He can’t help it.
She tried to keep reminding herself of that, but it was damned difficult.
“They are afraid that it might start a riot,” he said. “They don’t want people lining up outside when they don’t even know for sure yet if they have one. They also didn’t want to give people false hope in case the medicines they’re working on don’t work.”
That was just logical enough to make a scary sort of sense. But it also didn’t give her a better idea of what was going on, or if it was legit. “So they’re…infecting you all with Kite? Is that why all the money?”
“Oh, no. They draw our blood, then then give us test medicines. Then they draw our blood again and see what changes happened, and test the blood samples against the virus. They needed a wide variety of people from all over the country. They said just like with the flu viruses that maybe different strains would affect people with different antibodies in different ways.”
Again, that sounded just logical enough to keep the facility’s status as ambiguous in her mind.
“But why all the money?”
“Because they wanted our families not to be burdened by our absence.”
Well, in Marvin’s case, it was actually unburdening them to not have him around.
But she didn’t say that out loud.
He continued. “Once we get through this phase, if we make it to the point we’re sent out, then when we come back, they’ll be drawing more blood samples from us to do more testing.”
“Okay, see, that’s the part that’s confusing me. Why are they sending you out? What are you supposed to be doing?”
“To spread the Word of God,” he simply said, as if it was obvious.
“That’s it? For all that money?”
He glanced around and leaned in. “We were told that there might be…government agencies who wouldn’t take kindly to a church being the one to come up with the vaccine, and they might even try to sabotage things. They told us not to talk about it to other people. That they will have us start out with the least fortunate people, like the homeless and addicts, to try to teach them about God and to give them the medicines they’re giving us if they look like they’re working. To protect them.”
He leaned in closer. “People like us, sis. People who don’t have money. People the rich and the government have done their best to keep under their heels. They want to empower people like them, like you and me. The church sees the value in everyone based on them being people, not as being a bank balance.”
He looked down at his hands, which fidgeted in his lap as if independent of him. “I feel guilty I haven’t been able to do more,” he said. “I’ve always been different. But now I have a chance to help you and Aunt Darla. If I make it through this, then maybe she can finally retire.”
He eventually met her gaze again. “And I know me not being there right now helps,” he softly said. “One less person to feed. If I don’t make it all the way through to get paid…” He shrugged. “Then it’s just one more thing in my life I screwed up.”
At war inside her, the fear over this whole situation, and her breaking heart that her brother had finally achieved a moment of self-realization.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him yet about the condition he’d been born with. Why add that to his burden?
“So what about that girl, Korey?”
He smiled. “I really like her, sis. And she likes me. She’s from a poor family, too. I thought we had it bad, but they have it a lot worse than we do.”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“I don’t know what we are. We hang out all the time. But I like her. I’m thinking maybe after this is done, maybe I can talk her into staying in LA with us. If it’s okay with you and Aunt Darla.”
She was about to ask him something else when a tone sounded.
He smiled and stood. “I need to go. Class is starting again.”
She stood and hugged him. “Just…stay safe, okay?”
“I will.”
“Love you, bro.”
He smiled again, wrenching her heart. “Love you, too, sis.”
She watched him walk out of the sanctuary, her thoughts an angry, jumbled swirl. Since humans had enough grey cells to want to be in charge of everything, people had tried to coerce others into doing their will, either by charm, force, or brainwashing.
Nothing he’d told her gave her much in the way of new information.
If anything, it’d left her feeling more unsettled than ever.
And feeling more than a little sad—and scared—for her brother.
Chapter Nineteen
On her walk back to their apartment building, Stacia got the uncomfortable feeling she was being followed. But when she stopped and turned to look, she didn’t see anyone.
The feeling grew so strong that she turned around and diverted into one of the grocery stores she sometimes shopped at. After grabbing a sales flier from the rack by the door, she worked her way toward the back, where the discounted meat bin was. Sometimes she could snag a piece that had reached its expiration date and get it for a fraction of the regular price, if she could beat others to it.
Nothing.
After a few minutes of looking through the flier, she picked up two bags of dried beans that were on sale and discounted further with a coupon from the flier. She took her time walking up to the check-out, carefully scanning outside through the mesh-grate covering the plate-glass windows.
Nothing suspicious.
Part of her hoped it might have been Lima and Quack. But that didn’t make sense since they were scheduled to meet later.
Or maybe they were trailing her to see what she did?
Maybe she was just farking paranoid over what she hadn’t learned from Marvin, but what her mind was guessing at.
Quack and Lima had seemed nice. At least they’d been nice to talk to. And it was a relief to find out they weren’t part of a gang, that Aunt Darla wouldn’t be in any danger from them.
If anything happened to her aunt because of something Stacia had seen or done, she never would forgive herself.
