A boo went up from the crowd and there was a brief euphoric moment when Zoey thought they were booing Tilley, having come around to her side. Then she figured out that they were mooing. Will stood up and straightened his suit, standing in the spot where he’d quickly placed himself in between Zoey and the wreckage. Zoey took a long breath to steady herself and pushed her bangs out of her eyes.
To Andre, she said, “So, do we just lose the deposit, or do we now have to pay for the whole thing?”
“I think it’s important to remain calm in these situations, so I won’t go into detail about the exact financial toll of tonight’s operation until it’s all said and done.”
Tilley’s animated skull appeared on the Blink feed again and in the silly skeleton voice said, “My patience is done! I want the cow. Not her lawyer, not her bodyguard, not her pathetic toys.”
Will shot a quick, almost imperceptible glance at a nearby drone before saying, “Wu, do you have the shot, or is he back behind the window frame?”
“He is behind the frame and also I have the shot. These rounds can penetrate the steel beam and then detonate in a spot of our choosing, perhaps inside one of Tilley’s eye sockets. The problem is the female hostage is sitting right next to him.”
Zoey said, “Plus if you miss, or just hurt him, he’s going to activate his brain gadget for sure. You’d be giving him no choice.”
“If he has it,” muttered Will, casting an annoyed glare at the building.
Zoey followed his gaze and said, “Look, I know how you say you hate unknown variables more than Abe Lincoln hated ceiling fans—”
“I’m sure I’ve never phrased it like—”
“But I’m obviously going in there. Everybody wants something; we’ll make him an offer. It’s by far our best chance of this not ending in utter disaster.”
There was nothing in the world Zoey wanted to do less than she wanted to do this. At this point in the night she was supposed to be extremely drunk and full of sushi, sloppily hitting on some high-society kid who was looking to do something his parents wouldn’t approve of.
“Zoey, if you give in to this guy, next week you’ll have another one just like him holding up another of your joints making bigger demands. You’d be laying out the welcome mat.”
“Well, tonight I’m worried about tonight. Now how do I get in there?”
“I’m going with you,” said Will, never taking his eyes off that ragged hole in the building. “He has to know that only I can make the kind of decisions he wants made.”
This wasn’t true, but Zoey knew why Will had said it. If Dexter Tilley was watching literally any feed about his own hostage situation, he also was listening to everything they said right now, including the exchange with Wu moments ago. Being on camera every moment you were outside your home meant every conversation, facial expression, and mannerism was a performance. It was an adjustment that Zoey found difficult, because only a psychopath would find it easy. Of course, Tilley himself had to know that Will knew Tilley was listening in, and would thus deduce that this could be a performance on Will’s part. But he also knew that Will knew that he knew, so maybe Will’s performance was intentionally inauthentic, so that Tilley would think Will was lying, when in reality, he was telling the truth. Zoey was starting to get a headache.
Will looked her in the eye, getting serious now. “You know what to do?”
“I’ve been in a hostage negotiation before, Will. Multiple times.”
“As a hostage, yes. This end is more complicated.”
“Sure. So, again I ask, how in the hell do we get in?”
It turned out their method for reaching the busted-out hole in the side of the building was, in fact, just a big-ass ladder. The fire department was on hand (they always came when called but would send a bill later) and they had one that could extend from the top of the overturned food truck up to the opening. Unfortunately, nobody had a second, smaller ladder to get them from the ground to the top of the truck, so Andre rolled over a trash can they could use as a step stool. Zoey stumbled six or seven times on the way up, even with Will awkwardly trying to help her. It was almost like Andre had picked the single clumsiest option possible. The crowd loved it.
Will then led the way up the ladder, disappearing into the spot where most of the floor-to-ceiling window had been bashed away. Zoey followed, the rickety ladder shaking with every step. She was coated in cold terror-sweat before she was even halfway up. There were drones swarming below her and they probably had a great view of her black-with-white-polka-dot underwear (the pervs who zoomed in would find the white dots were tiny skulls). Live female wardrobe malfunction. Blink also never lacked for content or audience.
Finally, she climbed through the opening into the room, tumbled across an end table, and thumped to the floor. She stood, brushed broken glass off herself, and smoothed down her skirt. She accidentally brushed the wrong spot and the cat on her shirt started meowing to the tune of “Blow the Man Down” (“meow-MEOW meow-meow-meow…”) until Zoey found the off switch in the seam about two full minutes later. When she finally looked up, there were three sets of eyes staring back at her.
Zoey said, “Uh, hi.”
Huddled in the corner was a weeping woman Zoey assumed was Shae LaVergne. Thin, pale skin, huge brown eyes, auburn hair cropped into a pixie cut that swooped down across her forehead. She had ears that stuck out a little, giving her an elven look. Silk pajamas with little cartoon bunnies. Zoey suspected the Night Inn Cuddle Theater kept Shae very, very busy.
Sitting on the ornate bed was a chubby guy who didn’t actually look twenty years old, which was the age Budd had given her for Dexter Tilley—she’d have guessed an awkward fifteen or sixteen. Slumped shoulders, acne, hair he’d buzzed off, presumably after realizing he couldn’t do anything trendy with it. He had a wispy failed mustache. On his hands were black armored gloves, designed to let an overpowered person punch through metal without pulping their fists.
Along his shoulders and elbows were ugly, inflamed surgery scars. The aftermath of an in-and-out back-alley procedure with no post-op care. Zoey had seen body scans and, in one case, the actual skeleton of a guy who’d gotten the implants. It was a super-strong black mesh woven through bone and tendon, like their innards were wearing sexy fishnets. Somewhere in there was also a little thumb-sized device driving it all, the tech that made the whole thing possible, called Raiden. It could generate enough power to bring down a building. She’d seen it.
Will, softening his tone so radically that it physically startled Zoey, said, “You’re Dexter, right? How are you doing?”
“Not good.”
She had seen Will do this before, adopting a manner that implied he’d entirely forgotten a vicious conflict that had occurred just minutes earlier. Someone told her the technique was called “gaslighting.” Zoey assumed they called it that because it really confuses people, just like if you stopped in the middle of a conversation to suddenly light a fart.
Will nodded. “Let’s see what we can do about that.” He turned to the girl. “And you’re Shae? How are you holding up?”
In a tragically hopeful voice, the girl said, “You’re with the police?”