Ground Zero (15 page)

“I think I’ll let your husband check out the situation with your boobs. He’s already glaring at me.”

Mac looked over at Neil, who was in fact glaring, though she didn’t think it had anything to do with her breasts. She rolled her eyes and stalked over to him.

“I told him to hug me, cowboy, so get over it.”

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did all the talking for you. Relax. Ian’s harmless. He wouldn’t even check to see if he flattened my chest with that hug,” she teased.

“Harmless. Uh, okay,” he said sarcastically, which instantly lit up her temper, but it wasn’t the time to start a fight. They had things to do.

“Let’s just get back to the boat, then,” she said tersely. “Hopefully it won’t take as long to get back as it did to get here.”

“Yeah.”

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There was no place for a private conversation on the boat. Without the constant, happy chatter from Vigo and Denny, though mainly from Vigo, there might have been a lot of quiet time in the two days it took to get back to Detroit. Before they started out on the second day, Mac managed to convince Ian to take a quick dive with her to check out the hairline crack between the hull and the keel, but it wasn’t easy. He seemed to have lost the majority of his suspicions with regard to the two boys, but he eyed Neil warily when Mac made the suggestion.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! We need to know if we’re taking on water. Our lives may depend on it. So let’s put aside whatever the hell this other issue is and be grown-ups for two little minutes, shall we?”

Her loss of temper eased the tension a little bit, and finally Ian went into one of the bathrooms to change into a pair of shorts he’d brought with him. Then he tied up Bella on the deck so she wouldn’t jump in after him. Mac went to change into her own shorts and t-shirt.

“I’ll let you wear the equipment. I’ve been down there and know where I’m going, and I can hold my breath for as long as it takes to show you where it is. That way you can stay there and look at it as long as you need to,” she explained to Ian.

“Okay, but you better not drown or anything. I don’t look forward to explaining to that surly bear you married that I’m still alive while you’re feeding the fishes.”

“Could you take things seriously for a minute? You might be able to kick my ass, but I might just be fast enough to get a shot in and make you regret opening your soon-to-be-swollen mouth,” she retorted. With that she just jumped into the water off the railing, and waited for him to fall in. When they got halfway down the side of the boat, Ian turned in the water to look at her.

“You know, you didn’t actually have to show me where the keel meets the hull. It’s not exactly a difficult place to find.”

“Then why did I have to come with you?”

“If I have to freeze my ass off, you should, too,” he said, and then disappeared beneath water just in time to miss the splash she sent at his face.

“Aargh!” Then she waited stubbornly for him to finish looking at the crack. A few minutes passed before she felt a hand grab her ankle and yank her under water. She flailed and spluttered to the surface, hearing nothing but laughter from Ian.

“You freakin’ jerk,” she hollered, making Bella bark at her from the boat, which only made him laugh harder. When they got back on the boat she called him an American idiot, and stomped down the hall toward the bedroom to get changed. Neil was standing there, giving Ian an appraising look through narrowed eyes, and Mac had no idea what to make of it. All she knew was that she was irritated as hell and wanted to spend the next few hours of her life completely by herself. Something that wasn’t so easy to do when trapped on a boat with four other people.

Whatever it was that had gone on between Neil and Ian, however, tensions decreased to a tolerable level for the remainder of the trip to Detroit. They were able to discuss the issue of the hull in a reasonable and mature manner, with Ian providing what little expertise he could.

“It could just be crazing in the gelcoat. It’s only a single line, rather than a bunch of cracks in a concentric circle. I pushed on it with my finger, and there doesn’t appear to be any give, but I’m not an expert by any means. When I had a boat I took it in to other people to get things like that looked after. Probably got taken to the cleaners more than once by not knowing more about it, though.”

“So, what does that mean for us then?” Neil asked.

“It means doing what you planned to do in the first place. We keep an eye on it, and check to make sure we’re not taking on water. When we go into the water to check it, we can see if the boat is riding lower, and since it’ll be heavier if there’s water in the hull it may not go as fast, or steer as easily.”

“Might be hard for us to tell. We came down here with the current. Now we’re going against it, so that’s going to affect our speed all the way back. Still, if we notice it getting progressively worse, that should tell us something,” Mac said.

“You’ve got bilge pumps, too, which will start running all the time if the water is coming in,” Ian added, rubbing Bella’s ear as she sat contentedly beside him.

