Chapter Eighteen
Maji zigzagged down the yard just inside the tree line, trying to keep out of view of the drone without losing sight of it. “Coming into range, under cover,” she said.
“Hold your position,” Angelo ordered over the comm. “I got nothing from the ground cameras. Is it weaponized?”
Maji couldn’t be sure yet, but it looked as though only a camera hung from its lattice of support bars and rotor arms. “Negative. Eighty percent.” Which were not the best odds that it wouldn’t shoot her.
“Dev?”
“Eyes on front of property, nothing in the sky or on ground.”
“Tom?”
“Rear view from second story clear.” So wherever the operator was, they probably couldn’t see him or catch him once he realized they were hunting his very expensive toy.
In a few seconds, the nearly silent baby helicopter would glide by her, if it held its course. “Preparing for takedown,” she spoke in a near whisper. If it had audio on board, no point giving her position away.
“Scrub if you have to,” Angelo replied. She nodded, preparing to step out for a clear shot as soon as the drone had its camera pointed safely away from her. Of course, he couldn’t hear the nod. “Rios, confirm.”
“Shhhh,” she breathed, stepping out from under the branches with her pistol trained high.
Five shots from the semiautomatic, and at least one connected. The drone spun down onto the lawn, digging up grass where it collided with the earth. “It’s down. No weapons visible.”
“Sending backup,” Ang replied. “Rios, approach with caution.”
“Roger.” She skirted around behind the big black metal spider on the grass, keeping out of line of sight of the camera suspended underneath. Tilted awkwardly where it had crashed, the golf-umbrella-sized flier sat motionless, its eight rotor blades still. “Anybody miss it yet?”
“Negative. Disable feed, but watch your six.”
Maji nodded, still not willing to put her voice on its audio feed. As long as the big bug had power, it was still transmitting—sound, images, location. The camera whirred, turning on its axis via remote control. She placed herself in the machine’s six o’clock position, where the camera lens couldn’t point. She hoped.
Before Maji could dig out her penknife, Angelo’s voice halted her. “Wait! Scan for an IED.”
“None,” Maji breathed. Since the thing had no gun mounts, explosives had come immediately to mind. But apparently this drone was for surveillance only. She clipped the cable to the transmitter and then, for good measure, gave the camera lens a sharp smack with the handle of her gun. The crack was satisfying. Maji peeked over the top of the drone carefully, and sure enough, the lens was fractured. She sighed and took her voice back. “Disarmed. Where’s my sherpa?”
“Close enough,” Tom answered in the comm.
Maji took a knee and watched Tom jog down the hill, carrying his rifle with scope. She had indeed been close enough for him to pick off when he’d answered her, before Maji could spot his approach. As always, she was grateful they were on the same team.
Tom gave the downed machine a careful once-over, then slung his rifle over his shoulder and prepared to hoist it up off the ground.
“I’ll carry, you cover me,” Maji said. If unwanted company appeared, he was better able to handle it from a distance.
“Negative,” Angelo’s voice countermanded. “You’re on the house cams, Rios. Act a little girly, for once.”
Knowing her stealth run and sharpshooting had probably been caught on the security feed, Maji snorted. “Dream on, lover.”
She and Tom walked up to the house, each with one hand holding an arm of the drone, their other on a weapon.
Rose watched over Jackie’s shoulder from the kitchen doorway as the three guys dismantled the center of the odd machine taking up the entire kitchen table. Maji leaned against a counter, arms crossed, watching them as well.
“This guy’s starting to irritate me,” Angelo said. “And you.” He pointed at Maji with the needle-nose pliers. He continued the thought in Arabic.
Maji shrugged and replied in kind. Then Dev said something, and Tom gave him a little shove. Angelo snapped at them. Although Rose had heard Maji and Ang speaking in Arabic, it surprised her to hear the incomprehensible language from Dev’s and Tom’s lips, too.
“What the hell?” Jackie said, almost to herself.
“I keep telling Ang it’s rude,” Rose said. “Isn’t that right, akhi?”
Tom nudged Angelo, and he looked up from the guts of the machine. “What? Oh, sorry.” He looked over his team and seemed to come to a decision. “I have to tell Gino, sooner the better. But unless I say otherwise, when Sander gets back Monday, none of this ever happened.”
His teammates each gave him a nod. When Angelo looked to Rose and Jackie, Jackie answered for them both. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Thanks, Ma.” He pointed to Maji and Rose. “You two drop in on Frank, let him know he’s not feeling well enough to come to supper at the Big House.”
“He’s not?” Rose asked, then felt stupid. “Oh. All right.” To Maji she added, “Just let me go shower and change. I’m not dressed for cloak-and-dagger.”
Rose felt sheepish going to Frank’s apartment, after all these years. She’d only been inside twice before, once when she was twenty and he had the flu. More recently, she’d gone in to pull him out for Max’s and Carlo’s funerals, finding him bandaged from the crash and suffering from a bad case of survivor’s guilt. Rose climbed the stairs on the side of the garage and let Maji knock on his door. Something thudded inside, and Maji opened the door, motioning Rose to wait. Seconds later she was back.
“He’s wobbly,” Maji said. “Leave the lights off.”
