“You’re right,” she admitted. “He does.”
Twenty-Six
It had been three days since the garden incident. Some of the residents of Moone’s Landing thought it was nothing. Others thought it was very muchsomething. The group in the latter half expected Holly to get to the bottom of it, and that meant confronting who they considered to be the only likely suspect: Rasker Vipp.
This was what brought Holly to the door of room seventeen. She brought her hand up and knocked. There was a doorbell feature to the pad beside the door, but knocking was more friendly than chiming. It was a nuance thing: familiar people knocked; strangers chimed. She wanted Rasker to be comfortable, to let his guard down, so she went the friendly route. Later, when she asked him about the garden, he might not think of her as so friendly.
She had practiced what she was going to say the whole way here. She had a plan. It was a perfectlygoodplan as long as she did not panic, blurt out an accusation and immediately follow it up with an apology. He would deserve one, because Holly did not believe that Rasker had anything to do with the small acts of sabotage at Moone’s Landing. Nevertheless, she would be calm, and observant, and sensible.
The door opened.
Rasker looked at her with his whole body. He leaned in a little and gave her his full attention. His expression did a thing where he looked relaxed and intense at the same time. It didn’t make sense, but that’s what it was. She had never met another person who looked at her that way, and she liked it more than she should.
“The water station,” she said. Nothello, notgood morning. Just that. She blew a stray hair out of her eyes. “I’m going to troubleshoot the system for distribution problems. The square is bone dry and I’ve traced it as far as I can from above. I’m going to the underground caverns.” She paused when he just stared at her. “I mentioned it to you a while ago. The pools my great-grandfather filled with water that no one could drink? I thought you might want to see them.”
There was a beat.
“Of course,” he said. “Give me a moment.”
He disappeared back inside, and Holly exhaled. She turned and looked down the empty hallway and fidgeted with the hem of her long-sleeve pullover. Being nervous annoyed her. But if she was being honest with herself, the reason why she was uneasy was simple: She was going to interrogate someone about a crime he did not commit.
He emerged wearing loose dark trousers and a close-fitting shirt, a jacket folded over one arm. His dark blue hair was loose and less tamed today, and longer than she had realized. It reached the edge of his jaw.
She turned and started walking before he could catch her staring. “Lead on, Holly.”
Thezigwas parked at the side entrance. The tired little vehicle hovered just above the paved surface, with the rear passenger-side corner sagging. She’d placed a bucket of tools, borrowed from Sam’s “nonessential” stash, in the space behindthe seats. She had had to negotiate with Sam for this modest collection, and he had handed each item over with the pained expression of one lending out his last currency unit.
Holly drove. It was easier than she had expected, and she had come to enjoy thezig, even though it rattled at anything above moderate speed and there was a panel underneath, somewhere, that vibrated during turns. Loop Road curved through the interior of the outpost, and she took them around it at a comfortable pace.
They passed the residential cluster, the field, and then the pond and the overgrown wood where the vegetation had gone wild and tangled.
Here, Holly slowed down to look at the cabin. It sat at the pond’s edge, quiet and small, half-swallowed in vines.
“What are you looking at?” Rasker asked.
“See that?” she asked, pointing toward the spot where just a sliver of siding peeked through the trees and shrubs. “Oliver built that cabin for his family to enjoy.” She glanced at it as they passed, watching it disappear between the trees. “It’s abandoned, but when this is all settled, I want to open it up. Clear it out. Make it into something for Bean and me.”
Rasker said nothing. She was getting better at reading his silences. This one was not dismissive. It was thoughtful.
A moment later, he sat up straight and said, “Stop.”
Holly stopped thezig.
He slipped on his Ocuvai device. The screen covered his left eye as he peered through the trees, toward a small clearing that sat back from the road, half-hidden by a stand of overgrown brush. Lacking the augmented vision, it took her a second to see what he was seeing. Then she noticed the signs of undergrowth that had been pushed aside. The ground had been flattened, and the grass compressed in a round shape.
“Is someone sleeping there?” she wondered.
“Could be Cody,” Rasker said.
Holly frowned. “No. He’s staying at the hotel. He has a room.”
“He may have a room,” Rasker said, still looking at the clearing, “but I don’t think he’s been in it much. When did you last see him in the halls?”
She thought about it. She…hadn’t. She had passed him near The Emporium a couple of days ago. He’d given her one of his lazy smiles and a “hey, cuz!” But in the hallway during daylight hours? “Not for at least a week,” she replied. “I can’t imagine why he’d prefer the ground to a bed.”
“Some people find it useful,” Rasker said, removing the Ocuvai, “to make themselves scarce when they’ve overstayed their welcome.”
Well, Codyhadoverstayed his welcome. Holly pulled her eyes away from the clearing and got thezigmoving again. She recognized the small, unremarkable building that housed a vital feature of the outpost: the water supply.
