Annum Guard: Blackout Part 19

I'm not done.

"And what I want to know is why Marie seems so intent to cover for XP."

"I ordered you to let that go. Let XP go."

"What is going on here?" Red asks.

"Why?" I shout at her. "There's a real threat and a real enemy, and you're not following the trail!" I turn to Red. "Her name isn't even Jane Bonner!"

"What?"

Then Bonner is on me. She grabs my arm-all five of her fingertips pressing into my bicep. "You have no idea the danger we're all in." Suddenly I stop fighting her grip. I hear the fear in her voice, see it lurking behind her eyes.

"You know who's behind the blackouts."

"I don't."

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

Bonner pushes me away as she lets go of my arm. "Give me your watch. It's going back in the lockbox, back in the safe, and it's never coming out again. You are on indefinite administrative leave."

I blink. "You're firing me?"

"Jane!" Red says. "I told you-"

"Give me your watch."

"No. Not until you tell me what you're doing here, Marie, and who you really are."

"I said give me your watch."

"And I said no! Who are you working for? Whose pocket are you in?" And then I smirk. "Or should I ask, whose pants are you in?"

Before I have time to move, her knuckles crack across my cheekbone, and light explodes behind my eyes. I stagger sideways and slam into the side of the desk. Red reaches to help me, but I shake him off.

I push off the desk and turn to Bonner, fists raised. No one has ever hit me like that before, and every instinct I have says fight.

But then Bonner raises her hands in submission. "I'm sorry." She drops into her chair and cradles her head in her palms. Her shoulders shake, and I can tell for sure now that Bonner-Marie Quail-is terrified.

"This is not supposed to be happening," she whispers.

I lean over the desk. "What's not supposed to be happening?"

Bonner looks up. "Believe it or not, I'm trying to protect you."

"From what?" I bang both fists on the desk. "I think you're just trying to get rid of me."

"Give me your watch. Please. Please give me your watch! This is the only way I can help you."

"No, it's not. You can tell me-"

"Your watch, Iris!" She holds out her hand, palm up. It's clear she's not going to tell me anything else.

And so I slip the watch over my head and hand it to her.

"You can stay at Annum Hall until the end of the week." She gestures to the door. This conversation is over.

Except that it's not. She can be scared and try to hide the truth, but I'm not giving up. Not when my teammates-my friends-are in danger.

As soon as I have my hand on the door, she adds, "I'm serious, Iris. Don't go digging for answers you don't want to know."

But I do want to know.

"Well, I'm not quite sure how you expect me to dig, given that you just fired me and all."

Bonner narrows her eyes. "Leave. And close the door behind you."

I don't look at Red on the way out. I should have known I'd take the fall for this, no matter what he said. And, as Bonner knows, without Annum Guard, I have no way to figure out who XP is.

CHAPTER 19.

What happens next is a blur. I stumble past my teammates, past Abe. I mumble, "I got fired." There are gasps and protests, but I ignore them. I go out into the foyer and instinctively look toward the library, even though the interns aren't there. It's just after six in the morning. I go upstairs. I call my mom's cell. She doesn't answer. I call the house phone in Vermont. It's been disconnected. I try her cell again and leave a message. My third? Maybe fourth? I tell her I'm coming home. Even though I don't know if she's in Vermont.

When a manic period hits, she's a compulsive road tripper. Up and down the east coast, as far as her wallet will take her. I have good memories of riding the Ferris wheel at the Jersey Sh.o.r.e, of pretending to churn b.u.t.ter at Colonial Williamsburg.

And then not good memories of Mom's shouting matches with a security guard at the Met, after he asked her to keep it down and to stop screaming at everyone in the gallery that her work was better than Rothko's. I was thirteen. I remember how I felt being escorted out through a security entrance, the deep shame down to my toes.

I answer the door when I hear the knock because I know it's Abe. I don't say anything. He doesn't say anything. I tumble into bed, and Abe lies behind me, wrapping his arms around me like a blanket. I let myself melt into him.

