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Chapter 150 – The Kinsey ReportAlex got Shar up for church, and they went through the usual stuff, up until her dad started reading through the paper while he made waffles. They had a waffle iron Alex and Annie had bought for their parents years ago, and it made a big waffle you could separate into six tiny heart-shaped waffles. Alex really thought it was pretty, but she liked bigger waffles these days.
Her dad smiled and showed her the front of the sports section. The big headline was ‘DOWN TO THE WIRE!’ and under that was the final score. And the top two pictures? One from UPI showing Heyward fighting for a rebound against two of their players, and one from A.L. Mack showing Ray shooting one of his three-pointers over two defenders at the end of the game. And then on page two of the sports section there was a big article by one of the local sports reporters on dirty play by the Cougars, and it used a lot of her pictures.
Ooh, Alex hadn’t been paying enough attention to the stats last night! Ray almost had a triple double, and he led the team in scoring and assists and was second in rebounds behind Heyward. In the championship game! And he was picked as first-team point guard for the whole playoffs! She was so proud of him she was about to burst.
After church and lunch, Ray called Alex and asked her to come over before one o’clock. When she asked what was up, he just grinned. “We’ve got a special guest coach coming, and I want you to size him up.”
Okay, so she knew what that meant. They were in one of the NCAA recruiting periods when coaches could come talk to the high school b-ball stars and pitch their awesome basketball program and their famous coach and their cool school. Ray had told her that a couple coaches had also pitched sexy cheerleaders who would do gross sex things for the players. She really wished she could be surprised instead of just grossed out, but she’d read about colleges getting NCAA penalties for doing stuff like that, along with way worse stuff.
So she got over to Ray’s house about a quarter to one, and after she gave Ray a big kiss she went in the kitchen and helped Ray’s mom brew the coffee and get the cookies out of the oven and stuff, because Ray’s mom sort of got carried away every time college coaches came to talk to Ray.
This time, as soon as Ray’s dad welcomed the two men into the living room, Alex knew why Ray wanted her there. The guys were both wearing Georgetown Hoyas jackets. Alex was so excited she could hardly sit still.
Once Ray’s mom served everybody coffee and cookies — Ray had milk instead of coffee, and Alex had hot chocolate that she made herself so she could snitch several extra cookies while she was in the kitchen — the two guys started talking. They were both assistant coaches at Georgetown, and they had gone to the game last night to watch Paradise Valley play the Cougars. And they wanted Ray to consider going to Georgetown.
As soon as Ray’s dad got them to say the offer was solid, and it was for a full four- or five-year scholarship according to NCAA rules, Ray said, “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’d love to play for Georgetown, and I’m accepting your offer right now no matter who else comes to visit.”
The two coaches looked at each other, and the older one smiled. “That’s great, but do you mind if I ask why? That’s a pretty unusual attitude for someone who isn’t a huge Hoyas fan.”
Ray glanced at Alex and said, “My girlfriend is already accepted at Corcoran College, and I want to play basketball for a D.C. team. My favorite teams are here in California, but I don’t want to be stuck on the wrong coast for four years. Georgetown is exactly what I was hoping for.”
The younger coach asked, “And do you think you’re all set for the rigors of college classwork? We like to keep all our players eligible, and get them solid degrees they can use later on.”
Alex snorted. “Ray’s a great student! How many student-athletes do you have right now who are taking AP classes?”
The coaches glanced at each other, and the older one admitted, “That’s great, because over the years, we’ve run into a lot of athletes who have decent grades only because their schools are bending the scholastic rules into pretzels to keep them eligible so they can win games. Not only are they unprepared for college, but they’ve been taught that they can skip the schoolwork because someone else will cover for them. They end up being ineligible just about the time the season starts or the conference schedule starts, which is right when it hurts us the most, and it really hurts them, starting with making the NBA reconsider drafting them at all.”
Ray said, “I’m not the biggest brain in the world, like Alex and her family, but I was a good student way before I started being a starting basketball player.”
Ray’s dad said, “We’ve always stressed that school came first, and Ray’s done well in school. And he’s been in the school band and done concerts, too. He’s a very well-rounded student, and we’re very proud of him.”
Alex said, “And he doesn’t get in trouble, either.”
Ray’s mom smiled. “Ray and Alex have known each other since … forever.”
