Kit giggled. ‘Much better than mead,’ she said, and then she was tripping out of the hut with the scroll, leaving a quite bemused Vali behind her.
New York Metro.
Hunting for the site where Chantal had been kidnapped in the dark was probably not a great idea, but the cyberframes Pythia employed cared little about light, and waiting for dawn would mean risking further contamination of the scene. Both Cant and Deveraux had been notified, but Fox had started working on the search herself because she had better tech and they all knew it.
Still, the searching largely came down to sending out Pythia’s robots and watching what they found from where Fox had put the vertol down in a parking area intended for autocabs beside the station. It was slow-going and if they had to start running full forensic analysis over the area, it was going to get worse. By three a.m., Fox had decided that she was going to have to get Cant involved to close the park down. That was when Deveraux turned up.
‘I figured that the vertol parked illegally beside the station would be you,’ he said as he climbed the steps to the aft cabin’s side door.
Fox stepped back from the door to let him in, and he handed her a large, plastic, insulated cup of coffee. ‘You seem to know the way to my heart,’ Fox said.
‘I suspected you might need it. This is quite a setup.’
‘Yeah. Captain Jason Deveraux, UNTPP, meet Pythia, my forensic analysis technician.’
Pythia’s voice came from the speakers around the cabin. ‘Good morning, Captain.’
‘Good morning, Pythia,’ Deveraux replied. ‘An AI. Related to the equipment you demonstrated at the conference, of course.’
‘Yeah. Pythia, give Jason the feeds from your frames. He can see how little progress we’re making.’
‘How are you proceeding?’ Deveraux asked as the various display images appeared in his vision field.
‘I’ve got three frames out, one on foot and two airborne. The flyers are running laser scans along the path north from here and doing multispectral imaging. The ground unit is following along behind to examine anything we see in the other scans. Nothing so far, but Pythia’s going over the scans as they come in and I’m hoping we’ll have something to work with soon.’
‘You will need to get NAPA in soon to close off the park.’
‘I sent a message to Cant when I sent one to you. I’ll send another before dawn saying we need the place isolated, but I’d really like to have something to go on before then.’
‘This is a very large park, and she could have gone anywhere.’
‘No, I’m pretty sure of the route she took. This is one of her favourites, stored away in LifeFit. The frames are following that route, but there are too many potential places he could have gone with her so it’s just a case of waiting for a result.’ She flashed him a grin. ‘You didn’t have to come out here, and you don’t need to stay.’
Deveraux shrugged and took the top off his coffee. ‘An extra pair of eyes never hurts.’
~~~
‘Fox, I may have found something.’ Fox looked up at Pythia’s voice, checked the time. It was just after five and the sky was still dark, and the image Pythia was displaying was a laser topology scan of some ground, the detail wound up to maximum which just made it indecipherable to a human.
‘That looks like a lot of weird clutter, Pythia,’ Fox replied. ‘What am I looking at?’
Beside her, Fox felt Deveraux stir. They had both nodded off, leaning against each other in the bucket seats in the back of the vertol, which were a lot more comfortable than they looked, especially when you were running on a couple of hours’ sleep. ‘What are we looking at?’ Deveraux mumbled. ‘I’m awake.’
‘Better open your eyes then. Kit, could you set some coffee brewing? Pythia, explain.’
‘The evidence is sketchy,’ Pythia said, ‘and open to interpretation. I have two lines of footfalls which are disrupted as they meet. I have an area of disturbed ground at the side of the path which could be interpreted as being from a falling body. I have the ground frame looking at the area near the fall.’ Another image display pulled forward showing a lot of false colour imagery from the robot. One of the first things Fox saw were several broken twigs on a bush.
‘I’m not a tracker,’ Fox said, ‘but that looks like someone pushed through between those bushes.’
‘And there are drag marks under the grass at that point,’ Pythia said.
‘Get half the forensic swarms out to that spot. Hold the ground frame where it is until we’ve run the swarms over that area. We’ll push through to follow the trail once we’ve been over the bush. Keep following the track with the air units.’
‘Immediately, Fox.’
