Invasive by Chuck Wendig Read Free Book Online

her, skittering over every inch of her skin.
    She tells Hollis she should go home. But Hollis says she should stay there. In case Ez has anything. And a flight to Hawaii from Arizona would be easy.
    Does she even want to go home? She’s been avoiding it for so long . . .
    Hannah spends her mornings hiking Sabino Canyon—she tries to outrace the heat, though she never does. The third morning, she’s running the overlook above Sabino Creek. Down below, the cottonwoods are at the start of their bloom: clusters of fat red flowers dangling down, waggling in the breeze like chastising fingers. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
    And then, down there in the creek, walking around: a whitetaildeer. A doe with her belly hanging low. Hannah stops. Watches for a while as the deer stoops and drinks, tail flicking. A few flies buzzing around her hind end. Ripples radiating out from around her legs.
    Hannah’s right arm tightens a little. Her trigger finger twitches.
    An absurd muscle memory—even back then, even when she was a child, she wouldn’t have shot a pregnant doe. Her mother would have stripped her hide for that. But still, seeing an animal like this, it’s like the ghost of a memory rises up and she hears her mother’s voice: Deer that size would fill the freezer for winter.
    Suddenly, a buzzing at her hip followed by a quick chirping ring. Her phone. Hannah’s surprised she gets a signal out here, but she grabs it and answers it and by the time she looks back up the doe is bolting—two splashes and an arcing jump before the deer ducks down through the underbrush and is gone.
    It’s Copper. “They’re stonewalling. Asking for a warrant. Their representative—some cocky prick someone-or-other named Espinosa—says they’re a private corporation, they’ve done nothing wrong, and until there’s a formal connection . . .” He sighs.
    Above Hannah’s head, a pair of vultures orbit each other as if bound by a single axis. “I feel like I’m in a holding pattern.”
    â€œBecause you are in a holding pattern. We all are.”
    â€œMaybe you want to send someone else to deal with this.”
    â€œSo far, we’re not sending anybody.” A pause, like he’s considering his next words. “Hannah, I understand you had plans to go home, but this kind of thing? It’s why I need you. It’s why we pay you. Unless you want us to pay somebody else.”
    She knows the Bureau has other people like her on its payroll. Futurists aren’t common, but they aren’t rare anymore, either. The FBI also has a stable of hackers, philosophers, authors, other professional miscreants, and future-facing weirdos. If they can’t get her, her stock sinks. If she bails on this, she bails on future consults.
    â€œIt’s fine. I’m in.” Her own words sound stiff and angry because, she realizes, she feels stiff and angry. It’s not Copper’s fault. Heneeds what he needs. She is a tool and he needs her to do a job, end of story. She decides to switch tacks. “You find anything else about the body? You didn’t just call me to deliver this non-update, right?”
    â€œOh, there’s more. First up: We found something in the lake. A container.”
    â€œWhat kind of container?”
    â€œWe don’t know, exactly. It’s not typical for anything. It’s a lab container used for shipping. Picked it up on the lake floor not far from the dock. Weighted down with rocks.”
    â€œSend me a photo. You get an identity on the body?”
    â€œNo. We still don’t have a national database of dental records or DNA, and with no idea of who he was in the first place, we don’t have anywhere to start. We’re having someone work on a potential facial reconstruction. The nose is a problem, since it was mostly gone, but the reconstruction’ll give us something to feed to the recognition