Hot Contract (12 page)

The car bounced down into a rut and jumped
out again, rattling up the switchbacks. A bright yellow sign he
hadn’t noticed before warned visitors that the Project was a
restricted zone and all movement through it was recorded, followed
by various warnings about hydrogen sulfide blowouts and rare
mineral allergies.

“It’s a grid,” said Jen, pointing to a series
of up-thrust cliffs against the distant horizon. “That escarpment
there forms the northern boundary of the Southwestern Rift Zone.
The Project has permission to drill there,” she pointed again,
twisting around in her seat. “And there. The administrative offices
are at the upper end because this is a high lava hazard zone, and
features we built into the wellheads can’t be used to preserve
people.” She grinned. “We tend to combust.”

Keegan shook his head. “Lava hazard
zone?”

“It’s not as scary as it sounds. As volcanoes
go, this is a sweetheart. Even with a flow, we’d still have time to
shut down and evacuate.”

A dump truck rattled by, headed in the
opposite direction.

“It’s like a pancake,” said Keegan. “There’s
no way to get in close without being seen.”

“It was designed that way.” Jen sank down in
her seat, rubbing at her eyes. “Our access roads run right through
the park, we get lots of tourists.”

Keegan glanced at her. “You’re scared.”

She nodded. “What if they’re waiting for
me?”

“I doubt they have the manpower. It’d be
easier to wait until you resurface. They lost us after the party,
but they’ve got to know you’ll go back to the Project.”

Corlis kicked the back of his seat. “Let us
out here, we'll go in around the cameras.”

Fallon looked like the ass end of Hell, eyes
burning in his head. Whatever kind of rest he’d gotten had come
back to bite him, and he moved like someone with a bad case of wire
control. He threw the door open and got out.

“They don’t look happy,” said Jen.

“I don’t think they’ll ever be happy,” said
Keegan. He waited until his sister caught up with Fallon. “C’mon,
Jen, show me where to park this thing.”

The closer they got to the Project, the
bigger it loomed. No wonder the Aina were worried. He didn’t
remember it being so damned big. The Pele Project was no one’s
definition of short term.

Carved black lava walls and blackened steel
girders. He didn’t need the small plaque screwed into the welcome
sign to know the project was backed by Jen's family.

“Your daddy is a contributor?”

Jen nodded. “The linkage is the only thing we
agree on.” She pointed to a small road running around the side of
the Project. “Turn in there.”

The Project slid by off to the left, more
utilitarian and not so fancy away from the front. The parking lot
was in the process of being built and it was an odd patchwork of
finished spaces and dirt fill backed by a loading bay.

“We both believe in cheap power,” said Jen.
“And before you ask, he didn’t build the Pele Project as my toy.
It’s one hundred percent real, and I got the job without help. The
people at the Project know I’m a Stalling, but there are so many of
us. I could be any one of a hundred minor connections. There's my
space,” she said, pointing to a stall bordered by a construction
dumpster and a concrete island.

Dr. J. Stalling. Keegan stopped the car and
got out.

Jen threw her door open and rubbed the hem of
a pink ruffle over the dusty green sign. For an incandescent second
she looked proud and happy, lit from within like someone had
switched on a floodlight. “Mac unscrewed it the day I started
working here and posed me up against my office door. I felt like
such a geek.”

“He was proud of you,” said Keegan.

She met his eyes. “Yes,” she said, starting
across the parking lot. “He’s nice.”

They walked up a ramp into the garage,
through a maze of tubing and pallets loaded with things Keegan
figured would work better on the moon. It was a new world, all
shiny and heatproof. No one came running to warn them away.
Apparently the only people taking Terri’s death seriously were
Jen’s father and the terrorists out to kill her.

“Can you get us into Terri’s office?” he
asked.

The building Jen called the rear annex wasn’t
finished. The atrium was still in the original packaging, and the
railings that bracketed the future walkways were orange safety
mesh. He looked up to where a handful of occupied offices spread
across the upper levels.

Jen nodded. “None of the security measures
are working yet. No one thought unauthorized access would be a
problem.” She gestured him down a long hallway. “Hope you’re up for
a climb because the elevators don’t work either.”

