I stifle a squeal but the car keeps going.
Right across the pond.
“Jesus,” I say.
“Literally,” she adds merrily, still concentrating. Ahead is an outcropping that erupts from the ground with enormous jagged rocks.
She slams the brakes and stops the car inches from it.
“How did you do that?” I turn around to look at the water, thinking it must be a mirage.
“All our cars are amphibious,” she says.
I place my hands against the dash. “Can this one fly?”
“Ah, you are excited by the possibilities, no?” Colette lets out another of her infectious laughs. “A Vigilante never reveals all her tricks!”
“How long have you been a Vigilante?” I ask.
“Since I was fourteen,” she says. She presses another button and after a moment, another car comes from behind the rocks. The driver waves to her.
On the dash, her screen says, “Identity reinstated.”
“I’m me again!” she says. She backs away from the cliff and circles the pond this time. “I stole a military tank when I turned twelve and drove it up the Champs-Élysées — a very important street in Paris.”
We head back through the trees, more leisurely this time. “My maman knew I had a fantastic career ahead of me as a Vigilante driver. Both my parents were in the network.”
“How did you end up in America?” I ask.
“Jax recruited me. He likes the idea of crossing the networks,” she says.
“Is that why Klaus was German?”
She frowns. “Yes. Klaus was very thorough, very good. He had a level of focus that isn’t as easy to come by in the States. Security was his strength.”
“I’m sorry that he’s dead.”
We bump back onto the road.
“Well, we must learn what happened to him.” She gives me a wan smile. “And for that, we must get back to your home. Find the clues.”
“Will Jax come?” I hate myself for asking, but I am desperate to know.
She winks at me. “For you, yes, I think he will come.”
The edges of her screen blink red. “Uh-oh,” she says. “What is this?” She taps the screen.
A clipped male voice says, “Encrypted transmission. Are you secure?”
“I have a civilian in my car,” she says. “A Mia—” she stops. “What is your last name?” she asks.
Before I can answer, a gray-haired man’s face fills the screen. “You have Mia Morrow, who is a person of interest to the network,” he says, then his eyes move over to me.
I realize he can see us, and I self-consciously smooth my hair, realizing too late that there are bits of hay in it.
“Ms. Morrow,” he says. “I deeply regret that your safety was compromised in one of our silos.” He must feel he is imposing on the small screen, as he shifts back, revealing his shoulders and the breast of a smart navy suit. I’d put him close to sixty, but fit and handsome.
He continues. “Jax De Luca is a dangerous fugitive who unfortunately has intimate knowledge of our security systems.”
“I’m all right,” I say.
He turns to Colette. “Where did you find her?”
“Walking along a drive about twenty miles from this location,” Colette says.
A husky male voice comes from the dash. “Mood sensor activated.”
The man onscreen pauses a moment, his arms crossed over his chest. Colette smiles cheerily as she continues to drive as if nothing is happening. I don’t dare ask her what it means.
After a moment, the man says, “Good, I’m glad you are telling the truth and not covertly assisting your former director.”
“Of course!” Colette says brightly. “Poor girl was wandering about. I saw the alert on Jax. What did he do this time?”
“It isn’t a critical issue at the moment,” the man says, his eyes flicking to me. “Where are you taking Ms. Morrow?”
“She says she lives in Tennessee. We’re headed there.”
“Very good,” he says. “Make sure her home is secure and set up monitoring.”
“I don’t want to be watched!” I say. If Jax comes, they’ll find him!
“I assure you, your privacy is our utmost concern,” the man says. “It is only for your protection.”
“Who are you?” I ask, and not especially nicely.
“I apologize. I am Jacob Sutherland, Director of the United States Security Division of Special Forces.” He smiles.
It’s not lost on me that he doesn’t mention the Vigilantes. Everyone wants to think I’m ignorant.
“Who ARE you people?” I ask, deciding to continue the ruse.
Colette glances at me, then her attention returns to the road.
Sutherland holds out his hands in a friendly gesture. “We are a government agency that manages national security,” he says smoothly.
“How did I get mixed up in this?” I ask. If he’s going to be generic, then I can be nosy.
“You were captured by one of our rogue operatives,” he says. “Did you see the Bourne movies?”
Ugh. Now he’s insulting me. “No,” I say with disdain. Our life has been nothing like a movie.
He laughs. “Jax is no longer part of a rather secret program.” His face shifts into seriousness. “I hope we can count on you for discretion.”
“Of course,” I say absently.
“Take her home,” he says to Colette. “Thank you for your service.”
Colette gives a half salute. The screen goes blank.
I’m about to say something when she gets a word in first. “They’ll be listening in on our conversation during the drive,” she says. “For your safety.”
I nod that I understand. Bummer. I thought I was going to actually learn something but it seems that I’m a prisoner in the car now. I wish Colette still had her clone identity so we could talk.
And that Jax would kidnap me again.
6: Jax
It takes Sam the better part of an hour to undo the damage I did to the car in my attempts to get it off the grid. I spend most of it snarking back at him as he berates me for my hack job. Lots of “What the hell did you do to THIS?”
