He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of people who haven’t deserved to die since we started this thing, but they’re dead just the same. Guys like Sovereign don’t seem to care about ‘deserve,’ so why should I waste a lot of time thinking about it?”
I inclined my head as I looked back on the open grave. A backhoe in the distance started up, and I knew that he’d be heading this way, coming over here to start filling the graves that were lying open in front of me, the gaping holes in the earth that should still have been full, grass growing atop them. “Sovereign,” I said quietly. “I’ve never even met the man and I hate him.”
“Kinda gives you all the more reason to stick a thumb in his eye when you get a chance, huh?” Scott wasn’t exactly smiling when I turned to him, but there was a grim satisfaction in the way he said it.
“Let’s hope we get the chance,” I said, tugging on the skirt I was wearing. It was black and fell below the knee, totally uncharacteristic of me and not something I’d wear anywhere but to a funeral. “I don’t want to think that anyone’s died in vain.”
“There’s definitely a Wrath of Khan line to be quoted here,” he said as I fell in next to him, walking back toward where his car waited. “These guys ... they may actually have bought us a chance. Maybe.”
“I love how equivocal you are about that.”
“We’ve got the might of the meta world against us,” Scott said with a shrug. “I think a strong ‘maybe’ is a hell of a lot more chance than we had last week. I’ll take it.”
I nodded as we walked along. Birds chirped in the trees as a soft breeze rustled the boughs. I hated them for their cheery disposition. “It’s all we’re gonna get, I know that much. One shot. After that, it’s all bound to come raining down on us.”
Scott gave me a bitter smile. “Straight to the end, huh? At least it’ll be over with.”
“I was kind of hoping to drag it on a little longer,” I said. “Got a few things I’d like to do before I check out of this life.” I stopped at the door to his car and looked back over the sunny graveyard. “I’m not ready to end up in a place like this. Not yet.”
Scott smiled. “Too young to die, huh?”
I felt any trace of emotion frost over, like the ground in winter. “Too many people left to send before me.”
Chapter 33
My mother’s helicopter touched down on the helipad that I’d stood on what felt like a thousand times. She slid the door to the Black Hawk open and was the first to get out, Reed, Karthik and Kurt a few steps behind her. Kurt walked with a little bit of a limp, as if he’d had his knees taken out from beneath him. I couldn’t recall him walking like that when he left, so I nodded to him as my mother approached me. The day was a little more overcast. It would have been better funeral weather.
“Oh, him?” My mother dipped her head in Kurt’s direction. “He slipped getting out of the van when we were going in to the Omega safehouse. He’s fine.”
I nodded to her as the rotors began to spin down on the helicopter. It was loud out on the helipad, loud enough that I was content to wait until things had quieted slightly before I spoke again. I didn’t get a chance to say anything else before Reed stepped up, enfolding me in his arms in a tight hug that I reciprocated.
When he pulled away, he said with a ragged breath filled with emotion, “I hope you kept yourself far out of the way of that craziness, but I know you didn’t.”
I gave him a tight smile, but there was no joy in it. “I didn’t have anyone else to delegate to taking back the dorms. It was me or nobody.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be possible for you to let it be nobody, huh?”
“It’s not really who I am,” I said. “Standing by and doing nothing isn’t my thing anymore. Did too much of that once before; I won’t do it again.”
“We didn’t find much at the Omega safehouse,” my mother said, interrupting whatever else Reed might have said to that. “But this is worth a look.” She held out her hand. A cell phone sat in her palm, a slightly older model of disposable phone, the kind you could buy at Wal-Mart for fairly cheap.
I took it from her outstretched hand and flipped it open. “I assume it’s been checked for—”
“It’s clear on explosives, tracking worms, all that fun stuff,” she said. “J.J. talked us through shutting down the GPS on it before we got on the plane. Not that it matters, since pretty much everyone knows where we are, but I figured we’d best take no chances.”
“Good call,” I said, looking at the screen. It was a simple, small-screen flip phone with very few options available. I thumbed the button for Contacts, and only five were listed. Home, Murphy, Richards, corner store and Hildegarde.
I looked up at my mother and she nodded. “I didn’t call it yet, but we did do a trace on all those numbers. The home one went to the safehouse’s line, corner store rings a convenience place just down the road that delivers pizza—we checked it out, nothing seemed particularly funny about it, and they had records of dozens of orders going to the safehouse address—and the last three look like Omega operatives, one of which corresponds to the ID of one of the dead from Hildegarde’s team.” She smiled. “If you wanted a way to get in contact with Katheryn Hildegarde, I believe you may have it now, assuming she hasn’t cut off her phone.”
I stared at the little piece of plastic perched in my hand. “Is it likely she’s kept the same phone? She is on the run, after all.”
“J.J. says the phone in question is still in use but masked from easy tracking.” My mother shifted her weight from one leg to the other, altering her posture the way she did when she was impatient. “It’s set up to roam on non-native networks, the ones that don’t belong to the phone company that sold it to her, and it comes up under a different signature every time it hits a network. Long story short, you can call her, but the minute you do, she’ll be able to jump to using a different ID on the phone and it’ll keep us from being able to track her without jumping through some significant hoops.”
