Killer Spirit

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  I stared at her. “So either I help you or you kill someone?” That didn’t sound like much of a deal to me. “I don’t think so. And for the record, I know who has the weapon, too.” I took a step forward, playing the odds that she wouldn’t actually shoot me for a single misstep. “You do.”

  “Are you all this dramatic?” Amelia asked. “Or this stupid?”

  I was getting really tired of people calling me a drama queen.

  “Allow me to break this down for you. I’m not going to kill anyone. I don’t have the weapon. I’m honestly not sure why you think I do.” There was no humor in Amelia’s voice, nothing that made her words come across as anything but cold, hard fact. “What I do have is information that you need, and all I want in return is a promise.”

  Her words confused me so much that I honestly wasn’t sure whether she was speaking English or not. Did she really expect me to believe she didn’t have the nanobots? Of the other TCIs, one was in custody, one was dead, and the last one was wandering aimlessly around a park. If Amelia hadn’t stolen the weapon, that meant there was another player on the scene, and really, what were the chances of that?

  “Give me one good reason I should believe anything that comes out of your mouth,” I told her, vaguely aware of the fact that it sounded like something out of a horribly cheesy movie.

  “Believe me because it’s true,” Amelia said, “or believe me because if I had the weapon, your bedroom is the last place I’d be right now. Take your pick.”

  When she put it in those terms, I realized she was right. If she’d been the one to steal the nanobots, she’d either be sneaking her way into Peyton or halfway to Tahiti by now. Neither of those scenarios involved a detour by my house.

  “If you didn’t steal the weapon, who did?” I didn’t really expect her to answer, but I couldn’t help thinking out loud. I’d been so sure that Amelia was the person in black that I hadn’t spent any time thinking of alternative hypotheses. Amelia had the motive, she had the intel, and she had the ability to pull the whole thing off. Other than the girls on the Squad, I couldn’t think of anyone else for whom that was true.

  To my surprise, Amelia had an answer to my question. “If I had to guess who stole the nanobots, I’d go with whoever blew up Jacob Kann’s car.”

  Originally, the Big Guys had suspected Hassan of the bombing because he’d had the other TCIs under surveillance. Until about forty-five seconds ago, I’d thought Amelia had probably set the bomb herself. Now, I wasn’t sure what to think.

  “You’re saying that you didn’t take Kann out?” I had to ask.

  Amelia snorted. “He’s an idiot, and a womanizer, and he was under the impression that he was going to have sex with me, but I wouldn’t have killed him.” Amelia never took her eyes off me and the gun never wavered, but somehow, she managed to look exactly like the twins did when they started filing their nails out of boredom in the middle of one of our meetings. “As much fun as chatting is, can we get on with it? I don’t know who stole the weapon, but I do know they’ve disposed of it, and I know who has it now. If you’re very, very nice to me, I just might tell you who it is.”

  “Why would you do that?” I couldn’t fathom her reasoning. This whole interaction was so insane that I half-expected my clothes to disappear, revealing that this was just the latest in a long line of twisted naked dreams.

  “You act like this is the first time I’ve dealt your people in,” Amelia huffed. “Without me, your bosses wouldn’t have Hector Hassan in custody right now, Jacob Kann would have bought the weapon from Ross days ago, and Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray would have intercepted Kann, taken the weapon, and killed Ross just because they could. I’ve been playing the players and throwing kinks in the firm’s plans for days now, and this is the thanks I get? I’m not sure you deserve my offer.”

  “Kinks?”

  Amelia shrugged. “Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray brought me in to act as their little lapdog and fetch the nanobots as soon as Ross sold them. They didn’t exactly endear themselves to me, and I figured that if something this big was going down, your people would clue in eventually. I just stalled things for a couple of days. I convinced Peyton to let me bid against Kann for the nanobots instead of stealing them from him after the deal went through. When Ross realized he was dealing with more than one potential buyer, he decided to hold an auction, just like I knew he would.”

  Amelia was still speaking a language I couldn’t quite understand. She’d stalled Peyton and convinced them to wait before moving in? She’d somehow prevented Ross from closing the deal with Kann earlier in the week?

  “Why?” I glanced down to make sure my clothes were still in place, because this kept getting stranger and stranger.

  Amelia shrugged. “Why not?”

  Well, that was less than helpful.

  “You want another answer? How about this one: because I could. Because it was fun. Because my brothers set this job up for me, and they leave the toilet seat up too damn much.” I couldn’t tell whether she was serious or not on that last one, so I just listened, open-mouthed, as she continued. “An operation as big as Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray—I knew the government had to be all over that, just waiting for these guys to mess up. I figured that if I stretched things out long enough, somebody would catch on, and as far as I’m concerned, the more players, the better the game.”

  Some game. A bunch of people were fighting over deadly technology, and she was acting like this whole mission ranked right up there with Yahtzee.

  “So I’m supposed to think you’re a good guy?” I asked, my voice tight. “Because you’ve been stalling your employers?”

  “You’re not supposed to think I’m a good guy,” Amelia said. “You’re just supposed to think I’m good.”

  “Good?”

