Noura nodded. “What time is it?”
“Two-thirty-eight,” Rachel said automatically, before realizing she hadn’t actively consulted her implant.
Fabulous. I’m a living, breathing Timex, too.
“Good,” Noura said. “You’re going to need to take me out of here.”
Rachel laughed.
“Let me tell you how this will happen,” Noura said. “You drive me to where I’ve stashed my information, and I give it to you. I need to sign for it in person before they release it.”
The woman wasn’t lying, but her conversational colors were somehow…off. Rachel couldn’t figure out why Noura’s colors struck her as strange until she realized that there were small voids, empty places where colors and movement should be.
So that’s what a lie of omission looks like, she realized.
“Or,” Rachel said, “You tell us where it is, and we get a warrant.”
“No,” Noura said with a smile. “I go with you, or this doesn’t happen.”
“Talk me into it,” Rachel said. “You haven’t given me a good reason.”
Noura pointed towards the manila file. “May I?”
Rachel found a blank sheet of paper, and tossed it towards Noura. It glided over the steel table, Rachel’s pen rolling beside it. “Be my guest.”
Noura tore off the smallest corner of the top sheet, scribbled a few quick words on the paper, and then pushed the paper towards Rachel with one hand while holding the notepad in the other as a shield against the men and the cameras. Before Rachel could take either scrap or notepad from her, Noura dragged them both out of reach.
“Uh-uh,” Noura said. “Eyes only.”
And with that, she ate the scrap of paper.
“Oh Lord,” Rachel muttered, loud enough for the men to hear. If she hadn’t already had her frequencies set to reading mode, she would have missed Noura’s message altogether. “Talk about melodrama.”
Her bluster was purely automatic. Inside, she had gone shock-white and cold at what Noura had written.
Glazer says hello
“Got it?” Noura said.
“I don’t think I understand,” Rachel lied.
“It’s simple. You drive me to a specific location, and I give you the goods,” Noura said with a smile. “The rest is all up to you.”
“Drive?” The icy pit in Rachel’s stomach grew. She trusted her augmented senses above normal vision except when it came to piloting a massive metal device through one of the world’s busiest cities. With practice, she’d probably be an excellent driver, but the learning curve would be steep and paved with tombstones.
Noura took her silence as confusion, so the thief tried to dumb it down. “I’ve hidden the data. I’m the only one who can get it back. You’ll need to get me out of here if you want it.”
The emphasis on those five words was slight, and Rachel might have missed it if Noura’s conversational colors hadn’t been pointing straight at Rachel’s Southwestern turquoise as she said them.
“Let me see what I can do,” Rachel said.
She stepped out of the interview room and shut the door behind her, her mental wheels spinning to come up with a reason to give Noura what she wanted. It had to be a good one, good enough to get Noura out of lockup and alone in a car with Rachel—oh shit I can’t drive what the fuck am I going to do—without tipping anyone to the real reason she was about to break every protocol in the book—oh God oh God this is going to be a disaster—
Mitch Alimoren was there, glaring through the glass at Noura. “She’ll talk to you,” he said to Rachel by way of greeting. “She’ll talk to Hill. But she won’t talk to the Secret Service.”
“Probably because she thinks we’re easier to play,” Rachel said, faking a chuckle. “Thanks,” she said, as Santino handed her a hot cup of coffee.
Catching Alimoren up to speed took a little extra time. So did the jokes: the men couldn’t get over the part where Noura had eaten the scrap of paper. Rachel fed their laughter, declaring she would not be the one who went after it, and when they had finally pulled themselves together, she had a plausible story lined up.
“What did she write?” Alimoren asked, his colors moving slowly towards curious yellows.