“Nursery school,” Alex chipped in. “Ray’s been my very best friend for as long as I can remember.”
The older coach said, “Having a steady girlfriend is good, and having good study habits is great. Because a lot of people will put pressure on you to live up to the ‘gangsta’ image that a lot of star ballers have these days, and very few of them will have your best interests in mind. We try to help our guys even in the off-season, but some of them don’t want to be helped, and some of them have been told they don’t need to listen to anybody in authority. It’s always a real pleasure when we get someone with a good work ethic who isn’t trying to be another Fiddy.”
Ray grinned. “Alex will keep me on the straight and narrow. She’s the most level-headed person I know. And no one’s going to invite us to anything illegal as soon as word gets around who she is.” He waited until both coaches gave him ‘come on’ looks. “She’s A.L. Mack the photographer and videographer. She’s up for two Pulitzer prizes this spring. Nobody wants a news photographer capturing them doing illegal stuff.”
The younger coach smirked a little. “Well, nobody with two working brain cells. The NCAA had a case just a couple years ago where a couple Division II ballers let someone film them doing drugs and then committing some other felonies, and it was all up on YouTube before they even woke up the next morning.”
Ray’s dad put one arm around Alex’s shoulders. “We trust Ray, and we trust Alex. And we’re very proud of both of them.” Alex could feel her face getting really red with embarrassment.
And then Ray’s dad invited her to go out to dinner with them to celebrate, but Alex had to get home to do the thing with Lieutenant Lupo, so instead after dinner, Ray took her out to a movie and a late meal at his favorite place to eat. And the restaurant manager insisted it was on the house because Ray was so awesome the night before, even if they didn’t win the championship.
As they got back in the car, Ray said, “Man, I am totally getting that whole ‘thinking you’re entitled’ thing now. Imagine if you’d been getting that every day for years.”
She hugged him. “Honey, you’re a good person, and you know better, and I don’t think that’ll happen to you.”
He kissed her and said, “And if I do, you can give me a huge shock in the butt to get me back on track.” And then she giggled, and then they got really smoochy, and … Well, she ended up getting home half an hour after her curfew, and not telling her mom ahead of time she would be late, and also her blouse was totally untucked and buttoned wrong, so she was in mega-extra trouble.
* * *
Alex got Shar going Monday morning, and apologized to her mom about three times, but her mom was still totally upset.
Her mom waited to call until Alex was out of school and on her way over to pick up Shar at the Boys and Girls Club, even though talking on the phone in a moving car wasn’t a great idea. Fortunately, Alex could pull her earjack out of her backpack with TK.
The first thing her mom asked was, “And did you use protection last night?”
“MOM!” Alex squeaked. She was so glad she was in the car with no one else in there with her. And the windows were up. She was sure she was turning beet red, but she managed to say, “We didn’t! I promise, we really, really didn’t!”
“Alex, I did see your blouse last night. That was not a ‘we only went to first base’ blouse.”
She knew that, but she was still going to die from embarrassment right here in the car! “Okay, Mom, we … umm … we went past second base, but we didn’t go all the way to third base. I swear!” But her mom chewed her out for a couple more minutes, and Alex felt totally humiliated the entire time.
Her mom finally said, “All right. You are grounded for the next three nights. And I really didn’t want to have this discussion in the house, where little pitchers have big ears that might be telepathically assisted.”
Ugh. That would be even worse having this conversation face to face and knowing Shar was probably eavesdropping. And that would be followed up by all kinds of little questions she did not want to be dealing with. She was not going to be the one who had to give The Talk to Shar.
Oh, crud, it suddenly hit her that she probably was going to end up being the one who had to give The Talk to Shar. And probably also The Other Talk. Unless she could talk Willow into doing it, and that would probably be worse, because Willow would get side-tracked and start telling Shar all about stuff Shar really didn’t need to know about for a few years. Oh, she could see it now. “Alex, how come Auntie Willow knows all about lesbian sex but Uncle Jack is a guy? And another thing …” Eww, that would be mega-bad. It would be even worse with some telepathy involved. “Alex, how come Auntie Willow was thinking about Veronica Mars and a wading pool full of chocolate pudding?”
Crud, Alex was totally going to have to give her The Talk. And then The Other Talk. And then The Special Talk About Auntie Willow.
