Private Lives

with Winters stewing over the unfairness of it all. Then Alcista gets out — and Winters sets out to get justice, no matter how belatedly.”

Megan fought a chill as she stared at her supposed ally.

Leif shrugged. “Twist hard enough, and you can make any set of facts fit the pattern you’ve already decided on. We see the captain’s actions as proving his innocence. Steadman saw it as showing his guilt.”

“Won’t a jury get to decide all that?” Matt insisted. “The stuff Mark found shows Winters in an entirely different light from the picture the media is pounding into everyone’s heads.”

“Do you honestly want things to go that far? I don’t. So what do you want to do with what we know?” Leif snapped. “Spread it around to every competitor HoloNews has? It would just be dismissed as wild rumor. We don’t have any documentation we can show anybody.”

Miserably Mark nodded. “I wasn’t able to download anything without setting off alarms from here to Canada. Just getting in was hard enough.”

Leif went on a little more quietly. “Besides, this isn’t news to the one person who really counts. Captain Winters lived through it all. His lawyer could subpoena all the records Mark found, and maybe even petition the court to unseal the records on Alcista’s sentencing deal.”

He hesitated for a second. “If he wanted to.”

“If?” Megan echoed. “IF? Don’t you mean when? What are you talking about, Anderson? This is the captain’s ‘get out of jail free’ ticket.”

She stared uncomprehending at Matt’s suddenly stricken expression. Out of all the kids in the room, Matt was probably the most like James Winters. So why wasn’t he happy? What was wrong with this information that would exonerate the captain?

“If he uses it,” Matt said in a hollow voice. “Here’s a guy who basically let his wife’s killer go rather than ruin Net Force’s reputation for integrity. Do you think he’s going to smear the agency now just to get himself off the hook?”

12

After the Squirt’s bombshell of an announcement — and the realization that it still didn’t help their case — most of the Net Force Explorers began synching out. Some stayed to discuss the news a little, but it was clear their hearts weren’t in it.

Leif Anderson wasn’t one of those. Something that had been said during this get-together was teasing his brain. He felt as though he were on the edge of an idea…just what kind of idea, however, he couldn’t say.

A thought sent him floating through Matt Hunter’s starry sky to where Megan O’Malley hung like a very pretty balloon.

“Well, this went much shorter than I expected,” he said quietly.

She nodded, her expression not a very happy one. Then her eyes went sharp. “You’ve got that I’m hatching something’ look,” she told him.

“I’m not sure what it is,” he admitted. “But I could use your help finding out. You still want to meet?”

She nodded.

“Chez vous or chez moi?”

“Your place, I think,” she replied.

Then it was Leif’s turn to nod. Megan’s workspace was impressive, a virtual amphitheater on one of the moons of Jupiter.

But its vastness wasn’t the greatest place to share confidences.

Leif stretched out a hand, and Megan took it. In the blink of an eye they were in the living room of the Icelandic stave house he’d carved out of cyberspace. Leif dropped onto the sofa, surprisingly comfortable in spite of its angular, modernistic look. Megan joined him.

“Oh!” she said, glancing out the big window. “You run a night and day cycle in here.” She turned from the view to him. “But it’s not a full moon — is it?”

He shrugged. “I like a full moon.”

“Good for romance,” she said cynically.

“Maybe later. We were going to share information, remember?”

Megan gave him a half-smile. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

He pushed back a wave of annoyance. Megan was acting as if this were some kind of date, playing boy-girl games. Or maybe it was just that he realized he didn’t have much to bargain with.

“You’ve already got most of what I dug up,” he admitted. “Except for the source.”

Megan looked skeptical. “Who is she, and why should I be interested?”

“Her name is Bodie — short for Boadicea — Fuhrman,” Leif said in a resigned tone of voice. “She used to be an intern at HoloNews, working for Tori Rush. I happened to meet her the evening after she quit.”

“And the morning after that, as I recall, you looked like you’d been run over by a truck,” Megan said. “What is she, a female wrestler?”

Leif shook his head. “Just somebody who was determined to party hearty.” He thought for a moment. “Everybody got so interested in what Tori Rush was doing — hiring detec tives to dig up her stories — that they ignored why she was doing it.”

“It’s an old story,” Megan said. “She wants a promotion.”

“She wants her own show,” Leif corrected. “Even has the name picked out—The Rush Hour.”

Megan wrinkled her nose. “Cute, but a bit much,” she said. “I guess Ms. Rush isn’t in the running for the World’s Smallest Ego award.”

“Most people in show business aren’t,” Leif agreed. “And these days that includes network news as well. At least the on-air personalities.”

“And your new friend Bodie — was she a budding personality as well?”

“More of a frustrated idealist,” Leif suggested. “She’s hoping for a job on The Fifth Estate when she gets out of school.”

“So, you were already discussing her hopes and dreams,” Megan said.

Leif could feel his face growing warm. Megan was not making this easy. “I thought you might like to tackle Ms. Fuhrman this time around.”

“Tired of her already?”

“I thought she might react differently to you than to me,” Leif said.

“No doubt,” Megan replied dryly.

“You can use the same approach as you did with Wellman at The Fifth Estate,” Leif pushed grimly onward. “The loyal Net Force Explorer trying to help the captain.”

“And why did I pick the bodacious Bodie?”

“You’re tracking down a list of people who left HoloNews,” Leif suggested. “Specifically, people connected with Once Around the Clock.”

“That might work,” Megan admitted. “It’s certainly worth a try.” She gave Leif a look. “And that’s all you were holding out?”

“A little later in the evening Bodie mentioned Tori Rush’s contact at I-on Investigations. Someone named Kovacs.”

Suddenly Megan was leaning forward on the couch, her eyes excited. “Marcus Kovacs? He’s the big cheese in the company — supposedly a financial guy rather than an investigator.” She frowned. “So why is Tori Rush talking with him instead of the guy digging up the dirt?”

“Customer relations,” Leif suggested. “Maybe he wants to make sure his famous client is happy. Or maybe he wants to keep an eye on someone who could land him in a nasty lawsuit.”

“I don’t think he’d inspire confidence,” Megan said critically. “He doesn’t even look like a detective.”

“And how many detectives have you seen — outside of holo-mysteries?” Leif wanted to know. Then he leaned toward Megan, his glance sharpening. “Wait a minute! You’ve actually seen this Kovacs guy?”