[Brackets] (43 page)

“Thanks for nothing, morons,” Tucker called. One of the protestors began to yell back,
but shut up when Hen
ry started
toward
him to deliver a piece of his mind. Tucker pulled his father back to avoid an incident.

They reached Col
e
and Nera’s tunnel, and Tucker took a final look at Cole’s still-pale face. “You good to go?” Tucker asked. Cole nodded, and they all went in to witness the end of t
he game.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

When game play resumed, the teams on the court seemed simultaneously rejuvenated and thrown off by the odd distrac
tion. The sense of unity among
the people in the stands as the protestors were jeered and then
removed
vanished
once everyone remembered what was at stake. The players were fast and sloppy and made some mistakes, but in a few minutes both teams were back in rhythm. UCLA scored, Nebraska answered. The score ticked up steadily: 40-43, 46-45, 48-48, 52-54… No one could break away, no matter what happened. Neither team could shake the other from its heels. Tucker was standing on every possession, yelling instructions to the players and outright curses to the refs. Across the court, Cole was bent over
with his arms folded, repeating “Come on, come on, come on,” under his breath. Every so often, Cole looked a
round to see if Icha
bod was hovering in some corner. He never was.

Seven minutes into the second
half, Cole
looked up to
the top of the staircase where Ichabod must have stood earlier. Something had clicked in his mind.

“Do you think Noh is still up there in his booth?” Cole asked Nera.

“Probably. That’s what M
r. Casing said. Why?” Cole didn’t answer immediately. He drummed his fingers rapidly on his knees and looked back up to the top of the stairs.

“You know that thing that Noh showed us, how he has cameras on us that he uses to make the crowds in that virtual reality stadium? What if the cameras picked up the image of Ichabod
when he dropped that ball down?
If he could pull up
a picture
, we could tell security exactly what he’s wearing and what he looks like. And we’ll know
,
too,
in case he comes around.”

Nera looked back at the game and sighed heavily. She clearly did not want to go.

“You don’t have to come,” Cole said. “I just have to go check this out.”

Nera looked painfully torn. “No, you shouldn’t go anywhere by yourself. Could
n’t someone else go up? What about Rick and Abby?”

Cole pointed down to the floor
where Rick and Ab
by had taken positions as sweat-
moppers beneath the hoop. They weren’t in a position to help.

“No,
” said Cole decisively,
“
I know what to look for. I’ll be faster than anybody else. Besides,
I can’t even
concentrate on the game knowing that he’s out there.
If I have a chance to help catch him, I should do it.”

Nera
considered the proposal. “Fine,
I’ll come with you. But let’s run.”

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

The tumult from the protest
now
gone,
a
single security guard had resumed
the
post at the entrance to the luxury boxes, a bandage ove
r a red patch on his cheek bone
where he had sustained a hit by the flash mob.
The other guards were overseeing the hand-off of protestors to the police, and the rest were patrolling the interior of
the arena
.
The lone guard, suffering from a post-adrenaline crash, was hesitant to let Cole and Nera through until they reminded him who they were. “Just lock the door after you, OK? I’m the only one here for now.”

Inside, the skybox was dark and surreally quiet. Light coming in from the window cast bizarre shadows as it filtered through the thick coats of sticky-colored liquid and chunky food residue.
Cole and Nera made their way
up the stairs and found Mr. Noh exactly
as
they had left him. They tapped his shoulder,
startling him
. In a minute he was out.

Cole explained his
plan
.
and
Noh grinned. “Interesting,” he said,
turning
to a standard computer display to search for the 2D rendering they needed. He found Cole and Nera’s seat
s
and began to search
forward through time.

“Okay, this should be about it,” Cole noted. Noh slowed down the footage and Cole leaned in close, a finger hovering over the screen. The ball bounced down, and the fan below them came up. They backed up a few seconds.

“There, can you make that bigger?”

Noh clicked and zoomed with practiced speed. “Is that your monster? He looks smaller than what I’ve heard.”

But Cole wasn’t listening.
The man discreetly dropping the ball down the stairs and walking away wasn’t Ichabod.
It was, indisputably, the man he knew as Marshall Bell.

“What the…” Cole began. “Is there a way to save this image?”

“I could upload it to your phone,” Noh suggested. “Will this help you track down your stalker?”

Cole
didn’t know. Nothing made any sense anymore.

While Noh uploaded the image, Cole called Tucker.

“What?” Tucker answered, straining to hear over the excitement of the crowd.

“Tucker! I’m in the skybox with Mr. Noh. We just found out that Marshall Bell was the one that dropped that ball down t
o me. Ichabod’s message is fake;
Bell is lying to us.”

“What?” Tucker asked loudly. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”

“Noh found it on his video equipment. I’m looking at the picture right now. It’s definitely Bell.”

A pause. “So what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Just go tell a security
guy to... wait, I just got a tex
t from him
right now.” Cole heard a ping on his own phone. He
had
got
ten
the same text.

