In the Grey (8 page)

Shaking her head at
herself, she went back to the safe to retrieve the nanodrone in its
sterile, screw-top plastic container. They’d found the drone at
JFCOM last year. Everyone who was anyone in the security tech world
had dissected the nanodrone and put it back together. They had even
created a new one from the plans on Hector Jasper’s computer. But
the damned things didn’t work. She grabbed the container with the
drone and set it next to the journals.

As if it was the crown
jewel, Alex set the gold and diamond bee among the other objects.
She hadn’t trusted sending the bee through the regular channels.
Instead, she’d asked a good friend at the Denver Police Department
forensics lab to take a look. Other than the fact that the bee was
old, gaudy, and fairly valuable, it was just another mystery.
Somehow these objects explained why the Fey Special Forces Team was
murdered in their limestone storage vault under the streets of
Paris.

She had no idea what they
meant.

“
Anything?” Jesse
asked.

“
Nothing.” Alex glanced at
him and went back to staring at the objects. “You?”

“
Nothing,” Jesse
said.

“
I keep thinking it’ll
click in,” Alex said. “I’ll remember why I collected all of
this . . . junk and why Dwight hid this bee
monstrosity.”

“
I wonder if it’s more
like an archeological dig,” Jesse said.

“
What do you mean?” Alex
asked.

“
You know, they find a
mound and start to dig it up,” Jesse’s outline materialized next to
her. His angel tattoo flashed before his image filled in. “They
start pulling out this fabulous thing and that amazing thing only
to discover it’s a trash pit.”

“
Oh.”

“
I’m not saying this is
trash,” Jesse said. “I’m saying it might be left over from
something you did, or some of it could be trash?”

“
Only a few things mean
something?” Alex picked up the map of Serbia and the card holder.
Gesturing with the objects, she asked, “How would I
know?”

“
No idea,” Jesse
shrugged.

“
I should know,” Alex
said.

“
I guess,” Jesse
shrugged.

“
I can’t shake the feeling
that this junk is at the center of what Eniac is up to,” Alex said.
“The gold, sure, that’s obvious, but the rest of this? And this
thing?”

Sneering at the gold bee,
Alex crossed her arms and shook her head. They looked at the items
in silence. Alex picked up the sticky that said “GOLD” on
it.

“
What if the gold isn’t
the reason?” Jesse asked.

“
Right,” Alex said. “What
else is obvious?”

“
Well, they asked a lot
about a token or a way to get in,” Jesse said.

Alex picked up her lighter
and the black pieces of plastic.

“
Leave the lighter,” Jesse
said.

“
Right,” Alex said. “They
didn’t ask for a lighter. They asked about a security
token.”

“
To get into the other
vault,” Jesse said.

“
Maybe,” Alex
said.

“
That’s right,” Jesse
said. “They never actually said.”

“
We missed something in
the vault where the gold is stored?” Alex asked.

“
No idea.”

“
Hmm.” Alex tossed the map
and the sticky note on the desk.

“
You want to talk about
Wyatt?” Jesse asked.

“
No,” Alex said.
“You?”

“
I think it’s weird that
you could be doing anything after finishing your report – take a
bath, eat, drink copious amounts of Irish whiskey, make
love . . .”

“
John’s at the hospital,”
Alex said. “Won’t be back ‘til six.”

“
You know what I mean. Why
this?”

“
Something Wyatt said,”
Alex said. “Or didn’t mean to say.”

“
What’s that?” Jesse
asked.

“
He said, ‘If you look at
the big picture, it looks like everything fits together,’” Alex
said.

“
But you’d be wrong,”
Jesse and Alex said in unison.

“
There is no master plan,”
Jesse said.

“
Only individual solutions
created by the same problem solvers,” Alex said.

Alex looked up at the
ceiling when she heard the stairs creak under the weight of small
feet. She glanced at Jesse and he nodded. She flicked on her
espresso machine. She took a pint of milk from the refrigerator and
began making hot chocolate. When she looked up, Jesse was gone, and
Troy’s son, Hector James, was standing in the doorway. Rumpled from
sleep, his face was wet with tears.

“
Bad dream?” Alex
asked.

The child nodded. Maggie
got up from her chair and went to the boy. Hector James pressed his
face into the scruff of her neck.

“
Hot chocolate?” Alex
asked.

The child nodded. Alex
went to her office chair. She used her forearm to push her
collection of objects aside. She set the hot chocolate on the desk.
She held out her arms, and Hector James crawled onto her lap. She
held him tight. Maggie lay down at Alex’s feet.

For reasons no one could
explain, when Hector James was upset, he wanted Alex. She would
stop everything to hold him until he got up and went back to bed.
Sometimes, she held him while he slept. Other times, he would drink
hot chocolate. Once in a blue moon, he wanted to talk. She wasn’t
sure why he chose her; she was glad she could give the child the
comfort he needed.

“
Wanna talk about it?”
Alex asked.

Hector James shook his
head. Alex put the mug of hot chocolate in his hands. He went
through the ritual of blowing over the top of it and taking a sip.
He continued until it was the right temperature to
drink.

“
Can you show me?” Hector
James asked.

Alex pulled her computer
screen and keyboard to the front of her desk. She clicked a few
buttons and opened a folder she’d made for him. She clicked a
button and a sanitized photo slideshow of Hector Jasper’s death
appeared on the screen. A photo of the side of Hector Jasper’s shoe
on the floor of the burned building flashed on the screen. That
image shifted to a lifeless picture of his jacket. If you looked
closely, you could see blood and burned flesh. Hector James never
looked at the details; he only saw evidence that his monster had
been destroyed. He leaned into her and watched the slideshow. The
last photo was of Hector Jasper’s coffin.

