Zero Sum Game

Chapter 28

Now that I was awake, the hours passed slowly. I discovered I detested convalescing. It was extremely boring. The one saving grace was that I was still technically on a job, at least enough to satisfy my messed-up brain. Despite Rio’s and my discussion about what had gone down with Dawna, I still hadn’t talked to him or Arthur about what our next step would be regarding Pithica.

Of course, Rio still wanted me off the case. Ordinarily someone else’s objections wouldn’t have stopped me, but I had a sneaking thread of suspicion that he was right, that dealing with Pithica truly was out of my league. I’d never felt that way before, and I didn’t like it.

Presumably, Rio was still going after Dawna himself, but he wasn’t telling us about it. Arthur, meanwhile, was mired in some sort of guilty cognitive dissonance between what Dawna had convinced him of at first and what she had inherently convinced him of later by trying to have me killed in front of him, and seemed perfectly content to hover over me as I recovered. He spent a lot of time on his phone, too, though I never heard him reach anyone.

As for me, I decided to defer my decision on what to do about Pithica. If I could fool my brain for a while longer into thinking I was still working, that was fine by me. I still couldn’t figure out if I wanted to charge after Dawna Polk with everything I had or run as far away as possible and hope she never found me. Not to mention that some part of me still thought her logic might be right and Pithica might be a pinnacle of moral rectitude and I should do everything I could to help them. It was confusing. And I got a headache whenever I tried to think about it seriously.

Rio had given me a secure laptop to use, and I spent the hours reading up on the latest papers in recursion theory to give me something to focus on. It was marginally interesting.

On the fourth day after I’d woken up and been able to keep track of time effectively again, I remembered my email and went to sign in. I didn’t use email much. The only person I talked to about anything other than business was Rio, and he was strictly a phone person. The only thing I used email for was to get messages about potential jobs, though most of the people who knew to contact me did it via a permanent voicemail box. Likewise, I used email more as a message drop than for anything else.

I did have three overtures for possible work, all old clients or people who had been referred by old clients, which was how most people found me. Two looked dead boring, the other only vaguely intriguing, but at least they would keep me busy if I ducked off Pithica. Provided I stayed in LA, I thought—I might have to go back to considering a disappearing act if I decided to run. My autoresponder had already taken care of the “on a case, will reply shortly” messages and none of the circumstances sounded urgent, but I took the time to dash off replies anyway, telling them that I was currently busy with a job but that I was potentially interested and would be in touch.

That left one message, from an address I didn’t recognize. I clicked on it, frowning a little. It was encrypted. I passed my public key around to anyone who wanted it, but I didn’t know many people who would have sought it out, let alone used it. I decrypted the text—and my whole body went cold, like a ghost had reached out and touched my soul.

The message was from Anton.

All I could do was stare at it. The seconds ticked by, and I still stared. First of all, Anton never sent email. Despite being a professional information broker and probably owning more computers than I had guns, he had been something of a Luddite when it came to living in the modern world. He hadn’t even had a mobile phone. I always picked up a folder full of printouts from him in person, and though I had always assumed part of that had to do with much of his information coming from places that weren’t accessible via clickable URLs, I also figured Anton simply liked dealing with the world through landlines and hard copies.

Second of all, he was dead.

That part was still true. I looked at the timestamp and thought back, then shivered—he’d sent this less than three minutes before the first explosion had gone off.

I finally took a deep breath and read the words. The email was only one line long:

One file was attached. I opened it. I felt like my fingers should be shaking, but they were perfectly steady.

The file was text only, and looked like a response to someone:

The beginnings of adrenaline had started tingling through me. I read the message again. The mention of a wife…could that mean…?

“Arthur,” I called. He was next to me in a flash; I tried not to roll my eyes. “Arthur, was anything missing from Kingsley’s crime scene?”

“Yeah. He had a USB drive he always wore around his neck, but they never found it. Was one of the things that made the whole thing weird—the doc said he never took it off.”

The email was definitely talking about Kingsley, then, and he’d had a flash drive with…something…on it, and Pithica had been going crazy trying to find it. And apparently so had someone else, whoever had written this message…

My thoughts constricted in horror. As far as we knew, the only other group working against Pithica was Steve’s. And he had as good as told us that they would obliterate anyone who found out about them in order to protect themselves from Pithica.

Oh, God. Anton.

Penny.

“I found the drive, you know,” said Arthur morosely. “Too bad it was useless.”

It took my brain several seconds to catch up with his words, and then I cried, “You what?”

“Found it. In Polk’s house, once I tracked down she was the killer. Was only a few weeks ago.”

“What was on it?”

“Couldn’t tell; it was all coded up. But it’s useless.”

