Skin Deep

  “I learn quickly,” I said. “Physics, math, languages . . . I just need to spend a short time studying, and I can become an expert—via an aspect. Maybe gunplay isn’t different. I studied it, fired a few times at the range, and became an expert. But this skill is different—you can’t help me by talking—so I couldn’t use you properly until I imagined you guiding me. It’s not so different from what Kalyani does in guiding me through a conversation in another language.”

  “You’re stretching,” J.C. said. “Why hasn’t this worked for any other skill you’ve tried?”

  I didn’t know.

  “I’m a Time Ranger,” J.C. said stubbornly.

  “If that were true—which it’s not—wouldn’t you be angry at me for grabbing you from your other life and trapping your quantum ghost here?”

  “Nah,” J.C. said. “It’s what I signed up for. The creed of the Time Ranger. We have to protect the universe, and for now that means protecting you as best I can.”

  “Oh, for the love of—”

  “Hey,” J.C. interrupted. “Aren’t we tight for time? You should be moving.”

  “We can’t do much until morning arrives,” I said, but allowed myself to be moved on from the topic. I waved Tobias over. “Keep everyone working. I’m going to go take a shower and do some reading. After that, we’re hitting the field.”

  “Will do,” Tobias said. “And the field team is?”

  “Standard,” I said. “You, Ivy, J.C., and . . .” I looked through the room. “And we’ll see who else.”

  Tobias gave me a curious look.

  “Have the team meet me in the garage, ready to go, at seven thirty.”

  9

  I turned the cryptography book to text-to-voice, cranked the volume, and set it to 5x speed. The following shower was long and refreshing. I didn’t think about the problem—I just learned.

  When I stepped into my bedroom in my bathrobe, I found that Wilson had set out breakfast for me, along with a tall glass of lemonade. I sent him a text, asking him to have the driver prep the SUV—much less conspicuous than taking the limo—for a seven-thirty departure.

  I finished the book while eating, then made a call to Elsie, my contact in Homeland Security. I woke her up, unfortunately, but she was still willing to check on the matter for me. I put in a call to the coroner’s office—got the voicemail, but left a message for Liza—and as I was finishing, got a text back from Elsie. I3 was indeed under lockdown, with the CDC investigating and the FBI involved.

  I strode into the garage a short time later, dressed and somewhat refreshed, right on time for our departure. There I found Wilson himself—square faced, bifocaled, and graying on top—flicking a speck of something off a chauffeur’s cap, which he proceeded to put on his head.

  “Wait,” I said. “Isn’t Thomas supposed to be in this morning?”

  “Unfortunately,” Wilson said, “he is not coming to work today. Or ever, apparently, as per his message this morning.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “What happened?”

  “You do not recall explaining to him that you were a Satanist, Master Leeds?”

  “Two percent Satanist,” I said. “And Xavier is very progressive for a devil-worshiper. He’s never made me sacrifice anything other than imaginary chickens.”

  “Yes, well . . .”

  I sighed. Another servant lost. “We can call in a driver for the day. We had a long night last night. You don’t need to do work this early.”

  “I don’t mind,” Wilson said. “Somebody needs to look out for you, Master Leeds. Did you sleep at all?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “I see. And did you happen to eat anything at dinner last night before you ended up in the tabloids?”

  “The story is out already, is it?”

  “Written up in the Mag and posted on Squawker this morning—along with an exposé by Miss Bianca herself. You skipped dinner, and you skipped lunch yesterday as well, insisting that you didn’t want to spoil your appetite for the date.”

  More like didn’t want to throw up from nervousness. “No wonder that breakfast tasted so good.” I reached for the door handle to the SUV.

  Wilson rested his hand on my arm. “Do not become so preoccupied with saving the world, Master Leeds, that you forget to take care of yourself.” He patted my arm, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

  My team waited inside, all but Audrey, who burst into the garage wearing a sweater and a scarf. No other aspect had appeared upon my reading the book; Audrey had gained the knowledge, as she’d expected. I was glad—each new aspect put a strain on me, and I’d rather have old ones learn new things. Though, having Audrey along on the mission could be its own special brand of difficult.

  “Audrey,” I said as I opened the door for her, “it’s almost June. A scarf?”

  “Well,” she said with a grin, “what good is being imaginary if you can’t ignore the weather?” She threw her scarf dramatically over one shoulder, then piled into the car, elbowing J.C. on her way past.

  “If I shoot you, woman,” he growled at her, “it will hurt. My bullets can affect interdimensional matter.”

  “Mine can go around corners,” she said. “And make flowers grow.” She settled in between Ivy and Tobias, and didn’t put on her seat belt.

  This was going to be an interesting mission.

  We pulled out onto the roadway. Morning was upon us, the day bright, and rush hour well under way. I watched out the window, lost in thought for a time, until I noticed J.C. fishing in Ivy’s purse.

  “Uh . . .” I said.

  “Don’t turn,” J.C. said, batting away Ivy’s hand as she tried to snatch the purse back. He came out with her compact makeup mirror and held it up to glance over his shoulder out the back window, not wanting to present his profile.

  “Yeah,” he said, “someone’s probably following us.”

