The Spy Is Cast (40 page)

“I’m good.”

Kane reached a hand
down, and they clasped each other’s forearms as Kane pulled
Hellhound to his feet.

“We need to debrief
back at the RV, and then you can both head back to the city,” Kane
told us.

We followed him
wordlessly out to the gas company van. Kane ushered me into the
passenger seat while Hellhound climbed into the back.

“There’s blood back
here,” he observed as he sat.

“Oh!” I turned to
Kane. “I meant to tell you I’m sorry. How’s your hand?”

He briefly surveyed
the purpled bite mark. “Fine.”

“Ya bit him?”
Hellhound demanded.

“It was an
accident.”

“Kinky.” Hellhound
winked with a shade of his old ribald humour.

Kane glanced at him in
the rear-view mirror. “What happened? How did you end up at
Harchman’s?”

Hellhound’s expression
darkened. “I made a coupla stops after I left base camp yesterday
mornin’. Got back to my place a little after noon. I knew somethin’
was wrong when Hooker didn’t meet me at the door.” He paused, and I
knew he was composing himself.

“Coupla assholes
hidin’ inside my place,” he continued levelly. “I got a coupla hits
in, but they nailed me with a Taser an’ shot me up with some shit.
Knocked me out. Didn’t know where the hell I was when I woke up,
an’ then that fuckin’ bitch showed up with her goddamn knife. Dunno
how long she worked on me. Long time, off an’ on. Askin’ where the
key was, an’ who I was workin’ for. The key, that’s the thing
you’re carryin’?”

I nodded, and he
continued. “I didn’t tell her dick-all. Dunno what I woulda done if
ya hadn’t told me about the mind thing earlier, though. It felt…
real.”

He went silent
again.

“But then she dragged
Aydan in. That was some ugly shit,” he added quietly. “An’ I
cracked. Sorry, Cap.” He turned to me. “I thought ya were gonna
die. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I
assured him. “I’m pretty sure we contained it. And you didn’t tell
them anything they didn’t already know. Except for where the… um…
technology was. And I’d moved it from there anyway.”

He rubbed his hand
over his face, looking old and tired. “Sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to
be sorry for,” Kane told him firmly. “Aydan and I both understand
what you went through. Nobody could have done better.”

“Thanks,” Hellhound
said simply.

“What I want to know
is why they came after you in the first place,” Kane said.

“I can answer that,” I
told him. “They caught Arnie and me on camera at the road. You
could see the plates on both the bikes in one of the views. They
must have had access to the registries database, so they’d have
gotten Arnie’s name and home address. They’d also have been able to
trace the Honda back to the dealership and find out that it was
rented by Kane Consulting. And your cover was already blown. They
would have jumped on anything to do with Kane Consulting.”

“So we’re all up shit
creek,” Hellhound said gloomily.

“No. I locked
everything down,” I told him. “I’m absolutely positive that
information didn’t go outside of the people who were at
Harchman’s.” I turned to Kane. “As long as you picked up everybody
at Harchman’s, we should be okay.”

He nodded slowly. “It
was a clean strike. We had everybody rounded up at the building
site in a matter of minutes. The outlying guards took a little
longer, but there wouldn’t be any way that the information could
have been communicated to them.”

“So you’re safe,” I
comforted Hellhound. “We’re all safe. Or at least as safe as we’re
likely to get, anyway.”

Kane drove up to the
RV, and we got out of the van. “Hellhound, why don’t you go for a
walk,” Kane suggested. “I need to debrief with Aydan.”

“Feed her first,”
Hellhound grunted as he turned away.

We stepped into the
RV, and Kane eyed me inquiringly. “What do you want to eat?”

“I’m really not
hungry. I’ll just snack.” I reached into my backpack and pulled out
an apple. I still felt a little queasy, and I couldn’t face the
thought of more canned chili or stew.

“All right.” Kane
wedged himself onto the bench of the dinette while I ran myself a
glass of water. When I slid in opposite him, he pulled his notebook
closer and fixed me with a steady gaze. “Tell me everything. Start
to finish.”

I blew out a long
breath while I organized my thoughts. “After I finished giving you
those names, I discovered groupings of files. I found records of
their operation in March, and that’s when I realized they were
syncing with other sites. I could trace the tunnels to six of
them.”

