What Lies Ahead

Destiny Saga, IV

By

T. Starnes

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

About The Author

Other Books By T. Starnes

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

What Lies Ahead

Destiny Saga, Volume IV

Copyright ©2015 by T. Starnes

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-9968-6684-2

0996866841

Signup to get free previews of upcoming books before they’re released at

http://tstarnes.com/preview-notification-newsletter/

Chapter 1

Summer was over, and it was time to get this new year started.

I know that the year starts in January; but when you're in school, it always feels like it really starts in August, as that's when school is back in session. Our Caribbean vacation had been ... interesting, but it was now over, and there was a lot to do.

While I had taken a month off for a little R&R, Ronald had been making steady progress on his desalinization project. The initial funding for New Life had gone through, and the charity was ready to take on projects. Of course, Carter Talmon had also begun sending over messages concerning updates on Emily.

The way this year had started was a pretty clear sign that it would be just as wild as the previous year.

I was going out for my early run; alone, as usual. The girls didn't mind doing exercise with me, but they still thought my early morning wake-up run was insane, and refused to join me. So the house was silent as normal when I walked out the front door.

That was when I got my first surprise. There was a car sitting in front of my house, across my driveway. Standing at the front fender of it, were two men. The first word that popped into my head when I saw them, was 'goons'. They were beefy, dressed in suits, and both were giving me hard stares.

I had no idea what they wanted, but people with harmful intentions towards me had become more common than I would have liked. I knew to recognize the signs when I saw them, and these two definitely had negative thoughts towards me in mind.

I headed towards them, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

'I probably won't be helping them, but you have to start these situations somewhere,' I thought as I edged closer.

Mostly, what I needed to do was buy time while I got to within arms reach of them. If there was one thing I had learned acutely over the last six months, it was that all the training and enhanced musculature in the world, did little good against guns. So, I needed to stall as I closed the gap, in case they were armed.

"Your name Caspian Grey?" the larger of the two men said.

"Yes," I replied, edging closer.

"You need to come with us," the bigger man said.

"Who is us?" I asked, now within arm's reach.

"People you should listen to," he said, pulling aside his coat, revealing the butt of a gun.

That seemed particularly stupid. I was now well within arms reach and his gun was holstered. There was absolutely no chance he could pull his weapon before I got hands on him.

"No," I told him, getting a good balance, ready to move.

I guess he finally realized he was in a bad position. He took half a step back, bumping into his car, and started reaching for his weapon. My right hand snaked out and impacted, knuckle first, with his throat. He dropped towards the ground making gurgling sounds and clutching his neck. I hadn't hit him hard enough to damage his windpipe, or permanently cut of his air flow, but he would be speaking in a strained voice for several days. I followed that with a left hook, contacting solidly with the side of his head as he went down.

As he went down, his friend started reaching into the side of his jacket. Dollars to donuts said he had a gun in there. I reversed the movement of my right hand, gabbing at his elbow and pulling it towards me. While I was strong, this wasn't a position for good leverage against him, so I allowed him to pull against my grip. This wasn't the end of my planned move, however.

It added his body weight to the force I was putting on his arm when I kicked into the side of his right knee. The angle was wrong to break it, but considering the way he started to crumple in my direction, I most likely damaged it quite badly.

I twisted and kept pulling his arm as he dropped to his good knee, ending up between him and the car. My twisting motion and the sudden help from gravity allowed me to pull his arm all the way back. Leading with my knee, I landed on his back, forcing him onto his face. Sliding my grip to his wrist, I continued twisting, bringing his arm behind his back, both immobilizing him, and allowing me to cause pain in his arm if he tried to buck me.

"Who are you," I said in his ear.

It took a moment for him to answer, and when he did it was with in a pained voice.

"I work for Joe Richards."

I had no idea who that was, let alone why he would send people to my house looking for me.

"What do you want with me," I asked.

He didn't answer me right away, so I twisted his arm a bit further to give him a little nudge. Sweat was starting to collect on his forehead from the pain.

"Mr. Richards wants you to leave. We were supposed to take you to a quiet place, and convince you to leave Texas."

"Why?"

"I don't know. You interfered with something that involved him, and he wants you gone."

I had gotten into a few things since last August. A bunch of those could have been the cause for someone getting pissed at me, although nothing I had done had struck me as notable enough to bump against some kind of organized crime. Which is what these two practically shouted in the way they acted.

Maybe it was connected to the MilTech thing, last year. But the owner had seemed pretty stand-up, and it didn't seem likely that one of the now fired VPs who had set up the hit on me and my partners would have had that kind of backing without it touching the CEO. But then, there was the hired muscle he sent. That had to come from somewhere. It's not like you could just take an ad out in the paper for that kind of thing.

At that moment the front door opened and Mom stuck her head out. We hadn't made that much commotion, but a glance out the front window would have been enough. And most school mornings she would keep an eye out for me to return from my run so she could wake up the girls and cook breakfast.

"Call 911," I said. "These guys jumped me, and are armed."

She looked surprised, but didn't say anything. She just turned and disappeared into the house to make the call. She left the front door open, and after a few moments, the girls came pouring out of the house in t-shirts and shorts. Vicki brought some kind of rope, although who knows where she got it. They trussed up both men, allowing me to get off the guy I was holding down.

A patrol car showed up a few minutes later.

"Where are the guys with guns?" the first officer asked as he stepped out of his car.

He was on the other side of the two goon’s car, and since they were tied up on the ground he couldn't see them.

"Right down here, officers," I said, pointing down and stepping back.

The two cops came around the car and found our prisoners.

"Well, that makes this easier," he said.

"We didn't do nothin," the guy who had been unconscious said.

"Yeah, yeah," the cop said as he patted the guy down, "what do we have here."

He pulled a gun out of the guy's suit jacket, and after a little more checking did the same with the other goon.

"I hope you two are licensed to carry these," he said as he started to handcuff, and then untie the first one.

"Lawyer," the goon told him.

They handcuffed and freed the second goon and stuck both in the back of their patrol car.

"What happened here," the police officer asked after the guys were secured.

"I was coming out for my morning run, and these two guys were waiting outside for me. They told me I had to go with them. When I declined, they started to go for their weapons, so I put them down."

"You put them down?" the officer asked a bit incredulously.

"Bill, this is that kid who was in all those fights and that shootout last year," the other officer said.

"Ohh, yeah, ok," he said to his partner before turning back to me. "You are going to have to come with us, give us a statement, and file charges on the attempted abduction."

"Can he give you his statement now, and then come down to the station and do the rest of the stuff this afternoon. He has the first day of school today," Mom said.

She had made it very clear, earlier in the week, that school was still my priority. I couldn't just get by on my genetically super-charged brain. If she thought I wasn't trying, she was going to bring the hammer down. I guess that included letting little things like an attempted kidnapping distract me.

I know most teenagers would have chafed at that kind of thing; but after so long without a real family, having a parent lay down the law felt nice. I had gone so far as to call up Ted, Marcus, Carter and everyone else the previous week, telling them I would be getting back to the grind after I got the new school year started. I had also reminded them they had done a pretty good job of keeping things running before a pushy teenager came into their lives, and I was confident they would be able to live without me for a while.

"Yeah, fine," he said. "Just write out your statement, and make sure to come down to the station. We can hold them at least until then, on a firearms charge."

I filled out the statement, and the cops left with their prisoners. With all that taken care of, we went in to change for school. Thanks to the morning’s adventure, we needed to skip breakfast. It was annoying, but what can you do?

One area where we didn't have any trouble was how to get to school. Near the end of our trip, Vicki had turned sixteen. Her dad had a car waiting for her when she came home. What that meant was our transportation woes were at an end, although it created a new problem. The year before, we all rode to school together. I knew the girls wanted to keep doing that, but there would be many days I would need to go to the office right after school, while they were still in cheerleader practice.

So we ended with a compromise. Vicki picked up Tami while Zoe rode with me. I figured the days I'd have to head out, Zoe could catch a ride back with Vicki and Tami. On the other days, Zoe and Tami could switch. Plus, it's not like we didn't see a lot of each other.

The first stop that morning was a meeting with Mrs. Polaski and Mrs. Runkle, about our accelerated classes program.

"Now that we are all here," Mrs. Runkle said when the girls and I walked in.

We had tried our best to make up for lost time in getting ready, but were still five minutes late for the meeting. The girls were already annoyed because they had planned on looking put together and ready for their first day, and now it was pony tails and casual clothes. I didn't mind, since t-shirt and jeans was my preferred dress, but I knew better than to point that out.

"Sorry, Mrs. Runkle," I said.

"Yes, well, please try to be more punctual next time, Caspian," she said with a half grin. She had always been really nice to me, so I knew she was just messing with me.

"So," she continued, "last year you all managed to finish off all of your freshman and sophomore math and science classes, as well as the rest of your freshman requirements. The plan for this year is to take what are normally junior level math and science courses. We'll double up on your English and History classes, like we did for math and science last year. That means, at the end of this year, with the exception of electives, you will have finished off all the classes for your junior year, leaving us a lot of options for both AP and college level courses in your final two years here at Truman."

"Now, you all did excellently last year. Mrs. Polaski and I were very happy with your performance; but I will warn you, this year will be harder. Doubling up on English and History courses means you will be writing a lot of papers and essays this year. You will find your workload this year will be greater that it was last year. But I think you can handle it."

Mrs. Polaski stood up and said, "I want to add to what Mrs. Runkle just said. You have been excellent students this last year, and I have every confidence you will be able to do us proud. The school board has been evaluating this pilot program and several other districts have been making inquiries into our program, and seeing if it is viable for their schools. So, keep working hard."

"Your schedules are all up with the secretary. Please get them on the way out."

Mrs. Runkle wasn't kidding about how aggressive our schedule was going to be this year. They had streamlined the classes so that basically, each class was just the group of us in the advanced program. We had grown at this point to thirteen students, including Sarah who had tested into the program. The girls had the most to do with that. Sarah was very bright, but had mostly kept to herself in school before joining our group. The girls had decided she could handle the work and spent a lot of time over the summer break working with her so she would be ready.

There were also a few other kids I did not know particularly well, but they all seemed focused and smart. I was glad there were people not connected to us in the program now. Having my people make up the bulk of the program stood out too much for me. Maybe I was paranoid, but it was always something little that gave away the big secrets.

In each class we got our syllabuses and went over what was going to happen this year, and it became readily apparent what was going to happen was writing. Lots of it. To make up for the accelerated program, instead of a lot of little assignments, History and English classes were pretty much tests and essay papers, and that was it; besides, the tests themselves would be largely essay based as well.

While I wasn't worried about being able to do the work, papers take time to write, and this year was already looking to be a lot busier than the previous year. I wanted to take a bigger hand at the office, getting more projects shepherded through. The close call with the drone project had shown me we had too many eggs in one basket. I needed to get more projects in the works. My long term goals would require money. Lots of it, and this was the best way I could see to getting that.

After school, the girls all planned on riding back with Zoe after their practice was over. That was a benefit of not being involved in a school sport anymore, it freed up a lot of my afternoons. Vicki wasn't involved either, but she liked to go to the girls practices. The three of them were practically attached at the hip, and it was rare to see them not together any more. It wasn't something I had really spent time thinking about, but I made a mental note to talk to Alex about it at some point. While each was still her own woman, they were becoming more and more in sync, every day. It was a little unnerving, actually.

First, I needed to head to the police station and fill out the paperwork, and to file charges against the goons.

"Hi, I am supposed to come in this afternoon and file a charge against the two guys that tried to grab me this morning," I said.

After getting all the details, and typing a few things in the computer, the desk sergeant said, "I don't see anything like that in here. Normally, the patrol officer will open a case in the system with the suspected party's name and information, and mark it as waiting for the complainant. But I see nothing with your name in here. Do you know the names of the guys who were brought in?"

"No, but he said they were going to hold them on a weapons charge. They were carrying guns this morning."

He typed some more and said, "No, I have nothing on that, either."

I was starting to get frustrated by the bureaucracy, when one of the two officers walked through the squad room behind the desk sergeant.

"There, he's one of the officers who arrested them, this morning," I said, pointing at the man.

"Ok, take a seat," he said, getting up and heading over to the officer.

I sat down, but could still see them from where I was. The two men were talking for a moment, and then headed to an open desk, where they did more computer work. After a few minutes the officer from this morning looked confused, and both men headed for a doorway and disappeared.

Almost twenty minutes went by with me just sitting and waiting. Once, another police officer came through with someone in handcuffs, but that was it. Finally, the officer and the desk sergeant both returned.

"I don't know what happened," the officer said. "There is no record of the arrest this morning. The paperwork my partner filed is not there, and no one down in the holding area can remember seeing them. It's like it never happened."

"What the hell. What about their guns, you guys probably took those?"

"Nope," the desk sergeant said, "there is nothing in 'Property'. If Taylor, here, was not confirming your story, I would have just assumed you were confused. Because other than you and him saying it happened, there is no record of anything."

"What can we do? I don't want those guys just showing up at my house, again."

"I'm going to talk to my Lieutenant," the officer said. "I will call you when I find out more. Trust me, I am as concerned about this as you are."

And to his credit, he did seem concerned. I'm just glad he was there, otherwise I would have been blown off by the desk sergeant, as a crank.

I was annoyed by what happened at the station, but it pushed me into doing something I had been thinking about. The way things had been going, both during the previous year and on the cruise over the summer, I felt we needed to keep in contact more. With the events this morning, and then what happened at the police station, I believed this more than ever. So my next stop was to pick up some cell phones.

I was a little concerned over the cost, as the rate per minute charge on these things could rack up a bill pretty fast. A kid at school the year before had convinced her parents to get her a cell phone ‘for emergencies’ and managed to end up with a three thousand dollar phone bill at the end of the first month. Of course, considering how my finances had grown over the last year, worrying about what the phones might cost seemed silly. Even if all the girls did that kind of damage every month, it still wouldn’t put much of a dent in our finances.

I didn't go fancy. I just picked up the base model phones for me, the girls, Tina, and Alex. I had actually picked up one more without thinking about it until it occurred to me I was still counting Emily among our number. She was still on my mind, and all through the summer she had crept up, in little ways like that. My subconscious was having a hard time letting her go. I bought all the phones, along with the chargers and various accessories we would need. The guy in the phone store was particularly dubious about a teenager walking in and dropping a bunch of money on cell phones. He even went so far as to call the bank and verify that my credit card was good.

But, I was able to get the phones, and I headed back home.

My afternoon had been busy enough that I was the last one home. I called everyone together and told them about what happened at the police station.

"So there are two thugs out there who not only want to scare you into leaving town, but are probably pissed that you beat them up?" Mom asked, sounding scared.

"Yes, but I am less worried about them, than about the implications of what this means," I said.

"What implications?" Tina asked.

"That these guys were just let go, and any record of their arrest was erased. That means they are connected, big time. Put that with the fact that they were just hired muscle for someone else, someone I apparently upset; and it can mean real, serious, trouble. These two guys are just the tip of the problem."

"What are we going to do about it?" Zoe asked.

"There's nothing we can do, right now, but just be careful," I told her. "To that end, I bought everyone a cellphone."

I reached into the bag I was carrying and started handing them out.

"Please keep these with you at all times. I want us all to be able to reach each other as needed, in case of emergency. These things are expensive, so these aren’t for just chatting with friends; but if you need to use them, use them. Hopefully they can help keep us safe until we figure out what's going on, and what we can do about it."

The conversation about the men dwindled after a few more questions, since really there was nothing we could do about it at the moment. They also had their new phones to keep them entertained. Except for the cruise this summer, and a reasonable car for me, there had been little change in our lives since I came into money. Mom still worked. She loved her job, and didn't want to give it up. Plus, her lab gave us access to run tests on me and the girls as needed.

While the conversation about what had happened might have come to an end, I was more concerned than ever. This felt like the start of something, and I just knew it was going to get worse before it got better.

Chapter 2

When I went out for my run the next morning, Zoe was up and ready to go with me. Apparently, the girls had decided I needed a bodyguard. Luckily, there was no repeat of yesterday's visitors. Still, I kept my eyes peeled as we ran, looking for anything out of place.

When we got back, everyone was up and waiting on us. My best guess is most of them got up when I left and they were waiting in case something happened.

"I'm glad y'all decided to start getting up with me. Maybe you should all start running with me in the mornings."

"Fat chance," Vicki said over her bowl of cereal. "I now have a super metabolism that makes it hard for me to gain weight. That means I don't need to exercise ever again. I'm thinking of it as one of the perks."

"Just think what kind of condition you would be in if you worked out?" I threw back.

"I'd rather not."

"We all need to sit down and talk about something, tonight," Mom said, cutting off my response.

She had heard this particular conversation before and the odds were good that it wasn't an accident she chose that moment to break in.

"Why, what's up?" I asked, concerned that something had happened.

"It's nothing bad. We just need to have a short family meeting. By family, I mean everyone who lives here and you two, of course," she said, indicating Tami and Vicki.

We all got off to school and the day went pretty much like the one before, since we were still settling into our classes. I watched the girls do a short cheerleading practice after school and then we all headed for the baseball field. I had put the word out the day before to members of the football team and to the cheerleaders we knew that the workouts would be starting up again today on the baseball diamond, since it was more or less unused in the fall.

I was surprised when we passed the bleachers to find almost thirty people milling around. Besides many of the football players I knew from the year before, there were kids from the track team, the baseball team, and even one guy from the water polo team.

I had honestly expected not many people to show up. We had an OK turnout the year before, but I had started this when I was still playing sports. Now that I wasn't part of any of the school teams, I figured participation would be down.

I was happy to see this many people. I may not be able to participate in sports anymore, but I still really liked it when my school's teams did well.

I wasn't going to go easy on them! I ran them ragged, as though we had never left off for the summer, picking up the program from where we left it at the end of the last school year. Some of them had continued to work out over the summer and even follow the program. You could tell who those were: they were tired at the end of the workout, but not totally wiped out.

The regulars from last year who didn't keep up the program over the summer did barely better than those who were brand new to it. Pretty much everyone who came out was athletic and in fairly good shape, so I had always designed our workout program so that someone couldn't get through it using sheer natural athleticism.

That’s one of the reasons during last year’s workout sessions I had always pushed the girls to be aware of how hard the sets of exercises were. I wanted them to react accordingly, so they didn’t stand out.

Of course, I am terrible at taking my own advice. My poor choices the previous year had already showed my unusual physical abilities to more people then I was happy with. But I couldn't put that cat back in the bag.

It had been a tough decision, but I had already suggested to the girls that they sit out the workouts this year. Even if they faked being tired, I was worried the girls would still physically stand out too much from everyone else If they slipped up just once, people could add up my abilities and their abilities and come up with something close enough to four to make me nervous.

After all, Josh … who wasn’t the most observant person I had ever met … had figured it out.

Zoe had been pissed, since she was pretty competitive, but Tami didn't care and Vicki had already made her aversion to working out known.

We finished our workout and I headed home. Carter had sent me a message before I left for school asking for a sit down to go over his surveillance of Emily.

The girls had all made it clear that they wanted to be in that meeting, so they arranged to have dinner at my house tonight. Carter was already standing in front of the house when our two cars pulled up.

"Who's watching Emily while you're back here in Texas?" I asked him as I opened the door.

"I have some guys on it. You didn't imagine I did all my surveillance solo, did you?"

"I guess I did. I mean, in my head, you always struck me as the loner PI type."

"You read too many books, kid. This gig requires a staff and employees."

"OK. Sorry to jump to conclusions. I just wanted to make sure someone was still watching her."

"As long as your checks keep clearing, kid, someone will be watching."

"So, how is she?" I asked once we were all seated.

"It's hard to tell, really. But she doesn't seem to be doing too good. She doesn't leave the house except to go to school. As far as I can tell, she hasn't made any friends. Things also seem tense with her grandparents."

"How so?" I asked.

"The three don't go out often, but they have a few times and all of those trips have been totally silent unless something specific needed to be done. Even in those cases, the conversation was kept to as minimal an amount as possible. I know teenagers can be like that. With everything she's been through, I am not surprised she is closed off, but that isn't what concerns me. It's her grandparents. They are equally shut off from her. They react fairly normally to each other, so it's not a personality thing. It’s almost as if she’s invisible to them.

"Now, I am just comparing their interactions with those of average grandparents and teenage grandchildren without any stress, so it could be the situation that's causing the awkwardness, but it feels like more than that."

"I had expected to hear from her by now," I said, more to myself then to Carter.

"I think that's her grandparents. She has put letters in the mailbox a bunch of times, just to have them come out and remove whatever she put in. The last time she put in a letter, I had one of my guys check it. It was addressed to you four. Her grandparents are keeping all of her letters and my best guess is they aren't saying anything to her about it."

"And everything you have is from observing them outside their house?" I asked.

"Yes. We are only set up for basic surveillance."

"The fact that they are purposefully cutting her off from us, and then hiding that fact from her, worries me. What do we need to do, to go to the next step in surveillance?"

"What do you mean by next step?" Carter asked.

I knew Carter well enough by this point to know he was just being cagey. He knew exactly what I was talking about and just wanted me to come out and ask directly rather than offer anything outright. I doubted it was because he didn't trust me and guessed it was probably just his natural instincts that caused him to be so cautious.

"Being able to tell what is going on inside the house. I am worried about her. I just have a bad feeling."

"You know that is illegal, right?" he asked.

"Yes."

"OK, then yeah, we can do that."

"How does she look?" Tami asked.

"Honestly? She looks sad."

I was truly pissed at her grandparents. The fact that they were stealing the letters meant for us and not telling her meant she thought she was sending the letters and we were just not responding. She probably felt abandoned by us. It made my heart break just thinking about it.

Tami clearly had the exact same thought and looked completely stricken by the news. A stray tear rolled down one of her tanned cheeks.

"Don't worry," I said, wiping the drop away with my thumb. "We will figure out some way to get in contact with her."

Tami didn't seem convinced and I didn't blame her. At the moment, there seemed to be little we could do except wait until she turned eighteen. And if her grandparents kept playing this game the whole time, she would probably hate us when the time came.

There wasn't much left to report. Carter said he had a few more stops to make before he headed back to Florida, so I walked him out.

The mood was pretty melancholy as we sat around and reminisced about Emily. The girls were all pretty upset by what was happening, but it seemed to be hitting Tami the most. Of the three of them, Tami was the most sensitive, and it was showing.

Our collective moping was interrupted by a phone call.

"Hello?" I said in an unenthusiastic voice.

"Well, that doesn't sound convincing," a familiar voice on the other end of the phone said.

"Charlie?" I asked after a few moments when I placed the voice.

We had met Charlie and his girlfriend, Sandy, over the summer. They were both college students who had big ideas for helping the poor in Mexico, with planning that left a lot to be desired. I had stepped in and helped them out, and made an offer that, if they wanted to get serious about helping people, I would show them how to do it.

"Yep, everything all right out there? You sound upset,” he asked, still sounding upbeat.

“Yeah, I just have some stuff on my mind,” I replied, trying to put a happier tone in my voice. “You should be in school now, right? How’s it going so far?”

"Pretty good. We are still settling in and trying to get our bearings. It's taking some getting used to. College is different from high school, that's for sure."

"So, what's up?" I asked, betting he wasn't just calling to shoot the breeze.

"In Mexico, you had mentioned helping us do some real work, helping people," he said.

"Yep," I replied. I was going to make him ask what he wanted to ask, even though I know where this was going.

"Well, Sandy asks me every day when I am going to call you about it. We both really want to do this. You really opened our eyes this summer."

"I'm glad to hear that, but you two need to focus on school, right now. How about this? Come down here on your Thanksgiving break. We can talk about it then, and you can even have Thanksgiving with us if you want."

"We'll need to check with our parents. We haven’t decided what we were doing this year as both our families want us to come to their houses."

"OK. Well, if not, then go spend Thanksgiving with one of your families and come down here afterward. Just let me know where you will be, and I'll get plane tickets set up for you. Is it just going to be you two?"

"No, I talked to Eddie, yesterday, and he wants in, too."

"OK. Tell him the same offer stands for him, also."

"Will do. Thanks so much, Cas."

I hung up and turned around to see all the girls in the doorway watching me, including Mom who had come home from work while I was on the phone.

"So, that was Charlie," I said.

"And you invited all three of them for Thanksgiving?" Mom asked.

I could imagine she was already starting to do the math on all the people who would want to have Thanksgiving with us and the amount of food we would have.

"Yep. They want to get started doing some charity work, and I was going to figure out some way to get them involved."

"Do you know what you'll have them do?" Tami asked.

"Not yet. I need to work on that. We have a lot to do to figure out what we want the charity to be. Remember when I said that I wanted you guys to take up some of the responsibility, to be my partners? We will need to sit down, soon, and talk about what you guys want to do. But this would be a good first item for you three to work on. What to do about Charlie, Sandy and Eddie.”

All the girls just nodded, not saying anything, but I could see the wheels turning, which was great. Not only because I thought it was important for the three of them to take ownership of the project, to make it their own, but also because it was a welcome distraction from the melancholy that hung over the room just a few minutes ago.

“We don’t have to have an answer, now,” I continued after a minute. “There are still a lot of questions that we haven’t answered. What kind of charitable activity do we want to do? Where do we want to do it? How do we want to achieve it? What is it going to be called? I have some thoughts on all this, but I would like to hear what y’all think about it, first.”

“Well,” Tami said, “we want to help people.”

“Yes, but we also want to grow support for Cas. When what he … and, I guess, we … are becomes public, we are going to need that support. So, it needs to be visible,” Zoe added.

“But, being seen doing good isn’t as important as actually doing good,” Tami replied.

“Why can’t we do both?” Vicki interjected. “We find a way to help the most people we can, and do it in the most public way possible.”

“What do you have in mind?” I asked, since it seemed like she was thinking about something in particular.

“No one thing specifically, rather a selection of things. Activities that can help multiple people, rather than a single person, like you would with a scholarship or something like that. We could do shelters and food kitchens for the homeless; that could also provide assistance in getting jobs and housing assistance from the government. Those are the most common, but we could do medical clinics, tutoring or educational help for both adults and kids, even daycare for mothers getting back into the workforce.”

“What would you need to do to set up that kind of thing?” I asked.

Her ideas weren’t far off from what I was thinking. But, right now, she was still thinking about it in the abstract. Like it was something that someone else was going to do.

“I have no idea,” Vicki said.

“Well, that’s what you three need to do. Put your heads together, figure out what we need to do. What will it cost? What's the best way to set everything up? Lay out a plan.”

“Cas, we wouldn’t even know where to start with that,” Tami objected. “Girls, you three have been given huge boosts to your intelligence. This isn’t something that is outside your ability. You just lack the experience. So, go find people who have that experience and talk to them. You already have places you can start. Jonathan and Ted would be great resources, if not for the actual information, then how to get to the information. For the medical clinic, go talk to Alex. She should be able to point you in the right direction.”

“Planning your next step in world domination?” a voice behind me asked.

I turned to find Mom standing in the doorway. I had been distracted by our conversation enough that I hadn’t heard her come into the room.

“That’s not funny,” I told her.

This was a subject I remained sensitive about. The nature of the control I was able to put on people had me worried that I would slip past the fine line I straddled into straight-out enslavement.

“I guess not,” she said, putting her bag down and finding a seat with us. “However, I'm glad you are all here, because there is something I wanted to talk to you all about.”

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“Yes, but we do have a problem. Now that Tina and you live here, and considering how much time everyone else spends here, our house is starting to feel a little small.”

She was right. We had to give up the pretense of me having my own room altogether so Tina could have the extra room, and the line for the bathroom in the morning was starting to become an issue.

“So it’s time to find a new house?” I asked, continuing her statement through to its logical conclusion.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “I’ve already spoken with Jonathan, and he has a list of properties for us to go look at this week. They will be … um …”

It was unusual to see her stumble. Usually, Mom was so self-assured and to the point. It was actually funny, since I knew what was making her hesitate.

“They will be expensive,” I supplied.

“Yes,” she said, looking away.

“I assumed that. A house big enough for all of us would have to be pretty expensive.”

“I just didn’t want you to think I was taking advantage of your success.”

“I wouldn’t have any success if it weren't for you and the girls. Everything that happened last year all came out of the support I got from you. Paying for a new house doesn’t even come close to making us even for everything you’ve given me.”

There were tears in her eyes as she came over and grabbed me in one of her bone-crushing hugs. That reinforced everything I had just said. No amount of money equaled how special Mom made me feel. There really isn’t a price you can put on love.

Chapter 3

I spent the rest of the week getting into the groove of being in school again, and trying to balance that with my increased work schedule.

If last year seemed busy, this year was starting off insane! I was going into the office every day after school, getting home and working through homework, then passing out; just so I could wake up a few hours later, to start it all over again.

I knew I couldn’t keep this up for long, and would have to find a way to make it balance.

Actually, it wouldn’t have been so bad if the rhythm of the house hadn’t changed at the same time. Mom was now spending time after work looking at properties and making plans for getting us moved when we finally bought one. While what house we bought would be a family decision, it was decided Mom would do all the initial leg work. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to help her on it. Adding to that was the girls now absorbed in their own project. They had taken my request that they figure out a plan for the charity to heart and had thrown themselves into it.

Besides brainstorming among themselves, they were also calling experts across the country to try and get information in order to make the best plan they could, as well as making endless calls to Jonathan for legal questions.

They had even roped in Tina. While this was outside her experience and knowledge, they found a way for her to help them by keeping notes of things they were working on and doing other small tasks. It may not seem like much, but Tina was thrilled to be included by them. She had developed a serious case of hero worship for Zoe.

Between the girls’ project and Mom’s house hunting, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what Jonathan’s bill would be this month, not that he wasn’t worth every penny.

I shouldn’t complain about how busy everyone was though. They all dealt with my being distant when, from time to time, I got absorbed in something. It’s not like I was abandoned. While Tami and Vicki were going home every night when they finished their homework and research for the project, we all still found time to be together, and Zoe made sure to spend time with me as much as she could.

I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself or feeling abandoned, but I did find myself on a Friday night without much to do. Mom was off doing something, the girls, with Tina in tow, were on a call with some guy in Japan (and running up a phone bill that I would probably freak out about later), and everyone at the office had gone home to their families.

So I decided to go for a run. I don’t normally run at night; but I don’t have much desire to watch TV, and just sitting around watching other people do stuff drives me crazy.

Instead of running through the neighborhood, which was what I did on my morning runs, I decided to jog into the town proper. If for nothing else, the change of scenery would give me something to think about.

I was just getting onto the bridge that crossed the Trinity River, which ran through the middle of town, when something caught my attention.

In the middle part of the bridge, the highest point, a man was outside the railing, hanging onto it with both hands. I quickened my pace, unconsciously, as I evaluated him and the situation.

If I had to guess, I would say he was in his forties, although I am terrible at that kind of thing. Pudgy around the middle, but not overly fat, with a stocky frame. His hair was thinning in the front, leaving a widows peak, and he had a growing bald spot on the top of his head. Small, round wire frame glasses sat on his nose, which was bulbous and round, matching his somewhat round face.

I was managing to close on him when my movement finally caught his attention. I quickened my pace just a little more and veered in close to where he was, trying not to make it obvious, but his eyes narrowed a bit as he seemed to realize I was running generally in his direction.

We made eye contact which seemed to last a while, but was only a second or two at best. The sadness in his eyes was all encompassing. There wasn’t a pleading or a questioning in his expression, just resignation.

That brief eye contact was enough to tell me what was happening. This was a man who had given up! He held our eye contact for another moment, and, without breaking it, released his grip on the railing. His body tipped forward as he slowly began to lose contact with the bridge.

I put on all the speed I could, pushing my enhanced muscles to their fullest. Vaulting the rail, but leaving my left hand gripping it to anchor me, I stretched out to his falling form with my right hand. I managed to just reach his wrist as I stretched my body as far as I could.

He might not have been overly fat, but he was certainly dense. Even my advanced musculature was pushed to its max just to stop his descent. Newton’s Laws of Motion almost made me lose him as I absorbed what momentum he had started to build after letting go. I felt as if my left arm was being ripped out of its socket, and I swear I heard something pop. I pushed that pain aside and tightened my grip on his wrist.

He didn’t say anything to me, just looked up at me with those sad eyes as I slowly pulled him up. That sounds easier than it was. My left arm was fully extended and, while it kept me from going off the bridge with him, I didn’t have any leverage to use to pull the man up.

I was essentially pulling him up with just my right arm, until I got to the point when I could be less extended and actually gain enough leverage to pull him up the rest of the way. This was more like trying to “curl” an adult man than anything else. I may have some kind of preternatural physical abilities, but there were a few moments when I wasn’t sure that was going to be enough to save this man.

Finally, I managed to get him up and was able to shift my grip to lift him over the railing so he was safely on the bridge. As I went back over the rail and slid down to sit next to him, I was certain I had hurt something in my left arm. The pain was excruciating.

He was sobbing, softly, but I needed to do one more thing before I could find out what was happening.

Pulling the new cell phone out of my pocket, I punched in Mom’s new cell phone number.

“Hello,” she said when she picked up.

“It's Cas. I am on the Trinity Bridge. Could you call Alex and ask her to come pick me up? I will probably need to take a trip to the hospital.”

“Are you OK? What happened?” she said in a worried voice.

“I’m fine. There was an incident and I think I hurt my left arm. There is also another guy here. I’m not sure if he is hurt, but we should have him checked out, too.”

“What happened?” she asked again.

“I can’t get into it now. I’m fine; nothing’s wrong. I will explain everything when you get here. I gotta go.”

I hung up to avoid the conversation continuing, and slid the phone back into my pocket.

I couldn’t seem to lift my left arm to put around the crying man next to me, so I reached across with my right hand and placed it on his forearm.

“Hey, are you OK?” I asked.

He gave a shrug, still looking at his hands. I removed my hand from his arm and placed it on his back as he silently cried. We sat there for a while, occasionally disturbed by the noise of a car as it rushed over the bridge.

“Why did you stop me?” he asked eventually. His voice had that distinct Boston accent which always reminded me of JFK.

“Because I couldn’t let anyone throw their life away. Whatever is wrong, I promise you it isn’t worth that.”

“What would you know about it?” he asked, sounding agitated.

“I know that nothing could be so bad as to make jumping off a bridge a good option. But, if you want to tell me what made you feel it was, I’ll listen. Maybe you’ll prove me wrong.”

“You wouldn’t understand, kid.”

“Try me.”

“Fine. Yesterday, everything I have worked for, for my entire life, was yanked away from me. Two months ago, I was at the highest moment of my life. I thought I had conquered the World! Then one petty man pulled it all away.”

“OK, I can see how that would be tough,” I said when his angry words stopped, “but I might need a bit more context.”

“You’ve been watching the news this summer?”

“Some.”

“And so you saw all the stuff about the Pathfinder probe?”

Anyone who was alive and walked past a TV in the last two months would know what Pathfinder was. The cable news shows had been plastered with it since July, when Pathfinder reached Mars and the Sojourner rover started sending back pictures from the surface. The news had started to die down a bit for July, as the novelty wore off for most people, but it still showed up every week or two.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“That was me.”

“What?” I asked, not sure what he meant.

“I worked on that project for years. Many of the designs on both the lander and the rover were my inventions. The director had already pushed praise of my work over to his own people, but that didn’t bother me. I am used to the politics at NASA and, since I was attached to JPL and outside the normal internal politics, it was easy to be overlooked. But, I didn’t care. I am in it for the engineering and I loved my job. They let me work out some of my crazier ideas, and each time one worked, they indulged me more. I was called to a meeting in Houston yesterday. They have already started planning the next mission, and I thought that was what the meeting was about. But, no. Their ‘faster, cheaper, better’ plan meant they wanted to just do the same thing over. They didn’t need people pushing to break barriers or try new things. So they let me go. After more than a decade they just … threw me away.”

I was still stuck on the fact that he was saying he was behind the Mars probe. That was a huge engineering and scientific achievement. My experience with the DOD last year told me enough to believe him on the byzantine political maneuvering that could happen inside a government agency.

“With your resumé, I’m sure you can find other work. This isn’t the end.”

“I have no resumé outside of just saying I worked at NASA. I didn’t care about the politics and who got credit. I just loved the work. So while I hid in my lab, my supervisors put their name on my projects. I have nothing to show for my work.”

“But still, I’m sure if you talked to other companies you could …”

“I could what? Build a better car? Design an airplane that could carry five more people? I was sending my designs to another planet. I was allowed to explore at my own whims.”

“Is throwing your life away the answer, though?” I argued.

He just shrugged.

“Let me get you home. Where are you staying?”

“At the moment, I live in Alabama, since that’s where my lab was. Now? Who the hell cares? I was driving back from Houston when I saw this bridge and decided…”

“I think I can help you,” I said.

He looked up at me, with a weird expression that was both hopeful and dismissive.

“How could you possibly help me?”

Looking past him, I could see Alex pull her car up behind what I guessed was his car and get out, looking concerned. I held up my hand, motioning her to wait for me a moment.

“I’m certain you aren’t going to believe this until I prove it to you, but I own a … I guess you would call it a technology company. Give me one day. Let me get you checked out at the hospital, and I'll take you to my offices tomorrow. If you still think I can’t help, you can go on your way and I won’t bother you again.”

“You’re what, seventeen or eighteen? How do you own anything?” he said.

“See, I said you wouldn’t believe me. But, consider this. You were about to jump off a bridge, so what's one day of humoring me gonna cost you?”

He stared at me for a moment. Looking past him I could see Alex getting impatient as she waited by the hood of her car.

“Fine, one day,” he finally said.

“What’s your name?” I asked

“Douglas Evans,” he said.

“I’m Caspian Grey. It’s nice to meet you, Douglas. My friend over there,” I said, pointing at Alex, “is a medical doctor, and is going to drive us to the hospital.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Yeah, but I’m not. I did something to my arm when I caught you.”

“Ohh,” he said, finally seeming to notice my arm hanging limp at my side. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“No, it’s OK. A bum arm is a cheap price to pay for someone’s life. But, if you could help me up?” I asked.

He stood up, and helped pull me up. Seeing me stand up Alex decided that was enough of a signal that she didn’t have to wait any more.

Rushing over to me, she pushed past Douglas and started looking me over. I winced when she gripped my left arm.

“What happened?” She asked, as she not so gently tugged at my arm, observing each pained expression.

“Douglas here took a stumble over the side of the bridge. I was just able to grab him, holding onto the rail with my other arm. When he jerked to a stop I felt something pop. I was able to pull him up, but I can’t move my arm now.”

“Can you move your fingers?” she asked

After a few moments, and through a wave of pain that almost made me nauseous, I was able to make my fingers wiggle.

“I guess so,” I said through gritted teeth.

“I think you’ve dislocated your arm. Let’s get you to the hospital so we can get some x-rays and set it back in place.”

“I am not sure if Douglas has any injuries, but I would like him checked out, also.” I said.

I tried to make it seem like a request, since Douglas was listening, but I made sure Alex understood this was not negotiable.

“Of course, Cas.”

The three of us drove to the hospital in silence. Alex was focused on getting us there as quickly as possible, but kept stealing worried glances at me at each stop light.

For his part, Douglas sat silently in the back seat, staring out the window, lost in thought. I hoped he was considering my offer and not dwelling on whatever thought process led him to dangle above the Trinity River.

The more I thought about it, Douglas and I finding each other might actually be a good thing, in the long term. After working with Marcus and Ron, I had realized I liked guys who had big ideas and the drive to get to them.

At the hospital, Alex passed Douglas off to another doctor, and then she hauled me off to get x-rayed, poked and prodded.

“It looks like you managed to dislocate your shoulder,” she said as she gently pulled my arm down, released, and then repeated the motion.

Each tug on the limb caused a sharp burst of pain.

“I just want to go look at your x-ray’s to make sure everything’s OK before we push it back in place. Just in case.”

“Could you check on Douglas before you come back?” I asked

“Who?”

“The guy that was with me on the bridge.”

“Can’t it wait until we get your arm fixed?” she said, sounding impatient.

“No, it can’t. I can live with this for a few extra minutes and we just dumped him off onto other people. I think this guy could be important to my work and I don’t want him to run off 'till I can prove to him I’m the real deal.”

“Fine! I’m just gonna make sure he’s OK and plans on waiting for you, then I’ll be right back here.”

“That’s fine,” I said. I knew Alex was being protective of me, but there were times it was hard to overlook her “unique” bedside manner.

When Alex wanted something or had a goal in sight, she didn’t have the will or patience to put up with anything that might stand in her path.

I sat in the exam room for almost thirty minutes waiting for her to come back. Other than being somewhat bored, it wasn’t so bad. My arm only really hurt a lot when I moved, which I could avoid if I took shallow breaths and stayed very still.

Compared to some of my other trips into the hospital, it wasn’t so bad.

I also took a moment to notice I was in an actual exam room, and not in one of the several curtained-off exam areas in the emergency room, which is where most people go. I had to assume Alex was behind that.

Eventually she came back in.

“So, it’s what I thought: you just pulled your arm out of the socket. It will hurt like hell, but we can just pop it back into the socket. Normally, there would be a day or so of swelling and a few days of soreness but, I imagine with your physiology that time period will be much shorter.”

She started to walk towards me, reaching for my bad arm.

“What about Douglas?” I asked, holding up a hand to stop her from continuing.

“He’s fine. A little confused, but he promised to wait for you. He did ask me if you owned a tech company.”

“OK, as long as he hangs around. My next stop from here is to get him to sit down with Marcus and Ted.”

“No, your next stop is to get your arm fixed. Now, shut up and sit still,” she said.

She gripped my arm and did some kind of pushing/pulling motion on it. I couldn’t actually describe what she did that clearly because, as soon as she started, waves of pain started radiating up my arm.

Thankfully, as excruciating as it was, it was also of short duration. After a few moments, she lowered my arm, although she didn’t let go.

“Move your fingers,” she commanded.

I did as she said and, while it didn’t feel great, I found I could move them well enough. I could also lift my arm again, although that, too, still hurt with every motion.

“It will hurt for probably the rest of today,” she said, noticing me wince. “Like I said, at the rate you heal, I think it should start feeling better by the end of this evening. But that’s just a guess since we haven’t been able to quantify you, yet.”

“I’ll live,” I said hopping off the examination able. “Let’s go get Douglas, and get out of here.”

We grabbed Douglas, headed to his car, and I got him to agree to sit down with my guys for an impromptu interview. Considering his failed plan, he was suffering from a bit of 'life whiplash,' but to his credit he was rolling with it, and agreed to the meeting.

On the way to get his car, I made a series of calls. The first was to Mom, to assure her I was OK. She was actually pretty calm and mostly wanted to talk about a couple of houses she wanted us to look at the next day. I was a little upset for a second, because she seemed to take my adventure on the bridge so easily, until I realized Alex had called her from the hospital and given everyone updates.

Next, I called Ted, Marcus and Ronald and asked them to head up to the offices to meet someone. I apologized to all three for dragging them out on a Friday evening, but they laughed it off. It seems this was what they expected from me by now. I wasn’t sure how to take that, but, since they all said they would show up without even needing to know what it was, I decided I would just be happy these guys had so much faith in me.

I felt a little bad that I was going to drop Douglas in their laps and bail on them, but that wouldn’t keep me from doing it. I wanted to get their unbiased opinions of him. Since I was already starting to think of how he could fit in our organization, I didn’t want to taint their evaluation. Also, after the episode on the bridge and being in the hospital once again, I was tired and just wanted to go home.

Alex dropped us off at Douglas' car, and then followed us to the office, where the rest of the team was meeting us. This gave me a few minutes to let him know what was going on.

“When we get to the offices, I am not going to stick around. As much as this is an interview for my guys to get a feeling for you, I want you to do the same. I know you are still pretty skeptical about me and everything I have said. Hopefully, they can answer your questions and convince you to come work with us.”

“This is the weirdest night of my life,” he replied while looking straight ahead so he didn’t miss any turns Alex might make.

“I can imagine. But, I’m serious. Ted and Marcus have a lot of experience, and Ronald is a really sharp guy. Ask as many questions as you can think of. Fate brought us together, and I think we will do some great stuff.”

“And, you are most definitely the weirdest kid I have ever met,” he said, continuing his earlier thought.

“You have no idea,” I replied, letting the conversation drop.

We stopped at the offices and I walked him inside where I made brief introductions all around. I pulled Ted aside to talk, leaving the three engineers to chat.

