Fatal Error rj-13

by F. Paul Wilson

"First thing you do is empty them-almost empty them. Now. Use your Crackberry to find the nearest branch. I'll drop you there. While I'm hiding this van, you go to the nearest Duane's or department store and buy a duffel bag. You empty those accounts and put the money in the bag. I'll come by and pick you up and we'll start your disappearing act."

  Eddie felt a surge of panic.

  "But I've got a business-"

  Jack gave him a hard look. "Your business or your life. Choose."

  Eddie leaned back and stared through the windshield. He'd worked so hard to build up his actuarial business. Things were going so well. But none of that would matter if the Order caught up with him.

  He pulled out his BlackBerry and hunted up a Citi branch.

  12

  Ernst stared at Szeto's swollen, bruised, stitched, bandaged face and shook his head in disgust. He wanted to scream but didn't want the Kickers wandering the Lodge's halls to hear.

  "You have no idea who did this?"

  "I had no chance. Door hit me in face before I get look at him. I see nothing after that."

  "He took your pistol and used it to kill Fournier and Valez, then whisk Connell off to safety. Are you feeling a sense of deja vu?"

  Szeto nodded. "Max and Josef."

  Though not exactly the same-Max's pistol had been stolen but not used to kill either him or Josef-but both had died transporting another Connell… Edward's sister Louise.

  Ernst steepled his fingers. "Do you think it's the same man?"

  "I am sure. These Connells seem to have guardian angel."

  "A deadly one." Ernst aimed a hard gaze at Szeto. "An angel with inside information."

  Szeto frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "How could he possibly know you were taking Connell anywhere? Connell had only minutes' warning that he was being picked up, no hint that he would be in danger, and even if so, no time to set up a tail."

  "Only Fournier and I knew."

  "And Fournier is conveniently dead."

  Szeto's already swollen eyes narrowed further. "You can't think-"

  "Odd, don't you think, that he would kill Valez and Fournier, but leave you alive?"

  "I was down and no threat."

  "Valez was no threat either."

  "He might not have known that. You insult me."

  Ernst had no doubts about Szeto's loyalty, but a hint that he might be under suspicion would keep him sharp.

  "Just speculating. I am disturbed by someone's uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time to rescue the Connell siblings. Could it have been the same man who abducted Valez?"

  "Possible but not likely. If he wanted Valez dead, he could have killed him when he had him."

  "Yes, I suppose that makes sense. But this incident… right on the street… you aren't a suspect?"

  Szeto shook his head. "They think I am victim. I hide my holster under parked car. Police question me and I tell truth: I did not see man, his van is blue, and had Mississippi plates. I know nothing else. But I know how to find more."

  He meant the woman, of course-Connell's sister-but knew better than to bring it up directly. Ernst decided to misinterpret his remark.

  "Yes. Locate Brother Connell. If we are lucky, he will run to the police. If that happens, our brothers within the authorities will isolate him and interrogate him."

  "What if he goes into hiding like sister?"

  "We'll find him just like we found her."

  "That was luck. We thought she was in Wyoming."

  "But she came back. We weren't networking with the Dormentalists and Kickers then. Besides, I doubt he knows how to hide. But check his bank accounts and his credit and debit cards anyway. Track him that way."

  The Order had members in all the large financial corporations and law enforcement agencies as well. No information was privileged.

  "And when he is found?"

  "When he is found, he shall lead us to his guardian angel. You will see to it that he cooperates. And then you shall have the pleasure of dealing with that one."

  Instead of smiling, Szeto frowned. "We do not have much time. When Jihad brings down Internet, we will have difficulty tracing anything."

  Ernst hadn't thought of that.

  He was going to miss the Internet.

  13

  "Feeling better?" Weezy said, watching Dawn closely as she sat next to her on the couch.

  Dawn nodded. "Much."

