Free Cyber Genius by Patricia Rice Page A

amusing herself—but a miffed EG should never be left alone.
    Our grandfather’s portly butler Mallard had unbent enough to
accept our presence, but I couldn’t continually strain his goodwill by making
him babysit.
    Hiding in closets and sneaking around is my preferred modus
operandi. That’s impossible while dragging a child around. How does one query
kitchen staff about a missing worker without going undercover?
    Pondering, I dug deeper into Kita, since he at least lived on
this coast. The police report showed they’d looked for him at the address in
the hotel’s records. My eyebrows shot up when I checked my quarry’s credit
report and found a recent inquiry from a landlord at an address in the Adams
Morgan neighborhood where Nick was currently residing. The street was slightly
north of here and not exactly a cheap place to live. How much did fish chefs
get paid anyway? Well, since he was called a poissonnier , maybe he got paid for the fishy title.
    I looked up the hotel, which was toward the center of the
city—not a bad commute by Metro.
    I texted EG to ask if she wanted to see the National
Geographic Museum, which was near the hotel.
    She texted a sneering emoji. Okay, so she’d seen the museum
a few times.
    The zoo was on the upper end of Adams-Morgan, not precisely
near Kita’s address but a few stops away.
    ZOO? I texted.
    I got a pouting emoji in return. Tough luck, kid. It wouldn’t
hurt to cruise Adams-Morgan, see if Kita had moved in. He might hide from the
police, but me with a kid...? Pity it wasn’t Girl Scout cookie season.
    I texted Nick and warned him we were headed his way. I’d
told him repeatedly that I wasn’t taking full responsibility for EG, that he
had to shoulder his share. He’d agreed. We needed to rope Patra in, but she was
just out of school and needed to try her wings. As the eldest of our tribe, Nick
and I were the ones who had decided to settle down.
    I sent Tudor a map of the area we were heading into and
asked if he wanted to go to the zoo. His reply was explicit and impolite.
Teenagers are so predictable—but he’d know where we were if we ran into
trouble.
    I threw a few of my favorite spy tools into a tote and went
upstairs to pound on EG’s door. She’d let her bangs grow out, and the purple
dye had faded. She now appeared to have blue-black raven wings clipped back
from her face. She had Magda’s dramatic cheekbones and big green eyes that
would slay dragons in a few years. Right now, they narrowed suspiciously at my
tote.
    “I’m not staying with Mallard,” she stated flatly.
    “You will if I tell you to, and if that’s your attitude,
that’s what I’m inclined to do,” I said cheerfully. “But if you’ll lighten up,
we’ll go exploring before the zoo. Get your walking shoes.”
    “It’s November. It’s forty degrees out there. Who goes to
the zoo in winter?” But she was already hunting under the bed for shoes.
    “Fewer crowds, good exercise, it will toughen you up. Want
me to tell you about the winter we spent in Russia where we didn’t need a
refrigerator, we just kept food on the windowsill?”
    “Yeah and how long it takes to thaw milk. I’ve heard that
about a thousand times. Tell me what we’re really doing.”
    “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.” I watched her drag
on furry boots and suffered a pang of envy.
    EG had to go outside to school every day, so I’d bought her
warm clothes. I’d been living in Atlanta last winter and hadn’t needed boots. I
never left my office here if I could avoid it, so I hadn’t bought warm
footgear. I glanced down at my wooly socks and sandals. “Maybe we should go
shopping instead of the zoo.”
    “That makes sense. Let’s get Nick,” she agreed eagerly.
    My little sister was showing dangerous signs of following in
our glamorous mother’s footsteps. I’d gone the opposite direction, probably
because I couldn’t compete with our mother’s blond beauty. I’m short, my hair
is inky,