Leverage (Sunken City Capers Book 3)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  “Quiet!” the guard behind me yells.

  “He’s not very nice, is he?” I ask Jack the Guard, and smile at him conspiratorially.

  Jack the Guard shakes his head no almost doggedly.

  The guard behind me lets the door shut behind him. “Damn it, Collins,” the man says exasperatedly. “Get behind me.”

  Jack-the-Guard Collins must not be their highest paid recruit. Too bad he couldn’t have been the one to find me in the basement.

  Two minutes to the fire alarm.

  “Which way?” I ask sweetly. “And please don’t shoot me. Daddy’s a lawyer, and I hate when he gets on the war path—”

  “Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut,” the original guard says.

  I keep my hands where they can see them and turn so he can see me bite my lips. I don’t move, since I don’t know which way to go, keeping a slow count in my head.

  “Left,” the guard says.

  Time is dwindling. They haven’t moved to cuff me or demand I remove my digi-scrambler yet. Two things, I’m sure, that will surely be rectified soon when I reach the interrogation room.

  I turn to my right.

  “Other left!” the guard screams.

  One minute thirty seconds.

  Damn it. If only I can get Jack-the-Guard to try and cuff me, I might be able to use him as a body shield and a distraction when the alarm sounds.

  As I turn down the hallway, a couple of agents are waiting for me. One is a man with long dirty-blond hair in a ponytail, wide shoulders and a stiff potbelly—kinda gross looking, in a hipster-doesn’t-wash-himself kind of way. The Indian woman agent with him looks all too familiar. Fortunately, she doesn’t give a flicker of recognition.

  Too many people are getting a good look at my face, I suddenly panic. They might not have a digital image, which is about a thousand times worse than a hand drawing, but they still might be able to recreate it.

  I imagine taking a deep breath. One problem at a time.

  One minute to the fire alarm.

  “Vikki Gilbert,” the hipster-looking agent says, “What an odd place to meet, eh?” He stays several paces ahead of me, walking backward, while the Indian woman agent walks sideways, keeping an eye on me and the way ahead.

  “Considering that I’m supposed to be dead? Yeah, I’d say that,” I answer him.

  The hipster agent opens his mouth to answer, when a strobing bright light starts flashing, followed by a stiff, staccato, piercing fire alarm. One minute early—apparently, Puo can’t do math.

  I stop and look around carefully, and then back at the hipster agent.

  He never takes his eyes off of me.

  The other agent looks between the hipster agent and the guards.

  The hipster agent says to me and the guards behind me, “Proceed to the interrogation room.”

  “Are you sure that’s safe?” I ask innocently.

  “Proceed to the interrogation room,” he repeats.

  “Pretty sure we’re supposed to evacuate,” I say. “I’d rather not get trapped in a fire, or get burned, or have smoke inhalation problems—”

  “Proceed to the interrogation room,” he commands in a steely voice.

  Well, balls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE INTERROGATION room isn’t far down the hallway. The hipster agent lets me into the small interrogation room with a two-way mirror and a cliché plain metal desk and chairs facing each other. The fire alarm is cheerfully echoing off the plain, acoustically tiled walls inside the room.

  “Take a seat,” he says through the racket.

  The Indian woman agent continues walking down the hallway, obviously headed to the other side of the two-way mirror to watch the outputs of all the sensors they’ll have pointed at me. The guards mill about outside in the hallway, clearly unsure what to do with themselves.

  I walk into the room and sit on the floor to the left of the door.

  “Sit in the chair.” The hipster agent points at the chair with the back to the door and facing the two-way mirror.

  “You really should be more specific,” I say and stand up slowly. They still haven’t cuffed me or removed my digi-scrambler, which I’m sure is causing all kinds of havoc with any sensors pointing at me. I need to draw things out to give myself time to think, without pushing them too far.