She pretty much cringed the whole way over to pick up Shar. After she picked up Shar, she tried to concentrate on math problems for the whole drive, so Shar wouldn’t pick up on what was really going on.
* * *
They were done with dinner and cleaning up, even if Shar was trying to get out of drying pots and pans, when the house phone rang. Her mom and dad turned to look at Alex, who said, “Not me! Anyone I know would call on my phone or the tPhone. Or my computer.”
Shar burst out excitedly, “It’s Annie!”
So Alex’s dad flipped the kitchen phone to its speaker setting, which they like never used. “Annie? Is that you?”
Annie’s voice came through the speaker. “Dad? Are you guys done with dinner? Do I need to call back later?” But Annie sounded excited.
Alex’s mom said, “Oh, no, this is an excellent time, and Shar still has three whole pans to dry.”
Shar wrinkled her nose at Aunt Barbara, but got the dishtowel and went back to drying.
Alex asked, “Hi, Annie! What’s new?” Okay, she had a pretty good why Annie was probably all excited and stuff, but she was going to try really hard not to ruin the surprise.
Annie burst out, “This is really great! My department got this internship and it’s going to me — if I pass all the security requirements and I’m sure I will — and I’m going to be doing biochem for a DHS agency this summer!”
Their mom said, “Well, I think they’ll find the whole family, probably including you, has already been cleared for Top Secret information, so that may make things go better.”
“Oh, right, Alex. And Shar,” Annie replied.
Their dad asked, “And do you know what alphabet agency you’ll be working for?”
Annie happily explained, “No, but I do know they’re talking about serious biochem for amelioration and abatement of toxic wastes, and I know the plant has a whole division working on that, so I’m hoping maybe I’ll get to work with some people I already know!”
Shar looked up from the pan she was drying, and suddenly got it. Her eyes lit up, and she yipped, “Oh! Oh!”
Before she could say anything else, Alex gave her a mean glare and gave her a ‘shush’ gesture with a finger to the lips.
“What is it, Shar?” Annie asked.
Shar looked guiltily at Alex and fibbed, “I really gotta go to the bathroom, can you stay on the phone till I get back?”
“Of course, honey!”
Shar put the pan on the stove and ran out of the room. Alex followed her.
Shar whispered excitedly to her, “It’s Uncle Jack!”
Alex frowned. “But we’re not ruining Annie’s surprise tonight, okay? So go in the bathroom, count to thirty, flush the toidy, and wash your hands.”
“Fine. And you don’t haveta say ‘toidy’. I’m not a baby.”
Alex hurried back into the kitchen in time to catch her dad saying, “Honey, if they got Top Secret clearance for me and your mother just to handle Alex’s … umm … extracurriculars, then you probably already have it.”
Annie worried, “Will that be good, or will it look really suspicious?”
Her dad insisted, “Your records show you’ve done really high-level research at the plant and in our garage for the plant since you were in high school, and I had to get you a Secret clearance for one of the first projects, so it should look completely normal.”
“Thanks, Dad. You’re the best.”
Alex flew over and gave him a big hug, because he really was the best dad in the world, and a lot of the time she was really sorry she didn’t tell him that more often, and she was really mega-sorry she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him about her powers way back in junior high. He had been so hurt when he finally found out.
“I’m back!” Shar piped up as she ran back into the kitchen with a huge clatter.
Alex’s mom asked, “Honey, are those Sophie’s tap shoes?”
“She said I could wear ’em yesterday and today! They’re fun, and they’re really cute. And now I can do a dance for Annie.”
Well, it was pretty loud, and there was a lot of tapping in it, and it was a dance. And it was better than Alex could have done with totally no tap lessons. Alex was giving her that.
“Ta da!”
Alex clapped, and everyone else did, too. Alex sort of wondered a little about Sophie, because Sophie was the girliest girl in Shar’s class, and a good friend to Shar and a bunch of the other little girls, but Alex thought Sophie’s mom was sort of pushing Sophie into the really mega-girly stuff. Alex just hoped Sophie wasn’t getting the ‘girls can’t do boy things’ messages at home.
