by Alexa Dare
Shaking her head, Nora backed away.
“Please.” Tears rolled down her son’s cheeks and dripped from his jaw to plop on the bits of crumpled paper at his feet. “All I ask of you is for you to touch me.”
Nora reached out. Jaws tightened, she steeled herself. Her shaky inhale halted her movement. “You mustn’t move.”
In profile, the silhouette of his face remained so still that he didn’t blink. Waiting, expectant, he appeared not to breathe.
She wrinkled her nose at his soon-to-need-a-shower musk. She could at least provide one connecting gesture for her son so that he might take more pride in his appearance and personal grooming.
Yet, if he grabbed her wrist above the gloves…
She gasped and pulled back. “I can’t, Vincent. I won’t chance it.”
Enraged, he flung his head from side to side. A cross between a roar and a shriek rose out of him as if erupting from his fragile, damaged soul. He dropped to his knees among the torn paper and ravaged pencil splinters.
“Father would appreciate my talent.” Silent sobs lifted his shoulders and convulsed in jerks through his hulking torso. “He would not deny me as you have done.”
“It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s here.” Nora knelt. Her voice, as always, reached out to comfort him. “You are going to be okay. We are will be okay. It’s always been the two of us against all the others that used us.”
Yet if Vincent formed an alliance with Yates, he left her with no choice. At that moment, she accepted that she would have to destroy both father and son.
***
“Delbert, can you access their system the way they hacked into ours?” Nora stood at the untrustworthy prisoner’s shoulder. Despite wanting to dig her fingers into his plentiful flesh and prompt him to perform, she held back and kept her eager hands gloved and at her sides.
Yes, far too long between kills.
The big man eyed Vincent, Fitz Ross, and her as if expecting one of them to throw a first punch. Yet, sitting at the main computer panel, Delbert somehow settled in as if he belonged at a command-center keyboard.
Vincent sulked in the corner of the control room. He hugged the remains of the drawing pad and rocked his upper body in short jerky bursts.
At attention, Lieutenant Ross stood near Vincent. No doubt, for protection.
Of or against?
“No problem.” The self-proclaimed computer expert reluctantly dragged his shocked glance from Vincent. He tilted his head side to side with dull pops of his neck “Anything you say.”
“Delbert, you see, there is a problem. Should you mess with us to help Yates and are willing to die for his cause, please know that I do not intend to kill you.” Nora delivered the words as if she’d just handed the man a glass of sweetened iced tea.
“Good to hear, ma’am.” The man’s bulbous eyes glistened. “Because I’ve no desire to die.”
“Oh, you won’t die. You’ll survive to live a long-suffering life. Your heart will be damaged so severely that every beat in your chest will bring torture and excruciating agony.”
“I’ve got a good heart. In more ways than one.” Delbert stared at the computer monitor glow before him. “You’ve seen the bruises Yates gave me.”
“I knew Brockton Yates many years ago. One thing I am certain of is that he’s capable of deception.”
“He turned on me because of that Brody kid, so I hightailed myself right out of there. Nobody’s going to treat this good old boy like yesterday’s newspaper.”
“Delbert, I would rather not cause you harm.”
“I truly don’t want you to. Really, I don’t. Let me help you. Helping you will help me. If Yates gets ahold of me, he’ll skin me alive. Literally. For real. No joke. I’ve seen it done, and I ain’t kidding.” Delbert shuddered. “Ugly, nasty stuff.”
Should Vincent be hearing what kind of man his father actually was?
But her son claimed he wanted the truth.
So be it.
In gentle back-and-forth rocking motions, Vincent’s distant gaze locked on the jagged ribbons and ripped pieces of paper clutched to his chest. Did he even perceive what went on around him when he got like this?
“Besides, you got a mighty good thing going here deep inside this Briar Patch Mountain facility. Wouldn’t mind being part of the ground-up operation here, if you get what I mean. I’ll do right by you.” Delbert swiped the palms of his unbound hands along the upper curve of his belly, releasing a stale beer stench from his pores. “You won’t have to hurt me.”
