The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (45 page)

10

“LOOKS
like things were set up ahead of time,”
Dizzie’s
panicked voice went on.  “The rifle is mounted.  He’s attaching the
scope now.  Jill,
hurry!”

“MISS
Cole, you need to get off that platform
now!”
Corey insisted.

She proceeded
with her speech, not batting an eye.

JILL
hurried.  She was in the stairwell now.

“Don’t you dare
go in there alone, Jill!” Amber’s voice crackled.  “I’m almost there.”

“We don’t have
time,” Jill countered, bounding up the steps two at a time.

“IT’S
not too late,” the mayor proclaimed, “if we all do our part, to make Miss
Jann
-Birch’s dream a reality!”

A cheer rose
from the plaza.

“
Miss Cole!”
Corey yelled.

“STILL
fiddling with the scope,”
Dizzie’s
voice buzzed in
Jill’s ear.

“Almost to the
fifth floor,” Jill said breathlessly.

“You don’t have
time,” Bradley’s voice crackled tersely.

Jill burst into
the fifth floor hallway.  “What else can we do?” she asked, dashing toward
the lounge.

“Let me handle
this,” he answered.

“What do you
mean?” Amber’s voice demanded.

COREY
grit his teeth.  If the mayor wouldn’t listen to his warnings...

He really didn’t
want to go down in history as the man who tackled the mayor off the stage
during the centennial celebration speech.  But what choice did he
have?  He turned to start running toward her.

Then he glanced
across the plaza and saw what was happening at the Flynn Tower.

JILL
reached the entrance to the lounge.  She saw the man in black crouching
behind the raised garden across the room, saw him drop his hand away from the
scope and move toward the trigger.

She raised her
weapon.

A black
skycar
soared into view just outside the window, directly
in front of the mounted rifle.  The man lifted his eye from his scope and
goggled at the hovering vehicle.

Then he felt
the cool touch of Jill’s gun at the base of his neck.  His hands went up.

“Move away from
your weapon!” Jill’s distorted voice warned him.

He slowly
backed away from the mounted rifle.

“I’ve got him,”
Jill reported.

Amber rushed
into the lounge just then, her own weapon drawn.  She looked out the
window.  “Is that...?”

Jill
nodded.  She couldn’t see anything through the hovering car’s tinted
windows, but she looked toward the driver’s seat where she knew Bradley would
be sitting.  “You may have just saved the mayor’s life,” she told
him.  “Again.”

“And you may
have just saved mine,” he answered.

COREY
released a long-held breath.  He looked out at the crowd.  Night was
falling over the city. 
Anterra’s
artificial
atmosphere glowed above downtown’s infinite lights.  Everyone listened
with rapt attention to the speech.  No one noticed the
skycar
hovering against the fifth story of the Flynn Tower behind them.  No one
knew they had nearly witnessed an assassination.

From his
wheelchair just beneath the platform, Chief Riley was giving Corey an
inquisitive look.   Corey gave him a brief thumbs up.  “Why
didn’t she listen to me?” he hissed under his breath.

“Looks like her
earpiece isn’t functioning,
Cor
,”
Dizzie’s
voice crackled in his ear.

“You don’t
suppose she disabled it on purpose?” he wondered aloud.  From the start
she’d been reluctant to be in communication with the team.  They would do
a perfectly good job of protecting her without having to run anything by her
personally, she claimed.  They had insisted they may need to warn her
directly if an emergency situation arose. She finally agreed to wear the
earpiece.

Probably just to
get them off her back.

“I am not here
to tell you everything is fine and dandy,” Miss Cole was saying now.  “Nor
am I here to say there will not be difficult times ahead.  But I am here
to assure you that we will weather the storm!”

JILL
and Amber regarded the sniper.  He was a large man, muscular and
broad-shouldered, with strikingly pale eyes and paler skin.  He was on his
knees with his hands clasped behind his back, both agents’ weapons leveled at
him, yet he didn’t seem afraid of them in the least.  He looked at them
calmly, almost disinterestedly.

