by Elle Casey
I try not to get too excited over the fact that we share the same taste in cinema. Whenever I start thinking she and I can be friends, she throws me a curveball. Like betting against me this morning. I wonder what it’s going to take to earn her respect. I hope it won’t involve me getting shot.
The front door of the house opens. “Someone’s coming out!” My pulse starts beating hard, and suddenly it’s difficult to breathe. I’m both excited and scared to death. What if they see us? What if they know exactly what we’re doing? Is a bulletproof van bombproof too?
“Take some shots!”
“Oh, right.” My finger presses the shutter button. I quickly focus on the subject and do my best to catch him in profile and full on. He turns in our direction to get to his car, parked just a few vehicles down from where we are.
“Oh my god, I’m getting some great shots right now.”
“Keep going. You can never have too many.”
“Thank goodness for digital, right?”
“Yeah.” Toni’s moving around behind me, but I can’t stop to figure out what she’s doing.
“Listen, if he gets closer, you should back off the curtain and close it up.”
“How close?” I’m still taking shots.
“Within ten feet.”
I take a few more pictures and back up, pulling the camera out of the hole and shutting the flap.
The entire van is pitch-black inside. Toni must have shut off the light when I was busy taking a hundred pictures in ten seconds.
“Next time, warn me when you’re going to do that,” Toni says.
“Why?”
“Because it’s better if it’s dark inside here when you pull out, so they don’t see a square of light in the curtain.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No worries. I figured you were about to do it, so I shut the light off. Next time, just give me a signal first.”
“What’s the signal?”
“Lights.”
“Oh. That’s easy.”
“We try to keep everything as simple as possible, so in the heat of the moment we don’t forget.”
“Good plan.” I can picture myself forgetting a code word more complicated than lights. I am secretly appreciative of the genius in charge of passwords and signals, whoever that person is. Is it Ozzie? Seems like it would be. He strikes me as both a thoughtful and practical person.
“Get anything good?” she asks.
I switch the camera into play mode and buzz through the photographs. “Yes. Several.” I hold the camera over by her. “You know this guy?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean anything. We’ll run it through our facial recognition program and see what we come up with.”
“You have that? That program, I mean?”
“Yeah.” She sounds defensive.
“Sorry, it’s just . . . kind of hard to believe you’d have something that sophisticated in a security firm. It’s not like you’re the police or anything.”
“First of all, we’re not just any security firm. Ozzie only runs top-of-the-line operations. And second, we work with the police department. They give us access to all kinds of databases. We can’t do our job very well without it.”
I nod, thinking it through. “That makes sense.” I’m even more impressed with Ozzie than I was before. If I’m not careful, pretty soon I’ll be drooling whenever he walks into the room.
“This is interesting,” Toni says, staring at her screen.
“What?”
She leans a little to the right so I can look at her laptop screen. There’s an aerial photograph of a neighborhood, showing houses, driveways, and even cars.
“What’s that?”
“We’re right here,” she says, pointing to a spot on the map.
“I don’t see our van.”
“This picture was taken awhile ago. It’s not a live feed. Anyway, do you see that?” She points to a house on the street behind the one we’ve been watching.
“Yes.”
“Did it look vacant to you yesterday when we drove past it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“You’re supposed to remember these things.” She shuts her laptop and starts to climb over me.
“I’m confused.” I’m afraid I’ve failed another test with her.
Toni peeks around the corner of the curtain for a few seconds before she pushes it back enough to take the driver’s seat. “Let’s go take a look.”
“Can I come up there with you?”
“If you want.” She fires up the engine and pulls out of our parking spot.
I climb into the front with her and buckle myself in. “What did you mean, I’m supposed to remember that other house?”
“Your job when we’re out surveilling is to take in the details and file them away in your brain for future use.”
“Oh. And which details do I file and which ones do I disregard?”
“Disregard nothing.”
I don’t answer with the obvious response to that, which is, Oh, so I’ll just see about booting up my photographic memory.
“If you don’t have a good mind for details, you’d better take a lot of pictures,” she adds.
I lean into the back and pull a smaller camera with a more manageable lens out of the hard case that holds all the equipment I’m supposed to be using.
“Fine. I can take pictures.” No big deal. That won’t look suspicious at all, a woman driving down the street taking photos of every single detail.
“You’ll learn eventually what things are important and what aren’t.” She turns onto the road that runs behind the target house. “You want to take photos of the street here from this angle, the houses that connect to the target house, unusual things that look out of place . . .”
“Like what, for example?”
“Like a woman who’s sitting in a chair on her front porch. You don’t see that much around here, but when you do, it either means you have an old-school granny who likes to keep an eye on her neighborhood or you have someone employed by a dealer to watch out for the po-po.”
“Grannies do that?”
“Grannies gotta eat.” Toni slows when she gets near the house she pointed out on the satellite photo. “That’s what I thought,” she says, smiling.
I take a few pictures, although I’m not sure why.
