means that if they get her back to Berkeley, they can’t mistreat her. They can be themselves, which is bad enough, but Alisa’s older than George and I were when they took us in. She’ll be fine until Alaric can get there and take her away from them.”
“You’re willing to count on that?”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice. We can’t head for Florida. We’d never make it past the barricades. We need to get to the rest of the team and regroup.”
“How long before we reach Seattle?”
“We’re about twenty miles out. I figure I’ll try calling Mahir right before we hit the city limits—if he picks up, we can go straight to where he is, and not need to keep the connection open.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Becks asked, taking a smaller sip of her soda.
“I have no idea. I’m sort of making all this up as I go along, you know.”
“Thank you,” I said automatically, and winced.
Becks politely ignored my slip. “I know you are. I don’t envy you the lead on this story.”
“Hey, it’s worked so far. What are you going to do when we meet the Monkey? You could be anyone. What’s your new identity going to be?”
“I think I’ll be an Internet journalist.” She smiled. “I understand they don’t need much in the way of training. Or brains. How about you?”
“I’m going to ask for anything that lets me disappear.” I kept my eyes on the road. “This is going to end soon, Becks. It’s gone too far to last much longer. Too many people have died. So if I get through this story alive… I just want to be left alone.”
“You want to be alone with George,” said Becks.
“Maybe.”
“I don’t… Shaun, I…” Becks paused, taking a breath. “You know I love you, right? As a friend. I may have loved you as something more once, but that’s over now. You know that.”
“I do.”
“So it’s as a friend, and as a colleague, that I ask… are you sure? You’re not holding on that tightly as it is. Going off to be alone with the voices in your head—”
“It’s not just voices anymore. I see her sometimes.” That stopped her. I continued. “She was sitting in that seat not long before you woke up. We were talking. If I get deep enough into the conversation, if I forget long enough, sometimes I can even feel her. I’m
Becks sighed. “You’re asking me to help you turn into a crazy hermit living in the mountains somewhere.”
“Yeah. I am.”
“As long as you realize it.” She slumped in her seat, giving the jamming device a light smack with the heel of her hand. “How does this damn thing work, anyway?”
“You want the technical answer, or the honest answer?” I paused. “Actually, those are the same answer.”
“Shoot.”
“I have no fucking clue. Buffy was always real impressed with it, I know that; she wanted to build one for us, but other stuff kept getting in the way, and then we were working for a presidential hopeful, so it didn’t seem like a good political move.” And then she was dead, and she wasn’t going to be building anything for anybody. Things would have gone so differently if she’d lived. She would have seen what was happening and turned on the conspiracy that had turned her against us, and all this might already be over. George might still be alive. And I might not be looking forward to going all the way insane.
“It was nice of the Masons to give it to us.”
“Yeah, it was. I figure we’ll kill it with a hammer as soon as it’s served its purpose.” Becks shot me a scandalized look. I shook my head. “You really think they don’t have some sort of a tracking beacon in this thing? Buffy built alarms into the van security system that would have gone off if it were broadcasting—she had to reprogram them not to go off when Maggie got too close, since her parents have her rigged up with ‘do not abduct’ heiress crap. So I figure they’re just waiting until we stop moving long enough that they can assume we’re not in the vehicle anymore, and then they’re going to start pinging our position.”
Becks stared at me. “If they’re planning to use the thing to track us, why did you let me take it?”
“Because it was the only thing that would get us out of Berkeley. Even if the Masons just called the local cops on us, they’d be turning on every tracking chip they could think of as soon as we ran. And I somehow doubt they just called the local cops—or called them at all.”
“Why?”
“It took too long for them to get there. There’s a police station less than eight blocks away. My parents were turning us in for the ratings, remember? They called the CDC. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” It explained both the delay in their arrival, and why the Masons listened when I said they were making a mistake. The CDC is still the government, and after what happened during the Ryman campaign, trusting them might not have come as easy as it once did.
“Right.” Becks sighed and slumped in her seat. Then she leaned forward and turned the radio back up, signaling that she was done talking for the moment. I smiled a little, catching her meaning, and returned my focus to the road.
“I know,” I said, and kept driving.
The outskirts of Seattle loomed up with surprising speed; the relative obscurity of the roads we’d been taking meant that there was minimal traffic. I dug a burner ear cuff out of my pocket, snapping it on. A tap triggered the connection. “This is Shaun Mason activating security profile Pardy. Something’s wrong with Brenda, we’re out of Mister Pibb, and hunting season’s here. Now let’s go to Hollywood.”
“Your taste in passwords is crap,” commented Becks.
I made a shushing motion. Mahir picked up after two rings, asking, “Oh, thank God. Shaun? Is that you?”
“If it weren’t, somebody would have just gotten really, really lucky trying to turn this thing on. Where are you guys?”
Mahir’s voice turned instantly suspicious. “Why?”
“Because we’ve just reached Seattle, and we’d like to come join you. Especially if wherever you are has a bathroom. Is there a bathroom? Please tell me there’s a bathroom. We’ve been driving for like, twenty hours, and I need to piss like you wouldn’t believe.”
“TMI, Shaun,” said Becks.
“How did you get out of Berkeley?”
“Wait, what?” Now it was my turn to get suspicious. “What are you talking about?”
“Several local Berkeley bloggers posted yesterday morning about a surprise CDC hazard team drill being run in a residential neighborhood—and their target was your family home. The Masons have even posted about it. They said they were glad to cooperate with anything that might improve safety procedures and response times.” He paused before adding, grimly, “We thought they might have turned you in.”
I sighed. “They kind of did. They just changed their minds before things could go all the way horribly wrong. How did they look?”
“Your mum had a black eye—”
“Yeah, I gave her that.”
“—and a broken arm. Your dad just had some taped-up fingers.”
“What?” I demanded. “I didn’t do
“Apparently, it wasn’t believable enough for the CDC. Snap your transmitter to the GPS, I’ll send you the address for our hotel. Wipe it as soon as you get here.”
