“Aydan!” His voice was hoarse, and I wondered how long he’d been calling.
I tried to form words. Nothing happened.
One of his large shoes splashed through me, and I recoiled, ripples running through me. “Ow!”
“Aydan?” His voice sounded closer as he fell to his knees beside me. “Is… that you?” he asked hesitantly.
I could see him now, his image undulating as if I was looking up from below the surface of water. He reached out a careful hand.
His touch was startlingly personal, as if he’d touched my entire body all at once. I let out an involuntary gasp and tried to divert my mind from sudden prurient curiosity about what it would be like to have sex inside the sim.
Fortunately, my concentration was too weakened to give form to that thought, but it provided enough focus to let me form a word.
“Help.”
“Don’t worry,” Kane reassured me. “We’ll get you out.”
Too exhausted to deal with the logistics, I lay in my torpid puddle. He had said he’d rescue me. He’d get me out somehow.
“Aydan.”
I made an attempt to rouse myself and managed the faintest of whispers. “I’m here.”
“Can you take my hand?”
He laid his palm on my surface again. His heat radiated, and the intimacy of the touch sent ripples racing through me.
Goddamn. If I managed to create any corporeal form at all, it wouldn’t be my hand he was holding. Wouldn’t that make Spider blush.
I concentrated on the sensation of his hand in mine. What did it feel like to hold his hand? Big, broad, hard palm. Strong fingers.
“Good, keep going,” he encouraged. “I’m going to help you get up now.”
I felt the pressure of his hand as he gently pulled upward, but I couldn’t sustain my grip. I trickled through his fingers and back onto the floor.
“Dammit!”
“Sorry,” I whispered mouthlessly.
“It’s okay. All right, we’ll do this the hard way.” The floor tilted and rolled crazily as he sluiced me into a bucket.
“Aaaah! Goddammit!” I clasped my pounding head in both hands, then quickly reconsidered and clapped one hand over my eyes to keep them from exploding. I rocked and swore until I was certain I could open my eyes without having them rupture.
“Jesus Christ!” My eyeballs weren’t the only thing in danger of rupturing. I tottered to my feet as soon as I could see. “Gotta go. Back in a flash.”
I caught a glimpse of two worried faces as I staggered rapidly from the office and made a beeline for the ladies’ room. I clenched my teeth and whimpered as I scuttled into one of the stalls, knees locked together.
I didn’t even dare think about how long it had been since I’d finished that beer at lunch time. I studiously avoided looking at my watch until the pressure dissipated enough that I wasn’t actually in pain. Finally I breathed a deep sigh and slumped against the toilet paper holder, shaking. God, another couple of minutes in the sim, and I wouldn’t have made it.
There was a tap at the door, and Kane’s voice floated in from the corridor outside. “Aydan? Are you all right?”
“Fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I dragged myself to my feet and propped my quivering body against the counter while I washed my hands. When I wobbled out the door, Kane handed me a bottle of orange juice. I promptly spilled it down my chin when my trembling hands made me miss my mouth.
I swore and lurched, swiping my chin in an attempt to keep the dribbles off my T-shirt.
“Sit.” Kane pried the bottle out of my hand and lowered me to the floor with my back against the corridor wall. “Try it now.” He handed me the bottle again, and I managed to drink some by steadying it with both hands.
“Thanks.” I sipped again, and he slid down the wall to sit companionably beside me on the floor.
Spider emerged from the men’s room and surveyed us quizzically for a few seconds before taking a seat on the floor across the corridor from us.
We sat in silence while I drank my juice. A few moments later we all glanced up at the sound of a door closing as Stemp stepped out of his office. He hesitated at the sight of us sitting in the hallway, then walked down toward us, his face unreadable as always.
He stopped in front of Kane. “Your requisition is approved, and the equipment is ready downstairs. You can pick it up whenever you want it.” He eyed Kane expressionlessly for a few seconds. “I hope your judgement is sound.” He turned and vanished into the stairwell. The steel door clanged behind him.
