Locked and Loaded Page 10

  The girl began to cry.

  Callaghan smiled at her appreciatively before flicking the butt out the window.

  “He can still scream.”

  Christina

  Eventually — eventually — I managed to get into the stupid computer. Oh, who was I kidding? It was me, not the computer, who was the stupid one. I'd only gotten in after I had all but exhausted my mental list of commonly used passwords.

  I'd expected secrets and skeleton keys. Not tedium.

  I kept one eye on the computer's clock as I worked. This may have made time move even slower but I wanted to leave before the guard came to collect me again. It was like having a surly guardian angel.

  No. More like a surly guardian devil who was crabby because he had woken up to find himself on the business end of a pitchfork.

  I was glad when it was time to return to my dormitory. Dinner was the worst meal of all. My head ached, and I'd been nursing stress-related stomach cramps all day long, which seemed to have peaked with my consumption of that sandwich I ate at lunch.

  Now, I had indigestion, a path of liquid fire burning down my esophagus, and straight into my gut. I could feel the pain pulsing in time with my heartbeat, a glowing fist-sized ball in my chest.

  The door locked behind me.

  Once again, I felt a pang of remorse for the fact that we had no access to the mess after hours. Ginger was great for indigestion. I knew how to make a good remedy with a bit of powdered ginger by mixing it up with a bit of sugar and heating it for sixty seconds.

  I wrote “ginger” on the memo pad on my desk, underlining it twice and adding in parenthesis, “for indigestion.” Then I changed into one of the nightshirts I'd bought at the mall in San Francisco, rubbing at my chest as if I could wipe the pain from my body as if it were a penciled-in mistake.

  The sheets were cold as I slid into bed. The air-conditioner must have been running on full-blast this whole time, connected to a thermostat I did not have access to. My bed seemed to have been changed in my absence. I could detect the artificial floral smell of fabric softener, stronger than it was this morning.

  It smelled wrong. Felt wrong.

  I was confused.

  I had slept in far worse conditions, and compared to the smell of cheap disinfectant, to the smell of rot, and mold, and ancient dried blood, this fabric softener smell was far less offensive. Why on earth would I be so biased against that specific smell?

  Unless…it was due to the absence of another.

  Oh, no, no, no. I shouldn't be thinking like that.

  I couldn't be thinking like that.

  But truth was truth, and how could you deny something that was, in and of itself, the very essence of being? I missed having another body in bed with me. Specifically, I missed having his body in bed with me. So much so that it was almost a physical ache.

  It wasn't even about the sex so much as the comforting graze of skin on skin, of the discord that came from feeling a heartbeat that wasn't your own. A universe tangential but apart — two distinct worlds brushing into overlap, eclipsing one another without consuming. If that was not love, then I imagined it was something quite close.

  I liked the feeling that came from knowing I was not alone. Michael would kill to keep me safe. It was hard to fear the monsters of the darkness when the most dangerous of all of them slept beside you every night.

  And that was exactly the crux of the matter.

  The moment he had fallen for me, the moment I had succeeded in capturing Michael's softer side, he had become mine. I had tamed him in a sense, and now he was bound to me.

  And I, to him.

  I shifted my head on the pillow and heard a crinkling sound. The laundry tag? I rolled over again, and my hand closed around the slippery instructions just as the crinkling started again.

  Frowning, I lifted the pillow to find a crumpled piece of paper from the memo pad on my desk. I never wrote in bed; I kept the memo pad on the desk. Always.

  Someone else had been in here and that someone else had taken the time to write me a note telling me as much. With trembling fingers I unfolded the paper. There were only three words written on it, but those three words made all the heat drain from the room.

  TRUST NO ONE.

  Chapter Ten

  Opportunity

  Michael

  Suraya and Jatinder left us on the first floor.

  I did not know where they were going, and I didn't ask. The less I knew about their situation, the better. That was rule one in this line of business, don't fucking get involved. I'd gotten involved before — it had fucked up my life. Suraya was capable of handling her own problems. For the moment, at least.

  Callaghan had said she had been insubordinate in the past. He was quick to find pretexts for inflicting harm, but in this case I believed him. Remembering that icy facade. That bottle of pills. I wondered what it was that she'd done, and whether she might be coaxed to do it again under the proper circumstances.

  If she thought it might keep her sister safe, I was pretty sure she could be persuaded to turn on him. As long as she worked for the bastard, that would be a constant threat.

  Blackmail only works for so long. Eventually the blackmailee gets frustrated — and desperate.

  Nobody wants to spend their whole life paying debts to someone else.

  And there was no way I could turn things around from the inside of the IMA. Callaghan had too many spies and his operatives feared him too much to risk betrayal. Raw hatred was more valuable than fear. It made one blind to things like consequences and reality.

  If I was going to see that bastard killed, I'd have to do it myself, with a handpicked group with people like Suraya.

  A year ago, before Adrian's coup, Kent had given me a notebook filled with all of the people who wanted me dead and had the means to do so.

  Callaghan's notebooks, had I taken it upon myself or troubled Kent to list out his many enemies, would have been numerous enough to populate a small library.

