Free Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus by Mira Grant Page B

Fox’s body never was.”
    I paused. “I know why I’ve heard that name before. The Masons went to the Monkey. He was supposed to get them new identities. Instead, he fucked around and nearly got them all killed. Shaun really hated that guy.” Had he mentioned women working for the Monkey? I felt as if he had, at least once, at least in passing. He’d been a little distracted by the time he and the others made it back down the coast to me—something about finding his dead sister reborn in a CDC holding facility had taken his mind off things he would have once considered to be of the utmost importance.
    “Well, your Shaun may have had good reason. This woman seems really fixated on the idea that someone she calls Kitty ‘did a bad thing.’ If that bad thing involved your friends, that could explain why things went so sour at the Monkey’s place.”
    “That would make the woman I have the Fox, correct?” When Tessa nodded, so did I. “All right, keep digging, and if you find anything , I want to know about it. I’m going to drop a line to the folks I still know at After the End Times, and see if any of them can confirm your ID.”
    “If they do, let me know, okay? Finding the last of the Monkey’s girls would be a pretty big deal in the circles I move in.” I must have made a face, because Tessa put her hands up, and said, “I wouldn’t tell anyone where she was until after she’s not with you, I swear. I value your business, and I value you not sending people to close my mouth permanently. I’m not going to go spilling your secrets all over the Internet just because I want to look cool for my friends.”
    “I pay you for secrecy,” I said coldly. “Just remember that.” Then I killed the connection, before she could make any more excuses. If there was any chance at all that our guest was worth something to someone, getting a confirmed ID had just become even more important. And now I had to do it before Tessa did.
    “I hate subcontractors,” I muttered, and reached for the phone.
    3.
    It’s possible to maintain a landline in today’s day and age, and there are even reasons that it can be considered superior to having a cell phone, if you do it right. Old phone cables run through the entire North American continent, laced through earth and stone like veins through the human body. Most of them haven’t been used, or consistently monitored, in decades. One person with a decent understanding of how they work and a few skills picked up from an old telephone company repair manual can set up safe, secure, off-the-grid communications. It’s kind of funny, in a sideways sort of way: People used to go for burn phones and cell blockers, thinking that they were keeping themselves secure, and now those same people would kill their own mothers for a black market landline and the tech to keep it clean.
    I held the receiver between my cheek and shoulder as I typed, listening to the ringing. Finally, the line clicked, and an amiable female voice announced, “Kwong-Garcia residence, Maggie speaking.”
    “Tick tock says the clock, when the watch runs down,” I said.
    There was a pause. “I don’t really like this cloak-and-dagger bullshit, okay? I’ve got a scrambler on the line, courtesy of Daddy, so if you’re calling for Alaric or whatever, you can stop with the weird code phrases and the pretending that this sounds even remotely normal. It doesn’t. Anyone who happens to be in the room with me would know something was up if I gave you the countersign, so how about we just don’t?”
    “When did your father get you a scrambler good enough to trust?” I asked.
    “It was a wedding gift,” said Maggie. “Dr. Abbey? Is that you?”
    “It’s me,” I confirmed. “Congratulations on that, by the way. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to attend. You know how it is. Underground virologist, fugitive from the law, all that.”
    “We really liked the KitchenAid you sent,” said Maggie. “I would’ve sent you