“Shooter must have taken it,” Roland said. He pointed. “Got a wire running to the Arch.”
“Moms will get ’em,” Nada said with more confidence than he felt. “Let’s—” he began, but an urgent transmission cut him off.
“Snake down, Snake down.” Eagle’s voice was faint, but the words were clear.
“Moms?” Nada asked.
“I’m trapped in the cockpit,” Eagle said. “I can’t see the cargo bay. Transponder is on. We’re on the other side of the river. We’ve lost containment.”
The first police car roared up, cops leaping out, screaming for the three Nightstalkers to drop their weapons.
“Fuck me to tears,” Nada muttered as he lowered his automatic rifle.
CHAPTER 2
“I’d like some French toast,” Scout said, and her mother shot her a look as if she’d asked for a shot of pure heroin.
Scout’s mother was terrified of calories. She was making an egg-white omelet and some asparagus. And not much of either.
Mother also didn’t like that her daughter insisted that her name was now Scout. This change had occurred the previous summer when all sorts of strange things had happened in the gated community in North Carolina they’d lived in while Scout’s dad worked in the Research Triangle. Gas explosions, mysterious fires, strange people out and about; it had all been quite unnerving for Mother and she’d been happy to see North Carolina in the rearview mirror. Unfortunately, Tennessee in the windshield didn’t seem much different, with just the Smoky Mountains in front or behind.
At first she’d ignored Scout’s name request, an irresistible force against an immovable object.
The object won, because Scout simply refused to acknowledge her given name, Greer.
It only took her twenty-six days and forcing her mother to watch To Kill a Mockingbird and then leaving it on, playing off the DVR on a constant loop. Every time her mother turned it off, Scout turned it back on. It also didn’t hurt her cause that she had an aunt, a cousin, and a grandmother who were also named Greer and the whole mess got quite confusing at times.
Scout was easier all around was the way her mother finally rationalized it. A phase the seventeen-year-old would grow out of.
But Scout was who she was.
Of course, Scout also knew giving up Greer meant she was the outsider, not of the clan, but she’d never really been inside, so it shouldn’t have bothered her that her mother now called her Scout. She’d wanted it and her mother had given in. Victory.
But the still-child part of Scout kind of wished her mother hadn’t given in. She was wise enough to realize that sometimes people gave in when the fight wasn’t worth it because they simply didn’t care that much.
Awareness was a bitch.
Scout’s hair was now red with blue streaks, since Scout believed change was good. Short and spiked. A lot of kids laughed at it in the new school that first day in January, but Scout had noted the ones who didn’t laugh. Who watched. She knew Nada would have approved. Eggs and ham, or ham and eggs. There was a lot of difference.
She missed Nada. She missed the team. She didn’t even resent that they’d knocked her out to go do whatever they’d gone to go do, although the online newspaper had reported a lab explosion on campus at UNC. Yeah, right, Scout had thought upon reading that. Had Nightstalkers written all over it. The team really needed better cover stories. They’d left without a good-bye or fare-thee-well. Still, she’d understood on a base level that Nightstalkers never said good-bye.
It was too permanent a thing in a business where there were more serious permanent things.
“I’m going riding today,” Scout said, settling in on the bar stool at the perfectly clean granite kitchen bar. “I need the carbs.”
The sun had come up over the Smokies to the southeast an hour and a half ago and Scout was raring to go, way too early for most seventeen-year-old girls, but Scout was anything but normal.
The house was new, but unlike cars, it didn’t have a new house smell. Actually, it smelled pretty much of nothing. No character, no essence. It sat alone at the end of a cul-de-sac in a new, isolated subdivision outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, on the wrong side of the river but the right side of the railroad tracks. Scout often said the latter to irritate her parents, who’d sacrificed distance from Dad’s work for price per square footage. She had no idea which side of the railroad tracks they were on, although she could hear the train coming through, hooting and tooting every so often.
The nearest house was still under construction and it depressed Scout to count the five electrical boxes lined up along the street between their house and that one, because that meant while the houses were large, the lots were small and if this place got fully developed, she’d be able to jump from rooftop to rooftop. Big houses, tiny lots.
And the closest tree was a quarter mile away, as the developer had bought out a dairy farmer’s field and was trying to squeeze every possible nickel out of the real estate. Beyond that tree, huge power lines crossed the river, metal towers on each shoreline holding them up. This was TVA country, Tennessee Valley Authority, and the whole place thrived on power. The Smoky Mountains were to the southeast, but not visible from the front of the house, because rolling hills blocked the view. They could be seen from the roof if one stood on one’s toes; Scout knew this because she’d gone up on the roof one day when no one was home and stood up on her toes.
On the plus side, unlike Senator’s Club in North Carolina, there was no gate. Of course, as far out in the middle of nowhere as they were, it didn’t seem like there was going to be much traffic. No one came to this neighborhood by accident; it was on a bend of the Tennessee River, a thumb of land four miles long by two wide. To get to the other side of the river, where Knoxville was, one had to wind through miles of mostly single-lane roads to a larger road, to Interstate 140 (which ran all of twenty miles from I-40 to Maryville) and cross on the I-140 bridge, or take Alcoa Highway into downtown Knoxville. Traffic on that road (locals called it “I’ll Kill You”) was so bad, one literally took their lives into their hands just trying to merge into the speeding flow of people anxious to get to wherever was so important they were willing to risk their lives for it.
On the upside, the sloping backyard ended at the Tennessee River. And even better, beyond the cul-de-sac, on the other side of the wooden fence, was a huge spread with an old house and a barn and a bunch of cows, and most importantly a stable where Scout’s horse Comanche was housed.
Scout could tell her mother was wavering, glancing at the pantry.
“Please? Comanche gets carbs. I won’t get any lunch and I’m starving.” Scout wasn’t sure if oats were carbs, but Comanche definitely ate better than she did.
“A moment on the lips—” her mother began, but Scout cut that one off at the fridge.
“If you say a lifetime on the hips, I’m gonna scream.” Scout opened the door to the fridge and pulled out the real eggs. Then she opened the bread bin. “Face it, Mother. The food thing is your deal and I don’t float my boat by keeping my lips sealed to real food. That’s yours.”
“It’s everyone’s deal,” her mother said. “This country is in bad shape.”
“Yeah,” Scout muttered, putting the eggs on the bar. “Everyone’s worried a size two is twice as fat as a size zero.”
“What was that, dear?”
“Nothing,” Scout said as she headed for the stairs.
She glanced over her shoulder before she turned the corner on the landing and saw her mother staring into the bread bin as if it contained a snarling possum. Scout sighed and continued the trek to the upper level, thinking of her grandmother, Nana, who couldn’t feed her enough and her mother who wanted her to subsist on air and egg whites. Why the disconnect in subsequent generations? As if a parent had to do opposite their own, and everything skipped one generation, causing never-ending turmoil and misunderstanding.