Alex had been really lucky on that. Her dad had wanted her and Annie to know how to do hiking and camping like him, and he had really encouraged Annie maybe way more than normal on the science stuff, and he had been completely not bothered that Alex dressed in her own tomboy style, and he had encouraged their mom to go back to college for her Master’s degree. And both parents had encouraged her and Annie to get great grades in everything, even stuff girls got told they couldn’t do, like math.
There were a lot more boys than girls in her AP calc class and her AP chem class. Just like there were more girls than boys in her AP American Lit class and Spanish IV. She wondered if Terawatt needed to be thinking about things like that.
But after Annie ended the call and Alex’s dad hung up the kitchen phone, Shar bounced up and down. “It’s Uncle Jack! It’s Uncle Jack!”
Alex confessed, “Umm, yeah, it is. Willow and Jack are doing a little conspiring for us. Jack figures Annie’ll spend a couple weeks at the West Virginia base, and then the rest of the summer here at the plant, or else out at Roswell with Lieutenant Marshall’s group. And I can probably visit her when she’s down there.”
Her dad smiled. “I thought it might be, when Annie said the magic words amelioration and abatement.”
Her mom nodded. “Oh, right. The HWAAA. Do they even do any of that for real?”
Her dad insisted, “Sure they do! And they manage a host of government grants, too! We already have a huge one here and we’re competing for three more including one for Tromaville, New Jersey, and we’re aiming for a big international one they’re putting out with some U.N. agencies about a contaminated lake in Russia.”
“Ugh.” Then she realized she’d said that out loud.
Her mom looked over and asked, “Alex? Do you know about that lake?”
She nodded reluctantly. “Umm, yeah. Some of Jack’s people have had to do a bunch of patrol work there. It’s a big radioactive lake with an earth dam on one side, and it’s got radioactive things in it, and now the radioactive things are trying to creep out and maybe eat people, so now the Russians finally care enough about a lake they should have been worrying about for fifty or sixty years, which is so frustrating it just makes me want to scream! And if they can’t deal with the radioactive monsters, they can’t rebuild the earth dam, which needs work, and if it fails, the radioactive lake with the radioactive monsters is gonna pour downstream into a couple Russian towns, and it’ll be mega-bad.”
“Can I firebend the monsters?” Shar checked.
Alex’s dad said, “Boy, it sounds like they really do need our expertise.”
Her mom frowned. “George, it sounds really dangerous. I don’t want you going out there.”
Alex insisted, “Don’t worry, because Dad isn’t going there without me for backup.”
Her mom started, “Alex, I don’t see … Oh, wait, I do see how. Jack will probably have Terawatt officially flying in to save the day.”
Shar added, “Like always!” She tap-danced across the room and hugged Alex.
Alex hugged her back and asked, “You really like tap dancing?”
Shar nodded. “Sophie’s got the cutest tap dancing outfits! But they’re not as pretty as her ballet outfits. She let me and Maria try on the one with the big white tutu because it’s not fitted. But I don’t wanna do ballet. You have to practice like a jillion hours a week every week, and Sophie says you have to do it for years and years! I just wanna go see Sophie do the ‘Nut Cranker Suet’ next Christmas. She said she was gonna try out for it, and I just know she’ll get whatever part it is.”
Alex’s mom smiled gently. “Honey, it’s the ‘Nutcracker Suite’; s-u-i-t-e like a suite of scenes, and there are probably older girls with more experience trying to get the same part, so Sophie might not get it. Don’t get your hopes up.”
“Well, that’s not fair,” Shar pouted.
Alex insisted, “It’s totally fair. If you want it to be fair, it has to be fair for everyone, not just one person. That would be mega-unfair.”
Shar looked up at Alex, and in a pretty decent Willow impression, said, “Uberly of the unfair.” Alex and her mom both giggled.
Alex’s mom brushed a wisp of hair off Shar’s forehead and told her, “Honey, when people say ‘life isn’t fair’ what they really mean is ‘I didn’t get my way so I’m mad’. Life is fair most of the time, but it’s fair for everyone. And lots of times, good luck for you means horrible luck for someone else, so everyone else would think things were unfair. So you can’t make everyone happy all the time, and you can’t have everything go your way all the time, without other people having things not go their way.”
Shar asked, “But what about Terawatt? She wins all the time!”
Alex’s mom softly said, “But in order for Terawatt to be who she is, a lot of bad things had to happen to Alex. A lot of really unfair things, like the unfair things that happened to you. And it wasn’t her fault, or your fault.”
