by Kim Oh
“Really?” I looked up at him. “Think so?”
“Sure. If you don’t, what’ve I got to look forward to, except slopping out this greasy spoon’s kitchen and a cot at the halfway house?” He shook his head. “That, and just waiting for something, I don’t even know what it is, that’ll never happen. I’ll pass.”
That didn’t surprise me. Maybe I’d known it from the beginning, when I’d first met him here beside the garbage dumpster and we’d started talking.
And maybe that was why I hadn’t been totally surprised, when the whole business at the hospital with Stinson had turned out to be a setup, something that he and his buddy Perry had cooked up at my expense. Because if it didn’t go off the way they’d planned, he’d still get what he wanted. What he wanted more than anything.
“No . . .” I shook my head. “You’re not passing on anything.” I tucked the .357 back inside my jacket. “I’m not letting you off the hook.”
He gazed long and hard at me, as my words sank in.
“I’m not doing anything,” I said. “Except my Plan A. I’m just going to start up my bike and head on out of here.” I tightened the straps of Dalby’s backpack. “And I’m going to leave you here, just the way you were. And just the way you’re going to be.” I snapped the buckle of the waist belt together. “Because that’s just how cold I am.”
He nodded, almost in appreciation. “That’s cold, all right.”
“If you hadn’t pissed me off so bad, I might’ve helped you out. And . . .” I turned and slung my leg over the Ninja’s seat, getting into riding position. “If you ever find some other way to screw around with me, maybe I’ll change my mind.”
“That’s not likely to happen,” said Mason. “Let’s face it – I’m a tame rat. An old one, too. This was pretty much my last chance to screw around with anybody.”
“Probably so.” I started up the engine, feeding it enough throttle to rev it into a high whine. “Keep it that way.” I picked up the helmet he’d bought for me and slipped it on, visor up. “Or don’t.”
I turned the bike around and headed out of the empty parking lot.
I didn’t look back.
TEN
“Now do you want to talk?”
They had been waiting for me – the guys in the fake paramedics van. Again, out on the street near the strip mall. They just wouldn’t give up.
With my fists gripping the Ninja’s handlebars, I looked over at Jerry behind the van’s steering wheel. “I’m not really in the mood,” I said. “Lot’s happened –”
“Yeah, we know.” Jerry nodded. “Look – the situation’s changed. It was bad enough before, but now it’s worse. We know what happened at the hospital –”
“I don’t think you do. You weren’t there.”
“Actually . . .” He leaned out the driver’s-side window. “We were. Okay, maybe not inside the hospital, but we saw what happened outside. With the window getting shattered, and the guy falling out –”
“He didn’t feel a thing. At least, not by the time he hit the pavement.” I reached inside my jacket and pulled the .357 partway out, just enough to remind these people of what I was carrying. “You, on the other hand, might not be so lucky.”
“We’re willing to take the chance.”
“That’s great for you,” I said. “But why should I?”
“Hey.” The guy looked genuinely hurt. “We should be friends – really. Who do you think switched off the security cameras at the hospital?”
“Wait a minute. You did that?”
“Piece of cake.” Now he was visibly pleased with himself. “All we needed was a late-night coffee shop with a Wi-Fi connection, and we’re in. My buddies and I were hacking into those kinds of systems back when we were in junior high. The two-bit company that runs the service won’t be able to switch it back on until they trace the server we patched everything to. It’s in Uzbekistan – good luck with that.”
“Okay . . .” I eyed him suspiciously. “So why?”
“I told you – we should be friends. We’re on your side.”
I mulled it over, while we were waiting for the light to change. I wasn’t falling for that bit about being friends, but still. They’d said something before, about what was in the bag I was carrying. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t – but given everything that’d gone down, it was probably worth finding out.
“Okay.” I raised a hand and pointed to the side of the street, a couple blocks farther on. “Pull over.”
† † †
“Here’s the deal,” said Jerry. “It’s a contest.”
We were sitting in the van, parked on the street, with my motorcycle pulled up behind. It was a little cramped in the van’s otherwise empty cargo area, with three of us sitting there. Dalby’s backpack was between my shoulders and the rear doors, in case I needed to beat a hasty retreat. The .357 rested in my lap, my hand poised on its crosshatched grip.
I ignored what he’d just said. “Where’s the rest of your little outfit?”
“We dropped ’em off back at the motel,” said the other one. “We didn’t want you to feel like we were ganging up on you.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered. So . . . a contest, you said?” I looked over at the little battery-powered lantern in the middle of the floor. “Correct me if I’m wrong, pal, but people get into contests for fun. That’s my understanding. And believe me, in this whole business, I haven’t had any fun yet.”
“Well, it all depends upon how you consider it –”
“I consider almost getting killed as pretty serious. Especially when I’m just trying to do my job – for which I’d get paid. For me, that’s the real serious part. Just the kind of girl I am.”
