Divided States, page 10
Jeremiah’s father chose a casino—and a few of its cocktail waitresses—over his mother, so she moved back to the Texas Panhandle with her folks when he was in eighth grade. He stayed in Tulsa.
He was a good dad, though, and once-a-month visits weren’t enough. Jeremiah technically stole his mom’s rusted-out Bronco at fourteen. His backside hurt for a week, but his parents went fifty-fifty after that.
“I never liked gambling,” Mac says. “If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t—”
A gust turns the truck into a sail. Mac jerks the steering wheel to correct, sending the boys crashing to the edge and floor overhead.
“Sure you don’t want me back down there?” Dom yells, clearly unhappy to be shoehorned up there with Zeus. “I mean, I can drive this bad if it’s what you want.”
“Screw you,” Mac says under her breath.
Jeremiah snorts. “Everyone okay up there?”
After they answer in the affirmative, Jeremiah leans over. “Seriously Shaye, you good over there?”
Mac flips him off.
Jeremiah tries not to use her first name. He doesn’t use anyone else’s, so it’s patronizing to single her out, as her gesture reminds him.
But that’s not the only reason.
Mac was stood up at a bar about a year ago. The appropriate response was to drink until she didn’t care. Knowing he was divorced and dry, Jeremiah was the logical person to call for a sober ride home. He obliged, and even walked her to the apartment door and said goodnight, Shaye. That’s where she kissed him. Sloppy. Hungry. Mac told him not to call her Shaye unless he wanted to come inside.
He left.
The next day, Mac was hungover but thankful for the ride. No mention of the kiss. The next time he used her first name, he got the usual annoyance. No residual feelings from that night. She’d been blackout drunk. Or wanted him to think so.
Now, needing to break the cab’s silence just in case he was wrong, Jeremiah turns to the subject he and Mac can discuss for hours—the weather.
“Winter storms like this used to happen once a decade around here. Now it’s twice a winter.”
“No joke,” she says. “Remember when we had to go to Oak Ridge via Birmingham?”
They laugh because there’s nothing else to do. The Earth is two generations away from an unlivable climate, and there’s nothing they can do.
“I’ll tell you what, though, these storms beat the hell out of the constant tornadoes when I was a kid. This used to be Tornado Alley.”
“I’m sure the South would give the twisters back. And the hurricanes.”
They fly by the casino, and Jeremiah’s glad any chance for tension has passed. He’s about to launch into a rant about INSTA needing to up their hazard pay during winter when Mac explodes into a fit of cursing and slamming the steering wheel.
Jeremiah looks past Mac to her side mirror. Blue and red lights are speeding alongside the truck. Mac slows and the car pulls in front of them. It’s a Canadian County Sheriff cruiser, driven by a deputy who was looking for drunks leaving the casino.
“Stay calm, everyone. We’ll just take the ticket and deal with it later.”
Mac mutters something under her breath as her window lowers.
“What?” Jeremiah asks.
“You really think Novak and Robb had time to alter information in the TTD? They had someone at the Texola crossing to grease us through, but there’s no way our licenses will get through this guy.”
Shit. She’s right. The Transcontinental Traffic Database is as secure as any in the Allied Nations, and though the team’s TT licenses look right, the barcode probably won’t have the right information—if they’re not blank.
Jeremiah doesn’t have much time to formulate a plan. The deputy, tall and young, is already halfway to Mac.
He needlessly sweeps the beam of his flashlight across the windshield and settles on Mac, holds the position until she blocks it with her hand. The guy’s either sexist or a bully. Probably both. If he flirts with her, maybe she can work him. If not, Jeremiah will ask if they can talk, man-to-man.
The flashlight stays trained on Mac until he’s under her door. “TTL and BOL.” His voice is even, but he snatches the items out of Mac’s hand. “I clocked you at eighty-eight. Surprised she can handle that much speed.”
Mac looks ready to lay into him, but Jeremiah leans forward and puts a hand on her knee. I got this.
“It’s a modified engine,” he says. “Built just for us.”
It’s the truth. It also gets the deputy’s mind off Mac.
“And who’s us?”
“It’s a bit of an explanation, sir. Mind if I come down and explain it, one-on-one”—he tips his head toward Mac—“It’ll be quicker that way.”
The kid mulls it over by flashing his light over the documents. “All right,” he says, not looking up. “I’m going to hang onto these while we talk.”
Jeremiah squeezes Mac’s knee before opening his door. Thanks.
As he crosses in front of the truck, Jeremiah tips his head again, away from the cab, toward his car. The deputy translates correctly, assuming Jeremiah wants to have this conversation out of a woman’s earshot. They meet between the vehicles, just at the edge of the glow of headlights.
“Thank you, sir,” Jeremiah says before blowing into his hands. “I’m training her and don’t want her to get any more hysterical than she already is.”
“What kind of training means driving ninety in the middle of the night?”
Jeremiah leans in, close enough the vapor from his breath mixes with his. “We’re part of a team of intracontinental agents who transport hazardous material across the Divided States.”