“Oh. Is that sort of like a sump pump for a basement?” Mackenzie asked him.

“That depends what a sump pump is,” Ian replied.

“Oh, right. I forgot who I was talking to … the hopeless handyman himself. A sump goes in a basement. It’s got a float valve on it, or something similar, that turns on the pump if the basement starts getting water in it.,” she explained.

“In that case, yeah. The bilge pump is like a sump pump. I would think this boat has more than one, considering the size of it, so if you start hearing a new pump motor coming on all the time, when it wasn’t before, then you’ve got water coming in. Still, I don’t think it’s something we need to worry about. It’s very unlikely it’s going to be an issue in the amount of time we’ll be on the boat, and the pumps will keep the boat from sinking unless the water volume is too much for them to pump out.”

“I was hoping you’d be able to use the boat to get back, though. We can get more vegetable oil easily enough, but having to find another boat that’s suitable for conversion, and then getting Gilles to do it, will be a pain in the ass. My ass, in fact. Gilles can be cranky,” Mac explained, when Ian gave her a questioning look.

“You don’t have one normal friend, do you?”

“Nope. They’re all jerks. I must like jerks or something.”

“Gee, thanks, honey,” Neil said sarcastically.

“Hey, I said I like them. I didn’t say I was in love with them, so it doesn’t automatically imply you’re a jerk, but I’ll let you decide whether or not that shoe fits. By the way, what happened to Vigo and Denny? You didn’t toss them overboard, did you?”

“Wow, you must really think I’m some kind of asshole. No, I didn’t toss them overboard. They finally crashed. I guess it’s the excitement of being on a boat for the first time. They spent most of the night lying on the deck, pointing out all the stars. Now they’re exhausted.”

“What the hell are we going to do when we get to Detroit, Neil? They’re kids! Are we really going to let them walk twenty miles by themselves?”

“They survived several months in Cleveland, honey. They’ll survive a day-hike.”

“Maybe, but have you stopped to consider what will happen to them if they get there and things aren’t the same?” She didn’t want to say that Vigo’s parents might not be alive, just in case one of the kids woke up and heard them talking, but Neil caught on to what she was saying.

“Shit. You’re right. We’ll have to take them all the way there. Besides, if they have to go through downtown Detroit, God only knows what they’d be facing. So, Ian, it looks like you’ll be guarding the boat in the meantime,” Neil said, leaving Mac with the impression that he was looking forward to some time alone with his wife. Well, she could certainly do with a few moments of privacy with her husband, too. She wanted an explanation for his behaviour. Not that it would be easy waiting for the return trip to get it, but she could be patient occasionally.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you why the hell you look like you’ve had the shit beat out of you, and what the hell is going on with your hair,” Ian said, interrupting her thoughts. “I know your husband isn’t beating you, or you’d have shot him by now, so what happened to you?”

“Oh, not too much. My face met a door, which
was
Neil’s fault, so maybe I should have shot him, and then my head met the mast. After that the boat tried to scalp me. It was doing a good job of it until I lopped off my hair. Neil used Superglue to put my scalp back together, and set my nose for me – thankfully while I was still unconscious from the blow to the head.

“Aside from a couple of dives to check out the hull, I haven’t managed a shower just yet, much less a proper haircut to tidy myself up. Sorry I didn’t spruce myself up for our meeting, but you know me … I’m not exactly queen of the runway. You’re mostly lucky I bothered changing out of my pyjamas.”

Ian just laughed at her.

“You have the damndest luck, don’t you? When was the last time you walked ten feet without falling down and hurting yourself?”

“Oh, shut up. I better not be that clumsy, or it’s going to take a week for us to take those boys home. Meanwhile you and Bella will be lying around on the boat, soaking up the sun, drinking wine, and eating ambrosia. American Utopia. Can’t compare to the Canadian version, but we all have our problems. Not your fault you couldn’t be born in Canada, though, so I guess I shouldn’t rub it in. It’s not nice to make fun of those born with disadvantages.”

“You know, I can actually kick your ass now. We’re no longer in two different countries for you to be getting away with shit like that, Ms. Thane. Or should I call you Ms. Thing? Oh, wait, you’re married now. What the hell is your name?”

