Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [85]
Unless I was wrong. Unless there were other kinds of satellites.
I racked my brain, trying to dredge up memories of CNN coverage or other news organizations showing footage from Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of those military satellites were more advanced, weren’t they?
Whoo boy. The implications made my head spin. I just might have stumbled across some whole new and exciting thing to be terrified of. I tried to catch up and calm down. I said, “Sure, fine. Tiny trackers, the size of pocket change, okay. But that’s just radio contact, old-fashioned and reliable, right?”
“Probably,” he acknowledged.
And then he started taking off his clothes.
“Not that I’m complaining, but what the hell are you doing?”
“Peter Desarme might’ve had a tracker on him. It could be anywhere, sewn into a seam or clipped into a pocket,” he said as he kicked the pants off—revealing the hilarity-inducing fact that he was still wearing the silver spangled bikini in which he’d performed earlier. Apparently this didn’t call for any comment on his part, and if he noticed I was looking, he didn’t bring it up. “Here,” he said, chucking the pants at me. “Feel around all the seams, turn the pockets inside out. Do you have a washer or dryer here?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, we’re going to have to run all this stuff through them, on the highest heat settings.”
“Even if we don’t find anything?” I took the pants and began pinching around the bottom hem, feeling for … I didn’t know what, exactly.
“Especially if we don’t find anything. If we find something, we can rip it out and toss it into the microwave. If we don’t, and we want to play it safe, we’ll have to destroy the potential threat somehow or another. A good hot-water wash and an hour in the dryer ought to do it.”
“I still don’t know what I’m feeling for.”
“Anything that doesn’t belong. Something the size of a shirt button, or maybe as big as a dime. Just … keep looking.” He was down to the spangled britches, and I was dying for him to turn around. Yes, I was still wondering about the tuck. It couldn’t be very comfortable, could it?
“Do you, uh,” I broached. “Want a robe or something?”
“If you’ve got one,” he said without looking up or standing up.
I was about to tell him he could go grab one off the back of the bathroom door, thereby forcing him to get up off the floor and walk away from me … but that felt like too much calculation even for me. So instead I wandered over there and got it for him, and tossed it on his head.
He frowned at me, removed it from his skull, and slipped his arms into it. The fit was kind of tight around his shoulders, but oh well. I’m no burly man-shaped thing, and I didn’t have any stray clothing that would fit such a body. He’d have to make do.
Without a word of thanks he tossed me the shirt he’d been wearing, a white button-up. “Give this a once-over, in case I missed anything. And give me those pants back.”
We were double-checking each other. I got it.
I was happy to accommodate him because I didn’t seriously think there was any kind of signaling device inside the clothing. Usually I can sense that stuff. I can’t smell it exactly, though there is a faint metallic, ozone-y odor that goes along with such things. It’s just a sense I get when I’m around cell phones, televisions, cameras, and the like. It might have something to do with my psychic sense, like it’s tapping that same electromagnetic whatever-the-heck. I don’t know. But I definitely wasn’t getting any vibe off the duds.
Far be it from me to discourage anyone’s paranoia, though.
We ended up sitting together on the floor, going over everything with a figurative fine-tooth comb before throwing everything in the wash to rinse out the very last of our phobias.
Following this act of domesticity, we adjourned once more to the kitchen bar and resumed drinking. We also resumed our original topic, because one thing had stuck in the back of my head.
“Hey, when was the last time you even talked to your parents?” I asked. “I got the distinct impression you weren’t in touch.” Maybe we weren’t