He held his breath as she tilted the screwdriver against the connector. A spark jumped between the connector and the tool as they touched.
Sara reattached the wire to its connector. “Let’s boot it up and see what happens,” she said, over a smile at Zach. “If this works, the Auto-drive and Auto-nav systems should be available, and we can reregister the car to me.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
She shrugged. “Then we’re screwed and we’ll have to steal another car.”
“How about the drive restriction system?”
“You mean the thing that makes it impossible for anyone but you to operate the vehicle?”
“Yes.”
“No idea.”
He mentally crossed his fingers and sat in the driver’s seat. “Auto-drive.”
Nothing happened.
“Auto-drive,” he repeated.
Still no response from the car.
“Manual drive, then.” He gripped the wheel.
There was still no response from the car.
“Power on.”
The car sat, inert as a rock.
“Fuck.” Sara bit the word off.
“Yeah.” He agreed. “That didn’t work so well.” He raised an eyebrow at his useless car.
“Jump out,” she said. “When you bought your car,” she stared past him at the dead car, “didn’t you have to go through an initial boot sequence for it to learn your voice?”
He thought about it for a second. “Yeah, I did.” She was right. He had done something. He tried to remember. “It was at the dealer. I can’t remember what I did.” He got out as she did something he couldn’t see and closed the hood.
“Okay, let me give it a try.” She stepped around the front of the car, stumbling when her foot caught the wheel stop. Zach put an arm around her waist to steady her. She offered no resistance.
“I’m okay.”
“Yeah,” he smiled at her. “And you’ll be okayer when we get somewhere safe.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s not a word.” The edges of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“Sure it is. Google it.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“The trick,” she said to him in a gentle tone, “is not to look back.”
Zach recalled her leaving the lab that morning and wondered what she meant, but decided to keep his question to himself.
He helped her into the driver’s seat. “Press and hold the Auto-drive button.”
She pressed and held pressure on the two-inch diameter button on the dash. After a moment, the button blinked. She released it and the dash LEDs for the standby subsystems flicked on. “This is promising.”
The green stripe across the dash lit, blinked twice, and stayed on.
A soft, female, computer-generated voice flowed from the hidden speakers. “Initial boot in progress. Transponder code resetting to new sequence. Please wait. Auto-nav initializing. Auto-drive initializing. Systems check. Check complete. Please state name for voice print.”
Sara inhaled and spoke into the microphone. “Goode, Sara.” She gave the car her driver’s license number.
“Accessing. Accessed. Voice print and operator license confirmed. Systems operational.” The button lit up in blue. The Mitsu’s basic female voice spoke, “Auto-drive activated. How do you wish to be addressed?”
“Sara.”
“Please state destination, Sara.”
They grinned at each other like children.
“Let’s go, Zach.”
“I’m sorry, Sara, I didn’t understand your destination. Could you please repeat?”
She rolled her eyes at the dashboard as he dropped into the passenger’s seat and closed the door. “Technology.”
“Are you sure you should be driving?” he asked.
“The attendant will be less likely to question me going into the wrong parking lot. Besides, I won’t be driving long, I’ll start the automatic systems as soon as we’re out on the road.”
“Less likely to…” He found himself indignant. “Why because you’re a woman?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “I don’t make up the social conditioning, I just use it—to our advantage in this case. Now, please sit back and let me do this.”
He considered for a moment. He had to admit she knew more about it than he did. “Right.”
“Ready to go?” she asked.
“You do know where we’re going, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. I know where we’re going.” She threw the gear lever into drive and pressed on the accelerator.
“Wish I did.”
She patted his leg gently. “I understand, really I do. With any luck, this will be cleared up before you know it, and you can have your car and your life back.”
He shot her his best glare.
“I don’t know.” She scowled. “I just hope we can get where we’re going before things really heat up.”
“What’s to keep your colleague from checking my car’s transponder history to find it and checking security discs to find out which car left the lot?”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t work like that. Because of the privacy laws they passed a couple of years ago, the transponder is real time only. There’s no history kept anywhere. Once it’s rebooted, it’ll be much harder to find. Even if they do figure out we came to the airport, the only record of what cars entered or left the lot on what date are the closed-circuit cameras. There’ll be nothing to lead them to us through this car. The most they’ll get is confirmation of your car entering this area, and it leaving again. They’ll waste hours trying to figure it out.”
“Won’t it show a transfer out of my name? They’ll be able to track it down through Tallahassee.”
“It’ll be tomorrow before anyone can check, and it’ll still show the car registered in your name with the original transponder code. Since we aren’t supposed to know how to reset it, the current code won’t show up. That’s how thieves make cars disappear before they’re put on container ships taking them offshore. It’s a huge business.”
“How do you even know that?”
“It’s a long story. Hush, there’s the cashier.” She gestured toward the lighted booth ahead.
“Um. There’s one more thing,” Zach offered.
“What?”
“Your jacket. It’s starting to look a little beat-up.”
