False Positive

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  She pushed thoughts of the nice waitress that she’d coerced into telling them about The Ranch back in Utah far away. The nice waitress that was murdered specifically for talking to Kasumi and Dent.

  Dent helped keep her mind from going somewhere dark by asking, “And you’re suggesting what?”

  “That you call her. Set up a date.”

  He stared into his hands for a few seconds in silence. “A date?” he said finally.

  “Yep.”

  More staring and silence. Then, “I’m not going alone.”

  “We can double. You and Miss Wilkens, me and Jason.”

  “You are not dating Jason.”

  Now that reply was as fast as a bullet. She smiled at him.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  She stopped smiling.

  “It’s the best option we have,” she said encouragingly.

  He didn’t say anything, but at least he didn’t shrug. Good. He was thinking about it.

  She went to the restroom, washed up, and when she came back out he had his phone in one hand, Miss Wilkens’s business card in the other. She rushed over, snagging both away from him.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  He looked to his phone in her hand. “Apparently not calling Wilkens anymore.” His voice was deeper than normal, almost sarcastic.

  If it were anybody but Dent, she would have said something sarcastic right back. Instead, she said very slowly, “No, you’re not. You can’t call her the same day you got her number.”

  “Why not?”

  She pocketed the business card and tossed his phone to the bed. “I don’t have the patience to explain it to you. Just trust me on this, Dent.”

  “I didn’t realize you were an expert on things like this.” Again, sarcasm. Of all the things to pick up, he managed to pick up sarcasm. She wondered where he got it from.

  “Of the two people in the room, I am the expert. In this subject, and in soooo much more. And don’t shrug!”

  “Fine.”

  “You’ll call her tomorrow. Pretend you’re checking on the truck.”

  “But I do have to talk to her about the truck. She said so.”

  Her jaw clenched. “Fine. Don’t pretend, then. Just, when you do call, make sure you get her to invite you out on a date.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  Good question. She thought about it. Thought some more. Finally, she came up with, “When you call, it’ll be on speaker. That way I can hear her and tell you what to say.”

  “Will it work?”

  Instead of saying what she thought about their prospects, she lied. “Of course.”

  XIV

  Kasumi rang the doorbell, or in this case, was it a doormusic? It played ten seconds of some classical song that she was sure she’d heard in more than a few movies she’d watched. She looked up at Dent, in his buttoned-up shirt, black dress pants, and unfortunately his one and only pair of scuffed boots. She couldn’t work magic on him, had to work with what he had in the closet. She’d have to take him shopping. She herself had more than eight pairs of shoes, though sadly she only had room to take three with her on this trip.

  He tilted his head her way when he noticed her staring at him.

  She pushed the doormusic button again and then pointed at it questioningly.

  “Flight of the Valkyries,” he said, catching on.

  “Oh. Sounds … inappropriate.”

  The corner of Dent’s lips twitched. Ha! She made him laugh!

  Miss Wilkens opened the door, and immediately Kasumi could smell barbeque sauce mixing with something else almost-sweet. Yellow sundress perfectly fitting and chestnut hair perfectly flowing, Miss Wilkens invited them in with a slight flourish.

  “So glad you’re here,” she said in her heavy, but very feminine voice.

  “Thank you,” Kasumi said, trying on Miss Wilkens’s voice but failing miserably. She coughed to cover it up. Thankfully, nobody called her on it.

  Miss Wilkens led them inside, and after a quick tour of the downstairs area, set them up in the living room, where Jason sat watching a movie on a big screen. Kasumi plopped down next to him and she received one of those cool-guy nods in her direction.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked him, purely to start up a conversation.

  Miss Wilkens answered, to Kasumi’s dismay. “Barbeque spare ribs, double-baked potatoes, corn, and homemade cornbread.”

  Kasumi looked over to where the parent and the not-quite-a-parent stood near the kitchen’s entrance. “Sounds, and smells good, Miss Wilkens,” she said sweetly.

