The Spy Is Cast

by Diane Henders

  I gave him an innocent look, and he frowned at me. “I know there’s a but,” he said. “Spit it out.”

  I sighed. “I had to make an executive decision. Spider and I missed a critical flaw in our logic.”

  “Which was…?” Kane prodded.

  “I was able to create the sim within the sim so I could look at the records without updating their timestamps. But…” I glanced at his face, and addressed the tabletop instead. “The problem is, the process of creating a sim creates a new data record. So I had to leave it running while I viewed the existing records, and then I went in and deleted the record afterward.”

  “So you essentially advertised there was an invisible someone using the network.”

  His voice was utterly flat, and the small hairs stood up instinctively on the back of my neck.

  “It was a calculated risk. The only way anybody would notice would be if they happened to look at the data directory at exactly the time I was in there viewing the sim. That was a pretty short window of opportunity.”

  I looked up to meet his eyes. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  “No,” Kane said dangerously. “The right thing to do would have been for you to follow orders, and not take unnecessary risks. Get out of the network immediately and report the flaw in the plan. Revise the plan if necessary. Or scrap it entirely.”

  My temper rose in response to his inflection, and I squashed it with all my might. I matched his flat tone. “I didn’t realize our conversation constituted an order. And it’s a little late to second-guess me now. It’s done. I got the information. Do you want it or not?”

  Oops. That came out a little more aggressively than I’d intended.

  Kane fixed me with a hard stare.

  I was in no mood to appreciate intimidation tactics. I felt my chin jerk down in instant rage.

  Germain cleared his throat. “What did you find out?” he asked.

  I reluctantly broke eye contact with Kane and turned to Germain. “They asked Arthur Ketchum the same questions as they asked Kane. Who he was working for, how he got access to the network, where he’d hidden the key. I don’t know why they thought Ketchum was their intruder. I guess we’ll never know.”

  “Were those the only questions they were asking?” Kane inquired.

  When I turned back to him, he had his expressionless cop face in place, cool and detached. I tried to decide if that was good or bad as I answered.

  “That’s all they asked Ketchum. It turned out Richard Willis had a connection after all.”

  Kane and Germain both jerked forward. “What?” Kane snapped.

  “He ran a little computer business on the side, and Harchman had hired him to program the bimbos for the sims. When there was a breach in the network, he was their logical suspect because he’d been working with their systems. And he had a guilty conscience because he had been secretly sharing the porn videos from the sims on the internet. He didn’t know anything about the brainwave-driven network, though. Or if he did, he died hiding the fact. But I doubt it. He would have told them anything…” I swallowed the sickening memory.

  Kane sat back slowly. “I’ll pass that on to Webb and get him to look into Willis’s side business. What about the third captive?”

  Germain stiffened. “What third captive?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and sat back in the seat to hide my shudder. “There’s another captive. In there right now, being tortured.” I turned to Kane. “We have to get him out. We can’t just sit here.”

  “We’ll get him,” Kane said firmly. “As soon as you’re finished telling us what you found, I’ll call Stemp.”

  I gulped a breath of relief and sat up straighter. “This prisoner is different. I think he might be a secret agent or something.”

  Kane and Germain exchanged a hard glance, and a muscle jumped in Kane’s jaw. “What makes you say that?”

  “The others cried and screamed and begged. He said nothing. Nothing, no matter what…” A vision of the price he’d paid for his silence made my throat close up, and I sat in silence for a moment. When I could trust my voice again, I continued.

  “And they were asking him different questions. Something about an arms deal. It sounded like some weapons had gone missing in a shipment and they suspected he’d had something to do with it.”

  “You need to find him in the database as soon as possible,” Kane said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. I also discovered some interesting documents after I’d finished with the sims. I was just starting to read them when I got kicked out.”

  “What was in the documents?”

  “I’d barely gotten started, but it looked like some financial records. There were names and amounts. I’m wondering if it’s Fuzzy Bunny’s payroll records. So to speak.”

  Kane raised a thoughtful eyebrow. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

  “We have to do something,” I burst out. “Call Stemp. We have to shut them down.”

  He nodded and reached for his phone.

  Chapter 37

  I sat tensely while Kane talked. He finished his report, and the rhythm of the dialogue changed while he answered Stemp’s questions. I noticed he didn’t accord Stemp the ‘Sir’ he had given General Briggs. I wondered absently if it was just a military rank thing.

  As the conversation progressed, Kane’s responses became terse. His already massive shoulders seemed to swell, and his clear grey eyes darkened to iron.

  At last, the plastic case of the cellphone emitted a small crackle as his forearm muscles bunched, and he spoke in a hard voice. “No, I can’t agree. We can gain valuable intel by questioning their current prisoner ourselves, and Aydan has already ascertained that there are useful documents in the network. If we move in now, we can save a life and seize the documents-”

  Pause.

  “…No, not yet,” he growled. “…no, she wasn’t absolutely sure.”

  Pause.

  “He already tried, with no success…” His scowl darkened. “That will take too much time.”