For a second, I let myself imagine that I'm back at Peel, that I get a big do-over of my junior year. And then for another second, I imagine I'm not at Peel, not at Annum Guard. That I'm just a normal girl living a normal life, about to start my senior year of high school. I have a boyfriend, maybe even a summer job, and I'm starting to think about college. How nice would that be? To have my biggest problem in life be the SATs rather than bringing down a corrupt ring of time-traveling criminals.

And then I close my eyes.

Before I know it, I'm waking up. I'm alone, and I roll over to look at the clock. It's eight twenty-seven. I blink. Did I sleep the entire day?

I know the answer as I push myself off the bed. I feel drugged. Woozy. I always feel this way when I get too much sleep. It's definitely night. But still, I slide open the door and peek out the window in the hallway. The sky is a hazy, pinkish purple fading into a deep mauve along the horizon.

I look down at the floor. There's a silver tray with a sandwich wrapped in wax paper and a lidded gla.s.s bowl full of grapes sitting outside my door.

Abe. I bend over and pick up the tray. This has to be Abe.

I should go to him. Or to Yellow. Or to all of them. I should come up with a battle plan. I should let them know I'm not going to take this lying down. But instead I wolf down half a turkey sandwich, take a quick shower, and get back in bed.

Naturally, I'm not tired. Battle plan it is. I sit up and lean back against the headboard.

Options. I could force Bonner at gunpoint to open the safe and give me back my watch. But what good would that do? I'd still have no idea how to bring down XP-is it Secretary Howe? Maybe?-and let's not forget about the tracker in the base of my skull.

I could go to her and try begging, playing to her weaknesses. Maybe if I act brave enough, she'll want to help me. I laugh. Why am I even factoring her into this? She's a fraud. No, what I should be doing is finding out everything I can about XP before I'm cut off for good. That seems like an obvious step one.

I bolt into the hallway and knock on the door two down from mine. Abe answers right away.

"You okay?"

"Never better," I say as I push my way inside. His room is identical to mine. Single bed centered on the wall straight ahead, dresser to the left, closet and bathroom to the right. But his is painted a light blue while mine is lavender. "Thanks for the sandwich and grapes. I was starving."

"I figured."

I slide Abe's closet doors open. "I need some bugs. What do you have available?" I kick a pair of sneakers and a pair of dress shoes out of the way until I find the small metal safe in the back of the closet.

"Bugs?" Abe sounds confused, then he looks down at the safe. "Surveillance bugs? Who are you spying on?"

"I'm going to pay our interns a visit. Now. While I still have the chance."

"You do realize what you're talking about is illegal, right? You don't have a court order."

"What are they going to do if they find out? Fire me again?" I drop to my knees. "Is the combination still eleven-oh-three-twelve-seventeen?"

"Of course."

That gets my blood flowing. Abe picked that code freshman year. It's my birthdate, followed by his. I enter it into the keypad, and the light flashes green. I open the lid to the safe-to Abe's toolbox. "Do you have any ultrasonics in here?"

"Probably not." Abe reaches over, lifts the safe, and sets it on his bed. The two of us sit on either side. "I know I have at least one RF, though."

I scrunch my nose. RF bugs use radio frequency, so they're really easy to detect, but they're cheap, so that's a plus. Ultrasonics are my favorite. They take a sound and convert it into a signal way above what the human ear can hear; then you can intercept it and convert it back into a normal tone. They're much harder to trace. But they're also pricey.

Abe digs around and pulls out a smaller box, like the kind you get when you buy jewelry. He opens the lid and dumps a gold microchip the size of a fingernail into his palm. "Last one."

He holds it out, and I reach, but then his fingers close.

"You do realize that anything you hear on this isn't admissible in court?"

"I sat next to you in that Fourth Amendment seminar, Abe. I don't care about admissibility. All I care about is getting Zeta and Orange back." And then it's like I'm stabbed as the realization hits me again. "And Indigo."

Abe opens his fingers, and the bug falls into my outstretched palm. "Be careful. You're going to get arrested if you get caught." His voice is matter-of-fact. And rightly so. What I'm doing is highly illegal, not to mention unethical.

But screw that.

"I will." I close my fist around the bug, then I push up off the bed and head for the door. "Thanks for this."

