Private Lives

20

Megan didn’t know how much time had passed before she regained consciousness. Slowly, though, blackness turned to misty gray, and then she opened her eyes. She found herself in a dimly lit space, on a very narrow, rather hard bed. The wall curved beside her, and the ceiling seemed very close. Megan couldn’t go far to explore her new surroundings. One wrist was handcuffed to a railing at the edge of the bed.

The cuffs weren’t really necessary. Megan felt as if all the strength had been bled out of her muscles. And the merest motion made her head pound while starting the room spinning sickeningly. Worst of all, the room seemed to move by itself with a horrible slopping sound. Right then the room suddenly heaved up, and so did everything in Megan’s stomach.

Now she knew why the basin had been placed beside her pillow. With a supreme effort she forced her body to move, bringing her head over the side of the bunk to barf on the carpeted floor.

Too bad it wasn’t expensive carpet. That rebellious thought seemed to help clear Megan’s throbbing brain. The floor covering’s quality fell somewhere between the stuff found in offices with heavy traffic and Astroturf.

“That wasn’t very friendly.” The mild voice coming out of the dimness sounded very disappointed in her.

“Kidnapping didn’t seem very friendly to me,” Megan replied in a creaky voice. She peered into the semidarkness, finally making out an outline by the wall. Lights came on, and Megan dropped back to the pillow, feeling as if someone were hammering a spike into her head.

“It should pass in a minute,” the mild voice assured her.

Megan squinted up. The only guy she could imagine kidnapping her was Marc Kovacs-Mike Steele. But the guy in the gas mask hadn’t had Kovacs’s big mane of graying black hair. His hair had been cut businessman-short, and it was an unremarkable shade of mousy brown.

Of course, Steele had changed the color and length of his hair to become Kovacs. One thing was sure: Her captor didn’t want her to see any alterations he’d made to his face. He was wearing one of those face masks for the worst winter days, with holes for your mouth and eyes, and a sort of beak with a strainer on it for your nose. It was jokingly known as a “mugger’s comfort.” The thing must be almost unbearably hot in the warm cabin of this boat….

Hey! She’d figured out where she was!

The boat’s bobbing on the water — and the smell of the mess she’d made on the carpet — brought another wave of nausea. Megan grit her teeth and moaned.

“I guess you’re not a good sailor,” her kidnapper said. “Seasick already, and we’re not even away from the dock.”

“More like aftereffects of that gas you used on me,” Megan shot back.

Gas! She suddenly remembered her mother, father, and brother on the floor, out like lights. “What was that stuff you used?” Megan demanded. “My family—”

“Should be fine,” her captor assured her. “The gas was designed to creep up on you so you go to sleep. Often people curl up comfortably. You, however, bounced to the floor. I expect you’ll have bruises in some unexpected places — not that it will matter to you for very much longer.”

He broke off at her glare. “Anyway, I opened the windows to make sure the stuff dissipated,” he said gently. “Your folks should wake up with no ill effects.”

Except for having their daughter disappear, Megan thought bleakly.

She gave the masked man a hard look. Traces of a brownish mustache could be spotted through the opening in the grate thing at the end of the nose. The man didn’t seem to have a beard anymore.

“You presented me with an interesting problem,” the man — she decided to call him Mike Steele — said.

“I’m surprised at your subtlety,” she shot back. “Usually you seem to blow your problems up.”

The masked head nodded. “But in this case, I had to talk to you first. I had to find out what damaging information you’d planted on me, and where.”

A little too late, Megan realized that even the best evasive maneuvers of an amateur hacker might not fool an ex-Net Force professional.

Even though she faced death, either from this masked man or from barfing herself inside out, Megan couldn’t restrain the harsh laughter that escaped her lips. “There is no incriminating evidence,” she gasped. “I saw you getting away with murder, with no one able to stop you. Figured the least I could do was make sure you didn’t enjoy it.”

“It was a prank call?” Mike Steele sounded very annoyed.

“Yeah. What are you going to do about it? Kill me twice?”

“Believe it or not, I try not to go overboard in the killing department,” Steele said. “I did society a favor taking out Steve the Bull. He was a piece of human garbage. Even his former business associates were glad to see him go. Tori Rush had no family. She was a greedy little witch with an inflated sense of her own talent. Everyone she knew, and especially all the people she screamed at — including her agent — won’t miss her much.”

“And Professor Wellman? Universally respected? Loved by his students?”

