Chapter 36
caitlyn
The encryption key worked. When Vera told me she memorized it, I was skeptical to begin with, and when she listed off a sixty-four-digit code, skeptical didn’t begin to describe it, but sure enough, it unlocked the system, and the mess of fields started to unscramble as they came into their real order.
“How do you even do that?” I said, turning in my chair down in the computer lab to look at where Vera was leaning against a server rack. “I mean, just memorize an entire sequence like that.”
“Some basic techniques. Break it down into chunks and use an encoding system to translate it into easy data.”
I folded my arms. “You’re making that up.”
She smirked. “I’d give you the details, but they’re trade secrets. Been trained in this since I was half your age.”
“I can’t believe my sister married an assassin.”
“She’s got a powerful personality.” She came over and leaned over the workspace, looking at the computer screen projected up on the wall, some heavy regressions running slowly to parse the patterns. “She’d probably be good at this line of work.”
I scowled at her. “So… what? Are you in love with her?”
“Well, it would be a shame to marry someone you didn’t love. Don’t marry for money, Caitlyn.”
“I know,” I laughed. “I wasn’t planning to. But you’re dodging the question with jokes.”
She gave me a deadpan look. “She’s very good in bed.”
“Eww. Don’t tell me that about my sister.” I shook my head. “So you are actually together?”
“It’s a temporary arrangement that’s convenient for both of us.”
She was speaking in the same sort of clipped tone that Elaine would use when she was hiding something—when she was pretending Mom hadn’t just been yelling at her over paying late for a payment she never owed her anyway, smiling and pretending everything was okay.
“You do have feelings for her,” I said quietly, and Vera rolled her eyes.
“Figures we’d get a handy tech on the team and then find out she’s an annoying romantic. When is this going to be done?”
“It’s working on it. Stop changing the subject.”
“I’m not a sweet, loving housewife, Caitlyn. I’m a professional killer. I don’t do love and relationships. I don’t build a life, I end a life.”
Something scratched at the door. Vera groaned, rolling her eyes.
“This damn cat…” She turned back to the door, opening it, and in came Clara, mewing and headbutting Vera’s bandage-wrapped ankle immediately. She muttered something as she bent down and picked up the kitten, scratching her behind the ears.
I smirked at her. “Uh-huh. Cold-blooded killer, heartless dealer of death, and petter of kittens.”
Vera screwed up her face. “I didn’t ask her to keep clinging to me.”
“I don’t think asking does much with a kitten anyway.”
“I don’t care what you or Clara think. Love isn’t my specialty. Once this is done, we’ll have an amicable separation, and your sister can lead a normal life and find someone who isn’t a professional killer.”
“It’s okay to admit you like her. She’s a really special person.”
She grunted. “I wouldn’t have saved her life if I hated her.”
“So you admit it.”
“No, I’m saying—”
“But you can’t be together with Elaine if you’re not also supporting your local library,” I said. “She’s very passionate about them! When did you last donate to support yours?”
She blinked slowly at me. “Caitlyn Whitner, the last time I was in a public library was to attack someone in the bathrooms and hold his head underwater in the toilet until he told us who he’d sold our classified information to.”
I folded my arms. “That sounds like the library provided you a valuable service. Did you thank the librarian?”
“I did not.”
The door creaked open, and Petra poked her head in, relaxing when she saw Vera. “Ah, there’s my best friend in the whole wide world,” she said. “And the asshole holding her.”
Vera held out the cat for Petra. “Take this thing away from me. I am not a cat mom.”
Petra took the cat, kissing her on the top of the head. Clara yowled pitifully, reaching her paws out for Vera still. Petra sighed, handing the cat back. “Think she wants you to hold her.”
“Son of a…” With a frustrated groan, Vera took the cat back, looking away as she held her close to her chest, Clara immediately purring.
“Sup, Cait,” Petra said, leaning over the back of my chair. “The Wolf’s key actually work?”
“Surprisingly. It’s processing the data right now.”
“Caitlyn I can see doubting me,” Vera said. “But you know full well I’m capable, Petra.”
“Eh. If you weren’t holding a little bundle of sunshine and joy right now, I’d have come in the door swinging brass knuckles, and you’d be flat on the floor.”
I sighed. “You’re both like little kids.”
Petra mussed my hair. “Look who’s talking. Innocent little baby one.”
“I am not a little baby!” I laughed, swatting her hand.
“I’m taking the cat upstairs,” Vera said. “I think she’s hungry. Elaine will feed her.”
Petra rolled her eyes. “You and your wife can take care of your kitten together. Honestly…”
“Are you okay?” I said, once Vera left the room, craning my neck back to look at where Petra leaned on the back of my chair, a distant look on her face as she watched the screen move.
“You and Vera both, coming back from a mission like the one you were on and just strolling in like everything’s fine… ”
“Ah, it’s whatever. You know. Another day, another life-or-death car chase. I like it when things get down to the wire. It feels good when it’s tight.”
