"And you bought it?" I asked, incredulous only because half a gla.s.s of red was breaking down the barriers between my brain and my mouth. And let's be honest, those barriers aren't exactly reinforced concrete under the best of circ.u.mstances.

He didn't quite sneer, but the look he made wasn't pretty. "Of course I didn't buy it. But congratulations, you tracked me down. And while you were at it, you led them right to me, didn't you?"

"No!" I objected instantly. "I have no idea how they found their way to you, but I've survived under the radar for nearly a century, thank you very much, and it was only when I stumbled over the trip wire of your sister's project that anybody in any black suit and any shiny car ever had any specific interest in me, personally."

"I find that difficult to believe," he said.

To which I replied, "Yeah? Well I don't give a s.h.i.t. I don't have anything to prove to you." And I didn't tell him anything about Cheshire Red, or the half dozen international agencies that had wanted me for decades.

"Then what are you doing here?"

"What?"

"You," he said pointedly, picking up the gla.s.s again and aiming it at me. "What are you doing here, if you don't have anything to prove?"

"Oh, I've got work to do and things to prove, just not to you, you," I insisted. "My investigation accidentally stumbled across across you, which is not at all the same thing. I wandered into your circle by hunting down the military records for Project Bloodshot. In case you're unaware, those records effectively vanished, years ago. But I bet you aren't unaware. I bet you know you, which is not at all the same thing. I wandered into your circle by hunting down the military records for Project Bloodshot. In case you're unaware, those records effectively vanished, years ago. But I bet you aren't unaware. I bet you know exactly exactly where they are, because I bet where they are, because I bet you're you're the one who took them." the one who took them."

His eyes simmered over the highball gla.s.s. He downed the last couple of drops and acted like he wanted more, but was too smart to ask for more-much less drink any more. He said, "Yeah. I took them."

"I knew it!" I said, and it sounded sloppy. Which somehow didn't stop me from finishing the gla.s.s of expensive old red. I was wound up tighter than an E-string, and I needed to get a grip on myself before dawn came up in a handful of hours. So I drank.

"I have no idea how you got so lucky," he said. I liked the Spanish roll to his vowels, and I liked the hateful simmering. I wanted to p.i.s.s him off more, and keep him talking. I wanted to pin him down and demand that he say, "My name is Inigo Montoya-you killed my father, prepare to die." But I suspect that would've been deeply inappropriate in any number of ways. I told you, alcohol hits me hard and fast. I can't help it if my mind wanders.

And h.e.l.l, yours would've wandered, too, if you'd seen that body of his attired in fishnets and spangles. He was a good-looking man-maybe even more so than he was a good-looking woman. Good bone structure, that shiny blue-black hair with a faint, pretty wave...I wondered if he was gay, but I didn't dare ask. Don't ask me why; all I can say is that it was on the tip of my tongue and it took every ounce of remaining self-control to keep that query to myself.

Instead I told him, "I'm not lucky, I'm persistent."

"And whose records do you want?"

"It wouldn't matter if I told you. He isn't mentioned by name, just a serial number."

"All right." He signaled to me that he wanted more scotch, twitching his finger my way as if I were a bartender. "Then what do you hope to find when you score those records?"

I serviced him anyway. I mean, you know. I topped off his drink, and let mine stay dry. And I figured that possibly, given the circ.u.mstances, honesty was the best policy. Veiled honesty, but honesty all the same. My inner choir girl sang.

"One of the other victims of the project is a client of mine. He needs his medical records."

"Medical records? Can we really call them that?"

"I don't see why not," I all but snapped at him. "His body was experimented upon, and there are records of it. What else would you call it?"

"I don't know. Necropsy?"

"f.u.c.k you very much. Dead we may be, but still we bleed," I said, trying to quote something and bombing it. I cleaned up my fumble with a lazy, "You know what I mean. You wouldn't want someone cutting on your eyes either, I a.s.sume. Or"-I went for the heart of the matter as soon as I remembered where it was-"you wouldn't want anyone doing it to your sister. sister."

"No, I wouldn't," he said with a flare of something hot and hateful.

"Then don't begrudge my client his humanity either. a.s.shole," I added.

He picked up his gla.s.s like he'd like to empty it further, or maybe whap me upside the head with it, but he did neither of these things. He sat it back down again and leaned against the counter, raising his hands to his face and rubbing his eyes. "It's been so d.a.m.n long," he said. "She's been gone all this time, and I've been invisible. And then you. you." He shot me another napalm glare, but it surprised me by cooling into something more sorrowful. Mercurial, this one. I liked it. It was hot.

"I guess it doesn't matter. If you didn't lead them to me, someone else would have, eventually. Or I would've screwed up, or someone would've recognized me, somewhere."

"Does that mean you aren't mad at me?" I asked, just in case.

"I didn't say that. But it was probably a question of when, not if. Hey," he said suddenly, in a whole different tone. Then he began patting himself down, running his fingers inside the seams of his clothes. Only then I remembered-they weren't his clothes. He told me, "I nicked these off one of the guys who was chasing us."

