“Buckley, you didn’t call directly, did you?” she asked.

“What do you think I am, stupid? No, when they catch us all and kill us, it won’t be my fault. Can I give you a rundown of our current tactical vulnerabilities?”

“Shut up, buckley.”

“Ri—” It cut off as hundreds of miles away a phone was answered.

“Hello?” A soft female voice answered. Cally still marveled that the voice didn’t sound even a little bit harried.

“Hi, Shari. I’m done for the evening and thought I’d call in. How are the girls doing?”

“Sinda’s out like a light. She really wore herself out in Aunt Margret’s dance class. Morgan’s almost finished with her homework. I’ll get her.”

Seven minutes later, the limo turned into the parking lot of a vintage car dealership, pulling around back to park. Its four occupants piled out and into the building, taking the hidden elevator in the back of the broom closet down to the tunnel. In the small antechamber at the bottom, they carefully hung their dress clothes on the cleaning rack and racked their shoes and equipment. Cleaning was no longer a euphemism for precautionary destruction — not always. Things tended to be figleafed with a new look and reused as much as possible. It wasn’t terribly safe, but then it wasn’t a safe business. She tucked the small evening bag inside a pocket of a larger purse that had already been prepped.

Cally and Harrison got the makeup table to themselves for a few minutes while Tommy ran the standard post-op checks, downloads, and scrubs on the surveillance equipment and Papa dictated the post-op report into his PDA. By the time they were ready for their own turn at the table, she and Harrison were through. She smiled gratefully as he ushered her over to a stool and went to work on her neck and shoulders. Certified massage therapist was not on the list of desirable secondary skills for operational team members. It should’ve been, and Cally was personally grateful for the luck of the draw that had put Harrison available for field assignment just when Granpa was filling the vacancies on the team left by her sabbatical and Jay’s timely demise.