Tell Me No Spies (21 page)

I plastered on a smile
and strode toward them.

“Aydan! Hey, long time
no see!”

“How are you?”

“What, we’re not good
enough for you anymore, you snob?”

“Here, grab a
seat.”

My friends called out
greetings and reshuffled themselves to leave a position open on the
couch with its back to the wall, my usual spot. I sank into it,
gulping back unexpected emotion at the warmth of their reception
and the sheer heavenly normalcy.

The waitress stopped
in her tracks. “Aydan! Where have you been? How are you?”

“Great, Alanna, I’m
great. Good to see you.”

“Corona?”

I sighed. “You have no
idea how much I’d like a beer right now, but I can’t. I’m ‘way too
hungry, and I have to drive.” I glanced around at the food-laden
table. “Can you just bring me my usual?”

“Sure, no problem.”
She hurried away, and I appropriated a chicken wing from Bruce’s
basket before leaning back, glancing nervously toward the entrance
of the bar when a couple of patrons entered. They took seats at the
front of the bar, oblivious to us, and I relaxed again.

I took stock of the
assembled group. “Hey, where’s Nichele?” I kept my voice as casual
as possible.

Jean laughed. “You
know Nichele. She told me on Monday she’d be here, but she probably
met some hot guy and decided to dump us.”

“Yeah, probably,”
Brenda agreed. “I was supposed to go for coffee with her Thursday
night, and she stood me up. When I phoned her, she said she was
sick. But she was on her cell. I’d already tried her at home and
got no answer. In bed, sure, I believe that. Sick? Not so
much.”

Everyone laughed. They
all knew Nichele. I did my best to join in with the ensuing banter,
fear twisting my gut.

“Try her now,” I urged
Brenda. “Maybe we can convince her to come anyway.”

Brenda dialled,
listened, dialled again, listened some more. “She’s not picking up.
That’s weird. She always answers her cell.”

“Definitely in bed,”
Jean grinned, and I tried to conceal my concern while the
conversation veered to other matters.

After a decent
interval, I turned to Bruce. “Hey, Bruce, have you still got the
Caprice?”

He grinned. “Of
course. Why? You want to borrow it?”

“Actually, yeah, can I
take you up on that?”

He gaped theatrically
at me. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, not this
time.”

“Get out of here.
You’re cheating on your beloved Saturn?”

“My beloved Saturn is
on its way to the shop.” I crossed my fingers, silently begging the
car gods to forgive my lie. “The tranny started slipping a bit once
I got into city traffic, and I didn’t want to take a chance.
They’ll probably have it for a few days, and I could sure use some
wheels.”

“Well, sure, no
problem,” he agreed. “We can go and pick it up right after we’re
done here.”

“Bruce, you’re a
lifesaver.”

“I know. Stop eating
my wings.”

Under other
circumstances, I would have enjoyed the lengthy bullshit session
with the convivial group, but my head was throbbing and my
shoulders were wracked with tension by the time everybody straggled
out of the bar. They lingered agonizingly on the sidewalk, and I
resisted the urge to grab Bruce’s arm and hustle him over to his
car.

At last we drove away,
and I relaxed a fraction in the safe anonymity of traffic. Bruce
chatted cheerfully, and I did my best to hold up my end of the
conversation, fervently wishing he lived a little closer to
Kelly’s. When we finally stood in his garage, I breathed a silent
sigh of relief.

“Here you go.” Bruce
swept off the car cover with the grandiose gesture of a man
unveiling a priceless treasure.

I grinned at the sight
of the clapped-out 1980 Chevy Caprice. “I like what you’ve done
with the rust,” I complimented him. The half-eaten holes in the
rear quarter panels had been plastered with several criss-crossing
layers of duct tape, lifted and frayed along the edges.

He grinned. “Thanks.”
He tossed me the keys. “Have fun. Don’t take too many pink
slips.”

“I’ll try to restrain
myself.”

I turned the key and
listened to the velvety rumble with a smile.

My spirits lifted as I
steered the car out into traffic. Phase One complete. My smile
faded at the thought of Nichele’s no-show and the fact that she
wasn’t answering her cell. That was definitely bad news. Unlike the
others, I knew that wherever she was, she probably wasn’t enjoying
herself. I really needed to find out whether Spider had made any
progress.

