“Are you okay?” Amanda asked.
“I’m talking to a pair of holograms in the Costa Rican jungle. Do I have to answer that?”
“We’ve got this,” Charlene said.
“The Keepers have faced way worse, believe me,” Amanda said. “Like Charlie said, you’ve got to be very smart about getting out of there.”
“If there’s a reason for you to go in in the first place,” Charlene said. “If not, no matter how bad it gets, don’t play hero. Amanda and I can trick them. Don’t fall for that.”
Mattie nodded. Charlene turned toward the house, about to head that direction.
“Can I just say something?” Mattie’s voice was no louder than a breeze in the branches.
“Go ahead.”
“If I had friends like all of you…” She didn’t finish.
Amanda placed her hand on Mattie’s shoulder. Mattie twitched because she could feel herself being touched.
“You do,” Amanda said.
* * *
The house was a one-story hacienda with terra-cotta Spanish roof tile and pale stucco walls. The open-air windows were wood-trimmed and screened. A large propane tank was concealed by a thicket of bushes. Solar panels reflected from the roof in the intermittent moonlight.
Charlene crawled on hands and knees, followed closely by Amanda. Being projections, their DHIs shone clearly, making them easy to spot. But without the telltale blue outline that had accompanied the 1.6 software, the two girls looked perfectly real. The only way to tell they were holograms would be for someone to try to touch them, something they had no intention of allowing.
Placing her back against the stucco wall, Charlene rose slowly until her head was alongside the window’s opening. It amazed her that in this condition, she still felt everything as she normally would: sweat trickling down her rib cage, heart racing, breathing rapid and shallow. She moved just enough to peer inside, then dropped quickly, shaking her head. The two girls moved to the next window. Charlene tried again. She held up two fingers—two men. The next window showed the kitchen; empty. They dropped to their bellies and crawled past a back patio with two sets of sliding doors—a living room and a bedroom.
Through the bedroom window, Charlene recognized the Costa Rican woman from the woods, though she wasn’t wearing her camouflage. Charlene dropped down alongside Amanda and closed her eyes to try to regain her composure. She put her lips to Amanda’s holographic ear.
“Watching TV. It’s her.”
Amanda whispered back. “Door closed?”
“Yes.”
“Just her in the room?”
“All I saw. Who knows?”
“Dillard could be in one of these rooms.”
“I know. How easy would that be?”
“Too easy,” said Amanda.
Charlene nodded. Nothing was ever easy. She tried to think up a viable plan to get Mattie in physical contact with the woman. The problem was that if Mattie made physical contact, then the alarm would be sounded, making it more difficult, if not impossible, to rescue Dillard. But without Mattie making contact with someone who knew Dillard’s whereabouts, it was a wild-goose chase.
“First,” she said, “we’ll circle the house checking all the rooms. If no Dillard, then back here with Mattie.”
“There is another way.”
Charlene gestured for her to get on with it.
“I could push this woman,” Amanda said, “and hold her while Mattie reads her and finds out where Dillard is.”
“You’d waste your energy because she’d scream, and we’d be outnumbered.”
“Not if we got her gagged, she wouldn’t. You could do that, because the push won’t affect your hologram.”
“It’ll drain you.” Charlene had witnessed the effects of Amanda unleashing her supernatural force. “Who knows how long it could take us to find Dillard? And besides, we might need you to rescue him in the first place.”
“It’s an option,” Amanda said.
“Okay. An option.”
They circumnavigated the house, window by window. It took them ten minutes. They returned to Mattie in the woods.
“Nothing,” Charlene told her. “No sign of him.” She laid out the plan. Mattie would stay back in the woods, awaiting Charlene’s signal. Amanda and Charlene returned to outside the patio bedroom, where, once again, the woman outlaw was seen watching TV from the bed.
Charlene waved for Mattie to join them. Mattie belly-crawled and reached them without incident. Amanda took Mattie by the hand and the two of them moved to the sliding glass door, the curtain pulled on the inside. Charlene slipped up the wall and gained a view of the woman.