Arch Enemy (13 page)

M
organ and Yolande trekked through the jungle in darkness, ferns whipping their faces, each step slow and tentative. An ankle injury out here could be just as deadly as a bullet. The music of the insects was now and again interrupted by the screech of monkeys and birds. It was hot and humid, and the sweat that drenched their clothes was not enough to keep the mosquitoes from biting.

They had no water, and Morgan had no idea where they were going. If Yolande did, she wasn't sharing.

“How much longer, you think?” he asked as the first tendrils of light were emerging from the horizon.

“Stop complaining, you pussy. There is a road right up ahead.” She mumbled under her breath in French about wanting a damn cigarette.

It was sunrise by the time they came upon the muddy dirt road. Morgan couldn't swear it wasn't the same one they left behind, although Yolande seemed certain it was a different one.

They walked along it toward the northwest until they heard a car approaching from around a bend.

“Hide,” Yolande told him pointing to a thick tree by the roadside.

“You don't have a gun.”

“If I need you, I will call you,” she said. “Now hide.”

Morgan hid flat against the tree as the car came closer. He listened as it slowed down and came to a full stop next to Yolande, the motor idling. He heard the voice of a man, who held a conversation with Yolande in French.

After about a minute, Yolande said, “Okay. You can come out.”

The vehicle was a Ford pickup truck from the 1990s, dented and scratched and caked in mud. The driver was a half-bald guy with missing teeth in a ratty short-sleeve button-down shirt open to below the chest.

“His name is Henri,” said Yolande. “He will give us a ride.”

“How nice of him.”

“Not exactly. Give me your watch.”

Morgan rolled his eyes, but undid the clasp on his TAG Heuer and put it in Yolande's hand. She handed it over to Henri, who inspected it with a broad grin.

“Which way are we going?” Morgan asked. It hadn't occurred to him to discuss this sooner. He assumed Yolande would want to return to Abidjan.

“After the trucks, of course,” she said, opening the passenger side door.

“We have no guns. No equipment.”

She puffed up her chest, the long diagonal scar prominent on her brown skin. She was sweaty, exhausted, but she wasn't going to let that stop her. “We have a mission.”

“It's not yours.”

“Shut up. I don't chicken out at the first sign of trouble. Now come on, stupid. Get in the back.”

Morgan hoisted himself onto the truck bed where Henri was transporting a number of wooden-handled farm implements. They rattled as the truck set off along the uneven road, deeper into the country, toward Madaki and Mr. White.

D
octor Schuffman walked into the office and patted Alex on the cast in his avuncular manner. “Everything looks good here,” he said. “Relatively speaking. Got any pain, other than the pain in the ass of having to walk around in this cast?”

“Har har,” said Alex. “No, no pain, no discomfort. Just kind of itchy.” She scrunched up her nose. “And it smells kind of bad.”

“Well, that's to be expected,” the doctor said with a chuckle. “Just a couple more weeks now. Ready to finally be rid of this thing?”

“You have no idea how ready I am.”

“Not much writing on it, I see” he said.

“I haven't been getting out much.”

“Well, I guess we're all set. Want a lollipop?” He pulled one out from his coat pocket.

“I'm good, Dr. Schuffman, thanks.”

“Good,” he said, sticking it in his mouth. “That was my lunch!”

“How long have you been holding onto that one?”

He helped her to her feet and held the door open for her.

“I was saving it for you,” he said through the lollipop as she hobbled away. “See you in two weeks!”

“Not if I see you first!” she called out.

She walked to the elevator, but rather than going to the lobby she hit the button for the third floor. The inpatient ward.

“I'm here to see Katie—Katherine Kesey,” she said.

“Here we go,” the receptionist said, holding up a chart. “Just sign in here.” He handed her a clipboard across the counter. “Name, ID number—student ID is fine—the patient you're visiting, then your John Hancock.”

She filled out the fields and handed it back to him.