Kane offered no explanation, and I didn’t care enough to ask. The tremors were starting to subside as my blood sugar equalized, but I was still starving. I finally summoned up the courage to look at my watch. After eight o’clock. Jeez. My stomach growled.
I heaved to my feet and the other two followed suit.
“Sorry, Aydan, but we still need to debrief,” Kane said.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I’m going to go wash off the orange juice, and I need to grab a cereal bar. And then I have to go back into the sim again.”
Kane was already shaking his head and I held up a hand to forestall his objection. “We’ll talk about it in a minute,” I told him firmly, and ducked back into the bathroom.
When I returned to the office, Spider and Kane were snacking, too. I tore the wrapper off my bar and bit into it ravenously as Kane looked up.
“So what the hell was that?” he demanded.
“Sorry, I panicked,” I mumbled. “Hang on.” I gulped down the too-large mouthful and chased it with a swig of orange juice, then sank into the couch and took another, smaller bite. “Just let me get this down…”
We all munched in silence for a few minutes. I swallowed the last of the bar and leaned back on the couch.
“Okay.” I sighed. “Sorry I vanished like that. I should have let you know what was happening, but I read that document and freaked out.”
“What was it?” Kane asked.
“Somebody was notifying Fuzzy Bunny that I’m still alive, and that I have network access.”
Both men jerked forward in their chairs. “Who? How far did it go?” Kane snapped.
“I don’t know who it was. I found it in three separate locations and destroyed it. I had to search every single path on every single synced site. That’s why it took so long, and that’s why I didn’t dare waste any time. I’m pretty sure I got all the copies, and I’m pretty sure nobody had read the message yet.”
“Pretty sure?” Kane’s shoulders bunched under the snug T-shirt. “How sure is pretty sure? If that went anywhere in Fuzzy Bunny’s organization, you’re as good as dead.”
I ran my hands over my face. “Dead, I wouldn’t mind so much. But I’m thinking I wouldn’t be that lucky.”
“No, you’re probably right,” Kane agreed slowly. “Captured and tortured, more likely.”
“Don’t say that!” Spider protested. He turned haunted eyes to Kane. “You wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Sorry, Webb,” Kane said regretfully. “You know I’d do anything in my power not to let it happen. And you know it happened anyway, last time.”
“Anyway,” I interjected, trying to cheer up the discussion, “Pretty sure in this case means almost certain. Ninety-nine percent. But that’s why I have to go back into the sim tonight and make sure there are no other bombshells lurking in those files. It was just dumb luck that I got to that one before anybody opened it. Who knows what else is in there. That could have just been one of many.”
There was a short, dejected silence. Guess I hadn’t cheered the discussion up that much.
“All right,” Kane said. “I hate to say it, but you’re right. The sooner you get back into the sim and read those documents, the better. Tell me when you’re ready.”
I rose. “I’m just going to go and pee again first. Just in case.”
A short time later, I stepped back into the virtual network. The food had helped, and the si
m only wavered slightly while I headed for the virtual file room. The image stabilized as Kane appeared, too.
“Thanks for being here,” I told him. “It really helps when you hold the sim still.”
He grinned. “Just don’t think about pigs.”
A faint but pungent odour drifted to my nose, and I glared at him. “Stop that.”
We stepped into the file room, and I buried myself in the documents again.
After an interminable time, I laid aside the last one with a sigh. “All clear.” The file room wavered, walls melting like hot candle wax.
Kane stepped quickly over and grasped my arm. “Let’s go.”
My eyes burned. Kane flung a glass of ice water in my face, and I gasped and sputtered. “What the...”
He dragged me along the virtual corridor. “Your eyes were on fire,” he muttered. He forged through tall reeds and reeking swamp. The path in front of his feet stayed solid, but I sank up to my waist, the saw-like edges of the reeds slashing my skin. His grip bruised my arm as he dragged me along.