  I notice a chill in the air as I stand, as if this room is normally empty. It smells of the hipster’s several-hours-old cheap patchouli oil. I already can’t wait to get the hell out of here.

  I try opening the door behind me—locked. Hipster agent watches me, but doesn’t comment.

  Hmm ... two people locked in a room, how to get out? Hipster agent does have a weapon on him. And I’m still not cuffed—what’s going on there?

  “Think you can turn that off?” I ask, pointing at the strobing fire alarm flashing in the room.

  “It’ll sort itself out, I’m sure,” he says dryly.

  “Well,” I say, as I sit down in the cold metal chair, “I really don’t want to burn to death. So you might want to be sure of that.” There should be one nasty fire going in the high-security room.

  The Indian woman’s voice comes in over the comms, “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Hipster agent raises his hand to wait, while never taking his eyes off of me. “You’ll have noticed,” he says, lowering his hand, “we have not placed you under arrest—”

  Yeah, that fact hasn’t escaped me. But then, you have no evidence of any wrong doing that I know of. Just suspicious circumstances.

  “—or removed your digi-scramble—”

  “I should hope not,” I interrupt. “I have assurances from the Assistant Commissioner that I am allowed to have it.”

  “Quite,” the hipster agent says. He sets his hands on the table, his fingers interlocked with each other. “I’ve permitted these allowances—” He unlocks his fingers and gestures with his right hand. “—in the hopes that you might be forthcoming about certain things.”

  I cock an eyebrow at him. What is this about?

  “As you say,” he says slowly, “you’re supposed to be dead. And yet, here you are. I don’t think you faked your own death. Why, then, would you stroll into Mounties’ headquarters, eh?”

  When he pauses for a response, I say, “Why indeed?” The fire alarm is continuing to drive an ice pick into my ear at regular intervals.

  “No,” he says, “I thought not. Agent Myers alerted me before she collected you. But she never brought you to me. And then you were found without your escort in a restricted area, one of our agents has been attacked, and now Myers is missing.”

  “Strange,” I say and start to explain, “Myers got called away. She gave me directions and—”

  He waves me off. “Save it. Not interested. What I am interested in, first, is Myers’s safety.” He stops and waits for a response.

  “She was fine,” I answer cryptically, “the last time I saw her, and I have no reason to suspect that’s changed.” Hmm ... hope the building doesn’t catch on fire.

  He stares hard at me while bright white flashes pierce the room and the shrill alarm fills the silence. When he’s apparently made a decision, he says, “The second thing I’m interested in, is why you’re supposed to be dead.”

  We stare at each other for a few seconds before I say, “Me, too.”

  “And I suppose that’s why you were down in the basement rooting around?” he asks.

  “I was lost,” I maintain.

  “Of course you were,” he says. “But do you want to know what I think?”

  I make no response, but he continues anyway, “I think Nix is involved. And I think Nix wants you dead.”

  That arrests my attention. Did Myers tell him what I told her? When would she have had the chance?

  He continues to stare intently at me, trying to reach through my skull and read my mind. “What do you think of that?”

  I answer carefully, “It’s certainly an interesting theory.”

&n
bsp; He nods to himself. “And I think we, the Mounties, have a rat. And you know that, which is why you’re so damn unhelpful and hiding behind a digi-scrambler.”

  Tension swirls in the air, wraps around the alarm sounding, beating into a tightening coil. An urge to flee nearly overwhelms me.

  “Do you know who it is?” he asks me.

  No. I stare at him. But something about this is very wrong, firing off all kinds of internal alarms. I need to get the hell out of here.

  “No?” he prods again.

  I couldn’t answer him if I wanted to.

  “Well,” he says slowly and sits up. “Here’s what I don’t understand. Why would Deona Nix want to kill you? So badly, apparently, that she was willing to kill eighteen other people in a very public fashion that she knew would elicit public outrage and a strong government response? Nix is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”

  When I don’t answer, he continues, “Nix doesn’t act impulsively, or harass the general public—bad for business. So why go after you?”

