The Nexus (6 page)

After Corey left, Bradley stayed behind with Holiday.  “Sir, can I have a word?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” said the director.  “How did things go tonight?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“So I won’t be hearing about the various creative ways you violated protocol?”

“No, sir.  I’m not the one who violated protocol this time.”

Holiday just grunted faintly and waited for Bradley to go on.

“I know I’m the last one that should be blowing the whistle on anyone else, sir.”

“True.  Now that we got that out of the way, continue.”

“Just as we were about to arrest Mr. Love, Corey...”

“Yes?”

“He took his mask off.”

“Did he, now?”  Holiday seemed neither shocked nor angry.  He didn’t seem happy either.

“I know it’s not a big deal.”

“In fact, it’s a very big deal.  Revealing the identity of anyone in our department could compromise our entire endeavor.”

“I guess Corey figured we had Love, and he wouldn’t be getting away, so it would be okay.  He said he wanted Love to remember who caught him.”

“You can never tell for certain whether or not a suspect will get away.  Suppose Mr. Love doesn’t get convicted, for instance?  Even if he does, suppose he has ways of communicating while he’s serving his sentence?  I don’t have to tell you that bootlegged films are hardly all that’s at stake in this instance, Bradley.  Mr. Love has some very dangerous contacts—contacts we intend to track down.  That’s the whole point of the mission.  Corey could have a rather large target on his back.”

Bradley shifted his feet.  “Look, sir, I feel bad saying anything about this.  I’m the one who’s been on suspension the last month.  I just thought you should know.”

“And now I do.”  Holiday put his hands behind his back and stepped to the doorway.  He saw Corey rounding the balcony toward the door to the elevator lobby and the dorms.

“Sir?” said Bradley, stepping next to him.  “Don’t be too hard on him.  He’s a good point man.”

“He is indeed.  And it’s good to hear you say so at last.”

COREY was as good as his word.  He visited Jill again the next day, and the next.  To be as convincing as possible, she waited until the third day to give in.

“I’ve thought about it a lot.  Actually, there was never much thinking to do.  I get that now.  This is my best chance to make something of myself, and I’m going to take it.”

Corey nodded.  “It was just a matter of time.  Will I sound cliché if I say you won’t regret it?”

“A little.  I just hope you’re right.”  She still had to sound a little hesitant.

“Believe me, I am.”  He stood.  “I’ll go through the formalities to have you released.  I should be able to escort you up to Director Holiday later today.”

“So that’s his name.”

Corey winced.  Then he just shrugged.  “You’re about to be introduced to him, so you’ll be finding out his name anyway.”

AGAIN, Corey was as good as his word.  Janice Moeller processed Jill’s release.  Corey came down for her that afternoon.

“You sure you’re ready for this?”

She bit her lip.  “I think so.”

“Let’s do it.”  He reached beneath his jacket.

“Wait...you’re escorting me up at gunpoint?”

“It’s protocol.  You’re still technically a prisoner, remember?”

“Right.  I guess I can’t complain.”

“Just be glad I’m not making you wear the cuffs.”

Time had been almost irrelevant in her cell.  She could only count the hours according to when her meals had arrived.  When she looked out the stairwell windows she could see the sun high in the sky over the avenue of towers.

She tried to get Corey to talk while they walked.  He wouldn’t say anything about Holiday or what their department did.

“Sorry.  I know you can’t talk about this stuff, so I shouldn’t be asking you.  I’m just curious, you know?”

“Yeah.  Don’t worry, you’ll be hearing all about it soon.”

“Just tell me this:  Do you like what you do?”

He didn’t hesitate.  “I love what I do.”

They came to the elevator.  They still hadn’t seen another living soul.  Corey removed the same panel, punched in the same code.  The elevator dropped.

“So who knows what you guys do?” Jill asked while they rode down.

Corey shook his head.  “Not too many people.”  He still had his gun out but he held it harmlessly at his side.

“Other GoCom personnel?”

“Not even too many of them.”

“The police?”

“No.”

“The mayor?”

“I doubt it.”

She was genuinely impressed.

The elevator stopped descending.  “It must be important, whatever it is,” said Jill, “since you guys have such a cool secret base.”

The doors opened.  “It
is
important,” said Corey.  “Welcome to the department—the first of its kind.”

When he turned around the elevator was closing.

And Jill was still on it.

He pushed the button a hundred times, but the elevator was already on its way up.  By the time it came back down for him, she’d be long gone.

“I need your help, Diz.  Like right now.”

Dizzie turned around.  Her myriad piercings glittered in the light of the many computer screens spread out around her HQ cubicle.  “You look terrible!  What’s wrong?”

“Just help me, all right?  You’re not running com for any missions right now?”

“Not at the moment, but—”

“Can you pull up the GoCom security cams?”

“Well, sure.  I have the clearance.  But we’re only supposed to do that—”

“In emergencies.  This is one.  Believe me.”

Dizzie swallowed.  “Okay.”  She rolled her chair across the cubicle to her central console.  Expert fingers fluttered across the keyboard.  “We’re in.”

The screen directly in front of her flickered to a very, very long list.

“How many cameras does this place have?” Corey fumed.

“A lot.  It’s a big building.  And it’s the government, Cor, what do you expect?  So what do you need?”

“I need the cams in the elevator lobby—the one our elevator goes up to.”

Dizzie pulled up an electronic blueprint of the building on another screen.  “Give me a sec.”

“Hurry.”

