Stealthy Steps

by Vikki Kestell

“Emilio, do you know my friend Abe?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, do you know him, or don’t you?” I chided.

  “Yeah, I know the old man. He’s all right.” Emilio chewed the inside of his cheek. “He gives me food sometimes.”

  “He does?” I was surprised but glad. I wanted to know I wasn’t the only person in the neighborhood concerned about this kid.

  “Yeah. And your boyfriend do, too.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I retorted, biting back the itch to correct his grammar.

  Emilio just stared at me. “Whatever,” he finally mumbled.

  “Listen. I have an idea.” I tried to sound upbeat. “I’m going to ask my good friend Abe to take you in. I’m going to ask him to take care of you for me, just as if I were doing it. If he says yes, we’ll have to get CYFD involved—but only if he’s willing,” I hurried to add.

  Emilio looked skeptical.

  “If he agrees, I think CYFD will give him custody of you on a trial basis while he’s being approved. I know it will be hard for you to adjust to him, but he’s a good man, and he will be good to you. He makes great spaghetti, too.”

  Had I just committed Abe to something as serious as raising a young boy—without even asking him first? Yet I felt sure Abe would agree to do it, just as soon as I told him—and showed him—my situation. And Emilio’s.

  And as simply as that, I’d made several huge decisions—the scariest one being the decision to let Abe in on my secret. Scary because I loved him. I didn’t want him to know things that could get him hurt.

  I sighed and took the boy by the chin, as Aunt Lu had done with me many times. “Do you think you can bear it, Emilio? Can you be strong a little longer while we work it out?”

  Emilio, his eyes down, nodded.

  “Good man. You keep out of sight for now. I’ll see what I can do.”

  I realized as I slipped away that the mites had been, for the most part, silent during Emilio’s and my conversation. They were still quiet. If I hadn’t known better, I would have called them out for sulking.

  But I did know better: They were doing that “confab” thing Dr. Bickel had described. The tribes were consulting with each other, analyzing the data and the potential threat, coming to consensus on the best path forward.

  “Nano,” I whispered to the mites. “Emilio is a child—not an adult. Don’t forget to take that into account. He’s a kid and he’s easy for adults to overlook. No one will ask him about me—and even if they did, who would give any credence to a kid’s tall tale about an invisible woman?”

  The answer loomed large in my imagination and set my teeth on edge.

  Cushing would.

  Chapter 23

  Time was running out—I could hear the clock ticking, sense it winding down, feel it moving inexorably toward the moment Cushing’s team would identify me as the owner of the backpack. And show up on my doorstep.

  I was almost ready to go. Almost. I still needed to move the cash.

  I stayed up late again that night after settling on a course of action to hide the cash. Not wanting to unpack my bug-out bags, I dug out two more fabric grocery sacks and added long straps to them.

  All was quiet as I drove through the autumn darkness toward Dr. Bickel’s safe house and parked a block away, beside a cinderblock retaining wall. These “screening moves” were becoming natural to me. Then I strolled past the safe house, scrutinizing it for any indication that Cushing’s people had been or were still there. I studied the house and yard for signs of disturbance or surveillance.

  The yard looked well kept. Dr. Bickel had a yard service, paid (he’d said) out of a bank account with enough money in it to keep the yard looking good for years, an account (he’d assured me) that could not be traced to him. Everything to do with the house was taken care of via this account—including mortgage, utilities, and taxes.

  All I needed to do was move in and keep a low profile.

  No profile would be better.

  The safe house was, I conceded, a good solution to my problems, if—if Cushing’s financial lackeys hadn’t uncovered the house’s connection to Dr. Bickel.

  Keeping my eyes peeled, I walked completely around the block and then up the alley behind the house. Everything looked okay. Undisturbed.

  I clambered over the back cinderblock wall, went up to the rear door, and inserted my key in the lock. I swung the door open and pulled back to the alley to wait. An hour later, no jack-booted feds had arrived. With the exception of a barking dog off in the distance, the neighborhood was shrouded in the hush of night, the house enveloped in unbroken quiet.

