Slayers: Friends and Traitors

by C. J. Hill

  It wasn’t the most comforting of answers. “Couldn’t we meet in the van?” Tori suggested. “Isn’t that private enough?”

  “Someone could have followed us,” Bess said. “If that’s the case, they’ll think we went to the statuary and they’ll look for us there. Besides, according to Theo, with the right equipment you can decipher what’s being said inside a vehicle by picking up the sound waves hitting the windows.” She shrugged. “Personally, I think Theo just likes making our lives harder.” She took her place in the line for the ladder. “When you get up on top, stay low and follow the rest of us. We’ll be far away enough from the edge of the building that no one on the ground will be able to see us.”

  Jesse flew through the trapdoor, stood on the roof, and held his hand down to help Rosa up. He did the same for Lilly. Dirk ignored Jesse’s hand and leapt up onto the roof. Bess looked up as though contemplating trying to copy Dirk’s move, but in the end she held her hand out to Jesse and let him help her up.

  Tori flew up. By then the rest of the Slayers were carefully making their way around the skylights to where Dr. B waited for them. He sat cross-legged a few yards over, studying something on his laptop. Even in this simple act there was something of his signature demeanor: an odd mixture of intensity and mildness, of intelligence and inattentiveness. He was an operative who had a key to the roof of the Lincoln Memorial and yet was sitting up here wearing tan professor pants, bright white tennis shoes, and a jacket from a decade ago. Night vision goggles hung from his neck. It had probably never occurred to him that he didn’t blend in.

  His smile was tired, worried. “I’m glad you could all come.”

  “Alyssa isn’t here,” Lilly said pointedly.

  “That’s what we need to talk about,” Dr. B gestured for them to come closer. “I’m afraid Overdrake has captured Alyssa. He wants to come after the rest of you, too. Now we need to decide what to do about it.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Tori stared at Dr. B mutely. Alyssa had been captured? Lilly let out a high-pitched gasp. Her hand flew to her mouth. Her bright red fingernails contrasted against her ashen face.

  “He hasn’t hurt her,” Dr. B went on. “At least not yet. We need to free her before he does.”

  First Jesse had been attacked, and now this. The safety of the normal world was shrinking, closing in on all of them.

  Rosa paled. She reached out and took hold of Lilly’s arm for support. “How did Overdrake find her? How did he find Jesse?”

  “I don’t know.” Dr. B motioned for everyone to sit down. “Did any of the rest of you see anything suspicious? Anything that might indicate Overdrake was trailing you?”

  The group all shook their heads. As Tori sat down, she said, “If Overdrake planned to pick us off, he could have already found me. He could have sent people to my father’s events.”

  “True.” Dr. B typed something on his laptop. “But you’re also the most well-guarded Slayer. If you were attacked at a campaign stop, there would be a public outcry. The police would be pressured to find the perpetrator. Overdrake must not want that.”

  At least, Tori thought, not yet.

  Bess nudged her elbow into Tori. “And an attack on you would give your father the sympathy vote. I bet Overdrake is a Democrat.”

  Dr. B sent Bess a look that indicated he didn’t think her comment was helpful.

  “What?” she asked him. “You’re always telling us to pay attention for clues about his identity.”

  Dr. B turned to the other Slayers. “At 3:16, Alyssa sent me an emergency alert, and then turned on the phone function on her watch so I could hear what was being said. Overdrake had her by that point. He told her he wanted information about the Slayers—how many there were, names, and where you lived.”

  A chill went down Tori’s spine. She remembered how frightened she was when Overdrake captured her, how he calmly talked about killing her. His voice was smooth, so cultured and civilized sounding with his nearly British accent.

  “Overdrake,” Dr. B went on, “said if Alyssa cooperated, he wouldn’t hurt her. If she didn’t, he would employ other methods to extract the truth from her. He gave her three hours to decide. From the noises I heard next, I can only assume he’s gagged her. I haven’t heard anything from Alyssa over her watch since then.”

  Jesse broke into Dr. B’s speech. “Lilly, turn off your cell phone. And take the battery out.”

