How Spy I Am (37 page)

“I’m sorry to wake
you,” I half-shouted next to his ear. “Do you know Dr. Cartwright’s
first name?”

“Herbert.” His gaze
sharpened. “That means something to you.”

I grinned my
excitement at him. “Yes. Thanks. Go back to sleep.”

He eyed me with an
expression I chose to interpret as amusement, not annoyance, though
it probably contained a large measure of the latter. “Is there
anything else you want to know before I do?”

“Um…” I turned over
possibilities in my brain for a few moments. “No. I don’t think so.
I’m really sorry I had to wake you, but that was important.”

“It’s all right.” He
reinserted the earplug and leaned back into the webbing again, his
eyes drifting shut.

I copied his pose,
feigning relaxation while my brain did a little dance of triumph.
Now I knew three of the Knights. Sam had said Ivan, Bert, and Gus
were dead. Bert could be short for Herbert Cartwright, the freshly
deceased doctor. Terry Sherman from China and Sam Kraus from Canada
still living.

That accounted for
five of the eight. If I could get a list of M.I.T. alumni from the
sixties, I could probably narrow down Ivan’s and Gus’s last names
pretty quickly, and then I could start running searches for the
group of names to see if any of them appeared together with other
names who might be Knights.

What else had he said?
Something about ‘the mages’, whatever that meant. His wording had
been odd. Come on, brain, spit it out.

Something about how I
wasn’t supposed to know, I was supposed to be with a Knight.

What wasn’t I supposed
to know? And if I was supposed to be with a Knight, did he mean
himself? That was a little creepy. I liked Sam, but not that much.
Or maybe…

What if Robert was a
Knight? But no, that didn’t make sense, he hadn’t even been born in
1961. Unless… Sam had said ‘originally’. Had they adopted Robert as
a Knight later? Maybe around the time he started trying to recruit
me for Sirius Dynamics?

My train of thought
ground to a halt and I stared at the ceiling, hoping to find
inspiration in the ugly metal skin. I found none, and prodded my
tired mind on to the next thing instead.

The ghost. Sam had
also mentioned the ghost. But he hadn’t said ‘ghost’, singular.
He’d said ‘ghosts’. At least that part of the conversation remained
clear in my mind. He’d said, ‘you have to stop killing the ghosts,
you’re killing us’.

I sat up so suddenly
Kane jerked awake again. I shook my head and patted his hand
remorsefully, and he sighed and subsided into the webbing again
with a frown.

It was all I could do
not to jump up and pace. I vibrated on the edge of the seat
instead, filled with queasy excitement.

Us. The Knights were
the ghosts. I’d sent a fireball of destruction at the ghost in
Macon, and it had vanished from the network.

And when I came out of
the network, Dr. Cartwright was dead and Sam was on his knees. I
wrapped my arms around myself as queasiness won.

Dr. Cartwright had
said they were going to try something in the network to help Betty.
And then the ghost had appeared. What if the ghost wasn’t a ghost
at all, just Dr. Cartwright’s presence somehow trying to help
Betty?

Oh, God.

I’d killed Bert
Cartwright. And I’d nearly killed Sam.

Kane’s light touch on
my shoulder made me turn to face his look of concern. He leaned
over next to my ear. “Are you sick?”

I shook my head
miserably and hunched back against the webbing, hugging myself.

That must have been
Sam’s presence in the network at Sirius when the ghost appeared for
the very first time. No wonder he’d collapsed after I attacked.

But why the hell
didn’t he just tell me?

Before I murdered Bert
Cartwright?

By the time the note
of the engines finally altered long hours later, I had managed to
doze fitfully, but my only reward was a painful kink in my neck and
a sore ass. My head throbbed from the constant noise, my ears ached
from the earplugs, and rising claustrophobia made me switch to yoga
breathing.

Stay calm. Almost
there.

I herded my reluctant
mind back to what I knew. Dammit, I had more questions than
answers. What exactly had Sam meant when he said Terry Sherman was
‘offline’? That implied the Knights were online most of the time.
If they were, that was good news for me. But maybe it didn’t mean
what I thought it meant.

