How Spy I Am (28 page)

He sighed and leaned
across the table, speaking softly. “You know I have to.”

“Not when there’s
nobody listening.”

“It’s your cover
identity. You need to respond to it as if it was your own
name.”

I leaned forward to
match his quiet tones. “Yeah, but if it comes down to a
life-or-death situation, I hope you’ll yell something more useful
than my name. Like ‘Duck!’ or ‘Run!’ or something.”

The corner of his
mouth quirked up in a not-very-humorous smile. “Very funny.”

“I’m not trying to be
funny.”

He regarded me for a
few moments, his cop face firmly in place. “Look,” he said finally.
“We need to be able to work together for the next few days. Can we
just put aside our differences and do that?”

I forked a fried
potato with violent intent. “I don’t have any quarrel with you.
You’re the one who’s been going all psycho-boyfriend on me. Treat
me like you usually do, and everything will be fine.”

Kane stiffened. “I
apologize for my unprofessional behaviour,” he said, the words
clipped off as if by razor-sharp shears. “You can be assured it
won’t happen again.”

I briefly considered
whether to stick my fork in his eye or my own before deciding
neither was a viable option. I settled for a weary sigh.

“See, that’s exactly
what I mean. I can’t say or do anything without you taking it the
wrong way. I just want to go back to the way we were.”

He let out a long sigh
of his own, scrubbing his hand over the lines of fatigue on his
face. When he met my eyes, the cop face was gone.

“I don’t know if I can
do that,” he said quietly.

“You’re a spy. Just
fake it for a few days.”

He winced. “You really
know how to hurt a guy, don’t you?”

I reached across to
touch his hand. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Not earlier, and not
now.” When he looked down at my hand, I snatched it back,
remembering his reaction in the sim. “Sorry,” I added.

Kane reached across to
enclose my hand gently in his. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “We really
need to talk.”

He must have read my
impulse to leap up from the table and run screaming, because he
released my hand and added, “Later, when we’re not so tired and we
have time. I want to check into our motel and wash up, and then we
have to get to the site.”

I drew in a
surreptitious breath of relief when he signalled the waitress for
the bill. After he’d handed over his credit card, he gave me a
half-smile. “How would it be if I take you out for a nice dinner
tonight? You can have a glass of wine and relax before…”

He trailed off.

“Before you start
interrogating me,” I finished. “Yeah, sure, you’re Mr. Generous
when you’re on the department expense account.”

For a moment I thought
I’d really put my foot in it, but then his sexy laugh lines
crinkled in his first real smile.

“Just for that, I’ll
take you out for a fast-food burger,” he growled.

“No, please, not
that!” I begged in a fair approximation of abject terror. “I’ll
talk! I’ll talk!”

He chuckled. “That’s
more like it.”

Five minutes in the
motel room was all it took. I grabbed my suitcase and marched out
to pound on the door to Kane’s room.

He jerked it open to
frown down at me, and I nearly lost my train of thought at the
sight of all his shirtless glory. Fortunately, sheer disgust kept
my mind focused enough to limit me to a single gratifying
glance.

“I’m not staying
here.”

His frown deepened.
“Why not?”

“It’s fucking
disgusting. It’s worse than disgusting, it’s, it’s…” I couldn’t
summon an adequate word. “There’s hair in my bathtub. There’s a
used condom under the sheets. And somebody wiped their ass with one
of the towels. Either we go somewhere else, or I sleep in the
car.”

“This motel is the
only one that’s close to our site. Just call the office. They
probably just forgot to make up your room-”

“The bed was made. The
towels were folded. I’m out of here.”

Kane blew out a breath
and scrubbed his hand through his short hair, mussing it. I tried
not to notice how incredibly sexy he looked half-dressed and
rumpled and unshaven, but by the time I dragged my attention back
to what he was saying, I wasn’t sure I’d caught it all.

“…we’ll have to deal
with it later,” he was saying. “We have to get to the site. Come
in. I’m just going to wash up. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

When he turned away, I
gulped at the sight of his gun tucked into the waistband of his
jeans in the middle of his back. Something about that shiny,
dangerous metal against his naked skin…

The powerful muscles
rippled across his broad back as he pulled it out and disappeared
into the bathroom. I heard water running for a while, followed by
grunt that sounded like surprise.