Fox gave a nod. ‘It’ll be getting light in… ten or twelve minutes. I’d better wake Cant up and tell him we need some uniforms down here.’
‘It is fortunate that Inspector Cant seems to like you at the moment,’ Deveraux commented.
‘He doesn’t like me, but really hates the guy we’re hunting.’
The captain gave a shrug. ‘We work with what we have, non?’
‘Mais oui,’ Fox replied, grinning.
~~~
‘You know, you could have called me in on this sooner?’ Dillan’s tone had a bit of a grumble in it. There was a slight furrow in her brow suggesting that she thought Fox was keeping the investigation to herself. That was an idea which was, Fox admitted, not entirely without foundation.
‘I could have,’ Fox replied, ‘and then there would be two of us going over this data after having no sleep. It’s… seven now, you get to take over and follow Pythia through the analysis of the track she’s found. Expect Cant here in an hour.’ Dillan’s frown got deeper. ‘Just remember he’s actually on our side on this one.’
‘Okay,’ Dillan conceded. ‘What do we have so far?’
‘Pythia’s found the probable location where Chantal was taken down. It looks like she was dragged off the main track from there. We’ve got tissue samples which match the victim. You get dragged past a thorn bush, you get scratched. No indications of blood, yet, but she was obviously unconscious.’
‘Stunner of some sort?’
‘Probably. Uh, you don’t use LWOS do you?’
Dillan lifted an eyebrow, or tried to as both went up at least a bit: she really envied Fox for being able to do that Spock thing. ‘After what you and Kit found out about that thing, I’d have dumped it even if I was using it.’
‘Huh, okay, good point. I think he can use it to mask his appearance once he’s hacked into it. She probably didn’t see him coming until he hit her.’
‘We kind of leave ourselves open to that kind of thing, I guess. Everyone just lets v-tags change their environment, no questions asked. Someone clever could make you see whatever they want.’
Fox nodded. ‘One reason I screen them unless I trust the viron I’m in.’
‘You don’t trust them.’
‘Maybe it’s an age thing, or the Army. Did various courses on the use of VR infiltration as an attack mechanism. You can get paranoid when you know someone might be out to get you.’
‘I don’t classify that as paranoia,’ Dillan said, grinning. ‘I call that healthy caution. Okay, so you’re going to get some sleep while I handle the rest of the forensics?’
Fox glanced around to where Deveraux was sitting, his eyes on the displays Pythia was providing. ‘His place is closer so we’re going there. I’m sure we’ll get some sleep.’
~~~
Deveraux lived in one of the diplomatic suites in New York Tower, which he said was far too large for him. It did have three bedrooms, though one of those had been converted into an office. The other guest room did get some use, apparently, usually when his sister came down to visit.
The main bedroom had more of a lived-in feel to it. Deveraux was not especially tidy, which Fox thought was endearing in a man who appeared so suave outside his home. The bed was huge, firm, just perfect for the activities which
had consumed them for an hour before sleep had claimed them.
Fox opened her eyes and checked the time. Five hours of unconsciousness, not so bad. She knew it was not really enough, but it would set her up for the afternoon at least. Behind her, she could feel Deveraux spooned against her back. Shifting her behind a little allowed her to feel more of him and she smiled. Making use of that would set her up for a few hours more. Yes, that would set her up real good…
An alarm tone from beside the bed put paid to that particularly pleasing way of waking up. Deveraux rolled onto his back at the sound, instantly awake. ‘Deveraux here. Report.’
A woman’s voice came over the speakers. ‘Captain, Bellingham here. We’ve had a report sent through from Miss Meridian’s colleague, Dillan. She’s completed the forensic sweep and confirmed that Dandridge was kidnapped from there.’
‘We’ll be right down, lieutenant.’
Fox waited for the tone which indicated that the link had disconnected. ‘Damn. I was really hoping for ten minutes to make use of that horn you’re carrying around.’ She shifted, swinging her legs out of the bed. ‘I could use a shower before we go look at Helen’s data.’
‘Then there is hope for my horn yet.’
