Dangerously Placed (21 page)

There was no answer.

‘Try three,' I whispered.

Sky pressed the buzzer. There was a pause.

‘Yes?' crackled a voice from the speaker.

‘Oh, hi! I've got a delivery for a Christina Wilkinson?' said Sky brightly.

Another pause.

‘She's looking out the window,' whispered Budi.

Sky took a step back and looked up at the window, waving and brandishing the roses in front of her face.

‘I'm not expecting any deliveries,' said the intercom voice.

‘Oh! Must be a secret admirer, then!' Sky giggled. Ki raised an eyebrow at me, and I nodded. Who knew Sky would be such a good actor?

‘I'm sorry, but I think you must have the wrong address,' said the voice.

‘Oh, no!' Sky sounded like someone had just cancelled her birthday. ‘But it definitely says flat 3, 26 Kroeber Street. And I have five other deliveries this afternoon! Could you please take a look at them? Maybe the message will say who it's from. It's just, well …' She started to sound on the verge of tears. ‘If I don't get a successful delivery, it comes out of my pay. And these are reeeeally expensive!'

‘Ugh.' There was a moment's silence, then: ‘All right. Bring them up if you must.'

The security gate swung open. Sky began to walk slowly towards the foyer.

‘She's turning away …' said Budi. ‘Okay, now!'

Budi and I scuttled through the gate and into the foyer, reaching the stairs just as Sky started up them. We followed her to the top as quietly as we could. There was a walkway, open to the air like a balcony, leading from the stairwell to the apartment doors. With a glance back at us, Sky followed the next part of the plan, tugging a single red rose from the bouquet and hiding it behind her back. The door opened and we heard Christina say, ‘Well?'

‘Can I take these in for you? I have to get my tablet out of my pocket for you to sign for them,' Sky said. As she stepped through the door, she let the flower drop quietly to the ground. The door creaked back into place behind her, but there was no click – the fallen
rose poked out onto the doorstep, preventing the door from locking. Budi and I crept closer and I pressed my ear gently against the door.

‘Just put them down over there, please,' we heard Christina say. ‘I'm in a bit of a hurry.'

At that moment, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I gave Budi a triumphant smile. It was Ki's signal that she'd intercepted the taxi. Sure enough, a moment later there was the sound of a car speeding away.

‘What the …' exclaimed Christina, at the same time as Sky said, ‘Well, I'd better be going.'

‘I don't think so,' said Christina, and suddenly her voice was hard and cold. Our cover had been blown. ‘You're not going anywhere.'

‘I don't understand …' began Sky. The door jerked open a fraction, then was slammed shut. The rose crushed in the frame, but not enough to let the lock engage. Without a second's hesitation, Budi and I threw ourselves against the door.

We crashed into the room, almost falling over Sky. Christina backed away with a gasp. Without the sunglasses, I could see the fear in her wide, dark eyes and the bluish stains of fatigue under them.

‘
You?
' she breathed, though I couldn't tell if she meant me or Budi.

‘It's over, Christina,' said Budi, taking a step towards her, but she leapt back. There were two doors to our right. She ran through the furthest one. We heard the slam of a second door a moment later.

I helped Sky to her feet. She brushed herself down, nodding to show me she was okay.

‘It's no use hiding, Christina,' called Budi, peering cautiously around the open door Christina had run through. ‘And if you're thinking of escaping through the window, I should tell you that we have someone watching the front entrance, and the police will be here any minute.'

We heard nothing for a few seconds, then shuffling sounds.

‘I'll come out if all of you stay back.'

Budi looked at me. I shrugged.

‘We're not going to hurt you, Christina,' Budi began, but she interrupted.

‘No!' There was a note of hysteria in her voice. ‘I don't want anyone near me! Go and stand by the front door, all of you!'

‘All right!' Budi came back to us. ‘We're all by the front door now. Come out slowly, and make sure we can see your hands.'

Haltingly, Christina stepped out into view, glanced around at us and stood, framed in the window we'd watched her from outside, her eyes downcast and her hands held high.

