Jezebel's Ladder (27 page)

Amy and PJ stopped at an A&W Root Beer stand for some
refreshment while they waited a few hours for her researcher to call back. Sure
enough, a recent NASA investigation report had been entitled “Particle Modeling
Using the Crupkin Method to Adapt Barnes-Hut.”

PJ nodded. “Barnes-Hut is a
well-known, high-speed algorithm for tracking gravitational influences between
thousands of orbiting bodies.”

Amy shrugged. “The paper claims
that Crupkin had found a way to apply this method to atomic chain reactions.” A
quick phone call to the author gave them the name of a graduate student, Serge
Crupkin, whom they eventually traced to an Orlando suburb called Windmere. The
jigsaw puzzle was beginning to take shape.

PJ handed her the official
navigator’s map and said, “I called it, he’s a computer geek. That means I get
to drive!”

“Should we wait for the senator?”
Amy asked.

He cranked the air conditioning and
pulled into traffic. “Considering the nurse called someone as soon as we asked
for Nick, I think we’re on borrowed time as it is.”

This thought depressed Amy, so PJ
switched topics to her college experience to get her mind off the unfolding
conspiracy. It worked like a charm. By the time Amy got to her fourth roommate,
they had forgotten all about Windmere. He got so interested in her exploits
that he missed his turn.

Eventually, they found Crupkin’s
apartment amidst an endless row of identical, two-story, tan, stucco units.
They even found his nameplate under the doorknocker, but no Crupkin came to
answer it. They located an older guy in coveralls kneeling on the front lawn.
He wore the nametag ‘Fabian’ and admitted to being the superintendent for the
units. When questioned Fabian said, “Sure, the quiet college kid, works at
Moushwitz to pay the bills. I know him. He’s Goofy.”

Amy said, “I realize that most
computer science people seem strange to the average person…”

“Hey!” PJ objected.

She continued, “But we need to talk
to him immediately. Do you know where we can find him?”

The superintendent just shook his
head and kept tinkering with a broken sprinkler head on the front lawn. “Doesn’t
get back from work till the park closes.”

PJ looked at his watch. “That’ll be
too late. We’ll have to find him.”

“What does he do there?” Amy asked,
walking straight into the joke.

“I already told you, he’s the
character Goofy!” Fabian said.

They got into the park at nearly
six o’clock. She charged the tickets on her credit card and made noises about
her expense account.

PJ scratched his head. “Do you
really think they’ll reimburse you for Disney World?”

She shrugged and said, “Why not?
They reimburse for strip clubs.”

Amy was able to use the Congress
ploy to get park security to radio Crupkin. They arranged a meeting at a
lost-children rendezvous nearby. The senator’s plane had to be landing soon, so
Amy left a voicemail for the senator to meet them at the same place.

Goofy had arrived at the lost-child
site first and peered at them through a crack in the top half of the Dutch
door. He refused to open up until they could provide proof Nick had sent them.
In an effort to convince him, Amy held up the calendar sketch. After Crupkin
leaned his ‘chest’ closer to look at it, he shook his whole upper body in a
negative and said, with a Russian accent, “Not good enough.”

PJ worried about Paulson’s goons
arriving before they got the information and started scanning the crowd for
suits amidst the cotton candy and families. “What do you want, his shoe size?
I’m his best friend, PJ, ask me anything.”

“PJ? What does the P stand for?”
the Russian asked with suspicion.

“Come on, anything but that. I’ll
tell you who he puts on his dart board.”

Goofy shook his head again. “Any of
his co-workers could know that, but they would not know your first name.” His
accent was thicker than bock beer and had to be sipped in small doses.

After a colossal struggle, PJ
whispered, “Percival.”

Goofy whooped it up loudly. In his
mirth, he let go of the door and PJ pushed his way into the room.

Amy followed him and closed the
door with a smirk as PJ cornered the laughing, giant mascot. “He didn’t tell
you?”

“No,” Crupkin admitted. “I was just
curious.”