“What’s going on, Corey?  I have a bad feeling about all this.”

“Just hurry, okay?”

“Hurrying.”  She slid and rotated the three-dimensional map until she found what they needed.   “There’re four cams in that lobby.  Here they are.”  The largest screen in the cubicle divided into quarters to show the live feeds from the four security cameras.  The red-carpeted, wooden-paneled room was empty.  It was always empty.  That elevator wasn’t convenient for any of the GoCom offices—which made it perfect for the department.  “What are we watching for?”

“It already happened.  Can you get the footage from a few minutes ago?”

“Sure.”  She tapped the keyboard.  “This is one hundred fifty seconds ago.”

“Fast-forward.”

“Okay.”

She fast-forwarded the footage, but nothing changed.

Corey growled.  “We didn’t go back far enough.”

“Fine...This is eight hundred seconds ago.”

The view showed Corey and Jill walking into the elevator.

Dizzie gawked at Corey.  “That’s a prisoner!  You’re not authorized—!”

“I know, Diz, I know.  Skip ahead a little, will you?”

She gave him a severe look, then fast-forwarded again.

“There, stop!”

Now the cameras showed Jill getting back off the elevator.

Without Corey.

Jill looked around the room and picked a hallway.

“Get that cam!”

“Getting it.”

Dizzie pulled up the security footage from that hallway in the same timeframe.

“Someone caught her,” Corey whispered to himself.  “Someone had to!”

Dizzie kept pulling up the proper camera views to follow Jill’s route.  Eventually Jill came to a room off a large lobby, surrounded by offices.  GoCom personnel could be seen chatting in the lobby, or working behind the glass walls of their workspaces.

“What’s she doing?” Corey wondered aloud.

When no one seemed to be looking, Jill crossed the room at the edge of the lobby behind a row of large potted plants.  Then she disappeared into a door near the end of the room.

“Get that camera!” barked Corey.

Dizzie grimaced at him.  “There’s no camera in the ladies’ room, Corey.”

He groaned, and dashed out of the cubicle.

“You’re welcome,” Dizzie called after him, wrinkling her nose.

FOR the first—and ideally the last—time in his life, Corey Stone burst into a women’s restroom, gun drawn.

There were only two stalls.  He saw movement in the second, and heard a moan.

He kicked the locked stall door open.  A middle-aged woman in a business suit was on the floor next to the toilet.  Her hands and feet were bound.

Corey groaned.  The bindings were the color of a prison-issued garment.  The woman was gagged with a strip of the same gray cloth.

Corey ripped off the gag.  “Where did she go?”

“Untie my hands and feet!” the woman snapped.

“Where?” he asked again.

“Through the ceiling!  Now untie me!”

He quickly removed her bindings.  “Good,” the woman said through her teeth.  “You’ve got a gun.  You can kill her.”

He was standing on the toilet lid now, ignoring the woman while he examined the panels in the ceiling.  He lifted one of them away, and pulled himself into the opening.  In the near-darkness he peered around the crawlspace.  It led off in almost every direction.

Jill Branch could be just about anywhere in the building by now.

WHEN he got off the elevator, Dizzie and Holiday were waiting for him in the lobby.  Dizzie looked tense.  Holiday looked...like Corey would expect him to look.

A moment that seemed like an hour passed.

“Just one request, sir,” Corey stuttered.

Holiday’s tone was as icy as his gray eyes.  “A bit of audacity to make a request at a time like this.”

“Let me find her.”

Holiday waited for more.

“Let me find her,” Corey repeated, “and the moment after I bring her back you’ll have my resignation.”

“I have your resignation right now.  But you’re going to find her anyway, Stone.  You’re going to find her and put her back in that cell, or you’re going to be its next occupant.”

COREY and Dizzie were back at her cubicle.

“I’ve got the layout of that crawlspace,” Dizzie announced, gesturing at one of her screens.  “It runs over pretty much the entire wing of the building, as you can see.”

Corey couldn’t see because he wasn’t looking.  At the moment he was concentrating on groaning and burying his face in his hands.  “So she’s gone, basically.”

“Not exactly.  We can watch for her to reappear.”

“Which could be never.”

“No it can’t, Cor.  Come on.  She’s got to come out some time.  And there are only so many rooms where she can do that.  I’ve got my eye on all of them.”  She gestured to the thirty or so live camera views she had pulled up on various monitors.

“Except the restrooms, obviously.”

“Right.  But we’re watching the doors to all restrooms in that part of the building.  If she walks out, we’ve got her.  But you’d better help me watch.  We don’t want to miss her.”

“Can’t you just get Sherlock to tell us when she makes an appearance?”

Dizzie shook her head.  “Sherlock isn’t allowed to make reports about what goes on in GoCom, other than in our department.  Now come on, help me watch for her!”

“Fine.”  Corey pulled his chair over and made a pretense of watching the screens.

“Hey...?”

“What?”

Dizzie scooted closer to him.  “We’ll find her, all right?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge that she’d said anything.

“Look,” she said, “so you made a mistake.”

“A mistake.”  He laughed dryly.  “I let a prisoner escape.”

“True—a prisoner you weren’t even supposed to be with at the time.”

Corey stared at her.

“Sorry, sorry!  Supposed to be helping.”

“It’s not just a mistake, it’s a disaster.”  He stared at the monitors, seeing them without seeing them.  “People like us only get so many chances, Diz.  I was fortunate to be here—to get a second chance at my life.  And now...”  He blew a tired breath out between pursed lips.