Reach For the Spy (33 page)

Doug shook his head. “I
have too much food in the house already. I’ll eat here. I’ll see
you kids later.” He winked at Arnie. “You make sure you get in
before your curfew, boy.”

Arnie’s face twisted in
a bittersweet smile. “Yessir.”

Later when we lay in
bed, I stroked Arnie’s face and brushed a kiss across his lips.
“Hard day.”

He sighed. “Yeah.” His
arms tightened around me carefully, mindful of my bruises. “Thanks
for stayin’.”

“Glad to. I needed some
comfort, too.”

He turned his face into
my hair. “It ain’t like we really did a lotta shit together,” he
mumbled. “We were both busy. Sometimes we wouldn’t see each other
for months. But I always knew he was there, ya know?”

“I know.”

I held him until he
slipped into merciful sleep at last.

Kane stood beside the
bed, his clothes coated with mud. In the dimness, I saw his smile,
the laugh lines crinkling around his eyes. I reached for him. My
dream-self knew it was a dream, yet it was vividly real.

He leaned down to kiss
me, his lips hungry on mine. “Aydan,” he whispered. “I want
you.”

I pulled him closer,
gasping at the sensation of his hands running over my naked body.
My hands slid under his dirty T-shirt to caress the hard muscles of
his chest. Then the T-shirt was gone, and he was pulling off his
jeans.

When he lowered himself
to me, the touch of his skin burned like fire against me. I wrapped
my arms around him and kissed him ravenously, pulling him closer. I
pressed against him, desperate with need.

His eyes widened and
his body suddenly sprawled on top of me. The horrible laxity of his
muscles drove terror through my heart.

I struggled to push him
over onto his back, whimpering frantically. At last his body
flopped over under my efforts, his muscular arm slithering loosely
over his chest. His eyes stared sightlessly as I began CPR, sobbing
with the effort.

I knew I was too late.
He was already dead…

“Aydan, wake up,
darlin’.” Arnie’s hands were gentle on my shoulders. “Shhh, Aydan,
it’s just a dream.”

“I couldn’t save him. I
couldn’t save him.” I wept helplessly against Arnie’s chest while
he held me in the darkness.

In the morning, I said
subdued goodbyes to Doug Kane and Arnie and gratefully boarded the
plane for a couple of hours of solitary introspection. I had a
measure of relief now that the funeral was over and I could settle
down to a level of functional numbness.

By the time the plane
landed, I’d mapped out the beginnings of a strategy to trap
Stemp.

When we pulled into my
yard a couple of hours later, I turned to Spider. “Hey, Spider, I’m
having some computer problems. Can you come in and have a
look?”

He eyed me tiredly for
a few seconds before the subtext got through to him. “Oh! Sure, no
problem.”

I turned to Germain.
“Thanks for the ride. If you want to head out, I’ll run Spider home
when he’s done.”

Germain agreed, and
Spider and I went into my house without speaking. Once inside, I
held a finger to my lips and retrieved the scanner he’d given me to
quickly scan for bugs.

“Clear,” I said, and he
sighed relief.

He cocked a quizzical
eyebrow at me. “I’m assuming your computer is fine.”

“Yeah. I wanted to talk
to you in private before we got started at Sirius again. I’ve been
thinking about Stemp. Is there any way you can snoop on what he’s
doing at the internet cafe?”

Spider raised an
eyebrow. “I have many ways. What exactly did you have in mind?”

“Can you tell if he’s
the one that’s sending the messages to Fuzzy Bunny?”

“Not unless I catch him
in the act of doing it. I’d have to snoop on his actual
session.”

I sighed. “Too bad.
That would’ve been too easy, wouldn’t it?” I thought about it for a
moment. “I guess we’d better check and see if my filter has caught
anything more. If it has, we can cross-check the surveillance
footage again...”

My voice trailed off as
an idea occurred to me.

“What?” Spider
demanded.

“Can you bring up the
surveillance records from here?”

“Sure. I just...”

“Happen to have your
laptop with you,” I finished for him, and he smiled as he pulled it
out of his bag.

“Of course. What are
you looking for in the surveillance?”

“I wonder how often
Stemp goes to the internet cafe.”

