Undercover Genius (24 page)

I was feeding the list of prison visitors from the day
Reggie was murdered into the back door Graham had opened into police files when
I received an IM from sadams. I was not amused. I detest instant messages and
never give out my ID. And
sadams
sounded
more like a terrorist than the person I assumed had actually hacked into my
program — Sam Adams. Jerk.

“I want that virus file,” I told the intercom. It didn’t
answer.

I warily read the message, vowing to install two firewalls.
Problem,
it read, as if words were at a
premium. I wanted to shake the computer. Or Sam Adams. Instead, I typed
With?

Great Falls.

Getting a little nervous, I Googled Great Falls and replied
How?
to the IM.

Google revealed an area less than half an hour away with waterfalls,
gorges, a swift river, and big rocks — not the kind of place my very
civilized, city-dwelling family would appreciate.

These cryptic messages were taking caution to whole new
levels. Patra knew Sam Adams. Patra should be at work in Broderick’s cubicle
farm. If she was merrily rooting out data on BM versus her father, with side
roads into Blooms, Sadams had no reason to IM me. What the hell did waterfalls
have to do with anything?

Danger
was all I
got in return.

I hit the intercom. “Track this twerp and smash him into
atoms,” I yelled, hoping to get our attic spider’s attention. At the same time,
I was typing
Who? What? Where? When?

The IM screen disappeared. My phone rang.

Patra’s caller ID appeared on my screen with the text
message 911.

Patra’s perspective

Wearing the red shirt and old overalls she’d been given as
part of the “race,” Patra scrambled up a bush-covered hill, keeping her head
down. Covered in mud and burrs, she collapsed under a thorny shrub and gasped
to catch her breath. Until now, she’d been playing along, dodging maniacal
zombies.

Not to be paranoid or anything, but she was pretty damned
certain a contingent of those zombies had singled
her
out for a purpose. They’d not only taken most of her red flags,
but chased her off the marked route in the process. She’d been herded in the
same way lions cut baby elephants from the pack. Ana had taught her the tactic
when they were all just kids and needed to re-arrange a bully’s thinking.

And if she needed any reinforcement in her belief that
Broderick Media and the Righteous and Proud worked hand-in-glove, Patra’s team had
not only abandoned her, but joined the R&P zombies. Those were some of her
red-shirted teammates surrounding this remote outpost, preventing anyone from
coming to her rescue.

She texted Sam and Ana while she scanned the shedding forest
below. Late October and many of the trees had lost their leaves, so she could
see the trails between them. The thunder of the waterfall in the gorge was not
too far in the distance. She didn’t know what Ana or Sam could do, but at least
Sam might know where to look for her body, just as Ana had predicted with her
stupid hive mind theory. She had to remember that Ana wasn’t stupid.

Neither was she. Patra spotted the red T-shirts of two of
her fellow employees, and three wearing R&P’s zombie rags, creeping down
the trails through the trees below. They weren’t chasing each other — kind
of a dead giveaway.

She didn’t like this game, and she didn’t like being herded.
Where were they trying to push her, anyway? It was a damned state park. There
were probably Mounties or some such riding all over. Not that she could see any
in the immediate vicinity, and it was starting to get dark. That was a bit
scary. She was already pretty chilly.

The rapids were just on the other side of the hill from the
sounds of it, but this wasn’t Africa. The pathetic rocks and falls here looked
like a Disney stage set and not a life-threatening environment. There were kids
laughing and shouting not too far away. Only a suspicious mind or a guilty
conscience would see anything ominous in a game of tag. Guilty on both counts.

Her bright red T-shirt made her an easy target among fading
greenery. Damn, she wished she’d had time to prepare, but it had all happened
too fast. She’d been shoved onto a bus, handed this horrid costume, and dumped
out here without much of an alternative except to hope it really was a game.

She wiggled the red shirt off from under the overalls and
tied it to the bush. She was going to freeze to death in her overalls and athletic
bra if she didn’t find a way out.

One of the zombies shouted and pointed up the hill. Oh,
copulation
.

