How Spy I Am (23 page)

“Never mind,” I added.
“Forget I said that.”

She laid the remains
of her sandwich down as if it suddenly revolted her. “He did that
to you?” she asked softly.

“No, he just gave the
order. And I don’t think he intended it to go that far. Forget it.
You’re probably right, he’s just doing what he has to do.”

“And you’ll let him
kill you, too.” Her blue eyes clouded, and she reached across the
table to squeeze my hand. “Because you believe it’s the right thing
for our country. Oh, Aydan.”

I withdrew my hand
uncomfortably to reach for my tea. “Yeah, well, anyway. I wondered
what this whole project was all about, and it makes a lot more
sense now. Thanks.”

I leaned back in my
chair to sip my tea. A human turbocharger for their sims. So I
boosted their processing power, so what? It seemed like such a
small thing for Stemp to kill for.

No, that wasn’t it.
Stemp hadn’t killed… shit,
tried
to kill Robert because he
wanted me for the network. He’d given the order because Robert was
about to betray national security. And now, knowing Robert was
still alive, I had to admit I understood Stemp’s motivation. How
dangerous was a spy like Robert, on the loose with classified
knowledge in his head?

I hid my shudder and
stood. “Guess we’d better get back. Thanks again, Jack, I really
appreciate the crash course in Project Wetware.”

“You’re welcome.” She
beamed and rose to drop the remains of her sandwich in the garbage
on the way out. “Do you… would you like to do this again
sometime?”

“Sure.”

“How about
tomorrow?”

“…uh.”

“I’ve been dying for
some really spicy homemade curry, and my kids won’t touch it.
They’re with my ex this week, and I was going to make some for
lunch tomorrow. Do you like curry?”

My mouth watered.
“Homemade curry? Sold! What time do you want me?”

Her face lit up. “I’m
always up at the crack of dawn, so how about an early lunch? Say
eleven?”

“Perfect, I can hardly
wait.”

I had just settled
onto the sofa in my office when Kane appeared in the doorway,
accompanied by a whiff of shampoo. We all eyed him warily as he
seated himself, but it seemed the dangerous animal of the morning
was dormant, at least temporarily.

“Ready?” Spider asked
cautiously. His eyes flicked in Kane’s direction before returning
to me.

I shot a glance at
Kane and received a nod, his cop face impenetrable.

In the void of virtual
reality, I was faintly disappointed when he popped into existence
looking exactly as he did in real life. Whatever had driven him in
the morning seemed firmly under his control now. I was turning to
face him when the sim turned syrupy around me.

This time I knew
exactly what was happening when my avatar began its slow, forced
march down the virtual corridor.

The first shock of
terror morphed into pure red rage and I flung the full force of my
metaphoric inferno against the ghost’s control. An instant later I
was free, my shriek of defiance rising above the roar of the
flames.

“FUCK YOU,
KASPER!”

The sim dissolved into
agony before oblivion swallowed me whole.

I woke to the smell of
gunpowder and a babble of voices. Exclamations of dismay and
recrimination, the shuffle of moving chairs and feet, and
underpinning the chaos, a quavering male voice muttered a steady
litany, “Fuck-shit-fuck-shit-fuck-shit-fuck-shit-fuck-shit-…”

I pried an eye open
just as Stemp’s voice rose over the rest. “The situation is under
control. Everyone back to work.” I caught a glimpse of him as he
regarded the milling bodies with uncharacteristic frustration.
“Never mind,” he barked. “Everyone go home. Take the afternoon off
with pay.”

That got their
attention. The crowd began to thin out until only the young
researcher remained rocking on his knees beside a bullet hole in
the wall, his face as white as the paint while he chanted
vulgarities.

As I gradually
registered my surroundings, I realized Kane was holding my head and
shoulders in his lap, gently massaging my temples. I groaned, and
Stemp watched me emotionlessly while I struggled upright.

“I presume you’re all
right,” he said.

I followed his glance
to the small tranquilizer dart lying on the coffee table beside me
and sighed. “Fine.”

“Very well.” Stemp
shot a look around the room at Smith, Kane, Jack, and Spider. “Good
work, all of you.”

