Alien Diplomacy (35 page)

“So anything the Dingo wanted you to get is gone,” Chuckie said, migraine clearly arriving at any second. “Do you remember what it was?” he asked Nurse Carter.

“A wallet, a man’s personal care kit, a small Bible, and a manila envelope. We’re not allowed to look into anything that’s going into lockup, and two hospital personnel as well as Security put the patient’s belongings away, so I didn’t get to look inside anything.”

“I can’t believe the Dingo Dog carried a Bible with him. He kills people for a living.”

“The personal care kit could have held explosives, a disassembled gun, poisons…anything.” By the way Chuckie rubbed his forehead, I knew the migraine had made its grand entrance. “For all we know, the envelope contained the name of the assassination target.”

“I doubt it.”

Everyone looked at me. “Want to explain that?” Christopher asked.

“Look, we were all in the freaking Potomac. Jeff pulled the two bodies out, but he didn’t pull their damn car out of the river. And even if he had, you and Kyle searched all those limos.”

“True. We didn’t find anything like what was just described. Not,” Christopher added with a sigh, “that we couldn’t have missed them. I wasn’t looking for paperwork or men’s toiletry kits. I was looking for guns and ammo.”

I didn’t share with him that he hadn’t found all the guns, either. Why make it worse? “Fine. So, seriously, nothing Nurse Carter had waiting for me in that hospital vault was wet or looked as if it had
so much as been in the same vicinity as a bottle of Dasani. So the Dingo got this from somewhere or someone after he left Tim’s control but before he got to Nurse Carter.”

Chuckie looked like he’d fought the migraine off for a minute. “So he was given those things by the same people who took his partner away.”

“I think that’s a legitimate logic leap, yeah. But instead of doing with them whatever he was supposed to, he instead had Nurse Carter lock them up.” I looked at her, and my brain kicked, hard. “Wait a damn minute. You know him and he knows you. And that means he knew who he was handing this stuff to.”

“
If
he handed it to her,” Chuckie said, in that silky yet deadly way he’d clearly learned from working at the C.I.A.

She looked like she was going to argue, but perhaps all of us glaring at her convinced her it would be futile. Instead her shoulders slumped, and she nodded. “He recognized me. He told me these things had to go to you, to list you as his niece, that it mattered greatly, and that it would matter greatly to me.”

“And yet you didn’t look inside any of it?”

“I wanted to, believe me. But I couldn’t, there were too many witnesses. The Dingo was very…cautious when he spoke to me. I know he realized who I was. I believe it’s why he trusted me.”

“No reason why we should, however,” Chuckie said. “Since you conveniently forgot to tell us about this.”

“I thought it was self-evident.”

“No, that’s the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Usually when we’re trying to stop a major disaster, we like to share all our information with each other.”

Nurse Carter’s eyes flashed. “Look, I don’t know you people! Half of you
aren’t
people, either, not as I’d think of them, are you? You supposedly arrested me, but I haven’t had my rights read, haven’t had a phone call, haven’t had my crimes explained.”

“I don’t have to do any of that,” Chuckie said, voice still dangerous. “You’re under arrest because you’re a potential terrorist and you threatened an ambassador’s life. You don’t get any of the niceties local law enforcement’s forced to use. You get to prove you’re not a threat or you get a cell in an underground vault. Period.”

“As if you’re not going to put me into that cell anyway? For all I knew when you took me, you were going to kill me. You could still be part of the conspiracy I’m here trying to stop, or worse, really related to the Dingo and be the ones planning to finish whatever job he was assigned to. So I don’t know why you think I’m a bad
person for not stating the obvious once I’d told you about my experiences with the Dingo.”

“Because we explained that you tell us the truth or you go to the cell,” Tim said. “We’re trying to stop an assassination, and we don’t know the target. You’re not helping us at all. I say lock her up.”

“I’m willing to agree,” Christopher said. Everyone nodded.

I looked at Jeff. His eyes were narrowed. “What are you getting?”

“Aside from the fact that Nurse Carter here is desperately trying to hide her emotions from me? Terror. Pure, unadulterated terror. She’s more afraid of everyone in this room than she ever was when discussing the Dingo.”

“Does that make her our enemy?” Chuckie asked.

Len cleared his throat. “Ah, sir?”

“Yes?” every man other than Kyle said this in unison. I managed not to laugh, but it took effort. I noted that, terrified or not, Nurse Carter found this funny, too.

“We fingerprinted her, remember? You had her prints run.”

Chuckie nodded. “Results aren’t back yet.”

Kyle held up his PDA. “Back now, sir. This is Magdalena Rijos-Carter, R.N. She has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Paraguay. No outstanding warrants, no police record. On file because her husband was in the Air Force and to obtain citizenship.”

Len looked at his phone, where he clearly had the same info Kyle did. “Her husband died during a training maneuver.” Len looked up. “In the New Mexican desert. Several years ago.”

I decided to take the leap. “So, her husband died fighting a superbeing, right?”

Len nodded. “From what this says, or rather, the way it doesn’t say anything, yes, I think so. He was given a hero’s funeral.”

“And your brother was murdered in front of you.” I shook my head. “You knew about American Centaurion and didn’t come to us for help?”

“I only knew my husband worked high security missions. He never said what he did. I wouldn’t have believed him if he told me. Not until…”

“Until your brother found out about the supersoldier project in the Chaco?” She nodded. “Who did you lose to that project?”

She looked down. “Our son. He was doing work with some of the indigent, and…” She looked up and there were tears in her eyes. “They took out the entire village. From what we were able to gather, some were infected with whatever it is that makes them turn
into monsters. And they killed the others. I…don’t know if our son was one of the monsters or not. Or if he’s still possibly alive.”

“When did this happen?”

“About a year and a half ago.”