“Then hijack their electronics system,” Nora said. “We want a permanent takedown of all their computers, even their electricity. In other words, the works.”
“Beg pardon, but they are mountain men, ma’am, so I don’t think that’s going to stop them.”
“Just do the job in front of you. We’ll handle the rest.”
“I’ve got this.” Delbert swung around in his chair and faced the monitors. He linked his fingers and cracked his knuckles. Wrists poised, the eager tips of his fingers hovered over the keyboard. He looked back at them. “You don’t suppose they’ve got any pickles in the kitchen? Dill would be good. Don’t care much for the sweet ones.”
The system booted up with a surge of fan noise and blinking lights.
“Wasn’t me.” Delbert punched more keys. White rows of numbers and letters flowed across and down to fill the monitor screen in front of him. Lines scrolled. “They're in. The kid’s logged in from outside again. He’s good. I’ll say that for him.” With a snort, Delbert’s fingers flew. “No, no, no.”
Nora surged to her feet and paced toward Vincent.
Her son didn’t respond.
“The video check-in before was a ruse.” Delbert sucked at his teeth. “They were buying time to plant a worm. They’ve leached on to your systems like a parasite to a host. Danged impressive is all I’ve got to say.”
Nora expected smoke to rise from the rapidly clacking keys.
“By chance,” asked Delbert, “do you have backup power?”
The overhead lights flickered and shut off, while the tiny eerie green and blue of the system lights and monitors glowed.
“Selective electrical shutdown.” Delbert whistled his awe.
“We’ve several generators.” Ross angled to look over the big man’s shoulder.
The electronic fan’s hums quieted.
“What sort of air exchange provision you got? Because they disabled the in-flow from the surface too.”
“Emergency backup should take care of it.” A muscle twitched in Nora’s cheek.
“No. No. No.” The man’s fingers blurred. “He’s got the speed of youth, but not the wiles of the Delbert.”
The undamaged wall monitors powered up. The message, You Lose, flashed in bright yellow on black.
Through gritted teeth, Delbert wheezed, “Little fucker.”
The system went down. Again, a stark quiet fell.
Toward the ceiling, a tiny whir echoed.
Ross, ever prepared, turned on a small pocket flashlight. He aimed the light beam toward the vent system.
“Outgoing,” Delbert muttered. “They shut down the in-take but ramped up the outflow. Plainly put, ma’am, we’re screwed if we stay inside the mountain.”
“The air’s pumping out?” Ross gripped the chair back.
Delbert nodded. “With no fresh air to replace it.”
“None of the electronic doors work?” Nora paced to the sliding doors
“Nope,” Delbert’s eyes bulged extra-large, “but I did manage to code and send them a time-delayed nasty surprise.”
“I am sure you can’t wait to see the shock on Brockton Yates’s face.” Nora smiled at the stirring thrill in her belly.
“I can’t go back there.” Drips of dill-polluted sweat dotted Delbert’s face. He scooted, with a hefty sigh, back from the terminal. “If I go back, Yates will kill me.”
“Not if we take him out first.” Nora removed a toolkit
from under the cabinet and tossed a mini-toolset to the prisoner. “The panel is on the right side of the door. Get us out of here. Then you can tell me about your time-delayed nasty on our way to Devil’s Ridge.”
Chapter 24
Keyboard keys pressed into Brody’s forehead. In his lap, his fingers still mimicked typing motions. Sitting up, he combed his twitching fingertips through his sweaty hair and blew out a massive lungful.
“You outdid that traitor Delbert.” Yates smacked Brody in the middle of his shoulder blades.
Beneath the sting of the militia leader’s palm, Brody hissed an inhale and jerked upright. Acrid smoke and scorched wood of the soot-smeared cabin wall stuck in his nostrils like glue.
Better than vomit fumes, yet the charred stench rolled his stomach.
“You really think it was Delbert?” He pressed his wrists against the flat of his belly.
“I do.” Yates scrubbed his dimpled chin with his fingers.
“He’s a tough opponent.”