  Phones could be traced and Alyssa knew Lilly’s number. If Overdrake had the right equipment, he could pick up the signal from Lilly’s phone and tell where she was.

  Lilly pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her hands were clumsy, her face still white. “Alyssa didn’t tell him my phone number. Dr. B would have heard.”

  “Alyssa didn’t have to tell Overdrake,” Jesse said. “Your number is on her call history. You called her this afternoon.”

  Lilly pulled the battery out of her phone. “A lot of people are on her call history. My name won’t be listed next to my number. He won’t know it’s me.”

  Dr. B looked at Lilly with such disappointment that even Tori felt the weight of it. “Did you leave Alyssa a voice message?” he asked.

  Lilly gulped, seemed to shrink a little. “Overdrake won’t recognize my voice. He’s never talked to me.”

  Jesse spoke through gritted teeth. He was all captain now, expecting to be obeyed not contradicted. “We don’t know how Overdrake knew our names in the first place. If he bugged the camp or listened in on our phones, he might recognize any of our voices.”

  Lilly pursed her lips. “My own mother doesn’t recognize me on the phone half the time. Do you really think Overdrake can pick out my voice from Alyssa’s voice messages?”

  “Ever heard of voice recognition software?” Jesse asked.

  “It doesn’t matter now.” Dr. B held his hands up, putting an end to the argument. “Lilly’s phone is off and even if Overdrake was tracking it, he’d look for us by the statue, not up here. However”—Dr. B let his gaze sweep over the Slayers—“this is a good example of why the rules are in place. They protect all of us. You need to keep them, especially since we know Overdrake already gathered information about you. We need to make sure we plug leaks, not create new ones. Understood?”

  Everyone nodded. Tori felt sick. She glanced at Dirk. The two of them had exchanged each other’s phone numbers, too. Actually, she hadn’t given Dirk a choice. She’d dialed her phone number using his phone and then added the contact information on both of their phones. Dirk returned her gaze and shook his head. He didn’t want to bring it up. She supposed this wasn’t the time for confessions. They needed to concentrate on a rescue plan now.

  As soon as she had the chance, she’d tell Dirk they had to get new phone numbers.

  It would be impossible for Tori to forget Dirk’s last name and where he went to high school, and that bothered her. If Overdrake had kidnapped her instead of Alyssa, he might have been able to get that information from her.

  Dr. B turned his laptop so the rest of them could see the screen. It showed an aerial picture of a large building and the parking lot that surrounded it. “Our big advantage,” he said, “is that we know Alyssa’s location. She’s being held at this car dealership.” He pointed to the building on the screen. “More specifically, in a room here.”

  Rosa was the closest to Dr. B. “How do we know where she is?”

  “I can track your watches,” Dr. B said. “Her signal is there.”

  Everyone stared at him for a moment, then Lilly spoke. “You told us no one could track our phones. Their signals are supposed to be encrypted.”

  “They are,” Dr. B said. “No one else can track them, but I have the decryption program. I set it up for just such an occasion as this. There are times when I need to know where you are.”

  “And you never mentioned that to us before?” Bess asked in disbelief.

  Dr. B enlarged the picture on his screen. “That information in the wrong hands would be danger
ous. I certainly don’t want Overdrake to know that I can track you, or that if he had the decryption key, he could intercept that information.” Dr. B sent Bess a stern look and lowered his voice. “Which reminds me, we’ll talk about where you went last weekend later.”

  Bess gulped and didn’t say more.

  Rosa leaned forward. “If we know where Alyssa is, why can’t we call the police and have them go in and get her?”

  “We’ll consider that option,” Dr. B said. “It may be our best course. That said, the police need a warrant or probable cause to search a place. We have no physical evidence of foul play, I’m not Alyssa’s guardian, and she hasn’t even been reported missing yet. Involving the police would mean involving Alyssa’s parents.” Dr. B shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think I could come up with a plausible explanation for giving one of my teenage campers a watch I can track. Any lie I attempted would most likely result in deep suspicions, a restraining order, and the police investigating whether I was fit to be a camp director. I would have to tell Alyssa’s parents the truth about camp. I would have to turn over my laptop to the police.”

