Chapter Seven Piper
Chapter Seven
Piper
Piper got in her car after the PTA meeting and glanced at her dashboard. Nineteen minutes until pickup. Not enough time to go home. Not enough time to make a full run at Target or the grocery store.
It always seemed to work out this way. She felt like she spent entire days killing odd amounts of time.
Seventeen minutes to kill between the end of school and Olivia’s tap class. Twenty-three minutes to kill between voice lessons and the epic commute out to Caitlin’s Irish dance class. Thirteen minutes to kill between Bella’s ballet class and SpongeBob rehearsal.
Heaving a deep sigh, she put the car into gear and headed for the school pickup line.
She pulled in behind a gray minivan emblazoned with Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings decals, a Hollin Terrace Elementary and Middle School bumper sticker (Where learning is fun!) plus an assortment of busy badges for a dizzying array of hockey, baseball, and soccer teams. They even had a bumper sticker advertising their orthodontist.
She rolled her eyes. Did these people never think about security?
The rear of her car remained naked and unadorned.
Political bumper stickers were an invitation for people on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum to cut you off in traffic.
School and activity stickers told everyone who you were and where you were going.
Why would anyone in their right mind do that?
“Because they have nothing to fear and nothing to hide.”
That’s what Trina, her federally mandated therapist, had said when she’d mentioned this particular form of vehicular insanity.
“Nice people support their school and their soccer league by giving them free advertising space on the back of their car,” Trina had explained.
But of course, Trina could afford to think this way, because Trina didn’t receive death threats from insane people on X.
Unlike Piper.
I have a special knife in my pocket right now. It’s one I plan to use when I skin you alive.
Her muscles clenched as the latest message he’d posted on X last week echoed through her mind.
I can’t wait to kill you slowly and watch you die. I’ll start by removing your clothes. Then your fingers. You will feel the same pain you’ve inflicted on me.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and visualized a box. She placed each word inside the box, shut the lid, turned a giant key, and locked it tight.
Then she opened her eyes, pulled out her phone, and typed a quick text message to Mike Rodriguez, her old boss.
Just checking in . . . anything new on Hawkeye Slaughter?
A few minutes went by; then the response came back. Call me.
Her heart dropped. This couldn’t be good.
She punched in the number, and he picked up on the first ring.
“Here’s the deal.” Mike always cut right to the chase. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for whatever he was about to say. “Hawkeye is gone.”
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” The question came out an octave too high, shrill and laced with panic.
“He disappeared. He was last seen at an urban prepper expo two weeks ago in Virginia, taking selfies with his many YouTube fans. He said something about going dark to prepare for the ‘Great Unraveling.’ No one has seen him since.”
“So we have no idea where he is?”
Mike sighed. “We think he purchased a property in the Shenandoah Valley, but he did it through an LLC, so it’s harder to trace. He’s much smarter than your average doomsday prophet slash posse comitatus nutjob.”
“Great.” She rubbed her hand across the back of her neck. “In a world filled with psychotic conspiracy theorists, I manage to piss off the smart one.”
“He’s well funded too. Don’t forget that. He sold his check-cashing business right before his wife died, and he now has millions to play with.”
“This is really disturbing, Mike.”
“I know . . .” Mike admitted. “But maybe he’s—”
“Taken up yoga and joined an ashram?” she offered hopefully.
“It’s possible.”
“But not probable,” she said, her heart sinking.
“We do have one lead . . .”
She heard the pause in his voice, and it made her heart stop. “Yes?”
“Well, we think he may have joined forces with an antitechnology militia with ties to a violent domestic terror group. They just tried to burn a 5G cell phone tower near Richmond.”
“What?” She stared up at the pen marks one of her children had somehow managed to scribble on the ceiling of her SUV. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I know. It’s not good,” Mike admitted.
“We think this extremist group is running a training camp on the property he purchased. Based on some of the people he follows on Twitter—I mean X—and some of the things he’s posted .