Spider shrugged. “Let’s
find out.” His fingers flew over the keyboard.

In minutes, we were
looking at surveillance records. As we fast-forwarded through them
one after another, I turned to Spider to see my growing smile
reflected on his face.

“Well, well. A creature
of habit. Isn’t that convenient,” I mused. “So, what are you doing
tomorrow morning around eight o’clock?”

“Same thing I’ll be
doing at one in the afternoon. And nine at night.” Spider’s
predatory grin was incongruous on his boyish face. “Hacking into
Stemp’s internet session.”

We reviewed the last of
the records, and Spider shut the machine down. “Interesting. He’s
like clockwork. Same times, even on weekends. I guess that explains
why he was in the surveillance record before. When you do something
habitually like that, you just keep doing it and nobody pays any
attention.”

I grinned at him.
“Except us. Let’s go to Sirius and see if there’s anything new in
our filters.”

At Sirius Dynamics, I
idled my way to my office while Spider retrieved the network key
from the secured area. On a Sunday evening, the only sign of life
was the bored guard in the security wicket.

I wandered through the
door of my office, turning over strategies in my mind but jerked to
a halt with a yelp of surprise when I realized I wasn’t alone.

John Smith stood up
from behind my desk. The solid wall of his body odour hit me from
six feet away. I surveyed him with disgust, wondering if that was
still the same shirt he’d been wearing three weeks ago. I thought
the pattern of food stains looked familiar.

“Ms. Kelly,” he greeted
me warily.

“What are you doing in
here?” I demanded.

He ran a hand through
his lank, thinning hair. “Since I’ve been assigned as your handler,
I was checking over the structures that you’ve created in the
network. I wanted to be prepared for tomorrow morning.” He frowned.
“Why are you here tonight?”

“I’ve missed several
days of work. I wanted to check my filters to see if there’s
anything urgent.”

“I didn’t see anything
there,” he said. After a short pause, he continued. “I’m impressed
with your program. It shows a surprising level of
sophistication.”

I held back my
instinctive retort at the patronizing compliment. At least the guy
was making an effort to be pleasant. He was probably hoping to get
off on the right foot.

Because the last time
he’d pissed me off in the network, he’d gotten my right foot in a
place that had caused him considerable discomfort.

I smiled. “Thanks.”

Spider appeared in the
doorway and halted uncertainly, looking from me to Smith.

“Webb,” Smith greeted
him.

“Hi.” Spider glanced at
me. “Um...”

“We’re going to be a
while, if you want to leave,” I told Smith. Subtle, that’s my
middle name.

“As your handler, I
need to be here,” he disagreed. “In fact, going forward, I need to
be present at all times when you’re in the network. You’ll need to
provide me with a schedule of your planned access times.”

Shit. That was going to
throw a wrench in the works. I didn’t like him. I didn’t trust him.
And I really didn’t like the way he smelled. I tried to sigh and
hold my breath at the same time. The resulting grunt was
unbecoming.

“Fine. Spider, let’s
get started.” I plopped down on the sofa and waited while he set up
his laptop. We both ignored Smith when he took a seat at the desk.
As soon as Spider gave me the nod, I stepped into the network.

I took deep breaths of
the untainted virtual air while I headed for my program. With grim
determination, I tamped down the wave of self-pity that threatened.
Trading Kane for Smith was like trading an Audi R8 for a manure
spreader.

I shook myself and
firmly focused my attention on the job at hand. Kane was out of the
picture. Suck it up and get on with life.

I managed not to
sniffle only because I knew Spider was monitoring me.

As Smith had said, my
filters were empty. The good news was that nobody was trying to
talk to Fuzzy Bunny. The bad news was that nobody was trying to
talk to Fuzzy Bunny. I sighed. I would have preferred to see
something there. I was positive Kane hadn’t betrayed me, but a bit
of proof would have been really welcome.

I double-checked the
program to make sure that it was working. It was, and I made my way
back to the portal with a sigh.

I barely noticed the
soft impact against my head when I folded over to swear and clutch
my headache. As the pain subsided, my stream of profanity was
drowned out by angry shouting. I hurriedly dragged my eyes open to
see Spider and Smith squared off in front of me. Spider’s fists
were clenched, his eyes blazing in his flushed face. I slowly
registered his words.

