by Julie Kenner
“He definitely knows we’re together,” Stryker said. “The message came to me, not you.”
“What’s the other message say?” I asked, over the din.
Stryker clicked on it, and a new screen popped up showing nothing but a hyperlink.
Stryker clicked on the link. The page came up, and I gasped as I saw the image….
MEL —NO COPS
PLAY THE GAME
24 HOURS FROM OUR SWEET MEET.
OR DIE.
“I’ve never wanted to kill anyone in my life,” I whispered. “But I want him dead. I want to find him, and I want him dead.”
“So do I, kid,” Stryker said.
I leaned over him and grabbed a piece of paper, then started drawing out the pigpen again. I might be pissed, but I wasn’t stupid. I had twenty-four hours to figure out this Prestige Park bullshit. (I didn’t know what would happen in twenty-four hours, but I really didn’t want to learn the hard way.)
I started with the symbol at the very top of the screen and dutifully wrote N on my pad. Not very illuminating, but it was a start.
Beside me, Stryker was staring at the screen, a finger tapping against his jaw.
“What?” I asked him.
He looked up at me, a question in his eyes.
I made a production of tapping my own finger against my jaw. “You were thinking. What?”
“The website. I’m wondering if we can track him. Figure out who our enemy is.”
“But if he realizes, that will just piss him off.” I glanced around, nervous. We were speaking softly and the television was loud, but I was still afraid he could hear. I lowered my voice even more. “If he gets pissed off, he’ll just kill me straight away.”
“Won’t happen,” he said. “Qualifying round, remember?”
“Oh, that makes me feel better.”
“If we want to win, we need to get the advantage here.” He nodded toward the computer. “We need to figure out how he posted that message. It could lead us to him.”
“If we want to win,” I countered, “we need to play the game. I can do that. I can win.” I hadn’t lost this game yet, and I didn’t intend to start now. Not with the stakes so high. And how did Stryker plan to find the guy, anyway? He was a ghost. No, playing was my only option. I was certain.
“I’m not saying don’t play. All I’m saying is that you need every advantage you can get. You can’t afford to lose this game.”
“No shit,” I said. “Rebooting isn’t an option.” And then, because I knew that I was talking from somewhere in hysterical-land, “I know. Really. I just…” I let it go.
“What?”
I shook my head, tightening my arms around my frame.
“Mel.” His voice was gentle this time. “What?”
I closed my eyes. “I’m scared, okay? And I don’t like it. I started college when I was sixteen. I’ve won math tournaments where I have to stand up on a stage and solve equations in my head. The pressure is intense, and I thrive on that shit. I don’t get scared. But I’m scared now. I know how to play PSW. But what if I don’t know how to play this?”
“Then let’s try to end it. Let’s track down the bastard. Let’s get him first.”
“What if it doesn’t end it? What if it only escalates it?”
“He won’t know we’re looking. Not until it’s too late.”
“He could be listening right now,” I said. “Even over the TV.”
“I know.” Frustration flashed in his eyes. “I think we’re okay for the moment, but we need to move soon.”
I nodded. I didn’t like the idea of leaving. My apartment might be tiny, but at the moment, it was the only place in all of Manhattan that I felt safe. We had to go, though. We couldn’t risk having the killer listening to our every word. “Where?”
“Not sure. Right now I just want to find the next clue. We’ll worry about the other details after we know you’re safe.”
I licked my lips, realizing what had been bugging me. “But I won’t be safe. Not if we’re really playing the game. If you’re right about the qualifying round, then as soon as I solve the clue, I’m a walking target.”
Once the target solved the qualifying round clue, the game was truly under way. The assassin could pick a target off at any time after that. Of course, in the cyberworld, certain actions could provide you with a level of security. You could trade the clothes on your back for money and then buy a bulletproof vest, for example. I presumed the same applied in the real world. But since I had no idea where to buy a bulletproof vest—and since Stryker hadn’t suggested it—I wasn’t even worrying about that yet.
“The first clue,” he said. “That’s the Prestige Park one?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Let me see if I remember how this works.” I might not have played in a while, but the idiosyncrasies of the game were coming back to me. “When the game starts, all players get a message letting them know. The target also gets a coded message telling her what to do.”
“That’s the Prestige Park message.”
“Right,” I said. “That message will lead somewhere in the cyberworld where the target will find another clue. That’s the qualifying clue. As soon as the target solves that qualifying clue, then the assassin is free to cut her down.”
“So what’s our second message? The one in my inbox about twenty-four hours? Could it be the qualifying clue?”
“I don’t think so. The intro message always leads to the clue. That message just came out of nowhere.”
“Any ideas?”
“One,” I said. But I didn’t much like it. “The bit about twenty-four hours makes me think it’s a warning.”
“I’m listening.”
“PSW’s whole shtick depends on people getting in there and really playing the games, right? Finish one game, start another. That kind of thing.”
“So?”
“So Grimaldi wanted to guard against people who log in, get assigned the role of target, and then spend weeks and weeks trying to figure out the first clue. Speed is the name of the game.”
“What did he do?”
“He put in a twenty-four-hour kill switch.”