She edged over the crest of the rocky hill. On the other
side, she saw only the nearly perpendicular bluff to the river. She could jump
or climb down and pray she’d find a crevasse in the bluff where they couldn’t
find her, or her skeletal remains. Zombie race! Someone had a macabre mind.

She’d be in real trouble if they had bullets. As it was, she
just needed to keep her head, find a place they couldn’t reach her, and outwait
them. Gazing down the steep, rock-strewn bluff to the gorge below, she finally
understood why she’d been herded in this direction. She’d have to be a mountain
goat to escape that way. Or turn into one of EG’s bats, vampiric preferably, so
she could suck those zombies dry.

She punched her phone again, but the reception on this side
of the hill was gone. Inventing more pithy epithets, she grabbed a sturdy bush
and eased her way to the nearest ledge.

* * *

I sicced Graham’s nifty GPS phone tracker on Patra’s call —
it came from Great Falls, Virginia. Crap, Sam Adams had been right. What the
devil was she doing playing in a park? Patra hadn’t trusted the neat hedgerows
of Hyde Park when we’d been in London.

Graham wasn’t responding to my intercom. For all I knew, he
was steering Air Force One out of danger. Or fomenting revolution in Belize. I
was on my own.

I didn’t own a car. Mallard had access to a Bentley which was
too huge to zip through DC rush hour traffic. How the devil did I find Patra in
a park even if I could miraculously fly there?

I called Nick but got his voice mail. He must still be
interviewing. Desperate, I called Sean. He had an old MG he raced through
traffic as if he were on a NASCAR track. I’d vowed never to ride with him
again, but I was out of my comfort zone. No phone, no internet, and a sibling sending
distress signals stressed my mother hen instincts. And yeah, I’m sure there’s a
personality disorder in there. Stupid psychiatrists just hadn’t diagnosed it
yet.

Sean answered warily. I couldn’t blame the man. We’d already
got him shot once this week.

“Patra is sending distress calls. An IT nerd at BM is
telling me she’s in danger. I don’t know what the hell is going on but she’s in
Great Falls. How do I get there fast?”

“I’m at the pub. Meet me on your curb in five minutes. If
you’ve got tracking devices, bring them. There’s a damned big state park out
there.”

“No can do. News vans all over the street. I’ll meet you at
the pub.”

I hoped he hadn’t been drinking for long. I grabbed my
phone, told Mallard to watch out for EG when she got home, and dug out my army
coat.

I took the kitchen steps to the backyard. I peered over the
wall at the piece of street I could see — the local NBC news truck in
front, and across the street, a red van in a no-parking zone. Where were the
police when you needed them?

I slipped out the back gate into the concrete yard of the building
on the street behind us. A smart reporter would cover this escape route. I
looked around but didn’t see any. We weren’t a real story yet.

I ran down the street to the Irish pub on the corner. Sean
was parked right outside, waiting in his nifty two-seater. He threw open the
door so I could climb in. I winced as he hit the gas with his bandaged foot and
spun into the Circle. Shot toes didn’t seem to slow him down.

“You own a proper coat, don’t you?” he asked mockingly. “Most
women go for leather or wool.”

He referred to the ratty old army jacket I’d pilfered from
one of Magda’s boyfriends. I patted the pockets now to be certain all my
supplies were still there. “This
is
a
coat. You’ll remember I don’t have to leave the house to work.”

He snorted, steered the car in between two delivery trucks,
floored the gas pedal at an intersection, and hit the highway already cruising
faster than the rest of the traffic. I held my breath and closed my eyes as horns
blew.

“We have to arrive alive to be of any help,” I reminded him.

He tossed me his phone. “Call Morales. Tell him to give you
the lowdown on BM’s zombie games.”

“Who’s Morales?” I asked in suspicion, searching through his
address book.

“A damned good reporter on our side now. He once worked with
BM and can tell you the tales. Broderick likes his employees to be lean, mean,
and nasty. The zombie game is just a fun warm-up to cull the herd. He has more
intriguing competition for older employees, usually involving war zones and
real terrorists.”

Had Ernest Bloom been one of the employees “culled”? And
dead.

Hand shaking, I found “Morales” in his address book and hit
the number.