“I know this is weird, but I kinda stumbled on this guy. He just got the boot from NASA or JPL … I’m actually not sure which … and I think he is a perfect fit for us. I want you guys to feel him out and, if you think he will fit in with us then offer him something tonight. He might need to get set up in a hotel or something 'till we can move him here, if you do hire him. I’m sure you’ll figure it all out. I’ll call tomorrow and find out what happened.”

“You know this isn’t how companies normally hire people, right?” he asked, smiling.

“Since when have you known me to do anything the normal way?”

“Too true!” he said with a laugh.

I patted him on the shoulder, turned, and walked out of the offices. I was looking forward to getting home and getting some rest, and perhaps a little sympathetic attention from the girls.

Chapter 4

The next day was Saturday and I’d hoped to sleep in after the excitement of the previous evening, but it seemed that was not destined to be, as I was pulled out of sleep by something continually poking me in the arm.

My eyes cracked open, only to shut again quickly, as harsh daylight streamed into them. Someone who would soon be getting payback had opened the curtains on the window.

Letting out a groan, I rolled over and smashed my head into the pillow.

“Oh, no you don’t!” a voice said, intruding past my improvised pillow earmuffs.

Recognizing the voice, I knew I would never get my payback.

“I wanna sleep in,” I said.

“I let you sleep in! It’s 9am. Zoe has already headed over to Vickie’s house and you have to get up. I have stuff for you to do,” Mom said, starting to push my arm again, trying to annoy me into getting up.

“I have to call the office,” I said, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“You can do that later. We have more important things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like look at houses,” she said with a grin in her voice.

“Ugggh,” was all I could reply as I flopped down and put a pillow over my head this time.

“I’ll give you about two minutes until I get back up here with a glass of ice water,” she said, her voice moving out of the room.

I had just started to lull back to sleep when the ice cold water splashed onto my head.

“Breakfast is ready downstairs,” she said cheerfully as she left, ignoring the evil glare I sent after her as I shot up with a yelp.

I was dry and still grumpy when I walked down the stairs.

“That wasn’t funny,” I said as I walked into the kitchen.

“Told you he wouldn’t believe you would do it,” Tami said.

I had assumed she would be with Vicki and Zoe today, and was surprised to see her.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, that’s a nice way to great me,” she said in mock anger.

I rolled my eyes and said, “You know what I meant. I’m happy to see you, just surprised.”

“I volunteered to be the one of us who went with you today. You don’t think we would leave an important decision about where you live to you, do you?” she said with a smirk.

“Of course not,” I replied and walked over, giving her a peck on the cheek before sitting down to eat the food already on the kitchen table.

While it’s not my ideal way to spend a Saturday morning, it wasn’t the worst way I could have spent it either, mostly because Tami came along. Of the three girls, Tami was the one I spent the least amount of one on one time with. Although this wasn’t exactly just the two of us, since Mom was there, it was nice to be able to focus on her for a day.

To be honest, I would have preferred it if Mom had just picked a place for us. My knowledge about houses ended at knowing it should have walls and a roof, but she felt it was important for me to be in on the decision making process.

Most of the houses seemed pretty similar, just bigger versions of the house we currently had, with a few extra bedrooms.

There was one I liked, because it had a swimming pool out back, but room-wise it wasn’t much larger then what we had. Tami was torn, since she liked the idea of a pool as well, but she agreed it wasn’t big enough.

We ended up settling on a place on the outskirts of town. The downside being it was farther from school and from both Vicki and Tami’s houses, but since most of us could drive now, that was less of a problem.

On the upside, the place was freaking huge with seven bedrooms, including a pretty nice master bedroom. Tami fell in love with the Jacuzzi tub, although since it was in the master I was pretty sure that would end up going to Mom.

Both ladies seemed pleased with it, so I agreed. As long as I had my family with me, I really didn’t care where we lived. The house would be in Mom’s name, since I couldn’t really sign off on real estate and the agent was thrilled that we were just going to pay for it flat out.

I’m not sure how their commissions were worked out, but my guess was they made more in deals where there wasn’t a mortgage involved, or got paid quicker.

They dropped me off at home, and Mom went to the agents' offices to get all the paperwork filled out. Tami went with them, saying she wanted to know more about how all this stuff worked.

I hadn’t really noticed it before, but Tami had been spending a lot more time hanging around Mom lately. It was a small thing, but now that she was asking to go with Mom, I started to consider it.

Vicki and Zoe had been more absorbed in the charity than Tami had been, and if I had to guess that was on purpose. She had said her goal was to take care of the family, and I guess her shadowing Mom was kind of like an internship.

I couldn’t help but laugh to myself as I sat at the kitchen table and picked up the phone.

I made small talk with Ted’s wife before asking her to hand the phone over to him.

“How the hell do you do it?” he said as soon as he picked up.

“Do what?”

“Just fall into things. Douglas is simply brilliant. A company as small and unfocused like ours has a hard time attracting talent of that caliber.”

“So he passes muster, then, I take it?”

“Are you kidding? Not only is he brilliant, but in just this one meeting he managed to find a possible fix for the scaling problems Ronald was having.”

Over the last month Ronald had been working up how to scale his basic design into a full desalination plant. While his process removed most of the pollutants and salt in water on a small scale, it lost efficiency as it scaled up. If we couldn’t hold the efficiency, then the whole project would be a bust.

Ronald had roped in Marcus and all our permanent engineers into the project to try and figure out the problem, but so far they hadn’t managed more than small gains.

“Really? How did he manage that?”

“Apparently he spends his free time brainstorming with others on some BBS, just picking ideas apart and working to improve them. He met this Bio-Med PhD student who is working on some kind of specialized bacteria that works as a filter. She swears by it, and he says he’s dug into it and everything seems to check out. She hasn’t had the time to really put the work into making it viable yet, since it was pushed off as unworkable by her professors; but Douglas swears he thinks it has potential.”

“But wouldn’t you end up with all that bacteria in the finished product?”

“Not necessarily, but yea, that’s one of the things we would talk about. I plan on calling her with Douglas tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s great, I guess. So, do you think we should offer Douglas a job?” I asked hopefully.

“I already did, and he accepted. This is a guy we want on our team.”

“Well, that was easy.”

“Yep. He particularly liked the fact that we had a policy of allowing engineers to spend a part of their time working on pet projects.”

“Great. I will see you guys in the office, tomorrow.”

“Yep, talk to you then.” He said, and hung up.

I was glad Douglas had clicked with them and joined us, and even more so that he had a potential fix for Ronald’s project. The more I have thought about it, the more I wanted to get this out in the world. It was the epitome of what I wanted the company to be, both profitable and beneficial for humanity.

I had just set down the house phone and was getting up from the table when it rang again.

Assuming it was Ted calling back I said, “Did you have more about Douglas to rave about?”

“Cas, it’s Carter,” a rough voice came across the other end of the line.

Carter did not call me out of the blue. He would talk to me when we had scheduled updates but other than that, I had to call him. He wasn’t much for idle chit chat. Which meant something was wrong.

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“I think you need to get down here. Things are heading south.”

“What happened?” I repeated my question.

“I think her father’s abusive nature was learned, also, not just the drinking. Her grandfather is a piece of work, and her grandmother isn’t much better. They’ve pulled her out of school. I managed to take a peek at the school records and they have filed to have her home schooled.”

“Ok,” I said. While that was worrying, I was certain there was more to the call then that.

“There hasn’t been anything physical yet, but the level of verbal abuse is escalating. I would bet money it isn’t far away. They’ve also taken to locking her into her room.”

“I’ll get a flight out there tonight and send you the details. Have someone pick me up at the airport.”

“Will do,” he said.

“Carter,” I said quickly, before he hung up.

“Yeah?”

“If they put hands on her, I want you to go in and get her out. I’ll pay whatever I have to in legal fees and you’ll be taken care of. But I won’t let her be beat on by those people.”

There was a long pause, and then he replied, “Understood.”

Hanging up I first dialed Zoe’s cell phone. I could hear Vicki in the background and they were in a good mood.

“Where are you?” I asked, interrupting her greeting.

“Vicki’s house,” she said, sounding suddenly serious as she picked up on my tone.

“Put me on speaker,” I said and waiting for a moment before I continued so she could do that. “Carter called. Emily is in serious trouble, and I’m headed to Florida to get her and hopefully figure out a way to bring her back. Things have been very hard on her, and I’m afraid she might need a gentler hand once we get her. I’d like one of you to come with me.”

“I’ll go,” Vicki said instantly. “When do we leave?”

“I’m getting a flight arranged now. Hopefully we can leave not long after you get here.”

“Be careful Cas,” Zoe said.

“I will. We won’t be able to stay long, since we have to be back for school on Monday, but I want a chance to talk to her before we come back. I have to make other calls and I’ll see you two when you get back.”

I hung up and dialed Jonathan.

I didn’t give him a chance to say anything and started speaking as soon as the line picked up, “Jonathan, I need you to arrange a flight for me and Vicki to go to Miami.”

“Something’s happened with Emily,” he said.

That’s one thing I always liked about Jonathan, he was quick and made decisions just as fast.

“Yes. Carter called and said things are getting bad. I want to get down there and see if I can get her out.”

“Ok. I’ll get us a private charter for three. It’s faster than flying commercial.”

“Three?” I asked.

“You sometimes forget you’re still a minor. You need an adult to fly with you, makes everything smoother. Plus, if things do get bad, you’ll want legal backup.”

“Can you even practice law in Florida?”

“Yes. I passed the bar there at the end of summer.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

“I’ve been getting the same reports from Carter, and the writing was on the wall. I figured I should be prepared.”

I was speechless for a moment. That kind of loyalty, especially without the boost the change gave, was breathtaking.

“Thank you. Really. I have to call Mom and pack. Let me know when and where to go.”

“Will do,” he said and hung up.

I picked up the phone one more time, and dialed Mom’s cell number, now very happy she had it.

“Hey, honey,” she said, and I heard Tami laughing in the background.

“There’s been a problem with Emily. Vicki and I are flying to Florida … now.”

“Is everything ok? I can be home in fifteen minutes and go with you.”

“No, you have Zoe and Tina here to take care of. Jonathan’s going with us, just in case we need legal help. We’ll be fine. I just wanted to let you know what was happening.”

“Be careful, Cas. Those people have a lot of reason to hate you. If you make it worse, they might take it out on Emily.”

“I know. I’m going to do my damnedest to bring her back with us.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I have no idea. I’ll figure out something.”

“Well,” she said after a brief pause as Tami said something in the background. “Just be careful. Tami wants to talk to you.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Cas?” Tami’s voice came across as she was handed the phone.

“Yeah?” I responded.

“Please be careful, and bring our girl back to us.”

“I’ll try everything I can to bring her back. I promise. I have to go pack now.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Tami.”

Just as I was hanging up I heard the front door open, followed by Zoe and Vicki rushing in shortly after.

Zoe got to me first, and crushed me in a hug. Not to be outdone Vicki wrapped her arms around both of us.

“Hey, hey,” I said, “It’s not the end of the world. She’s had a rough time, but we will fix it, I promise.”

They both just clung on to me for another minute.

“Girls, I gotta go pack,” I said gently.

“We’ll do it for you,” Zoe said. “You get everything else planned.”

“Ok.”

Both girls took off upstairs and I reached for the phone, again. I was starting to hate the thing.

“How’re we looking,” I asked when Jonathan picked up.

“I was about to call you. I have a plane being fueled and checked over now, and flight plans are being taken care of. They should be ready for us when we get there.”

“Ok, great. Give me the details.”

I wrote down the airport where we needed to go, and other information on the flight. Then I thanked him and hung up. I made it half way up the stairs when the girls came around the corner, headed down the stairs.

“That was fast,” I said.

“We can pack fast when it’s an emergency,” Vicki replied.

“I’ll be sure to remind you of that in the future,” I quipped as I turned around to go back down stairs, only to get cuffed in the back of the head for being a smartass.

Taking my bag from Zoe, I put one hand on her shoulder and said, “We gotta go. We’ll be careful.”

I knew she was going to be worried about us, and leaned in for a kiss to let her know how much I appreciated her.

As I stepped back Vicki stepped into my place.

“I’ll take care of him,” she said, and offered a kiss of her own.

“Take care of yourself, too,” Zoe said, cupping Vicki’s cheek with one hand.

Vicki just nodded, took my hand, and we headed for my car. As promised, Jonathan had a plane waiting for us. In this case a small prop plane that seated five, not counting the pilot.

We made a little small talk with Jonathan and the pilot before both Vicki and I fell into silent worrying.

To his credit, Jonathan had taken a seat close to the pilot and left us to sit in the back two seats, where he left us alone to our thinking. I really appreciated the gesture and made a mental note to thank him for it when things were less tense.

Once the flight got going, Vicki and I said very little to each other. Instead we held each other’s hand, cocooned in our concern for what might be happening to Emily.

The flight took a little over two and a half hours before we touched down at a small private airfield outside Miami. It felt like a lot longer than that.

As we taxied to a hanger I saw Carter standing next to an SUV waiting for us, as promised. Climbing out of the plane, I went to shake his hand and get an update.

He waved me off before I could ask a question and hustled the three of us into his SUV.

Once we were on the move, I asked, “What’s the latest on Emily?”

“The situation has been escalating since I talked to you. Mostly it was just noise, screaming and slamming doors. A few minutes ago I got a call from one of my guys. They said they heard what sounded like a punch or slap, and now there is crying.”

“Should we send your guy in to get her?” I asked.

“Honestly, I’d rather wait till you got there. If he thinks her life is in danger, he’ll step in, but he is hesitant to do so otherwise. Keep in mind, even with good intentions, if we are wrong it could send my guy to jail. Even the fact that we know something is happening is problematic, since bugging the house was also against the law.”

“Drive faster then,” I said angrily.

I shouldn’t be mad at Carter or his guy. I had them walking a fine line and they were already on the hook for a lot. But I was pissed off. I was pissed at her grandparents for hurting her. I was pissed off at her dad for putting her in this situation. And I was pissed off at myself for not finding a way to keep her with us in the first place.

Vicki squeezed my hand, breaking my train of thought. I looked into her brown eyes and saw a concern, both for Emily and myself. She clearly knew what I was thinking, and was trying to cut off my self-recrimination.

We pulled into the house across the street from her grandparents, although Carter instructed us to stay in the car till the garage door was closed. As soon as it was I was out of the car and inside the house, looking for the guy Carter left observing the situation.

I found him in the living room at a fold out table cluttered with equipment.

“What’s happening?” I asked him.

The guy looked past me with a quizzical expression in response.

From behind me I heard Carter say “Tell him.”

“They just started at it again. She’s holed up in one of the guest rooms and has locked the door,” the guy said, pointing at a diagram showing the layout of the house, and indicating a particular room.

“Let me hear.”

Taking off his headphones the guy reached over and flicked a switch. Two small speakers on the table jumped to life.

“Don’t lock a door in my house.”

“Gerald, don’t …”

The voices were echoed out by a crashing sound, followed by a scream.

“You little bitch. Yer mother never could keep her legs together, trickin’ mah’ boy into gettin’ her pregnant. He threw away all his potential and for what? You? And then you go and kill him. I’ve had it up to here with your disrespect.”

I heard a wet smacking sound that I recognized. The sound of a fist hitting flesh.

I turned and tore out of the house. I wasn’t thinking of Carter or his man, or what they might see. I put every ounce of my enhanced muscles into getting to Emily.

Out of my peripheral vision I saw Vicki grab something and could hear her feet behind me. Reaching their front door I paused to plant myself solidly, and put my foot into the front door, causing it to explode inward, off its hinges.

As soon as the door was down I was moving again, headed for the room Carter’s guy pointed out. Rounding a corner I found an interior door that looked to have been kicked off the hinges.

Inside was an older man, maybe in his late sixties. I could see a clear resemblance to Emily’s father. On the floor, crying loudly, was Emily. Her left eye was closed shut, and blood was flowing from her mouth and nose. The noise in here must have been significant, as only her grandmother noticed me when I entered the room. Her grandfather was beginning to swing again.

Rage boiled inside of me. The only thing that stopped me from grabbing him, was the surprise of a flash of light from behind me.

Everyone, including myself, turned to look at Vicki, who was taking a second picture of Emily’s grandfather, fist raised in mid-swing, standing over Emily.

“You!” he screamed.

He started to move toward me, when once again, everyone was stopped. This time by Carter entering the room with a pistol in one hand.

“Everyone stop!” he said in an authoritative voice. “Kids, get Emily and step out into the front room. Her grandparents, Jonathan and I need to have a talk.”

As I went to help Emily up off the floor I noticed Carter take the camera from Vicki. Emily was trembling, but her open good eye was staring at me in surprise.

We went into the front room and sat with her between Vicki and me, with both of us hugging her tight.

“You came for me! You came for me!” she kept saying over and over in a sob.

“You’re safe,” I whispered to her. “No one will ever hurt you again.”

I just hoped Carter and Jonathan could back up my promise. I was hoping for some kind of legal solution. Kicking down their door and nearly assaulting her grandfather put us in a pretty bad position.

Emily eventual quieted down and started to cry quietly in my arms. There wasn’t much I could say.

Eventually Carter and Jonathan came back out.

“Let’s go,” Carter said.

Jonathan helped Emily to her feet, and, just as we stood up her grandfather came into the room.

“Get that little bitch out of here,” he said.

I barely got hold of Vicki as she started to tear at him. She was screaming and cursing at him, and I had to carry her out the front door as she kept trying to get at him.

Once out of the door, she calmed down enough for me to put her down and we all walked back to the house we rented across the street. “Kid, that was stupid,” Carter said when we walked in.

“I know. But I couldn’t let him hurt her.”

“I get that, but it put us in a tough situation. If your girlfriend wasn’t such a quick thinker we wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on, and you’d probably be in jail.”

“Vicki always has been smarter than me. So where do things stand?”

“With those pictures, and the pictures I promised we would get of Emily, they’re in a bad place. If anyone goes to the cops, then everyone gets to go to jail. Her grandfather is happy to part with her. As long as we keep this quiet, he won’t press charges on us for breaking into his house and will sign custody over to someone else.”

“So it’s over, just like that?”

“Yep. He thinks his name means something around here, and he doesn’t want it to get out that he was beating on his teenage granddaughter. He just wants to put it behind him.”

“I will start on this as soon as we get back. I need to talk to Angela, but I suspect she will volunteer to take custody of Emily if we can swing it with the courts,” Jonathan said.

“Do you think you will be able to?” Vicki asked.

“Since it’s not a custody battle, but her grandparents signing over guardianship; yeah, I think we will be good.”

“We need to pack up and get out of here,” Carter interjected, “just in case.”

“Ok, let’s go home.” I said.

Chapter 5

Jonathan called ahead to let the pilot (he had been asked to wait for us) know that we were on our way back. He also let him know that it would be three teenagers and an adult chaperone, in this case one of Carter’s guys.

Jonathan and Carter stayed behind to take care of the details of making it legal for us to take Emily with us. When we left, he was on the phone with Mom, and my guess was that she would end up with one more ward before all this was over.

For a while Emily kept crying, although whether it was out of relief to be away from her grandparents, tears of pain, or overwhelming sadness we couldn’t figure out. We couldn’t get her to talk during the trip to the airport at all, and we only got a few words on the plane itself before she fell into a restless sleep.

Looking at her face as it relaxed into sleep, I started to see the Emily I had gotten to know, the one that had broken out of her shell and, even after what happened with her parents, continued to become sure of herself.

She was now back to the wounded girl I had first met, except worse. While she had kept firmly latched onto my hands since the time we pulled her out of her grandparents’ house, she had barely even made eye contact with me.

I was afraid we were at the very beginning of our challenges with this and from the look in Vicki’s eyes I could tell she felt the same.

I gently woke Emily up as we landed back in Texas. She slowly came awake, and as the situation returned to her, she pulled away from me. It was like a stab in the chest, not that I blamed her.

I was glad to find Mom had come to pick us up, and that she hadn’t brought Tami or Zoe with her. This wasn’t going to be a happy reunion, and I knew it would break their hearts. The longer we could put off that kind of disappointment the better.

Vicki motioned for me to go talk to Mom while she stayed with Emily, who had switched to holding onto her.

“Hey,” I said gloomily as I walked up and got a hug from Mom.

“That bad?” she asked.

“Yeah. She has hardly said anything to us.”

“I made an appointment with Dr. Snider for her to see Emily tomorrow. I am betting those people didn’t get her any help after what happened with her parents. Now, with everything else that's happened, I think she needs it even more.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Yeah, that’s probably good thinking. Have you talked to Jonathan?” I asked.

“Yes, we’ve talked back and forth. They’ve signed over guardianship to me, and he has started the process of making it official. In the next few weeks I’ll probably have to go back to Florida with her to talk to a judge.”

“Any chance they’ll change their minds?”

“Jonathan doesn’t think so. They seem to be happy that she’s not their responsibility any more. He thinks with their agreeing to the change, the family courts won’t contest it.”

I looked back across the tarmac at Emily and Vicki. Emily was looking at her feet, with Vicki standing close, whispering into her ear. Looking up, Vicki saw me staring and gave a tight-lipped smile.

Through the sadness over Emily, I felt a burst of affection and pride for Vicki. I was happy more than ever that I had brought her with me and couldn’t help but marvel at her strength. She really was amazing.

“My car is here,” I pointed out to Mom, remembering that we had left it parked at the airport.

“Zoe rode out with me and drove it home. After Jonathan filled us in, we didn’t think you’d be in the best mindset to be driving.”

I leaned in and gave Mom another hug as a thank you. She gave me one of her patented crushes back, which I really needed.

Carter’s guy handed me our bags and headed back to the plane, probably to get back to his team. I loaded us into Mom’s car and we headed back to the house.

Once back, Zoe and Tami took over for Vicki, helping Emily upstairs to get some rest. I started to follow them up, but was stopped by Vicki.

“Cas, let us handle this for a little while,” she said, looking pained.

“What?” I asked.

I could see the logic behind letting the girls spend some time trying to pull Emily out of the sadness that had settled over her, but there also seemed to be something Vicki wasn’t saying.

Vicki looked away from me as she answered, “She blames you a little for what happened. I think she needs a little time.”

“She blames me?” I asked, shocked.

“Blame is the wrong word. She’s angry at you. She knows it’s not rational, but she’s mad that you let her go there, and didn’t keep her with us.”

It was like someone punched me in the stomach. I couldn’t believe she was angry at me.

“But the courts decided that. What could I have done?”

“She knows there wasn’t anything you could’ve done. Like I said, she knows it’s not rational, but that doesn’t change her feelings.”

I could see tears welling up in Vicki’s eyes as she leaned in and hugged me tight.

“Cas, she’ll get past this. I promise. She’s had a hard time. Please don’t take this to heart. She just needs time.”

“Ok,” I said, putting on a brave face.

I tried to project acceptance and reassurance, but Vicki saw right past my bullshit. She gave my arm a squeeze and then headed upstairs.

Going into the living room, I slumped down onto the couch and settled into a solid sulk. I knew it wouldn’t help, but hell, I was a teenager after all. Even super DNA or whatever can’t stop the angst sometimes.

It was decided that it would be best if Emily stayed with Zoe while I slept on the couch. The next morning, with a crick in my back, I cornered Mom in the kitchen before the girls came downstairs, ready to head to school.

“We need to get that new house,” I said without preamble.

“Not enjoying the couch,” she replied with a smirk.

“Not even a little bit!”

“Well, we were already in talks, so it shouldn’t be long.”

“Can you call them today? Tell them we’ll pay cash for it, and offer a five percent increase if we can be in the house this month.”

“Cas, that’s a lot of money!”

“I can afford it; and every night I don’t have to sleep on the couch, is worth it to me. Besides, you’re petitioning to take custody of Emily. You already have Zoe and custody of me and Tina. This is a four bedroom house. Don’t you think the court will start wondering where she’ll be sleeping?”

“Good point. I’ll call them this morning.”

“Seriously, we have the money. We should use it to make this happen fast. Before Jonathan starts getting court papers filed."

“Yes. You’re a smart boy. I knew we kept you around for some reason,” she said patting me on the cheek.

“I thought it was for my dashing good looks, and witty personality.”

“That’s what we want you to think,” she said with a laugh.

I tried to look offended but couldn’t hold it, and broke down laughing with her.

As I helped her get breakfast ready I thought of something else.

“What are we going to do about school for Emily?”

“Her grandparents already had her down as being home schooled, but I’d bet she didn’t get any actual education out of that, and is probably behind. Even if she did, it’s hard to get her switched between districts quickly. I’m going to talk to Jonathan about getting her homeschooling switched here, and then figure out what we need to do to get her caught up.”

“Ahh, ok,” I replied, not having considered any of that.

“If we do it right, she should be able to rejoin the rest of you at Truman next year.”

The girls came downstairs about the time we got breakfast on the table. Tami had stayed the night to be with Emily and Zoe, and all three were quiet as they sat down at the table.

Vicki had wanted to stay, too, but her father had told her 'no' for the first time. I was a little concerned he’d started to figure out the extent of my relationship with his daughter, but she brushed it off. Apparently he had some work stuff going on that had him distracted, and she was pretty sure it was connected to that.

Looking at the gloomy faces at the table, I thought it might have been for the best. As it was, I was having trouble not letting the mood of these three get to me. One more might have pushed me to join them in wallowing.

Instead, I tried to play it off like we didn’t notice, and Mom went with it. While Emily still wouldn’t make eye contact with me, everyone started pulling out of their funk after a few minutes. Even Emily joined in the conversation a few times, although never talking directly to me.

I decided it would be best if I showed Emily I cared, but kept my distance until she had time to talk to Dr. Snider.

Excusing myself from breakfast, I got ready for school. It was strange not starting my day off with a run, but between meeting and dealing with Douglas at the beginning of the weekend and bringing Emily home at the end of the weekend, I felt I needed a little break.

Tami and Zoe both tried to convince Mom to let them stay home with Emily, but she wouldn’t have it. She declared everyone was going to school, but that she would take a few days off so Emily wasn’t there by herself.

She even promised to take Emily shopping, which elicited a brief smile on Emily's part.

The week seemed to fly by. I kept myself unusually busy, even for me, to keep from dwelling on the Emily situation. I saw Vicki at school, but she said things at home made it hard for her to get out to see us in the afternoons. I was starting to get a little worried about that.

Emily had her first visit to Dr. Snider, although I wasn’t allowed to go. When they came back from the doctor, it was clear she had been crying. I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing, considering how psychologists operate, but Mom said Snider had talked to her afterwards and said it had been a good session. However, I couldn’t help but be worried about Emily.

Coupled with Vicki, it felt like my romantic life was hitting a serious speed bump. Things were tense with Zoe and Tami as well, since they were having a lot of the same feelings.

Thankfully work, the place where I was spending the majority of my free time, to allow Emily a little space, was better. Douglas had hit the ground running. He'd already rented an apartment and sent for his stuff. He was working fifteen hours a day getting set up. The man was a machine and had a near manic drive. I think he was starting to wear Ted and Marcus out!

He had set up a meeting with the bio-med student after he and Ted talked to her on Monday. We arranged for her to fly out from California, where she was currently going to school. On top of that, he said he had a new idea he wanted to talk to me and the team about, but he needed until next week to get ready.

Looking back, that night of intervention on the bridge, might just end up being one of the best nights for the company in some time.

The time I was spending talking to him gave me some other thoughts: specifically about Mom and Alex.

On Friday night I arranged to have Mom, Alex, and Jonathan meet me at home so I could pitch them my idea.

I brought Ted along with me, but didn’t tell him specifically what I was thinking.

“Hey, guys,” I said when Ted and I walked into the living room where the others were waiting.

“What’s up, Cas?” Mom asked, sounding concerned.

To be fair, the last week had been stressful on her with Emily, so I can see how my asking to sit down and talk formally would make her apprehensive.

“I’ve had an idea I wanted to talk to you and Alex about, and I wanted Jonathan and Ted to sit in and give me their opinion.”

“Ok,” she said, not sounding any less apprehensive.

“Since we found out about my … condition, you and Alex have been spending a lot of time working on learning about it, and dealing with the fallout from it. You haven’t said anything directly, but I know it’s been affecting both of your jobs. So, I have a solution. I think you should both switch to just working on this.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked.

“We know a little about what’s going on, but I think there might be other applications for this. Can you take what you’ve learned, and make medical or scientific advancements out of it? Can you figure out how to use it to our betterment and/or our advantage? Can you determine what the long term effects of my condition are, and how it will affect me and the girls?”

“So, are we trying to turn your genetics into a product, or are we studying you in specific?” Mom asked.

“Both. They aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m talking about pure research. It always pays off, you just can't tell when. Figure out everything you can about me and my genetics. If we find something we can make and sell off that research, great. If not, hopefully we at least learn something. It’s a gamble for sure, but I think it’s worth it.”

“How were you planning on setting that up,” Jonathan asked.

“If Ted agrees, I want to set them up as a subsidiary of our company. Our bio-tech division, or whatever.”

“Cas, that’s gonna cost a lot of money,” Ted pointed out.

“I know, and I know we’ve put a lot of resources into Ronald’s project, but we aren’t exactly broke. We put everything into the drone project and that paid off. I’m not saying we throw away our money, but now’s not the time to get comfortable. This isn’t a bad investment for us. Exclusive research on something no one else in the world knows about studied by an experienced MD who started the research and a respected geneticist.”

“Not to sound mercenary, but do you think that you can take what you learn about Cas and turn it into something?” Ted asked Mom and Alex.

“Yes,” Alex answered instantly. “I’ve had some ideas based on my study of what we’ve learned, but I haven’t had the time to follow up on it.”

“I’m sold,” Ted said.

“Mom,” I asked, “What do you think?”

“Honestly? I’m relieved. I’ve missed so much work over the last year, the lab supervisor was already started to make passing comments about it.”

“Good, it’s settled then,” I said.

“There is actually something else,” Jonathan said as I started to stand up.

“Yeah?”

“If you are going to start branching out, I think we may need to restructure it to have multiple independent divisions.”

“So, ladies, are you on board with quitting your jobs and coming to work for me?”

“Absolutely,” Alex said.

“Of course,” Mom replied.

“Great. I’ll leave the details of setting everything up to Ted. He’s the real businessman around here.”

“Well, that’s all set. Before I go, I do have one other thing,” Jonathan said.

“Yeah?” I asked, not sure what Jonathan needed.

“I have the paperwork for the new house. As she's your guardian I need Angela to sign off on it, and then the house is yours.”

“Really?” Mom asked. “That was fast.”

“We aim to please,” Jonathan said.

“Well, let’s get this taken care of,” I said.

We signed all the paperwork. Jonathan said he would get the money transferred and the deeds taken care of, first thing Monday. Ted headed out with him, promising to start on the changes to the company. I left Mom and Alex talking excitedly about ideas they had, and went to take a shower before I headed back to the dreaded couch I had been sleeping on all week.

Coming out of the bathroom after my shower in the shorts and t-shirt I normally slept in I was surprised to find Emily standing outside the door, waiting on me.

“Can we talk?” She asked as soon as the door opened.

“Sure,” I said.

I was torn. I really missed Emily; and being kept on the fringes for the last week, with her in the house but not being able to socialize with her, was really starting to get to me.

She took my hand and led me into Zoe’s room, which was empty. She pointed for me to sit at the desk while she sat over on the bed.

She opened her mouth to start talking, but I interrupted her.

“Emily, I want you to know how sorry I am. I should’ve gotten you out of there a long time before you got hurt. I should’ve found a way to keep you from having to go there in the first place. I should’ve known those people would make life so hard on you. Can you please forgive me?”

Everything that I'd had pent up inside me, for a week, came flowing out in a rush.

“Cas,” she said shaking her head, “there’s nothing to forgive you for. I’ll admit I was mad and I took my anger out on you, but Dr. Snider is right, it isn’t your fault. The courts decided and there was nothing you could have done to keep me from going there. I know that in my head. It’s just hard getting that message into my heart sometimes.”

“Do you hate me?” I asked, fearing the answer.

“No. I think I love you. You just have to be patient with me. I know Zoe went through some stuff when you first met her, and she told me a little about that. It’s not the same as my situation, but it helps to know I’m not crazy for how 'all over the place' my feelings are.”

“Of course I’ll be patient. And you’re not crazy. After what happened with your father, and then everything with your grandparents; I would be shocked if you didn’t have some stuff to work through.”

She got up and came over to me, sitting on my lap.

“You’ll also have to be patient with other stuff. This,” she said indicating her choice of seat, “is taking everything I have in me to do. I need to work through some stuff before I’m ready for much physical contact. I know that me keeping my distance has made you feel bad, I could see it in your eyes. I just need a little bit of time.”

“There’s no rush. Take as much time as you need. I’ll be here for you when you need me.”

A tear rolled down her cheek and it took a second for her to start talking again.

“I know you will be. I can’t believe you’d been watching over me. The moment things got bad, you swooped in and saved me. You and Vicki. I thought it was over. I was certain he was going to kill me, and then you were there. Zoe told me she once told you that you were her hero. I thought I understood what she meant; now I really do! You’re like my guardian angel. I want you to really know that, even if I am keeping my distance, it’s only for now. I am yours … forever.”

With that she leaned forward and kissed me.

I knew this wasn’t the end of her issues, and we would have some tough days ahead; but it felt, at that moment, that Emily had really come back to me.

Chapter 6

I went for a run early the next morning, floating on cloud nine. First, I had been allowed back into my normal bed. It was decided that, for now, Emily would stay with Mom. Since we would be moving into the new house in the next week or so, Mom was ok with it. The new house would have enough rooms for each of us, including me.

That was something she had commented on over the summer. She felt that, even though she had allowed some of our goings on around the house, she still felt it would be better if we kept different rooms. She might turn a blind eye to me and the girls, but she felt me and Zoe sharing a room was a bit much.

At the time it felt like that wouldn’t really change anything, considering the limited space, but with the new house, her rules would go into effect. Not that I begrudged her, her insistence. While she had made it clear she knew what we kids were going to do, and she felt it was better we were safe than sneaking around; she never agreed to, or probably even envisioned, the way things had ended up.

She had been fairly tolerant up to this point, so it was the least I could do to move into my own room and let Zoe have her own room.

Not that I didn’t plan on sneaking over from time to time. And I’m certain Mom knew that would happen, but I had already made up my mind we would treat it as if she didn’t allow it at all, to keep from shoving our activity in her face.

But even the enforced separation looming on the horizon couldn’t keep me down. All those sitcom jokes about the guy having to ‘sleep on the couch’ now hit home for me, and I was determined never to end up in that position again! A couch just isn’t a great place to get a good night’s sleep.

More than that, Emily was starting to come back to us. She was still angry and would even snap at me from time to time, but I could see her pull back from that almost instantly as she realized she was taking her anger out on me. Truthfully, I would take hostility over the previous avoidance, every time.

We were talking again, and had even sat on the couch and watched TV last night. I knew the road wasn’t over, but I was thrilled we had made progress.

I was ruminating over my good fortune when a sound pulled me out of my head. I hadn’t been paying attention, but it was an echoed report. I had only heard it a few times, but to my untrained ear, it sounded like gunshots. My suspicion was reinforced a moment later when a couple of others rang out.

It was an echoed sound, bouncing off the houses, but close enough to be loud. I’m not sure why, but I quickened my pace towards where I thought the sound had come from.

I was on the edge of the subdivision, and one street over - the neighborhood backed into some open fields. It seemed like the shots had come from that direction.

Even as I turned the corner I heard three more shots ring out. To me they all sounded the same, and I couldn’t tell if it was from one gun or three. But by this point there had been six gunshots over about twenty seconds, meaning something bad was happening.

On the field side of the road was a patrol car, with another car stopped in front of it. A police officer was behind the patrol car, braced against the bumper, while a man was standing next to the opened door of the other car, firing into the police car. As I watched, a stream of glass shards shot out of the front windshield as a bullet hit it.

I ran up and slid next to the officer. I had kept hunched over and moved at my top speed, so I wasn’t sure if the guy shooting had fired at me as I made my move or not. Either way, nothing terrible had happened to me, so that part of my unformed plan worked out at least.

Now that I was close, I could see the officer wasn’t using the back bumper as cover, but was rather slumped against it. Now that I was up close, I could see that the officer was a woman.

Propping her off the bumper, I eased her to the ground. I could see a long gash down her neck where a bullet had ripped through. Thankfully it was on the side, and so not fatal. There was also a hole in the front of her uniform. But the two bullet wounds are not what instantly grabbed my attention. What did hold my focus for a second was that I recognized this officer. It was my old nemesis, Officer Jawarski.

She locked eyes with me when I eased her onto the ground, and got a sudden angry and concerned look.

“I’m going to help,” I told her, hoping she didn’t try to start fighting me as I tried to get her out of this.

She tried to sit up, but struggled and flopped back down.

“You,” she said in a wheeze.

“Don’t move. I don’t know how bad it is, but you took a round to the chest.”

Metal thumps sounded as the gunman fired two more rounds into the car.

While I wanted to check on Jawarski and make sure she was alright, I couldn’t ignore the guy shooting at us. Reaching down, I picked up the gun lying nearby that she had at some point dropped. Her eyes followed me the whole time.

Kneeling up quickly, I fired two shots toward the front of the patrol car. For some reason, I couldn’t drop into slow motion as I had done in times before. Maybe I was surprised at finding Jawarski or maybe it was just because of the whole situation, but my focus was off.

Without the benefit I usually get from the altering of my perception, my skills with a firearm took a dramatic hit. I’m not even sure I hit the car.

Either way, it made the guy react. He dove into his car and sped off. There wasn’t much I could do about that, since I needed to see to Jawarski. I was just glad he wasn’t shooting at us anymore.

“I need to check and see what damage the bullet did, ok?” I asked her.

She nodded, a look of pain sweeping across her face.

The hole in her shirt was towards the center of her body, a little down and over from her heart. Unbuttoning her uniform I could see a bullet proof vest, which was good. Pulling back the uniform, I could see the flattened bullet stuck into the vest material. It hadn’t penetrated.

Of course, that didn’t mean she was totally safe. An impact like could break ribs or cause other damage, but at least the vest kept it from becoming fatal.

“Your vest stopped the bullet, but you’re bleeding pretty badly from the neck,” I said.

Now that I knew she didn’t have a bullet hole in her chest, I started trying to do something about the wound to her neck.

I checked her car and, after a minute of searching, found the first aid kit I was pretty certain was there. It was one of those random memories from my youth when a police officer visited my elementary school, and they mentioned police officers carried first aid kits to help injured people.

Of course, that isn’t really why the kits are there, but it probably sounded good to a bunch of little kids. Either way, it stuck with me, and thankfully so. My other alternative was to use my sweaty shirt to staunch her bleeding, which isn’t the most sanitary option.

And considering the reaction that Margaret had to my DNA, the last thing I wanted to do is cause some kind of contamination from me to Jawarski. I didn’t know if sweat would cause an issue or not, but I didn’t want to risk it.

I pulled a large gauze bandage out of the kit and pressed it against the gash in Jawarski’s neck, applying pressure, causing her to wince.

I was about to try and figure out her radio and call for help when I heard sirens in the distance that became louder as they closed in on us, meaning one of the neighbors had, indeed, call 911.

“Help should be here in a minute. You probably hurt badly, but you’re not that banged up.”

“Thanks,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Plus, I don’t think a bullet could actually take you down for long. You’re too mean for that,” I said with a smile, trying to cheer her up and keep her mind off the pain.

She actually growled at me, but then let out a half cough that might have been a laugh.

Patrol cars came screaming around the corner down the street, pulling up behind Jawarski’s car, leaving a good deal of room between us and them.

I looked over my shoulder as the guys in the lead car hopped out, guns drawn.

“Hands up,” one of them yelled.

“Back up from the officer,” the other one added.

I put my hands up in the air, and started scooting back on my knees, not wanting to lower my hands and make it seem like I was doing anything that might get me shot. A cop down on the ground and a guy kneeling over her would give these guys itchy fingers.

And I did not want to get shot again.

“Stop. Lay on the ground, put your arms out, palms up,” the first guy shouted.

I did as instructed. I couldn’t see them anymore, but could hear their feet shuffling towards me. After a moment a knee drove into my back like a sledge hammer. Another moment my arms were wrenched back and handcuffs were latched on.

I was pulled roughly up by my elbows. That amount of weight pulling on one arm twisted around your back hurts like hell. The officer then roughly pulled me towards his cruiser, slamming me down on the hood, my head bouncing off the sheet metal.

These guys were pissed. I hoped everything got sorted out before anyone decided I needed to be taught some kind of lesson. Police have little patience over injuring one of their own. Considering how dangerous their jobs could be, I could sympathize, but from my position I wanted this cleared up sooner rather than later.

The upside of this position was my head was now pointed back in Jawarski’s direction. As the officer started going through my pockets I saw Jawarski’s jaw moving. The cop with her leaned down, listening.

After a moment he stood up and hollered, “Phil, hold up. Jawarski says the kid’s a bystander. The shooter took off.”

“Ohh,” he said.

After another minute when I heard keys fumbling behind me, the handcuffs were unlocked and he helped me stand up straight.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“No problem,” I said.

Not that I was happy about being bounced off a car hood, but this wasn’t the time and place to start mouthing off about anything. These guys were still keyed up, plus there was the little thing of a criminal who just shot a police officer on the loose.

“I saw the guy,” I said.

“What did you see,” he asked, hooking his handcuffs back on his belt and pulling out a small pad and a pen.

“He was a white guy, older but not really old, maybe about forty years old. He was driving a red four door mid-sized car, not sure but it might have been a Honda or a Mazda. I think there might have been a bullet hole in it from Jawarski.”

“Ok. I’m just gonna sit you down in the backseat of my car while we get this sorted out. It might take a little while,” he said as an ambulance came around the corner.

“When I can, I’d like to call my mom and let her know I’m alright.”

“We’ll let you do that soon,” he said, opening the back door of his car.

I slid into the seat and he shut the door on me. Even with Jawarski backing me up, they weren’t taking any chances.

The guy walked off, probably to call it in, while the ambulance pulled up next to Jawarski’s squad car and the paramedics jumped out and got to business.

Within a few minutes she had been loaded up into the ambulance and she was gone. It still took almost an hour, over which time a series of people came by and asked me the same questions about what I saw.

Eventually, they had a patrol car drop me off at my house. It had been almost two hours since I first went running, and mom was in a near panic by the time I got home.

“Are you ok?” she asked as soon as I walked in the door.

I walked her through everything that had happened with Jawarski. To say she was unhappy would be an understatement.

“I swear you’re no longer allowed out of this house to go running. Every time you do it seems you end up in trouble, in the hospital, or both.”

“If you remember, the last two incidents ended with me helping people, so even if my runs are cursed, I still think it’s worth it.”

“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced.

“I want to go visit Jawarski in the hospital later today,” I said, trying to get her off being pissed at me.

“Why?”

“Because I want to make sure she’s ok.”

“Cas, that woman has been horrible to you. She’s done her best to get you thrown in jail a couple of times now.”

“That’s not her fault. I’m certain she’s one of those people with a negative genetic reaction to me. That shouldn’t stop me from caring. Plus, she had the chance to put the shooting on me, but made a point of telling the other officers I wasn’t involved. That’s progress.”

“Well, if you’re going to be all noble about it, who am I to say no.”

“We have that bio-med student coming in today, so I’m gonna head to the office and then to the hospital after that.”

“Be careful,” she said, looking serious. “These close calls are happening way too often.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was nice that she cared about me, but it wasn’t like I went out of my way to invite these situations. Still, arguing with her didn’t seem that productive.

I showered, changed, made a point of saying bye to Zoe and Emily, who were planning on hanging out with Tami today, and headed out to the office.

Thanks to my morning adventure I was the last one to show up at the meeting. Besides Ted, Marcus, Ronald and Douglas, there was a girl I didn’t recognize that I assumed was our guest.

“Hi, I’m Caspian Grey,” I said walking up and offering my hand.

After a brief moment of staring she took it and said, “Joan Morgan.”

“I know, I’m younger than you expected. I get that a lot,” I told her as I took my seat. “So, while we have our guest here, let’s talk about the Astraea.”

Since we couldn’t just keep calling it “the desalination project” now that we were looking to build a small scale plant in Houston before ramping up to a full sized test plant in an as yet undetermined location, I had asked Ronald to give the project a name. He came back to me with the name of the Greek god of purity. A little clever, but it was his project, so who was I to complain?