“What’s going on?” I ask, leaning over to see the house better as she drives by.
“It’s vacant, I’m pretty sure. And part of the fence connects to the fence of our target. We could get eyes on the back of the target if we can get into that backyard.”
“Is it worth the risk?”
“I’m betting yes. Come on—let’s go see.”
Now our faded blue jumpsuits are starting to make sense. “You mean we’re going to get out of the van?”
“Yes. Put your hair up and your hat on. Sunglasses are optional.”
I’m too shocked to argue. My hands move to my hair and follow her instructions, using the rubber band I had on my wrist. I’m afraid, but I can do this. I don’t want Toni being disgusted with my cowardice, even though I know that emotion is in place to keep me from getting in trouble with the wrong kind of people.
Ego. It’s a terrible thing sometimes.
I slide the baseball cap onto my head as Toni’s getting out. I have to count to ten before I can make my fingers take the door handle and pull on it. My muscles scream with agony as I drop to the ground from the elevated passenger seat.
“Bring your camera, but keep it hidden.”
I take the equipment and put it inside the roomy leg compartments of my jumpsuit, securing it inside with the Velcro flaps.
“Here, take this.” Toni hands me a toolbox.
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. Just act like you’re supposed to be here, and everything will be just fine.”
I’m already sweating. It’s not that hot out yet, but does that matter? No. Be
cause this jumpsuit, turning into a sauna designed to poach my body, is not hot because of the outside temperature; it’s hot because I’m panicking. I’m not bulletproof!
“We’ll go around the back. We’re meter readers.”
“Oh. Okay. We’re meter readers.” Nothing at all suspicious about two chick meter readers. Ha.
I follow Toni around the side of the house, noticing the windows here are broken or at least cracked. The smell of mildew is strong. I wonder if this is one of those houses that never recovered after Hurricane Katrina. I’d heard that there were still some around.
Toni walks right by the meter. I follow closely behind. The box I’m carrying bangs against my leg, and something heavy and metal rattles around inside.
“Being real quiet is a good idea right now,” Toni says in a low voice.
My heart skips a beat. I try to tiptoe through the grass, mostly unsuccessfully.
She stops at the far left corner of the backyard. I realize as I step up next to her that we’re also at the back fence of the target house. I’m afraid I’m going to pee my pants.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Toni bends down and opens up the toolbox she had under her arm. Inside is a drill and various bits mixed in with some other tools.
“Open yours up,” she says, taking the drill out. She unscrews the end and puts a bit inside, screwing it back tight again when she’s got it where she wants it.
I undo the latch on my toolbox, and my heart leaps into my throat when I see a handgun inside. “Oh my god,” I whisper.
Toni reaches inside and takes the gun out, placing it in the weeds at her feet. The next thing out of the toolbox is a small black box.
“What’s that?” I whisper.
“Watch and learn, Bo Peep.”
She drills a hole at the bottom of the fence separating the two properties. Even though the drill is completely quiet, with some kind of crazy silencer on it, and she goes slowly enough that the wood hardly makes a whisper, sweat flows down my face in tiny rivers. I’m trying to decide if I should pick the weapon up and have it ready for Toni if she needs it. No way am I going to use the stupid thing myself.
The black box attaches to the wood fence with four tiny screws. Toni puts those in manually. She pushes a button on it, and a tiny green light comes on.
“Find me some brush.”
I blink a few times, wondering what the hell she’s talking about.
“Or some garbage or something. I need to cover this thing.”
The lightbulb goes on above my head, and I quickly stand to gather bits of garbage and dead weeds. Toni takes them from me and adds them to the things she assembled, covering the camera so neither it nor its green light is visible.
“Sweet.” Toni stands and smiles. “You ready to get out of here?”
“Sure.” I’m proud of myself that I was able to keep my cool. What I really want to do is sprint to the van, but I follow Toni’s casual pace and cringe as sweat trickles down my spine.
When we’re in the van again, Toni goes to the back, opening up the laptop. She clicks the touch pad a few times and turns the screen to face me. “Lookie, lookie.” She’s smiling.
The camera inside the black box has a fish-eye lens, allowing it to pick up almost the entire back side of the house and the yard. The only thing we can’t see is the yard on the north side and the back corner, parallel with the camera.
“Not bad.” I nod in appreciation. “How much battery does that camera have?”
“Forty-eight hours, give or take.”
“Wow. That’s impressive.”
“Lithium ion. Waterproof too. I love gadgets.” She closes the laptop and stands to go to the front of the van. I swivel to the front so she doesn’t have to climb over my legs.
“Where to now?” I ask.
“Last part. And this is my favorite part, by the way.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
She laughs. “You’re going to love it, I promise.” She pulls out of the driveway of the abandoned house and goes back to the other street we were on before. She stops at the corner and parks on the side of the road behind another car.
Once she’s done, with the engine off, she goes into the back. She’s all the way in the rear of the van, so I can’t see anything that she’s doing.
Her voice sounds muffled. “Come out and play, Polly. Polly want a cracker?”
