she rushed to the door. Someone had already turned on the lights, and as she emerged into the second-floor hallway, everything crystalized in a glance.

  Roman stood at the bottom of the stairs, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, a carton of crackers clutched to his bare chest. He continued to yell.

  Three steps above him, Derek waved his hands in the air to bring back sanity and serenity.

  “Roman, stop!” Venice yelled.

  To her left, Mama Alexander emerged from her bedroom, thoroughly sleep-fogged.

  “Who the hell is he?” Roman yelled, pointing. “And what is he doing here now?”

  Venice felt heat rise in her face. Roman knew perfectly well who Derek was. The point of this display had everything to do with his second question.

  “Watch your mouth, young man,” Mama said. Nothing brought her around quite like the deployment of a bad word.

  Down in the foyer, beyond Derek, Venice saw the security team gathering, weapons at the ready.

  “No!” Venice said. “Oscar, I’m sorry, but this is a false alarm. Roman, you know better.”

  “Why is he here?” the boy demanded. Then, to Derek, “What are you doing to my mom?”

  “Roman!” Venice couldn’t believe the rudeness. Wasn’t sure how she would handle the humiliation.

  Down in the foyer, the four assembled guards sort of folded in on themselves, clearly wishing that they could be anywhere else.

  Derek said, “No, I get it. Look, Roman, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t,” Venice said. “You don’t owe him an explanation, and if anyone owes an apology to anyone, it’s Roman apologizing to you.” She made a point of looking straight at her son. “I’ll see you tonight, Derek.”

  Derek looked fairly terrified. “Um, maybe—”

  “I’ll see you tonight. After Roman and I have finished with his history project.”

  Silence hung in the air like a dense fog as everyone waited for something to happen.

  Finally, Derek moved first. “Excuse me,” he said, and he squeezed past Roman
.

  “You don’t belong here,” the boy said as he passed. “You are not my father.”

  Venice cast a look at Mama. “You can’t tell me this surprises you,” Mama said. “Interestin’ days ahead.” She disappeared into her room.

  Venice kept her spot at the top of the stairs. “Go to bed, Roman,” she said. “We can talk about this in the morning.”

  The defiant stare was the latest of his teenaged gifts. He kept his eyes locked on his mother as he climbed the steps. On the landing, he said. “It is morning. And he doesn’t belong here.” Then he padded down to his room. The door slam shook the whole structure.

  “Interesting days indeed,” Venice mumbled.

  * * *

  To Jonathan’s eye, southern South Dakota could easily have been mistaken for northern Nebraska. Farmland stretched forever, in all directions. Or maybe it was prairie. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he knew the difference. On this midautumn day, there wasn’t much color to the grasses and crops. Rolled bales of hay seemed to be the primary architectural elements, and he found the landscape quite beautiful. “When people think of the American heartland—of American plenty—this is what they think of,” he said to the others in the rented Suburban.

  “Looks like a lot of nothin’ to me,” Boxers said from the driver’s seat.

  “When the snow starts falling, there’ll be a lot more of that nothingness to go around,” Gail said from the backseat.

  They’d passed a road sign a few minutes ago that announced that they were approaching the town of Bateman, ten miles ahead, due north. According to the coordinates sent to Jonathan’s GPS, they’d drive up on their destination within the next few minutes.

  “We’re looking for a white farmhouse with green shutters,” Jonathan said. “It’ll be set about a mile off the road on the right. The end of the driveway is supposed to be marked with a tall white birdhouse.” Out here, as in the hinterlands surrounding Fisherman’s Cove, street addresses were different than in the city. Rural route numbers were still the current state of mail technology.

  Boxers pointed through the windshield. “Isn’t that a birdhouse?”

  “Bird condo is more like it,” Jonathan said. The birdhouse sat atop a fifteen-foot six-by-six-inch pole. Its multilevel three-foot-square design reminded Jonathan of the old New Jersey resort hotels, the kind you’d find in places like Cape May.

  “Those are some spoiled rotten birds,” Gail said.

  “I’d guess spoiled rotten cameras,” Boxers countered. “And, since they were built with Homeland Security money, I’m guessing they’re high-end cameras, too.” He slowed. “I presume we’re going in?” He didn’t wait for an answer, and Jonathan didn’t offer one.

  “I’m surprised there’s no fence,” Gail said. “Not even a chain across the driveway.”

  “I guess when you’re running an illegal secret prison, you want to draw as little attention to it as possible,” Jonathan said.

  “This is so disturbing,” Gail said. “The very fact that we have secret illegal prisons . . .”

  “You’ve got to remember the level of paranoia in the immediate aftermath of Nine-Eleven,” Jonathan said. “People were scared shitless, and they wanted answers. They wanted assurances that they’d be able to sleep safely at night.”

  “But secret prisons?” Gail pressed. “They didn’t want that.”

  “Weren’t you with the FBI when Nine-Eleven happened?” Boxers asked.

  “I was,” she replied.

  “Then you have to remember the pressure,” Jonathan said.

  “I remember the hysteria. I remember the paranoia, but I don’t remember suspending the Constitution.”

  “We all cut a lot of corners back then,” Jonathan said. “Due process took a big hit everywhere. We talk a big game when it comes to the rights of the innocent, but when it comes down to us versus them, we pick and choose our preferred sections of the Constitution. It comes down to the government to keep the panic from running out of control.”

  “You sound like you approve,” Gail said.

