CHAPTER TWELVE

Back Alley Meetings

Sylvie didn't leave the house for the next two days after the meeting in the office. Instead, she spent much of her time in the garage, thinking hard about her hare-brained scheme, trying to poke holes in it and see it from a different angle. She wanted her plan to be foolproof when she put it into action.

I can't afford any mistakes on this, she thought. If I fail, it means Dad and Ben will lose their jobs, maybe even Mom.

Once more she ran through the idea in her head. She would call Thomas Wolfe and arrange a meeting with him, on the proviso he brought Agent Bengal with him. She couldn't afford to do it in a public place where they could be seen, so she would have them meet her in the alley behind the store that started it all. Somehow, that seemed fitting to her. Most of those buildings still sported scorches and other battle damage from the Riots, but being so far from the town center, it hadn't been touched by the reconstruction yet. That would change eventually, but it looked like the area would remain quiet, hopefully long enough to take care of business.

But what about the tests? She fretted. They are going to want me to go to one of their facilities for their…things. I can't be out of town, or Mom and Dad will get suspicious. Gotta find a way to keep it here, and low-key.

Perhaps they could rent a building? Wolfe represented a huge corporation…they certainly could take over one of the new constructions or the old hulks and turn it into something they could use, right? She desperately hoped so, or this entire plan would fall through before it could even begin.

Once more she thought about bringing Taryn into it, but immediately she rejected the notion.

No. I'm not going to bring anyone else into this. It's just going to be me, and only me. The others have their own lives to lead. Taryn with Josh, Megan and Cindy appear to have settled into the lake, so none of them are going to want to be shifted or changed. It's me, and only me. She repeated, like a mantra.

The sound of the front door opening interrupted her thoughts and she heard her father's heavy tread on the floor.

She glanced at the clock hanging over on one wall and saw it reading as half-past six. Her father was home early tonight, she briefly wondered why.

The thought that her father might have been fired, or pressured to leave brought her hearts hammering in sudden fear.

She hurried inside the house to find him taking off his suit jacket in the kitchen, looking much older than he had before.

"Hey dad." Sylvie said tentatively. "What's wrong? You seem kinda…beat."

"I kinda am." He said with a wry laugh. "The feds are starting to cut the money flow on me. They say I'm not providing the right paperwork for federal aid, I'm not filing them promptly enough…the list goes on. I got sick and tired of fighting it so I left it to a couple of the other councilmen and came home."

"Oh." Sylvie carefully kept the nervousness out of her voice and motions as she started to make a salad for them. Inside her mind raced as she processed this new information. Was this another trick to get them to cave in? Starve the town into submission, as it were?

Sylvie knew her town couldn't survive long without federal grant money, not with business not able to open doors yet and revenue only trickling in. If they couldn't keep up the pace of the new construction…

"What can we do, dad?" she asked as she diced tomatoes and carrots and tossed them onto the salad.

"Keep trying, honey." Her dad said tiredly. "It's all we can do. I'll keep on things for my end, of course, but for now we have to deal with a bureaucratic system that is too bloated and unsympathetic." He subsided into a series of mutters and deprecations as she finished dinner for the two of them and passed the bowls out.

"Thanks, Honey." He said gratefully.

After dinner Sylvie cleaned up the bowls while her dad went to the back bedroom to get out of his work attire and take a quick shower.

She heard the water running and made a discreet exit to the backyard.

After caring for her business, she spent a few minutes staring morosely at the stars above. The cold, white pinpricks of light seemed both comforting and distant, observers of a cold world who never participated but only watched the bustle below them for amusement.

Heading back inside, Sylvie flipped on the TV and settled down to watch an action movie with her father before they went to bed.

#

If Sylvie dreamed that night, she wasn't aware of it. When she got up, she stretched, feeling relaxed and even happy. She went to the bathroom and went to the sink to sponge bath herself clean, then leaned her head into the shower to wash her hair. When she'd finished, she toweled off and dressed in buckskin shirt and hat. Putting her Winchester into its sheath and she went to the phone.

Waiting a few minutes for the other party to pick up, she twirled the card in her hand idly as her hearts started to pound.

"Hello?" A voice came on the line. In the background she could hear the sounds of a diner.

"Hello, Mister Wolfe?" Sylvie asked cautiously.

"Yes." The man's voice immediately changed from annoyance to interest. "How can I help you Miss Sylvie."

Sylvie took a deep breath. "I want to make a deal." She said.

#

The expressionless faces of the buildings leered at her as she approached the storefront from before; the empty windows seeming like dead eyes in a corpse glaring blankly around them. Bits of char and dust trickled from the buildings and here and there the plink!, of something louder echoed and added to the feeling of decay.

The street she'd ridden her bike down passed her on the left, and her eyes flickered down its deserted row as if pulled by some will not her own.

The street lay quiet, empty except for a stray pigeon passing by. No dog barked or cat ran from the alley, no wind stirred the dusty street.

A feeling stole over Sylvie, of something not quite right about this place. She hesitated, wondering if she dared continue, or if she went back. As far as she could see, there seemed to be nothing wrong on the street. No signs of imminent danger or the possibility of danger, she was armed, fast and lethally accurate, but still the feeling persisted.

