I didn’t want to hammer the final nail into the coffin, but it needed to be done. “There’s one more thing to think about,” I said. “Whoever was behind the attempted manhunt? They failed. They couldn’t find your trail, sir.”
“Oh no,” Mare gasped. “Oh no!”
“Oh yes,” I said, nodding. “I think they’re using us to lead them to you.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Now that we knew what had happened, it was easy enough for Pappy to disappear into the woods and track down our pursuers. Or, it would have been, if he hadn’t insisted on bringing me along.
“Need you to keep Brenda safe, Mare-bear,” he told her sternly, planting a kiss on top of her head as he handed her his gun. “And if we don’t come back by morning, you get yourself back to civilization.”
Mare nodded, accepting the gun and his instructions.
I didn’t. Leaving Mare behind and taking me seemed ridiculously sexist, but how was I supposed to bring that up to her grandfather? Hello, yes, please put your granddaughter in danger instead of me, thanks. It’s just practical.
I knelt beside her to say goodbye. As our lips touched, her fear for me fluttered across our link: she didn’t want me to go, either.
I had to ask. “Why me and not you?”
She smiled sadly. “When you split the party, you make sure the guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing goes with someone who does. Pappy needs backup, and if things go wrong, I know how to get back to Anchorage.”
I almost asked her why she couldn’t simply call the Anchorage emergency services to come and pick her up, but I didn’t need to: Mare was nodding, and I had just caught on that we were maybe deeper in trouble than we had thought.
“Ah,” I whispered aloud.
“C’mon, lover boy,” Pappy said. “Night’s a’wasting.”
We left the rough shelter of the grotto and went into the dark, with Mare riding along through my eyes.
“There are some tricks I can do,” I said, thinking about going out-of-body and using my avatar to scout around. “I might be able to find them, especially if they have a fire.”
“They won’t,” Pappy replied. His voice was barely a whisper. “They’re hunting. They’ll be dark, downwind, and careful.
“Now, shut up,” he added.
I shut up and followed him, Mare’s presence heavy in my mind and body. She wasn’t guiding me, but she was definitely there: my footsteps were silent, and I moved through the trees with an ease of practice that I hadn’t earned.
Our path curved across two low mountain ridges, where there were fewer trees and we could move more quickly. Some of my FBI training was applicable here. I knew to stay low and avoid being backlit by the moon. Pappy nodded at me once; apparently I wasn’t the world’s biggest fuckup.
I wondered what he’d think if he learned that part of his granddaughter had come along anyhow.
After an hour of fast walking, he gestured for me to hide behind a tree. I did, and he disappeared into the forest. I counted backwards from one hundred six times before he returned, and waved me over to him. He leaned towards me, one hand on his knife.
“Big hunting party,” he whispered. “Counted eight. Probably more. We’re done here. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Let me see them,” I replied. “Maybe there’s something Mare and I can do.”
He snorted.
I tapped my head. “Lots of technology up here,” I told him. “I can’t promise anything, but if I see the scene, I’ll know for sure.”
He shook his head, but took point and led the way as I started walking. Soon, we were flat on our stomachs and squirming forward, slowly, any sounds we made swallowed by a soft carpet of evergreen needles. The route we took put us on a small rocky outcropping over a small valley.
Pappy pointed to a spot on the valley floor. I saw nothing, but waited…
There!
A dark figure moved across a patch of white stone, and resolved itself into the unmistakable shape of a man taking a badly needed piss.
I held up a finger to my lips to tell Pappy I needed silence, and shut my eyes to go out-of-body.
Some—very few—people can see and hear our avatars, even without cybernetic implants. In my avatar, I stood in front of Pappy and said, “Hello.”
Nothing.
I took my avatar up into the air, over the valley floor, and down to where a man the size of a deluxe refrigerator was zipping up his fly. I followed him back to camp. There were a dozen people sitting around, quiet as church mice, men and women both.
Odd. I’d have expected a group of people in the woods to be noisier. No reason to be silent, after all. Nobody to disturb. I reached out through the link to ping Mare. “Hey, babe. You seeing this?”
Bemusement moved through the link. “No. Show me.”
I did an internal mental juggle which allowed Mare to share my visual feed. “What am I looking at?” I asked her.
“Hmm. Move around.” I did, flying low and slow over the hunters’ camp so we could take in the details. There were seven tents for twelve people, a food prep area, a covered shelter for backpacks and gear, and a sanitation station away from the main camp. “This is a pro setup,” she admitted. “Some of them look like hired help, not hunters. But nine of them look like they live in the woods.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“I can’t tell.” A pause. “Can you?”
“No.” That meant we hadn’t found them yet. Time to peek around in the tents. On instinct, I went to the smallest one, barely big enough for a single person, and shoved my avatar’s head through the cloth.
A woman was inside. She was in her mid-forties, light streaks of gray at her temples to silver her short raven-black hair. Pale white skin and a light cotton shirt, and strong hands with clean fingernails but no trace of manicure. She was reading a thick binder full of data sheets, a small LED camp light illuminating the pages and nothing else.