“We’re pretty excited about this,” Ronald said, pulling up some slides on a monitor mounted on the wall. “Joan and I have been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now, and it all seems to check out. Her ideas are really the key to making this technology scale up. The process I had already developed will still work, but to get it to filter large volumes of water, we cross the threshold for how much power it would take. For any water with contamination in solution, be it sewage or salt water, it’s hard to simply filter out the contaminates. You can clean out about ninety-nine percent of the contamination through a combination of carbon filtering and reverse osmosis, which is what we’ve been using, but that last one percent, when we are talking about salt water and sewage, is still too much. That’s where Joan comes in. I’ll let her explain how it works.”

“It’s like this. We have taken E. coli bacteria and inserted new gene coding into it that activates the region of OPH production as well as genes associated with desulfitobacteria that .. “

“Joan, we don’t need to get into the exact science. Let’s stick to the highlights level,” Marcus said, interrupting her.

“Right. Sorry,” she said, looking chastised. “So, we have changed a strain of E.Coli, removing most of the genes that cause toxin production, and inserted a series of genes from other, gram-negative bacteria. In general this new bacteria eats a wide range of pollutants, from salt to metal contamination, to pesticide, from which it produces a bio-electric effect that is harness-able. It’s not a large effect, not even enough to cover the electricity used in the filtering Ronald has developed, but it would be able to cover about twenty-five percent of the energy usage.”

“And how effective is it in removing contaminates?”

“About eighty percent effective.”

“That’s all?” I asked, expecting the number to be higher.

“Yes,” Ronald interjected, “but remember, this water would have already been filtered and will be filtered again after. Eighty percent may not seem like enough, but combined we would find barely traceable levels, and that more than passes FDA and EPA guidelines for potable water.”

“Ok, what have you tested it against?”

“Everything I can think of. Chemical solvents, PCBs, lead, mercury, natural pollutants, even some radiation.”

“It cleans radiation?” I asked, shocked.

“To a point, but then you have to have a process for removing the now radioactive bacteria. I wouldn’t suggest it as a selling point.”

“It’s still interesting,” I said.

“Who owns the patent on these new bacteria?” Jonathan asked.

It hadn’t occurred to me to ask that, but it was a good question.

“I own thirty percent and Caltech owns seventy percent.”

“Really?” I said, surprised.

“That’s pretty standard for university based research. The college pays for salaries, scholarships, facilities, all with the hopes that patentable research comes out of it. It’s a gamble on their part, so they take the biggest chunk of the pie.”

“I’m not gonna lie, and telling people that we are going to dump E.coli into their water sounds tricky. We are going to have to pass hurdles to get it FDA approved.”

“I actually started that process five years ago, along with EPA certification,” Joan said. “We are very close to getting approved by both.”

“Well, that’s something, although the marketing is still scary. But, this does sound like the answer to our problem. I guess the next step is to find out if we can buy or license the bacteria from them.”

“I’ll get onto it,” Jonathan said.

“Excellent. Well, I’m on board. So that’s the next step. Once we clear that hurdle, we go live with the Houston plant. How are we doing there?” I asked Ronald.

“The facility’s already built out; it’s how we found our scaling problem. We shut it down until we figured out an answer, and some changes will need to be made if we are able to use Joan’s bacteria, but that retooling shouldn’t take very long. Maybe two weeks from go ahead we can be back up and running.”

“Nice! Let's get to it.”

Everyone broke up and headed to their respective areas, with Jonathan leading Joan to the office we had set him up with in our building.

We were getting close to the point where I would need to convince him to quit his private practice and come on board full time to head our legal department.

Douglas pulled me aside as I made my way out of the office.

“Cas, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you much since I joined the company, but I wanted you to know how much I’m enjoying being here with you guys,” he said.

“Thanks Douglas and I hope you know how glad I am you’re here with us.”

“I appreciate that. Anyway, something I’d starting thinking about when I was still at JPL was a better way to do Solar Power.”

“Ok?” I said after he paused, prompting him to go into more detail.

“You probably know, NASA relies on solar energy a lot, since deep space probes can’t carry large payloads of fuel to generate electricity. But really, the basic technology of Solar hasn’t changed much since the eighties. It works, but it’s not terribly efficient. What I started working on isn’t exactly a new idea, rather it's a way to make an existing idea work.”

“And what’s the idea?”

“Artificial Photosynthesis. In its most basic terms, it’s just like natural photosynthesis, where solar energy is converted into stored chemical energy, which can then be used in energy production. If it works, the ratio of solar energy to practical, usable energy is much higher than in current solar panels.”

“Why didn’t NASA go with it?”

“Because they never really heard of it. I was on the unmanned-missions team, and this idea really needs people around for it to work right. The manned-missions team wasn’t interested in outside input.”

“But you think you can make it work?”

“I do. It will take some money though.”

“Talk to Ted about getting what you need. I like the idea of creating better ways to generate clean energy. It fits in well with our mission. I think it’s worth checking out.”

“Thanks, Cas,” he said, breaking into a big grin and practically skipping down the hallway.

I couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm.

After making one last round to check in with everyone, I headed for the hospital.

I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, considering Jawarski’s default attitude; but I still wanted to make sure she was alright.

Arriving at this hospital, I did what I normally do, and asked for Alex.

The nurse I asked just shook her head and said, “Alex is not here. I recognize you, though. You’re that kid she is friends with.”

“Yeah, she’s a family friend,” I replied.

I hadn’t realized my connection to her had become that obvious. Apparently, I wasn’t as sneaky as I always thought she was.

“You know she quit, right?”

“Really?” I hadn’t realized her and Mom had moved forward on my suggestion so fast, but I was actually happy to hear that.

“Yep, she wouldn’t say where she was going, but she seemed excited.”

“I wanted to visit a patient, a police officer that was brought in this morning.”

“Yeah, I know who you mean. Cops coming in are always a big to-do around here. She’s in room 743. You can’t miss it. It’s the one with all the cops hanging around it.”

Sure enough, there were four police officers hanging around the hallway outside her room. They all turned and looked at me as I walked up to her door, which they were blocking.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I was hoping to get in to see Officer Jawarski.”

“Do you know her,” one of them asked.

“Indirectly. I was the bystander who showed up at the end of the shooting this morning. I wanted to check and make sure she was ok.”

“Yeah, I’d heard there was a kid who helped her out. Ok, go on in,” the guy blocking the door said as he moved away from the door.

“What the hell do you want?” she said as I entered the room.

“I know you don’t like me very much, and that’s ok. I just wanted to check and make sure you were ok, after this morning.”

She had a strange look on her face, like she was concentrating, but it passed quickly.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied curtly. “I’d like to be alone.”

I hadn’t even walked as far as her bed, but I shouldn’t have been surprised by that.

“Ok, well, I know you won’t, but if you need anything, please let me know. I hope you get better, Officer Jawarski.”

I thought I heard her say something as the door closed behind me, but I didn’t want to go back in. I didn’t begrudge her the rudeness, nor the dislike she felt towards me, since it wasn’t her fault; but I didn’t want to have to deal with it again, either.

My brief bout of self-flagellation over, I made a quick exit. The cops by the door gave me weird looks, probably because I had been in the room less than a minute.

I headed home with something in my head, but not sure if it was possible. As I hoped, Mom was home when I got there.

“Hey,” I said to her.

“You’re home early.”

“Yeah, I only checked in at the office. I wanted to go by and visit officer Jawarski.”

“I bet that went over well,” she said with a smile.

“About how you would expect. I heard that Alex quit from the hospital already.”

“Yes, she told me she turned in notice the day after you talked to her, and the hospital decided to let her go that day, using her sick days to cover her last few weeks. Something about insurance, although I smell bullshit on that.”

“Well, I’m glad she’s free now. How about you?”

“They were less enthused to see me go. I agreed to three weeks’ notice, so it will be a couple more weeks. I will try and find time to come in and work with Alex in my off time, as long as it doesn’t cut into family time too much.”

“There’s something I want you two to do, as soon as you guys have a lab set up. We need to find a way to counteract, or at least lessen, the effect on people who seem to have some kind of genetic reaction to me. I don’t want what happened to Margaret to happen to someone else.”

“We hadn’t talked about that, but it’s not a bad idea. Though I’m not sure how we even begin to work on something like that. People who have that…, I don’t know, allergy or whatever, aren’t likely to volunteer to help readily.”

“Well, I don’t know if this is possible, but since she's in the hospital, Jawarski most likely has a blood sample there. If there is a way for Alex to get her hands on that…”

“That’s pretty risky. Hospitals are serious about HIPA regulations, and there are some criminal laws in this state over stealing that.”

“Well, talk about it with Alex, and see if you can think of something.”

“Sure thing. Now, go upstairs and help Zoe, Emily and Tina put things in boxes. We need to be ready for the movers on Tuesday.”

“That fast?”

“Yes. This house has become really crowded. I want to get us into the new one as soon as possible.”

“Ok,” I said, turning and running up the stairs two at a time.

I was excited at the prospect of being in the new house. It felt like a new chapter in our lives. Considering how rocky the last few chapters were, I hoped this one went a little more smoothly!

Chapter 7

The next week was filled with non-stop packing. Besides members of the family, we roped in many of our friends to come out after school and help us pack up. The only person who didn’t show up to help was Vicki, who had started becoming more distant from us even at school. Not in a way that made me think she was upset with me or the other girls, but just withdrawn into herself. I was starting to get very concerned about her, but she rebuffed my questions on what was happening and except for school we never saw her.

Zoe was taking it particularly hard, since she and Vicki had become incredibly close. It hadn’t gotten too bad yet, but I attributed that more to the distraction of the move. Once we were in the new place, I had a feeling Zoe would start putting the full court press on Vicki.

By Friday we had everything packed away and the movers showed up. It was weird to leave from the old house for school, and come back to the new house. Mom and the girls had done some serious shopping ahead of time, and a lot of new furniture had already been delivered to the new house to fill out all the extra rooms.

Of course, all the furniture and boxes being moved was only one step. We still had to unpack everything, and that would take a while.

Late Friday night, Mom, Zoe, Tina, Emily and I were sitting in our new living room with its high arched ceiling.

“So, what does everyone think,” Mom asked as we relaxed.

“It’s weird,” Tina said. “I’d gotten used to the old house and now this feels kinda like someone else’s house.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Zoe said. “I like my room though.”

I nodded in agreement, “Me too. Although I still think Mom should have taken the Master bedroom.”

“Cas, we talked about this,” she said, “We all know what’s going to end up happening most nights. No matter what I try, I know Zoe will end up in your room, and if they’re here, Tami and Vicki, too. No, you need the bigger room.”

We spent the rest of the night relaxing and chatting, just spending time together. Sometimes things get so crazy in our lives, it’s rare when we can just have a simple night with the family. Emily even seemed more relaxed, laughing several times at some of the stories that were being told.

It was cozy and extremely relaxing, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. For me however, there was a shadow hanging over everything. I had already determined to go and see Vicki once the move was done, and now that it was, I was working through what my plan would be.

I got up the next morning and was vague with everyone about where I was going. I think most of them believed I was going to work, and that was for the best. I wanted to take a shot at figuring out what was up with Vicki on my own, at least initially.

Pulling up to Vicki’s house I saw her parents' cars in the driveway. Her dad opened the door when I knocked, and he looked rough.

His eyes were completely bloodshot, with dark bags under them. He squinted at me through slit eyes, trying to block out the sun.

“What do you want?” he asked.

We had always gotten along well when I had visited them many times in the past. This was definitely not his normal greeting.

“I was hoping to talk to Vicki for a minute.”

He didn’t say anything at first, just looking at me. Finally, he stepped aside, letting me in. Once the door was closed he wandered off to another part of the house where I knew his office was. I knew where Vicki’s room was, but that was also not usual.

I headed up to her room and knocked on her closed door.

“What,” she shouted from the other side.

Something was definitely off around here. She got along with her parents fairly well, and if I had to describe how they treated her, it would be doting.

“Vicki, it’s Cas.”

The door opened after a minute, to reveal Vicki in a bathrobe. Her eyes also had bags under them, and her hair was a mess.

“What are you doing here Cas?”

“I’m worried about you. We all are. You haven’t been yourself. I wanted to come check on you.”

“I’m fine,” she said shortly.

“Vicki, I know that’s not true. I saw your dad. What’s going on around here?”

She stared at me for a moment, and then collapsed in my arms, breaking down. Picking her up, I carried her into her room and sat in a chair, cradling her in my arms.

For a long while I let her cry it out, saying soft words of reassurance and love to try and soothe her. Eventually her sobs turned into sniffles, and then stopped entirely.

“Can you tell me what’s happening?”

“Things are just…bad around here. Something’s wrong at my dad’s work. He gets these phone calls and drinks a lot after. Then he starts getting mad at everything. Mom and I have been trying to stay out of the way, but he and mom end up yelling at each other most nights.”

“What are they fighting about?”

“He is just yelling at her, about little stuff. The house is a mess, when it really isn’t. The staff is spying on him, which is crazy. She’s spending too much money, which she’s always done.”

“Do you know what’s happening at his work?”

“No. I’ve overheard a few things, but only his side of the conversation.”

“What was he saying?”

“He was apologizing, but I’m not sure about what.”

I tried to think if there was something we could do, but nothing readily came to mind. I didn’t know enough about her father’s work to draw any conclusions. I had always thought that he made a little too much money for a CPA, but I had nothing really to back that up with. I needed more information before I could actually do anything to help them, and considering his state of mind and the hangover he was clearly sporting this morning, I wouldn’t be getting that information directly.

“Is that why you’ve been staying here?”

“Partly, but also dad said he didn’t want me or mom out by ourselves. He said he wanted to keep me where he could protect me.”

“Protect you? He thinks you’re in danger?”

“I don’t know. I asked him that, but he wouldn’t explain. So it’s just school and back, that’s it.”

“You need to get out of here. The kind of stress around here isn’t good for you. Let’s go talk to him.”

“Cas, I don’t think that’s…”

“Trust me, Vicki.”

We went down to his office, finding the door closed.

“Daddy, can Cas and I talk to you?” she said after she knocked.

After a second the door opened. He had a drink in his hand. He didn’t say anything, just turned and walked back into his office, sitting in his big, expensive chair.

“Mr. Hollabrand, I’d like to take Vicki to hang out with our friends today. She mentioned you didn’t want her going out by herself.”

“I want her to stay here,” he said.

“I’ll keep her with me at all times, and usually with several of us. I won’t let her drive by herself, and I’ll bring her back here and walk her to the door. I don’t know why you think she’s not safe, but you know what happened last year. I can protect her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“But Daddy …” Vicki started to say, but stopped when I placed my hand on her arm.

“Mr. Hollabrand, I don’t know what’s going on, but I can see things are really tense around here. This isn’t a great atmosphere for her to be cooped up in. Look at her.”

He looked over at his daughter, and the man I had met previously peeked through. I saw concern on his face as he recognized the stress that she was clearly under.

“I don’t know.”

“My house is pretty secure. We had our security company put in a high end alarm. It’s top of the line stuff. No one is getting to us.”

“Fine,” he said, letting out a sigh. “You can go, but I want you home before it gets dark.”

“Really?” she said, her face finally breaking into a smile.

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said hugging her father.

She turned and ran upstairs to get dressed, leaving me standing in her father’s office.

“Just keep an eye on her, ok?”

“I’d never let anything happen to her,” I said

He grunted and turned back to his desk, effectively dismissing me.

I waited by the front door until Vicki came trotting down the stairs. Her hair had been combed out and was in a ponytail and, although the bags under her eyes were still there, she was looking much better than just a few minutes ago.

On the way back home we talked about everything she had missed over the last few weeks, purposely avoiding talking about her father. She needed a break from the stress of home.

I did start making plans to call Carter when I got back and have him start looking into her dad. I hoped he could figure out what was going on. I may not be able to fix it, but if there was anything I could do, I would. And even if there wasn’t, this felt better than just doing nothing.

The rest of Saturday was spent just hanging out. Tami came over and all of us just lounged around the house. Zoe was ecstatic that not only was Vicki hanging out with us again, but she seemed to be more like her old self. While no one was happy to have Vicki go back home before it got dark, it was best if we abided by her dad’s wishes, at least if we wanted her to be able to come back again.

Once she was home I stopped in a parking lot before I got back to the house and called Carter. I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Zoe, and worry her. Especially if there wasn’t anything specifically wrong.

“Carter, I have a new job for you,” I said when he picked up.

“Yeah?”

“I need you to check out Vicki’s father, Richard Hollabrand. Somethings going on at his work that’s pushing him over the edge and it’s becoming a problem.”

“So he’s having tough days at work. What’s there to look into?”

“It’s a feeling more than anything. He seems to make a lot more than a CPA should, and I’m not aware of any family money to explain it. I’ve always given it a pass, but now he’s worried about Vicki being out alone, saying it’s not safe. Putting it all together, it doesn’t feel right. It may be nothing; but, better safe than sorry.”

“It’s your dime. I’ll do some poking around and get back to you.”

With that he hung up, abrupt as usual. I hoped I was over-thinking things, blowing this out of proportion, but given the last year, I wasn’t willing to chance it.

My visit did have some positive effects however. At school the next week Vicki seemed to stay more upbeat. Getting her out of the house definitely seemed to be helpful. I didn’t feel any better about what was going on with her dad, but that would have to wait until I heard back from Carter.

Things were progressing in other areas too. On Wednesday afternoon, Jonathan, Mom and Alex went and rented some office space that they could turn into a lab, moving their venture to its next step.

I hadn’t been able to go with them, since it happened during school hours, but they were excited to get things moving forward. Not that I was really needed. Jonathan had things well in hand and, since they were set up as a division of the company, Ted was setting it up so all their back office needs were taken care of.

That was the one thing that had made Mom nervous. She was a scientist, and never had any interest in running a business. With this setup, she and Alex could focus on the science and let Ted and the operations team deal with all the other details.

Other parts of the business did need my attention. Specifically when Douglas tracked me down when I stopped in the office Wednesday after school.

“Caspian, good, I was hoping you’d come in today.”

As much as I had tried, he wouldn’t call me Cas. It actually unnerved me a bit, since the only people that called me Caspian these days were substitute teachers.

“What can I do for you, Douglas?” I said.

“Things are looking good on the solar project, but the lab here isn’t cutting it.”

“Talk to Ted, see if he has space you can expand into. If not we can look at renting something better.”

“I’ll be honest, Caspian. Your town here is nice, but it is too small. We don’t have access to top of the line facilities, and nearly everything has to be shipped in. This place is not set up for any significant industrial research.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“We need to set up facilities in a larger city that can support our work. While somewhere like Silicon Valley would in my mind be ideal, Ted pointed out that the distance between our headquarters and a lab space that would be halfway across the country wasn’t the best idea.”

“Did Ted have any suggestions for you?”

“Well, he suggested I talk to you.”

“Nice of him to pass the buck. What about Houston? It doesn’t have the high tech pedigree of the Valley, but it does have NASA and a lot of industrial production. With the ship channel, you would have better access to supplies. Ronald’s project is already down there for his mid-scale proof of concept test, and it’s only an hour away.”

“That could work. I will talk to Ted about looking for space there.”

“Ok. Just keep me in the loop. Between the new bio-tech stuff, Ronald’s project, and your stuff, we’re starting to expand pretty fast.”

“Sure thing. You know, this kind of request would have taken months if not years to do through JPL. I love how fast you guys move.”

“Ted may not agree with you, since he actually has to do the leg work to get all this stuff sorted out.”

“Well,” he said, grinning ear to ear, “I’ll go bug him about it.”

“You do that,” I said laughing.

You couldn’t help but like Douglas. His constant energy was infectious. I finally made it into my office and started going through the paperwork that stacks up between my visits to the office.

Ronald’s tests were looking good. The special bacteria were definitely making the difference. He was well under target for energy usage and the rate at which water could be processed was higher than initial estimates. More important than that, however, were our patents. They'd been cleared and we had successfully bought out the patents on the bacteria.

It had been expensive, but clearing up ownership of the patents was a great step towards making the desalination project a real and profitable venture. Between that and the successful tests, we were getting close to being able to move to the next stage. Even if we hadn’t decided what that was exactly.

Ted was also excited about things. When the drone patents had been sold, we used some of that money to buy out Ted’s old company, essentially rolling it up so he only had one thing to deal with.

He had never stopped his original work however, designing and producing smaller mechanical solutions. Thanks to the drone sales, and talk that had started up around our tests on other projects, we had received a bump in our reputation … at least inside the business world. What was now the small parts design section of our company had started picking up steam over the last month as well.

That was very welcome, considering that we were basically living off our money from the drone sale. It didn’t cover everything, but that division of the company was paying for a chunk of the other things we were trying to get off the ground.

I was just reading up on some reports Mary Ann had dropped off before she headed home for the day when I was surprised by a knock at my office door, mostly because it was always open when I was around, and no one ever knocked.

I was more than surprised when I looked up to find Officer Jawarski standing in my doorway. Her normal irritated facial expression, or at least normal when I was around, had been replaced by one of nervousness.

“Officer Jawarski,” I said standing up, “this is a surprise.”

“Yeah, well, I needed to talk to you and I heard around that you worked here late on school nights.”

“Well, you found me,” I said, trying to sound friendly.

She didn’t know why she hated me, but I did. Her tone, while still a bit short, was much closer to neutral than I had ever heard from her. Considering what I knew she must feel being near me, I was amazed by her strength. Biology is a hard thing to fight.

Her arm was still in a sling and she was not in uniform, which I had never seen. If I had to guess, she was still on medical leave after the shooting. What I couldn’t guess was why she was in my office.

“Have a seat,” I said, continuing. “Can I get you some water or coffee?”

“No, the faster we can do this, the better,” she said.

That sounded more like the Jawarski I had dealt with in the past.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“Something’s been bothering me, and I want to just deal with it. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I don’t like you, still don’t in fact. I don’t trust you and I think you’re trouble.”

“You’ve made that very clear,” I said.

“This will go faster if you don’t speak. Anyway, I am having a problem with that. What I know about you and what you did the other day are … I don’t know, not matching up. I am having trouble fitting how I feel about you with how I think I should feel about what happened the other day. In my head, I know I should be grateful for what you did, but I’m having trouble with that.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I would’ve done the same for anyone.”

“I said shut up and let me get this out. I know I don’t owe you anything, but just you saying that, I know I should respect how you are treating this situation. I was a Marine! Honor and loyalty are big things for us, and every act you’ve done since you helped me has been, God help me, honorable.”

She stopped to take in a breath. I could see the conflict on her face. I wish I could tell her I knew why she felt the way she did, but there was no way to explain it without bringing Jawarski fully inside, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. There was just too much of a chance she could hurt us.

“When I was at the hospital, people I spoke with there had nothing but great things to say about you. Hell, even other cops have mentioned you in passing at the station, and they seem to think you’re alright. But I can’t shake the fact that I don’t like you. It’s very confusing.”

She sat quietly staring at me until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I appreciate that you are second guessing your dislike of me, but I honestly don’t want to make your life difficult. I’m fine with you avoiding me if that makes things easier for you.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then what can I do for you?”

“I … I don’t know. I’m not even sure why I came here,” she said, standing up to leave.

“Officer,” I said, stopping her in the door.

“I get what you’re saying, and I know why you came here. You’re feeling guilty over this, and I would bet you are looking for some kind of absolution.”

She didn’t respond directly, but her awkward avoidance of eye contact told me I hit the nail on the head.

“Normally, I would say ‘No hard feelings, go live your life’, but I don’t think that will work. We haven’t gotten along, and in the past I think you have dealt with me unfairly. Still. I think you are probably a good person… well, with anyone that isn’t me.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said sarcastically.

“You’re welcome,” I replied, equally as sarcastically. “So let’s do this. Talk to my friends, my business partners, and my family. Find out - not about me - but about the things I’ve done. If you think that, in spite of how you feel about me, I’m doing the kinds of things a good person would do; then we will sit down and figure out a way where you can help me, if only to alleviate your guilt.”

“Help you do what?”

“Talk to everyone I mentioned about what I’m working on. I’m trying to help the world, or at least as much as a teenager with giant stacks of money can. I genuinely want to help people, and I’d like it if you could help me do that. I know you probably don’t believe that, but see if you can’t let the Marine inside you find a way past that. You don’t have to like me, to help me do good.”

“We'll see,” she said, and then turned and walked out.

Watching her leave, I really couldn’t say what I was hoping to achieve from this.

Chapter 8

Jawarski’s visit rattled me enough that I couldn’t get my head back into the work on my desk, so I decided to head out for the day.

I made a stopover at the new lab space for Mom and Alex. I knew they weren’t up and running yet as I had just looked at an invoice for equipment they needed, but I wanted to see what they were doing. While we had talked about her work, I never saw Mom’s old lab or what she really did during the day.

What I did not expect to see was Vicki getting into her car in the parking lot.

“Surprised to see you here,” I said as I walked up to her.

“My dad had to go do something, and I needed to get out of the house. Being cooped up there is really starting to drive me crazy.”

“I get that, but I’m also surprised you are here. Why not go hang out with Zoe or Tami?”

“They had a late practice, and I was kind of curious what Alex and Mrs. Bell were doing here, so I thought I would come take a look.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Want to come in with me?”

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head, “I need to get going. I’ll see you later.”

“Ok, well, tell your dad I am going to come get you on Friday so you can hang out with us.”

I gave her a kiss and then watched her get in her car and drive off. Her explanation for being here made sense in general, although she had never shown much interest in Alex or Mom’s work before. But who knows, people will do all kinds of things when they're bored.

Alex was standing in the front entry way when I walked in, and had been watching me talk to Vicki out in the parking lot.

“Hey, Alex,” I said seeing her there.

“Hey. Ready for your tour?” she asked.

“Yep. Is Mom around?”

“No, she went to talk to a rep about some more equipment we need.”

“Thanks for showing Vicki around. She was pretty bored. I hope she didn’t bug you too much.”

“No, she was fine. There isn’t much I can do at the moment. So let’s get started. This is, of course, the reception area.”

Which it obviously was, with a couple of couches and a desk near the door leading into the rest of the suite.

“You’re going to have a secretary?”

“More like part secretary and part office manager. Angela pointed out it was a good idea to have a gate keeper, especially considering the, umm, sensitive nature of what we are going to be working on here. Plus, there is more clerical work in a lab like this than you would think. Organizing reports, ordering supplies, stuff like that.”

I hadn’t considered that, but she had a point.

Beyond the reception area were two offices for Alex and Mom, already with the basic office furniture in place.

Next were two fairly large separate rooms, with large glass windows so you could look into them from the hallway. One had several long metal tables in the middle, which were currently empty, and five small work stations scattered along the walls between rows of cabinets.

The other room had the same long metal tables, and that was it. More interesting was the keypad lock on that room, and an intercom on the wall next to the door. There was a small room with another door leading into the lab that acted like a pass through room, with a large vent on the ceiling of that room.

“What’s that room for?” I asked.

“It is for working with pathogens and things we wouldn’t want to let out of the lab. While we won’t ever be certified, since we don’t want that much scrutiny in our work, we have set it up to match requirements for a BSL-three lab.”

“BSL-three?”

“Bio-Safety Level. It’s the standard safety precautions for dealing with harmful biological agents. Level one is for the least dangerous pathogens like non-pathogenic E. Coli. Stuff that can be deadly, but can be avoided with basic safety procedures.”

“Level two is for diseases that are harmful to humans, but are generally not aerosol. This includes pathogenic bacteria and diseases like HIV.”

“Level three, which we have here, is for working with serious and lethal diseases that can be contracted through inhalation. Stuff like Yellow Fever, Tuberculosis, and SARS is worked on in a level three lab.”

“What’s with the little pass-through room?” I asked.

“You have to have one set of doors closed, which electronically lock, before you can open the other. The vent creates a negative pressure and pulls everything into a special medical filtration system, which we are having installed next week. We will have bio safety cabinets where all the work actually happens. Those are also coming in next week.”

“Do you think we’ll need something like that?”

“Maybe. I still have a lot of tests I want to do. The hospital here in town doesn’t have a BSL-three lab, so I was limited in what I could throw against your blood sample. I also want to see what it does to break down the more virulent diseases.”

“You’re not worried about having that kind of stuff here?”

“Not really. We are following strict safety protocols; plus, I am nearly certain at this point that the change Angela and I have gone through makes us immune to these diseases already. I really wish I could test your blood against some of the real bad boys, like Lassa or Marburg, but you can’t work on that stuff outside of a certified BSL-four lab, which we won’t be able to set up. Those BSL-four labs that are around require a paper trail we wouldn’t want.”

“What about that other lab. What’s with all the work stations?”

“For lab techs, and research assistants.”

“You’re going to have assistants?”

“You didn’t imagine Angela and I would be able to do all this by ourselves.”

“Honestly … I kinda did.”

“Well, we do need some help. So we will have a small staff to assist us.”

The rest of the tour led through the back mechanical areas, which were larger than I expected. Alex explained that the room was needed for the sterilization and filtration equipment, both to meet compliance for a lab and because it was best to be safe when doing medical research.

I was pretty impressed with the whole setup. I’m not sure what was in my head when I suggested their setting this business up, but it hadn’t been something this size.

I got home from the lab to find Vicki’s car in the driveway. When she said she had to leave the lab, I had assumed she meant she was going back home.

Walking in I found all four girls plus Tina at the big table we had bought for the dining room.

“This is a surprise,” I said, dropping my backpack into a vacant chair. “I thought you were headed back home.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Vicki said. “I didn’t know if we would be ready to talk to you today or not. But Emily and Tina got a lot done while the rest of us were out, and managed to finish up our presentation.”

“Presentation?” I asked.

“You said you wanted us to figure out what to do with New Life,” Zoe said. “So we did.”

“New Life?”

“One of the things you said we needed was a name. Well, we’re trying to give people a step up right? It sounded good to us. We’ve already talked to Jonathan and he made sure there wasn’t a charity with that name already, and took care of everything to set it up.”

“I like it,” I said as I slid into a chair. “Go for it. I’m all ears.”

“Ok,” Tami said, “You said our goal was to help people and get the world ready for … us. That we needed to win people’s hearts and minds for our group, before anyone learned exactly what you were.”

“More importantly than that, I want us to help people. That comes first. Everything else is icing,” I interjected.

“Right,” she continued, “so we first wanted to highlight the areas where we needed to help people. And we needed to make it modular, so that once we had the kinks worked out of the first setup; we could expand into new cities easily.”

“Setup?” I asked.

“We'll get there in a minute. So, we found four areas we thought could best help people. The first is with work training and placement. Getting people jobs ultimately fixes all the other problems, and is the longest lasting fix. Second is providing some form of medical care. Third is food, both free and low cost depending on the person's situation. And fourth is housing.”

“Ok,” I said. “That list makes sense I guess, but break it down for me. How do you plan on doing each of those?”

“We have some ideas on that, but just keep in mind some of this is a work in progress. The first is training and placement. This one will take money. We can leverage your company, and, if you and the rest of your partners agree, maybe reach out to companies you do business with.”

“That’s only going to go so far,” I pointed out. “I’m happy to do it, and I’m betting Ted will be with me on that, but there are only so many jobs that are available, and most of those require specialized skills. Some of the out of work people will, of course, have those skills, but a lot won’t. You need to look into ways to find employment for people that might only have graduated high school, and for people that never finished.”

“Training programs will of course, help. I’m not sure if this will work, but it’s something for you to look into. Talk to employers and find out what skills they need the most. Focus on places that need trained, but not necessarily educated employees. If we work with them it might increase our chances of finding places for people.”

“My big concern is, this isn’t new stuff. The government and charitable groups do this, to varying degrees of success, and they haven’t put a dent in the homeless population.”

“That’s because most of those programs are focused on re-training,” Zoe countered. “They are targeting people looking for work and the ‘actively’ unemployed and not so much on the homeless population, who have mostly given up by that point.

“There is something else you need to consider,” a voice said from the doorway. We all turned to find Mom leaning on the door frame.

“For some of the people we find to help – people down on their luck, helping with job hunting or retraining so they can get a job will do wonders, but it won’t work for everyone. There is a segment of the homeless population that is, sadly, unemployable, either from mental health issues or substance abuse problems.”

“That’s where our second area comes in,” Zoe said, “providing free clinics and health care. Beyond basic clinic services, this will include setting up connections with mental health facilities and substance abuse programs.”

“Another program that will cost a good deal of money,” I pointed out.

“Not as much as you might think,” Tami said. “Yeah, it won’t be cheap, but we talked to a lot of free clinics already operating around the country, and we think this will be cheaper than our training program ideas. We will need to do some legwork to get doctors and other medical staff to volunteer, but it’s doable.”

“Ok, I stand corrected,” I said.

Vicki picked up their explanation from this point, saying, “The one area we are most proud of is helping with food. There was an idea floated in Congress a few years ago that was really clever, but never went anywhere, but we think we can make it work.”

“We waste a lot of food in this country. Farms throw out perfectly good fruit and vegetables because they don’t meet aesthetic requirements. Grocery stores throw out food well before it goes bad, again because of aesthetics. If we buy this food from the farms or stores, we both help those businesses and can get the food at deep discounts, which we can then sell at cost or give away.”

“That is pretty clever if we can make it work,” I said.

“Lastly is housing. We aren’t clear on how this one will work yet, but we need to find a way to get housing set up for people. Both cheap houses and maybe group homes for single people to help them in transition.”

“It seems like you guys put a lot of thought into this. So, where do we go from here?”

“Umm,” Zoe said, looking at each of the girls, “We aren’t really sure. I mean, so far this has been just academic. But to make any of it work, we need help.”

“We’ve already started putting some money into New Life, to get it set up. Talk to Jonathan about getting someone who knows how to run a program like this. You guys need to still be in charge, but you’re right, you need experience. This person can also help you fundraise, since we will need more money than New Life can provide on its own.”

“For now, we can start off locally. Maybe not here, since we are small enough our homeless population is pretty limited; but perhaps in Houston. They have a pretty big homeless population there. Once we get the bugs worked out, and more money into the program, we can start to expand it out.”

“I actually have to go to Houston pretty soon, if you guys want to go with me.”

“That sounds great,” Zoe said. “Maybe we can have a night out on the town afterwards.”

“You know you will need parental supervision right,” Mom threw in.

“I guess we can have you come along,” I said in mock surrender, which earned me a playful cuff on the back of the head from her.

Laughing Mom headed out of the room and the girls started packing up.

“Vicki, are you going to be in any trouble when you get home. Your dad seemed pretty determined for you not to be out without him not knowing where you were.”

“I don’t care,” Vicki said, sounding angry. “I’m tired of being a prisoner in my own house. Whatever he is into, I don’t care.”

“Vicki, that’s not a great idea. Your dad is under a lot of stress, and this isn’t going to help things. You're still his daughter and living under his roof.”

“For now,” she said with a pout. “Ok, yeah, I get it. I’ll be a good girl. I’m just sick of it.”

“I know, but you have to play it smart. Do you want me to go with you?”

“No. If I come home after my jailbreak by myself, I’m the one in trouble. If you come with me he will find a way to blame it on you.”

“Ok. Just hang in there. It can’t last forever,” I told her.

She just smiled, kissed my cheek, and headed out.

“Can I get a ride home,” Tami asked. “I rode with Zoe today.”

“Sure thing. Do you two want to go with us?” I asked Zoe, who was busy packing up.

“Nah. I have some stuff I wanna get finished and Emily promised to help. You two have fun,” she said with a smirk before going back to cleaning up.

Her smirk made me smell a rat, but I took Tami’s hand and headed out the door all the same. It was starting to get dark as we pulled out of the driveway.

About half way to her house my suspicion was confirmed when Tami turned off the radio and directed me to pull off into a gravel road that headed into a small wooded area. The sign indicated this road lead to a “municipal works” which I took to mean a water treatment thing or a pumping station.

I dutifully turned and headed down the road, but asked, “What’s going on Tami.”

“Pull up next to the building,” she said, not directly answering my question.

The building was less of a building and more of a concrete shed with a big ‘Keep Out’ sign on the door. I parked, turned off the car, and looked over at her.

“What’s going on?” I asked again.

She unbuckled her seat belt and limberly slid across the center console to place herself in my lap, leaning her back against the steering wheel.

“You’ve been so busy lately. We’ve had some time together, but it’s always when everyone is together. I love the other girls, but I wanted some alone time with my man too.”

Before I could respond she leaned in and kissed me passionately. As our tongues battled all thoughts of protest fled my mind. I put my hands on either side of her slender waist, feeling the strong muscles move as she started grinding into me.

Normally Tami is the one to take it slow, so is surprised me how aggressive she was being.  After we finished, we both lay back in the seat in a mangled heap.

Listening to her breathing becoming slow and steady, I thought she had fallen asleep.

“That was weird. Amazing, but kinda weird,” she said, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“Yeah, I don’t think this car was made for this.”

“It was still really great.”

Instead of answering I leaned down and kissed the top of her head, pulling her in tight for a one armed hug.

“I know I’m not Zoe, but I love you more than anything,” she said after a minute.

Pulling her head up so she could look at me in the eye I said, “What does that mean?”

“Well, you loved Zoe before, you know, all this biology stuff happened. She was your first love.”

“But I don’t put her above you, or Vicki. You know that, right? I love you each equally.”

“I’m not jealous of her. I’m so happy I’m with you that I’m ok not being team captain.”

“Tami, there isn’t a team captain. I may have loved Zoe first, but I don’t love her the most. You all share my heart.”

“Promise,” she said, squeezing in tighter next to me.

“Promise,” I said.

After a few more minutes of lying together, enjoying each other’s company, I reached down and slapped her gently on the butt.

“Ok, we gotta get up and get you home for real.”

The act of getting dressed was actually more awkward than how we got undressed, but eventually we managed it.

The rest of the drive to her house was in silence, my free hand gripped tight in both of hers. I hadn’t realized she felt this vulnerable about her position in our strange little group. I made a mental note to not only try and show her how much I cared more often, but to also check with Vicki and see if she felt the same way.

Pulling up to her house, there was a car I didn’t recognize in the driveway, but the sight of it sent Tami leaping out of the car almost before I got parked.

As she got up to her front door it opened, and a man I recognized came out. It was the preacher, and Tami’s parents were coming out behind him.

He ignored Tami completely as he walked away from the house, but the glare he gave me as he walked past left no illusions as to how he felt about me.

I started to walk up and support Tami, but she held up a hand.

“Cas, head home. I need to talk to my parents.”

Her voice made it clear she wasn’t in the mood for any kind of discussion.

I had hoped talking to Tami’s parents had ended the threat of the preacher and his cult for both girls, but apparently I was wrong.

What I was certain of was that the preacher and I would be having a personal conversation … very soon!

Chapter 9

First thing Monday morning Zoe and I caught up with Tami at school.

“What did your parents say?” I asked with no preamble.

“The preacher is pressuring them pretty hard to give in. They held him off, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last. They are really upset about having to go against him, Mom especially. She has totally bought into his bullshit. I think he’s losing some face over this, since it had already been announced that Judy would be the next of his chosen girls.”

“Do you think they will give in?”

“I don’t know. He has basically told them to get rid of me, that I was ‘too corrupted by the devil’s influence’. He wants them to sell their house and go live at his ranch compound full time.”

“Are they going to do it?”

“I don’t know. Mom is ready to toss me out. She’s totally pissed and blames all this on me. Dad is pushing back, but it’s always been her way before. I’m actually kinda proud of him for finally showing some backbone, but I don’t think it’ll last.”

“I’m going to have to go see this preacher!” I said, angrily.

“Cas, don’t. That will just make it worse.”

“How can it get worse? You just said you think they are going to give in to him. If they throw you out, you can always come live with us, no problem. But Judy? That poor kid doesn’t need to spend the rest of her adolescent years getting raped by some monster.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, a tear sliding down her face.

“Give Cas a shot at trying something,” Zoe said. “I’m sure he will talk to Jonathan and the people he had watching Emily and they will figure out something.”

“Yeah,” Tami said, wiping away the tears now coming from both eyes. “Ok.”

“Let’s stop off in the restroom and get you cleaned up,” Zoe said, taking Tami’s arm.

“Hey,” I said as they walked away. “Where’s Vicki?”

Vicki usually rode in with Tami and they had first period together, so it was weird not seeing her.

“I got a text from her saying she didn’t feel good,” Tami said.

“What? But she can’t get sick. I mean she shouldn’t be able to. Not with the changes that have happened to her body.”

“I know,” Tami replied. “I think she’s just stressed about home stuff. I mean, she did sneak out this weekend.”

Tami and Zoe disappeared into the restroom and I headed off to class.

By lunch, Tami was looking much better. Zoe was pretty good at lifting people’s spirits and it seemed she had been working on Tami most the morning.

Our lunch table this year had expanded quite a bit. Besides what made up the core of our group from last year, we had added a fair number of Vicki’s friends, since she was now a permanent establishment with us.

The school was, at this point, fairly used to our weird quartet; although we were still an object of curiosity, especially to the incoming freshmen. Many of the teachers were less thrilled and we got regular looks of displeasure from them. These were mostly teachers we didn’t interact with on a regular basis who didn’t really know us though.

“Feeling better,” I asked Tami as I sat down across from her and Emily and next to Zoe.

“I guess. There isn’t much I can do about it now. Hopefully you have more luck. But,” she said finally smiling, “we have some brighter news.”

“Yeah,” I said warily.

The smile was not her, 'I’m happy everything’s ok’, smile. It was more of an, 'I have a plan and I like making you do stuff’, smile. Zoe had the same smile on her face, so I knew they had been plotting. Emily, however, looked partly scared.

“We’ve been talking to Emily,” Zoe said, “and after weeks of working with her therapist, she thinks she is ready to move past what happened. So we’ve all decided it’s time for you two to go out on a real date, tonight”

“Really?” I asked, looking at Emily.

“Yeah,” she said, looking at me with a mixture of hope and worry.

“I assume the girls have already worked out all the details?”

“Yeah,” she said again.

“And you’re gonna say sentences longer than one word tonight?” I asked with a smile, to let her know I was just playing with her.

“Yeah,” she said with a laugh.

“What the hell, Grey,” Jacob said from a few seats down. “Aren’t you dating enough girls, yet?”

“Apparently not,” I said with a smirk.

Even though our friends were acclimated to our weird circumstance, they still sometimes got thrown by it.

“It’s not his fault,” Tami chimed in. “We’re the ones who keep bringing girls to him.”

“You are the luckiest man alive,” Josh said from the other end of the table.

“I don’t know,” Jacob said, “One chick is a pain in the a…”

He was interrupted when Rachel, his girlfriend, reached out and punched him.

“Not you baby,” He said, rubbing his chest.

“Better not mean me,” she said with a smile and a lot of attitude.

You had to like Rachel. She was quite possibly one of the most aggressive people I had ever met, and she didn’t back down from anyone.

At the end of lunch, I put a hand on Emily’s elbow to slow her down and waved the others to go on without us.

“We don’t have to do this tonight if you don’t want to,” I said to Emily.

Through most of lunch she had been fiddling and throwing me furtive glances, clearly uncomfortable.

“I want to, I’m just nervous.”

“Because of what happened?”

“No. I mean, yeah. I guess that’s part of it. But it’s also … I’ve never really dated before. With how my dad was and everything, I always kept to myself.”

“Do you want to put it off for a few days?”

“No, I really want to go, tonight.”

“Ok, then tonight it is!"

I gave her arm a light squeeze, and turned to head towards my next class

Normally in the afternoon I leave school by myself, since I went to the office before going home and the rest of them had after-school activities, so I was surprised to find Zoe leaning against my car when I got to the parking lot.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in practice,” I asked after giving her a kiss.

“Yeah, but I told the coach I had something to do right after class, and would be late to cheerleading practice.”

“Why do I feel like you have some kind of scheme?”

“Shut up,” she said with a laugh, slapping me hard on the shoulder, “and listen. We have talked and we all agree you should tell her tonight.” “Tell her what?”

“About you, about us, all of it.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Zoe.”

“She already knows something isn’t right about us. I mean, you don’t do a great job hiding it, sometimes; and, we’ve been laying the groundwork. Just explain it to her and answer her questions, and it will be fine.”

“I don’t know,” I said, hesitating.

“Cas, you were the one who said you didn’t want to change anyone without them knowing the full extent of what that would mean.”

“Wait,” I started to say.

“I’m not saying anything’s happening tonight,” She said, holding up a hand. “Especially after you tell her, she is going to need some time to process it. I mean, you being an alien or whatever is big news.”

“I’m not an alien.”