“A soon to be dead one when I get my hands on him.” Yates straddled a backwards straight high-backed dining room chair. He propped his arms along the top wooden slat. With his soot smudged bald head and face, the man looked like a reverse clown.
Brody didn’t dare laugh but zeroed in on the blank computer screen. “At least the fire only seared the back inner wall of the cabin. The tent and cabin across the way, the ones in view of the open door, wasn’t so lucky. But then again, Abe’s good at handling fires. He sealed the bullet wound in my shoulder with a look.”
“An impressive power.”
“You only got a taste of what they can do.” Could a man like Yates be scared off? “I need to block Delbert from coming in the back door. He’s too arrogant not to try.”
Yates’s gaze hinted at more than he cared to share.
Brody foot-walked his chair to the left and booted up a network-free laptop. First, he needed to code, then next hook up for upload. “You said you wanted to see your son. You meant Vincent, didn’t you?”
“Family business.” Yates’s narrowed stare warned off further questions. “You tend to yours, I’ll tend to mine. Doc’ll be pleased with your efforts.”
Yeah, right. Brody bet the traitorous family doctor would be. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, since I know that my uncle was and maybe still is, a part of this. Any news from Uncle Merv?”
“No one’s coming in or going out of the county. Roads are blocked to halt the spread of the pox.”
A pox created by a teenager who drew pictures. No one would believe his story, even if Brody wrote a full-sized e-book.
“Do you have the parts you need?” asked Yates.
“I need a soldering iron and some wire-gauge solder. If we install one of the project’s smart chips, we can push through the existing block on Briar Patch’s outgoing contact. You’ll be sending out a broadcast early tomorrow at the latest.”
“Done.”
“Once I’m finished, do you mind if I visit Cantrell before I turn in for the night?”
“Roderick’ll bring your gear and escort you to the outermost cabin.” With a nod and a glare, Yates left.
Left alone, Brody shoved the laptop aside. He already had the basic plan for an EMF blaster mocked up inside his head. “Let’s make it real.” With frequent glances over his shoulders, he laid out salvaged parts from Delbert’s scavenged extra-parts stash. An old walkie-talkie case would serve as the control for the blaster. The other walkie, with its antenna extended, could work as a bug sweeper.
The EMF device… A discarded router casing would work well to set off the blast to take out all the power within a half-mile radius.
If he played his cards right…
Before he could get started, thuds of boot steps tromped across the porch. Dang. Who was Brody kidding? He even lost at hands of Go Fish. In frantic grabs, he tucked the parts behind the laptop lid. Breath held, he tapped keys to create a worm that would tag-your-it the traitorous Delbert right back to his lair for a system takeover.
When the door opened, he forced his shoulders low.
“Here are your tools, Pox Boy. Name’s Roderick. I’ll take you to your brother’s cabin later.” One tall guy, the fellow looked like he’d stopped growing at six-foot-tall, then stretched another four inches. His extra-long face, topped by reddish hair, featured a lopsided grin.
“Thanks, I’ll put the tools to good use. A lot of the ones here seemed to disappear when Delbert did.” Brody wheeled backwards and whirled in the office chair to face him. “By the way, I know a special little girl that would tell you that name calling isn’t nice.”
“Is that the kid you left behind to fend for herself?”
“I didn’t have much of a choice.” Shame heated Brody’s face. “At least we tried to rescue her.”
“Throw me a line,” Roderick sang half off key, “once you leave me behind.” Chuckling, the lanky, red-headed man headed out humming an out-of-rhythm tune. Behind him, the scorched cabin front door banged closed.
Brody used his good foot to lurch the chair. With a grin, he jammed the barrel of the soldering iron underneath the door’s bottom edge to wedge the door shut.
A quick USB link to the laptop, and he synced the watch-cam Cantrell had given him. In seconds, he opened a tiny view screen. Easier to watch the video on screen than on the tiny square in the watch face.
“Come on. Come on,” he panted.
From outside, footsteps tromped again.
Spazzed, he minimized the screen. After a stomach-lurching spin, he rolled the chair in quick bursts and jerked the heating tool from the floor.