Her stomach felt heavy as she made her way down the hall of the ward to the intense smell of hospital disinfectant.

“Come in!”

Katie was propped up on the hospital bed. There was a teen show on the TV, muted. The other bed was vacant. There was no one else there.

“Hey.” Her voice came across drained of its usual energy.

Alex moved to stand at her bedside. Katie, in a hospital gown, had deep bags under her eyes, heavy-lidded, and was Alex mistaken or they were a bit skittish, too? “How are you feeling?”

“Still a little woozy, but okay. They said I could get out of here in a few hours.”

“I'm glad. The room's a little too quiet without you.”

Katie mustered a weak smile, then her face went solemn and she stared out the window. From the hill that held the student health center, they could see most of the campus, the vast open spaces sprinkled with evergreens and leafless deciduous trees tiny like a diorama, students and professors making their way through the paths to the assortment of red-brick colonial and angular modern classroom buildings.

“Mom's not coming out. She told me it was my fault for drinking too hard. Said she was glad my health insurance covered it, or it was coming out of my college fund.”

Alex grimaced in sympathy. “Parents can really suck sometimes.” She felt guilty saying so. As much as thinking about her father made her well up with anger, she had to admit to herself that he would always be there when she needed him, no matter what. “How are you doing?”

“Holding up,” she said, but her voice cracked as she did. “Barely.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I don't know what happened,” Katie said, shaking her head. “I didn't even drink that much last night. I had, like, half a beer tops. I don't remember anything past that.”

Alex frowned. If that was true . . .

“Do you know anyone in the frat, Katie? Anyone who might have wanted to take advantage of you?”

“I barely know any of those guys. I mean, I've seen them around.”

Alex looked down at the mottled linoleum floor. She felt so powerless to help her.

“Is there anyone you want me to call? Anything I can do for you?”

“I'd just as soon no one found out. I'm kind of embarrassed.”

“Are you sure? It can be really important to have some support—”

“It's fine, really.”

“I get it.”

Katie's distant expression slackened, and she put her hand on Alex's, which was resting on the bedrail. “Thanks for being here, though.”

Alex felt in that touch Katie's deep vulnerability. It was overwhelming to her, who wasn't the picture of stability herself. But somehow it gave her strength, knowing that she needed to be strong for her friend.

She set her jaw. This wasn't going to get any easier, and the clock was ticking. “I'm sorry to bring this up now, but I think you might have been drugged.” Katie withdrew her hand, her eyes glazing over again. Alex insisted. “It's really important for you to get your blood drawn as soon as possible, so that—”

“I'm feeling kind of dizzy,” Katie blurted out. She put her hand on her head as if to steady it, a little too theatrically.

Alex frowned. She'd lost her. “Do you want me to call the doctor?”

“No, I think I just want to close my eyes for a while.”

Alex wasn't buying it. “Katie, this is important. Please. I just want to help.”

“Maybe I don't want your help!” She seemed on the verge of a panic attack. “I can't stand all this questioning anymore. What do you people want from me?”

Alex narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. “Did someone else come here to ask you questions?”

“This guy. He kept asking these same questions. How much I drank last night. If I had taken any drugs. If I ever drank or took drugs, and if I was a virgin.”

“Was he with the police? Campus security?”

Katie shook her head, frantic.

“I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to,” said Alex, resting her hand on Katie's shoulder. But her friend flinched at the touch, and she drew it away. “Nobody ever needs to know you're involved. But I don't want to let whoever did this get away with it.”

“They'll come after me,” she said, near tears. “They said if I talked—”

“Someone told you to keep quiet about this? Who?”

“Please, just leave me alone.”

“Give me a name,” Alex insisted. “Just a name.”

“Out!” she yelled, crying. “I'll scream. I'll tell them you attacked me.
Get out!
”

“I'm sorry,” said Alex.

“Just
go
!” Katie screeched.

