“You swear she will?”
I saw Niall looking at us both, his face creased with worry. “I swear,” I said. I pushed Junk away, none too gently, though it’d take a strong man to propel Junk in any direction he didn’t want to go. “Go and see to the others and leave Niall and me to sort this out. Niall, is that right?”
He stepped up beside me. “That’s right.”
Wednesday 16:40
IT WAS the middle of the afternoon, and we were sitting back in my trailer, the two of us side by side on my couch. The explosion hadn’t alerted any emergency services, and no one had come to the park to see what had happened. Guess so many awkward things had happened there in the past, the city neighbors were cured of their natural curiosity. A few of the residents had suggested they call the police, but after Junk and his family talked to them, no one on the park wanted to draw any more attention to themselves.
The sounds outside had quieted down, and the worst of the wreckage had been cleared away. I’d spent several hours alongside Junk’s family shifting rubbish and sweeping up the mess. By now, the panic had subsided, and some of the kids were already playing with the last bits of twisted metal and odd knobs and handles that had been blown off doors. I could hear parents yelling at them to leave that stuff alone and the rumble of Phil’s flatbed truck as he drove slowly around the site, picking up and disposing of the debris. He stopped a couple of times, I heard, to tell the story over a beer or two.
Occasionally I heard Dylan bark. It was a reassuring sound, as maybe he meant it to be.
My bandage had come loose with the activity, and after a welcome shower, I’d been redressing it. I hadn’t been able to do a lot of the heavy lifting, but the wound was healing well, and my arm felt fairly strong again. I looked across at Niall. “How are the injured?”
“Fine,” he said. He’d just returned from another circuit of the nearby trailers, and he still shed a little dust with every step. He’d spent all his time since the explosion with the people on the park, helping them to clear up, seeing to any remaining shock or wounds. He was good at that, if a bit abrupt, but I reckon that’s what they needed at the moment. “The girl’s arm is good, and I swabbed a few more cuts and bruises. They’ve fetched Hans the doctor again, so he’ll take over now. Junk’s son had that bump on his head, so I checked on that, and another had a cut on his leg from the sharp edge of the steps. He’s only about ten. He was shocked too. He wailed a lot.”
“I didn’t hear him.”
Niall grimaced. “I showed him my scar in return, and he was quiet after that. All the youngsters were pretty interested in it, actually. It took their mind off the drama.”
I let my smile linger. “What does everyone think happened? I don’t want them drawn into this any further.”
He sighed. “They think it’s some random act of vandalism, but a few of them know it’s connected to you. To us. Some of the guys further around the park want you thrown off. Junk spoke to them and calmed them down. I… well, I spoke to some of them as well. I assured them everything was in hand, and all the damage would be made good.”
Huh? “What do you mean?”
“I’ll reimburse them. Maybe the Team can get it authorized through the Department, or maybe this’ll end up a personal debt. Either way, I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“You don’t need to do that.” I was shocked.
Niall’s mouth twisted in a small smile. “Can you afford to help them out?”
I winced. “You know damned well I can’t.”
“I don’t mean—”
“It’s okay, I know. So I’ll find some other way to help. They’ve been good to me here.”
He nodded. “Have you got through to the others yet?”
“No. The hospital admin line is constantly busy, and I’m reluctant to use the emergency call-out when it’s not a medical issue. But I can’t reach any of the other Team cell numbers either. There doesn’t seem to be any reception.”
“None of them? The guys should all be at the hospital by now.”
I met his puzzled eyes with my own. “None of them.”
“Dammit, Tanner, we have to think this through. Who’s behind it all? It’s not Simon—of course it’s not—but a lot of our clues still remain. He’s been the least targeted and holds the most information. He has access to all the systems and is involved in most of Judith’s decision making at some stage or another. His involvement was feasible enough for me to consider it, even while I didn’t want to believe it. He holds so many keys….”
“Or his section does.”
“Not him specifically, then?”
