CHAPTER 22
WE HUNG UP WITH THE LSR, then headed for the door. Buchanan barked some orders, so the K-9 guys took the three streetwalkers, Len and Kyle had Bud and Cujo, Lorraine and Claudia took Mickey and Garfield, and Siler and Manfred took the two dudes in suits.
Buchanan, Evalyne, Phoebe, Kevin, and the three dogs took me. Actively had to work to neither be offended nor annoyed.
The rest of the team were determined to be able to walk without escorts, so they went on ahead.
The Base was on Full Alert but, thankfully, Romeo gave some orders and the alarms all went to low, though they didn’t stop.
We wended our way through the floor and headed for elevator banks. As per usual, I was lost within about a minute. Sure, I’d lived here for a while, but that had been years ago now, and Centaurion Bases were far more maze-like than the White House could ever hope to be. Maybe Buchanan wasn’t wrong to have me surrounded. I certainly didn’t have to worry about getting lost this way.
Viola joined me and my particular part of the entourage. “What do we do?” she asked me quietly. “We haven’t had an issue like this before.”
“You mean other than every other attack and similar?”
She looked down. “I mean that we’ve had to handle. Not since . . . you put us all in place.”
Considered my response. If I advised them incorrectly it could have terrible ramifications, not the least of which would be everyone losing confidence in Viola, Romeo, and Carmine.
But, I had no clear idea of what to do with all the personnel. We were at high alert but the threat didn’t seem all that terrible at the moment. On the other hand, looks were often deceiving.
When in doubt or unwilling to give a reply, I’d learned to go with my father’s sage advice of answering a question with a question. It was advice that was quite flexible in terms of the situations it would work in. “What do you think you all should do?”
Viola didn’t hesitate. “I don’t believe we should take this threat as benign. Just because these new aliens look cute doesn’t mean they aren’t here to cause problems.”
Dad’s wisdom was once again shown to be the right call. “Good thinking. What else?”
She was quiet for a few moments while we walked along. “We should be ready to evacuate, in case of emergency.”
“I agree. I’d give the ‘pack up anything that matters’ order and have everyone err on the side of overstuffing the suitcases. That includes any and all pets and the humans.”
She laughed. “We don’t leave our friends and family behind.”
A reminder that I’d turned Caliente Base into the Hybrid Breeding Facility. “Take Romeo and Carmine with you. I think this will require the Top Dawgs to ensure that no one panics, everyone obeys, and those with hyperspeed use it.”
She shot me a small smile. “Thank you, Kitty.”
Gave her a fast hug. “No worries. And let’s hope that we’re just being Nervous Nellies right now.”
Viola grabbed Romeo and Carmine and they headed off, taking the Field agents we’d had with them.
We reached the elevators as the Field agents assigned to us returned. They assured me they were all packed and that others had their belongings and loved ones accounted for. Hyperspeed was the best.
Particularly with the extra Field agents along there were a lot of us and, needless to say, not all of us could fit into one elevator at a time. Frankly, we were at a bank of three elevators and there was no way all of us would fit into three cars. For safety reasons, we went six to a car, though Siler, Manfred, and the two DUI Dudes went in their car alone. The Field agents decided to speed things up and they took the stairs.
The first sets went on up and the agents headed off, leaving me and my current protection detail along with Claudia, Lorraine, Mickey and Garfield waiting for the next cars.
Was about to ask the girls what had been going on in the LSR that we’d missed—since pretending that aliens weren’t showing up seemed kind of pointless now—when I heard a sound.
“Hist!”
Looked around. “Um, did someone just sneeze or hiss or something?”
As I asked all three dog started sniffing like mad.
“No one spoke that I saw,” Buchanan said. “Though your mouth was open, Missus Executive Chief.”
“I’d been about to talk.”
“I guessed. The silence was a special rarity.”
Before I could ask Buchanan if Christopher had asked him to keep me on my snark toes, Prince growled. Then Duke and Riley joined him. They were growling at nothing as far as I could tell.
Of course, this was reminiscent of how Prince and I had met Siler, so I didn’t tell the dogs to cool their jets. “Don’t attack,” I said to them. “We want to be sure before we bite.”
At this the rest of those around me, Mickey and Garfield included, started looking around in a protective manner. Felt the love. Also felt that they probably weren’t making whoever had tried to get our attention feel confident about making any more noise.
Looked for turtle statues, or a sign of someone blending. Due to having spent a lot of quality time with Siler when he was blending, I’d gotten decent at being able to spot the way someone blending looked—just like the disguise Sherlock Holmes wore in one of the Robert Downey, Jr. movies—hidden but just a little more there in the space than should be.
However, I didn’t see any signs of this. And from the way the dogs were sniffing and growling, they weren’t sure where the hisser actually was.
“Whoever just sneezed or whatever, we have no idea who or where you are, so if you want to talk to us, now might be a good time to, you know, speak up.”
The dogs broke rank and trotted off. Decided to follow them. Because I had hyperspeed, I used it to avoid anyone being able to grab me. Because they weren’t stupid, the others followed us.
The dogs headed into another room that was close to the elevators. If I’d ever been in this room before I didn’t remember the experience. There was nothing amazing about the room—there was a small conference table and a few chairs and far less of the usual A-C bells and whistles than the rooms I was normally spending time in—it just wasn’t familiar.
But the dogs felt there was something very special in here. They spread out to surround the table as best they could, with Prince staying in front of the door and Duke and Riley taking the long sides of the table.
Dropped to my hands and knees to see a turtle-ish person standing there under the table, hunched over just a bit, hands out in that “don’t attack me, doggies” kind of way, looking freaked out. Close up, it looked kind of like a bright green Jiminy Cricket crossed with a frog, with two long fingers and one long opposable thumb on all four limbs and huge, teardrop-shaped teal eyes. However, the shell on its back said turtle. And it also looked familiar.
In fact, it looked like the statue that had been delivered to my office.