  “Your law professors must be really proud of you,” Boxers teased.

  “The social contract is a fragile thing, Big Guy,” Gail said.

  “Exactly,” Jonathan said, but in support of a different point. “When the public is scared, they want action. Washington was trying to keep a revolution at bay. It fell to the likes of Irene Rivers to sort it out. We got help from the Pakis and others to help us deal with the foreign nationals.”

  “Through black site prisons,” Gail said. “The ones that we were forced to shut down in shame.”

  “The ones we acknowledged and shut down in pretend shame,” Boxers corrected.

  “We had domestic threats that needed to be taken care of,” Jonathan said, “so we opened some black sites of our own.”

  “How did they get agents to go along with that?” Gail wondered aloud. “I’ll stipulate that you could get a handful of agents to throw their oaths to the gutter, but you’re talking a lot more than that.”

  “Hundreds, I would guess,” Jonathan said. “Which is why they didn’t use career agents.”

  “Contractors?” Gail asked.

  “Bingo. If the money’s right, you can talk anyone into anything.”

  “My God, your cynicism knows no bounds, does it?” Gail leaned forward so she could get a better angle to glare at Jonathan. “Were you one of the selected contractors?”

  “Not me,” he replied. “I was still doing wet work for Uncle.”

  “But you were aware.”

  “I heard rumors.”

  “And what did you think at the time?”

  “War is ugly.”

  “Oh, please don’t patronize me.”

  “Do you really see Digger as the patronizing element in this conversation?” Boxers asked. He clearly was losing patience.

  “None of that matters now,” Jonathan said. “What was, was. The domestic sites were closed down as Uncle got a better feel for the magnitude of what we were facing.”

  “And as the international sites filled up,” Gail pressed.

  “There’s that, yes,” Jonathan agreed. “As far as I know, the domestic black site program shut down. But it seems that the sites themselves still exist.”

  “How many?”

  “I have no idea,” Jonathan said. “At least one, it would seem. And it’s at the end of this driveway.”

  “Hey, Boss, we’re not alone anymore,” Boxers said, pointing ahead. An all-terrain four-wheeler approached them head-on, manned by three heavily armed men in jungle camo. “Badasses at twelve o’clock.”

  “Stop the truck and let them come to us,” Jonathan said. “And remember we’re on the same team.”

  “Do they know that?” Gail asked.

  “Probably not. At least not yet.”

  “I don’t like it when people point guns as me,” Boxers said.

  “Doesn’t look like their fingers are on the bang switch yet,” Jonathan said. “And they’re not really pointing them at us.” In fact, their muzzles all pointed skyward.

  The four-wheeler stopped as well, leaving a thirty-foot gap between them. The soldier look-alikes peeled off of their riding positions and formed a loose sort of skirmish line. The guy who’d been riding shotgun brought a megaphone up to his lips and said something.

  Jonathan cracked his window to let the sound in. “Did you hear what he said?”

  “I think it was something about coming in for dinner and drinks,” Boxers said. “But I could be wrong.”

  Jonathan opened his window the rest of the way and shouted, “We’re friendlies. We need to chat.”

  The guy with the megaphone said, “Turn around.” “We’re FBI,” Jonathan shouted. He pulled his badge holder from his front pocket and stuck his hand through the window to flash the gold shield. “I guess we need to start wearing these puppies on our belts,” he mumbled to the others.

  “I’m afraid it will burn my flesh,” Boxers
grumbled.

  “Get out and approach our vehicle,” Four-wheeler said.

  “Anybody see a downside to that?” Jonathan asked.

  “Other than me hating being told what to do?” Boxers asked.

  “It is their playground,” Gail said. “They get to set the rules.”

  “Agreed,” Jonathan said. “Plus, I always like the holy shit look people get when they see Big Guy for the first time.” He yelled, “On our way out.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Of course,” Jonathan said.

  “Dipshit,” Boxers grumbled.

  “Just don’t make us jumpy,” Four-wheeler said. Finally, there was a lightness of tone that showed he might not be an asshole.

  “Y’all know the drill,” Jonathan said. “Keep your hands visible and move slowly. And try not to block the warmth of the sun from the Earth.” That last part elicited a finger from Boxers.

  They opened their doors simultaneously and stepped out onto the gravel. Once he was standing straight, Jonathan clipped his badge to his belt, next to the buckle, and closed his door. The two other doors closed more or less in unison. Jonathan set the pace. He kept his arms down, with his fingers spread like jazz hands as he walked at a casual stroll toward the other team.

  “You can stop there,” Four-wheeler said when they were still fifteen feet away. “Now, state your business.”

  “We’re here to interview Logan Masterson,” Jona-than said.

  The other team exchanged significant looks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” their spokesman said.

  “Way to play a bluff,” Boxers mocked.

  Another of the guards stiffened. “Watch your attitude.”

  Boxers laughed. “Okay, now I’m really, really afraid of you.”

  “Is this really necessary?” Gail asked. Her voice dripped with disdain.

  “No, it’s not,” Jonathan said. “Stand down, Agent Contata.” He turned back to the spokesman for the guards. “I’m Agent Neil Bonner. I appreciate your stonewalling, but I really don’t have time for it. We need to speak with your house guest.”

  The leader looked to his cohorts, and they looked back at him. This clearly was not a conversation they expected to have. “What’s the pass code?” he asked after turning back to face Jonathan.