  Callaghan slid his key card through the slot. The door opened with a hiss of displaced air. A security camera over the door swung in our direction as we passed. The wall was patchworked with sensors and one-way panels. Kind of made me wonder what it was he was hiding.

  “So I hear young Christina Parker is following in her daddy's footsteps.”

  I'd expected questioning about that. His network was wide. Wider than I'd thought if he'd picked the information up so quickly.

  Unless he's bluffing.

  He probably was bluffing. He knew just enough to make you squirm and then pretended he knew even more in the hopes that you'd let something slip.

  Yeah, I knew what the fucker was doing. I'd been an interrogator too, once. But it still unnerved me. He'd always had a second sense for this kind of shit.

  “I wouldn't know.”

  “It never ceases to astound me just how little you claim to know, Michael.”

  “I didn't realize you thought so highly of me, sir.”

  “In fact, it rather makes me wonder what exactly it is that I'm paying you for.”

  “Military intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

  “Aye, not in your case.”

  We came to another door. I waited for him to go first; he was not a man you wanted at your back. There is no honor among psychopaths, and they will be quick to stab when you're turned around if they think it's worth their while.

  He laughed knowingly as he took the first step. “I suppose you know nothing about the hacker calling herself Cassandra, either.”

  “I don't.” I didn't. This was news to me. Unwelcome news. “What's her M.O.?”

  “My IT people have informed me that this hacker's techniques are markedly similar to those of another. One who goes by the name Hephaestus.”

  The girl's father.

  “Rubens Parker,” he said. “Or haven't you heard of him, either?”

  Fuck. This was not good.

  “Of course I've fucking heard
of him. I doubt there's a person here who hasn't. But that doesn't mean they're related. Could be coincidence.”

  “I don't believe in coincidence, and I happen to know for a fact that you don't, either.”

  He was right. The annoying Disney song was right. The universe was too fucking small. If things seemed to be connected, they usually were even if the why and the wherefore were not readily apparent.

  This conversation was getting out of hand, fast.

  “So someone's taken a page out of her father's book.” I shook my head, annoyed that I had let myself be put on the offensive. “I don't know what to tell you. Have you considered that it might be a copy-cat? Someone who wants to probe the weaknesses of our organization?”

  “To what end?”

  He'd been thinking this through. I'd run out of explanations. “I don't know, sir. To see if we have any? That's what such sweeps are typically used for.”

  “I'd say the girl seems rather determined to make a nuisance of herself.” He shot me a look I preferred not to decipher. “Wouldn't you agree?”

  “No, I wouldn't.”

  At this point in time, such distinctions didn't matter. Callaghan clearly believed that Christina and the hacker were one and the same—or he was trying very hard to convey that impression.

  And I had no way of refuting that belief because for all I knew, they could be.

  I didn't think they were, though. Christina wasn't a fool. She acted foolishly at times, but she was not a fool. Past experience had made her cautious — she had gotten burned before — and this went beyond foolishness.

  This was suicide.

  My denial appeared to amuse him. “Why not?”

  I came to the conclusion that Callaghan was attempting to bluff his way through the conversation in the hopes of tricking me into revealing something of value. It was a cheap intimidation tactic we used in all interrogations.

  I wasn't sure which insulted me more, the fact that he was using them on me, or the fact that they might be working since I had no idea what information he might be probing for.

  If anything.

  The silence stretched on. The longer I said nothing, the guiltier I looked. But the more I said, the more I put us both at risk. Catch-twenty-two. Or, as I like to call it, fucked if you do, and fucked if you don't.

  I started to fold my arms, belatedly remembered that represented defensive posture, and let them swing to my sides. “I think you're jumping the gun.”

  “Do you.”

  Did he think I was trying to supplant him? Was that where he was going with this? If he was, that didn't match his typical train of thought. Not the one I was familiar with. Not unless he'd grown paranoid over the years. My impression had always been that the bastard considered himself nigh invincible.

  On the other hand, I had been Richardson's second in command, not him, and he had only secured his position by ensuring that I was out of the running.

  “Perhaps you put the girl up to it,” he mused.

  “It isn't Christina.”

  “But how can you be sure?”

  I hesitated. This was a conversational minefield. There wasn't a lot I could say without admitting that I'd gotten her employment in the BN in exchange for leaking information about the IMA.

  “Because she's not stupid,” I said at last.

  “Perhaps not. But she has run circles around you in the past, hasn't she? Aye, that's what got you into this mess in the first place, Michael. And into her bed.”

  Okay, that did it. I was pissed. “This is speculation.”

  “But it's true,” he pointed out.

  “We thought Pandora was a female. But he was a male. An experienced male. Christina is a novice. If the hacker in question is already at the level of a man with three times her experience, then she doesn't fit the profile. You're looking for someone middle-aged, with anarchic principles. Isolate and repressed.”

  “You're protecting her.”

  “And you're on a wild goose chase. You're letting personal vendettas bias your search.”