“Right. I remember now. If the target doesn’t solve the introductory code in twenty-four hours, the target is terminated and the players can move on to a new game.” He met my eyes. “So much for my theory that you’re safe until we hit the end of the qualifying round.”
I pointed to the message still on the laptop screen. “I think that message is telling us that the twenty-four-hour kill switch applies in the real world.”
“Translate the rest of the message and maybe we’ll know for sure.”
“I will.” I sat in front of the computer and grabbed my pen. “The thing is, it’s already been well over a day since he gave me the envelope. Do you think the time is running from when I ran into him in front of Todd’s apartment?”
“Probably,” Stryker said. “But we’re not taking any chances. We need to get out of here. Go work somewhere where he can’t eavesdrop, and then make sure he doesn’t follow us once we’ve solved the clue.”
“We’ll go as soon as I do this,” I said, tapping the screen.
“We shouldn’t wait.”
“We shouldn’t leave without knowing exactly what we’re dealing with. Five minutes. That’s all I need.”
I thought he was going to argue more, but he didn’t. Instead, he eased into the bedroom, his cell phone at his ear. I could hear the low timbre of his voice blending into the background as I worked the code, the deep rumble providing a soothing counterpart to the frightening message I was slowly revealing. Antidote. Ricin. Deadly.
I swallowed, staring down at the message I’d uncovered. Not a difficult code, but it hadn’t been meant to be. Whoever had sent this had wanted me to uncover the message, and fast. This was a message meant to keep me alive. At least for a little while.
“Stryker.” The word barely slipped past my lips. I cleared my
throat and tried again. “Stryker.”
He burst back into the room, his hand on his gun. I’d scared him, but I didn’t bother to apologize. I was pretty terrorized myself.
“Here,” I said. I pushed the paper with my translation toward him.
I watched as his gaze drifted to the paper, then he looked up, meeting my eyes. “Shit,” he said.
I nodded. The man sure had a way with words.
Chapter
21
NOT RICIN BUT JUST AS DEADLY?
PLAY GAME FOLLOW CLUES GET ANTIDOTE.
Stryker read the words twice, looking for a hidden message. He didn’t find one. Everything the killer wanted to say was laid out with stunning simplicity.
Mel had moved to the couch, and now he joined her, pressing his palm against her forehead. She didn’t pull away, and for some reason that scared the hell out of him.
“Why didn’t you tell me you felt bad?”
“I don’t feel bad. But I guess now we know how the kill switch works. Some poison that’ll kick in after twenty-four hours. Fuck.” With the last, she hurled a pillow across the room. It hit the television and bounced ineffectually to the ground. “Is that even possible?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It is.” He’d worked in counterterrorism long enough to know that there were all kinds of nasty bugs being developed in labs all over the world. A Ricin-like toxin with a twenty-four-hour antidote window wasn’t outlandish at all. Still, that intense a poison would be hard to get hold of, and hard to deliver. “It could be a bluff,” he said. “Designed to psych you out.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You think?”
“Poison has to be administered,” he said. “It couldn’t be airborne, because there’s no way to regulate who gets infected. Something in your food? Maybe. But I don’t think you’ve eaten anything since last night.”
“It could have been in the Indian food,” she said, leaning forward, her forehead creased in concentration. Even scared, she was analytical and engaged.
“That may be the most logical answer,” he confirmed. “Especially since the only other way I can think of to infect you would be to inject you.”
“Oh, shit.” Her eyes widened, and she rubbed her tricep with her opposite hand.
He watched her, a bad feeling building in his gut. “What?”
“On the street, I tried to pull away and I felt a sharp pain in my arm. I thought I’d pulled a muscle, but—”
“Let me see.”
She complied silently, pulling the long sleeve of her T-shirt up so that half her tricep was bare. He ran his finger over every inch of her bare arm but found nothing. “Let me see the rest of it.”
She turned her head to face him. “Excuse me?”
He pressed his hand against her shoulder, which, along with a good portion of her upper arm, was covered under the now-bundled-up sleeve. “I need to check the rest of your arm, Mel. We need to be sure. Take off your shirt.”
“I…It’s not my shirt.” Her teeth grazed her lower lip. “It’s Todd’s. And I’m not wearing a bra or anything.”
“Oh.” He swallowed, his mind filling suddenly with an image of Mel peeling off the T-shirt and standing before him, half naked and ready for his intimate inspection. He shoved the image away; now really wasn’t the time. “Go change,” he said, his voice more gruff than he wanted. “A few minutes won’t make a difference.”
“No. I want to know.” As he watched, she tugged the sleeve back down, then pulled her arm out so that her arm was inside the shirt. Then she pressed her other arm and hand against her chest, keeping the thin cotton pressed against her breasts. “Go ahead,” she said. “Look.”
He peeled up her shirt, revealing her naked arm and back. Her skin was white and creamy, and as his fingers explored her upper arm, he had to fight an almost overwhelming urge to stroke her back as well, to slide his hand underneath the T-shirt and to cup her breast in his palm.
Goose bumps appeared on her skin, and she shivered under his touch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you cold?”