She cast a disapproving glance at her jacket. “You’re right.” She stopped the car and stepped out to brush her jacket off. As she did, she stumbled again and bumped the car. She regained her balance, crawled into the driver’s seat, and checked her face in the vanity mirror. “Now I need to do something about this.” She indicated where the blood from the cut on her head stained the collar of her white blouse. “No amount of water will fix this,” she said, with a disgusted tone.
“Turn this way,” Zach said. He reached up, and folded the collar inside the blouse, so the stain wasn’t visible under her jacket. “Wait a second, he said, and poured a little of the water onto the clean part of the shop cloth. He wiped more of the dried blood from her face, being careful not to start the cut bleeding again. A bruise was forming under the make shift bandage, and she was becoming increasingly pale. They had to get to a safe spot soon, or she would be in real trouble. “There.” He smiled at her. “All better.” He ripped another section from the cloth, folded it, and taped it in place of the one he’d removed.
“Let’s go,” She said, and drove toward the exit. She grabbed the ticket they’d gotten from the kiosk when they entered from where it sat on the dash. “Let me do the talking.”
He nodded.
Sara braked the vehicle next to the opening and handed the ticket to the woman in the booth.
The woman took the ticket and checked the time. “You only been in the lot for ten minutes.”
Sara smiled sheepishly. “Wrong turn. Sorry. I thought we were in short term parking.”
The woman’s laugh was deep and rich. “That’s okay, people do it all the time.” She turned away again. The LCD panel outside her booth glowed 0.00 in red digits. The woman turned back to face them again, her eyes glued to Sara’s forehead at the scalp line, where her injury was.
“It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” Sara said. She pulled the visor down and checked her forehead in the vanity mirror. “Renovating.” She slipped a hand around Zach’s fingers. “It’s our first house. We’re insulating the attic, and I bumped my head working up there.”
The woman bent down to glare at Zach. “Why you lettin’ her drive you around? She should be at home, with that bump and all.”
“His car is in short term, he flew in today from a business trip and his battery was dead. I had to come pick him up and I won’t let him drive my car.”
The woman nodded approvingly. “Okay then. You go get his car and go home and get some rest.” She waved them past.
“You’re too good at that,” Zach offered as they left the airport complex and headed west, toward the beach. “How you talk to people, and shorting out the nav system and everything else. I’d have still been there next week, trying to figure out how to do it without voiding the warranty.”
“Training,” she said. She engaged the autopilot, entered the destination on the beach, and leaned the seat back. “A tweak here, a nudge there. Attain the mission objectives and move on. They teach us to be visible on assignment and not to speak, so people will notice. It’s a big show most of the time. The opposite is also true. When you know what people are expecting to see and hear, you just fade into the crowd and they mostly don’t even notice you.”
“Is that what you did with me when you dropped off the sample?”
She smiled, as if recalling a pleasant memory. “Didn’t seem to work too well with you, did it?”
“Didn’t work at all, to tell you the truth. I looked up from my monitor and there was this… amazon.” He ignored her raised eyebrows. “Six feet tall, blonde, with eyes the color of clover honey, in the most severe black suit I’ve ever seen, with this little white curly wire going from her ear to her jacket.” He chuckled.
She rolled her eyes, but the smile stuck. “I’m not six feet tall. You make me sound like a circus freak, I’m a touch over five-ten, and that crap about ‘the color of clover honey—’”
“Is absolutely true. I could go on, but it would embarrass you.”
“I’m already embarrassed. Now you, on the other hand.” She rolled toward him in her seat. “With that hair of yours…”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” Zach checked himself out in the visor’s vanity mirror. “Looks the same as always.”
“Exactly. Like you combed it by sticking your head out the car window, but it always looks like that.”
“Yeah, well, people mostly don’t notice me anyway, so it doesn’t much matter.” He returned the visor to its usual place.
“Somehow, I doubt that. Listen,” she said. “We have to get you somewhere you can make hard copies of your results. Then you can release the information to the media.”
“What good will that do? The sample was blinded. You gave it to me, remember.”
“Yes, I did. And I have the information to raise the blind.” She pulled a crystal drive of her own from her pocket. “That’s your leverage. Once they know you have both parts, they’ll back so far off, you’ll probably be excused from paying income taxes for the rest of your life.” She returned the drive to her pocket. “Would you please get the shop cloth from the bag?”
He handed her the last bit of clean cloth and nodded at her head. “We really should do something about the cut on your forehead.”
“It’ll keep.” She raised the cloth to her forehead and put pressure on it. She winced.
“It hurts.”
“Hurts like a sonofabitch, but we don’t have time to worry about it right now.”
Zach snorted. “Tough girl, huh?”
She turned a narrowed eye in his direction. “Kick your ass anytime.”
“You’re on, Blondie.” He lifted his curled fists in front of his chest.
She glanced from his eyes to his fists, and back again. Her eyes sparkled. “That’s Special Agent Blondie to you, boy.”
“That’s Dr. Boy, to you, Special Agent Blondie.”
They stared straight-faced at each other for a long moment, then both cracked a smile by degrees. Zach relaxed into his seat and immediately stiffened against the pain in his rib. He moved his arm to his side as the Mitsu rolled through the evening traffic on autopilot.
