by Pogue, Aaron
"Whenever she goes out to the motel, then."
"Probably so." He shrugged. "People make stupid mistakes. It's the only reason we can do our jobs."
"Well, that and the assistance of the terrible Martin," Katie said. It earned her a black look from Reed, but she ignored it and went back to her examination of the Sunrise Inn.
Ellie's car was parked at the north end of the west parking lot, hidden from view of the road. That also put her in one of the rooms from eighteen to thirty-six, on either floor. Katie pulled up the registry and quickly eliminated half of the rooms by their occupants. Then she started checking through security feeds for the empty rooms. She didn't see Ellie in any of them, but the feed from room one twenty-one was blank.
"I might have something," she said. She did a search through the archives, but couldn't find a record of anyone renting that room in recent history. She tried to book it but the motel's reservation service told her it was unavailable, now, next week, and next year. "Yeah," she said to Reed. "I think she's in one twenty-one."
"Good," he said. "Dora has three teams there now." He passed the information along to the police, ending it with, "Be careful."
Katie frowned. "You think she's dangerous?"
"I think she's a powerful person, uniquely skilled, and backed into a corner," he said. "That is always dangerous."
Katie looked back down at her handheld, which showed a view of the parking lot, Ellie's car close to the camera, and nothing moving. "What is she up to?"
While she was still trying to guess, Reed started receiving video feed from Dora at the motel. He shared it to Katie's handheld and she opened it up, curious. When Reed noticed, he connected her to his audio link with the Chief, too.
The recorder in Hart's car had a much better angle on room one twenty-one. The covered walk that gave access to the second floor rooms acted as an overhang for the first floor, and the door to Ellie's room sat way back in the shadows of that overhang. The only window into the room was tall and narrow, six feet to the right of the door. The blinds were drawn, of course.
Hart's car was in the parking lot just behind Ellie's, with two other police cars to the right and left, forming a barricade around the room. Katie watched as one of the officers approached to knock on the door, but he got no response. Most of the rooms next to Ellie's were empty, but Katie saw officers go to the one above her and the one next to that to speak with the inhabitants. The cop by Ellie's door tried one more time, then withdrew as someone off-camera started calling out to Ellie over a bullhorn.
Dora said softly, "I hope you know what you're talking about, Reed." She was standing just in front of the camera, off to the right, facing away toward the motel. She shook her head, and said, "Is she even in there?"
"We've got her on camera entering the place," Katie said, "and she never left. She's in there."
For a moment, Hart said nothing. Then she looked back over her shoulder, a glance at the camera, and she sighed. "Is she dangerous?"
Katie looked to Reed, expecting him to give his trapped animal speech again, but instead he said, "Hathor, connect us to Lieutenant Drake." He waited for the connection, then said, "Drake, we've got men on the scene—"
"I'll be there in five," Drake said, sounding satisfied.
"We need to know what to expect," Reed said, as though he hadn't been interrupted. "Is Ellie armed?"
"Should be, yeah." The lieutenant thought for a moment, and said, "Yeah, she'll have her sidearm on her. Can't see her carrying anything heavier than that."
Reed said, "I don't suppose it's got an identity lock on it?"
Drake chuckled. "Wouldn't do much good in her line of work, would it?"
"I suppose not." Reed sighed. "Did you get that, Dora?"
"Suspect is armed. Got it. I'll pass the word, but we were operating under the assumption, anyway."
"She's not just armed," Drake said, his voice gruff. "I've seen that girl on the firing range. She's deadly. You should probably wait for me to get there—"
Hart bristled. "My men can handle this, Lieutenant."
"I'm sure they can, but I need Corporal Cohn alive. You just sit tight. I'm already on my way—"
"With all due respect, you don't have any jurisdiction here, so how about you keep your advice to yourself?"
Katie looked to Reed again, but he was helpless to stop the catfight that was emerging between the other two. Katie just rolled her eyes and dropped out of the connection. "Tell me if they say anything important," she said, and went back to the surveillance footage at the convenience store. She watched it play through, zoomed in close, looking for some clue to what was going on behind Ellie's tired eyes. "Why were you there?"
