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My mouth dropped open and I moved over to the espresso machine. And there were the instructions printed neatly in Jack’s handwriting.
“He always knows,” I said, shaking my head.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there before I felt the presence of someone else in the room. I used my periphery to look for the closest weapon, but unless I wanted to throw the machine itself I was out of luck. Whoever it was would have my throat slit before I could pick it up.
“It’s truly exhausting watching you think,” a familiar voice said.
I gasped and turned around. And then I launched myself across the room at the man sitting in what looked like the love child of a go-kart and a scooter from the future.
“Where have you been!” I scolded Carver. “Where are Michelle and the girls? We’ve been so worried about you. What is this ridiculous contraption you’re riding? You look like an extra inTron.”
Carver laughed in his usual good humor, but I could see the strain around his eyes. And then he got a good look at me.
“Wow,” he said. “Terrifying. Is that your natural skin color? Is this the reason you’ve never invited me over for breakfast before?”
I rolled my eyes and took a step back to really look at him. The last year had taken its toll on Carver. As long as I’d known him, he’d always been somewhat autonomous in his position at the FBI. Only a select few outranked him, and I knew for a fact there were times he only answered to the president. His brain was a commodity the government wanted to make sure didn’t fall into the wrong hands—they were in awe of his abilities as much as they feared them. The fact that Carver was one of the best men I knew was the only thing that gave him the freedom it did.
But something was going on that he hadn’t confided in us about. We’d had the feeling he’d been keeping secrets, and things had amplified after he’d started digging deeper into Floyd Parker and some of the developers that wanted a piece of King George county. Someone hadn’t wanted Jack re-elected as sheriff, and things had gotten dirty, even to the point of an article in the paper about the woman Jack had gotten pregnant when he’d been a teenager.
Carver had done a lot of deep digging to find out about who could’ve been behind having that kind of information. And whatever he’d found out had changed him. He’d moved his family suddenly from DC to Bloody Mary. It was obvious Carver was scared for his family, and a place like Bloody Mary made it very easy to know if you were being watched or followed by strangers.
But Carver and his wife Michelle had barely been moved into their house when they’d all disappeared. The next thing we knew was the FBI had raided their house, and they weren’t sharing with local law enforcement why. We’d only gotten one message from Carver letting us know he was okay, and that we were supposed to hold on to his computer Magnolia.
Carver in hiding couldn’t have been easy, and I couldn’t imagine he was doing it alone. Because of my father, he’d almost died and had been wheelchair bound the last several months. He would probably walk again, but not anytime soon.
“Does Jack know you’re here?” I asked. And then I paused in thought. “Never mind. Of course he knows you’re here. How long do we have before the FBI busts down our door?”
“Thank God you didn’t figure out how to use the espresso machine,” Carver said. “I’m already exhausted by your questions and you haven’t even had coffee yet.”
“Oh, excuse me,” I said sarcastically. “Maybe I’ve been worried. But now that I see you’re okay maybe I should just punch you for scaring the daylights out of us.”
“Just don’t punch me in the face,” Carver said. “Michelle and Magnolia are both partial to my good looks.”
I sighed and shook my head. “At least you named your wife before your cyber girlfriend. That’s progress in the right direction. Are you going to explain what’s going on, or are you just here to help me make coffee?”
“I’m going to take that as an invitation to stay,” Carver said, and rolled his new chair across the kitchen to the espresso machine. “You like the chair?”
“I’m still trying to process,” I said. “It’s very fluid. Like it’s part of your body.”
I hadn’t been kidding when I’d said he looked like an extra fromTron. It resembled a motorcycle, but the wheels were perfectly spherical so they could move in any direction. They even rose and lowered so it looked almost like he was standing on the tips of his toes to reach the coffee mugs in the cabinet.
“Just a little AI experiment,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “She’s still getting to know me, but I feel like we’re making good progress. Now if only every woman could read a man’s mind like Margarite.”
“You’re going to eventually run out ofMnames to call all of your robot women,” I said. “But I like the red. Very stylish.”
“Margarite is French,” he said. “She’d accept nothing less.”
“Does she talk to you like Magnolia?” I asked, the scientist in me curious, even though Carver’s AI experiments were a little too real for my comfort.
Magnolia was Carver’s computer. She did everything except have a physical body, and even at times I wasn’t so sure. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Magnolia invaded some poor woman and she showed up on our doorstep one day to make an honest man out of Carver. Of course, she’d have to kill Carver’s wife, which was nothing less than I’d expect from a superbot that would probably take over the world someday.
“In a way,” he said. “She can hear my voice and respond if I want her to. I injected a transmitter in the back of my neck and she’s learning to respond to brain commands.”
“I’m pretty sure a lot of superhero stories gone wrong start out like that,” I said, getting the milk from the fridge and bringing it to him.
He chuckled and the smell of strong coffee permeated the air. “Now that I’m on a hiatus from physical therapy Margarite has taken over that role. I’m using the muscles in my own legs to stand if I need to reach something out of the way, but she knows exactly how much support to give so I still build strength but don’t fall.”
“That’ll be a big help to a lot of people,” I said.