In real-life Terri must have been one hell of
a woman. Keegan pushed the door to her suite open with the feeling
of stepping into a personality.

Everything from the sign on the door, bright
orange with rainbow colored enamel, to the lurid shag carpet said
Terri had been a woman who liked what she liked and could care less
if you liked it too.

He sneezed.

“New car smell,” said Jen, pushing in behind
him and wobbling only slightly.

She looked green around the eyes and white
around the mouth, but she didn’t throw up. Whatever mind-mojo she’d
used to conquer her phobia worked with the door closed.

“How long was she in here?”

“A week. We’re all scheduled to move, but she
couldn’t wait. She wanted this suite and that view.”

Keegan looked at a series of pictures impaled
on the wall with what seemed to be long steel chisels. Jen was in a
couple of them, dressed in a yellow shirt with a bright red
safety-vest. Deacon was in the biggest, carefully blown up and in a
real frame. Jen’s mind-mojo must have spilled over on him too,
because the laughing happy guy in the frame looked nothing like the
sour-ass CIA agent Keegan remembered from his days at SOSCOM.

He did a quick walk-thru and returned for
Jen. “See if you can find anything.”

Jen nodded. “What are we looking for?”

Keegan opened a file cabinet and dumped the
contents out. The stack of folders hadn’t even been opened. A
handful of tabs were paper-clipped to a plastic pouch filled with
different colored markers. There wasn’t a single piece of loose
paper anywhere.

“Honey, I have no clue, but I hope I’ll know
when I see it.”

Jen up-ended a trash can. A packet of silica
gel and a solitary candy wrapper fell out. “I hate them,” she said
quietly. “She was the best. She had so much potential and now it’s
gone, like she was nothing. Except for me and Deacon, no one even
cares.”

She threw the trashcan down. It hit the
computer desk and knocked the mouse off. The screen whispered to
life.

Jen grabbed the mouse. “There’s a program
running. She must have been working when the Aina killed her.”

Keegan sat in the chair. From this angle, he
had a clear view of the web-cam aimed at his face. “It's a set-up
wizard.”

Jen leaned in over his shoulder. “The
Department of Energy is conducting an ESI. An environmental impact
study,” she explained. “Terri was scheduled to video-conference
with Washington later this week, but she’d never used a webcam
before. I remember…she told me she needed to practice.”

Keegan brought up the last file. “It
auto-saved when the computer went to sleep.”

“...geochemical models of the middle zone,
southwest rift show striking similarities in comparison to—what are
you doing here?” Terri asked, startling them both. “I thought we’d
agreed to keep it away from the Project. Get out of my office! You
know I can’t be seen with any of you.”

“...outside,” said a voice.

“We’re going to hurt a lot of people. I’m
having second thoughts.”

“You can’t have second thoughts,” said a
female voice.

Terry said, “We can discuss it outside.”

The file kept running, focused on the chair.
There was a faint murmur of sound, off to the side, and a sudden,
violent scream.

Keegan put a disk in the drive and hit
burn.

“That’s me,” said Jen. She hugged herself,
holding on like she was afraid she’d fall out of her dress. “I’m
the one screaming in the background.”

“You’re lucky you got away.”

“They let me go, Keegan. I’m family. They’d
want to be sure before they killed me.”

Jesus, she had one hell of a family if the
best she could say was that they were efficient killers. Anything
that took Keegan’s attention off their surroundings was a risk, but
he had to hold her. He was afraid. Not for himself, but for
her.

Jen held on tight, face pressed to his chest.
“Something is wrong with me,” she whispered. "I can’t feel any of
it. It’s like it’s all muffled and distant.”

“It’s okay to grieve, sugar.”

“I’m not grieving. I’m
angry
. This
whole thing is a cover-up. They killed Terri, now I’m caught in the
middle. The only one who cares is my dad, and he’d rather I die
before he tells my brother. It’s just so wrong—”

Keegan caught her shoulders and looked down
into her eyes. “I’m running blind and he knows who your enemy is?
With the kind of money he’s laying down, I can’t believe he’d take
a chance with your life.”

“My father is a person just like anyone
else.” Jen pulled away from him, rubbing at her arms like she was
cold. “The minute he brings my brother into this he’ll lose all
pretense of control.”