Reed leaned across to see what Katie was looking at, and his eyes narrowed. "You could be on to something," he said. He pulled up the casefile on his own handheld, and shook his head. "God, I should have listened to you. Katie, what if she met her buyer there?" Katie frowned, considering, but Reed went on. "That could explain her exhaustion, if she'd been trying to move things ahead of schedule. Could explain what's going on now, too. She's sleeping off three days of pure anxiety."
Katie could understand that. Of course, she'd been under anesthetic and on severe painkillers after her experience with Martin, but even without that—without the injuries—she knew she would have been useless for days after getting home. She considered Reed for a moment, who had tried so hard to convince her to stay home for another week. His eyes were locked on his handheld, as he scoured the same short video footage Katie had been looking at for the last ten minutes, looking for some sign of their culprit. She smiled at him anyway.
He looked up and caught just the edge of her smile, which made him cock his head in curiosity. He didn't ask, though, too busy with other matters. "We've got a list of positive IDs for everyone in the store with her, right? Have you checked that against video source?" Katie shook her head, and he nodded. "Okay. We need to do that, to see if there's any other ghosts there with her." He cleared out the video playback and made a note to himself, then pulled up Ellie's personal information. "I wish we had more here." There were three tabs, all of them scant on information. He opened up the empty medical history, and Katie's eyes widened.
"Martin!" She said, then shook her head. "Hathor, connect me to Martin. Thanks." Hathor gave her nothing, and Katie sighed. "Martin, I need your help." Reed watched Katie, interested.
Martin answered her a moment later, a little breathless. "What's up?"
"Get us Ellie's medical history. It's on a private Hippocrates server, right? Just like yours?"
"Katie!" Martin sounded scandalized, and Katie just laughed.
"Reed knows, Martin. You tipped your hand at Velez's."
"You tipped my hand," Martin said, then sighed. "And it probably saved our lives. Okay, yeah, I helped set up something like it for the clinic—"
Katie leaned forward. "Can you dump Ellie's records into the system?"
"I...yeah. Yeah, I can do that," Martin said. "Give me a moment."
Katie watched Reed's handheld until Martin said, "There. Done." A moment later the screen updated, with a long scroll of medical history previously obscured. "I hope there's nothing in there too revealing," Martin said, and Katie knew exactly what he meant.
"I can't see how there would be," Katie said. "But I'll take care of it if there is."
Martin laughed darkly. "Is that all?"
Katie didn't answer right away. She had the medical history open on her own handheld, scanning through it at the same time Reed was, looking for the fatigue Reed was so sure of. She spoke without looking up. "What are we looking for, Reed?"
"Find the signs of her anxiety," he said. "Figure out where it started, where it spiked, and maybe we can find a hidden call to her buyer. I just don't see...."
Katie didn't see it either. There was nothing over the weekend to reflect the exhaustion Ellie showed so clearly on the tape. A quick analysis of her breathing and heart rate patterns sho
wed a regular sleep schedule, too, right up until yesterday morning. Reed's prediction bore out her crash, though. From the look of it, she'd been sound asleep in the hotel room ever since she'd gotten there yesterday afternoon. Katie pointed it out to Reed, and he immediately got back on the line with the police chief.
"Dora," he said. "We've got Ellie's vitals. She's in the hotel room all right, and it looks like she's asleep. If you can get your men in quickly—"
"Reed," Katie said, but he waved her away. She caught his arm with a surprising strength, and he turned to her. Her eyes blazed. "Reed," she hissed. "She's not asleep."
"What?"
The car slammed to a stop, and Katie looked up in surprise to see through the windshield the same scene she'd gotten from Hart's dash cam. They were there. Katie shook her head. "She's not asleep, Reed. She's in a coma."
He frowned, and she showed him her handheld. Just after she'd shown up yesterday, seconds after she'd been caught on camera stumbling from her car to the motel room door, Ellie's vitals had spiked. Six seconds later, door closed behind her, she'd fallen back into regular rhythms, and Hippocrates had marked the anomaly a false alarm.
