Stealthy Steps Page 3

  Chapter 1

  The Back Story

  Dear Reader,

  I apologize for interrupting. I dropped you smack in the middle of my story’s most traumatic episode, precisely because it was the most traumatic episode. What took place on that mountain—the violent death of my friend and what happened to me—well, what took place there is the key event in my story, but it isn’t the beginning, and beginnings are important.

  And so, I’m sorry for yanking you around like this, for taking you back to the beginning.

  I’ve begun to write it out now, and I want what I put down to be complete and believable. So I’m going to fill in the missing parts before moving on—the parts like properly identifying myself and providing a proper background.

  I don’t know how much time I have to write. It depends on how long it takes General Cushing to figure things out. She is looking for me, although she does not know she’s after me.

  Yet.

  I don’t doubt that she will put the pieces together eventually. And when she does? She will set her soldiers to hunt me, the same way she hunted down Dr. Bickel.

  I can’t ensure that this record will survive should I be captured, but I still choose, for my own sanity’s sake, to record everything that has happened. All of it.

  So while I can, I will write. When my account is complete—or when Cushing closes in, whichever comes first—I will hide the file somewhere, perhaps “out there” in the ether. The way Dr. Bickel hid his research notes in the cloud.

  It’s not the best plan, I know, but it’s the best I can do for now.

  This account is my insurance, just in case things go badly wrong.

  Not that they haven’t already.

  My full name is Gemma Ellen Keyes. It’s been a month since that awful day in Dr. Bickel’s lab under the mountain. It’s been a month of hiding and a month of coming to terms with my new “normal,” with what I cannot fix or change.

  You should know that I’m not a special person. I’m not brave. I’m not smart. And nothing unusual ever happens to me—quite the opposite, in fact!

  When I was growing up, I always believed the most remarkable thing about me was my name: Gemma (pronounced “Jem-muh”) comes from the word gem or jewel, right? And gemstones are beautiful—sparkling and prized—all the things I was not and never would be.

  What I mean to say is that I have always been ordinary. Common. Nondescript.

  I am twenty-six and single, and when this all started I was a woman of average height and weight, average hair and eye color (brownish), average facial characteristics, and underwhelming prospects in life.

  There. That’s a better way to start my story.

  I might be recording these events for personal reasons, too. I don’t know. So much has happened in such a short span of time that I need a way to keep all this craziness straight in my own mind.

  When I wrote “for my own sanity’s sake” up above, you thought I was exaggerating, right? Let’s see if you still think that after you’ve read my account.

  I never intended to get involved in the mess I’m about to describe to you. I mean, I had no idea what Dr. Prochanski and Dr. Bickel were really working on—so how could I have known better?

  Yes, I made some mistakes and I will confess to some major misjudgments. But how could I have known this would happen?

  All right. Enough with the excuses. I need to get on with it.

  You should know that I have always been unnaturally shy. My average appearance combined with the way I tend to hide quietly in the background were why people frequently overlooked me. And because people overlooked me, they often underestimated me.

  That might be why I’m still alive at this point.

  But it’s also what got me into this fix.

  Because other than my name, I am utterly forgettable—so those who never paid much attention to me in the first place haven’t exactly noticed that I’ve disappeared. Vanished.

  Actually, it’s much more complicated than it sounds.

  Yes, I’m still here.

  But I have changed.

  Sorry. I keep getting ahead of myself. I want this record to be thorough and complete, and already it reads like the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic. I apologize for the “stream of consciousness” approach. I’ll try to keep my account simple and straightforward from now on.

  Hang in there with me. I think you’ll find it . . . interesting.

  Before all this started, I lived in the house my aunt left me after she died. It’s as though the little house knew me before I came to live here, because it, too, is unremarkable: A smallish two-bedroom stucco in a rundown neighborhood not far from old downtown Albuquerque.

