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"How about you drive?"
Misty's brain hurt; it always did, when she had to work too hard at something. She felt like she was always reaching for information that wasn't there, to get names and dates. To remember where she'd learned something.
The information just wasn't there, and looking for it was a waste of time on the face of it. But it was worse than that; she had to be constantly dealing with the headaches. Under normal circumstances she almost managed to forget that there was anything to remember. She could go through her day and just try to feel natural about everything.
There was nothing natural about her understanding of computers and networks. Someone had spent months or years teaching it to her, and she had learned a lot. Now she remembered the majority; the trouble was that those years were long-since gone, and everything that she knew how to do was linked in with sensations and experiences that she had no access to at all.
They started driving, and Misty rubbed her head.
"Which way?"
"Whatever way you want to go. Just drive. You want to be out of here before the cops show up."
"Cops?"
"I'll tell you all about it when my head stops pounding," Misty answered. She knew that she sounded sullen, and there wasn't a whole lot that she could do ab out it at that point. The best that she could try to do to keep up was to fix her headache and let herself breathe a little bit before everything started trying to mess her up again. It wasn't exactly high hopes, but it was what she could manage.
They drove until they hit the interstate again, Grant drove up a few miles, and broke the silence in a voice that was soft enough that no librarian in the world would complain about it; to Misty, it sounded like he was shouting.
"You hungry?"
"Starving," she admitted. They pulled off, ran through a drive-through window and had themselves a bag full of greasy breakfast food that was probably as sure to kill them as getting caught would, albeit slower. They didn't exactly have time for the gourmet treatment, though, regardless of what Misty might have liked. She let out a breath as they pulled in to a parking spot. Grant left the car running; Misty had her doubts that he'd be able to get it started again without her help.
She pulled hard on the straw. Soda hit her tongue, and then went down her throat, and at the end of it she almost felt like a human being again.
"Okay," she said finally. "So."
"So?"
"Let's talk."
"You sure that you're ready? I don't want to cause any trouble."
"We've got names."
She waited a moment; Grant's expression was enough to make the whole experience almost worthwhile. When she finally got rid of her headache, that would be a positive memory.
"Okay?"
"We've got plenty of names. Clients. Your friend was good at keeping records. Too good. A little cross-referencing between that and my phone's call logs, and then throw in a little bit of searching on the web for any information on known associates…"
"You get all that on the internet? Must be using a different internet than me," Grant said.
"Not really. I just know where to look."
She took another bite, and let the taste and the nutrients and more than anything the sugar take effect, dulling the pain in her head. She hoped it would be enough, but she knew that it was a fleeting thing.
"That's great. Now we can just call it in."
"Call it in to whom?"
Grant's expression, which had been like a kid in a candy shop, or someone who'd won the lottery, dropped. Misty almost felt bad.
"Yeah. I guess you're right. Call it in to whom?"
She let out a long, low breath. "Yeah."
"Well… hm." Grant gripped the wheel tight with one hand, even though they were stopped. Like at any moment he might have to jerk the wheel hard to the right to avoid the tree in front of them, if it made any crazy moves. "I mean, there's got to be something going on, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"Your, uh… friends. The whole of law enforcement isn't trying to murder you."
Misty watched him and waited for an explanation. Right now it didn't sound like he was going someplace that she wanted to follow, but she was willing to listen, at least. "Aren't they? Then why bother running? We can just get ourselves both arrested, and go to trial. I'm sure everything will be fine; after all, you said it would, right?"
"Very cute, miss smart-ass. I'm just saying, you're supposed to be a wanted criminal, but those charges won't stand up. Most guys are going to want you based on that, but if we can prove you're innocent, that you were set up by your corrupt bosses…"
Misty chewed her lip. There was a lot she didn't know about her history; what she knew was enough to know that she didn't want to know any more if she could help it. She let out a long, low breath and shrugged.
"What's your point?"
"My point is, we can go over their heads. Find the guys who are responsible for the guys who are responsible for what's happening to you, and we go to them. Tell them that we want to get all of this sorted out, and talk to them. I'm sure that they'll make all of this go away, right?"
Misty's face was a studied, careful neutrality. If he wanted to try, well, she didn't have any better ideas, and they had a full day before they could get out of the country, bare minimum.
"Are you sure you want to risk getting in touch with them? It could come crashing down, you know."
"I know," Grant said. "But I can't let that affect my decision. There's always going to be risks, but I have to make the right decisions for the situation. To try to find the simplest path. And right now, it seems like the simplest thing to do is to eliminate two birds with one stone."
"Two birds? It sounded like you were planning on trying to reason with them."
"That's the long-term plan, sure. But how do I get in the door?"
Misty took another slug of soda. It tasted like sugar, but that was precisely what she wanted right then. "I don't know, you call them?"
"And then what? They're not going to let me just talk to their supervisor's supervisor's supervisor without knowing that the whole thing isn't some wild goose chase or prank call." He let out a breath. "No, I'm going to tell them that I have information, and I'm not willing to divulge it to anyone who I don't know can do something about it. So I need someone with the authority to call up the branch office and send someone down, right now. Right?"
Misty waited for him to finish.
"So when I call them, I tell them I've got information. And of course, I do. Then, they connect me through, and what do I tell them about?"
"The names?"
"Precisely."
Misty looked at him and tried to decide if the idea was stupid or brilliant. That it wasn't going to work, she was pretty sure she knew. But it was at least worth the effort of trying, and it was better than no plan at all, which was what they had now.
"What about the yacht?"
"We'll move west the whole time," Grant assured her. "But if we get caught along the way, I'd rather not have to worry about some government hit squad coming down on us because of expired tabs on a stolen car."
