Going Rogue
“Where the fuck are you, Tanaka?”
Jordan’s voice wasn’t just angry. A kind of disbelieving fury lived under his words, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying, or that he was having to say it.
“Gertrude says you’re not in the building—”
“I’m not,” Nick confirmed.
“—She says you left. That you left out the lower levels—”
“I did.”
There was a silence.
“Where the fuck are you? Are you going to tell me?”
“If you accessed Gertrude, you already know where I am, Damon.”
“I don’t know where you are,” Jordan snapped. “She says your GPS isn’t functioning. She regretted to inform me that it appears to have been shut off from the outside… or blocked in some way. And that she could not tell me the information I wanted to know.”
Jordan’s voice rose slightly in Nick’s headset.
“…When we asked her to go around the block, to utilize the satellites and your implant, she told us no. She told us fucking no, Tanaka.”
“Gertrude said that?” Nick kept his voice carefully neutral, even as he sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Kit, who’d been his first call. “That’s weird.”
“That’s ‘weird’? Did you really just fucking say that to me?” Jordan was half-shouting now. “Nick, the A.I. just told us no. And it’s not just me. She won’t tell Morley where you are. She won’t tell the I.S.F. agents here, who came down to sit in on your interview—”
“Look,” Nick said. “Something came up, okay? Just reschedule the interview for tomorrow. I’ll be there. I promise—”
But Jordan abruptly lost his cool.
“I vouched for you, motherfucker!” the detective snapped. “I told Morley you were all right! I told the Captain you were all right! I said today was a fluke… that you had legitimate reasons to go after those kids, that they gave us probable cause. I said we wouldn’t have such a solid connection with St. Maarten and the Kingsworth kid without you.”
He paused, and Nick could almost see him.
He pictured the human glaring at him through the dark monitor, radiating fury.
“Do you realize the fucking position you put me in, man?” he said.
“I’m sorry—” Nick began.
“Sorry? Get your ass back here, Tanaka. Now.”
“I can’t. I really, seriously can’t. I’m sorry. I’ll be there tomorrow—”
“No,” Jordan snapped. “You’ll be here tonight. You’ll bring your lily-white, vampire ass back to the station tonight—”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I’ll make it up to you, Damon. I mean it.”
“Motherfuck—”
Nick terminated the link.
He winced a little as he did it, in spite of himself.
Before he could second-guess his decision, he clicked on another entry in his contact sheet. Hitting the auto-connect, he leaned back in the seat of the self-driving taxi, glancing out the windows nervously as the vehicle brought him up Third Avenue.
Luckily, a few of these things still took cash.
Even so, paranoia kept hitting him as he looked around the back of the metal box behind the front seat. He kept his face turned away, his hand up by his cheek to obscure his profile from the one camera he’d spotted.
He also kept the audio on subvocal, in case the NYPD had started looking for him in public places already, using I.S.F. and city surveillance.
He knew they’d find him eventually. He could at least make it harder for them.
He heard the connection click over in his headset.
Then it rang.
It rang for a while.
It rang longer than he normally would let a contact signal ring.
He gritted his teeth, letting it ring a half-dozen times more.
“Pick up, goddamn it,” he growled under his breath.
His mind kept flashing to the painting, to what he’d seen when he followed the network address St. Maarten gave him to the image.
Every time it did, his panic spiked.
He was about to hang up, to try again via emergency signal and hope like hell her location would be out of range of any sweeps they might be doing for him, even with her connection to him and the case.
He hoped she wasn’t under NYPD surveillance already, or if she was, whoever was monitoring the feed wouldn’t immediately put two and two together—
The line clicked.
Silence.
The line was so quiet, he thought she’d shut off her headset totally.
Then her voice rose, cold as ice.
“What do you want, Naoko?”
“Listen to me,” he said. “Wynter, I need you to do something for me.”
He could practically see her scowl at him through the line. Like with Jordan, he could almost see her blue-green eyes glaring at him through the darkened virtual monitor.
The difference was, another image burned there even brighter.
The image of a body chained to a desk sitting on a stone floor.
The image of a woman, wearing what looked like a silk robe, or possibly a kimono—a woman with black hair with loose curls, dyed with streaks of turquoise, dark-blue, green and scarlet.
He hadn’t been able to see her face.
The painting didn’t show her face.
He’d only seen the four people standing in front of her, all of them wearing masks. He’d seen the round tower of her books, the fish tank, the weird kinetic sculpture… the antique gun in the hands of the woman standing over her.
He’d seen the blood on the floor, running down one bare leg, soaking through the silk of her robe, clotting in her dark hair.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Nick,” she said.
His mind clicked back to the present.
“Fine,” he said. “Don’t talk. Just listen.”
He clenched his jaw, glancing out the window at the approach of his destination, Grand Central Station. His eyes slid up to the clock above the street, looking for the placement of the cameras so he could do his best to avoid those, too.