  The phone creaked another protest under his grip. “Yes, understood,” he ground out. A flush climbed his neck, and a sharp snap signalled the surrender of the plastic under his fist. “Yes. Sir.”

  Kane pressed the disconnect button, his face rigid. He turned away to place the phone on the counter, and Germain and I exchanged a glance as we silently watched the rise and fall of his shoulders while he took a deep breath. When he turned back to us again, his face was impassive, his posture deceptively relaxed. Only the frosty grey of his eyes betrayed his emotions.

  “That didn’t sound like it went well,” I ventured.

  “It’s not the way I’d handle it,” Kane said evenly, “But we have our orders. You need to identify the prisoner and the torturer, and anybody else you saw in the network. You should get started on the database right away. Webb will try to hack into Harchman’s network to retrieve the documents you discovered.”

  “But…” I crushed my urge to yell and pound the table. “Spider already tried to get into the network. He couldn’t.” I kept my tone calm and reasonable. “And there’s no telling how long it will take me to find these people in the database, if I can find them at all.”

  Calm and reason fled despite my best efforts. “Goddammit, Stemp hasn’t got a fucking clue what’s happening to that poor guy! What the hell is his problem? Who the hell does he think he is, playing God…”

  I snapped my mouth shut at Germain’s touch on my arm. He glanced at the rippling muscles in Kane’s jaw before turning to me. “Aydan, let it go. Let’s just do the best we can here.”

  “Stemp won’t let us do the best we can! How long is he going to wait? We already know Spider can’t get into the network!”

  I fell silent as a thought hit me. “But I can,” I added.

  “No, you can’t,” Kane said flatly.

  I eyed him. “You know I can.” When he said nothing, I went on. “You have orders not
to take down the operation, right?”

  “Right.” His face gave away nothing.

  “I have orders to find out who those people are, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Do we have specific orders not to go back into the network?”

  “No,” Kane said reluctantly. “But Aydan, I do have specific orders to safeguard you with my life. And even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t put you back into danger. It’s not an option.”

  I lunged to my feet, unable to sit still any longer. “John, dammit, two innocent men are dead because of me. You were tortured because of me. This is all my fault.” I faced him, resisting the urge to stand on my tiptoes to meet him eye-to-eye. “I can stop this whole fucking mess. Let me do it!”

  He frowned. “Aydan, none of this is your fault. Those things happened because those people are criminals, not because of anything you did.”

  “They never would have known there was a network breach if I’d figured out how to be invisible sooner. I should have thought it through before we went in the first time. This is all my fault.”

  “You didn’t have time to think it through,” he argued. “If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s Stemp’s. Don’t beat yourself up over what you can’t change.”

  It was a cheap shot, but I was desperate. I knew which button to push. I looked him square in the eye. “Look who’s talking.”

  We locked eyes for a few seconds, and then he sighed and ran a hand over his face. “We can’t risk going back to that access point.”

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  “Because they’ll have realized there’s a gap in their camera perimeter now,” he explained patiently. “The guards will have reported where they found us. We can’t go back.”

  “Shit.”

  We sat in silence for a while. “We really need to see what’s in those documents,” I said at last. “If it’s a roll call of Fuzzy Bunny’s associates, it could give Stemp everything he needs to shut the whole operation down.”

  “Yes, but I think we’re out of luck,” Kane said. “We have no other potential access points left. We can’t get you close enough to the network. And even if we did, it’s too risky if you’re going to get kicked out of the network randomly.” He gave me a wry twist of his lips. “You attract too much attention when that happens.”

  “Couldn’t you just sit on me and keep a hand over my mouth or something?”

  He blew out a frustrated breath. “Aydan, I could barely get the watch off your wrist. I had to kneel on your arm.”

  “Oh.” I examined my left arm. “I wondered what those bruises were from.”

  “Short of tying you up and gagging you, there’s no way. And even then, I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Hmph.” I crossed my arms and sank my chin on my chest while I slouched in the corner of the dinette bench, thinking. There had to be a way to get inside the perimeter again.

  I sat up slowly. “I have an idea.”

  Germain’s eyes crinkled. “I could smell the smoke.”

  Kane leaned back to watch me cautiously. “What?”

  “If Harchman isn’t a threat, I could call him. Tell him it was a big misunderstanding. I could tell him…” I thought for a second. “I could tell him you escaped from the police and called me at the house and threatened me, and I panicked and ran away.” I grimaced. “I’m pretty sure he’ll give me another chance.”

  “Another chance to do what, exactly?” Kane asked slowly.

  “I could tell him I’m afraid to go home. Ask him to let me stay at the guest house. That would get me inside the perimeter…”

  “Absolutely not,” Kane said.

  “But…”

  “Aydan, just because Harchman likely isn’t working with Fuzzy Bunny, that doesn’t make it safe. They’re still there, and we don’t know who’s involved. You’d have to dodge both unknown enemies, and Harchman. I would hesitate to put a trained agent into a situation like that. It’s just too dangerous for you.”

  “Okay, but pretend for a minute that I am a trained agent,” I argued. “Would that change anything?”