“No,” I said slowly. I’d been doing some more thinking while Niall was out and about on his troubleshooter missions around the site. Hell of a lot more thinking. “Consider someone with a similar access to equipment and services, but who doesn’t have Simon’s security clearance or his intelligence. Someone who’d have to dig a little deeper and a little more messily to try to find out more information about the Project Team, but could do it if he were determined.”
Niall’s body stilled, and his voice sharpened. “Someone who wanted to keep tabs on us all but didn’t need to gather much information about Simon himself.”
I nodded. “Yeah—because Simon was the one person our suspect could watch from the inside.”
Niall’s expression darkened. He sat like a coiled spring, staring ahead of him. I remembered this concentration of his so well. He was careless of how he looked; I wanted to reach over and brush the wisps of cobweb from his hair.
“Someone who made us fish for these red herrings, Tanner, who led us to suspect our own colleague, set traps for us and kept us on the wrong foot for days, while trying to isolate and attack the team members.”
“With variable success,” I said, dryly. “You might say someone a little naïve, not very experienced in our ways. But with a determination that’s still fucking dangerous.”
Niall ran a hand over his eyes and sighed. “And I let him go.”
There was a short silence.
“He was good, Niall. I believed him too. He looked too scared, too pathetic to be the real danger. I knew there was something out of place, but I didn’t follow up on my instincts. Anyway, we didn’t find the right gun on him—”
“Because he hid it under the trailers before Dylan caught him. Along with the bomb. I meant it, if I’d only looked further instead of being so damned concerned about you getting shot….”
I shook my head. “He was damned cool. I reckon the bomb was already set before he shot me. We never found any evidence on him of any explosive stuff. Maybe he didn’t plan to shoot anyone, it was just extra insurance for him. Or a distraction, so we never suspected anything else. I don’t know. Lucky the little bastard was a poor shot, like you said.” I took a deep breath, calming my anger.
“No one sent him here officially,” Niall said miserably. “That should have alerted me from the start. But it was his nervous behavior that made me start to wonder about Simon, to tell you the truth.”
“I think that’s what you were meant to do,” I said gently. “He’s been clumsy, but he’s not a complete fool. Damned good actor, at the very least. We both fell for it. He seemed to be a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, that was all.”
“Fuck it.” Niall groaned. “The dog knew more than I did.”
I shrugged, but I had to smile. “You’re right. Dylan didn’t like Greg from the start, even when they first brought you here. God knows how Greg got him off the site yesterday morning, leaving the coast clear for his sabotage. But then Junk brought Dylan back, nearly catching Greg in the act, I’d guess, but just that little bit too late for us to realize it. And Dylan’s been dog-nosing around the trailer ever since.”
“Maybe he saw Greg hide the gun. Hell, he was still keeping watch, even as we let Greg run back off home to the Team. Remember? Junk said the kid couldn’t get off the site without help.” He must have felt me tense up beside him
, because he turned to me at last. “Do you think he has Sheri?”
“I know he does,” I said grimly. “She’s his hostage.”
“Any idea where?”
“I think she’s probably being held back at the hideout that Brad found.” Niall frowned, but I continued. “Yeah, Brad said it looked like it’d been cleared out. But that’d be all the more reason to go back to it, thinking we’d dismissed it, thinking the trail was cold.”
“One of those double bluffs I joked about earlier.” Niall sounded really pissed.
“Uh-huh. At our expense, this time.”
He put out a hand to me, then, patting my arm. It was a consoling, comradely gesture, and one I never thought I’d feel again. I wished I had time to appreciate it. “She’s special to you, Tanner, I know. Will we go get her?”
“Damn straight we will! I don’t know what this guy has against us, but as soon as I can get hold of Brad and find out where this fucking place is—”
The cell phone rang again.
I glared at it. “That phone hasn’t brought us any good news for a while.”
