Zack was worried. She was gone before he could get downstairs, and she could have gone in a hundred different directions. He searched for several hours before going back. Logan was using cameras on different buildings around the city to see if he could spot her. It was like she'd disappeared off the face of the earth.
"It's what we were trained to do," Max said, handing him some coffee. "She'll keep low and stay in the shadows." She thought for a second about their evasion training. "Look for anyone who just broke away from a sector check or an attempted arrest."
Logan went into the police database. There were several attempted escapes, but only one had gotten away in the timeframe that Alicia had been gone. Two hours before, two officers, claiming suspicious behavior, had stopped a lone female. That meant they were hoping she was a prostitute and would give them a freebie. She'd opened a gym bag to show ID, and there was a knife on top. There had been a stabbing death at a nearby park, and they had tried to arrest her. Both officers were currently hospitalized. Her physical details were sketchy because neither officer was coherent enough to remember detail that well.
"Sounds about right," Logan muttered. Out of curiosity he accessed the stabbing death. Two gangbangers had been found dead at the park. One was stabbed through the back of the neck, and the other appeared to have died from a blow to the head that snapped his neck and crushed his skull, but there was no blunt object around that could have done such damage. A kick, maybe? A rival gang was thought to be the culprit.
"Looks like the girl been busy," Cindy commented.
Logan could kick himself. He should have had Max with him when he confronted Alicia. Instead he got a killing machine furious, and she went off and did what she does best. There wasn't anything he could have done to stop her once she made up her mind to leave.
"She's going to leave a trail of carnage," he said softly, feeling guilty.
"Maybe she's angry at being falsely accused by people that were supposed to be allies and isn't letting anyone else assault her," Zack snapped. He had just gotten back, and heard Logan reading the police report out loud to Cindy and Max. They all looked at him. "If she was playing us, this place would be crawling with Lydecker's men right now."
He could be right, and they all knew it. She had made contact with someone. If she could do it once, she could do it again easily. All it would take would be a phone call to let Lydecker know about Logan and Max, and in the hours that she was gone, he could have swarmed the place, and she would still be clear of whoever the traitor was.
"What did you say to her?" Zack snapped.
Logan glared back at him. Did Zack really want him to say what he'd seen? "I told her I knew she was faking everything from…concern to the seizure."
"She didn't fake that seizure," Zack protested. He'd been with her. It felt real to him.
Logan held up a flat red leather case. Her meds. "If she wasn't faking, you think she would have left without her meds? She doesn't need them, so she didn't think about them."
There was a long pause while everyone digested that information.
"Not telling could be part of her game," Max protested. "We don't really know what she's doing or why. But we need to find her fast."
"There ain't that many places the girl can be jumping on-line," Cindy spoke up. "She needs a computer to hook up with her peeps."
The other three felt like total idiots for not realizing that earlier. Logan checked a map on the computer. Both assaults had taken place within blocks of a cyber-café. There were only a few left in the city. She was using them. She had to be.
"Max and I will check them out," Zack said firmly. "You guys keep checking the cameras and see if you can find her on the streets."
"Be careful," Logan said. "The Reds are still out there."
Zack shrugged, he could handle it. He and Max walked out as Logan started looking for buildings with cameras that he could get to around the cyber-cafes.