Deadly Paths

by Jack Parker

  "Keep talking!" Victoria ordered. "Where are they?"

  Jessica sighed. She turned on the water, looking herself over in the mirror while washing her hands. Her tone became deadly serious.

  "You say you're not an amateur, but do you really think I just waltzed in here to offer myself up to you? I came to offer you a choice."

  "You're not the one holding the gun," Victoria spat. "You screwed up. I'm giving you to the count of—"

  "Shoot me and your little pretend wannabe spies out there both die," Jessica announced. "In fact, do anything but become my sister, joining us in our cause, and a lot of people are going to die. Including you."

  Now Jessica turned toward Victoria, leaving the water running and glared.

  "Two minutes!" Charlie was pleading now in her earpiece. Robin began to ask Victoria where the hell she was. All Victoria could do is meet Jessica's icy stare.

  "You wouldn't," she said flatly. "You have no reason at all to hurt innocents."

  "Except you stayed in the game, dear. This is because of you. And every moment you do you endanger them. I just came to tell you that. Would you mind lowering that weapon now? It's very rude."

  "Nova!" Charlie cried. "The password!"

  Victoria lowered her weapon with some hesitation, and then touched her ear, adjusting the volume.

  "Ah, that must be your friends now," Jessica said in an amused tone. "They must be starting to get worried. Tell them the last clue is 'I'd bend over backwards for a scotch right now.'" A thin smile crept onto her face. "They should figure it out from there. As long as they are alive they will do fine."

  Victoria activated her collar and relayed the message, then turned it off. She heard Robin exclaim that it had to be the sheet music of the violinist, because she had been doing a crazy limbo bend a moment before, heard him announce triumphantly as the violinist simply gestured for him to take his prize when he tried to approach, heard Charlie's frustration as the first attempts at the password failed. All the while, Victoria kept her gaze locked with Jessica's. The water began to steam the mirror, and the cascade of running water onto metal and porcelain proclaimed that time was running out just as potently as any sand hourglass.

  "Join us," Jessica said at last. "Become my sister, and you'll know everything. You owe the CIA nothing. They took everything from you that matters didn't they? Nations, especially the one you serve, are just instigators of war and strife. Real peace comes through total elimination of all weapons, don't you see? That's all we want to accomplish with the Black Fire Dragon."

  "By smuggling more weapons?"

  "The one with the biggest gun can make everyone else put theirs down, don't you see?"

  "You're insane. Nuclear weapons didn't do that. What makes you think these weapons will? What exactly are they?"

  "Because we won't allow them to fall prey to the misfortune of falling under the control of any one corrupt nation," Jessica said proudly. "And you'll find out, just join me. Say the word and I'll call off the hits on your friends right now. All you have to do is walk away from this ridiculous farce of a television show right now and disappear. We'll contact you in good time. But you better decide soon. I think you have one minute left about now."

  "One minute!" screeched Charlie, almost as if she had heard Jessica. "Nova, it's not working! Nothing's working."

  "I figured it out!" Robin exclaimed. "Charlie, the group just starting playing the theme from Mission Impossible. Remember the mission clue? The correct key makes the mission possible."

  "Mission Impossible!" Charlie said excitedly. "What are the notes to that?"

  "Been a while since I had lessons," Robin mused, "but I think this is, A, A, C natural, D, A, A, G, G sharp. See if that works."

  Victoria considered lying, infiltrating the sisters, getting all the information she needed. There would be no doing that, she realized. They wouldn't trust her right away. She'd have to do something to prove herself. This was all time she didn't have. But Charlie and Robin had even less time.

  "What's it going to be, dear Vickie?" Jessica asked. "The clock is ticking. If they get onto that elevator, it's over for them."

  "That worked!" Charlie announced. "It's on its way down."

  Victoria narrowed her eyes at Jessica. "Go to hell."

  She activated her color mic. "Charlie, stay where you are! I'm coming to you. Robin, you stay put too."

  There was no answer.

  "Charlie?"

