Plans and Certainties #3
“Which one of us?” Dean asked, sounding eager. Reg hated to break it to him, but he’d seen how things worked. There was one person at their house right now he could send to talk to Adelle Barerra who wouldn’t attract attention.
“Mom.”
“What?” Dean and Marcus both exploded, and Reg did what he’d always done.
He stayed quiet and let the two big brains—and big mouths—in the room rage while he waited to explain himself.
His siblings were a lot. A lot of personality, words, brains, charm, confidence—a lot.
Reg had always been a little. One of the little kids, whose sole job was to make sure the other little kid—the one who would wander into the middle of the street to grab a puppy or chase a butterfly off a cliff or amble off with a stranger because they had a nice smile—didn’t do any of those things while at the same time not letting the puppy die, the butterfly go unnoticed, or the stranger go unremarked and not reported to the appropriate sibling or parental figure.
He’d been encouraged to have his own interests, dream his own dreams, go his own way, and he had. But he’d done it by weaving in and out of all the human mileposts in his life, leaving small paths but no markers, so that a little did not get bulldozed by a lot.
It was not so much that he was afraid of being seen, but being invisible was a very handy habit to have.
Unbidden came that sweet whisper of a kiss from Anthony, who appeared to have seen Reg from the very beginning when Reg would have sworn Chance’s bright sun had made that impossible.
Well, Anthony was Anthony—but Dean and Marcus were Dean and Marcus, and he was just going to have to wait them out.
While he waited, he started rerouting the pathways Gael Barerra had tried to track his setup through, killing some uplinks and rerouting through others so the next time he did something like that he’d be ready.
He got so involved in his work he didn’t realize the room had gone silent until Marcus cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Reg said, fingers still working, eyes still glued to the screen.
“Are you going to explain yourself?”
Reg grunted, finished the uplink, and hit Save before turning to the both of them. “Middle-aged white women are invisible,” he said. “Mothers and grandmothers visit the school by the dozens. As long as she wears her granny sweats—”
“The ones her sister keeps sending her?” Dean asked, wrinkling his nose.
Aunt Sharon tended to favor old people’s clothes in conservative colors, while Julie Royal liked bright, flowy hippy dresses, often with flowers, which did not flatter anybody’s figure.
She didn’t care. She loved flowers. Her children bought her dresses and tunics in brilliant mismatched colors by the dozens, and she lit up like fireworks at every birthday and Christmas.
But she kept the sweats for when Aunt Sharon visited or FaceTimed.
“Yes,” Reg said. “And yes, they’re appalling and not Mom at all.
But if she wears one of those outfits to the school and tells them she’d like to talk to Adelle about a student—I can give her a name—they’ll let her in.
The same ICE asshole she mouthed off to today will not see her tomorrow, I guarantee it.
And we can make plans for today and get a message to Adelle and Ilia’s mother tomorrow, and if I show you how to deliver untraceable messages, I can get the boys wherever we’re going to send them, and we can keep each other in the loop. ”
Marcus and Dean stared at him.
“It’s a good plan,” Marcus said hesitantly.
“It’s a great plan,” Dean said, nodding, and Reg warmed, because Dean was the smartest of them and that was high praise. “It’s only got one little tiny flaw.”
“NO,” REG argued fifteen minutes later.
“Yes,” Dean said implacably.
“No. He has nothing to do with this.” Reg’s voice was rising, but that was because they’d been having this argument, on or off, for fifteen goddamned minutes.
They’d figured out where to bring the boys and their respective parents, if the parents agreed.
While the US had recently burned all its international bridges, some people—the people who actually made the country work, like Dean, Marcus, and Val—still had cachet.
Val had managed to keep his business afloat through the tariff nonsense by loopholes, cleverness, and, Reg was pretty sure, downright cooking his books and chicanery.
Dean and Marcus had continued to hunt for bad guys—and tip off their counterparts in their adjoining countries—with blatant disregard to policies designed to cut all law enforcement off at the knees.
It was called passive resistance, and it came very easy to the Royal family, because a lot of their lives had been spent keeping their heads down and working hard while standing up for other people at the same time.