“Yo, O’Herlihy, you owe me,” was the reply. “I want the
scoop on the Maximillian chick.”

I raised my eyebrows at Sean, but he wasn’t paying
attention. Not in the mood for games, I replied a little nastily. “My name is
Devlin, the only Maximillian chick is nine-years old, and the scoop is in Great
Falls and Broderick Media and not my front door.”

I gave him a minute to absorb all that ripe information. At
his muttered
shit,
I gathered he’d
put pieces together, and I continued, “O’Herlihy tells me you have the scoop on
Broderick’s zombie games. Want to trade?”

“Shit, yeah,” was the low-throated reply. “Give me a second
to pull up my stuff. I was just on my way out the door. Sean with you?”

“He’s become one with the wheel right now. We’re heading for
Great Falls. How much trouble is my sister in?”

“Last guy they culled went into the gorge, broke his leg in
three places, but didn’t hit the river. One before that drowned. The police
called them tragic accidents. You know for certain they’re culling your
sister?”

I think I had a heart attack.

By the time Morales and I had finished exchanging
pleasantries, Sean was swerving into the parking lot. I was pretty certain I
was gray-haired by now. I checked my braid to see. Still black. My parents
obviously had strong genes.

I was beyond terrified and wanted an AK-47.

There weren’t many cars left at this hour. The park would be
closing shortly. I took photos of all the license plates and sent them to
Graham. A few zombies were laughing and waving their flags as they shared a
flask near a flashy dual-cab pickup. I growled and reached for the MG’s door.

Sean caught the back of my neck, freezing me. “Those are the
ones
not
chasing your sister. Go easy
on them,” he warned.

I’m a sneak — hence the protective coloration of army
coat and hippy braid. I’m small and not dangerous-looking enough to intimidate
self-confident clowns. But it was irrationally satisfying to know that Sean
thought I could.

I strolled up and snapped a photo of the group. As expected,
that brought them down off their happy cloud.

“Hey, who do you think you are?” Zombie #1 asked, wiping mud
off his face with one of his rags.

“Your worst nightmare,” I said sweetly. “I grew up playing
with real terrorists, not fake ones. My sister had better be in one piece when
I find her or Broderick will be the subject of the next congressional
investigation. And oops, looks like the lot of you will be first on the witness
stand. Want to help me get my sister back safely?” There, I’d been as polite as
I knew how.

Sean leaned against his car door, crossed his arms, and just
watched, reserving his injured foot for back-up, I had to assume.

Zombie #2, a big, square brute who apparently enjoyed
throwing his defensive tackle weight around, loomed over me. “I want to make
pizza pie out of you.”

This game was more fun with Nick to laugh and wallop the brute’s
skull with a blackjack. Sean wouldn’t appreciate my nefarious talents. Oh well.

“You and who else?” I asked without an ounce of menace —
as I rammed my brass knuckles into his nuts. I saved that particular trick for
times I’m dealing with bullies a foot taller than me. The angle is good.

He went down hard, holding his junk. Since brass knuckles
are just a shade illegal, I slid my weaponry into my capacious pocket and
smiled at the rest of the zombies.

Sean snapped photos and pretended he hadn’t seen what I’d
just done.

“I repeat, I grew up with real terrorists.” My heart was
pounding, and I wanted to scream and kick shins, but I had plenty of experience
in getting a message across with a barely sane composure. “Your friends may be
out there attempting to push my sister over a ledge. Either you help us bring
her back alive, or you’ll end up in war zones you don’t even know exist yet.
Right now, I’m asking nicely to help me find my sister. The invitation will not
be extended again.”

“Most of us have tagged out. There are only a few stragglers
still racing,” Zombie #3 said with some puzzlement, gazing down at his groaning
compadre. “They could be anywhere.”

Since he was being reasonable, I focused on him. “Where is
the most dangerous area of the park?”

“The gorge,” he said. “But we don’t race in that area. We’re
just waiting for the final tally. Broderick’s team is losing and they’re out
there trying to even the score.”

“No, they’re not,” Sean said, limping up. “They’re trying to
murder her sister. How about some of you help us find her before the police
arrive?”