At that Neil started to laugh. Mackenzie pointed her finger at him.

“Don’t you start,” she warned. “That did
not
happen.”

“You could call her Mac-Mac like I did, though I get the funny feeling she doesn’t like it,” Neil said, trying to keep a straight face. Once Neil had explained his last name to him, and how everyone called him Mac, too, Ian’s laughter carried across the water. Even Bella looked like she was laughing. Mac could feel her face burning, and covered it with her hands.

“I’m going to kill you for that,” she muttered through her fingers. “He’s never going to let me live that down. I think we’ve done enough of this sitting around and talking. I’m going to get us moving, so we actually get to Detroit some time before midnight.”

As she pulled herself up the steps into the cabin, she made sure they heard her muttering about the jerks she had to put up with, though it was with some relief. It may have cost her some future embarrassment, but at least Ian and Neil were having a laugh together.

Once they made it to Detroit, Mac switched over to diesel for a few minutes to run out the oil, and then shut down the engines. She was going to get a few hours’ sleep, and then they would have to head out with Vigo and Denny. Not that she was looking forward to it. Assuming nothing bad happened, they could make it back in twelve hours, but after everything she’d been through she really hated assuming anything. She was better off expecting the worst and being pleasantly surprised if it didn’t happen.

When she tried to sleep, however, Mac knew within minutes that it just wasn’t going to happen. It was far too early for her, and those boys were raring to go. She could hear the excitement in their voices as they talked about the first thing they were going to do when they got there, so Mac gave up on sleep. She knew she wasn’t likely going to be able to sleep outside, either, so there was every likelihood she wasn’t going to get any rest until they got back.

“Coffee,” she muttered. “I need lots and lots of coffee.”

14 ~ Suspicious Minds

Billy was left in charge of things at the farm, while Cam took Chuck with her to scavenge at the hardware store. She would have taken Gilles, since she trusted him the most with respect to safety and security, but that was also the reason she left him behind. She needed to make sure someone competent was keeping a sharp eye on Mitch. So far she hadn’t had any problems with him, but leaving the farm without proper supervision could be disastrous. Billy could run things easily enough, but he needed good support, too.

At least Chuck had a hell of a reach on him. She’d seen him ducking under door frames, so she figured he was at least four inches over six feet, possibly five. He’d be able to reach anything on high storage shelves, without them having to mess around with forklifts. Carol had said they were battery-operated, which meant they might still work, but they had been sitting there for months. The charge in the batteries may have trickled out in that length of time.

Chuck was driving, because Cam wasn’t at all comfortable with a trailer, and the horse trailer was huge. It was meant to haul three horses, so it would give them plenty of space for any building supplies they might be needing, including anything they might take to the hunting cabin so Mike could make it habitable for himself. They sure as hell weren’t going to do the work for his thieving ass.

It galled her to have to take care of someone like Mitch, but he was going to need a roof over his head, too. Lisa’s cabin was in progress, and there were plenty of trees on the property to finish it, but the less they had to cut down the better. They were trying to keep themselves shielded from view, after all. Of course, it would take a long time for them to cut down that many trees. Between their property and Neil’s, there were plenty to go around.

“Okay, pull up to the shipping bay door there so I can unlock it. We can back the truck and trailer right in, if you’re okay doing that with a trailer,” Cam said.

“No problem. This has more than one axle, so it’s not that bad. Doesn’t sway back and forth so easily. Your mom’s open trailer is a bit more difficult, though this one doesn’t have so much visibility,” he replied as he drove up alongside the garage-style door. She got out, went in through the side door, and opened the roll-up door. Cameron waited while Chuck pulled around and started to back it in.

He left about four feet of open space behind him so they could still get the trailer doors open. The loading dock was too high for the horse trailer anyway, so Cam figured they could use some strong boards as a makeshift ramp to put everything inside. Since the shipping bay was meant for giant tractor-trailers, there was plenty of room for them, and she ran over to close the garage door. Hopefully no one had seen them come in.

She had just closed the door, and was looking through the row of windows to check for any unwanted company, when she saw some movement about a block away. She was about to call Chuck over to watch with her, just in case there was trouble, when she recognized the strut and stature. It was her dad. He was a short guy, and like a lot of short guys he strutted. Some form of compensation for lack of height, she supposed.