“This isn’t going well.” The guy sitting cross-legged next to Jerry shook his head. “I don’t even know why we’re talking to this person.” He had been the one in the passenger seat, when the van had pulled up next to me at the stoplight. “We’re going way off plan here.”
“Look, just let me handle it, okay?” Jerry turned back toward me. “You’ll have to excuse my partner Simon. He’s not really into improvising.”
“You need to be.” When I looked straight into Simon’s moist blue eyes, my gaze made him flinch, Asperger’s-style. “That’s my free advice. If I couldn’t roll with the punches, I’d be dead by now.”
Simon didn’t say anything, but just looked moody and disgruntled.
“Could we get back on track?” I raised the .357 from my lap, just for emphasis. “You said you had something to tell me – something about what I’m delivering –” With my other hand, I tugged on one of the shoulder straps of the backpack still slung behind me. “And, yeah, I really would like to hear that bit. But not enough to put up with this crap.”
“Sure.” Jerry made a visible effort to simmer himself down. “But I told you already. It’s a contest.”
“And I take it that’s the way Dalby set it up from the beginning?”
Jerry nodded. “Pretty much.”
It was my turn to simmer, at least inside myself. Now I was seriously pissed off – I hate it when the people I’m working for think it’s okay to lie to me. About exactly what the job is, that I’m doing for them. If they’d just be straight up and honest with me, things would nearly always go better – for them and me. But when they didn’t tell me the truth, that something else was going on, that meant two things. One, I was more likely to stand a chance of getting killed. And two, they seriously underestimated me. Like I wouldn’t find out somehow, about their sneaky crap. Of the two, that was the one that really annoyed me.
“And the contest,” I continued after a moment, “is that I am supposed to try and get this package up to San Francisco, and you’re supposed to stop me from making the delivery? That’s it?”
“No.” He shook his head. “The contest doesn’t have anything to do with you – well, yeah, it does, but not like that. The contest is between the Alpha Team and the Beta Team. You’re just
sort of the football between us.”
“Oh, sure – that makes me feel a whole lot better.” If I ever saw that Dalby sonuvabitch again – and I’d make sure I would – he was going to be in a world of hurt. Another Cole maxim: Somebody sets you up, they pay. That way, they won’t do it again. “I take it that you’re the Alphas?”
Another shake of the head. “No, we’re the Betas. That other guy, Stinson – he’s about all you’ll see of the Alphas.”
“Other guy – you mean, that I just had to deal with at the hospital?”
“That’s the one.”
So Perry had been right about the name. “You know . . . for a while, I’d just been thinking of him as the Challenger guy.”
“You mean those big muscle cars he drives?” Jerry shrugged. “Yeah . . . those are real environmentally friendly.”
Simon sniffed. “Cars like that are one of the reasons the ice caps are melting. They shouldn’t even be legal.”
I had a pretty clear vision of this Stinson fellow in my head, and somehow I just couldn’t imagine him behind the wheel of a Prius. The gritted teeth and the maniacal look in his eyes as he’d gunned the Challenger straight for me, led me to believe that he wasn’t overly concerned about the fate of fluffy polar bear cubs. A guy like that probably would have taken a blowtorch to the ice floes, just to watch the bears drown.
“Wait a minute.” There was a bunch of stuff that wasn’t clear to me yet – I’d have to pick through this muddle, one bit at a time. “You said Alphas – so there’s more of them than just Stinson?”
“Oh, yeah – I think he’s got a couple dozen people in his operation already. He’s burning pretty quick through the start-up capital he’s already managed to pull together. But he wanted to nail down his programmer talent, get ’em under binding contracts and NDA’s before anybody else could scoop them up.”
“So . . .” The picture was starting to get a little clearer – but not much. “This is some kind of fancy technology thing? Computers, Internet – like that?”
“Bigger,” said Jerry. “Way bigger.”
“You probably wouldn’t understand,” said Simon.
“Look.” My voice went as cold as the hunk of metal in my lap. “If my brother were here, there wouldn’t be anything you people are doing that he wouldn’t be able to explain to me. Or at least close enough. And when he’s your age, he’ll be kicking your ass, both money- and tech-wise. And you’ll be the old farts.”
That much, I didn’t get any argument about. Jerry just nodded, while all the rest of them looked somber.
“You’re right,” said Jerry. “The window of opportunity – for accomplishing anything – it gets smaller and smaller all the time. Thirty years old is the new seventy. That’s a lot of pressure. I mean, if you’re going to make any significant money before you’re put out to pasture. That’s why we jumped on this whole thing, when we were given the chance.”
“So that’s why you’re hooked up with Dalby.” I pointed to both Jerry and Simon. “You’ve got some kind of brilliant idea – like the next Google or Apple or whatever. And you and your team will all be multibillionaires in a couple of years, if you can just get it financed and off the ground.”