The angry programmer grabbed Goofy
by the neck and had started to administer a noogie of epic proportions when he
begged, “Wait. Don’t you want to know about the Wormwood project?”

“Wormwood, that was the simulation
file in the e-mail. Nick abbreviated.” PJ controlled himself, even though the
Russian was still laughing. “Take that stupid head off.”

“I think it’s a sweet name,” Amy
said to mollify him.

PJ grunted, “Start spilling.”

Crupkin had dark, sweat-plastered
hair on a classic, Gypsy face. The only thing missing was facial hair, which
they don’t allow in the Magic Kingdom. Despite the large dermal patch on his
neck, he pulled a cigarette out of the depths of the suit and hung it out of
his mouth expectantly. “Got a light? I ran out of smuggled matches an hour ago.
God, it’s hot in here.”

“Sorry,” PJ shrugged. “Aren’t you
supposed to be kicking the habit?”

“The patch just gets me to my next
break without tearing some little rug rat’s head off. I learned that trick from
Dumbo.”

Amy tore the cigarette from his
lips and commanded, “Tell us about Nick. Now.” The temperature in the room
seemed to drop a few degrees.

Crupkin sat down and huddled close
to the others, almost whispering what he had to say. “Nick’s a smart guy, a
little sloppy with his precision, but that’s why he came to me. He wanted an
accurate simulation fast and offered me a grand to code it for him without
telling anybody. If he used the computers at work, his boss would fire him for
whistle-blowing. Nick was trying to prove that some experiment was too
dangerous to perform.”

“Was it?” Amy asked.

Crupkin snickered. “Are you
kidding? First of all, H is 1.02, not 1. That might not seem like much to a
layman, but a 2 percent error can mount up over time.”

As he discussed his true love,
mathematics, he babbled about spherical equations and logarithmic algorithms
until Amy’s eyes glazed over. Then, PJ interceded. “All that wasn’t enough to
kill the project. What was the big bug your simulation found?”

The grad student said, “An
interesting theory. You have to use L’Hospital’s Rule to pin down the
divergent…”

PJ held up a hand. “Pretend you’re
explaining it to your mother.”

“My mother is a nuclear physicist,”
he said, puzzled.

“Okay, forget about Mom, explain it
to me,” Amy pleaded.

“It’s a chain reaction, right? So
the bigger the water source, the bigger the bang. Everything converts to
energy.”

PJ couldn’t help but remember
stories from the first atomic-bomb test, where Robert Oppenheimer had warned
the military they weren’t entirely sure the reaction would stop.

As they pried more details out of
Crupkin, the senator and his entourage of suits wearing sunglasses came through
the door and interrupted. Senator Braithwaite was blustering mad. “There you
are,” he shouted to Amy. “Do you have any idea what kind of stir that lunatic
has caused?”

“Nick?” she asked.

“The maniac stabbed an orderly in
the throat with a pen and escaped. They’re combing the countryside for him
right now,” said the senator. “Worse yet, the pen had
my
name on it!”
Amy paled when she realized that she had unwittingly provided the weapon. “Don’t
worry, the wound wasn’t fatal. Of course, the orderly couldn’t talk and the
doctors won’t let the agents near him till he stabilizes. So we have no idea
what else the nut is carrying with him.”

“Go Nick,” Crupkin cheered.

“Who is this?” the senator
demanded.

Amy took a breath and said, in a
small voice, “He’s the man I wanted you to meet, sir.”

“Nick hired me to do some
simulations,” Crupkin began again.

“Is this man a foreign national?”
Braithwaite asked Amy. Her future as an aide began to look bleaker with every
question. Something had put a major bee in his bonnet.

PJ decided to speed up the
interview before she dug herself in any deeper. “Those simulations proved
conclusively that Icarus is too dangerous to initiate.”

 “Why is this man spewing state
secrets in an unsecured area?” The senator sounded just like Paulson, trying to
suppress the ugly truth at all costs. If the senator suddenly wanted to bury
this problem, Amy might still have some degree of protection. However, once
they found out how much PJ knew, he’d never see daylight again.