“A bunch of numbers,” Rachel replied. “I think it was a combination, or coordinates, or part of a phone number or a bank account…”
“What were they?” Santino asked, and she rattled a series of digits off the top of her head. Her partner jotted them down and got to work decoding them. “Not latitude or longitude,” he said. “Maybe it’s part of an IP address…”
“Hell if I know,” Rachel replied, and then made sure to put her left foot exactly under Hill’s as he turned back towards the mirror. She gasped as she jumped, and hissed as the coffee burned her hand, and excused herself from Hill’s apologies to go run her hand under cold water in the nearest bathroom.
The bathroom was empty. She leaned against the door and took a deep breath, then another, and grabbed onto the feeling of the cinderblock walls around her. Glazer says hello…
And as the cool of the bathroom soaked into her, she realized she had panicked for no good reason.
Nobody at First MPD—not even Santino—knew she had helped Jonathan Glazer escape from police custody. It had been the lesser evil: Glazer was combat-capable and had extensive military training, and she was sure he would have escaped without her assistance. Tossing him a MacGyver lockpick was her way of saying, Go on, get out of here, and don’t hurt any of my people while you’re doing it.
In exchange, Glazer had bought OACET time and credibility.
Rachel still considered it more than a fair trade.
She laughed quietly to herself, the sound of it bouncing around the empty room. So what if word had gotten around the darker side of society that she was willing to aid and abet? Noura had nothing to offer OACET. Pretending to cooperate with Noura would only ensure the thief would willingly turn over all information to buy Rachel’s goodwill.
It’s not as though Noura had any proof. Glazer had escaped in the middle of a firestorm. Nobody was sure of anything, and the only security footage that did exist showed Rachel permanently crippling his partner.
She’s not leaving this station, but I can still convince her she’ll get something for nothing, Rachel thought. And maybe this’ll tell the underground gossip mill that I can’t be bought.
Well, she corrected herself, not unless it’s for the right price.
Rachel ran her hands under the tap, sprinkled some water on her dress shirt, and left the bathroom. She was beginning to feel pretty good about the situation when she realized that Noura’s message had a second meaning: Noura had admitted she was in contact with Glazer.
Oh! She had to shove her fists deep in her suitcoat pockets to keep from dancing around like a happy child. After breaking out of First MPD, Glazer and his partner had disappeared. Despite the MPD’s best efforts, the manhunt had turned up empty. This was the first solid lead since they had vanished. If she could somehow coax Noura into telling her the details, maybe she could track down Glazer and his partner, and finally check that item off of her To-Do list.
This, Rachel told herself, is turning into a very good day.
She swung around the corner, and stopped dead in her tracks. The colors within the interview room were Southwestern turquoise and poppy-seed gray, through and through.
Good mood gone, Rachel sighed, tipped her chin up, and walked into the room wearing her best poker face.
“What?” she asked as the men turned towards her.
“Alimoren wants to play along,” Santino said.
“If she keeps stonewalling us, we’ll never find out who hired her,” the Secret Service agent said. “There’s a bigger security risk out there than chauffeuring Noura to her drop site.”
Beneath her poker face, Rachel winced. Alimoren had a point: learning how Noura got into the White House took priority. But…
Santino sa
ved her. “Rachel doesn’t have a valid driver’s license,” he offered.
Zockinski and Hill went a dark sage green. “That’s why you make us drive everywhere,” Zockinski said.
She shrugged. “We live in the city,” she said. “Driving didn’t seem important. I haven’t had a valid license since I enlisted, and I did that when I was eighteen. Trust me, you don’t want me on the road.”
“No problem,” Alimoren said. “Detective Hill, Noura seems to like you. Can you drive? That’ll let Agent Peng focus on Noura.”
Hill nodded.
“If we do this,” Rachel said, as she felt the weight of inevitability settle on her shoulders, “the Secret Service takes custody of her. Not me and Hill, or OACET and the MPD in general. I want to go on record that I think this is a bad idea. She asked about the time—maybe she’s got friends out there who are ready to help her escape.”
“Agreed,” Alimoren said. “I don’t like this, either, but I’ll make sure the Secret Service bears the responsibility. You’ll have backup the entire way.”