I sighed with
irritation. “By the time I got in again with Spider, only two were
still active. Piss me off.”

“Don’t knock it,” Kane
assured me. “If we can identify two sites, that’s a tremendous
accomplishment. And it’s valuable just to know of the existence of
the others.”

“I guess. Oh!” I
exclaimed as another thought hit me. “Did you get the prisoner
out?”

“Yes. He was
uninjured. Physically, anyway. No wonder you couldn’t find him when
you searched the local database. He’s an agent from the States who
was undercover with Fuzzy Bunny, trying to track that arms deal.
Stemp is going to come out of this looking like a hero for
retrieving him.”

I snorted. “Yeah. Mr.
Wait-A-Little-Longer. He’d have been in deep shit if that agent had
died.”

“Probably not,” Kane
said seriously. “Undercover work is always dangerous, and that
agent knew what he was getting into. I don’t always agree with
Stemp’s approach, but he gets results. By waiting, he got the whole
package, all nicely wrapped up.”

I sipped some water,
trying to soothe my abraded throat. “Yeah. At the expense of other
people’s suffering.”

Kane didn’t respond,
and after another sip of water, I went on with my narrative.
“Anyway, by the time I finished snooping around in the network,
this other file had appeared with all our information in it, and I
realized how screwed we’d be if that got sent out. And that’s when
I realized they had Arnie, too. So I killed the sync routine and
went back out of the network to warn you.”

I eyed him quizzically
as I crunched my apple. “How did we get busted?”

“Remember how I said
you were rocking the whole van? One of the guards noticed. Harchman
has some good people there. Usually those rent-a-cops are
completely oblivious.” Kane looked disgusted. “Wouldn’t you know,
we get the one that’s on the ball. He made Germain open up the
van.”

“Just as I came out of
the network kicking and screaming,” I completed his sentence.

“And biting.”

I winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. So
you were coming out to tell me what was going on, but you couldn’t
because we were discovered.”

“Yeah. So I told
Germain to get out of there and go to Plan B. And I tried to
convince the guard to hold you down at the parking lot. I was
hoping the police would arrive and take you away before you got
dragged up to the house and identified.”

“Aydan,” Kane said,
sounding frustrated. “I’m supposed to be protecting you. Not the
other way around.”

“You’ve been
protecting me since March,” I told him. “Payback’s a bitch.”

Kane threw up his
hands. “Since March, I’ve failed to protect you from being
abducted, tortured, drugged, or manhandled by perverts. And as a
special bonus, I’ve forced you to undergo intense pain on a regular
basis and withheld food from you until you collapsed. With friends
like me, you don’t need enemies.”

“Yeah, but it’s been
such fun.”

He snorted. “What
happened after you went up to the house?”

“The guard took me up
to the house, and I hid in the bathroom and got into the network
again. I checked to make sure the sync was still dead, and I went
in to make sure Arnie knew it was a sim.”

“You told him it was a
sim?” Kane’s voice was ominously expressionless, and I hastened to
reassure him.

“No, no. I just
reminded him that it was in his head, that it wasn’t real.” I
swallowed hard. “Don’t blame Arnie for telling them about the
watch. You didn’t see what they did. And he thinks they’ve killed
Hooker, too.” My voice wavered a bit, and I sipped some more
water.

A spasm crossed Kane’s
face. “I wouldn’t blame him. I don’t know anybody who’s as mentally
tough as Hellhound. If he cracked, there’s nobody in the world who
wouldn’t have.”

I took a deep breath.
“By the time I left Arnie the first time, I was… pretty shaken up.
That’s when the policewoman arrived. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you
a more detailed message. I was afraid to tell her anything.”

“It’s all right. I
know now that you couldn’t have done anything else.”

“Thanks.” I gave him a
quick smile, relieved he agreed with me this time. “After I was
sure you were gone, I went out of the bathroom and Maria was there.
She was very kind, and she offered to let me lie down in the guest
house. When I got there, I realized she’d dropped me into a sim.
She’s in deep with Fuzzy Bunny. She was the one who tortured Arnie.
And probably the agent, it looked like the same kind of work. And
me.”

Kane sat forward, his
face creasing with concern, and I held up a reassuring hand. “A
construct of me. That’s why I didn’t die when she shot me inside
the sim. Arnie was trying to save me by telling her about the
watch. He had figured out how the other captives died, so he
thought I would die, too.”

