Agency

83 Personality Test

Someone had written LOCK HER UP on the wall of this toilet stall, in thick black marker. Before the election, Verity assumed, with someone else then having tried to scrub it off with solvent, the result reminding her of a tattoo halfway through laser removal.

Grim Tim had sent her in for the promised pee break, while he gassed his bike. Welcome as she found this, she’d also discovered that simply being seated on something neither moving nor vibrating, with her legs in front of her, rather than with a large motorcycle between them, was even more of a relief.

After they’d taken a right at what had turned out to be a literal crossroads, the simplest possible junction of two highways, she’d watched Dixon take a left, in Conner’s aerial feed, to recede toward Coalinga. When the van was out of sight, Conner had swooped the feed back to them, the final image blank and white, as the top of her helmet seemed to leap up, the feed itself vanishing, replaced by her own view of Grim Tim’s black leather back.

“Time, ladies,” Conner said now, causing her to flinch, before remembering that she’d removed the gray-framed glasses as she’d entered the restroom, tucking them into one of the hoodie’s pockets.

“Okay,” she said. By the time she’d gotten herself together, Grim Tim was at the register, paying for his gas with cash, his helmet still on. When he’d finished, she followed him out to the pumps, restraining the urge to say something to Conner now that she could see the drone.

Evening had arrived, Napa-Sonoma still providing extra pulpy orangeness. She settled her mask and put the helmet on. “Where’s Dixon now?” she asked, assuming Conner could hear her, but not certain he’d have an answer.

“Near Coalinga’s airport,” he said.

“What for?”

“Helping Lowbeer conduct a personality test.”

“How?”

“By letting us see just how nasty somebody’s willing to be.”

“Nasty?”

“Makes a difference how you want to deal with them.”

“Whose personality?”

“Pryor.”

Grim Tim handed her a pair of rubber-coated black knit gloves, still on shiny cardboard from the station’s rack. Something she’d meant to ask for as they’d pulled in, but had then forgotten. Her hands had been getting colder, since the crossroads, plus bug-impact on bare skin. “Thanks,” she said, partially pulling her mask down.

Something piercing his upper cheek moved a fraction, a minimalist alternative smile. He put his own gloves on, and straddled the bike. Pulling her own off their cardboard and putting them on, she got on behind him.

And then they were on the highway again, accelerating.