A moment later he
stepped out of the bathroom clean-shaven, a sheen of moisture
highlighting those delicious muscles. “You’re right,” he said.
“We’re definitely going somewhere else.”

I grimaced sympathy.
“Somebody mistake your towels for toilet paper, too?”

“No, mine just had
hair in it.” He grabbed the balled-up T-shirt he’d worn earlier and
used it as a makeshift towel. “We don’t have time to wrangle with
them over it right now. I’ll deal with it when we get back.”

He pulled on a fresh
shirt, cutting short my enjoyment of the view, and moments later we
were packed and driving.

Our in-car GPS guided
us to a low nondescript building. When we entered a modest lobby
and approached the reception desk, the young blonde receptionist
gave us a perky smile.

“Oh, now, y’all are
here to see Dr. Kraus?” she inquired in a soft drawl. When we
nodded acquiescence and showed our ID, she waved it away with a
gracious gesture and rose. “I’m Candy Parsons, and if y’all need
anything, you just holler. Follow me, and Dr. Kraus’ll be right
with y’all.”

Candy got us settled
in a small meeting room, and Kane accepted her offer of coffee. I
declined beverages. I was too nervous for caffeine, and a full
bladder seemed like a bad idea if I was going into the network for
any length of time.

Kane drank his coffee
in silence while I held myself still in my chair, willing away the
urge to squirm. What was their network going to be like? What if I
couldn’t get in? Or worse, what if getting out triggered one of my
violent pain reactions?

I gnawed the inside of
my cheek as another thought occurred to me. What kind of network
access fobs did they use? Stemp hadn’t mentioned bringing our
secret network key. Did Kane have it with him, or was I supposed to
use whatever they used here…?

My speculations were
cut short when Sam appeared in the doorway. His jolly twinkle was
nowhere to be seen, and his normally ruddy cheeks looked sallow. He
sank into a chair with a sigh and surveyed us across the table.
“You look as tired as I feel,” he said.

“Gee, thanks, Sam.
Flattery will get you everywhere,” I teased, and was rewarded with
a smile. “How’s it going?” I added. “Any progress?”

“No.” He leaned his
elbows on the table to rub his eyes. “I hope you’ll be able to
help.”

“I’ll try, but I
really don’t see how I can,” I said. “What do you want me to
do?”

“We just want you to
see if you can communicate with Betty inside the network. She won’t
respond to anybody else, but we’re hoping maybe another super-user
might be able to get through to her.”

My fatigue-sodden
brain ground slowly into gear.

Betty. From Macon.

“Betty…
Hooper
?” I asked. When Sam nodded, I sat up indignantly.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me about the U.S. program and who
Betty Hooper was when I thought I was going crazy last week?”

Sam stiffened before
leaning back slowly, combing his fingers through his beard. “I… uh,
couldn’t,” he mumbled in the general direction of the table.
“Orders. Need to know. I’m sorry.”

I sighed and subsided.
Stemp. Of course. The man wouldn’t admit he breathed if it wasn’t
on somebody’s ‘need to know’ list.

“It’s okay, Sam, I
know how that goes. So what really happened last week? Did I get
tangled up in Betty’s blog, or was it something else?”

“Betty doesn’t have a
blog.”

“So what was it,
then?”

He glanced around the
room as if searching for hidden listening devices and then leaned
forward over the table to whisper. “This is strictly confidential.
Don’t mention it to anybody here.”

Kane held up a hand to
halt him and reached into his pocket to extract one of Sirius’s bug
detectors. Sam and I sucked in simultaneous breaths when it flashed
red.

I was glancing
worriedly around the room looking for potential hiding places for a
bug when Kane touched my arm next to the place where the tracer had
been.

Comprehension dawned
and I nodded and rose, ignoring Sam’s fearful scrutiny. Outside the
conference room I extracted my change purse and tucked it into the
pocket of the light jacket I’d worn. When I headed down the hall
toward the reception area, Candy looked up with a smile. “Can I
help you?”