"I . . ." He trails off. I turn around, waiting for him to say it. Waiting for him to tell me he loves me. "Good luck."

I try not to let my disappointment show. "Thank you." Then I shut the door.

I deactivate the alarm to the front door-I'm seriously surprised Bonner hasn't changed the code on me yet-and step out into a warm summer night. I walk a block west before I hail a cab. I'm not going to bother with the T. It's so unreliable at night. Even though I'm only going a few miles, to an off-campus apartment in Cambridge, it could take me forty minutes on the T. h.e.l.l no.

The driver drops me off in front of a four-story brick building just a few blocks from the edge of Harvard's campus. I push the bottom b.u.t.ton, and a voice I recognize crackles through the speaker. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Hey, Mike, it's Iris. Can I-" The door buzzes open, and I walk into the foyer. Mike's already in the hallway, standing outside the first door on the right. The door to the apartment he shares with Colton. There aren't any Secret Service agents loitering in the hall, so I have to a.s.sume Colton isn't here.

"Hi," he greets me. He has on a concert T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans, and he's standing in the hallway with no shoes on.

"Are you alone?" I ask. I know the question is giving him the wrong idea about my visit, but I don't have any time to waste.

"You mean is Colton here? No. He's barely ever here. He'll sleep here a few nights a week, but that's about it. It's pretty much like I live alone." He heads back into the apartment and holds the door open for me.

I step inside. The apartment has brick walls and exposed duct work. There's a twisted, wrought-iron staircase leading up to an open, second-story loft. There's no separation between the kitchen and the living room, and there are two doors to the right. One is shut, but the other isn't, so I can see it's a bedroom. The entire place is open and airy, which is a good thing-if I plant this bug in a central location, it can pick up the whole house-but also a bad thing-how am I supposed to plant it without Mike seeing?

My eye goes right to a large silver sculpture shaped like a C on a living-room end table. It looks like a giant sink faucet, but it's plugged into an outlet on the wall, so it has to be a lamp. That will work.

"So what can I do for you?" Mike asks, stepping close to me-too close. He smells good, like he just took a shower.

I step away. "I came to say good-bye, actually."

Mike's mouth drops open and his eyes soften like someone just told him his puppy died. "You're leaving? Or . . . wait. Are you here to fire me?"

"The former." I lift my messenger bag over the top of my head and drop it on a very modern, angular, white leather sofa that doesn't look at all comfortable. "I'm leaving Annum Guard effective immediately." I see no need to mention that it's not by choice. I look up at the loft s.p.a.ce. There's a pool table in the middle of it, but the s.p.a.ce is so open that it looks right down into the living room. Mike's bedroom is the one room with a door where I could distract him, but that's not going to happen.

"Can I ask why?" Mike asks, his voice low.

Oh, I don't know. But the fact that you're likely spying on us for your grandfather, who's actively trying to kill me and my friends, has something to do with it, maybe?

"I'm excited to explore new opportunities." I sound like an ousted politician giving a concession speech on TV.

"And you came all this way across the river just to say good-bye to someone you've only known for a couple of weeks?" He has a point. I'd be suspicious too if I were him.

"Can I get a gla.s.s of water?"

Mike looks at me for a second too long before turning away. I watch him open a cabinet drawer and grab a tall gla.s.s. Then he opens the refrigerator, and I whip the bug out of my pocket. This might be my only chance. I take a step toward the lamp.

"You're sure you just want water?" he calls. "I have a few beers in here."

"Just water, thanks."

He pulls out a pitcher, and I grab the lamp. It's much heavier than I was expecting. It wobbles in my hands, but I slap the bug on the bottom and set it back on the table. Under three seconds.

Mike turns around and walks toward me with the water. "So can I ask you a completely inappropriate question?"

My pulse is racing. "Go ahead."

He hands me the gla.s.s, and his fingers brush across mine. "I've been trying to figure out your ethnicity. I feel like such an a.s.s asking that because it drives me crazy when people ask me, but I'm curious."

I take a sip of the water and a deliberate step away from the end table. "I'm actually a bit of a mutt. My dad's your standard American Caucasian-mixture of this and that. Some German, and maybe some Irish? But my mom's father was Moroccan."