“That was a miscalculation,” Steele admitted. “He wasn’t supposed to be in his office when the bomb went off. But that shouldn’t be your concern right now. You must have a bizarre lucky angel sitting on your shoulder. After I, ah, collected you, I got a call from a source of mine in the FBI fingerprint labs. They were going over an oddball item — a baby rattle in the shape of an anchor.”

Megan stared. Steele’s lips, revealed through the opening in his mask, had twisted in an ironic smile. “It’s a present I gave my partner in a former lifetime. Handmade. Unique. Extremely traceable. And even after all these years they lifted some of my prints off it.”

“So they were on to you all along,” Megan growled. “They just didn’t tell me!”

“As things turn out, I probably owe you some thanks,” Steele said. “If it hadn’t been for your call, I’d have been sitting in my office, happy as a clam, when they came to pick me up.” His voice lost some of its humor. “Besides, as I said, murder is bad policy, especially if the victim will be missed. Considering what your Net Force Explorer friends did when I framed Jim Winters, I’d hate to see how they’d react if I killed one of you.”

Steele’s eyes held a strange emotion as he looked down at her. “James always had the knack of bringing out loyalty. Wish he’d just come through in that department for me.”

And loyally stood by while you broke the law? Megan asked silently. It didn’t seem the thing to say out loud — not when her kidnapper was debating whether she lived or died.

“Anyway, I guess I owe you one,” Steele said. “Your tip got me moving just at the right moment. And this time my getaway fund is much fatter.”

Megan didn’t say anything, but her feelings must have shown on her face.

“As long as you don’t see all of my new look — or get the description or name of this boat — I’m not registered as the owner — I think I can let you go.” Steele nodded his masked head. “A blindfold, a quiet area of shoreline…all we have to do is wait for the tide to turn.”

Matt was getting a lift home from Captain Winters when his wallet-phone buzzed in his back pocket. He dug it out, flipped it open, and held it up. “What?” he asked glumly.

“Matt?” Leif Anderson’s voice crackled in his ear. “I got a weird call from Megan. Not another ‘Beware of Marcus Kovacs.’ This was just an open line…and a big thump! It got me worried, so I called the O’Malley house. Nobody answered. Not even after several tries.”

With both parents working at home and five kids coming in and out, that was definitely unusual. Matt passed the message on to the captain, and got the response he expected. “I’m in the car with Captain Winters. We’ll go and check it out right now. Call you back.”

The doors of the O’Malley house were locked, but the windows were open — which was odd, since the air conditioners were going. When they heard a low moan coming from the kitchen window, Winters gave Matt a boost inside.

Matt found a green-faced Mrs. O’Malley trying to push herself up off the floor. “Matt? What—” She rubbed a hand across her face. “Was in here cleaning up. Then felt woozy — sleepy.”

Matt glanced around. “Did you open the windows?”

Mrs. O’Malley shook her head — then winced.

“So somebody else must have opened them — to clear something out of the house.”

He went around to the door and let Captain Winters in. They searched the house, finding Megan’s dad and two more O’Malley brothers, recovering from the effects of being sleep-gassed.

“But where’s Megan?” Mrs. O’Malley cried. “She should have been home from school — here are her books.” She pointed to a set of schoolbooks dumped on the kitchen floor. As the fumes cleared out of her brain, Mrs. O’Malley looked at her rescuers through new eyes. “She’s gone, isn’t she? That’s why you’re here.”

Captain Winters already had his wallet-phone out, calling the police and Net Force. Matt could only look at his hands. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

“Well, now I know how a civilian witness feels,” Captain Winters said as he and Matt Hunter resumed their interrupted trip home. As a suspended agent, Winters could take no part in the investigation of Megan O’Malley’s kidnapping — except for answering questions.

Both Matt and the captain had had their statements efficiently taken down. Then they’d been politely — but firmly — told to go home.

The thoughts that had been running through Matt’s mind, held in check by the presence of Megan’s parents, gushed forth as soon as he was alone in the car with Winters.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Matt said. “My folks — Megan’s too, I bet — are always saying to me, ‘Don’t let people take you anywhere, especially if they’re up to no good. In private, they can do anything—’” He broke off. “We’ve got to do something!”

