Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
“ W here are we going?”
It seemed like they had been driving a long time, which wasn’t unusual since Maine was huge and most of it was uninhabited. Once you ventured away from the dotted coastline, you really felt the vastness. Though she was a resident, Georgie didn’t venture out of her small town too much. It was nice to get away, even if she had no idea where she was headed, and she took a while to stare out the window and appreciate the scenery before she spoke. Would he even tell her? Burke was so mysterious, so secretive. Or was that only her imagination because she knew he used to be a spy?
“We’re going to see The Oracle,” he replied.
Georgie sputtered a laugh that was so unexpected it sounded like someone stepped on a donkey’s foot. She pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to push back the ridiculous sound, but Burke merely smiled and tossed her an amused glance.
“Why is that funny?” he demanded.
“You never say what I think you’ll say.”
“Why would you think you’d know what I’ll say? I never know what you’re going to say. It’s always a surprise.”
Georgie stared at his profile. The question had been rhetorical. He didn’t actually expect an answer, but her brain tried to think of one anyway. Why did she believe she knew what Burke would say? Based on character traits she’d assigned him?
Her world was tiny and always had been, made that way by her profound hearing loss. Not by Georgie’s choice, and that was unfair. She’d always liked people, but few were willing to take the extra steps necessary to be her friend. Previously she’d always thought this was her fault. Why should people go out of their way for her? But Burke made her challenge that sentiment. All she asked was that people look at her while talking to her. Was that so much?
When people failed to do so, Georgie reacted by shrinking into herself. As a result, her world shrunk, too. Until recently it had consisted of Brody and her friends from culinary school, none of whom lived nearby.
But then Elyse showed up, and she hadn’t treated Georgie differently than she treated anyone else, hadn’t acted as if facing her when she spoke was something she even had to think about, let alone didn’t want to do. And then Burke who, while not exactly warm and cozy, had certainly never made Georgette feel less than because of her hearing loss. Rather he seemed annoyed with humanity in general. But who was Burke, and what was he to her?
Most of what Georgie knew about life she’d gleaned from books and magazines. She was the girl with her face pressed to the glass of life, observing others, never participating. She’d learned to categorize people and then judge them based on that category. It was a highly flawed system, notably biased by her limited experience and understanding. Real people were never like they were in fiction. Perhaps that accounted for so much of Georgie’s disappointment: unmet expectations. No one ever matched the version of them she created in her head.
Enter Burke.
She didn’t have a vision in her head for him, mostly because she had no idea what he was. Roommate? Tenant? Handyman? Hobo? Her mind constantly flicked through the catalogue of known archetypes, always searching for Burke. It continued to come up empty. And now he was taking her to see “The Oracle.”
Who was this person?
Strange that she had no answer for that question, and yet she trusted him completely. Why, though? Was it because Elyse trusted him? That was part of it. Clearly Elyse knew him well enough to tell Georgie if he was unsafe. But it was something more than that, some instinct that told Georgie it was okay to put herself in Burke’s hands. It was more than physical safety. She had that with her brother. But Brody wasn’t exactly known for his ease with her emotions. She felt like she always had to tamp them down, so as not to burden him further by exposing her crazy. Burke, though he hadn’t exactly known what to do with her at first, hadn’t shied away from her difficult feelings. He’d just let her feel them, hadn’t tried to rationalize her out of them or fix the problem. There was so much freedom in that, so much space to be herself, whoever that was.
“So, where exactly is this Oracle?” she asked after another long stretch of silence. He was comfortable with silence, and she liked that about him. Georgie couldn’t stand a lot of background noise; it overwhelmed her senses that constantly tried to parse, attempting to separate important noise from inconsequential. Hearing people took for granted how much of their brain space was used for processing all the noises they took in during the day. Georgie’s brain had to be much more involved in the process; it made her keenly aware of all of it.
“Nowhere you’ve ever heard of,” he said.
“I’ve lived in Maine all my life,” she reminded him.
“It’s not exactly on the map, which is sort of the point of it,” Burke said. She didn’t think he meant to be cryptic, rather he understood in a way she couldn’t. And since she probably wouldn’t be able to until they arrived, she sat back and enjoyed the scenery.
Even though she’d slept in more than she had in recent months, she still felt drowsy, lulled by the gentle vibration of the car and the monotonous scenery. One could only take in so many oversized pine trees before the mind began to drift.
The next thing she knew the car had stopped and Burke rested a gentle hand on her forearm. Her eyes snapped open and saw him saying something to her. “We’re here.”
Georgie blinked the sleep out of her eyes, sat up, and looked around. They were still in the woods, which told her nothing. Away from the coast, most of Maine was woods. In the distance she saw a small building and in the time it took her to fully wake, Burke had rounded the car and opened her door for her. She hadn’t taken him for the overtly gentlemanly type, but there was a lot she didn’t know about him. When he extended a hand to help her out, she thought he might actually be a tiny bit chivalrous, another surprise to add to her growing collection.
