“I don’t get it,” said June. “If you’re not in charge of this, who is?”
“You haven’t guessed already?” He turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Who stepped in when your mother left? Who was always running the show around here?”
It hit her like a slap. She shook her head. “That can’t be true. I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t want to believe it,” said the Yeti, turning back to the monitor. “I didn’t want to, either. Now I think she always worked for them. She came as an agricultural researcher as an excuse to see what else we were doing. She’s the reason they offered the funding. To take us over.”
June thought of the slender young man with the pitchfork. “Who’s Oliver?”
“I don’t know who you mean. One of the security men? I don’t know any of them anymore. Maybe it’s my memory, or maybe they rotate people in and out more often now. They do some farm work and some carpentry, but they also run patrols in the valley. A few came in just a few days ago. That’s when the encryption changed.”
His voice got louder. “And I’m getting nowhere.” He hit the plywood desk with his giant clenched fist. Everything on the desk jumped six inches in the air. It took an act of will for June not to jump, too. This was more like how he used to be. Scary, a force of nature. The Yeti.
But she was an adult now. “Relax, Dad. Maybe I can help.” She hooked the leg of a spare chair with her foot and pulled it over, opening her laptop. “Do you have Wi-Fi?”
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and visibly calmed himself. “Of course. You want to go online?”
“I have a friend who’s really good with security,” she said. “His name is Tyg3r.”
54
PETER
Sally looked utterly at home with the gray automatic in her hand, as if she’d held one in her crib as a child. It was one of the small Glocks, powerful but designed for concealment. Peter thought it suited her, whoever she really was, hiding inside the skin of a cheerful agricultural researcher.
“Or you’ll shoot me?” asked Peter. He kept his elbows down but held his hands up and out to the sides, floating in the air.
Oliver’s head appeared, then the rest of him, as he finished the climb up from the valley floor. He didn’t appear to be breathing hard. His youthful face showed nothing. He’d left the pitchfork behind.
“Oh, shooting you is definitely an option,” said Sally. She angled her head at the bulky man in the camo pants and buzz cut. “Wilkes throwing you off the cliff is another.”
Wilkes glanced quickly at Oliver, whose expression was unchanged, then back to Peter. Wilkes’s weight remained on his toes, his arms akimbo, hands open. His fingers twitched slightly.
Sally smiled then, her teeth white in her mouth, the wrinkles hard around her eyes. She was still motherly and cheerful, but now the other thing inside her was more visible. Her true self, Peter figured. Her professional self.
She said, “We don’t need to do this the hard way, do we, Peter? We both want the same thing. We both want June to be safe. And we want June to be happy. Right?”
“How do you propose to make that happen?” asked Peter.
“She’s reunited with her father,” said Sally. “Whether she knows it or not, this is what her whole life has been about. Understanding her relationship with her father. Then there’s you. Maybe she likes you, maybe it’s more than that, I don’t much care. But I’ll tell you this, kiddo. The only reason you’re still alive is because our June has taken a shine to you.”
“And what’s your piece of this?” Peter asked. But he already knew.
“Simple,” said Sally. “I’m fond of that girl, but I want the algorithm. I believe that she has it somewhere, and I’m going to get it, one way or another. So it’s up to you. Protect the girl by providing that algorithm, or die here.”
Under Sally’s professional eye, Peter deliberately unsnapped his holster, put two fingers on the butt of the trucker’s .357, and eased it out. Then held it over the edge and let it go. He heard it bounce a few times on the way down. “Now what?”
“Now we wait,” Sally said, and nodded to Wilkes, who took the Browning automatic from his shoulder rig and held it against his leg. Sally tucked her own gun away into the pocket of her barn jacket. “And watch.”
She retrieved a shoulder bag from behind her rock and pulled out a computer tablet. Tapped it and the screen came alive. “It’s amazing what technology can do, isn’t it? I’m seeing a drone’s-eye view of a vehicle convoy. Wilkes, they just turned off Highway 12 at Lyle.”
“Let me guess,” said Peter. “A big Mercedes SUV and a few Ford Explorers?”
“We have a subcontractor who has a misplaced sense of his own importance. He’s coming to make a fuss.” Her eyes were still on the screen. “I should thank you,” she said. “Between California and Seattle, you reduced his personnel significantly. It will make things easier today. Less likely our people will get hurt.”