The door swung inward.
Brody planted the soles of his army boots on hardwood and shoved back. His injured foot panging in protest, the chair rolled until the curved back bumped the makeshift computer table.
Roderick, in the doorway, looking like some sort of scarecrow escaped from a corn field, sized Brody up with beady eyes in a long ruddy face. “Forgot to tell you. I’ll be right outside. You need anything else for your computer doings, you just holler.”
“I’m, uh, going to have to make a mess, because I need to pull some stuff apart to install a smart chip.”
“Delbert used to make boatloads of messes what with all that sticky pickle juice on the keyboards stinking up the place.”
“You actually think he turned traitor?” Brody squirmed in his seat, angling before the laptop monitor to shield the screen from Roderick’s direct line of view, just in case.
“What Delbert’s up to makes no difference to you.”
“Keep my nose out of it and get to work. Got it.”
The camo-dressed militiaman hummed the same eerie tune, backed out of the doorway, and closed the door once again.
“How about I make it my business?” Brody muttered. He scooted over to the regular keyboard, moved the laptop to the side and set about doing what he did best. “I’ll teach you to mess with us Thackett boys.”
***
“What’s up, Chuck?” a woman challenged through the darkness. Her cackling whoops echoed from the direction of a two-room tent. Then, as Brody headed toward the outermost cabin, low rolling chuckles spread like a virus from tent to cabin porch in a chain toward the outermost building.
Throughout the encampment, a handful of low-banked bonfires burned. The tree canopies held the smoke within a light stir of a spring breeze.
Under escort, Brody worked to subdue the bounce in his walk. He dropped his head and shrugged. If only he could shake off the bad of the last seventy-two hours.
“Reckon Pox Boy here’s a man on a mission.” A double-barreled shotgun-toting Roderick stuck close to Brody’s side. “You taking that stuff to Cantrell?”
Brody gripped two walkie-talkies to his chest. “I thought we could—”
“Don’t care,” Roderick said. “Only supposed to escort you, but you better not be up to some sort of weird shit. If you are, Yates’ll fuck you up, big time.”
> As if he toted a small grocery sack, Brody pressed the walkie-talkies to his chest with one clamped arm. With the wristwatch Cantrell gave him on his wrist, he knocked on the cabin door on the outskirts of camp. As he waited, he scratched at the remains of the duct tape on the wooden doorframe.
No answer.
“Man, it’s me, Brody. We need to talk.”
Roderick grunted. “Get on with it. I’ve got work to do.”
Like a moth to a flame, Brody entered the cabin through the unlocked cabin door. He shuffled his way through the dimness to the circle of lantern light around the living room coffee table. Once again, Brody joined his brother in a sit-down. Back propped against the couch end, Brody set both devices between him and Cantrell. He pointed to one of the refurbed walkie boxes and then to his ear and mouth. He held up five, then ten fingers. He mouthed the word, Tops.
In the flickering glow, Cantrell stared and blinked.
Brody shrugged mightily, then slid his index finger across his throat. “No hello for your little brother?”
Weariness hooded Cantrell’s gaze.
“I brought some flatbread. There’s a little char from the iron skillet and it’s a bit salty but edible.” Brody pulled a crumble of bread wrapped in a paper towel from his pocket.
“Maybe later.”
Cantrell’s somber nod flip-flopped the emptiness in Brody’s gut, and he laid the flatbread aside. “Uh, you’re awful quiet.”
“Bone tired, Bro.”
“I also brought us a couple of walkie-talkies. Silly, I know, but I thought it might help us stay in touch.” He placed the talkie on the floor between their legs and held his finger over the button.
Cantrell, with a lift of his hand, stopped him from turning on the device.
Brody pulled back, and Cantrell did the honors.
A high-pitched whine squealed from the box.
They cupped their ears, although Brody had to stop shielding his eardrums to smack the top right of the walkie-talkie.
The high tone settled into a low thrum.
Wood jarring thumps shook the front door. Roderick asked, “What’s going on in there?”
“Sorry,” Brody called out. “Guess I screwed up the two-way radios.”