The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (22 page)

Yes
, Jill
thought.  “No,” Jill said.

“Then let’s do
this!”

They stood at an
abandoned pier on the north shore of the lake.  The water rippled behind
her mother, reflecting the lights of the city.

Her mother got
into a motorboat.

Jill got into
another one.

“Good luck!”
called her mother.

Jill didn’t
respond.

Her mother’s boat
puttered out onto the lake first.  She kept it at a low speed.  Jill
followed about fifty yards behind.

One moment her
mother’s boat was there ahead of her, a small black smudge on the reflective
surface of the lake.

The next moment
it was a blinding blossom of smoke and flame, and a deafening concussion
knocked Jill backwards...

“JILL!
 
Wake up!”  It was Dizzie’s voice.

Jill’s eyes
popped open.  “Bradley found out the drop point?”

Dizzie stood
silhouetted in the doorway.  She was still in her pajamas.  “Yep.”

Jill was already
on her feet and jumping into her clothes.

6

“GRANDAN
got the call about five minutes ago,” Holiday told the team when they’d
assembled in his office.

“Wait, they
called
him?” Corey asked in surprise.  “Could Sherlock trace it?”

“The call came
from an unregistered pay-as-you-go cellular phone on the Home Planet,” said
Holiday.  “Dead end.”

“The client sure
covered his bases,” said Amber, “using an
Earthsider
to make the arrangements.”

“We may not be
able to track down the messenger,” said the director, “but the point is, we got
the message.”

“So where does
the drop happen?” Jill asked.

“The roof of the
Aurora Plaza Hotel.  Mr.
Grandan
was instructed
to make the drop within the hour.”

“We’ll be there
in five minutes,” said Corey, leading the way to the garage.

JILL
always stared into the eyes of her uniform’s mask before a mission.  Twin
images of herself gazed back from the dark, reflective surfaces.  Just
above them, enameled across the dome of her visor, was the image of a blue
butterfly with wings outspread.

The visor was
mounted over the rest of her uniform, a modern black suit of armor standing in
the locker room’s glass case.

A moment later
she was looking at the world from behind those reflective eyes.  A
nameless exhilaration pulsed through her.

The exhilaration
grew as she stepped out of the locker room into the garage and swung onto her
skybike, grew more as she fired up the engine with a roar, grew even more as
she gunned it and sped across the garage and into the tunnel.

As she zipped out
of the cannery her bike wove between abandoned warehouses until she burst onto
the open freeway along the lakeshore and soared thirty feet above the ground traffic. 
Earth loomed darkly to her right.  The glittering spires of downtown shot
above the lake to her left.  The wind whipped past her as she sped toward
her destination.

Disappointed as
she was with how the mission had gone last night, at this moment everything
just felt
right
.

AURORA
Plaza was north of downtown, not far from the river.  It was a
cobblestone-paved square lined with gardens and fountains.  There was
still plenty of foot traffic ambling along the plaza at this time of
night.  The hotel faced the east border of the square.

“You’ll set up in
the office building south of the hotel,” Dizzie’s voice buzzed over the
earpieces in Corey and Amber’s helmets as their ground car neared the
plaza.  Half a mile behind them—and thirty feet above them—Jill was
getting the same instructions.  So was Bradley, coming from the northeast.

Maps lit up the
consoles of all three vehicles.

“Park in the
alley west of the building,” Dizzie’s instructions continued.  “I just
talked with their security.  They’ll let you in the service door off the
alley, Corey.  While Corey sets up, the rest of you will move into
position.”

Amber took off
her helmet.  “Do you think
Grandan
was
convincing?” she asked Corey.

Corey removed his
helmet as well.  “You mean when he took the phone call?  Why? 
You think he blew it?”

“If the caller
sensed any anxiety in his voice...”

“You’re worried
they know the job’s been compromised?”

“I think they
already knew.”

“You think the
shuttle crew noticed the goods were missing.”

“I’m sure they checked.”