  I continue to stare at him. We’re sitting across from each other. His gun is on his right hip, and the desk doesn’t look like it’s bolted to the floor.

  “Vikki Gilbert,” he says, “is— Or should I say was?—an upstanding American citizen who owns her own security company. By all appearances, Nix hasn’t had anything to do with you. So there are two possibilities here—” He pauses to watch me.

  I shift my legs under me and square my hips to him.

  “Either you are not Vikki Gilbert, or you are who you say you are and Nix has hired you to do some work for her for some reason, and the two of you have had a disagreement of some kind.”

  Enough time has passed that the EMP should have long fired and combusted, causing the room alarm to sound. All the drives that are pocketed on me are stiff—the corner of the one on my upper left is digging into the underside of my boob.

  “But then,” the hipster agent continues—typical man, won’t shut up, “here you are. You came here of your own volition, and now one of our agents is missing, another has been knocked out—expertly disabled I might add—and the very room we use to investigate Nix is continuing to malfunction—”

  The Indian woman agent breaks in over the intercom, “The room alarm is going off again.”

  That’s the least of your problems.

  “Is it?” the hipster agent looks at me intrigued. “What the hell are you up to?”

  I say in a confused and scared voice, “I would like a representative of the U.S. Consulate to be here for this interview.”

  The hipster agent actually looks angry. Legally, they have to respond to that request. It’s one of the nice things about the authorities. They have rules they’re bound to—makes them easy to anticipate.

  I continue, “That’s quite a tale you just told, and I have no intention—”

  He slams both his hands palms down on the table with a great smack! “We will contact your consulate,” he says without looking at me. He turns in his chair briefly toward the two-way mirror. He looks back at me and gives me a fake smile. “I had hoped to keep them out of this. And I thought you would have, too.” He keeps his hands on the table in front of him.

  Now, that’s a loaded statement that I can’t pass up. “And why is that?”

  He exhales and says, “There was this interesting case in Atlanta back in May—”

  Oh, fuck. My legs under me tense.

  “—A turncoat provided a lot of insider information that was shared with us. Nothing definitive, nothing digital. But descriptions. Abilities. Areas of expertise.” We lock eyes.

  A thousand curses for that corpse-fucking bastard Paranoid Pete.

  “I had hoped,” the hipster agent says, “that someone with those ... attributes, might be able to help flush a rat.”

  Fuck, no. Anything’s better than getting tangled up with the authorities. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “I want my representation.”

  There’s nothing to lose at this point. As soon as hipster agent appears the slightest bit distracted, I’m going to shove this table so hard into his gut, he won’t be able to breathe while I grab his gun and use him as a bargaining chip.

  Right as hipster agent is about to say something, a knock on the door behind me sounds.

  I turn around and see a fireman opening the door. “Everyone out!” he shouts through his gas mask. The guards from before are already gone.

  I recognize those piercing blue eyes through the gas mask and those wide shoulders. Hi ya, Winn. Relief floods me.

  Not having to be told twice, I bound up and make for the door.

  “Freeze!” the hipster agent struggles to stand up and retrieve his gun. His chair falls backward from his awkward motion and cracks against the linoleum floor.

  I’m out the door before the hipster agent can draw his weapon completely. As I slam the door shut behind me, locking him in, I yell into the room, “Myers is safe in one of the women’s second-floor bathrooms.” I don’t know how to describe it any better than that.

  Winn starts heading in the direction the other agent had gone. I grab him by the upper arm, his canvas jacket is rough under my grip. “This way,” I say and hurry in the opposite direction.

  The other agent has to be running over to intercept.

  I push Winn in front me, but find myself reluctant to let go of his arm. The muscle underneath the fireman outfit is comforting—mildly distracting. Well, the muscle with the uniform is distracting, but a part of me is rather hopeful he’ll hang on to the uniform. “You lead,” I order. “And run.”