  “Thank you, Kasumi. And please, you can call me Lynn.”

  Kasumi bobbed her head. In that case … She looked directly at Dent. “Doesn’t it smell good, Mary?”

  Jason suddenly burst out laughing. Kasumi joined him.

  “Jason!” Miss Wilkens quickly hissed.

  “What?” he replied, wiping his tears. Then, to Kasumi, he asked doubtfully, “His name is Mary?”

  “Yep.”

  “Marion,” Miss Wilkens said pointedly.

  “Lynn,” Dent responded automatically.

  “No, not you, Marion,” Miss Wilkens said. “I was telling my son, who seems to have lost his manners, that your name is Marion, not Mary.”

  Jason stopped laughing, Kasumi a second later, and the boy offered an apology to Dent. Dent, of course, seemed oblivious to the apology, or the need for one in the first place.

  Miss Wilkens gave Jason a stern look then put a hand on Dent’s shoulder. “Let’s let the young ones be, Marion. I could use some help in the kitchen.”

  Dent looked to Kasumi, as if asking permission, or maybe seeking advice. He was on his own on this one. She grinned and winked at him, then, ever so slightly, nodded towards the kitchen. Thankfully, he took the hint, and allowed himself to be led away.

  Alone with Jason, Kasumi decided to try breaking the ice again. “So, how do you like living here?”

  Jason shrugged.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. She got enough of that from Dent, and now she wondered if shrugging was a guy thing, and not just a Dent thing.

  Jason must have taken the hint as he quickly asked, “How about you?”

  “What?”

  “How do you like living here?”

  Confused, she told him, “I don’t live here.”

  He smiled and lightly smacked her arm with the back of his hand. “I meant the U.S.”

  Hoping he couldn’t tell she was blushing, she said, “Oh. You can tell I’m not from here?”

  A little chuckle from him, a little more heat from her cheeks.

  He explained, “Mom said that your mom is in Japan right now. And … You do kind of have an accent, Kasumi.”

  She looked down at her knees. “Oh.”

  “Hey, I like it. I think it’s cute.”

  Her eyes came back up. “Oh. Your accent is cute, too.”

  “I don’t have an accent.”

  “To me you do.”

  Now it was his turn to blush, and Kasumi was overjoyed, like she’d just gained a point in some secret game they were playing. That irrational thought tugged at something at the back of her mind. As they sat there watching the television, she began to wonder why she was thinking of how getting Jason to blush and smile mattered so much to her. She had to remind herself why she and Dent were here in the first place, had to stay on mission.

  Were her emotions being forced?

  It couldn’t be. She’d never really been affected by eTech. Even Connor at The Ranch couldn’t get this much of a natural-feeling reaction from her. And that made her focus on the real reason she was here. She and Dent were supposed to be gathering information from Miss Wilkens and Jason, trying to determine what they were sent here for.

  Jason leaned over and forward to grab his cup of water, brushing against her thigh as he did.

  And there went her stupid cheeks getting all hot again.

  How could she attempt to
get information out of Jason when she couldn’t find her tongue to speak? And when he offered her his cup after he’d taken a sip, she gave up. Hiding her no doubt foolish-looking grin behind the cup, she hoped Dent was having better luck with his target than she was.

  ---

  Lynn walked passed a marble-covered island and over to the kitchen counter top, where she tapped the screen of her EB sitting there.

  “Umm … timer’s almost up on the ribs. Can you hit start on the microwave? I preset it already. I’ve got the corn in there — hope you don’t mind me going canned on that small part of the meal — and once that’s done we can bring everything out.”

  Dent did as asked and noticed a small kitchen timer sitting on the counter just beneath the microwave. The plastic body had been opened, the insides exposed. It looked like Lynn may have been working on it.

  She came up behind him and said over his shoulder, “Oh, that thing. Been broken for years. With my timer app on my EB I haven’t gotten around to fixing that old relic.”

  Dent picked it up, more for him to do something besides talking than anything else.

