“This is my property, not yours. Anything you do is assault. And anything I do is self-defense. So bring it.” She jolted forward at him and Joule felt the smile creep across her own face when the man jerked back at the sudden, if small, threat.
When he only stared for a moment, making no further gestures, Melinda turned away from him as though he were no longer worth her time. This time, she addressed the crowd at large. “I'm calling 9-1-1 now. And I saw an officer on the road, right back there, less than a mile,” she threatened, pointing. “He'll be here quickly. You won't have time to get off of my property before you get arrested for trespassing. And you will be arrested. Helio Systems will prosecute to the full extent of the law.”
Joule watched as the peripheral people started to shift away at the threat. They probably didn’t have the money nor the time to fight a corporate giant. Who did? But it was odd, sitting in the car and feeling like she was part of the machine. Even if she knew most of what they were protesting was untrue.
Melinda was already dialing her phone and Joule watched as the crowd now dispersed in earnest.
Go Melinda, she thought and at that moment, she realized if she ever wanted to move into management, she wanted to be Melinda Gonzalez.
The crowd might be leaving, but they did so belligerently, moving close to the cars, holding up theirs signs to be sure the workers inside could read them. The man who’d harassed Melinda came close to her again, but Melinda just offered an expression that said he wasn’t worth her time, and climbed in, slamming her door.
Joule breathed easier with the manager out of harm’s way. Even as Melinda pulled forward, the man leaned in as if to look into the car for contraband or such. Sarah started the motions to follow along.
But as she shoved the gear shift into drive, her head snapped to the left. The lead man had leaned down to her car window and was looking directly at Sarah … as if he knew her. And he was making a motion to let her know he was watching.
7
“That's a nice T-shirt, Cage.” Izzy laughed at him as she passed by, carrying specimens up to the main tent.
They’d not seen him in just a T-shirt before, but today he’d tied his hoodie around his waist. He was known for being perpetually cold, but the Alabama humidity had broken him yesterday. He was hot and he didn’t like it. He wanted his jacket on, but needed to do the work, and the work made him hot.
He, Sarah, and Mitch were back at the same job today—doing the sweaty task of catching field mice and anything else they could get their hands on. Even Sarah—finally in a better mood after the encounter this morning—was singing “Little Bunny Foo Foo” as she emptied the traps.
Cage already had three containers stacked under his arm as Sarah held out another. “Take this one.”
He double-checked her field sticker with the trap number and exact GPS coordinates of where she'd found the little guy. Inside each clear plastic box, a single creature scrambled about. Cage now held two field mice, a lizard, and a huge centipede.
He headed away from their little cluster of workers before she could hand him another box, or before Mitch could get any ideas. Walking slowly at first, Cage waited for his critters to settle down. Normally, they were a little anxious at first, then got used to the container and eventually handled the field checks like recalcitrant teenagers. But not today.
Was it yesterday’s wind storm that had them all stirred up?
The field solar array was huge and it took him quite some time to trek his way to the main data tent Helio Systems had set up on the edge of the field. He passed people that he knew along the way, saying hello to each of them as he went.
The job was finally settling in, though the work itself was more backbreaking than he'd expected. While he had racked up plenty of experience in school doing fieldwork internships, the hands-on part of his education had been spotty at best. He’d had fun and, at the end of the two weeks, he went home, ate all the pasta, and slept it off for a few days.
Now he was on his fourth straight week and he’d been working a minimum of forty hours each week. Radnor was hard-pressed to get his project back on the original schedule, and that pressure was falling to the team. Cage didn’t mind. He knew what he’d signed up for.
Though they spent Thursdays in the lab, they were still on their feet all day. And the meetings on Fridays, when they got to sit down, were actually the most effort. The meetings got crazy as Radnor pushed them all for “more ideas!”
Though Cage had come here believing he was prepared, he hadn’t quite been. Still, he was finally settling in, and his muscle memory was catching up. So was his stamina. He didn't fall into bed quite as hard anymore. And his career choice was feeling more like a choice, and less like a trial period.
He'd been worried for the last semester of school, wondering if this was going to be the time that he and Joule finally went their separate ways. She was his only remaining family—aside from their grandfather, who insisted the twins live their own lives rather than move in with him. They'd lost both parents—dramatically, and in short order—about five years earlier.
Their first year at school hadn't been any easier. While normal twins might have happily gone their separate ways for college, and certainly for work afterwards, he and Joule had made
