Camp Alien (9 page)

C
HRISTOPHER LOOKED AROUND.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” We didn't move. He rolled his eyes. “Kitty, Jeff told me to come over and find out what you all were up to.”

Opened the door. “Oh. So you're not an evil bad guy? Crushing news. We were about to really have to question whether we'd gotten the right Mastermind and all that.”

“Hilarious. Look, your husband is aware of what you're doing because he knows you. I'm here to ensure that when something goes wrong, you have backup. And before the three of you on Alpha Team try to add words to the glares you're all shooting at me, there's no one who can get you guys out of here and
to
a good alibi faster than me. But it's nice to see that you're taking out the trash for the apartment's resident. That's thoughtful breaking and entering.”

“Oh, fine, good point.” While Lifehouse crooned “Wrecking Ball” in the background, brought Christopher quickly up to speed, including why we had the Bag of Shredded Possibly Information, while Serene gave him evidence gloves and he put them on and Claudia wiped down the door and anywhere else he might have touched on this floor.

Once all that was done, he zipped through the apartment, checking everywhere while “Story of My Life” by Smash Mouth started.

“Okay, everything's on the floor,” he said as he rejoined us approximately five seconds later. “No idea why she did that, but there's nothing in any drawer, cabinet, or closet. It's all on the floors. I checked under the bed, though, and there's nothing there but some dust.”

“Other than the kitchen,” Lorraine said. “It's kind of trashed, but the only things dumped out and around aren't breakable.”

“Yeah, there's nothing broken anywhere,” Claudia added.

“Nothing,” Christopher agreed. “So obviously this is staged.”

“Yeah, as I mentioned already. We're at the ‘why do this' part of the festivities.”

“Why leave the shredder full?” Serene asked. “She dumped everything else.”

“Who knows?” Christopher shrugged. “But since she clearly had time to throw away whatever was in there, I think it's unlikely that it's going to be of interest to us.”

My brain nudged. Cop shows were very clear on a certain point.

Went back to the freezer, put the stopper in the sink, and dumped the ice cubes out. Ran warm water over them.

“What are you doing?” Christopher asked.

“She could have something hidden in these.”

“Who hides things in ice cubes?”

“You need to catch up on pop culture.” Pulled something out of the water. “Fast.”

The girls took a look. “That looks like a diamond,” Claudia said.

“It is a diamond.” Searched through the rest of the sink. Found three more diamonds. “So, one diamond per ice cube tray, presumably. Interesting.” Filled the trays back up and put them into the freezer.

“Why are you doing that?” Christopher asked.

“Because no one does all this—trash their own place then take off—while leaving diamonds in their ice,” Lorraine said.

“So Kitty's making ice so whoever's supposed to get those diamonds doesn't think someone else has them,” Claudia added. “Oh, and duh.”

“Whatever,” Christopher muttered.

“If I were going on the run, I'd sure as hell take my loose diamonds with me. That she didn't indicates they're here as a payment for someone. Either to do something or to not do something.”

“Assassins?” Claudia suggested.

“I don't think so. I mean it's very possible, but it seems a little . . . complex.” Felt another pang. A week ago I'd have asked Siler or Buchanan to contact the Dingo and Surly Vic and just asked them. But a week ago they'd been alive. Right up until they'd both sacrificed themselves to save me. Their last act of protection.

Serene put her arm around my shoulders. “We can ask Benjamin about it,” she said gently.

Leaned my head against hers. “I miss them.”

“I do, too. I didn't know them as well as you, but we did . . . interact. Now and then.”

Presumed this was when the A-C CIA had either crossed into the Dingo's territory or had needed his help. He'd liked Serene, and I was sure that he'd known what she was up to far longer than I had.

Swallowed hard and pushed the sorrow away. Now wasn't the time to mourn. Now was the time to think, and if I could add thinking like the Dingo and Surly Vic to my repertoire, so much the better for me and mine.

As “Assassin” by John Mayer came on, I gave it a shot. “Could be for an assassin to kill me so I'm not around to say that the Kitty-Bot isn't really me. But if that's the case, he or she is late and working really cheap, because these diamonds can't be worth all that much, and anyway, Villanova has to know that Strauss is dead.”

“Are you sure those are real diamonds?” Christopher asked.

“I have an uncle who's a jeweler. Yes, I'm sure.”

“Just verifying, no need to be snippy.”

“I'm not the one who pulled you away from Amy and the baby, stop snarling at me.”

“Sorry.” His voice was softer. “Jeff wants you back at the White House as fast as possible, you know, Kitty.”

“I know.” Stared at the diamonds in my hand. “These are nice but . . .”

“But what?” Serene asked.