  The juice and cheese had worked a mini miracle. She certainly looked better. A little color in her cheeks made a world of difference. But she looked disheveled. Her medium-length blond hair needed a brushing and her oversized blue sweat suit didn't do her figure any favors.

  "Should I call your parents?"

  Suddenly she looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

  "Is something wrong?"

  She nodded, biting her lip. Finally she said, "I don't have any. My mother… died…"

  Weezy touched her knee. "I'm so sorry. Who are you staying with?"

  "No one."

  "You're living by yourself? Across the hall?"

  She nodded.

  But she looked so young.

  "How old are you?"

  "Nineteen next month."

  A teenager… living alone in this building. The rent was reasonable for the location, but not cheap. How did she afford it? Unless she'd inherited it. Like Weezy.

  "I'm an orphan too, if it makes you feel any better."

  Lame! she thought.

  Dawn offered a weak smile. "No offense, but it doesn't." Then she quaked with a sob. "I miss my mother so much!"

  Weezy hesitated, then put an arm around her shoulders. "It's been years and years for me, but I still miss mine. How long for you?"

  Another sob and she pressed her face against Weezy's shoulder. "Not even a year."

  Still a fresh wound, she thought. For some odd reason she thought of a couple of girls she knew who had gotten pregnant during high school. Their children would be just about Dawn's age.

  I'm old enough to be your mother.

  What a thought.

  Dawn gathered herself and pulled away. "Sorry."

  "It's okay. Really, it's okay."

  She was overweight like Weezy had been until a few months ago. As Dawn straightened her sweat suit top, Weezy noticed the bulge of her belly.

  "Can I ask you a personal question?"

  Dawn's face took on a guarded look. "Maybe."

  "Are you pregnant?"

  Weezy thought she was going to cry again, but she held it together.

  "I was… until yesterday morning."

  "You delivered yesterday? And now you're here alone?"

  She nodded.

  No wonder she almost passed out.

  "Where's your baby?"

  The tears flowed again. "Gone. He died."

  Oh no. The poor kid.

  Weezy squeezed her hand. "That's terrible."

  "They said he had birth defects but they wouldn't let me see him."

  "You didn't see your baby?"

  She shook her head. "Only a glimpse when they rushed him away because he'd stopped breathing."

  That was hard to believe, but she didn't seem to be lying. She seemed genuinely upset.

  Weezy gave her hand another squeeze. "I'm so sorry. I-"

  A knock on her door startled her. If that guy looking for his dog was back, she wasn't answering. She looked through the peephole and saw Jack. She'd given him a swipe card for the downstairs door.

  Always glad to see Jack. Sometimes too glad, because sometimes it hurt to spend time with a man she wanted and knew she could never have. He was so attached to Gia and Vicky-hermetically sealed was more like it. She'd never pry him free. Didn't know if she wanted to, really. For his sake. Gia made him happy, filled in the spaces where he was empty.

  Weezy could do that too, she was sure of it. And the thing was, she'd known him first, and should have had first dibs. But that had been such a-literally-crazy time in her l
ife that she hadn't realized what was sitting right in front of her.

  If only she could go back in time. She'd follow him to New York and become his partner in all ways. What a life they'd have lived-would still be living. He'd have never met Gia and would be unable to imagine a single day without his dear, sweet, ever-loving Weezy.

  Instead of solace, fantasies like that had made her miserable and forced her to move out of Jack's place and find her own.

  And now, happy as she was to see Jack, she wasn't happy with his expression. He looked concerned.

  She pulled the door open. "Hey."

  "Hey." He took a step across the threshold. "We need to-"

  He froze, wide-eyed, as he stared over her shoulder, then ducked back into the hallway and to the side.

  "Jack?" she said, following him.

  "Close the door," he whispered.

  She couldn't do that-she'd be locked out-but she pulled it closed without latching it. She'd never seen Jack like this. He looked agitated… flabbergasted.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Where did you find her?"

  "I didn't find her." She pointed to Dawn's door. "She just moved in."

