Undercover Genius (25 page)

“Pete and his team are out there,” the guy on the ground
muttered. “Call them and get them out.”

“It speaks. I’m impressed,” I said. “Call your buddies and
ask where they are and tell them they’re in a hell of a lot of trouble if they
don’t help us.”

“We’re not supposed to have our phones on while we race,”
Zombie #1 argued.

“But the race ought to be done by now. They’ve had time to
hit the last marker.” Zombie #3 had quickly sobered. He wore a worried frown as
he punched his phone on.

I’d gathered these zombies weren’t Broderick’s minions. I’d
like to have a word with “Pete and his team,” though. Except these zombies
didn’t seem to be getting any replies to their calls and were starting to look
as anxious as I felt.

“Didn’t one of Broderick’s team fall off a cliff the last
time they were out there?” Zombie #3 asked uneasily. “Maybe we’d better check
on Pete.”

“I like this guy. Give him a hug,” I told Sean, before
trotting off to the nearest trail signpost and trusting someone would follow.

I hit Patra’s number again as Zombies #1 and #3 wearily
started up the path. Sean brought up the rear, talking into his phone. At this
point, I didn’t care if he called in the FBI.

Patra still wasn’t answering her cell.

“Holy shit,” Zombie #3 said as he stared at his phone. “Some
bitch and her lawyer had Dr. Smythe arrested.” He held up the image for his
partner to see.

The news was displaying a photo of me in my party clothes.
Oops.

Patra’s perspective

“She went over the side here!” Pee shouted.

Patra ducked behind the shelter of tall rocks. She’d worked half
way down the side of the gorge and found a crevasse surrounded by jagged
boulders. If her herders had an ounce of rock-climbing ability in them, they
could easily follow the same narrow path she’d taken. And they’d kind of proved
that they were athletes already. She
so
wasn’t.

Her sole advantage was that the ledge was only wide enough
for them to attack one at a time.

She gathered stones in a neat pile in front of her hiding
place. The fissure in the rocks wasn’t deep and didn’t give her much throwing
room.

Breaking a stick from a half-dead shrub, she glanced down to
the river below. Jumping into the rapids wouldn’t be any safer than her narrow
hiding place. If she kept her back to the wall, Pee Wee and friends were more
vulnerable than she.

She could try climbing down, but she’d more likely end up
sliding off one of those nasty looking boulders and still end up in the river.
Nope, Custer’s last stand was here.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Pee sing-songed.

“I see her,” one of the zombies shouted. “Over there, by the
rocks.”

If she’d been prepared, she’d have her knife with her. Damn.
Ana was so going to kill her if she didn’t make it out alive.

Patra yanked up her overall leg and began sawing at her pantyhose
with the stick. She shouldn’t have worn the mini-skirt to work. From now on, it
was pants and knee-highs all the way. At least she’d left the hose on when she’d
donned the overalls. “Hey, Pee Wee,” she called. “Do
all
girls threaten your dick or just me?”

Ana’s fighting tactics had taught Patra that
testosterone-filled rage lacked logic. If she was really lucky, he’d get so
mad, he’d fall off the cliff trying to race down and strangle her.

“You bitch!” Pee called back. “You’re nothing but a lying
spy just like your bleeding-heart father.”

She didn’t have time to look up to see if he’d found the
path yet. “Lying spy? Wouldn’t someone have to be spying on me to figure out if
I’m a spy?” Was he talking about Leonard Riley? Or had Sam Adams not been
guarding her back this morning as she’d thought?

“You can’t cheat by hiding down there. Godless heathens are
losers,” one of the zombies crowed from somewhere just over her head.

“And your god says it’s okay to murder in his name?” she
asked, ripping frantically at the tear she’d made in the nylon. Maybe crowing
would distract the jerkwads until help arrived. “I think I’d rather side with
the peaceful heathens then.”

“We’re not murdering anyone,” one of the nameless zombies said,
apparently confused. “We just want to win this game.”

“Oh yeah, let me throw you my last flag and you can all go
home,” Patra called, trying to sound confident.

“Flag won’t reach us from there. You have to come out,” the
zombie argued. “This is a race, not hide and seek.”

