Playing With Death

by Simon Scarrow

Rose backs away from him and lowers the gun.

  ‘Robbie.’

  He runs into her arms and she holds him tight and the pain in her leg is nothing compared to the relief that he is alive. Her boy is safe again. Sirens wail, getting louder. She sees red and white lights strobing the road in the valley below, followed by a procession of Park vehicles.

  Rose sees the photo has been picked up by the breeze, and is skittering along the ground and out of sight. Koenig watches it too, his expression hard to read.

  ‘Rose?’

  She turns at the shout, sees Owen waving from behind her a hundred yards away at the edge of the line of trees. She waves back. A few minutes later, he trudges down with a SWAT sniper, cradling his rifle with its heat sights. There are more figures moving out of the trees and the gleam of headlights approaching. Owen kicks Koenig in his abdomen.

  ‘That’s for Weiss and Jones and my damn leg, you psycho bastard.’ He exhales deeply before turning to Rose.

  ‘Good thing I got your text. That was a close one. Baptiste and the others are still out there. Like we planned when we let this piece of shit listen in on our comms.’

  ‘My text?’

  Then she realizes. Diva.

  ‘Oh . . . yeah.’ She moves to pull her hair back, sees the blood on her hands.

  ‘We need to get you looked at.’ For a moment, Rose finds comfort in Owen’s presence and leans her head against his chest. It’s over. She feels Owen wrap his arms around her and briefly they both stand unmoving, sirens wailing in the distance.

  Two ambulances careen to a stop. The emergency medics run towards Rose.

  The sniper takes a look at Koenig on his front and spits. ‘You know I aimed for his head, actually, but the wind direction changed at the last moment. Tough break, huh?’

  Rose holds her wounded thigh, watching as the SFPD officers clear the scene and the EMTs drag the bleeding Koenig over to a gurney.

  85.

  A thick dressing is fixed to her thigh and Rose is given a shot of morphine before being lifted up on the gurney into the back of the ambulance. Robbie is by her side. His mouth still has pink blood marks where the coarse sticky tape has been pulled off. She watches as Koenig is hoisted up into the back of the other ambulance. His head lolls to one side as he shoots Rose a sardonic smile. He lifts his hand in a small childlike wave before the ambulance doors are closed. Forensics are setting up portable lights around the pool of Koenig’s blood. Police radios blare. Rose is in a strange, dizzy haze.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ a voice says.

  Rose pulls her eyes from the scene over to Baptiste, leaning near the ambulance door in the foreground.

  ‘It’s just a flesh wound. Good job Owen got that text,’ Baptiste muses. ‘We gave Koenig fifteen minutes before we pretended to leave the area, to flush him out. Your text told us it was a go. That’s when we sighted him up. We frisked him – I believe this is yours.’ She hands Rose her smartphone, clicking the battery back in. ‘Lucky he took out the battery after you texted Owen.’

  Rose nods her thanks as Baptiste places the smartphone on her lap.

  ‘You got him, Rose. That sick son-of-a-bitch is gonna die in prison.’

  ‘Amen to that.’

  Rose smiles a tired smile. Baptiste nods. They share a knowing look between the doors as the paramedics close them. Rose holds Robbie close as the ambulance pulls away. He leans his head against her shoulder.

  ‘Your mom’s gonna be OK,’ a bald paramedic says to Robbie as he takes his seat beside Rose.

  Rose squeezes her eyes tightly shut. She can feel the vehicle picking up speed as it joins the freeway, heading to the hospital. The fittings and gurney shake.

  She feels a vibration on her lap.

  ‘Agent Blake, you need to rest,’ the paramedic advises, looking back at her, ‘Whoever that is, they can wait.’

  ‘It’s OK, just let me get this,’ she says as she squints at the screen. It’s a text from Unknown.

  Diva.

  Are you still alive, Rose?

  Rose can’t help but smile. She types:

  You texted Owen. Saved my son. Thank you.

  It was the least I could do. Heal well, Rose. I look forward to working with you again.

