“Really? ’Cause right now, what I’m wishing for is a tank.” I paused. “Maybe two tanks. Becks will probably want one, too, and I don’t want to be greedy.”
“Always thinking of others, that’s you.” Her fingers brushed the back of my neck as she moved past me. I shivered. “The last time I saw the booster, Buffy was stowing it back here, with the rest of the backup network hardware.”
“We moved that around Valentine’s Day, when Becks did her ‘romantic places to take an Irwin’ article series.” I snapped my fingers. “The lockboxes!”
George leaned against the counter to watch as I dropped to my knees, rolled back the industrial rug covering the van floor, and pried up the trapdoor it had been concealing. We don’t have a complete second floor in the van—the weight would have been prohibitive, not to mention the structural instability it would have introduced—but we had a few extra storage compartments built in for a rainy day during the first major retrofit. They made good hiding spots for contraband when we were doing certain types of articles, and the rest of the time, they were a convenient place to hide snack foods… or excess hardware.
The first compartment held nothing but weird-looking cartoon porn and Russian girlie magazines. I smiled despite myself. “Damn, Dave. You had smarts and you had guts, but what you did not have was taste.”
“He was pretty much in love with Magdalene,” said George.
I amended: “Most of the time, what you didn’t have was taste. Sometimes, you were spot on.” I pried open the second compartment. A metal box with half a dozen antennae welded to the sides was nestled in the bottom, padded by wads of duct tape. I reached down to wriggle it loose, lifting it carefully out of its cradle. “There we go.”
“Remember, there’s supposed to be a detached battery pack that goes with it.”
“Right.” I stuck my hand into the welter of duct tape, rummaging for a moment before pulling up a small metal square with a power adapter at one end and a USB port at the other. “Got it!” I held it up, turning to show her.
George was gone. Again.
I stopped for a second, looking at the space where she’d been—hadn’t been—had appeared to be—only a moment before. Then I sighed, lowering the battery pack as I picked the wireless booster back up and pushed myself to my feet. “This stage of the crazy is going to get real old, real fast, you know.”
Sorry. But you’re still too sane to sustain that sort of breakdown for very long.
“Guess this means that whole ‘not forever’ thing we talked about before is sort of moot, huh?” My hads moved automatically as I spoke, pulling a bag from under the counter and sliding the wireless booster inside.
I think that depends on you, said George apologetically. I’m not the one who needs to move on. I’m the one who’s here because you still need me.
“Yeah, well, right now? Right now, I think being crazy may be the only thing that’s keeping me sane. Come on.”
I closed the van door and made my way back across the garage. The house security system didn’t say anything. I guess it was smart enough to recognize that I hadn’t gone near any of the exits. That, or it just wasn’t in the mood to argue with me. I didn’t care either way.
Alaric and Becks were still at the kitchen table, in the exact positions they were in when I went into the garage. There was one difference: Half of Becks’s guns were gone, making room for me to put down the bag. “Alaric, you got an extension cord?”
“In my laptop bag,” he said. As he bent to retrieve it, he asked, “Did you find the wireless booster?”
“I did. Got any idea how it works?”
“Not really.”
“That explains why we stopped using it. I guess we’re going to have to hope that my classic ‘smack it until it works’ approach can save the day.” I sat, unpacking the wireless booster and connecting it to the battery pack. Alaric passed me an extension cord. I hooked it to the battery, and Becks took the other end, plugging it into the wall.
Try not to break anything you can’t fix.
“Hush, you,” I said vaguely. “Working now.”
Becks and Alaric exchanged a glance, but didn’t say anything. That was probably the best thing they could have done.