“If they saw you come in, aren’t they going to be suspicious that everything is so quiet?” the five-year-old — genius, apparently — asked.
“Quite possibly. Or, they may decide I’ve somehow skipped out in fear and slipped past them. Either way, if I was here, I’d have to call the police, and I can’t do that with you here, can I?” Caspar Andreotti was getting used to treating his charge at his mental age, not his chronological one. Or was it?
“When do you think they’ll get us?” the boy asked. “I mean our rescue, not the police or other guys. Whoever you called for.”
“Soon now,” the house man answered. “Pinky, are you five, or are you just small for your age?”
“Do you think Joey—” His voice broke on his brother’s name. “Do you think Joey would have agreed to say he was six, even if he didn’t blab, if he was older?”
“No, Pinky, I guess I don’t. So why did you hide how very smart you are?”
“What, and piss off Joey that bad? Or get stuck in school early, or up a couple of grades and be the punching bag of all the bigger boys? Or treated like a freak?” The last contained a note of hurt mixed with bravado — whistling in the dark — that told Andreotti that feeling like a freak hit way too close to home for the child.
“You are smart, aren’t you? Never be ashamed of being smart, Pinky. It just saved your life.” The grown man, closest thing present to a father, made sure he was both serious, respectful, and above all approving.
Talented and deserving of respect, or freakishly different with the need to keep hiding for self-preservation. Those were the stakes. If Pinky was “scary smart,” which he was, then he needed to grow into a whole, functional “scary smart” guy. The Bane Sidhe needed those. Caspar hadn’t missed the note of hero worship in the boy when he’d said “spy.” In many people, that would be a red flag of unsuitability. This child was a natural. The organization’s problem would be in deciding where to place him to do the most good.
The kid was never going to enjoy New Year’s Eve again. Come to think of it, Andreotti figured they had that in common.
“Just one more question,” Andreotti said.
“What?”
“How in the hell did you find out my combination?”
Mueller had almost enough sense of self-preservation to avoid eyeing the O’Neal women. Married wasn’t always a problem on a distant deployment, but this wasn’t that. It was still a separation, with his wife and kids up in Indiana, underground with the people running this whole conspiracy.
A hundred miles away or a thousand, it still wore on a man. The girl with the damned gorgeous heart-shaped ass had to be an O’Neal. She had this kind of light brownish-red hair with blond streaks. The red on female islanders, he had been warned, was like the red of mushrooms or tropical fish — a danger signal. Still, as she turned, the sweater she was wearing gave him a good silhouette of the top rack. She caught his eyes and smiled, before walking away to wherever she’d been going. She looked back over her shoulder at him, briefly, as she went. He got another smile.
He also got a thwack upside the head from Mosovich, whom he hadn’t noticed coming up behind him. Situational awareness versus pretty girl was no contest. Especially in his condition.
“Forget it. She’s a widow,” he said. “No, don’t get any ideas that means ‘available.’ She’s a very recent widow. Like, of the action a couple of weeks ago.”
He didn’t have to say “off limits.” The code was clear. Her departed husband had to be in the ground for a decent interval of time before she became available — and then he’d have to compete with all the guys who had also noticed her ass and tits, and a face that was distinctly not bad. A married guy with kids wasn’t going to be — shouldn’t be — high on her list.
“She didn’t look very bereaved,” Mueller heard himself say, earning another thwack to the back of his head.
“Down, boy. You know as well as I do — doesn’t matter.” Mosovich looked entirely willing to keep hitting him on the head as long as it took.
“Who was the poor bastard?”
“Ned Mortinson. Who turns out to have been fifty-something.”
“Really? I hadn’t had him picked out as a juv.”
“Apparently he didn’t have himself picked out as one, either. She’s about twenty. For real. It wasn’t a match made in heaven.”
“You know her life history?”
“The O’Neals gossip like hell, turns out. Once you get in past their obsessive opsec. I asked around for a few basics before writing letters,” Jake said.
“Obsessive opsec. Sounds like a very good thing to me.”
“Yup. But on the island here? The world’s biggest gossips — and not just the women. You could run a wine cellar on their grapevine.”
“You gotta admit she’s got one hell of a nice ass. Nice every—” Mueller sighed and drew himself up straighter from his habitually straight posture. “Yes, sir. What’s on the schedule today?”
Chapter Nine
George Schmidt didn’t like leading patched-together teams. This one was a thrown-together extraction unit, seeing that Papa was off-planet, Tommy was generaling, and Cally was incommunicado in what Shari O’Neal assured him was a vital matter for Clan O’Neal. Since he wasn’t an O’Neal, by the Bane Sidhe’s unwritten operating rules, that pretty much required him to drop the matter. He didn’t have to like it. So he had Harrison as a wheelman, but he also had three random guys. One from Kaleb, whom he trusted, and two guys from DAG who’d been sitting around on base cooling their heels. Landrum was a good enough guy — raised Bane Sidhe like Schmidt himself, experienced operating as part of DAG, but a total cherry on Bane Sidhe ops. Kerry and Michaels were unknown quantities, though not to Landrum, who vouched for his teammates.
The rationale for landing him with three cherries was an extra man to make up for inexperience. Yeah, right. One more guy to maybe make a bad mistake operating like someone with a nation state’s government behind them and the general approval of the Darhel. These guys’ knowledge that Toto and Dorothy weren’t in Kansas anymore was only intellectual. He figured the real reason for three newbies was to use the opportunities to get new men broken in on fieldwork fast, and to stave off troop boredom. The first rule of managing these guys was that you did not want to let them get bored. A bored specwar operator was a bad specwar operator. Consummate professionals left too long without work would find themselves something to do — and whatever it was, nobody else would like it. Okay, a few female types might have a great time, but that was only a best case scenario.
DAG had no female operators. Bane Sidhe base had a good handful of upgraded juvs on hand at any given time. The Bane Sidhe guys knew the score, but the FNGs generally weren’t going to believe these women were their superiors in strength and probably in training, too, until they were in a world of hurt. George himself had heard a pretty damned funny after-action report on Father O’Reilly’s little talk with the women after the first incident. Unfortunately, she’d been incredibly gentle, and the guy had been shipped off right away to Island O’Neal. It wasn’t that the guy had exactly refused to take no for an answer; he had more misunderstood the signals and the lady took offense. A broken jaw had a remarkably immediate sobering effect on a man. Anyway, the light damage and speed of his disappearance left the potential discipline problem intact. One of the problems with Nathan’s more administrative and priestly background was that, good as he was with people, he didn’t always get the ops types. Almost always, but there it was: almost.