I steered the car
toward the nearest public library. They would have free internet
access, and on a Saturday afternoon Spider would almost certainly
be online.

When I went inside,
though, I was dismayed to discover they required a library card
before they’d let me use a terminal. I almost gave it up there and
then, but decided at the last minute to simply renew my expired
card.

Hoping fervently that
Kane wasn’t monitoring the library computer system, I paid the
small annual fee in cash. But why would he monitor the libraries?
What fugitive in her right mind would renew a library card?

My hands were shaking
by the time the renewal was complete, and I determinedly suppressed
the urge to glance over my shoulder every ten seconds. At last I
made for the terminals, only to find them all occupied. Tension
wound up in my gut while I spent nearly twenty minutes roaming
through the stacks waiting my turn.

Approximately an
eternity later one of the terminals opened up and I slid into the
still-warm chair, already reaching for the keyboard.

I’d just brought up
the World of Warcraft site when a quiet voice spoke behind me.
“Hold it right there.”

I tried to gulp down
my heart, which had leaped up to vibrate frantically in my throat,
and turned slowly. Wild escape plans jostled through my mind.

I locked eyes with a
wizened man who was so short, we were of a height while I was
seated.

“Hold it right there,”
he repeated softly but indignantly. “You’re at my station. Use that
one.” He made a shaky gesture with his cane toward another station
that had just been vacated.

My heart resumed
beating with a thump that made me gasp. “Sorry,” I stammered, and
tottered over to the other computer as quickly as my shaking legs
would carry me.

Jeez, wouldn’t that
have been a disaster. Attack some poor little old fart who just
wanted to surf midget porn or something. My hands shook so much I
could barely type the website address.

In the game, I rapidly
scanned for Spider’s character. There was no sign of him, and the
mouse creaked under my frustrated grasp. He must be working
overtime, trying to keep up with the demands of the teams that were
undoubtedly searching for me right at that moment.

I threw an involuntary
glance over my shoulder as my stress level ratcheted up another
notch. Nothing but the usual hush of the library. I willed the
tension out of my shoulders and tried some yoga breathing. In. Out.
Ocean waves.

Too keyed up to stay
any longer, I ran one last quick search before I left. And glory of
glories, there he was. Whisper…

“Spider.”

“where r u?”

“Any news on N?”

“no.”

Several heads turned
as I swore slightly louder than I’d intended. “Sorry,” I muttered,
and returned to my keyboard. The chat window had scrolled, and
Spider had typed another message.

“listened to recording
again. who’s J?”

Shit, I didn’t realize
he didn’t know who James was. I’d just assumed Kane would know.

I thumped my forehead.
Jeez, idiot. Kane didn’t know we were doing this.

“r u there? r u
there?”

“J is dog’s oldest
brother,” I typed. “Has gang connections.”

“thx, i’ll check it. r
u & dog ok?”

“Yes.”

“come in b4 it’s 2
l8.”

“Not until N’s safe.
Thanks, Spider. Over & out.”

I ignored his
scrolling demands in the chat window, logged off, and cleared the
cache before I left, trying not to draw attention by scuttling
furtively.

Please, please let
Spider still be on my side. If Kane had told him about our run-in
at the hotel and convinced him I’d gone rogue, I’d be sunk. He’d be
able to use his uber-geek skills to trace the computer’s IP address
back to the library in no time flat.

I hurried out to the
car and slid in, mentally thanking Bruce one more time.

Back on the road, I
shot a quick glance at my watch and groaned. Three thirty already,
and I still had an hour’s drive to rejoin Dave and Arnie. My
stomach growled, and I suddenly realized they must be starving. I
didn’t think Dave had any food in the truck.

I blew out a sigh,
trying to release my tension along with it. One more stop.

At the strip mall, I
flew through the grocery store. As I crossed the parking lot
carrying my bags, another idea occurred to me. I dumped the bags in
the trunk and headed back toward the buildings.

Twenty minutes later I
was the proud owner of a baggy nondescript hooded sweatshirt. I
pulled the tags off and slipped it on before I left the store, hood
up.