The way he put it, the whole thing almost sounded reasonable.
The plan was never going to work. Misty knew that. It was something that she had expected. She let out a breath and closed her eyes. She couldn't keep looking at the frustration that played out on Grant's face plainly.
Misty opened her mouth; there was a lot that needed saying, and she knew the words. She shut them again. She knew how she would have felt if someone tried to cheer her up about her situation; Grant was new to it. He was getting the worst parts of it, and no matter how many people were with you there was something about being trapped in between the devil and the deep blue sea that felt discouraging no matter what you did. So she gave him space.
"I've got an idea," she said finally.
"Oh yeah?"
"I'm not in love with it, but it's an idea, and that's better than we've been able to do."
Grant threw the phone over his shoulder in annoyance. It thumped off the back seat cushions. "Sure, I'm listening."
"We can't get the FBI to fix this, and we can't go at them directly."
"Nope," Grant agreed, with a voice that told Misty exactly how helpful that he thought her input had been so far. She wasn't in a position to do much disagreeing with his assessment. She wasn't helping anyone at this point. But that was going to change.
"But you said it yourself. You've got the FBI who can beat us in a straight fight, and we've got your hacker friends coming after us using this guerrilla stuff."
"Yeah."
"So what do you do to beat guerrilla fighters? You can't just try to use their own tools to fight against them. If a full-sized force worked for a guerrilla conflict then everyone would do it."
"So what, then?"
"Who's got more resources? Who's got more people? Them, or us?"
Grant's jaw tightened as the words twisted in his head. He was frustrated, but if he was going to lose his temper with her, Misty wasn't sure what she was going to do. She was already at the end of her rope; it wasn't time to get sassed at.
"Them, I guess."
"So we give them a taste of their own medicine. You're trapped in the thought process like you're still working for the government. But you're not."
"What are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting that we attack them directly. Come after them using their own tactics. And besides," Misty continued, picking up steam, "you've got at least as much firepower as them."
"How do you figure?"
Misty looked over at him. It was almost difficult to say any of this, given how little confidence she had in any information that she could have given him in the first place. "What is it, exactly, that you thought I was doing when I got caught up in this mess?"
Grant's eyes fixed on the street and he sucked a breath in. "Okay, then. What's the plan?"
"Get me someplace with WiFi, and we'll see what we can do."
"You promise not to smash in anyone's face?"
"No promises," Misty said. She hoped that her tone held an air of teasing, because she wasn't sure how much teasing she was doing, and she sure as hell wasn't ready to admit that she had that kind of violence in her, or that it had felt as natural as the rest of it.
"I could almost kiss you," Grant said.
"Then kiss me."
She leaned over towards him. He took his eyes off the road and pressed his lips against hers. He tasted pleasant, and his scruff scratched her face enough to irritate. It reminded her of him, though, and she liked that enough to limit herself to a momentary sour expression.
Misty turned back to the road, watched the street lines moving underneath them, and tried not to worry about what was going to happen next. Eventually everything was going to go wrong for everyone, and the trick was just making sure the you were on your feet when it happened.
Furthermore, she was almost getting used to things going wrong. It'd been a long year already, and only getting longer. Now, at least, she had something to look forward to, and someone who she could lean on when things got harder. And, in spite of herself, Misty knew the things were going to get harder.
Misty took a deep breath, and leaned back in the seat of the car. 20 minutes later, they'd found someplace where they could sit in their car while she connected to the Internet. Grant seem to think that's the best way to go about it, in order to avoid running into any trouble inside.
Misty tried her best not to take it too seriously, given how much trouble she'd caused last time they were seen. Now that they'd been in a new spot of trouble, it only made sense that the problem of being recognized to be even worse, because no doubt they'd been on the news again.
She reached into the back of the car, grabbed the laptop she surreptitiously brought with her, and made a doe eyed expression grant when he gave her a hard look.
"What? You didn't think I need a souvenir?"
"I don't think we need that kind of trouble," Grant said.
But when she opened it up and started working, he didn't say anything more. If anything he seemed almost pleased with her, in his own way. It might've frustrated him that she'd the been up to some old tricks, but now that it was working in his favor, he wasn't about to complain.
Misty worked quietly, the only noise in the car coming from the radio and her fingers tapping keys. It hurt her head accessing all this information, just like it had last time. And just like last time, she didn't want to do it again. There wasn't much choice, though, and she knew better than to avoid something just because she didn't want to do it.
Things moved quickly. That was how it tended to go, when she got involved in things; either it moved too slow, or it moved too fast. There wasn't much in the way of things between two. This was one of the fast times. Things were getting aggressive and she was going to have to get aggressive to match. Not she was complaining, of course; after all, it was her suggestion this time.
The difficulty started coming when she started getting packets back from servers she'd never sent requests to. It wasn't long from there before she started to realize what was going on. But she had worked do, and I meant that she had to keep working even if she wasn't sure what she was going to do next. Even if she was concerned, just a little bit, that they might get caught. That was the concern on the time and she couldn't afford to change things now. Not when they were close to getting away for good.
In the end, she finally left at the last minute. Any longer and there's no way they would've made it without getting caught. By the time they were up to speed, she could already see lights in the rear view, flashing blue and red in the evening sky. And what's more, she'd learned something more than a little bit upsetting.
There weren't many chances for Misty to stretch her legs in the past year. Most the time, she just been running and trying to get by. Like a student backpacking through Europe. Only once or twice had she had any excuse to really use any of the abilities that she'd learned in the life before she could remember.
The one thing that she had learned, when she had reason to access those skills, was that she was good at them. Compared to most people, she was a wizard. But not compared to these people. Compared to these people, she barely even knew what she was doing.
That, more than any FBI task force, worried her.