  "Funny thing about humidity and moisture," Jessica said sweetly. "It doesn't do well with certain electronics. Not that talking to them would have mattered. Maybe you'll join us after seeing how serious we are."

  "Bloody hell," Victoria swore, ripping the collar from her throat and bolting for the door. She gave Jessica one more warning glance as she reached the door handle—a nonverbal promise to return for her, then sprinted out into the reception area.

  The theme from Mission Impossible was in full swing. Victoria dashed across the dance floor to the sound of several startled outcries at the site of a woman running in a black stealth suit. She leapt up onto the stage next to the cellist, a man with a full head of dark hair who did a double take, but then gave her a crooked smile and nod as he continued the theme. Victoria took the cue and began to dance—spy style. There was no need to alarm these people. She just had to find a quick way to the second floor balcony, and if the guests thought she was part of the show, all the better.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Robin's annoyed voice asked into her ear. "Where did you even get that crazy suit? The game gave you that? So unfair."

  Victoria wasn't sure what she would have told him even if she could reply.

  She shuffle-stepped left, did a quick toe to heel ball change, then slinked gracefully into a cat stance while rocking her hips—all with the goal of making it across the stage. She crept along to the six note beat crossing foot over foot carefully as if avoiding landmines. A leg kick and a twirl to her right, and Victoria realized she had earned some applause from the guests. The applause grew as the violinist somehow matched her movements. Their impromptu choreography seemed well rehearsed, and Victoria had to hand it to the young woman at her ability to recognize and mimic her patterns so flawlessly while still playing her instrument.

  Victoria reached the other end of the stage and smiled back at the young musician, who stopped playing for a moment as the pianist performed a refrain. Victoria tried to place it. Mission Impossible and . . . Mozart? Sounds great, actually. Who knew?

  The violinist looked Victoria up and down and said, "Nice outfit."

  "Nice . . ." Victoria looked for a return compliment. The young lady had a peculiar hairstyle, fluffed in the back in a fan pattern almost like that of some exotic bird. "Nice hair."

  The violinist grinned, twirled her bow and, with a wink saluted with it as if to say, "good luck." She then resumed the main chorus of the Mission Impossible theme, giving Victoria a soundtrack as she leapt from the stage and caught hold of a marble column with her hands. She climbed the decorative structure, slipping only once while trying to scale around a busty angel, and ignored the sound of applause as she reached the second floor and sprinted into the hallway where she knew the elevator would be.

  "Nice Dancing!" Robin said cheerfully into her ear. "But Charlie already went up. What's with the acrobatics? And I can't get Charlie to answer. Maybe they cut off communications up there?"

  He continued to try to call her, but without any way to respond, Victoria took off her earpiece and placed it in a hip pocket. She sighed in relief, one annoyance taken care of for now as she turned the corner to find the hallway empty. There wasn't even a sign of the game show security guards. Charlie must have already gotten on.

  Damn it.

  Victoria pressed in the code for the elevator at a small terminal to the right of the up and down buttons. A message blared in red—SECURITY AREA ALREADY IN USE. ACCESS DENIED.

  "Bloody fantastic," Victoria growled to herself. "Guess I do t
his the hard way."

  She unsheathed her knife from its place on her thigh and jammed it into the control surface. The nice thing about fake security was, naturally, that it was fake. The panel came off easily, and with a quick twist of her wrist she had severed the connection between the bogus passkey device and the true elevator controls. She hit the down button to call the elevator, and the doors slid open to reveal an empty shaft.

  "Crikey, did I overdo it?" Victoria asked herself as she peered up the shaft, which in actuality contained two elevators, one that would have been for her and other serving some unseen hallway across from her. One elevator was a floor below her. The other was so high she could not quite tell how many floors up it sat. She hit the down button again, then tried the up. Nothing happened. Groaning in frustration at her carelessness, Victoria leapt into the shaft and caught hold of the elevator cables in front of her. She wrapped her legs neatly around a large cable, using her boots as support, and began to climb. She reflected as the cables swung back and forth perilously that it was a good thing she only had to go up three floors.

