Expectation (Ghost Targets, #2) (21 page)

He looked up and caught just the edge of her smile, which made him cock his head in curiosity. He didn't ask, though, too busy with other matters. "We've got a list of positive IDs for everyone in the store with her, right? Have you checked that against video source?" Katie shook her head, and he nodded. "Okay. We need to do that, to see if there's any other ghosts there with her." He cleared out the video playback and made a note to himself, then pulled up Ellie's personal information. "I wish we had more here." There were three tabs, all of them scant on information. He opened up the empty medical history, and Katie's eyes widened.

"Martin!" She said, then shook her head. "Hathor, connect me to Martin. Thanks." Hathor gave her nothing, and Katie sighed. "Martin, I need your help." Reed watched Katie, interested.

Martin answered her a moment later, a little breathless. "What's up?"

"Get us Ellie's medical history. It's on a private Hippocrates server, right? Just like yours?"

"Katie!" Martin sounded scandalized, and Katie just laughed.

"Reed knows, Martin. You tipped your hand at Velez's."

"
You
 tipped my hand," Martin said, then sighed. "And it probably saved our lives. Okay, yeah, I helped set up something like it for the clinic—"

Katie leaned forward. "Can you dump Ellie's records into the system?"

"I...yeah. Yeah, I can do that," Martin said. "Give me a moment."

Katie watched Reed's handheld until Martin said, "There. Done." A moment later the screen updated, with a long scroll of medical history previously obscured. "I hope there's nothing in there too revealing," Martin said, and Katie knew exactly what he meant.

"I can't see how there would be," Katie said. "But I'll take care of it if there is."

Martin laughed darkly. "Is that all?"

Katie didn't answer right away. She had the medical history open on her own handheld, scanning through it at the same time Reed was, looking for the fatigue Reed was so sure of. She spoke without looking up. "What are we looking for, Reed?"

"Find the signs of her anxiety," he said. "Figure out where it started, where it spiked, and maybe we can find a hidden call to her buyer. I just don't see...."

Katie didn't see it either. There was nothing over the weekend to reflect the exhaustion Ellie showed so clearly on the tape. A quick analysis of her breathing and heart rate patterns showed a regular sleep schedule, too, right up until yesterday morning. Reed's prediction bore out her crash, though. From the look of it, she'd been sound asleep in the hotel room ever since she'd gotten there yesterday afternoon. Katie pointed it out to Reed, and he immediately got back on the line with the police chief.

"Dora," he said. "We've got Ellie's vitals. She's in the hotel room all right, and it looks like she's asleep. If you can get your men in quickly—"

"Reed," Katie said, but he waved her away. She caught his arm with a surprising strength, and he turned to her. Her eyes blazed. "Reed," she hissed. "She's not asleep."

"What?"

The car slammed to a stop, and Katie looked up in surprise to see through the windshield the same scene she'd gotten from Hart's dash cam. They were there. Katie shook her head. "She's not asleep, Reed. She's in a coma."

He frowned, and she showed him her handheld. Just after she'd shown up yesterday, seconds after she'd been caught on camera stumbling from her car to the motel room door, Ellie's vitals had spiked. Six seconds later, door closed behind her, she'd fallen back into regular rhythms, and Hippocrates had marked the anomaly a false alarm.

It showed in four short lines on Ellie's medical history, but Katie knew how to interpret it because she'd seen it before. Reed recognized it, too. "What...how?" he said. "What does this mean?"

Katie froze at the question. Her mind raced, though, furiously putting the pieces together, rearranging them, trying them in other ways. For a moment she couldn't answer him, then Martin spoke in her ear. "What's happening?"

Something about his voice made it fall into place. In a flash she understood, and with that came a deep pit of fear in her stomach. She didn't let it show in her eyes.

"What it means," she said to Reed, perfectly cool, "is that you need to get out of the car."

He frowned. "I don't understand."

"And I don't have time to explain," Katie said, leaning across him to push his door open. Still close, noses almost touching, she breathed, "Please, Reed. Just trust me."

She could see in his eyes how much he disliked it. His jaw clenched. Outside, the lieutenant's car crunched to a stop on the asphalt beside them. At the same time Hart barked the order. "Go! Go! Go!"