She shook her head, a slow blush easing up the back of her neck. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “Did you find it?”
“Not yet. I—Shit.” And there it was. A tiny red prick. Not even noticeable unless you were looking for it. “Goddamn it all to hell,” he said.
She drew in a loud, shaky breath, then eased out from under his touch. Her arm snaked back up, and when she turned back to face him, she was dressed again. “It happened this morning,” she said. “Ten-thirty. Maybe eleven.”
“It’s almost one now.”
“Should I go to a hospital?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “If the doctors think you’ve been infected with that kind of a toxin, they’ll raise the alarm. Call in Homeland Security and get all sorts of authorities involved. You’ll be quarantined. And by the time we get it straightened out, twenty-four hours will be long gone.”
“We don’t have to mention the comparison to Ricin. We could just say poison.”
“There’s no guarantee the toxin will be isolated in time even if we do mention Ricin. And if we don’t, we can pretty much guarantee they won’t find anything out in time. In the meantime, the antidote will be out there waiting for us. But if we don’t find it in time—”
“You’re right,” she said. “No hospital.” She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “We follow the clue.”
Chapter
22
I felt fine, and I couldn’t quite get my head around the idea that I’d been poisoned and had less than twenty-four hours to find the antidote. If this were a movie—or even an episode of 24—I’d find the antidote in the last possible second, then I’d turn around and kick the shit out of the bad guy.
Would be nice, but I wasn’t going to bank on it.
I shoved Kiefer out of my mind and focused instead on the man who was with me. The man who’d promised to help get me through this. I believed him, too, and already I’d come to rely on his strength, to anticipate his thoughts and suggestions. I’d only known him for a few hours, but my life was running in fast forward now, and Stryker was running right alongside me.
At the moment, though, he wasn’t running anywhere. Instead, he’d parked himself back at the computer, and now he pulled up Google and typed in a search.
>New York Prestige Park<<<
About a million hits came up, all of them raving about the prestigious apartments/offices/restaurants on Park Avenue. So much for an easy answer.
We were running out of ideas. If we couldn’t figure out Prestige Park, we couldn’t find the next clue. And if we couldn’t find the next clue, I was dead.
“Let me try,” I said. I didn’t care if there were two thousand pages of hits. We were going to look at every single one of them.
“Hold on,” he said, then typed in a new search.
>“New York” “Prestige Park”<<<
He hit Enter, and bingo. A car park. “Well, hello,” Stryker said. And I actually almost smiled.
We’d decided to stay in my apartment until we figured out the clue, since moving to some other location would take too much time. But we’d also decided to be quiet, just in case there were other eyes and ears watching us. I’d changed out of Todd’s clothes and pulled on my Miss Sixty jeans and a Goretti tank top I’d scored off eBay.
Beside me, Stryker had his cell phone open and was dialing information. “Turn up the radio,” he said.
I rushed to the stereo and complied, turning the volume higher and higher until he finally nodded, satisfied. How he’d hear his conversation, I didn’t know. Didn’t care, either, so long as he got it done. I knew he would, too. The man had it together, that was for sure. He’d told me that his earlier phone call was to a computer geek friend to try and figure out who posted that Web message. Nice to know he was on top of that. And now he’d solved the Prestige Park mystery. And the best part? He was on my side.
Behind me, Stryker muttered into h
is phone, then snapped it shut. He leaned onto the table, brushing my shoulder as he picked up the pen I’d been using earlier. He scribbled a note, then inched it toward me. Prestige Car Park—downtown & Bronx.
“Looks like we’re going downtown,” he said.
I nodded, trying to remember if the online version of the game extended to the boroughs. I didn’t think it did. A plus for me, since, like so many Manhattanites, I was entirely clueless about life outside the island.
He snapped the screen shut on Jenn’s laptop, then slid it into the case, balling the cords up and shoving them in, too. I thought about protesting—it was Jenn’s computer, after all—but I didn’t. Jenn would understand, and we might need the thing. Finally, he grabbed the original message and my notes interpreting it. “Let’s go.”
I stood up, then took the papers from him. I dumped them and my pocketbook-sized purse into a tote bag that I regularly schlepped to class with me. “Are we coming back?”
“Not if I can help it.”
I nodded, shifting my weight on the balls of my feet, now snugly encased in my Prada sneakers as I stalled in the doorway. What can I say? It was hard to leave. I hated the idea of abandoning all my shoes. Not to mention my handbags, clothes, photo albums, books, and favorite CDs.
“I’ll buy you a change of underwear,” Stryker said, since my thoughts were apparently transparent. “But we need to get moving. We’ve already wasted enough time, and—”
“Fine. You’re right. Let’s go.” I told myself that this wasn’t good-bye forever—just until we’d won the game.
I tugged the door closed and locked it, my worldly possessions now measured by the width and breadth of the Kate Spade tote I’d snagged last fall in a seventy-five-percent-off sale. “I’ll be back soon,” I said to the door. I hoped I was telling the truth.
Chapter
23
T wenty minutes later, the taxi dropped us off in front of the entrance to Prestige Car Park. “What now?” I asked. “Can we just go in and look for spot 39A?”