Niall’s hand tightened on my wrist, stopping me reaching for it. “How come you can’t reach anyone else’s cell, but someone’s…”
“…reached me?” I stared at him. “Niall, they could be using another phone, or the interference could have cleared. We won’t know unless we answer, will we? But if there’s a chance it’s Judith, calling us from the hospital…”
He nodded and lowered his hand. I reached for the cell and flipped it open.
The voice on the line was the last one I’d thought to hear. “Tanner? Are you okay? I didn’t know who… who might answer this number.”
I pressed the loudspeaker button again so that Niall could hear as well. “You mean, whether I’d been blown into enough pieces to sparkle in the heavens or not? No, I survived. Niall too. He’s making a fucking habit of rising from the ashes of various explosions. Guess someone might be really pissed at that, don’t you think, Simon?”
Simon’s voice gave a low gasp, like a mix between fear and amusement. “Thank God. Same old Tanner.” The line was clear enough, though I couldn’t hear any other voices. There was the background noise of a siren, probably out in traffic. And the distant whine of jet engines, like a plane was passing low overhead.
“Simon…”
“He said the trailer would be destroyed by now, but I was to check whether this line was still operational. Whether there were any loose ends to tie up.”
I didn’t think I was keen on being called a “loose end.” “Who said? You mean Greg?”
“Yes.” Simon didn’t ask any of that unnecessary nonsense, like “How did you find out,” “What final clue led you to the perp,” or anything like that. We weren’t in a fictional detective story here. Niall’s eyes had brightened, and he pressed up against me to listen in more carefully.
“Where are you, Simon?”
“Can’t say.” Simon’s voice was guarded. “Greg wants to speak to you.” His next word was a whisper. “Brad?”
“He’s safe,” I quickly replied. I heard a soft exhalation of breath on the other end. “Does Greg have you covered?”
“Yes.” Simon started to speak quickly. “I followed some clues in Brad’s notes to try to find him, to try to find what was going on, but I had no time to let him know what I’d found—who I’d found. Don’t try anything rash. You must protect yourselves. I’ll sort it out somehow—” His voice broke off abruptly, as if the phone had been snatched from his hand.
I swore to myself. I could have done with some clue as to exactly where he was, what state Greg was in, what weapons he had. Anything.
But Simon Wagner was another guy who didn’t spend too much time out in the field. I felt chilled inside at the thought of what Greg might be doing with him.
“Tanner MacKay?”
I recognized the young voice, of course. There was less of a whine underlying it than before. “Let Simon and the girl go, Greg, and then we can talk, okay?”
There was a scuffling noise at the other end, and the voice sounded furious. “Not okay. Not okay at all. You should be under rubble by now. You and your partner. All of you. I’m not letting anyone go until this is all finished properly.”
“Things not going according to plan, Greg?”
“Shut the fuck up. You had no idea who was doing this, did you? I had the whole lot of you fooled. That was a plan, wasn’t it?”
Until we found him out. “What is it you want?” I noticed that Niall was leaving me to do the negotiation, which was fine by me. Personally, I’d have liked to take the kid and rip his head off, nice and slowly and with a side order of spicy relish, but fuck, that’d maybe have to wait. “Why are you doing this, Greg?”
“I said, shut up. You’re nothing but trouble, Tanner. Damned pity I missed your head with that shot. I don’t know why Sutherland didn’t get out then, why he stuck around you. But it’s all the better for me, I guess, because I’ve got you two in one place, everyone else in another. And now I have some bargaining chips to keep you there.”
“Let them go, Greg,” I repeated. “They’re no good to you.” I hoped I kept the tension out of my voice. “I mean, we’re not interested in negotiating for them. The girl… well, she’s expendable of course. She’s nothing to us. And Simon knows what this business is like. He’s just an agent, same as us all. He knows he’s on his own.”
I heard the indignation flaring in Greg’s tone. “That’s fucking typical of you—of all of you!—abandoning him like that. When he’s the one who keeps it all rolling, the only one who understands what’s going on.”