I raised my eyebrows. She frowned.
“I should have said that differently.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m not the one who needs to fuck it out of her system after a mission. I just need a vigorous workout.”
Oh, no. That meant Vera was the one who needed to… and so the temporary arrangement was…
Which meant I knew what my sister was doing tonight. I was happy for her, but I didn’t want to know about it. It was a good thing this house was big. And well-insulated.
“There’s no way you squeezed a workout in already,” I said, and she chuckled.
“When I say vigorous, I mean vigorous. The gym’s just around the corner from this room. You haven’t checked it out?”
I scratched my head. “I’m not the athletic sort…”
“You can do upper-body workouts! Gotta do something about that stick-figure body of yours.”
“Hey. I’m not a stick figure.”
She grinned, standing up and flexing her arms playfully. “I do boxing.”
“I can see that…” No wonder she had arm muscles like that. And could fully just pick me up even with my chair.
“I just picture Vera’s face on the bag, and…” She punched the air, making a sound effect as she did. “And I go until it burns, just to feel something.”
Car chases to feel alive, fighting Vera just for the sake of it, exercising until it hurt just to feel something… I pursed my lips. “Are you okay?”
“Huh?” She looked down over her body. “Did I get stabbed and forget about it again?”
“Again? No—I mean—you’re not. Just… emotionally. All that talk about just trying to feel alive…”
She let out a breath, slumping against the wall, and she raked a hand back through her hair. “Just been a rough couple years. I’m not gonna dump my shit on you.”
“You’ve got to talk to somebody.”
“Or what, you’ll shoot me?”
I pouted. “Petra.”
She put her hands up, chuckling. “All right, all right. Drop the pouty face.” She looked away.
“When I started with the Blackbirds, it was good. That’s how they get you, you know?
Money and connections and everything. Beer.
Women. That’s how they got me, anyway. I was good at what I did, and I felt like it.
Then they kept raising the bar for what you had to do to still be good…
” She rested her head on the wall, thumping her fist lightly on it at a steady rhythm.
“But at least you’re still pretty good. And then at least you’re still good in your specialty.
And then at least you’re still useful. Vaguely.
Somewhat. And then the next thing you know, you’re doing everything you can, trying so fucking hard, and it’s never enough.
All thanks to fucking Vera coming in and swiping it out from under me.
If I’d been able to get that promotion…”
I spoke quietly. “Then it would have just been six months later that they decided you weren’t useful anymore.”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t do great with talking about this kinda thing.”
“You don’t talk about it much, huh?”
“I rant about it to Jenna sometimes, but she doesn’t get it.
She’s a doctor. Doctors will always be useful.
You can’t afford to make your doctor desperate.
A driver, you just want to go fast, faster, faster still, and if she dies in a chase, that’s just one more paycheck you don’t gotta make, and you can start the next young, impressionable driver off at a cheaper rate.
Guess it feels different talking to you. ”
I nodded, looking down. Mom always hated that I wasn’t…
useful. That I’d never be useful, she said.
Elaine had already disappointed her by not going into better-paying work, and Matt’s grades weren’t the best. And you’re the worst of all, she would say.
Always talking to me, the one who couldn’t really leave the house for much, just to sit there and listen how much of a burden I was.
Petra’s hand on my shoulder pulled me out of the reverie.
“You never really got to do anything growing up, did you?” she said.
“I stayed inside and played a lot of video games,” I laughed nervously. “Read a lot of books, did a lot of drawing, but mostly I was on the computer all the time.”
“Well, we’ve gotta celebrate cracking this system. We’ll get the team together and go to see a movie or something.”
“A… movie?” I blushed, and she grinned.
“I mean, I’d do axe-throwing, but look at your scrawny little arms,” she said, pinching the sleeve on my shirt and flapping it around. “You couldn’t even shoot a gun. Throwing an axe? Forget it.”
“Hey,” I laughed, pushing her hand away. “I could probably… figure it out.”
She smirked. I blushed, looking away.
“Maybe a movie sounds fun. Um… thanks.”
“Thank you. Good to have someone I can talk to. And unlike some of the people I’ve been around, I know you’ll never shoot me.”
“Petra!”
A blip came from the screen before I could tell her off, and I looked back at where the regression had finished running.
I gasped, pulling it up on the screen, and even Petra could work it out immediately with no explanation, her brow furrowing as she looked up at the screen.
I tapped on it, zoomed around on the diagram it created, rearranged things just to make sure, and there was no doubt.
Everything routed through one point, two weeks from now.
The South Yard.
“That can’t be,” I said.
“They’re planning to go through with the Horizon build anyway,” Petra said. “Vera did tell them they could proceed and just not raise the legal issue, but…”
“But that’s so fast. The other logistics operations aren’t ready for it yet.”
She tightened her fist on the table. “But they’re trying to make a deadline. Imposed by someone else.”
I narrowed my eyes on the screen, my heart beating faster at the sight.
Two weeks from now.
The South Yard.