“They went patrolling. I remember your mother saying something about the quiet of the Memorial Day weekend being ideal. And there were three of them, although I can’t say the other fellow’s name right now. They were … what’s that phrase? Thick as thieves? Or Musketeers? Like you, Mort, and Jack. Always planning and plotting. But that day, only your mother and Harry returned. Rose couldn’t talk about it, and Harry was injured and couldn’t talk at all.”
My pulse kicks up a notch. Images swirl just out of reach. The Sight doesn’t often take me to the past, but it can.
“Whatever it was,” Adele says, “whatever happened to Harry, it wasn’t just physical. It was … well, you know, not the normal kind of injury.”
We are wounded in the line of duty: psychic wounds, Screamer toxin, all manner of things that can’t be solved with a trip to urgent care. Sometimes, a trip to urgent care or the emergency room can kill us.
“I was home before my last year of nursing school, and I had a friend studying speech therapy who needed the extra cash. We worked with Harry all summer long, all three of us.” Adele nods toward the pantry. “I don’t know how many concoctions your mother tried. It was enough, but just barely. His speech was slow, but he could talk. I don’t know if he ever made a full recovery in that regard.”
Adele considers her tea. “It was Labor Day weekend when your mother told Harry to go home, back to the Enclave, back to his betrothed. Miranda, I think her name was. Rose kept insisting it was the only way, that he had to secure the Darnelle seat on the High Council, although she never said why. They fought about it.” She shakes her head, so much sorrow and chagrin in the gesture. “And your mother never fought fair. So, in the end, Harry left.”
“And she never told you what happened?”
“She couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Couldn’t. Oh, I know she tried over the years. It was like she was searching for a loophole that would allow her to.”
I turn the notion over in my mind. It’s so out of the ordinary that I can’t account for it, like those old Enclave fairy tales. “That sounds like a curse.”
“It does.” Adele tips her head and stares out the window above the sink. “Come to think of it, it really does.”
Chapter 10
Henry
King’s End, Minnesota
Sunday, July 9
The data transfer took seven minutes. Henry even powered down the second laptop as an extra precaution, once the data was safe and encrypted. True, an additional personal laptop was a breach of Enclave protocol, but then Henry hadn’t become a principal field agent by playing by all the rules.
At the 10:01 minute mark, he watched Pansy Little’s data vanish from his Enclave-issued computer.
At the 10:10 minute mark, as predicted, his phone rang. The unlisted number that flashed on the screen could belong to only one person.
“My boy, how are you?” Reginald Botten sounded as jovial as ever, as if this were a mere check-in call.
“Hamstrung without that data.”
“Really, my boy, you shouldn’t be badgering the rank and file like that. They’re quite in awe of you.”
“I recall you mentioning I’d have access to all the records I needed.”
“Precisely why I called. This data won’t do you any good, and it’s not anything you need.”
“I’d like to be the judge of that.”
“I believe it to be compromised.”
“In what way?” Henry asked. “As I understand it, Rose Little retired when Pansy returned from her last year at the Academy. Five years of field data should give me an overall sense of her progress.”
“That’s my point. It won’t be her progress. I have reason to believe Rose stepped in from time to time and patrolled in Pansy’s stead.”
“And you believe this why?”
“There’s very little data from Rose’s umbrella these past five years. These situations are rare, but we do allow early retirement with an apprentice agent in place. In those cases, there’s always a greater influx of data from the retiree’s umbrella, especially in the first year or two. But in this particular case, the data has come almost exclusively from Pansy’s umbrella.”
