by Lucy Kelly
Just then the phone rang. While Mr. Kadyrov spoke to the caller, Anton began eating his meal. He was pleased he’d refused the food they’d been serving at the jail. In his Grandfather’s house he was served this delicious filet of sole and asparagus in cream sauce. He was dabbing his mouth with his napkin when his grandfather put down the phone.
“That was Gregor on the phone? What did he have to say?” he asked.
“Grace and the Contadinas went by her apartment to pack her things. He played me a portion of the tape. It seems Jett Contadina habitually carries an electronic detection device in his pocket. And he also let slip that his own devices were far superior to ours. It seems he’s an inventor of sorts.
"And last night he stayed and toured all over the casino. If they are cops, he wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity to plant some,” said Mr. Kadyrov.
“If he had planted a listening device in the club, they would have had a recording of me ordering the hit on him last night. Surely the police would have mentioned evidence like that when they arrested me. The charges would have stuck and I’d still be in jail,” said Anton.
“You’re right, my boy. Olga thought they might be cops and I told her we were sure that they weren’t. This proves they aren’t. If they were working undercover and had planted bugs, the cops would have jumped on it.
"However, just to be safe, Gregor is reviewing all the casino’s security tapes from last night. He’ll double check every move Jett made after he went out on the floor and do a new sweep for surveillance,” said Mr. Kadyrov.
The two of them discussed various methods of taking and dispatching the Contadina brothers while Anton finished eating his dinner.
It turned out that Justyn was a really good cook. The steaks and baked potatoes were delicious, as were the grilled veggies. Grace leaned back in her chair and stretched.
“That was great, Justyn; you can grill for me anytime. Give me a minute and I’ll clean up,” she said.
“You are not to lift a finger; Jett and I will do the dishes. Go on into the living room and spend time with Justyn. We’ve had you to ourselves most of the day,” said Jalen.
On the drive back to the house, Grace had told them of her concerns regarding surveillance. She knew that someone could sit in a parked car or in the park across the street and point a parabolic dish at the condo and hear everything going on inside without planting a single device. Such things were illegal to use, but that wouldn’t stop the Kadyrovs. Jalen had said he could easily put up a jamming field. It was nice being able to enjoy an evening at home without the fear of being overheard.
Crossing the room from the dinette to the living room, she said to them all, “I could get used to this kind of treatment. Do you vacuum and do windows too?” she asked.
“You forget our planet is Matriarchal; this is not considered women’s work. And having lived so long without a wife, we have developed a routine that works for us,” said Jalen from the kitchen.
Justyn added, “I’m the best cook. I’ve enjoyed experimenting with all these new foods. Jett, as you can see, invents whatever machinery we need around the house. Our home on HeVan is what you call a ‘smart house’. We have a central computer to regulate the air temperature and humidity. The computer also keeps track of the supplies that we use up, everything from artichokes to zucchini,” he quipped, making her smile.
She snuggled up to him on the couch, relaxing after the long day. She hadn’t really gotten any sleep the night before and she was tired. Within a few moments, she’d fallen asleep.
Jett came in to the room and Justyn signaled to him before he could speak. He looked down at Grace asleep in Justyn’s arms and smiled. A moment later, Jalen walked in. He, too, didn’t speak when he saw Grace sleeping. The three of them sat down and were content just to look at her. It wasn’t often they got this chance. She was so energetic that usually she kept them on their toes.
The summer sun was going down, the sky turning dark, when she awoke. She was a little surprised to see the three of them sitting there just watching her.
“What’s wrong? Do I have something on my face?” she asked, running her hands over herself.
“You are perfect, as always Kasharra. We were just taking a moment to drink in your beauty and thank the Goddess that you are here in our arms,” said Justyn.
“A moment? It’s been two hours,” she said, looking at the clock. “Well, we’ve got about six hours to kill before we have to download the surveillance from the nanos. Let’s play a game.”
“A game? I thought we could make love now,” said Justyn.
“Maybe it’s from working in a casino for three days. I can’t go to bed without playing cards or something, wait here. I’ll go get them. Did Addie teach you how to play poker?” she asked.
“Yes, we are familiar with this game,” said Jett.
“Great. Well, dealer chooses the game. I’m going to deal first so I choose strip poker. The worst hand has to take off a piece of clothing,” she said with a smile. Her Ankida were then suddenly happy to go along with the plan. A few games later, she realized that all of them had the ability to detect lies, so bluffing didn’t work. She stuck with Texas Hold ‘em and Indian Poker after that. Three against one, though, and soon she was down to her panties. She didn’t mind at all when she lost again. She was laughing when they carried her off to the bedroom. She didn’t find out until the next morning that Jett and Jalen went out alone to download the data and left her sleeping with Justyn.
Chapter Fourteen
When Grace woke up, her front was toasty warm, but her back was cold. She soon realized the reason; she was lying on top of Justyn and had no covers over her back. Jalen lay on her left with an arm thrown over her and Jett on her right with his back to her and one of her arms over him.
