by Gini Koch
“Charles Maxwell Martini, you return those cars and put them right down this instant, young man.”
No more grinning from my son, but the cars zoomed back to the kids who’d been playing with them and landed nicely. One for the win column.
Denise Lewis, whose husband was my mother’s right-hand man in the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit and our Embassy’s Defense Attaché, smiled at me. “Good job, Kitty.”
Managed not to say that Jamie hadn’t been this much work. She had been, she’d just been different.
Was saved from having to respond in any way by Kyle Constantine and Len Parker sticking their heads in. I’d met them in Vegas when they were still playing football for USC and they’d helped me out in a big way. They could have both gone pro, but instead they joined the C.I.A. right after they graduated. Len had been assigned as my driver and Kyle as my bodyguard, and both had done a great job.
But right before some of us took a trip to the Alpha Centauri system to avert a variety of civil wars, evil plots, and yet another alien invasion, Kyle had been put in charge of the Second Best Lady’s Cause.
Actually, I still had no idea what my official title was as the wife of the VP. No one around seemed to know, or care. I’d searched the papers for clues, but stories written about me tended to focus on all the madness that surrounded us on a daily basis, with adjectives tending more toward “outspoken,” “blunt,” and “trigger-happy.”
Anyway, a politician who’d been aligned with all of our enemies during the presidential campaign that had put Senator Vincent Armstrong into the White House, dragging Jeff along kicking and screaming, had somehow managed to become our ally. The slipperiness of political bedfellows and changing alliances never ceased to amaze me. It truly made fighting alien invasions, mad super-geniuses, and crazed megalomaniacs seem like such clean work.
“Kitty, Gideon Cleary’s here,” Kyle said. Speaking of the devil I’d just been thinking about. “We need to brainstorm the next ad campaign.”
Mommy Time was over. Time to get back in the saddle and handle grown-up things.
“And,” Len added, “we have news, too. News you’re not going to like.”
CHAPTER 2
HUGGED AND KISSED JAMIE and Charlie, handed Charlie to Denise, petted all our animals—of which we had so many, both Earth and alien, we’d all lost count—grabbed my purse, and headed out.
Once we got out of the daycare center even better music was playing. I kept us tuned to the Aerosmith Channel, and while other bands were allowed and even encouraged, my rule was at least one song from my Bad Boys from Boston for every ten on the playlist.
“What’s going on?” I asked as “Back in the Saddle” was, possibly prophetically, playing softly in the background and we got on the elevator and headed down for the meeting. “New issues with The Cause?”
The Cause was protecting campus co-eds from being attacked and raped. When we’d met, Kyle had been drunk and suggested that I might like to get to know half of the Trojan football team intimately. Len had stopped that—well, Len and Harlie.
Harlie was a Poof, aka the best wedding gift ever. Poofs were alien animals that looked a lot like tiny, fluffy kittens with no visible ears or tails, but with shiny black button eyes. They were fluffy balls on tiny legs and paws and I and everyone else loved them. They were also incredibly great protection because they could go Jeff-sized with tons of razor sharp teeth when danger threatened, so they were wonderful personal protection bundles of cuteness.
Supposedly they were pets for the Alpha Four Royal Family only—which I’d somehow married into—but the Poofs were androgynous and mated whenever a royal wedding loomed. Supposedly.
In reality, the Poofs were Black Hole Universe animals, and apparently our Poofs had decided to go forth and multiply. We had tons of Poofs, and more seemed to show up with a lot of regularity.
In the Poofs’ world, if you named it, it was yours. And the Poofs made the call as to what they considered a name—and therefore who they considered their “owner”—so a lot of people had scored Poofs simply because they’d said something like, “Look at that, how adorable is that?” Which is how one of our friends, Representative Nathalie Gagnon-Brewer had gotten a Poof. She called hers Dora for short.