  Her shoulders ached and her hands felt hot and raw by the time she finished the ascent, where she had to carefully swing across the elevator shaft, press her body against a small ledge the doors created, and jam her knife into the space between the doors where she could force them open. She tucked and rolled through the small space into a hallway filled with clouds of white steam, and drew her gun.

  The room was quite cool, and the steam seemed to be for some kind of effect. It formed an unnatural fog that congregated at ankle level as she moved past a few large pipes into an area filled with rows of computer mainframes. The steam in this area revealed a great web of laser lines that presumably a contestant was supposed to work her way through. Charlie was directly ahead down the center row, but not unharmed.

  She was hanging from a pipe in the ceiling with power chords double wrapped around her waist, her wrists bound behind her back, and her wrists tied to her ankles with duct tape. A gag of wedding napkin was stuffed in her mouth, and as she rotated toward Victoria she tried to give out a panicked and muffled vocal warning.

  The warning was too late. Light eclipsed her vision like a camera flash as Victoria was struck hard on the back of her head. She pitched forward onto her hands knees, and vision hazy, rolled to a sitting position and got off a shot at her attacker. She heard the bullet ricochet harmlessly off a far wall before a great blurry shadow of a man coming out of the steam put a boot into her face and sent her the rest of the way into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "Hey it's me, the one and only Steve Morrison!" said the recorded voicemail greeting cheerfully. "I'm a pretty busy guy and I'm sorry I missed your call, but if you'll—"

  Grace tapped the "end call" icon on her phone and tossed it away from her, hopefully to land safely on the couch. She didn't really care though, as apparently the thing was useless to her at the moment. Not only could she not get ahold of Steve, nobody on the whole God damned Catholic wedding coverage crew was responding to either the network communication frequency or phone calls. She stopped pacing and slumped back into her chair and stared at the large screens in the room below her.

  Three weddings were going smoothly. Grace couldn't help but notice it was once again that bitch Nova that seemed to be near to or the cause of the trouble. Harmony was a horrible real name for such a person. Somehow, Nova had gotten some kind of sleek, sexy, black suit and gone all catwoman across the stage. She had put on a hell of a show, that was for sure, and all Grace could do, instead of think of any orders to give the control team, was to stare open mouthed at the performance with the Spy Games special guest musicians. After Nova had pulled a spider man to the balcony, the shit hit the fan for the Catholic wedding.

  At least the team members were frantically running to and fro trying to re-establish communications with the Catholic wedding crew, trying to get the video feed for the computer mainframe room back up and running, sending runners, or checking repeatedly to see if Mako was back where he belonged. They were saving Grace a lot of yelling perhaps, but she more felt like crying right now than going on a rampage. This wasn't some cameraman that forgot to take the cover off the lens. These problems we beyond anything she'd seen on her four years with the show. She dared not think the words bubbling to the surface of her mind, lest she further curse herself somehow—could it get any worse?

  Even though she did not quite think the words, it got worse. Much worse.

  First, the bride of the Star Wars wedding went missing. None of the wedding party were supposed to leave until at least two hours into their reception. It was part of the deal the lucky couples had in getting a huge discount on weddings that normally would have cost somewhere in the six figure range. Grace wasn't even quite sure who to call to complain to. Was it the wedding planner? Carlo? The fucking cake decorator? She looked around for her phone on her desk, then started opening drawers.

  "Ugh, what the fuck did I do with the damn thing?"

  There was knock on her office door. Then someone entered.

  "Director!" It was Robert, the young controller, wearing his sunglasses indoors as always. "Director Goodson, we know you're busy but we've been trying to get your attention and—"

  "Stop whining and get to the point, Robert," Grace interrupted coldly as she stood. "What?"

  "The police director. We just got word there's like a whole squad of cops storming into the hotel. They say they're here to make arrests."