It was the second
time she’d said so, and for the second time he looked at her
suspiciously.  “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

“You know I’ve
been on plenty of missions.”

“I mean the
smuggling.”

She looked away.

Corey bit his
tongue.  He wished he hadn’t said anything.

“My father was a
smuggler.”  Amber’s voice was so soft it was barely audible.

“I thought your
father was with the government until he died.”

“He was.” 
She didn’t elaborate.

Corey didn’t
press her.  Now wasn’t the time.

JILL
dropped back to street level as she neared the plaza.  Her bike, Corey and
Amber’s car, and Bradley’s car converged on the alley within moments of each
other.

“You have the
goods?” Bradley’s distorted voice asked her.  The
taeguk
and trigrams of the Korean flag were enameled across his visor.

Jill opened her
bike’s compartment and handed a black bag to Bradley, still sitting in his
car.  He unzipped it and looked inside.  A silent, sullen Doug
Grandan
sat in the passenger seat next to him.

“I’m glad you’re
checking inside,” muttered Jill.  “Maybe I accidentally brought an empty
bag.”

“Hey, just making
sure.”

“That’s good,
because I might have forgotten one of the
two
things I was supposed to—”

“Quiet, ladies,”
Corey interjected as he and Amber stepped out of their car.

Bradley shot him
a look, invisible from behind his visor.  “Where’s the tracker?” he asked
Jill.

“Imbedded between
layers of fabric in the bag.”

“What if he takes
the stuff out of the bag?”

“If the tracker
was attached to the goods themselves he’d spot it,” Jill answered in
annoyance.  “What was that you said earlier about me doing my job and you
doing yours?”

“Okay,” Bradley
conceded.  He handed the bag to Doug
Grandan
. 
“You know what to do.”

“I still don’t
see why I have to do this,”
Grandan
huffed.

“Your client may
have surveillance in place watching for you to make the drop,” said
Corey.  “He has to be able to tell it’s you.”

Grandan’s
frown grew.  “Fine.”

“Rookie
errander,” Bradley explained with a shrug.

 “Showtime,”
said Corey, taking another bag from the trunk of his car.  “Places,
everyone.”

Amber got in the
driver’s seat of their car.  The three vehicles departed from the alley
several moments apart from each other to avoid attention.

Corey was left
alone in the alley.  He knocked on the metal maintenance door.

A security guard
opened it from the inside.  “Follow me.”

They took the
elevator to the fifteenth floor and navigated the dark hallways to a lounge
between office suites on the north side of the building.  The bank of
windows looked across the street to the Aurora Plaza Hotel.  The rooftop
was a few stories lower than this vantage point.

Corey took off
his visor.  “Perfect,” he said, and dismissed the guard.

DIZZIE
sat drinking thoroughly caffeinated coffee in her cubicle, still in her
pajamas.  Her central screen showed a live map of the Aurora Plaza hotel
and surroundings.  One dot of light blinked in the office building where
Corey had taken his position.  Three more lights blinked where the others
sat in the department vehicles.  Bradley was in the alley next to the
hotel itself.  Jill was west of the plaza.  Amber had taken the other
car north of the plaza.

“We’re watching
you,” Bradley’s voice crackled in Dizzie’s earpiece as he spoke to
Grandan
.  “One wrong move and we’re all over
you.  Put this on.”

She heard
Grandan
grunt.  Another light started blinking next to
Bradley’s.

“Tracker and
audio are working,” Dizzie said into the microphone stretching from her
headphones.

“Get going,” said
Bradley.

Grandan’s
dot slid down the alley and around the corner to
the front of the hotel.  Along with it was a smaller red dot—the bag with
the goods.

“He’s inside,”
said Dizzie.  “Corey, you ready?”

“Ready.”

Dizzie took a
gulp of coffee and rolled her chair to the neighboring screen.  It was
divided into the images from the hotel’s security cameras.  She watched
Grandan
slink across the lobby to the elevator.  Above
the tenth floor button was a button marked “R” for roof access.  He
punched it.

“On his way up,”
reported Dizzie.  “Send me your view, Cor.”

