Guardian Angel (20 page)

I nodded.

“When she fled the Guardians, Richard, Cindy stole a number of top-secret files which she planned to use as insurance against Guardian pursuit.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, surprised. I looked over at Alia. “Did you?”

My sister shook her head.

Mark continued, “Shortly after her escape from the Guardians, Cindy entrusted these documents to me. I was asked to hang on to them in case something happened to her. But after a few years, Cindy felt safe enough to ask me to return them to her, which I did.”

“Then obviously you must have read them,” said James.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Why are you asking me about them?”

“I never read them,” said Mark. “The documents were sealed in a large envelope which Cindy had asked me not to open, partly for my own safety.”

“And you were never tempted to peek inside?” asked Terry.

“Of course I was tempted!” laughed Mark. “I am only human, after all. But Cindy trusted me because I was a priest and I wasn’t going to abuse that trust.”

“Then you have no idea what’s in these files,” I said, still not understanding why Mark had brought this topic up.

“Actually, I do know,” said Mark. “As I said, Cindy didn’t want me to have the specific details, but she was kind enough to tell me that the envelope contained lists of Guardian spies in the Angels at the time, and, much more importantly for us now, it detailed the locations of several Guardian safe houses. Some of these places were so secret that only the very top members of Diana Granados’s government ever visited them.”

“And you think that Randal Divine might be hiding in a former Guardian safe house?” I asked incredulously.

But Mark was dead serious. “The only Guardians who would have known the most secret of these locations are people like Cindy, Travis Baker or Ralph Henderson. In other words, either converted or dead. Therefore, we consider it a distinct possibility that Randal believes these old Guardian hideouts to be safer than those belonging to the Angels, which, after all, are well known among the personal guards of the late Larissa Divine.”

“I guess that makes some sense,” I agreed.

“We think that Cindy might have kept the documents hidden in her house after I returned them to her,” said Mark. “You lived there with her for a time before your capture by the Wolves, Richard. One of the reasons I pressured Proton into letting you come here was to ask you about this directly. Please take a moment and try to remember.”

I closed my eyes, thinking back upon those days when I lived with Cindy and Alia in that suburban house. Back then, I was mainly concerned about my own survival, about finding Cat, and teaching Alia to speak with her mouth. The things I remembered most clearly were Cindy’s cooking lessons and power-balance meditations, our outings to the countryside lake and the rest of the time we spent at home as we slowly became a family.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Jacob, but I never saw any files like you’re describing.”

Perhaps in mild desperation, Mark turned to my sister. “Alyssa?”

Alia shook her head too, saying, “I don’t know either. Besides, I didn’t know how to read back then anyway.”

“There was a room,” I said, remembering, “on the second floor, filled with boxes and old furniture and stuff. Cindy’s envelope might be in there somewhere.”

“It’s not,” Ed Regis suddenly said.

We all looked at him.

“I was there in person,” explained Ed Regis, giving me an uncomfortable look. “After you gave me her address.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, we cleaned out the entire house,” said Ed Regis. “We even pulled up the floorboards and opened up the walls. But we found nothing. There were many boxes in the second-floor storage room, but they contained mostly clothes, books and a few photo albums. There was hardly anything related to the Guardians or psionics. Everything in that house was moved to one of our secure facilities.”

“Those belong to the Angels now,” said Mark. “There was nothing else?”

“Actually, there was something,” said Ed Regis. “Dust patterns on the floor suggested that the storage room had been recently searched. The other rooms had also been searched prior to our arrival.”

“That’s because we left Ralph Henderson tied to a chair there when we left,” I explained. “Ralph must have recovered the files for the Guardians when he managed to get free.”

“No,” said Terry. “He certainly would have if the files had been left there, but Cindy wouldn’t have left them at her house. Why would she? She wasn’t planning on coming back.”

“Tiffy has a point,” I said, realizing the flaw in my logic. “Cindy had probably hid them in the baggage that we took to Mark’s – I mean Jacob’s house.”

“We were there too,” Ed Regis said with an apologetic look in Mark’s direction. “There was nothing at Father Parnell’s house or at his church.”

