Page 15 of Girl, Remembered

She looked at the screen, half-certain that the visual on Roadrunner’s screen was a front for something else. The collection of toys that decorated his desk held hidden gimmicks, such as a duck that doubled as a recording device. Ella was sure some of the toys would explode if touched.

‘You’re watching boxing.’

‘Yeah, for my sins. It’s the match from last night, but modern boxing sucks. Tell me what you want, and I’ll see if I can fit you in.’

Ella crouched down and spoke low. She laid everything out, every detail, what she’d found already, what Amelia had found, what she needed. Roadrunner listened, and she only caught him glancing at the screen twice. When she finished, Roadrunner paused the boxing match.

‘Okay. Who told you I’d be good for this?’

‘Amelia.’

‘Brady? I knew it. The Brit can’t do it, so the Yank has to step up. This is 1941 all over again.’

Roadrunner possessed the annoying ability to relate every situation to a historical event, whether those events were real or part of some superhero franchise. Ella said, ‘It’s not Pearl Harbor. It’s just a little breaking and entering. Digitally. I need to know what happened to Lindsey Doyle as a kid.’

Roadrunner laced his hands behind his head and rocked in his chair. He’d somehow become even more nonchalant about gathering intelligence in the two years Ella had been gone from this place.

‘And you think I’m capable of doing this? You sat next to me for years. Did you ever once see me perform this… wizardry you speak of?’

‘No, but you told me about it all the time.’

Roadrunner held eye contact, obviously because he had nothing to say as he’d been busted. ‘Okay. Say I do this. What’s in it for Road?’

‘Whatever you want. I know I’m asking a lot, but I can’t do it by myself.’

‘Ha. Ella Dark is finally asking for help.’ Roadrunner tapped his novelty duck. ‘And I got the audio of it.’

‘Use it. Sell it. Blackmail me with it. Just-’

‘Look, I’d love to help, but I’m up to my neck in stuff for CT. We’ve got car bombs going off in Atlanta like nobody’s business. They’re on terror alert over there. No deaths yet, but there might be. Besides, your little job is too risky, even for me.’

Ella idly glanced through Roadrunner’s collection of what most people would call crap. She saw superheroes, video game characters, a plastic Bruce Lee mid-kick, a bronze George Washington. On the end, fat and scowling in a three-piece suit, sat Winston Churchill with a cigar the size of his forearm.

She reached out and grabbed him. His head wobbled on the spring.

‘Churchill. He still your hero?’

‘Put Winnie down.’

‘We will fight on the beaches, fight in the fields, the streets. We’ll never surrender. That’s what Churchill said, right? Never give up.’

Roadrunner held out a hand, palm up, and waited until she surrendered the bobblehead. Ella complied.

‘And this fat genius also said the one thing you learn from history is that nobody ever learns a damn thing from history. So which Winston do you want, Ells? I’ll have you know that today is my wedding anniversary, and I was planning on celebrating tonight.’

It became clear. Ella sighed, but she had no jurisdiction here. She couldn’t drag an intelligence analyst away from his day job to chase something that might not even lead anywhere. She wanted Doyle’s childhood details, but couldn’t be certain if anything in there would be relevant to finding her. Not to mention that every second Roadrunner was working on something other than his regular job, lives were at risk.

‘Fair enough. If you ever change your-’

Roadrunner shunted forward and pressed a beefy finger to her lips. ‘Like I said, I’m busy. And there’s no way in hell I could violate the isolated network of the Louisiana Department of Education. A job like that would take seven, eight hours, and I’d need to do it on my personal laptop.’ Roadrunner kicked a bag at his feet and winked.

Ella opened her mouth to push, and then she caught the wink, and the finger against her lips, and the little rubber duck sitting on the corner of the desk with its painted eye pointed right at the pair of them.

The penny dropped.

This was all for the benefit of the tactical duck. She gave him a moment.

Then smiled.