Monkey Wrench

  That would have been a few hours after…

  Swallowing hard, Stacia picked up the note and started reading.

  My dear, sweet Stacia,

  Imagine my utter shock when I logged into my bank account this morning during a break at work and found an extra one-hundred thousand dollars there! My goodness, I thought certainly the bank had made a mistake. I even called them, but no, they said it was a wire deposit, named to Marvin.

  I suppose this time he was right. He called me last night and sounded odd, rambled on, but kept saying we’d be taken care of financially.

  When I got home from work, Ed Escoletto from down the hall was waiting for me. He told me he saw what happened in the park. Everything. Including that you were exposed and you left with some men who you seemed to know. I’m guessing they’re your new friends you mentioned. He said he watched and the police questioned people. But they told Ed there wasn’t any ID on Marvin’s body. Ed said he told the police he didn’t know who Marvin was. He worried that they might come take me in if he identified Marvin. He said he knew if I’d been at work I was clear because we test every day.

  I hope you get this. I hope to a god I don’t even believe in anymore that you didn’t catch that horrible disease from your brother. If you’re reading this, I suppose you’re clear.

  I hope so.

  I pray so.

  I have a confession to make. I haven’t been running out of pills every month. I’ve been saving them up. I kept them hidden from you both. It’s taken me a couple of years to fill a bottle completely. I don’t know how many are in there, but I’m sure it’s over a hundred.

  I hope it’s enough.

  If I’m still breathing when you find this, please close the door and walk away and come back later. Let me end this now. The only reason I hung on for so long was Marvin. I knew years ago you would be okay. I don’t mean that to sound cruel, or harsh. It’s not that I loved you less than him. But I knew you could take care of yourself if something happened to me.

  I am so proud of you. And I love you so, so much. And it’s okay, because I know you love me, too. Don’t feel you left anything unsaid to me, because you haven’t. I adore you and hope you will be able to go on and do great things in your life with this money. Years ago, I’d put you both on all my accounts as my beneficiaries. You will inherit the apartment at its current rate. You will get my benefit payments, my life insurance, which isn’t much but still, it’s more than we had before. You can already access the bank account. My wedding ring is in my purse. Please, take it. Sell it if you want. Or hold on to it if you feel nostalgic. Either is fine with me.

  Have me cremated, please. Scatter my ashes in the Pacific Ocean if you can. It’s where I scattered Tom when I got his ashes back. Together, he and I will forever be part of the waters.

  That’s a comforting thought.

  Now no more tears. Call the undertaker and have them come for me and please, please live your life. Be happy. Smile. Take risks. You have the freedom to do that now, before it weighs too heavily on you. And no telling how long you might have if Kite has its way. So enjoy your life. Make every day one you’re proud of.

  I love you. Remember, I’m out of pain now. I’ve had arthritis since my late twenties. That’s over forty years of suffering.

  I’ve had enough. I have no more fight in me, and now I don’t need to keep fighting.

  Love you, sweetheart.

  Darla.

  Stacia closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. In and out, trying to keep the choking sobs quiet and from turning into agonized screams of grief that would alert the whole building.

  The room spun. She dropped to her knees and curled up in a ball, still heaving huge gusts of air in and out of her lungs as the grief threatened to take her.

  Not both of them.

  Please, not both of them.

  Marvin had not been the world’s best brother, but he hadn’t been the worst, either. He’d been able to coax a smile from her during times when no one else could. He could be infuriating, but she knew he loved her and Aunt Darla.

  And now the only other family she had in the world was gone.

  Alone.

  She didn’t know how long she lay there, curled up, when she heard the knock on the front door. When she didn’t answer, whoever it was repeated it, and again, calling out her name.

  Two voices.

  Quack and Lima.

  Unsteadily, she pushed herself to her feet and aimed for the bedroom door, the note still clutched in her hand. She ended up needing to brace one hand on the wall to keep from collapsing.

  The men were pounding on the front door by the time she finally reached it and snapped the deadbolt open. Then they rushed in, their expressions turning furious when they got a look at her.

  “What happened?” Quack demanded, on full alert. “Are you all right?”

  Lima protectively pulled her into his arms and that was when she shoved the letter at Quack.

  He took it, closing and locking the front door behind them, as he scanned the note.

  His expression immediately softened. “Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry. Is she…”

  She closed her eyes, nodding, unable to say it.

  She couldn’t.

  Could not.

  “Where?”

  She waved her hand toward the bedrooms and began sobbing against Lima’s chest.

  “What?” Lima quietly asked Quack.

  She heard the paper exchange hands and then Quack’s footsteps as he walked over to the bedroom.

  Then his sharp intake of breath.

  Followed by Lima’s.

  Make it better, make it better, please make it better…

  She chanted it over and over in her mind.

  She didn’t realize she was saying it out loud until she felt Quack rejoin them, his body gently cradling hers, both of them, their arms around her.

