by P. R. Adams
“So maybe that’s all there is to it. This data we have. Maybe it’s enough to be a threat. Stop the Metacorporate Initiative.”
Danny finished the beer off. “It’s too late. It’ll be a law any day now.”
“Okay, not the law. Maybe they don’t want the data out there, anyway. Maybe in the right hands it’s damaging enough to hurt important people.”
“But they looked at the data—”
“They’re not experts, Danny. Not like this SEC. Didn’t Chan say there was data about politicians making money off all this? That could be some important allies going down. Agency allies. Shit. What if we’ve been looking at this all wrong? It’s not just me they want dead. They want to recover this computing device? Why? Some asshole takes a device into the field as part of the assassination attempt, and he gets whacked and I end up taking it, which sets a panic off.”
Danny was blinking rapidly. “Yeah. That’s a pretty big screw-up.”
“They were pretty desperate to kill me, apparently.” I opened a connection on my data device to Chan.
“Yeah?” Chan’s eyes looked puffy, unfocused. As if sleep had become something far too rare. Or maybe crying had become too common.
I hoped that was all it was. “We’re going to have to dig through that data with fresh eyes.”
That didn’t sit well. Chan’s head bowed. “Nothing there.”
“Maybe there is. It’s not the Agency or Cytek we’re looking to nail; it’s people in government and other businesses. Fine upstanding citizens breaking the law out in the open. Come on over, and I’ll explain.”
Chan disconnected.
Danny looked up suddenly. “You, um, you have a plan?”
“Not yet, but I think we’re finally getting closer.” And when we got close enough, I wanted Stovall for myself.
Chapter 23
We took Delaware State Route 1 to Dover in used cars that had cost far more than they should have. They were ugly, boxy Indian cars that had been heavily modified by previous owners. More plastic than metal, with shoddy robotic manufacturing to match what was coming out of China. Death traps. But they gave us another few days of invisibility on the Grid, and that’s what we needed.
It was a pleasant day, bright sun rising high, the breeze carrying almost-fresh air off Delaware Bay. I was feeling good enough to enjoy the warmth, wearing a T-shirt and jean shorts, remembering times where I’d been on beaches or out beyond the shore with a fishing boat, heading for open water. There was a youthful vibrancy to that—wearing shorts, salty wind in your hair, women in bathing suits. No one around for miles.
I missed that peace, that freedom. I wanted it.
Danny’s motorcycle sped past us, almost lost against the fresh black asphalt of the rebuilt highway. He pulled into a roadway motel that had checked out. It would be our home for another day or two.
That was all we needed.
My room smelled like the cabin of an old fishing boat, and it looked like the walls had seen some hard living: water stains in the corners, cracked windows, warped plaster. Crumpled beer cans filled the bottom of my garbage can. Off-brand. That was our life now.
I tossed my duffel bag onto a chair and pulled out my toiletry bag, then set things out in the bathroom. More crushed beer cans in that can, mold on the shower walls.
Huiyin was waiting for me when I stepped out, sexy in a tank top and low-cut shorts hanging off soft hips, straight from my memories.
Panic.
Were they my memories? Could the chip in my head be working again? Could someone be manipulating me?
No. This was me. My life. And Huiyin was who she was, at least in the flesh. Fine flesh.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” She slinked onto the foot of the bed, pushed her slippers off onto the floor with delicate, slow toe movements, flexing her calves in the process.
Part of her training. Remember that. Remember your training. “We’re close. I really think this is going to work.”
She stretched out, exposing a taut belly. No stretch marks from kids that weren’t mine, just scars I couldn’t see left by the same sort of cold bastards who had torn me to pieces. “You’re too focused and tense. You need to relax.”
“When this is over.”
She propped her head up on a hand. “You’re worried about causing trouble with the team? I checked. There are no cameras.”
“I’m worried about trouble, period.” I anchored myself against the bathroom doorjamb. I wasn’t going to budge. She slept with those Gridhounds. With Dong. Who knows what else she slept with?
A pouty look. Coquettish. “You said your team was about trust.”
“It is. And I trust we’ll make this work.”
She lay back again, stretched up toward the pillows, then wriggled along the bedspread, taking her shorts down to mid-thigh without touching them. She raised her legs, licked her lips, and slow-scissored the shorts to the end of one big toe, then flipped them on top of her slippers. “Show me you trust me, Stefan.” That was throaty, definitely part of her training. She needed control of me for some reason. Chan?
What the hell. I did trust Huiyin. At least as far as I could. And I needed her as much as she needed me if we were going to finish this operation.
I unbuckled my jeans and tossed them and my underwear next to her shorts. It was a little trickier working my T-shirt over my glued-up wound. I dropped the shirt beside the bed, then threw back the sheet and pulled Huiyin to me. I kissed her belly and breasts as she pulled her tank top off. My lips were still raw, but there was no resisting her. We had been too close together without being able to touch. Now nothing stopped us.
Her kisses were intense, hard—painful—crushing my lips and pressing against my still-swollen nose, but her lips soon tracked down my chest and focused on pleasure. I pulled her thighs over my head and returned the favor, and before long, I wasn’t even thinking of the mission, about who was controlling whom. All that mattered were her taste and scent and being in her.