"Like I didn't figure that out."

"I just wanted to make it clear that I didn't mug any innocent bystander." He grabbed his own a.s.s and then, with a victorious flourish, produced a very slim wallet. It was not the world's most promising wallet. It almost looked like a pair of leather credit cards bound together, which led me to guess what it actually was. An ID folder.

I sidled up to him, sneaking in close to look around his arm and over his shoulder. "What does it say?"

"It says I mugged Peter Desarme." He brandished the badge so I could see it in all its glory. "CIA agent."

"Wait. What?"

"That's what it says," he noted redundantly.

He let me swipe it out of his hand. I examined it up close and personal. It looked real. "I don't get it."

"What's not to get?"

"I figured these were army guys. Or, high-ranking, suit-wearing...I don't know. Men in Black. In my head I'd been calling them feebs. But CIA? That's really out of left field."

"There's no good reason men in black can't be CIA agents. And besides, it's not that that crazy," he objected. "Project Bloodshot was closed. Maybe it was reopened as a civilian operation." crazy," he objected. "Project Bloodshot was closed. Maybe it was reopened as a civilian operation."

"How do you know it's closed? I mean how do you really really know? We're talking about the know? We're talking about the military military. It's a whole organization of left hands dedicated to not knowing what the right hands are doing."

"You may be right, but I bet you're not. Some a.s.shole with money might've picked up where the army left off. It happens sometimes."

"You can't be serious."

He said, "Think about it-all that money and research and effort, all dumped into something that winds up blacked out and shredded. It happens all the time. And every now and again, a private corporation will take an interest, and take another stab at it. They use whatever's left of the military doc.u.mentation to seed the new experiments, picking up where they left off. Sometimes they even look up the former researchers, engineers, and scientists. Anyone who took part in it."

"Then where does the CIA come into it? Doesn't the very presence of CIA operatives mean it's not a civilian operation? Or..." I reconsidered my words. "Or at least that it's a different kind kind of official operation?" of official operation?"

"Nah," he said. "CIA guys are wild cards. They're allowed to freelance, and a lot of them do."

"Like mercenaries?" I asked.

"More or less. People are always talking about setting guidelines for what they can and can't do, but n.o.body ever does. There's plenty of...let's say 'conflict of interest' going on where they're concerned. But..." He shrugged. "There's no regulation. So they moonlight wherever the money's good."

"Huh." I handed the ID back to him, but only after noting for the record that Adrian deJesus and Peter Desarme bore no resemblance whatsoever, and we wouldn't have any luck repurposing the official cards. "You learn something new every day."

He said, "Yeah. I'm learning a bunch of new things today, for example." Then he dropped his hands and slapped the wallet onto the counter. His gaze went back and forth between the floor and the scotch gla.s.s, respectively. Quietly he asked, "So let me see if I can learn one more thing, while we're talking. Did you know my sister? Is there any chance of that?"

"No," I said. "But there's a chance my client did. They were in the same program, anyway. Can you tell me a little about her? Something I can use to refresh his memory?" Or satisfy my own curiosity, as the case may be.

He sighed. "Isabelle ran away from home to go live with a boyfriend-a useless piece of s.h.i.t she'd met someplace downtown. Our parents wouldn't have it; they threw her out."

"Can you throw somebody out who's already moved out?"

"It was the principle of the thing," he said. He tipped his finger at the gla.s.s and asked, "A little more? If you don't mind."

I didn't mind. It was expensive scotch, but I never drank much of it anyway. I think that the bottle was a gift from Horace, received ages previously. Adrian was welcome to it-and all the more so if it loosened his tongue.

While he sipped, I asked, "She was your younger sister, I a.s.sume? Did you try to talk her out of it? Being big brother, and all?"

"Of course I tried. But she wouldn't hear it, and I was already overseas by then-"

"Military," I said, remembering what the PDF had said about the thief.

"Navy SEAL," he specified. "I was wrapping up training far enough away from here that there was nothing I could do about it. Anyway, she started to dabble in drugs, and then the boyfriend died or disappeared-I'm not sure which. She tried to come home but our mother wasn't having it. Momma gave Bella the line about how if she wanted to go be an adult, she could stay out there and be an adult."

"Ouch. What'd she do then?" I was going for the sympathy play, and it wasn't entirely a ploy. I honestly wanted to know about his sister-how she'd been turned, how she'd been captured, and how she'd died.

"Lived on the streets, I guess. Bounced in and out of shelters."

"Dropped out of school?"

He nodded.

Well, that was one more paper trail I wouldn't bother chasing.

"By the time I had leave to come home, the household was a war zone between my mother and my father. And Isabelle was nowhere to be found."

"Your mother wanted her to stay gone, and your father wanted her to come home, is that right?"

"Yes." His eyes narrowed, watering with exhaustion or very old pain. "How did you know?"