  “Probably?” Ivy asked.

  “Hard to say for certain,” J.C. said, shifting the mirror. “The car doesn’t have a front license plate.”

  “You think it’s her?” I asked. “The assassin?”

  “Again,” J.C. said, “no way to tell for certain.”

  “Maybe there is a way,” Audrey said, tapping her head and the new knowledge inside of it. “Wanna try some hacking, Steve-O?”

  “Hacking?” Ivy said. “As in computer hacking?”

  “No, as in coughing,” Audrey said, rolling her eyes. “Here, I’m going to write some instructions for you.”

  I watched with curiosity as she scribbled down a list of instructions, then handed them to me. It was imaginary paper—not that I could tell. I took it and read the instructions, then glanced at Audrey.

  “Trust me,” Audrey said.

  “I only read you one book.”

  “It was enough.”

  I studied her, then shrugged and got out my phone. Worth a try. Following her instructions, I called up F.I.G, the restaurant where I’d eaten—or, well, ordered food—last night. It rang, and fortunately the breakfast staff was already in. An unfamiliar voice answered, asking, “Hello?”

  I followed Audrey’s instructions. “Yeah, hey,” I said. “My wife ate there last night—but we had a family emergency, and she had to run before finishing her food. In fact, she was in such a hurry, she used the business credit card to pay instead of our home one. I was wondering if I could swap the cards.”

  “Okay,” the woman on the phone said. “What’s the name?”

  “Carol Westminster,” I said, using the alias Zen had used for her reservation.

  A few minutes passed. Hopefully the receipts from last night were still handy. Indeed, after shuffling about a moment, the woman came back on the phone. “Okay, what’s the new card name?”

  “Which one did she use?”

  “It’s a KeyTrust card,” the woman said, starting to sound suspicious. “Ends in 3409.”

  “Oh!” I replied. “Well, that’s the right one after all. Thanks anyway.”

/>   “Great, thanks.” The woman sounded annoyed as she hung up the phone. I wrote the number down in my pocket notebook.

  “You call that hacking?” J.C. said. “What was the point?”

  “Wait and see,” Audrey said.

  I was already dialing the bank’s credit card fraud prevention number. We continued in the car, taking an exit onto the southbound highway as I listened to holding music. Beside me, J.C. kept an eye on our supposed tail with Ivy’s mirror. He nodded at me. They’d followed us onto the highway.

  When I finally got through the menus, holding patterns, and warnings my call might be recorded, I ended up with a nice-sounding man with a Southern accent on the other side of the line. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “I need to report a stolen credit card,” I said. “My wife’s purse got taken from our house last night.”

  “All right. Name on the card?”

  “Carol Westminster.”

  “And the card number?”

  “I don’t have it,” I said, trying to sound exasperated. “Did you miss the part about the card being lost?”

  “Sir, you just need to look online—”

  “I tried! All I can see are the last four digits.”

  “You need to—”

  “Someone could be spending my money right now,” I cut in. “Do we have time for this?”

  “Sir, you have fraud protection.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just worried. It’s not your fault. I just don’t know what to do. Please, you can help, right?”

  The man on the other line breathed out, as if my tone change indicated he’d just dodged a potentially frustrating incident. “Just tell me the last four digits, then,” he said, sounding more relaxed.

  “The computer says 3409.”

  “Okay, let’s see . . . Do you know your PIN number, Mister Westminster?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Social security number attached to the card?”

  “805-31-3719,” I said with confidence.

  There was a pause. “That doesn’t match our records, sir.”

  “But it is my social security number.”

  “The number I have is probably your wife’s, sir.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “I can’t let you make changes until I authenticate, sir,” the man said in the neutral, patient voice of one accustomed to talking on the phone all day to people who deserved to be strangled.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I suppose you could call her,” I said. “She’s off to work, and I don’t have her social handy.”

  “I can do that,” the man said. “Is the number we have on file all right?”

  “Which one is that?” I asked. “Her cell was in her purse.”

  “555-626-9013.”

  “Drat,” I said, writing down quickly. “That’s the stolen phone’s number. I’ll just have to call her when she gets to work and have her call you.”

  “Very well. Is there anything else, sir?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  I hung up, then rotated the pad to display the number to the others. “The assassin’s phone number.”

  “Great,” J.C. said. “Now you can ask her out.”

  I turned the pad around and looked at the number. “You know, it was shocking how easy that was, all things considered.”

  “Rule number one of decryption,” Audrey said. “If you don’t have to break the code, don’t. People are usually far less secure than the encryption strategies they employ.”

  “So what do we do with this?” I asked.

  “Well, first there’s a little app I need you to download onto your phone,” Audrey said. “J.C., which of the three competitors do you think is most likely to have hired the woman?”

  “Exeltec,” J.C. said without missing a heartbeat. “Of the three, they’re the most desperate. Years of funding with no discernible progress, investors breathing down their necks, and a history of moral ambiguity and espionage. Subject of three investigations, but no conclusive findings.”

  “That packet has their CEO’s phone numbers,” Audrey said.

  I smiled and started working on the phone. In short time, I had my mobile set up to send fake information to Zen’s caller ID, indicating I was Nathan Haight, owner of Exeltec.