There was no electricity running to the small shack, or at least none Georgie could see, but when they reached the door, Burke held his palm to a keypad that looked as if it had been pulled from the spaceship Enterprise. The door slicked open with a soft hiss and then clicked closed behind them, as soon as they were safely inside. Lights flicked on, and they must have been motion detection because Burke didn’t touch anything.
He sat at a desk in front of the largest computer Georgie had ever seen. She eased closer and tried to take in the full scope of it. It took up an entire 8 foot wall, with multiple processors and what must have been acres of wire.
“What is this place?” she muttered.
He glanced at her, motioning toward the wall. “I told you, The Oracle.”
“The Oracle is a computer?” she exclaimed.
“What else?” he said.
“An elderly voodoo woman, renowned for her mystic understanding,” she said.
“That was the old Oracle. She got fired and we replaced her with a computer,” he said, smiling when Georgie snickered.
She wandered around the tiny space, which didn’t take long, and then made herself stand still so she didn’t pace back and forth. She wanted to explore outside but was afraid she would get lost in the woods. She considered asking Burke to explain what this was, but didn’t want to make him have to turn around and face her while he was doing whatever he was doing. With nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no explanations forthcoming, she sat criss-cross applesauce on the floor, trying to be patient.
He took less time than she thought he might. After a bit of typing on his part, he stood and pushed the chair in, holding out a hand to help Georgette off the floor.
“You’re done?” she asked.
“I’m done,” he affirmed.
“When do I get to know what this was about?” she asked.
“As soon as we’re back in the car.” He didn’t turn off the lights to the building or lock the door, but those things happened automatically. Georgie stared at the little shack, trying to figure it out.
“What?” Burke asked, observing her pause.
“How is there power here? A generator wouldn’t be able to power that computer,” she noted.
He put his arm around her shoulders and herded her toward the car. “Military tech that isn’t available to the public, and that’s all I can say about that,” he said.
“Like some kind of perpetual energy?” she asked, brows aloft.
“I can’t say,” he replied.
“You could, actually, because I wouldn’t understand a word of it. Kitchen chemistry is the extent of my scientific knowledge.”
He waited to speak again until they were tucked in the car. “Let’s skip the how and get to the what.”
“What what? I am so confused,” Georgie said, putting a hand to her head. Was this actual spy work? What else could it be? How odd to see Burke that way. She knew he had worked for the intelligence community, but she had no idea he was still active. She’d assumed he was unemployed. “How are you allowed to go in there? I thought you didn’t work for the government anymore.”
“I don’t,” he said.
Her eyes bugged. “Did you just break in?”
His lips twitched. “Why are you whispering?”
She touched her fingers to her lips. “Am I? I had no idea. I thought I yelled that last part.”
“It was a whisper hiss.”
“Huh.” She wondered what that sounded like, suddenly self-conscious. Did other people whisper hiss? Georgie had no idea.
“To answer your question, I still have clearance on certain things. I wanted to take a peek at The Oracle to see what it’s been picking up from our area.”
Georgie blinked at him. “You’re telling me that computer in a shack in the woods has been spying on my neighbors?”
He nodded. “And you, too. Basically all of New England.”
Impossibly, her eyes widened. Was it possible to strain eye muscles? She was about to find out. “What? How?”
“Again, the how is not something I can tell you,” he said.
“All right, then tell me the what. Or maybe the why?”
“What?” he said, tipping his head.
“Burke,” she exclaimed. “What is going on? Please help a confused girl out. This is not my world, you remember. As an innkeeper, I can’t remember the last time I went to a secret government facility to check in on my spy gear.”
“That would be a definite way to get a leg up on the competition,” he said.
“Burke,” she said.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. I can’t go into detail, but let’s say there’s a way to fine tune the intel, to cherry pick certain sectors to check on what’s going on.”
“And you checked our sector?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
He took a breath and let it out slowly, checking her expression as if to gauge what he was about to impart. “Last night, the person you saw, they evaded my cameras.”
She’d forgotten about the cameras, but how? She was appalled and upset by that. “We’ll circle back to the cameras, but I still don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.”
“Because it’s not something amateurs do, not something a local burglar would understand or even think of. The cameras are well hidden. How did he know to avoid them unless he’d been trained for it? And if he’d been trained for it, then I need to cast a wider net. Possibly a federal or international net.”
“You said ‘international’ like it has fifteen syllables,” she noted. “What’s significant about that?”
“Nothing, usually. But there are certain places that, when you see them on a list, send a shudder through you because of what you know about them,” he said.
“And you saw one of those places? Or The Oracle showed you one? I’m so confused.” She put her hand to her head again.
“I saw a little bit of chatter, enough to make me wary. I need to do a little poking around, see what’s going on,” he said.
“How do you do that? How do you begin to investigate ‘international chatter.’”
“We start in the most logical place,” Burke said.
“Mars? At this point nothing is logical to me,” Georgie replied.
“No, we begin with your brother.”