  “We can’t make this better, sweetheart,” Quack sadly said. “I’m so, so sorry. We wish we could. All we can do is help you through it. I promise, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now, it does get easier. I swear. And we won’t leave your side.”

  Lima pressed his lips against the top of her head. His breath felt warm against her scalp. “We will not leave you alone, baby. We promise. You’ll come with us.”

  At some point she realized she was lying on the couch, her head in Lima’s lap, and she heard the sound of Quack talking on the phone.

  Then at some other point, a knock on the door, and Quack opening it, talking to a couple of men who brought something inside.

  Then Quack knelt next to the sofa, stroking her forehead. “Do you want to say good-bye to her?”

  She nodded.

  The men tenderly helped her up. She refused to open her eyes, to look, until they had her standing next to the stretcher.

  Her aunt looked peaceful. Calm.

  Content.

  Happy.

  Leaning in, Stacia kissed her forehead and gently stroked her brow. “I love you. Thank you for taking care of us all these years. Thank you for being a mom to us. Thank you for loving us. I will never forget you.”

  Then she stepped back and the world went black.

  * * * *

  When Stacia opened her eyes, she thought maybe she’d dozed off for a nap and had a horrible nightmare. She was lying in her bed, fully clothed, with a comfortable, Quack-sized and Quack-scented body spooning her.

  His arms were wrapped around her, his hands clasping hers.

  Out in the apartment she heard the washer and dryer both going.

  He nuzzled the back of her head. “Hey.”

  She didn’t speak. If she didn’t speak, she could maintain this illusion, this blessedly grief-free bubble of momentary sanity, that all was well with the world around her.

  That her family was alive.

  Delicious aromas wafted into the bedroom. Her stomach angrily growled in response and she realized it’d been at least twelve hours since she’d ea
ten. Maybe longer.

  “Lima’s making dinner,” he softly said, nuzzling the nape of her neck again.

  Not sexily, not looking for nookie.

  Gently, tenderly.

  Lovingly.

  She drew in a hitching breath.

  She rolled to face him, burying her head against his chest. Maybe if she tried hard enough, he could swallow her whole and she could quit feeling.

  Maybe then it would go away. All of it.

  “You need to eat,” he said. “You’re going to get sick if you don’t. Your body is telling you it needs fuel.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Eventually, he tipped her face up to his and waited until she finally opened her eyes and looked into his. The little flecks of gold in his brown eyes looked subdued in this light, almost amber.

  “We love you,” he said. “You are not alone.”

  “When you leave—”

  “You leave with us.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  It was a statement of fact.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “You’ve got a natural knack for mechanics. We’ll find some books and load them on a tablet for you and you can read and learn and work on anything we need worked on. We’ll teach you everything we know about surviving. And we will be your family.”

  “Papa isn’t going to want another person to drag around.”

  “You don’t understand, he will be your family, too. Everyone. You will be part of us. And you will never be alone again.”

  “What about Kite?”

  “We’ll face it together. Either we’ll fix it, or it’ll get us all at once. The only thing I’m frightened of is walking out that door and you not being with us when we do.”

  She heard the bedroom door open, and a blast of the previously wafting aroma engulfed her like a tsunami.

  Her stomach growled again in response.

  Lima walked over and sat next to her on the bed, capturing one of her hands and bringing it to his lips to kiss it. “Hey, dinner’s ready. You have to eat.”

  Despite her stomach’s protests to the contrary, she shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “You can,” he gently said, “if we have to sit here all night spoon-feeding you. And don’t think we won’t do it.” He gave her a little smile.

  She couldn’t smile, didn’t know if she’d ever smile again, but eventually she nodded.

  “Good girl.” He kissed her hand again and stood, holding on to her and coaxing her up. Between him and Quack, they got her out of the bedroom and into a chair at the table.

  He’d made a thick stew, with chunks of beef in it.

  “Where’d you get beef?” she asked.

  “The store.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “As long as you needed to be,” Lima said. “We didn’t leave you alone, either. One or both of us was always with you. Your body and mind needed to shut down for a little while. It’s okay. You obviously needed a system reboot.” He smiled a little.

  She nodded.

  His smile faded. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I mean it. You’re not alone. Alone is the last thing you ever will be again. Now eat.”

  With a sigh, she picked up her spoon.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The men helped Stacia pack a couple of bags of things to take with them back to their safe house for the night. They would return with her in a day or two to help her sort the rest and decide what to do.

  She sat between them in the truck on the ride back, silent, numb. Quack was driving.

  Losing Marvin had felt like getting gutted with a dull butter knife.

  Losing Aunt Darla hurt, but more like an amputation with full anesthesia. Part of her was missing and she felt the ache of the phantom limb and probably always would.

  Could she ever recover from either loss?

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  Lima answered. “We’re trying to find the next doctor—”

  She firmly shook her head. “I want to blow that building up. You said two of your guys can blow shit up, right? Let’s go do it.”

  “Eh, logistics, babe,” Quack said. “We kind of need a plan.”