Sylvie decided to move on. She wouldn't be intimidated by ghosts, she told herself firmly, but she still felt reassured by the comforting weight of the rifle on her back.

In the alley, she saw the same SUV from the range, sitting quietly with the lights off, looking like something from a spy movie. The incongruity might have made her laugh, but this was not the time or place for levity.

The doors opened and out stepped Thomas Wolfe and Agent Barry Bengal. Neither men looked particularly pleased to be in each other's company, she thought. But then, neither of them showed much emotion on their faces, it was all in their body language; the tense shoulders of Bengal, the slightly angry posture of Wolfe.

Great, here I am jumping in with four feet and already they're ready to fight. She thought resignedly.

Sylvie went forward and stopped just out of arm's reach from the men, her eyes roving quickly behind them and herself to make sure they were truly alone.

The two noticed her quick glances and waited patiently for her to finish her survey before Wolfe spoke.

"Miss Mathison, delighted to meet you as always, although this is certainly an…um…unusual meeting place." He said carefully.

Agent Bengal remained silent, but curiosity burned in his eyes when he removed his glasses.

"Yes, I imagine it is." Sylvie said nervously. "But there's a reason for that. I don't want anyone to know about this."

"I gathered as much." Agent Bengal grunted. "Why?"

"Because I don't. You got a problem with that?" Sylvie challenged, letting anger push her nervousness out of the way.

"A little." Bengal admitted easily. "Mostly because you're young, underage, and meeting us in a back alley behind the building you were attacked and transformed in with no warning at all…yeah, it's a little strange."

"Point." Sylvie muttered, deflating a little.

"Okay," she took a deep breath. "Here it is. You guys (she pointed at Agent Bengal) cut off the town from its federal grant money with paperwork issues. The town needs that money if it is going to survive. You (she pointed to Wolfe) have enough money to casually plunk down twelve thousand just to talk to me and make me an offer; you got money and are willing to spend it for my time. I'm willing to trade you that time, and your experiments, with a couple of provisos."

"Oh, and they are?" Wolfe asked sharply.

"One, this stays between us, and only us. I don't want my parents finding out or they'd put a stop to it, if they could, because of…well, what I feared when I met you, becoming a permanent lab experiment and not a person."

"That won't happen." Bengal assured her seriously. "I swear that, at least."

"Thank you. Two, you'll have to do your experiments here in town, as I won't be able to disappear long periods without someone in my family noticing. In case you haven't noticed, I'm well watched these days." Sylvie said dryly.

Wolfe winced and Bengal nodded.

"Well, the third is obvious, I think. You guys bring back the money to the town so we stand a fighting chance to rebuild, and you (she pointed to Bengal) find a way to kill that review of Ben's performance, and my father and mother. I don't want them to lose their jobs, not over me, got it? And lastly," she looked hard at them, "this is just going to be me. The others won't understand this at all. You want your guinea pig, you've got her, but you only get one, deal?"

The two men glanced at each other. Then Wolfe said, "One moment please, I need to clear this with the company directors."

He hurried back to his car while Bengal leaned in a little closer to Sylvie.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked her quietly. "Trying to take all this responsibility on yourself? You don't have too, you know. The government offer I mentioned before is still valid, and we haven't spoken to the other parties about the full offer yet--"

"No." Sylvie said equally quietly. "And chances are, you aren't going to get them either. Look, Mister Bengal, I know my friends; Cindy and Megan have disappeared into Luna Lake, and unless you drain the whole lake you aren't going to find them if they don't want to be found. And chances are good they won't want to talk to you; they're even more shy and secretive then the rest of us. Taryn…she has her life back, her mom back. She shouldn't have to set aside her chance at, well" she laughed, "not exactly a normal but a happy life. Plus she has Josh, when he isn't helping his mom out at their place and getting it fixed up he's hanging out with Taryn. Those knuckleheads are good for each other. That just leaves me." She pointed to herself. "I've got fewer attachments then the others, which makes me the ideal candidate for your…stuff. I just need a little help from you guys making sure everything else goes all right."

She realized her tail had been swishing back and forth in agitation as she'd spoken and immediately stilled it, trying to keep a bold and jaunty face on the situation.

Bengal looked at her, concern in his eyes, as he tried to formulate a response.

Unfortunately for him, Wolfe chose that moment to step away from the SUV and come back.

"I've talked to my board of directors." He announced. "And they don't see a problem in having the tests done in the town itself, providing a full medical representative for you and our team shouldn't be an issue. We'll purchase an empty building and arrange a discreet entrance and exit for you. I've also been informed that our staff will be looking at ways to help ease the paperwork for your grant money."

Bengal nodded. "Good. As long as this remains a joint venture with us, then I don't see why I can't remove the obstacles of the investigations."

"All right then." Sylvie breathed in and out her nose. "For my part, I will accept as soon as I get word that the grant money is cleared and you've killed the investigations. I'll come in then. When do you suppose that could be?

Bengal shrugged eloquently. "I could have the investigation killed in a matter of a day or two. Wolfe?"

Wolfe appeared to think. "It will be a few days yet to bring in all the equipment we will need, arrange a cover story for buying a building in the area, and arranging matters discreetly. Perhaps two weeks?"

"All right. In two weeks, I'll call you." Sylvie said.