  I realized I’d let my mouth get me in trouble again when I met intent gazes from both men. “I’m not,” I added hastily. “But if I was… Is it a bad plan altogether, or just a bad plan for me?”

  “This is a pointless discussion,” Kane said expressionlessly. “It’s a bad plan for you, and it’s not going to happen.”

  I subsided before I could dig myself in any deeper. I kicked my heel lightly against the bench while I thought. “Okay, what about this, then,” I said slowly.

  “What if… we found some pretext to go onto the grounds. Furnace inspection, gas company, carpet cleaning, I don’t know, whatever. Nobody has seen Carl before. He could drive a service vehicle in and leave it parked in the lot while he pretended to do whatever he was there for. If it was a truck or van, I could hide in the back and browse through the network to my heart’s content from the parking lot. Nobody would be any the wiser.”

  Germain frowned. “Unless you got kicked out of the network again. Then it would be hard to explain why I had a screaming woman locked in my truck. And you’d be identified instantly.”

  I sighed. “So tie me up and gag me.”

  “Aydan,” Kane said gently. “That’s insane. You’re claustrophobic.”

  “I’d go into the network right away. I wouldn’t even know I was tied up.”

  “And you wouldn’t know if you were discovered, either. It would be totally irresponsible for us to put you in that situation with nobody to guard you.”

  “So guard me. You can hide in the truck, too, with the signalling device.”

  The two men exchanged a look. “That could work,” Germain said reluctantly.

  Kane scrubbed his knuckles through his hair. “Maybe,” he growled. “I don’t like it. But I haven’t liked anything about this mission yet. All right. Let’s see if we can come up with something that will work.”

  Some discussion and several phone calls later, we had a plan. Kane leaned back in the dinette bench. “All right. Let’s head to the pickup point. Germain, you can drive the RV back to our original base camp, and I’ll follow in the gas company van. Once we’re settled at the base camp, we can go ahead with the next phase.”

  Germain nodded. “Let’s load up your bike.”

  When we arrived at the pickup point, Kane unbuckled his seatbelt. “Aydan, you’ll ride with me.”

  It wasn’t a request. I nodded and followed him out of the RV. I waved to Germain as he drove away, and Kane and I got into the van.

  He spoke as we cleared the city limits. “Aydan, what was that, back in the RV?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First of all, why did you deliberately create that record when you knew it was dangerous? After I’d warned you to be careful? And secondly, why were you so…” he paused, obviously searching for the right word, “Challenging? When I called you on it?”

  I tensed defensively, but his voice was even. If he was still angry, he was hiding it well.

  I struggled for a reasonable tone. “I didn’t mean to undermine your authority. I honestly thought it was the right thing to do at the time. There wasn’t significantly more risk than if I’d had files open and locked. You were okay with that risk when we discussed it up front.”

  “It’s not about my authority. The point is, we discussed the plan up front. If you deviate from our plans without telling me, I can’t protect you. When the team isn’t fully informed, that’s when team members die. For no good reason.”

  His voice was grim, and I realized I’d reawakened his old ghosts long before I took that cheap shot in the RV.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him sincerely. “I warned Stemp I wouldn’t be any damn good at this spy stuff. I told him I didn’t want to be put in a position where I could endanger you.”

  His face softened. “Aydan, I know you’re doing your best. And it’s not my own life I’m worried about. I’m just tr
ying to keep you and the rest of the team safe.”

  I sighed. “I know.”

  “So why did you get in my face?” he asked mildly

  I grimaced. “Sorry. It wasn’t anything to do with you.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “Apparently, I have some faulty wiring in my psyche somewhere. The instant I feel that somebody’s threatening me, I get furious. Usually far out of proportion to the threat.”

  “But I didn’t threaten you.”

  “You sounded threatening. I was on edge to start with. It was enough.”

  He glanced over. “That’s why you were ready to take on those two men in the campground.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “When I lose my temper like that, I’m ready to take on anybody.” I shrugged. “It’s saved my butt a couple of times. Most guys back down when they realize I’m serious.”

  He gave me a crooked grin. “You do look kind of… feral… when you get that angry. No offense.”

  I laughed. “None taken. I’ll admit I haven’t tried too hard to overcome that particular personality trait.” I sobered. “It’ll probably get me killed someday.”

  “Probably,” he agreed.

  “Thanks.”

  “Just saying.”

  When we reached our destination, Germain turned off at the base camp while Kane and I drove on to retrieve the Honda from its hiding place. Kane parked the van near the creek and held out a restraining hand when I reached for the door handle.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “We don’t know if we’re walking into an ambush here. I’m coming with you.”

  I suppressed a sigh. It was nice to be protected, but my ravelled nerves were begging for some silence and solitude. I said nothing and slid out of the van.

  As we strode toward the creek, Kane glanced over. “Are you feeling comfortable riding yet?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. It just took a little getting used to. It’s good to be back in the saddle.”

  “Good.” He hesitated. “Aydan… I just want you to know how much I appreciate all you’ve done. You’re a great partner. A trained agent couldn’t do better.” He gave the last sentence a meaningful intonation, which I chose to ignore.