‘Ha! Well, it saves water.’ Still, she connected through to Dillan as she padded through to the en-suite and remote accessed the shower controls. Dillan’s image appeared in-vision. ‘Got your message,’ Fox said. ‘Anything good?’ Stepping into the water streams felt good: apparently, diplomatic digs had good showers.
‘I’ve got tissue samples from maybe a dozen individuals,’ Dillan said. ‘Pythia’s running them now, but I’m not hopeful. I expect we’ll discover a lot of runners with skinned knees.’
Fox felt Deveraux enter the shower, just from the diversion of the water. ‘Nothing from the spot beyond the bushes?’ Deveraux’s hands landed on Fox’s hips, his fingers pressing into her flesh. She leaned forward, hands on the wall, and slid her feet apart.
‘Yeah, found something there, but for all we know, it’s a good spot for au naturel nookie.’
Fox felt Deveraux’s lips on her neck. His hands slid up to cup her breasts. She tilted her hips back and the invitation was taken, as was she. ‘Run them anyway. We might get lucky.’
‘You’re coming over?’ Dillan asked.
‘I’m coming,’ Fox replied. ‘Real soon now.’
~~~
‘Why do I get the feeling you weren’t talking about the speed you would get back here?’ Dillan asked, sotto voce. It was starting to get a little crowded in the back of the vertol with Cant there as well as Deveraux and the two Palladium investigators.
‘I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,’ Fox replied pleasantly.
‘You are just about glowing. That’s either really good sex or you do better on six hours’ sleep than I do.’
‘Five hours.’
‘Shit. Before and after. Lucky–’
‘Do not finish that sentence if you value your life. Anything come up from the DNA?’
‘Oh yeah.’ Dillan turned and waved up a bank of displays showing personal records. Cant and Deveraux shifted their attention to those. ‘Inspector Cant got us access to NAPA records, so we got the results from there first, of course. We got three prostitutes, all women so we can discount those. Two cops, both men, but we can discount those too. Too young, no foreign travel. An accountant and an electronics technician. Those two have old records for assault, and drunk and disorderly.’
‘Five unknowns,’ Fox said. ‘Did you run Grant?’
‘No DNA on record.’
‘He does have several sealed records,’ Cant said. ‘Very sealed. I looked into unsealing them and bounced. Canard took an interest, ended it.’
‘Interesting,’ Fox said.
‘I’ll look into it,’ Deveraux said. ‘It’s going to take time, but I don’t have any politically minded bosses to reel me in.’
Cant actually grinned: Fox was beginning to wonder whether he had been replaced with an android. ‘You know,’ Cant said, ‘I could get used to this inter-agency collaboration.’
Deveraux gave a shrug. ‘Getting into bed with the UNTPP can have its compensations.’
‘Yeah,’ Dillan said, flicking a glance at Fox, ‘I’d noticed that.’
~~~
Pythia’s vertol was back at the MarTech tower hangar with a direct, fibre-optic link to the MarTech network, which was speeding things up a little. They were down to two unknowns with none of the others showing any signs of being useful. One had come back as the DNA of a man wanted for embezzlement in Norway so Cant and Deveraux had decided to haul him in for questioning, but it was mainly so that the UNTPP could start extraditing him: no one expected him to be a likely suspect in the murders.
Jackson’s request that Fox and Dillan come to his office had come late in the evening when Fox was thinking about getting some more sleep under her belt, but when the big boss called…
The fact that Jackson had Travis and Terri with him, and that he immediately locked down the room, had Fox on immediate alert. ‘Travis has come up with some very interesting findings,’ Jackson said, ‘and I want to discuss them in a secure location.’
‘Okay,’ Fox replied. ‘Discuss.’
‘Travis?’
The technician straightened his back. ‘We have been through the evaluation of the software taken from Miss Shaftsbury’s implant. At this point we have not found a vulnerability in it.’
‘But it’s not behaving the way it should,’ Fox countered. ‘I mean, it has to have been hacked, right?’