It showed in four short lines on Ellie's medical history, but Katie knew how to interpret it because she'd seen it before. Reed recognized it, too. "What...how?" he said. "What does this mean?"
Katie froze at the question. Her mind raced, though, furiously putting the pieces together, rearranging them, trying them in other ways. For a moment she couldn't answer him, then Martin spoke in her ear. "What's happening?"
Something about his voice made it fall into place. In a flash she understood, and with that came a deep pit of fear in her stomach. She didn't let it show in her eyes.
"What it means," she said to Reed, perfectly cool, "is that you need to get out of the car."
He frowned. "I don't understand."
"And I don't have time to explain," Katie said, leaning across him to push his door open. Still close, noses almost touching, she breathed, "Please, Reed. Just trust me."
She could see in his eyes how much he disliked it. His jaw clenched. Outside, the lieutenant's car crunched to a stop on the asphalt beside them. At the same time Hart barked the order. "Go! Go! Go!"
"Katie..." Reed said quietly, pleading with her.
"Go," she said. "They're going to need you to sort this out."
He searched her eyes for an explanation, and shook his head when he didn't find one. "Katie—"
"Trust me," she said earnestly, and he must have felt the force of her urgency, because he finally relented. He slipped away from her and stepped out of the car, still holding Katie's eyes.
"I don't know what you think is going on—" he said, but she didn't hear the rest of his speech. She grabbed the door handle and slammed it closed, then engaged the locks.
"Driver," she said sharply, "take me to the Barnes house. It's urgent. Thanks."
She saw the surprised look on Reed's face, in the instant before the car screamed out of the parking lot and back into the traffic heading east. Hart and Drake both converged on him, apparently still feuding, but Katie knew that wouldn't distract him for long.
"Are you still there, Martin?"
"I'm here, Katie," he said, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He asked again, "What's happening?"
"It wasn't Ellie," she said. "Stop searching for her buyer. We have more pressing—"
"I'm done," he said simply, cutting her off.
She blinked. "Huh?"
"I found her buyers," he said. "They weren't nearly as careful as Miss Cohn. I just handed the necessary information off to the FBI."
"Wow," Katie said. "That's great, Martin!" It took her a moment to remember what she was doing, then a look like panic came across her face. "Martin! Can you lock out this car?"
"What?"
"I need you to take over this car right now! If Reed or Hart thinks to shut it down, Gevia's done."
He sounded doubtful. "I don't understand—"
"Do it!" Katie shouted. "I'll explain later." She checked the driver monitor, which said she had eight minutes to the destination at top speed. She could feel the car barreling along, weaving through traffic that created precision lanes for the emergency vehicle as it pushed toward a hundred and twenty miles per hour. She glanced out the window, and it still seemed too slow. She spat out a string of dark curses, then pulled up Theresa's personal details on her handheld.
Martin interrupted her. "Okay," he said. "I think that did it. I just restricted Hart's access on this vehicle, and cleared Reed out of it. You're still in control." He hesitated for just a second, then said with a little too much unconcern, "Why are you going to Eric's place?"
"Hold on a second, Martin," she said. "Hathor, connect me to Theresa Barnes, high priority. Thanks." She waited through two rings and left a quick message, then tried again. Still nothing. Katie pounded a fist against the window. "Why isn't she answering?"
"She doesn't have her headset," Martin said.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at her location history," Martin said. "It stopped a while back. That means she doesn't have her headset or handheld—"
"Or her watch," Katie said. "Hathor, show me HaRRE. Thanks." Still several minutes away from the house, she pulled it up on her handheld and started searching. She checked throughout it, praying she was worrying over nothing, but the virtual house was completely empty.
"What time does the location history end?" she asked, too busy to check it herself.
Martin answered immediately, "Twenty minutes ago, give or take." Katie suspected he was doing the same thing she was.