“Knowing Jay Gridley, you can bet he’s got every available hand working this case,” Winters said. “I was able to schmooze a little bit with the agents who came to talk to the O’Malleys. Net Force is taking Kovacs’s office apart bit by bit, looking for evidence of a bolt-hole. The same thing is going on at the swanky condo he’s got at the Watergate, and in his summer home in the Blue Ridge country.”

The captain shook his head. “I’m surprised at that. The Mike Steele I remember wasn’t a mountains kind of guy. He was always off to a beach, on the water. Boats were his thing.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “He supposedly died on one. He gave you an anchor rattle as a baby gift.”

“Hmmm. So maybe my colleagues are looking in the wrong direction.” Winters frowned as he turned the steering wheel. They were less than a block from Matt’s house.

“Think your parents would mind if we used your system for a little research?” the captain asked abruptly.

“To help Megan? How could they?”

When they heard what had happened to Megan, Matt’s parents were a hundred percent ready to help.

Matt led the way to his room and warmed up his computer system, giving Winters voice access.

“Computer!” the captain snapped. “List, in order of distance from Reston, Virginia, and the Watergate complex, all yacht clubs, marinas, and private docking facilities for small craft.”

“Processing,” the computer responded.

Matt looked at Winters in surprise. “I thought you’d be going after ship’s registries, or whatever you call them.”

Captain Winters shook his head. “This is Mike’s ace up his sleeve, his line of retreat if everything goes wrong. The country place in the mountains is a very expensive distraction, something to divert the attention of the law from his real getaway route. He won’t call attention to his boat by keeping it under his own name.”

“Then how are we going to find it?” Matt asked in dismay.

“I’m afraid that will be up to me,” Winters replied grimly. “I’ll have to go through the names of the boats, one by one, hoping to spot some connection to Steele.”

“That’s a long shot,” Matt couldn’t help saying.

Winters nodded. “Which is why I wouldn’t even mention it to Net Force. I can’t see Jay Gridley disrupting his search pattern in mid-deployment, just on my say-so.”

“Information retrieved,” the computer announced.

“Let’s see just how big a haystack we’ll be digging through,” the captain said. “Display on visual.”

The closest Washington marina was on Buzzard’s Point, an area in the throes of redevelopment into a trendy neighborhood. The docks were closed, being rebuilt to service more expensive yachts.

Next closest was a marina south of National Airport. It was located right where the Potomac widened as it approached Chesapeake Bay. Then it seemed that every Virginia town on the coast had boating facilities. And across the bay were more towns in Maryland, not to mention the port cities of Annapolis and Baltimore.

“Small needle, pretty fracking big haystack,” Matt mumbled. Louder, he said, “Are you sure there’s no way I can help?”

Winters unhappily shook his head. “Since I don’t really know what I’m looking for, I don’t see how I can teach you to look for it. Steele used to call this part of the job ‘playing cowboys and Indians.’ It’s fishing for the crucial fact among a sea of possibilities, guided by your instinct and experience.”

He gave a reminiscent laugh. “Mike loved to mix his metaphors. Cowboys and Indians, all that Viking stuff…” He suddenly straightened up. “You know, if you want to give this a try, get a listing of the boats docked at each town on the Virginia shore. Look for Western or Scandinavian connections. I’ll do the same across the water. It’s a long shot—”

Matt nodded. “But we have to try.”

Heading out to the living room, Matt called up his part of the list. He couldn’t believe how many vessels were out there — pleasure craft, fishing boats, sailboats…

“I feel like I’m getting pretty waterlogged, just sitting here,” Matt muttered, unreeling yet another section of the seemingly endless roster of nautical names.

No, this was a particular kind of waterlogged feeling. Between his car rides and computer work, he hadn’t seen the inside of a bathroom since before he’d left school. His back teeth were practically floating.

Returning back down the hall, much relieved, Matt paused to stick his head into his own room. Maybe Captain Winters could go for a drink or something. Matt felt pretty thirsty, all of a sudden.

He blinked. A list of names hung in the air in holographic projection. But the captain was nowhere to be seen. Had he been struck with the urge, too? Maybe he was a step before Matt and had gone to the kitchen for something to drink.

But when Matt checked, the captain wasn’t in the spare bathroom or in the kitchen.

He seemed to be…gone.

Baffled, Matt dashed back to the system in his room. Yes, there was the list of boats. It was some marina in Annapolis — apparently Winters had decided to check the big cities first.

Could he—?

Matt ran an eye down the displayed listing. He stopped beside the entry for a fair-sized cabin cruiser….

The good ship Skraelling.