PJ made for the door while Amy
explained, “Really, sir. Secrecy will do more harm than good at this point. The
more people who know, the better chance we have of stopping the disaster.”

Crupkin made a dash for it as well,
but it was too late. His big outfit made him easy to catch at the door. PJ got
two steps off the sidewalk before suits swarmed all over him. He managed to
break the first tackle, but one of the suits shoved something small and hard
into his back.

The last thing he heard was, “We
have the matter under control, sir.”

Sedna paced. She’d left a message for Trina on the equine
charity bulletin board to meet her at their old safe house. There were bars on
the windows, which were more plywood than glass, but no air conditioning units.
The derelict was under the flight path for Long Beach municipal airport. A
person could fire a gun off during takeoffs with no one noticing. A “For Sale”
sign with an out-of-business realtor’s phone number sat on the weedy, miserable
excuse for a lawn. At 11:30 Pacific time, Steve had been admitted to the
hospital with severe burns. Running his insurance card would set events in
motion. Someone on the arson unit was bound to find the crisped body of Virus
under the floor tiles in a few hours. She wanted to be well clear of this city
by then. Sedna felt guilty for killing him, but he’d discovered the plan.

The taxi pulled up at 12:37. She
clenched the trigger of her pistol as her sister climbed out and sent the
driver on his way. Then, Trina let herself in the back door.

Sedna crouched around the door
frame, waiting. The Taser came around the corner before Trina did, aimed at
Sedna’s midsection, “Tag, you’re it.”

“How?”

“You’re an active now,” Trina
explained. “I could see you from about six feet away.”

Sedna chuckled. “Momma Bear has
been giving you all sorts of toys.”

“That’s boyfriend bear, and he’s
been giving me everything he can.”

Sedna was pale and stone-faced. “Did
you bring the money?”

“Yes, I transferred it to our old
Nena account. Sorry it took so long. I had to hitchhike to LA, dodging cops,
and the bank had to phone Daniel.”

“What did roller boy have to say
about that?”

Trina handed over a transaction
receipt. “He trusts me without hesitation. He just wanted to know I was safe.
Tan was out checking truck stops between here and Vegas. You’ve scattered our
people all over creation.”

“That’s the idea,” muttered Sedna. Then
she complained, “This isn’t enough.”

“He trusts me because I would never
betray him. I’m giving you
my
half, everything I have because of what we
shared. That’s all I can do, take it or leave it.”

Sedna clenched the pistol grip in
anger. “Since when does he matter more than blood or training? We are one
person.”

Trina shook her head. “Daniel and I
share
everything
together, even more than our family did. You wouldn’t
understand.”

The assassin put away her gun, and
Trina did likewise. Sedna said, “There are spare clothes in the duffel, wigs,
and passports. Help yourself.”

“What did you mean when you said
you want to scatter Fortune’s people?

Sedna switched to the dart gun as
Trina rummaged through the goody bag. “I killed Master Sam, but I was never
able to completely ignore his last order. I have to kill myself and burn
everything. I think I’ve found a way to do both at the same time.” She fired
two darts into her clone-sister. When Trina was down, Sedna switched clothes with
the weak one and removed her black wig.

****

Daniel was delirious when he got
the second phone call from “Trina” that day. He had just reached Benny’s house,
and the other men from the car were carrying in luggage. She gave him an
address.

“As soon as I can slip away,” he
promised. “What was the money for?”

“Something that will rock your
world,” Sedna promised. “Hurry up, I’m horny.”

****

Daniel had to wait two hours for
Tan to drive back from the highway rest stop, then another hour for him to
shower and eat. At four Pacific time, Crusader called Benny with questions because
Jez was unreachable. Daniel used the distraction to make his getaway. “Tan, my
girlfriend’s found a safe house and wants to meet. Could you please drive me?”

“The same girlfriend I’ve been
chasing all day?”

“I called you the moment she called
me. Please? It’s been over twelve hours since we talked,” the teenager begged.

“And ‘talked’ is code for something
I do not want to hear about. Head out the front door. I will meet you on the
next block with the car.”

