S Huang - Zero Sum Game

Tresting and I both sat upright simultaneously. “What?” Tresting cried.

“Yes, yes, you may worship me.” Checker affected a statuesque pose, one hand canted in the air. “The line for autographs starts on the right—”

“Checker!” said Tresting.

“You won’t even let me bask? You horrible man,” Checker scolded amiably. “I tracked her to an unregistered car, and tracked that car to a parking garage in an office park. Hitting your phone now, Arthur.”

I waved my disposable at the screen. “What about me?”

Checker gave me a penetrating stare as if sizing me up. I gazed evenly back. “Fine,” he said, stabbing a button. My phone buzzed in my hand with a new text message.

I didn’t show how unsettled I was that he had the phone’s number already. After all, I’d called Tresting on this cell; it was the simplest explanation. Checker was not omniscient. He wasn’t.

“I don’t know what office, but I will soon,” Checker said. “I still have a lot of security footage to fast-forward through, and all the leases and backgrounds of the businesses in the building. Give me a few hours and I’ll narrow it down for you.”

“ Atta boy!” Life flowed back into Tresting. He jumped up with entirely too much enthusiasm and gripped Checker’s screen with both hands. “You are brilliant. Brilliant!”

“I know,” said Checker with a smile.

Tresting whipped around to address me. “How you want to play this, then?”

Part of me was surprised he wasn’t trying to keep me out of things. Not that he would have succeeded, but still. “I say we bust in, bash some heads, and find out what’s going on here.”

Tresting’s eyebrows lifted. “You really ain’t a detective, are you.”

“Nope,” I said. “That’s not my job. People tell me where something is, and I get it back for them, no detecting necessary.” It was almost true; every so often I had to do research for a case, but rarely much. Clients hired me for the extraction part.

“I suppose brute force does have a certain elegance to it at times,” put in Checker. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

“Why, what would you do?” I demanded of Tresting.

“Usually? Stake it out first. Bug the place. Gather intel without getting seen, have Checker here hack into their systems. Go in undercover if I got to.”

“Like the delicate approach you used with me,” I said pointedly.

“Totally different. Lone woman spiriting away my target? Far as I knew, I had the upper hand on that one.”

“Far as you knew,” I said.

Tresting shrugged ruefully.

“Dawna could still be in there,” I argued. “And so far, they’ve been ahead of us. Trying to kill me, taking Courtney, the GPS signal going out—we can’t play this thing safe and slow.” I thought of Anton’s death and the Dark Suits at Courtney’s house, and started to wonder if we should leave Tresting’s office for somewhere more secure.

Tresting sucked a breath through clenched teeth. “Agreed. Soon as Checker’s milked all the intel he can, my vote is we walk in the front door.”

“With guns,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Tresting. “With guns.”

Having seen enough of Checker’s data to give Tresting the benefit of the doubt on whether he was stark raving mad—not to mention feeling much more worried about this case and what I’d stumbled into—I elected to get a few hours’ sleep while we waited on Checker’s intel.

“I think I’ll take a turn on your couch,” I told Tresting. I wanted to be here for any updates.

“Sure thing,” said the PI. “I gotta make some calls anyway.”

“How were my programs?” asked Checker as I stood up, a hint of challenge in his voice. “Fun reads? I strive for elegance.”

I pretended he wasn’t provoking me. “Yeah, impressive. Markov chain Monte Carlo, smart way of doing it.”

Both men stared. Checker’s jaw had dropped open slightly. “Cas Russell, your hotness level just went up by about thirty percent,” he said finally.

Score one for Cas, I thought. “I read statistics papers in my spare time. Hey, Tresting, where’s your loo?”

He pointed, still speechless.

I used my moment of privacy to text Rio an abbreviated update, sending him the office park address Checker had tracked Dawna to and a quick heads up about our plan to go in. When I came back out, Checker and Tresting were deep in quiet conversation. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard them switch topics when I reentered the room, and I hoped they had been talking about me. It’s satisfying when I make people nervous.

I stretched out on Tresting’s couch, my hand under my jacket comfortably near my gun, and had a split-second to register that my headache had started to come back before I was asleep.

I woke to a shouting match.

Full daylight streamed around the office’s still-closed blinds. The monitors of Tresting’s computer were dark; instead, he was standing behind his desk having a vociferous argument with a short, stocky woman I’d never seen before. She had a round face I might have called cherubic if her eyes hadn’t been blazing with anger, and she was quite well-kept, with neatly styled dark hair, impeccable makeup, and a coat I recognized as “expensive.” I had a hard time guessing her age; I figured it as late-forties-but-looks-younger.

I sat up and rolled my neck, embarrassed I hadn’t woken when she’d come in—usually I’m a light sleeper. But then, usually I haven’t gone two days without rest.

“I pay you to keep me updated!” the woman was shouting.

“That’s what I’m doing now, Doc,” Tresting answered, obviously trying to keep his cool.

“You found her and then you lost her! You knew where she was and instead you go chasing off after—”

“That ain’t what—” Tresting tried to cut in.

“ She killed my husband!” she cried.

Oh. Leena Kingsley. “I thought you were supposed to be a diplomat,” I said without thinking.

Kingsley spun to glare at me with the full weight of her attention, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t lurch back a few inches from the fury radiating off her. I remembered belatedly that she’d seen her whole Foreign Service career come tumbling down in flames. Oops.

Kingsley rounded back on Tresting. “And as for bringing in someone else—”

“She’s another professional who had information—”

Nice of him to put that spin on it.

“California law expressly prohibits a private investigator from sharing any information related to a case without prior consent of the client!” Kingsley snapped.

“California law also prohibits PIs from trespassing on private property, or drawing firearms on unarmed citizens, or pretending to be anything other than a PI to get information,” Tresting said, crossing his arms. “Don’t believe you’ve expressed any displeasure with me before.”

I hadn’t known those laws. Wow, Arthur Tresting was one naughty PI.

“They killed Reg,” Kingsley spat, her voice trembling with fury. “Try to remember that. It may not be personal for you, but finding out what happened is the single most important thing in the world to me. Have you ever loved anyone, Mr. Tresting? If so, try to put yourself in my shoes.”

She spun on her heel and stalked out of the office. Tresting slumped into his chair, his head sagging.

I thought Kingsley was being a bit hard on the poor man. It was obvious to me he’d been driving himself into the ground investigating this. “Good thing you didn’t tell her you spilled about her case while we were pointing guns at each other,” I said.

“Shouldn’t have at all, really,” he admitted. “Everything’s gone upside down and backwards. The doc, too. First time I met her, she was the soul of diplomacy, thought I’d never see anything disturb that poise. And now she’s…”