Mark’s lips didn’t even show a hint of a frown. “When Cindy and I discovered that the Wolves were after us, we dropped everything and ran,” he said. “I’m certain that Cindy didn’t have the files on her.”

“So these documents just went poof?” asked James.

I looked at Alia for help, but she just stared blankly back.

Terry pointed out, “If these documents were to act as insurance against the Guardians, Cindy wouldn’t have kept them on her. She would have passed them to someone else just like she passed them to Jacob once.”

“That’s exactly what she did!” I exclaimed, almost jumping out of my seat when it hit me. “Jacob, you remember how Cindy left your house for a day and a night?”

“I do,” Mark said slowly.

“She must have passed the files on to someone then. Someone she could trust.”

“Cindy trusted nobody back then, Richard.”

“She trusted you, didn’t she?” I argued.

“Because I wasn’t a faction member,” said Mark.

“Well, then she passed the files to another non-faction member,” I said. “And I think I know who.”

“Who?” everyone demanded at once.

“A friend. A cop. I think his name was Bird or something.”

“Bird?!”

“No!” I jumped again as I remembered. “Brian! Cindy said he owed her a favor.”

“Brian what?” asked Mark.

“I don’t know. But he worked at the police station across the street from Cindy’s old hospital.”

“Cindy wasn’t gone long enough to make a roundtrip back to her hometown,” said Mark.

I nodded. “I know, and I don’t think she would’ve risked it. When she left, she told me that she might have found a new home for Alyssa and me. But she was lying because she didn’t want me to know about the files either. No, she drove to another town near yours to hide her trail, called Brian and mailed the files directly to him.”

“It’s possible,” said Mark, “but there’s no guarantee.”

“Well, you said she hardly trusted anyone, Jacob. Edmund claims the files weren’t at her house or yours. So Brian’s worth a check, don’t you think?”

Mark nodded. “We will pass this information on to the Council. Their Knights can seek him out. Thank you, Richard.”

“Glad I could help,” I replied, though I had a feeling that Bullet-in-the-Butt Brian was in for a very bad day.

Terry said teasingly to Mark, “Bet you wish you peeked in that envelope when you could.”

Mark shook his head. “I never regret my civility, Tiffany.”

There was a knock on the doorframe. Proton pulled himself through the curtain and said wryly to Mark, “If only the Council could fight as much as they can talk.”

“Are they still waiting for the Meridian to officially join the Guardians?” Mark asked pleasantly.

“If they are, they’re in for a long wait,” replied Proton. “The Meridian has just submitted its surrender to King Divine. The leaders will be brought to Lumina within a week to be processed for conversion.”

After the Guardians, the Meridian had been one of the largest psionic factions in the country. Another big step forward for the Angels.

“Anyway,” said Proton, looking around at us, “has Jacob already briefed you all on your responsibilities here?”

“Not yet,” said Mark. “But I think we’ll just put them all on the camera crew for now so that we can relieve some of our other operatives for tourist duty. Jack and Edmund might qualify as tourists later, but I fear the rest are too famous for outdoor work in Lumina.”

“I agree with Richard and Tiffany remaining on the camera crew,” said Proton, “but I want Alyssa with the blood runners as soon as possible.”

“I’ll see what I can set up for her,” said Mark.

I didn’t understand the jargon at all, but I already didn’t like what they were saying about my sister. For the moment, however, I kept my mouth shut.

Checking his watch, Proton said to Mark, “We have about an hour now to the S&D at Quintus. Let’s get them armed and settled. Then they can watch a show and learn their first job at the same time.”

“I’ll show them around,” said Mark.

Leaving Proton there, the six of us exited the meeting room.

“First, the armory,” said Mark as he led us through the low-ceilinged maze. “As you may have guessed by now, though Proton and I are officially codirectors of the Resistance, Proton is the leader and I am more his assistant than his equal. But that is for the best. It is important that we have a single, strong leader to follow in these difficult times.”

“What was all that about camera crews, tourists and blood runners?” I asked.