Pausing in the store’s doorway, she didn’t see anyone hanging around. Instead of walking straight down the block toward the apartment building, she ducked around the corner and sprinted across the side street and down behind the next set of buildings. A slightly longer way, but at least the feeling of being followed didn’t return by the time she reached the building’s northeast entrance, the one farthest from where she usually entered and exited, and she ran up the stairs to their apartment.
* * * *
Stacia put the beans and some leftover chicken meat on to simmer while she tried to sleep. Unfortunately, she was plagued by troubling thoughts of Marvin and what might be going on with the church.
After only managing a few hours of sleep, she got up early and showered before she put the finishing touches on the soup. By the time Aunt Darla returned home from work, Stacia had a thick chicken bean soup ready for her dinner.
The older woman let out a soft sigh as she settled into a chair at the table. “You take such good care of me, sweetheart. Thank you.”
Stacia leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Well, just returning the favor. You’ve taken good care of me all my life, and I love you.”
Her aunt caught Stacia’s hand before she could step away. She gently squeezed her hand with her twisted, gnarled fingers. “I love you, too, dear. You have no idea how much.”
Stacia hated the pinched, drawn look on her aunt’s face. She was such a sweet, kind, loving woman. To suffer the loss of the love of her life, and then to lose her only sister, and then the arthritis.
It wasn’t fair.
Then again, life wasn’t fair. Whining about it didn’t get you through it.
Her aunt released her after a final pat of her hand and picked up her spoon. “Do you think Marvin will be home tonight? I haven’t seen him in so long.”
Stacia didn’t like to lie, especially not to he
r aunt, but the other option wasn’t better. “I saw him this morning and talked with him for a few minutes. He’s hoping the church takes him on in a paying position. He’s taking some sort of classes they’re giving for free. And they’re feeding him, and they have a dorm there for their students, so that’s not a bad thing. He said to tell you hi.”
Aunt Darla smiled. “You’ve been very patient with me giving him leeway all these years,” she said. “And I do appreciate it. I know he can be a drain on our resources, but I promised your mother. You two are like my own kids.”
Stacia returned to her aunt and gently hugged her. “I know. It’s okay. I just get…frustrated. I love the lunk, but it would really make life easier if he could hold down a steady job and contribute to the household.”
Remembering to stay with her normal mantra was hard. She didn’t want to tell her aunt anything that would worry her. If Stacia veered from her usual stance, that would likely clue her aunt in to the fact that something wasn’t right.
“If this doesn’t work out for him,” her aunt said, “I’ll talk to him and tell him he doesn’t get any more chances. I cannot have you work yourself to death trying to make ends meet for all of us. I talked to a couple of women at work today who have roommates. They told me what they charge, just for room and utilities, not even food. It would mean you wouldn’t have to take all those extra hours anymore. You could actually have a normal life. And there are several women at work who are looking to become roommates and downsize because they can’t afford to live alone, or they need to move somewhere else.”
Out of nowhere, an overwhelming feeling of dread washed over Stacia. Most likely from so much change, nearly too much, coming at her too quickly.
Stacia kissed her aunt’s forehead again. “We’ll see what happens,” Stacia said. “Maybe this time it’ll be different.” She sat at her place at the table.
Her aunt studied her. “You don’t really believe that, do you? Because I know I don’t. Bless his heart, I love your brother, but I think I’m finally ready to see things from your point of view.”
Stacia picked up her spoon. “No, but I want to believe. I really wish I could believe it.”
Chapter Twenty
Stacia was standing outside with her surgical mask on and her tote bag in hand when the men pulled up in front of her building in an old Clando pickup truck. She didn’t even give them time to shut the engine off, hurrying over and jumping into the backseat of the double cab.
Tonight, she was desperately glad they were picking her up. The watched feeling had returned as soon as she’d stepped outside the apartment building.
Making the trek through the park to the bus stop would have been nerve wracking in a way she wasn’t used to. She hadn’t been mugged or raped, although she’d had a couple of close calls over the years that she avoided by running fast and yelling loudly.
Tonight…
She shuddered as they pulled away from the building. “I work at the Carlkilney Brewing plant over in Torquada.”
Lima was driving. “We know,” he said, the surgical mask hiding the smile he was likely wearing if his tone of voice was any measure.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess you probably do.”
Quack turned to look at her over the back of the seat. He pulled down his mask and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I…” It would be stupid to admit she felt like she was being watched, right? “Hey, were you guys watching me for a few minutes or something before you drove up?”
“No. Why?”
“It’s stupid. It’s probably nothing.”
“Let us be the judge of that,” Lima said.
She told them about feeling like she was being watched, and about earlier that day, her side trip into the store. “I’m sure I’m just paranoid now. Going to that church gives me the creeps.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Quack said. “What time does your shift end?”
“Six in the morning. Why?”
“We’ll be waiting outside the plant for you,” Lima said. “In this truck.”
She didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse, but she wouldn’t refuse their offer.
