by MB Austin
Maji grinned. “Just like that. How’s your stomach?”
Rose realized she had stopped feeling queasy as soon as she took the wheel. “Fine. Ooh, and hungry!”
“Excellent. Get plenty to drink, too—you’re going to be on a bike next.”
But instead of putting her into the bicycle group, Hannah walked Rose to a cool spot under a big-leaf maple where Maji’s motorcycle and one almost its twin stood parked in the shade.
“Oh no,” Rose protested. “I don’t even like being a passenger.”
Hannah hmmed. “Still, I would like you to experience what it is like to be the one in control. Will you try?”
How could she say no? “Please tell me there won’t be a high-speed chase.”
Maji laughed behind them, approaching with Frank, each of them with a jacket and helmet in their hands.
Rose put the jacket on, surprised by how light it felt. The hard pads in the elbows and back made her feel like a gladiator, but she didn’t swelter as expected. Hannah showed her how to secure the helmet and made sure the built-in radio was working.
Astride the bike, Rose’s sneakered feet just touched flat on the ground. Learning to power-walk was simple, a matter of controlling the anxious throttle. With all the controls at her hands, following Maji smoothly around the course was easier than she expected, and stopping much like being on a bicycle. As they worked up to slaloms and turns, Rose forgot her anxiety. The quiet machine followed her body as she looked and leaned, as instructed, wherever she wanted to go next.
“Where the head goes, the body follows,” she said to herself in quiet wonder.
A chuckle in her headphone startled her. “Just like in the dojo,” Maji agreed.
“Sorry,” Rose said. “I forgot we were on radio.”
“No worries,” Maji said. “More fun than you expected, huh?”
“I will admit to that only if you promise never to tell my mother.”
“Deal.”
Angelo could hear Frank chatting with Hannah, through the comm. He got up and stretched, asked Sander if he needed more coffee, and went up to the kitchen. Switching the master controls so that only Frank could hear him, he asked, “Frank, you and Hannah alone there?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Ask her, did she get to listen to my message.” Angelo had sent a brief recording with Frank, explaining how the sleeper virus would redistribute the funds sucked out of the targeted bank accounts. Millions of ordinary citizens and hundreds of nonprofits would wake up to find money from an untraceable source in their accounts, like a surprise lottery win. It was simple, and elegant.
“Hold on,” Frank said. Angelo heard murmuring, then Frank’s rendition of Hannah’s words. “She says, can you really write code that complicated, on your own.”
Angelo smiled. She was in. “Tell her I wrote it, tested it, and know it works.”
“She says you have the green light to continue. And she’ll arrange to meet with you in person soon.”
“Great. Thanks, Frank. I’m gonna go back to open channel now. And this little talk never happened, got it?”
“Oh, okay. Wait—she’s got one more thing. Oh, wait. She wants my earpiece.”
Uh-oh. What could Hannah not say through Frank? “Hello, Angelo,” Hannah said.
“Hey. You got a concern?” He’d been so close.
“Maji.”
He breathed again. “I know how to keep her insulated.” Keeping Gino and Khodorov from assigning any blame to her would be fairly simple. And they had already discussed how to keep JSOC from coming down on her.
“That’s not my concern,” Hannah said. “When she realizes the cost of this mission to you, she will want to stop you.” He started to object, but she cut him off. “Don’t underestimate her. Be prepared.”
Of course she was right. Even though he’d let Maji think that he planned to go off grid, at some point she would recognize it for what it really was—a suicide mission. “Understood, ma’am.”
“Very good. I’m giving the comm back to Frank now. It appears that Ricky has decided to spy on class today.”
Angelo opened the channels back up, so that Maji and the guys could hear him, too. “Frank, go see what bug Ricky’s got up his butt. I’ll be online with you.”
Maji glanced to the spot where Frank was in discussion with Ricky, on top of the rise at the edge of the lot. She’d listened to Angelo coach Frank as he approached the asshole. It was probably for the best she was on the helmet headset with Rose as well and needed to stay quiet to keep from distracting her.