  I slipped through the yard and into the house. It appeared to be just as I’d left it two months ago. I saw no evidence of anyone other than me having been there. A coating of dust lay upon the furniture—a coating, I told myself, that would have been disturbed had the house been searched.

  I returned to my car and opened the passenger side door. I stared at the small suitcase I’d placed on the car floor. This was, perhaps, the most dangerous part of “shifting my flag”: If the safe house were compromised, now or in the future, I would lose the cash in the suitcase.

  I’d fretted over that possibility. As a hedge against disaster, I’d crammed two bundles of cash into a large coffee can. I hadn’t buried the can in my own yard, though. No, I’d buried it in Mateo’s neglected backyard.

  Wouldn’t he be surprised?

  Oooooh! And wouldn’t he be in trouble if Dead Eyes found it there?

  I pulled the now-half-full suitcase out and opened it on the sidewalk where my actions between the door and the wall would go unnoticed by passing cars. I grabbed a stack of money and put it under my shirt, into the shopping bags. When all the money was transferred, I put the case in the car and snuck back into the house.

  In the kitchen I scooted the stove away from the wall and used a hammer to break through the plasterboard. Then I stuffed all but one bundle of the money into the hole I’d made, cleaned up my mess, and shoved the stove back against the wall.

  The hidey-hole was crude and effective only until Cushing found the house. The word “until” seemed to have found a permanent place in my brain, because I didn’t for a moment believe that this place—or any place for that matter—would be safe for me for long, let alone forever.

  No place had been safe for Nick Holloway, not even at the end of his story.

  No place had ever been safe for me.

  No place ever would be.

  A black mood descended on me as I sat cross-legged on the cold linoleum. The dangerous feelings I normally resisted seemed to have more power than they usually did.

  Dark, stormy questions—for which I had no answers!—pressed me and hammered away at my heart: Would I ever be free from the sense of being pursued? Where hypervigilance was no longer necessary? Where I could relax and let down my guard? Where I was truly secure?

  Was life even worth the never-ending struggle?

  I recognized where that last question was leading me. Shoving its insistence aside, I hefted the last bundle of cash and estimated its size. I’d made an observation as I’d climbed over the back wall: One of the top cinderblocks was loose.

  I took the package out to the wall. By wiggling the loose block back and forth, it came free at last. My hunch had been right: The block below the one I’d removed had two hollow cavities. I crammed the last bundle into one of the holes and shoved the top block back into position. I would lightly cement it later.

  Tomorrow, I decided, I will make the jump to this house.

  A sense of urgency was growing in my gut. As I drove home, I made a list of the things I’d needed to leave behind, the things Cushing could use to track me if I brought them away with me. At the top of the list were my car, my phone, and my laptop.

  I had to leave them behind but I also had to figure out how to replace them in my new identity. The phrase “new identity” expanded the list of things I’d have to abandon very soon: my
Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages, my email address, my credit cards, and my online shopping accounts.

  My options were shrinking: I had plenty of cash, but I would have no laptop and no online profile. Without a digital footprint, ordering online was out. The number of problems and obstacles began to grow—and I still needed to confide in Abe, still needed to beg him to call CYFD and apply to take Emilio in.

  The tension I was feeling was making the mites nervous, but I couldn’t keep the anxiety from building. I could not ignore the strong impression that I needed to move—and move now.

  As I opened my side door, I shook off the disquiet, telling myself I was just overtired. Exhausted.

  Tomorrow, when I was rested, I would complete my tasks and make the move. Tomorrow I would reformat my laptop’s hard drive and then smash it to bits. After that, nothing would remain for Cushing to find, nothing that might connect me to Dr. Bickel or that could aid Cushing in her hunt for me.