Through the hole
in the window they could hear the mayor’s speech echoing from the plaza: 
“Evil will rear its ugly head, but we will respond!”

Amber leaned
close to the man, about to begin the inquisition.

“I know you have
many questions,” he said in a thick accent that Jill couldn’t place. 
“Please, do not waste your breath.  I will speak to no one except your
superior.”

“Then I guess
we’d better get going,” said Jill.

They started
cuffing him.

“WHATEVER
trials we face,” Mayor Anne Marie Cole went on, “we will endure them. 
Whatever tragedies befall us, we will press onward.  Through thick and
through thin, we
will
do whatever we must to leave a better
Anterra
behind for our children and our children’s
children!”

Not an audience
member remained seated.  The standing ovation echoed for blocks around and
shook the foundations of the plaza.

It was almost
too loud for Corey to hear the shot.

Almost.

The cheers
shifted to gasps and cries as the mayor jerked backwards behind the podium.

Riley sat up
straighter in his wheelchair, a horrified look on his haggard face.

Anne Marie Cole
crumpled.

Commotion.

Corey ran toward
the platform.

“DID
you hear that?” Amber asked.

Jill had heard
it.  With the pale man in black cuffed between them they halted halfway
across the lounge and looked out at the plaza.  The roped off area around
the platform was in an uproar.  The mayor had collapsed.

Even the
handcuffed man standing between them looked startled by the sight.

“NO!”
Riley yelled, seizing Corey’s arm before he could reach the mayor’s side.

Miss Cole’s
personal bodyguard was doing the same thing—blocking the way for any security
personnel to step onto the platform.

From behind his
visor Corey gave the home planet liaison a baffled look.  “Let go!”

“You can’t go up
there,” Riley sputtered.

Corey pulled
free, inadvertently tugging Riley to the ground, and leaped onto the platform
beside the mayor’s fallen form.  A red stain blossomed on her
blouse.  “Miss Cole!”  He reached a hand toward her.

His hand passed
through her like she was a ghost. 

“Get back down
here!” Riley’s voice shouted behind him.

Corey tried to
touch her again.  Again his hand passed through her as though she were made
of air.

“She’s not
here,” Corey reported.

“Um, can you
repeat that?” said
Dizzie
.

Corey sat back
and sighed.  “The mayor was never actually here.”

“What are you
talking about?”

“A
holograph.  She’s only a holograph.”

The three
dimensional image of the sprawled, utterly motionless mayor began to flicker.

The crowd’s
alarm turned to astonishment.

Then Anne Marie
Cole disappeared from sight altogether. 

11

“MISS
Cole’s stage, including the walkway on which she entered the plaza, was an
elaborate holographic projection device,” Director Holiday explained in his
office an hour later.  “The image of the mayor taking the podium and
delivering her speech was a live three dimensional broadcast.  She
performed the actions and spoke the words exactly as we saw and heard them, and
at precisely the same time, but from a remote location.”

“I don’t suppose
Sherlock...” Corey began.

The director
shook his head.  “The equipment to pull it off was brought here from the
Home Planet.  Sherlock was unable to trace the signal’s point of
origin.  Multiple departments are examining the projection platform now,
but I’m not optimistic.”

“So she could be
anywhere,” concluded
Dizzie
.

“Why didn’t she
have protection at her actual location?” asked Amber.

“Presumably she
did, though I don’t have to tell you how much manpower was devoted to the plaza
tonight.”

“To protect a
holograph,” Bradley muttered.

“The fact that
we and her bodyguard and so many others were positioned there helped sell the
ruse,” noted Corey.

“Well
someone
wasn’t fooled,” said
Dizzie
.  “Whoever shot her
didn’t shoot a holograph.”