  Dr. B’s gaze traveled around the group. “However, if we’re able to take care of this ourselves, we’ll not only keep our cover, we might be able to garner information about Overdrake and his organization. So let’s take a vote. Do we try to handle this on our own first?”

  “Yes,” Lilly and Bess said in unison.

  Jesse nodded.

  Rosa said, “Alyssa wouldn’t want us to blow our cover.”

  Dirk hesitated, then nodded as well.

  Tori hated to be the last one to agree, but she couldn’t help thinking of all the ways this mission could go wrong. They could fail, be hurt, be killed. Tori could be captured again. Or—almost as bad—the police could catch her breaking into a car dealership. To say the least, news stories that showed her being led away in handcuffs wouldn’t reflect well on her father. The media, the people at her school, and late-night comedians would explode with commentary. And the president—Tori didn’t even want to think about what he would say about her. Probably publicly. While smirking.

  Would it be such a bad thing to let Alyssa’s parents and a few police officers know about camp? It didn’t mean the information would leak out to the public. It didn’t mean Alyssa’s parents would forbid her from training like Ryker’s parents had … Well, it probably meant that, but it didn’t absolutely mean that.

  Tori had gone too long without answering. “If you don’t want to come,” Dr. B prodded gently, “you don’t have to join us.”

  She imagined herself leaving the roof, going home, and waiting there to see how it turned out. She couldn’t do it. Waiting would be torture. When it came down to it, she couldn’t let her friends face Overdrake’s men without her help. “I’ll come.”

  Dr. B nodded and rattled off a list of the supplies he’d already put in his van. Rifles, tranquilizers, flash bangs, smoke bombs, infrared sensors, wire cutters, lock picks, neck microphones, earpieces, Kevlar outfits, and helmets. Booker, Dr. B’s right-hand man at camp, would meet them with another van.

  Booker was a middle-aged man who took care of the Slayers’ horses and anything else that needed to be done. He was the gruff, quiet type that always made Tori a little nervous. It was hard not to interpret his silence as disapproval of life in general, and perhaps specifically teenagers. Still, he never seemed to be rattled by anything that went on at camp and was competent in everything he did, including breaking and entering.

  Dr. B brought up a street view of the fence that surrounded the car dealership: Razor wire looped over the chain-link fence. “This may be electrified,” he said. “However, it’s only ten feet tall. Dirk will be able to jump over. Jesse and Tori can fly the rest of you over. If you have to get out fast, I don’t want to risk anyone being caught on the wrong side of the fence. When you go over the first time, move one of the cars within leaping distance of the fence.”

  He didn’t ask if they could accomplish this fact, which probably meant he knew about all of those times at camp when they had moved Theo’s truck to different locations.

  “Is there something we can do about the lights?” Bess asked. “It’s as bright as day in that place.”

  “Not without alerting Overdrake that he’s been breached. Surprise will be our most effective tool. Fortunately the rows of cars will provide good cover.”

  The discussion was beginning to have a feeling of déjà vu. Dr. B had said surprise would be the Slayers biggest asset when they broke into the dragon enclosure last summer. There was plenty of surprise in that attack, but they were the ones who’d been surprised.

  Perhaps Jesse was thinking about that mission, too. “How do we know this isn’t another trap?” he asked. “How do we know Overdrake didn’t take Alyssa because he knew we would come after her?”

  Dr. B switched to another street view of the dealership. “Overdrake has no way of knowing we can locate Alyssa. Before tonight, the only two people who knew I could track the watches were you and me.” Dr. B regarded Jesse. “You didn’t tell anyone else, did you?”

  “I told Dirk,” Jesse said.

  Another flash of disappointment crossed Dr. B’s features. It made Tori feel even worse about the rules she’d broken.

  Dr. B turned to Dirk. “Did you tell anyone that I could track the watches?”

  Dirk shook his head. “No.”

  Tori felt a spike of anxiety run through Dirk, a burst of guilt. It worried her. If he had told the truth, it wasn’t the complete truth.