The young researcher’s
head jerked up. “Good work?” he squeaked. “He nearly shot me. I
nearly died. I was right on the other side of the wall…
Fuck-shit-fuck…”

Stemp crossed the room
in a couple of strides and seized his arm, pulling him to his feet.
“You’re fine,” he snapped. “Go home. Take the afternoon off.”

He propelled the young
man out the door and “Fuck-shit-fuck-shit…” receded down the
hall.

I blew out a long
breath and turned to meet Kane’s steady gaze. “So?” I inquired.

“A minor
misunderstanding,” he said expressionlessly.

“Uh-huh. What
happened?”

Kane seemed
disinclined to explain, so I turned to Spider’s white face.

“We, um…” Spider took
a deep breath and tried again. “We saw the ghost. In Jack’s
brainwave tracings. Jack yelled for me to shut down the sim and I
was doing that when you caught fire in the sim, and then Smith shot
your physical body with the trank so you wouldn’t suffer but Kane
got the wrong idea and thought he was trying to kill you so he
pulled his gun and Jack grabbed his arm and…” Spider stopped to
suck in a breath.

“For which I thank
her,” Smith interrupted with a half-bow in her direction.

“I’m glad I was in
time,” she said shakily. Her face was still bone-white and her
hands trembled on her instrumentation case.

“I want an
explanation,” Kane growled.

“Uh. Right, you
weren’t here the last time this happened,” I said. “There’s this
ghost-”

“I know about that,”
he interrupted. “Jack briefed me yesterday. I want to know why you
screamed ‘Kasper’. When Jack yelled the first time, it pulled me
out of the network. Then you caught fire in the sim screaming
Kasper’s name, and seconds later he pulled a gun. I was already
firing when I realized it was a trank. The only reason he’s still
alive is because Jack knocked my aim off.”

“Um… Who’s Kasper?”
Spider asked. When Kane and I both nodded toward Smith, Spider’s
eyes widened. “I, um, I thought your name was John,” he
mumbled.

Smith blew out an
impatient breath through his nose. “I changed it.”

“Wh… Why?”

Smith ignored Spider’s
question to glare at me. “Why did you yell my name?”

“Sorry…” I cast about
frantically for an explanation that didn’t include a non-dead
husband. “Um… it was just, um, a joke. Kind of.”

He eyed me narrowly,
and I tried again. “You know, like you say, ‘Einstein’ instead of
‘genius’? I said ‘Kasper’ instead of ‘ghost’… You know, ‘Fuck you,
ghost’? Sorry,” I added in the ensuing silence. “I wasn’t
thinking.”

“Clearly not,” Smith
snorted. “Why did you catch fire?”

“
I
didn’t. It
was just a metaphor. I was burning away the ghost’s control. It
worked, too. He’ll think twice before he tries that again.” I gave
Smith a hard look, but he showed no reaction.

Kane turned his
impassive face in my direction. “Are you sure you’re all
right?”

I hauled myself to my
feet. “Fine.”

“Go home, all of you,”
Stemp said. “Report for duty at the usual time Monday morning.”

I handed the network
key to Kane and was turning to head for the door when he spoke to
Honey.

“Come on,” he said
gently. “Let’s take your case back to the secured area, and then
I’ll buy you a coffee.”

I left without waiting
to hear her reply.

When I reached the
lobby, a flash of red light through the front doors made me peek
out to see the tail end of a departing ambulance.

“What happened?” I
asked the guard when I trailed over to the security wicket to turn
in my fob.

He dropped the
sign-out sheet in the turntable and spun it around for me to sign.
“That old researcher that looks like Santa Claus had a heart attack
or something down in the secured area.”

My fingers clenched
the pen. “Sam Kraus? Is he…”

“I think he’ll be
okay. He was sitting up and talking by the time they brought him
up.”

“Oh.” I let out the
breath I’d been holding. “Thank God. Maybe I’ll swing by the
hospital later and see him.”

The sun was setting by
the time I got out of the car to let myself in my gate. I drew in a
long breath of fresh country air and leaned on the car for a few
minutes, watching the sliver of red sun diminishing behind my hill
and letting the tension ease out of my shoulders.