“Yep.” Jerry spoke with thuddingly obvious assurance, as if I’d asked him if the sun rose in the West. “It’ll be big. No doubt about it.”
“So if this is such a great idea, no doubt about it, et cetera, et cetera – what’s the holdup about lining up the financing that would get you and your bunch up and rolling? Yeah, maybe it’s not like it used to be, but my understanding is that there are still a bunch of venture capitalists out there who’d listen to you. I mean, if this business idea of yours really is so hot.”
“Yeah,” said Simon, “there are. But that’s the problem with so many of them having gotten burnt when the first Dot Com bubble burst. There were some big write-downs – lot of money got lost. Just evaporated. More than got reported in the business papers. So the ones who are still in the game, they’re only looking to bankroll absolute sure things. Absolute guaranteed winners.”
“I thought your idea was a sure thing. That’s what you just told me.”
“Okay . . .” Simon looked annoyed. “There are sure things, and then there are other sure things. Some stuff, anybody can look at it and see how it’ll work. And make money – a lot more money. Basically, you just look and see what people are already doing, and then you figure out a way to do it cheaper. No big deal. But other stuff is different. They’re sure things – if you’ve got the vision.”
“And that’s what Dalby has, I take it.” I bent my head down, peering into Simon’s eyes. “He’s got . . . vision.”
Both Simon and Jerry nodded.
“So why didn’t he just give you the start-up cash you need? Instead of coming up with some dopey contest, or game, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Dalby is . . . kind of a funny guy.”
“I noticed that already.”
“He’s got vision, all right . . .” Jerry’s gaze drifted away from me, as though he were peering through the van’s side wall and out into the night. “But if you want him to do something for you . . . you know, like give you money, the whole venture capital thing . . . then you have to earn it.” Jerry looked back at me. “You have to prove yourself to him.”
“What Dalby always says . . .” Simon spoke up. “Is that he doesn’t invest in ideas. There are plenty of good ideas out there. Great ideas, even. But if they don’t happen, if they don’t come into reality and change the world, and make a lot of money – that’s because of the people who had the ideas. They weren’t the right kind of people. They weren’t the kind who’d fight to make their ideas come true.”
“I see.” Actually, I did. If this Dalby guy wanted to make other people jump through weird-ass hoops before he’d give them money – I couldn’t say he was wrong about that. The only thing that really bugged me about the setup was that doing stuff that could get me killed was apparently one of those hoops. Pull that off and win a prize.
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight.” I left the .357 in my lap, rather than gesturing with it – these guys already were weirded out. “So this contest that Dalby set up – it’s actually between you and . . . whatsisname. Stinson. The guy with the muscle car. Right?”
Another group nod.
“So how’s the score kept? In this contest.”
“Score?” Jerry frowned, puzzled by the question. “What do you mean?”
“How do you know who’s won? When it’s all over.” I spread my hands apart. “If I’m the football, how’s the touchdown scored? I mean, is the winning team the one that stops me from making my delivery up in San Francisco, or the team that gets the parcel away from me –” I reached behind me and tugged one of the backpack straps. “Or what?”
“Oh, no – we don’t have to get it away from you.” Jerry pointed to the backpack, sitting up higher behind me. “We just have to get our hands on it. Really – and just for a couple of seconds. After that, you could keep it, deliver it, do whatever you want – it wouldn’t matter.”
“Okay . . . but you did have your hands on it. Remember? Back there on the freeway – you got it away from me, but then you hooked it to that drone thing and sent it flying. Or at least you tried to. If just getting your hands on the package I was carrying is how you win this stupid contest, what was all that other stuff about?”
“All right,” said Jerry, “it’s a little more complicated than that. To win the contest, we do have to get the package away from you – but just long enough to trigger the proximity sensor inside it.”
“The what?”
“Proximity sensor. It’s a battery-powered receiver, with an extremely short range – like a couple centimeters. It has to be placed right next to the trigger, for it to catch the coded signal.”
“So who’s got this trigger?” This whole thing was starting to sound less like a football game and more like a shooting
range. “I didn’t see anything like that, when we were going through all that freeway commotion.”
“Simon.” Jerry pointed next to himself. “Simon’s got it.”
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“Show her.”
I watched as Simon grabbed the bottom half of his shirt with both hands and pulled it upward, exposing his pale white, and somewhat flabby, abdomen. To the right of his navel was an adhesive bandage, like the one I still had on my forehead. Only his bandage was bigger, about six inches square or so.
“It’s actually about all healed up already.” Still holding his shirt, Simon looked down at himself. “I just keep the bandage on because it itches once in a while, and I don’t want to start scratching at it. You know, so it won’t get infected or anything.”