It meant another bus fare she could slide over into the grocery money column. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Did you talk to your brother?” Quack asked.
“Yeah.” She told them about their conversation.
From the look on Quack’s face she could tell he felt pretty much the same way about it that she did.
“Doesn’t clear them at all,” he said.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “I keep coming back to the fact that one hundred grand is an obscene amount to pay someone for something like this. Especially when so many people are so poor they could get away with giving them a few thousand. Hell, maybe even a few hundred.”
“Hush money,” Quack said.
“Blood money,” Lima added.
His words chilled her.
“And that was one of my thoughts, too,” she admitted. “How many families are going to complain, when they’re bad off to start with, if they suddenly see more money than they’ll probably ever earn in their entire lives show up in their bank account? I know that sounds shallow, but there are a lot of people out there desperate enough to look the other way if they’re fed a reasonable enough explanation that helps them sleep at night when they’re given that kind of money.”
Taking a direct route in a private vehicle meant an hour-long bus trip was reduced to thirty-five minutes. When they pulled up outside the plant early, parked just down the block so as not to raise any suspicions, the men sat there with the quiet solar engine running and the air-conditioner going.
“Look,” Lima said, “you strike me as a reasonable, logical woman. Our inside person is still fighting with decrypting the info we have. Based on what we’ve found out so far, I think we’re all in agreement here that whatever’s really happening in that building isn’t kosher.”
Relief filled her, that they were validating her opinion. That she wasn’t just being suspicious. “Thank you.”
“We’ll see what else we can find out,” Quack said, “and we will be waiting out here for you at the end of your shift. “We’ll take you to meet the rest of our group and talk more in-depth. Hopefully we’ll have something concrete we can give you to take to your brother and talk him out of there.”
“Can we just kidnap him out of there?”
Lima smiled. “That’s always an option of last resort. Let’s try sifting through intel first.”
“Thanks.”
As she walked down the fence surrounding the plant to the main gate, she slung her tote bag over her shoulder and tried not to engage in idle, sexy fantasies about the two guys.
* * * *
The men watched her walk down the sidewalk and toward the main gate of the bottling plant. Lima could see his partner’s grim expression reflected in the passenger side mirror.
The three of them were in absolute agreement about this entire situation.
“I don’t like it,” Quack said. “That’s just enough bullshit to tell me whatever they’re doing is really, really bad. I mean, typical brainwashing 101 garbage, turning the victim against the very people who might help them. Instilling paranoia.”
Lima had reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror to watch her. “You and I are on the same page, dude. Preaching to the choir.”
They waited to leave until she was safely inside the gate. Used to irregular hours themselves, they’d both napped during the afternoon in preparation to meet up with her. They had already planned on arranging to pick her up from work to take her in to meet with Papa, but fortunately, she gave them a ready-made excuse.
After returning to the safe house, they updated Papa and the others.
They all grimly agreed with the current assessment that whatever was going on at the church facility, it was looking more and more suspicious.
Lima checked his laptop for any more updates from Bubba.
He could tell from the tone of the man’s messages that he was growing increasingly frustrated by bumping up against the encryption when he usually wasn’t stymied by such things.
I don’t know what they used on these files. Other than the little bit I’ve already given you, everything else is wrapped up tighter than a rich virgin’s cooch. The longer it takes me to get inside those files, the more I want to know what the hell’s inside them. Banks don’t even use this kind of encryption.
Lima knew if Bubba couldn’t figure it out, he damn sure couldn’t. He was a skilled hacker in his own right, but more of the on-the-fly kind of skills that they needed in the course of their duties, not the deep kind of hacking knowledge that Bubba had honed over decades in military intelligence before going to the private sector.
“So the million-dollar question,” Quack said, “is what the hell do we tell her if we’re right and they are doing something nasty in there? We can’t risk her going in and warning everyone and getting herself killed by those asshats. Or just as bad, captured, and she tells people how she found out. Not that I think she’d willingly tell them, but it’s not like she’s been trained on how to endure torture. And I’d prefer she didn’t get tortured in the first place.”
“I know, I know. We’re back to that stupid waiting game again,” Lima said. “Just suck it up and deal with it like the rest of us.”
He knew logic wouldn’t work on Stacia’s brother anyway. Not at this point. Whatever indoctrination methods they were using had already hooked him into their belief structure. He suspected kidnapping and deprogramming him would be the only way she could reclaim him at this point.
Then again, he could be wrong. The church would have had no way of knowing about Marvin’s condition. Maybe that would screw things up the way they’d screwed things up for him all his life.
This time, it could be the man’s lucky break.
Chapter Twenty-One
Working at the plant wasn’t exactly what Stacia would call fun by any stretch of the imagination. It had, however, stopped being something she dreaded now that Marco was gone. The lightened mood of the entire shift didn’t go unnoticed, either.
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