At first she just thought it was a little weird. A coincidence, maybe, running into him this way. She thought about getting him to come over and help them, since it would make the work go faster, but then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked over, and saw a woman heading toward him. She had a long stride, and was fairly tall for a woman. The moment she saw Cam’s dad, she began to hurry her pace. They met in the middle, and were immediately locking lips in a tight embrace.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Cam murmured. “Dad’s got a girlfriend.” She knew there were other people still alive, so she wasn’t too surprised, though she did wonder why her dad hadn’t simply brought her to the farm. Obviously this was something that had been going on for some time, seeing as he’d been disappearing for his ‘walkabouts’ for weeks, if not months. There was no reason she could think of that he couldn’t just bring her home with him, and then he wouldn’t have to walk so far to meet her all the time. Unless she was married, of course, and for that she would really have to kick her dad’s ass.

But then she recognized the woman. Cameron sucked in her breath so fast from the shock that her saliva caught in her throat and she started to cough. Her first instinct was to run out there and confront them both, but a small voice in the back of her mind advised caution. Whatever was going on here was a bad thing, and she needed to get to the bottom of it. Maybe it was just an affair, but maybe it was something a whole lot more sinister.

She very sincerely wanted to smack her dad upside the head at the moment, because she couldn’t think of any good reason why he’d be getting himself involved with the mother of the man she had killed. But then, maybe he didn’t know who she was. Still, he at least had to know she was married, because he was keeping their relationship a secret.

“You gonna stand there staring out the window all day, or are we gonna get this trailer loaded?” Chuck’s voice carried across the shipping bay, echoing slightly. Cam shook her head to clear it, and tried to ignore the sick feeling in her gut. They had a job to do. She would have to figure out what to do about her dad later.

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

When they got back to the farm, Cam didn’t even bother unloading the truck and trailer. There was no urgency there, and she had something a whole lot more important on her mind. By the time Chuck had pulled away from the hardware store, there had been no sign of her dad, or of Geraldine, but she hadn’t expected any. People conducting clandestine affairs generally didn’t bang one another in the middle of a street where anyone could see them. In fact, it had been a little stupid of them to meet on the street in the first place, because she herself had seen them.

The problem, of course, was that she had no idea when her dad would get back so that she could talk to him. He must have left the farm the day before, in order to walk so far in that length of time, which meant he’d probably disappeared right after she’d complained that he wasn’t there for her.  It made her understand once again why her mother hadn’t stayed with him.

Thinking about it, she realized this wasn’t the first time he had given some woman priority over his own daughter. He’d done it when she was really young, which had resulted in fights between him and her mother. Finally her mother had issued an ultimatum. He either had to do what he said he was going to do, or he wouldn’t be allowed to see Cam. It must have been shortly after her parents had split up, because she vaguely remembered the woman her dad had been seeing at the time, and that she hadn’t liked her very much.

She considered his situation as she walked over the bridge to get to Kirk and Leigh’s cabin. It wouldn’t be hard to find at least one of them puttering around the place, and Cam needed someone to talk to. She preferred talking to Kirk, but she was pretty close to Leigh, too. They were the only people she could really trust to keep things to themselves, because they were her own friends, rather than just people who were in her life because of her mother.

Cameron found both of them outside with their archery equipment, which made her sorry she hadn’t thought to bring her own. She could have used the practice. For now, though, she would need to interrupt theirs. After a quick greeting, she explained what was going on.

“Oh. Shit. That’s bad. That’s really bad,” Kirk moaned.

“Tell me about it. It gives me a whole new perspective on the kind of person she is, and I let the filthy woman hug me! Hell, I cried on her shoulder. God, I can’t stand cheaters,” Cam snarled.

“You have no way of knowing what their marriage is like. He might be beating the shit out of her, or maybe they were about to get a divorce when suddenly their kid is dead and the world goes to hell. Now they can’t,” Leigh said pragmatically.

“If she was being beaten, I’m sure my dad would know, and I guarantee he would have made sure she got away from her husband. It’s possible they were splitting up, or that me killing their kid ruined their marriage, but they sure didn’t act like that when I was there. I only met her once, and him twice, so I can’t be sure, but I just didn’t get that vibe from them. Of course, I didn’t get the vibe that she was fucking around on her husband, either,” she said bitterly. She was really starting to feel like a fool for crying on Geraldine’s shoulder.