  “Hey, give it whirl if you think you can get it working again,” Lynn said. “I’ll start getting the table set.”

  Dent shrugged, examined the old timer, and opened it completely. Immediately he saw that it was only a matter of resetting a tension spring and connecting two loose copper wires. As he went to work, Dent had to think that a mechanic by profession should have the necessary skills to have had this fixed in mere minutes.

  Behind him, plates and silverware clinked and clanked.

  “Oh, by the way, looks like your solenoid’s fried on the truck,” Lynn said as he heard her come back into the kitchen behind him. “Same thing with the starter. Already got the solenoid replaced, but the starter I had to order in. Should be here tomorrow afternoon. I also took the liberty to go ahead and order a new ignition lock cylinder. With,” she said pointedly as she ghosted up behind him, close enough he could feel her breath on his neck and smell just a hint of cucumber, “keys and everything. Should make driving the beast easier for you.”

  She’d gone out of her way to do a favor for him, he realized. “Thank you,” he said, the words coming straight from his brain and rolling off his tongue almost of their own volition.

  “Not a problem,” she said, squeezing his shoulder before heading back to finish whatever she’d been doing.

  He closed up the timer, gave it a test, found it worked properly, and set it back on the counter. He then joined Lynn as she began bringing the dishes out to the dinner table, after which they’d all settled in and began eating, Dent found quite delicious.

  He was on his second helping, attempting to appear interested in the small talk going around the table, and came to the conclusion that if Fifth had not been there, he would have had trouble acting like he was normal.

  Fifth kept the conversation going, rambling about the weather, skiing, ice cream, and any number of inconsequential topics. But the way she kept looking to the boy, not directly but out of the corner of her eyes, Dent wondered if there was something more to her rambling. She was normally talkative, but tonight, she was more so.

  Dent narrowed his eyes. He would have to do some research on the boy. Make sure he wasn’t a bad influence on Fifth. Keeping an attentive eye on both Fifth and Jason, Dent reached for the basket of cornbread squares. Before grabbing one for himself, he offered one to Lynn, which she took with a raised eyebrow and a ‘thank you.’

  As he put the basket back down, he noticed that Fifth had gone quiet. He looked over to find her lips parted and her brows raised. It was enough to make him ask, “What?”

  She shook her head. Then, to Lynn, she said, “You have a nice house, Lynn. Actually, the area around here is pretty nice.”

  A small smile appeared on Lynn’s face. “Thinking of moving here, are you?” she asked with a wink.

  “No,” Dent answered, though the question wasn’t directed his way.

  Heads turned his way. He stared back.

  “No,” Fifth said after a long second, “But it looks like there would be some benefits to living here. Right, Marion?”

  “Really?” Lynn was quick to reply.

  “Yep,” Fifth answered for him.

  Dent had a thought that he may be missing something here. He would have to ask Fifth about it when they got back to The Wine & Vine.

  He said, “The people here are nice.” He thought it may have been appropriate.

  “So you keep saying,” Lynn said carefully.

  “Wasn’t always this nice, though,” Jason said form his end of the table.

  Lynn shot her son a look and Dent tilted his head slightly at her. She took a small bite of her cornbread and seemed to think of her next words. She said, “Herristown had a bit of a slump years ago.”

  Dent straightened up. “How so?”

  “Crime was pretty bad. Not that bad, but bad enough that it wasn’t good.”

  “How long ago?” This came from Fifth. Good girl, Dent thought. She, too, figured this the opportune chance to get answers.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Lynn said. “Ten, maybe fifteen years back.”

  Dent spoke before Fifth could. “What happened?”

  “The community rallied together. Guess we’d finally had enough. Police force began getting support from us nobodies, people started looking out for each other. Parks began being cleaned up, our parish of Saint Nicholas was rebuilt and modernized, and Herristown began attracting tourism like it had in its earlier days.”

