Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [42]
Inside, everything was quiet. Everything was always quiet for the first few minutes, while the kids worked out that there wasn’t any trouble.
I sensed them, both on the second floor where it was warmest. They weren’t upset or stressed, though their ears perked up and I received a twinge of cautious alert when they realized someone was inside. I stretched my psychic side and felt my way around the premises; I didn’t detect anybody else, so I announced, “It’s me, guys.”
From upstairs, Domino said, “Again already? Fucking-A, lady, leave us alone.”
I climbed the stairs and found Pepper at the top. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said back. “And tell your idiot brother that I’m not here to bother you. I’m here to leech the power supply, and since I pay for it, I am fully entitled to do so.”
“My brother is an idiot,” she said, but there was no malice in it—just agreeable acquiescence.
I was already extricating my laptop from the bag. “See? I knew you were smarter than him,” I told her. “Tell me, short-stuff—where’s the nearest power outlet in this joint?”
I so rarely needed them that I didn’t know where they were located.
“By the light, I guess.” She pointed at the contraption whose lightbulb I’d broken, then replaced, on my last visit. It was plugged into a raised spot on the floor.
“Right. Dumb question.” I pulled up an elderly dining room chair to the crate I’d stood on the night before, and voilà—makeshift work space. “Don’t mind me. I’m having a scatterbrained kind of night here.”
“It happens to the best of us,” she said.
My God, how the hell did that poor kid end up so much older than her years? Half the time when I talk to her, I feel like I’m addressing a forty-year-old woman.
I checked the laptop to make sure that the wireless card was disabled. So far as I knew, there wasn’t any free WiFi in the area, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Not anymore. No more sloppy operations for me. I wiggled the safety prong into the power outlet and let my machine boot.
“Hey guys, gather ‘round, would you? We need to have a little talk,” I said as I waited for the screen to come alive.
“Screw you,” Domino said. He didn’t move away, and he didn’t come any closer.
Pepper came to sit at my feet. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
I smiled down at her because it was hard not to. “What are you, my therapist now?” Everything restarted on cue, bringing my screen back up to full function with a grouchy little window at the bottom complaining about the lack of an Internet connection. I closed it away.
“What’s a therapist?”
“It’s …” I reached into my purse and pulled out the thumb drive. “A doctor who makes you talk about your problems. But that’s not the point. The point is, I need for you two to go on serious lookout duty over the next few days. Or maybe even few weeks.”
“Serious lookout duty?” The boy was mocking my tone, but he was also interested in what I was saying. He liked a challenge, and I liked that about him. It made him easy to manipulate.
“That’s right, bucko.” I clicked while I talked, prompting the machine and telling it to open the PDF in whatever program it liked best, but for chrissake open it already. “I might’ve gotten myself into a little bit of trouble with the government.”
“Is that why the man in black came inside?” Pepper asked.
I didn’t like the way she put it. “Man in black.” Men in black are always trouble, without a doubt. I said, “No, I don’t think so. I think he was more of a random intruder, though I can’t be sure. But be on the lookout for more guys like him, just in case. And there might be other people, too—real official-looking people who have badges and guns.” The fear level in the room rose a notch. It radiated from both young parties.
The PDF took forever and a day to sort itself out through Adobe. This no doubt had something to do