Mare and I took all of this in within moments, as nearly as soon as I poked my avatar inside, the woman’s head snapped up, her eyes moving around the tent. Her gaze passed through me, but she flipped the edge of her sleeping bag back to expose a high-powered rifle. Eyes still searching, she unzipped the tent and whispered for the nearest person to come over.
“Something’s off,” we heard her whisper. “Do a search around the camp.”
Mild shock from both Mare and myself traveled through the link, as we realized the woman couldn’t see us but she still sensed our presence. We had found the boss.
“What do we do?” Mare asked, her anxiety rising.
For the first time since Brenda had decided her nose belonged in my ear, I smiled. “It’s time to get myself kidnapped.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
They found me on a hiking trail about a half-mile away from their camp. Two men emerged from the woods, moving as silently as Mare and her father. I didn’t have to feign surprise…or relief. Being alone in the Alaskan woods at night is a harrowing experience, even if it had been only a few minutes since Mare’s father had planted me in the middle of the trail.
“Oh thank God!” I shouted. “People! Real people!”
They recognized me, of course, and went out of their way to make me feel safe. They were good at their job. They convinced me that walking towards Anchorage at night was not the wisest thing to do, and they had a nearby camp with real food and shelter and…
To be fair, they didn’t have to twist my arm at all.
Into the woods again, where I didn’t bother with trying to find a path, or use the quiet rolling footsteps which Mare had taught me. I crashed through the underbrush, a bumbling city boy completely out of his element. I was happily transparent about why I was there—My girlfriend’s grandfather has a white bear! My girlfriend’s grandfather didn’t like me sexing her up so he dumped me in the woods!—and chatted amicably the entire way.
I was concerned that some of the hunters might have found Pappy after we had separated,
but my group was the last to reach camp, and he had disappeared without a trace. It was just me. The too-loud, too-flamboyant, too…everything. The men and women in the camp were generous with their food, and seemed like decent people. They didn’t answer my questions as to why there was no fire going, though, and there wasn’t a single digital device.
“How’d you end up alone?” asked a woman who couldn’t have been out of her twenties.
I launched into the same story. “We thought something happened to my girlfriend’s grandfather. We came out here to find him. We did. He’s got this big…uh…big knife…” I was using energy bars to scoop peanut butter straight out of the plastic jar, and I paused to give her a smile. She smiled back. Cute dimples. “They told me to follow the trail back to the city and wait for her. Said it’d be about a day or two, and then he could leave the mountains again.”
That did it. There was the sound of a zipper, and a pair of pale hands pulled back the flap on the smallest tent. The woman with the raven-black hair emerged, staring at me.
“Hi,” I said, as I gave her a wink. “Did you want to ask me about the bear?”
Her expression was frozen stone. “Leave us,” she said to her crew, her voice slow and southern-smooth. They did, picking up various pieces of gear before sliding into the trees and the dark.
The woman stood and stretched, her shirt sliding up to expose a flat, well-muscled stomach as she stood on her toes. As she came down, she said, “The famous Agent Josh Glassman. Here.”
“Coincidence, I swear,” I assured her. “But since I am here, I’d like to negotiate.”
She smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was the kind of smile that ends in either figurative or literal bloodletting, and I was sure she wasn’t opposed to causing either kind. But her lips were spectacular. “What kind of leverage do you think you have?”
“Well,” I replied, as I began counting on my fingers. “First, I’m a cyborg, and for all you know, I’m livestreaming this conversation to OACET headquarters, the Pentagon, and the President’s phone.
“Second, if anything happens to me, I’m sure that will be enough to get a search warrant for your properties. They’ll probably find Brandon—”
“Brandon?”
“The other bear. His sister’s name is Brenda. Yes, they have names.” A third finger went down as I said, “This is a state park. Hunting of any kind is illegal, not to mention a threat to nearby hikers, and…” I paused before taking a shot I wasn’t sure I’d hit. “You’ve got someone working for you in local law enforcement. We know who they are, but they don’t know that we know.”
One corner of those spectacular lips twisted up. “Aren’t you clever?”
Ah. It’s good to be right.
“I am,” I said, as I patted the ground beside me. “Now, let’s get to know you.”
“Old story,” she replied, as she crossed the clearing. She moved like a cat, her footsteps sharp and spare. She sat, legs folding, so she faced me. “I have a hard job, and I have a hobby I love which lets me relax.”
“Big game hunting?”
“Just…” Her lips twitched again as she looked me up and down. “…hunting.”
I leaned forward. “What do I call you?”
This time she laughed. It was a dark sound, like velvet. “Don’t pretend you don’t know my name.”
I didn’t. I hadn’t bothered to run her information, or ask OACET’s data crunchers to do it for me. At this point, I already had all I needed to run this play. “I didn’t ask for your name,” I replied.
At this point, women who are out of their depths show some hesitation. A nervous chuckle, or an old joke about how I wouldn’t call them the morning after. This particular woman did none of that: she mirrored my posture and leaned towards me, so those spectacular lips were mere inches from my own. “What do you want to call me?” she said quietly.
I reached out and let some of her silver-black hair run through my fingers. It felt like glossy silk. “Raven.”
“A crow?”