  “I’ll tell you what the farking plan is,” she said. “We walk in there and blow it the fark up.”

  Lima waved his hand. “Oh, sure, when you say it like that.”

  “We can’t stop the people who’ve already been sent out. Marvin said they were supposedly flying him out that night. But we can stop them from doing it to more people. At this facility, at least.”

  Quack coughed. “Um, about that.”

  “What?”

  “The volunteers. Bubba sicced Arliss on it after he finally broke the encryption and pulled the itineraries from the computer system yesterday afternoon. Arliss commandeered two other SOTIF teams who were on-continent. They split up, fanned out, and got them. All but one of the people who were sent out were captured and killed just after arriving at the airports. Bubba had tail and transponder numbers for the planes. The people literally didn’t know what hit them.”

  “What about the one they didn’t get?”

  “It was a volunteer from the first batch sent out, and the team didn’t get there in time. She got away, but they got the other members of that group.”

  “She?”

  “Korey. Isn’t that the chick you said your brother—”

  “Yeah.” She closed her eyes, trying not to hear the naive woman’s Kentucky twang in her mind. “Where?”

  “Seattle. They’ve got the remainders of the two teams en route to search for her based on the training info Bubba decoded. But overall, that’s a pretty damn good success rate.”

  “But not for Seattle, if she spreads it around.”

  “Maybe she will, maybe not. On the plus side, they’re having a chilly, wet spring. It’s harder for the virus to spread in those conditions.”

  “Not if it’s direct-injected. And we’re coming up on summer.”

  “True. But incidental contact, at least, will be more difficult.”

  “Why can’t they put out alerts or something about her?”

  “Because they don’t want the public to panic, for starters. Also, we don’t want to alert Silo that we’re onto his operation. He’s liable to scuttle everything before we can recover evidence.”

  “I still want to blow the fucking place up.”

  “Alrighty, then,” Quack said. “We’ll see what we can arrange for you. We happen to know a couple of guys.”

  Lima draped an arm around her and snugged her close, kissing the top of her head. “Our baby wants big boom, then our baby gets big boom.”

  * * * *

  When they returned to the safe house, Lima gathered everyone around to tell them what happened with Stacia’s aunt. Stacia sat and listened, still emotionally numb in some ways.

  And ragged and raw in others.

  “I’m sorry about your aunt,” Papa said. “She sounds like she was a remarkable woman.”

  “Thank you. She was.” She tried not to break down crying. She was supposed to be Ak. An ass-kicker. Not some fucking wussy little whiner.

  Digging her nails into her palms, she sat there and focused on breathing as Lima and Quack took over the discussion.

  Papa agreed. “Based on what Bubba has found out about their plan, that place needs to be erased ASAP. In the final batch of files Bubba decrypted, he also found the security badge files for the workers, which included pictures. None of the people they have listed match what we have for the people on The List, but they’ll get us access to the lab part of the facility.”

  “You sure?” Quack asked. “Fake names, maybe?”

  “I had Q and Sin personally look at the files to make sure. They’re willing to swear none of the badge pictures of the people they saw looked anything like the people they spent a couple of years locked up with in a lab in North Korea. Disguised or not.”

  “We are
sure,” Q said. “But we must search that lab first. Their research notes indicated they were close to formulating a vaccine. I do not want us to lose valuable samples we might need.”

  “I can make you swipe badges from the files Bubba got,” Lima said. “Won’t have pictures, but you won’t need them. All we need is a few minutes to get in there so Q and Sin can play scavenger hunt, and then Yankee and Oscar can do their thing.”

  “What do we do about any personnel we come across?” Quack asked.

  “Use extreme prejudice,” Papa said.

  That was the short way of saying that no one but their own people made it out of the building alive, regardless of who they were, civvies or volunteers or whatever.

  No witnesses.

  “Okay then,” Yankee said. “So we’re clear to blow that fucking place up?”

  “I want to blow it up,” Stacia quietly said.

  Everyone stared at her, then looked at Papa.

  He slowly nodded. “Gentlemen, it’s time for us to make a plan. And we need to do so quickly, because we want that place to be little more than smoking ashes come tomorrow morning.”

  * * * *

  Stacia didn’t give a fark about their plan. All she wanted to do was avenge her brother. And her aunt, because had Marvin not died, her aunt wouldn’t have killed herself.

  She stayed out of the men’s way and did what they told her to do. When they were ready to leave an hour later, it was close to sundown. Two of the men stayed behind at the safe house with Clara and Pandora. A caravan of several vehicles headed to the facility, each taking a different route. She rode in a car with Quack, an old Toyota solar job that looked like it was overdue for a date with a scrapyard, but was still running.

  She didn’t see what vehicle the others were in.

  “Is Lima going to be okay?” she asked.

  He reached over and patted her on the leg. “They’ll all be okay,” he said. Lima was needed inside the building in case they ran into any problems accessing the lab through the security system.

  Quack pulled over and parked on the street several blocks away. “Why are we stopping here?” she asked.