Alex reminded Shar, “And Terawatt doesn’t win every time. I lost my first fight with Gojira. I lost that one bad. And I lost some of my fights against Danielle Atron back before I became Terawatt, like when her badguys sucked me up in a huge special vacuum cleaner thing when I tried to puddle away from them. And there were battles I lost that I didn’t even know I lost, like when Dave Watt figured out I was the Mystery Kid because I wasn’t being careful enough with my powers. If he hadn’t turned out to be a good guy, that would’ve been mega-bad.”
Alex’s mom asked, “Honey, have you done anything nice for Officer Watt? Your father and I wrote him some nice recommendations when he wanted to join the police department, and we send him a Christmas gift every year, but maybe we should do more.”
Alex admitted, “Well, Terawatt has told his commanding officer a couple times that Officer Watt was really helpful, so that’s in his file. And I’ve slipped him some extra doughnuts when he got something to eat at Gloria’s. And there’s this on-line catalog of cool police officer gear, and he’s gotten a couple ‘mystery donor’ presents out of it.”
Shar asked, “Do I get any mystery donor presents?”
Alex’s dad asked, “If you got a present with no name on it, wouldn’t you know who it was from, so that would take away the ‘mystery donor’ part, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh. Yeah,” Shar shrugged. “Maybe.”
Alex sort of wondered if Shar’s telepathy would be a good thing in junior high and high school, or a really bad thing. She might be able to tell that the shy, cute guy in her class had a crush on her, so she could tell him she liked him, too. But she might be able to tell that really horny creepos were thinking really icky stuff about her body, which would be too gross for words.
* * *
Alex got a phone call on her tPhone on Tuesday morning. It was just a few minutes after she dropped off Shar at elementary school, and right before she got into the parking lot at the high school. And it was the ‘My Little Pony’ music.
She used her TK to pull her earjack out of her secret inside pocket of her backpack and then put it on her ear, instead of using her hand. Okay, ‘jam it in her ear’ was more like it, because she did it a little too hard. She still managed to tap the answer button with her TK before Jack gave up.
“Tera here. I’m in transit to the day’s funfest. As you already know.”
Jack said, “Yeah, having Acid Burn’s version of your sched is helpful. Maybe even mega-helpful.”
Alex smiled. “Or totally of the helpful!”
Jack laughed, then told her, “Okay, the next part’s not so fun. We have a meeting with Senator Kinsey. His office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Thursday morning, eight ack emma.”
“Oh, crud.”
Jack complained, “We didn’t get to pick the time. Or the place. He’s enjoying throwing his weight around, but I think we can make that work for us. We’re going to do the touch-and-go with the Blackbird at Camp Atron at four ack emma your time Thursday morning, so we’ll have you divebombing his building before eight our time. Just grab the presents Miller leaves you in the Blackbird, hide ’em on you, and come in through the HVAC system on the roof. Miller will leave you a little map to get you to the right office on the right floor. Then meet us there. The rest of us will have already gone through metal detectors, x-ray scans, cavity searches, you know, the usual. Even Big Cheese. Just slip me the stuff and then follow Hammond’s lead when we meet Kinsey. And don’t let Kinsey piss you off, even if he’s a really annoying son of a gun when he’s not doing his glad-handing routine. We’re planning on bushwhacking him to keep you and A.G. safe.”
“Jack … are you going to be safe?”
Alex could practically hear the shrug. “Probably. The worst he can do is threaten to have me demoted, or to sic a hitman on me. No big. I’ve handled worse.”
Alex reluctantly pointed out, “He could threaten Charlie. Or Willow.”
There was suddenly a steely tone in Jack’s voice that Alex hoped was never pointed at her. “If he does, he’s a dead man. No one threatens my family. Especially not some power-hungry sleazebag.”
“Jack, please don’t get in trouble over this. I don’t know what I’d do if you did.”
Jack slid back into ‘casual Jack’ again. “Oh, you’d have Finn looking out for you. And Miller. And everyone else. And I think most of our noncoms would hack Kinsey into fun-sized pieces if you asked ’em to, after you’ve been so nice, especially about their families.”
“I don’t want anybody getting in trouble because of me.”
