The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (17 page)

20

IT
was late afternoon when Amber, Dizzie, and Bradley walked into the coffee shop
near the Aurora Bridge.  Corey was already there waiting for them at a
booth in the corner.

“You look as
happy as a kid on the first day of school,” Dizzie observed unsympathetically.

“Have a seat,”
Corey said somberly.

He’d invited the
three of them to join him here for some relaxation on their day off. 
Apparently that had only been a ruse; there were obviously deeper purposes for
this get-together.

“Is Jill coming?”
asked Amber.

Corey ignored
her.  He launched into what he had to say without giving them time to
order drinks.  “The department has been compromised.”

That got their
attention.  They waited for him to elaborate.

“I invited you
all here so we could talk somewhere privately.  I can’t let Sherlock hear
what I’m about to tell you.  We don’t know who has access to Sherlock
right now.  I started to suspect something the night I brought Amber and
Jill to the cannery entrance.”

“Someone was
watching us,” Amber remembered.

“We tried to
catch him,” Corey reminded her.  “Jill insisted she go after him directly,
while you and I doubled back to trap him.”

Amber looked
puzzled.  “You’re saying Jill
let
him get away?”

“She knew who he
was?” asked Bradley.

Dizzie squirmed
in her seat, saying nothing.

“I can’t prove
it,” admitted Corey, “but it’s not illogical to assume.  I didn’t think
anything of it at the time.  But that spy isn’t the only person who’s
managed to avoid us lately.”

“Mr. Love’s
client last night,” said Bradley.

“Exactly. 
And it was the same in that case.   Who was the one who actually
encountered the client?”

“Jill,” Amber
whispered.

Dizzie squirmed
even more.

“Remember,” said
Corey, “Jill had chased him one level below us at the parking garage.  We
heard them talking.  By the time we got there, he was gone.”

“You think she
let him get away too?” asked Amber skeptically.  “Why would she want to do
that?”

“Because she’s
working with someone on the outside—someone who wants to know the department’s
secrets.”

Even Bradley, whose
low opinion of Jill was no secret, still seemed unconvinced.  “She did get
shot, remember?”

“What better way
to appear innocent?”

“So,” Amber said
skeptically, “she sees this guy, figures out he’s working for the same people
she’s working for, says, ‘Hey, shoot me to make it look like I tried to catch
you and you escaped.’”

“Something like
that,” said Corey.

“We did hear them
talking to each other before the shot,” put in Bradley.

“We couldn’t hear
what they said,” insisted Amber.

“Dizzie,” asked
Corey, “could
you
hear what they were saying?”

Slowly, Dizzie
shook her head.  “I...didn’t even know they talked to each other.”

“You see the
problem, don’t you?” Corey asked them.  “Dizzie was running com on the
mission.  The only way she wouldn’t hear them is if Jill purposely
disconnected her microphone.”

“Unless her
microphone just malfunctioned, or something,” said Amber.

“Why do you keep
defending her?” said Bradley.  “Corey’s right.  These are suspicious
circumstances.  It’s all good that you like Jill, but you can’t let
personal feelings get in the way of something like this.”

“Personal
feelings!” burst Amber, jumping to her feet.

The other
clientele of the coffee shop glanced awkwardly in her direction.

She took a deep
breath and sat back down, but she was obviously still steamed.  “Don’t
lecture me about emotions getting in the way of clear thinking,” she whispered
fiercely at Bradley.  “We know all too well how you feel about half-bloods
like Jill!  You’ve wanted her out of the department since the moment you
set eyes on her, regardless of whether she’s guilty of anything.”

Bradley looked
sourly away.

“She’s right,”
said Corey.

Bradley shot an
accusing look at Corey.  “Hey, I’m on your side, here!”

“My side,” Corey
said firmly, “is not just to get rid of Jill.  My side is to find the
truth.  Keep your prejudices out of this.”

“Speaking of
prejudices,” retorted Bradley, “we all know you’ve had it in for Jill
yourself!  Don’t act like we don’t know the history between you two.”

“It’s true,” said
Amber.  “Not to bring up bad memories, Corey, but you may have some
emotional bias here, too.  We need evidence, not speculation.”

“You’re
right.  And I have evidence.”

“What evidence?”
Dizzie asked nervously.

