“You alright?” he asked.
“Hey, you’re the one that got shot.”
He shrugged. “Shit happens.”
She laughed. “I just never figured someone would want to target e-sports champions as part of a government plot.”
“To be honest, it does seem a bit far-fetched.”
Jenna narrowed her eyes and looked back out the window. “Listen… this whole thing has me worried. I don’t know what Gonzalez is thinking! We’re not trained at all, why is she bringing us along without backup?”
“She doesn’t want anyone else to get involved in this. And we’ve both actually been to Arcadia before, she hasn’t. We’re more familiar with the layout.”
“Or…” Jenna glanced out the window, then leaned closer. “She’s taking us straight to them.”
Lewis blinked, confused. “What? She can’t be working for them, she shot one of them in the face! She’s been helping us both this whole time.”
“Des, what did she say to you just before we got into the car?”
“She said a lot of things.”
“The clean-up crew. The agency that employed Zhao and all his people at Arcadia is probably going to terminate everyone involved if they think there’s a risk of them getting exposed. First, your buddy Jake dies while doing a story on them, but they manage to pass that off as him doing drugs – which is improbable to anyone who knew him, but whatever. Then Charlie, their next target, is scheduled to go nuts in L.A. this past week. So they send in one of their operatives, Gonzalez, and have her pose as an FBI agent to make sure the investigation doesn’t turn up anything. Hell, she’s probably the one who deleted Rogue Horizon off Charlie’s computer!
“She realizes you know more than you’re letting on, and through surveillance or whatever finds out you’re going to Vegas. Actually no, she doesn’t even need surveillance. You called Arcadia and booked a tour for you and me. Her superiors would’ve told her. How else did she magically know to run into you here? That would’ve been an incredible coincidence if she was here on her own, wouldn’t it?”
“No way. My boss told her I’d be here.”
“Did you confirm that with Valerie Richter?”
Lewis was horrified. He stared at the floor and listened as she continued.
“So, let’s say her superiors, the people who even Zhao works for, are concerned with his performance as of late. Maybe there’s a whole bunch of other fuck-ups we don’t know about that they’ve sent her to Nevada to look in on too. Point is, she’s in Vegas, meets up with you, and sees the total mess that Zhao’s people cause here. They murder a cop in public, they shoot up a nightclub, they get recorded all over street cameras and CCTV. She plays it slick though. She’s gonna befriend you and me and trick us into spying on Arcadia with her. Meanwhile, she’s captured us without ever having to use handcuffs or putting bags over our heads. When she sees the mess that Blackwell, Caruso, and Jackson have caused she decides they’re liabilities who need to be killed and written off as random hitmen. So now she’s going to turn us over to Zhao and then wait for orders from her superiors to see if she needs to torch the whole place with us inside or not.”
He shook his head. “It’s just… it’s too…”
“I thought you were just being paranoid earlier, and see where that got us? I need you to trust me here, Des. Think about it: why did she suddenly disappear on you back at the Mirage? She hid. She knew Blackwell was about to capture you. And how did the men in black know you were headed to Solaria? Because you had just told her! Once the fight broke out and they failed to do their job properly, she decided the best way to salvage the situation was to kill them and save us so that we’d drive all the way out here with her. Sara Gonzalez probably isn’t even her real fucking name!”
Just then, the door chimed and swung open. Lewis and Jenna both looked up over the aisles to see the face of the woman who had driven them here taking in her surroundings. She glanced back at them.
“Come on,” she said, looking almost angry. “It’s time to go.”
Lewis became perfectly still, a thousand different thoughts racing through his mind. Everything his girlfriend had just said made sense of the past several hours. And in truth, he had been skeptical of Gonzalez – if that was her actual name – from the moment he’d met her. One of the lead investigators in a national FBI case just happened to be in L.A. in time for the next incident to happen? It was possible, but unlikely.
The probability of her just finding him like that at the Mirage’s poolside was even more unlikely still.
The real question was: what did they do now? Gonzalez had the car and would’ve told Zhao that she was inbound with the two of them. Arcadia would be expecting them. There was no way they could sneak in now. Flight was the only option. Even if they managed to somehow subdue her and drive into the compound pretending to be her, Zhao would have people waiting as soon as they opened the doors.
“What are you waiting for?” Gonzalez said. “Buy something or don’t. We’ve gotta get a move on.”
He could practically see the gears turning in her brain, the thoughts streaming through her mind: They’ve finally started to figure it out. They’re onto me and they’re very bad at hiding it.
Jenna looked at him, hesitating. “Actually, I don’t think I’m gonna get anything.”
“I thought you were hungry,” she said.
Jenna scratched her shoulder. “I guess I’m not anymore,” she said, forcing a smile.
“Okay,” Gonzalez said.
It happened very quickly. In a flash, her pistol was drawn and aimed toward the counter as her finger curled around the trigger. The clerk looked up and opened his mouth to scream, but the bullet tore through his face before he could emit a sound. Cranial matter exploded all over the rack of lottery tickets behind him, and his body was thrown back like a ragdoll before sliding down out of sight.
Lewis and Jenna hit the floor.
Gonzalez sighed loudly. “Alright, the jig is up. Let’s not make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
Lewis tried to keep his breathing quiet. His heart beat rapidly and his pulse pounded in his ears. This was a small store. There was nowhere to hide or run and with two well-placed shots, Gonzalez would have them both incapacitated. At this point, he realized she’d probably kill him and deal with Jenna by herself. She couldn’t hurt her too much because she had to be released back into the world with her completed programming.
Unless she really was planning on killing everyone at Arcadia. Then it wouldn’t make a difference if she shot them here or not.
He heard her footsteps walking around the other end of the aisles. He and Jenna quickly scurried to the end of their row and hid around the back. Somewhere at the other side of the store, Gonzalez stopped. “I know where you are. Hiding is pointless,” she said.
Lewis turned to Jenna. “Run for it?” she said.
He shook his head. “No, she’s too good a shot.”
Gonzalez began advancing up the middle aisle. “A pity it has to end this way…”
Tires squealed outside as headlights splashed across the store’s inventory. A car door slammed, then another. The entrance chimed as it opened.
“You traitorous bitch!” He recognized Caruso’s voice.
Now he leaned out around the corner just in time to see Gonzalez swing her arm toward the entrance and pull the trigger. Gunfire erupted in the store and glass shattered. Gonzalez crouched down, then moved around the corner and headed toward the door. More shots came from outside. He turned to his girlfriend.