“No, that was not a burglar,” Miko began, looking daggers at Mina. “What's going on?”
“I'll explain, I promise. But we need to get out of here, now,” Mina insisted, limping towards the door.
“We need to wait for the police to file a report,” Miko countered, but didn't sound as self-assured as usual.
“When that guy doesn't report in, there'll be more. I'm not supposed to tell you anything, but I think I owe you about a dozen now. My bosses will deal with the situation. But we need to go. Just please, trust me.”
Miko nodded, quickly pulling her clothes on over her pajamas, grabbing her hat, and heading for the door, catching up with Mina and moving to help support her so both could move more quickly.
There were a good number of people moving about the floor now, reacting to the screams. Miko thought quickly, taking advantage of Mina's injury and the traces of blood. Anyone who looked their way got a quick, “burglar—she was hurt. Move, please.”
Meanwhile, Mina thought of a few options for ways out, before a thought hit her. She first headed for the security offices on the ground floor. With the commotion on her floor, this level was empty. The guard on duty was slumped forward over the equipment, but nothing looked tampered with. A quick bit of further investigation revealed he'd been shot in the back of the head. He had never turned towards the locked door to his office, which showed no signs of being forced. Mina quickly grabbed the security vid, hoping it might, on review, give her some idea what was going on, even if its being missing would require some explaining later.
That was all the time for delay Mina felt she had. At first, she started towards her bike, before the taste of aluminum cut off that line of thought. Since the guy who broke in clearly hadn't been expecting Miko, they'd be watching Mina's bike if something went wrong, but might not have the parking area covered. She had to assume there weren't too many of them about since large groups here would be conspicuous at this hour. She suspected, in fact, that there were probably three of them around somewhere—or two, with one having gone through the window. With the time to think about it, she decided that the assailant's body type was pretty close to the smallest of the three men at the sandwich shop, though that was hardly conclusive.
Whether he'd had any backup or not, the girls made it to Vlad, and were able to pull out of the lot without trouble. Mina wasn't able to tell what condition the man was in after his fall, given that there was a small crowd gathered around the area where he would have hit. She recognized a few of her neighbors, but didn't otherwise see anyone she recognized, but from a distance, in the dark, that wasn't a surprise.
Once they got a few blocks away, she started explaining. Miko made her slow down and start over half a dozen times, given how rushed all the details were. Finally, she got out enough for Miko to switch to the questions.
“Okay, so ... wait ... you're just pretending to be a flower delivery girl, and you're really some kind of secret-agent-spy-cop?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but ... “
“No, no. I know when you're lying. What I meant to say is that is so cool! You're like the last person anyone would expect, so it's perfect!”
“Thanks, I think.”
“So, now the not-cool bits. They seriously think Scott had something to do with this?”
“I don't know what to think. Given how quickly they tracked me down, and how quick she was to jump on her own conclusions. I ... I sort of think my boss might know more than she's telling me.”
“You really think so?”
“Well, when I called to tell her what I'd found, she was way more interested in jumping down my throat than on, you know, the case. She certainly doesn't seem that worried about me. Maybe they think I'm too much trouble, and they're trying to get rid of me?”
“If they wanted to get rid of you, wouldn't they have just called for a flower delivery to put you where they wanted you, instead of, you know, shooting a security guard and breaking in to a secure building?”
“Okay, point. Maybe so ... I still don't trust her. She's so convinced Scott is behind this, and ... well, you know him.”
“Yeah, poking around online is one thing. Hacking school records to see if he can ... sure. Not something like this.”
“So, I know what you're going to say, but I need to say it. You shouldn't get involved. This is really, really dangerous. I took the job, you didn't.”
“Only because they didn't offer ... yet. You know I'm not going anywhere while you're in trouble. Besides, I know how to prove Scott is innocent.”
“Wait, what?!”
“Yeah. We can't go to your place, they might be watching. Probably shouldn't go to mine, just in case ... but that's okay. I suspect no one expects a nine-year-old to be the key to this case.”
* * * *
On the way to Scott's house, for reasons Miko hadn't entirely explained yet, Miko tried to get more details out of Mina. “So, if you're a spy on an investigation, and have people after you, shouldn't you be—I don't know—calling in or something?”
“Not yet,” Mina said, after a few moments of thought. Sure, she probably should, but something wasn't sitting right so far. “Last time I called in, after the thing at the sandwich shop, my boss just chewed me out. I'll call in when I actually have something. I doubt she cares if I get killed at this point. At least then I'd stop screwing up her investigation.”
