“Miss, we found this inside the rear bumper during the final inspection this morning.” He handed her a small transmitter with a short pigtail antenna. It was meant to attach magnetically to the metal parts of a vehicle. “We weren’t sure if you wanted us to re-attach it, and I didn’t want to break it.”
“Oh, yeah. That looks like one of my Dad’s anti-theft gizmos. I’m sure it hasn’t worked for a while.” She stuffed it into her pack.
“Well, he sure did a good job hiding it. I was surprised my guys didn’t find it when they removed the bumper during the first pass. But there it was plain as day when I checked it over this morning.”
“The paint looks great,” she said, trying to hide her relief. From Hector‘s account, it seemed as if it must have been attached while it was in the shop’s lot. She hoped that meant whoever put it there didn’t know where she was living.
“Have you thought about my offer?” Hector asked. “I could really use a bigger truck, and yours is pretty good.”
“Yeah, I know. My dad was real careful about stuff like tune-ups and oil changes.”
Hector had offered her a swap for his little four-wheel-drive pickup plus some cash. She put him off then, but the news of this transmitter gave her second thoughts. If Meacham or Burzynski had done this, it would mean they had checked the registration. Her identity as Emily Hsiao was no longer safe. The little truck was barely big enough to hold her bike in the bed, but it had an extra panel in the tailgate that folded out to become a ramp. That would certainly come in handy. And it would just be a lot easier to conceal a little truck than a big one.
“I can up the cash to five hundred,” he offered hopefully. It wasn’t a good deal. His truck was in good mechanical shape, but the interior was chewed up and the radio was busted. To anyone else, those would have been decisive considerations. But to Emily they were irrelevant.
“Let me drive it around the block to test it out,” she said.
He handed her the keys and she drove off. They were in an industrial section of town, near where she had earlier seen a large shipping complex with a lot of long haul trucks backed up to a loading dock. She parked at one end and walked along the dock, pretending to look for someone in particular. On hearing a driver say he was heading out west that afternoon, she quietly attached the transmitter inside the front bumper of his rig and drove off. On the way back to the auto shop she popped the clutch a few times and decided it was in good shape, though the four cylinder engine seemed a little underpowered to her.
“You have the cash and title on you?” she asked Hector when she got back. He went into the office to get it.
“You cover the cost of the paint on the F-150 and you got a deal,” she told him.
He winced, but finally accepted. It was still not a particularly good deal for her, but she had other considerations. When they exchanged paperwork, she told him to leave his license plates on the little truck. She’d turn them in when she went to the DMV, and trust him to turn in hers. Actually, she didn’t care what he did with those plates, as they were connected to a registration and identity she would never use again.
With her bike in the back, she drove directly to the DMV and settled all the paperwork for the new truck. She wore a very self satisfied smile plastered across her face for taking care of this loose end so efficiently. It wasn’t even ten yet. One last task: before heading over to Charlottesville, she climbed into the back of the truck to inspect the bike for tracking devices. There aren’t a lot of places to hide one on a dirt bike. But she was still concerned.
After the business with the transmitter, Emily became rather more preoccupied with disguising her trail. Instead of driving directly to the campus, she parked the truck at a shopping mall a few blocks away. A short ride later deposited her at the Rotunda, where she stowed the dirt bike, before walking circuitously to the admissions offices which were in the complex behind Newcomb Hall. Once there, she ducked into a restroom, changed into one of Andie’s outfits, and pulled a large school-logo hoodie over everything. She tied her hair back into a low ponytail and put on a pair of large sunglasses. Camo complete. In this guise she walked around Newcomb Hall, familiarizing herself with the layout of the building and examining the crowd. She looked for anyone who didn’t fit in. Most of the people she saw looked like students. They carried backpacks full of books, and talked like high school students, only cooler. A few older people were visible here and there, custodians, kitchen staff, office workers, all easy to spot, by their dress, as well as their demeanor. They were preoccupied with doing a job, or not doing it, which marked them off pretty obviously from the students. One last distinctive group she took to be the teachers. Older than the students, but resembling them in other ways: they dressed a bit more conservatively perhaps, but carried backpacks full of books, and were similarly oblivious to their surroundings.
No one Emily saw set off any alarms for her, but she wasn’t deeply confident she could spot a trained operative. It was a relief to see that the students looked a lot like her. They dressed more or less like her, and didn’t look significantly older. She could lose herself in a crowd here in a pinch. Since it was almost noon, she decided to go to the upper terrace to survey the patio for a man in red pants. A few students were milling about, but the real crowd would probably emerge when classes let out at noon. She began to sense that hers was a hungry vigil, and decided to go down to the food court for something to eat. It would be a good cover, make her look more like a student. She got a salmon teriyaki rice bowl and a bottle of water.
By the time she left the food court, there were lots of students buzzing about, and no empty tables on the patio. Along the edge on the far side she spotted an older man looking foolish and annoyed in red pants sitting by himself. She walked up blandly, asked if he minded sharing the table, and sat down without waiting for an answer.
“Hello, Emily,” the man said. “It’s good to meet you finally.”