“But they're not huge and they're not uncut. I'm wondering if they're actually from jewelry that Villanova owns herself.”

Lorraine zipped off and was back quickly. “I found this in the rubble.” She had what looked like an engagement ring without the stone in her palm.

“That would account for one of the stones, but not the others.”

“This was the only thing that was missing a stone that I could find.”

“I could search again,” Claudia offered.

“No . . . you know, Strauss is dead, but clearly what she was planning isn't.”

“We have the, as you call it, Kitty-Bot at Dulce,” Serene said. “That plan was clearly rolling.”

“Right. So, is her loyal assistant who is definitely not on the side of right continuing the plan on her lonesome? As in, are these other three diamonds from Strauss' personal collection?”

“We can only find that by breaking into her home and checking,” Christopher said. “Which I'm sure you'll have us do shortly, but you cannot be involved in that. You have a couple minutes more here, and then I have to get you back to the White House.”

“That's fine. Hang on, though. Don't talk, not for a second or two.” Had to get all the questions rushing into my mind into a semblance of order. Closed my eyes. It helped somewhat. “Dream On” by Aerosmith helped more. Because I had one overriding issue. “The milk.”

“Excuse me, what?” Christopher asked. “Sorry to speak out of turn, try to forgive me.”

“It'll be hard, but I'll give it a shot.” I thought better running my yap, after all. “The milk has been out of code for much longer than we've known that crap was going down. The empty freezer indicates that Villanova wasn't planning on being around for a good long while, so she cleared her freezer out. Veggies and such can rot quickly, and everything else in the fridge looked random, as in, bought at one time or another, but none of it being bad or not is an issue—we all have veggies that have gone bad because we forgot about them, and we all have ancient bottles of something or other shoved into the back of the fridge.”

“Not all of us,” Christopher said.

“Don't even try to make me believe you cook, dude. And yeah, yeah, the Elves handle all things for the A-Cs. However, I'm talking humans. Regardless, milk tends to be on the money in terms of when it goes bad. And every shopper checks the expiration date—unless it's the last quart in the
market, no one buys milk that's going out of code the next day.”

“What does it prove?” Lorraine asked.

“That whatever's going on with Villanova has nothing to do with what just went on with all of us this past week. But very probably has a lot to do with what we just went through with the Kitty-Bot, because that plan appears to have kicked off about two weeks ago, since that's how long the milk's been out of date, so how long Villanova's been gone. And while I'm no forensics expert, I imagine it'll show that the dust has been gathering for a little while.”

“So she went shopping and then took off?” Christopher asked. “Who would do that?”

“More like she'd gotten food to last her a few days since she'd cleared out her freezer already and then was given the go order. The milk isn't full, she'd drunk some of it.”

“I can see what you've said,” Serene said slowly. “But doesn't Villanova know that Strauss is dead? I mean, this plan is, like the milk, out of date.”

“Good question. Just like the one you asked earlier—was someone supposed to come search this apartment because Villanova has ‘disappeared'?”

“That's the only thing that makes sense,” Christopher said. “Meaning the expectation would be that the police would be here.”

“Possibly, but never sell our enemies short in the Cray-Cray Buffet of Insane Ideas Department. And that also begs this question—does Villanova, in fact, know that Strauss is dead, or is she somewhere remote enough that she's not aware of the new world order?”

“She'd have to be pretty remote to miss everything that happened,” Christopher said.

“Or too busy,” Claudia offered.

Serene shook her head. “I don't think you roll a takeover plan and never communicate with your team. Plans go wrong all the time, and these people work in politics, where they
know
things don't go as planned. So, is Villanova running the plan even though Strauss is dead? And if she is, what does she actually hope to achieve? For herself, I mean.”

“She could be in hiding,” Lorraine said. “As in, she's not working the plan but doesn't think she can come back here for whatever reason.”

“Come Back Home” by Two Door Cinema Club came on. Hoped it wasn't prophetic. “Add this to the growing Questions List—what other aspects of the plan the Kitty-Bot is a part of did Straus and Villanova have in play two weeks ago? And what else might be coming?”

The others looked like they might be ready to join in the conversation when we all heard the same sound we'd heard before—someone was coming into the apartment. Again. Apparently prophecy was in the air.

W
E WERE STILL IN
the kitchen but we zipped into the office. Considered possibilities and realized that there was no way the water in the trays was frozen. Shoved the shredder into the kitchen, ran to the freezer and dumped out the water in the ice trays, put them back, and skedaddled back to the others. Hyperspeed was truly the best because this only took me about a second. Then I did what I had before—I closed the office door, leaving it open a crack.