Jack insisted, “I know, but someone has to be unhappy at the end of this one, kid. There is no win-win position. If we let you or your galpal A.G. be his bodyguard for even one hour, we’d have to expect everyone will demand the same, and the President would be due a lot more. And where does it stop? Foreign dignitaries? Ambassadors? Rich campaign contributors? Bear in mind those guys would be more like Oswell Spencer and less like, say, Scrooge McDuck. We can’t let him borrow you, period.”
Alex wondered, “Haven’t you told Kinsey this already?”
Jack grumbled, “Top Banana did. At length. In person. It didn’t do any good, and Top Banana was pissed off enough to authorize Big Cheese to handle this in any way he chose.”
Ugh. This was going to be so mega-grim.
* * *
But still, on Thursday morning she was up early enough to eat a big breakfast and take off in her uniform at a quarter of four. She got to the Camp Atron airstrip with about two minutes to spare.
She spotted the Blackbird almost too late, since it was flying with no lights. She dived down and just barely made it to the cockpit, which was going maybe twenty miles an hour faster than her by then, but it wasn’t that bad leaping onto it and puddling through the port into her seat.
The pilot just said, “We’re already airborne, ma’am. If you could seal the port?”
She snapped it shut with her TK and just stayed in her seat. This time, there was only a teeny package that she looked at before she pulled it into her morph. It had a tiny building map and a ziplock baggie that was about two inches by two inches. The baggie had three weird little things in it. One looked like a black thumbtack with a thick head. One looked like a little clear plastic half-pipe with little black doodads painted on the inside. And the last thing looked like a sticky little gray ball of lint.
It took her a while to figure out just what all three of them were, but she had a ton of time in the Blackbird. When the jet dived down toward Andrews Air Force Base — her official least favorite air force base in the world — she waited until they were down in the atmosphere and the pilot gave her the signal. She popped the port, puddled out onto the side of the canopy, locked the port closed after her, and coasted off the fuselage to zoom down toward Washington D.C.
She gave it a few seconds before she popped out the tPhone and got Willow’s app up. There was a GPS signal pointing right at the middle of the building. She headed there at high speed, not even trying to slow down until she was a lot closer.
She didn’t really hit the brakes until the last thirty seconds, and then she just barely kept from crashing into one of the big roof HVAC units. That would be bad. And embarrassing. She ducked into an intake, moved a couple of filters out of her way, scooted past some fans she had to stop with her TK first, and dodged around some big cooling coils and heating systems. Then she followed the directions from the little map to the third floor, northwest corner. She found a nice vent that let her watch down the hallway through a tiny grill that had a metal mesh she couldn’t puddle through.
So while she waited, she used her TK to take out the screws holding the grill in place. That only took a few seconds. When Jack came down the hall with General Hammond and Major Davis and Action Girl, Alex opened the vent, puddled down the wall, and stuck the vent back in place with her TK. She left the screws in the duct. Then she puddled up behind Jack, and when he put his right hand behind his back, she dropped the little baggie into it. The baggie went right into one of his pockets.
She went normal and floated down the hall behind Jack and in front of Action Girl. Hanna was in her full uniform, and she looked pretty cool. General Hammond looked like he wanted to yell at somebody.
Major Davis led them to a really nice office with four people working at nice desks. All four ignored them and kept working away at computers and stacks of papers. Naturally, Senator Kinsey wasn’t there. These people were …
“Ahh, peons, I’d recognize the type anywhere!” Jack said in a fake-hearty manner. “And it’s the ever-popular four-peon gridlock to keep you from the Door Of Importance.”
Okay, now Jack had their attention, even if all four were pretending he didn’t. He kept going, “But I’m sure Terawatt could just fly over those desks and open that door with her powers, even if it’s locked on the inside. Even if it’s bolted on the inside.”
The head paper-pusher jumped up and stood in front of the door with his arms outstretched. “No! We’ve got orders …” George Hammond cleared his throat menacingly. “… sirs.”
George growled, “That’s General Hammond to you, sonnyboy.”
Jack looked at Alex and mouthed, ‘do you feel lucky punk’. Alex had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from giggling.
Jack must have prepared Hanna, because Action Girl suddenly said in a distinct Boston accent, “This is bullshit. If he wants ta play stupid political games, I’m outta heah. I’ve got work ta do back home.” She turned to walk out the door.