Mark explained, “The camera crew watches Lumina day and night from the surveillance room here on Twenty Point Five. We’ve hacked into almost every security camera that the Angels have. Tourists are people like Raider who are cleared for outdoor duty, pretending to be Angels or ordinary non-faction people living in this area. They hide in plain sight and have the advantage of being able to follow our targets around and cause mischief when necessary. Blood runners are medics, also an outdoor job. We call them blood runners because the most common injuries here are those that require an immediate response. We have six doctors and nurses, and now, with Alyssa here, three healers.”

Mark stopped at a doorframe and pulled the curtain aside. “Here we are. This is the armory.”

We entered a long rectangular room lined with wooden crates filled with grenades and an assortment of guns of all sizes.

“Take whatever you feel comfortable with,” offered Mark.

“That would be nothing,” I informed him.

Mark smiled. “Cindy would be happy to hear that.”

My continuing dislike of firearms notwithstanding, I dutifully picked out a pistol and two spare clips. Terry and James also settled for handguns while Ed Regis chose an automatic rifle.

“I’m just used to the weight,” said Ed Regis, who also took a sidearm for good measure.

Alia, predictably, refused to touch any part of the arsenal.

Terry gave her a disgusted look. “You insist on coming with us, Alyssa. You agree to fight with us. And yet you still cling to your pacifist nonsense. You’re even worse than your brother.”

“There’s more than one way to fight a war, Tiffany,” Alia replied defiantly.

Mark cleared his throat once and said, “I’ll show you your sleeping quarters now.”

We exited the armory, and as we walked on, Mark continued, “Many of our operatives sleep in the barracks on the west side, but I insisted on you guys getting a private room. That way, it’ll be easier for you to keep your secret, whatever it is, to yourselves.”

“Thank you,” said Terry.

“The walls are quite thin, however, so if you’re talking about anything private, speak in whispers,” warned Mark. “Also, I’m afraid we can only give you one room.”

I wasn’t about to complain about room assignments in a place like this. “We’re motorhome people,” I reassured him. “We’re used to living small.”

James bumped his forehead against a pipe running along the ceiling. “Ow! I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this ceiling.”

We entered the tiny square room that Mark had appropriated for our private use. It was about the size of a walk-in closet. Like the rest of Twenty Point Five, the walls here were made of random pieces of junk: a cracked plastic sheet, a wide wooden table turned on end, a thick blanket hanging down from a pipe, and several stacks of large cardboard boxes.

“This was a storage space until yesterday,” said Mark, “so don’t be too surprised if someone tries to dump some boxes in here. Just have them talk to me.”

“Nice and cozy,” James remarked unenthusiastically.

But our tiny room had been properly prepared. Lined up along the cardboard-box wall were five tightly rolled sleeping bags and foam mats. In one corner was a wooden crate full of water bottles. Our duffle bags containing our clothes and other belongings, which we had left under Raider’s trapdoor, had also been brought in. “Cozy” was an understatement: there was hardly any visible floor.

“You’ll be working in shifts,” said Mark, “so it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to all sleep in here at once.”

Alia asked Mark about the plumbing.

“Nonexistent, Alyssa,” Mark informed her. “There are no baths or showers on Twenty Point Five. We don’t have any running water here, and the toilets are just buckets with lids on them, sort of like indoor outhouses. Hold your nose as you use them and try not to fall in.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Alia.

“Not as disgusting as the job of emptying the buckets,” said Mark, laughing as Alia moaned loudly.

“Bet you wish you stayed in Wood-claw now,” I whispered to Alia teasingly.

Alia stuck her tongue out at me.

“As for keeping clean,” said Mark, “we take turns sneaking into the showers of our allied condos on floors twenty and twenty-one, but not very often. Fortunately for you, Alyssa, being a blood runner requires you to stay presentable.”

“Don’t you mean ‘invisible’?” I asked.

Mark shook his head. “Setting up phantom trains takes preparation and timing to avoid the thermographic cameras, so we only use them to move people that the Angels would recognize, such as Tiffany and yourself. A blood runner has to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

“Alyssa is pretty well known among the Angels, too,” I argued.

“I know,” said Mark. “That’s why I hesitated at first to make her a blood runner. But Proton is right. There’s little point in having a healer here if she can’t move about. We’ll set her up with a proper disguise. I think Raider’s daughter might be about her size.”