I’d finally had a
chance to visit my clients, and several hours of bookkeeping had
soothed my frazzled nerves. I drew another deep breath and blew it
out slowly, comforting myself with the memory of Sam’s rosy cheeks
and brisk step when he’d left the hospital half an hour ago. Thank
God it had only been a dizzy spell, not a heart attack.

When the sun vanished
completely, I parked the car in the garage and made for the house,
my mind already returning to the events at Sirius and wondering
once more if I should report Robert.

When I caught myself
pacing restlessly through the house again, I jerked to a halt and
dealt my long-suffering sofa a couple of irresolute kicks. Dammit,
this waiting game was killing me. Why the hell didn’t Robert
contact me?

I blew out a breath of
irritation and picked up the phone. I needed a distraction. Maybe I
could convince Hellhound to come over now that Kane and I were
definitely dead in the water.

His cell phone rang a
couple of times before his familiar rasp tickled my ear. “Hey,
darlin’.”

“Hi, Arnie. What are
you up to?”

“Tryin’ to convince
the dumbass cat that suckin’ up ain’t gonna work. I ain’t gonna
give him any more treats.”

Shit, he’d gone back
to Calgary. So much for my hopes for the evening.

“How’s that working
for you?”

His gravelly chuckle
floated out of the speaker. “Not so good. Guess I know which one of
us is really the dumbass.”

“You’re such a soft
touch. Big bad biker, my ass.” He laughed, and I continued,
“Speaking of my ass… any chance you’ll be up here again in the next
little while?”

“Not for a while. I
got pretty behind with my stuff here last week. I’ll call ya next
time I’m up.”

“Okay, I’ll do the
same if I’m down there. Take care.”

“You, too,
darlin’.”

I hung up and vented a
long growl before I drifted into the office to fire up the
computer. I’d finished a couple of crosswords and was beginning to
fidget again when I saw a tiny white square blinking in the lower
right corner of the computer screen.

This wasn’t the first
time I’d noticed it, and I’d always dismissed it as an anomaly in
my video display. Absently wondering what the hell caused it, I
watched it blink on and off in a steady rhythm.

Wait a minute.

A rush of excitement
accompanied my sudden suspicion. Could it be…?

It took me two tries
to centre the mouse cursor over the tiny box while my hand shook. I
clicked on it, but nothing happened.

Right-click.

Nothing.

Double-click.

Nothing.

Shift-click.

Nothing.

I blew out a breath.
You know you’re desperate when you try to read meaning into a video
malfunction. I was about to shut the computer down when nagging
doubt made me try again.

Control-click.

Nothing.

Alt-Shift-click.

My lungs constricted
when a monochrome text window bloomed onto my screen. The flashing
cursor zipped across the first line, trailing text behind it.

“Are you safe?”

My heart thudded
against my ribs, shaking my hands so badly I had to steady them on
the desk to type the three letters. “Yes.”

“Meet 23:00.”

I gulped, trying to
summon up some moisture in my dry mouth, and typed again.
“Where?”

“The usual,
confirm.”

I watched my trembling
fingers move across the keyboard. “Confirmed.”

The text window
blinked out of existence and I stared blindly at my screen, my
pulse thundering in my ears.

Robert was alive. He
wanted to see me.

What should I do?

And where the hell was
“the usual”?

I sprang to my feet
and jittered from foot to foot, still staring at the screen.
Nothing else appeared, and I turned to hurry to my bedroom,
caroming off the door frame with a curse.

A glance at my watch
informed me I had just under three hours to get wherever I needed
to be. I grabbed my waist pouch, then stood staring at my wide-eyed
reflection in the mirror.

‘The usual’.
Where…?

Oh, of course. I
sucked in a deep breath. Robert and I used to have our favourite
bench in Carburn Park, overlooking the river where we could watch
the ducks. That had to be it.

Carburn Park. In
Calgary.

Shit!

It would take about
two hours to drive to Calgary. And I needed an insurance
policy.

Back at my computer, I
set up a time-delayed email message, “Get info where I ran through
the spider web.” Kane would understand our old code
immediately.

Then I created a new
text file and typed furiously, recording everything I’d discovered
before copying the finished file onto my little USB thumb drive. I
deleted the original from my computer using my secure erase program
and hesitated, wondering how secure it really was. Somebody like
Spider could undoubtedly still retrieve it.