  Again?

  Despite her gratitude, Rose feels cold and naked. Through the window of the ambulance she can see only darkness, hiding the world from view. But this is a different world now. If you are a part of it then there is nowhere to hide any longer. Nowhere that Diva cannot find you.

  The words of a few days ago return to haunt Rose.

  ‘. . . I am everywhere.’

  Epilogue

  A few days have passed. Rose watches the TV at the foot of her bed. A news anchor is discussing the latest polls. The election campaign is going well for Senator Keller. Rose turns her head as Baptiste enters her hospital room. Baptiste pulls up a plastic chair. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Pretty good. Can’t wait to be out of here though. I need to check on Jeff before I leave.’

  Baptiste nods. ‘Robbie’s with your sister. Scarlet says he’s doing just fine. Misses you though.’

  They share a smile before Baptiste’s expression becomes serious. ‘Koenig’s strapped to a hospital bed in a maximum security cell, under twenty-four-hour guard.’

  Rose nods. ‘How’s the team?’

  ‘Owen’s sorted Samer out a place to live for now. We got cameras on him all the time, and he’s under a strict curfew. At least he’s working for us. He seems to look up to Owen.’

  ‘That’s a good thing?’ Rose jests.

  ‘Brennan is the one messing with my head though. He keeps harping on about all the stuff he’d like to do to start policing the StreamPlex. It’s back up and running smoothly. No more deaths reported. That’s something, I guess.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose says quietly as she thinks about Diva, somewhere out there online. Somewhere, and everywhere. The thought unnerves her. She tries to push it from her mind. ‘I guess we’ll be handing the Koenig material over to the prosecutor’s office.’

  Baptiste nods. ‘Can’t say I’m unhappy to put this one behind us. But there’ll be another sicko out there, inspired by Koenig. There always is.’

  ‘It never stops, does it?’ Rose sighs.

  Baptiste offers her a tired smile. ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  Rose can feel her smartphone vibrating under her covers. She reaches for the device and feels a chill as she sees that it’s a new message from Diva.

  Jeff’s in satisfactory hands. I checked the doctors’ backgrounds at the hospital. Most have good records and sound reputations.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Rose turns the smartphone face down on the blanket beside her. ‘Just a friend.’

  I think . . .

  Acknowledgements

  Playing With Death began life as a script for radio back in 1995 when some of the implications of the new online world were very clear, and we are gratified (and alarmed) that the original prognostications turned out to be so accurate. The idea of turning the radio play into a TV series came out of a meeting of the ‘Story Architects’ – a name conjured up for an informal creative talents group consisting of Simon, Lee and Alex Scarrow. The format for such meetings was for each of us to bring a few ideas to the table to kick around, and see together how far they could be developed. It was an immensely useful process for us all, and a huge pleasure to springboard the wildest ideas. So we would like to express our thanks to Alex Scarrow for sharing his thoughts with us in those early crucial days.

  Although we quickly had a TV producer on board, the process of getting a television series commissioned is long and laborious, to say the least. So we decided to take the plunge and put our ideas into print first, a medium that would give us the gre
atest degree of control over the cutting-edge nature of the story.

  Owing to the subject matter and setting, an immense amount of research went into writing this novel. There were many people in the IT industry and the FBI who were very generous with their time and advice but were not prepared to be named, unfortunately, thanks to the sensitive nature of their work. To them we offer our profound gratitude for their invaluable help.

  Happily we can name others who were instrumental in shaping our first co-written novel. Firstly our agent, Meg Davis, who read through the first drafts and offered some useful opinions about the setting. Then there’s the fabulous editorial team at our publishing house. Marion Donaldson, Martin Fletcher and Seán Costello steered us safely through the rewrites and helped make the novel become the pacy, edgy and terrifying tale that it is. We greatly look forward to working with them on the next novel in the series!

  Simon and Lee

  April 2017 CE (or 35 IE, as we like to think of it, dating from the introduction of the Internet Protocol Suite in 1982)