“If we’d a known you were in trouble, Honey Cake,” Jolene said, her voice coming from the speaker system near the driveway, “we’d a sent for you ages ago. You done good, gal. Real good.”
That should have been my line and I knew it. “Make sure they have everything they need,” I said. “Supper tonight in the office, Cupcake. Something special?”
Cupcake pulled the two to their feet and away from me, leading them down the dusty drive into the junkyard. Amos drove their truck into an open place near the guest quarters and began unloading it.
Pulling my mic around, I spoke softly into the comms system, so Wanda couldn’t hear me. “Cupcake. We need cams on them.” She didn’t reply, but I knew she had heard.
The housing was something new to the junkyard—three cargo containers on Aisle Alpha Two. There was a fancy one for Amos and Cupcake, and two had more minimal supplies: water, ready-to-eat meals, basic furniture, and a personal toilette compartment. One had hidden cameras inside to watch the guests. It was a guesthouse or prison, whichever we needed, with just a turn of the locking mechanism.
“Jolene,” I said, “look at the intel Wanda says she brought. Add it to ours. When Cupcake is free, get her to look for long-term housing for Wanda in Naoma. The kid will need to go to school, and they don’t have to live on-site twenty-four seven.”
“Gotcha, Shining Sugah.”
Cats around my feet, I decided to go over the inventory in the smallest, dirtiest storage shed in the junkyard, which looked as if it would fall in with a gentle wind. But the ramshackle appearance was false; it was built like a vault. And like a vault, it was packed full of gold and gems in the form of jewelry. My Pops had left me a fortune, and I had never known about it until Cupcake arrived. If she had been paid a salary, I’d owe her a raise.
Spy, watching me from the shade of an overhang, sent me an image of a slab of salmon, presented to Cupcake.
I breathed out a laugh. If Cupcake wanted money, she knew where the stuff was located better than I did. But . . . maybe I owed money and approval and awards or something. The Outlaws gave patches and women and status to made-men. And status and money to female made-men. The military gave money and rank and pretty little medals. I’d have to think about that.
In my earbud, I heard Cupcake chatter as she led Wanda and the kid away. “Amos will bring in your stuff. Hydrate, sleep, clean up, eat, whatever. Supper is at six thirty.”
I hadn’t felt Warhammer’s nanobots on Wanda or her kid. So far as I could tell, neither had been transitioned away from me. The presence of the kid suggested Wanda wasn’t here to infiltrate and observe. But her timingwasunsettling.
When Cupcake left Wanda and the kid, I tapped my mic and said, “So I wasn’t being paranoid at the timing of Wanda’s appearance, Cupcake?”
“You weren’t alone, Shining,” she replied into the comms system. “It’s fishy as week-old cod. Jolene, security system on?”
“Video and audio on, Cupcake, darlin’. The kid’s name is Alex. I’m searching through archives to see if I can find a birth record.”
Mateo said into the comms, “Shining is popular this week. Outlying systems indicate we have another visitor. Male. Riding a motorcycle. Good thing you left the outer perimeter weapons system offline.” If his vocal cords could sound sly, they would have.
Jagger?Thatcould make me feel weird.
Mateo said, “We have ARVAC readouts and vid.”
“I’m listening.”
“Sensors suggest he’s on his OMW bike, the one equipped with a miniaturized MPP. Muters on the engine.” Muters changed the sound of a Harley, creating an infiltrator mode, a soft snore rather than the full-throated war-bike roar. “Enviro visual shielding is functional but not active. Our sensors are better. He is alone as far out as the sensors can detect.
“The One Rider bike is mounted with the same weapons as his first visit: one 9-millimeter Heckler & Koch MP8 Universal Machine Pistol, two 9-millimeter Heckler & Koch MP8 machine pistols. As per visuals, he is not armored but wearing kutte. Jeans. Two additional semiautomatic weapons on his person, make unknown. Knife in a hip sheath.”
“I’m unarmed,” I replied. “Are you in position to take him down should he instigate hostile actions or prove to be an unfriendly?”
“Affirmative and with pleasure.”
“Yeah, well, don’t shoot him just for fun.”
Mateo made that grinding snorting sound of laughter. If the warbot warrior decided to shoot Jagger, there was nothing I could do to stop him.
* * *
The bike turned in and puttered up the drive to me. It was Jagger, on his official Harley—the one he rode as enforcer to McQuestion, the war chief and vice president of the Outlaw Militia Warriors—and his bike and clothing told me that this was an official visit. A black leather jacket was strapped on the bike, probably from when he started out on a cold ride at dawn. He was wearing his kutte with all its patches over a sweat-soaked T-shirt, sweat-stained jeans, and riding boots. He wore fingerless riding gloves, a helmet, and a neckerchief against the sun. He was sporting a week-old beard I could see beneath the telescoping modified faceplate, the hemplaz shield splattered with the guts of the desert’s toxic mutated bugs who were still looking for a place to overwinter. He also carried all the weapons Mateo had described.
And he was everything I remembered. Big. Lean. Shoulders like a slab of concrete. Dark haired. Bloody gorgeous.
The bike came to a stop. His feet dropped to the dirt. The bike went silent.
Through the faceplate his eyes met mine. My insides clenched as if we were in bed together and I was ready. So ready. But I relaxed my posture as if I had no cares in the world and said nothing. Jagger was here without an invitation, without an order from me, without notifying me first. It was the surprise assault of an unexpected business meeting, OMW style, and with the negotiations coming up, that might mean anything.