Christopher took my hand as I shoved the diamonds into one of the inner pockets of my purse, hoping that I hadn't blown it by taking them out of the ice. Then again, if they were a payoff to someone to kill me, or whatever, it was better to not have said payoff available to said potential assassin. Everyone else linked up, just in case whoever was on the other side wasn't the next person Jeff was sending to bring his errant wife home.

The door opened slowly. Far more slowly than when Christopher had been on the other side. But then, an A-C picking a lock, especially the former Head of Imageering, would be fast at it, and Christopher had undoubtedly been working at hyperspeed.

Because I was enhanced I could see people moving at the normal hyperspeed level, so Christopher's entry had seemed normal to me.

But this entry was far slower, slower than a normal human's would have been. Meaning whoever was breaking in or returning home was being especially cautious.

The person on the other side finally stepped through the doorway. It was a man about Chuckie's size, average looks,
with short blond hair and a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. He was also wearing gloves, leather ones, and since it was the end of May, it wasn't because he was cold. I didn't think I knew him, but he was vaguely familiar.

Since my earbuds were in, any noises my phone might make would only be heard by me. Risked it and took a few pictures of whoever this was.

He walked to the kitchen and I waited to discover if he was going for the freezer. But he wasn't. What he wanted was the shredder.

He pulled the lid off and made a sound of disgust. “Unreal. How did I get talked into this?”

Recognized his voice. Not exactly, but I knew I'd heard it before, and I knew for sure now that I'd seen him before. Where this had been and who he was were, however, still not coming to me.

“The Chauffeur” by Duran Duran came on and I realized exactly who this was. Figured my using this as a reason for Jeff to allow me to pipe my music throughout the White House wasn't going to fly, but I planned to hold it in reserve, just in case.

I was looking at Evan, Armstrong's former limo driver. Evan had been Armstrong's driver for years, but during Operation Destruction he'd been proven to be a little suspect in the trustworthy department. Armstrong hadn't fired him so much as handed him off to someone else. Senator Zachary Kramer, as faded memory did me a solid and shared a relevant fact when I actually needed it.

I'd been in the Washington Wife class with his wife, Marcia, but while she'd been friends with that in-crowd, things had changed—me being friends with most of that in-crowd that was still alive, mainly—and now the Kramers were officially anti-alien. Meaning Kramer's driver was fake breaking into Strauss' assistant's apartment to gather the shredded materials we'd already snagged. Which suggested a connection between Kramer and Strauss, which wasn't really shocking in any way.

Of course, I couldn't tell any of the others who this was, at least not out loud. And it probably didn't matter—we needed to ensure that we weren't spotted here.

Evan didn't seem to have any curiosity about looking for another shredder, which was good for us. Instead, he went
right to the freezer and grabbed the ice cube trays. “Are you kidding me?” He tossed them back in and slammed the freezer door. “How did I get stuck with these idiots?”

He heaved a sigh and pulled something out of the messenger bag. It looked like a thermos. Took pictures of it in case it was actually a nuclear reactor or a bomb while “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze kept me calm and focused.

He unscrewed the lid and carefully splattered the contents around the room. Said contents looked like blood. Once done he closed up the thermos, put it back into his messenger bag, and left, leaving the front door just slightly ajar.

We waited a few moments. “We need to get out of here right now,” Christopher said in a low voice. “And we have to be sure we don't touch any of that blood.”

“Why was Evan tossing blood around?”

“Who cares?” Christopher asked. “Because he's in on whatever's going on. We need to go. Now. And be sure not to step in any of the blood.”

Turned my music off and put my phone into my purse, just in case. We walked carefully to the front door, then linked back up and left at hyperspeed, Christopher leaving the door ajar in the same way Evan had.

Once the five of us were out, he kicked it up to his Flash level and we were all back in my room at the White House in less than a minute.

“Who was that?” Serene asked while we all gagged. Christopher's top speed was hard on everyone other than Jeff.

Shared the wonder that was Evan and his connection to the Kramers, which meant they were likely connected to Strauss and Villanova. “Christopher, you need to get back to the Embassy. Lorraine, Claudia, go with him. Get Hacker International working on piecing together whatever's been shredded. Clearly it's key.”

“Kitty, you need to take a shower,” Serene said. “We used you taking a bath as an excuse for why you've been gone. It's only been about thirty minutes, but that's almost too long.”

“Hyperspeed shower here I come. See you three later.”

They zipped off and I zipped into the bathroom and took
the fastest shower of my life. Didn't wash my hair because I figured I could use the excuse of blow-drying it as a reason for my being so absent. And, despite everything, figured a good brushing would solve most issues.