 “You should
already have it.”

She pulled up the
feed from the camera Corey had set up at the office building window.  The
night-vision image was a greenish but otherwise clear view of the hotel rooftop
across the street.

The hotel
elevator reached the roof and
Grandan
stepped
off.  A floodlight mounted above the elevator doors made a pool of dim
bluish light.  The camera mounted next to the light watched from
Grandan’s
back as he crossed the rooftop away from the
elevator.

Corey’s camera
watched the same scene from the opposite angle. 
Grandan
reached the edge of the roof nearest Corey’s vantage point.  He dropped
the bag behind a raised ventilator near the corner and headed back to the
elevator.

On the onscreen
map the little red dot blinked alone at the southeast corner of the hotel
rooftop.

“He made the
drop,” Dizzie confirmed.  She went back to the hotel security images and
followed
Grandan’s
trip back down the elevator and
out of the hotel.  The poor kid seemed too nervous to do anything but
cooperate, but there was always a chance he’d try to run.

He didn’t. 
He went straight back to the car with Bradley.  They parked at the far end
of the alley.

“Now,” said
Corey, “we wait.”

They’d be waiting
for a long time.

IT
was after 4 a.m. when it happened.

Dizzie paused in
mid-sip, stared at the screen for a minute, and finally put down her coffee
mug.  She tapped at her keyboard, but nothing changed.

The security
camera over the elevator had shut down.  That section of her screen was
now an empty grayish rectangle.

“I don’t have
eyes on the roof anymore, Cor,” she said.  “Repeat, I do not have eyes on
the roof!”

“I
hear you, Diz,” said Corey, sitting suddenly forward in the lounge chair. 
He didn’t know he’d been drifting off until Dizzie’s announcement had startled
him fully awake.  “That’s why I’m here.  You’re still getting my
feed?”

“Crystal clear.”

“Let’s not worry
too much just yet.  It may just be a malfunction.”

Then the
floodlight on the hotel roof blinked off.

“Or not,” he
amended.  “The light’s dead too.”

“I see that,”
said Dizzie.

Corey checked the
screen on the back of his camera.  The night-vision still gave them a
decent view.  “This is no accident.  He must be on his way. 
Watch the elevators.”

“Watching,”
Dizzie confirmed.

Corey glanced up
from the screen and looked out the window.  He stood up.  “Dizzie,
cancel that.  He’s not using the
vator
.”

A blue car had
just turned into the alley next to the hotel.  Slowly it began rising.

“He’s in a
skycar,” said Corey.  “This is it, people; get ready.”

The vehicle
lifted over the edge of the rooftop and a figure stepped out of the
backseat.  Corey got behind his camera and zoomed in on the scene. 
“Okay, we’ve got a male; average height and weight, as well as I can make out
from here.  He’s examining the bag now.”

“Are you getting
a facial?” Jill’s voice asked.

“Not yet. 
He hasn’t looked directly my way.”

The figure
briefly examined the camera and the notebook.  He was about to grab the
bag when he hesitated.

“What’s the problem?”
asked Dizzie.

“I don’t know,”
said Corey.  “It looks like he’s suspicious.”

The figure pulled
out a heavy-duty flashlight and began sweeping a powerful beam across the
rooftop.

“He’s checking
things out.”

“Cor, get down!”
Dizzie cried.

But the man on
the rooftop was already shining his powerful beam across the street. 
White light poured through the window and across Corey and his camera. 
Corey ducked behind a chair, but not before he’d been seen.

The figure leaped
back into the skycar.

“He’s heading
north out of the alley,” cried Dizzie.  “Go, go, go,
go!
”

7

“I’M
on him,” Bradley’s voice crackled in Jill’s earpiece.  He moved his car
out of the alley as the skycar moved in the same direction thirty feet
above.  “Jill, move in!  It looks like he’s staying at skytraffic
level.”

“On my way,” she
said, already soaring over the plaza on her bike.

She spotted the
blue skycar emerging from behind the hotel.  It circled the block away
from the plaza.

