The Spy Is Cast (22 page)

I felt my face heat
up. “He was, um, having a moment. Reliving a moment. With certain
modifications. Apparently I made an impression at the party.”

“Oh.” He thought about
that for a moment, and then changed the subject. “Is there anything
else you can tell us about the prisoner who was executed? Did you
hear any of the questions they were asking? Was there any way to
identify him? Any distinguishing marks?”

“No.” I swallowed
nausea again. “There wasn’t much left by the time I got there.”

“Damn. So we’re no
further ahead. We still don’t know who those captives are -”

“Or were,” I
interrupted quietly, the sound of the gunshot echoing in mind.

Kane gave me a
sympathetic glance. “Or what Harchman wants from them,” he
continued. “In retrospect, maybe I should have just stayed there.
As long as I was telling them under torture that I didn’t know what
they were talking about, they weren’t sure they had the right man.
They still don’t know that, but now they know I’m out here and I’m
dangerous.”

“If you’d been in
there any longer, they would’ve killed you,” I snapped. “They
killed that prisoner without a second thought, and they weren’t
stopping with you. If you died in the sim, they’d just call the
ambulance and pretend you’d had a heart attack. There’d be no
evidence to the contrary on your physical body. You would have had
to blow your cover anyway and leave the sim just to survive.”

“Right,” Germain
agreed. “And taking on three assailants while tied to a chair is a
bit of a stretch even for you. Your chances of escape on your own
would have been slim. This was better all around.”

Kane lifted a shoulder
in assent. “Probably true.”

“But why can’t you
just go in and arrest them all and question them?” I burst out.
“Why…”

“Stemp wants to know
the full extent of the network, and he wants to know who the
captives are and what questions they’re being asked,” Kane said.
“If we rush in now, we’ll lose the chance to gather valuable
intel.”

“But they’re killing
people!”

Kane rubbed his
knuckles over the strained lines in his face. “Yes. Untraceably. No
evidence. That’s why we have to make sure we do this right. They’ll
be able to kill a lot more people and get away with it if we rush
this investigation. The first step is to try to identify the
captives and the men we saw in the sim.”

He reached for my hand
and held it gently, searching my face. “Aydan, I know it’s hard,
but I really need you to think back to what you saw of the captive
in the sim. Can you give us anything at all to go on? Hair colour?
Eye colour? Unusual clothing, tattoos, scars, anything?”

I closed my eyes,
forcing my shrinking courage to revisit the memory. “Brown hair.
Thinning. His eyes were…” I gulped, trying to convince the beef
stew to stay put. “…gone.”

Kane’s hand tightened
on mine. “It’s okay, don’t think about that. What was he
wearing?”

A couple of deep
breaths later, my voice started to work again. “Brown deck shoes…
with… with white gym socks. Casual pants. Beige casual pants.”

“That’s good, keep
going,” he encouraged.

I squeezed my eyes
tighter. Remember, dammit. Ignore the blood. What else?

“A polo shirt. I mean,
I don’t know if it was Polo brand, but one of those collared
T-shirts. White.”

Red by the time I saw
it, though.

“Take a breath. Nice
and slow,” Kane murmured, and I eased a few pounds of pressure off
my grip on his hand and obeyed. “Was he wearing jewellery or a
wristwatch?” Kane prompted.

My eyes flew open.
“Yes, a watch! It was one of those great big clunky black things
with all the dials and gauges on it. And now that I think of it, he
had a tattoo on his left forearm just above the watch. It was red,
so it didn’t really show up in all the blood…”

This time I took a few
deep breaths without being reminded.

“Can you remember what
the tattoo looked like?”

“It was really plain.
I can draw it.”

Kane passed me a pen
and a piece of paper, and after a couple of tries, I managed to
steady my shaking hand enough to sketch the simple rectangular
tattoo.

Germain sat up,
grinning. “That’s a diving flag,” he said. “And it sounds like he
was wearing a diver’s watch.”

Kane’s smile crinkled
the sexy laugh lines around his eyes. “Good work, Aydan. That’s
going to narrow it down. Is there anything else you can remember?
Was he wearing any other jewellery? Any other tattoos or scars or
marks? Any guesses as to age or height or weight?”