“Did you really have to yank the T45?” he says at one point while waving a small bundle of thin cables at me.
“Yes,” I reply. “It’s part of the GPS system, isn’t it?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “All you had to do was disconnect it, not yank it out like Mola Ram.”
“Who?”
“Mola Ram. Old Indiana Jones character. You know, pulled out a dude’s heart?” He holds his hand up in a claw grip and I shake my head.
“Never mind,” he sighs. “Just don’t do it again. This thing is a bitch to get back in.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I’ve got a dying woman in the backseat and enemies breathing down my neck,” I say.
Sam grunts in reply, then tosses me a transmitter. “Rewire and reboot,” he says and busies himself with finishing his more intricate work.
I snatch up a wire cutter and sit on an overturned wood crate to unsnarl the mess I made when I jerked everything free.
My mind turns back to Mia. She and Colette should be on their way to Tennessee by now. What will Colette tell her? She’s never been a fan of my exploits, but to my knowledge she’s also never badmouthed me to anyone in the past.
I shouldn’t care what Mia thinks of me. I don’t expect to see her again. It’s best for both of us if she stays far away.
I strip a wire and attach it back to the transmitter. The Vigilantes keep tabs on everybody, and Mia in particular. That bracelet they gave her was beyond anything I ever issued to anyone when I was a silo director. It worked on doors that the skeleton key didn’t budge. That kind of unfettered access was typically only available to top-level officials and special guests.
Sutherland would be the only one with that kind of power.
Mia was, by all evidence, just an innocent who got wrapped up in something ov
er her head. An innocent with a wiped record. Which could only mean she had contact with the Vigilantes in the past. Unknowingly, most likely.
I shake my head. No, Jax. This is just wild speculation. She may have ambition and some raw talent, but she’s not Vigilante material. And if her wiped record and the bracelet are any indication, that was a decision made long ago.
She’s safer having nothing to do with us. With me.
“All right, I think I got it,” Sam calls out from the car. He pulls out a thin black slab from his bag as he approaches and hands it to me. “Your new Blackphone. Don’t lose this one. It’s completely blank. All untraceable materials.”
“So I’m solidly off grid?” I slip the phone into my pocket.
“Except to me and Colette,” Sam says, nodding. “Even then, you come up as unknown. Which reminds me,” he adds with a glance at his watch. “We need to get moving. My clone’s ticking.”
“All right,” I say, and slip into the driver’s seat.
Sam pulls out a tablet, then tosses the bag in the backseat. He slides into the passenger seat so recently occupied by Mia. I push the thought out of my head and start the car.
“All systems check out. We are clean,” Sam says as he taps on his tablet. “What’s the plan?”
“We need to find someplace we can log into the network anonymously,” I say. “We need to find out exactly what happened to Klaus.” My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “And find Jovana.”
“Yeah, about Klaus,” Sam says with a singsong lilt. “I’m not sure he’s actually dead.”
“What?” I stare at him. Is he joking? “I saw the record. He died at the Tennessee safe house. Mia’s house.” I even thought for a while she had done it, I add silently.
“Yeah, but something’s not right with that record,” Sam replies. “When you sent that message, I was shocked and starting digging. I couldn’t figure out how Colette and I had not seen that before.”
“It was hidden,” I say. “Carter, the director of that silo, had to search for editing flags to even find it.”
“And that’s just it,” Sam says. “Why hide something like that?”
I start to reply but stop. Sam’s nod tells me he’s already been down this path.
“So if you want to make someone disappear,” Sam continues, “a faked death is one way to do it. But the records are still there, so you have to hide those, too.” His face is solemn. “That’s some high-level shit, Jax. And why go to that trouble if the person is really dead?”
Of course.
7: Mia
We arrive at my aunt’s house in the early evening. Colette has been witty and funny despite the fact that we had to limit our topics of conversation. We ate at a burger joint and she made fun of the French fries.
I’m glad to be out of the car for a while. My life has been nothing but long drives and difficult conversations for what seems like ages.
Colette pulls up in front of the porch. Nothing about the house looks any different, but my perspective of it certainly is. Everybody says it’s a safe house for Vigilantes. They can’t all be wrong.
I must be the one who’s wrong.
I realize I don’t have any keys and the front door has all six deadbolts in place. I can’t remember if Jax locked the back door or not. Seems like he would have given me the keys if he’d had them.
“We’ll have to go around back,” I tell Colette.
She walks from the car and smooths her smart beige sweater, making sure the navy stripe along the bottom edge is flat. Do all these Vigilantes dress like models?
She follows me around the house. “I’m guessing Jax stole you and snuck out the back like a common criminal.”
“Something like that,” I murmur, remembering my tattered gown and the red ropes.
The back door is closed but unlocked.
“Let’s take some care going in,” Colette says. “Let me go first.”
She pulls a gadget from her pants pocket. It looks like a Swiss army knife, but when she flips it, something that resembles the barrel of a gun pops out.