“I don’t know what to tell ya, Cam. All I can say is that I don’t think it’s a good situation. Even if it’s just them having an affair, the last thing we need right now is to have some crazy husband showing up at the farm, pissed at the guy fucking his wife. As shitty as it is, you’re going to have to do something about it. Not only is he your dad, but you’ve also got to deal with all the shit on the farm right now, so you’re stuck with the job.”

Kirk was right, she knew. There was no one else, and it was her responsibility for the moment. If her mother was here, it would have been her dealing with it, but she wasn’t. Cam was really starting to resent Ian for her mother’s absence.

“What I’m worried about, is what her intentions are,” Cam said, gnawing at her bottom lip.

“Well, yeah. She could be madly in love with your dad, of course, and she hasn’t known for very long who it was that killed Gerry, but she could have started something with him just to get inside information on what was going on at the farm. I’m sure by now she knows exactly where we all are, and what our set-up is. It’s not a good thing. I hope you took care of the holes in the security where that guy was getting through.”

“Of course I did, Kirk. I improved on the original set-up a bit, too, I think. Not only did we get the camera back in place so that everything is in view again, but I made sure there were screenshots printed so we can verify that the cameras are still pointed to the same place. I even kept an extra copy of them in my own file, in case someone fucked around with it and printed new reference images to keep people from being suspicious.

“Instead of moving the sensor by the dead tree, though, we cut up the tree and moved it. Mom will find a use for the wood, I’m sure. We checked all the other sensors, and I’m going to walk both perimeters every once in a while to make sure that doesn’t happen again without us knowing about it. Mom is going to freak out when she gets back, and finds out nobody told her about all this shit happening, but we did a damn good job taking care of everything.”

“You won’t get any argument from me, though I don’t envy you when she gets back. She’s going to chew up one side of you and down the other,” he said.

“I know. I’ll have to wait out the storm, and explain my reasoning when she’s done having her shit-fit. I know I’d be pissed, too, so I can’t blame her but it’s not going to be much fun for me.”

“Well, what was she going to do, other than worry? Every time you had a problem, you resolved it long before she’d have been able to make it back here to do anything,” said Leigh.

“I know, but she’s not going to see it that way. At least not at first. She has every right to be kept in the loop, just like when I got pissed at Gilles for trying to take charge. He and Chuck were making plans without consulting me. The plans were the same as mine, so the result would have been the same, but they kept me out of the loop. It pissed me off, and it’s going to piss her off, too. Still, it won’t be a question of her not trusting me after this or anything. She might not believe I’ll tell her everything if she has to leave again, but she’ll at least know I can handle whatever comes up,” she finished.

“Won’t be much comfort while she’s chewing you out, but it’ll pass,” Kirk said. Cam had to laugh. It didn’t matter that she was an adult. The thought of getting in shit with her mother still had her stomach knotting. Then again, her mother was pretty intimidating when she was riled.

“So when do you think we can get together again for a real game night? I really want to see what everyone thinks of that game once we’ve really gotten into it,” Leigh said.

“God, I wish I could. We still have to ship off that asshole who was stealing from us, and we’ve got two cabins to get built. Of course, Mitch is going to be stuck doing a lot of the work himself, because I want him to get a taste of what it takes to do the shit we’ve been doing. He won’t be laughing when he’s got splinters, and blisters on top of blisters. Might be the first he’s ever earned anything in his life, and I’m looking forward to seeing that,” Cam said, grinning evilly.

“You already know that game is great, babe,” Kirk said, poking Leigh’s shoulder.

“I
don’t
know. Lisa was right in a way. I mean, we’re already dealing with all that shit, so how is it any fun for anyone?” Leigh looked worried, so Cam put in her two cents.

“Of course it’s fun! It’s competitive, for one thing, which isn’t something we can do in real life. And for another, the consequences aren’t real. It’s not the same thing at all. In a way it’s just like
The Sims
. You can do stuff in the game that you can’t do in real life, like drowning your Sims, or starving them to death. And you get to try different ways of doing things, to see what works best. Of course, I’m hoping you’re planning to make other kinds of games, too, so we have a little more variety. No rush, though. We’ve still got a zillion games to play. I made sure of that when mom and I were planning for all this.”