“Um. Height, I
wouldn’t know, he was sitting. Weight, he had a bit of a belly, but
he wasn’t fat. Age, I don’t know, maybe middle-aged. The skin on
his arm looked kind of… weathered, I guess? I don’t remember any
other jewellery or scars or anything.”

“That’s all right.
You’ve given us a good place to start. Now we know we’re looking
for a middle-aged diver with thinning brown hair, average build,
who’s either currently missing or else died of a heart attack. If
you can start looking through the database, that would be
great.”

I sighed. “Okay. Shit!
Wait a minute!”

“What?” Kane
demanded.

“What will happen to
the other prisoner now? If…” I swallowed the tightness in my
throat. “If he’s even still alive. You killed off three of Fuzzy
Bunny’s men. Who’ll take over? Should I be going back into the sim
to see what’s going on?”

“No,” he said firmly.
“Not tonight. I think Fuzzy Bunny will be sufficiently distracted
by the loss of me and their men that they won’t expend a lot of
energy on their remaining prisoner tonight. And you need a
break.”

“I’m okay,” I said
reflexively.

“Good. Then you can
get started on the database whenever you’re ready.” He got up. “I’m
going outside. It’s too hot in here.”

I realized I was
sweating, too. The icy sensation that had frozen me all afternoon
had finally gone away. As Germain followed him out, I got up and
peeled off my boots, socks, jacket, and pants. I was padding
barefoot over to the sink to refill my water glass when Hellhound
stuck his head in the door.

He raised a lecherous
eyebrow as he took in my tank top and clingy shorts. “Gettin’ ready
for me, darlin’?”

I laughed. “Depends on
whether you like an audience or not.”

“What if I say I do?”
He grinned and bounced his eyebrows.

I put on a severe
expression. “I’d be shocked.” We both laughed.

“Ya wanna come out for
a walk?” He leered suggestively. “We could go… commune with nature
for a while.”

I looked him up and
down. “Tempting. Except for the mosquitoes. But I need to get
started on this database. I have a feeling it’ll take a while.
Germain said he’d narrowed it down based on what I gave him, but
there are a lot of pictures in the shortlist.”

“Ya don’t know what
you’re missin’.”

I sighed. “Sadly, I
do.”

I had just gotten
started with the database when Kane stuck his head in the door of
the RV. “I contacted Webb,” he said. “I’ve asked him to see if he
could get a copy of the guest list from the party, just in case the
man they killed was one of the guests. Then we can cross-reference
that with anything he can dig up from the dive club
memberships.”

“How long do you think
it will take?”

“I haven’t a clue.
He’ll call as soon as he has something.” He withdrew, and I turned
back to the database.

The sun was setting by
the time the men stepped into the RV again. They had left me to my
work, but I’d heard the rumble of their voices outside while they
strategized.

“Any luck?” Kane
inquired.

“No.” I blew out a
sigh. “Slow going.”

“It’s all right. These
things take time.”

“But we don’t
have
time!” I protested. “We need to -”

I was interrupted by a
buzzing from Kane’s pocket, and he pulled out his phone, his frown
clearing as he glanced at the call display and punched the talk
button.

“Webb,” he said in
greeting. “What have you got?”

We all eyed him
tensely as he nodded slowly, frowning again.

“Right. Okay, thanks.”
He hung up and blew out a tired breath, massaging his forehead.
“There was no record of anybody with that tattoo in the law
enforcement system, so he wasn’t a criminal. Webb’s sending a list
of possibilities from the dive club memberships, filtered by age.
He doesn’t see much chance of getting a list of party guests. The
only way would be to hack into Harchman’s computer system in hopes
of finding it. He already tried, but it’s secure and encrypted. And
if Webb can’t get in, I’m willing to bet nobody can.”

Kane looked at his
watch. “It should be dusk in about half an hour. That’d be a good
time to go back and get my bike. We need to get surveillance up
again, too.”

“Are you nuts?” I
demanded. “If they catch you…” My stomach lurched, and I gulped it
down. “If they catch you again, they’ll torture you for real! You
really want to live the rest of your life blind and burned and
crippled and drinking all your meals through a straw…” I realized
my voice was rising rapidly and shut up. I clenched my hands in my
lap to hide their shaking.