I glanced at Niall and raised an eyebrow. Greg’s behavior was very erratic. His aggressive language jarred with our perception of the kid we’d previously thought of as respectful, timid, and basically ineffectual. Yet his defense of Simon was interesting. I spoke back into the phone as calmly as I could. “Simon thinks highly of you, Greg, we all know that. So why don’t you let him go, and he can speak for you? We’ll sort this out between us.”
“No way.” Greg laughed, a short, sharp, scornful sound. Wasn’t I the one who’d said he wasn’t a complete fool?
“So you tell me,” I said. “You can speak for yourself, right? That’s if you can make us listen. If you can make us care.”
I made myself sound as scornful as I could. I realized what other nuance I’d heard in Greg’s voice. Not just anger, not just resentment. It was pleading, too—the need to justify, to boast. Wasn’t he just itching to do that?
“Shut up,” he snapped back. “Yes, of course I can speak for myself. None of you have the right to tell me what to do. And you’d better listen.” His voice sank in volume as if he’d turned his head away for a moment. Then it returned as strongly. “You’ll both stay there until I arrive. I’ve got things to say to you in person.”
I could feel Niall tensing beside me. Would Greg really come here? It could be of advantage to us if he did. Despite all that, I put the edge of a whine into my voice. “Why the fuck should we stay here? You might have all kinds of other stuff planned, and we’re not sitting here like fairground targets to get blown up again.”
He gave a low growl of disgust. “You’ll have to take that risk. I’m the one in charge now, aren’t I?”
I looked at Niall, who spoke quickly to me under his breath. “There’s no risk of another bomb here. The blast under the trailer was low level, less explosives than were really needed. Maybe he’s used up all his supplies, or is using them somewhere else.” He grimaced. “And I’ve checked everywhere else on the site. Twice.”
“The hospital?” I hissed back.
He shrugged. “I’d say too big a target, too difficult to organize an effective attack there. Especially if he’s acting on his own. But I don’t know for certain. He doesn’t sound stable.”
I turned back to the phone. “Greg.” I wheedled. “Maybe we should come and meet you. Tell us where you are.” Out
of the corner of my eye, I saw Niall roll his eyes, but I got the right response from Greg.
“So you can send the Team after me? Don’t be stupid. I’m coming to you. But if I don’t find you there I’ll have to leave another calling card. Maybe another person will lose limbs, another person will learn what it’s like to be shit scared and desperate. And get that fucking dog away from the site. If there’s anything that smells of a trap, or any kind of obstruction—”
“We’ll stay here,” I said swiftly. “Don’t get hysterical. You’ll bring them both with you, won’t you? Simon and Sheri?”
“Maybe,” Greg said. He didn’t like me talking to him like a kid. “Maybe not.”
“Greg,” I said. “That’s fine. Chill. We’re completely at your call, aren’t we? But aren’t you worried we’ll call in some back-up? If you can’t give me any idea of when you’re coming….”
And he laughed. Loudly, and this time with a rather pleasantly melodic tone. He feels superior. “Do what you like, MacKay. But I think you’ll find the back-up isn’t available at the moment. Not for you, anyway. In the meantime, I’ll be there when I’m there. And my back-up? Well, just remember who I have with me. You understand?”
The call ceased. I turned to Niall.
“Is he insane?” Niall asked, frowning. I think he meant it genuinely. “Coming to meet us here? Warning us he’s on his way? He could have got clean away, he could have tried some other remote attack again. Not knowing we were on to him—”
I held up a hand, quieting him. “Yes, I believe he’s nuts, but not in the way we can measure. He wants to see us for some reason. He wants us all to be here together. He wants his day in court.”
Niall still looked confused. “What did he mean, another person might lose limbs, another person might learn what it’s like to be scared and desperate? He can’t mean us, surely.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s melodramatic crap, his head’s in a mess. He must think Joe is still likely to lose his leg or something like that. He hopes he’s ruined that life, if nothing else. I don’t know what he’s thinking about the rest of us.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits Page 91