Right when we’d handled the clustered formation in the Chaco, before Operation Drug Addict got underway.

Jeff cleared his throat. “Your son isn’t alive. If he was turned into a superbeing, he was destroyed. I gave the order and watched it happen.”

Nurse Carter looked at him. “Thank you,” she said finally.

“Why are you thanking him?” Christopher asked quietly.

“Because now I know. For certain, that there can be no hope, but also that there can be no more horror.”

I looked back at Jeff. “What do you think?”

“What I thought before. Reynolds, she’s not our enemy. Not sure what to do with her, but the underground prison isn’t the right choice.”

“She’s not our friend, either,” Chuckie pointed out.

Nurse Carter shrugged. “As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I want these people stopped. If I can help you keep the Dingo’s target from being killed, I will. Especially if it means you can stop my enemies from murdering someone else’s brilliant, loving brother, or taking anyone else’s beloved son and murdering him in the way I know he died.”

I patted her shoulder. “We’re doing our best. Today, our best is none too good, but, you know, we sometimes manage to pull out a miracle.”

“We need that miracle, girlfriend,” Reader said with a sigh. “Because we’ve lost whatever clues we had and are, pretty much, back to square one. And time’s running out.”

“O
KAY, SO, LET’S GET BACK
to where we were before we finally got Nurse Carter’s full info. Let me ask, though, did you work with the taxi drivers, helping them get in here?”

“Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “I wanted that information more than you do.”

“Where did you get the gun you had in the security deposit box?”

She shrugged. “It was the Dingo’s. He told me it was waterlogged when he slipped it to me, but I figured you wouldn’t know that, and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to pull the trigger.”

“It worked. I had no clue it was his gun.” And said gun had been in front of my face only the day before, too. It figured. As Jeff liked to point out, I had fabulous attention to detail, just not usually the details most people cared about.

“The relevant question is, does this mean the three enterprising taxi drivers are working with the Dingo and company?” Chuckie asked. “Or are they working their own angle?”

Tim shook his head. “There’s always more than one thing going on.”

“I think another question should be were the taxi drivers the only ones who broke in this evening,” Reader said.

“We have no way of knowing, since the cameras were tampered with.”

Len cleared his throat. “The guys in the taxis seemed a lot less…effective than the ones who blew up the limo and put us into that car chase.”

“And Kitty into the Potomac,” Reader added, while shooting me
the cover-boy grin. “But yeah,” he said, smile gone, “I’ll give you that our other limo was destroyed.”

“They had a lot of firepower.”

“The limo was blown up, though,” Reader said shortly. “They shot out the tires, shot out the windows, and tossed in an explosive.”

“Who saw it happen?” Chuckie asked.

“What? Why?” Reader sounded almost as snappish as Jeff normally did when talking to Chuckie.

“Because we still don’t know who bugged Kitty or how,” Chuckie replied. “And, as Kitty just pointed out, if they were taking the picture to avoid White or Serene reading it, then they know us very well. And infiltration is always a risk in any operation, especially this one.”

“I hated my last driver. Not that I want to speak ill of the dead. If we really think he’s dead.”

Reader, Tim, and Christopher were all on their phones. Jeff didn’t look convinced. “I didn’t pick up anything treacherous from any of your drivers, and I check for it.”

I sighed. “Jeff, there are liars in the A-C community. It’s a skill, and it’s a well-hidden one.”

“I know you’ve told me about it. I just don’t believe it,” he said.

“Christopher can block you.”

“He’s enhanced. Serene can probably block me, too. But I don’t really buy it with our regular people.”

“Camilla is our shining example. I wonder if we should bring her over?” Camilla had been, thankfully, a double agent during Operation Confusion. Without her, and her ability to lie, we’d all likely be dead or enslaved by Ronaldo Al Dejahl.

I liked her, though she wasn’t someone anyone hung out with. A-Cs who were truly able to lie convincingly were extremely rare, trained in secret, and pretty much could be considered the Jedi Monks of the A-C population. They had their own clubhouse somewhere, but the rest of us never got to go there. Most A-Cs didn’t know the clubhouse existed. Jeff’s father, Alfred, had, but Jeff hadn’t. Which was an interesting point to ponder, only not right now.

“She’s on assignment,” Chuckie said.

“Huh? What assignment?” I was never told anything even before I’d moved into the Embassy, and it was worse these days.

“She’s doing something very delicate,” Chuckie said. “It’s approved at the highest levels.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. And nothing you do or say is going to get the information out of me. However, I’m with you—it’s fairly easy for a human to lie to an empath if they know what to focus on.”

“Huh.” Jeff shot Chuckie a dirty look. “Not that anyone can tell with you.” Chuckie laughed.

“Boys…”

“Not starting,” Jeff said quickly. “But do you really think we had a car full of traitors following you?” He sounded a little freaked out, a little angry, and a lot protective.

“No. I think we had one guy, maybe two, whoever the humans were. I think, once the gunfire started, they shot the A-Cs in the car, rolled down the windows, jumped out of the car and into one of the many other limo options surrounding us, while their cronies tossed a bomb into the limo and blew up any sign of internal foul play.”

“Glass in the limos is bulletproof,” Reader acknowledged as he hung up. “All the metal’s reinforced, too.”

“So even if you’re slow on the laser shield button, you should have time to hit it, right?”

He nodded. “Right. And there were two humans in the car, the one who’d driven you to your Washington Wife class and the one you’d had before him who also hadn’t worked out.”

“One human was driving and I remember that the other one took shotgun. Meaning they were the ones who had the best access to said laser shield button, as well as every other doohickey in the car.”

“So, maybe Kitty didn’t like them not because they hadn’t gone through a danger situation with her, but because she picked up something wrong they were doing,” Len suggested.