Chapter Six

Axle and the black Aston Martin turned to face the blue-silver Aston Martin who approached them. Axle found himself, for reasons he couldn't fully understand, hiding his disappointment. Finn looked from Axle to the Aston Martin and back again. "Did I interrupt a stand-off?" he asked. "If I did, I could leave."

"No, wait," Axle said. "You're not interrupting anything."

"Oh, good." Finn looked over at the black Aston Martin. "Who's this?"

"No idea." Axle glanced at the Aston Martin. "Maybe we should go."

"Perhaps we should."

Finn and Axle turned away from the black Aston Martin, and Axle could hear the car return his guns to their place. "Armed and dangerous," he whispered to Finn.

"And armed with a multitude of secrets," Finn replied, "but I've got a VIN number."

"That's good, right?"

"Better than I expected. It's something to run through the system to see if we can learn anything more about him."

"Electro okay?"

"Perfectly safe in Siddeley's cabin, I assure you."

Axle's chassis sagged in relief. "Good," he breathed. "He keeps sayin' cars want him dead, bad cars. Cars like Axlerod."

Finn looked more closely at the muscle car. "You don't say."

"Ask him."

"He seems much too jittery to give us a coherent answer, so as of now I'll take your word for it."

Axle chuckled. "Heck, I'm not sure if he's right or crazy, so I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Will I have a choice?"

"Depends. You can strand him somewhere in Detroit and go on about your business like we never dropped by."

"I could."

"So why don't you?"

"Just because I could doesn't mean I should."

Axle nodded, and the two cars drove on toward Siddeley in silence. Axle followed Finn up the ramp into the cabin, where Electro huddled in the corner, mumbling to himself. "I don't believe it," he whispered. "The kid finally cracked."

"I managed to catch part of your conversation with this Aston Martin," Finn said as he drove over to the computer. "You sounded an awful lot like your brother, or what I've heard of him."

"Lemme guess, you've got some sort of audio files of him."

"Yes, we do. We have records of all of our agents."

Axle nodded in understanding and drove over to Electro. "Thank the Manufacturer," Electro rasped. "Who was that car?"

"We're trying to find that out." Axle looked over his fender at Finn, who was busy studying the records on the computer screen. "Got somethin'?" he asked.

"His name's Alan deCarteran," Finn replied. "He was recruited by Chief Montgomery, a superior of mine, but I'm hardpressed to fathom why."

"He's bad," Electro whispered. "He's one of the bad ones."

"We'll see about that, but we're not sure yet," Axle replied. "Just stay here, okay?" Axle backed up a few feet and turned so that he faced the computer.

"The only thing we have here is the basic set of papers," Finn said.

"So check Montgomery out."

Finn gave Axle a strange look, but he entered the query into the search engine anyway. He clicked on an entry, and they both studied it closely. "Spy Car Chief of CHROME Britain, a reclusive car with a tendency toward keeping his secrets."

"Reclusive leader, huh?" Axle asked. "Torque never liked those freaks, and I'm starting to think that had some foundation."

"Rod Redline was a top-notch American spy. You don't get to that position through luck."

"I always thought that was paranoia talkin', but one car's crazy is another man's brilliant, I guess."

"I can see that."

Axle glanced back at Electro, whose eyse were fixated on the image of the silver blue-eyed Scion tC on the screen. Axle studied the car's face, which seemed to him like something out of a horror movie, displayed by the villain when he was pretending to be a good guy while secretly awaiting the opportunity to gut the unwitting victim alive.

Maybe there was something to Electro's theory after all, he thought. "I don't like the looks of this character," Axle said after a moment. "Can't believe you work for him."

"I didn't have a choice then."

"Do you now?"

Finn looked at Axle again. "Are you suggesting I go rogue?"

Axle shrugged. "If your chief is a bad guy, is it worth it to work for him?"

Finn paused, rolling back slightly. He studied Montgomery more closely, his eyes narrowing. "That's a very good question," he whispered.