Corey took a
small black box out of his coat pocket.  “This is an old audiocassette
recorder,” he said.  “I borrowed it from Dino’s lab.  Sherlock can’t
hear what’s recorded on it.  Since I was suspicious, I followed Jill when
she went out this morning.  She went to a public phone booth.  Listen
for yourselves.”

He pressed play,
and the scratchy audio began to emerge from the speaker.

“
It’s
me...It’s not easy to get away, okay?  I basically had to get shot to come
here, as you probably heard...You could say that.  But I’m not telling you
over the phone...Still...Harvest hotel on the west rim, tonight, 11 p.m., suite
607...Not this one.  Believe me...See you tonight
.”

Corey stopped the
tape.

No one said
anything for a long moment.

“But...but if she
was talking at a public phone booth,” Amber said after a minute, “Sherlock
should have heard.”

“I checked
Sherlock’s records,” said Corey.  “He wasn’t aware of this
conversation.  The phone booth Jill used had a sign on it that said it was
out of order.  Apparently it’s part of a phone network used by the
criminal underground.”

Now even Amber
looked convinced.  “This phone conversation...it may not be what it
seems,” she said, but she seemed doubtful even of herself.  “We don’t know
what Jill was talking about, or who she was talking to.”

“You’re right,
technically,” said Corey.  “But it’s enough evidence to have me worried.”

“So what do we
do?” asked Dizzie, who still looked very uncomfortable.

“We have the
advantage,” said Bradley.  “We know where this meeting is taking
place.  We go there ahead of time, set up surveillance.”

Corey shook his
head.  “I scoped out this hotel this morning.  It’s in an abandoned
neighborhood.  No one’s been in those upper story suites for ages. 
The dust is so thick it’s like snow.  If we work on the scene ahead of
time, they’ll know for sure we’ve been there.”

“So we follow
her,” said Dizzie, “and catch them red-handed.”

“Right,” said
Corey.

“Shouldn’t we
tell the director about this?” Amber said through a frown.

“We can’t,” said
Corey, “or Sherlock will know.  And if Sherlock knows what we’re up to,
Jill will know too.  Whoever she’s working for has access to Sherlock just
like the rest of us.”

“We could find a
way to tell him without Sherlock overhearing, couldn’t we?” said Bradley.

“We can’t take
that chance.  This is up to us.”

“So that’s why
she joined the department in the first place,” Amber said quietly.  “She’s
selling secrets.”

“Apparently,”
said Corey.  “Think about it:  If the Anterran criminal underground
has access to Sherlock, the department is crippled.  And who knows how
they could use him!”

“Then tonight
can’t get here soon enough,” said Bradley.

IN
fact, tonight took quite a while to get there.

The waiting
seemed almost unbearable.  Amber avoided Jill for the rest of the
day.  So did Corey.  Bradley always avoided Jill, so that was nothing
new.

Only Dizzie
seemed not to shun Jill’s company.  She still went next door to visit her
and ask her about her shoulder, and sat with her in the
caf
for dinner.

Then it was
time.  Finally.

They met in the
garage at 10 p.m.  They were in full uniform.  Amber’s mask was newly
enameled with the figure of the mythical bird which matched her last name.

“Don’t you think
Sherlock is wondering what we’re up to?” asked Bradley.  “He’s got to
notice that we’re heading out on a mission even though there’s no mission
scheduled.”

“It doesn’t
matter,” said Corey, his voice tinny and electronic behind his mask. 
“Jill has already left HQ.  She has no way to see what we’re doing now,
whether Sherlock is suspicious or not.  You there, Dizzie?”

“Here,” Dizzie’s
voice came in their earpieces.  “The map to the hotel should be on your
screen in a second.”

It was a long,
silent drive.

THE
Harvest Hotel was in one of the abandoned neighborhoods near the west
rim.  The only lights for several blocks in any direction were the street
lamps.  Corey parked in an alley behind a trash bin two blocks away.

The streets were
eerily silent, like a ghost town.  The sounds and lights of the inhabited regions
of the city seemed strangely distant.

They went through
the grimy glass doors of the hotel and switched on low flashlight beams when
they got into the empty lobby.  Graffiti, dirt, and broken glass were
everywhere.  The furniture was torn and dusty.

They ducked
behind a half-wall across the lobby.  From here they had a full view of
the room and the front doors.  It was 10:26 p.m.