  “I’ve been playing you, and I’ve been playing them. I knew the second one of your girls put a tracker on my car, just like I knew when Peyton brought me here that all they wanted was someone to follow orders and look good doing it.” She played with the gun in the tip of her hands, stroking her thumb up and down the side. “They thought they were doing my family a favor by offering me this job.” Her lips pulled back into something that looked like a smile, but probably wasn’t. “I disagreed.”

  I forced myself to think through everything Amelia had said. Peyton had brought her in to do a simple job, and somehow Amelia had manipulated them into changing the job description. She’d then orchestrated Ross’s decision to host an auction, which had resulted in two more TCIs coming to Bayport. That influx had tipped the Big Guys off to the fact that something was up, and as a result, we’d been brought in on the case. According to Amelia, that had been her intention all along.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “So you wanted the government brought in on this case, but once you knew we were on it…”

  “That’s when things got interesting.” Amelia’s smile looked genuine this time. “I decided to see if I could get you to take out the competition for me.”

  “The competition you brought here to begin with.”

  “Except for Jacob, yes.”

  “And you expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with his car blowing up?”

  “Haven’t we already been over this? I have no idea who killed Jacob Kann, but whoever they are, they’re good. My plan was just to plant a bunch of drugs on him and then lead your people in for the arrest.”

  She talked about framing someone so glibly. “You framed him,” I said. Something about her tone and the words she’d spoken earlier led me to my next conclusion. “Just like you did with Hector Hassan.”

  Amelia grinned. “I knew somebody would be on this case eventually, and I knew Hassan had some pretty unsavory backing.”

  If by “unsavory,” she meant “terrorists,” then yeah.

  “I needed to keep track of the others, but figured you guys would be doing the same, so I bugged Connors-Wright and Kann and gave Hassan enough rope to hang himself.”

 
; “You bugged yourself to throw us off track.” In a word: genius.

  “That pointed you guys toward Hassan, since he was the only one not already bugged, which led to you guys tracking him and bringing him into custody before he could do any real harm.” Amelia smiled then, the barest hint of satisfaction playing across her even features. “You’re welcome.”

  “Okay, so you set up Hassan,” I said. “That doesn’t prove that you weren’t the one who took out Kann.” I knew I was beating a dead dog here, but I just couldn’t help it. Amelia Juarez was apparently some kind of evil mastermind, and she was standing in my bedroom. I wanted her to be the bad guy, because the idea that there was someone out there who’d beaten both of us to the weapon was scarier than the gun still trained on my forehead.

  “You don’t want to take my word on the fact that I had nothing to do with Jacob’s murder? Fine. I’m assuming you guys have some sort of database. You might want to check it, because according to Peyton’s reports on the explosion, the bomb was remotely detonated, which means that someone was watching that car and waiting to press the little red button.” She smiled, and I could practically hear her thinking “check and mate.”

  “Coincidentally enough, that was the day your group attempted to plant a tracker on my car. They were tailing me when the bomb went off. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the word I’m looking for here is alibi.”

  I would check our files to confirm what she was saying, but I knew without doing so that she was right. We’d had teams tracking and planting surveillance on each of the TCIs, and if the bomb really had been detonated manually, none of them could have done it without one of our teams noticing. I wondered briefly how we could have missed this, how the Big Guys could have missed this, or if they’d actually missed it at all.

  If none of the TCIs had planted the bomb, that meant that someone else had, and that meant that there was another player on this case. A player who’d killed Jacob Kann and later stolen the weapon from Ross’s lab. A player who, according to Amelia, had already given the nanobots to somebody else.

  “Who?” I didn’t bother to elaborate. Amelia knew what I was asking.

  “No more questions about my motive? No wondering why I’m being such a good little mob princess and sharing what I know?”

  “Just. Tell. Me. Who.”

  “I came here with an offer. If you want to know the information, that means you play by my rules.”

  “What do you want?” My voice was dull, and the desire to flying tackle her and take my chances with the gun was incredible.

  “All I want is a promise that once I tell you who has the bots, you and your little team will be the ones to retrieve them.”

  “Done.” I didn’t give even so much as a second’s thought to the fact that we’d been taken off the case. Clearly, this diving in headfirst thing was working for me.

  “There is one other little thing…” Amelia looked me straight in the eye. “I want your word that nobody hears about this conversation until tomorrow, and that whoever your team works for stays in the dark until everything’s gone down.”

  I couldn’t tell her no. I could, however, lie through my teeth.

  “If you break these rules,” she continued, “I reserve the right to blow your cover wide open. I’m sure Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray would love to know that the government has an entire team here, right under their noses.”

  For the first time, I realized the full implications of the fact that Amelia was here, in my bedroom. Somehow, she’d figured out who I was. From the sound of it, that wasn’t all she knew.

  “I saw you yesterday outside of the firm,” she explained with no small measure of glee. “You had that same unnaturally natural look about you as the girls who’d been following me, so I took a picture and tracked you down via the Web.” She paused. “I never would have guessed cheerleader.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Nice website, though.”

  I knew that class project would come back to bite me in the butt.

