“Uh-oh, it the police,” Romeesha muttered, pronouncing the word “poe-leece,” a pause between the two syllables. Then she grinned.
“Love you, too, Miss Was-Just-Illegally-Hacking-the-Pentagon,” Bo said, grinning back.
“Bitch gotta earn a livin’.”
“Gotta sec?”
Romeesha smiled again. “Sure. Come on in. What up?”
“You’re good with software, right?”
“That a joke?”
“Go with me on this,” Bo pressed. “You’re good, right?”
ROM stopped, turned, saw the seriousness of his expression. Crossing her arms, her eyes narrowed slightly. “Better than good. You need me to write something for you?”
Orbis shook his head. “I need you to age someone for me.”
She wasn’t expecting that question. “Say what?”
“Law enforcement does it all the time,” Bo explained. “Say a kid goes missing 10 years ago. They can take a picture of that kid and ‘age’ it to show what he might look like today,”
“Oh, right! I got you,” ROM, replied, brightening. “But you got computers down at the station. Or the FBI—“
“No. I can’t do that. Not with this,” Orbis took from his backpack a print out of a photo. The child in it, a smiling little blond boy, could not be more than seven years old. But it wasn’t the age that took ROM back. The child was naked. And tied up.
ROM stared at the photo quietly. She held it for several seconds longer than she should have before she finally spoke. Searching for the right thing to say, she began, “This kid is—“
“Yes.”
“Why is—“
“Stop.”
ROM looked up to see a face devoid of any humor.
The woman slowly rose her eyes to the man. With a tilt of her head, they headed to the basement.
Without a word, ROM quickly opened a small panel on the wall behind the light switch and pressed a series of codes. There was a flash, followed by a low buzzing. The hologram vanished, revealing ROM’s lab. With equal lack of ceremony, she sat down in front of the screen, her fingers flying over the keyboard.
There was a low buzzing.
“Ok, scan is complete,” ROM announced. Orbis was the perfect Navy SEAL: he was born paranoid. He’d see conspiracies in a flower garden. And take them out. “We clear. Now why can’t you manipulate that photo yo’self?”
Bo sat down. “This is from a cache of evidence my department was ordered to bury.”
ROM blinked. “’Bury?’”
Orbis was quiet. He opened his mouth to speak, and then paused again. Finally, when he did speak, it was in a very low voice. “I got this photo from a human trafficking case.”
“Somebody want you to bury that?”
“Yes. Somebody powerful. Somebody powerful above the law.”
ROM stared at the man. “Who?”
“I can’t say. I’m not sure. I stole this photo from the file. Stole a few more, too.”
The woman’s face turned slightly to the side, her eyes focused on the man, who, until 15 minutes ago was not a goody two-shows, he was THE goody two-shoes. Class validictorian, never drank until he was 21, and then never drank after that, first in his class at West Pointe, never smoke, a die-hard teacher’s pet—if it weren’t for the fact that he was gay, he’d be absolutely the biggest pain in the ass ever. He made Buddha look bad. “You? Stole? This?”
“I really don’t think I should tell you any more.”
“Orbis, who is that kid?”
The question was dodged. “Can you age it?”
“No problem. But why?”
“Just age the photo. You’ll see if it is who I think it is. If it isn’t, you can just write me off as a crazy person.”
ROM knew when to cut the sass and get to work. She placed the photo on a glowing glass panel and beams of light passed over it, top to bottom and side to side.
“Pull it up on the screen.”
“I’ll do better. You watch.” She pointed to what looked like to two glass disks, one over the other. With a high hum, they pulled away from each other, and the glass took on a faint, pink glow. “3D holographic projection.”
“How did you and Miss Gwen get all this in here?”
“Secret,” ROM replied slyly.
“She designed all this?”
“And built it. I did all the programming.”
“This must have taken years—“
“Weeks.”
“Do you ever get out and have, you know, fun?”
ROM looked at him, wided-eyed. “That? From you? ‘Sides, you shittin’ me? That was paradise!”
Orbis had seen a lot in his time, but these girls were just plain weird. He was about to say so when the holographic device beeped chirpily, and in a puff of sparkles, the head of child appeared. ROM had, thankfully, instructed her computer to not show the boy bound. His face simply hung in the air, suspended, perpetually smiling. You’d never know what was happening below his neck.
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