  I still live in my little house—for now. It sits at the back of a cul-de-sac, straight ahead as you follow our street until it curves and ends at my house. Everyone in the neighborhood calls it a cul-de-sac but, to be fair, it’s really an unremarkable dead-end street.

  Aunt Lucy said “cul-de-sac” sounded nicer than “dead end.” I can’t disagree with her there.

  Aunt Lucy was our dad’s older sister. Her married name was Lucia Reyes—which is close to the spelling of her maiden name Keyes but is pronounced “Ray-yez.” No matter. We simply called her Aunt Lucy or sometimes Aunt Lu.

  Aunt Lu’s husband, Eduardo, died when he was only thirty-two. Aunt Lu and her husband didn’t have any kids, and Aunt Lucy didn’t get married again.

  That’s where we came in, my twin sister Genie and I. Aunt Lucy was maybe in her forties when she got us. We were sent to live with Aunt Lucy in this house, in this neighborhood, after our parents died in a fire. Genie and I were nine years old.

  One of my strongest memories is of Aunt Lucy folding me into her soft bosom, stroking my hair, and crying with me over the loss of my mom and dad. The pain—the agony—of losing them was a deep, bleeding hole in my heart. I was just a kid and I didn’t understand grief or how to survive it. If it hadn’t been for Aunt Lucy and her love at that crucial time in my life, I don’t know what would have become of me.

  Once in a great while I still feel the fingers of that despair reaching out to grab hold of me. When I sense those sinking feelings trying to latch on, I run to my memories of Aunt Lucy. In that place I can smell her fragrance, feel the soft cushion of her breasts, and hear her heart beating under my cheek. Eventually the hopelessness backs away.

  The three of us, Aunt Lucy, Genie, and I, lived together in this house until Genie left for college back east when she and I were eighteen. Then it was just Aunt Lu and me.

  I could have gone away to college, too; Dad and Mom didn’t leave us much family, but they did leave us a little insurance money for our educations. That little bit grew over time. I didn’t go away to college, though; I stayed with Aunt Lucy and attended nearby UNM instead. I didn’t want to leave Aunt Lu by herself because she wasn’t well, and I was afraid something serious was wrong with her.

  Genie may have realized something was wrong with Aunt Lucy, too, but she didn’t feel the way I did about Lu. When Mom and Dad died, Genie hadn’t grieved like I had, either. Genie is different. She doesn’t love anyone, I’m afraid, except maybe herself.

  Aunt Lucy took us to church every Sunday while we were growing up. I think she hoped and prayed that church would fix Genie—as if!—so we attended faithfully for years. I’m afraid that Aunt Lucy didn’t understand. She didn’t see. Didn’t see what Genie was.

  I hoped for a while that Genie would change, but she didn’t. I lost faith that God could fix that.

  I’ll write more about my sister later. I don’t want to, but I will have to.

  It was because of Genie (I will get to her; I promise), that fading into the background became a habit for me. Even before our folks died, I’d learned, like a wild creature, to go still when danger was near. By middle school I’d adopted a fixed, vacant expression.

  It was smart of me to look stupid.

  I didn’t realize until much later that
this “trick” I’d picked up in my childhood was a gift of sorts: I could disguise or hide my feelings as I wished. Unless I chose to show my emotions, they stayed tucked away on the inside. It was how this twig was bent; it was how I grew.

  Anyway, back to Aunt Lucy. After Genie left for college, I begged Lu to see a doctor and she reluctantly took herself. It wasn’t good news. They told her that she had breast cancer, and it was advanced.

  We did all the treatments anyway, and they gave her two more years. The treatments were hard on her, but I am so grateful for those two years.

  Aunt Lucy took out a mortgage on her house to pay the medical bills and, with help from hospice, I took care of her myself as the end neared. I did my best and loved her dearly—but love alone cannot hold back the ruin of such a disease.

  I dropped out of school the semester before she died so that I could be with her, so I could let her know how much I loved her.

