Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(85)

But she knew they weren’t going to use dogs anytime soon. They’d have to figure out who had lived and died inside the facility last night before they knew whom they were looking for. Once they found the hijacked Ford and fingerprinted it, they’d know that Mark, Jen, and Heather were among the escapees, if anyone else had made it out. All of that took time under the best of circumstances. The mass confusion added by Jack’s explosions around the base only made the confusing situation worse.

Jennifer had finally come out of her drug haze at a little past four a.m., and had now recovered sufficiently to operate without assistance. That was good. They were going to need each other at peak performance over the next twenty-four hours.

The sound of the garage door opening snapped Heather’s attention back to the scene before her. As she’d anticipated, both cars backed out into the driveway, one after the other, and drove off down the lane as the garage door rumbled shut behind them. Two working adults. No children. That and its isolation were the reasons Heather had selected this particular dwelling.

Leading the way, she moved quickly to the side of the house, rapidly examining the electrical meters, cable box, and telephone wiring. It took her exactly fifty-three seconds to bypass the security system. With a nod to Mark, Heather moved up beside him as he broke the lock on the garage’s side access door and stepped inside.

They swept the house, clearing the first floor, then the second, leaving the basement for last.

“All clear.” Mark’s voice from the basement allowed Heather to reduce her guard for the first time in weeks. Even though she knew it wouldn’t last, for right now it felt damn good.

“You want the shower first?”

Mark shook his head as he looked her up and down. “You and Jen each take a bathroom while I keep watch. You both look like hell.”

Neither Heather or Jennifer bothered to argue. In twenty minutes they were back downstairs, dressed in jeans and blouses that were a couple of sizes too big, but far better than the lab coat and orange prison garb.

“Your turn. I’ll take watch while Jen hacks their laptop.” Mark handed her the Mark 17 SCAR-H and two spare magazines.

“Check the fridge while you’re at it,” he called out as he headed upstairs toward the master bedroom. “I could eat an elephant.”

Heather followed Jennifer into the office, a room just off the foyer that had a clear view to the spot where the curving driveway disappeared into the trees that surrounded the house. Jennifer slid into the seat in front of the laptop, held down the power button for several seconds, and waited for the laptop to power off. That done, she inserted the subspace USB dongle into a USB port on the Dell laptop’s right side.

Jennifer brought up the BIOS screen and set the computer to boot from the USB device, bypassing the user log-in and password. As the Windows desktop appeared, she smiled and cracked her knuckles.

“Damn, I’ve missed this.”

As Heather watched, Jennifer began her web search, memorizing the locations of key facilities she wanted to access. Satisfied, she began a completely different kind of search, this time using the dongle’s subspace receiver-transmitter.

“Check for Jack’s messages first,” Heather said. “Then you can start your hacks.”

Jennifer nodded, shifting her attention back to the web browser.

Jack had a standard operation procedure of posting encrypted messages on a handful of Facebook accounts, using encryption software Jen and Heather had designed. And while they no longer had a copy of the program, it only took a couple of minutes to download the latest version of the Java Development Kit and install it on the laptop. From there until she had the program up and running would be a matter of minutes, not hours.

As Jennifer set to work, Heather walked over to the window and peered out. Except for a few birds pecking at the grass near the driveway, nothing moved. Heather walked out of the office, unlocked the front door, and stepped outside. Moving into the trees, she paralleled the narrow lane that led from the driveway into the woods. Fifty feet later, the lane turned hard left and headed toward the road that linked lanes just like this one to the highway. The distant squeal of children at play in a backyard dominated all other sounds.

Turning away from the lane, Heather made a 360-degree loop through the woods surrounding the house, her movements generating no more noise than a field mouse’s, despite the too-big Nikes that encased her feet. Finding nothing of concern, Heather reentered the house through the front door, locking it behind her. She turned to see Mark coming down the stairs, clad in better-fitting jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of gray New Balance running shoes. More importantly, for the first time in weeks, he’d shaved. The weight he’d lost had taken his already low body fat to near zero, making the muscles in his arms stand out like cables beneath his skin.

“How’s your head?” Mark pointed to the Band-Aid at the edge of her hairline.

Heather reached up to touch it. “I’ll live. You ready to eat?”

“What’ve they got?”

“Haven’t checked yet.”

Mark turned toward the kitchen, with Heather in tow. “House like this, a couple of miles away from a store, they’re bound to have a full fridge.”

It wasn’t full, but close enough to bring a smile to Mark’s face. The leftovers included chicken wings, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and half a pan of green bean casserole. Heather made plates for herself and Jennifer, leaving Mark to finish off the rest.