“I said or whatever,” she said with a laugh. “But you made a big deal out of wanting people to have a choice, so we figured this needed to happen. Cause that girl has it bad for you.”

“Ok, well, I guess I appreciate that you guys heard me.”

“Yeah, we’re pretty wonderful. Ok, head to work and don’t be late getting home. We will have your date clothes set out for you.”

To tell the truth, I was actually really excited about my date with Emily. I know a part of it was biology. We hadn’t figured out exactly how it worked, but it was becoming clear that, even before someone was changed, there was some kind of biological pull that happened after I had kissed a girl.

Mom thought it might be even before that, and have to do with once I was attracted to a girl. She said it might have to do with pheromones or something similar, and I began changing the person before there was even any physical contact.

I wasn’t thrilled by that, but she said it was actually not that unheard of in nature and there had been, if not identical examples, parallels of biological attractants.

It was something we were looking into, and the girls had, under who knows what pretense, gotten fairly regular blood samples from Emily and several other people I was in regular contact with who hadn’t actually been changed yet.

Whatever it was though, I could feel the pull of Emily and each day she started, at least in my head, to move closer into the same grouping as the other girls.

So Zoe did have a point. I needed to have a talk with her now and give her a chance to get away from the freak show that is my life before it got too late.

I was pretty lost in thought when I walked into the office, and almost ran over Mary Ann, who had gotten up from her desk to intercept me as I walked in.

“Ted’s looking for you, Space Cadet,” she said with a smile as I just barely dodged her.

“Sorry about that. Had stuff on my mind.”

“That sounds about normal. He wanted you to stop in his office as soon as you came in.”

“Sure thing,” I said, trying to push out my thoughts about tonight’s date with Emily and get focused for whatever Ted needed.

When I walked into his office Ted practically leaped out of his chair.

“Excellent, you’re here. Let me call Marcus, Jonathan, and Ron in here.”

The previous week Jonathan had finally moved into our offices full time. He still had a piece of his practice, but he had handed off most of his cases to partners, and they were in the process of buying him out.

It was totally amiable, although his partners weren’t crazy about our business being taken away from them as he joined us. With the way we had grown over the past year, I’m sure they saw giant dollar signs in place of our name.

But we had always been a client through Jonathan, and we hadn’t signed any kind of agreement locking us into business with them.

I’m sure they could have fought it, but since Jonathan was essentially handing them the rest of his portfolio, and we promised to use them for any overflow legal work we had, they saw the value of keeping us happy and giving us Jonathan.

In exchange for giving up his practice, we had made Jonathan a partner in Destiny, equal to Marcus’s standing. It was still a gamble for Jonathan, but considering the amount of money we made the previous year, and the amount we could make if any of our future plans worked out, it was a gamble with a serious upside.

After a few minutes everyone had assembled and Ted launched into whatever had him so amped up.

“We received a call late last week from Aaron Baxter at Miltech.”

“Really, what could he possibly want,” I said, surprised.

MilTech was a DOD contractor we'd had a run in with the previous year that had ended up their buying our drone patents and essentially funding everything we have done since then.

I had met Aaron at his office once, and he seemed like a stand-up guy, going as far as having some guys in his office that had come up against us arrested when he found out they had broken into our offices for a little industrial espionage.

That being said, he'd had those people working in fairly high levels of his organization, so I wasn’t yet ready to be his best friend.

“They have heard about what we’ve been doing on the desalinization project and were especially interested in the patents we filed recently on the use of bacterial cleaning of the water, pre-filtration.”

Once you filed a patent, they were out in the public and some companies had entire teams scouring new patents to try and find something they could scoop up cheap before it ever got off the drawing board.

“They recently got a contract to do an overhaul on a bunch of Navy ships, as well as the construction contract on a new series of destroyers. From what he said, water filtration and available space for new systems has always been an issue on ships, and they are looking for ways to cut down on the water tanks the ships have to use room for now.”

“We haven’t managed to scale it down yet to be small enough to fit on a ship,” Ron threw out.

“From your reports, it seemed like you weren’t that far off,” Marcus said.

“Maybe. The latest run of tests has been pretty successful.”

“I told him we didn’t have it scaled down enough,” Ted continued, “But they are a little way off from starting the contract. Stuff like this always has to go through layers of approval so we have a little time. Plus, they also need to take the time to update all their plans accordingly.”

“Was he talking about buying it or …” Ron said, sounding both worried and excited at the same time.

By this point I had spent enough time around engineers to know what he was thinking, or at least feeling. The prospect for selling off patents was always exciting, because it usually comes with a payday. Of course, at most major companies, the engineer sees none of that; but we had shared the wealth from the sales of the drone patent, which made any large sale become a windfall for everyone.

At the same time, these guys spent a lot of time thinking over their designs. To some of them, their work was their children, and they had a hard time letting it go. There was always one more tweak, one more modification that could be making their invention just that much better.

That was a blessing and a curse, since while it made for incredibly focused and dedicated work on a project, sometimes it made it tough to get the project finished up.

“We didn’t get into specifics, but it sounded like they were talking about licensing it. That would be great, because right now we are living off the proceeds of our last sale, and a steady cash flow would do wonders for our balance sheets.”

“As long as we make sure that we aren’t on the hook for any kind of penalties if we can’t get it to scale down properly, I am up for this. All of our plans had been civil anyway, so this seems like a no brainer,” I said. “Jonathan, you and Ted take point on this and let’s see where it can go.”

“No problem,” Jonathan said.

“Ok, well, I have a few things I gotta get doing. I have somewhere to be in a couple of hours and there are a few things I need to take care of. But keep me in the loop on this.”

“Will do,” Ted said as the meeting broke up.

I headed back to my office, and spent a few hours going through the various work that always piles up on my desk while I am at school. Ted, Marcus, and Jonathan, now that he was with us full time, covered as much as they could, but some things needed me to sign off. Also, there was always a large stack of reports and memos.

That was my doing. I had insisted on being kept in the know on everything we worked on. Luckily my reading speed was fast enough by this point that I was able to stay on top of it.

Finishing up on my work I packed up and headed home, and my thoughts immediately returned to Emily. I was filled with a weird mixture of excitement over our date and worry about the conversation that was going to happen.

“Go upstairs and get dressed,” Zoe said to me as soon as I opened the door.

“Yes, boss,” I said as I walked past.

I gave a small jump in surprise as she whacked me, hard, on the ass as I passed her.

“And don’t you forget it,” she said.

As I had assumed, clothes were already laid out for me on my bed. They had selected nice dress pants, a dark blue button up shirt, and a sports coat I didn’t even know I owned. Of course, if I had to guess I probably hadn’t owned it before this week.

As usual, the girls had been plotting.

By the time I got downstairs, Emily was already there, surrounded by the other girls, although Vicki’s absence was notable.

She looked amazing in a simple dress and short heels, and her black hair, which normally hung mid-way down her back, was pulled up with braids leading into the longer section.

I don’t know much about hair, and less about how girls style it, but I approved of whatever this was called.

With her hair out of her face it really changed the way she looked. She had filled out some since coming to live with us. With her parents and then grandparents, Emily had always been on the scary side of skinny. I’m not sure either set was very concerned about feeding her.

Mom however had made it a mission, and it was really changing the way Emily looked. Her whole face, once boney and angular had started becoming softer and rounder. I hadn’t really noticed it before, since normally her hair was framing her face and hiding some of it.

“We made you two reservations at that Italian place down by the court house,” Tami said.

“Ohh,” Emily said, her eyes sparkling, “I’ve wondered about that place.”

“We know,” Zoe said, “That’s why we picked it. Your reservation in in twenty minutes, so you two should get going”

I gave them both a kiss, which would normally be weird for a guy to do when he was headed out on a date, but Emily seemed to approve.

Taking her by the arm I lead her out to the car, opening her door for her. I was determined to play the gentleman tonight, to hopefully make up for the cluelessness that I normally opted for.

“You look great,” I said as I turned on the car and pulled out of the driveway.

“You think? I feel kinda weird actually. It feels weird to be in a dress like this, and my hair,” she said, reaching up to feel the braided bangs.

“Well, you look amazing every day. This is just a different kind of amazing.”

“I feel kinda like a fraud. Give me jeans and my boots and I’m a happy girl. But all made up like this,” she said gesturing down her side, “It feels like I’m pretending.”

“You never played dress up as a kid?”

“No. I liked going out into the fields, working in the dirt. Dad always liked it when I was productive, and it was nice to be away from … to be by myself. I’ve always spent a lot more time in work clothes. I only wore a dress on the few times Mom would take me to church.”

“Well, I think you look nice.”

“Thanks. You look handsome.”

“You have Zoe and Tami to thank for that. I’m clueless when it comes to clothes.”

“Yep.”

When we got to the restaurant I asked to be seated at a small table near the kitchen, it was louder than the rest of the restaurant, but we could lean in and talk with less worry about being overheard.

While I had talked about my nature and how it affected those closest to me, up 'till now all of those conversations had either happened after someone had changed, or with someone who knew generally about what was going on.

This would be my first go at explaining everything from scratch, with the added complication of the more serious change that happened with those whom I became intimate with.

But first I wanted to clear the air between Emily and myself.

“So,” I said after we had ordered, “How are you?”

“I’m doing better. I still get… upset, sometimes, but Dr. Snider says that is normal. Your mom has been really great about listening to me vent, and everything. It’s nice to have someone I can talk to like that.”

“You know you can always come to me if you want to talk.”

“I know, but … you aren’t the right person to talk to. I need someone more … impartial. You like me, and I know you would avoid saying stuff that might hurt me, but I need to hear that stuff. Plus, my anger is sometimes directed at you. Dr. Snider says it’s a form of PTSD, and that it’s common for people who have been through family stuff like me. I haven’t quite figured it out, yet, but Zoe and Tami and Vicki all like me too. I think they would try and spare my feelings, too. Your mom though, she’s … I don’t know. Sometimes she reminds me of how it was, talking to my mom, on those days when things weren’t so bad.”

She stopped talking and a tear rolled down one cheek. I reached out and took her hand, holding it and letting her regain her composure. After a minute she pulled her hand away and wiped her eyes.

“Sorry. Sometimes it hits me.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. I’m sure in your place I would be a total wreck. You’re much stronger than I am.”

“I seriously doubt that. The girls filled me in a little on what happened to your adopted parents, especially Margaret. You had it rough.”

“Well, that was very different. There were … extenuating circumstances.”

“Zoe and Tami were telling me a little about that. They said they couldn’t be specific, but they made it pretty clear there was stuff going on here that I didn’t know about.”

“There is. Besides being able to spend some alone time with you - which, of course, I am all for - part of tonight is so I can tell you about some of this. Before you get in deeper with me, I wanted you to know all the facts, and be able to make your own choices.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me start at the beginning I guess. Have you ever noticed I’m different than other people our age? Physically, I mean.”

“I guess. I know you’re pretty athletic and you go on those runs in the morning.”

“What I usually show, is me holding back. A lot. We discovered last year that I’m genetically different.”

“So, like some kind of deformation or something?”

“Not really. Man, I didn’t realize how hard this would be to explain. Ok, this is going to be hard to believe, but you know me, and mom and the girls will confirm when we get home. We can show you demonstrations of some of it too. My genes are more developed than a humans, that is a homo-sapiens.”

“You say that like you’re an alien.”

“Not an alien, but not the same as other people, either. We think somehow I was born as a next step in evolution. I can’t get sick, I heal incredibly fast, my muscles are stronger, my reactions quicker.”

“You’re right, that is hard to believe.”

“I know, but I can back it up. A doctor friend and my mom have been doing some pretty extensive research on my system. We can show you some of that. They have thrown all kinds of biological agents, even HIV, at my blood. Nothing affects it. As for the physical differences, when we get back home I can show you those, too.”

“Ok, let’s say I believe you. I do want to see some of this demonstration, but I can’t think of any reason why you would want to trick me about something like this.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, if you are, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“Deal,” I said with a smile.

“We have also learned that I can pass on some of my genetics. For instance, if my blood somehow gets mixed into someone else’s body, it starts converting their system. They don’t become like me, but some of the stuff like the resistance to disease, is passed on.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You might not know it, but last year Mom had a tumor that we thought might kill her. We infected her with my blood as a last resort, and the tumor went away.”

“Wow! Why are you not trying to sell this off as some kind of wonder drug?” she said.

At that moment our food arrived and I waited to answer until the waitress had walked away.

“It’s not as simple as that. There are … side effects.”

“Like what?”

“Well, the most important is that it also alters the person’s brain. Not their personality exactly, but it makes them extremely loyal to me. It’s not mind control or anything, but it does have some affect, which bothers me.”

“Oh, I guess I can see that, although if I was dying of something I would make that trade.”

“That’s not the only reason. There are some people out there who have a negative reaction to me, on the genetic level. Besides hating me right off the bat, mixing my blood with them is pretty terrible. Margret, my adoptive mother, was having some health issues. We tried to help her by infecting her with my blood. It went, badly. She went insane.”

“Oh, no,” she said, looking concerned.

“Yeah. That still really troubles me. We are still doing a lot of research on this, trying to figure out what all the effects are. We still have a long way to go, but I want to avoid any mistakes like that in the future.”

“I can see why.”

“That’s one of the reasons I am telling you all this. I made it clear to everyone, that before I got close to anyone else, they would have to be told the truth and be able to make their own choices.”

“You are planning on injecting me?” she asked. “I mean, I guess I would like the not getting sick thing.”

“I’m not done explaining everything. There is more to this. You and I have been getting closer, and I really like you.”

“I really like you, too.”

“And it feels like we are headed to a place where you and I might, get together, one day.”

“Maybe. I haven’t really ever dated before, and you already having three girlfriends is weird. But I really like you.”

“I meant more than just dating.”

There was a long silent moment before her eyes got big, “You mean sex?”

“Yes.”

“I … I’m not sure I am ready at all for that kinda thing. I mean … I’ve never …”

“I’m not trying to push you, and it’s totally ok if we don’t; but I wanted you to know. Especially since I am starting to suspect there is more to the … attraction part of my genetics that is in play, here. My sleeping with any of the other three girls was not really planned, at least not by me, and it seemed to happen really fast, mostly with them pushing for it. I think there are stages of my genetics that help in…propagation.”

“So people who date you get some kind of genetic whammy that makes them want to sleep with you?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect it. I think there are stages before that. The way I, and the girls, or rather the girls then I, become attracted to someone. I think it’s already started here, honestly. And we know that by kissing you I am exerting some kind of biological thing that makes you more physically attracted to me.”

“So, you’re what, some kind of walking roofie?” she said, starting to sound angry.

“I … I don’t know. A lot of this we are just now learning. Some of it is just stuff I am suspecting, but we haven’t figured out how to prove it, yet.”

“So you didn’t know about the attraction kissing thing before you kissed me.”

“That I did know.”

“And you didn’t want to give me a choice then? Explain things before it went so far. You figured you would warn me after you hit me with your whammy, so you could sleep with me.”

“It’s not like that,” I said trying to calm her down.

She was starting to sound pretty angry, and even with her anger issues I didn’t blame her. Some of this is what I was worrying about. Everything about my genetics seemed to be just what she was suggesting it was, a genetic roofie, and it bothered me quite a bit. I could imagine how much it bothered her.

“Let me get you home. Maybe the girls, or Mom, can explain it better.”

“Whatever! Just keep your hands off me.”

I didn’t want to wait for the check, so I dropped a couple of hundred dollar bills on the table, hoping it would cover everything and make up for us leaving, mid-meal.

The drive back was in silence, with Emily fuming beside me the entire time. She stormed past me without a word; and went up the stairs, slamming the door to her room. Mom and Zoe both came out of the kitchen to the front room, looking concerned.

“Didn’t go well?” Zoe asked

“No. I explained most of it, but didn’t get to everything. I was starting the explanation of what happens when I become … intimate, with a girl; when she got angry, and I brought her home.”

“I’ll go talk to her,” Mom said.

“Ok. Thanks, Mom.”

As she walked up the stairs, Zoe took my hand, “You look really upset. Let’s go to bed early.”

“I appreciate the offer, and the understanding, but I need to go be alone for a little while. I’m just not in the mood to be very good company.”

“Ok, but don’t go away too long. I know you’re upset, but crawling into a hole helps no one.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

Kissing her on the forehead, I headed up to my room for some serious wallowing.

Chapter 10

I woke up alone the next morning, which was unusual. We tried not to flaunt it in front of Mom. While she didn’t put up a fight against it, she wasn’t thrilled with Zoe and my nocturnal activities.

Most nights Zoe snuck into my room, or I snuck into hers. Sometimes with Tami or Vicki in too, if one of them was spending the night with us.

But I had gone to be alone after my disastrous date with Emily. I wasn’t sure if I was happy or not that Zoe had gone along with my request for some alone time.

I got back from my morning run to find her at the table eating with Emily, who decided she was done eating the moment I walked into the room.

As Emily left the dining room, with one sidelong glare cast my way, I sat in a chair across from Zoe with a sigh.

“Just give her some time,” she said. “She just took your explanation badly. She’ll come around. Remember, this is a process. She has a lot to deal with, and we knew this was a trial run. She still has anger issues to deal with.”

“I know. I don’t even completely disagree with her assessment, it’s …”

“No,” Zoe said, interrupting me. “Don’t go there. None of us believe we have been hit with a ‘biological roofie’ as Emily seems to be putting it. Let’s not go down this path again.”

“Ok, but it still is hard not to take a little of this to heart.”

“I know. Just give her time.”

“Ok, I am going to go take a shower. Are you picking up Tami today?”

“Yeah. We never heard from Vicki yesterday, and since she missed school we are going to go by and check on her first. Emily will ride with us, and we’ll see you at school after.”

“Give her my best,” I said as I went up to take a shower.

Before last night’s date, I had been hoping Emily would ride with me to school, today. I found myself falling for her more and more, which just made last night’s events hurt that much more.

I spent most of my morning routine of showering and getting ready absorbed by thoughts of what Emily had said last night.

Despite Zoe’s admonition, I couldn’t help but feel some of her accusations were somewhat accurate. I could berate myself with the best of them, and spent the entire drive to school practicing that dubious skill.

I was just pulling into the school parking lot when my cell phone rang, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“Hello,” I said, recognizing Zoe’s number.

“You need to get over to Vicki’s house, right now.”

“What’s wrong,” I asked, recognizing the panic in her voice.

“Her house is just … it’s bad. You need to get over here.”

“I’ll head there now,” I said and hung up.

I backed out of the space and left the school parking lot behind, making a beeline for Vicki’s house.

Pulling up to her house, behind Zoe’s car, I could see the door standing wide open. Inside the entryway I found Tami, Zoe and Emily standing, looking shocked.

It wasn’t hard to tell what caused their expressions. The house was trashed. The two rooms we could see from the front entryway were torn apart.

“Did you find anyone?” I asked.

“No, we checked all the rooms. No one is here, and they’re all like this,” Tami said

“How’d you get in?” I asked.

“Front door was open. Not all the way, but a little bit,” Emily said.

There was no trace of anger in her voice. Apparently the shock of a ransacked house was enough to distract her from being pissed at me.

I pulled out my phone, and dialed a number.

“Officer Jawarski, this is Caspian Grey,” I said when she picked up the phone.

“What do you want?” came her curt reply.

“You said you wanted to do something to make up for the other day. Well, I’m calling in the favor.”

“Fine,” she said after a long pause.

“A friend of mine is in trouble. She wasn’t at school yesterday, and wasn’t answering the phone, so we came to check on her. The front door was open, and the house has been torn apart. No one is home. I don’t actually know anything’s wrong, but it seems bad.”

“Wait outside, and don’t touch anything in the house,” she said after getting the address.

“Is she going to come help?” Zoe asked.

“I think so,” I said.

After what seemed like an hour, but was closer to ten minutes, an older model sports car pulled up and Officer Jawarski stepped out.

This was the second time I had seen her out of uniform and it was still an odd experience. She was wearing blue jeans, an orange University of Texas T-shirt and a baseball cap with some logo I didn’t recognize. My mental picture of Jawarski was always her blue uniform and I hadn’t actually ever considered her dressed in anything else.

“Wait here,” she said and slipped into the house.

We waited another few minutes in silence until Jawarski returned to the front door.

“Has your friend said anything about people following her, or about someone her family has a problem with?”

“Not really, no. But her father has been on edge lately, really worried about something. He has kept both her and her mother cooped up in the house, saying it wasn’t safe.”

“But he never told her what specifically he was worried about.”

“No.”

“Do you know if they have any enemies, maybe somebody from work?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. He’s a CPA, which isn’t really an enemy getting kinda job. Although …” I said, trailing off.

“Although?”

“I’ve always had concerns. Her family is well off. Very well off. I’m pretty sure it’s not inherited, not from how Vicki has talked about her grandparents. Her mom doesn’t work and I don’t think a CPA earns enough to afford them the lifestyle they live.”

“So you think he’s into something crooked?”

“Maybe, but it’s just a guess. I’ve never actually seen anything specific. Should we go to the station? Fill out a report or something?”

She stared at me for several minutes, thinking. She was clearly wrestling with something in her head, but I couldn’t guess what.

“If I was on duty and you asked me that, I would say 'yes', and direct you to go to the station,” she said eventually. "But honestly, we didn’t find anything to directly suggest there is something illegal, here, and no one would start looking into this for forty-eight hours. Since we are here, let’s see if we can find anything that might tell us what your friend’s father was worried about.”

“Ok,” I said and turned to the girls. “You guys head on to school.”

“But …” Zoe started to say.

“If we all miss school, today,” I said, interrupting her, “it will be pretty conspicuous. Someone will call Mom, and she will start to worry.”

“Fine,” Zoe said, sounding like it was anything but.

She gave me a kiss, followed by Tami who repeated the gesture. To my surprise, Emily gave me a kiss on the cheek, also. Then they all headed to their car and drove away.

“I will never understand how you ended up with so many girls,” Jawarski said, looking somewhat disapproving.

“Someday I might tell you my secret.”

“Whatever,” she said turning to walk into the house.

She pulled out a pair of latex gloves and handed them to me.

“Put these on. The place is pretty much trashed already, but try not to move anything. If you pick up anything, put it back where you found it.”

“Aren’t you worried about us messing up the crime scene?”

“This isn’t’ a crime scene. If we found a body or something illegal, then I would call it in immediately and you would have to wait outside, but we don’t actually know if something has happened to your friend. Since there is no evidence of any actual crime, we can poke around a bit.

“Huh, and here I thought you were 'by the book.'”

“Shut up and look around,” she said.

I turned away from her and smiled. That last bit was said without any actual animosity, which was a huge step up from how our previous conversations went. It also occurred to me that, if some random citizen had called this in, she almost certainly would have treated this whole thing by the book.

It seemed pretty clear she was breaking the rules for me. Whether it was because of our conversation the other day or some guilt, I wasn’t sure. I appreciated the gesture none the less. I had a bad feeling about this, and I wasn’t crazy about waiting for the justice system to figure it out.

Jawarski headed into their living room, right off the front entryway, probably because it was the closest room, while I headed towards the back of the house.

Vicki’s fathers’ office was nothing like I remembered it. The one time I had been in his office it struck me how neat and orderly it had been. I remember noticing how everything had a place and every drawer and cabinet was labeled.

The room now looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Papers littered the floor and the knick-knacks that had neatly lined some of the shelves were scattered around, many broken. The drawers to the file cabinets were opened, as were all of the ones in his desk. A wall safe that I don’t remember seeing before had its door wide open. I noticed a nail above it and a picture I did remember laying on the floor below it, meaning he'd probably had it hidden.

Looking inside I found it completely empty. Whatever had been in there was now gone.

I started digging through files, not sure what I was looking for. I knew he was involved in something, and my only hope was that he had been dumb enough to write it down and whoever trashed the office hadn’t removed it.

The more I looked, the clearer it became that my search was pretty futile. Everything that I found was innocuous, and didn’t hint at anything out of the ordinary or illegal.

Still, the longer I searched, the more something was digging at my subconscious. As I skimmed paper after paper I felt like I was missing something obvious.

Standing up, I backed up close to the door, and just focused. It was the same feeling like when you see an actor in a movie, and you know you’ve seen them before, but can’t remember. I had noticed something, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jawarski’s said behind me.

I jumped a little. I had been so focused on the room, that I hadn’t heard her walk up.

“There’s … something here. I just can’t figure out what,” I said, not turning to look at her.

“Was the room like this before you came in, or did you screw up the ‘don’t move stuff or mess up the scene’ part of my instructions?”

“It was like this. There’s a safe in the wall,” I pointed absently at the safe, still not taking my eyes off the room, “that’s been emptied.”

She walked past me and over to the safe.

“Your friend’s father sucked at hiding stuff. This painting has weird dimensions; it just screams ‘look behind me’.”

And just like that, I realized what I’m missing.

“You’re a genius,” I said.

“By comparison … without a doubt.”

I ignored her jab. She couldn’t help it. The fact that she was still helping me despite her allergy - or whatever - to my genetics, said a lot about her. After hating her for more than a year, it was weird to find each insult made me like her that much more.

“From the outside of the house, the window is several feet from the corner of the building. This is the last room in the house, and is clearly the room at that corner, yet this window is pretty much against that wall, with only about six inches to spare. Aren’t rooms normally made so the window is in the center of the wall? Also, that safe is in the same wall and goes back almost a foot. Something’s off with this room’s dimensions.”

She looked around the room, focusing on the things I pointed out.

“Son of a bitch! You’re right.”

She started feeling against the wall until she got to the corner furthest from the window, about six feet in from the safe. I couldn’t see what she did, but I heard a click and she pushed a small section back into the wall and slid it open, the wall moving along some kind of recessed track.

Inside was a small space, maybe two and a half feet deep, and four feet wide. It had a shelf, stacked with both files and video tapes.

“Son of a bitch,” she repeated.

We started looking through the files. It became obvious pretty quickly, that Vicki’s father was involved in something illegal. There were all types of financial transactions. Most of the names and addresses weren’t local, but one jumped out.

“There’s a building off Seventh Street that’s listed several times. It’s the only local address I can find. They might have taken Vicki and her family there,” I said.

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t see any bodies. I don’t see a blood trail or signs of blood in the house. Their cars are still here. They were taken somewhere. It’s a place to start, at least.”

“I need to call this in. These records need to go in as evidence. I see mention of at least one arson that I know for a fact is unsolved. Once we look into this stuff more, I’m betting we manage to close several cases and re-open a bunch more.”

“Ok, but Vicki and her family, first. Who knows what is happening to them? Once this becomes an active crime scene, whoever took them might decide they are more of a problem alive, than they would be dead. If you call your friends, I’m still gonna go try and see what’s at this address. I can’t let anything happen to her.”

She stared at me for a few beats before nodding her head in assent, “Fine.”

We put everything back in the boxes like we found it, but left the door open. If we closed it, and Jawarski just pointed them to the cache of files, it would look pretty suspicious.

I’m not sure why I did it, but when she walked out of the room I grabbed the ledger I had been looking at and slid it into the back of my pants, pulling my shirt over to hide it.

Just like the feeling I had when looking at the room, there was something bugging me when we put all the books back. Until I could figure out what was bugging me, I decided to take a piece of the evidence, just in case.

Dumping the book under my seat, I followed her in my car to the building we saw in the ledger.

It was just out of downtown in a business park of about five or six fairly identical one story offices, with loading docks in the back of them.

“How do we handle this,” I asked her after we parked a few buildings down.

“I will go in and talk to whoever is working in that office, and see if anything seems out of place.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Like hell you are. You’re a sixteen year old kid.”

“Who pulled you away from a gun fight?”

“So every time you disagree with me, you’re going to hold that shit over my head?”

“I wasn’t holding it over your head. I was pointing out I don’t panic under pressure, and after seeing the stuff I was in last year, you know I can handle myself.”

I didn’t mention that she had arrested and written a biased report trying to put me in jail over that stuff.

“This isn’t some school yard fight.”

“I realize that. But I am going with you. You’ll have to handcuff me to the steering wheel to stop me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she said, but she didn’t make a move to follow through with that, so I followed her as she started for the building.

Inside was a small reception area. The desk where a receptionist clearly would sit was empty, but standing beside it were three fairly large guys who looked like they would be more comfortable in a back alley than in an office.

“Hi, I’m Of…” Jawarski started to say, holding up her badge, and then abruptly stopped as the men each reached for weapons, pulling them out of concealed holsters.

Jawarski started to go for her gun, which she had clipped to her belt, but there was no way she was going to reach it in time.

I didn’t think about what I was doing, I just reacted automatically, and the world dropped into the slow motion. I had recently begun to think of it as The Flow because of the way things seemed to slowly flow by. I still wasn’t sure how I called it up, but it seemed to usually be there when I needed it. My best guess was that it was connected to adrenalin, somehow, since the only times I had been able to make it happen were during moments like this.

The world slowed down around me as I moved towards the three gunmen. While my body was also moving at the same rate as theirs, relatively, I had time to think and consider each movement in between the seconds, which allowed me to react nearly instantly to anything they did. Couple that with my already enhanced speed and reactions, and I practically flew across the reception area.

I positioned myself in front of the middle guy, so that I was in reach of each man and planted my feet. The key to a fight is position and balance. Flipping through the air is only for the movies, since it leaves you so off balance you can’t get any power behind your strikes, and you are easy to knock down.

The guy on my left was the fastest of the three, reacting to my charging towards him. His gun was already part way up his body with the barrel starting to tilt towards me. I reached down and grabbed his wrist, twisting it back to put pressure on the joint. It wasn’t a hold in the traditional sense, but it would keep him from using that hand until he pulled free.

What it did do was give me the time to deal with the guy on the right. Putting my weight on my left foot, I pivoted, lifting my right foot off the floor. Pulling my knee in and snapping it back out again, I smashed my foot in the middle chest of the guy to the right with as much force as I could put into it.

The impact was jarring, like kicking a wall as I impacted with his sternum. I felt the air push out of his chest, and something gave way. The upward angle I had given my kick lifted him off the ground and he sailed back into the wall, leaving a spidery indent in the sheet rock as he slid down.

As I was kicking, the left side of my body went towards the floor, pulling the guy whose wrist I had down with me.

I dropped towards the floor and brought my extended leg back towards me, sweeping the middle guy behind the knees. I didn’t have much power behind it, but he had been trying to back up away from me as he pulled his weapon, and was really off balance. That was enough to send him to the ground.

Unfortunately, he had pulled his gun enough that he fired a shot as he fell. He wasn’t really aiming at me, but I still felt a burning sensation along my right side.

I ignored the pain and concentrated on the task at hand.

The guy whose wrist I was holding had finally gotten his other hand on my arm and was starting to wrench his gun hand free. I continued the momentum of my sweep, and did a roll, releasing his wrist and bringing my shoulder down on his gun hand to keep the weapon from being effective.

The roll knocked him to the ground and, because he was off balance, caused his head to smack against the carpeted floor.

It wasn’t enough to cause him any actual damage, but it stunned him for a second, which worked to my advantage.

I put a foot on his wrist and pulled on his gun as I stood up. The wrist-lock and then the fall had really loosened his grip on the weapon, allowing me to rip it from his grasp.

The middle guy was on his back and bringing his weapon to bear on me, not bothering to get up. Aiming the gun I put a bullet into his chest, sending a misting spray of blood exploding back out towards me.

Standing up fully, I stepped back from the guy now clutching his most likely broken wrist. Jawarski had her weapon out but wasn’t pointing it at anyone specifically as she focused on me in an open mouthed stare.

“How the hell …?”

“I’ll explain, later. If there are any more guys in here, they must have heard that shot.”

She shook herself to clear her head, and her face returned to its normal professional mask.

“Watch these three guys, I’ll clear the rest of the building.”

“But…”

“Shut up and do what I’m telling you.”

Since she was the professional, I left it to her. She disappeared through the door to the rest of the building, while the guy on the floor whose gun I was holding glared at me. His friend who I had kicked wasn’t moving at all, and I wasn’t sure if I had killed him or not.

The pops of gunfire sounded from inside the building. Every instinct told me to rush back to help her, but I didn’t want to just murder the thug lying on the ground with his hands up, and I didn’t want to let him go.

Another few minutes went by. I was starting to worry until Jawarski came back through the door, holding a phone to her ear.

“… send the coroner and EMS,” she finished saying and then hung up.

Behind her I saw Vicki and her mother, both looking shaken but otherwise unhurt. I did not see her father.

Jawarski’s weapon was holstered. She knelt next to the guy with his hands up and rolled him over. She pulled his arms behind him, snapping cuffs onto his wrists.

“Give me that,” she said as she moved to stand next to me.

I handed the gun to Jawarski, and went to Vicki, wrapping her in a hug.

“Are you alright?” I said in a whisper.

“My dad … he’s … he’s …” was all she said before she broke into sobs.

I wrapped my arms tighter around her, and she cried into my shoulder, hanging on limply.

“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

I looked up and saw Vicki’s mom crying and looking equally broken. Holding out an arm I pulled her into a hug with us.

Vicki put an arm around her mother and the other around me to hug us both and I let out a wince and a gasp, as her arm went along my side.

Pulling back she saw a line of blood on her arm.

“You’re hurt!”

My adrenaline was still going, and I hadn’t really felt it until she touched the wound. My shirt had blood soaked through it in a ragged line that the bullet had ripped.

Pulling up my shirt, I could see an ugly furrow in my side. The bullet had ripped across my skin, but hadn't actually gone in me. It was starting to hurt like hell, but it was just a flesh wound.

I pulled them back in a hug as the sounds of approaching sirens could be heard in the distance.

The building turned into a madhouse as police and then paramedics began flooding the building. The guy I had kicked was alive with what they thought was cracked ribs. The guy I shot was dead. I found out that there were two more dead guys that Jawarski had shot, in the back office.

We were walked out to an ambulance and the paramedics began looking everyone over. Since I had obvious injuries they started on me, cleaning and then putting a bandage on my side. The guy doing the work said I should go to the hospital, just in case, but I think they always say that, since he followed it up by saying he didn’t think I would even need stitches.

They were looking over Vicki when I saw Jawarski walking towards me. I excused myself and walked over to her.

“The detectives are going to let you take them home, although they can’t go to their home. That’s a crime scene now.”

“I’ll take them to my house.”

“Ok. They are going to want you to go to the station and give a report. I vouched for you, and they are doing me a favor not hauling you in now. Don’t screw me over on this.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Uh-huh. So explain to me what happened.”

“You know what happened. We went to Vicki’s house and …”

“Not that dipshit, I mean in the office over there. I’ve never seen someone move that fast. You practically kicked that guy through the wall. It was … not normal.”

“Ohh, that. It’s a longer conversation than we can have, here; but if you come to the house, tomorrow, I can explain everything.”

She gave me one of those hard cop stares like she didn’t really believe me.

“I promise. If possible, I’d like it if you could go with me to the station tomorrow, when I give my statement. It’s not really necessary, and I’ll have my lawyer with me, but I’d still like it.”

She stared at me hard for another minute and then rolled her eyes. “Fine. I gave a statement already, but we need to make sure we are straight on what you are going to tell them.”

“I was just going to tell them the truth.”

“You mean that I let you wander through a crime scene, and then took you into a shootout?”

“Ohh. I guess that wouldn’t be so good.”

“No. We're still going to tell the truth, but maybe we'll omit a few things. These are bad guys. The detective recognizes one of them. There won’t be much to it, as long as our stories are straight.”

“Ok, that makes sense. So you’ll come by my house in the morning?”

“I guess,” she said and started to walk away.

“Jawarski?”

She stopped and turned back towards me, “What?”

“Thank you.”

“Whatever,” she said with an eye roll, and then turned to walk away.

Chapter 11

When we had got home the family was equally sad for Vicki, freaked out about what happened, and pissed at me for being in danger again.

Zoe had given up her room to Vicki’s mom, and both she and Vicki would spend the night with me. Vicki’s mom was emotionally drained and went right to bed.

I put in a call to Jonathan, gave him a brief sketch of what had happened and asked him to meet us at home early in the morning. I wanted him there when I talked to Jawarski. It took a while, but I was able to convince Mom and Tina that I was ok, and I finally got them both to head off to bed.

Zoe had called Tami to let her know Vicki was alright, but that things were pretty bad, and she asked Tami to come over tomorrow as well.

Vicki was still a wreck when we finally got her into bed, sandwiched between me and Zoe, with Emily on the other side of Zoe, her arm stretched over to hold Vicki’s hand. She cried for what seemed like hours as we petted her hair, stroked her back, and whispered our love to her over and over.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” she finally said as the sobs died away.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” I said, hugging her tighter.

“I hate him.”

“Why?”

“This is his fault. I heard the guys when they broke into the house. He did something to screw them over.”

“He wouldn’t have done it on purpose. He loved you and your mom. He wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

There was a long silence before she spoke again.

“Was he a bad guy?”

“I don’t think so,” Zoe said, “I think he was just mixed up with the wrong people.”

“But why was he even involved with them.”

“We don’t know, yet,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll find out, but I would bet he was just trying to do the best for you and your mom.”

She was silent again. I knew it would be a while before she got over this. Eventually we all drifted off to sleep.

She wasn’t crying the next morning, but was more like a zombie. I heard the doorbell and knew that I needed to get up and start dealing with this, but I didn’t want to leave Vicki.

“Go,” Emily said, seeing I was torn. “We will stay with her.”

“Emily, I …”

“It’s ok,” she said taking my hand. The look of hate that had filled her eyes since our disastrous date was gone. “Go take care of this.”

I gave her hand a squeeze, got dressed, and went downstairs. Jonathan was sitting at the kitchen table with Mom.

I sat down and talked Mom and Jonathan through what had happened the previous day, starting with Zoe being worried about getting hold of Vicki, right up until we got home.

Jawarski showed up a few minutes later, and we went over the events. She was a lot friendlier with Mom and Jonathan, and at moments I could see that if it weren’t for whatever genetic thing made her hate me, we might have even been friends.

She told us what her statement was and with Jonathan’s input, we agreed on what the official story was.

We would say that she was a family friend. I had been worried about Vicki, and I had asked her to go by some places where I thought her family might be.

I was to say I had heard her father mention the address before. We went inside and were jumped by the three guys in the lobby. The police were already aware of my dust-ups in the past, so we would let the stuff in the building more or less play out like it had, although we toned it down a bit in the step by step, heartbeat moments to make it seem less fantastic.

Since we had been jumped as we went inside, that would explain why she didn’t call it in right away. We were just going to ask if they had seen Vicki’s father, and had no reason to suspect anything bad was going to happen.

“Now,” Jawarski said once the story was all straight, “explain to me what the hell you did yesterday.”

Mom looked at me, concerned. We hadn’t really discussed the moment by moment details of the fight itself.

“Cas,” she said in a warning voice.

“When those guys pulled their guns, I didn’t think. I just reacted. I didn’t hold anything back.”

Mom looked from me to Jawarski.

“She already knows something's up. We are going to have to tell her.”

“Cas, I don’t think …” Jonathan started.

“I know why you’re concerned, Jonathan, but I think we can actually trust her. She’s a good person. It’s just the genetic allergy or whatever, that causes her to act that way towards me.”

“Genetic allergy?” Jawarski said, confused.

“But that report after your fight,” Jonathan replied, ignoring her.

“Yeah, I know, but I think it will be ok. We can’t put the cat back in the bag after yesterday.”

“Will someone tell me what the hell you are talking about?” Jawarski said, getting frustrated.

I explained it to her. Everything. As with everyone we had talked to before, she didn’t believe me at first, even with what she had seen the previous day.

I’m not sure if I would have been able to convince her without Mom and Jonathan there. But the three of us together managed to make her believe our story about what I really was.

“This is still pretty unbelievable,” she said.

“This also explains why you hate me,” I said.

“How?” she asked. “I didn’t even know about it.”

“We aren’t sure of the how or why, yet; but, there are some people who have some kind of genetic reaction to me. It makes them antagonistic toward me.”

“Well that tracks. I’ve never liked you.”

“I know, and this is why.”

“I don’t know. I still think you’re an asshole.”

“Well, I won’t deny that, but consider all the people around me.”

“But you have them brainwashed or whatever.”

“It’s not exactly like that. Think of it like this. They are having an opposite genetic reaction to you. My genetics make them feel positive towards me, just like they make you hate me.”

“If they like you as much as I don’t, they must really really like you, then.”

“They do.”

“I’m going to have to think about this.”

“I know. All I ask is that you give me your promise you won’t tell anyone. I have a sense about what kind of person you are. I know that if you promise me you won’t tell anyone, then I can trust that.”

“Alright, I promise. Well, let’s go to the station and take care of this. Just don’t screw it up. I don’t want you to mess up my career. And you’re going to drive separately. I don’t want to have to bring you home.”

She turned and walked out the door, and I couldn’t help but smile as I followed her out.

Things at the station actually went pretty well. They took my statement, asked a few questions, thanked me, and I left.

Jonathan said he thought it went well, but he would follow up with the detectives. He'd let me know if anything was wrong, or if I needed to do anything else.

I thought about stopping to ask Jawarski if we were in the clear, but the glare she gave me made it pretty obvious I should leave her alone.

I went straight back home and upstairs to find Vicki. Tami had showed up while I was out and she, Zoe and Emily were all sitting around Vicki, who was propped up in my bed.

There was a nasty bruise starting to grow on one cheek, but otherwise she looked ok … at least physically.

Emily slid back to make room for me next to Vicki as I joined them on the bed.

“How are you?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a sniff. “I keep going from mad as hell that he got us into this, to so very sad. I can’t help it.”

“It’s going to take time. You’ve gone through something pretty scary, and you lost your father in the process. No matter what he did, that’s going to hurt for a while.”

“You mom has made an appointment for her with Dr. Snyder,” Emily said.

“Good, only time can heal this, but it helps to have someone neutral to talk to.”

“She’s pretty good at helping people who've been screwed up by their parents,” Emily said with a smirk.

“Emily, that’s not …” I started to say until she interrupted me.

“I’m just saying,” she said.

I, and all the girls, had missed a day of school. Mom had called and let them know that we had a family tragedy. I’m not sure if Tami’s parents called in sick for her, too, or if she just skipped; but she was planning on staying with us all day.

I sat with Vicki for a few hours, just holding her until she finally fell asleep.

Coming downstairs, I found Vicki’s mom sitting at the dining room table, just staring at her hands. She jumped a little bit when I slid in the chair across from her.

“How are you doing, Mrs. Hollabrand?”

It was a dumb question, but I wanted to comfort her and it was the only thing I could think of.

“I knew,” she said. “I knew he was into something, and I just pretended I didn’t. When Richard first graduated we lived in this tiny apartment while he was an intern and then junior accountant. I thought when he set up his own firm we would be living the high life. We had just had Vicki, moved to Alice in a nice house, not that monstrosity we live in now, but one in a small subdivision. But, I was greedy.”

“You can’t …” I tried to say, but she kept talking.

“I was. I always pushed Richard to do more, to make more. I had a dream that we would be rich and take fabulous trips and mingle with the pretty people. I pushed him into it. The money started coming in and I was happy. I didn’t care what he did to make the money, as long as I could keep shopping and spending time with vacuous people who liked me because I was rich.”

Tears were rolling down her cheeks as she wallowed in her guilt.

“He made his own choices,” I said. “Everyone has people pushing them to do things, but it’s still up to each of us to choose for ourselves. You can’t blame yourself for what happened, and even if you could, it wouldn’t do any good. Things are as they are. All you can do is move forward, and do what’s best for you and Vicki.”

“He’s right Janet,” I heard a voice say behind me.

Mom was standing in the doorway.

“I don’t know what we are going to do. I haven’t worked or done anything but spend money in more than a decade.”

“We will figure something out,” I said.

“And we can’t go home. I’m scared. I don’t want to put Vicki in any more danger.”

“Then stay here,” I offered.

“Can we,” she said looking hopeful.

“Yes. I’m not sure how we will make this work, but we will figure out something. You can stay here as long as you need to. Right, Mom?”

“Of course,” Mom said, although her tone didn’t sound as certain as her words.

“Thank you. You really are a good boy,” she said gripping my hands before standing up. “I need to go be with Vicki for a little bit.”

“She’s in my room sleeping. Zoe and the other girls are with her. I think it might do her some good to be with her mom for a while.”

She gave my hands one last squeeze, and headed upstairs.

“Things are going to be really crowded around here,” Mom said.

“I know. But what could we do. They’re both a wreck.”

“I know Cas, and I’m not mad. I knew I couldn’t stop you from swinging in to the rescue. But we need to sit down and figure out how this is going to work.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said giving her a hug. “You’re the best.”