This time, Jeremiah’s hoping the truth will impress a man who wants to feel important.
The deputy doesn’t say anything, but glances back at the rig.
“There’s nothing in it now, so no need to worry, deputy …”
“Jones.” He turns back with a neutral expression Jeremiah can’t read. “So then what are you doing out here?”
Jeremiah turns toward the cab and exhales through his nose, dual streams drifting toward Mac. “She’s related to one of my bosses and he said I needed to hire her to do something. She sure as hell can’t provide any security, but I think I can get her to at least drive without killing us.”
When Jones doesn’t smile, Jeremiah questions his initial read, which is rarely wrong.
“Let’s say I believe you. I still don’t see why you’d have her drive down my highway that fast.”
As if he divined it, the smallest pieces of sleet begin hitting Jeremiah and Jones in the face. “I’m using this storm to train her in outrunning and driving through bad weather.”
Jones purses his lips, then shakes his head.
Dammit.
“People tell crazy stories to get out of speeding tickets, but that’s the dumbest one I’ve heard yet.”
Jeremiah doesn’t fluster easily, but the cloud between them gets thicker as his mind races. He needs Jones to understand the situation. The weather’s caught up with them. Lori’s been taken hostage. There’s a nuclear bomb twenty feet away from them and only four people protecting it.
He takes a step toward Jones.
Jones yells for Jeremiah to step back as he reaches for his hip. When Jeremiah doesn’t comply immediately, he takes a step back and draws.
His view of the truck is blocked, but Jeremiah has faith.
“Now’d be a great time, Mac.”
Jones pivots toward the cab, allowing Jeremiah to see his number two leaning out of her window, the pistol from the dash’s hidden compartment now fixed on her target.
“Drop it, asshole.”
Jeremiah allows the stalemate to go on for nearly thirty seconds before speaking again.
“Okay Zeus, time to wrap this up.”
The best marksman Jeremiah’s ever worked with steps out from behind the truck and takes three strides toward Jones, his automatic rifle ready.
Jones’s pistol bounces between the two, with occasional glances to a smiling Jeremiah.
“I wouldn’t,” Jeremiah says. “There’s another one of us out here. And you have no idea where he is or what he’s packing.”
There’s no way to know if Dom’s out of the truck and hiding somewhere, but the bluff works. Jones lowers his pistol. Zeus rushes him with instructions to get on his knees and interlock his fingers behind his head.
“What are we going to do with him?” Zeus asks.
Jeremiah hadn’t thought that far ahead. They can’t kill Jones, though it’s the cleanest option. Kidnap him? No.
“Mac, go kill his radio.”
Though her look says she’s unsatisfied with the plan, Mac trots to the car.
“You out there, Dom?”
“Back here.” His hulking figure steps out from behind the ass-end of the trailer, rifle at his shoulder.
“Go flatten two of his tires.”
Jeremiah looks down at Jones through the thickening sleet. “Give me your phone.”
The Canadian County deputy’s scowl is defiant, but after a ten-second staring contest, Zeus presses his rifle’s muzzle into the base of his skull.
Jones digs out the cell and hands it to Jeremiah.
“Now, when you’re found, you’re going to say you let us off with a warning. Then, just as we pulled away, you were ambushed by a group of rednecks from the casino and couldn’t make out the license plate through this weather. Sound fair?”
He nods.
“Load up,” he says before offering a hand to Jones. “You, too.”
Anger gives way to confusion as he stands.
“Is what you said true?”
“All but two things. She’s more of a man than you or me”—Jeremiah points to the trailer—“and that’s not empty.”
Jeremiah wonders if he should’ve told him. But he didn’t say what was in the trailer. And it was worth it to see the worry on Jones’s face.
Back in the cab, Mac’s face is harder to read.
“You really saved my ass out there.”
Nothing.
“I know you disagree with what I did, but that guy was a dick. The only way I was going to—”
He stops when she grins. You’re welcome.
Present crisis averted, Jeremiah allows himself one of Mac’s awful songs to relax.
Then it’s back to figuring out how to save Lori without giving her kidnappers a nuke.
22
LORI
FAST offices, Cushing, Northeast Province
Republic of Oklahoma
Lori doesn’t need to use the restroom. She needs to get away from Fowler’s East Texas whining.
He’s sorry. The guiltiest man in history. Lori let him apologize five times for lying about the nature of their conversations, nine for having to tell her about his operation like this, and thirteen—a damn baker’s dozen—for tracking her on vacation. When he started talking again, Lori stood and walked out of the office and down the hall to the small but clean bathroom that always smells of the sink’s small soaps.
Five minutes is pushing it, though, so she stands and reaches for the knob.
Then, footsteps. Boots. Cowgirl boots because they’re connected to a woman’s voice, whispering but angry. The steps move closer, then drift away, pacing the hall outside Eric’s office.
Lori puts her ear to the door. The hushed tone and door distort the voice enough to avoid a match. That’s twice Lori’s brain has betrayed her—and on the one day she might need it most.