They waited.

AT
seven minutes before 11 p.m., Jill parked her skybike in an alley a half mile
from the Harvest Hotel.  Near one end of the alley was the rear entrance
to the Ace of Hearts Pawn Shop, which closed daily at 5 p.m.

She couldn’t
remember the last time a lock had been easier to pick.

Jill waded
through the shop’s claustrophobic displays until she came to a storage
room.  Behind rows of metal shelves, a corner of the cement floor had been
cleared of clutter.  In the corner stood an old cabinet.  On the
cabinet sat an old television—really old, with a bubbling-out gray screen and
round dials protruding from wooden panels on one side.  On top of the old
television sat an old video camera.  Its lens stared at Jill like a
Cyclops’ eye.

The gray screen
flickered to life.  She saw the silhouette of a man.  Behind him were
the shelves and cabinet doors of what was apparently a small office.

“Finally,” the
man’s voice grated through the old television speakers, “we meet face to face,
Jillian Branch.”

IT
was
11:03.  No sign of Jill yet.  No sign of anyone or anything at all in
the littered lobby of the Harvest Hotel.

Amber squirmed
impatiently.  “I think we’re in the wrong place.  Could we be in the
wrong place?”

“We’re not in the
wrong place,” said Corey.  “Just wait.”

“You’re in the
wrong place,” Dizzie’s voice came suddenly in their earpieces.

“What?” said
Bradley.

Dizzie heaved a
sigh.  “I wanted to tell you before.  Believe me!  Director
Holiday wouldn’t let me.”

“What are you
talking about?” Corey demanded.

“Get to your
car.  I’m uploading new directions onto your screen.  And hurry, will
you?”

“THIS
does
not
count as meeting face to face,” Jill said to the camera and
television.  “Number one, I can’t even see your face.  Number two,
even if I could, you’re still just on TV.”

“You don’t sound
pleased to finally meet me,” the silhouette on the screen said with mock sorrow. 
“Nevertheless, for my part I am pleased to finally meet you.”

“Oh, and number
three, I doubt I’m even hearing your actual undistorted voice.  I still
don’t think we can say we’ve officially met.”

“Well, perhaps
not, then.  We will save that for another occasion.”

“That occasion
was supposed to be right now.  You were supposed to be here in person.
 What’s the deal?”

“The ‘deal’ is
simply that I could not risk allowing you to really see and hear me at this
point.  In fact, I cannot allow you to even give me a report of your
findings.  You have been compromised, you see.”

“What are you
talking about?”

“Your friends in
the department have been following you, Jillian.  We dare not speak of
anything important at all.”

“If you think I’ve
been tailed here, you should have cancelled our meeting altogether.  Why
go to the trouble to set up this TV and camera?”

“To warn you,
Jillian.  To help you understand that you are not being careful
enough.  And by the way, I do not
think
you have been tailed. 
I know it.”

“Look, I’m aware
that department employees have been spying on me.”

“Oh?  You
don’t sound bothered in the least.”

“Someone
overheard our first phone conversation this morning.  Why do you think I
changed the meeting place?  They still think we’re meeting at the Harvest
Hotel.”

“I suppose you
are referring to your young teammates,” said the man on the television.
 “I, actually, am not.”

Jill
paused.  “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,
Jillian, that there are far more hounds on your tail than you ever knew.”

“What?”

“Hello, Jillian,”
a familiar voice came from behind her.

“Goodbye,
Jillian,” the distorted voice came from the TV.  The screen went blank.

Jill turned and
faced Director Holiday.  His smirk was more triumphant than she’d ever
seen.

21

“HOW
did you know?” asked Jill.

“A moment,” said
Holiday.  “Let’s wait until the others arrive.”

“The others?”

As if on cue,
Corey, Amber, and Bradley walked into the storage room.  Corey’s helmet
was off.  If looks could kill, it would have been an instantaneous and
painless death for Jill.

“I don’t think,”
said the director, “that
we
are the ones who owe an explanation.”

Jill looked at
the cement floor at her feet.

“Tell us about
it,” said Amber.  Her expression couldn’t decide whether to be hurt or
enraged.

“Spare no
details,” said Bradley, who looked more pleased than anything else.  But
Jill wouldn’t know that.  She was still looking down.