They entered into the dim living room, where Frank reclined in a battered Barcalounger. At the sight of Rose, he fussed with his robe. “I shoulda cleaned up,” he said weakly.
“Nonsense,” she replied, not raising her voice more than necessary. “Let me freshen that up.”
Rose took the TV tray by the lounger, with its half-finished sandwich and empty cup, and headed for the kitchen behind him. As she re-emerged with a tall glass of ice water, she saw Maji crouched down by him, holding his hand. Not branding him a junkie and turning her back on him, then, she thought with relief.
“Thank God,” Frank replied to whatever Maji had said. “I couldn’t have looked Mrs. B in the face today.”
Rose recalled Frank’s version of a just-say-no lecture on drugs, delivered as an anecdote when she was a teen. The tales of hash smoked on the front lines, trying heroin the first time, and the agony of withdrawal. And the fact that he’d sworn to Nonna on his life to stay clean. She couldn’t believe he would start again of his own accord. Yet Angelo wouldn’t give her an explanation for what had happened.
“You want the music back on?” Maji asked.
Rose noticed for the first time the album jackets on the floor by the stack of vintage stereo components. Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor, the earliest of the scattered collection, sat on the record player, hissing softly as it spun. How many times had she heard that on the cassette players of his cars, over her summers here? Music forbidden in California, now nostalgic as part of her adolescent rebellion.
“No!” Frank snapped. “I got a headache,” he apologized. “Just gonna doze a little.”
Rose set the cold water by him and gave him a kind smile, taking her cue from Maji. Not that she would have berated him, but there were questions she was dying to ask.
“I’m so sorry, hon. I let you down again, and—”
“Stop, it Frank.” Maji popped up from the crouch in her effortless way and stood back where she could make eye contact with both of them. “Lie to whoever else you’re supposed to, but not Rose. She’s too smart, and she needs to know she can trust you.”
“I can’t,” he protested, looking even more dejected than before.
Maji looked unconvinced. She turned her attention to Rose. “When Frank picked us up, did he have coffee in the car?”
Rose couldn’t recall. She shrugged.
“Well, he didn’t. But there was a take-out cup in the holder when I parked at the hospital.” Maji turned her gaze back to Frank, as if to pin him to his recliner with it. “And whoever brought it to you put your cigarette out in it. Somebody you never thought would slip you a Mickey and shoot you up.”
“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. “I—”
“You’re right-handed,” Maji interrupted, poking her left hand inside her right elbow. “But the needle went in here. And not too smoothly, either. Not like someone with plenty of practice.”
Rose watched him close his eyes, a tear squeezing out from under one lid. “I knew it,” she breathed. “But why?”
“Because he doesn’t have family to threaten, and getting hooked again scares him more than dying,” Maji said.
She swore softly in Spanish, the expletives aimed at…whom?
“Sirko?” Rose asked. “No, you wouldn’t let a stranger bring you coffee while you were on watch. So…?”
Frank gave Maji an anxious look, and Maji answered with a wry smile. “Too smart by half. And Frank, you won’t let anybody get to you, will you?”
He shook his head. “I’d die first. But they don’t know that. And, Rose?”
“Yes?”
“You don’t know none of this. I can’t help Ang if they don’t think they got me good, and that I’m keeping their secrets. You understand?”
She couldn’t honestly take it all in, but she nodded. “I’m getting pretty good at acting. I can pretend to be mad at you, and disappointed—whatever makes sense, I guess—as long as you know the truth.”
He blinked back tears, nodding silently.
It was frightening to see him so vulnerable. Rose looked to Maji. “Thank you.”
Maji left Rose in the Big House kitchen with Nonna and went to find Angelo.
“Ay, Annie Oakley!” Ricky called from the living room.
So her marksmanship was now on record. Great. It looked like they’d been meeting, the snacks untouched on the coffee table between the armchairs Angelo and Gino occupied and the couch Ricky dominated.
“Scoot over, will ya?”
Ricky made room for her. “We should go to the range sometime.”
“Ri don’t need the practice,” Angelo said.
Maji shrugged. “Took me four, five shots.”
“Yeah, but it was moving, and way up high,” Angelo countered. “Anyway, don’t tell Sander. Gino’s call.”
“Okay.” She looked to the boss of bosses, staying in character. “What about Frank?”
“He’ll keep his mouth shut,” Gino said.
She nodded. “He gonna keep driving us? ’Cause I got some reservations.”
“We got that covered too, babe,” Angelo replied. “Gino’s bringing more of the crew in.”
His crew. Ang couldn’t possibly let that fly. “No offense, Mr. B,” Maji started, “but I’m not comfortable out and about with guys I got no history with.”
Ang grimaced. “Then you’re gonna be stuck in the house a lot, you and Rose both. Dev and Tom got their hands full with Ma.”
“We’ll make do,” she said. “It’s just a couple more weeks, right?”
“Three,” Ang answered. “And I can’t be entertaining you. I got work to do here.”
“She gets that,” Ricky said. “We all get how busy and important you are.”
Gino raised a hand to wave off Angelo’s comeback. “Both of you, shut it. We’ll see how it goes. Besides, I get the feeling Ms. Rios can take care of herself.”
Maji didn’t hide the surprise she felt. “Thanks, Mr. B.”