  Before I allowed myself to sleep, I ran through the call logs and address book on my phone. I already knew that once Cushing had her spotlight on me, she would have her team access the logs from my service provider. In that case, nothing on the phone, deleted or not, would be hidden from her—in fact, whatever I deleted or altered now would be actually be more suspect. I dropped the phone without making any changes.

  I would not pick it up again.

  I tore through the house, looking at it from Cushing’s perspective, determined to destroy anything she could use against me. I was rummaging through the kitchen junk drawer when I saw the cell phone Dr. Bickel had given me.

  For use only in a dire emergency, he’d cautioned. But he’d also told me the phone was “secure,” that it could not be traced to him. I’d almost forgotten about it. I’d never used the phone and he’d never called me on it. After he’d died, I’d thrown it into the drawer.

  It can’t be traced to him, but it can’t be traced to me, either! It was a stunning, gratifying revelation, and I huffed a breath of partial relief. I scrabbled in the drawer for the power cord and plugged the phone in to charge.

  The last thing I did was to re-check the rucksack and bags. What I would be taking away from my home seemed pitifully inadequate: some changes of clothes, extra socks, a nightie, a hoody, hiking boots, toiletries, a little food and water, the Maglite, gloves, a framed photograph of Aunt Lu I kept on my nightstand. My new phone and charger.

  Dr. Bickel’s lab book.

  “More precious than all these supplies,” I whispered.

  I staged the filled bags, rucksack, and tomorrow’s clothes next to my bed. Weary in heart and body, I climbed under the covers and fell into dreamless slumber.

  SOMETHING NUDGED ME awake, and I rolled over and glimpsed the clock through bleary eyes: It was nearly ten in the morning. I had slept hard. As the world snapped into focus I remembered: Today I would make my leap—today I would abandon my home.

  Before I pulled the covers back, I was already arranging the day’s tasks and rubbing at a familiar spot on my hand.

  And then it hit me: The nanomites woke me.

  My hand was still tingling. Stinging.

  The mites were chittering softly, and I knew them well enough by now to distinguish between their typical humming and the nervous chipping I heard now. The mites couldn’t ‘hear’ but they could feel vibrations.

  Something was wrong.

  I slid from bed and padded on bare feet down the hall to the living room—in time to hear a resounding knock on my door.

  Cushing’s soldiers would not politely ring the bell. No, for her it would be a no-knock warrant—or more likely, she would slap an “imminent national security threat” label on her actions to justify storming the house without a warrant.

  I told my hammering heart to calm down: whoever was at the door? It wasn’t Cushing. They knocked again and then rang the doorbell.

  Jake, startled out of a dozing pose on the couch, clawed his way into a semblance of traction and scrambled around behind an armchair. I shook my head and placed my eye to the peephole.

  Genie!

  My impatient twin, dressed to the nines, arms folded, tapped the toe of her three-and-a-half-inch, brand-name heels on my porch.

  What is she doing here? Never mind! Think fast—what am I going to do?

  The nanomites were cautioning me, but I needed no warning from them: Under no circumstances would I answer that door—not that my inaction would deter Genie for long. What Genie wanted, Genie found a way to get.

  Too late, I remembered that Genie knew where I kept my emergency key.

  “Gemma? Gemma, it’s Genie. Open up.” More peals on the doorbell. Jake bolted from behind the chair and sprinted for the back door.

  Smarter than you look, I acknowledged. But there was no handy cat door for me.

  I ran back to the bedroom and scrambled into clothes and shoes. I cast my eyes around the room. My bags! The bed! I tossed the packed bags into the laundry hamper and covered them with dirty clothes. I yanked the bed covers up, tidied the spread, and made a few adjustments to the room to lend to the impression that I wasn’t at home.

  I swung my bedroom door open and crept back to the living room to wait and watch. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Gemma, I’m coming in.” And as if to prove her point, I heard her insert a key into the lock on my security door.

  I pressed my lips together, angrier with myself than with her. It was my fault she had a key. I’d intentionally had the security door locks keyed the same as the front and side door locks. And then I’d placed my emergency key under that old pot by the garage—just as Aunt Lu always had—which, by the way, Genie also knew.