It was done except for the details, and Rachel allowed herself to grin like the wickedest of witches as she returned to the interview room.
“First,” Rachel began, as she returned to the chair across the table from Noura. “I don’t have a driver’s license, so I’m not driving you anywhere alone. Hill will be our driver.”
Noura began to protest, and subsided only after Rachel shot her a private wink. “Fine,” the cat burglar said, hope rising in a multicolored surge.
“You should know that if you’re trying to play us, it won’t go well for you,” Rachel continued. “We’re not your average cops—we’re used to dealing with criminal masterminds.” She put an oh-so-slight emphasis on “dealing”, and watched the threads of Noura’s hope twine around each other and strengthen.
“As long as you’re fair with me, you’ll get what I’ve promised you,” Noura said.
“You really need a lawyer here,” Rachel told her. “Otherwise, you’ve got no guarantees that we’ll keep our deals.”
“I’m not concerned.” Noura smiled. “Rumor has it that you keep your side of the bargain.”
There was a slight flurry of curious yellow on the other side of the mirror, and Rachel decided to wrap things up before her too-smart partner began to revisit old mysteries. “Well,” she said. “For cops, we do okay. Now, you’re also going to need to wear a remote transmitter…”
It took another hour to get Noura released into their custody, and another few minutes of pretending that the police cruiser they were using for transport had been issued to them at random. It wasn’t: the MPD kept a couple of cruisers fitted out with hidden recording equipment. Anything Noura said during transport would be seen and heard by Santino, Zockinski, and Alimoren and his team as they followed in a surveillance van.
Rachel approved. She was still burned out from overuse as a camera during the past couple of days. Anything that took some of the strain off of her brain was fine by her.
Noura didn’t. When Hill opened the rear door of the cruiser for Noura, she peered inside in disdain. “You must be kidding,” she said. “It smells like vomit.”
“It’s a police car,” Rachel said, as Hill put Noura in the cruiser. “They all smell like vomit.”
“Even the new ones,” Hill added.
The door slammed shut on Noura, and they were underway.
Noura wasn’t chatty. Her colors moved in searching patterns as she evaluated the road around them, offering directions as they went. She took them a roundabout way: it was only after Noura took them past Dupont Circle that Rachel realized Noura was retracing her steps.
“Tell us the address,” Rachel said. “It’ll be easier.”
Noura gave her one of those knowing smiles, and told them to take the next right.
Finally, after another fifteen minutes of navigating traffic, she said, “Here.”
Hill glanced up at the building. “Yup.”
It was a commercial mail drop in a good part of town. Foot traffic would be regular, peaceful, and predictable; the clerks would be attentive and helpful. “You mailed the package to yourself?” Rachel asked.
“Yes,” Noura said. “But not under my name, and I wasn’t the one who bought the drop box.”
Smart, Rachel admitted to herself. There was no way they’d get a warrant to search through each customer’s mail. If Noura decided to back out now, it might be months before they got their hands on the package.
If there even is a package, and if Noura didn’t just create this wild goose chase out of thin air to give you the opportunity to let her go…
Hmm.
Hill slid the car into a conveniently empty space (everyone declined to mention the fire hydrant), and left to scout the store. After some cautious poking around, he gestured for the women to join him.
Rachel helped Noura out of the back seat, and leaned in close. “Tonight,” she whispered. “They’re expecting you to try to escape while we’re here.”
Noura didn’t reply, but her bright hope tempered itself within an uncertain orange.
“Don’t worry,” Rachel assured her, loud enough for Hill to overhear. “We keep our promises.”
“They told me you could do that,” Noura said. “I didn’t believe them.”
Rachel and Hill exchanged a glance. “Do what?” Rachel asked.
“You know what a person is thinking,” Noura replied.
Hill chuckled.
“Is this another rumor that’s going around?” Rachel asked him, and he nodded. “Aw, fuck me,” she said. “Don’t people have better things to do than make shit up?”
