BooksBarbecue
Back Roadkill Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Chapter One: Fender Bender
  5. Chapter Two: Bigfoot Burrito
  6. Chapter Three: Treasure Hunt
  7. Chapter Four: Open Sesame
  8. Chapter Five: Central Intelligence
  9. Chapter Six: First Flight
  10. Chapter Seven: Park It
  11. Chapter Eight: Next Steps
  12. Chapter Nine: Search Strategies
  13. Chapter Ten: Overflight
  14. Chapter Eleven: Barn Doors
  15. Chapter Twelve: Saturn Fly-By
  16. Chapter Thirteen: Getting a Clue
  17. Chapter Fourteen: Hacked
  18. Chapter Fifteen: The Spy Game
  19. Chapter Sixteen: Investigations
  20. Chapter Seventeen: Break-In
  21. Chapter Eighteen: Battening Down
  22. Chapter Nineteen: Shoring Up Defenses
  23. Chapter Twenty: Third Time’s the Charm
  24. Chapter Twenty-One: Proxy
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two: Rescue
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three: Chase
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four: Spies R Us
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five: Surveillance
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six: Making Plans
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven: Going In
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight: Infiltration
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine: Accidental Captive
  33. Chapter Thirty: Interrogation
  34. Chapter Thirty-One: Reaction
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two: Kidnappings
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three: Reviewing Options
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four: Public Debut
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five: Distractions
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six: The Big Reveal
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven: Regrouping
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight: Waiting for Results
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine: It Hits the Fan
  43. Chapter Forty: Disassembly
  44. Chapter Forty-One: Wrapping It Up
  45. Chapter Forty-Two: Negotiations
  46. Chapter Forty-Three: Coda
  47. About the Author
  48. About the Publisher

I nodded. “We can’t do this with zero risk.” I looked at Nat. “You up for this?”

She grinned back at me. “Lemme at ‘em.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Going In

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Going In

Day 21. Thursday

This was going to be one of those interminable days. More so than normal, I mean. Not that Nat was going to be doing anything James-Bond-like—sticking a little piece of plastic onto a convenient surface wasn’t the kind of thing that would require a stunt double. Still, I found myself checking my phone far too often, hoping for a text.

Meanwhile, normal life needed my attention. Stock the cukes, restack the apples, we’re out of bulk sugar, cleanup on aisle five … Argh! I was beginning to understand more and more why both Patrick and Nat had latched on to this whole Loranna thing. They really had no credible alternative to, as Nat put it, dying of mediocrity in this Podunk town.

My pity party of one was interrupted by a ding from my phone. Finally! I tapped the notification and read the text: Bug in place. Now we wait.

Cool. And apparently completely lacking in drama, to judge from the message. Just as well. What was that old saying? Adventure is defined as bad stuff happening to other people somewhere else.

Or something like that.

The drive home was the usual uncomfortable mutual silence, punctuated by a single half-hearted attempt by my father to talk about alternative colleges. It reminded me, though, that Sheldon had said something about looking into my MIT situation. Not that he could do anything concrete, but he might dig up some info.

And Patrick and Nat would be over right after dinner. Hopefully, Sheldon had picked up something useful.

I blasted through the front door and foyer with a yelled, “Hi, Mom!” trailing behind me, and vaulted up the stairs in three strides. It took only a moment to change, and I was down the stairs in two leaps and out the door.

“Hey Sheldon, what’s new?” I said as I entered the barn.

“This just in,” he replied over my cling-on. “Humans discover thumbs, make a mess.”

“Ha, ha. C’mon, be serious.”

“I am serious. Everything I said is true.”

“How about something closer to home?”

“Nat will be overjoyed. I have significant audio and video samples of Karen Ingram and her assistant, both of whom have set off the cloaking detector.”

“I’m … kind of ambivalent about that, honestly. Do we really need to do this?”

“Jack, the Loranna are on their best humanlike behavior in public, which includes the third floor. They certainly don’t speak Lorannic when there are humans around, let alone discuss secrets. We need to get into their computer systems if we expect to learn anything.”

“You can’t hack your way in?”