“So, real hardcase, huh?”
“Total. I'm starting to wonder if there's more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
“She seems so convinced Scott is responsible for this.”
“Which there's no possible way.”
“Right, but she won't believe it. It's like she's not even looking at the evidence, she just wants to pin it on him and have it go away or something.”
“You really think that?”
“Sounds crazy, right?”
“A little, maybe ... how much do you know about her?”
“Not much. Aside from being one of the scariest people I've ever met.”
“Which is always a prime quality in a boss.”
“A boss who is going to chew me out even worse when she finds out that I've told all about her top secret organization to a civilian.”
“You mean your organization?”
“Maybe ... this might be my third strike or something ... but I'm going to get to the bottom of this and prove Scott had nothing to do with all this first.”
“You mean we are.”
“I'm going to be in enough trouble just getting you into this this far. I want to hear this grand idea of yours, then get you somewhere safe. You don't even have the Inquisitor chip.”
“Uhm, yeah ... because that did you so much good. Anyway, Scott is my friend ... and so are you. I told you once, you're stuck with me til we finish this. Then we'll figure the rest out. Besides, you're a super spy now. You need a Kato.”
“I need a what? Or is that a who?”
“We seriously need to catch you up on your history of great sidekicks. Watson, Kato, Tonto ...”
“Uhm, Watson was Holmes, right? And ... I know Robin.”
“You have to ask about Watson? Seriously? Okay, fine. I'll be Robin, but I'm the first one. And you're not getting me to wear the short pants, even if you ask really nicely.”
“There was more than one?”
“Philistine.”
“There's no way I'm talking you out of this, is there?”
“Not a chance in hell, Kemosabe.”
“Who?”
“Hopeless. Anyway, you're not going to be able to do this with your bike and public transit, and you're not going to find better wheels than Vlad. So, you know, benefits.”
“Okay, okay. So if we can't go to my house, or yours, why are we going to Scott's?”
“Because Beth is there.”
“We're not telling her about this. No way.”
“Not a word about the top secret spy stuff, no. She knows Scott's passwords though.”
“First, you're sure? Second ... so?”
“Positive. On the rare occasions he didn't finish homework by the time he got home, he'd let her log in and play her characters on his accounts. She's almost as good a healer as he is. Even with his cheating with the cyber-eye interface.”
“I'm not even going to ask. So why do we need his passwords?”
Miko sighed. “Scott is addicted, and we both know it. If he were some kind of evil mastermind, free to do as he wants, he'd be logging in every day.”
“You really think so?”
“Addictions are addictions. Tell me I'm wrong.”
“Rarely enough that it gets kind of annoying.”
“Love you too. In any case, I'm not wrong now.”
“The Director will never accept that as proof of anything.”
“No, but it's a place to start. Sure, we know Scott didn't do it, but this will erase all doubt, and we can officially start trying to find a different culprit. Besides, maybe there'll be some kind of clue there. Half of his online friends don't know who he really is. Even without any details, maybe there'll be something in his game mail about his boss, or something. You said they were having some kind of problems ... maybe he complained to someone? Not all the details, but, you know, just that his boss is a jerk or ... something.”
“It's a stretch, but maybe. We can check. So how're we going to get Beth's attention without waking her parents up?”
“We just go around back. It's Friday night. She'll have snuck out of bed to get on the computer by now.”
“You're sure?”
“Completely. I've babysat a few times on Friday nights after Scott got old enough to be dragged along to events full of snobby rich people his parents thought he should know. That's always where I found her.”
Moving around the house and looking through the back window into Scott's main computer room revealed the light off, but the tell-tale glow of the computer screen. Miko tapped on the window, until a small face peeked through it. A few moments of silent gestures got the idea across, and Beth went to the back door and unlocked it. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Shhh,” Miko replied. “We need to get to Scott's game accounts, can you get us logged in?”
“Sure, but why?”
“Top secret, Munchkin. But if you do, I'll loan you my vid player for the whole weekend, and set it up with any series you want.”
“Leverage?” Beth asked. “Not just cartoons?”
“You don't want to watch cartoons?” Mina interjected.
“Cartoons are for little kids ... and Miko,” Beth responded, going with her theme of being too old for all sorts of things, while quickly catching herself before Miko could object. “Besides, Eliot is on Leverage. Pow, pow!” she added, punching the air.
