“We will, Nick. The alarms are on in the house, and we’ll be paying attention. Jean and I will go watch ‘Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ or ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ while we stand guard.”
“I’d rather Dad put a bullet in my head than watch those two crappy movies,” Jean mumbled, much to the amusement of Nick and Gus.
“What the hell? I thought you loved those movies.”
“No… you loved them. I had to endure them,” Jean replied. “Let’s watch ‘Taken’. I love that movie. The daughter sure found out who to depend on in that one.”
Rachel turned her open mouthed, gasping stare onto Nick, who shrugged with comic finesse, while Gus chortled inappropriately. “Jean plays you like an old harmonica, hon. Maybe you shouldn’t present such an easy target.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed as the truth bled into her consciousness. “Slowly I turn… step by step. I…”
With one last half laugh and scream, Jean ran for it with Deke in close order guardianship. Rachel took a deep breath. “I’ll wake you two at ten. That should give you pricks enough time to plot the demise of Western Civilization. In the meantime, I think my daughter and I will share a special moment with the classic movie ‘The Sound of Music’.”
“Uh oh… don’t do it, Rach,” Nick pleaded. “Jean already threatened to run away from home if you played that movie again. Take her suggestion to heart, and watch ‘Taken’. It will bring out the beast in you.”
Rachel gestured to the heavens with her attention coming to rest on Gus finally. “Do you understand what’s happened here, Gus? During the damn life and death trip we made with El Muerto, my daughter was assimilated into the ‘Borg’.”
Nick immediately shifted into his convincing ‘Borg’ voice from Rachel’s Star Trek: The Next Generation TV show reference. “Your daughter… has been assimilated. You too… will be assimilated. Resistance is futile… you will be assimilated.”
Rachel sighed, taking the tablet and phone from Gus. “Get some sleep. I’ll go find out what ‘Seven of Nine’ junior wants to watch.”
“You’re mixing Star Trek franchise references,” Nick warned. “The human Borg ‘Seven of Nine’ was a character in Star Trek: Voyager.”
“Well big whoopee do!” Rachel headed for the door.
“I would have liked to assimilate ‘Seven of Nine’.”
“Gus!” Rachel turned on him. “Really? I would have expected a statement like that from the Terminator, but not from you. What if Tina heard you talking like this?”
“Would this be a bad time to mention that Tina sometimes dresses in a ‘Seven of Nine’ outfit, and I put on my Worf Klingon costume?”
After the laughter died down, Rachel shrugged. “At least you have more imagination than my fiction writer here. All I get is a ‘Princess Leia’ costume.”
“Is this a bad time for me to tell you I borrowed it from Gus?”
*
Nick moved through the El Carmelo Cemetery, smiling at the dense fog covering everything in sight, including the pathways to the Lighthouse Lodge bordered by the cemetery. He pictured Gus waiting for his call banging his head against the steering wheel. Gus listened patiently over four hours prior to their surveillance operation, as Nick explained how the rooms 141 and 143 were far from the entrance in front, but could be approached easily from the ocean side through the cemetery. The sliding glass doors in the back of each room opened out to the cemetery. Gus had refrained from commenting, but Nick could tell he had been doubtful of the approach, knowing Munsun was a trained CIA operative. Using his fog bank cover, Nick flitted easily to the Lighthouse Lodge building’s rear wall, a black shadow watching silently before moving to the partially open rear entry of room 143.