“Please tell me you don’t have a parrot back there.” I twist around farther to see better.
“Oh, but I do have a parrot back here.” She giggles like a mad scientist.
She comes to the front of the van and holds something black out in front of her. “Behold: Polly.”
“What is that?” It looks like a small black X with helicopter blades on it in four places.
“This is a drone. She’s my Parrot.” She cackles with glee. “And today she’s going to go sit on a pole and spy for us.”
I reach out to touch it, but Toni stops me with a sharp slap to the back of my hand.
“Ow!”
“Don’t touch. She’s mine.”
I lift an eyebrow. “She has a camera on her. I think that makes her mine too.”
Toni’s eyes narrow. “Keep your paws off her or else.”
My jaw drops open in surprise. Is she threatening me?
Then her expression changes and she smiles. “Gotcha.” She motions for me to join her. “Come on back here and help me fly this bitch.”
I feel like a kid in a toy store. I’m so excited. I never outgrew getting gadgets for Christmas and my birthday, and this is one hell of a gadget. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I thought all those stories in the news about drones were science fiction.
Toni clicks on a program on her computer, and a black window opens. She presses a button on the drone, and in a couple seconds, the window on the computer flickers. I can barely make out the interior of the van, where the drone is pointing.
“Whoa.”
She hands it to me. “Here. Be careful with it. In a minute I’m going to send you outside with it.”
My enthusiasm is tempered by the reality of our situation. “Outside the van, you mean?”
She pauses in her keystrokes to look at me. “Where else would I mean?” She shakes her head in disappointment and then starts clicking her keys again. “As soon as I have this ready, you’re going to go outside the van and put Polly on the ground. I’ll launch her up, and then my goal is to get her on that light pole just behind the van.”
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because. The bird’s-eye view is awesome for catching daily activity and vehicles and sometimes people too.” She frowns. “Not always great at getting faces, but still, valuable intel worth getting.”
She leans over and grabs a big black box. It has hand controls on it, joysticks and buttons. She flicks a switch and it goes on.
“Okay, so, hold Polly from underneath and away from your face. I’m going to check her props.”
I do as I’m told and hold the thing as far from me as I can. My arm muscles ache with the effort, even though it weighs not much more than a feather.
It vibrates as the propellers start to buzz. They’re going so fast, they’re a blur.
“Good. We’re all set. Go outside and put it on the curb behind the van. Take this with you.” She hands me a walkie-talkie. “I want you to let me know of any problems that you see.”
“Problems?” I’m picturing bad guys with guns.
“Yeah, like power lines I might not see in the monitor or whatever.”
“Oh. Okay. I can do that.” I think. Being almost a whole block down from the target house makes me feel a little safer than I did in the backyard behind it, but not much.
“Go. We have to get back soon.”
A glance at my watch tells me that time flies when you’re scared shitless that you’re going to get discovered on a surveillance run. I’m not unhappy about that. It sure beats time crawling.
I step outside the van with the drone in one hand and my walkie-talkie in the other. Behind the vehicle in two seconds, I put the drone down on the curb.
A voice comes out from the two-way radio, so low I can barely hear it.
“We good?” Toni asks.
I look all over the device for a button, pressing one on the side experimentally. The static that was there is gone. “Um, yeah. We’re all good.” I let go of the button.
“Good. Now step back a little. I don’t want to hit you with this thing.”
I walk back a couple strides, but it’s not enough. The drone takes off straight up about one foot and then veers to the side, slamming into my thigh.
“Ow, shit, mother fu . . .” I hop around on one leg, trying to keep the shout from leaving my lungs.
“What just happened?” comes a voice over the speaker.
I grab it and press the button. “You ran the thing into my leg!” There’s going to be a bruise, I know it.
“Oh. Sorry. Let’s try this again.”
Again?! What am I, the crash test dummy?
I grumble as I pick up the drone that’s fallen to its side in the street. I put it down on the curb again and go around the back of the van until I’m at its side. This way I can peek around the corner and watch from a safe distance.
The propellers start up again, and the device rocks back and forth. It rises slowly from the ground and hovers near the back of the van. I move farther toward the side of the vehicle. Now I can hear it, but I can’t see it. The whir of the blades is whisper soft. I’m sure none of the neighbors will notice a thing.
Suddenly, it appears around the side of the van.
“Ack!” I run backward, but it follows me.
I scramble for my walkie-talkie. “Stop chasing me with that thing!”
It surges forward at me and then at the last second goes backward and sideways, banging into the side of the van before hitting the street.
I’m nearly out of breath with the panic of my near miss. I press the button on my radio. “What the hell, Toni, is this some kind of weird initiation?”
Her voice comes out as a growl. “Just get the damn thing and come back inside.”
I approach it carefully, nudging it with my toe first. It doesn’t move. Flipping it over onto its back, I bend down to retrieve it. It buzzes once, but I shake it really hard, and it stops. “Not this time, Polly, you little asshole.”