Stovall could wait. For now.
Huiyin slipped out while I showered. There had been the muffled sobs again. But no cuddling. No whispers. No questions about what our futures held. Those were things for people who didn’t live on the edge, a heartbeat away from death. We both knew the game. If the opportunity arose, we would take advantage of each other again.
A few hours later, everyone gathered in Chan’s room and chowed down on pasta from a mom-and-pop restaurant off Bay Road. It had been around for a couple generations, and it was easy to see why. The room quickly filled with the aroma of garlic and butter.
Not of Chan, though. Once again, there were clean scents—soap, shampoo, a light, citrusy perfume. I was pleasantly surprised.
But Chan’s mood didn’t match the moment. Surrounded by a wall of displays, sleepy magenta eyes locked on computing devices. Chan’s legs were curled tight on top of the still-made bed. Only one yellow cartoon cat pillow had survived since our first meeting, and that was stuffed at the head of the bed, not wrapped like a shield.
Ichi wasn’t much better, scowling darkly at me more than once. She brushed a hip against Huiyin’s shoulder while passing her at one point, and I thought it might come down to fists. I made a mental note to talk to Ichi about how seduction worked. Then again, I wasn’t so sure Huiyin would be open to the idea. There were some deep-rooted animosities in her somewhere, something that might have been present before the two even met.
Maybe Chan hadn’t sneaked a camera into my room, but I wasn’t so sure Huiyin and I hadn’t been found out.
Danny helped me take the containers and garbage cans outside the door, and made a point of knocking them over with the sort of clumsiness he would never really know.
I bent to help clean them up and whispered, “What?”
“You, um, you did her again?”
“None of your business.”
He glanced through the door at the others. “It sort of is. That’s a mess in there. Like watching a soa
p opera. Right?”
“I’m not trying to create drama. She needs to think she has me under control.”
He plucked a half-eaten piece of garlic bread from a plate, took a bite. “Does she?”
“I don’t think either of us has the other under control, no.”
“Chan’s having trouble. I thought I had all the drugs cleared out. I was pretty thorough, but, um—”
“I know. I was hoping it wasn’t the case.” I put the last of the containers atop the garbage can. “It’s not your fault. I think it’s Huiyin.” The picture of the drugged-out dragon tattoo punk came back to me. Control. She had a different idea of being a handler than I was used to. Was she after Chan? “I’ll take care of it.”
I stood in the center of the room, brushing crumbs from my hand. There was comfort in being able to stay on my feet unassisted. That comfort was blasted away by all the emotions, the hostility radiating from the others.
I cleared my throat. “Chan, could you bring up what you and Abhishek put together?”
An image appeared on the display sides facing everyone; Chan didn’t look up.
I’d gone over the image enough that I didn’t need to look at it as I spoke. “This is our evidence trail. Communications records, names, device IDs, bank account IDs, electronic messages. Most of the names may not seem familiar, but that’s probably good. These aren’t the big fish; these are the little ones. They’re the sort of people who Danny says are normally most exposed during operations, and they’re the ones who are most likely to fold under pressure, maybe take a deal and testify against their superiors.”
Ichi squinted at the image. “These are…bribes?”
“Money transfers and other gifts in exchange for votes, among other things.”
“That is illegal?”
I looked to Danny. He cleared his throat. “Um, there’s lobbying, which is legal. But when money’s over a certain amount, or it isn’t declared, and if it’s directly in a quid pro quo—”
Ichi scowled.
Danny pointed at the image on the displays. “That’s illegal. I’m pretty sure.”
Ichi leaned back in the chair she’d brought from her room. She balanced on legs scratched down to the wood. “We are going to arrest this Stovall? After what he did to you?”
And your father. I said, “No. We’re going to use this to lure Cytek out. To get this Lilly Duvreau to come after us again. And maybe Stovall will rear his ugly head. If he does, he won’t be arrested.”
She smiled—devilish. She had killed now. It wasn’t just bravado. It was in her system, same as it had been for Norimitsu.
“This won’t prevent all the damage this new law will do, if it’s signed.”
Danny coughed. “When.”
“When it’s signed.”
Chan muttered, “Too late. People talking. Hard crash, probably worse than 2062.”
“We can’t stop what’s coming. Voters created this environment. It’s their choice, their doing.” I waved at the data. “But we can do some good. Some of this was sent to our contact in the FBI.” I glanced at the time on my data device. “She should be available to talk right about now.”
Chan tapped a button on the computing device running the displays, and a ring came over the audio feed.
Lyndsey’s face replaced the data trail image, backgrounded by a wall. Painted drywall, not a cubicle. She dabbed a napkin at her full lips and stretched back in a chair, head cocked slightly, a corner of her mouth ticked up in a bemused smile. Her hair was pushed back by a headband that matched her beige blouse. “Stefan. I see you’ve got your friends with you.”
“I do.”
“You know, I’ve seen a disturbing initial report from the coroner’s office. Some of the people killed at the Baltimore data center? Not from the fire. Sounds like guns may have been used. You know anything about that?”