Harlie had gone large and in charge way back when and scared Kyle straight, and to prove it, totally without my even knowing, Kyle had started a Take Back the Night program while he and Len were still at USC, which created a service where anyone on campus could call to get a security escort back to wherever they called home, and led info sessions to teach girls how to avoid date rape situations and how to get out of them safely.
Many colleges had these programs, but Kyle’s had been particularly effective, in part because he’d gotten all the jocks involved in a positive way. He’d been one of the representatives for USC’s sports program’s preventative counseling service, which worked with athletes to keep them from becoming the kind of men who thought women were playthings made to be dominated. He’d been, from all Len said, quite intense about it.
All this had made him the man for the job when Cleary had come to us asking for support with putting a similar program in place in all the colleges and universities in Florida, where he was still governor. He’d also suggested it as my Cause, and I honestly had no objection.
Cleary had thought up The Cause, however, because he was intimately involved in a scandal that we had, so far, managed to keep under wraps.
“No, not an issue with The Cause,” Kyle replied. “Though I’m sure that’s the reason we’ll all give for why he’s here. We think we have a hit on Stephanie.”
“Really?” Think of the scandal and it appeared. Or something like that. Maybe I still had some telepathic resonance from Operation Civil War. Or maybe Charlie had done a mother-and-child feedback with me like Jamie had and I just wasn’t fully aware of it yet. “How confirmed of a hit?”
“We’re not sure,” Len said, as the elevator opened and we headed off for one of the smaller salons. “Governor Cleary didn’t want to tell us a lot without you in the room.”
“For a guy whose state isn’t next to the Beltway, he’s sure up here a lot.”
“He’s going to run for President again,” Len said. “We all know it. He’s keeping his ties tight. Can’t blame him for that.”
“I can guarantee he wants to activate Clarence, though,” Kyle added. “So if you still want to tell him no, you’d better call Jeff.”
“Why?”
“Because Mister Reynolds sounds like he’s on Cleary’s side,” Len said. “Not sure why.”
Speaking of one of my son’s namesakes and my best friend since ninth grade. “Chuckie’s here? When did he get here?” Normally I knew when he or Jeff were coming to or in the Embassy during the work day. I pulled my phone out and sent a “get home now, please and thank you” text to my husband. It sounded like the boys were right and we were going to need him here sooner as opposed to later.
Chuckie was the head of the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division and, thanks to what we brought back from Operation Civil War, the Golden Boy of the Agency. Which meant that he had even more enemies within the Agency than he had had before.
Chuckie lived in the Embassy now, because his apartments kept getting trashed by people trying to kill him. And his emotional state hadn’t been stable since we’d gotten back from Operation Civil War, because of the horrible things that had happened to him out there, and the fact that the guy he’d thought was his best friend had turned out to be the Mastermind and therefore the guy directly responsible for the death of his wife. Crap like that can affect a person for some reason.
“He came with the governor,” Len answered as we reached the salon and the music changed to Mötley Crüe’s “Chicks = Trouble.” “And they came in with Mister Buchanan. And they were all vetted by the Secret Service.”
> We had a lot of Secret Service agents with us, more than the VP normally got. Because of me. Oh well, I was keeping people employed. Go me, creating jobs. We had less Secret Service tailing us inside the Embassy because we were in one of the most secure buildings we could be, and because we had other internal protection.
Malcolm Buchanan had been assigned by my mother to be my personal shadow and bodyguard when we’d first come to D.C. And there wasn’t a day I wasn’t grateful for Mom’s prescience. I insisted Buchanan had Dr. Strange powers because he came and went like the wind and if the man didn’t want you to see him, you didn’t see him.
I saw him now, though. He was standing at the back of the room, clearly on guard, leaning against the wall in a way that I knew meant he could propel himself wherever he wanted, instantly. The boys moved to similar positions within the room.
Chuckie and Cleary were sitting, and they both looked rather stressed and grim. So, it was going to be that kind of meeting. Oh goody.
“Missus Chief,” Buchanan said with a small smile. “In case you haven’t already guessed . . . we have a problem.”
