CHAPTER 27 Code Word Girly #2
I stared at her. “So either I help you or you kill someone?” That didn’t sound like much of a deal to me. “I don’t think so. And for the record, I know who has the weapon, too.” I took a step forward, playing the odds that she wouldn’t actually shoot me for a single misstep. “You do.”
“Are you all this dramatic?” Amelia asked. “Or this stupid?”
I was getting really tired of people calling me a drama queen.
“Allow me to break this down for you. I’m not going to kill anyone.
I don’t have the weapon. I’m honestly not sure why you think I do.
” There was no humor in Amelia’s voice, nothing that made her words come across as anything but cold, hard fact.
“What I do have is information that you need, and all I want in return is a promise.”
Her words confused me so much that I honestly wasn’t sure whether she was speaking English or not.
Did she really expect me to believe she didn’t have the nanobots?
Of the other TCIs, one was in custody, one was dead, and the last one was wandering aimlessly around a park.
If Amelia hadn’t stolen the weapon, that meant there was another player on the scene, and really, what were the chances of that?
“Give me one good reason I should believe anything that comes out of your mouth,” I told her, vaguely aware of the fact that it sounded like something out of a horribly cheesy movie.
“Believe me because it’s true,” Amelia said, “or believe me because if I had the weapon, your bedroom is the last place I’d be right now. Take your pick.”
When she put it in those terms, I realized she was right. If she’d been the one to steal the nanobots, she’d either be sneaking her way into Peyton or halfway to Tahiti by now. Neither of those scenarios involved a detour by my house.
“If you didn’t steal the weapon, who did?
” I didn’t really expect her to answer, but I couldn’t help thinking out loud.
I’d been so sure that Amelia was the person in black that I hadn’t spent any time thinking of alternative hypotheses.
Amelia had the motive, she had the intel, and she had the ability to pull the whole thing off.
Other than the girls on the Squad, I couldn’t think of anyone else for whom that was true.
To my surprise, Amelia had an answer to my question. “If I had to guess who stole the nanobots, I’d go with whoever blew up Jacob Kann’s car.”
Originally, the Big Guys had suspected Hassan of the bombing because he’d had the other TCIs under surveillance. Until about forty-five seconds ago, I’d thought Amelia had probably set the bomb herself. Now, I wasn’t sure what to think.
“You’re saying that you didn’t take Kann out?” I had to ask.
Amelia snorted. “He’s an idiot, and a womanizer, and he was under the impression that he was going to have sex with me, but I wouldn’t have killed him.
” Amelia never took her eyes off me and the gun never wavered, but somehow, she managed to look exactly like the twins did when they started filing their nails out of boredom in the middle of one of our meetings.
“As much fun as chatting is, can we get on with it? I don’t know who stole the weapon, but I do know they’ve disposed of it, and I know who has it now.
If you’re very, very nice to me, I just might tell you who it is. ”
“Why would you do that?” I couldn’t fathom her reasoning. This whole interaction was so insane that I half-expected my clothes to disappear, revealing that this was just the latest in a long line of twisted naked dreams.
“You act like this is the first time I’ve dealt your people in,” Amelia huffed.
“Without me, your bosses wouldn’t have Hector Hassan in custody right now, Jacob Kann would have bought the weapon from Ross days ago, and Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray would have intercepted Kann, taken the weapon, and killed Ross just because they could.
I’ve been playing the players and throwing kinks in the firm’s plans for days now, and this is the thanks I get? I’m not sure you deserve my offer.”
“Kinks?”
Amelia shrugged. “Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray brought me in to act as their little lapdog and fetch the nanobots as soon as Ross sold them. They didn’t exactly endear themselves to me, and I figured that if something this big was going down, your people would clue in eventually.
I just stalled things for a couple of days.
I convinced Peyton to let me bid against Kann for the nanobots instead of stealing them from him after the deal went through.
When Ross realized he was dealing with more than one potential buyer, he decided to hold an auction, just like I knew he would. ”
Amelia was still speaking a language I couldn’t quite understand. She’d stalled Peyton and convinced them to wait before moving in? She’d somehow prevented Ross from closing the deal with Kann earlier in the week?