There was a short
silence while Germain and Hellhound regarded the two of us
uneasily.

Kane sighed. “Aydan,
this is my job.”

I took a deep breath
and spoke evenly. “I realize that. I’m not trying to convince you
otherwise. But don’t take pointless risks. The bike’s not worth
it.”

Germain broke in.
“Aydan’s right. We need to set some priorities here.”

“Keep in mind that if
they did catch me, they likely wouldn’t escalate the violence that
quickly in real life,” Kane said. “If they did, they’d have a dead
captive on their hands in short order, and no information. And
they’re going to want information from me now more than ever.”

“Assuming they read
the Torturer’s Handbook and they follow the industry best
practices,” I interrupted sourly.

“They’d also be
hampered by the location,” he continued. “They wouldn’t be able to
do anything in the guest house. Too many other guests wandering
around. Too much noise and mess.”

“Goody.”

“I’m not trying to
argue that I should go over there tonight,” Kane said patiently.
“I’m just saying you’re probably overestimating the actual risk.
Effective torture is mostly psychological.”

Germain shook his
head, frowning. “Hellhound and I will cover surveillance for
tonight,” he said. “And we can bring the bike back, if it’s still
there.”

“If I was Fuzzy Bunny,
it’d still be there, all right,” I said. “It’s called bait.”

Kane nodded. “I
thought of that, too. But we have night vision and infrared scopes.
If they have it guarded, we’ll be able to spot their people
easily.”

“True,” I said slowly.
“But if I was Fuzzy Bunny, I wouldn’t put a guard on it at all.
After your performance today, I’d assume you were both smart and
well-equipped enough to detect that. I’d route my patrols far away
from it so you could get in easily. And I’d put a transmission
device somewhere on the bike so I could track you down at my
leisure.”

Kane gave me a
piercing glance. “I’d also followed that train of thought,” he
assured me after a second. “We’ve got a handheld sweep device. I
wouldn’t move the bike without making sure it was clean.”

“Here’s another
question, though,” he added. “Do they even know the bike is there?
And if so, do they know it’s mine? I told the guards I was on foot.
The patrols haven’t been going anywhere near that far out. And it
didn’t look like they were on high alert. I didn’t even run into a
patrol when I left this afternoon.”

“Why do you want the
bike back so badly?” I asked.

“I don’t like being
one ride short,” Kane replied. “It compromises our mobility.
Besides,” he added reluctantly, “It’s my own bike. That 750 cruiser
of yours just doesn’t have the power and handling that I’m used
to.”

“Now the truth comes
out,” I teased.

He gave an unrepentant
shrug. “The truth, yes, but I wouldn’t risk a mission for it. I
stand by my reasoning. If we don’t retrieve it, we’ll need to get
another bike.”

“Okay,” Germain
agreed. “Hellhound and I will take the Yamaha over. We’ll check out
the area with the scopes. If there’s no guard, we’ll go in and
sweep the bike, make sure it’s clean. If it all checks out, we’ll
bring it back. Otherwise, we’ll leave it there.”

“I’ll take the first
watch,” Hellhound volunteered. “Germain can spell me off around
two, an’ we can swap again in the mornin’.”

“What do you think
about keeping a watch here at night, too?” Germain asked. “It
overextends us, but with the extra activity over at Harchman’s, we
might want to be cautious. Especially with Aydan here.”

“Good point,” Kane
agreed. “All right. You two handle Harchman’s. I’ll watch
here.”

“We’ll take shifts,” I
corrected. “You guys are tired already. I can pull my weight.”

Kane assessed me, and
I met his eyes steadily. He’d looked tired when I arrived earlier
in the day. Now he looked like death warmed over. He wouldn’t admit
it, but I knew his experience in the sim had taken its toll.

“All right,” he said
finally. “Let’s do it.”

“Wait,” I said. “One
more thing.” They all turned to look at me. “Arnie needs some more
information.”

“We’ve already been
over this,” Germain said. “I have a direct order not to
disclose.”

“Everyone please note
Carl has followed orders to the letter,” I said. I turned to
Hellhound. “You need to know that-”

“Aydan, there are
serious consequences if you breach your confidentiality agreement,”
Kane interrupted.