“He’s turned back
south on Denizen Drive,” Jill reported.  “They’re headed for downtown.”

“I’ll stay ahead
of him,” said Amber.

Jill whipped
around the corner and regained sight of the car.  She flew a hundred yards
behind it.  “Okay, he’s dropping to street level.”

“I see him now,”
said Bradley.

Jill could see
Bradley’s car thirty feet below, weaving through traffic in pursuit of the
fugitive’s vehicle.

“Easy!” she heard
Grandan’s
voice squeak.

The blue car
squealed around a corner into a shopping district, and then took another corner
toward a residential area.

“Stay on him,
Bradley,” said Jill.  “He’s just trying to lose us.”

“Stay on
Denizen,” he answered, whipping around the same corners.  “I’ll see if I
can push him back your way.

Grandan’s
voice whimpered something inaudible.

“Amber, where are
you?” Jill asked as she sped ahead.

“Corner of
Denizen and Route 12,” she replied.

“Stay
there.  That’s where he’ll most likely be leaving the residential zone.”

“He’s headed
there now,” Dizzie confirmed.

“I’m right on
him.”

“I’m moving in,”
said Jill.

She came to Route
12, shot past where Amber was parked, and angled her bike toward the entrance
to the residential area.

The blue car’s
lights appeared in front of her.

She braked to a
sudden stop.

So did the blue
car.

Amber moved in on
him next to Jill.

The car whipped
around.

Bradley came up
behind him.

All three agents
leapt from their vehicles, weapons drawn.

It was a
wide-eyed and trembling driver who emerged from the blue vehicle with his hands
in the air.  “Don’t shoot,
don’t shoot!
”

The backseat was empty.

“Where is he?”
Bradley demanded.

“Dropped him off
on the roof of another building,” the driver answered.

“What building?”

“No idea!  I
just slowed down low enough for him to bail.  He said keep going, lead you
away from him.”

“And you listened
to him?”

“I was scared,
okay?  He said he’d make it worth my while.”

“Who is he?” Jill
asked him.

The man held up
his hands.  “No idea.  I’m just a driver-for-hire, you
understand?  I’ve never seen him before, and I don’t know what he was up
to, I swear!”

“You really think
he’ll track you down and pay you now?” Corey asked him.

The driver’s
mouth just hung open.

Amber opened the
back door of the hired car.  The black bag sat on the seat.  It was
empty.

“Diz, any sign of
him?” asked Jill.

“Sherlock hasn’t
spotted him,” Dizzie replied.

Bradley ran back
to his car.  “We’ve got to get back there.”

“Back where?”
asked Amber.  “He could be anywhere!”

Bradley
halted.  “Okay, so now what?”

“I’ll run the
whole scene from
Cor’s
camera,” said
Dizzie
.  “Maybe we can enhance the image, get an ID.”

“Maybe isn’t good
enough,” spat Bradley.

“It’s all we’ve
got,” said Jill.

Bradley couldn’t
argue.

“I
think this is the best we can do,” said Dizzie.  “Sherlock agrees it’s the
clearest facial the video gives us.”  Her cubicle’s central screen showed
a frozen image from Corey’s video.

Holiday, Jill,
and the rest of the team gathered behind her.  She’d gone frame-by-frame
through the video looking for a good image of the client’s face.  This
frame showed him glancing up roughly toward where Corey’s camera had been
positioned in the neighboring office building.  He was in the act of
lifting his flashlight.  By the next frame his light was raised, washing
out the camera’s view.

“Sherlock, can
you enhance this?” asked Dizzie.

“
Of course,
Desiree
,” Sherlock’s British-accented mechanical voice sounded from her
computer’s speaker.  “
In the meantime, may I offer my most sincere
sympathies to the team regarding the night’s goings on?
”

Dizzie wrinkled
her nose while she refilled her mug from a coffee pot in the corner of her
cubicle.  “We’ve got to reprogram that machine not to call me Desiree,”
she said, eyeing the director critically.