Alex saw another of the ‘peons’ hastily reach under her desk and press something. The door into the inner office instantly opened, and two busty, gorgeous, overly-made-up female interns in minidresses walked out with files in their arms. One said, “We’ll get right on these, Senator!” If they had been between twenty-five and thirty-one, Alex would have thought ‘Orphan!’ Instead, she figured they were college age, and she thought ‘what a sleazebucket’. Because there was no way the best-qualified women Kinsey could find were nineteen or twenty-year-olds who were also Playboy Playmates in their spare time. She was liking this guy less and less with every second.
The guy at the door just said, “You can go in now … general.”
George gave the guy a look that should have made the little jerkhead shrivel up like a slug on hot concrete. Major Davis stepped forward, opened the door the rest of the way, and stepped through like he was handling General Hammond’s security, too. He held the door open for all of them and then closed it behind them. Alex made sure to float half a foot off the floor, and just behind someone else so it wouldn’t be instantly obvious she was that high off the carpet.
It was a big, fancy office with really expensive wall-to-wall carpeting. It was a corner office with a nice window behind Kinsey’s desk and a huge window off to Alex’s right. Both windows had really expensive draperies. Senator Kinsey was sitting smugly behind an enormous cherrywood desk that probably cost more than Alex’s car. Standing on Kinsey’s right was another jerkhead in a power suit. The guy had ‘slimy minion’ written all over him. And Alex knew slimy minions when she saw them, starting with Danielle’s minions. This guy was like a politico version of Lars, but with a bad hairpiece on top of everything. She wanted to zap him one, and he hadn’t even opened his mouth yet.
Senator Kinsey smiled at George and Jack, and said, “General Hammond. General O’Neill. You didn’t have to bring your associates here in person.”
Jack calmly said, “Oh, I think we did.”
George Hammond said, “Is this meeting being recorded?”
Senator Kinsey glanced over at his minion, who said, “I don’t think that would be in anyone’s best interests.”
Alex cut in, “It might be in my best interests.”
Major Davis pulled a box out of his valise and flipped it on. Then he did a bug sweep of the room. He finally stopped in front of the bookshelf that was off to the side opposite the bigger window. He moved the device back and forth, and then he reached for what looked like a block of sculpted jade. From behind it, he pulled out a tiny matte-black thing the size of a fat cigarette that was probably a video camera, too. He frowned. “It would appear that the Senator might not have adequate security after all, sir.”
Kinsey was trying really hard not to turn red in the face. His minion looked pretty worried.
Jack leaned forward on the front edge of the Senator’s huge desk. “Well, Senator, maybe it’s a good thing we dropped by after all. I wonder how much dirt someone now has on you.”
George said, “At ease, O’Neill.” Jack stood up and stepped back. George went on, “Given the sophistication of that bug, and what it would take to get it planted in here, I’m guessing you have enemies well outside what your colleagues are dealing with. If you want to give us full disclosure, the DHS can step in and the right agency can assist you. If it turns out that it’s an SRI tasking, then General O’Neill would be handling it, and he might bring in Action Girl or Terawatt or Klar for individual ops. But under no circumstances are we turning over any of the super-powered federal deputies of the SRI to you or your people. I believe General Jackson already made that point clear.”
Kinsey leaned back at that point. For a second, Alex thought he was going to put his hands together in that ‘steepled fingers’ way that head bad guys did in movies while they were scheming or they were explaining their evil plan. But he just put his hands together on the edge of his desk. She wondered what Jack would have said if Kinsey really had done the ‘evil mastermind’ hand thing.
Kinsey gave General Hammond a smile that was about as fake as his minion’s toupee. “General, you seem to be forgetting who you are speaking to. I can cut your budgets down to nothing. I can have every one of your agencies investigated. I can —”
“You can go to hell, Senator,” George flared. “I don’t play that game. My agencies are squeaky clean, and if you target me through the DoD, I am fully prepared to take retirement as of this second. I’m already a couple years past when I’d planned on retiring, only the SRI turned into a bigger project than anyone expected.”
Kinsey’s smile didn’t change. But his eyes did. Alex realized that Kinsey wasn’t targeting George. He was targeting Jack.
Kinsey smirked. “I don’t think anyone will consider your projects all that clean when they find out that General Jack O’Neill is dating an Orphan.”