Ludovic. Sam's father, Gabe. Had to be. Shit. Why hadn't she told him she'd had that kind of in with the Dive? If he'd known that, he'd have suggested they go partners instead of trying to hack the dragon all on his own. Except she probably would have said no, and he'd have ended up here after all. No fucking use thinking about it.
But the question remained-what was Ludovic doing now? Just waiting for Rivera's ax to fall? He tried to remember what Sam had told him about her parents. She was on the outs with them, he knew that for certain, but he seemed to remember it being more with her mother than her father.
Keely sat back in the chair, one hand on the keyboard. Too bad the guy wasn't a hacker. Then the guy could pass him a virus, maybe even a little dose of the Fish, and he could pass it on to Rivera, who could then give it to whatever VIPs he was sucking off. Maybe he should just do that himself. He didn't have any Fish handy, but he knew a few tricks of his own-
He'd just be delaying the inevitable and maybe making his own position worse. Rivera would just take the virus to the Corrections Board, and he'd end up polishing Rivera's boots for the next two decades. He sighed and started the tap routine.
A couple of hours later, he was in, and he managed to capture thirty minutes before the system spat him out again. He disengaged and made the three copies Rivera wanted. Then he took a look at what he'd gotten off the guy.
Rivera was going to shit. There were maybe fifteen minutes of the guy's personal program, probably volatile storage he'd forgotten to dump. The rest of it was all commercials, finished spots, roughs, initial composition storyboards, requisition lists. He rather liked the one for body armor-guy strolling through a bad neighborhood, gets shot at, knives thrown at him, people trying to punch him, everything bouncing off; gets to his office, sits down at his terminal, and the message comes up on the screen: You Have Been Hacked! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Guy turns to pov and says, Well, there's one thing Gilding BodyShields can't protect you from. Woman enters picture, leans down, gives him openmouthed kiss, walks off, he stares after her, saying, And there's another.
Thanks, guy, Keely thought, but what the fuck have you been sitting around doing commercials for when you should have been running like hell?
Well, whatever Rivera had had in mind, Keely was sure it hadn't included commercials, which was going to make Rivera look like an idiot in front of whomever he was trying to impress. He patted the monitor. "I can't believe that's the best you could do, but if it was, good for you, pal. Good for you." He staggered off to shower.
"Something off the local dataline," Fez said, looking up from the screen.
"I'll get it," Adrian said, moving to the other screen. "Let me practice my Mandarin." He punched for the translation program and sat back and waited for the characters to appear on the screen. "Makes me feel useful."
Sam gave a small, soundless laugh. At least someone was feeling useful, she thought. They'd spent the last few days studying Keely's zap, but not doing much else. Sam felt antsy. She wanted to do something, tell somebody, but both Rosa and Fez had been adamant about keeping quiet. The information would be too traceable if Keely had talked, and they had to assume that he had. Not willingly, perhaps. She didn't like to think about that, and she knew they were probably right, but she still felt frustrated. Keely had zapped them the data for some reason.
"Oh, damn," Adrian said, and something in his voice gave Sam a small chill.
"What is it?" Rosa asked, sitting up on the couch. She'd been going over a hard flatcopy of some program she'd been working on.
"Rosa, you and Jones, and possibly Sam, are being sought by the police for questioning."
"Stone the fucking crows at fucking home." Rosa threw down the hardcopy and stalked over as Fez rolled his chair over next to Adrian. "What for?" Sam's small chill became a deep freeze. She wanted to get up out of the easy chair and join the others at the screen, but her legs felt too watery to hold her up. In three years on her own, she had never been specifically targeted by the police.
"What do you mean, possibly me'?" she asked in a small voice.
Fez split the screen horizontally, putting Adrian's translation on the bottom. "Details of the case aren't available," he said after a moment. "Someone's put out a 'round up the usual suspects' command. I imagine they're working on a list of Keely's known associates. There's a whole list here, but they don't have any real names-Gator, Kazin, Captain Jasm, Cherokee Rosa, Jones, and Pheasant Sam."
"Who Sam?"
He spelled it for her.
"The Mandarin has it closer to game bird, actually," Adrian murmured.
"Well, that's that. Time for a change of address," said Rosa. "Better run home and pack up my stuff and my stiff."
"I'll go with you," Sam said shakily.
"I think it would be better if you both stayed here," Fez said, looking from Rosa to Sam.
"I know," Rosa said wearily. "I can always get more stuff, but it's the stiff. If I just leave him there, he really will be a stiff. If they find him dead, they'll figure one of us killed him to keep him from talking. Won't that be a pretty pickle."
Fez sighed. "How about the gypsy jobs you've been doing? What are the chances any of those turning you?"
"Who can say?" Rosa spread her hands. "If I find a welcoming committee waiting for me, I'll jump and get a message to you later on the answering machine. Otherwise, I'll get back here with Jones as fast as I can."
"Change rentals!" Fez called after her as she went out the door.
"Pheasant Sam." Sam shook her head. "Maybe it isn't me. Adrian's translation-"
Fez shook his head. "A pheasant is a game bird." He moved back to the other screen and scrolled all the way to the end.
"Keely really did talk, then, didn't he?" she said.
"Not willingly, I'm sure. Probably in a drug-induced stupor."
"The police can't do that. I mean, they're not supposed to."
"Nobody said the police had to do it. He might be in a hospital." Fez paused. "If Keely knows your actual first name, 'pheasant' could be a slurred or garbled version of that."
Sam tried to hear it in her mind, the transformation of Cassandra into pheasant. It seemed farfetched, but stranger things had come to pass, she thought, looking at Fez's system-
"Shit," she said. "It isn't Pheasant Sam. It's Fezzansam- Fez and Sam."
Fez went so white she thought he was going to faint. "Oh, my. It's one of those good-news days, isn't it?" He was about to say something else when he did a double take at something at the bottom of the screen. "Oh, my. Did Art tell you he was going to email this information to you?"
"No!" She jumped up and ran over to him. "I mean-" She tried to think. "When I talked to him, he said he was going to copy me, and I didn't even think of-oh, Jesus, why did he do that?"
She went to the other screen. Adrian surrendered the chair to her. "I'll blow it up from here. I'll send a delete to the mailbox."
"Don't!" Fez said. "Don't get on-line. You can only delete mail under your own name, and someone could be watching for any variation of Pheasant Sam. Including plain old Sam."
She sat back with a groan. "It wouldn't be under my name anyway. I forgot. All my mail's forwarded to Rosa, and I don't know her password. We've got to get a message to her, to tell her to delete the mail right away."
"Adrian can do it," Fez said.