"I told you, I went there and talked to them, remember? Your dad gave me your stage name. Your mom acted like she wanted to burn my face with a road flare."

"That's them." He waved one hand carelessly, then froze it in midair. His body language and his tone changed abruptly, to something sober and tense. "You spoke to them?"

"I told you I-"

"You went to visit them? At their house?"

"Yes," I told him, not sure where he was headed with this line of interrogation, but sensing that I wouldn't like the destination even a little bit. "But I told you that before. before."

"I wasn't thinking. We..." He dropped the gla.s.s and it stayed upright, but sloshed. "We have to go back there. What if you led the agents right to them?"

I held up my hands in a gesture that wouldn't have stopped an aggressive poodle, much less a frantic, tipsy drag queen. "Don't, Adrian. Don't go there, not like this. Your parents aren't in hiding, are they? I was inside their house, yes," I confessed, and then I grasped at straws. "And it looked to me like they'd been there for years. The government doesn't want your parents. It could've had them at any time-"

"Okay. Okay, yes. You're right," he said, and it was pitifully apparent that he was leaning on my words, trying to calm himself down. Hey, I know it when I see it. "You're right, they've been there since before I was born. n.o.body wants anything from them. Everybody knows they don't know anything...except, my father gave you my stage name..."

"Well, he sort of scribbled it-"

"He told you where to find me. If he told you, he could've told anybody!"

"G.o.ddammit, Adrian, settle down. He didn't tell just anybody, he told me me-and I was doing a very convincing cop impression, I'll have you know."

He glowered at me and then he growled, "You mean, you showed up in an official-looking car, in a suit?"

Oh. I got it. "Well, it wasn't...it wasn't a black black suit, and it wasn't a suit, and it wasn't a black black car. And I had a badge..." I looked back down at Peter Desarme's clothes on Adrian's back, and his badge on my kitchen counter, and I figured he, too, would've likely had an official-looking car to complete the package. car. And I had a badge..." I looked back down at Peter Desarme's clothes on Adrian's back, and his badge on my kitchen counter, and I figured he, too, would've likely had an official-looking car to complete the package.

"You don't understand. My parents, they...They aren't very trusting of authority, but they fear it and they'll cave to it, if it comes on hard enough. Please, for the love of G.o.d, tell me you did not lead anybody to my parents."

"I couldn't have," I hoped, and I prayed. "Listen, I was not not being followed. I'm smarter than that, and more careful than that. If I weren't, I never would've survived this long." being followed. I'm smarter than that, and more careful than that. If I weren't, I never would've survived this long."

He was tapping his foot and tapping his wrist on the edge of the counter, trying to come to some kind of decision. "You would've noticed someone tailing you in a car."

"That's what I'm telling you, yes."

"But what if you were being followed some other way? Something less obvious?"

"Like what?" I wanted to know, but a word bubbled to the surface of my attention, and I didn't like it. "Like with some kind of...I don't know. Surveillance system."

"That's what I'm thinking," he mused, poking at the wallet. "Something like a satellite."

"A satellite?" My blood went colder than my drink. "That's not possible."

But Adrian didn't say anything to help slow the ramp-up of my paranoid frenzy. "The technology wasn't really live yet when I was still in the service, but you could see it coming. Satellites were the next thing that would save us-we'd be watching our enemies from s.p.a.ce, in high definition."

"But...but can they do that now now?" I demanded. "That's something that happens on TV, and in movies once in a while. But in real life? Bulls.h.i.t Bulls.h.i.t. I call bulls.h.i.t."

"Call it what you want. The gear these guys were wearing-it was advanced stuff. Those earpieces." He made a fiddly motion, as if he were holding one up. "Those microphones. A quarter the size of what we were using a decade ago."

The only satellites I knew about that didn't carry TV signals fed straight to the Internet, like Google Earth...and that was just a snapshot, right? Satellites-which is to say, powerful cameras out in orbit-only give you an image. They don't give you live video feeds.

Unless I was wrong. Unless there were other kinds of satellites.

I racked my brain, trying to dredge up memories of CNN coverage or other news organizations showing footage from Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of those military satellites were more advanced, weren't they?

Whoo boy boy. The implications made my head spin. I just might have stumbled across some whole new and exciting thing to be terrified of. I tried to catch up and calm down. I said, "Sure, fine. Tiny trackers, the size of pocket change, okay. But that's just radio contact, old-fashioned and reliable, right?"

"Probably," he acknowledged.

And then he started taking off his clothes.

"Not that I'm complaining, but what the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

"Peter Desarme might've had a tracker on him. It could be anywhere, sewn into a seam or clipped into a pocket," he said as he kicked the pants off-revealing the hilarity-inducing fact that he was still wearing the silver spangled bikini in which he'd performed earlier. Apparently this didn't call for any comment on his part, and if he noticed I was looking, he didn't bring it up. "Here," he said, chucking the pants at me. "Feel around all the seams, turn the pockets inside out. Do you have a washer or dryer here?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, we're going to have to run all this stuff through them, on the highest heat settings."