  His eyes widened further. "There? Across the hall?"

  "Yes. What's wrong with that?"

  "Everything! Get rid of her. Get her out of your apartment."

  "I can't do that. She's not feeling well and-"

  "We've got to talk-about Eddie and about her. And I can't let her see me."

  "Why not?"

  "Because she knows my face." He backed away toward the elevator. "I'll wait downstairs and check back with you in a few minutes."

  Just then she felt a tug on the door. Dawn pulled it open.

  "I should be going," she said.

  Weezy noticed Jack turn away. He stopped at the elevator and stood with his back toward them.

  Still off balance from Jack's strange reaction, Weezy studied Dawn. She appeared composed now, and steady on her feet.

  "Do you think that's a good idea?"

  "I'm much better now. I'm going to do a little food shopping."

  "Do you need money?"

  She smiled and started down the hall. "No, I'm good."

  Weezy glanced past her and saw Jack still waiting for the elevator. She couldn't imagine what was going on between him and a nineteen-year-old girl, but was sure he had a good reason for not wanting her to see him.

  "Wait. Let me give you my number in case you need anything."

  She hurried inside and jotted it down on a sticky note. By the time she returned to the hall, Jack was gone.

  She pressed the note into Dawn's hand, telling her she could call any time, then shooed her down the hall.

  She couldn't wait to hear what this was all about.

  14

  "That's the girl I told you about," Jack said, pacing Weezy's front room like a caged tiger. "The one with the super oDNA baby that everyone's been looking for."

  "Dawn Pickering?"

  "Yes!"

  Sometime last year he'd told her about oDNA, the Otherness-spawned genes hiding in the mass of junk DNA cluttering the human genome. Dawn's baby was the fourth generation of what someone had called "barnyard genetic engineering" aimed toward creating a child packed with oDNA. For what purpose, no one knew.

  She pressed her palms against her temples. "She told me her name was Dawn and that she'd just had a baby… I should have put it together. But who'd ever guess?"

  " 'Just' had a baby?"

  "Yesterday morning, she said."

  "Wait. That's not right. She was pregnant last April… ten months ago. But that's not important. Her moving in across the hall from you-that's important."

  "I know it's a coincidence, and I know what the Lady told you about coincidences, but she's just a scared kid."

  Jack remembered the Lady's words, spoken at Kate's graveside: No more coincidences for you.

  "Things like that don't just happen. Someone-whether working for the Otherness or the Ally, I can't tell anymore-put her there for a reason."

  "But that would mean they know where I am."

  Jack nodded. "Exactly. I'll bet that's why the Order was looking for you."

  Weezy looked a little ill. "Eddie called me yesterday and said they had a photo of me."

  Eddie… that was what he'd come here to discuss with her, but the shock of seeing Dawn had blasted it out of his head. He'd get to Eddie in a minute, but first…

  "That clinches it. They found you."

  "But he told them it wasn't me."

  "They were testing him, I bet. And he flunked."

  Another reason to want Eddie gone.

  Weezy frowned. "But how could they have moved her so fast?"

  "When did her furniture arrive?"

  "Um… yesterday afternoon. I see what you mean. Still… awfully fast."

  "Fast or not, the fact is she's here. And the only reason I can think of for that is to get to know you."

  "No way," Weezy said with an emphatic shake of her head. "She wasn't faking. She was about to pass out. You can't fake green color and sweat."

  "I'm not saying she knows, I'm saying she's being used."

  "And you call me paranoid."

  "Seriously, Weez. I think you should stay away from her. She says she had a baby just yesterday, so what is she doing here?"

  "She said the baby died and-"

  "Whoa. Died?"

  "She said it had birth defects."

  Jack thought about that. "Makes sense in a way. Maybe all that oDNA was too much for it… turned it into some awful mutant. No surprise, considering who its father was. Was it misshapen?"

  "She said she never saw the body."

  Jack held up a hand. "Wait-wait-wait. How can that be?"