Finding two cameras on poles above the curb and overseeing the entrance to the station, he tucked his jaw and face deeper into his jacket and shoved open the door after feeding bills into the box in front of him, on the wall between himself and the console that housed the A.I. driver.
As he climbed out of the taxi, he kept his face down, covering it by checking his watch.
He’d made good time.
Luckily the traffic hadn’t been bad.
He’d already instructed Kit to buy him a ticket, so he wouldn’t have to swipe his ID tat to buy one himself. He knew if he did the latter, there was a good chance the NYPD would stop the train before it left the station—right before seven or eight uniforms boarded, hit him with multiple tasers, tranq’d him, chained just about every moving part of his body, then dragged him forcibly back onto the platform and into the back of a police van.
Pushing that image from his mind, as well, Nick focused back on the person on the other end of his headset as he made his way steadily into the station, keeping his steps and movements as slow, clumsy, and human-like as he could.
“You’re not safe at your house,” he said through the sub-vocals. “I need you to get out of there. Do you have somewhere you can go? Somewhere with no active surveillance?”
Silence.
“Wynter,” he growled. “I’m serious.”
A man glanced at him, and Nick looked away at once, making his way to an old-fashioned display board that showed arrivals and departures.
“I have a friend’s house, one of—”
“Don’t tell me where,” he said, cutting her off. “Don’t tell me shit. Someone’s probably listening in on this call.”
“Nick. What the hell is going on?” Her voice grew openly angry. “First you record me and don’t tell me… and, what? Sell the recording to the media for kicks? Now you’re acti
ng like a damned weirdo, like ninjas are about to show up at my front door—”
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Wynter,” he growled. “I didn’t record you. Okay? It must have been someone on your security team who sold the tapes to the media—”
“Bullshit, Nick! How stupid do you think I am? Do you really think I would have said all that, if my security team was going to hear it? There are no recording devices in that room. Why the hell do you think I brought you in there? I did it so we could talk.”
Seeming to rethink her words, she exhaled angrily.
Her voice turned into a harder grumble.
“Well… really I did it so I could blow you while you bit me, but maybe it’s better you’re such a cantankerous, overly-moralistic, pious bastard—”
“Wynter!” Nick snapped. “I didn’t turn you in, goddamn it! I didn’t even know about it. Not until I got reamed out by superiors for it.”
Clenching his jaw, he fought back the impulse to ask her about Gavin Kingsworth, since they were on the subject of not telling one another things.
Instead, he looked around again, noting a nearby camera with a scowl and doing what he could to put other humans between it and him.
“We’ll talk about it later, okay?” he said, forcing his voice lower. “You can yell at me all you want later. I might even yell back—”
“Promise?” she grumbled.
“Yes,” he growled back. “I promise. But right now, I need you out of your damned house. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Turn off all GPS tracking in your headset. Then take it off and power it down, as soon as you hang up with me… and leave it in your house. Avoid cameras wherever you can. Stay off the street. And only use cash. No ident-tat payment, okay? Nothing they can use to track you—”
“Nick—” she began, exasperated.
“Just listen, okay? This is important.”
He checked his watch, frowning up at the arrivals and departures board.
“At 3:55 a.m., I want you to call me. Okay? Not a minute before then. I want you to go wherever you’re going without warning them you’re coming, and without a headset that’s registered to you. Call me from someone else’s headset or monitor… or a public kiosk. Anything but yours. Don’t call the police. Don’t log in anywhere, especially not with your own I.D. Don’t talk to anyone you don’t trust. Definitely don’t talk to anyone you don’t know. Okay? Call me at 3:55, and I’ll come get you.”
There was a silence.
“Wynter?”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I understand.”
“Good. Get out of there. Now. Leave the headset.”
Without waiting, he disconnected the line.
He was already walking toward the ticket booth to pick up the ticket Kit bought for him.
“So it worked?” Her voice turned into a full-blown gloat. “Niiice. I’d never done that before. Convinced an A.I. to tell its programmed superiors to pound sand. And the GPS block worked? Both on your headset and your implant?”
“Yes, but—” he began.
“Awesome!” she broke in, that gloat even more prominent. “Who’s the man, Nicky-baby? Who’s the—”
“Kit,” Nick broke in. “You’re the man, okay? But shut up about that right now. I don’t have much time—”
“You owe me bigtime, Tanaka. And don’t you forget it,” she crowed. “I own your ass now. So many favors, you have no idea…”
She laughed, clearly amusing herself with thoughts around just how much he owed.
Gritting his teeth, he fought back an urge to bark at her, knowing it was fear and nerves and whatever vampires had in lieu of adrenaline.
Making his voice deliberately polite, he cleared his throat, human-fashion.
“I know I do,” he said. “I know I owe you, Kit. Bigtime. Trust me, I won’t forget. And I don’t mean to be a dick. I appreciate what you did… more than I can possibly say. I owe you a dozen steak dinners, for sure—”
She laughed, but he cut her off.
“—but I need to talk to you about something else right now. It’s important, Kit.”
“Okay, chief. What?”