When she started to wiggle, Justyn woke up. His hands came up to hold on to her bottom cheeks.
“Good morning Kasharra, how did you sleep?” he asked.
“I slept fine; I’m cold, though,” she answered.
“We can’t have that,” said a voice on her left.
“That would be bad; she might get sick,” said a voice on her right.
“Then I think we should do all in our power to warm her up immediately,” said a voice over where her head rested on a powerful chest.
They were as good as their word and she was very quickly warm all over. A couple of hours later she was washed, dressed, and feeling remarkably well.
“I’m a little upset that you went out and got the download last night without me. This is my job, you know,” said Grace, as they all sat down to a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and homemade country potatoes. “We have to review the data, see if anything on them is important enough for us to act upon right away. And I don’t want to be cooped up in the house all day, either. Captain Udaka said I was to show you around. We should stay away from places near the condo. Everyone around here knows me.”
“I plan to set up an algorithm that will search the data for key words. There are hours and hours of tape; we need to be able to skip to the important parts,” said Jett.
“That’s a good place to start. But every second of the tapes will have to be gone through. I think we should divide them up into four parts and load them onto MP3 players. Then, we can listen in on an earplug as we go around today. If we hear anything important, hit pause. If there’s nothing happening, hit fast forward and it will jump in five-minute intervals. Do you have any linguistic filters built in? What if they aren’t speaking in English?” she asked.
“After Becky had us learn Greek and Italian, I thought it best if we went ahead and loaded all the other Earth languages into our database. So I loaded in Chechen and all languages spoken in neighboring countries yesterday. It would take weeks for our brains to learn all the languages. It’s easier to have the nanos translate them into English for us,” said Jett.
“Wait a minute; you can learn a language in weeks?” she asked.
“If you only wish to learn one language, then it should only take five to seven days,” answered Jett. “We are still wearing the nano-patches that are teaching us Greek and Italian. We haven’t had the need yet to use the new languages, though. Is there a language you’d like to learn?”
“Yes, I’m half Irish and half Spanish and can’t speak either language. I’ve always wanted to learn them both.”
“I’ll download the information and transfer it to some nano-patches for you,” said Jett.
“And if these are the languages you wish to speak, we will all learn them as well,” added Jalen, and the others nodded.
“That would be so great! Hey, I know where we’re going to go today. We’re going to Great America!” she said.
“Great America? I thought we were already in America,” said Justyn.
“Just wait, you’ll see. Let’s get a move on. Jett, you’re in charge of getting the data split into four six-hour segments. Give me Mr. Kadyrov; I don’t think I could stomach listening to Anton for hours on end,” she said.
It took about an hour before they were finally ready to leave. An hour after that, they were pulling into the parking lot at Great America.
“What is this place, Grace?” asked Justyn.
“This is where families go to have fun. They have great food and fun rides. We should go to the water park first. Then we’ll be nice and cool for the rest of the rides,” she said. “One of us will have to stay with the evidence at all times. We can’t leave it unattended because that would break our chain of evidence and lose admissibility in court. I have this big hobo bag and we’ll keep all the evidence in here.”
“We’ll be getting wet?” asked Jett and Jalen gave him a swat while she rolled her eyes. She could see he was trying to lighten the situation.
“Yes, that’s why I bought those swim shorts for you all,” she said.
They started, as Grace suggested, with the water rides. Once they arrived at Hurricane Harbor, they quickly changed into their swimsuits and headed to the tallest slides. She didn’t know if they’d need it, but she took her time lathering them all with sunscreen anyway. Grace pretended not to notice all the envious looks she was getting. While the guys played in the water, she picked up a sunny spot to work on her tan while listening to the evidence tapes and pretending to read fashion magazines.
It had taken her a few tries to get used to the equipment Jett had given her. He had adjusted a Bluetooth to pick up her brain impulses, so all she had to do was think about the data and she was scrolling through it. It was great that she wasn’t being observed constantly adjusting the MP3.
One of the guys was always with her; they switched out every fifteen minutes or so, and that was fine.
After a couple of hours, they were ready to try something new. So they all dried off and took turns in the changing rooms getting back into their regular clothes. Grace had worn tan, khaki shorts and an olive green tank and moccasins. Each of the guys wore a knitted polo shirt, Bermuda shorts and Docksider loafers. Jalen wore navy over white; Jett had forest green over tan and wild man Justyn was wearing a pale pink polo over plaid shorts. Grace thought that they all looked hot. She was fast changing her mind about the first impressions she’d had regarding their personalities.
