Part 15 (2/2)
”Can you throw somebody out who's already moved out?”
”It was the principle of the thing,” he said. He tipped his finger at the gla.s.s and asked, ”A little more? If you don't mind.”
I didn't mind. It was expensive scotch, but I never drank much of it anyway. I think that the bottle was a gift from Horace, received ages previously. Adrian was welcome to it-and all the more so if it loosened his tongue.
While he sipped, I asked, ”She was your younger sister, I a.s.sume? Did you try to talk her out of it? Being big brother, and all?”
”Of course I tried. But she wouldn't hear it, and I was already overseas by then-”
”Military,” I said, remembering what the PDF had said about the thief.
”Navy SEAL,” he specified. ”I was wrapping up training far enough away from here that there was nothing I could do about it. Anyway, she started to dabble in drugs, and then the boyfriend died or disappeared-I'm not sure which. She tried to come home but our mother wasn't having it. Momma gave Bella the line about how if she wanted to go be an adult, she could stay out there and be an adult.”
”Ouch. What'd she do then?” I was going for the sympathy play, and it wasn't entirely a ploy. I honestly wanted to know about his sister-how she'd been turned, how she'd been captured, and how she'd died.
”Lived on the streets, I guess. Bounced in and out of shelters.”
”Dropped out of school?”
He nodded.
Well, that was one more paper trail I wouldn't bother chasing.
”By the time I had leave to come home, the household was a war zone between my mother and my father. And Isabelle was nowhere to be found.”
”Your mother wanted her to stay gone, and your father wanted her to come home, is that right?”
”Yes.” His eyes narrowed, watering with exhaustion or very old pain. ”How did you know?”
”I told you, I went there and talked to them, remember? Your dad gave me your stage name. Your mom acted like she wanted to burn my face with a road flare.”
”That's them.” He waved one hand carelessly, then froze it in midair. His body language and his tone changed abruptly, to something sober and tense. ”You spoke to them?”
”I told you I-”
”You went to visit them? At their house?”
”Yes,” I told him, not sure where he was headed with this line of interrogation, but sensing that I wouldn't like the destination even a little bit. ”But I told you that before. before.”
”I wasn't thinking. We...” He dropped the gla.s.s and it stayed upright, but sloshed. ”We have to go back there. What if you led the agents right to them?”
I held up my hands in a gesture that wouldn't have stopped an aggressive poodle, much less a frantic, tipsy drag queen. ”Don't, Adrian. Don't go there, not like this. Your parents aren't in hiding, are they? I was inside their house, yes,” I confessed, and then I grasped at straws. ”And it looked to me like they'd been there for years. The government doesn't want your parents. It could've had them at any time-”
”Okay. Okay, yes. You're right,” he said, and it was pitifully apparent that he was leaning on my words, trying to calm himself down. Hey, I know it when I see it. ”You're right, they've been there since before I was born. n.o.body wants anything from them. Everybody knows they don't know anything...except, my father gave you my stage name...”
”Well, he sort of scribbled it-”
”He told you where to find me. If he told you, he could've told anybody!”
”G.o.ddammit, Adrian, settle down. He didn't tell just anybody, he told me me-and I was doing a very convincing cop impression, I'll have you know.”
He glowered at me and then he growled, ”You mean, you showed up in an official-looking car, in a suit?”
Oh. I got it. ”Well, it wasn't...it wasn't a black black suit, and it wasn't a suit, and it wasn't a black black car. And I had a badge...” I looked back down at Peter Desarme's clothes on Adrian's back, and his badge on my kitchen counter, and I figured he, too, would've likely had an official-looking car to complete the package. car. And I had a badge...” I looked back down at Peter Desarme's clothes on Adrian's back, and his badge on my kitchen counter, and I figured he, too, would've likely had an official-looking car to complete the package.
”You don't understand. My parents, they...They aren't very trusting of authority, but they fear it and they'll cave to it, if it comes on hard enough. Please, for the love of G.o.d, tell me you did not lead anybody to my parents.”
”I couldn't have,” I hoped, and I prayed. ”Listen, I was not not being followed. I'm smarter than that, and more careful than that. If I weren't, I never would've survived this long.” being followed. I'm smarter than that, and more careful than that. If I weren't, I never would've survived this long.”
He was tapping his foot and tapping his wrist on the edge of the counter, trying to come to some kind of decision. ”You would've noticed someone tailing you in a car.”
”That's what I'm telling you, yes.”
”But what if you were being followed some other way? Something less obvious?”
”Like what?” I wanted to know, but a word bubbled to the surface of my attention, and I didn't like it. ”Like with some kind of...I don't know. Surveillance system.”
”That's what I'm thinking,” he mused, poking at the wallet. ”Something like a satellite.”
”A satellite?” My blood went colder than my drink. ”That's not possible.”
But Adrian didn't say anything to help slow the ramp-up of my paranoid frenzy. ”The technology wasn't really live yet when I was still in the service, but you could see it coming. Satellites were the next thing that would save us-we'd be watching our enemies from s.p.a.ce, in high definition.”
”But...but can they do that now now?” I demanded. ”That's something that happens on TV, and in movies once in a while. But in real life? Bulls.h.i.+t Bulls.h.i.+t. I call bulls.h.i.+t.”
”Call it what you want. The gear these guys were wearing-it was advanced stuff. Those earpieces.” He made a fiddly motion, as if he were holding one up. ”Those microphones. A quarter the size of what we were using a decade ago.”
The only satellites I knew about that didn't carry TV signals fed straight to the Internet, like Google Earth...and that was just a snapshot, right? Satellites-which is to say, powerful cameras out in orbit-only give you an image. They don't give you live video feeds.
Unless I was wrong. Unless there were other kinds of satellites.
I racked my brain, trying to dredge up memories of CNN coverage or other news organizations showing footage from Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of those military satellites were more advanced, weren't they?
Whoo boy boy. The implications made my head spin. I just might have stumbled across some whole new and exciting thing to be terrified of. I tried to catch up and calm down. I said, ”Sure, fine. Tiny trackers, the size of pocket change, okay. But that's just radio contact, old-fas.h.i.+oned and reliable, right?”
”Probably,” he acknowledged.
And then he started taking off his clothes.
”Not that I'm complaining, but what the h.e.l.l are you doing?”
”Peter Desarme might've had a tracker on him. It could be anywhere, sewn into a seam or clipped into a pocket,” he said as he kicked the pants off-revealing the hilarity-inducing fact that he was still wearing the silver spangled bikini in which he'd performed earlier. Apparently this didn't call for any comment on his part, and if he noticed I was looking, he didn't bring it up. ”Here,” he said, chucking the pants at me. ”Feel around all the seams, turn the pockets inside out. Do you have a washer or dryer here?”
”Yeah.”
”Okay, we're going to have to run all this stuff through them, on the highest heat settings.”
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