Urgent- U need to get back to G. Turtle booth right now. Ichabod news.- Bell

“What
now
?” asked Tucker. “What’s our move?”

Cole looked around at the room. “Can you get up here in the next minute? I have an idea, I’m going to text him to come up here inste
ad.
”

“Oh man, you’re killing me. There’s like s
ix
minutes left in the game! Do you really need me to be there?”
Cole didn’t even have a chance to
respond
before Tucker
answered himself
, “Never mind, I’m coming. If I’m getting played, I want to know
why
.”
And then, “I hate this so much.”

Cole pocketed his phone and turned to Noh. “Can you do me a favor? Is there a way to put this image on the screen downstairs? I mean, is there a way for me to signal you to put it up?”

Noh nodded. “I have cameras in that room. Just wave.”

“Really? OK
, good
. Nera,
um, you need to s
tay here with Noh and get ready to call security if it looks like things are going bad.”

Nera frowned at Cole.
She was not used to this new, energized persona he had suddenly taken on
. “What are you doing? Let’s just get him arrested.”

“No, no,” said Cole. “For the first time in three weeks, I have a chance to get some answers. I want answers.”

“Me, too,
” Noh chimed in.

Cole
texted Bell to come to the Potomac Skybox. Bell, after a moment, agreed. Cole ran out quickly to tell the security guard to let Tucker and Bell in
, his
mind racing
as he considered the conversation that he wanted to have.

Tucker entered a few minutes later
,
and Marshall Bell thirty seconds after that. The Marshall looked
grim, none too pleas
ed about the unexpected change.

“Why are you up here?” asked Bell.

“Better view. Why did you want us?”

The Marshall paused, realizing
that something was amiss,
but continued. “I’m sorry to interrupt you again so close to the end of the game, but
we’ve been contacted by Ichabod
and we know what he wants.”

“Before you go on,” Cole interrupted, speaking
over his sudden nervousness, “y
ou should know that we know you’re lying. We know that the message from Ichabod wasn’t real.”

“Excuse me?” Bell responded evenly. Cole waved to the camera and pointed to the interface window. The five-second clip of Bell dropping the ball filled the screen and repeated
on a loop
.

“
With one signal, se
curity is going to come in here
and we’re going to report that there is a man impersonating a Federal Marshall and an arsonist at the same time. But before we do, we want to know who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

The man looked up at the footage, then back at the surprising pair of young interrogators. He froze for only a moment before sniffing and shrugging.

“Well, this makes things easier for me,” he said. He slowly reached into his jacket and pulled out a tablet computer. Motioning Cole and Tucker over, he brought up a screen split between two video feeds. One showed the dark image of a man sitting before a computer monitor. His face couldn’t be seen, but he was wearing glasses and a grey hood. The other image was of a hospital room, with someone asleep in the bed.

“I came up here with a very elaborate story about Ichabod’s endgame to make you give me what I nee
ded, but now that you geniuses
have seen through it, I can be more direct. The video on the right is Perry Lynwood’s room at George Washington Hospital, not far from here. If you look closely, you’ll notice a small suitcase underneath the table by his bed. That suitcase contains a bomb. Now, I need you to tell your friend up in the booth not to call security or I trigger the bomb right now.”

They froze. This was, to say the least, an unexpected response to their inquisition.

“Why should we believe you?” Tucker retorted.

“You don’t have to, but you should,” said Bell as he removed something skinny with his other hand. He held his thumb over a device with a red button.

Cole looked at the device
in total shock
. He quickly turned to the camera and waved Nera off, mouthing
“D
o
…
not…
call…
security.”

“Now,” Bell continued, “I need to know just one thing from each of you, and then I will be on my way and nothing else will happen. I need to know if you, or someone you know, or maybe someone you never met, had a special system for picking your brackets. This is very important. A yes or no will do.”

“This is about the
brackets
?” Cole nearly screamed. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Maybe. Yes or no?” Bell shook his wrist with grim playfulness.

Tucker and Cole looked at each other.

“No,” they both said.

Bell studied their faces very carefully, his finger still over the red button. “I’ll ask again. Is it at all possible that your bracket picks were not made by you, but by some method or program or other person? Answer fast, lives are in the balance.”

“No!” Tucker said loudly, his arms open wide. “They were just normal picks. I do this every year. Now please put that trigger away and we’ll forget all about this.”

Bell continued to examine their faces. He sniffed again. “I believe you,” he said,
putting
the trigger back in his pocket. “But
the person
you see in the other video feed does not. You see, he thinks the plan is that he will pretend to be Ichabod, and you
will
reveal your system as a way of convincing him not to blow up your friend. You’ll notice that he has the same trigger that I do, over by his right hand. He has instructions to detonate if he thinks he is being fooled.”

“So tell him that it’s over and he doesn’t need to!” Cole urged.