During the long
explanation that followed, she didn’t glance up even once.

HAD
it only been two weeks ago?  It seemed more like a lifetime...

Jill had nabbed
the info from the Tanaka Brothers’ Gallery.  She parked on the street a
block away from the tall, round building, and walked toward it.  Behind
one of those glowing windows on the twenty-third floor, the one called Sketch
was waiting for her.

She paused half a
block away from the high rise.

The thought had
been pushing its way further and further to the front of her mind.

Maybe she should
have accepted Holiday’s offer.

In the notepad in
her backpack was the list.  She’d stolen it from people she didn’t
know.  She was bringing it to a man she didn’t know, who wanted it for
reasons she didn’t know.

She’d called
Holiday’s offer ridiculous.  And it was.

More
ridiculous than being a pawn for criminals who couldn’t care less whether you
live or die once they’ve done with you?

It was a long
time before Jill started walking again.  And when she did, it was away
from the high rise.  She got back on her skybike and headed for home.

Someone was
waiting for her in her living room.  Beneath his hood she could make out
handsome Korean features.  He didn’t greet her, didn’t even get up from
her couch.  He just said, “Don’t be alarmed.”

It was about two
seconds two late for that.  But suppressing emotions was something Jill
was good at.  She set her backpack on the table and went to the fridge to
grab a bottle of water.  “Drink?” she asked.  “Or did you help
yourself, as long as you’d broken into my place?”

“I think you know
why I’m here.”

“Sketch sent
you.”

“You bailed out
on the job.”

“I got spooked,”
she lied.  “Someone was watching me.  I didn’t want to blow our
cover.”

“
We
were
watching you.”

“And you came
back here when you saw I was leaving?  You must have put the pedal to the
metal.  You beat me here, and I’m not exactly a slow driver.”

“I’m here to make
you another offer.”

“I already have
another offer, thanks.”

“We know. 
That’s why I’m here.”

Jill regarded him
thoughtfully.  “Go on.”

The young Korean
pulled back his hood.  “You’ve been in contact with a government
department—a department no one is supposed to know exists.”

“Well.  You
have your connections, don’t you?”

“We do.  But
we could use another.”

“What are you
saying?”

“Our source
inside the department has not been as helpful as we had hoped.  We would
like another inside man.”

“Or inside
woman,” Jill guessed.

He nodded. 
“Accept the department’s offer.  Join them.  Learn all you can about
them.  Report back to us.”

“Why?”

He smiled. 
“Simple.  We’re taking down the department.”

“So I’d be a
double agent.  Sounds dangerous!” she whispered in phony amusement,
flopping down on the other end of the couch.  “I suppose you’d be offering
me quite a bit for the job.”

“That’s
correct.  The more you tell us, the greater your compensation will be.”

“Okay.  I’m
in.”

The guy looked at
her skeptically.  “Just like that, you agree?”

“I agree to give
it a shot.”

“A shot?”

“Right.  I
mean, yeah, the department recruited me.  But I doubt their offer still
stands.  I don’t know if you heard, but I kind of snubbed them by breaking
out of jail and everything.”

“But you will try
to convince them that you will join them?”

“Sure.  It
probably won’t work.  If it does, I’ll get back to you.  By the way,
how
do
I get back to you?”

That’s when the
guy told her about the “Out of order” public phone at the mall.  She
memorized the number to call to reach Sketch.  Jill told the guy she
figured that was all they needed to talk about at the moment; in other words,
time for him to leave.  He did.

Later that night,
Jill headed out to a classy hotel near the west rim—not far from the Harvest,
in fact.  Off the lobby was a row of empty payphone cubicles.  She
took out a screwdriver, opened the inner workings of one of the phones, and
made some personal modifications including the addition of a device she’d
brought along.  Then she dialed.

A few seconds of
canned music played on the other end of the line.  Then:

“Anterran
Governmental Complex.  How may I direct your call?”

By the end of the
conversation, Holiday had told her:  “Take it or leave it, Jillian. 
If you’d like us to extend our offer one last time, demonstrate your worth one
last time.  It’s only reasonable.”

It was.  And
she did.

AMBER
ran a hand through her blonde hair and sighed.  “That’s why you
joined.  You’re Sketch’s spy.”