“Come on, Aydan, help me out here.” He pulled me out of the swamp with a sucking sound and placed me on the path ahead of him. “Walk.”
I squelched forward, expecting a solid path with all my might.
I stopped dead. Apparently I had also expected snakes. Lots of them.
“Oh, for...” Kane shouldered me aside. His flamethrower belched fire and smoke. The snakes burned and shrivelled. He turned back to me and before I could react he slung me over his shoulder and ran for the portal. We stepped through just as blackness filled the void.
I sprawled on the sofa and cursed feebly until the pain subsided to tolerable levels. Then I flung an arm across my face and groaned for a while, just for variety. Finally I shut up and hauled myself into a semblance of sitting position.
“Well, that was fun,” I croaked. “Let’s do that again soon. Not.”
Kane was massaging his temples, too. “Not,” he agreed. “Do you think you’re in the clear?”
“Yes. But I don’t know for how long. I wonder how long it’ll take before whoever it was realizes that their message never arrived.”
Kane shrugged. “No way to tell. Is there any way you can set an alert if that file gets re-sent?”
I laid my head back on the sofa and frowned at the ceiling. “I think so. If I go in again and just...”
“No. You’re done. So am I. I was having trouble holding it at the end, too,” Kane said. “We can’t take the chance tonight.”
Spider spoke up hesitantly. “I think I can do it from the external network interface. While you were busy in the sim, I was analyzing the file, trying to figure out where it came from. I could probably modify your program.”
“Do it,” Kane ordered.
I looked at my watch and groaned. “It’s nearly midnight. You’d better take a break, Spider.”
“No, I’m okay.” He grinned. “I want to get in and play with that program. I’m used to being up half the night gaming anyway.”
I squinted at him. He looked fresh as a daisy, and I rubbed my aching forehead. Oh, to be twenty-six again.
“Let’s go,” Kane broke into my dull thoughts. “We’ve got one more stop to make before I take you home.”
“Will the festivities never end?” I dragged myself up off the couch and plodded after him out the door.
On the main floor, Kane stopped at another heavy steel door and stooped for the retinal scan. I watched him warily. “Is this another time delay?”
“No.”
The door released and I followed him into a room lined with lockers of various sizes.
I gazed around. “A changing room?”
“Not exactly.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and consulted it for a moment. Then he moved to one of the lockers and swiped his security fob across its prox pad. The door unlatched, and he reached in to extract a carton about the size of a shoebox. He carried it over to a small counter and opened it.
“For you.” He turned and handed me a pistol.
Chapter 33
“Uh.” I regarded the small black gun open-mouthed. “What...?”
“It’s a Glock G26. A Baby Glock. For concealed carry.” Kane delved into the box again. “Here’s a concealed waist holster, and an ankle holster. You should use the waist holster whenever you can. It’s easier to access. But the ankle holster is easier to conceal in the summertime when you’re not wearing a jacket.”
He pointed out features as he spoke. “It’s a 9mm. Ten-shot magazine, standard Glock safe-action trigger, and the sights are good. It’s an accurate gun for its size, but you’ll notice it kicks a bit more than the full-size model. You’re strong, you shouldn’t have any difficulty with it.”
I gazed blankly up at him. “I don’t have a permit for this. And it’s illegal to carry a concealed weapon.”
Kane reached into the box again. “Your permit. And your concealed carry license.” He handed them to me.
“But... I didn’t think there was any such thing as a concealed carry license in Canada.”
“Officially and practically, no, not for the general public. But they do exist. For people like you and me.”
“But...” I tried to get my tired brain to process the new information. “But... what am I supposed to do with this?”
He gave me a wry smile. “Typically, you’d use it to shoot somebody who was trying to kill you. That’s been happening frequently enough that Stemp agreed you should carry.”
“But... what if I shoot somebody?”
“That’s the general idea,” he said patiently.