  "Yeah, I know. Weird. She said she'd had a glimpse before they whisked him away, but after that… 'They wouldn't let me see him.' Those were her exact words."

  Jack knew as much about labor and delivery as about particle physics, but he figured every mother had a right to see her baby, even dead.

  And then he knew.

  "They lied to her. It's alive."

  "Why would anyone-?"

  "This is a unique child, a unique being. Somebody wants to keep its existence secret, even from its mother. Did she say where she's been staying until now?"

  "No. She might have come around to mentioning it, but you knocked on the door. And I guess we'll never know if we're going to avoid her like she's Typhoid Mary."

  Jack wanted to know… needed to know. But was that wise? Maybe that was why she had been put here-to make them seek out the answer to the question of the baby's purpose.

  But which side would the answer benefit? That was the bigger question.

  "Let's put Dawn aside for a moment and deal with a more immediate problem: Eddie seems to be on the Order's hit list."

  Weezy shot from her seat, her hand against her mouth.

  "Oh, no! Are you sure?"

  He told her about the shoot-out.

  "I think we have to assume he was on a one-way ride. And that means we have to disappear him like we did you."

  "Eddie's going to be tougher."

  Jack nodded. "A lot tougher."

  Weezy had kept most of the considerable proceeds from her share of her parents' estate, swelled by her father's death benefit, under her maiden name. The Order had been looking for someone named Myers, so she'd had time to transfer them to a new identity. Eddie wouldn't have that luxury.

  "Where is he?"

  "He's stashed in Abe's garage, but he can't stay there very long. It's not meant for human habitation."

  "He can move in with me. I've got a spare-"

  Jack shook his head. "Not a good idea. We have to assume they know you're here. They may be out there watching for him, expecting him to run to his sister. You two have got to stay separate."

  "But where-?"

  "I'm going to take him over to Ernie, just like I did you. We'll get him some papers then
start building him a new ID."

  "If he needs money-"

  "He's okay for now."

  "Poor Eddie. He's losing everything… his home, his business… everything he's worked for."

  Jack sensed guilt in her tone. Weezy hadn't had much of a life after her husband offed himself, rarely leaving her house, virtually no social contact except Eddie, so going into hiding hadn't been an appreciable change in lifestyle.

  "I don't see any other way."

  She wandered over to the window. "I warned him. Why wouldn't he listen?"

  Jack shrugged. He understood. "He thought his sister might be in trouble so he got involved. Trouble is, he's a direct guy. He's not cut out for that sort of thing."

  "Yeah, but now his life is ruined." Her voice thickened as she stared out at the city. "And it's all my fault."

  "Bullshit. He's a grown man who made a choice-a noble one, I might add."

  "But he'd never have had to make that choice if I'd kept my mouth shut and stayed out of the Order's business."

  "You smelled something rotten and cried foul."

  She turned to face him, her eyes red. Her words came in a rush.

  "And did I change one damn thing? No. Life goes on just as before, with the same people pulling the same strings and everybody dancing to their tune while Eddie and I are both in hiding, which is better than dead, I guess, which is what we'd both be if not for you."

  "Easy, Weezy. It'll be all right. We take it a day at a time. And who knows… I mean, who knows how much time we really have left?"

  "You mean about everything ending in the spring?"

  He nodded. "Yeah."

  "We're losing, aren't we."

  "We're not winning, that's for damn sure. And we'll never win as long as we let them keep us on the defensive."

  She said, "We don't seem to have much choice."

  "It only seems that way-because they have a center, a focal point, a leader. We don't."

  "We have Veilleur."

  Jack shook his head… Glaeken. But Glaeken wasn't Glaeken anymore.

  "Who won't let me go on the offensive. He's old, he's tired, he's fading. He's got only a few more years left and he knows it. He's ready to pack it in. But the One, the Adversary, R, or whatever we're calling him at the moment-he's immortal, he's got powers, and he smells blood. He's going for the kill."