I started to also head upstairs when the phone rang, pulling me up short. “Hello,” I said, picking it up.

“Cas, it's Ted. Jonathan told us what happened to your friend’s father. I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not really. She just needs time to deal with her grief. She is going to talk to a professional this week, hopefully that will help.”

“Ok. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do”

“I will. Thanks, Ted.”

“Cas, I really hate to add on to the stuff you are going through at home, but I actually called because we need something. I need to get you to head to Houston tomorrow, if you can. If you can’t, just tell me; but there is some property down there for our new solar factory, and we have to close on it pretty quickly if we want it. I’m tied up, and so are Jonathan and Marcus. We really wanted one of the partners to go with Douglas. He’s a great engineer, but he has a tendency to get tunnel vision, and miss some of the 'big picture' stuff.”

“I think I can go. Mom is here, the girls are here, and they are seeing Dr. Snyder tomorrow. There isn’t much I can actually do to help. But if Vicki wants me to stay then I’m gonna have to say no and stay here.”

“I understand. Please let me know as soon as you can.

“Sure thing,” I said.

I hung up and headed upstairs. Vicki was awake when I got up there, hugging her mom. She smiled at me when I came in, and I gave her a small kiss just to remind her that I loved her.

Standing back, I leaned against the wall and watched them. No one was talking, just hugging each other. The crying had mostly stopped, but I think both Vicki and her mom wanted people close, just for the comfort.

The more I watched them, the more determined I became that I should stay here with them. Vicki was my priority here.

“What?” Vicki asked looking up at me.

“Nothing.”

“No, you have a look on your face. Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s actually wrong but … umm … Ted called. He wants me to go to Houston tomorrow, with Douglas, and look at some property. I am going to call him back and tell him I’m needed here.”

“No. You should go,” she said, then paused. “Actually, Zoe. You should go with him and stop and talk to Mr. Henderson on the way back.”

“Mr. Henderson?”

“It’s something Vicki and I had been working on before … this,” Zoe said. “He has a pretty big farm outside of Liberty. We had been in talks with him to buy his reject food.”

“This is for New Life, right?” I asked.

“Yes. We had a meeting scheduled, but I was going to call and cancel. Just, with everything that has happened, I hadn’t been able to yet.”

“You should go with him and stop on the way back,” Vicki said.

“You need us here,” I argued.

“No. We will be fine. Mom is here. Ms. Bell is here. We have Tami and Emily and Tina. We are sad, and we are going to grieve. But we are safe, and we are surrounded by people who love us. It will be at least a few days until we can have the funeral. Mom talked to the Medical Examiner this morning and they are going to require a full … workup … because of how everything happened.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling guilty.

“She’s right,” Zoe said.

“Ok. But call us if there is anything you need, or if anything happens. It’s just a day trip and we can turn around and be back within a few hours.”

I was reluctant to leave them so soon after everything that had happened, but everyone else seemed to think it was ok, so I went with it.

I called Douglas and he agreed to pick us up in the morning, and drive over. I know it was still an adjustment for him to be working for a kid, and I am not sure he felt one hundred percent comfortable letting me drive.

Tami eventually headed home and the rest of us, including Vicki’s mother had a quiet dinner together. While a veil of sadness still hung over both women, she seemed a bit more at ease than she had in the afternoon when we talked.

After my conversation with Mrs. Hollabrand, I suggested to Mom that she might have a similar conversation with her, just to make sure she knew we really meant they were welcome to stay with us.

Late in the afternoon, Vicki’s mom had made some calls to cleaning people they used to get the house back in order, and who would lock it up for the time being, which I was happy to hear. I’m not an expert, but it seemed like a good thing that Vicki and her mom would be around people that cared about them for a while.

The rest of the evening was pretty relaxed, and Vicki spent the night with her mother.

Shortly after sun-up, Douglas showed up with Jonathan driving as he’d managed to rearrange his schedule. Jonathan still wanted me along for my input. Mom was nice enough to hand us a thermos with coffee. She promised to call the school and extend my absence, but she made it clear this was a one-time thing. She didn’t want my work stuff keeping me or the girls from going to school.

Tina was not happy that she didn’t get the same pass, but I’m pretty sure her complaints were only half serious.

The drive down to Houston was interesting. I sat in the back with Douglas, who rambled on for most of it about his project. Zoe did pretty much the same thing about her plans for New Life in the front seat with Jonathan.

Eventually we pulled into the outskirts of Houston, near the shipyards, in a fairly industrial area. There was a series of large buildings all grouped together, and they generally seemed pretty run down.

“This place is a pit,” I said getting out of the car.

“It’s not much to look at, I’ll admit,” Douglas replied. “But the buildings are solid. They have a good mixture of large areas that will work well for assembly, with some smaller areas for the more detailed work and staff functions, as well as adequate utility hookups. We are also fairly close to both a rail yard and the dock facilities, making both receiving raw materials and shipping out finished product easier.”

“How much of this are we looking at?” I asked.

“About half. There is one section still being rented out that is operational,” Jonathan said indicating a medium size building in one corner of the complex, “but the rest of this has become suddenly vacant. The property is owned by a Chinese real estate conglomerate, and they are looking to dump it just to get it off their books.”

“There is another outfit that wanted to buy up the whole complex, but they were slowed down by that one holdout. They were apparently offering a pretty cut rate amount, but the property was starting to be a money loser, since they couldn’t get renters. I was told they had a bunch of inquiries, only for the interested renters to drop out each time. They were pretty happy when we stepped in and asked about it, and their price is pretty reasonable – much higher than what they were being offered by the other party, but still well below market price.”

“What are they going to do with the rest?”

“For now, keep trying to rent it. The way the buildings are set up, it’s kind of split into two sections, and while that one renter is left it’s hard for someone to take that half. If he wasn’t there we would just snap up the whole property, but we don’t really want to get into renting, and Ted said the layout isn’t great for us to use those buildings while he was there.”

“Ok. Do we have an option on them later, if the renter leaves?”

“Yep. I put that in the contract, that if we buy this section, we have right of first refusal.”

“Excellent. Let’s check it out.”

We were actually looking at buying half the property, which covered one large building and three smaller ones.

The other side of the property, the side with the remaining tenant was slightly bigger, with two large buildings and two smaller ones. The tenant was in one of the smaller buildings, in-between the two larger buildings.

This meant they couldn’t rent that side out to be used by one company, since they would have to go around another company to get to the various buildings.

I could imagine this was driving the company that owned the property crazy, since they had all this empty space that was just costing them money.

The buildings were exactly as Douglas had described them. He showed us where he planned to put the various production lines, shipping, workshop for fine tuning designs, and where the supplies would be held.

I had looked the figures over, and the cost to get this operation was going to be high, but not prohibitive. Besides the buildings and raw materials, we would have to hire a moderate staff for this location. Not just workers, but a few engineers to support Douglas, warehouse guys, security, and some administrative staff.

If the contract for the desalination project with MilTech came through, we would have our first steady cash flow; so we actually needed more room than before Douglas came on board. Marcus and Ted both agreed that this had a good shot of working, and there were both civilian and government possibilities once we had a proof of concept out. On top of that, we were going to get some nice tax breaks that were being pushed, to spur green innovations.

We finished walking the property, and then met up with a representative from the company that held the property. He looked exceedingly pleased that they had sold off this portion, and reiterated their desire for us to buy the other half.

We put them off, for now; but I made it clear we would keep that as an option, if things worked out. If Douglass' project was even a moderate success, I could see the need to expand. Plus, it’s never a great idea to close any doors you don’t have to.

We hopped back in the car, and Jonathan looked through some maps before we headed back on the road. It took us a little time to find the entrance to the farm we were going to, but we found it eventually.

I was a little shocked when we pulled onto the gravel drive leading off the small county road we had taken into farm country.

When she said a farm, I had pictured something out of a painting – small farmhouse, a barn, a couple of fields and maybe a pasture with grazing cattle.

What we found was a serious operation. A large grain silo, a barn big enough that it qualified as a warehouse, and fields going on forever.

We pulled up to the house, which did meet my mental image of what a farmhouse looked like, and an older man in jeans, a t-shirt, and a battered cap came strolling out. Douglas didn’t even bother getting out of the car. He just leaned his seat back, and took a nap.

“How can ah help you folks,” he said to Jonathan.

“Not me. These two,” Jonathan replied.

“Ok. Kids, what can I do for ya.”

Zoe stepped up to him and extended her hand, “Mr. Henderson, I’m Zoe Bell. We spoke on the phone.”

“Ohh. You’re the girl with that charity thing, right? I had expected someone …else.”

“Probably older. Which is fine. I can’t imagine you get business calls from high school students very often.”

“Not really. At least not outside of the 4-H kids.”

“We were driving through the area, and I wanted to discuss some of the purchases we had talked about. Also, I would like to get a contract in place. Mr. Colleta is our attorney, and has all the paperwork.”

“Alright, let’s head into the house and talk, I guess.”

He led us in through the battered screen door and into a small breakfast nook just off the kitchen.

“We had been discussing the possibility of our charity buying the product you can’t sell, at a discount.”

“Yes. And like I said on the phone, we have fairly standard rates we sell our crops at. I understand you are a charity, but this is our livelihood.”

“Yes, sir, I understand that. But let me ask you. How much of your crops do you throw out each year?”

“A goodly amount. There are standards that wholesalers require. They can’t let undersized or misshapen produce into the supermarkets.”

“Exactly. It’s that product that I’m interested in. The stuff your wholesaler won’t take. What do you do with that?”

“Well, some of it we can grind and sell as feed.”

“Ok, how much of your crop is unsalable, and how much do you sell as feed?”

“I would say maybe ten percent is waste, and we can usually recoup about two percent of that in other ways.”

“So the other eight percent is pure waste, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So right now you make absolutely nothing on it?”

“I guess,” he said, starting to sound suspicious.

“Then even at a fraction of what you are selling the rest for, you are still up. If I get your waste, at fifteen percent of market price, that’s still a lot higher than zero. Right? “

“It just doesn’t seem right to take that big of a cut.”

“A cut from nothing?” she asked. “This is money that you are throwing in the garbage. Why walk away from free money?”

He thought for a long minute.

“Yeah, I take your point. I’m not crazy about selling my crops for so little, but you’re right. Even at fifteen percent, it’s still higher than nothin’.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Great. Mr. Colleta brought along a contract, just so we have something in place. Once we have distribution set up, we will buy up any unsold product you have after each harvest. We are looking to expand this, so if you have any neighbors, feel free to mention this. I’m sure they would appreciate it.”

She had Jonathan go through the contract piece by piece and Mr. Henderson signed off on it. After just little over thirty minutes we were stepping out of his house and headed back to the car.

I wasn’t even sure what I was doing here, since I hadn’t opened my mouth once, the entire time.

We stopped, and he shook hands with Zoe this time.

“You’re an interesting kid. If this is what you’re like now, I can only imagine how clever you’ll be when you grow up.”

She gave him a smile and we all hopped back in the car. Douglas didn’t even wake up until Jonathan dropped us off at home.

Chapter 12

The funeral was the next day, so we missed one more day of school. I made a mental note to talk to Mrs. Polaski about all our missed days. I’m not sure how many days a student could miss before it becomes a serious problem as the girls like cheerleading, and I didn’t want to hurt their eligibility.

The funeral itself was pretty small. No one Mr. Hollabrand worked with showed up; which, I guess, considering the implications of who he was working for and how that was involved in his death, was a good thing.

Vicki was a wreck, and she spent most of the service bracketed between Zoe and Tami, who were trying to comfort her. Mom stuck around with Mrs. Hollabrand, holding her hand and offering her comfort.

Some of their family friends also showed at the service, but since we brought them to our house, the bonds between my family and Vicki’s mom had grown. Mom in particular had spent a lot of time with her.

What surprised me the most was that Emily stuck with me holding my hand. The thing with Vicki had happened on the heels of my disastrous date with Emily, and we hadn’t really resolved anything. We had put it aside for the good of Vicki, but even after we brought Vicki back home, Emily was still standoffish with me.

This is why I was shocked when she took my hand at the funeral and stayed by my side. Walking out of the church, on the way to the grave site, I turned my head to say something to her, and Emily shook her head, indicating she didn’t want to talk about anything.

We stayed together through the rest of the proceedings and all the way home, when she finally broke away from me without saying anything. I hoped this was a sign that we might be able to heal the rift between us. Or at least take a step towards that.

I spent the rest of the day with Vicki, comforting her.

The next morning arriving at school I broke off from the girls, and headed to the front office. I sat until after the first bell, since Mrs. Polaski had to do morning announcements and other stuff at the beginning of every day. The school secretary told me that I would get a pass when I went to my first period class.

Eventually Mrs. Polaski came out of her office and waved me in. She seemed pretty agitated.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Grey?”

“I wanted to check with you about absences. Because of what happened to Vicki’s family, I have missed several days of school, already. I wanted to make sure I didn’t mess up this year accidentally.”

“The policy is that you receive a warning after three unexcused absences and you could be expelled or not awarded credit after five unexcused absences in a semester.

So far, all of your absences have been excused, so that doesn’t really apply to you. There is, however, the ninety-percent rule. It says you must attend ninety percent of the days a class is held, in order to receive credit in that class, regardless if the absences are excused or not.”

“We have, like, a hundred and seventy five days of school right? That means its seventeen days or so, right? So we should be fine, right?” I asked.

“That sounds correct. Unless you plan on missing a bunch more days, you should be fine.”

“Great,” I said getting up and opening the door to her office. “Thanks for your time, Mrs. Polaski.”

“That’s what we are here for, Mr. Grey.”

I stopped half way out the door.

“Are you ok, Mrs. Polaski? You seem pretty upset about something.”

“Just school administration stuff. Nothing that affects you I think, since you aren’t in any of the music or art programs.”

“Is something happening to those classes?”

“It seems the state,” she started to say and stopped. “That’s not important. Get a pass and head to class. You’ve already missed a lot this week.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After school I swung by work and made a bee-line for Jonathan’s office.

“I need you to do me a favor,” I said walking through his door.

“Name it.”

“Something is going on with the school's art programs that has the administration shook up. Could you look into it, and let me know what’s going on?”

“Sure thing,” he said. “While you’re here, we also need to talk about the MilTech contract. Let me get Ted and Ronald.”

I plopped down in one of the chairs across from the desk and waited for them to join us.

“Did you tell him,” Ted said to Jonathan as he walked in.

“Not yet.”

“We’ve closed on the deal with MilTech,” he said, sitting in the chair next to me. “This is going to be a big contract. Not only are we talking about the new ships they are designing, but their bid on a major overhaul of older vessels just got approved, too. They want to make our tech part of it.”

“Are we ready for that?”

“Yep. We have contracts in place to protect us long term and we agreed they would get first bite at improvements. We are sending Ronald up to Virginia this week to work with some of their designers. We will be on the hook for some of the more sensitive assembly, here. They will deal with the install. Getting our production line set up is Ronald’s first task when he gets back from Virginia.”

“Excellent. I haven’t seen the numbers yet.”

“We took a smaller upfront in return for a small piece of their bid and any future bids that incorporate our designs. Long run, this is going to be worth more than what we made on the drone sale.”

“Outstanding,” I said and then turned to Ronald. “What about the larger installations we discussed?”

“We are still working on that. As output increases, our efficiency starts dropping. For it to be viable, we need to get that to drop off or at least slow down some.”

“But you still think it’s doable, right?”

“Yep. I have a team that is going to keep working on it.”

“What about the test plant you set up?”

“We are going to start dismantling it and closing it down. It was never meant for long term use. We are back to working out of the lab until we find something more permanent. I was going to work on that after I got the production for MilTech set up.”

“I have some ideas on both of those. Talk to me before you do anything.”

“Sure thing.”

We did a rundown of other stuff we had in the works, and then the meeting broke up so I could go and do my homework.

Being a kid sucks sometimes.

Vicki and her mom continued to stay with us the rest of the week and through the weekend. We made a trip en masse to their house on Saturday and picked up a bunch of clothes and other stuff they needed on a day to day basis, and hauled it back to my house.

Most nights Zoe sneaked into my room after the rest of the house went to bed. I guess it’s not really sneaking, since Mom knows it is happening, but we always try to keep it from being too obvious. Saturday Vicki had joined her. She was still sad, but sleeping cuddled between me and Zoe seemed to be helping.

I was surprised on Sunday when, instead of either of my normal two bed mates, Emily walked in the door wearing a robe and sat at the edge of my bed. “Emily? Is everything ok?” I asked.

“Yes. I wanted to talk.”

“Ok,” I said.

‘We need to talk,’ or variations of that phrase, rarely work out well for the person being talked to; so, I got a little nervous.

“I accused you of some pretty terrible things on our date. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“A lot of what you said is true. I am not trying to take advantage of you, or anyone, but my biology makes things … complicated.”

“I get that. I don’t know how much of it was me being mad thinking you were taking advantage of me, and how much it was me still being angry at my dad. Looking at how you handled the whole thing with Vicki and her parents, and everything else you’ve done to help me with my family, Tami with her family stuff, and Zoe last year, I can see how unfair everything I said was.”

She leaned over and wrapped me in a tight hug.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

“Me too.”

She pulled away, leaned in, and kissed me. It started as soft and tentative, and then slowly ramped up. Her hands gripped the back of my head, moving through my hair, as I started letting mine caress her arm and the side of her body.

She finally broke our kiss and stood up. I tried to stand up too, thinking we were done; but she pushed me back down on the bed.

Emily took a breath, paused, then opened and dropped her robe. She was wearing nothing beneath it.

She was gorgeous. Even though she was wearing more traditional clothes these days, they still tended to be on the baggy side. She had started putting on a little weight, which was good. Her parents had underfed her, and her grandparents had been worse. She was finally eating regularly for the first time in a long while, and the effects were great.

She had gotten a haircut over the weekend. Now her brown hair, that used to be long and stringy, was shoulder length; and, thanks to help from the other girls, was being properly managed.

“You are beautiful,” I said in a whisper.

She looked at me with those large brown eyes.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

“More than anything.”

Taking her hand, I led her to the bed.  All the other girls had more experience and took the lead, but this time I had to take the lead, I did my best to make sure everything was as gentle and loving as possible.

Afterwards, as I lay next to her, I noticed she was crying.

“Baby, are you ok?”

“I’m perfect,” she said, looking up into me with misty eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I heard an ‘awww' sound and we both sat up, looking towards the door. At some point Vicki and Zoe had crept in, and were standing by the closed bedroom door.

“You two are so adorable,” Zoe said.

“And that was so hot,” Vicki said.

Both girls shed their clothes, and crawled into bed with us; Zoe behind Emily, and Vicki behind me. We all drifted off to sleep, and even Vicki smiled a bit, which was refreshing to see.

I hadn’t planned on going into the office during the beginning of the week, so I could be there with Emily as she went through the sickness that usually followed the first part of the change. I had called Ted and let him know I needed a few days and would come in on Wednesday, so I was surprised when Jonathan called Monday night and told me he needed me to swing by the next day before I went home.

I was more surprised when I saw Carter was in the office with him.

“What happened?” I asked, knowing something had gone wrong.

“Your preacher friend is starting to turn up the heat. You had asked me to keep an eye on him, and he has the community putting the full court press on the family over Judy.”

“I guess my warning didn’t take,” I said.

“Guess not.”

“Ok, let’s release what we have.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Jonathan asked.

“Not all of it and not the worst of it, but just enough to get him some negative attention. Call it a shot across the bow. I want him to know we are serious.”

“So, what should we release?”

“Good question,” I said, turning back to Carter. “What do you think?”

“The worst we have is the tape where he talks about the age of the girls he wants as his brides and the selling off of his old brides. Let’s call that the nuclear option.”

“Let’s hold onto that for now. If we have to use it, then we use it, but Tami’s parents are referenced on that tape, and I don’t want to hurt her family any more than we have to.”

“I guess next down is a record I got showing a payment from Taylor to a couple of state representatives. There was a push to look into Taylor and his group that seemed to evaporate shortly after the payment.”

“Let’s go with that. It’s sexy enough that it will get news play. We want him to get the message. Also find out when he is going to be away from his people, so I can talk to him. I want him to know this is the consequence for calling our bluff, and he needs to step away before it gets worse.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Carter said, standing up and left.

“This could get messy,” Jonathan warned when we were alone.

“I know, but what other choices do we have? Calling CPS or anything like that will turn Tami and Judy’s world upside down. The last thing I want to do is punish them for what their parents are doing.”

“Still, you need to be careful. While you’re here, I have the information on your school art program. You were right; there are problems with the art programs. Not just for Roosevelt, but the whole district. Some funding was cut at the federal level, and the district decided to shut down most of the art and music programs, except the marching band.”

“When?” I asked, since as of now there were still art classes.

“It hasn’t been decided yet, but my best guess is next year they will start phasing out the lower level programs. At least, that was the proposal floated for the next school board meeting.”

“Do they have any options?”

“Not really. There was talk about pulling some money out of the athletics program, but that was shot down pretty quick. There is another plan that would allow a small amount of funds to go towards enrichment programs, but it would only cover part of the cost. The rest would have to be covered by the students, and it would be an after school thing rather than something organized by the school itself.”

“That sucks.”

“It’s the way it is. When schools hit hard times, art programs are usually the first things to go.”

“How hard would it be for New Life to put up some money to help keep the arts and music programs alive?”

“For one school, not hard. Many high schools get private donations earmarked for particular programs. There might be some grants we could leverage. There have been a lot of these kinds of cuts around the country over the last few years, and I know some groups are out there trying to help. I’ll look into it.”

“Thanks, Jonathan.”

“You know, pretty soon I’m gonna need staff to keep up with all the stuff you throw at me.”

He said it in a joking way, but I knew he was mostly serious.

“Sit down with Ted and work something out. With the money coming in from the MilTech contract, we can afford it, and you’re right, I throw a lot of weird stuff at you.”

He seemed pretty happy when I left his office. I knew he didn’t mind all the random requests I made, but I didn’t want him to feel overloaded.

The next week started to get back to something of our normal routine. Vicki was still sad most the time, but she was coping. She and her mom talked to Dr. Snyder about what had happened, both to help deal with the grief from Mr. Hollabrand’s death, and to deal with being the victims of a kidnapping.

Dr. Snyder gave them things to look out for, signs of PTSD, but so far they seemed to be coping. Mrs. Hollabrand gave their servants notice, since she said she didn’t know when they would be going back to the house.

It took us a while, but we had convinced her that we were happy for them to stay with us as long as possible. I think having so many people around, all of whom were sympathetic, really helped her. Since she didn’t work, she started doing stuff around the house to help. She seemed very proud of it, in fact. If I had to guess, I would say she hadn’t done laundry or cooked dinner since her husband came into his money.

Mom was spending more and more time at the lab, although that was mostly getting up early rather than working late. She was making it a point to always be home to have dinner with us. Considering there were now seven people living in the house, dinner was quite the affair every night.

Almost two weeks after the events at Vicki’s, I got a message from Mom that she wanted me to stop by her lab, to talk to her and Alex. It was Friday, when I normally put in extra time at the office, but since they were now a division of Evolve, I figured it counted as going to work.

There were more cars in the parking lot than when I went to the lab weeks before, and I found they had someone working up front now.

“May I help you?” the woman asked.

“My name is Caspian Grey, I’m Angela’s … umm … son,” I said. I wasn’t sure what she would have told her employees and our relationship would have taken a while to actually explain.

Thankfully, I was expected.

“She said you were stopping by. I’m Donna Lambert, the new office manager. Follow me back.”

I followed her through a glass door, and down the hallway into the room Alex had pointed out as Mom's office on a previous trip.

“Mrs. Bell, Caspian is here,” she said by way of introduction.

Both Mom and Alex were in the room, going over some papers on her desk.

“Thanks, Donna,” Mom said as her office manager smiled and headed back up front.

“You guys have been busy,” I said.

“Most of it wasn’t us. That secretary of Ted's took charge, hired staff for us, and got all the furniture in. She is a whirlwind,” Mom replied.

“Yeah, she’s on the ball.”

“But we have been busy. Thanks to a sample of blood your new friend Officer Jawarski gave us, we were able to do a lot of tests on genetic negative reactions, and we have found some pretty interesting stuff.”

“When did you get a blood sample from Jawarski?”

“A few days after Vicki and her mother moved in with us,” Mom said. “She was actually very cooperative. You’d be surprised. When you’re not around, she is one of the nicest people I have ever met.”

“I’m actually not that surprised. I have seen glimpses of it, and the fact that she deals with me despite everything says a lot about her. I mean, compare her against Margaret, and it’s pretty obvious how remarkable she is.”

“Well, we think we have found something that will make dealing with her a little easier.”

“Ok,” I said, sitting down.

“We did some tests,” Alex said, “both on the samples she gave us and on her directly. We don’t have a CT or MRI here, but she has agreed to meet us at a lab later this week to get a few scans. Up until now, everything we have on genetic negatives has been conjecture. Now that we have someone we know is a genetic negative that has agreed to work with us, we have been able to gather some real data.”

“We won’t know until we run more tests,” Mom said, taking over, “but we think we have something that will, if not reverse the genetic effect you have on them, will at least dampen it.”

“Think of it as anti-allergy medicine,” Alex added.

“That’s great news. Do you think it could help Margaret,” I asked.

I still had some guilt from the way the situation with my adoptive mother ended.

“No. There was actual neurological damage done. This wouldn’t reverse that. It’s also not as great as it seems. This would require regular boosters to remain effective. It’s not a cure all,” Mom said.

“You also would never be able to change her. Any introduction of your blood would still have the same devastating effects as with Margaret.”

“Well,” I said much more subdued, “At least it’s a step in the right direction.”

“We think so. Beth has agreed to stop by later this week for some more tests. We might have confirmation of this within the next week or two.”

“Beth?”

“Officer Jawarski.”

“Ohh. Well, I hope it works. She’s pretty great, and has been really helpful.”

I spent about an hour with Mom and Alex, so they could show me everything they had done to the lab since my last visit.

It was a pretty impressive setup.

They hadn’t worked much on anything else, since their focus was on studying Jawarski now that she was in the know and available, but they were already moving pretty fast.

I had no doubt there would be some big breakthroughs from them in the future.

Chapter 13

Saturday morning Jonathan called, and said he was stopping by the house. He wanted to make sure the girls and Mom would be home, which was unusual. I was glad he called ahead, though. Mom was really getting into her work, and she had headed out a little early to do something that couldn’t wait until Monday.

She showed up at the same time as Jonathan, and walked him into the house.

“Caspian had asked me to look into a few things,” he said once we were all assembled around the dining table, “and since it dealt with Next Step, I figured the rest of you should be in on the conversation.”

“A few weeks ago, Caspian came to me with concerns about your school's art and music programs being cut. I looked into it, and he was right. Starting next year, the district is planning on phasing out the programs because of budgetary reasons.”

“How did you know?” Zoe asked.

“Mrs. Polaski said something to me when I went to ask about the number of absences we were racking up.”

“Oh.”

“He asked me to look into having Next Step help get funding for the programs,” Jonathan said, continuing. “One option was to fund the entirety of the art and music programs as they are now. That, however, doesn’t seem like the best way to go as it is a fairly large cost, even for just one school. After talking with a few contacts I have at the state house who put me in touch with a few folks at the Department of Education, I think I have a better solution.”

He pulled out a few packets and handed them around.

“There is a federal grant out of the DOE that allows for additional funding for districts to have basic art programs, which in this case covers music, as well. If the school district comes up with outside funds for additional programs, the cost would be actually only slightly higher than if we funded the entirety of the program for Roosevelt, but it will cover the entire district.”

“How would it work?” I asked.

“The state would give the district additional funds earmarked for arts and music programs. We would have to set up, and pay for, more advanced classes after school.”

“So it’d be enrichment type courses?”

“Something like that, yes. However these would be run by certified teachers and the schools would be able to give credit for the classes taken. There are requirements we would have to meet, but I talked to a district in New Hampshire that started this last year and has had some success.”

“I have a question?” Zoe asked, raising her hand.

“Just because we are talking about school doesn’t mean you have to raise your hand Zoe,” I said, teasing.

She stuck her tongue out at me before turning back to Jonathan.

“Can we use college students for these after-school classes?”

“We can have college students work with the program, but the classes themselves have to be taught by accredited teachers. The teachers' union like the idea since it gives another outlet for teachers to earn money. There has been a slowdown in pay rises and new hire salaries are down. And there are only so many summer school and driver ed classes available to teach.”

“Ok. We've been looking at ways to help kids who qualified to go to college, but couldn’t afford it. We were talking to several companies about setting up work study programs they could use, and this seems like a good place to start that.”

“It seems like a good idea, and it’s something we can work on.”

“Will these classes be free to students?”

“Normally no. That is why we can do it district-wide. There will have to be some costs, otherwise it becomes extremely expensive. Other districts that are running this charge a per class rate for each student. I know it will raise the costs, but we can offer offset and free classes for those students who can’t afford it. I would hate for this to be a program only available to more well off students. I can look into this, and see what the numbers are.”

“Ok. Let us know. I really want to do something to make sure these programs are still around next year.”

“I am confident we will be able to. Maybe not everything we discussed; but the New Hampshire district managed to make theirs almost revenue neutral, if you figured in the federal grant and class costs to students. I know we are talking about not quite going that way; but I think we can do it, and keep the costs down to a manageable point.”

“Let me know if there is anything you need from us,” Zoe said.

“I’d like to stop by next week and talk to you about how this would affect Next Step’s budget and about the college work study thing you were talking about.”

“I’ll be here,” Zoe said with a bright smile. “I was also working on setting up a real, funded tutor program for the school district, using college students along with what we just talked about. Is there a way to roll these together?”

“Maybe. I will look into that, also.”

“Jonathan, this is a lot of stuff to deal with. Are you sure you have time for all this?”

“I do, now. I took your advice and hired a few paralegals to help with both New Life and Evolve.”

“Good, I was worried.”

“Don’t worry about me. I spent my career doing just business filings and contract law. I’ve had more fun over the last year than I've had in the rest of my career.”

Jonathan headed out to take care of everything and we spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and doing stuff around the house. I got a reprieve from having to do much at the office, since half of the building seemed to have come down with something and were home sick. I felt bad for them, but I can’t say I hated my free weekend.

I was in a really good mood for school on Monday morning, right up until the phone rang.

“We have a window for you to talk to the preacher, kid,” Carter said when I picked up.

I really wished he would stop calling me kid. The story had broken in the local paper and was quickly picked up by papers in both Austin and Houston. By the end of the week I had even heard it mentioned on the national news, although in a relatively low spot in their lineup.

“When and where?” I asked.

“Tonight. He is headed to one of his potential victims’ house. He told the family he would be there at four-thirty.”

He gave me the address of where the family lived.

“Do you want me to go with you?” he asked.

“No. The more people that are there, the greater the chance he tries to save face. No, I think it should be just me and him. I wouldn’t mind if you kept an eye out for me while we met though.”

“Sure thing. Be seein’ ya kid,” he said and hung up.

I headed to school and had what could quite possibly be the least productive school day in my life. I couldn’t say what we learned in any of my classes, and twice a teacher had to call my name several times to get my attention.

When school let out, I said goodbye to the girls, letting them think I was headed to the office. I knew they would worry if they knew I was going to threaten the preacher.

I was down the street thirty minutes before the preacher showed up, waiting for him. I saw a car pull up, and my suspicion was confirmed when I saw the older man step out of the car a moment later, helped out by his driver. I had hoped he would be alone, but I assumed he would have someone with him.

I was most of the way to him before the preacher looked up and saw me. From the look of hate on his face, I knew he recognized me. His driver, and most likely body guard considering his immense bulk, turned to put himself between the two of us as I came up on them.

“What do you want?”

“Just a short conversation.”

“The reverend has nothing to say to you,” the walling mountain said, putting out a hand.

“I think he does. I know that news story last week caused you some problems. It’s a shame those records got leaked.”

I didn’t want to come out and admit to anything right next to a witness, but I wasn’t being very circumspect either.

He glared at me a moment before patting the other man on the arm, “It's okay, Josiah. I will speak with him.”

The mountain seemed unsure, but walked away towards the house they were visiting, anyway. He turned and kept an eye on us however.

“I gave you a warning the last time you threatened the Smiths. I told you if you tried to get your claws into Judy or Tami, you would regret it. Did you think I was joking?”

“I do not bend to the will of Satan. The politician was a tool, and easily discarded. It seems your little blackmail didn’t work so well.”

“Do you really think that was the worst I had? I just wanted you to sit up and pay attention. I have a lot more on you, enough to get your wrinkled old ass sent to prison. I want you to listen, because this is your last warning. I don’t want you to have anything to do with those two girls. Don’t talk to them, don’t visit them, and sure as hell don’t plot to bring Judy into your disgusting cult. I know you are still planning on having her as your next wife, and that shit stops! Now!”

“There is nothing you can do to me. God protects me.”

“God has nothing to do with pedophiles. You’ve been awfully chatty about the girls you are marrying, how young they are, and what you do with them when they leave you. Selling off women, actually they’re young enough to be called girls, is pretty damned illegal. You know the FBI would love to get their hands on you, but so far you’ve managed to be slippery enough to keep out of jail. I’m sure they would love to hear all this.”

“You’re lying.”

“Are you ready to bet your freedom on that?”

“Get away from me Satan,” he said and stormed past me to join his guard and headed into the house.

I’m not sure what I expected to happen. I knew he wouldn’t just fold like Tami’s parents did, but I didn’t really get an answer one way or another. I made a call to Carter later that night, and asked him to keep an eye on the preacher for a while longer, at least until we knew how he was going to react.

Thankfully, when I saw Tami the next day, she seemed fine. She didn’t mention anything, so I hoped maybe the preacher had decided to just back away from them.

I was going over Tami’s reaction, or non-reaction, and what the preacher might do when I was pulled up short by a hand grabbing the back of my shirt.

Even though I hadn’t had any problems at school since Jake and his crew were kicked out, but I was still turning, ready for a fight when I saw it was Mrs. Polaski holding onto me.

Now I was just wondering what I did wrong.

“Come to my office, Mr. Grey,” she said, letting go and turning around to walk off.

I just shrugged and followed her. She didn’t sound angry, but the way she pulled me up short, still threw me off guard.

“Is there a problem, Mrs. Polaski?” I asked when we were in her office and the door was shut.

“I don’t know. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything about the problems with the school to a student, and I am wondering who you told?”

“Sorry, what?” I asked, still not sure what she was talking about.

“Weeks ago you asked me if something was wrong, and I told you about the art and music programs being canceled,” she explained. “It’s not something I would normally discuss with a student, but I was upset when you asked me and wasn’t thinking straight. Yesterday, there was a district wide meeting in which we found out a charity had stepped forward and, with the combination of a few federal grants, had managed to get us funding for basic classes plus put in an entire after-school enrichment program for students who wanted to go further.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yes, it’s a very good thing. They are even putting up money to set up a district-wide tutoring program. My problem is, where did this come from? None of the other principles knew, and the superintendent told us the money came with an anonymity clause attached. They weren’t allowed to tell us where the money came from.”

“Ok. But why are you asking me?” I asked, playing dumb.

“Caspian,” she said exasperated, “I’m not an idiot. Everyone knows about you taking over Ted Bakers company and being some kind of wunderkind businessman. I know you’ve come into money. Hell, everyone in town does. I complain to you about the changes and weeks later mountains of money come down to save us out of nowhere. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Let me ask you a question. Did you know about my personal … umm … finances and what not before you talked to me?”

“Yes,” she said after a moment, having the good graces to look guilty.

“Well then I think we can assume everything worked out like it should have.”

She just shook her head and pointed to the door, “Get to class, Mr. Grey.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I said, leaving.

“And, Mr. Grey,” she said, stopping me before I could close the door behind me.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

I just gave her a nod and a half smile, closed the door, and headed to class.

That night I got a call from Marcus asking if there was any way I could get to a meeting during the day, later in the week. He wasn’t specific, but this was the first time they had ever asked something like that, so I figured it must be important.

I didn’t want to miss any more classes, not with the absences I picked up when Vicki went missing, so I told him it had to be at eleven-thirty, which was my lunch time at school, and I would have to bail after forty-five minutes. We had an hour for lunch, and that gave me just fifteen minutes for traveling to and from the office. I would probably be late for my next class, but the teacher liked me so if it wasn’t too bad I could probably get away with it.

Marcus said that would work, and that I should dress up for the meeting.

Over the summer Mom had convinced me to get a tailored suit. She pointed out I could afford it and, considering the nature of the deals the company was making, there was a good chance I would need it.

On Friday I got a lot of stares as I walked through the halls or sat in class. I think I might be the only person, ever, to wear a three piece suit to the high school; but there wasn’t time for me to change before or after the meeting … at least, not if I wanted to make it on time.

At the office, Mary Ann directed me to the conference room, which we actually didn’t use very often. Our meetings tended to be fairly informal. Walking in, I found not only Marcus and Ted, but Ronald, Jonathan, Charles Green (our CFO), and several men I didn’t know.

“Gentlemen,” I said walking around the table and shaking hands, “I’m Caspian Grey.”

I got smiles from my guys but either looks of confusion or frowns from the other guys.

“Sorry I’m late. Would you bring me up to speed?”

“These gentlemen are from the government of Papua New Guinea. It seems word of our Desalinization system has been getting around.”

“I am sorry,” the man sitting next to Ted said in heavily accented English, “but who is this child.”

“Believe it or not,” Ted replied, “this is our CEO. He runs the company.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” I said, trying to keep my face completely neutral and serious.

This was something we had to deal with from time to time when working with people not familiar with us. So much of the time everyone treated me as an equal that it always threw me when I was reminded how in the eyes of most the world, I wasn’t.

“I’m not sure,” he started, but I cut him off.

“Mr. … ?”

“Sam Tagobe.”

“Mr. Tagobe, I understand your concern. However, having heard of our technology, I’m sure you did some research into our company.”

He indicated he had.

“Then you know that, while we are a young company, we have a strong foundation. Our financials are solid. If you want to judge the company based on my age, then we can end this conversation now and each go about our day. But, keep in mind I have always been a part of this company. So, when you looked at us before coming here, and saw we were a solid and reputable company; please understand that I was head of the company then, too.”

He started to say something, but was interrupted by a man next to Marcus in what I assume was their native language. They had a heated exchange before the man next to Marcus said something in what was obviously a commanding tone, at which point Mr. Tagobe stopped arguing.

“I apologize, Mr. Grey. We represent the government of Papua New Guinea. We have come to speak with your company about contracting a plant to create and clean seawater and sewage. I do not know if you are aware of the events in my country, but we have been devastated by a drought this year, and our people are dying. We have no water for crops, and no water for drinking.”

“I am terribly sorry to hear that, Mr. Tagobe,” I said before turning to Ronald. “Where are we on the plant? I know you’ve been working to miniaturize it, but how are we on large scale production.”

“We are there. Large scale facilities are much easier to work with.”

“What kind of output could we get from a full sized facility?”

“Between eight hundred thousand and one million gallons a day. That’s a very rough estimate, and it partially depends on how much is salt water, and how much is reclamation.”

“Ok,” I said, turning back to our guests. “Would a facility like that meet your needs?”

“Yes, we think so. At the moment, we are in desperate need, but even when the weather is not against us, fresh water has always been a problem.”

“One of our missions at Evolve, Mr. Tagobe, is to make the world a better place. I think we can help your country. Now we just have to hammer out the details.”

Of course, everyone around the table knew this wasn’t something that would be sorted or agreed on today. We gave them a technical breakdown of what exactly we would do for them and Ronald was planning on taking them to his lab to look at the small demonstration model he had set up.

The only point in the negotiation I stuck to, was that I wasn’t willing to just build it for them. We would contract to build the plant, and operate it, for a set annual fee. But it would be a plant run by Evolve, and the locals working there would be employed by us.

I made it clear I wasn’t planning on charging by volume of water, which they were relieved to hear. That was how some companies would do it, but that would make the country more or less beholden to us, long term. But, I was concerned about both the conditions of people working at a plant using our technology, and making sure corners weren’t cut. When you are talking about reprocessing sewage for human consumption, a few cut corners can lead to a large number of sick and/or dead people. We came to a rough agreement that we would charge an annual operating fee; enough to cover our costs and give us a small profit, but something the government of Papa New Guinea would find bearable.

After fifty minutes, longer than I planned on staying, I excused myself. I knew between Ted, Jonathan and Charles, that they would make sure the numbers made sense and would work it out. I promised to be back after school to see where we had landed, and made a hasty exit.

I was still ten minutes late to class. I got a frown from the teacher, but otherwise she just let it pass.

At the end of the week, Mom asked me to stop by the lab again, after school. Ever since she had left her last job and started working in the lab that we set up with Alex, she had seemed happier. Maybe it was because the work was more cutting edge than what she did before, or maybe it’s because she was no longer in the cycle of getting grants and getting published. Either way, I was glad she was so happy.

I had spoken to both Alex and Mom a few times since my last visit to the lab, and I knew they were pushing hard on finding a way to mitigate the effects I had on people like Officer Jawarski, so I wasn’t surprised that she was in the lab with Mom and Alex when I showed up.

“Caspian, just stop, there,” Mom said when I walked in the door.

I complied, and stood just inside the door to the lab.

“How do you feel,” Alex asked Jawarski.

“It’s hard to say. I guess I am not as bothered by him as before. I don’t feel like I want to kill him, anymore.”

“You wanted to kill me?” I asked, surprised.

I knew she hadn’t liked me, but she had pushed that level of rage at me pretty deep. I hadn’t seen a hint of that.

“I still think you’re an asshole.”

“That just shows you have good judgment.”

I was surprised when she gave a smile at my joke. That was most definitely a change.

“Did you just smile at me? Jesus, I think we have a cure.”

“Shut up,” she said, but smiled again.

“We still have some tests to run, but, I think we have managed to mitigate her reaction to you. That’s the good news,” Mom said.

“What’s the bad news?” I asked.

“It’s not permanent. It will require periodic boosters to maintain her immunity,” Alex replied

“So this isn’t something we could do easily for everyone who reacts this way.”

“No, not easily,” Alex said.

“Well, I’m glad we have it for Jawarski. It’s good to have her on our side, even if she does want to kick my ass on a regular basis.”

“Don’t think that part will change,” Jawarski warned.

“I will keep an eye out,” I said with a smile.

“We have other problems,” Jawarski said.

“With this procedure?”

“No. The guys who were holding your girlfriend. They’ve been released. All of the evidence we pulled from that secret cache in her house is gone. Not just the evidence, but logs of the evidence. If I didn’t know that we had signed it in, then I wouldn’t even know it had ever existed. It was determined we had no evidence of an actual crime, and the DA dropped all charges.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Really?”

“A few months ago, just as school started, I was jumped by two guys. I put them down, and they were arrested, but they then disappeared, along with any records about the arrest.”

“What the hell?”

“Yeah. Something is going on, and they have some hooks into the system at a pretty high level. At least high enough to affect the DA.”

Jawarski looked pissed.

“Umm, I may have somehow ended up with a ledger from Vicki’s house.”

“You stole evidence,” she said, sounding annoyed.

“Borrowed, maybe. But, I think we can say that was a good thing at this point. We probably shouldn’t hand that over, until we figure out what is going on.”

“I guess,” she said, sounding unhappy. “I am not happy to hear there may be a rat in my department.”

“I think it might go bigger than that. I need to look at the ledger again, but someone is moving a good deal of money around, and I think I may have pissed them off. And I think Vicki’s dad tried to steal from them.”

“Really?”

“It’s something I saw in the ledger. Can you meet me at my house tomorrow at lunch time? I want to have a few other people I trust, sit down with us. Something is going on, and I think it’s time we started getting ready for it.”

Chapter 14

The next morning I had Ted, Jonathan, Carter, Jawarski and Mom gathered around the dining table. These were the people I was starting to think of as my brain trust, and they were who I usually brought my problems too. Before we could get started, I decide it was time to bring Carter on the inside. I didn’t know if what was happening was connected to me or not, but to give the right advice, he had to really understand what was happening.

We went through step by step everything we knew to that point. When we were done, Carter sat back and let out a long puff of air.

“I knew you weren’t ordinary, but there was no way I woulda guessed all that. And you say the only way you ‘change’ people is by mixing in some of your blood?”

“Yea, they get sick the next day or so as their body adjusts, and then they are … different.”

“Really?” he said, although it was more rhetorical.