“How’s your chest?” She reached out to him, concern in her eyes.
“I’m all right.” He sucked air back into his lungs through clenched teeth.
“You should lie back.” She reached over his lap and tugged the release lever. His seat dropped almost flat.
He bounced against the seat with a groan. “Oh, God! That’s worse, that’s worse.”
“All right. Wait a second.” She leaned over him. “Grab my neck.”
When he had, she braced her hand against the door, slid her other arm under him, and dragged him upright.
“Ow, ow, ow, that hurts.” He loosened his arm on her neck.
“All right, here we go.” She lifted her hand off the door, and released the lever with it. Zach’s seat popped upright, slapping against his back. He jerked forward in pain and her head bounced off the dash. They groaned at the same time, each falling against their own door.
“I can’t breathe.”
“I’m bleeding again.”
“And I can’t breathe.”
“I don’t feel good.”
The calm tone of her voice grabbed Zach’s attention. Blood was trickling down the side of her face again. Her hand was red, where she’d pressed it against her scalp. Her eyes rolled up in her head, and color faded from her face. She dropped onto his lap, her head landing on his crotch.
***
Don Brown sat on the penthouse balcony, his bald head purple with anger. “Don’t tell me you don’t know. Find him,” he said past gritted teeth into his link-communicator. Beads of sweat formed on his head despite a cool breeze blowing from the Gulf, bringing a much-appreciated change in temperature. He turned to a sound from the living room and frowned at Stiles’s latest acolyte adjusting her skirt as she moved across his view. She stopped at the mirror to check her hair and makeup before crossing to the private elevator, which would whisk her down to the garage, where a cab waited to take her home.
Brown disconnected the old-style smart phone when the elevator’s door closed behind her. He slid the glass door open and stepped into the living room, where he settled into a seat and waited, fuming.
Stiles strolled into the living room a moment later, calmness smeared across his face like cheap makeup. He tightened the knot on his bathrobe and plopped onto the couch opposite Brown. “What?”
Brown exhaled and ran a hand over his eyes. “Why do you insist on doing that?”
Stiles stared at him in wide-eyed innocence. “What the hell are you talking about, Don?”
“That girl…” Brown waved a hand in the air.
Stiles’s grin widened. “Rachel? A wonderful girl.”
Brown’s lips formed a tight line. “Exactly. A girl. Martin, you’re married, for Christ’s sake. Do you have to throw the campaign into the toilet before it even gets started?”
Stiles laughed. “Don, it’s nothing. She just recharges my spiritual batteries, so I can come back to it refreshed.”
The muscles under Brown’s cheeks bunched, but he knew when to let it go. “There’s another problem.”
Stiles straightened his robe, his attention focused. “What?”
“Marshall’s gone to ground.”
“What? Where’s Murphy?”
“Talking his way out of shit with the local police.”
Color flowed out of Stiles’ face. “What?”
Brown leaned forward, resting his f
orearms on his legs. “While you were getting your batteries pumped up, your pet psycho, Murphy, has been quite a busy little boy. So far, he and that dipshit Newman fixed your problem with Thomas. In the process, they lost Marshall, blew a hole in his house big enough to drive a small bus through, and totaled one of our SUVs. And guess what?” He stood and started to pace. “Our vehicle was destroyed by someone driving Murphy’s own personal antique Cadillac. The local police are investigating the crash. The medics are trying to talk Newman into going to the ER for head trauma again.”
“Again?”
“Again.” Brown turned and jammed one hand in his slacks pocket while he gestured with the other. “They just found him semi-conscious on the grass next to Marshall’s lab, where some old piece of junk car was burning down to the wheels in the street. Now even the goddamn Fire Marshal is involved, as if we needed more shit.”
Stiles’s mouth flapped open and closed a couple of times.
Brown stared at him.
“No. It can’t be.”
“Yes, it can. Martin, we have got to consider damage control. How we spin this in the next few days could keep us clear of the shit-storm. The first thing you’re going to do, is get rid of your little energizer bunny and get back on track.”
“Give me your iLink.” Stiles held out a hand.
Brown moved away from Stiles. “What’re you going to do?”
“I said give me your goddamn phone, Don.” Stiles snapped his fingers.
Brown reached into his pocket and pulled his iLink out. He held it to Stiles.
Stiles put it in his ear. “Connect. Murphy.” He hesitated. “Murphy. Who’s in charge there? Put him on, now.” He waited for a moment. “Hello, is this Officer Wilde? Hello, Officer. This is Congressman Martin Stiles. Mr. Murphy and his assistant are needed here. I’m sure you understand. Could you see your way clear to turn those boys loose?”
Brown stared at Stiles in shock, unable to fathom the man’s cajhones.
“Well, yes, of course, they’ll be down to the police station first thing in the morning to make a statement. You have my word.” He waited a second. “Could you put Mr. Murphy back on the link, please? Thank you, Officer. Hello, Mr. Murphy?” Stiles leaned forward in his seat. “About Dr. Marshall, find him and kill him.”
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