Page 23 of Ava
“Absolutely. Since you’re the first one here, you’ll be moving in when it’s ready. I have to mail letters to the others today, it might be two weeks or more before they can arrive, if they can. If not, then I’ll have to do background checks on other women.”
“How many do you have to send letters out to today?”
“Five. I’d like to have six women on my team, seven including me, but as you can see, we have room for eight, and I’d be happy with that.”
“Sounds, good.” Ava nodded. She looked around, then turned in a circle. “Is this everything?”
“No,” Justin said as he came down the stairs, and stopped halfway. “Come on back up, and I’ll show you the attic, then we can go into the basement.” As they joined him, he opened doors in the hallway, and pointed out several closets they could use for storage, then again, at the end of the hall, he opened a door, and allowed them to go first. Ava was the first one up the stairs, and nodded as she ended up in a room that ran the entire length of the house. She loved the dormer windows. That was where they encountered Chuck, and Justin handed him the list he’d gotten so far.
“Thank you, this helps a lot. Once I get all this stuff, then one of the guys can take a room, and a bath, and we can get this stuff knocked out in a week. When we’re almost done, I’ll call the inspector back and have him come back out and give us the final okay. I’d plan on two weeks from today, barring any complications.”
“Sounds good,” Morgan said as she turned to Ava. “That good with you?”
“It’ll have to,” she sighed. “Now that I see it, I’m kind of impatient to move in. I wish all my barracks rooms while in the service looked this good. At least here, when I share the barracks, I’ll have a door on my room.”
At Justin’s frown, she grinned. “Imagine twenty-five to thirty women in the same room, sleeping on bunk beds, single ones, I might add, and the only space we had was one locker the size you’d get in high school, and one foot locker.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Both women nodded. Ava turned to Morgan. “What do you think? White?”
“Yes.” She nodded and then turned to Chuck. "Could you do all the ceilings in the bedrooms and bathrooms white also?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks.” They made their way down, and Justin stopped them. They went to another door, and he opened it to point. Ava was the first one to look, and she grinned as she started down the stairs. Once down there, she laughed. The entire basement had concrete blocks, painted gray. That was on the upper walls, the lower walls all had what looked like blue exercise mats spread out against them, just like a military barracks, but what made her laugh, was the stack of boxes in the middle of the room.
“Is this just one big room?”
“No, this is where we decided to put in the gym. In case someone was watching TV, and didn’t want to disturb anyone else, this will keep everyone apart. There is a bathroom down here, but it has three shower stalls, and a triple vanity sink, plus a toilet, nothing fancy. Something like a gym might have. And down this hallway,” he said as he walked away, then threw open the door. Morgan was the first one in, and she looked around, then turned to grin at Ava.
“I like.”
“What is it?”
“The weapons room. One of the women I’m hoping to recruit is an IT expert. She is in charge of the communications for her unit when she was in.”
“Sweet, will we be wired?”
“Yes, I hope to eventually have surveillance cameras mounted to all the buildings, and have them wired into computers here, and upstairs. The only place we won’t have them is inside here. I won’t infringe on your privacy that way.”
“That sounds good, but I wouldn’t put the screens down here.”
“Why not?”
“Because, they’d be inconvenient if something happened in the middle of the night. I’d use one of the offices upstairs to set them up. Centrally located, you know.”
“I’ll have to talk to Alice about that. The woman I’m thinking of is Alice Montoya.”
“Is she out?” Ava asked, then froze. She realized that Justin had made himself scarce as they discussed business. Her respect for him just went up several notches.
“According to my sources, her last official day is a week from this Friday.”
“Ah...” Ava nodded. “If she’s anything like me, then she might be wracking her brain on what to do after getting out. Is she medical or regular?”
“As of three months ago, it will be regular, and again, according to my resources, she has no family. That’s why I’m recruiting her, and the others. Same as you. I don’t want to have you and the others to keep having to tell family members that you’re on a mission, but not in the military any longer, you know? I think that would be hard to explain.”
“Yeah. I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen. Growing up in the foster-care system, I never got the sense of being in a family until I joined the Marines.”