He seemed to be thinking hard over something and then gave himself a shrug and focused back on the rest of us.

“So you do this to everyone you work with, huh?”

“No, of course not. Once we realized what was happening, we made a decision not to change anyone without talking to them first, and making sure they understand the implications of what would happen.”

He stared at me intently and then said, “Are you sure about that?”

“What?” I asked. “Yes. I am positive. I have spoken with everyone we have altered.”

He looked at me for a moment longer and the, with a shrug, said, “Ok.”

I looked at Jonathan for a moment, and he had a look similar to what I was thinking. Carter isn’t normally the type to bring up something for no reason, and he doesn’t let go of things that easily.

But we had pressing things to think about.

“On to business then. We’ve started noticing something strange is going on, and I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts on it, because it feels pretty serious. I know we have talked about most of this already to this point, but I want to go through it step by step again. Some strange things have been happening over the last two months, and it seems pretty certain they are connected.

“First, there was the visit I had by two armed men. They made reference to some of the stuff that happened last year with MilTech, and that I was causing problems for them. They were trying to get me to go with them, and I had to put them down. They were arrested shortly after that.

“While that was a problem, the really troubling thing was what happened afterwards. I checked in with the officer who arrested them, and both men had disappeared from the system. Not only were they not brought up on charges, the actual records of their being arrested also disappeared. If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be able to tell anything had actually happened.

“Then, a couple of weeks ago there was the thing with Vicki’s father. When Jawarski and I were looking through their house, trying to find out what happened to Vicki and her family, we came across a cache of documents that looked to show all kinds of illegal activity.

“Since we were trying to get to Vicki, we didn’t really look through it too much, but instead Jararski had all off it picked up by detectives, along with the guys we found holding Vicki and her mom.

“Now, all of those documents, plus the guys who were arrested, are gone. With again, no records they existed.”

“I went by the station yesterday, and it’s worse than that,” Jawarski said. “The bodies of the men I shot are gone. The internal records on the police involved shooting, which is usually scrutinized by IA, is gone. I talked to a few people and they were told it was being handled by the DA’s office directly. I called the DA’s office, but they said they couldn’t comment on it. I talked to a friend over there, and she couldn’t find any records of the investigation at all.”

“It takes someone with a lot of juice to make something like that disappear,” Carter said.

“I know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“So, how does this affect us, and what do we do?” I asked.

“Does it affect us?” Jonathan asked.

“It has to, doesn’t it?” I said. “I mean, at least the thing earlier this year, someone was after me specifically. And then Vicki’s father. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“We need to look into it,” Carter said. “I have a few contacts I can reach out to. What we need is information.”

I reached into my backpack and pulled out the ledger I took from Vicki’s house.

“I have this,” I said looking sheepishly at Jawarski. “I held this back when we turned everything over to the detectives.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Jawarski said.

“I know, but, something felt off. I was going to give it to you if everything worked out.”

“It’s a good thing you did,” Carter said taking the ledger. “Let me go over this and see what I can find out.”

“Let me know what you find, and if there is anything you need,” Jawarski said.

“Carter,” I said, “Will you work with Jawarski on this. You guys have a lot of overlapping skills in this area, and are the best to handle this. Since Jawarski is on the inside, she is in the best place to see what’s actually happening.

“Sure thing,” he said.

“You’re ok working on this,” I asked Jawarski.

“Yea. If there is rot in the department, I want to do something about it,” she answered.

“You know, considering how things have disappeared, this could go pretty high.”

“Yea, I know. Doesn’t matter.”

“Ok. Well, you guys look into this. We can’t figure out what to do until we know what’s happening.”

“There’s something else,” Jonathan said.

We all looked over at him.

“A friend of mine called yesterday. They know I’ve been involved with you on a bunch of stuff, and they wanted to give me a heads up. Child Protective Services has opened an investigation into you,” he said looking at Mom.

“Me?” she asked, surprised,

“Yes. Besides Zoe, you have custody of Caspian and Tina, and now Emily. Everything went through the courts fine, so it isn’t a question of whether you are their legal guardian or not. As far as I can tell, there have been some anonymous allegations of abuse.”

“What!” both Mom and I yelled at the same time.

“Calm down. Anonymous allegations only go so far, and it seems these were rather non-specific, which normally doesn’t warrant an actual investigation. However, with everything else that is going on, and at the level it appears to be happening, I am concerned. I am working on it, and will let you know as soon as I find out what is going on, but I didn’t want you to be blindsided.”

“I …” Mom started to say, and stopped.

She was stunned. She prided herself on being a good parent, both to her own child and to all of us who lived under her roof. She was taking this very personally.

“Don’t worry yet Angela. I am working on it. It will probably amount to nothing.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Nothing is positive, but so far it’s just someone making noise. Let’s not panic until we know more.”

We went around a little bit longer, working out some specifics on what we were going to do, but at this point we couldn’t make specific plans on everything. All we were doing at this point was working on information gathering.

We mentioned the warning Jonathan had given us to Zoe, Tina and Emily later that night. They were equally as concerned, but agreed we would just have to wait and see.

It did have the effect of tamping down enthusiasm for the rest of the weekend. Everyone was pretty distracted.

I begged off of going into the office for most of the week, and spent my time when not in school hovering around the house, and Mom and Alex’s lab. I wasn’t so much worried for myself. Considering I was now personally very wealthy, if she was removed as my guardian, I was nearly certain I could argue for emancipation and win. And Jonathan had mentioned that they were looking into her having custody of multiple juveniles, so that shouldn’t affect Zoe.

Tina and Emily were different stories. I wasn’t biologically related to Tina, so the courts wouldn’t have as much of a problem splitting us up. Having gone through the system, which was chronically underfunded and understaffed, I knew they would take expediency of moving kids put into the system over the well-being or opinions of the kids.

If Mom lost custody, they could be in another city a week later, and CPS didn’t like kids to have contact with previous non-biological guardians. It might be years before I would see either girl again, and that really had me upset.

And it had Mom even more upset, which is why I was hovering around her, both at home and at work.

By Thursday, she had had enough.

“OUT!”

I was leaning against one of the cabinets in the lab, watching her and Alex work on something. This kind of science really wasn’t my thing, and I was never really clear on what they were doing.

“I was just standing over here,” I said in my defense.

“I can feel you staring at me. I know you’re worried Cas, but you can’t just stand around watching me all the time. It’s driving me crazy.”

“I wasn’t even saying anything.” I whinned back.

Even I recognized that as a whiney teenager voice, but, in my defense, I was a teenager.

“Cas, we will be fine. Jonathan will take care of it. Just, let me have some peace, ok?”

“Fine, fine. I will go find something to do, but I’m not leaving. I will be here when you’re ready to go home.”

“Cas,” she said warningly, and then stopped. “Ok, I’ll compromise. You can hang around today, but I do not want to see you in this lab for a week. You can smother me at home, but I need to get work done while I’m here.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said, trying to sound innocent.

She just rolled her eyes. Alex on the other hand seemed to find this all funny, and was smiling through most of our argument.

“But right now, go play in the street or something,” Mom said, this time with a smile so I knew she wasn’t actually mad.

“Good Idea,” I said, and went out of the lab.

Of course, I really didn’t have anything to do at the lab, other than hang around and bug Mom. I probably should have just left and headed home, but I was still worried about her and didn’t want to do that.

So instead I started poking around. I had a tour when they were first setting up, and again shortly after they started actually using the facilities, but there were still a lot of areas I hadn’t seen, at least not in use.

It seems they hired a lab tech, since there was a person I didn’t know working in the other secured lab. She, and it was a woman, was bent over a table looking into a microscope. I didn’t want to intrude, so I headed down the central hallway. There were 2 rooms beyond the lab that I wasn’t sure what they were used for.

One, on inspection, was clearly being used for storage. Shelves lined the wall, covered in boxes of different stuff. While I recognized some of the names on the boxes, I had little idea and less interest in what any of it was used for, so I shut the door and peeked into the other room.

This seemed to be some hybrid between a lab and storage, or maybe it was storage for sensitive materials. While the other room was boxed products, and included things from beakers and pipe cleaners to toilet paper, this room had glass fronted refrigeration units lining the wall.

Inside there were a variety of medicine and chemicals, as well as test tubes. Some were filled with what I assumed was blood while others had clear or slightly colored liquids in them. The sides of the test tubes had a combination of letters and numbers that I couldn’t identify.

What caught my eye was one glass cabinet with row after row of trays with something I had never seen before. It was kind of like a thumbtack with a very small clear bulb on the end, instead of the plastic thing that most thumbtacks had. Some looked empty, but others were red. A safe bet would be that they were filled with blood.

I opened the cabinet and pulled out one of the empty ones to look at it. Pushing on the clear end, it was plastic, and wasn’t hard to depress. When I let go, it expanded again, reminding me of an eye dropper. The pointy end was much sharper than any thumbtack I had ever seen.

I went over to a sink that was on one wall, and put the pointy end into a small drop of water, depressed and released the plastic end. When I saw the water sucked up into the plastic bulb, it confirmed my hunch.

Setting that one aside, I went back to the cabinet and just stared at it, trying to work out something that was bothering me.

This wasn’t anything I had seen in a lab, or ever heard about. What could they possibly be used for?

If they were used for holding and moving liquids like an eye dropper, why were they so small? The amount of liquid it could hold was infinitesimal.

And why was the end so sharp. In a lab that was testing blood, viruses and bacteria, the last thing a technician wants is to have something puncture their skin. While I may not be totally conversant in biology and lab procedures, this went against everything I understood about how labs work.

If I factored in that Mom and Alex were solely studying my biology and the shape and design of the things in the case, I could come up with one use, and that bothered me. A lot.

I reached in and pulled out one of the full dropper things. Of course, this was immensely stupid, since I didn’t actually know what was in the bulb reservoir, but I was confident by this point that my system could fight off whatever was in it.

Plus, I didn’t plan on sticking myself with it.

I put the sharp tip against the back of one of my fingernails, and gave it a small amount of pressure.

As soon as the pressure started, the end started leaking out. Not dumping the bulb completely, but clearly the sharp end was able to push out, as well as draw in the liquid.

Going over to the sink, I pointed the sharp end over the drain, and pushed the bulb, causing the red liquid to squirt out. It was obvious by this point that the liquid was blood.

I was turning to take it back to the cabinet when the door to the lab opened and Alex came in, carrying a tray.

When she saw me, and saw what I was holding, she froze in place, her eyes growing wide.

That was enough to confirm my hunch. A sickening sensation filled my stomach.

“What … is … this?” I asked through clenched teeth, my anger rising.

“Caspian, its … I can explain.”

“No,” I said, holding up a hand. “I think we both know what this is. Whose idea was this?”

She passed for the briefest of moments, her eyes darting around before she said, “Mine.”

“Alex, you are a terrible liar.”

“I swear Caspian, this was all my idea.”

I set the dropper on a counter.

“Let’s go.”

She didn’t ask me where we were going, and I could see tears starting to form in her eyes as she followed me out of the room.

Sticking my head in the lab Mom was working in I said to her, “Mom, we need to go home right now.”

“What’s wrong,” she said, sounding concerned.

“We need a family meeting.”

“Cas, can this wait, I’m in the middle of …”

“No,” I said, interrupting her, “We need to do this now. I will call the girls on the way. Could you call Jonathan and have him meet us at the house as soon as he can get there.”

“Cas, we,” she started and then stopped. “Of course. I’ll see you there.”

She looked worried, but started packing things up.

“Alex, head to the house now and wait for me.”

To her credit, she didn’t argue with me, she just ducked into her office to get her purse and headed out of the building.

I was right behind her and started calling the girls as I made my way home. They could all hear in my voice that something was wrong, but thankfully didn’t push it.

I got home about the time Tami was showing up, and followed her into the house. Everyone but Mom and Jonathan were already gathered in the living room.

“Cas, what is this about,” Zoe asked.

“Let’s wait until Mom gets here,” I said, pacing up and down the room.

They all watched me, occasionally stealing a glance at Alex, who was staring at her shoes.

After a few minutes Mom showed. Jonathan was right behind her and, to my surprise Jawarski was with him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“They said you were in a fit about something, and since I wasn’t one of your zombies, you had a better chance listening to me.”

“That’s not what I said,” Mom said defensively.

Jawarski just shrugged.

“Ok, I’m sorry for calling everyone together so quickly, and but something has happened and we need to take care of it right now.

“I was at the lab today, and I found something. A small thumbtack type thing with a plastic bulb on one end.”

Most of the people gathered were looking back at me, waiting for me to continue, but I noticed Vicki’s expression changed from concern to fear.

“I have a guess what this is, but I wanted to get Alex to explain it to me, and find out who else knew about it. Alex?”

“It’s for delivering small amounts of your blood into people.”

“Why not a use a syringe to infect them after they have agreed to the process,” I asked fatuously.

“Its … it’s so you can infect someone secretly. We designed it so all we had to do was scratch someone and they would be exposed.”

Mom and Zoe’s eyes darted back to me, probably trying to gauge my reaction. This went directly against what I had asked everyone to do when we learned about the effect of my blood on other people last year.

“So, let me get this straight. I made it very clear last year that I only wanted to change people who had consented to the process and understood it. That was clear. Right?”

“Yes,” Alex said softly.

“Cas, she was just trying …” Vicki said, starting to defend her.

“Vicki, you knew what she was trying? Are you telling me you were in on this with her?”

“Cas, we weren’t trying to sneak around,” Vicki said, not bothering to pretend she was innocent.

“And yet that was exactly what you two did. I made it clear that this wasn’t what I wanted. When people find out about us, and they will find out, how is this going to look?”

“Cas,” Vicki said again, started to sound upset.

“Don’t ‘Cas’ me Vicki. I trusted you. You know this isn’t what I wanted. How could you do this to me?”

“Do this to you?” Vicki shouted, standing up. “Fuck you Caspian. You know that I love you and would never let anything hurt you. That includes letting you hurt yourself.

“Did we go behind your back? Yes. Did we go against what you wanted? Yes. But only because you aren’t thinking clearly. You can’t tell people all about this and then ask them if they want to be changed. What happens if they say no? Then they know everything and aren’t loyal to you.”

“Some loyalty,” I said snottily.

“Don’t be so fucking naive,” Jawarski said from across the room. “What?”

“Don’t … be … naive. Alexandra and your girlfriend are right. You can’t go around asking people nicely for shit. Not about something like this. There are going to be people who you need to get control of, and a lot who don’t have your best interest at heart. You can’t go around life assuming everyone is a good person. That will screw you faster than anything.”

“But what about when people find out about me?”

“They will already assume you are doing this, and won’t believe you when you say you aren’t. Cas, something big is happening out there. Real criminals are just walking out of the justice system without a trace. Someone is looking into Angela and your family. The wolves are at the door my friend. Refusing to use everything at your disposal to defend yourself is stupid beyond belief.”

“This isn’t what I wanted,” I said, sitting down and putting my head in my hands.

“But it’s what needs to be done,” Vicki said, coming to sit next to me, putting an arm around me.

“Who have you done this to,” I asked quietly.

There was no response.

“Vicki …”

“Jonathan, Ted, Marcus, everyone at the lab … and Vicki’s mom,” Alex said.

“Alex, those are our friends.”

“Speaking as one of those people, I understand why they did it. This explains why I was so sick one day last week, but I still get it. I’m not upset with them, or with you,” Jonathan said.

“Of course you say that now that you’ve gone through the change,” I said.

“We’re not zombies,” Vicki argued. “We disagree with you sometimes. We go against your wishes sometimes.”

“Obviously,” I said.

“BUT,” she continued, ignoring my interruption, “We do these things out of your best interest. We aren’t sycophants, just loyal. There is a difference.”

“This has to stop.”

“No,” Mom said forcefully.

“But …”

“No, no buts. I didn’t know about this, but now that I do, I agree. We have to be proactive. Beth is right; there are people out there who clearly have it out for you. We have to protect you. And this family.”

I sat for a minute, going over everything they were saying. Jawarski was right, I was being naive. But this went against everything I believed in. I was having trouble making those contradictory thoughts work out.

“What should we do,” I asked Mom.

“Put some rules in place. We shouldn’t be infecting anyone on a whim.”

“Maye have a few of you get together, discuss if you infect someone, and take a vote.”

“That’s a good idea,” Emily said. “Alex and Mrs. Bell should be part of that group. One of us, probably Vicki.”

“And Beth,” Jonathan said.

“Me?” Jawarski asked, surprised. “I’m not one of your group.”

“You already are,” Jonathan replied. “Caspian clearly trusts you, you have a strong ethical code, and you haven’t gone through the change so Caspian can’t say you are being affected by your biology. If anything your biology works the other direction.”

“I like it,” Mom said. “We can meet regularly, discuss this, and come to a decision. If anyone thinks someone should be infected, tell one of us and we will discuss it at our next meeting.”

“Wait,” I said. “I didn’t agree to …”

“Cas,” Zoe said, “the train has already left the station. Time to get on board.”

“What about if we infect someone who’s a genetic negative. I don’t want to do to someone else what we did to Margaret.”

“That’s why Mom and Alex are part of the group deciding,” Zoe replied. “They will do their best to weed out those people.”

“You should prepare yourself however,” Alex said. “At some point we will miss someone and it will happen. Without doing a full genetic workup, there is no surefire way to know if someone is a genetic negative or not. And some of the people we are discussing we will never be able to get samples from to check.”

Jonathan stood up and said, “Caspian, they are right. Listen to them. I was in the middle of something, so I have to get back. But I will say Angela and the rest have my vote. They’re right about this.”

“Who else votes yes,” Tami said.

Every hand but mine went up.

“Wait, I didn’t …”

“The ayes have it,” Tami said. “Sorry Cas, you always said this wasn’t a dictatorship. Sometimes democracy doesn’t go the way you want it. You’re just going to have to get used to this.”

I just nodded and went upstairs to pout. There wasn’t another word for it really. Deep inside I knew they were right, but I didn’t like it. It went against every sense of my morality.

And I knew that, at some point, this was going to turn around and bite us in the ass.

Chapter 15

I was pretending to be asleep when Zoe, Emily and Tami came into the bedroom. I could hear them whispering to each other for a while, but chose to ignore them.

The way I felt at the moment, I knew if we talked, I would just end up snapping at them. Partly it was because I had made it very clear what I wanted, and they had completely ignored me. I wanted to be pissed at them for being disloyal. This was hurt a bit by the fact that they were trying to do what they, and I guess pretty much everyone else, saw as the right thing to do.

Another part of it was just petulance. I recognized it, but that didn’t keep it from being true. I was angry that they had a point.

They were right, I had been naïve. It was clear that something big was stacking up against us, and we couldn’t hamstring ourselves from the outset.

Deep inside I knew I would end up going along with them; but for now, I wanted to pout and punish them for their disloyalty. Like I said. Petulant.

I got up early and snuck out of the house, letting the girls sleep. They would probably be pissed at me when I got home, but I figured it was better than having another fight.

I had already planned on heading down to the new offices in Houston. Jonathan had the corporation sign all the documents, since I couldn’t do it myself. We were getting the keys to the various buildings.

Jonathan had arranged for the contractor we were hiring to meet me out there, to go over the changes we needed.

Seeing as how things had gone the previous year with the break-ins, we were looking at a fair number of renovations.

Most of them we had already gone over and agreed to, so this was more like a last minute check on everything.

As I had left pretty early, so I didn’t have to talk to the girls in the morning. This meant there was virtually no traffic on the way over, causing me to be more than an hour early.

I pulled through to one of the back buildings, and parked. We had already decided that this would be used as office space, since it was the smallest of the buildings and already set up for that.

Getting out of my car, I started to walk around the property when something caught my eye.

Next to the office was the only building not sold to Evolve. The one Douglas had pointed out. The movement that caught my eye was three men entering the front door.

I was about to shrug it off and continue my walk around the property when the last of the trio turned to look out at the parking lot. I instantly recognized him as one of the two men from the beginning of the year. It wasn’t the one that had done most the talking, but I still remembered him.

I watched him finish looking around the parking lot and then head inside with the other two.

I thought for a moment and then followed them. It seemed like a fair bet these two guys were connected to the same people that went after Vicki’s family, if for nothing else then by the fact they were able to slip out of the system so easily.

The idea of having them involved with a business right next door didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to get a little more information, and see if this other tenant was in their pocket or associated with whoever this guy’s group was.

I cracked the door open, and peeked in. No one was in sight. There was a front desk for a receptionist, but it was empty. I silently entered, closed the door and headed into the building.

A door at the end of the hallway was slightly open, and when I peeked through the opening, I saw it led into a large open area with machinery scattered around.

At the far end, was a room with a window that looked out onto the open area. It was probably used by the manager who oversaw this area of the business.

Through the window I could see a man in a suit and tie standing in front of a desk. In front of him were the three guys I saw enter the building. From his body language, the man in the suit and tie was scared. He had backed up until his butt hit the edge of the desk, and the three guys were crowding him.

I moved along the edge of the warehouse, trying to stay behind machinery as I made my way to the office, eventually stopping just outside the opened door, listening.

“…on’t want any trouble.”

“Albert, Mr. Richards has been very patient with you. He gave you a week to think about it. You have an offer from McClellan, and you are going to accept it.”

“But, this company means everything to…”

The man was cut off by a thudding sound, followed by a groan.

“You’re out of time. If you don’t sell out now, you won’t be around to have another chance.”

I’d heard enough to figure out what was going on. The guy who owned this property clearly wasn’t in league with these three guys. More importantly, the two men who tried to grab me at the beginning of the year mentioned someone named Richards.

I stepped around and through the door. The man in the suit and tie was doubled over, holding his stomach.

The guy I recognized was in front of him, leaning down face to face with the man in the suit, his fist still raised. The man on his left was standing back, arms folded across his chest, smirking.

The guy on his right however noticed me, his hand starting to go into his coat.

Not wanting him to have time to come up with a weapon, I opted for power over finesse. Putting all of my enhanced strength behind it, I punched as hard as I could into his chest, just below the sternum.

I felt something give, and if I had to guess, I broke one of his ribs. I also impacted close enough to his diaphragm that all of the air in his lungs pushed out of his body as he flew back, away from the impact.

By the time he hit the wall, he was already sucking for air. All thoughts of his gun were forgotten. My old friend was just starting to get up, having not noticed me until he heard the impact of my fist hitting his friend.

I moved forward and used him as balance, putting my arm around his neck and latching on as I brought my right foot off the ground. This caused two things to happen.

My right foot cut an arc through the air, with the heel of my shoe catching the other thug in the jaw. I hadn’t pulled the kick at all, and his whole body twisted with his head, as he dropped like a wet bag of cement. I continued to twist my body around until my foot was on the floor again.

I had managed a half turn in the air, and since my arm was around the middle thug's neck, he had my entire body weight plus the momentum of my turn pulling at him.

If he'd been trained and if he'd had a firm stance, he might have put me on my ass. But he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would have that type of training, and he was leaning forward and was horribly off balance.

As my body twisted, the guy I was holding onto also began twisting, causing his feet to come off the ground. As I finished my turn and reset my feet I pulled my arm, pushing his upper body in and down, causing him to twist even further.

In an almost cartoon like display, he managed one full rotation before impacting on the concrete floor of the warehouse office, his head bouncing once and then settling down.

I stopped and took survey of the three men. The guy I had punched was still sucking for air in the corner. He would live, but he'd need an ambulance soon. The other two seemed to be breathing, as their chests were moving up and down, but they were both out cold.

“Call the police, and tell them to send an ambulance. We can talk while we wait for them,” I told the stunned man in the suit.

He stared for another minute before shaking himself and going to the phone. He walked the operator through what was going on, and asked for police and an ambulance.

While he did that, I pulled out my cellphone and called Jonathan.

“We have a situation,” I said when he picked up.

“Who’d you beat up, now,” he said with a laugh.

“Why does everyone assume I beat someone up when I call?”

There was a long silence from the other end of the line.

“Ok, it was three guys. One of them I recognize, he’s one of the guys who tried to grab me earlier in the year. They were trying to beat the guy who owns the property next to us into selling to them. You need to get down here.”

“I will make some calls and then head that way. You always keep things interesting, Cas.”

“I try,” I said and hung up.

“My lawyer is on the way,” I said, turning to the guy in the suit, “but things are going to get confused when the cops show up. Just tell them what happened, and try and stay calm.”

“Who the hell are you,” he asked, sounding anything but calm.

“Ohh, right, sorry. I got distracted. My name’s Caspian Grey. We are the people that bought the rest of the complex.”

“But …” he said, looking confused.

“Yeah, I’m young. But it’s still true. I am the CEO of Evolve. We’re your new neighbor.”

“But how …?”

“Let’s sit down,” I suggested. “Just take some deep breaths.”

As we sat down I looked over the three men again. Wheezy was starting to have some real problems. There was a chance I punctured his lung when the rib broke. It may sound heartless; but the ambulance was on its way, and I didn’t feel a lot of remorse for a guy who was planning on shooting me, just moments before.

His friends were both still out cold.

“Are you ok?” I asked as he sat down in one of the chairs across from the desk.

“Yes. And thank you.”

“What are neighbors for?” I said with a smile. “What did they want?”

“There has been this group of investors that’ve been pressuring me for months to sell my company to them. Over the last few weeks, they have gotten a lot more insistent, and guys like this have started showing up.”

“Why do they want your company so badly? What is it you do, exactly?”

“That’s the thing I never understood. We don’t really do much, at least not stuff that would cause someone to threaten me to sell my company. We are an import company, and focus on small runs of hand crafted products. If you’ve seen those small stores that sell a chair made by a Argentinian craftsman or blown glass vases from a small village in Spain, that’s the kind of stuff we bring in.”

“Doesn’t sound like it’s a big money business.”

“It isn’t, we mostly …”

He was interrupted by shouts out on the factory floor. Looking through the window, I could see a couple of police officers.

“We’re in here,” I shouted to the cops, then turned to my new friend. “When they get here, just keep your hands in the open and be still. Don’t reach for anything. Just stay calm.”

“You two, don’t move,” the first office said when he came through the door.

He didn’t have his gun out, but his hand was on the butt and his holster was unsnapped.

“What happened … GUN!” he started to say before shouting to his partner.

The last guy I knocked out was coming to, and he hadn’t really registered who was in the room yet. He had started reaching in his coat and pulling out a weapon.

Both cops fell on him, one driving a knee in his stomach, the other pinning his hands to the floor. The guy must have gotten his wits about himself, because he stopped struggling and let them get their handcuffs on him.

More officers showed up, along with some paramedics, and they split everyone up, getting the basic story down.

I only really changed two parts of my story. I didn’t tell the police about recognizing one of the thugs. Having recognized a guy that they pulled a gun off would have automatically put me in the questionable category. Plus, the story of having been accosted by him in Alice, and his being arrested without there being any report on that arrest any more, would add unneeded complexity to the situation.

It was enough to say I noticed that one of them had a gun.

The other thing I changed, was the fact that I stood outside the door listening. While I had good reason to listen to the conversation for a minute to find out if my neighbor was involved with whatever organization we were starting to butt heads with, there was no easy way to explain that to the police. Or at least not one that made any sense.

Instead I just stated that I'd walked into the office, subdued the men, and called the police.

That of course had issues all of its own. Why didn’t I call the police when I saw the men with guns? Why did I wait until after attacking the men? How was I able to subdue three armed men?

But since the man in the suit was going to tell them about what happened inside the office, there wasn’t any way to avoid that part of the story. I did manage to talk myself out of having to go with them to the station to answer more questions, thankfully.

The fact that I was essentially a Good Samaritan, at least on the face of it, made it harder for them; but the clincher might have been my mentioning that my lawyer was on the way.

Plus, they had three guys, all armed, and a statement from two witnesses. Cops love to close cases, and usually avoid adding complexity if they don’t have to.

Still, I would need to get Jonathan to go to the precinct when he got here, and do some damage control. Detectives were sometimes less willing to take the easy answer when all the pieces didn’t fit.

I was confident that Jonathan would get it figured out.

Once the police and ambulances started making their way out I went and found the guy in the suit.

“I never got your name,” I said.

I didn’t want to keep thinking of him as ‘the guy in the suit’, and given what I already knew, it seemed pretty obvious that we would be dealing with each other from time to time. At least until we settled the issue with the as yet unnamed group that kept cropping up.

“Arnold. Arnold Petti.”

“Nice to meet you, Arnold; like I said before, I’m Caspian.”

“You said you ran the company that bought up all the other property around here?”

“Yep. We did. I was just down here looking over the property, and meeting with some contractors to go over changes my team had decided on.”

“That must have been a pretty big chunk of money. Aren’t you a little young to be running a company that can manage that.”

“I get that a lot, I promise. Yeah, I’m young, but if it works, it works. My partners are well seasoned. I sometimes say they're old when they are within earshot, just to get under their skin. Anyway, they seem to have faith in me.”

“Well, you certainly know how to handle yourself.”

“Years of training,” I said, trying to brush it off.

“I'll bet, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

“Really?” I said, curious.

Every other time someone has seen me in an altercation, they bring up my physical abilities. His response caught me off guard.

“I have a brother who finished the Olympics, just short of medaling in Judo when we were young men. While I never got into that kind of thing myself, I have seen enough people who have put in years of practice of recognize training. The kid that beat him was something like seventeen years old. What I meant, though, was how you handled the police.”

“I promise that’s not from years of practice,” I said.

Although if I was being honest, by this point I had more experience dealing with police than most kids.

“I didn’t think that,” he said with a laugh. “I meant the ease of how you dealt with the situation. I’ve seen men older then myself fold under this kind of situation. You didn’t seem flustered at all.”

“What can I say,” I said with a laugh and a shrug. “So, what are you going to do about these guys coming for your business?”

Partly because I didn’t really like talking about myself, and partly because we would end up in territory best left uncovered, I was glad he let me shift the conversation.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Well, at least for here on the site, we are going to be doing a lot of security upgrades. We have bought all the property but yours, including the property around yours, and are going to make the entire area secure. We were planning on getting in touch with you about making sure you had access to your buildings. We weren’t considering covering your building with our new security measures, but I think I can bring up some alternatives with my partners. If you think you might want to take part of our new security setup, we can do that.”

“I’d have to see what you were suggesting, but I can say I definitely would be open to that.”

“It won’t help you when you’re away from here, but at least you can work in peace. I’ll talk to my guys, and see what they think. Then we can all get together. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds good.”

“Well, my contractors are almost certainly here and waiting for me, so I need to go deal with that.”

“No problem. Thanks for all your help, Caspian. I really appreciate it.”

“Happy to do it,” I said, and headed back outside.

Sure enough, a rep from the company we were hiring, and their Foreman, were both waiting for me when I left Arnold’s office and headed back to where I parked.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. We had a little excitement next door. I’m Caspian Grey.”

“I’m Melvin Jones with Southwest Construction. This is our Foreman Jake Turner.”

“Nice to meet you both,” I said, shaking their hands.

“We saw the police cars when we drove up. What happened?”

“Our next door neighbor ran into a little trouble. That’s partly why we have you guys out here. While there are technical improvements to the building, we really need those security improvements, more. With what just happened, this whole area feels just a bit too open.”

“If you are getting people coming off the streets and causing problems, I can imagine it would,” Melvin said.

I let them assume it was random street crime. No reason to complicate things.

“So, show me what we are planning,” I said.

“Since we’re out here, let’s start with the outside, first. We are going to redo most of this roadway. Your team suggested they might have larger trucks coming through, and outside of the loading docks on buildings two and three, the rest of it wasn’t meant to handle heavy loads. Leaving it the way it is now, you are going to have to replace some of the entry ways and through areas within a year or two.”

“Maybe,” Jake said.

“Ok, maybe. It really depends on how many heavy trucks you have coming through. If it isn’t much, it could be five or more years, if it’s a bunch every day, it’s more like one year.”

“Ok, so you’re suggesting better safe, than sorry?”

“Basically. You're eating the cost up front, but if in two years you need to rip everything out, it’s going to affect your shipping and receiving while the work is being done.”

“Ok, what else.”

“Your guys made it very clear that security was important. We are still working through the specifics, but we are walling in your buildings with a solid security wall. A guy named Carter from your office put us in touch with your security company, and they are going to be bringing out sensors to embed in the wall, as well as an array of cameras to install along it.”

I was curious what they meant by ‘your security company’ and made a mental note to talk to Carter about that.

“Also,” Jake added, “there's sensory wire along the top of it. If I didn’t … anyway it will be pretty secure.”

“What was that first part? If you didn’t?”

“What I was going to say is, I’ve seen designs for an enclosure like the ones your team gave us for the perimeter wall. I was with the Seabees, back in the day, and I’ve worked on similar walls at overseas embassies.”

Something else to talk to Carter about. I didn’t want to second guess the work already ordered, but it seemed a bit of overkill.

“The only problem we are having is the extra building on the property that isn’t yours. We are trying to determine the practicality of a separate road and entrance to their section of the facility, and then walling you off from them. That whole thing falls apart if they don’t agree to it though, so we are still working on alternatives.”

“What if we worked out a deal with them so their building was inside our … area.”

“Compound,” Jake said.

“Whatever,” I replied. “Would that make it easier?”

“A lot easier,” Melvin said.

“Let me talk to my guys about that. We should be able to have something for you in a few days. Would it require you to rework your plans much?”

“Not really,” Jake said. “If you have them inside your compound, then it’s basically just walling in the perimeter of the entire area. Simplifies things a lot.”

“Ok. I’ll let you know on that. What else?”

“We are going to change the parking lot. Right now, all trucks roll down the main parking lot, in between the buildings, and then have to make a hard swing to get to the loading docks. We are going to add an additional road around the side, with a larger entrance for trucks.”

“Huh, I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“We checked, and there have been several police reports over the years documenting trucks swiping and clipping parked cars. It’s really a bad idea to bring these big trucks through a parking area for staff and visitors.”

“I can see that.”

“Your team also requested controlled access points, so we are setting up guard booths at each end, with the one at the truck entrance large enough to let the entire truck into an enclosed area to be checked, before being allowed on the property. We also have instructions for two poles with power access on them. I’ve seen this kind of thing before being used for cameras, so I’m sure your security company will be setting up something like that.”

“Those are pretty much the main security features. We were informed that state of the art alarm systems will be wired into each building, but that will be handled by your security company.”

“What about the buildings themselves?”

“Well, the office building,” he said, indicating the building we were standing in front of, “is more or less set up as it is. We are going to change one area to be able to run servers. I talked to a fairly young girl in your office who had all kinds of requirements.”

“Like?” I asked, pretty sure he was talking about Zoe.

“Raised flooring with cooling from below, to allow more airflow throughout the room; more power hookups, and things like that. She also had wiring instructions for both that building and running serious wiring between the buildings. I’m going to have to bring in a guy for a lot of this, since some of this stuff is outside of my area; but I’ve been told it’s mostly for networking and high end data exchange.”

“As long as it meets her standards, it should be good. She really knows what she's doing.”

“So it seems. Anyhow, three of the buildings we are going to leave alone. Marcus, in your office, said they weren’t needed; but we would probably be asked to come back here, when you were ready to expand into them. The remaining three buildings we are redoing the flooring, and, adding in the networking like I said, and upgrading the power to meet the requirements you guys asked for. You guys hooked us up with a company experienced in setting up assembly lines, and we are going to have to put in some serious air compressors to run some of the air powered tools. They will be here during that stretch of the construction, and we will make adjustments as needed.”

“So how serious are the changes?”

“Pretty serious. For the three buildings we are working on; we are going to essentially gut them entirely, and rebuild from the ground up.”

“What’s the time frame on this?”

“Your team said there was a rush, and were willing to pay some serious rush fees. We should have the perimeter wall finished, just after Thanksgiving. We will start the gutting while the wall goes up, but that’s more involved. It will probably ready after Christmas.”

“That long?”

“Are you kidding? Be happy the buildings themselves are in good condition. If we had to actually put up new buildings, run sewage and water, pour foundations, and everything else it would be summer at the earliest.”

“Ohh!”

“Don’t worry. We will move as fast as we possibly can. You guys are paying top dollar, with the promise of more work, later.”

“Sounds good. I’m just looking forward to getting this facility up and running.”

Chapter 16

Jonathan showed up shortly after my meeting with the contractors broke up.

“So, how much trouble are you in?” He asked, getting out of his car.

“So little faith. None. They were a little suspicious of a few things, and I left out my history with one of the guys, but since my story matched with Arnold's, and the guys were armed, it was pretty open and shut.”

“Arnold?”

“Arnold Petti. He’s the guy who owns that business that wouldn’t sell. Turns out this group has been pressuring him hard to sell his import/export business to them.”

“I’ll still go by the police station and make sure there isn’t something that might come back and bite you in the ass.”

“Well, that is the part you are paid to cover.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a card, which I handed to Jonathan.

“This is the card the officer gave me, if I had any other questions. Since you’re here, there’s something I need you to do for me.”

“Ok.”

“Have Carter look into Mr. Petti. He seems like a good guy, and if possible I would feel better if we could work out a deal where his building could be inside the perimeter we are setting up.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea.”

“Yes, but I want you, Carter and Ted to look into it and make sure I’m not wrong. We know we are starting to butt heads with someone out there, and it seems Mr. Petti is part of that.”

“That kind of coincidence makes me think it’s anything but.”

“I know, but if he is who he seems to be, I want to help him out.”

“One day that kind of thinking is going to get you into serious trouble.”

“Probably. It’s a good thing I have a hot shot attorney to bail me out.”

He gave a snort and shook his head, “Anything else?”

“No. I talked to the contractors. They seem to have everything under control, and should start Monday. I already told them I was considering having the wall contain Mr. Petti’s area too, and that you or Ted would call them next week to confirm. If we do that, you guys need to work out the details with both the contractor and Mr. Petti. He doesn’t know what I am thinking, but I am certain he would be happy for it.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

“That’s what I like. I get to be the idea man and you guys get to take care of all the details.”

“Yeah, it works great for us too,” he said sarcastically.

“Well, good,” I said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I’m headed back home, unless you have anything else for me?”

“No, I’ll sort this out and talk to you on Monday.”

I headed back home and was surprised to find Tami and Judy sitting on the couch inside, bracketed by Zoe and Tina, who were each hugging their respective friend.

While it wasn’t unusual to have Tami around the house, and occasionally Judy over to see Tina, it was rare that they were there at the same time and even more rare that they were together when at our house.

They also had both been crying.

“What happened?” I asked, setting down my stuff and going to them.

“Their parents kicked them out,” Mom said from her seat across the room.

“They went to church,” Tami said in between gulps of air as she tried to compose herself. “When they got home, they said we were no longer welcome in their house. Dad said as far as he cared, he had no children.”

“What?” I asked, shocked.

“Dad said we had pushed too far, and that they did not want us in the house tainting them with our corrupted lifestyles. He said we could pack one bag each of clothes, and take our school bags, and that was it. He watched us pack.”

“Mom gave me some money when Dad wasn’t watching,” Judy said, still sobbing, “and said that she was sorry. I asked her to talk to Dad, get him to change his mind, but she said that she wouldn’t.”

“I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I went after the preacher too hard,” I said.

“No!” both Tami and Judy said together.

“Cas, they were getting very close to handing Judy over to that pervert. If you hadn’t done anything, she would have…” Tami said, and then stopped; her voice failing her, and the tears starting.

“You can, of course, stay here. We are running a little short on room again. I guess you can share Judy's room with Zoe, and Tami can share with Emily,” Mom said.

Of course, saying Judy would room with Zoe was just part of the façade she put up. It mostly meant that there were two beds in that room, and some of Zoe’s stuff would be stored there, even though Zoe wouldn’t be spending very many nights as Judy’s roommate.

Both girls ran over to Mom and hugged her tightly. I saw Vicki’s mom also come across the room and hug the girls. She had started coming back out of the shell she built around herself following her husband’s death.

It would do both Tami and Judy good to have the extra maternal guidance and love that they clearly missed at home.

Mom was right about one thing. We had just bought this house, and it was already at max capacity. We had seven bedrooms and nine people living permanently in the house.

On paper, it would be Emily and Tami sharing a room, Judy and Tina sharing a room, and everyone else getting their own room.

In reality, we still had five rooms occupied, and two just holding stuff. But we needed that fiction of the girls sleeping in their own room, especially with the noise we were hearing about concerns over custody arrangements.

Everyone settled in for the night and things seemed to calm down. I knew it would be an adjustment period for them, and the best thing I could do was just be supportive.

I pondered their situation for most of my morning run before school on Monday.

Inside, I was actually happy they were separated from their parents now. Those two had made some atrocious decisions and clearly didn’t have the well-being of their kids in mind.

Living with us meant they were safe from the preacher. And that’s what I really cared about.

Not that I didn’t feel bad for them. Rejection hurts, and while Margret and I weren’t exactly close, I knew having your family reject you hurt even more. I knew the girls were hurting and it would take time to cope with it.

When I got back home, I found Mom and Mrs. Hollabrand making breakfast.

I went and hugged mom from behind, and hugged Mrs. Hollabrand the same way. She froze for a second looking surprised, then relaxed.

“Thanks for making breakfast,” I said to both of them.

“You stink,” Mrs. Hollabrand said, “go take a shower, wake up all the slugabeds, and get breakfast before you have to go to school.”

“Sure thing,” I said, and turned to head upstairs.

I looked back and saw Mom and Mrs. Hollabrand look at each other, Mom with a smirk and Mrs. Hollabrand with a warm smile.

She had just started coming out of the shell she had built around herself following her husband’s death, and Mom had suggested that we make sure to include her and make her feel accepted.

That was one of the first smiles I had seen her give since she moved in with us.

It was heartening.

School was the same as it always is, except today all the girls headed out, even skipping cheerleader practice, to pick up Tina and Judy. They were headed to buy supplies for Tami and Judy to replace stuff they hadn’t been able to take with them.

I noticed they had made sure to grab my credit card on the way out, so there was a good chance it would be more than that.

Not that I would complain.

I had mentioned to Levi that I was going to come in for some practice this afternoon and headed that way. Stuff with the new property was moving along, and I figured the office could make it through not having me come in one day.

I was surprised to find Jawarski waiting inside the dojo when I showed up. I hadn’t talked to her in a little while, so I wasn’t even sure how she knew I would be there.

“I’m surprised to see you,” I said.

“Angela mentioned you would be here. I thought over some of the things you told me, and what I saw at that office where your girlfriend was being held, and I had some ideas for you.”

“You talked to Mom?”

“I talk to her, Alex, and even some of your girlfriends pretty regularly.”

“Really? I’m surprised. We haven’t even spoken much in the last few weeks.”

“That’s cause I like them more than you.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, I believe in what you guys are doing. You are legitimately trying to make the World a better place. I see the stuff your charity is working on. Angela and Alex have walked me through what they are working on using your blood as a starting point. I just don’t like spending time around you if I don’t have to.”

“So what was this idea you had,” I asked, changing the subject.

I knew why she felt that way, but it always sucks to hear you make people’s skin crawl.

“I saw you in action, and you are fast. Amazingly fast. I know part of that is your training, and part of that is the slow down thing you told me about. When you are working out, you probably are just doing normal work out stuff. Right? Practicing forms, maybe some sparring, that kind of thing. Right?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Do you ever do the slow motion thing in practice?”

“Not really. It’s hard to control. I’ve only been able to do it on purpose a few times. Every other time, it’s happened when I started getting really amped up.”

“Do you think it’s adrenaline based? Maybe something Alex could test for?”

“Maybe. But I have only been able to do it proactively a few times. So maybe not.”

“Have you ever practiced trying to make it happen?”

“No, but now I’m thinking I probably should have.”

“That’s cause you're only half way incompetent.”

I frowned at her, “I know you don’t like me, and I know why. But could you please keep the insults down to a low roar? It kinda sucks.”

“I’ll try,” she said, “but no promises. Let’s go inside. I already talked to your teacher, and he agreed to let me work with you in one corner.”

That wasn’t much, but it was probably the best I was going to get. I followed her in and gave a nod hello to Levi, who was working with a small group in one section of the dojo.

“Ok, explain to me what it was like the two times you were able to make it happen.”

“It’s kinda hard to explain. I sort of focused and felt something click in my head right before the slow motion thing started. Saying something clicked isn’t quite right, I just felt somewhat different. Kind of like that moment when you are thinking hard on something you forgot, that’s just on the tip of your tongue, and then you remember.”

“Try it for me now.”

I took a deep breath and started to focus, straining, but nothing happened.