‘You see?' said Budi. ‘We're over here, you're over there – there's no reason for anyone to do anything stupid. We'll just wait here calmly until the police arrive, okay?'

Christina's lips tightened.

‘I don't seem to have any other choice, do I?'

There was silence for a moment while we all listened for the sound of police cars drawing up, but there was nothing to be heard.

‘Where are those guys?' muttered Sky.

‘They'll be here,' I whispered back. ‘They have to be close by now …'

‘Can I ask you something?' said Christina suddenly.

Budi nodded.

‘Sure.'

‘How did you … know?' The dark eyes remained fixed on the ground, as if she couldn't bear to look at us. ‘That it was me, I mean.'

‘It was me who opened the Mainframe Room door after you killed Mr Grody,' I said. ‘When I saw you at the funeral, I realised you were the one who'd attacked me, and when Budi recognised you, I remembered seeing you in the Mainframe Room and it all made sense.'

‘Oh.' Christina's gaze flicked up, then down again. ‘I hated having to hurt you, you know.'

Sky gave a snort of disbelief.

‘Really?' I said, watching Christina carefully, remembering how dangerous she could be. ‘For someone who hated it, you did a pretty thorough job.'

Christina shook her head.

‘I know it's hard for you to believe me, but I really didn't want to. It was the only way I could see to stop you delving further into what had happened to Grody. I never intended to do you any serious harm. I thought
what I did would be enough to scare you away from Simulcorp Marketing for good.'

So Ki had been right about that.

‘You weren't far off,' I told her.

‘I see you're a little tougher than the students we had in when I worked for Simulcorp,' she said, with a brief smile. ‘I really am sorry for what I did to you, though.'

‘And Pierce?' asked Budi, softly. ‘Are you sorry for what you did to him?'

Christina suddenly transformed. Her lips drew back into a ghastly snarl and her eyes flashed with rage, and for a moment her face looked almost like the skull she'd worn when she attacked me in AU-3.

‘
No
,' she rasped. Then, just as quickly as it had come, her rage seemed to pass. She blinked a few times, as one coming out of a trance. ‘No, Budi,' she repeated, in a calmer voice. ‘I'm not.'

Budi looked shocked, but he glanced at me and I could tell what he was thinking: we should keep her talking until the police arrived. I nodded. The less chance she had to think about trying to escape or hurt us, the better.

‘So you remember me, then?' asked Budi.

‘Of course,' said Christina. ‘There are many things I've tried to forget about my time at Simulcorp, but you're not one of them, Budi.' Her lips curled. ‘I remember thinking the CEO had done well to recruit you. Better than some of his other choices, I must say.'

‘You mean Pierce?'

She nodded.

‘Tell us,' said Budi quietly. ‘Tell us why you killed him, Christina.'

Christina gave a harsh laugh.

‘You wouldn't understand.'

‘I think I do,' I said. ‘Mr Grody was the man they never found, wasn't he? The one you were with in the Mainframe Room. The one they fired you over.'

Her head snapped up, startled.

‘Yes! How did you know that? I never told anyone!'

‘I didn't know for certain. But I knew that Mr Grody was using a second suit to pose as another employee. When I thought about what had happened to you, I realised that he might have done it before.'

‘I see.' Christina studied her hands, seeming to weigh up what I'd said. ‘Well, you're right – he did. Evidently you know that I once worked at Virk. What Budi may not have told you,' she went on, ‘is that at that time there was no Head of Division. In fact, the situation was much as it is now – there were two of us who were considered senior staff, just as Budi and Inge are at the moment. Oh, yes, I've kept an eye on you all!' She chuckled at Budi's gasp of surprise. ‘Back then, when Virk was very new, we were still grappling with appropriate roles and job descriptions for it all. Two of us were obvious contenders for the position of Head of Division, which rumour had it the CEO would bestow on one of us after a trial period of six months. Those two were myself and Pierce Grody.'

She sighed.

‘Of course, I thought I was the smarter of the two. I thought I had business sense – never let my guard down around the competition, never shared my ideas with anyone. Especially not Pierce. Anyone could see he was as hungry for the top spot as I was, and I had an idea that was going to blow him out of the water.

