Read Online Beating Heart Cadavers by Laura Giebfried - Free Book Online Page B

sharply to the left to get back into Caine's old bedroom. It had been cleared of his possessions years ago after he had moved out, and now only a few pieces of furniture wrapped in plastic that had been moved from Simon's nursery littered the room. It had undoubtedly been the first place that the late ambassador had looked for the object in question, but he hadn't found it. Fields was better at hiding things than that.
    Scooting down, she ran her hands over the smooth expanse of wall. Caine had punched a hole in it that had torn through the plaster, and it had taken her the best part of a weekend to fix it. She had had to repaint the entire room to ensure that the color was unnoticeable over the spot where a thin sheet of paper lined the opening, and was thankful that Ambassador Caine had never been familiar enough with his son's bedroom to detect the slight change in hue.
    She pressed against a soft spot and took out her gun. Holding it by the barrel, she slammed the grip against the facade and rebroke the surface, then pulled away at the paper to make it large enough to look inside. It was still there. She smiled as she saw it nestled in the insulation, safely tucked away where no one could touch it, and then reached forward and plucked it out. It was due for a new hiding spot now, it seemed.
    After shoving the large crib over a few feet to hide the hole, Fields returned to the kitchen and took a seat at the counter, pulling the notebook towards her as she did so. It was made of metal, with a heavy binding and pages that made it as thick as a textbook, and it had been fastened with a lock that she couldn't fathom how to pick. For a moment she sat thinking of a better place to hide it, and then a separate idea came to her and she crossed the room to the phone. Retrieving it from the hook, she dialed the number that Caine kept on a note stuck to the wall.
    “Hello?”
    “Professor.”
    Mason paused as he heard her voice, the hint of surprise coming through the line in the form of his silence.
    “Ladeline? I wasn't aware that you owned a phone.”
    “I don't. Not one with an Onerian connection, that is.”
    He hummed.
    “Don't tell me you're calling to say goodbye,” he said. “Have you found Jasper?”
    “I'm working on it.” She shifted the phone to her other ear so that she could lean up against the wall. “When the government sends someone to check up on you, what department are they?”
    Mason paused, and for a moment Fields thought that he might not give her an answer. He always avoided the subject of his issues with the authorities.
    “It's … Security, I think. A subset of it, at least.”
    “What color uniforms do they wear?”
    Mason had to think for a moment.
    “Navy, I think. But I might be colorblind.”
    “You're not sure whether or not you're colorblind?”
    He must have given a shrug.
    “It's never been an issue,” he said. “There's a list of the uniforms in the course textbook – hold on a minute.”
    She could hear him moving about his office as he went to get a copy, and the fluttering of pages sounded in the background as he tried to find the right section.
    “Alright, I've got it,” he said.
    “And?”
    “And I'm definitely colorblind – they all look the same.”
    “Mason, that's not helping me at all.”
    “Alright, alright – I'm exaggerating. They're all a bit murky, is all. But security's navy – could be dark gray, of course. I won't say for sure.”
    “Which one's fallow?”
    “That depends: what color is fallow?”
    Fields sighed. She got the feeling that Mason was purposefully giving her a hard time and positively delighting in it.
    “Mason.”
    “I'm not kidding this time, Ladeline – I haven't got a clue. Is it green?”
    “Beige.”
    “Beige. Alright – there's … well, there's the Health Department – that's a yellowish one.”
    “No. What about one that's light gray or brown?” Fields asked, thinking that the color might look different to him. The