Dangerous Games

32

“Doc. I need some paper and a pen.” He produces it quickly, and I say to Killian, “Go.”

I copy down the coordinates he gives me, then read them back to him to confirm. When I’m done, he says, “May I continue, or are you finished with the interrogation?”

I say through gritted teeth, “I haven’t even begun with the interrogation.”

“Anyway,” he says, sighing, “our dead man kindly left behind his wallet and his cell phone. I’m sending you a pic of the ID now.”

My heart leaps. “What kind of phone does he have?”

“Android.”

“You can navigate to the Timeline page to see a map of everywhere he’s been!”

Killian snorts. “Oh, really? Gee, I never would’ve thought of that. Thanks for the helpful tip.”

God, this guy. I’d like to shave his eyebrows off while he’s sleeping. “Tell me you have something good before I lose my mind.”

In his pause, I can hear him smiling. “First things first. Tell me you’re grateful I saved your life.”

I drop the phone against my side again, taking deep breaths and counting to ten. When I put it back to my ear, I say as calmly as possible, “I’m grateful you saved my life.”

He makes a disgruntled noise that indicates he’s not entirely satisfied with my expression of gratitude.

I take more breaths, count a little higher. “Killian. I would like to share my sincere appreciation that you showed up when you did, and picked me up in the ambulance, and took me to your safe house, and called Doc to take care of all my holes. Thank you. Truly. From the bottom of my heart.”

He’s silent for a moment. In the background, I hear the distant boom of thunder.

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”

I almost throw the phone across the room, but instead scream several dozen obscenities as Doc watches from nearby, shaking his head. When I stop screaming, Killian is laughing.

“My God. That temper. You’re a lit fuse, my friend.”

At the top of my lungs, I thunder, “Where’s my woman?”

He mutters, “Ugh. Me, Tarzan. You, Jane. Not an ounce of finesse.” Then, in a normal voice: “I’ll upload the data from the phone’s SIM card and send it over. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting. You and your crew can pore over it, make your plans. In the meantime, I’ve got other business to attend to. I’ll check back with you soon.”

Panic scuttles up my back, clamps icy claws around my throat, and squeezes. “Check back? What the hell are you talking about? Do you know where she is or not?”

He ignores my questions. “You’ve got the use of the safe house for as long as you want. Doc will give you anything you need. Cheers.”

Then—unbelievably—he rings off.

I stand staring in shock at the phone in my hand until an electronic ding from across the warehouse distracts me. It’s the computer bank. One of the many screens has lit up. Line after line of green text appears, scrolling quickly from top to bottom.

Doc says brightly, “Oh, look, code! I love it when he does that Matrix shit.”

“Yeah,” I say, scowling, already dialing Connor. “It’s my favorite, too.”

Half an hour later, Tabby has mapped every place our dead friend Vlad has visited within the past ninety days, dug up his school, criminal, driving, credit, and employment records, run background checks on his entire extended family and known associates, researched all the contacts in his phone, and cross-referenced the numbers and emails against whatever international hacker database she uses.

She’s also downloaded his entire text message history, along with all his pictures.

Oh, the pictures. Vlad loved his p***s more than air.

“I can honestly say, I’ve never seen a pair of testicles that big.”

“They’re like grapefruit! I wonder if he had to have his underwear custom made.”

“Do you think it’s a medical problem? It looks painful.”

“I’m more interested in knowing why he has so many pictures of his junk. This collection is almost Smithsonian in scope. After scrolling through this gallery, I could pick this dude’s frank and beans out of a police lineup.”

Tabby, Connor, Doc, and I are on a conference call via a laptop Doc has provided. Doc sits at the bank of computers in a captain’s chair while I pace behind him. He downloaded the data from Killian’s uplink to the laptop and sent it to Tabby. The final thing we’re waiting on is the identification of the owners, both business and residential, of all the addresses on Vlad’s cell phone map.

In the meantime, voyeurism.

For them, anyway. I’m wearing a groove in the floor and fighting off the impending heart attack that wants to kill me.

“Okay, I’ve got the address report,” says Tabby. The pictures of Vlad’s d**k vanish from the screen.

“Thank f**k,” I say. “What’ve we got?”

She’s silent awhile, examining the report, which is shown on our end as a small box on the upper-right side of the laptop’s screen. The rest of the screen is an image of Tabby and Connor sitting beside each other at his big black desk in his office at Metrix.

She’s wearing a pink T-shirt with the slogan STOP STARING AT MY t**s stretched across her t**s. Her flaming red hair is in a ponytail. Her lips are painted scarlet. Her nails, black.

Connor looks his usual hulking, imposing self. One massive arm is slung around the back of his wife’s chair. As she works, he toys with the end of her ponytail.