  “Are you sure?” she asked him. “It could be important. We need to be certain Overdrake doesn’t know.”

  Now all gazes were back on Dirk. His went to her. A warning was in his eyes. He didn’t like being questioned and didn’t want her to do it again. “Why would you think I told anyone about the watches? Did you ever hear me say anything about them?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s just…” She didn’t like feeling his anger and suddenly wished she hadn’t spoken in front of everyone. She could sense Dirk’s emotions, but not the meaning behind them. “You seemed so anxious for a moment.”

  “Of course I’m anxious,” Dirk said. “We’re about to break into a place where people want to kill us.”

  “Sorry,” Tori said. “I misread you.”

  “Wait a minute.” Bess’ gaze ricocheted between Tori and Dirk. “Counterparts are pretty good at reading each other. Leo could tell when I was lying before all the words were out of my mouth. If Tori has doubts about you telling the truth, then I do, too. Did you or didn’t you tell anyone that my dad could track the watches?”

  Dirk grunted and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Do you want to get a polygraph test going? Fine. Let’s do that instead of rescuing Alyssa. I’m sure Overdrake didn’t mean it when he threatened to torture her.”

  Dr. B looked directly at Dirk. “Did you tell anyone about the watches?”

  Dirk looked at Tori, not at Dr. B. “No.”

  Everyone else’s gaze turned to Tori then, waiting for her assessment of his answer. She told the truth. “All I can sense from Dirk right now is that he’s mad at me.” And she didn’t need her counterpart sense to tell that.

  Dirk smiled coldly. “Yeah, sorry, that’s what happens when you announce to everyone that I’m lying.”

  Dr. B sighed and seemed satisfied with Dirk’s answer. “We need to get back to our plan. We don’t know how many guards will be around, although I assume they’ll be both outside and inside. Check your infrared sensors before you go in.”

  Tori glanced at Dirk. He was looking at Dr. B, firmly ignoring her. She supposed she deserved it. Dirk wouldn’t do anything to endanger anyone. During the last mission, he had been the one who freed the other Slayers, and when Overdrake had captured Tori, Dirk had come back to rescue her.

  A memory flickered through her mind: Dirk and Overdrake on the enclosure roof yelling at each other. It was always a jumbled memory, one
disjointed and mingled with the panic of that night—the men, the guns, the feeling of helplessness.

  Overdrake hadn’t thrown a net on Dirk, hadn’t pointed guns at him. He just yelled, What did you think would happen when you came here? What?

  Tori pushed away the memory and made herself concentrate on what Dr. B was saying, “Overdrake himself might be in the building. I’m not one to encourage you to break the law, but if the opportunity presents itself … well, you’ll need to assess the risks and benefits of capturing him. Keep in mind that, according to Tori, he has extra strength and perhaps even leaping abilities like a Slayer.”

  Tori didn’t like the way Dr. B made that sound—as though she didn’t really know for sure. When she had been Overdrake’s prisoner, he’d effortlessly picked her up and held her over his head. Later she saw him leap up and down from tree branches in a way that only Slayers moved. He was able to see well enough in the dark, too.

  It was odd how the dragon lord’s powers were so similar to theirs. Perhaps he had other abilities like theirs, too. Perhaps … a thought struck her for the first time. Perhaps a dragon lord could pretend to be a Slayer and they wouldn’t even notice.

  The thought burrowed deep inside her, made it hard to breathe. Because she had just remembered something else. Dirk’s father spoke with an accent—a British-sounding accent, like Overdrake’s.

  Could it have been him?

  No, she told herself. She would have recognized his voice when he spoke to her. But the next moment she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t expected to see Overdrake with Dirk at his football game. Had her expectations blinded her?

  Dirk was wealthy, he lived in Winchester where the first compound had been, and his father knew who she was on sight.

  It all fit together except for one thing—during the last mission Dirk rescued the other Slayers. If he was Overdrake’s son, why would he turn around and help them escape?

  The memory from the dragon enclosure roof came back to her mind. This time instead of seeing dragon lord and Slayer facing off, she saw father and son.