She skipped the recreation backward twenty minutes and still found the house empty, but in the living room she found the front door standing open. She zipped out onto the porch and found Theresa there. She was dressed comfortably, light pants and a cotton shirt like she might have worn on a casual shopping trip. While Katie watched she closed and locked the door, humming some tune to herself, then turned back toward the front walk. Something caught her eye, and a smile blossomed across her face. "Oh, hi!" she said warmly. "If I'd known you were coming, I'd have baked a pie."
Katie checked, but the walk was empty, all the way to the curb. She knew what to expect, though. She watched Theresa's smile fade, then a moment later Meg Ginney materialized on the porch step within reach of Eric's wife. She had no smile for the older woman. Instead, she looked worried, hands clasped behind her back. "Mrs. Barnes," she said, "we have to go to the clinic right away."
"What's the matter?" Theresa said, concerned now.
"It's...it's Eric," Meg said, shifting nervously. She bounced on her toes. "I think something's wrong."
"Oh, nonsense," Theresa said with a relieved smile. "Eric is fine. I have a very expensive service monitoring his condition twenty-four, seven."
"Please, Mrs. Barnes," Meg said. "It's important."
Theresa shook her head, and her tone became maternal, almost condescending. "I'm sorry, Meg, I just don't have time right now." She took a step closer to the other woman, heading for the car that had just pulled up to the curb. "I do wish you'd called—"
"No!" Meg shouted, and shoved the older woman back, hard. Theresa lost her footing and went down, landing on her backside with a cry of pain. Meg gave a sob, too, which pulled Katie's worried gaze back to her.
The girl had a gun, comically oversized in her tiny hands, but the look on her face was dead serious. "Get up!" she screamed. "Get up! You're coming with me."
Theresa's calm was shattered. "Meg, Meg, what are you doing?" Her face crumpled.
"Stop it! Shut up!" Meg shouted. She made a grab for Theresa's arm but missed. She took a heavy step forward and the older woman cowered. Then Meg bent and grabbed her upper arm in a crushing grip, so she could pull the woman to her feet. She stepped back quickly, the gun still trained on Theresa. She snapped, "Stop crying! Take...take off your watch. Leave it here. The other stuff, too." When Theresa didn't respond, M
eg battedthe headset off her ear. Then she stepped forward and ground it underfoot. The images of the women began to stutter, but the audio was still clear.
"You'd better listen to me," Meg said, trying to regain control of herself. Her voice was more level, but it had a manic edge to it. "I'm not messing around here. Do you believe me?" Theresa only whispered, and Meg said it louder. "Do you believe me?" She didn't wait for an answer this time, but pointed the gun at what must have been the courtesy recorder on the porch and fired it with a thundering boom. With the video source gone, the avatars of the two women froze instantly, puppets without masters.
A recorder somewhere in the house was still getting audio, though. Katie heard Theresa's scream at the gunshot, and then Meg's murderous threats. Theresa must have believed her by then, because Meg fell silent a moment later, and Theresa's wail began to dwindle. Then the sound was gone, and the motionless models winked out of existence, leaving Katie alone on the porch.
She realized she'd been holding her breath, and gasped for air. "Did you see that?" Her voice came out a scream, but she couldn't control it. "Martin, did you see that?" She glanced at the time in HaRRE and up at the clock on the driver's monitor. "Driver, get me to the De Grey Clinic! Now!"
14. Standoff
Martin said in wonder, "Where did she get a gun?"
"I don't know," Katie said, drawing her own gun and checking the clip. "But she's not afraid to use it. She didn't even flinch." Katie spotted the green light at the top of her pistol grip and she cursed. "I've got an identity lock on mine, Martin."
"Of course," Martin said. Then, "Oh."
Katie nodded. "I'm going to be unarmed as soon as I step onto the clinic grounds."
"Well, maybe she won't know," Martin said hopefully.
"Thinking like that is a good way to get shot," Katie said. She holstered her gun and checked the driver's monitor again. "Can you do something about it?"
"No." He sounded frustrated. "I had no part in that program."