“Cally, I’m sorry to interrupt your holiday.” Nathan had clearly already gotten word of his promotion. “If you can, Tommy should probably see this, too. We just got word that the Maise family has been hit. Their safe house apparently wasn’t. One of the kids survived and the house operator got home to find bodies and kid. He’s called for a pickup and is waiting in place. By the time you get this, we should have him in hand at least, if not on base. I’ve got the Schmidts on it, blooding some of the new guys, and I devoutly hope that won’t be literal.
“Cally, I know your first impulse is going to be to come running up here and get in the middle of it. Good. There’s going to be blood to let and despite your current responsibilities, I cannot think of a person better suited to handling this. I can’t order the acting head of Clan O’Neal, but… come.”
“Cally’s seen this already?” Tommy asked his son as the holo flicked off, automatically returning to the now forgotten game.
“Um… nobody knows where she is.”
“Oh. Yeah, her belated honeymoon is a secret. Get it from Shari or Wendy. They both know where to find her.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir.” The boy’s face was tight, and his speech was beginning to take on a clipped tone. “Mom and Shari won’t tell me where she is.”
“What?” Tommy shook his head unbelievingly. “Wait, how did you know what was on this? You played it?” He looked at his son the way only a father can look at an erring child.
“No, sir. The courier…” His son shrugged, as if it was no fault of his if another guy had run off at the mouth. He’d deal with that later. Arthur swallowed hard, so his own face must have said as much.
“Mosovich, get three of your men who are the most dialed in on Bane Sidhe protocol and get them locking this down. Mueller, go get Maise. Nothing on why. My job to break the news. Yes, we’re going to go up to Indiana, all of us, and we’re going to pick up our hunting licenses. Questions?”
“No, sir,” all three responded.
“Sounds to me like the Darhel have declared open war on the O’Neals,” Tommy said, cracking his knuckles, then rotating his head and shoulders with a series of pops. “Time to show them why that’s a terminally baaad idea. Right after I explain the… gravity of the situation to my wife.”
“I need Cally. Now,” he said grimly.
Shari sighed. “Is it really that big an emergency? The woman’s recovering from broken ribs, nearly dying again, losing a child offworld, severe overwork again, just got her—”
“Yes. It’s that bad.” His face confirmed his words.
“Honey? What the hell’s going on?” Wendy asked.
“You two need to know because you need to quash rumors and, whoever’s in the hot seat, a lot of the grunt work of clan stuff is going to fall on you.” The look he gave the two women was bleak. “The bastards hit one of our safe houses. Not agents, they went for the dependents. It was the Maises.”
“Oh my God.” Shari’s hands were clapped to her mouth, while Wendy hadn’t moved, stunned.
“It was a deliberate hit which means somebody is gunning for Bane Sidhe dependents,” Tommy said. “The younger boy made it. Of course we have to tell Maise and he goes with. Mosovich and Mueller know and will take care of breaking it to the men. Which will be when we know more. You’ll want to coordinate with them, and with whoever takes over clan management. If that’s not you.” He nodded to Shari.
Shari had survived the Posleen war solely by her virtues of not hesitating and being rock steady in a crunch. She didn’t hesitate now, pulling a buckley out off her back pocket and punching out its unlock sequence.
“Sam. Call Stewart. Tell him ‘drama queen.’ ” She paused and then looked puzzled.
“Tommy,” she asked in a very small voice. “One, how did they know where the safe house was and two, what else do they know?”
“Drama queen,” Stewart’s buckley announced.
“Your PDA has gotten to know you, honey.”
Cally rolled up on one side, laughing at him. It was only early evening, but after a supper of oysters Rockefeller, strawberries, and champagne, eaten in bed, they had decided to test the oyster myth. Having just agreed that more tests would be necessary, they were cooling off before sharing the shower.
“It’s for you. A call.” Instead of laughing, his mouth had twisted in annoyance. “Sorry,” he said, handing her the buckley.
“Drama queen?” she asked, taking it. “Yeah, gimme the call,” she told the machine, not waiting for an answer from her husband.
“Yan? This is Shari. I’m so sorry, but I need Cally. I hope I haven’t inter—” Her friend and step-granma poured the words out in an apologetic rush.
“It’s me,” Cally said. “What’s up?” She plucked idly at the red satin sheets the maid service had brought up this morning.
“You need to get to the airport. Now.” The other woman’s voice issued starkly from the buckley, tense and strained. “Okay, you’ve actually got about two hours. Talk to your friend about arrangements and just get there. Bye.”
“Call ended,” the PDA said.
Cally didn’t waste time trying to ask Stewart what was going on. He’d had emergency contact arrangements — which she’d assumed. There was an emergency. That was all they knew. She was unsurprised that the details hadn’t been forthcoming over a buckley connection. It was encrypted, of course, but as Tommy had told her so often, encryption algorithms were made to be broken.
“Okay, honey, what arrangements have you made for egress?” she asked.
“Bike. Being babysat by one of your relatives as insurance it stays in operable condition.”
“Right. I do need a shower. Do I need to pack my shit, or do I have a bug-out bag?” she asked hopefully.
Her husband clapped a hand to his chest, “Darling, I am shocked, shocked, that you thought I’d neglect something so fundamental.”
“Yeah, yeah. Thank you, I love you, and I’m going to wash off this stink. I am not going to show up to team and base smelling like a cross between a girls’ gym and a whorehouse.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“If you do, what do you figure the odds are of it being just a shower?” she asked, smirking.
“Nil, but you do have the time.”
“Point. I’d love company,” she purred.
In the event, it took her more than two hours to get to the airport. She’d forgotten what day it was, and thus forgotten about Friday traffic. She was still the first one there, traffic being an equal-opportunity hazard.
She stood on the tarmac, having bummed a smoke from Kieran, and hunched a bit under the cold mist that had started coming down. She could move into the hangar, but it felt kinda good to be outside, and the airport was a change. She and Stewart had immured themselves and spent an awful lot of time in the hotel room. Fantastic time, but still enough to give that cooped up feeling. Besides, while she’d given some control over to her other half for fun and games, now she was back full-on into her professional self. The transition was instant, for practical purposes, as soon as the call had come in.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t a bit disorienting, and it was convenient to stand in the open air, let her eyes rest on the main terminal building, which was a fair way off across the main runways, and give her headspace time to really adjust. The difference between waking up alert and ready to fight, versus taking the time to “really” wake up. Professional minus the adrenaline.
She ground the cigarette butt under the toe of her bike boots and reached for another. White-market cigs were supposed to be nonaddictive and noncarcinogenic, although that was recently debatable. They also cost the earth, with the Darhel-driven taxes, damn the fucking Elves to hell. Again. The far cheaper black-market smokes were the same old bad shit from before the war, which mattered for ordinary people. Cally and Kieran weren’t ordinary. Like any operators or critical staff, they were immune to cancer, the other lung diseases, and immune to nicotine as well. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a certain comfort from the taste of good tobacco and the hand-to-mouth habit.