Serene had clothes out for me, a navy skirt and pumps with an iced blue top, and I got into them quickly but carefully. While I brushed out my hair and put it up in a banana clip, we discussed what we knew and concluded we knew a lot and nothing at the same time.

“We need to get anything Elaine has on Evan out of her.”

“That'll fall more to you than me,” Serene said. “Honestly, right now, the two of us need to get back into political mode, and fast.”

“Only sort of. We have the head of Titan here as well as Drax. We're just in
that
What The Hell Is Going On mode, versus this other What The Hell Is Going On mode. Speaking of which, what's our story for what happened with the Kitty-Bot?”

“I checked with Tim while you were showering. Suspected intruder issue that was handled is the official word. I don't know that you'll even be asked about it—the Planetary Council has been mingling, and most of what everyone's talking about are Jeff's personnel announcements and the Drax situation.”

“As long as no one suggests the Kitty-Bot as my replacement, I'm good with it.”

She laughed. “I'll get my people on the Kitty-Bot What The Hell problem. We're better suited to that than the Titan and Drax issues.”

“Which is your polite way of saying that the FLOTUS can't be caught up in all the intrigue and illegal B&E that's going to go on.”

Serene shot me a very innocent look. “Kitty, we would never do anything illegal.” She sounded totally honest and completely ditzy.

Laughed and hugged her. “You're really our best secret weapon.”

She hugged me back. “Have to take care of my family.”

We headed downstairs. Serene either had the White House layout memorized or was a lot better with spotting the signage, because we reached the dining room where
everyone else was without issue. Spent the time regressing my mindset back to what it had been before the Kitty-Bot appeared. I had to FLOTUS up and take one for the political team, and I had to do it now.

We separated, and I went over to where Thomas Kendrick was. Unsurprisingly, he was with Culver, Gadoire, and Vance. Tito was also there, and he nodded to me, meaning that he'd double-checked Kendrick and he was indeed a real human.

Everyone asked if I was alright, said I was, and that was that. Presumably because Kendrick had been here waiting for a good forty-five minutes or more and no one wanted any more delays. Worked for me.

“Madam First Lady, thank you so much for inviting me into your new home,” Kendrick said as he stood up and we shook paws. No joy buzzer or similar in his hand. One for the win column.

“Kitty,” Vance said as he stood, too, “I'm sorry, but I need to grab you for just a moment. It's a point of etiquette that our new First Lady might be unaware of,” he added with a gracious smile for the others. Then Vance took my arm and led me out of the room.

“What point of etiquette am I unaware of? I mean besides all of them.”

“None, I just wanted to tell you what we've gotten out of Thomas while you were out of the room doing whatever it is that you were really doing that we're all going to pretend was taking a bath and calming down from a false intruder alert.”

“Really?” Tried not to sound shocked. Failed, based on Vance's expression.

“Yes, really,” he said, sarcasm knob easily at eight and heading for nine. “We're not idiots and we're on your side. And he'll tell us things he might hold back from the rest of you.”

“As always, not trying to insult you or the skills.”

“Whatever. Anyway, Lillian got him onto Drax Industrial right away. Thomas knows about the Invisible Commandos, and he told us that he had no idea that was Drax's sales pitch. He's horrified, and has been subtly cutting ties. He did say that if Jeff wants him to keep an eye on Drax, he will.”

“I have just so, so much trouble believing that the head of Titan Security is our friend. I'm sure it's possible, but it's still a leap.”

Vance shrugged. “He's not Antony Marling. You know how it works here.”

“I do. I also know he's pals with the heads of Gaultier and YatesCorp.”

“You're pals with one of the other heads of Gaultier.”

“Stop using your evil logic on me. So, do you guys believe him?”

“Well, Jeremy Barone does.” Jeremy was the brother half of a brother-sister Field team. He was the empath, his sister Jennifer was the imageer. She was now Jennifer Barone-Gaekwad, but she was still working with us and was on-site at the White House, too. “He was hanging out nearby, and he gave me the signal that Thomas wasn't lying. He could be wearing an emotional manipulator, of course, but until he's strip-searched, we don't have any way of telling. But Jeremy thinks he got enough emotions to feel confident that Thomas isn't wearing a blocker or an overlay.”

“Or he's testing out the next level of Titan tech. But, fine. That gives me a lot to work with.”

Vance grinned. “That's what I'm here for.”

Decided that, regardless of what my role was now, I was still the Head of Recruitment for Alpha Team. And that meant I could hire as I saw fit. And, per Elaine, I had a lot of staff positions to fill. And we had at least two evil plots working, and more always loomed on the horizon. It was time to fill the ranks.

“Um, Vance?”

“Yeah?”

“By any chance, are you interested in a job?”