Now she pulled off the helmet and stripped off her gloves, listening to the two men almost out of her sight.
“Rickster!” Frank said. “What’s up?”
“The fuck’s this about?” Ricky sounded irritated.
“Driving school, for Rose and Ri. Cool, huh?” Frank paused. “You need me?”
“No. Gino sent me to find out where you been going every day.”
“Here. There. Why?”
“You always take the girls someplace?”
“Just when Ang says to. So?”
Maji wondered how long this dance could go on.
“So where you take them?”
Frank hesitated, while Ang repeated his instructions. Then he answered, “Ang can tell you. Why don’t Gino ask him?”
“He’s asking you. Through me.”
“Whatever. But I’m not playing telephone here.”
“Huh?”
“That game, where one person whispers to the first person, then the next repeats, and when you get to the end of the line, it comes out all funny?” Neither one laughed. “Didn’t you ever play that? At a party?”
“What are you, a hundred?” The sound of Ricky spitting—hopefully on the grass—filled Maji’s earpiece. “Fuck it. You gonna talk to me, or not?”
“Nope. I’m gonna stay out of the middle. That’s how you make it to a hundred around here.”
* * *
When Ricky came to fetch Angelo on Wednesday, all he said was, “Gino wants to see you guys.”
Maybe, Angelo thought, Gino wanted to meet Dev and Tom in person. “The guys are out with Ma,” he answered.
“Not your rent-a-cops. You guys.”
Oh. Maybe Gino wanted to tear him and Frank a new one, at the same time. He was efficient that way. “Frank’s out, too. I can call him, have him skip the groceries,” Angelo offered.
“Jesus, you’re an idiot. He wants you and the…Russian kid.”
Angelo stifled a laugh. That’s Mr. Faggot to you, Little Dick. “His name is Sander. Hold on.” He left Ricky at the doorstep, closing the door in his face.
Down in the basement, Angelo took a few seconds to enjoy just looking at Sander, so engrossed in programming he didn’t even look up. He did everything with that intensity. It was a shame to hurt him, really. “Hey,” he said at last. “We got a summons to the Big G. Like, now.”
Sander stretched up and back, rolling his shoulders to undo the hunch from typing. “Well, I hear daylight is healthy in small doses. I could use a break. What’s he want?”
“Dunno.” Angelo envied Sander’s ability to be curious about Gino without any accompanying apprehension. What would it have been like to grow up feeling insulated from harm by your father’s protection? Carlo had, flaunting the Benedetti name like a badge. But not him. “Let’s go find out. Maybe Nonna will make us lunch.”
Sander looked skeptical. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“She say that to you, direct?”
“No, but—”
“No buts. You’d know.”
They walked silently behind Ricky, who ushered them into Gino’s office. The man cave of polished wood and leather furniture had been Angelo’s grandfather’s until his death, and then his father’s. It still smelled like it did when Grandpa Stephano would let him sit quietly by the corner bookcase, soaking in every word while he conducted business.
Today, Angelo knew, Gino dre
ssed himself in the room to give Khodorov’s kid the right impression—a big man in the center of command. As they entered, he nodded from behind the big desk, inviting them to the leather chairs across from him. They sat, and Ricky stood awkwardly to the side.
Gino had his genial face on. “Boys. How’s it going down there? I hear you got quite the setup.”
“We’re well equipped, thank you,” Sander said. Such a polite kid.
“How you feeling about the schedule?” Gino asked Sander. “This Fourth of July thing gonna work?”
Sander tilted his head briefly in consideration. “Yes. Turns out Angelo’s not full of shit when he calls himself a genius.”
Gino laughed, with an undercurrent of discomfort Angelo picked up from years of reading his uncle’s tells. “Okay, then. We better get the party lined up now. I’ll put my wife on it. If that’s okay with your people?”
“It’s your house,” Sander acknowledged. “Any help you want, of course, just name it.”
