Seventeen Crimes

Nine

Brie waited until Dylan was at work, before inserting the thumb drive into her computer. The load screen popped up immediately, asking for a password. There was a pop-up asking if she wanted to reformat the drive.

She briefly considered doing just that. It would erase everything on the chip and she would be done with the whole mess. She could tell Dylan that there was nothing there, that she was lied to. But it would leave her with no answers.

For the first time in a long time, Brie wanted answers.

She wanted to know what happened between her parents – and her mother's story wouldn't be the story that gave Brie the answers. And she doubted that her father's story would have any answers, but would fill in a number of the empty spaces.

Trey said he didn't look at what was on the chip, and while she didn't fully believe that, she knew that his experiences with their father were completely different.

After all, they were born on completely different planets.

Brie entered her birth year as the pin.

There were only two files on the thumb drive, a video and a text document.

She pulled the video up, letting the file load while she answered a phone call from her editor.

"What's up, Sheridan?"

"The president is having a Rose Garden presser with climate scientist Nora Burgher," Sheridan said.

"That wasn't on the agenda," she said.

"Its for this afternoon. How soon can you be to the White House lawn?"

"If I leave now, I should be able to make it," Brie said, checking the time on the computer.

"Good." Sheridan hung up, without leaving Brie a chance to respond.

Brie huffed, closing her computer top and grabbing her purse and keys. She didn't have time to adjust her make-up or her clothes, leaving out of the apartment and requesting a ride share all at the same time.

These things took time, she reminded herself. Time that she didn't necessarily have as Sheridan began texting her the information that he had on the Rose Garden presser.

Except she forgot her press badge and had to turn back. Which was making her later still.

She heard her name, coming out of the building again, but ignored it.

"Brie, please, stop."

She did, turning, surprised to find Trey Hodges standing beside the SUV.

"I don't have time. I'm late," she said, turning away.

"Where? I can take you," Trey said.

He did have access to car.

She turned slowly to her brother. "I'm surprised you can even drive on Earth."

"I technically don't," he said, gesturing to the man seated in the front seat of the SUV. "But we can take you, where ever you need to go."

"I need to be to the Rose Garden as soon as possible," she said, jumping at the chance to be there without waiting for the ride share.

Trey held for her the door, and then politely – perhaps protectively took the front seat.

Brie also took note of the potential dangers of the situation, and texted Brent, asking if he was covering the presser. He answered in the negative.

Pursing her lips and hiding what she was actually doing, Brie took a picture of the driver and forwarded it to him. Trey introduced the driver, and she forwarded that information to her friend as well, all as a precaution.

Beside that, the silence between the three of them remained pregnant – not exactly tense.

"Why were you outside my apartment again?" she asked, taking a lip gloss out of her purse to at least touch that up. "Stalking me?"

"No," Trey said. "I came because our grandmother – Elaine Hodges – passed some time ago and her estate was settled. The portion that went to our father, he expressed that it should go to you."

"I don't really remember her," Brie said. She looked down, capping the lip gloss and putting it away.

"I never knew her at all," Trey said.

"Probably neither set of your grandparents, being that you live on Mars and they – if they are still alive – live here."

"My mother and her parents exchange videos all the time, and I hear from them frequently myself," Trey said. "I have never met them in person, but I feel that I know them for themselves."

With the way traffic was, Brie felt it probably best to keep her brother talking – if he was the one talking, then she wouldn't have to keep up her end of the conversation, or listen to the two men discuss something she knew nothing about.

Something she didn't care to know anything about.

She took a breath.

"So," she said. "What was it like to grow up on Mars?" she asked.

That was always a good place to start.

(809)