“But we could track her?” I looked at my mother carefully. “She’s a dangerous person, a wanted fugitive.”
“We might be able to,” she replied. “Key word there is might. Our little tech geek didn’t seem heartened by the idea.”
I sighed. “We might as well call her, then.” I turned to Reed. “Go talk to J.J. and tell him what we’re about to do. Get him ready to do what he can to find her.” Reed nodded, hesitating for a moment. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Really.” I don’t know how convincing I sounded, because I was pretty sure I sounded like I was dead inside by this point. A sensation I was rapidly approaching in actual fact.
“We need to talk later,” Reed said, and I could tell by his eyes he meant business.
“We do indeed,” I said, resigned. He took the hint and headed toward HQ at a jog. I looked back at Kurt. “How are you holding up, Kurt?”
“Feel like I’ve been kicked in the knee by a horse,” he grunted.
“Go see Dr. Perugini,” I replied. I had a great line about how it looked like he’d been kicked in the face by a horse, but I kept it to myself. It wasn’t worth it. I waved him off and he headed toward the building as well.
“Have anything for me to do?” Karthik asked, and I thought I caught a note of faint hope. He seemed a little down—more than a little, actually. I knew how he felt, and I suspected he was blaming himself for not being here when the battle had gone down.
“I have lots for you to do, Karthik,” I replied. “But first, we need to try and make contact with Hildegarde. Why don’t you come along? You can take a listen if we get her on the phone, tell us what you think.”
He nodded and fell in behind me as we walked into HQ and across the lobby toward the elevators. Security checked our badges scrupulously even though they’d seen me exit the building only moments before. The head guard watched us all carefully, his hand on a submachine gun, finger lingering just above the trigger. I’d been told by Scott that they were tak
ing the incident at the dorm personally, those who remained. A few had quit in the wake of the incident, but the ones who were staying were almost all ex-military and were more than a little pissed that so many of their brethren had died in a sucker punch attack. Personally, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in their crosshairs at the moment.
We passed through the security checkpoint and hit the elevator, riding in silence to the fourth floor. When it dinged and we exited, I led them in silence to my office. I saw Ariadne through the window, her head down, working on a stack of file folders that was sitting on her desk. I was glad I didn’t have her job, I reflected as I passed.
When we got into my office, I sat in my chair and gestured for my mother and Karthik to take the seats across from me. They didn’t, though; my mother joined me on my side of the desk, hovering near the window, and Karthik remained standing next to the door, in a perfect position to ambush some poor bastard who stopped in to drop off a report. I didn’t say that, though, because he looked tense enough to actually do it.
There came a knock a minute later and when the door opened, Reed was there, J.J. in tow behind him. The nerd still wore his hipster glasses, though he’d grown something of a beard in the last few months. I say something of one because it was not the sort of thing a normal man would have looked at with pride. It was stringy and patchy, the kind you’d expect to see on a prepubescent teen. “Hey,” he said as he entered, flopping down into one of the chairs opposite me before I even had a chance to offer him a seat. “So, we’re going to try and track down Katheryn Hildegarde, killer of FBI agents?” He templed his fingers and stretched them, and I grimaced as he cracked his knuckles. I was fine with the sound of my own joints doing that but when other people did, it I got a little creeped out. “This should be fun. She’s got someone devilishly tricky working her network security; this little thing they’ve pulled to mask her is absolutely masterful stuff. It’s kind of new for me, too, I’ll admit. I’m a little envious—”
“J.J.,” I said, cutting him off. “Can you do it?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I mean, I’ve never tried it before.”
I held my breath and my annoyance. “What do you need?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. I’m hooked into our phone system,” he gestured at the little laptop sitting on my desk in front of him, “I’m watching the networks. I’m good to go. You may dial when ready.” I shook my head at him, then picked up my office phone and dialed the number out of the contacts list on the phone I still held.
It rang as I stared over the team sitting around my office. Karthik waited nervously behind the door, still looking like he was going to take a swipe at whoever was next to walk in. Reed fidgeted on my couch, his ponytail making a slight swishing noise against the leather surface. The ringing in my ear was louder than I remembered, and had an atonal, electronic buzzing noise to it.
There was a popping on the line, and I heard the sound of someone answering. “Hello?” came a female voice, strong yet tentative.
“Katheryn, this is Sienna Nealon. Do you know who I am?” I paused, hoping that the next sound I heard wasn’t a click and a dial tone.
“It’d be hard not to know who you are,” she said, and I could hear the caution in her voice. “How’d you get this number?”
“We picked up one of your colleagues’ phones at a safe house in Portland,” I said. “Do you know what my current job is?”
I heard a sigh at the other end of the line. “I’ve heard rumors about a few jobs you have. Primus of Omega? Operations Director for the U.S. government’s new meta Agency? Oh, and the last person on earth that Sovereign wants to see dead. So,” she went on, “in which official capacity are you calling me today?”
“In my official capacity as someone whose sole focus is beating the holy hell out of every member of Century. Preferably with their own limbs after I’ve ripped them from their bodies.” I let a little heat sizzle through the line. It wasn’t feigned.