  It was during Aunt Lucy’s decline that Jake came to live with us. Lu insisted that God had sent him. I disagreed. Why would God pick such an ugly cat to comfort someone as special as Aunt Lu?

  Ugly. Not just unsightly, not merely run-of-the-mill unattractive, but full-on “you even-scare-your-mamma” ugly.

  Jake was maybe three years old when he crawled up on our side porch in the middle of the night. He set up a wallering fit to raise the dead. He sure raised us from a good night’s sleep! Jake’s left ear and eye were mangled and he was mostly skin and bones—held together by the combined efforts of a large population of vermin.

  That tabby had the biggest, meanest, tomcat mug I’d ever seen—and the charming personality to match! Still, Lu begged me to help him.

  So, for her sake, I prepared to do battle with a brigade of fleas.

  I bathed that cat—and he clawed the mess out of me. (I should have donned raingear and chainmail first.)

  I doctored him—and myself afterward.

  I fed him—and the ungrateful monster sank his teeth into me!

  Over my protests, Jake spent his convalescence on the bed next to Lucy, and she drew a great deal of comfort from his affection. And me? If I so much as walked by Lu’s bed, that wretched excuse for a cat would snarl and swipe at me.

  Lord forbid I should try to pet him! Heaven help me if I should show a little kindness! To this day, my hand bears the scars of those misguided advances.

  Miserable brute!

  I doubted that God would pick the ugliest, nastiest cat alive to comfort someone as special as Aunt Lu, but I was wrong. Jake had been what she needed after all.

  After Aunt Lu died, Jake stalked around the house for days yowling and crying for her. He still lives with me. Or maybe he allows me to live with him.

  The vote is still out on that one.

  I said earlier that my sister Genie didn’t love Lu like I did. I meant that. Genie didn’t visit when Aunt Lucy got sick. She didn’t come home when Lu passed.

  Later, when I told Genie that I needed to dip into our education fund to pay the bills that Lu’s new mortgage hadn’t covered, she responded by pulling her share of the money from the joint account. I wasn’t the least bit surprised—I was only relieved that she hadn’t taken my share, too.

  So I took care of the remaining bills and paid for Aunt Lucy to have a nice shady spot in the cemetery. Then I dragged my sorry, grieving heart back to school and eked my way through another semester.

  I’m sitting at Aunt Lucy’s old kitchen table under the dining room window right now, typing up this account on my laptop. Once in a while I look up and glance through the window. I tell myself that I’m admiring the early mums, but I’m really watching our street as it curves and empties into our “cul-de-sac.”

  From this window I can see all vehicles coming or going.

  From this window I will know when they come for me.

  While I keep watch, I observe Mr. and Mrs. Flores, my neighbors on the right, and nosey Mrs. Calderón, next door on the left. I watch the Tuckers two doors to my left, on the other side of Mrs. Calderón.

  I watch my old friend, Abe Pickering, who is three doors to my right. He lives on the curve where the street empties into the cul-de-sac, so his house is almost opposite mine.

  I keep watch as I type up this account, and I’ll stay here as long as I can. Until the day someone stands on my doorstep and demands to see Gemma Keyes.

  “Seeing” Gemma is the problem, of course. When that day comes—the day I can’t produce Gemma for those demanding to see her—I’ll have to leave.

  I don’t exactly have a plan for that day yet.

  Without actually giving directions to my house, I can say that sometimes on a hot summer day when the wind is right, I catch the wild, warm, moist scent of animals from the Rio Grande Zoo. If you know old Albuquerque, you might be able to visualize how our neighborhood looks: corner bodegas, vivid murals painted on stucco and cinder block walls, narrow streets and tiny houses with patchwork yards owned by the same families for generations, lots of driveways and curbs cluttered with cars (always one or two vehicles in some state of disassembly), sidewalks haunted by transients and, of course, a growing gang presence.

  Hmmm. As I type I keep saying “you” as though I’m writing to one particular person, someone I know—which is crazy, because who would that one person be? I trust few people in this world, and I would be crazy to get any of them involved. If things go sideways, they would likely suffer the same fate as I—and I won’t have that.

