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“You’re still wondering if she’s on the level?” Kat asked. “I believe every word of it. I saw the room they kept that poor kid in. A blind basement room, no ventilation.”
“Yeah,” Amos agreed. “The air was bad, the light was bad, the sheets were dirty, the mattress hard, it smelled like mildew. She was in a prison cell, not a clinic. You should have seen her face when we came in.”
“I had to press the doctor hard to get info about the medicine,” Kat said. “If he’s really a doctor, which I doubt. Scared the guy to death. He said that box in her room was all the medicine they had on hand. That a fresh supply was delivered weekly. And I put the fear of God into that guy. I don’t think he was lying.”
“Dear God,” Angela whispered. “That poor little sweetheart. So brave.”
“I’m grateful the redhead decided to partner with you to rescue the sister,” Ethan said. “I just feel like there are a blind spots in this story. Blind spots make me nervous. Anything can jump out of them. I’m happy, but I’m twitchy as hell.”
“Before he had me gassed, Halliwell sent Red down to ask me about SmokeScreen,” I said. “In the spirit of full disclosure. He’s still hot for it. And I think that Red is hoping that if things go sideways for the sister, that we could use it to dig into Halliwell’s databanks for the cure.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “I see.”
The silence that followed was heavy with words that didn’t need to be said. We knew all too well what happened the last time SmokeScreen had been used… by me. Everyone’s lives had been blown up. Men had died. All because I was a fucking idiot who thought that I could wield lightning without getting fried.
Well, I was humbled now.
“Hey.” Red’s melodious alto voice from the dining room entryway. “Any more of that yummy dessert?”
“You better believe it.” Angela bounced up, grabbing a dessert plate from the pile. She served up a generous plateful without missing a beat. “Here you go. So what’s your story, honey? What do you do?”
“Well, before I got stuck working at Halliwell’s outfit, I had my own consultancy,” she said, licking sweet, goopy sauce off her fingertip. “Red Queen Consulting.”
Amos whistled. “Wait. Red Queen Consulting? The top shelf malware outfit?”
“Yeah, that’s me. You’ve heard of it?”
“Of course we’ve heard of it,” Darius said. “You’ve consulted for all the big defense contractors and all the big intelligence agencies. You’re famous.”
She snorted. “Oh, come on. Hardly.”
I was taken aback. “Malware? No shit. How did you get into that?”
“My mom’s computer got infected when I was a kid, not much older than Reggie,” she said. “I set myself to figure out how to beat it, and started geeking out on it. I get hyper-focused on things. One thing led to another, and a few years ago, Red Queen Consulting was born. Don’t worry, I stay on the side of truth and righteousness, when I can figure out where that line is. It tends to move around pretty freely.”
“Red Queen Consulting,” I repeated. “Is that a reference to your hair?”
She smiled sheepishly. “It’s more about Reggie’s hair. When I started consulting, Reggie and I were watching the Alice in Wonderland movie on repeat. She got a big kick out of the Red Queen, and Regina means queen. And Mom, Reggie and I were all redheads. So Red Queen Consulting was born. Off with their heads! I loved that she was such an unapologetic bitch. It’s a kind of superpower.”
Kat nodded in perfect understanding. “Agreed. From one unapologetic bitch to another. Angela, too. She’s as bad-ass as they come. Long may we reign.”
The women exchanged grins. The men, including me, stayed strategically silent.
“My corporate logo is a drawing that Reggie did for me,” she said. “Reggie’s an incredible artist. It was the perfect image. I love it.”
I pulled out the phone she had given me and pulled up Red Queen Consulting to check out the logo.
It was, in fact, a cute drawing. Catchy and memorable. A simple cartoon face, with Red’s pointed chin and big, tilted green eyes, a crown, and wild, Medusa-style locks of red hair waving around her crown. “Talented kid,” I said. “She really caught you with that sketch.”
“How did Halliwell get his hooks into you?” Kat asked.
Red’s mouth tightened. “Reggie got sick,” she said. “The doctors told me it was Varen’s, the same thing that killed our mom two years ago. They said there was no cure, no treatment, and that she’d be dead in two weeks. Then Halliwell pops up and tells me he has a treatment for it… but only if I license my new software exclusively to him, and come to work for him.” She shrugged. “I figured, I had to try it, right? So I went. But that place was a horror show, and it wasn’t going so well with Reggie, either. Her symptoms improved, but they wouldn’t talk to me about her treatment. It was driving me mad. She was fading day by day in our video calls.”
“But Halliwell’s treatment worked?” Ethan asked.
“Well, she didn’t die, if that’s the only metric we’re talking about,” Red said. “The fevers and rashes stopped. But she was peaky and miserable, and she was locked in a windowless room. A woman I met in Halliwell’s headquarters told me that’s a thing Halliwell does. He makes people sick with manufactured diseases that mimic real diseases, and then he dangles his ready-made cure. He did it to her mother. And killed her mother with it, in the end. That was when I realized I had to make a move, fast.”
“Dear God,” Angela murmured.