When I reached the
city limits, I huddled deeper into the hood. A layer of tight
leather, two layers of warm fleece, and a layer of sheer panic made
the sweat trickle down my back while I carefully maintained the
speed limit past the eagle-eyed police officers at the edge of
town. They’d constricted traffic into one lane and as I watched,
they flagged down a tractor-trailer and waved the driver over to
the side of the road.

Lucky they weren’t
looking for a dull-blue, rusted-out junker of a Caprice. I drove on
by, gaze riveted to the road.

After an hour of
driving, I bit down rising panic. I was lost. I hadn’t been paying
attention to where Dave had gone in the dark of the previous night,
and in the morning we’d driven north and east instead of retracing
our original route.

Goddammit, that road
had to be around here somewhere.

After another fifteen
minutes of futile zigzagging on the back roads, I slapped my
forehead hard enough to rattle my teeth. Retracing my route to the
highway, I headed north until I found the road where we’d joined up
in the morning. Then I followed the route backward. Duh.

Dave’s truck was a
beautiful sight when I crested the gentle hill at last.

As I nosed the Caprice
into the crossing, Hellhound swung out of the truck and hurried
over while Dave climbed stiffly down from the driver’s side.
Arnie’s arms closed around me the instant I stepped out of the
car.

“Jesus, darlin’, it
took ya that long just to pick up this piece a’ shit?” he teased,
but his eyes were worried and he ran a gentle hand over my
hair.

I pulled away to grin
at him. “Watch your mouth. You should know better than to judge a
book by its cover. Look at this.”

I popped the hood and
enjoyed the sight of two astonished faces. “Sleeper car,” I told
them with satisfaction. “It’s the 350 with the four-barrel carb
that came with the original police package. It made over two
hundred and fifty horsepower before Bruce even started tinkering
with it. And it’s got all the drive train and suspension upgrades.
Bruce picked it up at an auction and did everything but the body.
And look at this.”

I grinned as I opened
the trunk and pointed out the blue-painted steel bottle and braided
steel lines.

“Nitrous boost.
Sweet,” Dave breathed. “And is that a Hurst shifter I saw? Got a
racing tranny in her?”

“Yep. She’s done to
the tits.” I beamed at them. “This car’s taken more pink slips than
you can count. Bruce used to make some good coin selling off the
cars he won in bets, back before they cracked down on street
drags.”

I savoured the happy
memories for a few seconds longer before reaching in to hand them
the grocery bags. “You guys hungry?”

“Darlin’, I love ya.
Will ya marry me?” Hellhound grabbed the package of pepperoni
sticks and tore the plastic off with his teeth.

“Not a chance,” I
assured him, and we exchanged a grin.

Dave selected a
package of deli roast beef and ripped into it with equal
enthusiasm, if slightly more decorum. For a while, the only sound
was the crackling of plastic wrappers while we perched on the trunk
of the Caprice and ate.

At last, Arnie blew
out a long sigh and leaned back, reclining against the rear
windshield with his arms folded behind his head. “Shit, I needed
that. Don’t s’pose ya got any beer.”

“No, sorry. That would
go down nicely right now, wouldn’t it?”

I leaned back beside
him, enjoying the fading sunset and letting the day’s tension leak
out of my muscles.

Dave straightened
slowly and turned to regard us. “Now what?”

I blew out a sigh of
resignation and sat up. “Now we need a plan. Spider still hasn’t
been able to find Nichele.”

“Ya talked to him?”
Arnie sat up hastily. “How? Isn’t Kane watchin’ him, too?”

“Not when he plays
World of Warcraft. That’s how I got in touch with you the first
time. I contacted Spider inside the game, and he contacted
you.”

“Shit, I wondered
about that. I was just doin’ a report for a client an’ all of a
sudden this message popped up on my screen, ‘Aydan, Hotel Village,
eleven PM, emergency’. I couldn’t figure out what it was, ‘cause it
wasn’t an email or anythin’, just a little message box.” He
scowled. “An’ then I called Kane right away. Fuck.”

I rubbed his shoulder.
“It’s okay, you couldn’t have known.”

“Who’s Spider? Is that
a code name?” Dave peered at me eagerly.

“No, just a nickname,”
I said, to Dave’s obvious disappointment. “His real name is
Clyde.”