The house beyond him was dark, all of the curtains drawn, furniture covered in dusty sheets. Several electric fans hummed behind him, clanging against the cheap painted metal of their parts—one pointed right at Laird but rotating on a steady back and forth, occasionally spinning his long greasy hair into tendrils. Underneath the sound of the fans, there were footsteps up the stairs behind Laird.
Following Cameron’s gaze up the steps, Laird yelled out, “Ma! Stay up there!”
“How do you know you’re not interested?” Cameron asked, leaning against the doorframe, being careful not to touch the wire with the tip of his sneakers.
“I don’t work with terrorists,” Laird replied.
“You worked with Ratanake,” Cameron said.
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, but he brought the joint to his lips to hide it, taking a large, long inhale.
“Ratanake wasn’t a terrorist,” Laird said. “He was a soldier.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cameron sighed. “So was I. So were you. So was Asher. We were all damn soldiers.”
“Until you killed them all at the funeral,” Laird snapped.
The smell of the weed made its way over to him, collapsing down into his mouth, making him think of college. He shook the memories from him and said, “Not you.”
“Because I left early,” Laird muttered, the marijuana smoke catching in his throat, stifling his words. He exhaled.
“Simple as that.” Cameron raised his arms in an outward shrug.
“What’s the job?” Laird asked.
Cameron and Asher exchanged glances. There was a certain desperation in him, exactly the type of soldier that the Readers looked for. That was their mistake with Diana Weick. She hadn’t been beaten down enough for them to get through to her. Now she probably was, but there was no way she’d be joining them after what went down at Ratanake’s funeral.
It wasn’t difficult for Cameron to see a bit of himself in the bloodshot eyes of Laird—that same defeat over a multitude of years serving the wrong people, paying your dues into the wrong conformity. This man had served on the same team as his father, somehow. It was hard to see the SEAL in him now, but that was because Ratanake and the other military officials had picked out every piece of him, molding him to exactly what they needed and then dropping him back inside this decrepit farmhouse, forcing him to crawl his way back.
It was money for him as it had been for Asher. And Cameron could work with that.
“Fifty thousand to get us a password,” Cameron said.
“Whose password?” Laird asked.
“We’ll forward you the info if you agree,” Cameron replied, not mentioning that they didn’t know whose password they needed yet. They would know soon. The VBA couldn’t leave that position empty forever, though he was sure they would like to.
Laird clicked his tongue against his teeth. “And if I don’t?”
“We’ll leave you to your…” Cameron gestured to the house. “Devices.”
“You got this place pretty rigged up,” Asher noted from the other side of the doorframe, leaning his hat inside to take a look around the corner. With a hard gaze, he followed a labyrinth of wires, stapled to the wall across from a couch that was covered in a stained sheet. There was a staticky purr coming from all of them like the whole house had electricity running through its foundation.
“To keep out the aliens,” Laird said, watching Asher follow his surprisingly organized wires.
Asher and Cameron both looked at him as he waved the shotgun between them.
“Jesus. Okay.” Laird laughed at their expressions.
Taking a look around his home, Laird sucked in his cheeks and took another hit of the joint.
“Aren’t you going to give me the pitch?” he asked. “Get me to join your Girl Scout squad?”
“Do we need to?” Cameron laughed a little.
“I’d like to hear it,” Laird said.
“Must get lonely out here in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Cameron murmured. “I don’t need to pitch you, Laird, because you know exactly why we’re doing what we’re doing. You’re living in it right now. You sat for years on a military secret—yeah, Nelson Rank, we know all about that—and it nearly destroyed you. It wasn’t your responsibility to save Rank. It wasn’t even your responsibility to tell Ratanake that Kushkin had him, yet you felt like you had to because the United States military instilled this guilt in you from the moment you enlisted. They tell you ‘Honor, courage and commitment,’ but how much courage and honor do you see from those guys sitting on their asses up in DC? The only ones who are committed are the guys like you, Laird. You’re so committed that you drive yourself crazy because you didn’t follow orders that you never got. That whole funeral was a bullshit show put on by the officials… pretending like they ever gave a shit about Dominic Ratanake and the soldiers beneath him. They don’t care! Even now, with all those guys dead. What do you think they're up to? The important guys, the rich guys, are in hiding. They’re scared, terrified, of the Readers. As always, letting the young guys, the freshly enlisted, the fucking kids, die for them. Don’t you want to be on the right side of this battle? The side that’s not only going to win, but that’s going to change the way things are done for the rest of our lives. We’re all going to get our payday. We are. We’re going to get what we’re owed. And you can get yours a bit sooner if you step in with us here and now.”
“Nehemias!” a woman called from upstairs.
“Shut the fuck up, Ma,” Laird called back, contemplating Cameron’s words, his face and eyes filled with the low-hanging smoke from the joint. It was almost burned down to a roach. He ashed it out on the floor by his leather boots.
“Is that not the pitch?” Laird said. “Sounded like a pitch to me.”
Cameron shrugged and replied, “I like to talk about our cause.”
The heat was filtering in through the outside, humidity landing on all