“...dare you! Keep your
hands off her, you pervert!”

“I wasn’t.” Smith
backed away, his hands raised placatingly. “I wouldn’t, I was
just...”

“Is there a problem
here?” Germain stepped into the room, his sharp eyes assessing the
combatants. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. Germain was about
half an inch taller than me, but the breadth of his powerful
shoulders made him look short and square. I’d watched him spar in
practice with Kane only a few weeks ago. If there had been a
problem earlier, it was officially over now.

“Aydan, are you okay?”
he asked. “What’s going on?”

I straightened up and
let go of my head. “I’m fine. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“He was... He was
fondling
Aydan while she was in the network!” Spider
blurted, his face scarlet. He glared at Smith. “You’re sick!”

“I wasn’t!” Smith’s
face was reddening, too. “I was just going to massage her
temples.”

Germain frowned.
“Aydan? What happened?”

I stared at him while
nausea rose in my stomach. “I don’t know. You know I can’t feel
anything with my physical body when I’m in the network. It takes a
pain stimulus to wake me.”

The nausea intensified
with the realization that Smith could literally strip me naked and
have sex with my real body while I was in the network, and I’d
never know unless he actually caused me pain. I was sure he hadn’t
done that, but the thought of it made me shudder violently before I
could stop myself.

“Webb,” Germain
snapped. “What did you see?”

“Aydan was coming out
of the network, and I was just going out to take the key back to
the secured area. I realized I’d forgotten to set up our schedule
for tomorrow, so I came back in, and he was standing in front of
her, running his fingers through her hair...”

“I wasn’t!” Smith
barked. “How stupid do you think I am? If I was going to assault
her, I wouldn’t do it when I knew she was coming out of the network
and I’d be sure to get caught!”

“So you’ve given this
some thought,” Germain said evenly.

“No! Jeez!” Smith’s
gaze darted around the room as if searching for an escape route.
“I’m her handler. I read Kane’s reports, and he noted that
massaging her temples helps relieve her pain on exiting the
network. I was just trying to help!”

Spider opened his mouth
to retort, and I could see this would only devolve into a
‘yes-you-did, no-I-didn’t’ argument. I stood up and put my hand on
his arm. “It’s okay, Spider, thanks for looking out for me.”

I turned to Smith. “If
you were trying to be thorough, I appreciate it, but for your own
safety you shouldn’t come near me when I’m in the network. It can
be quite disorienting for me to exit, and I sometimes have violent
and unpredictable reactions.”

I met Smith’s eyes.
Clearly, he’d gotten the message. He took a step backward as his
angry flush drained away. “But... what if you stop breathing
again?” he stammered. “Who will resuscitate you? Should I just
stand here and watch you die?”

“You don’t need to
worry about giving Aydan mouth-to-mouth,” Germain said quietly.
“Webb has completed his emergency training. He’ll be with Aydan at
all times when she’s in the network from now on. He’ll deal with
any medical emergencies that might arise. Isn’t that right,
Webb?”

“That’s right,” Spider
agreed, his young face hard.

Smith threw up his
hands. “Fine! Jeez, I’m just trying to do my job!” He detoured
widely around Germain as he stormed out.

“Man, does that guy
ever wash?” Germain asked.

I fanned the air in
front of my face. “Apparently not. Thanks, Carl. I’m glad you were
here.”

His normally cheerful
face was sober. “You’re welcome. But you should definitely take
precautions. It didn’t occur to me how vulnerable you are when
you’re in the network. Everybody else wakes up at the slightest
touch.”

I shuddered. “It didn’t
occur to me until now, either. I’ve always been with you guys, and
I trust you. It never even crossed my mind.”

“Well, thanks, that’s
good to hear.” Germain gave me a tired smile. “Take care. See you
later.” He strode out the door.

I sighed. “I’ve had it
for tonight.”

“Is it okay if we start
at nine tomorrow?” Spider asked.

“Actually, I have to be
at the Greenhorn at ten,” I told him. “Do you want to meet after
lunch? I could be here by...” I thought for a second. I wanted to
make sure he had enough time to eavesdrop on Stemp’s session at the
internet cafe.