Angelo dug in his back pants pocket. “Here, G. Give this to Aunt Paola, okay?” He handed him a business card for Cuba Libre, the FBI’s front. “They’re local, and I hear they do food and music, both.”
“Fine,” Gino said, slipping the card into his jacket pocket without a glance.
Angelo stood to go. “Great.”
Gino motioned for him to sit again. To Sander he said, “Something happened last night—I wanted your take on it.”
“Okay.”
Gino looked to Ricky, who stepped to Gino’s side of the desk in order to face Sander. “Ricky visits certain places on my behalf, stops in to check on things, see people. You understand.”
Sander nodded and looked to Ricky. “Where, when, and who, please. Be as specific as you can.”
“Dusty’s,” Ricky started, looking half chagrined to be dictated to by Sander and half proud to be in the spotlight for once. “Maybe one, two o’clock this morning. I was getting ready to wrap up the bounce, so I hit the john before driving back home.”
Angelo hoped to God they weren’t about to hear a tale of how the Rickster had bashed one of Khodorov’s men by mistake. Any guy so much as looking at Little Dick in the men’s room would regret it. “And?”
Ricky looked annoyed to be interrupted. “And this guy comes in, stands at the pisser next to mine. Just stands there. So I say, You got a problem? And then I see he’s holding a pistol with a silencer, flat against his abs, pointing at me. And I’m in there by myself, no backup.”
“What did he want you to tell him? Did you tell him about this project?” Sander asked.
Ricky shook his head. “No. He told me. He told me who I was, who I work for, where Sienna and my folks were all day, where they live. He said the project at my house was drawing attention, and not everyone interested had been invited to the party.”
Sander leaned back, crossing his arms as he looked up at Ricky. “What words did he use for the project at your house?”
“That. The project at your house.” Ricky looked genuinely concerned. “And not everyone interested has been invited to the party. Those words exactly. ’Course, I didn’t say nothing back to confirm, or give anything away.”
Angelo watched Sander digest that. “So what did you say?”
“I said, You want me to deliver a message or something? And he said, No. You will wait for instructions. And if you tell anyone about this meeting, we will know. Then he just walked out. I didn’t even get to ask, Who’s we, motherfucker?”
“No need,” Sander said. He switched his attention to Gino. “Classic Sirko.”
Chapter Fifteen
The second week of camp ended early on Friday, with Hannah sending them all to Winston’s Dairy in recognition of their hard work. The move had seemed spontaneous until Rose saw the line of host-family cars in the parking area, ready to caravan out toward the North Fork and ice cream. Bubbles rode out in the town car with them, in the back with Rose while Maji took shotgun for a change of pace.
“Does camp always come with ice cream on the second Friday?” Rose asked.
Bubbles grinned. “If we’ve been very good. And we always are.”
“Something good today?” Frank asked, looking at them in the rearview mirror.
Rose thought of Bayani bringing the workout to a hushed halt when she knocked one of the boxing dummies to the floor. “A ninety-eight pound girl laid out a Bob with one hard kick,” she offered. “That was impressive.”
“Bob? You got guys in there, too?”
Rose shook her head, deciding not to share her theory about the willowy Filipina’s original gender assignment. If Hannah accepted Bayani as a young woman, so would the rest of them. “No,” she told Frank. “We have six Body Object Bags. Bobs.”
“Huh. No Joe or Dino. Not even a Ricky?”
As Rose and Maji had helped Bayani right the dummy, Maji had asked the teen who she’d been thinking of. Tariq was the answer, the name spat out with half chagrin, half defiance. And Maji had shared the names she’d given the Bobs—Efran, Skip, Gus, Lalo. And a girl’s name—Sheila? Rose gave him a wink via his mirror. “Maybe we’ll have a Ricky this year.”
The girls got their cones to go, heading off with their host families to play tourist for the weekend. Bubbles caught a ride with the other instructors, anxious to spend an evening at home with Rey. Maji checked in with Frank and left him posted up on the little road into the farm, enjoying a cone in the town car. She and Rose sat at a picnic table, watching the cows graze in the field.