I was just finishing
off my mental to-do list when the landing gear bumped down on the
runway. Kane opened his eyes and sat up to stretch, looking
refreshed. I suppressed a stab of irritable envy. Must be nice.

When the engines
quieted at last and the cargo bay door opened, I gratefully sucked
in the exhaust-tinged air and stowed my earplugs back in my waist
pouch. Kane was already retrieving his duffel bag and my small
suitcase, and we threaded through the stretching, murmuring
soldiers to get to the tarmac.

A few formalities in
the airport, and I stepped out into the chilly evening like a
prisoner released from jail. I glanced up at Kane pacing beside me
as I headed for the shuttle. “Where did you park?”

“A row away from
you.”

I shot him a
suspicious look. “How did you know where I parked?”

He leaned close to
whisper. “I’m a spy.” He grinned. “Also, I had the tracer for
Stemp’s tracking device.”

I grimaced. “I’ve got
to find a plausible way to get rid of that thing.”

The shuttle wove
slowly around the rows of cars, and I opted to get off when we
arrived at Kane’s Expedition so I could get a few breaths of fresh
air on the short walk to my car.

“Damn, that’s fresher
than I thought,” I said as the icy breeze blew through my thin
jacket. I straightened when a pleasant thought hit me. “Hey, I’ve
got a remote starter. I can start warming up my car before I even
get there.”

Smirking with the
pride of new-car ownership, I drew the fob out of my waist pouch
and pressed the button.

I wasn’t sure whether
it was the explosion or Kane that knocked me to the ground. I
stared up at him, rubbing the brand-new bruise on the back of my
head. An orange glow lit the night, accompanied by a deafening
chorus of car alarms.

Kane peered down at
me, then slowly rolled off my body and sat up. “Think that’ll be
warm enough for you?” he asked.

I sat up to gape at
the column of withering flame and oily black smoke that marked the
remains of my nice new car. Shock dampened my reaction down to numb
cynicism. “Yeah. Probably.”

“Come on, we have to
get out of here.” He grabbed my arm and hauled me onto my feet.
“Run.”

“Why-”

A smaller explosion
answered my question as the next car went up.

I grabbed my suitcase
and ran.

Much later, I
struggled back to a semblance of alertness in the airport security
office, where I’d been doing my best imitation of invisibility for
the last couple of hours while Kane did all the talking.

He extended a hand and
I let him pull me to my feet. “We can go,” he said. “Stemp doesn’t
want us to take a chance driving the Expedition, so he sent air
transport.”

“God, please not
another Hercules.”

“No. A Griffon.”

“I’m really hoping
that’s not the mythical beast that’s half lion and half eagle.”

Kane chuckled. “No.
It’s a helicopter. We’ll be home in an hour.”

“Thank God.”

When we disembarked on
the Silverside Hospital’s helipad, Kane hustled me to the dark van
parked nearby. The driver put the vehicle in gear as soon as the
doors closed behind us, and Kane and I both stared out the windows,
watching for any suspicious movements on the deserted streets. I
sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly when we drew up to
the Sirius Dynamics building.

“I think this is the
first time I’ve ever been glad to see this building.”

Kane regarded me with
an unreadable expression. “Things must be bad, then.”

“Uh. Yeah. Neither of
us is going home tonight.”

He shot me a wry
smile. “I’m glad to hear you say that. I was afraid you’d go
ballistic when I told you.”

“No, for once we’re on
the same page.”

We hustled for the
front entrance almost back to back, both of us scanning the quiet
street. I didn’t relax until we’d signed for our Sirius fobs and
made it through the first set of security doors on our way to
Stemp’s office. My shaking legs barely dragged me to the top of the
stairs.

“Aydan?” Kane’s voice
seemed very far away.

“Just need a snack,” I
mumbled, and dragged myself to the lunchroom.

Some orange juice and
a couple of granola bars later, we faced Stemp across his desk. He
looked offensively wide awake, and it made me hate him even
more.

An earlier glance in
the ladies’ room mirror had informed me that if I’d looked like
something the cat had dragged in this morning, I now looked like
something the cat had shit out. Despite my snack, my hands trembled
continuously, and the only thing that kept me upright in my chair
was the need to ask Stemp one single question.

“Where’s Betty?” The
demand burst out of me before he could speak.