“I can’t believe you would think that,” Puss ’n Boots says, trailing away from the bathroom. “How many years have I been here for you?”
There’s noting inherently sinister about the words. The delivery doesn’t give much away, either. For all Lori knows, Fowler hired a new secretary, had her come in because of the shootings, causing an argument with her boyfriend.
Puss ’n Boots starts back toward the door. “So, we’re good?”
She stops pacing. “Right. See you then.”
The steps quicken and she’s nearly outside the bathroom. Lori reaches over and flushes the toilet just as the door opens.
Rita Clarke yelps and jumps back. “You scared the crap out of me,” she says in a phony drawl, trying to add back in what California’s homogenization took away. “I didn’t know you were here.”
You’ve got to be kidding. On top of everything else, Lori’s going to have to deal with the bottle blonde, too?
Clarke keeps the books, which means she’s constantly on Lori for expense reports and mileage—when she’s not questioning her timesheets. They only interact in person at company-wide functions or if she interrupts Lori’s monthly meeting with Fowler. Clarke’s more concept than woman, an email address that somehow manages to sound passive-aggressive every time they trade messages.
“I just got in from New Orleans.”
Hearing the location seems to trigger something, and Clarke finally notices Lori’s clothes. “Oh my Lord, were you? I mean, is that …”
“Blood. Yeah. I took one in the leg, but it’s not bad.”
Clarke gasps. Literally, like she’s on stage auditioning for an off-off-off-Broadway show. “I think I have something in my office you can wear. Pants may be a little tight in the thighs, though.”
Tossing aside the dig at her legs—which are all muscle and proved useful in New Orleans—Lori detects something else. After the yelp, Clarke’s reactions were forced and her speech unnatural.
She’s being disingenuous. But about what?
Lori follows Clarke to her office. It’s the most boring room she’s ever seen, decorated on one wall by a map with pins in each salesperson’s home city and a mosaic of color-coded spreadsheets on another. The rest are bare, save for one landscape oil painting that looks like it came with the place.
Clarke crosses the hardwood to her psychopathically neat wooden desk and reaches into the side drawer. What woman keeps nice clothes in her desk?
She pulls out neatly folded dark jeans and a black silk blouse. “I keep these in case a big-wig client comes in. It’s saved me a time or two on casual Friday.”
Lori buys that and accepts the clothing. “Do you mind if I change in here?”
“Oh, sure, go ahead. I’ve still got to use the bathroom and let Eric know I’m here.”
As she leaves, Lori notices one other detail. It’s well before dawn and she lives in a different country, but Clarke never asked Lori why the hell she’s here.
Lori waits fifteen seconds after the door closes, then starts looking around the office. Moore and Boudreaux want her to play double-agent, conveniently ignoring the fact she was never an agent in the first place. Nevertheless, Lori’s come to trust Boudreaux, and Eric’s given her no reason to believe anything he’s ever said.
And then there’s Clarke’s behavior, strange even for a woman who admitted to a string of out-of-town rendezvous with other men, then lobbied to stay and help run the business rather than letting Fowler buy her out.
Lori’s snooping starts with the cartoonishly large map. Cartography’s importance exploded after the first meeting between Texas Governor Levi Cole and U.S President Alex Ramirez, who must’ve dropped the vowels at the end of her name to scoop up votes from uninformed misogynists. Though most GPS navigation apps were updated quickly and seamlessly, physical maps had become the most popular item sold in any office supply store. Lori had small ones at home and in her truck, but she rarely looked at them. For Texas citizens with transcontinental licenses, getting into Oklahoma was simple, and this disaster of a vacation was her first travel outside of either of the republics.
But, as promised, the travel was relatively painless.
At first, Lori didn’t pay much attention to the Texit talk. Political rancor, outsized state pride, and a history of national independence was nothing new. Then Cole was accused of corruption and murder by the New York media—Texan for liberal East Coast elitists—and most of the state dug in around its beloved governor.
The scandal became all anyone could talk about, including Lori. The secessionists, once considered part of the tin foil hat crowd, were taken seriously when asking for proof of the accusations. The national media, led by cable news anchor Regina Watkins, obliged.
Half the country believed Watkins, including the United States Department of Justice and President Ramirez, a native Texan. The President’s apparent disloyalty made an already toxic situation worse.
When a federal grand jury didn’t indict Cole, his sympathizers exploded in joyous rage. Texas retailers began selling flags with Traitor written above Ramirez’s mugshot and full first name, the last two letters painted in menstruation red.
A week later, thousands of men and women in Western garb marched in Washington calling themselves White Hats for their western headwear ranging from convenience-store straw to custom-shaped Stetsons. They protested. Then after an inflammatory social media post from Governor Cole, they rioted. Only ten minutes passed before a dozen White Hats were gunned down by Secret Service after sprinting across the North Lawn, a mass casualty event carried live by all the networks and cable news channels. The Amarillo newspaper headline read 12 executed by SS assassins above photos of sinister-looking agents behind scopes and muzzles.