  I heard the outside metal door open and then heard Genie insert a key into the heavy front door. I stepped behind it just as it swung open.

  “Gemma?” Genie closed the door behind her. “Gemma, are you home?”

  She swept her gaze around and sniffed. I scanned my little house at the same time, trying to see it as she would.

  Oh, no. My laptop!

  There it sat, on the kitchen table under the front window. It was, of course, password protected, but I didn’t want her to see it, let alone touch it.

  I should have destroyed the hard drive last night, I chastened myself, but I had wanted a fresh mind to update this account before copying and removing the file. I’d allowed my fatigue to dictate a lapse in judgment. I won’t do that again, I vowed.

  Genie pivoted on her high heels and strode down the short hall toward my bedroom. The moment she turned away, I tiptoed to the table and unplugged and grabbed up the laptop. I slipped it under my shirt.

  Genie spent a minute in my room before stalking back into the living room. She wandered around, touching my things, picking up the occasional item to examine it. When she reached the table, she stopped.

  The notebook! The one I’d made lists in, the one in which I’d written my crazy, stream-of-consciousness memories that fateful first morning. How had my frenzied preparations to abandon ship missed it? If she picked it up, snooped inside of it—

  I twisted my fingers together. That notebook contains damaging information that could fall into Cushing’s hands!

  Genie, however, had fixated on something else: The power cord for my laptop—and the long, heavy-duty extension cord coiled on the floor next to my chair. She bent and touched the extension cord, puzzled. Then she lifted one end of the laptop’s power cord. She checked the other chairs around the table, quite obviously searching for my computer.

  I was relieved that it was safely camouflaged—then I snapped to how unnaturally silent the mites were, as though they recognized the danger Genie presented. If so, I had to give them props for identifying a true threat when they encountered it.

  Are the nanomites familiar with the term ‘sociopath’?

  Genie dropped the laptop’s cord and sniffed again. She swiveled and wandered into my kitchen. While she was rummaging through my cupboards, I slipped
the notebook under my shirt to join the laptop.

  It perhaps made the tiniest sound as I did so.

  Genie froze. She strode back into the living room, her head turning, eyes darting about.

  The mites hummed a warning.

  Shut it! I scolded. I stood in the corner between the dining room and living room and didn’t budge. Didn’t breathe.

  Genie again stomped to my bedroom. On the way back, she checked the bathroom and spare room. She swept her appraising gaze over the living room and once more over my kitchen table. And stopped cold.

  I hadn’t often seen Genie in doubt. She was too self-absorbed to admit to doubt, uncertainty, or inadequacy and, in my years of knowing her, I had never seen those emotions cross her face. It was gratifying to see that she actually had feelings along those lines.

  She stared at the table for a full minute, eyes narrowed, as though trying to figure out what was different. Then she snorted and clicked her way through the kitchen. She threw open the back door and marched down the steps toward my garage.

  I followed behind, seething, but helpless to keep her from snooping.

  That’s when I noticed the shiny silver-blue Lexus rental parked in my drive. And Mrs. Calderón peering through her front window and waving to Genie.

  Mrs. Calderón. I should have known. I have her to thank for Genie’s unannounced visit. She probably called Genie to tell her “how worried she is about me” because I’ve “become a recluse.” I’d like to stuff a cork in her pie hole, I fumed, and a foot!

  I yanked my attention back to Genie. She hadn’t tried to open the garage door; she was merely peering through the barred window, probably to see if my car was there or not.

  “Oh, hi. There you are.”

  My breath caught.

  Zander?

  It had been a couple of weeks since he’d come around. I figured he’d given up on me, and I told myself that I wanted him to but . . . And what was he doing here now? Today of all days?

  Genie didn’t respond immediately. No, she would resolve on a course of action before she did. I could feel her psyching herself up, as she turned. A beguiling smile wreathed her face.