Colette eases the door open. I wince when it squeaks on its hinges.
She steps inside, then pauses, listening.
Once we’re in the kitchen, she shakes her sleeve so that it falls back, revealing a watch a lot like the one Jax had before we went to the silo. With one tap, it scans the room with a strange gold light. Certain things turn red. The coil beneath the refrigerator. My radio clock with its digital display. Then a strange lump below the oven.
“What’s that?” I whisper.
“I think you have a mouse,” she says.
I suppress a squeal. “I do not.”
She moves to the door, but I continue to stay by the oven, feeling freaked out. I tap lightly on the side of the stove. A tiny scuffle below makes me want to jump on a chair.
Instantly I’m annoyed with myself. I just escaped a high-security silo, swam in a river, and tried to seduce a dangerous man.
I will not freak out about a mouse.
Colette moves to the next room, but my mind is still admittedly on the critter in my house. I’ve been here for six months while I nursed my aunt as she faded away. I never saw any evidence of mice.
I turn on the light over the stove.
But I see it now.
The package of bread on the counter has a hole in it, and little dribbles of dried crumbs litter the surface.
What’s different now, since I left? Is it just because the house was never empty before? It was only one night.
I spot a bit of rice on the floor near the pantry. That shouldn’t be there either.
The door is slightly ajar and I open it wider. I never leave that door open and I’m quite certain I didn’t before I went to bed last night, before Jax arrived.
I step inside and flip on the light. A bag of rice also has a hole, more grains spilling out. Two cereal boxes are turned on their sides.
Dang it. How am I going to get rid of it? Trap it? Maybe I can borrow someone’s barn cat.
I lean my head against the door frame. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to deal with a big empty house alone. My need for Jax rises up, overwhelming me. It’s ridiculous. I barely know him. He was horrid to me. Tied me up. Stole me. Then foisted me off on his friend.
But the things he made me feel. So much power. And passion. This can’t be very common, what has happened between us.
Maybe it is for him. Maybe all his women feel like I do when he leaves.
I kick at the rug that has been on the floor of this pantry since I was a child. I cock my head. It’s turned the wrong way.
No one would notice but me. But there’s a frayed corner from where the door always catches the edge.
And that corner is opposite the door now, near the back wall.
Someone’s moved this rug since yesterday.
I want to back out of there, call for Colette. Fear sluices through me as I think about some stranger going through my things.
But then I remember — Jax.
Maybe it was just him. I think he said he looked around.
I pick up the end of the rug and slide it back.
And then I see it.
A hatch.
There’s something hidden in this pantry.
Colette is no longer quiet, and I hear her footsteps coming up the hall. “All clear!” she calls out.
I shove the rug back in the pantry and close the door.
She pops her head in the room. “You okay?”
“Just the mouse,” I say, gesturing toward the bread on the counter. “I hate mice.”
“Get a kitty,” Colette says. She turns on the overhead light. “Cozy little place.”
“It’s been my aunt’s forever,” I say. “Why do you people keep calling it a safe house?”
“Never mind all that. Sounds like a miscommunication from the beginning.” Her smile is genuine, even though I know she’s lying. “Jax wrote letters to the wrong place.”
>
“No,” I insist. “Jax said Klaus was killed here. He was very clear about it.”
Colette stares up at the ceiling. “You know, I think I saw a cat wandering in the field behind your house. You want to go see? She will help with the mouse problem.”
What? I stare at her, and her eyes get very big. She taps her forehead. “You want that, right? A cat for the mouse?” she says.
She heads for the back door, and I start to understand. We’re being monitored here, just like in the car.
“That’s a great idea,” I say.
We leave the house and walk a ways through the field. Aunt Bea’s land stretches for several acres, a buffer against the rest of the world.
And easy to defend, I realize, seeing the house and fields through new eyes. It’s flat and easy to spot people arriving. There aren’t any trees or places to hide.
Did she know and never told me?
“How does a Vigilante stop being a Vigilante?” I ask suddenly.
Colette stops and turns to me. Her short bob swings against her cheekbones. She slides her sleeve up and taps her watch. Only when it tells her what she wants to know does she answer. “You can retire, just like with anything.”
“Does your family have to know you are one?”
“It’s through your family that you become one,” she says. “Why all the questions?”
“Why didn’t I know this was a safe house?”
“Only your aunt could answer that.” Colette’s dark eyes search the fields and follow a car that drives along the road in the distance. “But there are parents who retire and never tell their children.”
“My parents are dead.”
This gets her attention. “How did they die?”
“Boating accident.”
Her lips push together in a tight line.
“I know,” I say. “It’s like a spy cliché. But they were huge regatta racers. They liked boating in storms. They lived for that sort of danger. It was really only a matter of time.”
She nods absently, eyes back on the road. “There are reasons for everything,” she says. “Do you have the option of selling this house and moving?”
“I hadn’t thought about it yet,” I say. “Aunt Bea only died a couple weeks ago.”
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