“I took the leap, Malcolm. Chuckie, Gideon, why so serious?”
“Someone just tried to kill me,” Cleary said, voice shaking. “And I’m pretty sure it was Stephanie.”
CHAPTER 3
STEPHANIE WAS JEFF’S NIECE, his eldest sister’s eldest daughter. Her father, Clarence Valentino, had been an A-C traitor of the highest order. And I’d had to kill him. But not before he’d turned Stephanie.
Understandably, she’d blamed us for her father’s death and joined the Mastermind’s team with gusto. That had gotten her arrested at the end of Operation Defection Election. But that hadn’t kept her down.
During the campaign she’d somehow been released into Cleary’s custody—partly because she’d only been nineteen, partly because the case had been made for extenuating circumstances and insanity due to grief over her father’s death and all that jazz—meaning a lot of strings had been pulled, undoubtedly by the Mastermind, who we all knew Cleary had been working with.
And, because of that pull, her record had been wiped clean, at least her record with the government. With us, not so much, but the A-Cs were all willing to forgive if she wasn’t going to try to kill everyone again.
Stephanie had seemed semi-normal for a while and appeared to be toeing the legal line, though she’d avoided all the A-Cs, even her mother and siblings. Cleary had seemed to think he and his family had rehabilitated her, and they’d treated her like family, though Cleary was still on the side of the Mastermind at the time.
But unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that, she’d also started sleeping with the Mastermind. And then he’d had her kill eight of our Secret Service detail during Operation Bizarro World.
Stephanie had freaked out and disappeared, which we’d discovered right at the start of Operation Civil War. There were two theories about her disappearance. One was that she was faking us out, so that we’d come after her and walk into a trap. The other was that she was afraid of the Mastermind and hiding from him. The longer she was gone—and she’d been gone for over a year and a half now—the more credible the second theory seemed.
There was also the theory that said Stephanie was dead, killed by the Mastermind. While we never discounted that one, if she’d been sighted, that would be a good thing. Barring her once again trying to murder people.
“Are you sure it was her?” I asked as I sat down at the small conference table we had in this room.
“Fairly sure,” Chuckie said.
“Very sure,” Cleary said.
Looked to Buchanan. Who shrugged. “I didn’t see any of it, Missus Chief. I was just near enough that when Reynolds called I could get to them the quickest.”
Wondered why Buchanan had been near to Chuckie, versus near to me, for this particular situation. Chose to table the question for later. “What happened?”
“The governor was finishing a meeting with several lobbyists,” Chuckie said. “I was . . . observing the meeting.”
“He was spying on us, he means,” Cleary said, without a lot of animosity. Chuckie just shrugged.
“What was the meeting about?”
“Whether or not to close NASA Base,” Cleary replied.
Well, that was new. And now it made a lot of sense why Chuckie had been “observing” this meeting. “Why would anyone want to close NASA Base?”
“I have no idea,” Cleary said. “I certainly have no desire to do so.”
“But you did, during your Presidential campaign,” Chuckie pointed out, as the music changed to “A Letter to Both Sides” by the Fixx. “And the people who you met with are still pushing for it, even though you’ve dropped it to have a better chance of success in the next election, or the one after.”
Cleary nodded. “That’s very true. At any rate, we finished the meeting, and as we were leaving the restaurant, I saw Stephanie across the street. As soon as she saw me she disappeared. I thought she’d run away from me. But then someone took a shot at me.”
“Excuse me? No one’s mentioned that Florida’s governor was attacked on our streets.”
“The restaurant lets out into the back, where there’s an alley and a small parking lot,” Chuckie explained. “So that people can leave without being seen together, if needed.”
“Gotcha. But still, shots tend to draw attention.”
“Not,” Chuckie said dryly, “when they’re done with a bow and arrow.”
“What, Stephanie’s become Green Arrow or Huntress? I don’t buy it.”
