Private Lives

What to do?

Three family members had keeled over. That didn’t sound like the result of bad tuna salad. Megan took a step toward the kitchen. Should she start dragging Mom out? Should she go to the living room and call Emergency Services?

No, to both questions, she decided. If this was a gas leak, or carbon monoxide, she was breathing the stuff herself. The thing to do was get out, then call for help.

She dug in her shoulder bag for her wallet-phone even as she dashed into the living room. The floor seemed spongier with every step she took. Either that, or her legs were getting rubbery.

Bad sign, Megan thought. Means whatever is in here is getting to me as well.

Her groping fingers encountered her wallet, but seemed to be having a hard time flipping aside her IDs and stuff.

Should still be set to phone mode, Megan thought fuzzily. Who had she called last? Right. Leif. Warned him that what’shisname? might be after them. Silly idea. What was the emergency code?

Inside the bag her fingers didn’t seem to belong to her anymore. They fumbled over the foilpack keypad. What should she press? What was she doing here?

That was when she spotted the figure coming toward her. A guy dressed in dark blue slacks and a matching zippered jacket. Could be casual clothes, could be some sort of delivery uniform.

The thing she really noticed was the gas mask covering his face.

Megan knew she only had one chance. She snapped a high kick at the masked intruder. At the same time she stabbed blindly down on the top row of wallet-phone keys.

For about the fifth time in the last few minutes, Megan knew something was wrong. She’d misjudged the distance her kick would have to traverse. Her foot was nowhere near the guy in the gas mask when it was time to recover.

And…she couldn’t seem to get her balance. She seemed to be flying through the air in slow motion. No, she was falling. No, the room must be turning. Was that the floor or the ceiling coming at her?

She tried to position her arms and body so they would take the force of landing on…whatever…and turn it into a roll that would bring her back to her feet.

But Megan never felt the impact. She knew her arms were drooping, her head lolling, as if all the bones had been removed from her body.

Strangely, for a brief second, the world seemed to snap into focus.

It’s the floor, she thought, seeing the rug at very close quarters.

Then everything went black.

20

Megan didn’t know how much time had passed before she regained consciousness. Slowly, though, blackness turned to misty gray, and then she opened her eyes. She found herself in a dimly lit space, on a very narrow, rather hard bed. The wall curved beside her, and the ceiling seemed very close. Megan couldn’t go far to explore her new surroundings. One wrist was handcuffed to a railing at the edge of the bed.

The cuffs weren’t really necessary. Megan felt as if all the strength had been bled out of her muscles. And the merest motion made her head pound while starting the room spinning sickeningly. Worst of all, the room seemed to move by itself with a horrible slopping sound. Right then the room suddenly heaved up, and so did everything in Megan’s stomach.

Now she knew why the basin had been placed beside her pillow. With a supreme effort she forced her body to move, bringing her head over the side of the bunk to barf on the carpeted floor.

Too bad it wasn’t expensive carpet. That rebellious thought seemed to help clear Megan’s throbbing brain. The floor covering’s quality fell somewhere between the stuff found in offices with heavy traffic and Astroturf.

“That wasn’t very friendly.” The mild voice coming out of the dimness sounded very disappointed in her.

“Kidnapping didn’t seem very friendly to me,” Megan replied in a creaky voice. She peered into the semidarkness, finally making out an outline by the wall. Lights came on, and Megan dropped back to the pillow, feeling as if someone were hammering a spike into her head.

“It should pass in a minute,” the mild voice assured her.

Megan squinted up. The only guy she could imagine kidnapping her was Marc Kovacs-Mike Steele. But the guy in the gas mask hadn’t had Kovacs’s big mane of graying black hair. His hair had been cut businessman-short, and it was an unremarkable shade of mousy brown.

Of course, Steele had changed the color and length of his hair to become Kovacs. One thing was sure: Her captor didn’t want her to see any alterations he’d made to his face. He was wearing one of those face masks for the worst winter days, with holes for your mouth and eyes, and a sort of beak with a strainer on it for your nose. It was jokingly known as a “mugger’s comfort.” The thing must be almost unbearably hot in the warm cabin of this boat….

Hey! She’d figured out where she was!

The boat’s bobbing on the water — and the smell of the mess she’d made on the carpet — brought another wave of nausea. Megan grit her teeth and moaned.

“I guess you’re not a good sailor,” her kidnapper said. “Seasick already, and we’re not even away from the dock.”

“More like aftereffects of that gas you used on me,” Megan shot back.

Gas! She suddenly remembered her mother, father, and brother on the floor, out like lights. “What was that stuff you used?” Megan demanded. “My family—”

“Should be fine,” her captor assured her. “The gas was designed to creep up on you so you go to sleep. Often people curl up comfortably. You, however, bounced to the floor. I expect you’ll have bruises in some unexpected places — not that it will matter to you for very much longer.”

He broke off at her glare. “Anyway, I opened the windows to make sure the stuff dissipated,” he said gently. “Your folks should wake up with no ill effects.”

Except for having their daughter disappear, Megan thought bleakly.

She gave the masked man a hard look. Traces of a brownish mustache could be spotted through the opening in the grate thing at the end of the nose. The man didn’t seem to have a beard anymore.

“You presented me with an interesting problem,” the man — she decided to call him Mike Steele — said.

“I’m surprised at your subtlety,” she shot back. “Usually you seem to blow your problems up.”

The masked head nodded. “But in this case, I had to talk to you first. I had to find out what damaging information you’d planted on me, and where.”

A little too late, Megan realized that even the best evasive maneuvers of an amateur hacker might not fool an ex-Net Force professional.

Even though she faced death, either from this masked man or from barfing herself inside out, Megan couldn’t restrain the harsh laughter that escaped her lips. “There is no incriminating evidence,” she gasped. “I saw you getting away with murder, with no one able to stop you. Figured the least I could do was make sure you didn’t enjoy it.”

“It was a prank call?” Mike Steele sounded very annoyed.

“Yeah. What are you going to do about it? Kill me twice?”

“Believe it or not, I try not to go overboard in the killing department,” Steele said. “I did society a favor taking out Steve the Bull. He was a piece of human garbage. Even his former business associates were glad to see him go. Tori Rush had no family. She was a greedy little witch with an inflated sense of her own talent. Everyone she knew, and especially all the people she screamed at — including her agent — won’t miss her much.”

“And Professor Wellman? Universally respected? Loved by his students?”

“That was a miscalculation,” Steele admitted. “He wasn’t supposed to be in his office when the bomb went off. But that shouldn’t be your concern right now. You must have a bizarre lucky angel sitting on your shoulder. After I, ah, collected you, I got a call from a source of mine in the FBI fingerprint labs. They were going over an oddball