Alex shuffled off, closing the door lightly behind her. No one out in the hallway seemed to have heard. Heavy with guilt, she limped her way down the ward hall. She had pushed too hard. But her determination to do something only intensified. By the time she reached the reception desk, she had formulated a plan.

“I think I might have missed a number on my ID in the sign-in sheet earlier,” she told the receptionist. “Can I see?”

The receptionist handed her the sheet. Alex scanned it for Katie's name. She found it once, next to Alex's own name on the sheet. Then, a few entries above hers, with a matching patient name—

Adam Groener.

Gotcha
.

L
isa Frieze overslept and drove back up to Springhaven University in the late morning, swigging Dunkin Donuts coffee and swerving through traffic. She drove onto campus wired for action.

She found Vickery waiting for her outside the library.

“Nice of you to join us,” he said, leading the way inside.

“I was up late last night looking into the other Ekklesia cases around the country,” she said. “They've all got similar MOs. None of them took direct action, not more than the kind of prank they pulled on Panagopoulos. All of them claim to be working for citizens' freedom or bringing the guilty to justice. And all of them have a hacking angle.”

“But they all happened at the same time,” he said. “So there's no way it's the same people.”

“We're talking about a massively distributed network of agents,” she said.

They were walking downstairs, bare concrete with plain steel railings. “Where are we going?”

“I want to show you something.”

He opened a metal door and pointed at the frame, specifically at the strike plate.

“Do you see it?”

“I'm not sure what I'm looking for.”

“Here,” he said, pointing closer. “What does that look like to you?”

“Glue. Like we found on the door to the roof of the library. So this was their point of entry.” She looked through the door. It opened into a tunnel that seemed to go for a mile until disappearing in a curve. A set of thick pipes ran through it, and it was warm and misty.

“Steam tunnels,” he said. “They run under every building in the university. It's where the heating comes from.” He looked down the tunnels. “It's an awful lot of doors.”

“So their point of entry—”

“Could've been anywhere,” he said. “Could be students, service staff. Or neither. Someone who could make the camera feeds disappear sure as heck wouldn't have too much trouble gaining access here.”

“What's the access system on these doors?” she asked.

“Keycards,” he said. “With a manual override key.”

“All the tunnels?”

“That I know of.”

She thought for a moment. “If we're talking about hackers, it would be more in their wheelhouse to clone a card than to make a copy of the key or pick the lock. I'm guessing any use of the keycards gets logged in a database somewhere.”

“I'd guess,” said Vickery.

“I want to talk to security,” she said. “Maybe we can find a clue in the access logs.”

“I've got some paperwork to do down at the station,” he said. “But I can put you in touch with the right people.” He told her the on-campus address of the security office. “I'll give them a call, let them know you're going to swing by later.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you going back to the city tonight?” he asked as they walked back upstairs.

“I was planning on it,” she said.

“Why don't you hang around? I know a great little bar off the highway. No college kids, just good beer and good music.”

Her phone rang. Conley.

“Let me get back to you on that,” she said as they parted ways. Then she picked up. “What?”

“Did you look at the service manifest Cotter sent you?” he asked.

“Been busy,” she said. “What did you find?”

“Nothing that called any particular attention,” he said. “But I had the feeling that it wouldn't. We got it too easily. So I went to the Acevedo building. You know what I found?”

“I suppose you're going to tell me.”

“They had a service visit from Hornig two weeks ago.”

“Let me guess—it's not on Hornig's logs?”

“No,” Conley said. “And I checked the signature on the visitor logs at the building. No match. We had an impostor come in.”

“How did you get access—” she remembered the young receptionist who she had no doubt would've remembered him. “Never mind.”

“So I went to see if I could find surveillance footage of our guy,” said Conley. “And you know what I found?”

“Let me guess,” she said. “It's gone.”

“How did you know?”

“Do you think Watson's murder might have anything to do with the Ekklesia?” asked Lisa.