“Quite,” said
Holiday.  “And we know of at least one other who was aware of the mayor’s
plan.”  He looked significantly toward his office doorway.

Chief Riley had
just appeared there, slouched dejectedly in his wheelchair.  All he got in
greeting was a series of accusing looks.  No one seemed to notice the
grief and defeat written on his face.

Except for
Dizzie
.  She strode next to him and put a hand on his
shoulder.  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

He glanced up at
her gratefully.  “It’s very kind of you,” he said wearily.  “I
expected criticism, not comfort.”

Bradley opened
his mouth to say something—presumably something more along the lines of the
criticism Riley had mentioned.  Amber interrupted him, forcing her voice
to sound as sympathetic as possible.  “We know how much you must be
hurting right now, Chief Riley.”

He smiled
sadly.  “Do you?”

Holiday cleared
his throat.  “I assume you will do anything in your power to help us find
the shooter?”

“Of course.”

“You know where
the mayor really was tonight?” Corey asked.

“Certainly
not.  It wouldn’t have been safe for anyone to know that.”

“No?” said
Bradley.

“You could have
told us about your plan,” Jill said evenly.  “We could have helped.”

“I agree,” said
Corey, struggling to suppress his obvious frustration.

Riley smiled
wryly.  “The shoe’s on the other foot now, isn’t it?”

Amber didn’t
look quite as sympathetic any more.  “What are you talking about?”

“You chose to keep
me out of the loop regarding your mission yesterday.  If you’re angry,
just try to remember that I’ve only done the same thing.”

“Except for the
minor detail that we saved the mayor’s life,” interjected Holiday, “whereas
you’ve gotten her shot.”

Fire flashed in
Riley’s eyes.

“Don’t be so
hard on him, Director,”
Dizzie
pleaded.  “Can’t
you see he’s in pain?”

“The director’s
right,” Bradley countered.

“Is he?” Riley
asked.  “Try to remember why you kept your plans a secret yesterday.”

“Mayor Cole
persuaded us not to tell you,” answered Jill, “just like she apparently
persuaded you not to tell us about her plans for this evening.”

Riley
nodded.  “All of us in this room are trying to do the right thing,” he
said, voice quivering with emotion, “just as we have every step of the way so
far.  Let’s put the past behind us where it belongs and move forward,
shall we?”

Holiday’s gray
eyes gleamed icily.  At last he nodded slowly.  “No more secrets.”

“No more
secrets,” Riley repeated.

Jill
frowned.  The chief Home Planet liaison was biting his lip slightly.

“Now,” Riley
went on, “what about this sniper you’ve arrested?”

“They’re
prepping him for questioning as we speak,” said Corey.

“You have no
idea who he might be,” Holiday asked, “or what criminal faction he might
represent?”

Riley shook his
bald head.  “No more than I have any idea who the other assassins were—the
ones who successfully...”  He swallowed.

Corey grit his
teeth.  “Two separate plots to take her life on the same occasion,” he
breathed.

“Could they be
in cahoots?” Amber wondered aloud.

Dizzie
looked at her.  “Ca-
whats
?”

“Cahoots. 
Like, could they have been working together?”

Dizzie’s
eyes widened.  “You mean maybe the sniper was
a decoy?”

“Why would they
need a decoy?” asked Bradley.  “A distraction would have been
useless.  We weren’t even protecting the actual mayor.”

“The sniper
seemed as surprised as we were when the shot was fired,” Jill recalled.

Riley exhaled
slowly.

“There’s no
suggestion that this gunman has any connection with the mayor’s eventual killer
or killers,” said Holiday.  “For now, until there’s evidence of a link, we
must pursue each case separately, beginning with the sniper.”

“What?” snapped
Riley, attempting to stand from his wheelchair.  “Begin with the one who only
attempted
to kill her?  What about the people who murdered her?”

Dizzie
gently settled him back into his chair.

“How do you
suggest we go about finding them?” Holiday asked.

