Private (Private 1)

“Let him sleep. I guess this will hold until morning.”

Chapter 62

I PICKED UP the phone, yelled into it, “Not yet!” then I chucked it back onto the nightstand.

I’d been dreaming, actually peering into the downed CH-46, looking into the cargo bay. I could almost see my subconscious, and I’d made a decision about what to do next.

Now the dream was gone.

What was the question?

What had I decided?

The phone rang again. My annoying death threat caller had never called back once I’d answered and hung up.

This time, I looked at the faceplate. It was Sci.

He said, “I’ve got a lead on Schoolgirl.”

Chapter 63

A HALF HOUR LATER, I was at Starbucks, drinking an orange-mango Vivanno with Sci. He was wearing blue pajama bottoms with smiley faces and a Life Is Good T-shirt with a pink heart in the center of his chest. His hair was flattened into a bowl shape from his motorcycle helmet. I would’ve ribbed him about his wardrobe, but I was still tired and he was so intense

ly, deadly serious.

I stirred my smoothie with a straw and tried to focus on what he had on his mind.

Sci said to me, “The thing is, some guy named Jason did go off his terrace right after the Esperanza girl was found dead. It was a suicide, according to LAPD.”

“Jason is a programmer?”

“He’s in public relations. Was.”

“I don’t get it. Explain the connection to me again.”

Sci sighed. He knew that I wasn’t like him. I know my way around a computer, but I’m no geek.

“Look,” Sci said, trying again. He grabbed a shaker of cinnamon and a shaker of chocolate powder, one in each hand.

“The cinnamon is a wireless program that can clone phones and send and receive messages, okay? The chocolate is a combat game—in real life. It’s called Freek Night.”

He clinked the two shakers together, said, “What these two items have in common is a gamer who uses the screen ID Morbid.”

I said, “Explain to me the part about the computer games again.”

“Most of the really popular ones are war games. Mo-bot plays one of them. World of Warcraft. It’s an MMORPG, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, that is ongoing twenty-four hours a day around the planet. It has eleven million players a month.”

“War games on the computer. Trust me, that has to be better than the real thing.”

“Most of these games concern big wars with armies. The gamers play to take over countries or planets, past, present, or future. It’s addictive, seriously addictive. It feels real. Get that? You with me so far?”

“Yep,” I said.

“A few games are one-on-one, where the players fight like old-time samurai or Roman warriors. Sometimes they have teammates or allies, like war buddies.”

“I know this is going somewhere, Sci, or you wouldn’t have called me at five thirty in the morning.”

“Hang in, okay, Jack? I haven’t slept at all.”