“Guns are very dangerous. Would they have survived the fire from the missiles?”
The first hint of anger touched her eyes. Not a good look. “Would those missiles have been fired if you hadn’t been there?”
Trouble. Leave it be. “Have you had a chance to look the data over?”
She crossed well-toned arms over her chest. “You asked me not to let it out into the wild. I’m not an expert in securities fraud and stock manipulation.”
“What about bribery?”
Her dark eyes slid sideways, as if she might be reviewing something on another display. “You’ve got a case there. Five or six representatives, a few senators. Mostly, it’s going to be aides.”
“Who you could flip with plea deals.”
She scratched her nose with a polished nail. “Maybe. I couldn’t make that call.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“So what is this?” Not quite impatient, but it sounded like she wasn’t seeing the entertainment value anymore.
“Can you slip some of that data to people in the SEC? Just enough to get rumblings going about an investigation. Maybe get a rumor started that you have someone feeding data to the FBI, looking for a payoff. Dirty data. Jail terms, career-ruining data.”
“I can.”
“Tell Merkel to watch for taskings to your military units and contractors after you release that. Maybe she can track them back to Stovall.”
“And will we ever actually see this data?” Skeptical. Annoyed.
“It won’t do you any good unless our plan works, and that relies on you getting this fed into the rumor mill.”
“That sounds evasive. I had a pretty straightforward question, Stefan.”
I felt like an ass, standing around in comfortable clothes, a belly full of pasta, while she was still at work. “If I’m alive when this is done. Maybe if I’m not.”
She ran a tongue over a yellow-stained canine, as if she were trying to work a chunk of food free. “And how many bodies are you expecting to leave lying around this time?”
“However many it takes.” I nodded at the others. “Minus five, if possible.”
“And Agent Stovall?”
“He’ll be part of your evidence trail if this all works out.”
“Not a witness, though.”
“Evidence.”
“I see.” She uncrossed her arms and leaned closer. “That might make Teresa happy.”
Teresa. I hadn’t caught her first name before. “It would be good to see Agent Merkel smile. So, do we have an agreement?”
“I’ll have to make some calls.”
“That’s all we ask. We’ll handle the rest.”
Lyndsey disconnected, and the image of the data trail reappeared. I sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling the immensity of the moment. “We’ve got a day to prep, maybe two. This time, we’ll be choosing the location. So, where do we want them to come for us?”
Danny rubbed his hands together. “Someplace where their numbers and gear won’t matter as much.”
I turned to Chan. “You think you’ll be able to deal with their flying cars?”
Chan nodded, and for just an instant, I caught a glimpse of puffy magenta eyes.
Direct eye contact! Our relationship was undergoing repair, apparently. But I couldn’t kid myself. It looked like Chan was using again. I’d slipped up, let my guard down. I’d let Chan down.
Huiyin seemed focused on something far away for a few seconds, then she said, “When we’ve dealt with them, what do you plan to do next?”
“Help you find out what you’re looking for on Dong, if that’s still unresolved.”
“And after that?”
“Retire, I guess. Find someplace I can make a living away from all this insanity.”
She considered that, then snorted. “You’ll never retire.”
“Maybe not. But I’d at least like to give it a try.”
Chapter 24
Spears of sunlight pierced the windblown woodland canopy, lighting the fallen pine needles and leaves like a dance floor. I rested against a thick trunk, checking my weap
ons loads and sucking on a pouch of syrupy sports drink gel. It was sweet, wince-inducing sweet, and salty, but I needed the electrolytes and carbs. The woodsy air and the scrape of branches in the wind were soothing, my calm before the storm.
Huiyin looked up from inspecting one of the submachine guns we’d acquired and rubbed the back of her leather jacket against the trunk of the tree shielding her like a bear scratching an itch. She rested the weapon between her raised legs, which were covered in matching leather, then craned her neck to get a look at me through mirror shades. “How many people have you killed?”
“Ever?” It was a daunting question.
The way she sort of went still answered my question: Ever.
“I lost count. The first one’s the worst, or at least that’s what everyone says. But for me, the first few were just…no one. We were moving through a village square. Nighttime. Desert. All these blocky, adobe buildings. When you weren’t using night-vision goggles, everything was this sort of pretty blue-gray, but we were looking for insurgents, going door to door. So it was NVGs, and everything was green.”
She twisted around a little to be more comfortable as she listened but said nothing.
“Guy on my right, my squad leader. Good guy. Wife, two kids. Swann. He was squatting behind this bus stop sort of thing, working out our next positions. Then…gunfire. Automatic. All on his position. Tore the plastic and metal up. Kicked up dust and dirt right between him and me, where it shouldn’t have been able to. But there were so many pieces just torn away.
“Someone shouted for me to move forward, and when I got there, my team leader told me the insurgents were in the second floor of this two-story building. The team would provide cover, but I needed to get across the street and put a grenade in that upstairs area.
“When they opened fire, I remember my guts turning to ice. But I ran. The front door was this flimsy wood. With my pack on, running at full speed, I hit it pretty hard.”
The night flashed through my head—sand clouds, guns roaring, glass shattering.
