Донна Эндрюс - Click here for murder

Click Here for Murder

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asked KingFischer to add him to his security searches, ASAP.

No time to do anything more right now. My human allies were arriving.

I'm not ready for thisi Tim thought as he

perched on Maude’s credenza.

He patted his pockets again. Especially what he referred to as the escape hatch pocket. Card keys for the three hotel rooms. Security cards for the UL and Alan Grace offices. And a key to his PI office. Their safe houses. If they needed anything, if anything went wrong, they had safe houses set up, all around the area.

So why did all this emphasis on safe houses make him feel more nervous, instead of more secure?

Maybe because there was also a gun, hidden in his pocket. His choice whether to take it or not, Turing had said. He’d moved it from desk drawer to pocket and back again half a dozen times already.

He patted the canvas bag that hid his paintball gun, and the knapsack that held his ammo, water, cell phone, and miscellaneous supplies.

He’d checked it all ten times over. He wanted to pull everything out and check it again, but he didn’t want to look like an idiot, so he glanced down again at the magazine he was pretending to read. And took another drink of water from the bottle sitting beside him. A small drink, because he was already afraid the first thing he’d have to do when the game began was find the nearest john.

“So where are we supposed to go, anyway?” Claudia asked.

Donna Andrews

ESfl

She was pacing up and down, but Tim didn’t get the idea she was nervous. More like working off a surplus of energy.

“We don’t know yet,” Maude said. She was sitting at her computer, looking quite calm. Tim didn’t know which one he envied most, Maude, who could sit there without twitching, or Claudia, who could pace up and down and look like a caged tiger instead of a nervous wreck.

“They’re supposed to send us an e-mail to tell us where to pick up our game materials,” Maude added. “It hasn’t arrived yet.”

“If it’s the same place for everybody, that could be a bad thing,” Claudia said.

“Why?” Tim asked.

“Anyone who knows what the other players look like is going to have an advantage,” Claudia said. “If we all have to shuffle through the same place to pick up our game materials ...”

“Someone could see us,” Tim said. “But wouldn’t we see them, too?”

“Not if they got there first,” she said. “They get there first, pick up their stuff, and then find a place where they can watch all the other players go in. They’d have a serious advantage. Damn it, when are they going to send the e-mail?”

“But we’re right here in Crystal City; we can probably get there first, right?” he asked.

“Everyone knows the game’s in Crystal City,” Claudia said. “So everyone’s going to be down here, somewhere, waiting to get that e-mail. Checked into a hotel, or maybe

Click Here for Murder

EST

at a cybercafe or a Kinko’s. Glued to their computers, waiting for word.”

“I’m doing everything I can to make sure we get it as fast as possible,” Turing said through the speakers. “Watching for anything from the game site.”

Claudia nodded. Tim frowned. She seemed to take Turing’s abilities rather for granted. Had she figured out who— or what—Turing was this quickly? Or had Maude told her? Or did she have the same mental picture he’d once had, of someone sitting at a desk, surrounded by a dozen monitors and several keyboards, deftly keeping several dozen computer tasks going at the same time?

“It’s show time,” Turing announced. “The McDonald’s in Crystal Plaza Arcade. I’m printing directions. Look for the man in the beret.”

“I know where it is,” Tim said. “I’ve eaten there often enough.”

“Let’s move out,” Claudia said.

She was out the door before Tim had finished picking up all his stuff, with Maude close behind her.

“Make sure your paintball gun is out of sight before you leave the building,” Turing said. “And do a radio check when you hit the street.”

“Roger,” Tim said. He wouldn’t have thought his throat could feel any drier than it had for the last hour, but suddenly it did. He snagged the water bottle and took a long swallow before following Maude and Claudia out the door.

He heard Turing telling him once again to be careful as the door closed behind him.

Donna Andrews

EbD

* * *

"I r m going ini" Maude said-

She walked into the McDonald’s and spotted Nameless. If the idea is to look nondescript and avoid attracting attention, she thought, I’d lose the beret and sunglasses.

She scanned the dining room. Several of the people seated at nearby booths and tables seemed to be focused a little too intently on their food. Eating chicken nuggets did not require quite that much concentration. She noted their faces.

Nameless didn’t acknowledge that he’d met her before. She showed him a copy of her e-mail. He handed her a small envelope.

“Your objective’s in there,” he said. “You got a ceil phone?”

She nodded. He handed her a Post-it note with a phone number on it.

“Gamemasters will be wandering around, but if one’s not around and you need one, page us.”

She nodded again and left the restaurant. She walked half a block away before opening the envelope.

She found a handful of badly photocopied Monopoly money, several white index cards with scrawled inscriptions such as “revolver” or “handcuffs,” and a blue index card that read “Game objective: to locate and terminate Melody Blue.” Whoever that was.

She reported to Turing and watched from the shadows as Tim went in to pick up his envelope.

Click Here for Murder

2bl

* * *

Maude and Tim have been playing the game

for four hours now. I’m beginning to relax. So far, it’s long on skulking in the shadows, and short on action.

What action I have seen has been more like bad improvisational theater. The number of fast-food restaurants and bars where they can lurk dwindles as the night wears on; some places have closed, and others have grown tired of harboring flocks of black- and camouflage-clad figures nursing single beers or soft drinks and occasionally exchanging cryptic remarks or significant glances.

Some of them took to loitering on street corners when the restaurants turned them out, striking up conversations with passing players by asking for the time, a light, or directions to Metro, until the police grew suspicious and began cruising the area rather often. The loiterers have now regrouped in a park from which, I predict, the hovering police will evict them soon. But meanwhile, they mill about, gathering in twos and threes for furtive conversations and occasional dramatic outbursts.

I’ve seen one apparent gun battle conducted with dice, the combatants waiting tensely for each die roll, and occasionally brandishing index cards at the gamemaster.

I saw two paintball fights. In one, three players ambushed another in an alley, from which he emerged, sulking and covered with paint. In the other, two characters exchanged fire, and then whipped out cell phones—apparently to summon a gamemaster. They paced up and down the sidewalk across the street from each other until the gamemaster arrived and earned the anger of both by announcing that they had killed each other and were both out of the game.

Donna Andrews

EbE

I’m still a little anxious, but mostly because I feel so far from the action. I can see them in my cameras occasionally. I keep nagging them to mutter into their microphones more often. Occasionally, they run into small areas where the radio signal fails. The first few times it happened, I panicked. I still feel anxious when it happens, but only anxious. The game seems relatively tame.