True to his word, Tan delivered
Daniel to the rundown neighborhood. As they drove by the derelict house, Tan
didn’t like the look of it. “Are you certain?”

A pair of black Lycra shorts with a
hot pink stripe waved out the front door like a cape in front of a bull. Daniel
started breathing faster. “Awesome. Don’t worry, we cover each others’
backs…you know what I mean.”

“Push your panic button if there’s
any sign of danger,” Tan cautioned while getting the wheelchair out of the
trunk. “I will have Mr. Robins post some people over by that market we passed.
They can be here in minutes.”

Daniel grinned. “She’s a lot of
woman, but I’m not calling for backup.”

Tan pushed him up the walk and up
onto the porch. The front door was ajar, and jazz music could be heard coming
from cheap CD-player speakers in the next room. “Lock the door when I’m gone,”
the kick boxer advised.

Daniel rolled in and threw the
three latches shut. He followed the music to one of the two bedrooms in the
wreck of a house. She was dancing in her underwear near a twin mattress on the
floor in the corner. Two other mattresses were propped against the wall. She
had her arms in the air and gyrated to show him her every curve.

The shock was almost physical, but
Daniel hid his reaction. “Why don’t you have a seat on Santa’s lap, little
girl, and tell him what you want for Christmas?”

She smiled, bent over to give him a
view, and backed onto his lap. “I’ve been a
bad
girl.”

When she got close enough, Daniel
wrapped his arms around her in an embrace. When she relaxed, he slid his hands
behind her neck in a full-nelson hold. “What did you do with her, Quinn?”

The clone struggled but could not
break free of his well-developed arms. However, the wriggling did cause a
muffled moan to escape Daniel’s lips. Instead of answering, she reached a hand
behind and scratched his neck with her long nails. He winced but didn’t relax
his hold.

“You must call me Sedna,” she
demanded, “Goddess of the Underworld, final judge of mankind. Did my sister
tell you about the poison we excrete? It’s a paralytic, just like those dogs
that horrified you. But it burns as it crawls through your veins. The faster
your heart beats, the faster the poison spreads.”

She slid her pelvis back across the
length of his lap, causing him to gasp, “Stop that!”

Sedna smiled smugly. “I just have
to delay and let nature take its course. Or you could give me what I want, and
I’ll neutralize the venom. Our spit counteracts the effects. I can suck the
poison out of other places, too,” she said, writhing on the place she had in
mind.

“I’m not going to cheat on her,” he
said, closing his eyes and opening his special senses. During daylight hours,
this hurt worse than walking in a sandstorm, but not finding Trina hurt more. He
experienced an odd double vision; two people with the same DNA occupied the same
house. Trina was nearby, anxious and uncomfortable but not in immediate peril.
He considered the panic button in his pocket but knew he couldn’t control Sedna
if he released his hold. “You’re obviously holding her prisoner. What do you
want?”

“More than you could possibly know.
To start with, I want another four hundred thousand dollars.”

“I can do that. Use the same
account as before. The password is Triniel the number four, capital ever,” he
supplied. “We’re worth a lot more than that as a hostage. What else?”

Sedna purred. “I told you, I’m
horny. She has me curious what kind of sex was so good she left her family for
it. Come on,” she swayed back and forth. “A few more minutes of this lap dance
and you’ll climax anyway. Don’t you want me to enjoy it, too?”

“Not with another. I could never be
one with her again if I did.”

“But I’m not
really
someone
else. We’re clones. We share everything. I just want to have one last thrill
before I die. I’m sure she’d be okay with that. Besides, who do you think is a better
ride, Glinda the Good or Morgan Le Fey?”

Daniel clamped down in a sleeper
hold to cut off the oxygen to her brain. The assassin sensed the meaning of
this move and screamed, “When you pass out, I’ll kill her. I’ll gut the
spineless worm and make you watch!”

“I’ve developed an immunity to the
venom. I’ve lost count of the times my back’s been scratched up. I’ll let your
sister decide what we should do with you.”