  “Have Wilson ready to honk,” Audrey said.

  I told him to be ready, then dialed.

  It rang once. Twice.

  Then picked up.

  “Here,” a curt, female voice said. “What is it? I’m busy.”

  I gestured to Wilson. He honked loudly.

  I heard it over the phone as well. Zen was most certainly tailing us. I hit the button on my phone’s app that imitated static on the line, then said something, which I knew would be distorted beyond recognition.

  Zen cursed, then she said, “I don’t care how nervous the other partners are. Bothering me repeatedly isn’t going to make this go faster. I’ll call in with a report when I know something. Until then, leave me alone.”

  She hung up.

  “That,” J.C. said, “was the strangest hacking I’ve ever seen.”

  “That’s because you don’t know what hacking really is,” Audrey said, sounding smug. “You imagine geeks in front of a computer. But in reality, most people ‘hacking’ today—at least as far as the media calls it—just spend their time on the phone trying to pry out information.”

  “So we know she’s following us,” Ivy said, “and we know the name of our rival company. Which tells us who has the corpse.”

  “Not for certain,” I said. “But it looks good.” I tapped my phone, thoughtful, as Wilson pulled off the highway and started driving through downtown. “Advice?”

  “We need to avoid getting in over our heads,” Ivy said. “If that’s humanly possible for us.”

  “I agree,” Tobias said. “Stephen, if we can find proof that Exeltec stole the body, the CDC might be willing to raid their offices.”

  “We could just raid their offices ourselves,” J.C. said. “Cut out the middleman.”

  “I’d rather not do anything specifically illegal,” Tobias replied.

  “Don’t worry,” J.C. said. “As an Interdimensional Time Ranger, I have code 876 special authorization to ignore local legal statutes in times of emergency. Look, Skinny, we’re going to end up compromising Exeltec eventually. I can feel it. Even if they aren’t storing the body in their local offices, there will be a trail to it in there somewhere.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Audrey added. “I’m with J.C. Breaking in sounds like fun.”

  I sat back, thinking. “We’ll go to the coroner,” I finally said, getting a nod from Tobias and Ivy. “I’d rather find proof incriminating Exeltec, and then set up an official raid.” A plan was beginning to form in my head. “Besides,” I added, “breaking in isn’t the only way to find out what Exeltec knows . . .”

  10

  The car rolled down a waking urban street, lamps flickering off now that the sun was fully up, like servants lowering their heads before their king. The city morgue was near the hospital, situated in a spread-out office complex that could have easily held three or four exciting internet start-ups. We passed carefully-trimmed hedges and trees with last year’s Christmas lights still wrapped around them, dormant until the season started up again.

  “All right,” J.C. said to me. “You ready for this?”

  “Ready?” I said.

  “We’re being tailed by an assassin, Skinny,” he said. “That feeling between your shoulder blades, that’s the knowledge that someone has you in their sights. She could squeeze the trigger at any moment.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Ivy said. “She’s not going to hurt us as long as she thinks we’re leading her to important information.”

  “Are you sure?” J.C. said. “Because I’m not. At any moment, her higher-ups could decide that you working for Yol is a very, very
bad thing. They could decide to remove the competition and take their chances at finding the key on their own.”

  The way he said it, cold and straightforward, made me squirm.

  “You just don’t like being followed,” Ivy said.

  “Damn right.”

  “Language.”

  “Look,” J.C. said, “Zen has information we’d really like to know. If we capture her, that alone might give us the proof we need. We know where she is, and we have a momentary advantage. How well do you think you could pull off a quiet evacuation?”

  “Not well,” I said.

  “Let’s try it anyway,” J.C. said, pointing. “See that turn right ahead, as we move into the parking lot? The hedge there will hide us from the view of the car following us. You need to bail from the vehicle there—don’t worry, I’ll help you—and have Jeeves park in front of the building right beside the hedges. We can get the drop on Zen and turn this chase on its head.”

  “Reckless,” Ivy said.

  It was, but as the turn approached, I made a decision. “Let’s do it,” I said. “Wilson, I’m slipping out of the car at the next turn. Drive as if nothing has happened; don’t slow more than normal. Park right in front of the morgue, then wait.”

  He adjusted the rear-view mirror so he could meet my eyes. He didn’t say anything, but I could see that he was concerned.

  The turning of the mirror gave me a good glimpse of the dark sedan behind us. I felt under my jacket for the sidearm J.C. had insisted I bring. This was not how I liked missions to go. I’d rather spend ten hours in a room trying to figure out a puzzle or a safe with no lock. Why, lately, did guns always seem to get involved?

  I moved to the side door, then crouched down, grabbing the handle. J.C. moved over behind me, hand on my shoulder.

  “Five, four, three . . .” he counted.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Two . . . One!”

  I cracked the door right as Wilson turned the car around the hedge. J.C. heaved against my back, somehow pushing me in just the right way so that when I left the car, I hit in a curling roll. It still hurt. The momentum of the car’s turn clicked the door shut and I rolled up into a crouch beside the hedge, where I waited until I heard the car behind us start to turn.