“Those aren’t plaid pants,” she replied coolly.
“That’s not an orange ball cap,” he said in an aggressive tone.
“You’re not the man I spoke to on the phone yesterday,” she said decisively and stood up from the table. “I’m tired of playing games. Let me know when you guys are serious about talking.” She turned to go.
“Wait! Wait.... He’ll be here in a second,” said the man in the red pants, clearly flustered. Just then, a tall gray haired man in a tweed jacket carrying books in a backpack walked over and sat down. He waved the first man away. He clearly had a similar idea about camouflage on a college campus.
“Well, it really is good to meet you, Emily. I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said in a voice she couldn’t help but recognize.
“I don’t know if the feeling is mutual,” said Emily. “Where’s my father?” she asked as urgently as she could. The man looked at her very carefully. He seemed to be trying to read her, and she didn’t feel her sunglasses presented any obstacle to his gaze. She took them off and looked directly into his eyes. She wanted him to see the full depth of her irritation with him. What he saw in her eyes was a dark fury simmering as if at the bottom of a deep pit. He was a little taken aback and imagined he was seeing something like what his men encountered a bit more directly yesterday on the road out of Deerfield.
“I don’t know yet. But maybe we can still help each other,” he said. Emily was mollified. At least he wasn’t lying to her... yet.
“I don’t know how I can help you. Or why I should try. How do I know it wasn’t you who burned down my home?” she asked pointedly.
“Well, it wasn’t. But I don’t know how to convince you if you won’t take my word for it,” he said. He took a deep breath before continuing. “But, okay, I’ll go first. I’ll trust you. We found the burned bodies of three of my agents at the estate. We don’t know how they got there or why they were killed. But they were supposed to meet with Michael Cardano earlier that day in DC.” Emily gave an audible gasp for his benefit. “So you do
know something,” he said. “Were you there?”
“No!” she said vehemently. “Well, not exactly. I was camping in the woods behind the estate. My dad was supposed to try to find me. It’s a game we play.” Burzynski couldn’t conceal a wistful smile. “From where I had set up camp, I could see the estate buildings. I was watching for my father with binoculars. I didn’t see him come home.” She tried to simulate a catch in her voice.
“What else did you see?” he pressed.
Emily gulped and said “I saw a lot of shooting, and then the house was on fire. I didn’t see how it started. There were at least two groups of people. Some guys in suits were shooting from the area around the house. A whole lot more guys in black military style uniforms coming out of the woods on the north side were shooting back. I didn’t wait around to see how it ended.”
“How were you able to see the guys in the black uniforms at night?” he asked warily.
“It was a full moon that night, and the damn house was on fire! There was plenty of light,” she replied testily.
“Sorry, I just had to be sure.”
“Great! You’re testing me. You obviously have nothing to tell me. There’s nothing more I can tell you. Unless you find my dad, please leave me alone,” she said angrily. She stood up as if to go.
“Wait. Don’t go just yet.” He paused and looked her up and down. “You’re holding something back.” She stood silently, wondering what he was thinking of. “You must know what happened to Cardano and the rest of the estate staff,” he continued. “Were they there during all this?”
“I have no idea. By the time I was watching, there was no sign of them. And there’s still no sign of them. I’m on my own trying to hold things together. I don’t need you bothering me anymore. You obviously have no information for me,” she said, now in genuine anger.
“I’m sorry. I really am. I’ll be in touch if I find out anything about your dad,” he said as he stood up and abruptly walked off.
Emily watched him for a while. But she decided not to follow him. She was not likely to find out anything about him that Michael couldn’t simply tell her, and she wanted to preserve the impression that she was naive. It wasn’t easy to know just what to make of Burzynski. He didn’t seem deceptive, and he didn’t say anything she knew to be a lie. Also, his sympathy with her plight seemed genuine. But she had to remind herself that he was trained in the art of deception. He may just have been better at lying than she was at detecting his lies.
Back in Newcomb Hall, the crowd of students had thinned out a bit. She went into a quiet restroom on the second floor to modify her outfit, on the off chance Burzynski’s people were still tracking her. She took off the hoodie and stuffed it into her backpack and pulled out a sleek leather jacket. Looking very stylish, a quick check in the mirror, a few final adjustments, and she noticed a tall, blonde woman enter behind her. Too old and too focused to be a student, probably not a member of the faculty either, for analogous reasons. She looked very fit, as if she had been through a rigorous training program.
Emily turned to leave, and the woman reached out to her shoulder as if to squeeze by in a confined space. It would have passed for an innocent gesture, except that the restroom was quite spacious. A glint of something shiny, metallic in the woman’s hand caught her eye. A quick, almost instinctive impulse: a quick upward block of the wrist and a sharp blow to solar plexus. The woman staggered backwards, then gathered herself to lunge once more at Emily, this time with no attempt to conceal her aggressive intentions. Now the needle in her hand was easy to see. She held a syringe and meant to inject her with something. Emily slapped the woman’s hand towards her own chest, kicked her quickly in the right knee and as she fell to the floor kicked her a second time hard on the side of her head. The woman went spinning into the corner of an open stall face down. Emily leapt on top of her, controlling the hand with the syringe by twisting her wrist back and up behind her..
