“Bodie Fuhrman,” Matt put in.
Gridley nodded. “Nice name. Anyway, she’s talking her head off to the NYPD and to our local agents up there. We’ll have ample grounds to question Mr. Kovacs about his investigatory efforts for Tori Rush — and his involvement in the demise of Ms. Rush and Professor Wellman.”
The head of Net Force looked grim. “We’re going to take full jurisdiction in this matter. It’s not just the Alcista thing and the destruction of
Both Winters and Matt nodded in silence.
“If all goes well, we should be ready to move by tomorrow afternoon,” Jay Gridley said briskly. He turned to Matt. “Until the results actually hit the media, however, I have to ask you to keep things quiet.”
“Do we expect any more fireworks from Mike-Marc?” Winters looked a little ill, in spite of the deliberately restrained language he used for murder. “I think he…overreacted…when he saw his frame job about to crack.”
“I just don’t want any premature warnings stampeding him into a quick exit,” Gridley said somberly. “Mike Steele is not going to come back and haunt us another time.” Again, he looked at Matt. “Okay?”
“Got it, sir,” Matt said. The mood in the small room seemed to have mellowed now. Both men seemed comfortable in each other’s company. Matt figured it was time for him to butt out.
“I guess I’ll be heading home,” he said.
Jay Gridley nodded, a wry smile on his face. “I’m sure that as soon as you’re out of this door, you’ll face a barrage of questions as intense as any HoloNews interview. Remember what you just said. No one — not even Mark — is to know what’s going down tomorrow.”
“You can count on me,” Matt said. “Kovacs will get no warning from any Net Force Explorer.”
Megan O’Malley sat in front of her computer. She could feel the frown on her face — part of her was not happy with what she was about to do. But she’d made her decision in spite of it.
“Computer,” she said. “Net connection. Voice only — no holographic projection. Vocal filter program, mode choice, ‘gravel voice.’ Route connection through the following nodes…”
She then went on to reel off a list of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Net, while throwing in some random-access evasion programs as well. When she finished, it would be the best anti-tracking effort she’d ever come up with.
Megan allowed herself a small smile. At least this was something she could do. The walls of security around I-on Investigations and Marcus Kovacs himself were too powerful to be breached by her hacking. She thought of recruiting the Squirt — he could get her in to cause havoc in Kovacs’s home or business system. But she didn’t want to drag anyone else in on a personal vendetta.
She didn’t know which was worse, seeing a friend and mentor destroyed by a phantom enemy, or knowing who was doing it, and helplessly watch him not only avoid the consequences, but thumb his nose at justice.
But she did know she wasn’t putting up with it any longer.
Megan had to do something!
She gave the computer the private communications code for Marcus Kovacs. That had been the one useful item of information she’d been able to dig up in all her hacking. Even with the speed of her computer, there was a bit of a time lag as the signal bounced all over the Net, even popping into sites in other countries.
Ah! There was the
“Hello,” a drowsy voice said. Megan had aimed for a time when most normal people would be asleep.
The voice became more alert. “Why isn’t there a visual? Is there a problem?”
“I know who you really are.” Megan whispered the words, but they were nearly washed out of her own ears by the amplified voice that mimicked her speech. True to its description, it had the hoarse, gravelly tones of an old man.
“Don’t be so sure you got yourself off the hook by murdering all those people,” she went on. “I think you only postponed the inevitable. But I’m not the patient type. So I took a page from the old Iron Mike Steele playbook. When you don’t have evidence to incriminate people, just make it up and plant it on them.”
“What—?” Kovacs’s voice was sharp now. Obviously, he was fully awake. Best of all, Megan could detect a note of alarm in his voice. Time to wrap this up.
“Search all you like. You’ll never know where this little bit of information is hiding. But it will be somewhere, tick, tick, ticking away, waiting for just the right moment to wreck your life.”
She cut the connection and pulled out of the Net, bouncing through another set of cutout addresses to foil any chance of a trace.
The computer finished its program and automatically shut down. Megan flopped back against the cushions of her computer-link couch, feeling drained — and a little silly.
It would be great if she could actually do what she’d threatened. But she didn’t know how to pull off such a scam. Not only was it wildly illegal, it was impractical. She hadn’t even managed to get access to the guy’s computers.
Megan sighed, massaging her temples. But even if what she’d done was little more than an elaborate prank call, Marcus Kovacs — or rather, Mike Steele — knew his number was up. He might get away with taking people’s lives, with taking James Winters’s reputation, but he knew somebody was on to him.
At least the scuzz-bucket wouldn’t get away with his own peace of mind.
19
The next afternoon, after classes, Matt came out the side door of Bradford Academy. He was on his way to the bus, but as he glanced toward the parking lot, he saw a familiar figure.
Captain Winters stood beside what just had to be an unmarked Net Force van. Two agents sat in the front seat of the waiting Dodge SUV.
“Matt!” the captain called. “I thought we’d be able to catch up with you here.”
“What’s going on, Captain?”
“These gentlemen are just on their way to I-on Investigations to talk to Marcus Kovacs…and bring him in.”
“So the fingerprint thing turned out okay?”
“Several partial prints were recovered from the silver rattle,” Winters confirmed. “Astonishingly, they don’t bear any resemblance to the impressions in Mike Steele’s files. But they perfectly match segments of Marcus Kovacs’s fingerprints on file with the licensing authorities. That’s pretty odd, since Mr. Kovacs was still supposedly in the Balkans when I got that piece of silver. There’s no record of him ever entering the U.S. until he arrived to take over I-on. And that baby rattle has never been out of the USA.”
Once again Winters looked the very picture of a Net Force agent, every inch the hunter. “Those will be difficult enough questions for him to answer. Adding in what the Fuhrman girl told us about I-on’s activities, I think we’ll be able to put him through the wringer.”
Winters stopped for a second. “Well, not we, exactly. The gentlemen in the car will take care of that. I’m not only too close to the case to handle the investigation, I’m still on suspension.”
A cloud seemed to pass over the captain’s features, but then he smiled. “On the other hand, Jay Gridley offered you and me the opportunity to ride along — as observers, I guess you’d say. You can’t fault the man’s sense of justice. Right now neither of us has any police power. But Jay thought we might like to see the payoff on an investigation where we’ve both made so many contributions…and sacrifices.”
Gridley certainly got that right, Matt silently agreed.
He glanced at the two athletic-looking men in the van. “And it’s all right with them?”
“It’s not as though we’re going to be in at the kill. We’ll just be spectators.” Winters pointed to another car parked in the lot. “That’s mine,” he said. “We’ll just follow along, park in some inconspicuous spot, and watch as the so-called Mr. Kovacs is led off. I don’t intend to wave or call attention to myself at all. I just want to see this