“Yes, I was wondering
if there’s somewhere I can leave my jacket instead of carrying it
with me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I
should’ve asked if I could take your coat when you came in.” She
bounced to her feet and extended her hand. “I’ll put it in the
closet for you. It’ll be right around the corner here when you’re
ready for it.” She indicated a door behind her desk, and I thanked
her and returned to the conference room.

I sat, and Kane
deployed the bug detector again. This time the green light glowed
steadily, and Sam gave me a dubious look before leaning closer. “As
near as I can tell, you had some sort of… collision in the
network.” He glanced at me, then addressed the table again,
frowning. “This is a gross oversimplification, of course, but when
your consciousness is in the network, it’s essentially reduced to a
stream of data packets. I’m not sure exactly how you do it, but
you’re somehow capable of collecting and assembling relevant data
packets into a cohesive whole.”

“So…” I thought about
that for a moment. “So when I encountered Betty, it was like a big
data transfer.”

“I think so. You read
and internalized all her data in a single gulp. You retained all
your own memories and experiences, but you added hers, too, and
believed them as if they were your own, at least for a short time
until your own reality reasserted itself.”

“But… what was Betty
doing in the external network at all? I thought super-users were
just like turbochargers for sims. Can Betty sneak around invisibly
and decrypt files, too?”

Kane shifted suddenly
in his chair at my question, and we both stared at Sam.

“No,” Sam said
quickly. He ran his fingers through his beard a couple of times. “I
think…” He cast his eyes up to the ceiling as if searching for
divine inspiration. “I think probably you accidentally breached
this network.”

“I’m sure I didn’t,” I
objected. “I was out in the public data stream.”

“How do you know?”

“I, um… I just know.
Private firewalls… feel… different… I guess…” I stumbled to a halt.
“I’m sure I wasn’t in any secured networks. This network is secured
isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course.”
Sam’s eyes focused in the vicinity of my left ear. “I’m quite sure
you must have been in this network,” he said firmly.

“Ooookay… So what
makes you think I can help Betty?”

“She lapsed into a
catatonic state immediately after your collision in the
network.”

I recoiled, my stomach
squeezing into a tight ball of nausea. “
I stole her mind?
That’s… that’s…” I swallowed hard, willing my greasy breakfast to
stay put.

“No, no!” Sam made
calming gestures. “No, you can’t steal someone’s mind. I think she
might just be in shock. Maybe there was something in the way you
contacted her that locked down her ability to respond…”

“So I made her into a
vegetable. Oh my God…” I wrapped my arms around my roiling gut.
“What about Cassandra? Who’s looking after her? How is Jessie
managing when she has to work all day? Her deadbeat ex won’t do
anything to help, that slimeball-”

Kane’s big warm hand
closed over mine. “Aydan, calm down. Who are these people you’re
talking about?”

“Jessie is Betty’s
daughter. She’s a single mom, and Betty looks after Cassandra in
the afternoons while Jessie works. They need Betty, and I just
wiped out her mind…” I gulped down another wave of nausea.

“We’ll find a way to
fix it.” Kane held me with his eyes until I swallowed again and
sucked in a long breath.

“I hope so.” I eased
back in the chair, letting go of his hand and forcing myself into
yoga belly breathing. In. Out. Ocean waves. After a few moments, I
straightened. “When can I start?”

“Right away.” Sam
rose. “Follow me. We’ve set up a makeshift hospital room in one of
the offices. You can talk to her in person, but we don’t really
expect her to respond. Then we’ll hook both of you up to the
monitoring system and you can go into the network with a standard
Sirius-type fob.”

At the door to the
room I paused, supporting myself against the door frame while I
took in the hospital bed and its occupant. I stepped forward to
take her cool hand in mine and shuddered when I looked into the
brown eyes that stared blankly at the ceiling.

Her hair was coloured
a determined coppery-red that made her plump cheeks look even
paler. The smooth hand I held was nicely manicured, but her nail
polish was beginning to show a few chips around the edges.
Unbidden, my mind dredged up the knowledge that she’d had an
appointment for a manicure the day after I met her in the
network.