“Why?” I glanced down to make sure my clothes were still in place, because this kept getting stranger and stranger.
Amelia shrugged. “Why not?”
Well, that was less than helpful.
“You want another answer? How about this one: because I could. Because it was fun. Because my brothers set this job up for me, and they leave the toilet seat up too damn much.” I couldn’t tell whether she was serious or not on that last one, so I just listened, open-mouthed, as she continued.
“An operation as big as Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray—I knew the government had to be all over that, just waiting for these guys to mess up. I figured that if I stretched things out long enough, somebody would catch on, and as far as I’m concerned, the more players, the better the game. ”
Some game. A bunch of people were fighting over deadly technology, and she was acting like this whole mission ranked right up there with Yahtzee.
“So I’m supposed to think you’re a good guy?” I asked, my voice tight. “Because you’ve been stalling your employers?”
“You’re not supposed to think I’m a good guy,” Amelia said. “You’re just supposed to think I’m good.”
“Good?”
“I’ve been playing you, and I’ve been playing them.
I knew the second one of your girls put a tracker on my car, just like I knew when Peyton brought me here that all they wanted was someone to follow orders and look good doing it.
” She played with the gun in the tip of her hands, stroking her thumb up and down the side.
“They thought they were doing my family a favor by offering me this job.” Her lips pulled back into something that looked like a smile, but probably wasn’t. “I disagreed.”
I forced myself to think through everything Amelia had said.
Peyton had brought her in to do a simple job, and somehow Amelia had manipulated them into changing the job description.
She’d then orchestrated Ross’s decision to host an auction, which had resulted in two more TCIs coming to Bayport.
That influx had tipped the Big Guys off to the fact that something was up, and as a result, we’d been brought in on the case.
According to Amelia, that had been her intention all along.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So you wanted the government brought in on this case, but once you knew we were on it …”
“That’s when things got interesting.” Amelia’s smile looked genuine this time. “I decided to see if I could get you to take out the competition for me.”
“The competition you brought here to begin with.”
“Except for Jacob, yes.”
“And you expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with his car blowing up?”
“Haven’t we already been over this? I have no idea who killed Jacob Kann, but whoever they are, they’re good. My plan was just to plant a bunch of drugs on him and then lead your people in for the arrest.”
She talked about framing someone so glibly. “You framed him,” I said. Something about her tone and the words she’d spoken earlier led me to my next conclusion. “Just like you did with Hector Hassan.”
Amelia grinned. “I knew somebody would be on this case eventually, and I knew Hassan had some pretty unsavory backing.”
If by “unsavory,” she meant “terrorists,” then yeah.
“I needed to keep track of the others, but figured you guys would be doing the same, so I bugged Connors-Wright and Kann and gave Hassan enough rope to hang himself.”
“You bugged yourself to throw us off track.” In a word: genius.
“That pointed you guys toward Hassan, since he was the only one not already bugged, which led to you guys tracking him and bringing him into custody before he could do any real harm.” Amelia smiled then, the barest hint of satisfaction playing across her even features. “You’re welcome.”
“Okay, so you set up Hassan,” I said. “That doesn’t prove that you weren’t the one who took out Kann.
” I knew I was beating a dead dog here, but I just couldn’t help it.
Amelia Juarez was apparently some kind of evil mastermind, and she was standing in my bedroom.
I wanted her to be the bad guy, because the idea that there was someone out there who’d beaten both of us to the weapon was scarier than the gun still trained on my forehead.
“You don’t want to take my word on the fact that I had nothing to do with Jacob’s murder?
Fine. I’m assuming you guys have some sort of database.
You might want to check it, because according to Peyton’s reports on the explosion, the bomb was remotely detonated, which means that someone was watching that car and waiting to press the little red button.
” She smiled, and I could practically hear her thinking “check and mate.”
“Coincidentally enough, that was the day your group attempted to plant a tracker on my car. They were tailing me when the bomb went off. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the word I’m looking for here is alibi.”