16
This time Jensen made it all the way to the sidewalk before his pager chirped.
"What now?" He was afraid to hear the answer.
Hutch's voice. "We've got some activity on that place we're monitoring."
Jensen stiffened. He wanted to ask which one of the telemetries was lighting up, but not on an open circuit.
"Be right up."
This could be good, he thought as he retraced his steps across the lobby, or this could be very bad. He'd feel a whole lot better if he knew where the Grant broad was.
Up in the office, Margiotta had gone home, leaving Lewis and Hutchison to man the fort. Lewis pointed to a red blinking light on the monitor labeled PERIMETER.
"In all the time I've been here, this is the first time I've seen that go off at night."
This was looking more and more like bad news.
"What's the readout?"
Lewis squinted at the screen. "Two large heat signatures—possibly a couple of bears."
Two bears? Jensen thought. On the same night that Amurri or whatever his name was had helped Grant leave her tails in the dust?
"Could they be human?"
Lewis nodded. "I don't know much about bears, but I think they tend to scrounge around alone. So, yeah. More than likely they're human."
Shit.
Jensen gave Lewis a rough tap on the shoulder. "Up." When Lewis complied Jensen said, "You two wait outside."
He and Hutch exchanged puzzled looks but did as told. When Jensen had the room to himself he clicked his way to the AV monitors. There he entered his ID number and punched in a password. He toggled the pickups to LIVE. That turned them on and started them transmitting.
A menu popped up, offering him a choice of half a dozen views. He clicked on the great room and waited for the picture to focus.
Even though the transmission was encrypted, it hadn't made sense to keep it going twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Besides, in the standby state the pickups were immune to most bug sweeps.
He'd put up decoy cameras just so Blascoe could disable them. It let him think he was rebelling and gave him a false sense of privacy.
A wide-angle view of the great room, through the glass eye of the moose head, swam into view. When he saw the three figures seated in a rough circle, he realized his worst-case scenario had become reality.
He exited the program and kicked open the door to the next room.
"Hutch! Lewis! Get your stuff. Road trip!"