“Nope, nothing.”

“Try again.”

I tried again. And again and again and again. We kept it up for almost twenty minutes and all I managed to get was a massive headache.

“Ok,” she said after my latest failed attempt, “When you got it to work the first time, were you straining so much? Were you physically trying to focus?”

“I don’t know, honestly. There was always a lot going on.”

“So these other times, you were also focused on other things too?”

“I guess so.”

“Did you feel panicked or worried?”

“No. I guess I felt calm. I knew something needed to happen and I just focused on that and it happened.”

“Ok, try clearing your mind, and ease into it. Don’t try to push it.”

I did as she suggested and at first nothing seemed to happen, and then, for just a second, time seemed to slow.

“Ohh,” I said, stumbling.

“I take it that was something?”

“Yeah. It was only for a second, but it happened.”

“Alex described to me she thought it was an acceleration of your neural synapses. Actually, her description was a lot longer than that, and I didn’t really understand it, but when I asked her to slow down and give me the ‘for dummies’ description that’s what she said.”

“We haven’t been able to study it in the lab, because I was never able to reproduce it, but that was her hypothesis, that I wasn’t actually changing the speed of time, but experiencing everything on a faster, mental level. I don’t actually move any faster than I can without it, I just have more time to consider those moves.”

I noticed Levi heading towards us and everyone else leaving.

“I asked Levi to work with us when he finished with that group,” she said as he got close.

“Jawarski,” I said in a warning tone.

“Caspian,” she said, sounding both serious and condescending, “he has done this kind of thing for decades, and in real life and death situations. Do you think you’ve been coming here since your change, or whatever, and he hasn’t noticed the physical differences?”

“I tried to play it down.”

“Not enough. He noticed. I didn’t really explain it other than to ask him not to talk about it.”

“I still don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“We can trust him,” she said with a smirk. “He was a little under the weather earlier this week.”

It took a second for me to realize exactly what that meant.

“God Damnit,” I said loudly, “I told them …”

“Don’t be mad at your mother,” Levi said, having heard the last little bit of our conversation. “She explained some of what was happening and asked for my permission. She explained what the effects would be, and I agreed. She also explained that you would be upset. I take it you’ve been struggling with some of what your condition is doing.”

“I’m struggling with people going behind my back.”

“Don’t worry; this time at least, no one went behind your back, and I feel better than I have in years.”

“Ok, so you know. That makes things easier.”

“I’ve known since before then. You have always been a good student, but you’ve never had the natural skills you seem to have developed suddenly over the last year.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Caspian, have I ever told you what I used to do before I started teaching?”

“Not really.”

“Exactly. Now, let’s get started. Beth, did you manage to get him to work out this thing you mentioned.”

“Just now. He managed to make it happen for a second,” she answered.

“Can you try it again?”

I tried the same thing as before and, after a second, it happened again. I was trying to focus on the feeling when it happened, but it was elusive.

“Was that it?” Levi I asked when it stopped.

“Yes.”

“Huh, I’m not sure what I was expecting. Everything seemed the same to me. What was it like?”

“I just kind of … cleared everything away.”

“Have you ever meditated?” he asked.

“No.”

“It’s not something we teach, since we are focused on the physicality of fighting, but I’ve spent time with people who teach the more eastern forms of martial arts, and they focus on that a lot. You focus on nothing, and it frees up your mind to work on its own.”

“Yeah, it was kind of like that.”

“Ok, before we go any further, I’m certain you’ve held back on me when we’ve sparred. I want you to go at me full speed. Please.”

We backed up to the center of the mat and faced off. I waited, and let him come to me. Levi is usually highly aggressive when he fights, and this was no exception.

He came at me, feigning a left knee and then striking out with his right fist. He was fast and I had always marveled at his speed, but this was the first time I had let loose sparring with him since I began changing the year before.

I ducked down enough to loop my right arm around his, gripping his shoulder with my right hand. Putting my weight into his body, I pushed back, using my momentum to take him to the floor.

As we fell, I twisted around, wrapping my feet around his mid-section, and continuing to roll when we both hit the mat, causing him to double over, which had the benefit of limited any leverage he could get.

I maintained my hold on his shoulder, but added in pressure from my left hand, pushing on his elbow. Not enough to break it, but enough to cause pain.

He punched at me with his free hand, but he couldn’t get any power behind his strikes from his current position, and any attempt to break my lock was failing. With my enhanced strength and his weak position, he just didn’t have a way out.

All this had happened in less than two seconds. That isn’t as fast as some of the best practitioners in the world; but it was close, and they had taken decades to master the skills to be that fast.

“Enough,” he said with a groan.

I released, popped up, and helped Levi to his feet.

“So you have been holding out on me,” he said.

“Sorry. We were trying to keep people from figuring it out.”

“That’s probably a good idea. You never want your opponent to guess your strengths. Still, that was pretty impressive, and you didn’t do your slow motion thing?”

“No,” I said.

“Ok, let's try it this time.”

To say the first attempt to force the slow motion and fight Levi was a disaster would be a very kind way to put it.

I spent the better part of an hour getting knocked around. It’s like trying to walk, chew gum, rub your belly and pat your head all at the same time; only nothing like that, and a whole lot harder.

Eventually we managed to make it so I could keep from getting dropped in his first move, but I was still struggling when we called a halt to the practice.

Levi had a class starting soon, and he didn’t want us going at it with anyone watching. We agreed to continue our weekly practices, but he changed the times so it could be one on one with no witnesses.

Jawarski also agreed to join us each time. She had actually been a big help. She wasn’t trained in any formal way, but she had been a Marine and knew what she was looking at.

On the way out of the Dojo, Jawarski stopped me before we headed our separate directions.

“I’ve already told your mother, but you should know too. Since word came down that Angela was being investigated by Family Services, I’ve put some feelers out. This is a lot more serious that Jonathan first thought. I couldn’t get specifics, but someone has already spoken to a judge about her, and I think the DA is getting close to making a move. Jonathan knows all this, but I didn’t want you to be surprised when it happens.”

“What kind of a move? What are they accusing her of, specifically?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get any details, just something was in the works, and it would happen soon. Jonathan is doing his best to find out more.”

To say I was unhappy about this would be an understatement, but I didn’t want to take it out on Jawarski. Dealing with her was still rough, but since she had started taking the boosters, we were getting along a lot better, and I didn’t want to jeopardize that.

“Thanks. I appreciate your looking out for us.”

“Sure. And go see Alex. She said she needed something.”

“Ok,” I said, waving goodbye as I headed to my car.

I found Alex and Mom in the back of the lab when I got there.

“Hey, guys,” I said walking in.

“Sit down over there, Cas,” Alex said in her normal all business way.

“You weren’t clear on what you needed.”

“We are running low on the samples we took last time, and we need an extra supply.”

“I thought you took a bunch last time, so you had enough to do tests on.”

“If we were just doing tests, it would have been. But since we started using your blood to change other people, our supply has run low. We tried synthesizing it, but that didn’t work. We also tried blood from the girls, since their biology is closer to yours than what we could achieve with synthesis, but that didn’t work either.”

“I’m actually a little relieved to hear that. It means you guys have to limit what you are doing, since clearly you’re not going to listen to me.”

At least Alex had the decency to look sheepish at that.

“We can do some of this, but it's up to you to hold back enough to do testing. I’m not going to become your milk cow because you guys are determined to change everyone I ever come in contact with.”

“It’s not like that, Cas,” Mom said defensively.

“It’s a little like that,” I replied. “Some of the people you went after were already in the know, and already on our side. I mean, Jonathan, for God sakes. Why did you guys go after him?”

“I didn’t …” Mom started.

“I know you didn’t know what they were doing, but Alex did.”

“Vicki made a good argument,” Alex said in her defense, “that it was better to err on the side of caution. Everyone trusted Jonathan, but that wasn’t enough of a reason not to change him.”

“I’m not going to re-litigate this. We’ve already had it out and what’s done is done. But I want to be clear, I am not going to keep coming in here for you guys to tap me for a resupply, especially if it’s because you’ve been using it all to go around changing more and more people. It’s up to you to moderate your supply.”

With that, I let her finish one last draw, told her that was enough. After cleaning myself up and putting a Band-Aid over where the needle had been, I headed out of the office.

I didn’t feel like going to work, so I headed back home. Everyone else was home by the time I got there, and I tried to act like normal around them.

The fight over changing others was the first big fight I had with any of the girls since their change, and I wanted them to know I wasn’t going to let it sit above us.

Vicki was sitting on the couch, reading a chapter out of one of her text books, and I joined her. Even with the advanced classes we were taking, the homework and study didn’t actually take that much out of us, mostly thanks to the changes we had all undergone. But that didn’t mean we didn’t have to study or do the work at all. Even if we could have coasted by on just our enhanced intellects, it wasn’t really how any of us wanted to do things. I knew with having to travel down to Houston and the fight with the girls, I hadn’t been putting in the work.

Vicki looked over and smiled at me as I cracked open my book and I leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek before starting my studying.

About an hour later Mom came home to find all of us, including Tina and Judy, spread around the big family room with school books opened, each studying our own work but still wanting to be together.

She smiled and headed off towards the kitchen. After a while the smell of food started wafting towards us, and at some point each of us looked toward the kitchen, waiting to be told food was ready. Normal teenagers can be voracious, and we had found that after enhancement appetites go up. It’s a good thing I was rich now, or Mom would have never been able to afford to keep us all fed.

The doorbell rang and I started to get up, but was waved down by Mom, who walked through to answer it.

I went back to my book, but heard Mom say ‘Can I help you?’ after opening the front door.

“Mrs. Angela Bell?” a woman’s voice responded.

“My name is Tamora Cronin and I am with Child Protective Services. We have reports of abuses of minors in your home. The deputies are with me to escort the minors under your care to a safe location, while charges are pending with the court.”

Chapter 17

I was so shocked at what I'd heard, I dropped my book. From the look on her face I knew Vicki had heard it, too, and was equally as shocked.

The CPS agent at the door had just said we were being taken away from Mom. I was stunned.

Since Vicki and I were the closest, we had heard everything that was said, but everyone else was sitting on chairs and couches, and even the floor in Tina’s case, further from the door that lead out to the front entryway, and apparently hadn’t been paying attention enough to hear anything.

I got up, with Vicki hot on my heels.

“Mom, what’s going on?” I asked walking up to her.

Outside the front door was a middle aged woman with two uniformed officers behind her.

“Who are you?” The woman asked fairly rudely.

“Caspian Grey,” I replied.

“He’s on the list,” she said to one of the deputies behind her before turning to me. “Please go with these officers.”

“Why?” I said.

I knew why, having heard enough from the other room, but I wasn’t prepared to make it easy on her.

“You are being taken into protective custody for your own safety,” she said, not really explaining anything. “Ma’am, could you please bring any other children you have living in this house to us. Otherwise the deputies will be forced to come into your home and check for them.”

“Ok. But they have some friends visiting.”

“I have a list of the children under your care. Those are who we are looking for.”

“Nora, Kids, could you please come here,” Mom yelled into the house, calling for Vicki’s mother and everyone else.

After a moment the front entry way was filled with people. The woman from CPS looked stunned for a moment.

“These are all kids under your care?” she said incredulously.

“No, like I said, we had visitors for dinner, and the kids had some friends over studying. This is Nora Hollabrad and her daughter Vicki, who were visiting. Also Tami Smith and her sister Judy Smith were over visiting Caspian and Tina, respectively.”

“Tina Grey is a name I have on my list,” the woman said, trying to regain some control.

“What’s going on?” Tina asked, concerned.

“We are here to take you into productive custody,” the woman said haughtily. All hell broke loose, as everyone started talking all at once.

“Hold it,” Mom yelled. “We will take care of all of this, but they have a court order. Until Jonathan can do his thing, we have to follow the orders of these two officers.”

“My paperwork says there should be a Caspian Grey, Tina Grey, Zoe Bell, and Emily Deakins currently in your custody.”

“I’m Caspian Grey, like I said. This is Tina, Zoe and Emily,” I said pointing out each girl.

“Children, please come out and go with these deputies.”

“Ma’am, please don’t do this. Something is going on here, and when we get to the bottom of it, there will be blowback on anyone involved. Do yourself a favor and let us stay here until we can work it out.”

“Do I need to have the deputies escort you out,” she said, sounding annoyed.

We all looked at each other, terror in our faces, especially Emily, who looked ready to burst into tears.

“Kids, we need to do what she is asking, for now. I will call Jonathan and get him to sort this out. Making a scene will only make his job harder,” Mom said.

She had her Mom voice on in full force, and it was clear arguing with her would do no good. We looked at each other with worried glances, but filed out the door as she asked.

I looked back at Mom and, no matter how forcefully she was telling us to follow the CPS woman’s instructions; she was not ok with what was happening. She looked as mad as I’d ever seen her.

“Mrs. Bell, here is the paperwork. The children will be taken to our local offices. There we will find temporary housing for them until they can be placed in either a youth facility or foster home. Here are the court documents telling you when your case is going to be arraigned, and what your recourse is.”

“You will be hearing from my attorney,” Mom said.

“I’m sure. Have a good day,” the woman said and walked away, shooing us in front of her.

“We will take the boy with us if you take the three girls,” one of the deputies said.

“I don’t think …” the woman started.

“They can’t all go to the same facility, and there are some additional questions we have, on another case.”

Since we had some warning from Jonathan beforehand, I hadn’t been all that worried … until that moment.

“He has to have a legal guardian,” she protested.

“We will make sure he gets his rights. You need to worry about those three girls … and yourself. Do you understand?”

“I … yes. Come along girls,” the woman said, looking frightened herself.

The two guys pushed me roughly towards a cop car. This was different than thugs coming after me. I couldn’t just beat up two uniformed officers, especially not with this CPS thing hanging over us. For now I would have to play along and find out what was happening.

“Go with her,” I told Zoe, Emily and Tina. “I will be ok. Watch out for each other. Jonathan will take care of it.”

“But Cas,” Tina started to say.

“Tina, go. Now. Just do what they tell you to do, and stick with Emily and Zoe.”

“Shut up and get in,” one of the cops said, pushing me into the car.

Through the window I could see Zoe pulling Tina with her and Emily. All three looked over at me as their car went one way, and mine went another.

I knew the separation was temporary, and Jonathan would get it all straightened out, but that didn’t keep my stomach from tying into knots.

It took me a moment to realize that we weren’t headed towards town, where the police station was. Instead we were headed to the southern edge of town, eventually pulling up in front of a warehouse.

“Where are we?” I asked through the cage that separated me from the officers.

“Shut up,” the officer in the passenger seat said.

Both men got out of the car with the passenger walking around to the driver’s side and backing up quite a bit, unsnapping his holster.

Only when he was in position did the driver open my door and wave me out. As soon as I was out of the car he spun me around by my elbow and pushed me into the side panel, keeping my arm behind me. He reached down and pulled my other hand behind my back and I felt the cold press of metal on my wrist as handcuffs were applied. The entire time he was handcuffing me; his partner was a few steps back with his hand on the butt of his weapon.

I could see a few ways out of this, even as the handcuffs were being applied. One aspect of Krav Maga is fighting in real world situations, often using prop guns and knives. With my enhanced strength, I was pretty sure I could take out both of these guys.

My problem was, they were cops. Even if they were dirty, which was starting to feel like a real possibility, being wanted for assaulting police officers would make things harder.

For now I was forced into a 'wait and see' mode. A lot of people, from Mom and the girls to the CPS woman, all saw me leave with the officers. If I disappeared or something happened to me, it would easily trace back to them. The open way they took me with them suggested they didn’t actually plan me bodily harm.

Or at least that was what I started telling myself as the cop behind me pulled me off the car and started to march me into the warehouse.

The warehouse itself was totally empty, except for a few chairs sitting in the middle of the floor and a hook hanging from the ceiling. It was like a scene out of a bad horror movie.

The officers led me over to the hook. When they undid the handcuffs to clip them in front of me, I was still debating if I should fight my way out of this, but the equation had changed. While one guy was right next to me, his friend was well back, and this time his gun was out of the holster and in his hand. There was no way I would be able to get to him, at least not without getting shot.

My hands were secured and then raised up and looped through the hook. I wasn’t forced on my tip toes, but it did make me stand up straight, leaving me mostly defenseless. Because of how the handcuffs were looped over, I didn’t have much leverage and wouldn’t even be able to lift my feet off the ground if I needed to defend myself.

I was well and totally screwed. When the door on the other side of the warehouse opened, my concern jumped into overdrive.

I instantly recognized the guy walking towards me, having run into him twice now, once in front of my house, and again in Arnold Petti’s office.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised that he had again managed to skate through going to jail.

“You’ve been a pain in our ass,” he said when he reached me.

He nodded to one of the cops and pain shot through me as a fist connected with my kidney. I was groaning as four more blows landed across my mid-section.

“Don’t worry, we aren’t going to kill you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” the goon said. “We just need to convince you to stop getting in our way, and to start helping us.”

“Fuck you,” was the cleverest thing I could think of.

In response a fist connected with the side of my face. Blood started dripping down my nose, and if felt like a tooth was lose.

“That’s not a good attitude,” he said.

The guy was really enjoying this and playing it up to the hilt. I started working through the possibilities in my head, and I knew beating me up wasn’t how they planned on getting me to go along with whatever they wanted. I had a good idea what they would use, and was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“But first, I think I owe you something.”

Instead of giving a signal to the two dirty cops, he stepped forward and smashed his fist into my face. Pain seared through me as blood started pouring down my face. Even after the hit, the pain didn’t subside and I was pretty sure he had just broken my nose.

He then started in on my body with hit after hit. I had been in a lot of fights over the last year or so, but generally I had been lucky and hadn’t been hurt much. I guess that is if you don’t include getting shot the one time.

I hadn’t taken a pounding like this. Everything hurt and it felt like my lungs were on fire. He reached back and took a huge swing just below my chest. I felt pain rip through my side, and it didn’t go away. I wasn’t sure, since it had never happened to me before, but it felt like a rib was broken.

“Ok,” the goon said, slightly winded from the beating he just delivered. “I think we are about even now.”

I glared at him, trying to keep from crying, the pain was so bad. I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks and mingling with the blood flowing from my nose.

“Now let me explain to you what’s going to happen. You blocked our purchase of some property in Houston. A real estate company will be contacting you about buying that property, and you will sell it to them, at the price they offer.”

“Fat chance,” I said with a wheeze.

“I think you will cooperate. That is, unless you are fine seeing that woman you live with go to jail for child abuse, and all your little friends end up in the foster system.”

And there was the other shoe. The CPS investigation had been out of the blue, and never really made sense.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Like that matters. We’ll figure out something, and the Judge will go along with it. You're outclassed, kid. Get with the program or your life will be shit from here on out.”

So they had a judge in their pocket. That explained some things, but also made me worry. Clearly whoever this guy worked for had a hold on the police department … and not just the one here in Alice.

He had somehow walked out of the mix up in Houston, too.

“Fuck you, you can’t buy everyone.”

“We can buy more than you think, but you know what. It won’t matter. Even if you find some way to get your friends back and the Bell woman out of jail, it will be too late. Court cases take time. During which, that pretty girl friend of yours will be living with a foster family. Have you heard some of the terrible things that can happen to girls that end up with the wrong family? I’d hate to see your little friend go through that.”

“I’m going to kill you!” I screamed as I jerked against the handcuffs digging into my wrists. The image of something happening to Zoe was enough to push me over the edge and all I wanted to do was beat this guy until he stopped moving.

“Love the spunk kid,” he said with a laugh, “but you better get control of yourself. She’ll be headed to a foster family before long.”

I was already hurting from the beating I had taken, and was running down. I gave a few last tugs against the handcuffs, but couldn’t get leverage to do anything about it.

“We still have a little time. Before we send you out, we are going to give you a few things to remember that we can get to you whenever we want.”

He stepped back and let the cop who had started beating me continue with his work. All the blows were directed at my body, and I was slowly weakening as the pain took over.

It was getting harder to breath and the edges of my vision started going black as more and more hits came in. All I could focus on was the pain radiating up my sides that spiked every time I took a breath.

As I started to pass out, the blows stopped coming. Or at least it felt like that. It was really hard to tell as the entire world faded to black.

When I came to, I was being lowered onto the floor with Jawarski’s face looking down on me. Every breath I took ached and my nose felt like it was on fire.

“Wha..” I said, trying to shake the fog that had descended on my brain and figure out what happened.

“Alex is on her way. I don’t see any holes, so you’ll probably be fine.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Carter put a tracker in your shoes a while ago. He also put them in the girls and Tina’s, just in case. Angela called and told us what happened. We saw you were separated and the GPS pointed to this warehouse, which CPS wouldn’t have a reason to take you to. So we came to check it out.”

“What about the officers?”

“In cuffs at the moment. Carter brought some men and we surprised them. Everyone was taken down peacefully.”

“But, they’re police officers!”

“Yeah, who were beating on a sixteen year old kid. Sorry we let the beating happen long enough for you to pass out, but we had to get video of it to show IA when they show up.”

“You called Internal Affairs?”

“Yeah, it’s the only way we could think of to shut this down. Carter took off, but left some of his boys, and a paper trail to show they were hired as your personal security. The story is they called me when they saw where you were taken, and then took video of what was happening until I showed up and put a stop to everything. Hopefully it’s enough.”

“Uhhh,” I groaned as I sat up.

Looking over at the door to the warehouse, I saw Alex rushing in.

“Stop moving until I check you out,” she said as soon as she got to me.

I had been trying to sit up more, but she lowered me to the ground and starting poking and prodding me. Each time she touched my lower chest, I groaned.

She then pulled out a stethoscope and listened to my chest as she had me take breaths, although the exhales sounded more like groans than anything else.

“I think you’ve managed to break or at least crack some ribs. Your nose is also broken. It doesn’t sound like you’ve pierced your lungs, which sound fine, but I want to get a full set of x-rays and run some tests. With your normal rate of recuperation, most of this will be healed, quickly. The bruises should form and then start immediately going away. By tonight you will probably show little outward signs of anything having happened.”

“We need to take pictures, now, and then stash you for however long bruises would take to fade away. We won’t have a leg to stand on if he looks fine, too soon."

“Ok, let’s get him into my car. I really want to check out his ribs.”

“Jawarski!” a voice shouted over by the door.

Two guys in suits and three uniformed officers came through the door to the warehouse.

“Stay here, I’ll deal with this,” she said as she headed over to them.

They had an animated, but not loud, conversation. A skill I guess cops develop so they can argue about something without having witnesses overhear them.

I could see Jawarski gesturing at the officers. After a moment, she walked over to one of Carter’s guys and got a small video camera from him, which she took back to the guys in suits.

They and Jawarski huddled around the camera to watch, as the uniformed cops took up spots next to the prisoners, shooing Carter’s guys off to go talk to the guys in suits.

After a minute, Jawarski waved Alex over, and the two of them had a brief discussion with the detectives. Then the entire group headed to where I was still stretched out on the ground.

“I’ve spoken with the detectives,” Alex said when they got to me, “and told them you are not in life threatening danger and that they can question you. But after that, I will need to take you to a medical facility to look at some of your injuries. I’m still a little concerned about your ribs.”

“Son, can you tell me what happened here?” the older of the two detectives asked me, kneeling down so he could look into my face while his partner pulled out a notepad.

“Sure. A woman from CPS came to our house today with a court order to remove the children from the custody of my current guardian, Angela Bell. This included my sister, Mrs. Bells biological daughter, and one other girl who recently came to live with us.”

“Do you know why the court order was issued?”

“No, sir. The woman from CPS refused to say. She just said that we had to go with her and the deputies.”

“Those were the same as these two deputies?” he asked, gesturing at the two cops still in zip ties sitting on the floor.

“Yep. They separated me from everyone else. The girls went with the CPS lady. They brought me to this warehouse, and hung me from that hook.”

“What did they want from you?”

“They wanted me to talk to the guy in the sports coat.”

“Do you know him?”

“Kind of. He tried to kidnap me a few months ago?”

“Was there a report of this?”

“Yes. The police showed up and took him and another guy to jail. I found out later that the record of the arrest had disappeared, and this guy just walked out of jail. I ran into him again at a new production facility my company is setting up, late last week. He was trying to beat one of our neighbors into selling out to whoever he works for. He was arrested then, too, by the Houston police; but it appears he walked away from that, too.”

I gestured a bit on the last sentence without thinking, and let out a groan as pain coursed through my chest.

The guy talking to me looked up at Jawarski and then back at me, continuing.

“Your company?”

“Yes, I am CEO of a company. I know, I get it a lot, but it’s true,” I said, then let out another groan as pain shot through my ribs.

“Ok, what did he want to talk to you about?”

“He wanted me to sell to him … or, I guess whoever he works for, really … the property we bought in Houston. Apparently, we got in the way of a deal they were having. He used the officer on the right to ‘emphasize’ his request, and made it pretty clear he would also go after my friends if I didn’t comply.”

“By emphasize, you mean …”

“I mean he beat the crap out of me,” I said, waving a hand over my prone body to make my point.

My face contorted into a grimace as more pain washed over me again, from my poorly thought out gesture.

“Officers, that’s enough. I need to get him out of here so I can x-ray him,” Alex said, interrupting them.

“Okay. Jawarski said she had your contact info. We’ll be in touch.”

Alex then whisked me out of the warehouse.

Chapter 18

The ride from the warehouse was much shorter than I had anticipated, since we ended up at Alex's lab instead of the hospital, which was on the other side of town.

“Why are we here?”

“Because the last thing we want is for you to be in a hospital. I don’t work there anymore; and, if you remember, that’s how I found out about you. Don’t worry, I had everything short of an MRI set up here on the off chance you were hurt again. I can’t fix you up from bullet wounds or anything, but I have what I need to check out some bruised ribs.”

I hadn’t considered that. She made an excellent point. Going to the hospital opened up a whole range of worrying possibilities.

I was however, not surprised at all to see Mom getting out of her car next to us. I hadn’t heard Alex make a call to tell her we were on the way, but I was certain she would have done just that.

She rushed over to me as soon as I was out of the car. She started to put me in one of her spine crushing hugs, but let go when I let out a pitiful groan.

“Is he bad,” she asked Alex.

“I don’t think so; at least, not bad with his accelerated healing. We still need to get some x-rays. I think his ribs are only bruised, but I want to make sure it's not worse than that.”

They started getting into medical jargon, and I tuned it out as they led me into the lab. I had actually been wondering where they were going to take me, since I hadn’t seen anything resembling an examination room on my last trip through.

They led me past the two environmentally sealed labs to the large room they used for more general research that didn’t need to be in a closed environment.

It turned out that one of the cabinets below the counter running along one wall wasn’t really a cabinet, but instead was an examination table that folded out. After some braces were snapped into place and legs folded down, it was able to support my weight.

From a cabinet above the counter she swung down an x-ray machine attached to an adjustable arm.

After a few minutes she had a series of x-rays of my chest, and went off to get them developed in a small darkroom they had in one corner of the building, leaving me alone with Mom.

Her normal happy expression was gone, replaced by a mixture of concern and sadness. It almost seemed that a little of the spark that always seemed to be driving her was gone, and reminded me a lot of when she got sick, before we tried the blood mixing that eventually saved her life.

“It will be ok,” I told her, getting up and giving her a hug, “I’ve been beat up more than this, before.”

“You’re a kid! You shouldn't have to 'be ok' with being beaten up even once, let alone being able to compare it to other beatings!”

“You must not remember high school very well, then,” I said with a smile, putting on a brave face to try and alleviate some of her worry.

She only managed a weak smile in return, saying “I guess. It’s not that, though. I’ve let you guys down. Looking back over the last year or so, all the mistakes are so obvious.”

“What mistakes? Even with some of the crazy stuff that’s happened, this last year has been the happiest of my life.”

“Maybe that’s because I keep just giving in to anything you kids want. Sometimes being a parent means making you do thinks you don’t want to do. Not only did I let you fall into bed with Zoe, and the others, but I’ve been honestly ok with it. I know the situation is unique, but I’m pretty sure the rest of society wouldn’t see it that way.”

“I will give you that they probably wouldn’t, and we can back off if you want. You’re right that most parents don’t let their kids have sex under their roof, at least that they know about. Sure we are all raging hormones right now, probably more than average kids since we have all the other biological stuff going on; but, we can control ourselves. If anyone is to blame, it’s me and the girls. I know we’ve taken advantage of your … acceptance.”

“And look where it’s landed us.”

“I don’t think that has anything to do with the CPS visit. First, no one outside of our group knows about me and the girls. There's no evidence we are any more sexually active than any other teenagers. The way those two cops dragged me off and one of those mobsters or whatever was waiting for me, proves this is tied into the thing with the company last year, and Vicki’s dad. Something is going on, and our family is being used as pawns.”

“Ok, I admit that is probably true, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been way too permissive with you kids. I’m the adult and I should have been acting more like one.”

“Except I don’t think you had a choice,” Alex said from the doorway.

“How is he?” Mom asked, switching gears from anxious and self-recriminatory to anxious and motherly.

“He’ll be fine. Some bruised ribs and soft tissue damage. With his rate of healing, it should be cleared up in a day or two. I will check up with him every day this week, though. We don’t have enough data yet to really predict what his body will heal, nor how fast.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I know, Doc, you are all business. Doesn't keep me from giving you shit about it. So what was this about her not having a choice?”

“It’s something I’ve been working on since last year, when Margret reacted so badly. We know that there are people who have negative reactions to you. We also know there are people who have positive reactions to you, as a baseline. So far, we’ve just been writing that off as some kind of recognition of your different biology; but that doesn’t seem quite right to me.”

“Why?”

“Because the body doesn’t really work that way. Cells don’t anticipate, not really. Cells react to other cells, just like any chemical reaction. We have seen that blood mixture, sexual transmission, even your saliva, works to take over and affect another person. Somewhat like a parasite, although that analogy isn’t quite right. We know your biology is always working towards its goal. Namely reproduction.”

“I’m not crazy about being compared to a parasite.”

“I said the analogy wasn’t right. One of the imperatives common to all organisms, is to propagate itself. It’s one of the things that defines life. Homo Sapiens do it partially through the release of endorphins. It’s partly what causes that feeling of love after people have sex. It’s your body trying to persuade you to do it more often, so you can pass your genes along.”

“So what does that have to do with Mom not having a choice.”

“My hypothesis is that much like your saliva having a smaller effect than blood or semen, there is some other mechanism that has a smaller, but not unimportant, affect as well. Think of it like stages, each leading to the next to make it possible for your genetics to pass on. We know the effect of stage one alteration, at least anecdotally. In some, it causes anger and revulsion; and in others, it creates friendliness and a willingness to go along with you.

“We know stage two, at least for those who are genetically predisposed to you creates attraction. We haven’t really studied it more, and never with someone who was genetically opposed to you, to know much more about stage two.

“In stage three we’ve seen the physical and mental changes to those physically predisposed to you; giving them some of your resistance to disease, as well as creating the sense of loyalty to you. Also, we’ve seen in stage three for the genetically opposed to you it creates insanity. And then there’s stage four, which we’ve seen at least in the genetically predisposed. It’s the most extreme form, with actual genetic, mental and physical changes on top of the disease resistance and loyalty. We don’t know how this would affect someone genetically opposed to you, although my guess is that it would be pretty extreme.”

“I’m still not with you.”

“What she’s saying,” Mom said, “is that stage one already creates a willingness to give in to what you want, or what the person thinks you want.”

“So even when I’m not touching someone, I’m affecting them?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Honestly, I don’t think it’s pheromones or anything airborne. If I had to guess, it probably has to do with contact. Besides sweat, everyone’s skin releases oils. It’s natures way of protecting your skin from the elements, and keeping it moisturized so it doesn’t crack or tear as easily.”

“So what, I just have to touch someone to get my way?" I asked, not really liking where this conversation was headed.

“It’s not as extreme as that. This isn’t mind control, but your cells do cause a physiological adjustment in someone else's system. We would have to really study this and have people who previously hadn’t been exposed to you and study their system, and probably brains, over time after contact with you, to be sure of the exact mechanics.”

“I think we would have trouble explaining exactly what we were studying.”

“I guess,” she said, paused, and then continued. “If I had to guess, I would say it is the same way the body trains other behaviors, by causing releases of some combination of endorphin, serotonin or dopamine as they come in contact with you. The more they have physical contact with you, the more their body would be trained to react favorably to you. In genetically opposed people, I am guessing their body doesn’t process the signals your cells are sending as you come in contact, and it causes the release or stops the release of hormones, causing an imbalance that might present in the negative reaction we’ve seen. This is, of course, all conjecture; and it's clearly not as extreme as when any body fluids are exchanged.”

Alex turned to Mom and got back to the original point, “From what I’ve been told or overheard, it does explain both your permissiveness with Cas, and some of the reactions from others he’s come in contact with, like coworkers or school officials. Before you start feeling too bad, consider how many kids could walk into a Principal's office and convince them to set up some kind of advanced education system, or how many could convince grown businessmen and engineers to let him become the CEO of their company … while still attending high school. You’re not the only one that’s changed their behavior in small ways after being in contact with Cas.”

“I guess,” Mom said, “but I’m still not happy with myself. We are going to have to change some things around the house, for your own good.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, not thrilled by what those changes were going to be, but accepting my role as the kid in this relationship.

Not that I wasn’t going to try and sneak some alone time with the girls. I was a teenage boy, after all!

We left the lab shortly after that so I could go home and rest. Alex suggested it would help the recovery time. Since it still hurt a little each time I took a breath, I was willing to listen.

Sure enough, the next day I was feeling much better; at least, physically. I spent the night with Mom, since the state seemed to have lost track of me after the mess in the warehouse. I had never been checked into a youth facility, and so I wasn’t actually in the system.

The same wasn’t true of the girls, who were allowed a brief call that night. They were surprised to find me back at home. That surprise turned to outrage and plans to bust out of the facility they were being housed at, once we told them exactly how I ended up back at home, but both Mom and I put the kibosh on those plans. The way things were we didn’t want to rock the boat with the preliminary hearing coming up later in the week.

I was a little concerned that my having dodged the system would actually be rocking the boat, but a call to Jonathan eased those fears a bit. He made the point that the state wouldn’t want to bring up my not being put into the system, and then having to admit to handing a youth over to corrupt policemen who had strung him up and beat him.

Thursday rolled around and I convinced Mom to call the attendance office at school, and report me as being home sick. She was against the idea, but I made it clear the alternative was my just ditching school for the day all together, and probably bringing the girls with me.

I guess she assumed one truant kid was better than several, although Jonathan thought it was a bad idea and admonished me to stay in the back of the court and keep quiet. Keeping me out of school would be something else the state could throw at Mom if it came up.

He had a point, but I really wanted to know what was happening, since this whole proceeding really affected me. Once they moved to sit at one of the tables in the front and while people were still milling around, I moved up to sit in the second row, picking a spot behind a large woman in the hopes I could hide behind her.

I knew I was playing with fire, but decided to do it anyway. I was close enough that I could hear both Jonathan and Mom, and the lawyer representing CPS and the State. Shortly after I sat down, he leaned over to talk to Jonathan.

“I thought after we finish the preliminaries, got the pro-forma motions out of the way and a trial date set, we could all go across the street to our office and sit down. My boss usually prefers if we come to some kind of pre-trial agreement, to try and save the taxpayers a few bucks.”

“I’m not giving up the kids,” Mom said angrily, although she stopped when Jonathan put his hand on her shoulder.

“My client is pretty adamant on what she finds acceptable, but we would still be ok with sitting down and hearing your offer.”

“Ok. This should take maybe thirty minutes. Say, meet at our office at ten. That should give you a little bit to confer. I figure if we come to an agreement, then great. If not, no harm done.”

Jonathan nodded and the woman moved back to sitting behind her table and saying something to the woman I couldn’t hear. I was honestly a little shocked. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was someone less reasonable and congenial than the woman sitting at the prosecution table.

She didn’t seem to have any direct grudge against my family, and more seemed like a woman who was just doing her job and making the best of it. I’m not sure what offer she would make Jonathan, and if she would continue to be so reasonable, but it did give me a little hope.

“All rise for the Honorable Tillman J. Davis,” the bailiff at the front said as the Judge was walking in.

When we all sat down, the judge went through a handful of housekeeping type things that didn’t seem like they really pertained to our case. He made it clear that this was a preliminary hearing, and all evidence and testimony would be held until the actual trial.

“Does the defense have any motions?”

“Two, your honor,” Jonathan said, standing. He handed a small bundle of papers folded into a rectangle with a blue cover to the bailiff, who had walked over when he stood. “We are asking for an expedited trial date, so the kids don’t have to spend too much time in the state's custody, and a second motion requesting the children be returned to their guardian prior to a trial decision.”

“The second motion is denied. Prosecution do you have any issue with an accelerated trial date?” the judge said, turning to the other lawyer.

“We are pretty booked up your honor. But we have no objection if we can make it work.”

“Ok, Jane,” he said, turning to a woman sitting at another table off to one side of the room, perpendicular to the two lawyers, “could you look over the schedule and see if we have anything available.”

I had assumed she would tell him then, but he turned back to Jonathan and the prosecutors while the woman thumbed through a large bound book.

“Anything else from the defense?”

“No your honor,” Jonathan said.

“And the prosecution?” the judge asked.

“We have a motion for summary judgment,” she said standing and handing similar blue papers to the bailiff.

He handed them to the Judge, who opened one, read it for a moment, and then said, “The motion is granted in favor of the state.”

To say the prosecutor lady was surprised would be an understatement. Both her and Jonathan looked completely shocked. It seemed pretty obvious to this point that everyone expected a trial date to be set, and this seemed like something they do at every case, just to get it out of the way, but that no one expected to actually work.

They went through the rest of the motions, but both the prosecutor and Jonathan were on autopilot. When the judge had dismissed them, Jonathan moved to talk to the prosecutor, who ignored him as she brushed past, refusing to make eye contact.

I waited for them outside the courtroom, rushing up as soon as Mom and Jonathan came through the door.

“What just happened?”

“I have no idea. That was just a standard thing that all prosecutors submit, but they hardly ever go anywhere. I’ll have to check, but I think that’s true with family law, too. It keeps a defendant from presenting their case and facing their accusers; and, the times it does happen, all too often it gets overturned on appeal.”

“So what do we do,” Mom asked.

“I’ll get an appeal started, and make some calls. I’m just at a loss. Not in my wildest dreams did I think something like that could happen.”

I wasn’t so sure. This was another in a series of unthinkable events, from the filing of the case with CPS to start with, through to the cops who grabbed me and hauled me to the warehouse. I figured if they could get a couple of cops to grab a kid up and hand him to a gangster they could get to a judge, either through money or threats.

We were silent the whole way home, except for the occasional sniffle from Mom, who seemed pretty devastated. I spent the entire ride plotting my next move. It wasn’t something I was crazy about, but I couldn’t see another way out of our situation.

Chapter 19

When we got back to the house, I pulled Vicki into her room while Mom and Jonathan stopped to talk to Vicki’s mom downstairs.

“How’d it go?” She asked.

“Not well. We lost.”

“Already? I thought this was just to set a court date or something.”

“It was, but they always ask the judge to just decide the thing then and there. The judge usually says “no” and then everything moves forward. It’s apparently standard legal stuff. But this time the judge said “ok”, and found in favor of the State, and against Mom. Everyone, including the prosecutor, was shocked.”

“So what does this mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that none of us can come back.”

“What are we going to do.”

“Tell me about the delivery method you and Zoe cooked up,” I said in an apparent non-sequitur.

“What? I thought you were dead set against that?”

“I was. Still am, actually. But something isn’t right here. What happened today is incredibly rare. When you add that to the cops that got paid off, or whatever, to grab me; I smell a rat. Changing someone without their permission - or worse, without knowing if they are a genetic negative - is wrong and dangerous. But, we don’t have any choice. If whoever was behind the cops grabbing me is also behind what happened today in court ...”

I left the implications unsaid, mostly because I wasn’t sure what they were. It was pretty obvious someone had it in for me; but what their actual goals were, and what they were willing to do to reach those goals, I wasn’t sure. All I knew so far was that the law was clearly not something that would stop them.

“Well, it’s not that complicated, not really. Basically you just scratch or poke the person and it automatically administers the blood. It’s a small amount, but from Alex’s tests, it seems a drop is enough for your blood to start replicating in their system.”

“Wouldn’t they feel it?”

“Yeah, but how often do you get bitten by an insect or scratch yourself against something? Everyone we’ve done it to has written it off instantly as just that, and went about their business.”

“And it still takes a day like it did with everyone I knew about?” I asked, making sure to stress the fact they were doing these tests behind my back.

“Umm,” she replied, looking away, “well, a little longer. I think it’s more like two or three days, depending on the size of the person. With Alex, Ms. Bell and Melissa we used full on injections so the volume of blood was significantly greater. I mean, one drop versus half a syringe is pretty significant. It takes a lot longer for one or two drops of blood, which is all these reservoirs can hold, to reach critical mass.”

“Ok. I think we are going to need some help on this. Maybe we can ask Melissa to come down for a visit and help. The Judge might recognize my face and we can’t get to Zoe or Emily or Tina, so it will be up to you and Melissa to dose him.”

“To dose who?” Mom’s voice called from behind me.

I turned and found her and Jonathan walking into Vicki’s room

“The judge.”

“Caspian, I’m not sure ...”

“Did you see what happened in that court room?” I said, raising my voice, which was unusual enough that she stopped dead in her tracks. “Jonathan, was what happened today at all normal?”

“No, not even a little bit. Everyone was shocked, and the prosecutor practically sprinted out of the court room to avoid me.”

“Do you think there is a chance the judge was bought off, or at least controlled, by whatever group grabbed me the other day?”

“I hate to think that about any judge; but considering they had police officers involved, too, I think there is a strong chance.”

“See?” I said looking back to Mom. “There is zero chance we will get a fair hearing. This has been a witch hunt that has something to do with either me, or the company. I don’t know which, yet. I was against changing people without their knowledge from day one - and I still am, I guess - but I don’t see any other options for us. If we want to keep our family together, this is what we have to do.”

“You don’t think ...” she started to say to Jonathan, who cut her off.

“No, the boy’s right! It’s the only way. I have a duty to uphold the rules of the court, but since this entire situation has followed no rules whatsoever, I have no problem with this.”

“So what do we do?” Vicki asked.

“Jonathan, do you think you can get a schedule of when the Judge will be either in court, or at least in his offices without being too obvious?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Then Vicki, call Melissa and have her meet you down here. Jonathan will get you a schedule of where the judge will be. You guys then rotate watching for him and find a way to ‘bump’ into him either outside his office or out in the parking lot.”

“And then?” Jonathan asked.

“We give him a few days. When he gets back from an unexpected sick day, you do your lawyer thing.”

“What ‘lawyer’ thing did you have in mind.”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure there is some kind of motion you can submit to change what happened, today.”

“There are a few things left we could do. I was going to start those when I got back to the office, but I hadn’t had any hope of them working ... considering. If you pull this off, then they might be enough for him to set aside that ruling and we can go back to court.”

“And with him on our side, the kids can come home?” Mom asked.

“Yes, but ...” Jonathan said, leaving the last word hanging.

“But?”

“But what do we do next?” I answered. “This was just one move by these people. If we counter it, they are going to do something else. What we need is information. Hell, we don’t even know who they are, why they are after us, or what they want; let alone what we can do to stop them.”

“I’m not sure how far I can go looking into the Judge without being noticed,” Jonathan said.

“Once we take him, I can sit down and just ask him. That isn’t an issue. Before that point, while the girls do their thing, I have some other avenues.”

“What avenues?” Vicki asked.

“I sorta held onto some of your dad’s files. We had already had some questionable brushes with the police. I was just doing it temporarily, in case we needed it to find you guys. Once we did, the other files had already vanished, so I kept holding on to it. I am fairly certain now that these people, and the people that killed your father, are one and the same. I mean, what would be the chances of two different criminal organizations buying significant chunks of the police department? I'm gonna dig through those files and try and find out what the hell is going on.”

“And once you find out who’s behind this, what then?” Mom asked.

“We change those people, too,” Vicki said. “Once they are on our side, we’ll be safe.”

“No,” I said angrily. “I’m still not okay with just going around infecting people because it’s the easiest way. I would still be against doing it to this judge, if I thought there was any other way around it. No, what we’re going to do is figure out why these people are out to get us, and what they want, then go from there. I want these guys in jail, not working for us.”

“But, Cas,” Mom said, protesting.