“No.” Chills ran across my skin at a fairly recent memory of an unpleasant encounter with crows. “Raven,” I said. “Definitely a Raven.”
“So, Agent Glassman,” Raven said with a teasing smile. “What do we do now?”
I leaned back to put a little distance between us again. “We need to settle the matter of the bear. After that…”
Raven brushed the bear aside with a wave of her hand. “It’s settled.”
“Just like that?”
“As you said, you have leverage,” she replied. “If anything happens to the bear now, it’ll fall on me.”
I nodded. “And a year from now?”
She smiled.
“It’d be nice if nothing happened to that bear,” I told her.
“The world isn’t a gentle place,” replied Raven. “I’m not the only hunter out here.”
“But you’re the only one who knows about her.” I sighed and stretched, much as she had done, so my shirt lifted up. It was part flirting, part reality: I had spent the last two days cranked past my comfort zone, and I needed a full night’s sleep in an oversoft bed. “Seems like you need a better prize than a bear.”
“Oh, Agent Glassman.” Raven laughed again. “Don’t give yourself that much credit.”
“I’m not,” I said, as a plan clicked together in my head. “But you came out to hunt? Right?”
She lifted one of my hands and inspected it, tracing the lines on my palm with a fingertip. “Right.”
I came towards her and whispered, very softly, “Then let’s go hunting.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’ve always said that if someone dropped me naked in the middle of a city, I’d be able to procure clothing, shelter, and a five-star meal within an hour.
Never thought I’d actually get to test that claim.
Raven had made a phone call. Thirty minutes later, a helicopter dropped me off on the top of a tall building with a private landing pad. I was not quite naked: Raven had graciously left me with my shorts.
Mostly naked, then. And a bet between Raven and myself: if she could catch me by sundown, then she could have me…and Brenda would only be safe as long as plausible deniability held. But if I caught Raven, then Brenda was safe from her, forever. More, Raven promised she’d pay to move Brenda to a wildlife sanctuary in Canada, in which she’d be protected and would live out her days in freedom.
The game, as they say, was on.
I knelt and kissed the helipad. That was a mistake; helipads are fairly disgusting. I didn’t care. It was civilization! Precious, glittering civilization! The city was singing around me, all of the large and small pieces of technology welcoming me home with their cacophony of digital frequencies.
The helicopter lifted off, leaving me alone on the roof. I grinned: I had a good idea about what came next. I went to the access door and tried the handle…locked. Well, Raven had to try, but the Internet of Things was everywhere, and this building had upgraded their security. I flipped the lock open and took the stairs two at a time, delighting in the feel of cold linoleum and metal stair treads beneath my feet.
And then Raven pulled her second trick.
Several stories below me, a heavy door flew open, followed by the sounds of footsteps and the occasional chirp! of communications radios. I grinned: it’d be easy for Raven to win our bet if I was in a holding cell.
But that’s not how I work. Besides, I needed clothes.
When the security team reached me, they found me with my hands in the air and sitting on the stairs. “Hey,” I greeted them.
There were two of them, both men in their thirties. They didn’t carry guns, but one of them was holding a flashlight the size of my forearm. The one with the flashlight froze; the other asked, “Are you Josh—”
“Yup,” I replied. “Were you notified about a helicopter dropping off a passenger?”
The guards looked at each other, then back at me. “…yeah,” the first said
hesitantly.
“That was me. This is an OACET training exercise,” I said. “Can I put my hands down?”
They nodded, and I started talking.
Ten minutes later, I was dressed in one of their company’s spare uniforms, the two guards had called their boss and asked for someone to come in and cover their shift, and the three of us were on our way to a location that a friend of a friend had told me about, once upon a time. Every decent-sized city has places that are open at all hours. They aren’t quite stores, and they aren’t quite black markets, but they are hard to find unless you know where to look. This particular spot was a bespoke clothier’s, one which kept normal business hours but also had a clerk on staff during the wee ones, just in case someone with an exciting life needed to hide their shame and pretend they meant to do that with their usual clothes.
It’s just good sense to keep a list in case you’re naked in a strange town.
Look, it happens more often than you think.
The store was there, with heavy curtains covering the windows. Anybody passing by would think the dim interior lights were on for security purposes. I ambled up to the door, did a shave-and-a-haircut knock, followed by a wave and a smile when the clerk pulled back the curtain to see who was bothering her. Her eyes went wide, the door flew open, and my temporary entourage and I were shown directly to a fitting room.
Thirty minutes after that, the three of us were back on the streets. I had bought the security guards—Theodore was the shorter of the two, and built like a brick wall, while Saunders was my height and build and our hair color was not too dissimilar—suits of their own. And Saunders and I wore matching hats, as I had insisted that the hats might make people think we were related, and wouldn’t that be fun?
Into the city again.
The terms of my bargain with Raven were simple: I couldn’t leave Anchorage, and I needed to be seen in public at least twice. After leaving those signs for Raven to follow, I could try to take myself off the board. Rent a hotel room, hide in an abandoned car, that kind of thing. I was halfway temped to go back to the woods—who would think to look for me there?—but Raven would have the tactical advantage.
The Alaska Escape Page 6