  “Assuming you play by my rules, your cover is safe with me. And if you win, I’ll even let you mind-wipe me, or whatever it is the government does to keep the ten of you its nasty little secret.” Amelia somehow made those words sound incredibly reasonable.

  “If we win what?” I tried to match her tone, but couldn’t quite keep the frustration out of my voice. Being held at gunpoint sucked.

  “Since you don’t seem to like the word game, let’s call it a challenge. I’m going to tell you who has the nanobots and what they’re planning to do with them, and in the morning, you’re going to share the news with your little team. Then, tomorrow afternoon, right before the action goes down, we’re going to stop it. Like I said before, I don’t particularly want anyone to die, and if we don’t do something, someone will.”

  “You want to work with us?” This kept getting stranger and stranger.

  “Not exactly.” She looked down the barrel of the gun, straight at me. “Think of it more like a competition. I want the weapon. You guys want the weapon. Neither of us wants it used tomorrow.”

  Where were the men with the little white coats when you needed them? This was seriously insane. “You’re actually challenging us to see who can get to the weapon first?”

  She had to realize how little sense that made. If she wanted the weapon for herself, why even clue us in to begin with?

  “That’s the gist of it,” Amelia said. “And stop looking at me like that. I’m not crazy. I’m bored, and the person who has the bots isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. I could take him with one hand tied behind my back, but what fun would that be? Unfortunately, in addition to being no fun, that would also be stupid on my part. If I did steal the bots back and Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray found out that I’d been holding out on them, I’d be a dead girl. If, however, there’s government involvement, then the firm will blame whatever goes down on them. They may not know about your team, but they know they’re being watched, and they know there’s an operative presence in Bayport. If there’s even a hint of government involvement, do you think they’ll suspect for even a second that the pretty little piece they hired to run their errands was involved?”

  I seriously had to wonder if the fact that she was making sense to me meant that I was a few people short of a pyramid myself.

  “How do I know you’ll keep up your end of the bargain?” I asked. For all I knew, she’d already blown our cover to the firm. At this rate, I might not have to deal with homecoming after all. If Jack’s father found out who I really was, if Jack found out who I really was…

  “Simple. Tomorrow afternoon, we’re going after the same thing. Beat me to it and take me down. After that, it’s just a matter of lie detectors and memory-altering drugs.”

  “And if you win?” I had to ask, even though I couldn’t imagine Amelia outsmarting the entire Squad. Again.

  “If I win,” she said, “you’re just going to have to trust me. Either way, as long as you play by the rules, my lips are sealed, and your cover is safe. You can believe me or not, but I actually don’t have anything against your team. People underestimate you.” She smiled, wryly this time. “If there’s one thing I understand, it’s that. Who knows? If things had been different, maybe I’d be the one running around in one of those stupid skirts.”

  Was it wrong that I felt a vague feeling of kinship with her when she said the phrase stupid skirts?

  “Tell me when and where,” I said. “We’ll be there.” I really couldn’t see how we had any other choice. If we sat back and did nothing, the weapon would either be deployed, or it would end up in Amelia’s possession. Neither one of those was what I’d call a good outcome.

  Amelia, keeping her eyes on mine, lowered the gun. “Tomorrow at three in Walford Park, Anthony Connors-Wright is going to kill his father, and he’s planning on using the nanobots to do it. There’s a political rally, and his father is in charge of security for the good senator. Anthony has some major Daddy Issues a
nd doesn’t have the foresight to realize that unless you pick the right target, the nanobots aren’t that big a deal.”

  “Not that big a deal?” I repeated. “How many people at this rally have to die before it’s a big deal? If he releases the weapon—”

  Amelia tilted her head to the side. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “There’s a reason that so many terrorist groups wanted this thing,” Amelia said, “and there’s a reason Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray was funding the research. Biological weapons are a dime a dozen. If you want to attack a crowd, there are a half dozen toxic agents a lot less expensive than DNA-wiping nanobots. There aren’t, however, many biological weapons that can be programmed to attack a certain individual.”

  I thought back on what Chloe had told me. The nanobots were revolutionary because of the amount of programming they could carry despite their microscopic size. We had assumed that future development on the programming front would concentrate on identifying the specific base pairs to be attacked within a DNA strand, but what if, instead, the programming identified the DNA to be attacked?

  “Are you saying that you can let these things loose in a crowd, and they’ll attack only one person?”

  “It’s called assassination, and yeah, that’s what the guys at Peyton seem to think this does.”

  Suddenly, Chloe’s magnet analogy took on a whole new dimension, because Amelia was standing there telling me that like a metal to a magnet, these nanobots would zero in on a single individual, based on their DNA. You let them loose in a crowd, and they set their sights on their preprogrammed target, leaving everyone else unharmed. I wasn’t sure exactly how to rate this development. On the one hand, instead of killing thousands of people, this weapon would only kill one. On the other, that one person could be the president.

  Suddenly, of the two negative outcomes I’d considered earlier, the one where Connors-Wright deployed the bots and killed his father was looking good, because if Amelia actually got a hold of this technology, there was no telling what she would do with it, or who she would sell it to. The Big Guys were going to freak, or at least, they would have, had I actually been able to tell them about it.