Maji allowed herself a moment to just enjoy being out in the open, with no walls or alarms. Frank could watch the drive up to the farm. She had her earpiece in and her gun pressed into the small of her back. They were secure enough, and the ice cream was as fantastic as she remembered.
“It’s so bucolic,” Rose said next to her, leaning back against the picnic table, taking in the rolling hills of grass and scrub. “I’d come here even if they didn’t make the best ice cream on Long Island.”
“You’ve sampled all the competition?”
“I’ve had a lot of summers to explore this area. And I really like homemade ice cream. Isn’t that in my file?”
Maji laughed. “No.” She turned partway toward Rose, wishing she could see her eyes behind those big sunglasses. “If you were free to roam this summer, where would you go?”
“Oh, the usual. The beach, window-shopping in East Hampton, the arboretums, maybe a Gold Coast estate. And the farmers’ market, of course.”
Maji would have loved to tag along, hand in hand, if this summer had been the vacation she had planned for herself. “Next summer, maybe.” There would be life here after Angelo, wouldn’t there? Rose would come back to see her grandmother, at least.
“Maji?”
“Mm-hmm.” It was so nice to hear Rose speak her name.
“Was the girl in Bubbles’s story the Sheila-Bob you mentioned to Bayani?”
Maji sat up straight but didn’t turn to look at Rose. The afternoon’s discussion session had gone from the importance of looking out for each other, to roofies, to Bubbles’s disclosure before Maji had had time to prepare herself for the memory of that terrible day. And while she was impressed that Bubbles could talk about it, finally, so matter-of-factly, Maji wasn’t sure she could. The whole time Bubbles had been telling the story, she could feel Rose watching her. She exhaled slowly. “Yeah.”
“Was Sheila a friend of yours? Before she set Bubbles up, of course.”
Maji didn’t try to hide her bitterness. “A junkie can’t be your friend. They can pretend to, but underneath that, everything is always about the next fix. I learned that years before Sheila.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose said softly and laid her hand on Maji’s. When Maji pulled hers away, Rose didn’t object. Instead, she handed Maji a bottle of water and a napkin.
Maji washed the stickiness off her hands in silence, grateful for the moment to pull herself back together. She’d been holding the memories at bay
since the afternoon, locked behind her blank-slate face.
“I can’t believe you took on four guys by yourself. I mean, I can believe it, but…you could have been killed.” The quaver in Rose’s voice gave away the horror behind the words.
“I was lucky,” Maji conceded. “Lucky I got her out without killing anybody.”
Rose took her hand. “Nobody could have blamed you if you had.”
“I would have.” And how she would have lived with the aftermath at fourteen, she didn’t know. It was hard enough as an adult.
Rose turned Maji’s face toward hers. “You can’t know that,” she said, her warm brown eyes liquid with caring so sweet it hurt to look at them.
“Yes. I can.”
Rose’s eyebrows shot up, her hand rising to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot.”
Maji looked away. She stood and turned toward the road, clicking the transmitter back on. “Frank, let’s roll.”
No reply came back.
Maji slipped the gun from its holster with one hand and pulled Rose off the bench seat with the other. “Stay behind me.”
Rose opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but no words came out. She sprinted after Maji, barely keeping up. When the town car came into view, Maji stopped short and Rose had to dodge to keep from running into her. “What is it?”
“Don’t know,” Maji answered, scanning the area between them and the car, and the road beyond. “Stand by,” she added quietly. Rose realized she was speaking to her team via the comm.
They approached the car at a cautious jog. When Rose saw Frank slumped over the wheel, she gasped and surged forward. She felt herself knocked aside, then steadied by Maji’s hands on her shoulders. “Get behind the wall, and stay down until I say so. Clear?”
Rose followed her glance to the stone wall across the drive, with the Winston’s Dairy sign propped against it. She nodded and went, fighting the urge to run to the car and yank the door open instead.