“He stopped
calling you ‘Miss Mason,’ like you asked him to.  Aren’t you happy?”

The image on the
screen began to clarify.  It wasn’t as easy as it seemed when they did it
in the movies; the image couldn’t instantly be transformed into a
high-definition photo.  But the computer was fairly good at guessing how
to fill in the more blurred details.

“If this doesn’t
work,” muttered Bradley, “it’s over.”

“Love your
optimism,” remarked Jill.

“You know I’m
right,” he retorted.

“Aren’t you
always?”

“Shut up, both of
you,” growled Corey.

“Agreed,” said
Holiday.

“
Enhancement
has reached maximum level
,” Sherlock reported, “
but I regret to say I’m
unable to make an accurate facial ID
.”

Bradley turned to
leave.

“Stay,” said
Corey, grabbing his arm.

“We’d miss you
too badly,” murmured Jill.

“Can you at least
give me a list of possible IDs?” asked Dizzie.

“
There are
sixty-eight possible matches.
”

“Too many to do
us any good,” said Corey.

Holiday was
leaning thoughtfully toward the image.  “It
isn’t
...?”

“You know this
guy?” asked Dizzie.

“I can’t be
certain, of course.  The image is still rather grainy.”

“Is his name on
the list?” asked Amber.

“I don’t know
what name to look for, unfortunately,” replied the director.

“I’ve got another
idea,” Dizzie said between sips of coffee.  She returned to her seat in
front of the central monitor.  “Sherlock, do you know the route his car
took tonight to get to the hotel?”

“
Bits and
pieces of it, yes.  Traffic cameras did pick it up several times
.”

“Give us any
traffic cam images that show the client’s face.”

“Of course.”

“You’re
brilliant, Diz,” said Corey, giving her a pat on the shoulder.

“Aw, well,” she
said with a wave of her hand and a beaming smile.  “The caffeine is
finally starting to kick in, I guess.”

A moment later
Sherlock had given them four repeating video segments.  Dizzie found the
best still shot from each video.  “Try enhancing these, Sherlock.”

“Of course,
Desiree.”

“Those images are
worse than the first one,” said Bradley.

“True, but we’ll
still get possible IDs from each,” said Dizzie.  “We can cross-match the
lists from each image, maybe narrow it down a little.”

Her idea was a
good one.  The five lists had only seven names in common.

“Let’s see the
information for each,” said the director.

Soon Dizzie had
pulled up the seven profiles.  Every adult citizen of Anterra was required
to submit a thorough personal dossier for the government to have on
record.  Holiday pointed immediately to the third.

“
Holbert
Dillon,” Corey read the name.  “How do you
know him?”

“I don’t,” said
Holiday.  “But I know he’s your man.”

His address was
775 Thirteenth, Suite 12b.

“Can you give us
a schematic?” asked Bradley.

“Already on it,”
said Dizzie as her fingers fluttered across one of her keyboards.

“I thought we
were done for,” Jill shot in Bradley’s direction.

He ignored her.

A three
dimensional digitized model of the apartment appeared on Dizzie’s screen. 
“Suite 12b is on the northwest corner of the building,” she reported.

They were already
on their way to the garage.

JILL
led the way downtown on her bike.  The other three followed in a
skycar.  A pale, silvery halo above the Home Planet hinted that the sun
would be rising soon.  They flowed with the downtown traffic, still heavy
even this early in the morning.  Eight blocks west of the Avenue of Towers
they came to Thirteenth.

Holbert
Dillon’s apartment building appeared ahead on the
left, a gracefully curving structure with a fountain and a pillared portico in
front.

They circled to
the northwest corner.  The lights on the twelfth story were lit. 
“Looks like he’s home,” said Jill.

“Any activity?”
Dizzie’s voice asked.

“Can’t
tell.  The lights are on, but the shades are drawn.”

“Can you move in
closer?”

“If he’s watching
for us we may spook him.”

“Wait around the
corner, Jill,” said Corey’s voice.  “We’ll park on the street and try from
the inside.”