  No one is going to stop a fireman running through a building with a fire alarm still going off.

  Winn sprints ahead of me, while I keep up and shout directions at him. I’m not precisely clear where I am, but I have a good general sense, and signs that say “exit” are helpful.

  We don’t pass anyone in the third floor hallway or stairwells—I think most of the building has already filed out into the cold with the same rote enthusiasm as an elementary school fire drill.

  The hard drives slap against my body, jostling inside my coat as we run out onto the first floor. There’s a smattering of people here; they watch and make way for Winn.

  “Move out of the way,” Winn calls out, “This woman needs medical attention. Move!”

  We easily make our way through the thinning crowd streaming out the security checkpoint. All kinds of alarms are sounding as people flow through the security gates without divorcing themselves from electronic gadgets.

  Either the other agent got trapped in her own observation room or she panicked and who knows what she did. Either way, Winn and I burst outside.

  The frigid air has never felt so welcome.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ONCE WE’RE OUTSIDE it’s easy to disappear. And Winn does keep that fireman’s uniform. He wears it all the way back to the floating house.

  I watch Winn disappear down the upstairs hallway into his room to change. I still haven’t sorted out what to do about Winn yet, but knowing the uniform’s there adds some ... stupid distractions.

  I pivot from the hallway and into Puo’s room. “I brought you some— Ugh!” It stinks! “You need to do laundry! And crack a window!” Damn, how and when did it get this bad!

  Puo swivels in his chair. “Heeyyy!” he whines defensively.

  “What’s with you?” I ask. “You don’t usually have this ...” I wave my hand around while searching for an inoffensive term “... issue.”

  Puo screws up his mouth while considering me.

  “Seriously,” I say, “laundry. Now. And why do I even have to tell you this?”

  I skip down to my room and get a laundry basket and skip back. Puo and I gather up his clothes in short order.

  I nearly gag when I find a crusty pair of jeans, sliced down the side, and a pale-green shirt similarly sliced. “Here’s the problem,” I say.

  Winn walks into Puo’s r
oom and makes an eww face, but doesn’t say anything.

  To Puo I say, “Can we just throw these out—?”

  “No,” Puo answers quickly.

  “But they’re ruined,” I say.

  “No,” Puo insists.

  I stare at Puo, trying to understand. “Are these what you were wearing in the English Bay?” I ask. The clothes they rescued Puo in and had to cut off to deal with his coronary spasm.

  Puo nods once.

  “Why do you want them?” I ask.

  “I just do, Isa,” Puo snaps at me. “I know it’s not logical, but ... I just do.”

  “Okay,” I say uncertainly. I look at Winn, and he gives me the slightest shrug. He doesn’t understand either.

  “Can we wash them?” I ask more cautiously. These really, really stink.

  Puo squirms, and eventually says, “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

  Oh, boy. A life filled with unpleasant odors fills my head. This needs to be dealt with.

  “What if,” Winn asks, “we put them in some sealed plastic bags? Then you have them unblemished, and the bags lock in the ... freshness.”

  Puo nods that this would be acceptable.

  I drop the sliced clothes on top of the laundry basket, hold my nose away from it and hand it to Winn. “Put those in a bag, and clean the rest.”

  Winn takes the basket and can’t help himself from saying, “Whoa.”

  Whoa indeed.

  Winn disappears out into the hallway, trailing the stink with him. Already it’s smelling better in here.

  I turn back to Puo. “What was that—?” about, I meant to ask before Puo interrupts me, trying to change the subject.

  “So what’d you bring me?” Puo asks, studiously ignoring the previous exchange and not making eye contact.

  I fetch the nine drives from around my coat and other hidey-holes. “Some insurance.”

  “Fancy,” Puo says but without any mirth. He walks over and takes the drives from me and sits back at his computer.

  I stay where I am and ask doggedly, “What is going on?”