Sure, Stephanie was a traitor and a murderer, but she was still a young woman, only twenty-one years old. Maybe she thought Cleary wanted to shut down the Base and so was trying to protect her family. Maybe not. But she was so young, there was a chance she could be salvaged, saved, redeemed. Again.
And we’d brought just the person to do it home from another solar system.
On Beta Eight we’d discovered a clone of Clarence. The Clarence Clone had been created quickly and without all the bells and whistles our Earth clones had. And he’d lived on a world where a large number of us—Jeff, Chuckie, and myself included—were somehow considered gods. And he still thought we were gods, even though we’d told him that we weren’t.
He had some of the original Clarence’s memories and mannerisms, but otherwise, he’d been a lonely, simple but not stupid, living Secret Sentry. He’d proved his worth and loyalty, and we’d brought him home with us.
Sylvia and their other children had been overjoyed. And, despite our explaining that this was a clone, they’d chosen to ignore us and act as though it was the original Clarence, who’d just had a terrible head trauma and memory loss.
The Clarence Clone had none of the mean or the evil that the original had developed in spades by the time Jamie was born. The Clone was more like the guy Sylvia had fallen in love with. So I could understand the desire to play pretend.
However, TCC, as we called him in shorthand, was the one person who could probably bring Stephanie in from the cold, and potentially even get her to confess. Because without her confessing to the fact that Clifford Goodman was the Mastermind, we had no solid proof that could convict him of anything in a court of law.
Of course, Cleary had been in the Mastermind’s Inner Circle during Operation Defection Election. However, he hadn’t known that Cliff was the Mastermind, or at least so he’d told us when he’d come fully over to our side after the events of Operations Bizarro World and Civil War and, frankly, we believed him. In part because Cliff hadn’t launched whatever his Doomsday Plan might be against us, meaning Cleary hadn’t told Cliff that we all knew who the Mastermind really was.
Cleary knew now, and had given us what intel he had, but because he hadn’t known that Cliff was the Mastermind, he didn’t have any information that wor
ked as actual proof. Cleary couldn’t confirm that Cliff was the Mastermind, or that Cliff had done anything illegal, ever. It was all the “we were at this meeting together” or “he gave me a sealed letter” type of circumstantial evidence that would, at best, prove that Cliff had been one of the Mastermind’s flunkies, but nothing more.
We had to take Cliff down definitively, and that meant we needed someone who’d seen him get his hands really dirty and who would also actually say so in a court of law. And that someone was Stephanie.
“No, I don’t think she’s become some amazing archer,” Chuckie said. “But she was close enough when she shot—using a crossbow, so stick with your Huntress analogy—that if I hadn’t seen Cleary react to something I wouldn’t have been near enough to knock him out of the way.”
“Are you okay?” I was asking Chuckie. I cared a hell of a lot more about him than I did Cleary. And, crap, I’d told Jeff to come home and that meant he could be in danger from whoever our Huntress actually was.
He smiled. “Yeah, I am. I alerted Jeff, by the way. He’ll be coming home soon, alert and aware, and via a gate. Just in case. And yes, on my order.” Gates were alien tech that looked like airport metal detectors but could transport you thousands of miles in seconds. They were great, but still made me nauseous to use.
However, I wasn’t the one using the gate, and they were safe. I relaxed. Always nice to have the smartest guy anywhere on my side and thinking ahead. “Good. So, I’m going to guess the next questions. Do we bring in outside help or not?”
Chuckie shook his head. “That’s not the question, but nice try. The question is, do we activate TCC or not? I feel it’s time. He’s acclimated, he’s willing, and if the governor really did see Stephanie, then she’s active in some way and we need to try to catch her before the Mastermind, other enemies, or even the police do.”
We’d made it a point to refer to Cliff as the Mastermind so that we didn’t give away that we knew who the Mastermind was to anyone we might not be able to trust. Sure, everyone in this room knew, but the concern was well-founded. We’d had a Secret Service agent working for the Mastermind who had been discovered just in time.