“How do you know that if it’s encrypted?”

His face was all moon-eyed hopelessness. “Asked Dawna Polk about it. She said it was nothing.”

Holy crap. “Arthur, where is the drive now?”

“Checker’s got it. I’m going to get it back from him and toss it, though.”

“Arthur! Arthur, no, that’s—that’s not you talking; that’s—forget it. Have you talked to Checker about this yet?”

He sighed. “I can’t reach him.”

I was suddenly having trouble breathing. “You can’t reach him?”

“No. It’s strange, you know? He usually answers. I can’t reach…I can’t reach anybody.”

Oh, crap. Oh, fuck. How had I not thought of this before? Shit, I had mentioned Checker in my generous tell-all to Dawna, and I had only just met him. Arthur worked with him all the time.

“Arthur,” I said carefully. “Don’t freak out, but did Dawna ask you about Checker?” Would it matter? Could she have seen everything anyway, whether or not she had asked?

“No,” Arthur answered. “Well, not until after I mentioned him. She was real interested. He’s a heck of a guy, you know?”

“Oh, no.” I pushed back the blankets and scrambled up. “Oh, God.”

“Russell, stop! What are you doing? You can’t get up!”

“The hell I can’t.” I tore the medical tape off the back of my hand and slid out the IV, ignoring the dark blood that welled up. It would clot. “We have to find him. Now.”

Arthur shook his head. “You ain’t allowed to find Checker. It’s part of his security whatsis, you know—clients don’t get to know where the Hole’s at.”

“Arthur, this is very important.” I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where Checker lives—he calls it the Hole?” I took a deep breath. “Do you know where it is? I’m not asking you to tell me, but do. You. Know?”

He looked like he was thinking it over. It was wildly disconcerting, like watching a five-year-old child in a grown man’s body. “Of course I do. But I ain’t telling you, so don’t ask.”

I physically shook him. “Arthur! We have to find him, now! You know, so Dawna knows, and Pithica’s coming after him!” We might be too late already.

Arthur shook his head again, adamantly. “She wouldn’t hurt him. She was just interested.”

“No! She would definitely hurt him! She lied to you, remember? About Rio? About not hurting me?”

His face clouded. “Yeah.”

“And it made you doubt her motives, right? Remember?”

“Yeah…”

Thank goodness Dawna hadn’t had another crack at him after undoing her own work. He would have been a Pithica-loving robot. “Arthur, listen to me. You don’t have to believe me, okay? But you do have to go see Checker, now. In person.”

He frowned down at me. “You feeling better enough for me to leave for a while?”

Oh, Jesus, did I ever. “Yes! I promise! Now go, right now!”

He shrugged me off. “Don’t know what you’re so hyper about, but okay. I am kind of worried I can’t reach him.” He grabbed his coat off a chair. “And I can get that flash drive back off him, too.”

Oh, brother. Was I this bad under Dawna’s influence? How on earth did I fix this? Rio always seemed to be able to talk me out of it, but Steve had implied I was highly unusual that way, and I still didn’t know why. I shuddered to think what Arthur would have been like if Dawna hadn’t had me shot.

“You lie back down,” Arthur admonished, pointing at me as he headed toward the door.

“Cross my heart,” I called after him.

The door closed. I found my jacket and gingerly zipped it; if it was still raining out I probably didn’t want to get the bandages wet. My boots were by the door.

It was indeed still raining, the continuous, drenching downpour that was the hallmark of Southern California’s wet season. The flat we’d been in turned out to be back in the congestion of Los Angeles proper, and Arthur, honest guy that he was, got on a bus. Since I stole a car, it was mind-numbingly easy to follow him, even through miles and miles of red lights and stop-and-go traffic.

After three line transfers and over two hours, Arthur disembarked from the latest bus line near Panorama City and started walking. I ditched the car and followed, hunching against the rain and turning up the collar of my jacket against the deluge. Arthur was one of those people who was always glancing around and checking his surroundings—it probably came with the whole being-a-PI thing—and his observational skills would have caught most tails, but I’m very good at following people.

I trailed him onto a residential street, where he turned into the driveway of an unremarkable one-story house with a ramp installed over the porch steps. Arthur bypassed the house entirely and circled around to a side entrance of the garage.

As he reached it, he stumbled to a stop and staggered as if he’d been knifed.

My brain short-circuited. I dashed forward, next to him in an instant. “What is it?”

He blinked at me through the rain. “Russell! What in the hell—you shouldn’t—how did you—” His voice kept cracking, as if he wasn’t sure how to form words anymore.

I turned to the garage. The doorjamb next to the lock was splintered, and the door stood open a few inches, letting the wind and rain pour into the dark emptiness inside.