He tightened his grip while she
tried in earnest to escape. She tipped the chair sideways with her thrashing
and they both crashed to the carpet. Still he kept his grip. When they rolled
over the edge of the mattress, he had to shake his head to keep focus. Even
after she slumped, he kept the grip another few seconds, just to be safe.

Daniel found the dart gun under the
pillow, and pumped one into Sedna’s butt. That wouldn’t hold long and neither
would tying her in the sheets. Looking through the assassin’s bag, he found zip
ties. He was reluctant to use the harsh restraints until he realized she had
probably bound Trina with them. When he was done, Sedna looked like a roped
calf.

Closing his eyes, Daniel pinpointed
Trina at the far end of the house. After taking a swig of water to cool down,
he climbed back into his chair and made his way to the garage. There was a step
down, but the door was wide enough. It would be a one-way trip. He pushed
himself through without hesitation. There was no car. The room was taped shut
and lined with plastic, just like Maverick had done in the steam tunnels.

Trina wasn’t in the freezer—a
relief. Her signature seemed to be coming from directly above. He found the
pull-down staircase into the attic. The pull cord was just out of his reach. He
found a set of blacksmith tongs in the corner next to a Bunsen burner. Stretching
at full extension, he could grab the end of the cord and pull the stairs down.

Daniel found Trina disoriented but
conscious, laying naked on a piece of plywood over the insulation. Panting in
the extreme heat and from the climb, he lay next to her to catch his breath. “Hey.
Your evil twin just hit on me. I left her tranquilized in the bedroom.” He cut
the zip ties with his multi-tool. “I’ll let you take the duct tape off
yourself.”

She wrapped her arms around him and
they touched mentally. He shared flashes of what had happened since she left.
She showed him a few key scenes. Sweat poured off both of them. Her
intoxicating smell and lack of clothing was making it difficult for him to
think.

When they made it back to the
cement, she asked, “Did you hit the panic button?”

He shook his head. “I thought you’d
want to handle it in the family.”

She stroked his face. “The kitchen
is the coolest place. Let’s have a quickie there before we wake up the wicked
witch.”

Rescue sex was incredible.

****

When Trina strolled languidly into
the bedroom to find underwear, she asked her bound sister, “Happy now?”

Sedna said, “No. But you are. I’m
glad for you and a little jealous. I hope for your sake I fail. Your man should
have killed me.”

“He’d never hurt me like that,”
Trina explained. “We won’t get rid of the last of the family, whatever you’ve
done. We’d like something in exchange for all that money we gave you.”

“Like what?”

“You’re an active now. Where’s the
page?”

Sedna considered her options. “In a
bank safety deposit box in Jezebel’s name, but you have to promise not to
retrieve them or tell anyone until Wednesday.”

“Them?”

“Virus and I had quite a
collection.”

“Interesting. Why the delay?”

“I want you to wait till I’m dead,”
Sedna said.

“We can get you help,” Trina said
sincerely. “This self-destructive behavior has to stop.”

“Virus said the same thing before I
killed him.”

“We could tranq you again.”

“I’m broken, Trina. Let me at least
be good at that.”

“You can’t come near us again. Once
I set you free…”

“You’ll never see me again,” Sedna
promised, her voice breaking at her sister’s last kindness.

Trina cut the ties. “Daniel can
find you a hundred miles away.”

Sedna massaged her wrists. “Turn
off his phone, or they’ll send him after me.”

“I’ll go distract Daniel.”

Sedna laughed. “Shit, Starlet was
right about you two.”

Serious, Trina turned to look at
her clone for the final time. “If you’d asked me, I would’ve told you. We spend
most of our hours sharing memories, giving pieces of ourselves as gifts. His
happiest memories are Christmas with his family and times he’s met me. When you
insult him, remember that.”

Sedna looked at the floor, jealous.
“You have a new family.”

“I have nothing more to give you.
Farewell, sister.”

Once outside, Sedna used her phone
to transfer the remainder of the million dollar payment to her CIA contact in Florida.