Page 200 of Deep Cover

9

Cole

"We've got a lead."

I jerked aware. My head had been down, not on my chest, but tilted down, the blue lights of the communications room not shining in my eyes. I hadn't been asleep, but deep in a meditative state. Now my head whipped back and I stood, toppling over the chair I'd been using.

"Sir. I didn't realize you were here."

I ignored that completely. The speaker was one of the corporate hackers, a button-down who worked for some paycheck during the day and stayed up half the night getting into places he wasn't supposed to for the thrill of it.

I scanned the information he'd found at the same time he read it, at the same time the others around us started into a flurry of activity, linking to his link and from there out and out until they'd cast a net.

Only hours earlier she'd been in Paris at a party, the kind written up in underground magazines distributed through dodgy porn sites. Some kind of malware kept nudging his machine and he kept beating it back.

Paris. In some kind of hotel. Money can buy you a big room to host your freakshow and no one will interfere with your kink while you're there. I should know.

Photos of a girl tied to a pole standing on the table looking a hundred kinds of stoned. Usually that alone would distract me.

Today I just kept looking.

Diners, dressed for opera or cocktail hour, springtime in Paris, all elegance and pearls and maybe a cigarette in a foot-long holder, the owner languid and –

Interested in the dark haired girl in the blue dress, her face wary, watching, clearly uninterested in anything the woman next to her was saying. The woman herself looked like the kind who never needs to get stoned because she has no idea how boring she is or how much everyone wishes she'd go away.

"That's her."

There was one exhalation of breath from everyone in the room. Just as fast, there was a trebling of tension as everyone returned to their machines, determined to pick up the trail.

Everyone leaves a trail. Yes, money paves the way. I know that. I've done that. I've made people disappear. I've made problems disappear. I've made myself disappear. But I've done all those things at once and I have the advantage over Vincent Geddes in that I'm more sane than he is.

His idea clearly was that he could taunt me with her. Because he could get them airborne again in less time than it took most people to call for delivery pizza.

They could be anywhere.

Which was exactly what I was supposed to think. I'd lay odds on it. They could be anywhere. Chances were, his private jet, whichever one he was using – because they'd all been scrambled – had flown out of Paris.

But I didn't think Vincent had. I thought he was still wherever he was staying. He'd have Annie with him.

"Surveillance cameras on the street?" They weren't called that when they were part of whatever the EU considered to be their take on SmartCities but it was still spying on people without their consent.

Tonight I was glad for it.

"Got it," two people said at the same time, and then, "Jinx!" before looking guiltily at me as if they shouldn't have.

But they could say any damned thing they liked. We had a link to a camera on the street and in minutes we could hook up to all the cameras along the street and trace the progression of the car all the way back to the three-story house on the corner of a perfectly normal street in Paris.

"Jet." I was already starting to run.

"Waiting," called back security. I didn't know who.

"Sir!"

"Yes." But he had to catch up. That was Jefferson, head of security now. Meaning he was going to drive me.

I said yes because I wanted to make it to the airport in one piece and without a ticket. Jefferson would use the chopper.

Unauthorized landing of a bird at McCarran International - Small price to pay.

We were airborne in the jet, heading for Paris, thirty minutes after ‘jinx’.

France in the spring. Beautiful. As if I gave a fuck. I'd spent the too long flight thinking what I meant to do to him and what I meant to do to her. Because no mistake, she'd let herself be taken and she was in for it when I got her back.

Maybe the reaction was childish, and maybe the reaction was like that of a parent frightened by a child's temporary disappearance.

Either way, I'd want to punish her. I'd want to punish him out of her system. Purify. Cleanse.

I wanted her back. Damn it, I wanted her back for more reasons than teaching her never to let that happen again. I wanted her back.

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