Nick checked the shimmering metal ticket he carried, looking for the numbers displayed on one side. Finding his cabin cubicle to the right side of the narrow corridor, he stuck the metal ticket into the slot by the door.
When the light turned green, he shoved the sliding door sideways, entering the cabin even as he glanced up, frowning at yet another camera.
They were definitely going to find him.
Sooner rather than later.
He just hoped like hell the train got to where it was going before that happened.
Watching the door shut behind him automatically, he slumped into the contoured seat with a sigh. As he did, the same voice he remembered from the morning before rose on the train’s announcement system.
“Prepare for departure of the Northern Night Train, nonstop to the Northeastern Protected Area. Train is now leaving the station. All passengers remain seated…”
The creepily feminine, metal-tinged voice rolled out in musical tones, no more reassuring now than it had been less than twenty-four hours earlier.
“Expected arrival in one hour, fifty-five minutes,” the voice continued brightly. “Expected arrival time is 3:45 a.m. Please remain seated until the train has reached maximum cruising speed. Cabin doors will be locked until acceleration is complete…”
Nick waited for the voice to finish, rearranging his back in the seat, then focused back on his headset.
“Hey,” he said, gruff. “Sorry. You still there?”
“That was the train, right?” she said. “What’s in the Northeastern Protected Area, Nick? Is this about that chick on the news? The principal at that school?”
Nick fought not to curse at her again.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, still gruff. “I need to ask you about my ident-tat. Is it true it has two-way surveillance capacity? As in, can it listen to and record everything I say? Everything that goes on around me?”
There was a silence.
Then her voice rose.
“Why would you think that?”
Nick grunted. “Because someone who should know told me it could. She also strongly implied someone might already be listening in.”
There was another silence.
Now Nick was pretty sure she was doing something on her end, probably something via her monitor. He sensed activity, even though he couldn’t hear it.
“No,” she said after a pause. “I mean, the capability might be there… but no one’s listening in on you, Nick. No signals in or out of that thing, apart from the GPS.”
“Could audio piggyback on the GPS signal?”
“No,” she said, sounding even more sure. “No, that’s a whole different kind of data packet. A live audio stream would be bigger… much bigger. There’s no way you could compress it down to a location tracker-sized signal, not without anyone noticing. Even if you could, I would still be able to tap it, and listen in myself.”
“And you can’t?”
“Nada,” she confirmed. “There’s nothing there, Nick.”
“So no one’s been listening in?” Nick frowned. “She seemed really sure someone could be. Listening, that is.”
“Someone?” Kit said, her voice a frown. “Who, exactly? I.S.F.? Because I can tell you for sure we aren’t doing that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she said, her voice bordering on annoyed. “What did I just tell you? Anyway, it’s super illegal. Even for vampires.”
Nick rolled his eyes.
He couldn’t help it.
“Like that’s ever stopped anyone,” he muttered.
“It stops some of us,” she said, genuinely testy now. “Not everyone who works for law enforcement is a dick, Naoko.” Pausing, she added meaningfully, “You work for law enforcement. Are you a dick? Do yo
u run around violating people’s rights for the hell of it? Surveilling people illegally? Going through their bank records, maybe?”
“Fair point,” he muttered.
“Look,” she sighed. “Do you trust whoever told you this?”
He frowned, thinking about that.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
Kit sighed. “Even if she thought that, and believed it one hundred percent… what makes you think she knows anything about your ident-tat, Nick? The technical specs for government-issued vampire tat-implants aren’t exactly hanging out as entries in public network libraries.”
“She designed them,” he said. “The person who told me was Lara St. Maarten.”
There was a silence.
Then Kit let out an incredulous laugh. “Well, you definitely can’t trust that bitch, Nick. Isn’t she a murderer?”
“It’s on the news?” he said, frowning. “Already?”
“It’s everywhere,” Kit confirmed. “On the plus side, it seems to be overshadowing the recording of that school principal trying to get in your pants—”
Nick winced. “Jesus, Kit. Drop it, okay?”
“What? You think I was going to let that slide by without comment?”
“Why are you even awake?” he grumbled. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“Some asshole keeps calling me, wanting favors,” she said cheerfully. “I could hang up on him, but I’m still hoping he’ll teach me how to surf.”
Nick grunted a laugh, in spite of himself.
“Thanks, Kit,” he said. “Go to bed.”
“Naw. I’m a night owl. Anyway, knowing you, you’ll get yourself into some new crazy jam in a few minutes or so. I might as well stay up for when you call.”
“Whatever.”
“Yeah. Fuck you, too, vampire.”
Snorting another laugh, Nick hung up.
Then he leaned back in the contoured seat and frowned, staring up at the curved green-gray ceiling.
No one was listening in on him.
Wynter said there was no surveillance in the room where she’d taken him to show him the student files.
Did Gavin have some way to listen in at the school? Or had someone totally unrelated to all of this recorded them, then leaked the tapes for money?
Vampire Detective Midnight Page 26
