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nothing about you." Yet.
"Far as I know, you're a maverick who rushes into dangerous positions without
an ounce of precaution."
He stepped close to stress that he was a nearly a foot taller than her. "Some
would say you're a fool to bring two strangers to her hotel room."
"You're Atticus Steele. No middle name. You were found abandoned as an infant
in 1973. You joined the military in 1988 with what must have been a forged
birth certificate and served for six years. In
1994, you were given an honorable discharge, and you applied to the University
of Maryland . . ."
"Okay, so you did your homework, but that doesn't make us "
". . . where you met your current lover, Hikaru Takahashi." Zheng played her
hole card. "You two have been together for ten years and own a T Street row
house in Washington that you've been renovating over the last five years. I'm
told that you just refinished the floors and they're beautiful."
Atticus's opinion of her went from annoying to terrifying.
"Did you do a full background check on us?" Ru snapped.
"I was discreet," Zheng said. "But yes. You originally came on my radar screen
as drug dealers.
It wasn't until this morning that I learned you were actually undercover
agents."
Atticus relaxed slightly. "I'm impressed. The agency provides us with fairly
fireproof backgrounds so perps can run their own checks and we still come up
clean."
"I have my resources," Zheng said.
Atticus glanced to Ru, who didn't look happy but nodded his agreement. "Okay.
So you're good,
and you're way ahead of us on this." And most likely the only way she'd catch
them up to speed would be by their agreeing to work with her. Of course,
agreeing wasn't the same as trusting. In some ways, it would be just another
undercover assignment. "We're in."
Zheng accepted the announcement with a serene nod. Putting down her coffee
cup, she took a folder out of her briefcase. "We have an ex-cultist working
with us in Pittsburgh. Her cult name was
Socket. She's a Boston-area heiress whom the cult recruited specifically to
gain access to her fortune.
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Her total worth is ten million dollars, which is in a trust she can't
touch but it gives her a yearly income of a hundred thousand dollars. As one
of their cash cows, the cult didn't subject Socket to the most brutal of their
brainwashing techniques, but that also means she wasn't part of their inner
circle."
"So, unlike Ascii, who will tell the FBI nothing, Socket spilled her guts, but
there's not much there?"
"Exactly," Zheng said. "This is the only photo we have of Ice, current leader
of the cult." It seemed to have been taken from a bank surveillance camera. In
the grainy black-and-white photo, the tall, lean blond male was partially
obscured by a potted plant. "Socket worked with us to create composite
sketches of him and the other known surviving cultists."
Twenty laser printouts of pencil drawings followed. The cult favored
military-short haircuts, and accepted a wide range of ethnic groups. Of the
twenty, five were women and the rest men. All were identified only by single
computer terms: Ice, Firewall, Mouse, Ether, Diskette, Ram.
"What do we know about this Ice?" Atticus asked.
Zheng consulted her PDA. "He's approximately six-one, a hundred and eighty
pounds, blond with blue eyes, in his early twenties, and has black tribal
tattoos on his back. He's skilled in martial arts and served as the cult's
weapons trainer. While they didn't discuss it openly with Socket, she got the
impression that he also taught the cult how to forge driver's licenses, pick
locks, and steal cars. He was the cult's tactician for ambushes on the
Ontongard Gets. The founder, William Harris, was the one with the vision Ice
was the one who made it happen."
"We don't have any real names for these people?" Atticus asked.
Zheng produced another artist sketch with a Polaroid attached. Atticus
recognized him as the driver of the Honda. The photograph was of the man's
dead body on the coroner's table. "We've identified him as John Pender,
originally of New Hampshire. He joined the cult two years ago, breaking ties
with his parents."
"I would think," Ru said, "that he's a total dead end."
Zheng's full mouth curved into her Mona Lisa smile and her eyes softened there
was warmth under that cool exterior. When not hard as steel, her gray eyes
were surprisingly beautiful. "Perhaps.
Perhaps not."
Atticus realized his paranoia was slipping and hugged it a little closer.
Until he knew more about
Zheng, he had to keep in mind that they weren't necessarily on the same side.
"So far, you've not given us much to go on."
"Socket also gave us this list." Zheng shuffled through papers in her
briefcase. What wasn't she showing them? Atticus controlled the urge to snatch
up her briefcase and dump it out. "Through dummy corporations, the cult bought
a good deal of property in New England. The only one they openly owned was a
farm in New Hampshire, and they used it as a front for anyone investigating
them." Zheng found the paper she was looking for and laid it on the table
between them. "The top addresses were the ones that Socket knew about. I had
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