“Unless we find
out the mayor’s actual location,” added Corey, “we have nothing to go on,
sir.  The gunman we captured is our only lead.”

“But you said
yourself that this...this holographic projection equipment was purchased from
Earth,” Riley said.  His expression was pleading.  “Isn’t that a
lead?”

Holiday’s eyes
softened a bit.  “Certainly it is.  Our people are already on it,
Chief Riley, as are several other branches.  We will inform you the moment
they’ve uncovered anything.”

“Finding out
where the equipment came from won’t help us find out where she used it
tonight,” Bradley said to himself.

“It’s a start,”
Dizzie
said, shooting a silencing look in Bradley’s
direction.  “Now, Chief Riley, maybe you should get home and try to rest.”

Riley clenched
his jaw.  “I’m staying right here to personally observe your progress.”

“And there will
be progress,” said Holiday, “but it may be a long while.  Please, my
friend, do as Miss Mason suggests.”

Riley sighed,
sinking back into his chair.  “Very well.  My mobile will be at my
bedside.  If there is the least development—”

“Of course,” the
director promised.

They watched as
the chief liaison rolled quietly out of the office.

“Poor man,”
Dizzie
whispered when he’d gone.

“He knows more
than he’s saying,” mused Bradley.

Dizzie
glared at him.  “Next you’ll be accusing him of
pulling the trigger himself!”

“Bradley’s
right,” said Jill.

They all looked
at her.

“Are you
suggesting Riley is behind the assassination?” asked Corey.

“I’m suggesting
we
do
have a lead to find out where the mayor really was tonight.”

“He said he
didn’t know,” said Amber.  “You think he was lying?”

“I’m just saying
what Bradley said.  He’s not telling us everything.”

“Of course he
isn’t,” said Holiday.

“
Director,
”
Sherlock’s voice came from the computer on Holiday’s desk, “
you wished me to
inform you when the prisoner was ready to be questioned.”

“Thank you,
Sherlock, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Maybe Riley
should be the one being questioned,” Corey thought aloud.

Holiday smirked
slightly.  He didn’t disagree; he just said, “One thing at a time.”

THE
interrogation room was down a dark hallway off the HQ balcony.  Holiday
reached the door, paused, and took out his mobile.

“What’s up,
Director?”
Dizzie’s
voice answered his call.

“I don’t suppose
you’re in bed yet?”

“Um...no.”

“It’s rather
late, and you’ve had a long day.  Where exactly are you?”

She
hesitated.  “We’re in my cubicle.”

“We?”

“Yeah...the rest
of the team is with me.  We’re...”

“About to watch
the live feed from the interrogation room.”

“How do you
always know everything?” she burst in an unusually high pitch.

He smiled. 
“I’m happy to hear it.”

“We’re
gonna
do it whether you’re happy about it or not.”

“I know. 
We need more eyes on this situation.  It’s safer that way.”

“To be honest,
we didn’t really have your safety in mind.  We just didn’t want to wait
until morning to get the scoop.”

“Whatever your
reasons, I’m glad to be under your watch.”

“You’re actually
freaking me out a little, here, Director.  Is everything okay?”

“Perfectly. 
Just pay close attention, all right?”

“Well, yeah, of
course!”

“WHAT
was that all about?” Amber asked when
Dizzie
pocketed
her mobile.

Dizzie
faced the team soberly.  “I’m glad you’re all
still armed.”

Corey looked at
her questioningly.  “Will we need to be?”

“The director
seems to think so.”  She tapped at her central keyboard.

The camera views
from inside the interrogation room filled the main screen.  Director
Holiday was just entering.  He took a seat across from the would-be
assassin and dismissed the guards.

The cuffed man
sitting across from the director was in his prescribed prisoner attire.

Amber stepped
closer to the screen, staring.

Across the man’s
bared arms and on the top of his shaved head were tattoos that looked like
spiders’ webs.