“Three, please. I doubt we’re going to be stopping for a big lunch.”
“Good. Will you need to bury her body in the forest behind my house tonight, or will you be keeping her around a little longer for informational purposes?” This question was asked just as pleasantly as the last. Maggie’s tone didn’t hold anything to indicate that killing Kelly was of any more or less importance than my omelet.
Maggie can be like that sometimes. She’s grown beyond her upbringing, for the most part, but sometimes she’s still a spoiled little rich girl whose response to things she doesn’t like begins and ends with getting rid of them.
It’s better not to argue with her when she gets that way. “Informational purposes, but I promise to let you know when that changes,” I said. Kelly paled. I decided that the polite thing would be to ignore it. “Any news out of Oakland?”
“The announcement of Dave’s death went up about an hour ago,” said Alaric, quietly.
“Okay.” I looked at my coffee, and sighed. “What do our site stats look like?”
“Up five percent globally, Dave’s reports are up thirty-five percent, and we have three syndication requests for his Alaska material from last year.” Alaric sounded a lot more confident in this answer. That wasn’t surprising. Next to Mahir, there’s nobody who tracks our standings as carefully as Alaric does.
“Did Maggie fill you in on the cover story?” Everyone nodded. “Good. Has anyone posted?” Everyone shook their heads. “Not so good. I need you all online. We were camping in Santa Cruz, our apartment got blown up, we’re shaken, we’re going to stay in the field for a few days while we recover. Maggie, I want you to make it clear that you’re here alone. Tack on a poem I don’t understand, with lots of creepy-ass death imagery—the usual—and then if you can double security, that would probably be a bonus. Nobody say anything about the Doc. She’s not here.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Maggie said, walking over and slapping a can of Coke into my hand before putting the plate with my omelet next to my discarded coffee cup.
“Good. Becks—”
“Come up with some believable outdoor footage.” She stood, picking up her plate. “I’ll set up out in the van.”
“Good. Alaric—”
“Ground-level analysis of the Oakland tragedy, short memorial piece on Dave.” He rose as he spoke, expression already far away. “I should be able to cobble something together fast enough to let me hit the forums and do some damage control after.”
“That’s excellent. Now what are we going to do about the Doc?”
“I thought you’d ask that,” said Alaric, looking briefly smug. He likes being efficient. “I checked Buffy’s stock of precoded IDs. Kelly looks enough like Buffy did that she can use most of them.”
“Any of them come with medical credentials?”
“No strict medical, but three scientific. I have an ichthyologist—a fish scientist,” Alaric added, seeing my look of blank incomprehension. “Also a theoretical physicist and a psychologist.”
“I minored in psychology,” said Kelly, sounding relieved to have something to contribute to the discussion. “I’ve never practiced, but I can fake it if I have to.”
“Great. Alaric, get the ID up and running, make sure it passes any surface checks people are likely to run, and go from there. You’re still a doc, Doc. We’re going to hire you to replace Dave as soon as we come back to civilization.” Kelly looked faintly alarmed. I grinned. “Don’t worry. Mahir will ghostwrite your articles, and we’ll just publish them under—what byline are we publishing these under, Alaric?”
“Barbara Tinney.”
“Great. We’ll publish them under the Barbara Tinney byline. It reinforces the impression that you’re legit—and we can just call you ‘Doc’ in public.”
“You’re crazy,” pronounced Becks.
“And you’re carrying eight guns,” I replied. “Now that we’ve covered what everybody knows, can we move on? When I post, I’ll say a few words about Dave and how honored we all are to have worked with him, bullshit, bullshit, blah, blah, blah.” I waved my free hand vaguely before cracking open the Coke and taking a deep drink. The acidic sweetness hit the back of my throat like a slap. I choked a little, getting my breath back, and finished: “I’ll hit the staff boards. Give everybody the edited version of the situation. Be done with your reports and ready to roll by ten.”
“Where are we going?” asked Kelly, looking like she couldn’t tell whether she should be relieved to be getting away from Maggie or worried about what was coming next.