Page 19 of License to Kill

“It turns out my ma is the worst mother on the face of the planet. I was told I had been abandoned with just the locket with my name on it. My pa never said otherwise. No, I don’t think I’m all right. I think you’re right. I’m going to need a lot of therapy to get over this. If I can. Can somebody just get over this?”

“I don’t know.” Amelia sighed. “Yeah, I guess it is a bit much to expect you to be all right after that. You were given up for adoption. To them, that’s abandonment. There was a locket, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see if the locket can be recovered for you. If it can be, it should be a trivial enough matter. If it’s locked away in evidence, there are ways to get it out and make it disappear.”

No kidding. Evidence vanished with disturbing frequency, so I could readily imagine the locket could disappear and find its way into my hands. “I can believe that.”

“I know it’s hard to look on the bright side of things right now, but good things will come in time.”

“How are you so sure about that?”

“That’s just the nature of life, and you were named Karma for a reason. Maybe your parents wanted to make sure that all of the bad in your life would be balanced with good. That doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me. And right now? You’ve gotten more than your fair share of the bad, so the good things are bound to come sooner than later.”

“That is disgustingly optimistic, Amelia.”

“I like looking on the bright side. The good stuff comes eventually. It’s just a matter of when.”

It took a few days, but the black market operators found the evidence we needed to locate and eliminate one of the main cells of the group. According to our information, they had small clusters of members spread across the United States, but the branch we would wipe out represented a quarter of its strength. Like Linsc, they had a place they met, a place we could wire and detonate at a distance. We would need to check the bugs installed and confirm there were no innocents in the building before we took it out, but a pair of shapeshifters with a grudge, AKA us, could handle the work.

A wolf might draw attention, but a fox wouldn’t, not even an oddly colored fox like me. My job would be simple enough. I would dig holes around the building, plant the explosives, which were already wired and ready to rumble, and get out while Amelia handled doing a check of the building looking for people who weren’t on our list to die.

I needed some help from her to transform, and once I was a fox, the Fenerec growled. Uncertain of what I’d done wrong, I turned my ears back.

She inhaled, and after several long seconds, she released her breath in a gusty sigh. “You look like a gangly puppy, all spindly legs with a hell of a lot of growing to do. If I were to judge by your paws and ears, you’re going to be easily the match of any Fenerec when you finish growing up. We have a puppy phase, too. It just leads me to believe my guess about your aging is accurate. Therapy will help. What else I think you need will remain unspoken, as you won’t agree with me and I don’t want a fight. Alright. You’re a little larger than a regular fox, but not large enough to bust our plan. Go have a look around the building and see if you can get underneath the porch, check out the foundation, and poke your nose where it doesn’t belong. I’ve got enough explosives with us to reduce that farmhouse to a fine powder and give the neighbors a shake they won’t forget. And this time, we won’t be anywhere near here when it goes.”

I huffed, as I had a half a mile to hike through the woods to get to the damned farmhouse and do my share of the work before ferrying over explosives.

The exterior of the farmhouse needed work, which made my job easier. Other animals had already made nests under the deck, although my presence scared them off. As I couldn’t justify blowing a nest of young raccoons to bits, I picked up each little one by the scruff of the neck and moved it into the woods while the mother hissed at me.

While we were of comparable size, my unnatural nature did a good job of convincing her to keep her distance.

She took the hint, and as soon as I finished with my transfer, she herded her family away.

The farmhouse would be easier to hide explosives around than I thought, as someone had installed lattice around the entire foundation, creating a gap large enough for me to move my payload around without anyone discovering my activities. All I needed to do was carry the armed bundles to the porch, crawl underneath, drag them into place, and fill the space with everything we’d brought.

I’d done some math while waiting for our chance to strike. We had enough to take out an entire skyscraper.

The farmhouse and its asshole occupants didn’t stand a chance.

At the truck, which we’d brought because the SUV had insufficient space for the ridiculous amount of ordinance we’d brought with us, Amelia handled preparing the payloads. She lined up small bundles rigged so I could carry them, large enough to be as efficient as possible while small enough for me to carry. I’d be an exhausted, quivering mess by the time I hauled everything to its proper spot, but I refused to complain.

The bastards deserved their fate, and it was only a matter of time before they killed somebody else in their mission to gain control over military weapon systems.

“While you were poking around, I flew a drone over, had a look in the windows, and went over the base footage. Unless somebody comes over unexpectedly, we’re good to blow this joint. You have an obscene amount of explosives to move, so get to it. I’m going to shift and help ferry things to the edge of the trees to limit how far you have to walk.”

I bobbed my head, picked up the first of the bundles, and headed for the farmhouse. Once there, I waited and checked the windows, searching for any sign someone looked for a stray fox armed with a bomb.

All seemed quiet, so I trotted to the gap beneath the deck and wiggled through the gap between the house and the lattice, setting the first on the far side. At Amelia’s suggestion, I set them within a foot of each other, which would get full coverage around the structure. The extras would go beneath the porch around the foundation, to make sure nothing of the building remained when we finished with it.

No one went in or out of the house in the three hours it took us to set everything up, and once I returned to her truck, Amelia helped me shift back to human.

“Interesting. Shifting doesn’t help you heal at all.”

“And the injuries tend to carry over.” I’d healed enough since being shot I could function, but becoming a fox hadn’t done me any favors. If anything, transforming had set me back a week. Moving hurt, and I expected to keep hurting for a while longer before all that remained were scars. “What’s next?”

“We blow the place up. Want to hit the button again?” Amelia put the truck into gear. “We’re going to put at least three miles between us and the payload first. When that goes, it’s going to go hard.”