  But as I type away, I find that it is easier to explain what happened if I fix on one person reading my tale. One person who will care about all this. Who will care what becomes of me.

  So, Dear Reader, if I keep typing “you” in my story, would you do something for me? Would you pretend that you—whoever you are—that you and I are sitting at my tiny kitchen table under my tiny dining room window, sipping on some hot, sweet tea? Would you pretend that we are looking out my front window, looking past my Texas sage and lavender bushes and over the “dead end” my shabby little neighborhood calls a cul-de-sac?

  Would you imagine then that I’m looking you straight in the eye as I tell you this story? And would you try to believe that nothing I say is the product of a crazy person?

  Could you do that?

  Would you do that?

  If you are at least willing to try, I thank you from my heart.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah.

  Like I said, I took time off from school to take care of Aunt Lu. I was about a year behind, but eventually I earned dual bachelor’s degrees in history and accounting from UNM. History was my love, but accounting was more likely to pay the bills.

  Genie had finished her degree the year before and already had the first year of law school under her belt when I graduated. I could easily picture her as an attorney. I felt sorry for those who would someday pit themselves against her in court—I knew I would be scared to go up against her.

  I was twenty-three when I graduated. I’d earned pretty good grades in college, but what kind of decent, interesting job can you get with history and accounting degrees?

  In probably the best career move I could have made, I had applied for an internship at Sandia at the end of my junior year. “Sandia” as in Sandia National Laboratories, a big federal R&D complex on the Air Force base here in Albuquerque. Sure enough, my accounting studies are what got me in the door.

  I worked as a part-time intern for Sandia the last month of my junior year, full-time the summer after my junior year, and then part-time again during my senior year. Mostly I did administrative work. Unremarkable, non-career-boosting administrative “stuff.”

  The weird thing is that thousands of people work at Sandia, including some of the brightest minds in the world. So how is it that I, out of all those thousands, landed in this mess?

  And for the record, I am not a traitor. I will name a few people later who are traitors, but I am not one of them.

  You have to understand that since those who are searching
for me have all the power, this account may be my only opportunity to proclaim my innocence: If they catch me, I’ll likely disappear, never to be heard of again.

  I have to tell my side of the story while I can.

  You should probably have some background on the area I worked in at Sandia so that I don’t lose you as I explain how things unfolded. In a nutshell, we taxpayers pay the federal government to conduct different kinds of research and development at Sandia. The Department of Energy oversees the work.

  You may not know this, but DOE isn’t only about “energy.” Its mission has three parts. Yes, the first part is all that stuff about energy and energy conservation, but the second part is science and innovation, and the third part is nuclear safety and security.

  The second and third parts are important to this story.

  After World War II ended, the world got caught up in the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. Some smart people in the government (I don’t think we have those anymore) decided that no single government entity (meaning the military) should have complete control of America’s nuclear weapons.

  Yes, the Department of Defense “owned” and maintained the weapons, but to ensure the nation’s “nuclear safety and security,” the nuclear pieces of the stockpile were given to an agency that would, eventually, evolve into the Department of Energy. Basically, DOE controls the “special nuclear material”—the part that makes a bomb or missile nuclear—while Defense manages the conventional weapon and its delivery.

  Why keep them separate? Because without the special nuclear material, a nuclear weapon can’t make a big boom with a mushroom cloud.

  Just a regular boom.

  It’s a much safer world that way.

  DOE makes sure that special nuclear material isn’t put into a weapon without a direct Presidential order. DOE also safeguards nuclear materials so they don’t fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations. It’s a big job with a lot at stake.

  DOE “rents” space on Kirtland Air Force Base here in Albuquerque for Sandia and for a few of its other programs, like its National Training Center and a hub for the Office of Secure Transportation. The Air Force base provides a secure place for DOE’s activities.