God, if he wasn’t captured by then...
On the TV, the Disney happily-ever-after ending faded to the credits.
She noted Hannah looking over her shoulder at her mother’s computer. No teen on earth could resist a screen.
“Dope,” the girl said. “Graphics rock.”
Parker moved the mouse pointer over a blue dot on the side of the reactor depicted on the slide filling the screen.
“That’s your thing, the Futvee!”
Parker nodded. Like the S.I.T. the F.T.V.—“fuel transport vessel”—was her brainchild, a proprietary device that contributed to making Pocket Suns unique, and more marketable than most SMRs. Traditionally uranium fuel rods had to be carefully loaded into the core and, when spent, removed just as carefully, all by experts. The trip from the enrichment facility and to disposal sites was always risky. Parker’s Futvee was a self-contained pod that could be mounted and dismounted by any worker and was virtually impervious to damage.
The phone rang. Parker hesitated and then picked it up.
No need to worry. The food had arrived. She walked to the lobby to pay the delivery boy.
In the room once more, she set out, on the bed, the waffles, bacon for Mom, red and blue berries. Real whipped cream and fake syrup. Under the circumstances, the girl’s concern about her weight remained largely on the distant horizon.
There was a coffee for each of them.
Passing her daughter a plastic plate, she glanced at a slide of the S.I.T. trigger. “Hey, want to hear a story? An employee stole one of these. He was a spy. He was going to sell it to a competitor.”
“Stole? No way.”
“Yes way.” She smiled. “Mr. Harmon called me yesterday morning and told me somebody he hired recovered it.”
“The guy who stole it, he was in your department?”
“No. He was IT.”
“Computer people,” Hannah said. “Can’t friggin’ trust ’em. Look atThe Matrix...Did you know him?”
“No. He was in Building Five.”
“The new one.” Hannah knew the company almost as well as her mother did. Parker often arranged for the girl to come hang in her office after school. Before November 15 this was to keep her from being home with a drunk, temperamental father. Afterward, it simply made the paranoid mother feel more comfortable her daughter was nearby.
“What happened? The prick got arrested?”
Parker let the language go. “I don’t know.” Not adding that she didn’t have a chance to follow up with Marty about the spy’s fate because just after the S.I.T. was recovered, she and Hannah had had to flee.
“Can’t say your mother has a dull job, huh?” Impulsively she squeezed the girl’s hand and, after a nearly unbearable moment—will she reciprocate or not?—Hannah scooted close and threw her arms around her mother’s shoulders, buried her head against the woman’s neck.
Parker held her tightly and fought to keep the tears at bay.
43
There.” Moll, in the front seat of the van, was pointing at the Thompson Hills water tower.
The thing stood out like a blue and silver spaceship lording over the stubby fields and low brown buildings of yet another lost mill town.
Desmond squinted it out. “So, the kid was there, in the back, when she took the shot.” He was looking at the lot behind the Sunny Acres motel.
“That sign is like to blind you.” Moll was referring to the big, pink vacancy sign.If you got close, he supposed, you could probably hear it sizzle.
They drove through the lot, in a slow U around the grungy motel. They knew the woman would no longer have the 4Runner; she’d rented something, make and model unknown.
“We check out every car?” Desmond asked. “Figure which one’s theirs. Take them when they come out.”