‘Actually, it’s behaving exactly the way it was programmed to behave. It was not hacked.’ Fox frowned at the thin man. ‘Hacking implies some form of infiltration and the operation of the code in a manner counter to its normal operating mode. This software was switched into an alternate operating mode, but not via any form of infiltration.’
‘A backdoor,’ Dillan said. ‘Grant put a backdoor in the code.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Jackson said, ‘who put the backdoor in cannot be determined. Grant is certainly a likely candidate, but there are almost certainly others. We need to find it to determine who worked on it.’
‘We need to find it fast, Jackson,’ Fox said. ‘There’s a girl being tortured to death right now. There’s no way we’ll get authorisation to go after someone like Grant without some solid evidence.’
‘I’m aware. How much sleep have you had in the last day?’
‘Not important right–’
‘Get some. Take a tranquiliser if necessary, but sleep. I suspect you’ll need your wits about you when we track this down. If it’s Grant you’re after, he almost certainly knows that we’re looking. You’ll need to move fast.’
‘You can stay here,’ Terri said. ‘Guest room beside mine. We’ll sleep when we find what we’re looking for, and you’ll be that much closer to Pythia when we do.’
Fox nodded, frowning. ‘Okay. You wake me as soon as you have something. Helen, you’ll keep an eye on them and get me out of bed at four a.m. if nothing’s come up sooner. Then you crash. Oh, and let Jason and Cant know that we’re onto something.’
‘Not that I think I’ll be much use,’ Dillan said, ‘but that’s fine with me.’
‘Of course you’ll be of use, Helen,’ Jackson said, smiling. ‘We are going to need a near endless supply of coffee if nothing else.’
28th July.
The insistent buzzing dragged Leonard Dandridge out of fitful sleep. He had taken a tranquiliser before going to bed and it had put him under, but his sleep had been far from restful and, as he struggled to make sense of what was happening, the drug was more of a hindrance than a benefit.
‘Lights,’ he snapped and the room lights came on, too bright. ‘What…?’ A call at… two thirty in the morning!? Who would be calling then? The thought occurred that it was NAPA or Meridian with some news of his daughter and he cleared the call through.
There was no video and
the audio was distorted, electronically masked. ‘I have your daughter.’
‘Who is this?’
The response cut through him like a knife. The sound was clear, unmodified. Screams. A woman screaming in pain. No, in agony. Then words. ‘Please! God. Stop.’ Chantal’s voice, twisted in pain. ‘Please, God, make it stop!’ He was about to say something when the electronic voice came back.
‘If you want to see her again, you’ll go to your yacht. Be there at three thirty. Alone. If anyone else is there, if the cops show up, I’ll know and she will die in more pain than you can imagine.’
‘I’ll–’ He stopped as the connection was cut. Almost automatically, he checked the source, but that was blocked. Nothing could be entirely blocked, he knew that. Meridian could trace it, or her technicians could. He called up the contact number and paused. Whoever this was, they might be monitoring his network access. ‘I can’t lose Chantal as well,’ he whispered. His eyes strayed to the empty side of the double bed. ‘I can’t lose her too.’
Slipping from his bed, Dandridge went to a chest of drawers on one side of the room and found the pistol he kept there, locked in a safety case. He had never fired it, not even to test that he could, but by God he was going to use it now.
~~~
Fox’s eyes flicked open as soon as she detected someone else in the room with her. She was turning, sitting up, before Terri and Dillan made it more than a metre in.
‘Damn, girl,’ Terri said, ‘you trying to remind me what I’m missing?’
Fox ignored her. ‘You found it?’ It was barely three and they would not have woken her without reason.
‘They found it,’ Dillan replied.
‘The backdoor itself,’ Terri explained, ‘is in interface code which just about anyone might have had a hand in, but we traced the command structure all the way into the core. The only programmer who worked on that area is Reginald Grant. It’s signed for God’s sake.’
‘I sent the information to Cant,’ Dillan said. ‘He’s organising a warrant for Grant’s house.’
‘Right,’ Fox said, swinging her legs out of bed. ‘I’ll take it from here. You two get some rest. I hope Jackson and Travis are already on their way to bed.’
DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) Page 28