“I’d have thought you would have expected it, Maia. You did recommend me, after all.”
“Hee! I get it! It’s one thing to have an intellectual understanding of it,” Cally said, grinning hugely, “and another to have to deal with the reality of it.”
“Egg-zackly,” Maia declared, matching Cally’s grin.
Nick and Lee exchanged meaningful glances, smiling slightly.
“No, we couldn’t have done better,” Nick responded to the unspoken message in Lee’s gaze.
“What?” Cally demanded, seeing the smiles.
“Nothing, Cally,” Lee said. “Just two ordinary men, pleased with their choices of mate.”
“You better be,” Maia said, mock-threatening. “You’re stuck with us now.”
They all chuckled.
By the end of the evening, they had the rest of the sting operation planned. Maia had a good notion of the quantity of work Nick was about to drop on her people, and Cally had proven adept at helping them brainstorm how to handle the ‘old guard’ police staff who were coming back to work.
“Because,” as she pointed out, “some of ‘em really are like Nick – they’re legit. And some of ‘em… aren’t.”
“Like the lot trying to kill us,” Maia grumbled.
“Yup,” Nick agreed. “So when are we gonna give ‘em the opportunity?”
“Give it a couple more days, I think,” Lee pondered. “And maybe another trip out by, say, a ‘drywall installer’… except all they have to do is go into the house and sit around for a while, maybe make the odd banging noise, then leave. No danger this time, other than any risk on the road. And with the latest version of automatic drive, even that’s unlikely.”
“But it also ensures the saboteurs aren’t gonna try to go back in the house,” Cally realized.
“Good observation, Detective,” Lee said with a grin. “So figure a dinner party at our place, with a proper tour of the whole house, and… hm. We need to plan for some serious boom, if our perps are gonna think they took us out.”
“True,” Nick said, “but I’ve got some ideas about that.” He offered them a wicked grin.
“By the look on your face, son, I believe I’m looking forward to hearing it,” Lee said, raising an eyebrow, as Maia leaned forward eagerly and Cally clapped her hands.
“…Oh, that’s a good ‘un,” Maia declared, when Nick was finished explaining his concept. “That’s a real good ‘un! I like it.”
“Yup, I agree. But I’ll see to it,” Lee said. “It’ll have to be handled just so, and I’m probably the best one to do it, given my position.”
“Let me know if you need backup on that,” Nick said.
“And it’s probably my people that need to be handling it,” Maia added.
“I will, Nick, and yes, Maia, honey. Now, it’s getting late, and these two newlyweds need to go do what newlyweds do before they crash,” Lee noted with a smirk, checking the time on the wall clock.
“Hey, mister. We’re not exactly old fogies here, ourselves, where that’s concerned,” Maia said, poking him in the ribs, and he grinned.
“Nope, we’re relative newlyweds too, and we still have to get home before we can do anything.”
“Hey, put the car on auto-drive, the windows on one-way, and we’ll get started on the way home,” Maia shot back with a smirk.
They all laughed.
Then the Carters rose, hugged the Ashtons, and left.
Cally gave Nick a wicked grin.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, holding out a hand, as they headed for the bedroom.
The next morning, there was still no word on Compton, but the weather was finally starting to clear as the tropical system moved further inland and began to convert to an extra-tropical system. It was still overcast and muggy in the area of the Imperial City, but the thunderstorms had stopped, replaced by an intermittent light rain.
So ICPD Detectives Rich Weyand and Darrell Osborn went out to the Carter house in a van marked Courtland Drywall.
This time, it was Hennig watching the house. Like Brandt, he hid among the cubes of brick, and when the rain showers came through, he ducked under a nearby tree, careful to remain behind one of the cubes, at least as seen from the street. The tree itself, he decided, was big enough to hide him from anybody at the Carter house – he was glad the higher-end construction had left many of the larger trees, the builders choosing to landscape around them. At least, he considered, there wasn’t any lightning in the storm clouds today; Brandt had told him about the near-miss the day before, and he wasn’t keen on reenacting that event.
Hennig watched as the drywall van pulled up to the gate, two heads visible in the cab through the vehicle’s windows. Moments later, the gate opened, and the van pulled through; the gate closed quickly after it passed. Just as the other contractor vehicles had on the previous day, it headed down the drive, paused in front of the garage door, and waited for the door to open. The drywall van then pulled inside, and the garage door closed.
It was there essentially all day.
From time to time, borne on the gusty, sultry breeze off the departing tropical system, Hennig could hear an irregular pounding sound, like hammers, emanating from the Carter house.
Inside the Carter house, Osborn and Weyand mostly kicked back and relaxed, noshing on the pitcher of lemonade and platters of snacks the Carters had left for them, while working in VR on their other cases. From time to time, they donned ear protectors, then pulled out mallets and blocks of wood, placing the blocks on Lee’s work table in the garage before pounding on them with the mallets as hard as they could, grinning from ear to ear the whole time.
Half an hour before Carter was due to get