“But...” I stopped and shook my head vigorously in the hope of kick-starting my brain. “What I meant was, what if I get it wrong? What if I shoot somebody who isn’t Fuzzy Bunny? Like, what if I’d been carrying this a couple of nights ago, and I shot Bill Harks? He’s just a local guy, not a spy. There’d be all kinds of trouble. You couldn’t just cover that up.”
“Bill Harks was trying to kill you. Your primary objective; in fact, your orders; are to stay alive. At all costs.”
“I don’t think he was trying to kill me,” I argued. “It wasn’t like it was life or death.”
“Aydan.” He frowned down at me. “I saw the video. That kick he landed on your ribs, if it had been full-force the way he’d planned, and if it hit you in the head? You could easily have died. Or been brain-injured.”
He looked into my eyes. “Your responsibility is to stay alive. If you’d had this gun a couple of nights ago, your responsibility would have been to shoot Harks if you couldn’t scare him off. To disable, if possible. To kill, if necessary. Let us worry about any cover-ups that need to be done.”
“But what if I get it wrong? What if I shoot some poor shmo who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?” I gazed up at him. “I can’t do this.”
“Aydan, I know you can. I’ve seen you do it.”
“That was different,” I mumbled. “I knew they were Fuzzy Bunny. You were there to tell me.”
Kane laid his hand on my shoulder. “Aydan, I know you won’t make a mistake. I’m not afraid you’ll shoot someone by accident. I’m more worried you won’t be prepared to shoot someone when you need to.”
I stood for a few moments trying to absorb the magnitude of what he was saying. My mind steadfastly refused to deal with it. I sighed. Okay, stick to practicalities for now.
“I’ll need to practice with it. Do I just go to the store and pick up ammo?”
“No.” He smiled. “The whole point of carrying a concealed weapon is that nobody knows you have it. We’ll issue you ammo. Just ask whenever you need it.”
“Okay, I’ll need a box for tomorrow, then.”
Other than the prospect of having to shoot somebody, I was actually pretty excited about the gun itself. I love guns. This one was a little beauty.
“I’ve never seen a handgun this small before.” I grinned up at him. “Is there a firing range I
should use, or should I just take it out to the back forty?”
“There’s a firing range downstairs in the secured area, but if you’ve got a safe place on your farm, you could use that. Just take another gun with you so you can explain away the sound of the shots. Remember, nobody can know that you have this.”
“Right.” I thought a bit more. “So when do you want me to start carrying it? And when should I carry it?”
“As soon as you feel comfortable using it, start carrying it. And carry it with you at all times.” He grinned. “Take it to bed with you, too. It’s a little more effective than a crowbar.”
“Yeah, but you don’t get a second chance,” I argued. “If I’d had this when you showed up at my place, it would’ve been game over for you.”
Kane sobered. “You’re right. This is dangerous. That’s why there are only a handful of these licenses in existence. I know you well enough to believe you won’t make a mistake.” He repacked everything into the cardboard carton and handed it to me. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
When we pulled up in front of my house, Germain stepped onto the front porch, hands on hips.
“You’re out long past your curfew, young lady,” he teased as I trailed up the steps.
“Yeah, where were you when my date wouldn’t let me come home?” I groused.
I raised a hand to Kane as he drove away, and followed Germain into the house. “Long day,” he commented.
“Yeah, but we managed to skirt disaster for another day.”
His sharp eyes picked out the cardboard box tucked under my arm. “About time. What did you get?”
I glanced pointedly around the room.
“The bugs have been removed,” he reassured me. “Cameras, too.”
“How about the phone tap?”
His brows drew together. “I didn’t know you knew about that. It’s still in place.”
“Good. It can stay. Just in case I get more calls from my secret admirer.”
He snorted. “Good plan. I won’t mention that you know about the tap.”
“Thanks, Carl. You’re the best.”
Reach For the Spy Page 19
