scene vehicles, to Unit Eighteen’s van. He set me on the long middle bench seat, closed the door, and went around to the other side. He and Tandy climbed in. “We got two choices, sugar. I can take you home,” he said, “Tandy and me. Or you can put on Paka’s after-shift clothes and we can go back to work. Up to you. But you need to know there could be repercussions for you going into the compound against orders.”
“I’ll stay. I left my basket in the church, with my laptop inside.”
“I’ll notify Rick,” Occam said as he tossed a gobag over the seat. “Get changed. I got me a ton of texts and e-mails while you were healing to go through.” He climbed out of the van and shut the doors, giving me privacy, pulling his cell. While he talked, I zipped open the gobag. The catty scent of Paka met my nose. Occam didn’t look my way, guarding the van. Like a cat, I thought, who sits in the window, knowing you are looking at him, and ignoring you, aware of your scrutiny, but not reacting to it. Which eased my embarrassment as I stripped off my shredded clothing.
Sunlight turned Occam’s lightly tanned skin a pale gold, and made his amber-hazel eyes glow. He was wearing loose cotton pants and a stretchy T-shirt, the clothing dark blue with the words PsyLED stenciled on the shirt in white. And he was barefooted again, toes pawing the ground, the way a cat might milk the earth.
I realized he was wearing his gobag clothing. He had been in leopard form at some point this morning and had probably changed from his leopard form to his human one when he came to save me. That was why he eyes had glowed. I wondered, briefly, where he had been when the shooting started, how much ground he had covered, and how fast he had shifted and then dressed, to get to me so quickly. He was tall, all muscle and bone, long-limbed and lean, with long fingers and slender hands, like a guitar player or a pianist. His blondish hair was unevenly cut and ragged, hanging to his collarbones in places, longer now, perhaps a result of shifting several times in the last few days.
Tandy stood on the other side of the van, facing outward and he waved off a woman in an FBI jacket when she came too near. I felt terribly exposed to be changing in the van, so I slid to the floor, where I stripped off my skirt and pulled the elastic-waist sweatpants on over my blood-crusted undies. I couldn’t make myself go without and there were no panties in the gobag, not that I felt I could wear another woman’s undies anyway.
When I was dressed, the unfamiliar feeling of sweatpants on my legs, and my shoes back on my feet, I tapped on the door. Occam and Tandy opened them at the same moment and slid in. “Good timing,” Occam said. “We’re heading to the Stubbins farm through the old farm road. Rick says the FBI is there already, and he thinks one of churchmen ran off that way. Buckle up, Nell, sugar.”
Occam drove across the compound, allowing for the ruts and the invisible bumps and holes hidden by weeds and grasses. He hit a particularly deep rut and we all bounced. When we settled, he looked back over his shoulder. “Sugar, you mighta walked into a firestorm of trouble back at the compound, but according to the texts that bombed my cell while you were healing, you just went from problem child to asset of the hour, the week, and the month. The FBI is drooling over what they’ve found since they responded to Rick’s ‘code ninety-nine and shots fired’ alert. They got a gold mine at Jackson Jr.’s house and now a ton more at the Stubbins farm. And they didn’t even have to get that subpoena.”
I didn’t know what a code ninety-nine was, but I understood the rest. “Are they happy enough that I won’t get fired as a consultant for PsyLED?”
“I doubt anyone will even mention that possibility,” Tandy said, a smile in his words.
Unexpected relief flooded through me. I nodded and pressed a hand to my middle, staring out at the little-used, narrow roadway, never paved, and with saplings grown in close. Beneath my hand, the rooty feeling of my belly seemed softer, as if things were settling.
Occam’s cell rang, a quiet vibration