“No. I see the merit in what you’re saying, but infecting them is a last resort.”

“Okay. But don’t think this will be the last time we talk about this,” she replied. “I’m not going to let anything separate our family.”

“I know, and I promise I won’t let it come to that. If we can’t figure out another alternative, we can think about it.”

Mom and Vicki went off to do something while Jonathan and I sat down with the ledger, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. Making sense of it however was easier said than done. The ledger was a list of payments, some with names, some with business names and some with just numbers. Reading it was like listening to one side of a conversation. We were missing context for almost everything.

Knowing that the judge was crooked, we found his name, and several payments of twenty-five thousand dollars over the course of a couple of years up until the end of last year, when the ledger stopped. Jonathan had the idea to pull up a list of cases the judge was hearing around those payment days, and we noticed a pattern.

A few days after each payment the judge was set to listen to cases involving land disputes of a company called Land & Trust Management, which meant nothing to me. Jonathan made a note to look up the company and find out what they do.

Jonathan also pointed out something else he found weird. Apparently judges work specific areas. A judge hearing family cases would not be hearing contract disputes. At some point this judge had been moved from one division of the justice system to another. He made another note for something to look into.

I saw another name that jumped out at me, George Taylor. He was one of the two cops who hauled me to the warehouse and was currently under an IA investigation. The dates of the payments to him meant nothing to me, but Jonathan said he would take it to Jawarski and see if she could figure it out. I made a few more notes and then headed out.

The next day I found myself sitting outside a fancy restaurant in a car with Jawarski in an awkward silence. Jonathan had come through with information about the judge. Apparently he had a lunch meeting with several fundraisers. Jonathan couldn’t tell what he was running for, but he had been calling around to people who regularly paid into political campaigns. Either way, it was somewhere we knew he would be and outside the courthouse, so we knew we could get to him.

Megan had shown up early this morning. Considering the drive from her school, she must have left as soon as Mom got off the phone with her. I was a little miffed that she would skip classes, but she insisted that once she heard what was happening, she wasn’t ok with just standing around.

Jawarski had also shown up this morning after Jonathan let her know what was happening and had shown her proof that the Judge was dirty. She was all for taking this to the DA, but we saw his name in the ledger too, which gave us all pause. It was only in there once, and the dollar figure was one of the smaller ones in the entire ledger, but it left enough doubt that we were able to convince Jawarski this was the only way to go.

She had made some changes to our plan and agreed only on the condition that we followed her lead. When the door to the restaurant opened and the judge finally came out, I was relieved. Twenty minutes of total silence with a person who hates you is just about the worst way to spend an afternoon.

“Megan, he’s walking to the parking lot. You’re on,” Jawarski said into a small walkie-talkie she had brought with her.

“I’m on it,” the reply came back.

After a few seconds we could see Megan walking from the parking lot towards the restaurant. Although there was hardly anyone around, she was walking down the same path that the judge was walking up to get to her. She was digging around in her purse, looking distracted, but I could see her other hand in a fist down by the side of her purse. I knew she had the small device in her hand, gripped between her thumb and one of her fingers.

We had spent well over an hour with Megan, Jawarski, Alex and Mom all working with her to get the delivery just right. They had all agreed I was the test subject, so I spent a good deal of the morning getting poked. Although I complained non-stop, I barely felt anything each time she did it. The only hard part was, it had to hit skin or very light clothing. A thick garment, like the sports coat the judge was wearing, would stop it cold.

I held my breath as a seemingly distracted Megan bumped into the judge, dropping her purse. He seemed annoyed at first, but relented when he saw it was a college girl, who looked completely embarrassed. The judge even stooped down to help her pick up some of the things that rolled out of her purse before walking away.

As he walked away he started rubbing the back of his hand, and I hoped that meant she was successful. When we all regrouped, the ampule was empty and she said she was positive she stuck him in the hand.

Now all we had to do was wait.

Everyone else went home afterwards while Jonathan and I went back to the office. I had put the file from Vickie’s dad in a plain package, and had stuck it in the patent safe. These guys seemed to have a pretty long reach, and it was the safest place I could think to put it.

Getting any real information out of the file turned out to be frustrating and time consuming. They were mostly financial records, and rarely referred to anything directly. On top of that, most of the entities had at some point been assigned a number, so there weren't any names.

I thought we were at a dead end until Jonathan had the thought to look at some of the dealings we knew about, specifically the real estate transactions whose records were public, and cross reference those with the ledger.

It took some time but we slowly started building a picture of this organization. There were a lot of lines we still couldn’t make sense of, but we had identified several companies that were part of it, and a pattern was emerging.

There would be an area, usually industrial, that buyers had a little interest in, with fairly low occupancy rates. The crime rates in that area would suddenly spike, with lots of break-ins and random assaults. The company (and it didn’t matter which one since this group had dozens of companies they used, that we could tie together through the ledger) would step in and offer a fairly low ball offer for the property. Eventually, everyone would sell, although in some cases there were random unsolved murders that coincidentally made the property suddenly available.

There seemed to be a couple of years or so gap where nothing happened and then, miraculously, this property that had been bought up cheap would be picked for a state or even in some cases a federal project. The government agencies were suddenly paying out big money to get hold of those properties.

There were a few pieces of property that hadn’t gotten the big payday yet, but those records were also less than a year old. Jonathan said he would check and see if there was any noise of something happening in those areas. The smart money said there was.

What this all meant was that these guys had their hooks into at least state-level governments, deeply enough that they knew about projects being decided pretty far ahead of time. They had figured out a way to pull in some pretty serious money!

While all of this was interesting, and gave some clues as to what kind of people we were up against, it didn’t actually answer most of the questions I had when I started looking at the files. Except for a few guys, and the name of someone higher up, I had no idea who I was actually fighting. I also didn’t know what I was going to do about them.

It was clear something would have to be done. Since the beginning of the year, they hadn’t gotten tired of messing with me. In fact, they had done just the opposite, stepping up the pace and putting my family in danger. Even if this plan with the judge worked out, we couldn’t just count the victory and hope they forgot about us. We needed to do something to keep them from coming after us.

While changing the Judge was the only way out of our current predicament, that wasn’t a long term solution. There was no way we could work our way out of this by just changing everyone we identified. For starters, if this organization was as large as it was starting to look, that wouldn’t be practical.

Also, there was the concern that each person we infected made it just a little more likely that people would find out about me, which would be bad on just about every level. I also didn’t want to give everyone involved a get out of jail free card on this. They had messed with me and my family, and at least some of them were going to face justice for that.

No, we needed a plan. Of course, coming up with that plan was easier said than done.

Looking at the time, I called it a night and headed back home. We had a meeting scheduled early in the morning with the people from Papua New Guinea. We had signed all the paperwork. Now it was time to actually put everything into motion.

As much as I was worried about the girls and what was going to happen with the Judge; we had a lot of irons in the fire, and there was no way I was going to put all those plans on hold. For a moment, sitting in my car in the driveway, I felt overwhelmed. As hard as I pushed myself and with all my special abilities, at that moment I felt very much the sixteen year old that I really was.

Laying my head on the steering wheel, I let the feeling rush over me, suppressing the panic attack that would probably have happened if I had let it, but there wasn’t time for that. Taking a deep breath, I sat up and got out of the car.

The girls were counting on me, Mom was counting on me, the company I'd built was counting on me ... and, if my plans worked out, the World was counting on me even if it didn’t know it.

I wasn’t going to let any of them down!

Chapter 20

As I sat at the conference table the next morning, looking at an empty room, I couldn’t help but think the pep-talk I gave myself the night before might have been a bit overboard.

I had psyched myself up and with a fresh bounce in my step, I had charged into the office early. I was ready to take on the World, only to realize I was thirty minutes early for the meeting. Pretty much no one was in the office yet. I could only smile at myself when I considered how ridiculous I must have seemed bursting into the office. Thankfully, the building being mostly empty saved me from anyone seeing my misplaced enthusiasm.

After I’d been sitting for a while, Ted walked in with Mr. Tagobe, a few of Mr. Tagobe’s aides: Jonathan, Ronald and Charles Green.

“There you are,” Ted said, setting the folio he was carrying down. “I didn’t realize you were already here.”

“I got here a little early,” I replied.

“Excellent, then we can get started. Mr. Tagobe,” Ted said as they all sat down, “we’ve finished initial surveys and Ronald assures me we are good on building our first plant. As we discussed, we will be cutting you folks a hell of a deal, since you are also going to be our guinea pigs.”

There was a pause as everyone looked over each other.

“Uhh, by guinea, I of course meant...” Ted started, stammering.

“No offense is taken, Mr. Baker, I am familiar with that saying. We looked over the numbers Mr. Green sent over last month, and I am assured we are indeed getting ‘a hell of a deal,’ as you say. The payments are agreeable to us.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Once we sign the papers today, we will be dispatching Ronald and a team of engineers and organizational types to get the ball rolling. They will set up the accounts we need locally and begin hiring a small amount of office staff along with construction staff. Looking at the numbers, our initial outlay is pretty significant and, for a while anyway, every dollar you pay to us will be going back into your local economy as we get this thing built. So that’s a win-win on your part.”

“Yes, we saw that. We appreciate your goal of hiring as much local labor as possible and we saw, again from Mr. Green’s numbers, that you were paying a more than competitive rate. Although I did note labor costs in my country are much cheaper than if you brought in your own people.”

“That’s true,” Charles interjected, “but there are a lot of reasons for not paying the same rate as we would pay American workers. A business paying more than any other to its employees would have a negative effect on your economy. If the difference was high enough, it could cause inflation. We are trying to be as generous as we can to your people. That is of course not taking into account that for at least the first few years, we will be underwater on this project.”

“Mr. Tagobe, I want to be clear that our goal is to be fair to everyone we employ. Once we have our facilities up and running, it will include a modern infirmary and we will fly out medical staff if we have to. We are also working on other benefits we can offer to anyone who works for us, regardless of what country they were born in or live in, that could help your people. While we are a business, I’ve made it clear to my partners that first and foremost we are going to be true to our moral beliefs.”

“I thank you for that Mr. Grey. I do understand the points Mr. Green was making and I know he is not wrong. While we are not in the same situation as some of our neighbors, countries like mine have always had a long history of foreigners coming and taking advantage of the local people. It is a hard mindset to get past.”

“I can see that,” I said. “Please, if you ever feel like there is something we should be doing, talk to us! We will do our best to make sure we are being as fair as possible. My partners share my mindset for our mission on this.”

“Thank you, again. Besides the jobs and money for my country, this water is still badly needed. We look forward to your plant becoming operational as soon as possible.”

“Speaking of that,” I said turning to Ronald, “What’s our estimate on that.”

“Construction is going to take the better part of six months. We might be able to shave that down a little bit, but this isn’t a small project. Honestly, my goal is to be ready before next summer.”

“Do what you have to. I would love to see our plant producing drinkable water early next year.”

“I’ll do my best, Cas.”

“Of that, I have no doubt,” I said, giving the man a smile. “So, do we have anything else to discuss?”

“No,” Ted said. “We are here mostly just to sign the final paperwork so we can shove Ronald on a plane.”

“Then let's do this,” I said.

With that we, in turn, signed what seemed to be a never ending stack of documents. They included authorization for purchase of the land the plant would be located on, which it turns out used to be some sort of government facility, various business permits, and approvals for initial payments to Evolve.

I had expected something like this after having dealt with the US military, but I had thought a smaller developing nation would have less red tape to sign off on. How wrong I was!

After another hour we had everything done, Mr. Tagobe was headed back to his hotel and Ronald was sent home to pack. By the following evening they would all be in Papua New Guinea, and the real work would begin.

As the meeting was breaking up, I pulled Jonathan aside.

“Any luck looking into what the people after us are buying up all that land for?”

“Cas, I know this has you twisted up, but you have to be patient. I’ve put feelers out this morning, but there hasn’t been enough time to hear anything back yet.”

“Yeah. Sorry, I know you’re right. I just hate how in the dark we are.”

“I know.”

“Speaking of being in the dark, could you call that guy who owns that last building and have him come up to meet with me? I wanted to talk to him, make sure he knows what’s happening down there, and what he’s up against.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Yes. He seemed like a good guy and deserves the heads up. Plus, we need all the allies we can get right now.”

“Ok, I’ll call him.”

“Thanks, Jonathan,” I said, as I headed out of the conference room door.

I headed straight for the exit and out of the office as soon as our guests pulled out of sight. Having been cooped up all morning, I was dying to know the status of the Judge. While Emily, Zoe and Tina hadn’t been gone more than a few weeks, I was missing them terribly and I wanted this whole ordeal to be over.

Arriving home I rushed in the front door and asked “Have we heard anything?”

“Not yet,” Mom said, coming out of the living room into the hall. “Carter’s men are watching him and they know what to look for and will let us know. It takes time, Caspian.”

“I know, it’s just ...”

“I know, sweety,” she said pulling me into a spine crushing embrace. “We all miss them. You’ve done everything you can do. Now you just have to wait.”

Sighing I pulled out of her hug, readjusted my spine, and gave her a smile.

“Thanks for the pep-talk.”

“What are mothers for?” She said and headed back into the kitchen.

“CAAaass?” I heard bellowed from upstairs. “Is that you?”

“Yeah,” I hollered back.

“Come up here!”

I obeyed and headed upstairs to find Tami and Vicki in the master bedroom.

“Ten bucks says he totally forgot,” Tami said as I walked in.

“Forgot what?” I asked, honestly having no idea what she was talking about.

“Homecoming is at the end of this week.”

“Ok?” I said. I hadn’t forgotten, so much as I hadn’t thought about homecoming at all.

“And we’re going,” Vicki said.

“We are? I would have thought, with everything that’s happening ...”

“... that we need this,” Tami said, interrupting me. “Look, Cas, we are barely into this year. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, and look at everything that’s happening. Zoe and Emily taken away, after all the drama to get Emily back here in the first place, what happened to Vicki’s dad. It’s just too much. We need something to blow off some steam. The homecoming game and dance is just the answer.”

“Ok, so what do I need to do? Get tickets, buy flowers? What?”

“Ha, like we’d let you actually do any of the planning. We’ll take care of the details, you just need to remember to keep the time blocked for us. Also, you’re taking Vicki as your date.”

“Wait, I thought ...” Vicki said, looking at Tami surprised.

“I know, but this has been a tough few months for you. You need to be reminded of how special you are, and this seems like a good opportunity. I’ll be going stag, so I’ll still be there. I'll still take a few dances for myself, but you’re his date.”

“I agree,” I said. I hadn’t thought it through, but Tami was absolutely right. It had been a tough year so far for Vicki. I would need to make sure the night was extra special for her. I took the girls for granted much too often, and that needed to stop.

“Great. We’ll let you know what you’re wearing and when you need to be somewhere,” Tami said while Vicki continued to look stunned.

“What would I do without you?”

“Lay in your bed, cry a lot, and eat nothing but cold cereal ...”

“Yeah, Yeah,” I said, giving both girls a kiss and heading out of the room. “I’ll remember that next time someone’s feeling frisky.”

I barely dodged the pillow launched in my direction as I headed out the door.

It wasn’t until hours later that we finally got the call from Carter. Mom had answered the phone and put it on speaker phone so we could all hear what he had to say.

“Ok, we’re all here,” Mom said; we, in this case, being Tami, Mom, Vicki and her mother, and myself.

“It seems like your trick worked,” Carter said through the phone. “He left the office early and headed home. We made some discreet inquiries and apparently the Judge wasn’t feeling well. This seems to be within the time frame Dr. Chang gave us. Seems unlikely it's a coincidence.”

“What’s he doing now?” I asked.

“Lights are off, he seems to be holed up in his room. He sent his house staff home early.”

“Ok, things seem on track, then. Keep someone on him, for now. If nothing changes, I’ll arrange a face to face with him tomorrow.”

“Is that smart?” Mom asked.

“No, but it’s how we have to do it. If the infection has started, and it seems like it has, one of the first changes is the personal loyalty to me. I stand the best chance of doing something.”

“Why not wait?”

“Because he might decide to go see a doctor.”

“Good point,” Vicki said.

“Thanks, Carter,” I said to the phone.

“Sure thing, kid,” he said, followed by a click as the phone hung up.

“I guess I’ll go down there tomorrow morning and talk to him.”

“Actually,” Mom said, “Jonathan called just before Carter. Apparently some guy you wanted to meet is going to be at your office in the morning.”

“Ohh, great! Ok, I’ll meet with him and then go see the judge after.”

“Why put it off?” Vicki’s mom asked. “I’d think helping your friends would come first.”

“It does, and this meeting is part of it. It’s the guy at the new property we just bought. It has to do with the people behind this whole CPS thing, your abduction, everything. I’m trying to find out what their game is, and find a way to stop it. Or at least get them to leave us alone.”

“Ohh,” she said.

I know the wounds from her husband’s death were still fresh in her mind. I cursed myself silently for being so thoughtless and bringing it up.

“Mrs. Hollabrand, I’m so sorry...”

“No, it’s ok. I’m glad you are trying to protect everyone. I’m going to go lay down.”

She patted my cheek and walked out of the room.

“Vicki ... Could you ...”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, Cas, she’ll be ok. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Vicki said, reading my mind.

With a pat on my arm, she hurried after her mother.

“Why don’t we eat a quick dinner and call it a night? It sounds like tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”

I nodded, thankful for the millionth time that this woman was in my life and taking care of all of us.

That night I slept restlessly, my mind on the meeting with the Judge. As hopeful as I sounded, there were still risks of me walking in. If the man just had a badly timed case of food poisoning, I would be pretty far out on a limb.

For the second day in a row, I got an early start out the door. This time it wasn’t a renewed sense of purpose that got me going, but rather Mom pushing me out the door. I’d been hovering all morning, and it was clear I was getting on her nerves.

A few minutes after I got there, Jonathan walked in. Since we were at least an hour ahead of our scheduled meeting, I smelled Mom’s hand in the timing.

“She called you, I bet.”

“She did indeed,” he said, setting down his things and laughing. “She said you were worked up and pacing the house like a tiger in a cage.”

“I’m just nervous about the meeting that comes after this.”

“Angela mentioned that. I want to go with you.”

“No.”

“But you’ll need ...”

“Nothing. If he’s been changed, then I’m free and clear. If he hasn’t, your being there is improper and not only do I get in trouble, but so do you. We can’t afford you losing your license.”

“I don’t like you going alone.”

“That’s what Mom said.”

“She’s a smart woman.”

“So she keeps telling me, and I agree. But no, I am going alone. We only need to risk one neck on this gamble. How about instead we talk about what your contacts said.”

“I haven’t gotten much, but I have heard some. The area around there is going to be undergoing a lot of development in the next couple of years. Apparently there are talks to open a new city port facility near there. The last time the city did something like this, they poured a lot of money into revitalizing the area.”

“So they are forcing people to sell cheap, with the hopes they’ll be able to sell the land later for a profit?”

“Or build something of their own on it and make a profit that way.”

“So it’s a real estate scheme of some type.”

“Yep.”

I sat silently for a moment, then said, “I’m surprised. I guess I was expected something more ... I don’t know ... exotic.”

“You’ll find that most crimes come down to the acquisition of money, power, or romance ... or some combination of the three.”

“Well, at least we know the why.”

“Not really. I mean, we know about their grab on that land, sure; but everything I could find says it only started six months ago. From what you said about your run in with their guys in August, their beef with you goes back further than that.”

“It seemed that way.”

“And, going through the ledger some more, I am seeing a lot of payments going back years. This is more than a real estate deal. This is just one part of their organization. I mean, we know Richard Hollabrand was mixed up with them for years.”

“So, we still know nothing.”

“Basically.”

“You are just a ray of sunshine.”

“What can I say, Cas, it’s my lawyerly charm.”

Our conversation was interrupted by a beep on the conference room speaker, followed by Mary Ann’s voice.

“Mr. Grey, there’s an Arnold Petti here to see you.”

“The Mr. Grey thing is your idea of a joke, isn’t it, Mary Ann?”

“If you say so, Mr. Grey.”

“Fine, send him in, chuckles.”

Caspian could hear her laughter as she clicked off the speaker.

“That woman is mighty fond of you, you know?”

“Yeah, I think she’s pretty swell, too. Despite her sad sense of humor.”

The door opened and the business man I had met several weeks prior stepped in.

“You weren’t kidding were you? You really run this company.”

“Well, I own part of the company. People much smarter than me actually run it,” I said, standing up to shake his hand.

“Don’t let him fool you, Caspian is the heart and soul of this company. I’m Jonathan Colletta.” Jonathan said, offering his hand as well.

“Yep, we spoke on the phone, although you were real vague on what this meeting was about.”

“Only because I wasn’t sure, myself. I was just following orders.”

I shot Jonathan a look, and wondered briefly why everyone had decided to mess with me today. Knowing him, Jonathan probably thought it would be helpful to try and lighten the mood before my meeting with the Judge, and instructed everyone to give me a hard time. Which was sweet of him, really. Now I would just have to keep reminding myself he means well.

“Sorry for the cloak and dagger. I still had a few things to get cleared up on my end when I asked Jonathan to set this up. Last time we talked, I told you I didn’t know much about why those guys came after you, trying to get you to sell your business. We now have a better idea, and I thought you would like to know what’s going on.”

“I sure as hell would!”

“Turns out, that property you own is slated to be part of some economic redevelopment area. These guys are trying to tie up all of the land in the area while it’s still cheap, before news of the change becomes common knowledge.”

“Huh! I guess I was suspecting something less ... common than that.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” I replied, looking over at Jonathan, who waved me away. “Have you had any more problems since we put in the new security measures?”

“Nope, they have left me well enough alone. Although, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure if it was worth it to keep fighting them over it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve never had a huge business, but the last few years have been really tough. A lot of the stuff I import became a bunch cheaper and a lot easier to get after NAFTA, and the competition for what’s left has gone through the roof. I’m just not sure it’s worth scraping it out any more.” “So what will you do?”

“I don’t really know. I’m too young to retire and too old to learn a new business. That’s the main reason I haven’t thrown in the towel, yet. I have no idea what I’d do next. Now that I know about this land thing, I guess I could hang on and see about cashing out by selling the land later when the price goes up; but honestly, real estate ain't my thing, and it seems like a big gamble.”

“If you do decide to sell, please give us a shot at buying the property.”

“Well, that kinda puts you on the same footing as the other guys, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. I’d be willing to put in the sales contract something along the lines of ... if something drives the price of the area up, and we sell the property at a profit, we give you the amount that your portion of the property was worth. It’s a no lose proposition for you. You wouldn’t be able to sell to legitimate people unless we did, too, not the way we surround your business. And this way, you aren’t walking away from a possible jackpot down the road.”

“Wow, that’s pretty generous.”

“I believe in being fair. Considering everything that’s happened this seems fair. Especially considering your property is more or less mixed in with the area we now own. It would be tough for us to sell if you didn’t sell also. As far as land goes, our fates are more or less intertwined anyway.”

“You have a point. Still, I’m not sure I’m ready to walk away, yet. Like I said, I have no idea what I’d do.”

“I have an offer for that, too.”

“You do?" Both Petti and Jonathan said at the same time.

“I do. If you decide to throw in the towel, you can come work for us.”

“Doing what?”

“Same thing you are doing now. Getting stuff shipped from here to there. In some cases large shipments, or shipments of large things.”

“Cas, I think we should ...” Jonathan started to say.

“No, we don’t need to. I’ve thought this out.”

“That’s an interesting offer.”

“How about this. I’ll have my guys put together numbers on what we’d buy your property for, and what we would offer as far as employment goes. Take it ... leave it ... whichever. At least you’d have offers.”

“Looking at the offer wouldn’t hurt.”

“Great. I’ll get it sent over. And thanks for coming up here. I know it’s a haul from Houston, but I wanted to have this conversation face to face, as we have some stuff going on around here I can’t get away from at the moment.”

“No problem. It’s definitely been interesting. I’ll say that.”

I stood up and extended my hand, “I’ll have that info sent over. If you’ll excuse us, my lawyer is about to have kittens and really wants to talk to me.”

Jonathan didn’t look pleased that I called him out on his less than subtle expressions. Still, he said his goodbyes, and followed me back to my office.

“Cas, you really gotta run stuff like that by me and Charles before you offer it to people.”

“Yeah, I know. Problem is, I thought of it there on the spot.”

“Cas,” Jonathan said exasperatedly.

“Yeah, I hear you, but on this, I’m right. We’re using vendors to do our large shipments, and we are about to start shipping a lot to the Pacific Ocean. Some of that stuff is not easily replaceable, and this is just the start. If this test goes well, I’m betting we’ll be in multiple other small nations around the world. We need an expert on how to move stuff across borders. You and Charles have enough to do without spending hours researching shipping to this country or that every time something like this comes up. Don’t think just because a lot has been going on I didn’t notice that.”

“Ok, you have a point. Still, we need to look at this internally before you offer it.”

“You’re right. I’m also right on the real estate thing. The way the area is laid out, we are tied into whoever owns that property. Do we want the chance that he sells to whoever this group is?”

“No, that would be bad.”

“And more importantly, I have a feel for Arnold. He’s trustworthy and seems like a good person. That’s pretty high in my list of qualifications for working with us.”

“Fine, I get your point. I will go sit down with Charles and we’ll ‘do some research’ and figure out a fair offer to send him.”

“That’s all I ask.”

He made it half way out of my office before stopping, “Are you going over now?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure I can’t come with you?”

“I’m sure.”

“Ok. Good luck, Cas.”

“Thanks.”

As I packed up my things to head out, I realized that the way this year had gone so far I wasn’t sure I wanted to rely on luck.

Chapter 21

As I drove away from the office, towards the address Carter gave me for the Judge's house, I continually worked over the possible problems and potential outcomes of this meeting. My brain worked over and over the situation, continually feeding me progressively worse outcomes. I know it was nerves speaking, and the most likely outcome, based on what Carter had seen, was the change had taken place and things would go as plan.

But, it's hard to convince your brain of that sometimes.

The first hurdle was to get into the house. If things didn’t go as planned, he would just turn me away at the door. Probably followed by a summons to come see him in the court.

If I was able to get in to see him, there was the danger that he wouldn’t be affected. He’d hear me out, and then throw my ass in jail.

Of course, there was also the chance that he was a genetic negative, that his actions had nothing to do with the group we had been facing off against, and the infection caused him to go insane. If that happened, who knows the outcome? Anything from throwing me in jail, to attempted murder came to mind.

Of course, this was all speculation. Until I talked to him, there was no real way of knowing. As I pulled in front of his house, I took a moment to calm myself. I breathed slowly in the meditative way Levi had shown me of getting focused.

I was happy to see the car parked down the street with one of Carters' guys inside. He gave me the briefest nod to acknowledge me, then went back to pretending he wasn’t spying on the judge.

I headed up the front walkway of the house and paused in front of the door. After a long breath, I pushed the buzzer. A half minute or so later, a middle aged woman answered the door.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m here to see Judge Davis.”

“He’s been very sick and isn’t seeing anyone.”

“Please just let him know Caspian Grey is here. I’m positive he wants to see me.”

She paused a beat, then said, “Ok, one moment.”

She shut the door and I was forced to wait. It felt like a decade passed as I stood in front of that door, waiting to find out my fate; but was probably less than two minutes before the door opened again.

“Come in. he’s down the hall on the right,” she said, sounding somewhat confused.

I gave her a smile in thanks and followed her directions, ending at a slightly opened bedroom door. It swung open a little as I knocked, revealing the Judge sitting up in bed.

“Judge Davis?” I said through the crack.

“Come in,” he said, his voice sounding raw.

I made my way to a chair that was sitting next to the bed, probably where the woman, who at best guess was his wife, sat to take care of him.

“Thanks for seeing me.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure why I agreed for you to come in. It’s very improper for someone who has been in my court to visit me at my home.”

“But, you felt compelled to let me in and talk to me?” I asked hopefully.

“I ... yes. I’m not sure I understand.”

“It’s ok, I think I do. Now that I’m here, how do you feel? Do you think its ok that I’m here? Do you trust me not to get you in trouble?”

“Yes. Huh, now that I think about it, yes. I do feel I can trust you, so I guess its ok. What can I do for you, Mr. Grey?”

“I wanted to ask why the sudden ruling in the Angela Bell Case? From what I’m told, that was very unusual."

"You're right, it's really unusual. Hell, I doubt it will hold up under appeals, but I'm sure they've thought of that and fixed that, too. I didn't want to do it, honestly."

"Who's 'They'?"

"The Syndicate. They've ... had me ... for some time. I didn't have a choice."

At least I had a name now. Although you'd think they would have gone with something a little less of a cliché.

"How did they force you?"

"I've done stuff for them in the past, and they have proof. If I went against them, I would be disbarred. Probably put in prison."

"I'm a little lost here, Judge. Start from the beginning."

"It seemed so innocent when it started. They'd ask for little favors. The name of a witness that wasn't exactly secret, or the jury pool list before voir dire. Even then, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but it didn't seem to really hurt anyone. And we had to have more chemo treatments for Jean. We really needed the money. And like that, they had me. I'd done enough small favors for them, gone too deep. They threatened to expose me. Just like that, they owned me."

"And they came to you, asked you to take away Mrs. Bell's kids?"

"No. They just told me there was a case that would be in my court, and I needed to make sure I found for the state."

"So you weren't involved until after the case came to your court."

"Yes, but they probably arranged it. They can get to anyone, and they have people everywhere. They probably had someone in CPS arrange for the file to be opened, and then made sure it ended up in my court."

"Is there any way we can turn this around, get Mrs. Bell her kids back?"

"I could reverse my ruling, but I'd be done."

I was about to tell him to do just that, and live with the consequences of what he'd done. But then I thought better of it. This wasn't going to be the last time we'd have to deal with The Syndicate, and having someone at least partially on the inside would be a big resource.

"Is there a way you can do this so you don't expose yourself to them, but still get the case thrown out?"

He was silent for a few moments, and then said, "Maybe."

"I'm going to have Mrs. Bell's attorney contact you. You can trust him. I want you to work with him, and find a way out. Be clever about it. I don't want to burn you, but if it's that or nothing, I will push for you to go public about all this."

"I understand. About the lawyer I mean. I don't understand why I'm telling you all this."

"That I do know. I can't really explain it now, but the reason you're telling me everything and trusting me is because of something I did. But look on the bright side. You're now working for the good guys."

"I hope that's true. I'm just so tired. Every time they call me, it's like something inside me dies a little more."

I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder.

"I know. For a little while, you're going to have to keep taking orders from them. I want you to keep in their good graces, but give us a heads up when they give you orders. Hopefully, we can put an end to all this."

"I hope so," he said, looking concerned.

I stood up and started making my way out of the bedroom before stopping and turning to look back.

"On the bright side, you will start feeling better real soon. In fact, you will feel better than you ever have before."

I made my way out of the house and back to my car. As I opened the door I gave a thumbs up to Carter's guy down the street, who promptly turned his car and pulled away. I followed a minute later, headed for home.

The first thing I did when I got home was to call Jonathan.

"It worked," I said when he answered.

"That’s a relief. What did he say?"

"He said the group behind this is called The Syndicate."

"That’s original."

"Yeah, I know. Anyway, he said they told him the case would be coming into his court, and he should make sure the State won. Apparently he's been in their pocket for a while."

"Hmm, sounds like they have someone at CPS and probably in the Clerk of Court's office, to arrange all that."

"You need to call him. I want you two to see if you can come up with a way to have the case reopened and thrown out, but without exposing him. I think he might be useful in the near future, and we don't want to burn him. Honestly, after talking to him, he's a victim in this, too. Sure he's done wrong, but they have a pretty tight grip on him."

"And if we can't find a way out?"

"Then we have him throw the case, he ends up in jail for being dirty, and we lose a potential tool to fight The Syndicate with, on down the road."

"I'll try and be clever then."

"Please. Also, have Carter pull the surveillance. Make sure the judge has your number and knows to call you in the future with any new information."

"Will do. Anything else?"

"No, just bring the girls back. Please."

For the next several days, it was just waiting. I knew that eventually, one way or another, the girls would be coming home; but Jonathan and Judge Davis couldn’t rush it. So each day I went to school, then work, then back home. Everything seemed to be happening mechanically. For the past few months I had been filled with so much constant motion, hopping from one crisis to the next; that the waiting, now, was killing me.

Vicki and Tami were on edge too, but they were keeping themselves busy getting ready for the homecoming game and dance on Saturday. They’d given me snippets of the plan here and there, but generally I was left in the dark. Which was fine. I found my life was so much easier when I let them take charge of this type of thing.

I did get a change of pace on Friday when I got a call from Ron Perry, the guy who had been our contact during the drone project.

“Caspian, its Ron Perry,” he said when I picked up the phone.

“Colonel Perry! I’m surprised to hear from you. We haven’t spoken in a while.”

“I know, but things were changing here, and I wanted to reach out to you guys. I talked to Ted and he suggested I call you directly.”

“I’m always happy to take your call, Ron. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m getting near my twenty, and I’ve been thinking about retiring. I was talking to Ted, and he mentioned if I did I should look you guys up. Well, I’ve talked to my wife, and she agrees. She’d like to get out of DC, too.”

“I see, that’s actually pretty good news. We’ve got some new projects going on around here, and your expertise might be just the thing we’re looking for.”

“Really, you’re doing more military contracts?”

“In a roundabout way. MilTech reached out to us. They're interested in some of our new technology for a Navy contract they have.”

“MilTech? That’s a surprise, considering how everything went down last year.”

“They had some bad apples that’ve been weeded out. The CEO over there’s a standup guy, and I can do business with him. The deal is solid and we are closing in on the point where our technology is ready to do some trials with them. Of course, as much as I think of their CEO; it would be nice to have our own guy with knowledge and access when we get rolling, to look over their shoulder. A lot of the problems with the drone project came out of a lack of experience on our end.”

“That sounds like a pretty good fit.”

“We wouldn’t just use you for that, of course. I’m sure there are tons of ways you could make yourself useful over here.”

“You know I’ve known Ted for years, and I really enjoyed working with the rest of your team, last year. I told my wife if I did leave and managed to con you guys into taking me in, I wouldn’t go looking elsewhere. I’m tired of the politics and want to work somewhere that looks out for its people.”

“Consider me conned, then, Ron. I’ll talk to Ted and Charles Green, our CFO. I’m not sure if he was with us when you were working with us last year, but he’s a good guy too. I’ll have them draw up a proposal and send it your way. If we can make the numbers work out, we’ll get you over here.”

“Excellent. I’m sure they will. I look forward to working with you.”

“Same here Ron. Take care.”

We each hung up and I went looking for Ted and Charles to give them the news, although knowing Ted, he knew where that conversation was going to go before I even picked up the phone, and probably already had everything worked out. After dropping the task in their laps, I returned to my office to stew some more.

Finally, at six pm, I got a call from Jonathan.

“Cas, we’re set.”

“Really? And we can do this so he isn’t exposed.”

“We think so. He’s going to come off as hostile in court, for the sake of appearances; but we found a spot that, in their haste to push things through fast, The Syndicate caused some paperwork to get skipped. It’s enough to get the case thrown out, and he assures me they probably won’t try again. It seems like the DA over at family law wasn’t in with the rest of them, and they had to practically force her to try the case.”

“So that’s it?”

“Yeah, just the hearing, tomorrow. I already called Angela. They have a half day court session, and we have an eight AM slot.”

“That’s good news. I’ll see you then.”

I barely slept at all that night, wedged in between Tami and Vicki, thinking about the rest of the girls coming home tomorrow. I knew I needed to get to sleep; since after that was all done, we still had the football game and then the dance to go to. I was certain I would be up all night. I must have passed out at some point, because the next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes and daylight was streaming in through the window.

Looking at the clock, I saw it was just after seven. I slid out of bed, with the girls getting up right behind me. We all got dressed and were out the door as soon as we got downstairs. Looking at Mom, I was pretty certain she didn’t sleep at all.

We were at the courthouse thirty minutes early, and had to sit outside our designated court room and wait. No one felt much like talking, and everyone was lost in their own thoughts.

Eventually, Jonathan showed up and we made our way inside. Mom sat next to Jonathan at the defendants' table, with an annoyed looking DA sitting across the aisle at the prosecutors' table. At least we had warning this was coming. The DA must be pissed the case she already thought she won fell apart at the eleventh hour.

“All Rise” the bailiff called out, and Judge Davis walked into the court room, and sat behind the bench.

“You may be seated. This hearing is to discuss the defense's motion to overturn my previous ruling and a second motion for summary judgment, is that correct?”

“Yes, your honor,” Jonathan said, standing.

“This is over people's filing 32j ?”

“Yes, Your honor.”

“Madam District Attorney, have you had a chance to look over these documents.”

“Yes your honor, but...” she started to say, rising, but the judge cut her off.

“I see in the defense's motion, that the sign offs on the Removal of Custody order isn’t present. My clerk checked, and we are certain these are the originals. The Defense produced the documents they received during discovery, and they match the originals. Did we misplace something, or are these how the documents were presented to the court?”

“Your honor, we’ve only had a day..”

“All you had to do was look at your own records! Do these documents match the internal copies you kept at your office? Yes or no?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“All I see is the signature of the case officer! Her supervisor and someone from your office should also have signed off on these, and they should have been presented to the court for a judge to make the order. Were you able to find any reason why the proper sign offs on these documents didn’t happen?”

“No, your honor. But like I was saying, if we could just have a little more...”

“So, in the case as presented, you saw fit to remove children from this woman’s house without an actual court order? Is that correct?”

“We had the order, Your Honor. It’s just ....”

“Yes, I see you had the paperwork for the order. I see it was assigned out of your office even. What I don’t see is the signature from a sitting judge. Do you know what that makes this?”

“umm...I think...”

“It makes this a piece of paper, not a legal order to remove children from a parent's custody. Are you allowed to search someone's house without an order?”

“No your honor.”

“But you think it’s ok to go through the removal process without the correct authorizations? Is that it, Madame District attorney?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“I want to say, for the record, that I am appalled by this! I see clear evidence, as you presented to me, that these children would be better off in the custody of the State than with this woman.”

“We agree your honor.”

“I wasn’t finished! Despite that, I am forced to return the children to her custody, effective today. And do you know why that is, Ms. District Attorney?”

“Bec...”

“Because you people couldn’t pull your heads out of your collective asses long enough to fill out the right paperwork. This is something an intern fresh out of law school could figure out. I’m not sure how you managed to screw this up so badly.”

“Your honor, I’m sure if we...”

“Can it! I hereby order my previous summary judgment void, and am submitting a new summary judgment for the defense as they requested. Mrs. Bell’s children will be returned to her as soon as possible. Considering the liability you have placed upon the city, I would suggest you leave this woman be. This case is closed.”

With that, he stood up and marched out of the court room. It was a pretty convincing argument, honestly. I’m sure, had the case not ended so abruptly before, Jonathan would have found this mistake on his own during the initial trial. Of course, that wouldn’t have mattered if the Judge was on the take.

Mom was beaming ear to ear, pulling Jonathan into one of her hugs. He looked pleased and pained at the same time. The DA looked pissed. Lawyers, as a rule, hate losing cases. They probably hate being chewed out by the judge even more. She gave only one glance towards Jonathan and Mom before she and her aides stormed out down the aisle and out of the court room.

It turned out however, the waiting wasn’t over. It was nine thirty before Zoe and Emily burst through the front doors of the court room, followed by a woman from CPS that I didn't recognize. I had a stray thought wondering what would happen to the case officer that signed off on the removal, but didn’t get a judge's signature. Her not being here probably signified it wasn’t good, to say the least.

The girls saw us and bolted away from their keeper. Everyone, with the exception of Jonathan, who stood aside looking at us with a pleased expression, smashed into a giant group hug. Eventually, he reminded Mom of the spectacle we were making, and we broke apart long enough to pile into cars and get home. We didn't stop for lunch!

Once back at the house, Emily and Zoe gave Mom hugs and thanked her for bringing them home. Then they promptly excused themselves, dragging me, Tami and Vicki upstairs; while Tina went off with Judy to reconnect.

The door was barely closed when clothes started flying. I had worn a button-up shirt to court, and Emily ripped it open, sending off a spray of buttons.

“I’ve missed you guys so much,” Zoe mumbled as she kissed Tami passionately.

We spent the next several hours showing just how much we missed each other. Finally, I found myself on my back with Zoe lying on top of me and Emily tucked in to one side, with Vicki and Tami intertwined and pushed to my left, trapping my arm beneath them.

“Aren’t we supposed to go to a football game tonight?” I asked.

“We have time,” Vicki said in a sleepy voice.

“What about the dance?” I asked. “Is there still time to get tickets for Zoe and Emily?”

“Already got them,” Tami replied. “They weren’t on the moon you know. We were all already going to the dance.”

“Ohh.”

“See,” Zoe said, lifting her head off my chest, “this is why we don’t let you plan things.”

I just grunted and fell asleep.

When I woke up again, I was alone in bed, and the sun was coming in through the window at a much lower angle. Looking over, I could see Zoe, still naked, standing by the dresser drying her hair. The door to the attached master bathroom was open, and I could see glimpses of the other girls walking back and forth, getting ready.

“What time is it?” I mumbled.

“Four thirty. Game starts at six. Get up and go get in the shower, you smell like a whore house,” Zoe said.

“Who’s fault is that?”

“Yours. You’re the one with the harem. Now get up and go get ready.”

“Are we coming back after the game?”

“Yes. We’ll come back, change, go to dinner, then the dance.”

I slid out of bed and moved behind her, reaching around her with my hands resting on her stomach.

“I’m really happy you’re home,” I whispered in her ear.

She leaned back and gave me a kiss, saying, “Me too. Now go get dressed.”

I did as ordered.

The game itself was fun. Zoe and Tami were on the field cheering while the rest of us were in the stands, right on the rail so we could yell to them and our friends on the team.

The only weird part was Josh. Every time I said something to him, he ignored me, and a couple of times gave me the evil eye. During halftime I caught up to Amanda and asked her about it, but she brushed it off. She said he’d been in a bad mood with everyone all day and I shouldn't read too much into it.

We won the game, but just barely. It was actually a pretty even match.

After the game we went home to change and then headed to a small Italian restaurant Tami had booked for us. It was pretty fancy, but I guess I could afford it, and with the tip I saw her write in before having me sign the check, it was clear she thought I could afford it, too.

I was wearing a pretty standard suit, although a lot nicer than many of the kids who would be at the dance. The girls each had an elegant but not overly flashy dress, with a necklace I hadn’t seen before, matching the color of their dress. Zoe was in blue, Tami in yellow, Vicki in red, and Emily in green.

They looked smashing.

The dance itself was a fun affair. We joined our friends and the girls took time switching partners, although I only danced with one of my four all night. They had figured out some sort of rotation.

The night ended with Vicki in my arms during the last song. Tami was dancing with one of the JV football players, and Zoe and Emily were sitting at a table, looking beat. They had danced every song all night, not taking a break until now, and had clearly worn themselves out.

“This might be one of the best days of my life,” I said into the top of Vicki’s head.

“I know. We all get back together, then we get the fun night out. I get to end it in your arms, dancing. I never thought I would feel fine again, but, right now, I feel like maybe I will be ok.”

“Baby, I am so sorry about what happened with your Dad. I know it hurts.”

“It does. Mom and I still cry about it some nights. But, the world didn’t stop. I still love him, and I won’t forget him. But I have to keep going, you know.”

“I know.”

“And all the love from you, Zoe, Emily and Tami, even the support from Mrs. Bell and Tina and Judy and our friends. I don’t know what I would have done without you guys.”

“You know we love you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You know I love you.”

“With every cell in my body.”

“Good.”

She squeezed me tighter as we swayed across the dance floor.

In my head, I knew there were still dangers out there. We’d won a victory, but The Syndicate was sure to push back, and we had no idea yet what to do about them. And there were still a lot of missteps on the way to making the world ready for the future. If people found out about me and the girls, it wouldn’t be good, that was for sure.

I knew all of that, but for the moment, I didn’t care.

My family was back together. That’s what really mattered.

The End

About The Author

T. Starnesisa freelance writing living in Texas. He has a love for books of all types, but preferably sci-fi, mystery and the occasional history.

Find out more at

amazon.com/T-Starnes/e/B016APILAY

Or visit tstarnes.com

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Other Books By T. Starnes

Other books available on kindle

In The Destiny Saga

Destiny’s Road

The Ties That Bind

A Summer Cruise (A Destiny Interlude)

No Good Deed (Coming Soon)