Corey still had
that same cold look.  “Mr. Love’s client,” he said.  “It was the same
guy who recruited you for Sketch, wasn’t it?”

Jill smiled
wryly.  “I figured you might have caught on to that.”

THAT
had only been a day ago.

Jill had waited
on her skybike, as instructed, behind a building fifty yards from the office
park’s parking garage.  She was the safety net of the mission.

It didn’t take
long for her presence to be required.

She’d gunned into
the air along one side of the garage, seeing the hooded guy running across the
empty parking spaces of the third level.  She angled her bike over the
barrier at the edge of the garage and went after him.  Concrete columns
whipped by her on both sides.

She was closing
in.

He knew she was
closing in.  He got to the end of the level and heaved himself over the
edge...

He caught the
barrier at the rim of level two and swung himself back into the garage.

It was only a
temporary escape.  A moment later Jill had swooped down to level two,
right in front of the hooded guy.  She parked, leaped off her bike,
leveled her gun at him.

That’s when
things got interesting.

She switched off
the microphone in her helmet.  “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

The same Korean
face she’d seen at her apartment two weeks earlier was smiling out at her from
beneath the hood.  “The mask will do you no good,” he said.  “I know
who you are...Jillian Branch.  I bring greetings from Sketch.”

She lowered her
weapon and tugged off her helmet.  “What are you doing here?” she
repeated.

“Meeting Mr.
Love—or so I planned.”

“Don’t give me
that.  I know you have another source inside the department.  You
knew we had Love.  You knew he’d eventually give you away.  You knew
there would be a mission tonight, and you knew I’d be on it.”

“Perhaps I
did.  Perhaps I’ve been sent to remind you to hold up your end of the
deal.”

“We haven’t made
a deal yet.  You were supposed to wait for me to make contact.”

“We’ve waited
quite a while.  Sketch is getting impatient.”

“Give me some
time.”

“We’ll give you a
little.  Meanwhile, it’s time for me to be getting back.  Your
friends will be arriving any moment.  But of course, we can’t let them
know we work together!”  The hooded guy drew his own gun.  “We’ll
make it look like I escaped, what do you say?”  He aimed at her
shoulder.  “Don’t worry; I hear the armor in these uniforms is very
strong.”

The shot’s impact
knocked her over.

When Corey, Amber
and Bradley got there, the skybike was roaring away.  Jill wasn’t on
it.  Jill was alone in a heap on the cold cement floor.

THE
storage room of the Ace of Hearts was silent for several long moments.

“You let him get
away on purpose,” breathed Amber.

“You nailed it,
Corey,” said Bradley.

“What about when
Corey showed us the fish cannery exit?” Amber said at length.  “The guy we
saw spying...was that him too?”

“Maybe,” said
Jill.  “I never saw him.  He got away fair and square that time.”

“This is all
really interesting,” said Bradley, “but could we talk about it later? 
Like back at HQ, with Jill in handcuffs?”

“A rather good
idea,” said Holiday.  He took a set of cuffs from a pocket inside his
coat, and handed them to Corey.  “Would you mind?” he asked.

Slowly, solemnly,
Corey took the cuffs.

“Why?” Amber
asked Jill weakly.  “Why’d you do it?”

Jill didn’t
answer.

“What would you
expect from a half-blood?” Bradley muttered.

Corey’s punch
came so quickly that no one knew it had happened until Bradley was sprawling
into a storage shelf.  The impact knocked several tacky figurines onto the
floor.  Bradley ended up on his seat among the broken pieces.  There
was shock written in his eyes as he rubbed his face and looked up at Corey.

But Corey wasn’t
looking at him anymore.  Corey was staring with questioning eyes at
Jill.  Then he cuffed her hands behind her back.

“See you at HQ,”
Holiday said, expressionless, and left the room.

Corey and Amber
escorted Jill out.  Bradley stumbled two paces behind them.

No one seemed to
notice that the little red light on the video camera over the television was
still on.

A
minute later Jill was in the backseat between Amber and Bradley.  Corey
had just started the car when Holiday’s voice came over the car’s com:

“Desiree, did you
get it?”

“Sure, I got it!”
Dizzie reported.

“Got what?” asked
Corey.

Amber noticed
Jill’s face.  “Hey, what are you smiling about?”

“There’s actually
just a little more to my story,” said Jill.