“If this were a race, I’d still be on the marked course and
not on these rocks. Nope, you take Pee Wee and his henchman out of here, and
I’ll hand you the flag when I reach the parking lot.” Keep them talking, she
muttered another of Ana’s axioms. The pantyhose leg finally ripped off. She pulled
at the branches of the bush concealing her sanctuary, hunting for a pair of
sturdy limbs while surreptitiously studying the path above her.

“Don’t you morons know who you’re talking to?” Pee asked,
finding the path she’d taken and starting down it.

Crap. She hastily snapped off the best branch she could
find.

“Her family just had Dr. Smythe arrested,” Pete said,
seeking safe purchase for his big boots. “Her father was a raving lunatic who
encouraged terrorists. She’s been digging through our files, trying to find
dirt. And she thinks we’re
idiots
and
can’t figure that out.”

Her family had Dr. Smith arrested? Who in hell was Dr. Smith?
Oh, Smitty, she guessed. The R&P zombies wouldn’t be happy about losing
their fearless leader. What the devil was Ana doing out there in the real
world?

“You’re lying about all except that last bit. I
know
you’re idiots.” She finished
knotting one end of the nylon to a thick branch and started on the next. “You
let your own bigotry blind you. Journalists are supposed to be objective and
unbiased, and you’re not even giving me a fair trial. C’mon, let’s see which of
us is right. If I win the race, you’re wrong.”

Had she pushed him to real rage yet? She peered around the bush.
Sure enough, Pee was now sliding down the rocky path at a stupidly reckless
pace. She finished the knot, and set a nice round stone in the sling of her
mangled stocking. The angle wasn’t as good as she’d like, but she’d take what
she could get.

“Hey, Pete, check my phone.” The voices of the zombies
weren’t coming closer. “He’s right. Dr. Smythe’s been arrested.”

“You’re not supposed to turn your phone on,” another zombie
protested. “It’s against the rules.”

Watching through the shrub, she could see Pee and his cohort
in their red shirts continuing down the path. She waited until she could smell
the alcohol on their breaths before she pulled back on the sling.

The rock hit Pee Wee right between the eyes.

* * *

A male scream echoed over the deserted forest trail. I
broke into a run up the path the zombies had showed us. That hadn’t been Patra,
but I knew enough about my sister and battles to be frantic. Patra never
attacked unless cornered.

The rush of the rapids ahead was loud enough to guide me the
rest of the way. I left the weary zombies in the dust. Sean increased his pace,
but he was hampered by the limp. We arrived in a clearing near the cliff’s edge
to find a zombie wearing tattered skin, green eye shadow, and bloody rags
blocking the path with a big stick. Cute.

Not subtle, Sean simply plowed his fist into the guy’s jaw.
Maybe he really did have a thing for Patra.

Green Boy went down, cracking his head on one of the rocks
lining the path. I winced but kept running across the clearing. I could hear
Patra talking now. A second zombie wearing a fright wig and black make-up
turned in our direction. I raced straight at him, hands out, and shoved him
backward, down the hill.

His scream wasn’t pretty. Neither was Patra’s.

The impetus of my shove had me off balance. Sean caught me
and flung me toward solid ground before I could tumble down the hill. That was
a damned tricky ledge.

“Patra, we’re here!” I shouted. “We’ve got two down. How
many more?”

Sean peered over the ledge and held up two fingers. I got
down on my rear and started sliding down the rocky path. He grabbed the back of
my army coat, presumably to keep me from taking chances on a crumbling cliff. I
jerked a switchblade from one of the pockets. He’d have to learn that my army
coat meant lethal business. I did not wear it without planning to use it. He
probably wouldn’t approve of the grenade in the inside pocket either.

Sean released the back of my coat.

“Pee Wee just went into the river. I think we’ve got the
other two trapped between us,” Patra shouted. “How about it, guys? Want to join
Pee and Blackface down the ledge or want to shake hands with my sister and my
new boyfriend?”

I would probably throttle Patra once I had my hands on her.
A guy in a red shirt was further down the path, closest to Patra and holding a
big stick. Another red shirt stood nearer to me. They both looked pretty ticked
off.

“What did you do to stir the hornets?” I called back, still
sitting on the cliff’s edge but brandishing my rather nasty looking knife. I
didn’t comment on Patra’s adoption of Sean as boyfriend.

The roar of a helicopter nearly drowned my question.

Sean, the impeccably correct, used one of the race flags to
signal the ’copter, but I wasn’t seeing landing space on a cliff.