  Callaghan shook his head. “No, I know exactly what I'm hunting, Michael, and your attempts at misdirection are laughable. You've got her hidden away somewhere impenetrable. I know about your ring of contacts. You must have set her up with someone. I grant you she never could have found the proper people alone. You must have helped her. Just as somebody else is undoubtedly helping her now.”

  “I don't know where she is.”

  “I don't suppose you do.” He smiled. “But you know who she works for.”

  I opted for silence.

  “The BN, I'm assuming?”

  Fuck you, Callaghan.

  “I could make you talk.”

  “You'd need a reason to. A good one. Otherwise, what would your men think? They'd think they might be taken in for the grand inquisition at any moment. Talk about terrible morale.”

  “Some might say the fact that you can open your mouth is reason enough to want you silenced, Michael. I'm rather inclined to agree. Nothing good ever comes out of your mouth. Aye, perhaps I should cut out your tongue, like I did the Sniper.”

  “You'd miss the sound of my voice.”

  “Doubtful. On the other hand, I'm tempted to put a bounty on your girl's head. I could, since she started work for the BN. I can think of several good men who would bring her in because they have a chip on their shoulder in your name. Especially if I let them play with her awhile first.”

  He was bluffing.

  “I should have made more of an effort in the lass's capture before. I figured her to be quite the foolish child, playing the whore for you like Richardson's A. But she's supposed to be quite the little prodigy. Had I been aware of her value she would've never been permitted to leave Seattle with you. Not alive.

  “I won't have another repeat incident of those lost weapons logs, and the missing disk. I will not be made into a fool.”

  “I think it's a little too late for that, sir.”

  He turned around to face me.

  “The only question that remains is whether you'd care to tell me where she is before I start having the known bases razed to the ground. Even if we don't find her right away, I'm sure they'd offer her up as a sacrifice just to stop the carnage.”

  He wasn't bluffing.

  “Well, Michael?”

  Fuck.

  Christina

  The next day proceeded as usual. I went from session to session in a daze of self-doubt, feeling as if there were a giant spotlight fixed on my every move.

  Clearly someone was watching me.

  TRUST NO ONE, the note had said.

  Who had sent me that message? And why?

  Mr. Chou did not mention my progress. I guess he took it for granted that I'd figure out the solution under his brilliant tutelage. Instead of the praise I'd kind of been hoping for, he gave me another laptop. Different model, same vague instructions as before.

  New password.

  Of course, he was brilliant. He had a thick accent and was not particularly helpful in his instruction and his personal hygiene and people skills left much to be desired, but I could tell he knew what he was doing. He might have been better than my father, even.

  That seemed traitorous, though. I loved my father; he had been the one I looked up to as a little girl. I consoled myself with the thought that it was hard to compare. Their styles of teaching were so different.

  Mr. Chou's approach was holistic, taking all aspects of the computer's layout into consideration, emphasizing the gestalt of the programming. The workings of the whole were of greater importance and significance than each individual part on its own.

  But he wasn't patient. Misogynistic, snobbish, elitist, Mr. Chou was filled with the self-importance of one for whom intellectualism is the only redeeming characteristic they possess.

  My father, on the other hand, was more single-minded, goal-oriented, driven by cause and effect, trial and error, margin and success. He knew a lot about the individual com
ponents and based on their functions he could guess how they would act when put together.

  In other words, he was exactly the type of individual Mr. Chou would refer to as a monkey with a bone, I was sure. But my father was kind and patient, if somewhat absent-minded, and best of all, he really did his best not to make you feel stupid.

  But I was learning more from Mr. Chou, and faster, than I ever had with my father. It was unfair that such a nasty man could be a good teacher.

  The guard intercepted me as I was heading back to my room. I hadn't seen him all day and was beginning to hope that I never would again.

  I should have known better.

  Was the guard one of the people I wasn't supposed to trust? Or had he sent me the note?

  “What do you want?” I said pettishly. “I'm just going to take a nap — or is napping a thoughtcrime now?”

  “You're supposed to report to the library.”

  “You're wrong. I already had independent study.”

  “For Language Lab.”

  “That's not even on my itinerary.”

  The guard made the exasperated face he was so very good at. “You're supposed to pick up a new itinerary every day.”

  “What a waste of paper.”

  He scowled, and I found myself in a vice-grip as he half-dragged me to the library in spite of my protests that I could walk perfectly well on my own.

  “Be quiet,” he hissed, “it's a library.”

  If he hadn't looked so grim I might have laughed.

  Later, I found out that because the BN was an enclosed facility and the leaders wanted to minimize traffic coming in and out, the recruits were expected to make themselves useful to help pay their way.

  Those with a technical bent were regularly called upon to fix broken vehicles, and the normal wear and tear that occurred around the building. Those with computer know-how maintained the network and debugging.

  I guess since they didn't trust me enough to let me near their computers, one of the higher-ups had decided that I'd do my bit by helping other recruits brush up on — or in some cases, learn from scratch — their Spanish.

  Because all Spanish dialects are completely interchangeable.

  It pained me, how ignorant some people were.