The flat eyes
appraised me briefly. “In the secured area of the Silverside
Hospital, under twenty-four hour guard.”

I held my voice under
rigid control. “What do you intend to do with her?”

“Make sure she gets
the best supportive care possible until you and Dr. Kraus can find
a way to extract your memories from her mind.”

“And how long do we
have to do that?”

“As long as it
takes.”

Relief melted my
bones, and I held myself in the chair through sheer force of will.
I slowly stiffened my backbone when I realized it was too good to
be true.

“And what happens if
she wakes up and wants to see her family? What happens if we can’t
get my memories out of her head?”

Stemp met my eyes.
“You’ll find a way.”

“But…”

Stemp ignored my
protest and turned to Kane. “Report.”

“I want to see her,” I
interrupted.

Stemp returned his
attention to me. “The guards have orders to let you see her at any
time of the day or night.” He ran a hand over his face, briefly
revealing the exhaustion his expressionless facade hid. “I give you
my word she’s unharmed. May we finish debriefing?”

I gave him a hard
stare, but I couldn’t tell if he was lying. My sluggish brain
ground through the possibilities, and I realized it didn’t really
matter. If he was telling the truth, Betty was safe. If he was
lying, it was already too late.

I nodded and shut
up.

Kane rapidly and
efficiently outlined the events of the day, and I let his words
flow over me. When Stemp turned his unreadable gaze on me again, I
propped myself up a little straighter in the chair.

“I don’t have much to
add,” I began. “I mentioned last night that something was bothering
me about the Macon installation. There were actually a couple of
things. The first was that the network… felt… funny.”

“Funny.”

When I didn’t respond
right away, Stemp raised an eyebrow. “Can you describe this…
funniness?”

“I’m thinking.” I
knotted a fist in my hair and tugged gently. “It was… different but
too familiar. It… smelled… like something I should know. But I
didn’t quite.”

I fully expected Stemp
to ridicule me, but he sat back in his chair instead, eyeing me
with a frown. “You should discuss this with Smith tomorrow.”

I was nodding when a
jolt of remembrance shook me. Smith! What if Kasper was leaking our
information to Robert? I could be playing directly into his hands
if I told him anything.

I wrapped my hands
around my aching head and groaned.

“Ms. Kelly?”

“Sorry. One other
thing. Dr. Cartwright… was the ghost. I… He didn’t die of a heart
attack. I killed him.”

“What!” Both Stemp and
Kane jerked forward in their chairs, staring at me.

“You didn’t tell me
that.” Kane’s cop face was as expressionless as Stemp’s.

“No, I just figured it
out when we were on the plane,” I said. “Remember when I did the
big firestorm here in the network to knock out the ghost’s
control?”

Both men nodded, and I
continued, “I just attacked its control, not
it
. In Macon,
when the ghost appeared, I was so mad I attacked
it
.
Personally. With the intent to utterly destroy it. And Bert
Cartwright dropped dead.”

Kane sat back slowly.
“And you figured this out by knowing his first name?”

“Um, no, not
exactly…”

Stemp levelled a
penetrating gaze at me. “Did you discover what Cartwright was
trying to force you to do?”

“No.” I gnawed my
bottom lip in chagrin. “If I’d known it was him, I wouldn’t have
killed him.”

“If an unknown force
was trying to control you, destroying it was the right decision at
the time,” Stemp said. “What else do you have to report?”

“Um.” I sat up a
little straighter, feeling obscurely comforted. “The motel bomb may
not have been intended for Kane after all, but I still think he
needs to be on guard.”

“And…”

“And that’s all I can
tell you at the moment.”

Stemp’s impassive gaze
betrayed none of the frustration I was sure he was feeling. “Very
well. Dismissed.”

“One more thing,” Kane
said. “We need to stay here tonight. And both Aydan’s and my house
need to be searched for bombs.”

Stemp was already
nodding when I spoke. “Can we stay in the bunker under Kane’s
office instead?”

Stemp gave me a long
stare. “Why?”

“Um…” I cast about for
an excuse. “I have a pretty strong claustrophobic reaction to the
secured area here because of the time delay chamber. I’d be a lot
happier in the bunker.”