“I called them names, stoned their ringleader, and you
apparently had their fearless leader arrested,” Patra called back. “Looks like
you’ve taken out Evil Menace Numero Dos,” she said with admiration.

I could see her now. She’d found a nice niche behind some massive
boulders. “Is that a panty hose slingshot?” I asked in approval. “Good work.”

The Redshirts glanced back and forth between us, probably
trying to decide which of us was crazier. Apparently distraction defused their
hormonal rage, and their brains kicked in again. Finally realizing the
helicopter wasn’t moving on, they glanced up at and swore at the military
markings. Someone’s 911 call had gone through. I was in no place to question
why military and not police.

“The slingshot got Pee Wee right between the eyes. He was a
little unbalanced,” Patra said with regret. “Not sure if he hit the river or if
he’s on the rocks.”

I could hear sirens in the distance. “Do we want the cops to
talk to these guys or do you just want to go home?” I asked conversationally.

“We didn’t do anything!” Redshirt shouted. “She was shooting
at us. She’s
killed
Pee…” He stumbled
uncertainly over the unflattering name Patra had used.

“They’re bullies,” Patra said. “Loudmouth there is Broderick’s
tough. The zombies are with R&P. I’m betting they’ve sent a few other
people over this ledge before. They’re kind of good at it. I say let the cops
have them. Throw me down a coat, if you’ve got one. I’m about to freeze.”

Sean heard this last. He looked at my armed and loaded army
jacket, and immediately doffed his fancy suede coat. “Catch,” he called,
flinging the coat and aiming at the boulders.

Patra caught it. “You’re going to get really lucky,” she
called back.

Sean sighed and looked at me. “She’s a baby, right? She
doesn’t mean that.”

“Only if ten years difference matters,” I told him. His look
of interest should have ticked me off. It didn’t.

I laughed as our two drunken bullies staggered up the hill,
looking for a way to escape my knife. Athletic as they were, they chose to cut
through shrubbery and find a different ledge than the one I guarded. I just
wanted Patra safe. The cops could work off some energy chasing criminals.

“She’s Magda,” I warned Sean conversationally, as if we were
in the front parlor. “Your virtue is in danger.”

“You’re right, I should leave Graham alone,” Sean said in
resignation as the Redshirts shoved their way through a bush and looked for
footing on an outcropping of rock. “If all of you are on his side, I don’t have
a chance of surviving, much less learning anything.”

“Graham’s alive and on the side of the good guys. What more
do you need to know?” I was probably lying. It wasn’t as if I knew Graham was
on any side but his own. I just preferred not to be caught between Graham and
Sean.

I waved at the helicopter. A long arm waved back. I wanted
there to be a diamond cufflink but I saw only a flight jacket before a ladder
was lowered to Patra’s ledge.

“Crap,” I muttered as Patra disappeared inside the helicopter.
I didn’t need to test my phone’s reception to call our resident spider. I
recognized his tactics. “Graham’s covering up again. Let’s get out of here
before the cops arrive to ask questions.”

Sean didn’t have to be told twice. We turned left instead of
right, and took the long way around, avoiding the path the authorities would
follow. The zombies and redshirts could help the cops find their friends once
we weren’t there to give evidence against them.

I briefly considered giving up the old Magda tactic of
staying low so the bad guys don’t know who you are or where you are until you’d
nailed them. Except I wasn’t interested in the puppets on the bluff. I wanted
to nail Broderick and the puppetmeisters who had sent them. That required
avoiding media attention — and keeping Patra out of the spotlight.

The police and park rangers had already disappeared up the
hill by the time Sean and I leisurely made our way down and climbed into the MG.
One cop had stayed behind to gather equipment. Since we came down from a
different path, he rushed through his routine and left us alone. If they wanted
to talk to us, they could check out Sean’s license plate.

The pickup drunks had probably fled as soon as they heard
the sirens. Drinking and driving made people nervous around the law.

In a blue funk, I sank deeper into the MG seat . Patra had
nearly died today, and I wasn’t any closer to the demons behind the attempt on
her life, Bill’s murder, or anything else. I could suspect orders came down
from the upper echelons of BM, or that someone in the R&P had something to
conceal, but suspicion didn’t provide evidence. Like in our grandfather’s
death, we had no proof at all. How did I cut the head off a Hydra?