“Who sent you?” she hissed into her ear.
The woman, groggy and disoriented, didn’t answer.
“What’s in the syringe?”
Again, no answer, but she groaned from the pain in her wrist and the throbbing in her head. This woman was very tough. She was struggling hard not to admit how much pain she was experiencing.
“Fine,” Emily said menacingly. “Let’s stick it in you and find out.” Emily moved the needle closer to the woman’s ribs.
“No! No, no, no, please, no,” she pleaded, suddenly wide eyed and alert.
“Who sent you?” Emily asked again.
“I can’t tell you. They’ll kill me,” she pleaded. Emily gave her wrist a slight twist. She knew the pain must be excruciating. “I can’t...” A tear ran down her face. Emily jabbed her slightly with the needle. “No! please, don’t kill me.”
“What’s in it? Poison?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Who sent you?” she hissed once again. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you told me,” she added with a sneer.
“I can’t...” Emily jabbed her a little deeper. The woman let out a muffled shriek. Tears were now streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t kill me. You’re not a killer. You can’t do this.”
“Why not? You had no hesitation about sticking it in me.”
“You’re right,” she confessed, and went limp. “I’m sorry.” The woman took a breath and uttered the name Emily already knew well enough: “Meacham.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t want you talking to Burzynski.”
“I don’t know anything. That’s what I told that other guy. Why can’t you people leave me alone,” she said in genuine exasperation. “How did you find me here?”
“We followed Burzynski.”
“How many are with you?”
“Two men, downstairs.”
Emily removed the syringe from the woman’s hand, squeezed it out into the toilet and threw it across the floor. The woman breathed a sigh of relief. She twisted the woman on to her side, pulled her face upwards and stared into her eyes for a long moment. The woman flinched, terror written across her face.
“You came here to take my life. I preserved yours. Don’t try me again,” Emily whispered into her ear. She stood up, picked up her pack and walked out of the restroom. There was no one waiting for her outside.
The woman lay still on the floor for a few minutes gathering her thoughts. She was a trained professional operative. She knew she was a good fighter. She had faced fearsome adversaries, had killed before. She was angry, with herself, with Meacham, with everyone. She would have liked to believe the girl got lucky. But she knew better. She had deflected her attack effortlessly, thrown her aside like a rag doll. She never had a chance. Strangely, the one person she wasn’t angry with was the girl. She could have tried to console herself with the thought that she must be a trained professional too, especially considering the magnitude of her skills, and that she was completely unflustered by her attack. But when she glanced into her eyes, she didn’t see a pro. At the bottom of those black eyes she saw a placid, innocent spirit. A profound sense of shame welled up inside her, something she hadn’t felt in several years. There was also something else in the girl’s eyes, a quiet fury, a storm of unimaginable force seemingly held in perfect equilibrium. The combination was intoxicating, and terrible.
She could no longer fathom how Meacham could conceive of harming this girl. What possible purpose could it serve? Whatever it was, its moral repugnance stank in her nostrils. She had long been aware that both Meacham and Burzynski were operating outside any lawful authority. They were each making a bid for power in the covert operations community. Agents like her had gone along for the ride, in part for the thrill of it, but mainly because they had their own ambitions to gratify. When she tried to pick herself up off the floor her head throbbed—the girl must have hit her harder than she had realized. She threw up in the toilet next to her. After a few more minutes, once she was finally able to stand, she took a f
ew uncertain steps over to the sinks and threw some water in her face. She tried not to look at herself too closely in the mirror. At least there were no visible bruises yet. Nothing to explain to her team. She would merely report that the girl had somehow eluded her.
Emily walked to the other end of the hall, down another staircase and then back towards the food court. She saw two men in dark suits loitering conspicuously by the staircase. They must be Meacham’s men, she thought. She walked right past them, out the front entrance, and then crossed over to the Admissions offices in the adjoining building. She picked up brochures and application forms. There was even time for a conversation with one of the admissions counselors about various programs offered in the history department. Even Emily was surprised at how easily she could shift gears: one moment a death struggle with an assassin, the next a convivial chat about college possibilities.
A quick step across campus brought her to the library a good fifteen or twenty minutes before the guys were likely to get there. She found a terminal nestled in a lonely spot among the stacks and called Michael to discuss the events of the morning. He was stunned by the news, and astounded yet again by the resilience of this surprising girl. As horrifying as the attack was, it suggested Meacham either did not know about the mutation, or more likely had no idea of Emily’s relationship to Yuki. There was certainly cause for relief in that.
“Please don’t tell my Mom about any of this, okay?” Michael understood. Nothing would be gained by telling her about dangers she could do nothing to protect her daughter from.
“She’s right here. I’ll put her on,” he said to indicate his assent.
Yuki grabbed the phone hungrily and peppered her daughter with questions. She wanted to know every detail of her life, every desire, every sorrow, every joy. She hoped it would keep all her anxieties about her daughter’s safety at bay.
Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Page 11