“Can you fix this? Is there a way to keep the little shits out of my computer?”
“Yeah, but I’ll have to have a look at her computer again, or talk to the kid.
“Three little girls Hank, playing around with this shit.” He was already on his little hand gadget. “I found her. Nia Chan, Asian, born here to Chinese parents, both computer scientist. We’re fucked. She built her first computer when she was five.”
“How come you don’t look fucked?” He had a big ass smile on his face.
“This is good this is very good. I’ll be right back I need to make a call.” He left before I could ask him what the hell he was up to.
I heard someone at the front door downstairs and looked at the monitor to see Caitiebear and the boy coming back. A look at my watch showed that they were two minutes early. Had all that shit really just happened in less than an hour?
I watched as she smiled back at him over her shoulder while turning the key in the door and my fingers itched to turn on the speaker so I could hear what they were saying. Shit!
That move looked so natural, so much like a couple, like something her mother and I have done a thousand times before. I’m trying here, I really am, but every time I take two steps forward with this shit, I get dragged five steps back.
Mancini seems to think that the kid is okay, something I’ve always known, but that’s not all there is to it is there? That’s my little girl down there, flesh of my flesh. And these fucks want me to send her out in this fucked up world on her own, without me, or her mother to protect her.
How do you go from watching over your child every day of her life, to just tossing her to the wolves? If I’d been an absentee father, one who didn’t care beyond making sure she had a roof over her head and food to eat, this might’ve been easier.
Shit, the people around here can say whatever they want. Kat and I have been married for damn near ever and my father in law still finds his ass in my house at least twice a week and every Sunday he, and his wife are at my dinner table. But they want me to send my kid to the other side of the country.
I was working myself into a real lather when the boy knocked on my office door. “Sir, we’re back, sorry I played it so close, I’ll do better next time. By the way she didn’t notice the security detail that followed us.”
Shit, I forgot about them. They’re under strict orders to follow my wife and kids anytime they leave the house without me. I could tell him that it was an oversight on my part, but I didn’t. “But you did?”
“Yes sir!” I studied him for a few seconds and noticed a few things. The boy has always been straightforward, and though when he was younger he had a healthy dose of fear of me, as he should, he never backed down. That’s something I’ve always liked about him.
Now he has a steady gaze when he talks to me. Not disrespectful mind you, like he’s trying to stare me into submission, just that he’s lost that boyish reticence that had kept him alive.
“Mancini told me that you’ve been working with him.” He looked over his shoulder and back down the hallway as if checking to make sure no one was approaching.
“Sir, may I come in?” I nodded my head and kept my eye on him. He didn’t close the door all the way, just pulled it a little before walking to the chair across from me and sitting down. “I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to come out and ask.”
A lifted brow was all the answer he got. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot kid, you’re making progress even if you don’t know it.
“Sir, is Caitie in some kind of danger?” Well fuck! Why didn’t I expect him to ask me that? Mancini never mentioned telling him about what we were working on, so how did he…?
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, Catalina seems to think that the reason you won’t let Caitie leave a year early is because you think I can’t protect her, so she put Mancini and I together. And though he’s trained me and still is in all kinds of combat, there’s more going on. I’m sure you know all about it.” I didn’t answer one way or another.
“Anyway, I started thinking about it and putting the pieces together on my own and I’ve come to the conclusion that the same thing he has me dealing with has touched her in some way.” He gave me a look filled with apprehension and then my eyes dropped to his hands that were gripping the chair arms so hard they’d turned white.