Deadline

The echoes of my knock were still ringing when the door swung open, revealing a short, cheerfully curvy woman with spiky brown hair streaked with bleach-white lines that looked more accidental than anything else. She was wearing an electric orange T-shirt that read DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS, jeans, and a lab coat, and was pointing a hunting rifle at the middle of my chest.

“Got any ID?” she asked. Her voice was light, even charming, with an accent I couldn’t quite identify. She followed the question with a pleasant smile that didn’t warm her eyes. This was a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if she thought we were giving her reason.

Not the friendliest greeting ever, and yet, not the least friendly, either, said George. Kelly gasped, either in shock or indignation. I wasn’t sure which, and I really didn’t care; it gave me something to respond to that wouldn’t convince the woman with the large gun that I was insane right off the bat. That could come later, when she no longer had a weapon aimed at us.

“Hush,” I said, making sure to slant my eyes toward Kelly, to at least give the impression that I was talking to her. Looking back to the woman in the doorway, I asked, “May I reach into my jacket for my press pass? I promise to do it slowly.”

“Fine by me,” she said, still smiling. “Joe! Come over here, boy.” The largest dog I’d ever seen came ambling up behind her, its flapping jowls oozing strings of gooey white saliva. Its head looked like it was bigger than my chest. That may have been shock speaking, but there was no way I was going to volunteer to do the measurements. It didn’t help that the damn thing was solid charcoal black, making it look unnervingly like the classic hellhound.

Kelly drew her breath in again. This time, I didn’t blame her. Even Becks gasped, and I heard Maggie mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “Holy shit.”

“Joe, guard,” said the woman with the rifle. The massive canine obediently padded out onto the walkway, standing between her and the rest of us. It wasn’t growling, glaring, or doing anything else actively hostile; it was simply standing there, being enormous. That was more than enough.

Reaching slowly into my jacket, I asked the most sensible question I could come up with under the circumstances: “Lady, what the f**k is that?”

That’s right. Antagonize the woman who accessorizes with Cujo. I was tired of being the only dead one in this relationship.

I ignored her, choosing instead to focus on the woman who had the capacity to kill me. Call me single-minded. I tend to pay more attention to the immediate threats to life and limb, and leave the sarcastic dead people for later.

“That’s Joe,” said the woman, keeping the rifle aimed soidly at my chest. “He’s shown me his ID. He’s in no danger of getting himself shot.”

“He’s an English Mastiff,” breathed Maggie, almost reverently. She started to step forward, one hand outstretched in a gesture I’d seen her use on her video blog whenever she was adding a new rescue to her miniature pack. She froze midgesture, eyes darting toward the woman with the rifle. “Is he friendly?”

“He will be, once I’ve seen your ID.” Still, shotgun lady’s smile took on a slightly more honest edge. “Joe’s a good boy. He only eats the people I tell him to eat.”

“How encouraging,” I muttered, and held out my journalist’s license. “Here. All my credentials are on file. Just run the code.”

“And your people?” She jerked her chin toward the others, not bothering to take the license from my hand.

“Rebecca Atherton, head of the Irwins. Magdalene Garcia, head of the Fictionals. Alaric Kwong, he’s with the Newsie division; the actual division head lives in London and isn’t with us today. And this is—” For a sickening moment, I couldn’t remember Kelly’s alias.

Barbara Tinney, prompted Georgia.

“—Barbara Tinney,” I echoed. “She’s a social scientist on loan to the site for a few months. Getting some field experience.”

From the look on the woman’s face, she wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh. What are you folks doing here? Take a wrong turn on the way to a real story?”

I had two choices. I could try to come up with a plausible lie or I could tell her the truth. Once, I would have gone straight for the lie, the more interesting the better. I’m not really comfortable with that sort of thing anymore. “We came to see Dr. Abbey,” I said, still holding out my license. “I have some files from the CDC that I need to have explained to me, and I thought she might be the person who could do it.” Her brows lifted slightly; she was interested. I decided to press my luck. “I don’t know if you follow the news, but my sister, Georgia Mason—”

“Retinal Kellis-Amberlee, wasn’t it? I remember her. That was a real tragedy. I was very sorry to hear about it.” The rifle wavered slightly. “I need a better reason for you to be here, and not at a ‘real lab’ somewhere.”

Tell her. George’s mental voice held a venom I rarely heard from her, even when she was alive. Then again, I couldn’t blame her. The CDC’s secret keeping might be the reason she was just a voice in my head.

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Barbara Tinney is a cover ID for Dr. Kelly Connolly of the CDC. The researcher who was killed in a break-in recently—that was a full-body clone. The real Dr. Connolly wasn’t killed, and this is her.” This time, Kelly’s horrified expression was more than a bit betrayed. I did my best to ignore it. “She’s how we got the files, and those same files identified this lab as being disreputable enough that no one would suspect we’d go to you, while still having staff who know how to find their asses with both hands. It didn’t mention the giant dog, or we might have gone somewhere else. Now, are you or can you tell us where to find her? I’m getting a little uncomfortable standing out here in the middle of nowhere.”