They spent the next three hours going from ride to ride and Grace was pleased at their reactions. Jett was fond of The Viper, the big wooden roller coaster. He said it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced and he paid close attention to how it was constructed. Jalen preferred the Raging Bull roller coaster, which had bigger and more dramatic drops; and somewhat to her surprise, quiet Justyn liked the Vertical Velocity ride the best, the corkscrew upside down and way up in the air ride they couldn’t get Grace to ride on. He laughed when he got off and wanted to try it again. All three of them went on the Dare Devil Dive more than once, too. They must have been like this when they were little boys, she thought. I wish I could have known them then.
“Do you have any home movies?” she asked when they stopped for lunch.
“Home movies; what are those?” asked Jalen.
“Video pictures of you when you were younger. You’re having such a good time; I wondered what you were like when you were children. Do you have images of yourselves back then?”
“Yes, we have some memory savers of when we were younger. We didn’t bring them on this trip, though. I believe our parents have most of them at their home,” said Jalen.
“Your parents are still alive?” she said and then caught herself. Looking around to see if anyone was listening she asked, “How long do you guys live anyway? Never mind, you can tell me later. As to the home movies, I would like to see them. What would you like to do next? You’ve been on all the rides three times. And now that we’ve eaten, we should wait and let our food settle before going on another ride. There are games of skill or shows we could watch,” said Grace.
“Games of skill?” asked all three at once.
Grace laughed. “I guess we’re going to play some games. Remember these games are made to be difficult. They want you to spend your money; it takes skill to win the largest prizes.”
They finished their meal, Grace newly amazed at how much they ate. So far they’d ingested burgers, fries, pizza, and funnel cakes. The funnel cakes had been a big hit and Justyn said he wanted to learn how to make them. They had large frames to fill and they weren’t fat; she hoped they wouldn’t make themselves sick from all the sweets and fried foods they weren’t used to eating.
As they walked over to the section of the park that held all the game concessions, Grace noticed more than one curious or envious look in her direction. She was walking alongside Jalen with their arms around each other. Before they left, she’d emphasized the importance of maintaining their cover everywhere except the condo. She was already planning a trip back for when they could just be themselves. Justyn tended to walk on her other side and Jett wandered all over the place, in front of them, behind them, always popping up when you least expected. He was like a little boy, the way he’d rush ahead to see something and then come back to tell his brothers. At the same time, she knew he was also making regular reconnaissance.
When they reached all the game booths, she decided to add an extra layer of challenge for them.
“Let’s walk around and look at all the choices. Then you can each try and win two large stuffed animals,” said Grace.
“That would make six. Why so many?” asked Justyn.
“I figured we could give them to Addie as gifts for the babies.”
“What will the babies do with large stuffed animals?” asked Jett.
“The babies won’t do anything with them right away. They will be a decoration in their nursery. When they get older, they’ll climb on them and think of them as their friends. I told a lot of my secrets and wishes to my favorite stuffed animal when I was a little girl. I really wanted a Sgt. McGruff stuffed animal, but they don’t make them. So my dad found a stuffed animal—I think it was actually supposed to be a dachshund and then got a miniature trench coat for it. I still have him; I’ll show you when we get back to the condo,” she said.
As she suggested, each of the men went around and looked at the different games. Justyn chose throwing a ball at some bottles on a round table. Jalen chose throwing rings over the tops of milk bottles and Jett chose tossing the ping-pong balls into water-filled bowls. They were all determined to win stuffed animals and felt their hand-eye coordination was up to the task. They soon learned what many others already knew. It was harder than it seemed. She walked back and forth between them and noted that they did have good precision and hit more than they missed.
It only took Justyn a few minutes to win, as he had such a strong arm. He hit the milk bottles with tremendous force. When he saw the prize, though, he understood the nuances to the game. Handing the smaller prize to Grace, he worked out the angles in his head then continued on and quickly won a large tiger. He easily won again. The operator was giving
him a tight smile as he asked him which one he’d like next. Justyn turned to Grace and asked her what he should get.
“Get the big red dog. There's a series of famous children’s books that feature a big, red dog,” said Grace.
After he got the dog, they walked over to Jett and Jalen. The operator was happy to see him go and very soon got over the loss of the stuffed animals as he knew that others would see them and come to try their skill. Jett had dozens of smaller gifts and one large, stuffed giraffe. Just as they walked up, they heard him shout with glee. He pointed to a large stuffed bear. Jett kept a small, plastic, water pistol; Grace didn’t want to know what he planned to do with it. He was deciding what to do with the pile of smaller gifts when Jalen came up behind them holding onto two large stuffed animals, a zebra and a cow.
A little girl standing nearby, holding her mother’s hand, said, “You have a lot of them,” she said.
“Sorry,” said her mother, “she’s a little jealous.”
“That’s okay,” said Jalen, looking down at the child. “Grace said,” pointing to Grace, “that because there will be six babies, we needed six animals.”
“Oh, my, Congratulations!” said the woman, before she picked up the girl.
“Here,” said Jett and he handed the girl the smaller prizes he’d won.
“What do you say?” asked the mother.
“Thank you,” she said with a smile and then ducked her head.