Mina was lost, but not surprised that Miko grinned. “Okay, Leverage. All the seasons.” She held up the vid player, starting to work with it. “I'm throwing in A-Team too, which is mostly the same, with more Eliot ... except they call that guy B.A. ... and I think it a couple years earlier.” A pause in her plugging in chips from her collection. “But only after you get us in.”
“Sure!” Beth said, then hushed her voice, glancing towards the hallway. With no sign of stirring, she ran to the computer room followed by Mina and Miko. Logging out of her game and into Scott's took only a few moments. As soon as they were in, Miko took the computer chair, getting quick lessons from Beth on how to navigate around between Scott's various characters and accounts, and determining which were his and which were Beth's. As soon as she felt they had enough, she handed the vid player over to Beth, who quietly headed into the next room, the Szach kids' main TV room, with its own entertainment system and big screen, so they could watch their shows or play video games while their parents used the main living room.
Miko logged into the first character, found nothing there, and moved on. By the third, they had found an apparent main character, or at least one who got a lot of in-game mail. They started going through it, looking for anything out of the ordinary. By the dates on the unread mail, they could be fairly certain Scott hadn't logged into that character. They left much of it unread if it seemed to have recognizable game-related titles so they had some kind of evidence chain, while looking through anything that stood out.
“Still nothing,” Miko responded after a few. “But at least now we can be pretty certain he hasn't logged in.”
“Not til we check all of his characters,” Mina reminded her. “I'd like to just leave it at that, but I need to be thorough on this. While we're on the computer, when we finish this, we should take a look at the security film too. I could play it on something smaller, but you traded away your vid player, and this screen will let us see more detail,” she added.
“Good idea,” Miko agreed. “We'll do that next. I don't think we're going to find much as far as work stuff here, but we'll keep checking.”
They went through the rest of the characters on the account, confirming all of the dates as best they could. Near as they could tell, only Beth's had been logged in at all recently. Not all of the others could be confirmed for certain, but enough could to leave a definite pattern. Nothing regarding work commentary, but much as Miko tended towards optimism, Mina hadn't expected anything to be there. Scott was too paranoid about his own security, and while some of the people online wouldn't know who he was in real life, enough would that any information leaks could get back to him. At best, she figured he'd probably vented about his boss being a jerk a few times in whatever chat they were using. While she was sure Beth knew some of Scott's friends online, she didn't want to start bringing anyone else in on any part of the investigation, witting or not.
She, and probably Miko, were in enough trouble already, and while she hadn't had much choice on Miko getting involved, she otherwise wanted to at least try to be responsible about this after the trouble she'd already gotten into over the two previous incidents. If her boss was somehow involved in some sort of problems, or was trying to make the case go away, that was one thing, but she had nothing but suspicions so far.
After they went through the characters, with Mina taking notes on character names and last confirmed log-in dates, as well as records of previous game activity, as much as they were able to determine that with their limited experience with the game systems, they logged out and put the security vid chip into the computer.
The first thing that really surprised Mina was that the intruder had apparently just walked in from the street. He seemed to have some idea of where the cameras were, and kept his face hidden. Mina couldn't determine anything more about him from the vid that she hadn't already known, but suspected that people had seen him on the street. Presumably that meant the police would have determined his identity, which also meant she might be able to get some information from Agent Park or Hall soon enough.
Agent Park, at least, she still felt like she could trust. She'd need his kind of resources to get much further, but felt he would at least believe her about the account. Following that trail of thought, she felt her first spark of optimism that maybe things could be worked out. She'd taken his advice, and followed her gut. She had made some mistakes, sure, but she was pretty sure that the cop would also want the evidence in the case, and could follow up on some of it ... and maybe give her some tips on dealing with the Director. Maybe he'd even be willing to go with her to speak to the Director, as she was pretty sure that this was going to be another of those situations that merited an in-person briefing. She wasn't looking forward to it, but if they were able to clear Scott, and make some real progress in finding both him and his kidnappers, then she figured that whatever happened to her would ultimately be worth it.
As they were getting to the part of the vid near Mina's apartment, the man had pulled on the ski mask fully. She was able to see bits of the fight through a hallway security camera past the open door. With a little bit of manipulation of the vid, she was able to get a few good looks at the violent exchanges between Miko and the other man.
As she messed with the camera angles, the girls heard a squeak from the doorway. “That's so cool!” Beth exclaimed. “That icon really looks like Miko ... I knew they were getting better at customizations in some of the new games, but hadn't seen anything like that. Can I make a character?”