Reg saw his siblings doing it—because he was a master at it—and the results in this situation were that Val had a way to sneak the family into Canada to meet with Dean and Marcus’s contact, who would get them straight to the embassy and into a witness protection program.
The trick would be to get the women to the border in separate vehicles via separate routes.
Dean and Marcus were damned good at surveillance and at breaking the surveillance of hostile forces, and they insisted that the families couldn’t meet until they were safe.
This meant that—if everybody agreed—Dean and his mother were taking an unplanned trip to Seattle, where Val would pick up their cargo, while Reg drove to Vancouver, Washington, to drop the boys off there.
Marcus couldn’t go. His legs and back had been damaged by the plane crash that had almost killed him, and he could only stay in one position for so long. Reg’s point about Julie being invisible was uncomfortable, but it was also true.
A sweet little middle-aged white lady with her knitting and her bland-colored sweats was practically a secret weapon, but Dean knew how to wield real weapons, and he also knew tactical driving techniques, so their vehicle would have both advantages.
Reg had to go with the boys. He had their trust, and he’d been an unknown quantity at the school that day, a volunteer that only Adelle and the kids knew, and nobody would ask the kids anything.
Children and young adults were not only heinously bullied by both ICE and street gangs, they were also ignored unless they were being exploited.
Reg was pretty sure nobody would get his name, although he also knew he was going to have to borrow somebody’s SUV to get the kids to Vancouver.
All this he knew. He and Dean and Marcus had planned this in between the fight they’d started at the very beginning and were still having even as they finished all the details, like where the SUV was going to come from, because he didn’t want to shove two teenagers in the back of his hybrid for what was going to be a very cramped three-day journey, with few hotels and rest stops on the way.
“He doesn’t need to come!” Reg yelled now, mostly to break up the no/yes/no/yes/no/yes rhythm.
He and Dean had been taking turns on the computer as they argued—Dean getting in touch with his buddy who worked for Canada’s version of border security and special circumstances while Reg uplinked and killed different pathways to keep his equipment safe and their location as secret as possible.
“You need backup!” Dean yelled, taking the keyboard from Reg and making a final flourish. “Marcus can’t come with you, Dad’s needed here to relay information, and Prock hates guns!”
“Anthony is teaching me how to shoot,” Reg defended, and Dean snorted.
“Great. I don’t doubt you’re great at it, Reg, but you’re not ready to fire with your left hand out the window while tactical driving with your right hand as you escape bad guys. It’s called riding shotgun for a goddamned reason!”
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!” Anthony yelled as he burst through the door. “This room is soundproofed, you morons, and I’ve been asked to break up the Battle of the Fuckin’ Bulge in the middle of the family den! What’s all this about?”
“My dumbass brother!” they both yelled at the same time, and Dean shoved the keyboard back at Reg while they maintained furious glares.
Marcus cleared his throat. “Dean,” he said courteously while Reg rerouted his uplinks for one more goddamned conversation, “would like his brother to ask you to accompany him on a road trip with two horny teenagers in order to get them to safety. Reg, on the other hand, seems to think that’s an imposition on your time and would like to go by himself. ”
Anthony grunted, and Reg couldn’t even spare him a glance, because his secret computer skills had been tested and retested this night and he couldn’t afford to break up his rhythm.
“No, we’re not letting him go by himself,” Anthony said. “Let me call my manager. I take it my dad is needed to meet up with Val for this one?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “I’m sorry—”
“No worries. Bailey’s dad is actually registered and certified at small weapons—Bailey ratted him out. Connor would love to come teach classes this week. He brought the kids over while you were waging WWII reenactments. He was in Desert Storm, you know.”
“I did not,” Dean said, looking surprised.
“Well, he’s like the rest of you. Unless it’s worth screaming about through soundproofed walls, apparently it’s not worth talking about.”
Reg actually felt Anthony’s glare at the back of his head.
“Uhm—”
“If you can give me the keys to your apartment, Reg, I’ll go pack for you, then go get my own gear. I just need a—”
“My vehicle’s in the driveway, and Reg’s key is on the ring, marked in blue,” Dean said, digging through his pockets since Reg’s fingers were busy. “Don’t dawdle, McCauley—I want us all under the same roof tonight.”