“Well. He thought I
was dead,” I amended. “The construct took a bullet to the head, and
I had to get out of the sim fast because I knew Maria would come
straight to my body to get the watch. So I pried open the watch to
make it look like somebody had beaten her to it, and she fell for
it. You and the team arrived shortly afterward.”

“How did you recover
fast enough to deal with the watch?”

“Maria slapped a fob
on me. It got me out painlessly. Which reminds me.” I peeled it off
the back of my neck and handed it to him. “Too bad it only seems to
work for specific sims, not for general network access. I would
have been happy to skip all the kicking and screaming.”

“I wish you could
have.” Kane rubbed his hands over his face and stood up. “I have to
get back to Harchman’s. Now that I know how deeply Maria was
involved, I’ll want to question her personally. And I need to check
in with Webb. Can you and Hellhound take the Honda back to Calgary?
You can pick up your car, and drop him off at home. And you can go
home, too.”

“Sure, no problem.” I
got up, too. “I’ll just get changed. Oh.” I took off my watch and
handed it to him. “You’d better take this.” I picked up my backpack
and headed for the bathroom.

Kane stopped me with
an outstretched hand. “Thank you. For all you’ve done. I’ll likely
be in touch again soon with more questions.”

“Okay. You know how to
find me.”

By the time I stepped
out of the RV in my leathers, Kane was gone and Hellhound was
slouched in the folding chair with his eyes closed.

He jerked upright at
the sound of the door. “Ya ready to ride, darlin’?”

I nodded, and he gave
me a grin that did nothing to hide the bleakness in his eyes.
“Seems to me, ya said once that the only way you’d double on a bike
was if ya were drivin’. Ya wanna arm-wrestle for it?”

“Not a chance. I know
I wouldn’t win, and I wouldn’t be safe to double us anyway. You can
drive.”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m
hatin’ to hafta ride a Honda. ‘Specially this pathetic little 750.
If I hadta ride on the P-pad, too, my dick’d prob’ly just shrivel
up an’ fall off.”

I laughed. “Can’t have
that. Let’s go, macho man.” I stopped. “Wait, what about your
helmet?”

“It’s back at home.”
He picked up Germain’s full-face helmet and put it on. “This ain’t
as cool as my brain bucket, but at least it hides my face so
nobody’ll recognize me on this piece a’ shit.”

I laughed. “You’re
such a snob.”

He chuckled and swung
onto the seat, and I climbed on behind him. I hooked my boot heels
over the passenger pegs and groaned. “We might have to stop halfway
there so I can stretch my legs. Why the hell do they think all
passengers are five-foot-nothing?”

Hellhound reached back
to run a hand down my leg. “Love those long legs of yours.”

I wrapped my arms
around him. “Let’s get out of here.”

We arrived at the bike
dealership just in time to return the motorcycle before they closed
for the day. I dismounted stiffly and limped around for a few
minutes, trying to get my knees working while the dealer filled out
the paperwork. When everything was duly signed, I gratefully sank
into the driver’s seat of my Saturn.

Arnie climbed
cautiously into the passenger seat. “This ain’t bad,” he said.
“Usually I can barely get into these little tin cans.”

“Watch your mouth,” I
admonished. “Don’t talk that way in front of my car. And besides,
it’s plastic, not tin.”

He chuckled. “No
offense. This is a fine car, darlin’.”

I patted its dash.
“Yeah, it is.”

As I put the key in
the ignition, Hellhound’s stomach let out a horrendous growl. I
turned to him, counting back hours. “Jesus, Arnie, when did you eat
last?”

“Yesterday breakfast,”
he admitted. “But I don’t need food the way you do,” he added
quickly at my look of horror.

“Yes, you do. Where do
you want to go for supper? No argument,” I added as he opened his
mouth to protest.

He gave me a
half-smile and leaned his head back, his eyes closing. “I don’t
care. Surprise me, darlin’.”

By the time I pulled
out into traffic, he was fast asleep.

I debated while I
drove, and decided on a restaurant as close to his place as
possible to prolong the drive. He’d been starving and in agony for
a day and a half. At least he’d get nearly half an hour of sleep in
the car.