“You swear when you get defensive,” Hill said, his colors richly purple.
Rachel put a hand at the small of Noura’s back, and all but shoved the woman towards the clerk while she went to cover the rear exit.
She almost didn’t believe it when Noura returned with a package. It was plain white, with hunter’s orange duct tape securing the edges. Rachel scanned it and found nothing but printouts and an overlarge wristwatch.
“I’ll be damned,” she said to Hill. “Nutty thief came through.”
Hill nearly smiled. “Bombs?”
“No, it’s clean. I’m not opening it, though,” Rachel said, dropping the package in a large evidence bag. “I know a bomb when I see it. Poison is trickier.”
“It is clean,” Noura said, slightly yellow from the implied insult. “I packed them myself.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” Rachel said. “You lied to me.”
“I’m a con artist,” Noura replied. “Don’t take it personally.”
“No.” Rachel shook her head. “I don’t know what people are thinking, but I am one of those freaks who can read microexpressions.” It was an excuse she had used a couple of times before, and she decided to put it out into the MPD gossip pool to get ahead of the mindreader rumor. “You’re the first person I’ve met in years who’s able to lie without me catching it.”
“Oh,” Noura said. “That. Don’t you know that a con artist never really lies?”
“What?”
Noura smiled at her. “We always believe what we say. It’s the best way to sell the con.”
There were more implications in that statement than Rachel could process. “That’s…” She groped around for the right description. “…sociopathic.”
The woman shrugged. “You asked,” she said. “That’s how it works.”
Interesting. Rachel mulled over Noura’s words. How does that work? If I read emotions instead of minds, she’s not just telling the truth, she’s feeling the emotions that go along with it…
Her grandmother’s favorite saying had been that you can tell the truth without telling everything you know; even lies of omission seemed to register as voids within conversational colors. But if you were emotionally disconnected from the truth, maybe a lie could exist on the same fundamental level as truth.
It put h
er recent conversation with Mulcahy in a new light, maybe. Nobody could lie within a link, but if she was getting better at hiding her emotions…
Wait. Is it possible to lie within a link?
Rachel thought she might be able to make out the edges of an answer, but it slipped through her mental fingers as she saw the gunman bearing down on them.
TWELVE
Rachel didn’t know what tipped Hill off. For her, it was the man wearing professional blues, marching towards them with a newspaper wrapped around his right hand. Those blues were…wrong. The hue was closer to gunmetal than suits or uniforms, and Rachel threw a scan through the newspaper. She was already shouting and moving when the man pulled out the sub-compact handgun.
Hill was moving, too. He hit Noura high, Rachel hit her low. Between them, they knocked Noura out of the gunman’s path as he fired four times, bangbangbangbang, fast as lightning.
They almost made it. Three shots went wide. The fourth caught Hill in his right shoulder and moved through skin and fat and muscle, and then smashed into Noura’s jaw.
The woman’s colors were utterly white as her hands came up to find a void. An unearthly howl started from where her mouth used to be.
Rachel didn’t have time to assess the damage. “Hill?!” she shouted.
“Good…” he grunted.
Back in Afghanistan, her service weapon had been a military Sig Sauer P229 Combat pistol. She had fallen in love with the gun, and had stolen it when she had gone stateside to join OACET. It wasn’t standard police issue; neither was the custom fast-draw shoulder holster she had started wearing as a compromise to herself for ditching her bulletproof vest. The gunman might have been expecting her to be armed, but he wasn’t ready for her to lunge for cover behind the nearest car, her weapon already out and drawn on his chest as she rolled.
She didn’t take the shot. He was staring at her, Southwestern turquoise woven tight within the gunmetal blues, and she realized as she was about to pull the trigger that he wouldn’t shoot her. He was there for Noura’s poppy-seed gray, and there was something else in there, something white wrapped up in orange…
State Machine Page 17