  Dent listened to every word, and even Fifth had gone quiet, as they listened to Lynn talk about the city’s reformation and how this building was torn down and that strip of shops received a facelift.

  All the while, Dent was torn between two unfamiliar sensations. He didn’t know why, but he was drawn to Lynn’s voice, wanting to hear her talk about inconsequential things regarding her town. And that led to the second feeling. Maybe it was impatience, he thought. Half of him wanted to listen to the woman talk, but the other half wanted to get back to The Wine & Vine so he could verify the information she was giving him.

  Luckily Fifth was there to help guide him through the rest of the uncomfortable evening.

  XV

  “So are we going to talk about tonight’s dinner?”

  Dent didn’t look away from the television, which he’d paired with his EB so he could search the web on the bigger screen. “No.”

  They’d been online for barely five minutes, each trying to verify what Lynn had told them about Herristown’s history, and the entire time Fifth had made noises — heavy sighs, clicks of her tongue, even a few ho-hums. Each time, Dent had ignored her.

  And, of course, Fifth would not be deterred. The term ‘dog with a bone’ came to mind.

  “You did good,” she said.

  “Well,” he corrected her automatically as he pulled up a crime report for Herristown.

  “Well, you did good.”

  Now he took a break from his research. He turned to face her, the chair creaking as he did. The girl wasn’t even on her EB. She was laying back in bed, four pillows — two of them from his bed — propping her up.

  “You’re supposed to be helping to find us some answers,” he said.

  She ignored him, saying, “If I didn’t know you, Dent, I’d think Miss Wilkens was getting to you.”

  One way to halt this conversation. He countered her with, “I’d say the same about Jason and you.”

  Her face grew flush and it seemed she tried to sink further back into the pillows.

  “No way,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” she said, staring up at the beams of wood crisscrossing the ceiling. “He’s … he’s … I don’t know.” She looked over at him. “Maybe he might be the reason we’re here.”

  “Why?”

  “He might be like me. Like Connor.”

  Dent tilted his head.

&n
bsp; “He might be able to make me like him. You know ….” She tapped her temple.

  “If he is, then we know why we were sent here. He could be the target.”

  “Not the target!” she said, voice raised and pitched higher than normal.

  “If he’s the reason we’re—”

  “I didn’t say he is. Just that … I don’t know. He’s something.”

  “Should we—”

  “No. We do like you said. Check Miss Wilkens’s story. See what’s going on in this city. I don’t see how eTech, or someone else with a talent like mine, can affect a whole city. Even I’m not that strong.”

  She had a valid point. “You have a valid point,” he told her.

  She gave him one of her looks, one that usually accompanied the words “Shut up.”

  “Besides,” she said, sitting up and pointing at her EB. “We can’t find anything juicy about this city dated back more than fifteen years. Which is weird, right?”

  Dent had come up against that same roadblock. How digital records of a city could be practically eliminated from online, at least from the basic searches they were capable of executing, was beyond Dent. Someone, or someones, with the knowhow made sure Herristown had no digital history. And Lynn had claimed that history was mired until recently.

  He turned back to the television to start a new search. Fifth bounced from her bed to his, closer to where he’d pulled the chair in front of the television. She watched as he typed in a search query.

  “What are you doing now?” she asked. “Super spy tech stuff? Some old military back channel you still have access to?”

  He didn’t bother looking over at her as he responded. “Looking for the local library.”

  “Library?”

  “Yes. Where they have books and hard copies of papers and records.”

  She sucked her teeth and took a deep breath. “I know what a library is. I just didn’t know they still existed.”

  “They do, and I found Herristown’s. We’ll take a taxi there tomorrow.”

  “Why not ask Miss Wilkens to take us?”

  “We’ll take a taxi.” He didn’t like how Lynn … distracted him. The less time he spent with her, the better. If she was part of whatever was going on in Herristown it would be best if he stayed isolated from her. And yet, he found he wanted to find a reason to see her again. With considerable effort, he pushed those thoughts, those emotions, far from his mind.