“
He’s dead,” Hector James
said.

“
He’s dead,” Alex
said.

Satisfied, Hector James
turned his attention to his hot chocolate.

“
I miss Mommy,” Hector
James’s voice was so quiet Alex could barely hear him. “Will you
show me?”

Alex started a photo
slideshow of pictures of his mother, Dahlia. A beautiful woman, she
had been the love of Troy’s life and the mother of his children.
After years of vicious abuse, she’d finally escaped her marriage to
Troy’s brother, Hector. Troy and Dahlia had been planning a wedding
and a life together when Hector arrived to exact his revenge. She’d
sacrificed herself to save the boys and Troy. Hector was blown up
by his own explosives only moments later. While Troy and the boys
managed to escape the explosion, they remained shattered by the
loss.

“
Mommy’s very pretty,”
Hector James said.

“
She is,” Alex said. “You
look quite a bit like her.”

“
No, Hermes does,” Hector
James said of his little brother. “I look like Daddy.
See?”

He pointed to a photo of
him and his mother. In the photo, Dahlia was laughing and trying to
hold on to her squirming three-year-old child. To Alex’s eye, he
looked very much like his mother. Hector James set the almost empty
hot chocolate mug on his lap and snuggled into her. She felt more
than saw him suck his thumb.

He’d turned eleven years
old a month ago. Most days, he was a happy, well-adjusted boy. He
did well in school and had a few close friends. But in the early
morning hours when the years of Hector’s abuse came forward to
overwhelm him, he snuggled on Alex’s lap and sucked his thumb. They
sat for a while under the light of the laughing, smiling photos of
Hector James’s old life until he fell asleep.

When Alex was sure he was
asleep, she took the empty mug from him and set it on the shelf
next to her keyboard. He rubbed his head against her until it
rested in the gap between her arm and chest. She glanced down to
make sure he was asleep before pushing her keyboard and monitor
back. She set up her gallery of mysterious items along the edge of
the shelf. She’d just moved the nanodrone into place when her phone
vibrated. She glanced at Hector James; he was still
asleep.

“
Hargreaves,” she said in
a low voice.

“
Will you accept a collect
call from Denver Main Corrections Facility?” an automated voice
said.

“
Yes.”

Hector James picked up the
Magic 8 Ball. She gave him a soft smile, and he closed his eyes to
make a wish.

“
Alex!” Trece yelled into
the phone. “DPD picked me up.”

“
What?” Alex sat up
straighter. Firmly rooted on her lap, Hector James shifted
forward.

“
Someone switched my file
with my cousin’s,” Trece’s voice rose with desperation.
“Fingerprints, photos, even DN-fucking-A. They think I’m him. They
say I escaped from prison! From prison! No lawyer. No trial,
because I already had one! They’re taking me to Pelican fucking
Bay.”

“
California?”

“
DPD got the tip this
morning,” Trece said. “They came with SWAT. With SWAT! White Boy
answered the door and was like, ‘What the hell?’ My DOD ID is
worthless. With Steve missing, there’s no one to call.
I. . . ah, shit Alex, I can’t go to prison. I won’t
survive it. I can’t do it again. I won’t make it a day. Help me,
Alex! You have to do something! Help me!”

Alex heard movement in the
background.

“
The Sheriffs are here to
take me to California,” Trece said. “Tell Luz I love her
and. . .”

“
Listen to me,” Alex said.
“I will fix this. Keep your head down and do your time. Do not kill
anyone. Do you hear me?”

“
But. . .”

“
This is a tactic designed
to get you stuck there for the rest of your life,” Alex said.
“Do
not
give them
that chance. Do good time. I’ll get you out.”

“
I don’t think I can do
it,” Trece said.

“
We never think we can
until we do,” Alex said. “We
will
get you out.”

“
What about Solarus?”
Trece asked.

“
Focus, Trece, focus,”
Alex said. “What are you going to do?”

“
Follow orders, sir,”
Trece said. “I will do good time.”

“
Which means?”

“
No fights, no killing,
good time,” Trece said. “You think I can do this?”

“
I know you can,” Alex
said.

Voices in the background
instructed Trece to hang up the phone.

“
I trust you,” Trece
said.

“
I won’t let you down,”
Alex said.

The phone clicked and the
line went dead. Alex caught movement out of the corner of her eye.
Hector James held the nanodrone between the index finger and thumb
of his left hand. He was working inside the nanodrone's body with
the pointed end of her metal emery file. Too stunned to respond,
she watched the boy.

He held the nanodrone
close to his eyes and then worked with the tip of the emery file.
He set the drone on her desk, leaned back to look at it, and then
picked it up again.

“
Who broke the fairy?”
Hector James asked.

“
Fairy?”

“
This fairy,” Hector James
pointed to the nanodrone. “I had to fix it.”

“
Thank you so much,” Alex
said. “That’s very nice of you.”

“
No problem,” Hector James
smiled. “Happy to help.”

“
Can you get it to fly?”
Alex asked.

“
Sure,” Hector James
clapped his hands and the nanodrone took off from the desk. “It
won’t fly for very long, because it runs on light. It’s kind of
dark in here.”

The nanodrone flew for a
minute or so and then set down on the desk.

“
What does it do?” Alex
asked.

“
Nothing,” Hector James
said. “Well, it flies and stuff.”

“
Does it take pictures or
shoot weapons or . . .”

“
No,” Hector James said.
“Hector told everyone that it did, because he’s a big fat liar. But
the fairies just fly. Don’t tell Hermes. He thinks they transmit
pictures straight to Mommy.”

“
How do you know?” Alex
asked.

“
Because this is one of
Mommy’s,” Hector James said.