I quickly looked away and poured some soap into the sink, agitating it to get the bubbles to rise.
Had he seen me staring at him?
Probably.
The real question was: why did I feel so embarrassed about it? It wasn’t like he knew what I was thinking about him.
Right?
I squared my shoulders and pretended like I couldn’t feel his gaze on me. Pretended that I didn’t know he was laughing at me.
By the time he strolled back into the kitchen, I was on my knees, halfway through cleaning up the blood.
“Drones are called off. You got your two days,” he said.
“All right, then. Clean sheets are in the hall closet. Put the soiled ones on the floor in your room and I’ll take care of them.” I stood and carried the two rags sopping with soap and blood over to the empty side of the big sink.
“I could lend a hand,” he said.
“No need.” I wrung out the rags, then sloshed them in the hot-water side of the sink, soap almost up to my elbows.
A little bell set in the corner of the ceiling rang out like a chime stirred by a hard wind. Out in the barn, another, deeper bell rang, and I knew there was another bell even farther out on the edge of the property that gave one low knell.
Someone in House Brown was calling. Someone needed my help.
“What’s that?” Abraham asked.
I turned, the two rags in my hands. “On second thought, I could use your help.” I deposited the soapy rags in his hands. “Wipe up as much blood as you can. There’s a box of sodium peroxide powder here.” I plucked the box out from beneath the sink. “After the blood’s up, sprinkle this over the stain, but don’t inhale the dust.”
“I know how to clean up blood.”
“Good!” I gave him a wide smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”
I wiped my hands on a towel and strode out of the kitchen, through the living room, down past Grandma’s room and my room, to the narrow door that led to the basement.
It was locked, keyed to open for my fingerprints and for Neds’, Quinten’s, and Grandma’s.
I glanced down the hall before opening the door. Abraham stood at the end of the hall, watching me.
“Better get on it,” I said. “Terrible mess, that floor.” I tugged open the door and shut it firmly behind me. Waited there, listening for his boots, but I didn’t hear him come down the hall, didn’t hear him put his hand on the door latch.
Good enough.
Stairs led me down to the communication hub for House Brown.
When I was young, the basement was a wonderland to me. Filled with copper, wood, and brass mingled with slick plastic and shining silver and glass. The room glittered with a dizzying display of dials, levers, buttons, screens, and wires. I had dedicated three months to learning what every toggle, gauge, and system could do.
Quinten had taken Dad’s antiquated short-wave collection and expanded it until we could tap into every sort of data stream ever made. It was why we were now the hub for House Brown. Some of the House Brown communities had current tech and could bounce data from here to Jupiter if they wanted to.
But the majority of the people in House Brown weren’t that advanced. Still, it didn’t take much to put up a tower and send some kind of a signal.
Quinten had made sure we had the equipment to receive even the weakest signals here, loud and clear.
The main station to the right was Quinten’s. He usually sat in the leather office chair in front of the monitors that stacked from floor to ceiling, maps and radar and other vital tracking systems available at a glance.
I preferred the antique hutch off to one side that held analog radio equipment, a telegraph key, and a sweet little laptop Quinten had linked into our entire network.
The laptop screen was blinking in time with several other screens and buttons in the room. I glanced over at the maps. Signal was coming in from Nevada. The Fesslers’ land.