"Katie..." Reed said quietly, pleading with her.

"Go," she said. "They're going to need you to sort this out."

He searched her eyes for an explanation, and shook his head when he didn't find one. "Katie—"

"Trust me," she said earnestly, and he must have felt the force of her urgency, because he finally relented. He slipped away from her and stepped out of the car, still holding Katie's eyes.

"I don't know what you think is going on—" he said, but she didn't hear the rest of his speech. She grabbed the door handle and slammed it closed, then engaged the locks.

"Driver," she said sharply, "take me to the Barnes house. It's urgent. Thanks."

She saw the surprised look on Reed's face, in the instant before the car screamed out of the parking lot and back into the traffic heading east. Hart and Drake both converged on him, apparently still feuding, but Katie knew that wouldn't distract him for long.

"Are you still there, Martin?"

"I'm here, Katie," he said, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He asked again, "What's happening?"

"It wasn't Ellie," she said. "Stop searching for her buyer. We have more pressing—"

"I'm done," he said simply, cutting her off.

She blinked. "Huh?"

"I found her buyers," he said. "They weren't nearly as careful as Miss Cohn. I just handed the necessary information off to the FBI."

"Wow," Katie said. "That's great, Martin!" It took her a moment to remember what she was doing, then a look like panic came across her face. "Martin! Can you lock out this car?"

"What?"

"I need you to take over this car
right now
! If Reed or Hart thinks to shut it down, Gevia's done."

He sounded doubtful. "I don't understand—"

"Do it!" Katie shouted. "I'll explain later." She checked the driver monitor, which said she had eight minutes to the destination at top speed. She could feel the car barreling along, weaving through traffic that created precision lanes for the emergency vehicle as it pushed toward a hundred and twenty miles per hour. She glanced out the window, and it still seemed too slow. She spat out a string of dark curses, then pulled up Theresa's personal details on her handheld.

Martin interrupted her. "Okay," he said. "I think that did it. I just restricted Hart's access on this vehicle, and cleared Reed out of it. You're still in control." He hesitated for just a second, then said with a little too much unconcern, "Why are you going to Eric's place?"

"Hold on a second, Martin," she said. "Hathor, connect me to Theresa Barnes, high priority. Thanks." She waited through two rings and left a quick message, then tried again. Still nothing. Katie pounded a fist against the window. "Why isn't she answering?"

"She doesn't have her headset," Martin said.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at her location history," Martin said. "It stopped a while back. That means she doesn't have her headset or handheld—"

"Or her watch," Katie said. "Hathor, show me HaRRE. Thanks." Still several minutes away from the house, she pulled it up on her handheld and started searching. She checked throughout it, praying she was worrying over nothing, but the virtual house was completely empty.

"What time does the location history end?" she asked, too busy to check it herself.

Martin answered immediately, "Twenty minutes ago, give or take." Katie suspected he was doing the same thing she was.

She skipped the recreation backward twenty minutes and still found the house empty, but in the living room she found the front door standing open. She zipped out onto the porch and found Theresa there. She was dressed comfortably, light pants and a cotton shirt like she might have worn on a casual shopping trip. While Katie watched she closed and locked the door, humming some tune to herself, then turned back toward the front walk. Something caught her eye, and a smile blossomed across her face. "Oh, hi!" she said warmly. "If I'd known you were coming, I'd have baked a pie."

Katie checked, but the walk was empty, all the way to the curb. She knew what to expect, though. She watched Theresa's smile fade, then a moment later Meg Ginney materialized on the porch step within reach of Eric's wife. She had no smile for the older woman. Instead, she looked worried, hands clasped behind her back. "Mrs. Barnes," she said, "we have to go to the clinic right away."

"What's the matter?" Theresa said, concerned now.

"It's...it's Eric," Meg said, shifting nervously. She bounced on her toes. "I think something's wrong."

"Oh, nonsense," Theresa said with a relieved smile. "Eric is fine. I have a very expensive service monitoring his condition twenty-four, seven."

"Please, Mrs. Barnes," Meg said. "It's important."

