UnSouled (Unwind Dystology 3)

65 • Roberta

She does not enter the house until she’s been given the all clear by the team leader. Inside, the men continue in high alert, even though their quarry has been caught. The shrill cries of a small child blare like a car alarm.

“We tranq’d the mother,” the team leader tells her, “but we’re worried about tranq’ing the kid. The dosage might kill it.”

“Good call,” says Roberta. “We lost neither our element of surprise, nor our humanity tonight.” Still, the crying child is a nuisance. “Close its door. I’m sure it will cry itself back to sleep.”

She follows the team leader upstairs, where two more of Proactive Citizenry’s takedown force have Cam pushed up against a wall in a dark bedroom and are in the process of handcuffing him behind his back. She reaches over and flicks on the light.

“Must these things always be done in the dark?”

Once the handcuffs are snapped shut, she approaches him slowly. “Turn him to face me.”

He’s turned toward her, and she looks him over. He says nothing. “You don’t look much worse for the wear,” she says.

He glares at her. “The fugitive life suits me.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“So how did you find me?”

She runs her fingers through his hair, knowing he hates when she does that but also knowing he can’t stop her while handcuffed. “You had already disappeared off the standard grid by the time I realized you were gone. I had thought you left the country, but you were far more clever than that. It never occurred to me that you’d take refuge on a ChanceFolk reservation—or that they’d even give you refuge. But People of Chance are an unpredictable lot, aren’t they? In the end your thumbprint—or should I say Wil Tashi’ne’s thumbprint—came up when the ID of someone named Bees-Neb Hebííte was scanned at an iMotel.”

He grimaces, probably remembering the exact time and place he touched that ID, thereby leaving the incriminating print.

Roberta clicks her tongue at him. “Really, Cam, an iMotel? You were made for Fairmonts and Ritz-Carltons.”

“Now what am I made for?”

“Undecided.” She looks at the unconscious young man lying on the bed. “Can I assume I have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hebííte?”

A pause, and then Cam says, “Yep. That’s him.”

She sits down on the bed, not even bothering to inspect the unconscious kid. “He must have been the star of the reservation parading you around there,” Roberta says, mostly just to get a rise out of Cam. “If you stayed there, you might have evaded us for a good long time. Why didn’t you?”

Cam shrugs and finally gives her his famous grin. “Phileas Fogg,” he says. “I wanted to see the world.”

“Well, you didn’t quite make eighty days, but I hope it was sufficient.” She turns to the team leader. “Time to wrap this up.”

“Do we take the others?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Roberta chides. “We’ve gotten what we came for. I have no desire to complicate things with kidnapping.”

“But taking me—that’s not kidnapping?” Cam asks.

“No,” Roberta says, happy to take the bait. “According to the law, it would be considered the retrieval of stolen property. In fact, I could press charges against everyone in this house, but I won’t. I’ve no need to be vindictive.”

They haul him out to the car, but gently so, by Roberta’s orders. Upstairs the child continues to cry, but the sound is greatly muffled when they pull the fractured front door closed. The mother, whoever she is, and the rest of this unseemly crew will eventually regain consciousness to take care of the irascible toddler. If not by morning, then a few hours later.

They drive off with Cam seated in the back of the sedan next to Roberta, handcuffs still on, although he’s not struggling against them. Now that Cam has freed his grin, he won’t stop. She has to admit it’s a bit unnerving.

“I assume the senator and the general were fuming when I left.”

“On the contrary,” Roberta tells him happily. “They never knew that you left. I told them that you and I were going back to Hawaii for a few weeks before you reported to them. That you wished to spend some time at the clinic for a motivational makeover. And, of course, that’s where we’re now going. So that you can have some mild cortical retuning.”

“Cortical retuning . . . ,” he echoes.

“Only to be expected,” Roberta tells him. “You’ve been prone to quite a lot of wrongful thinking ever since you were first rewound. But I’m happy to tell you that I have an effective way of taking what’s wrong within that wonderful mind of yours . . . and making it right.”