“It’s not really who I am,” I said. “Standing by and doing nothing isn’t my thing anymore. Did too much of that once before; I won’t do it again.”
“We didn’t find much at the Omega safehouse,” my mother said, interrupting whatever else Reed might have said to that. “But this is worth a look.” She held out her hand. A cell phone sat in her palm, a slightly older model of disposable phone, the kind you could buy at Wal-Mart for fairly cheap.
I took it from her outstretched hand and flipped it open. “I assume it’s been checked for—”
“It’s clear on explosives, tracking worms, all that fun stuff,” she said. “J.J. talked us through shutting down the GPS on it before we got on the plane. Not that it matters, since pretty much everyone knows where we are, but I figured we’d best take no chances.”
“Good call,” I said, looking at the screen. It was a simple, small-screen flip phone with very few options available. I thumbed the button for Contacts, and only five were listed. Home, Murphy, Richards, corner store and Hildegarde.
I looked up at my mother and she nodded. “I didn’t call it yet, but we did do a trace on all those numbers. The home one went to the safehouse’s line, corner store rings a convenience place just down the road that delivers pizza—we checked it out, nothing seemed particularly funny about it, and they had records of dozens of orders going to the safehouse address—and the last three look like Omega operatives, one of which corresponds to the ID of one of the dead from Hildegarde’s team.” She smiled. “If you wanted a way to get in contact with Katheryn Hildegarde, I believe you may have it now, assuming she hasn’t cut off her phone.”
I stared at the little piece of plastic perched in my hand. “Is it likely she’s kept the same phone? She is on the run, after all.”
“J.J. says the phone in question is still in use but masked from easy tracking.” My mother shifted her weight from one leg to the other, altering her posture the way she did when she was impatient. “It’s set up to roam on non-native networks, the ones that don’t belong to the phone company that sold it to her, and it comes up under a different signature every time it hits a network. Long story short, you can call her, but the minute you do, she’ll be able to jump to using a different ID on the phone and it’ll keep us from being able to track her without jumping through some significant hoops.”
“But we could track her?” I looked at my mother carefully. “She’s a dangerous person, a wanted fugitive.”
“We might be able to,” she replied. “Key word there is might. Our little tech geek didn’t seem heartened by the idea.”
I sighed. “We might as well call her, then.” I turned to Reed. “Go talk to J.J. and tell him what we’re about to do. Get him ready to do what he can to find her.” Reed nodded, hesitating for a moment. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Really.” I don’t know how convincing I sounded, because I was pretty sure I sounded like I was dead inside by this point. A sensation I was rapidly approaching in actual fact.
“We need to talk later,” Reed said, and I could tell by his eyes he meant business.
“We do indeed,” I said, resigned. He took the hint and headed toward HQ at a jog. I looked back at Kurt. “How are you holding up, Kurt?”
“Feel like I’ve been kicked in the knee by a horse,” he grunted.
“Go see Dr. Perugini,” I replied. I had a great line about how it looked like he’d been kicked in the face by a horse, but I kept it to myself. It wasn’t worth it. I waved him off and he headed toward the building as well.
“Have anything for me to do?” Karthik asked, and I thought I caught a note of faint hope. He seemed a little down—more than a little, actually. I knew how he felt, and I suspected he was blaming himself for not being here when the battle had gone down.
“I have lots for you to do, Karthik,” I replied. “But first, we need to try and make contact with Hildegarde. Why don’t you come along? You can take a listen if we get her on the phone, tell us what you think.”
He nodded and fell in behind me as we walked into HQ and across the lobby toward the elevators. Security checked our badges scrupulously even though they’d seen me exit the building only moments before. The head guard watched us all carefully, his hand on a submachine gun, finger lingering just above the trigger. I’d been told by Scott that they were taking the incident at the dorm personally, those who remained. A few had quit in the wake of the incident, but the ones who were staying were almost all ex-military and were more than a little pissed that so many of their brethren had died in a sucker punch attack. Personally, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in their crosshairs at the moment.