BRADLEY
waited in the car while Corey and Amber took the lamp-lined walk across the
side lawn.  The small glass door to the building was locked.

“Dizzie, can
Sherlock open this door?”

“No, but he can
silence the building’s alarm system temporarily.”

“Good enough.”

Corey made sure
the hallway inside was empty before he put his armored boot through the glass.

He and Amber
stepped inside.  Lamps lined the floral-papered hallway.

“Stairway is just
ahead to your right,” said Dizzie.

They ascended to
the twelfth floor.  The hallway was empty.  At the end they reached
the entrance to Suite 12b.  Light showed under the door.

Bradley tried the
knob.  The door was unlocked.  They leveled their weapons and burst
inside.

They stood on the
polished floor of the suite’s entryway.  They saw themselves in a nicely
framed mirror on the far wall.  Below the mirror was a table with a stack
of books and a picture of Dillon and his toddler-aged daughter.  Also on
the table was a video camera pointed toward the front door.

“Hold on,” said
Dizzie.  “Sherlock tells me he’s just now getting a motion-triggered video
feed originating from Dillon’s residence.”

“He was watching
for us,” Amber sighed, lowering her weapon.

“He knew we may
get an ID match on him,” added Corey.  “Now he’ll know for sure.  He
was ready for us.  Dizzie, other than Sherlock’s interception, where is
the video feed going?”

“We can’t tell
yet.  Sherlock’s trying to find out.”

Corey shook his
head.  “It won’t do any good.  Dillon knows we’re here.  He’ll
sever any connection he has to the video feed long before we can trace him.”

“And I’m guessing
he won’t be coming home any time soon,” Dizzie’s voice muttered.  “I’ll
have Sherlock watch for any sign of him or the car registered to him.”

“A lot of good
that will do,” Bradley’s glum voice crackled in their earpieces.

IT
was a dejected team that assembled in Conference Room D the next evening.

Jill took a seat
next to Corey.  “Didn’t go so well last night, did it?” she asked, just to
make conversation.

Corey didn’t hear
her.  He was saying something to Amber, who had just taken the seat on the
other side of him.  Jill grimaced to herself.

“Rough night last
night, huh?” said Dizzie, sitting on the other side of Jill.

“You could say
that.”

Bradley, about as
cheerful and sociable as usual, sat by himself in the row behind the rest of
them, arms crossed and brow knit.

Holiday entered
at the front of the room.  “Every one of you did your job as well as could
be expected,” he began.  “Things haven’t turned out the way we
hoped.  But that isn’t the fault of anyone here.  You may each be
proud of your efforts, whatever happens in the end.”

That was some
consolation, Jill supposed.  “What next?” she asked.

“Question the
prisoners again,” Bradley said darkly.  “They have to know more.”

“I believe Dino
has told us all he knows,” replied the director.  “But as for the man who
calls himself Sketch...”  He paused as his cell began to vibrate on the
desk beside him.  He frowned as he checked it, and finally answered
it.  “Holiday.”

“Your team is
good,” said the voice on the other end.  “Very good.  Congratulate
them for me.”

Holiday raised
his eyebrows at Dizzie and jerked a thumb toward his phone.

Dizzie leaped out
of her seat and ran to the computer at the back of the conference room. 
“Sherlock,” she hissed as she ran, “trace the call the director just took!”

“Why not
congratulate them yourself?” Holiday suggested to the caller.

“
I’ve no need
to trace the call, Desiree
,” Sherlock’s voice emerged from the
computer.  “
It hasn’t been blocked.
”

“That’s precisely
my plan,” said the caller.

“
The call is
originating from an unregistered phone.  Vocal characteristics are a
precise match with those of Mr.
Holbert
Dillon
.”

“What do you
mean?” Holiday asked Dillon.

“Just what I
said,” he replied.

The connection broke.

“Where did the
call originate?” Dizzie asked.

“
I’m not at
liberty to give you that information unless you state plainly that this is an
emergency; otherwise I will be in violation of protocol according to section
—
”