Theresa shook her head, and her tone became maternal, almost condescending. "I'm sorry, Meg, I just don't have time right now." She took a step closer to the other woman, heading for the car that had just pulled up to the curb. "I do wish you'd called—"

"No!" Meg shouted, and shoved the older woman back, hard. Theresa lost her footing and went down, landing on her backside with a cry of pain. Meg gave a sob, too, which pulled Katie's worried gaze back to her.

The girl had a gun, comically oversized in her tiny hands, but the look on her face was dead serious. "Get up!" she screamed. "Get up! You're coming with me."

Theresa's calm was shattered. "Meg, Meg, what are you doing?" Her face crumpled.

"Stop it! Shut up!" Meg shouted. She made a grab for Theresa's arm but missed. She took a heavy step forward and the older woman cowered. Then Meg bent and grabbed her upper arm in a crushing grip, so she could pull the woman to her feet. She stepped back quickly, the gun still trained on Theresa. She snapped, "Stop crying! Take...take off your watch. Leave it here. The other stuff, too." When Theresa didn't respond, Meg battedthe headset off her ear. Then she stepped forward and ground it underfoot. The images of the women began to stutter, but the audio was still clear.

"You'd better listen to me," Meg said, trying to regain control of herself. Her voice was more level, but it had a manic edge to it. "I'm not messing around here. Do you believe me?" Theresa only whispered, and Meg said it louder. "Do you believe me?" She didn't wait for an answer this time, but pointed the gun at what must have been the courtesy recorder on the porch and fired it with a thundering boom. With the video source gone, the avatars of the two women froze instantly, puppets without masters.

A recorder somewhere in the house was still getting audio, though. Katie heard Theresa's scream at the gunshot, and then Meg's murderous threats. Theresa must have believed her by then, because Meg fell silent a moment later, and Theresa's wail began to dwindle. Then the sound was gone, and the motionless models winked out of existence, leaving Katie alone on the porch.

She realized she'd been holding her breath, and gasped for air. "Did you see that?" Her voice came out a scream, but she couldn't control it. "Martin, did you see that?" She glanced at the time in HaRRE and up at the clock on the driver's monitor. "Driver, get me to the De Grey Clinic! Now!"

Martin said in wonder, "Where did she get a gun?"

"I don't know," Katie said, drawing her own gun and checking the clip. "But she's not afraid to use it. She didn't even flinch." Katie spotted the green light at the top of her pistol grip and she cursed. "I've got an identity lock on mine, Martin."

"Of course," Martin said. Then, "Oh."

Katie nodded. "I'm going to be unarmed as soon as I step onto the clinic grounds."

"Well, maybe she won't know," Martin said hopefully.

"Thinking like that is a good way to get shot," Katie said. She holstered her gun and checked the driver's monitor again. "Can you do something about it?"

"No." He sounded frustrated. "I had no part in that program."

"What about the clinic's security?" she said. "You set that up. Just turn it off."

"No, it's...I didn't...no." He laughed. "I didn't build the whole system, and most of it isn't stuff I can access remotely. The identity stuff specifically is all run locally."

"But you got the audio from my headset—"

"That's different," he said. "It's injected blind into the archive. Your gun requires a strong active ID, but the clinic is set up to hide IDs. Even if it had enough recorders to get the necessary overlapping coverage—which it doesn't—there are active isolation systems all over the campus. I can't just turn those off."

Katie sighed. "Well, maybe she won't know."

"Why are you going in at all?" he said. "Why did we lock out Reed and the local police? Get some backup—"

"For one," Katie said, "Theresa doesn't have the time." She fell back into her seat and let her eyes slip closed. "For another, Meg knows the secret."

"It's starting to seem like everyone knows the secret," Martin grumbled.

"Fewer and fewer," Katie said under her breath. She peeked at the monitor again, then took a slow, measured breath. "I need you to do something about those blind injections."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm two miles out, and I don't cherish the idea of charging in there alone. Find a way to activate my headset—"

"I can do that," he said. "It's an ugly workaround, but I made it happen before."

"Just be sure you can patch me through to Reed, too. But...I don't know, on a delay. Or with your hand on the button, anyway." She sighed. "Something."