The man in charge of StallingCo Security ran
an army equivalent to that of a small nation. In Keegan’s world,
Jen’s brother, Percival, was as infamous as they came.

“He works for your dad, doesn't he? Why can’t
Art tell him to back off?”

“It’s not that easy. Percy only technically
works for StallingCo. He created Security to protect us. It belongs
to him. Dad has override powers, but to my knowledge he’s never
used them. Percy can be a jerk.”

The man responsible for last year’s hostile
takeover of the Tamara Weapons Research Group was a jerk. Fancy
that.

Jen shivered. “Keegan, I—”

The door slammed back and bounced off the
wall, and a stranger stumbled through the opening. Fallon followed,
kicked the man over and held a gun to his head.

Corlis stood to the side of the door,
watching the walkway with a look in her eyes that said she’d be
happy to blow someone away.

Fallon didn’t look up. “Time for true
confessions.”

“I’m not telling you anything!” spat the
captive.

Fallon slammed his palm flat down on the
stranger’s face, and the man screamed, head bouncing off the shag,
back into Fallon’s hand.

“Man, you are just
asking
for rug
burns. Who sent you and where are they?”

“Torture!” wailed the terrorist.

“Not if I make it quick,” said Fallon. “Then
it’s just meat removal, you feel me?”

Jen squatted down beside the prisoner, the
ruffled hem of her dirty pink dress billowing out around her.

“You aren’t related to me,” she said. “Who
are you?”

The Aina rolled his eyes toward Jen. “I
belong to the Land.
Ua mau ke ea o ka aina I ka pono
. The
life of the land is preserved in righteousness. Kuipo is on to you,
heretic! She’ll find you soon.
You can’t hide from her!
”

Keegan swore under his breath. “Any more out
there?”

Corlis glanced over her shoulder at them and
jerked her chin at the captive. “Unarmed observer.”

The man lurched upwards. “I don’t need a
weapon to be of use to Kuipo!”

“Think I’ll start with his ears.” Fallon
pulled a knife and wiped it slowly on his sleeve. “Wouldn’t want
you to get blood poisoning from a dirty knife.”

Jen stood. “Ask him who Kuipo is.”

“You heard the woman,” said Fallon. “Answer
her.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know!” screamed the
prisoner. “Don’t cut my ear off, you fucking bastard!”

“I only nicked your earlobe, dumb-shit.”

Jen turned, staring at the distant wall,
apparently lost in thought. Hell, this whole thing had to be hard
on her. Terri’s office, the file, and now Fallon’s crazed psycho
act. Keegan studied the self-admitted terrorist. Tall and painfully
skinny, with the pasty-pale look of an office worker. A low level
foot solider.

“Kuipo,” he said.

The man burst into spittle-choked tears. “I
don’t
know!
I’m not in her cell. We’re all in cells. You’re
not listening—”

Corlis didn’t bother to turn. “Amateurs.”

Fallon nodded in agreement. “Fucking
liability.”

“We’re cutting him loose,” said Keegan. He
gave Fallon a hard stare the man ignored. “Get him mobile. We want
this guy to report in.”

He snagged Jen’s hand and pushed past his
sister. “Vacate,” he told her. “We’ll meet back at the car.”

They started down the stairs. It was a long
way down and Jen could see light through the risers. She caught at
a handrail and pulled back, only to have Keegan stop and turn back
to her.

“You okay?” he asked. “I saw your face when
Fallon nicked that guy.”

She shuddered at the memory, and shut it down
fast. “If I’m with you I’ll have to get used to it, won’t I?”

Keegan went very still, his eyes shuttered
and dark. “It’s not just blood and killing, Jen.”

“I didn’t—” Yes, she had. She’d all but
accused him of being a killer for hire. “I shouldn’t have said
that.”

“Easy mistake.”

“Why are you treating me like an equal? Why
don’t you just lock me away somewhere while you do your thing? You
have enough people.”

Keegan held out his hand. “There are a lot of
answers. And not all of them are right. Ask me later, okay?”

She slipped her hand into his. “All
right.”

“I’ll remember,” he said. “Now, hang on to
me, honey—I’ll get you down.”