  Grace felt the color drain from her face. Her mind raced through the horrible possibilities. Oh God, what did they find? Was it Harmony after all? Will they arrest me too? I can't let the crew see that. Steve, you bastard, if I go down . . .

  "Director" Robert asked with some concern creeping into his voice. "Ms. Goodson are you alright? What should we do? We can't film the arrests and they are going to—"

  "Shhh!" Grace hushed him, grabbing her headset and heading for the stairs.

  "Director we should cut cameras!

  She ignored him, brushing past him without a glance as she stormed down the stairs.

  "Uh, right, Director?"

  "I said, shut up!"

  She stared at the four screens as she made it down to the pit area of the mobile control center. Each one showed essentially the same scene, three or four police officers marching right through the middle of the reception to confront the bride. In the case of the Star Wars wedding and Catholic weddings, the officers confronted the groom, since the immediate location of the bride in those two events was unknown. Grace glanced down in thought.

  "Why are they looking for the brides?" she murmured to herself.

  One of the female technicians, Grace wasn't sure who, answered her soft spoken question. "Some kind of warrant for a conspiracy between the women. It seemed pretty serious."

  "Give me audio on Celtic one!" Grace ordered. "Put it on full speaker."

  "—arrest for the murder of Mila Masters, fraud and embezzlement, a police officer was saying. The bride, Grace remembered her name as Maria Diaz, looked terrified and stricken with grief. Meanwhile, her new husband, Raphael DeGalle, a big shot CEO of a company Grace had never even heard of, looked positively enraged at the charges.

  "How dare you interrupt our wedding for such nonsense!" he bellowed. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

  "I understand sir," a voice familiar to Grace said as a man shouldered his way forward through the wall of blue uniforms. It was Detective Spears. He flashed his badge. "I'm very sorry sir, we have to take your wife into custody now. We have evidence that suggests that she conspired with the other brides of this opening day of weddings to liquefy the assets of your company after your marriage by disposing of you."

  "That's preposterous!" DeGalle fumed, jabbing a finger at the detective. "There's no way she could legally do that. Even if I died, the board would never allow her to take ownership and I signed no prenuptial whatsoever!"

  "That's where the
fraud comes in, sir. We collected documentation and forgeries from an anonymous source. Without the tip no one would have noticed or doubted these documents because the women got your associates like Mr. Borowitz in the wedding down the hall to confirm the agreements as witnesses."

  This gave DeGalle pause for just a moment. Then he shook his head.

  "No. No Nick would have said something."

  "Raphael, baby, you don't believe them do you?" She began to cry. "They're ruining everything. Make them leave!"

  Grace felt like sticking her finger in her own throat as she watched the pathetic display. "You can't let them take me."

  Raphael wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "I know precious one. I'll deal with this."

  He looked up at the detective.

  "You honestly expect me to believe any of this? Nick's been with his wife for more than two years and Mariah here just met Scarlett last month! From what you're saying they'd have had to eventually kill all four of us getting married today."

  "Five." Spears corrected. "There's already one murder in the middle of all this, and were you aware that Timothy Church was missing?"

  "Can't say I ever liked the bastard," DeGalle said. "But this is all obviously some kind of hoax and you're ruining a wedding just to flex you're muscles. Now I'll kindly ask all of you to leave and we can deal with this later."

  Spears shook his head, nodding to an officer with handcuffs out to move forward. "I can't do that, Mr. DeGalle. We have a warrant. I'm sorry."

  It actually happened in the Jewish–style Borowitz and Ryder wedding reception first. The bride stepped back and jabbed a small syringe produced from the top of the veil garment into the side of the neck of her husband. Something dropped from concealment inside the bridal gown at the same time, clattered to the ground, and was rolled forward billowing white smoke. Police officers drew their guns and tried to surge forward to make the arrest, but the noxious cloud of gas completely obscured the view of the bride and caused immediate tearful chocking and coughing. When the smoke cleared from view on screen two, Scarlett Ryder and Borowitz had disappeared. The results were the same for Mariah Diaz and DeGalle.