‘And then one day someone new showed up in the office. He called himself Jamie. He was handsome, attentive … and best of all, no threat to me. He told me he was a junior in CGI. I had no reason to doubt that; the CGI guys lived in their own little world, and hardly ever came out to socialise.' Christina smiled bitterly. ‘It never struck me that I only ever saw him when no one else was around. Before long, Jamie and I had become very close. We'd never met in realspace, but there was nothing strange about that, either – he said he lived in the States. He told me his plans for the future: sweet, unsophisticated dreams of seeing the world, buying a house, raising a family. In return I told him a little about my ideas.' Her face hardened. ‘Like a fool, I trusted him – believed him when he admired my intellect and pretended not to understand the concepts I was dealing with. Believed him when he said that he was falling in love with me.'

I watched her expression carefully, still conscious that she was dangerous and might try to run or attack us at any moment. But she wasn't even looking at us. She seemed barely aware we were still there.

‘And then we were caught together in the Mainframe Room. I was embarrassed, of course, but Jamie – Jamie seemed terrified. He ran down the hallway and was out of the main entry before anyone could stop him. I tried to laugh it off, but when every single person in the office denied ever having seen him before, the joke became a nightmare. There was an investigation; the CEO and the members of the Board demanded that I tell them everything I knew about the man they considered an industrial spy. But I didn't tell them anything.' Her dark eyes took on a haunted look. ‘I wanted to protect Jamie. He'd said he loved me – I thought that was more important than anything in the world. So I lost my job, my reputation, and any chance of working in the industry again.

‘For weeks I sat around in a daze, sure that Jamie would own up, or at least try to contact me. When he didn't, I tried to contact him, but there was no one by his name at the address he'd given me, and no record of anyone fitting his description at the companies he'd claimed to have worked for. I couldn't work it out … until one day I saw a rumour on a marketing site that Pierce Grody was in negotiations with Avatar Robotics. Then it all fell into place.

‘It was my idea, the one Pierce used to win the Avatar contract: portable virtual projectors, complete with audio visual sensors so the holographic representations could respond to customers' actions and commands.' Christina raised her chin, and for a moment she was
once more the haughty, confident woman I'd seen at the funeral. ‘Oh, Pierce had some technical skills, I'll grant you that, but he'd never been able to empathise with public fears and perceptions. He knew enough to be able to develop my concepts once he'd stolen them, but he could
never
have come up with something like that on his own.' Her voice dropped to a hiss. ‘He knew he could never best me in a fair competition, so he became Jamie and won by treachery instead.'

‘But if you knew this, why didn't you tell anyone?' asked Budi.

‘Don't you think I tried?' demanded Christina angrily. ‘No one would speak to me! I tried to talk to the CEO, but he thought my explanations were a cheap attempt to crawl back into his good graces. I tried calling Pierce at work, at home, but of course he wouldn't talk to me at all. Finally I heard – only three weeks ago – that the negotiations were all but finalised with Avatar. I was desperate. I took to watching Pierce at AU-2, trying to find a time to catch him in realspace, but he was strangely stealthy about his movements – always wary when he went from his house to the Virk Room, always looking over his shoulder.'

‘Afraid someone would realise his Virk projection and the real Grody weren't leaving the office at the same times, and discover that he was spending time being Yasuo as well,' I murmured.

Christina nodded. ‘I didn't know why he was doing it, but I did realise that the only time I could be sure of
making him listen to me was when he was in his Virk Room. So on that Tuesday I was waiting outside AU-2 when he logged in after lunch.

‘My plan was simple, at first. I would wait until I saw the outer door open and force my way in. I knew that the scanners would detect an unauthorised entry and the building would go into lockdown, but that didn't matter. All I wanted was a few minutes alone with him to have a little discussion.'

‘I wouldn't call what happened a “little discussion”,' I said, frowning as I remembered the staring figure lying still on the office floor. ‘Surely you don't expect us to believe that what you did to Mr Grody was an accident?'