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “You’ve got my attention.”
“I’m calling you because I was under the impression you might be a person who’s of a similar mindset,” I said. “Someone who’d like to put Sovereign’s back against the wall and nail him tight to it.”
I heard her breathe on the other end of the line, and I could almost hear her contemplating my words. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but if you think you’re going to beat Sovereign, I’m going to go ahead and say you’re either crazy, naïve, or you don’t know what you’re up against.”
I waited to see if she would say anything else. She didn’t, so I spoke. “But you’re not hanging up.” I paused for a second. “And you’ve gone and stuck a splinter in Century’s paw yourself.”
She was thinking it over, I was sure of it. “What have you got in mind? Since I assume you’re not calling me to let me know what you’re going to do just so I can write it up in a declaration of intent and frame it for you.”
“I don’t know what your penmanship looks like, but I would definitely be looking to outsource that work,” I said. I looked at my mom, who stared back at me with a look of annoyance that was all too familiar. I shrugged. Cracking wise was not something I was going to give up at this late stage in my life. “No, I’m calling you because I figured that as two people who have a common goal, i.e. kicking Century in the dangly parts, I figured we might be able to accomplish more together than individually.”
There was a long pause after that, and only her light breathing every few seconds convinced me that she hadn’t hung up out of hand. I wanted to give her time to think, but at the same time, I was wondering what was going on in her thought process. It felt like forever, but was probably only a few seconds before she came back with, “What did you have in mind? Specifically?”
“I’m planning to put a severe hurting on Century,” I said. “Soon. I could use a few more metas in my camp. Any chance you’d like to visit us here in Minnesota?”
She didn’t hesitate much this time around. “I was planning on heading south, but it’s just too damned hot in California. Going east sounds like a real good idea.” There was a hoarse amusement in the way she said it. “Strength in numbers, right?”
“Seems less intimidating when it’s not a hundred versus one, doesn’t it?” I asked.
There was a stark, humorless laugh. “Only marginally. Is this a number I can reach you on?”
“Yeah,” I said, and clutched the phone a little tighter. “It’s my direct line; it’ll find me, day or night, unless I’m in the middle of punching someone in the face at the time.”
“Then, from what I’ve heard about you, it’ll barely ever catch you at all?” Her voice was laced with irony.
“I’ve slowed down a lot lately,” I said. “Saving all my face punching for Sovereign and his crew, and they’ve yet to do much to present their chins for a solid hit.”
I heard her click her tongue. “True enough. We’ll be there in a few days, and maybe together we can find a way to change that up a little bit.” There was a clicking noise, and the line cut off. I set the phone gently back down in the cradle, running through everything I’d just heard. I looked around at my team, and found them staring back at me. Reed in particularly looked jaded about the whole exchange. “She came around pretty fast.”
“Not to sound cliché,” Reed said, “but anyone else think it was a little too fast? Especially considering she knows she’s killed government agents and that you’re working for said government.”
I chewed my lower lip. “Could be she’s just anxious because she feels the heat of Century’s breath coming down her neck. The enemy you know ...”
“Versus the one you don’t?” My mother spoke from behind me. “She might prefer the possibility of jail to the certainty of Century eventually killing her. It allows her to abdicate responsibility for keeping her group on the run.”
“Let’s not plan on her good graces,” I said, tapping my fingers on the desk. “J.J.
, any luck tracking her?”
“That’s a negatory,” J.J. said, shaking his head, still staring at his laptop screen. “I’ll dig a little deeper, but based on what I’m seeing here, I’m not even hopeful about giving you a location based on what tower she was using on the network. Which would be cheerfully vague, in any case, and several hours out of date by the time I ran it down.” He picked up his laptop and stood, heading toward the door. He paused next to Karthik, just as he was about to reach for the handle. “By the way, about that other thing I sent you ...” His voice trailed off. “I ... um ... sorry I couldn’t be more specific.”
I frowned. “What other thing?” I tried to remember if I’d gotten some email of consequence from him, but nothing was standing out.
“The tracking notice,” he said, looking at me blankly. “I sent it to Ariadne. I figured she would have forwarded it to you by now.” He pursed his lips, and looked very uncomfortable. “She probably hasn’t gotten to it yet. I just sent it an hour or so ago. Never mind.” He started to turn, but a look from me to Karthik caused a hand to be placed in front of the door, shutting it tight.
“J.J ...” I said, trying not to be too menacing but probably failing. “Why don’t you save Ariadne the trouble and just tell me what you found?”
“Um, right,” he said, adjusting his black-rimmed glasses as he turned back to me. He kept his head down, staring at the carpet. “I, uh, was combing airline reservation computers along with some NSA PRISM intercepts, and I caught a little bit of a pattern.”
I wanted to thump him on the head or throw a stapler at him, but I refrained. “And?”
“And, well, I found some receipts for a credit card,” he said. “And a couple plane tickets under different aliases.” He still wasn’t looking up.
“Lots of people travel every day,” I said. “You’re going to need to be more specific.”
“Right,” he said, and looked up at me furtively, just for a second. “The names were Richard Snow and Edgar Stark.”
Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 Page 21