. . well, we think he may have invited these groups to join him physically this time, not just ideologically. ”
She rubbed her temple, an ineffective attempt to ward off the early pricking of a massive stress-induced headache. “What kind of militia?”
“Oh, you know, garden-variety insanity. Anti–law enforcement. Anti–federal government. Anti-technology. Preparing for the coming revolution. That kind of thing.”
“But I still don’t understand why—”
“He lost his wife,” Mike said gently. “They were married for twenty-eight years. Six months before she died, he lost his only child in a car accident. The kid was texting while driving. And as far as we can tell, those losses kind of . . . put him over the edge. Now he’s an angry, violent man with a lot of money and nothing left to lose.
And he blames technology for his son’s death.
He’s started threatening tech-company CEOs.
And he blames you for the loss of his wife. ”
“But I didn’t—”
“Kill anyone?” he interrupted. “Of course you didn’t.
But you work for the federal government, and he needs a target for his rage.
His wife could have had that heart attack sitting in her driveway.
Instead she had it while sitting in the traffic jam we created by shutting down the Fourteenth Street Bridge. ”
“The traffic jam I created,” she said bitterly.
“We created,” he insisted. “There were at least fifteen people involved in that decision. You just happened to be the one sitting in the chair when the music stopped.”
She leaned back against the headrest. “And now people are offering to weaponize his anger.”
There was a beat of silence as Mike acknowledged the truth of this statement. Then he said, “I’ll keep you posted. Try not to worry.”
“That’s like telling a fish not to swim.”
“I know.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “My girls are about to get in the car so . . .”
“I understand,” Mike said. “Listen, we all know what this guy is threatening to do . . . and we’re on it. I promise.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
“And we’re keeping your seat warm. It’s not the same without you . . . and those cupcakes Olivia makes.”
She smiled. Olivia had discovered baking last year, and her experiments had kept the office well supplied with treats.
“I appreciate that. Talk to you later.”
She pressed the red button on her phone, ending the call. Then she tossed it into her purse in frustration.
How was she supposed to protect her girls when she couldn’t even protect herself?
Shouts, screams, and scratching noises brought her attention back to more immediate concerns.
She glanced out the window, where an ocean of children surrounded her SUV. The sounds of a zombie apocalypse and the sounds of children attempting to get in the car at the end of the school day were remarkably similar.
She pressed the unlock button, and Bella and Olivia climbed inside, both chattering like magpies.
Caitlin approached from the middle school side of the parking lot. She said nothing as she climbed into the car. Piper shot her a worried look. She’d seemed quieter since the conversation about Alex Orlov. More withdrawn.
But her sisters flooded the car with noise.
“Mom, did you order my new tap shoes?”
“Colton Lindenhurst pulled his pants down in PE today.”
“I’m starving. Did you bring snacks?”
“I left my water bottle at home, and I was dying of thirst all day.”
Piper’s conscience prickled with guilt. She had seen the forgotten water bottle on the kitchen counter after school drop-off that morning and pretended like she hadn’t.
“Teddy Maxwell got a new pair of Nike tennis shoes that cost $400, and Gabriel Adelson smeared ketchup all over them at lunch. He was so mad.”
She’d heard a mother of boys once complain that her sons didn’t talk about their day. She’d jokingly asked Piper to provide a transcript of everything she heard in her car on the way home from school so she’d know what was going on.
A quiet car . . . What would that even be like? With self-reproach in her heart, she pushed away this temporary longing for silence. She wouldn’t trade her beautiful, funny, chatty girls for anything on the planet. But sometimes . . . well, sometimes they were a lot.
“Move over, Bella, you’re sitting on my tiara.”
She headed left out of the school parking lot, and into an afternoon and evening of logistics calibrated down to the minute. Dance. Voice. Piano. Pick up sandwiches at Subway. Eat in the car. Then the big event of the day, Bella’s opening night performance as a scallop in SpongeBob: The Musical.
Piper closed her eyes and tried to quell the anxious tension roiling her gut. Then she asked the universe to open the emergency supply of patience she would need to get through the rest of her day.