you’re always Sonic,” Donny said now, his carrot-colored hair falling forward as he reached for the controls Chuck had taken from him. “Gimme back the controls.”
But Chuck only nudged with his foot the controls he’d abandoned, scooting them closer to Donny. “You can be Tails,” he said. “Live a little.”
“Tails sucks, man,” Donny said. “He don’t do jack.” But instead of reaching for the controls that Chuck held firm, he leaned over his friend and snatched the controls Hobie held.
“Hey!” Hobie objected eloquently.
“I’m Knuckles now,” Donny announced. He tossed the controls formerly known as Chuck’s to Hobie. “You be Tails.”
“Tails sucks, man,” Hobie said. “He don’t do Jack.”
Adrian closed his eyes in a silent plea for patience. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for a good, solid two-by-four at the moment. How could people who claimed the IQs of NASA engineers have the maturity of eggplants?
“Boys, don’t make me separate you,” he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “You know how much you hate being put in time-out.”
They, of course, ignored him. Worse than ignored him, actually. They didn’t even hear him. And if there was one thing Adrian hated more than anything in the world, it was going unnoticed.
He opened his mouth to say something that would, he hoped, wrest their attention from the colorful graphics zipping by on the TV screen for even a moment, when the door to the hotel suite beeped at the use of a key card, then opened to reveal the final member of the group. She, too, barely acknowledged Adrian as she strode by him, tossing a halfhearted “Hey, Nick” over her shoulder at him as she approached the boys instead.
Ah, Iris, he thought as he watched her take a seat on the sofa, thrusting one long leg over the arm to swing her foot anxiously above the floor. She was always doing something anxiously. The antithesis to the boys, who could sit idly for hours in front of their games, Iris Daugherty could never be still for more than a few minutes at a time. She was an icon of her generation, too, though she took greater pains to establish her own identity of Goth Girl. She was dressed today as she always was, completely in black, from the cropped T-shirt to the baggy, zipper-ridden cargo pants to the studded belt and high-top sneakers. Her ears were pierced probably a dozen times, as was her eyebrow, her nose and her navel. Scores of black rubber bracelets encircled one wrist, and a black studded wristwatch was wrapped around the other. She carried with her, as she always did, an enormous black bag, chunky with its contents, slung diagonally over her shoulder and torso. As he always did, Adrian wondered what she could possibly have it filled with, as it was indeed always completely stuffed. She dyed her straight, chin-length hair and eyebrows black to match her clothes, even painted her bittendown nails black. Heavy black liner encircled pale blue eyes, and black lipstick stained her mouth.
Whenever Adrian saw her, he couldn’t help wondering what she’d looked like before the transformation. Especially since she was an aging Goth Girl who couldn’t hang on to this persona much longer without looking ridiculous. At twenty-six, she was older than the boys by half a dozen years, having started college a bit later than the others and taking her time to complete her degree. Adrian didn’t know a lot about her, but from what he’d heard and observed of her, he’d formed an impression of a rich kid who was even more bored by life than he was. He’d been around wealth often enough as an adult that he was reasonably adept at recognizing those who were born to it. Perhaps because his own background was so completely opposite to theirs.
Although Iris was certainly as comfortable around computers as the boys were, Adrian had come to the conclusion that the main reason she hung out with them was that she was a geek groupie. He’d overheard enough conversations between the young men when she wasn’t around to know that she’d slept with all three of them at some point—and more than once with all of them at the same time, something that intrigued Adrian rather a lot.
Ah, well then, he thought as the realization formed. He stood corrected. There was something—or rather, someone—he found intriguing after all. In fact, he found Iris rather fascinating. Rather captivating. And more than worthy of his preoccupation.
“Hello, Iris,” he greeted her as she slumped back on the sofa and watched the boys play.
She had the courtesy to turn around then and reply, “What’s up, Nick?” But she promptly returned her attention to the game and gamers, indicating she hadn’t expected a reply to the question. And when she realized what the boys were still arguing over, she uttered a loud sound of obvious disgust. “You’re playing Sonic again?” she said disdainfully. “What are you, a bunch of fifth graders? I thought we were going to break out the new Resident Evil this afternoon.”
“We men,” Chuck said manfully, emphasizing his gender, “are playing Sonic. You do what you want, Iris.”
What Iris did was roll her eyes dramatically and leap up from the sofa to make her way to the minibar, from which she withdrew, without asking permission, a soft drink. Not that Adrian minded. Much. It wasn’t as if he’d be drinking it himself. The beverage was, to his way of thinking, about as appealing as a big glass of bile. Not to mention that any expenses racked up during his stay here in the suite were more than covered by the money the group had appropriated over the past few months. Mostly by raiding other people’s computers and appropriating their financial information—and then their finances themselves. And Iris was no slouch herself when it came to hacking and designing viruses. Plus, there was the small matter of, when it came time to check out of the suite, Adrian would be gone before the bill was tucked under the door, leaving behind absolutely no traceable evidence of himself or the others.
He was currently on week three at the Four Seasons. One more, and he’d be moving to the Omni, just up the road. Although he alone stayed at the suite around the clock, he’d given the others key cards and indicated they were welcome whenever they wanted to drop by. That, of course, wasn’t true—Adrian didn’t welcome them at all, ever—but he needed them to think he was one of them, or at the very least striving to be one of them. They were valuable tools, the way he saw it. And he wanted to have them close by for whenever he might need them.
Like tonight.
He watched Iris as she screwed the top off the soda and enjoyed a healthy swallow before lowering it again. And for some reason he found the sight of her black-stained mouth covering the rim of the bottle to be more than a little arousing. He hadn’t really thought about giving Iris a go himself, since the last time he’d mixed business with pleasure, he’d regretted it. What he’d thought was simply an alluring sex kitten named Tiffannee, someone who didn’t have the brains of a sponge mop, had turned out to be one of the most dangerous—and cunning—women in the world. And she’d come this close to returning Adrian to the not-so-loving bosom of OPUS, who would have then locked him up and thrown away the key.
He would not make the same mistake twice. His information pipeline at OPUS might not be running quite as freely and quickly as it once had, but he’d been able to learn enough about each of the boys to be reasonably certain they were precisely who they claimed to be. Iris remained a big question mark, but since she wasn’t really a player in their game, Adrian wasn’t too concerned about her background anyway.
What mattered was that bits and pieces of information had begun to flow from his source again, and a background check of each of his, ah, colleagues was at the top of his list of needs. It shouldn’t be long before he knew more about them than they knew themselves. In the meantime, they’d more than proved their worth by breaking every law he’d asked them to, without question or compunction. There was almost no chance any of them were working for anyone other than him. Would that they just worked a little better. Then Adrian would be a very happy man.
“So what’s on the agenda tonight?” Iris asked.
The question dispelled his troubled thoughts and replaced them with much nicer ideas. He was rather looking forward to this evening. He had his eye on a certain Swiss bank account he was hoping the boys could bleed