Eve In Utopia

Chapter Fifteen

Eve stepped out of the elevator used by employees, pushing a room service cart. Her program kept the security cameras from identifying her, but that wouldn't help her if someone saw her in person. The upside to that was she had been detained in Gamma Tower and presumably the search would be more concentrated there instead of here in Beta Tower. Also the authorities had a limited number of personnel to search with as they had to concentrate on protecting the President and other leaders from attack and they were all housed in Alpha Tower.

At Washburn's door, Eve stopped to put her ear against it to listen, but heard nothing. Surely Monty had beaten her here, but if so there was no indication of it. Leaving the cart beside the door, Eve used her key card that she had reconfigured to open any door in the resort and slipped quickly inside. The room was dark, but Eve could make out what looked like a body on the floor. Her first thought was that Monty had indeed beat her here and killed Washburn, but when she flipped on one of the bedside lamps and rolled the body over, Eve found herself staring into the lifeless eyes of Monty.

"Put your hands up an don't even blink, or I'll shoot!"

Eve looked up from the corpse to see the female Secret Service Agent Angie Wong standing in the room doorway with her gun pointing at Eve's chest. "I suppose the line about how this isn't what it looks like is pointless?" she asked as she carefully stood up with her hands raised.

"Pretty much," agreed Angie who stepped into the room and kicked the door shut with her foot, never taking her eyes off Eve. "Is he dead?" she asked Eve.

"Bullet through the heart from the looks of it," replied Eve. "I'm no expert, but he's only been dead for a few minutes from the feel of him. You will find I don't have a gun on me and I don't see one around, so the killer must have took it with him."

"You're saying you didn't kill him?" asked Angie.

"No, but I came here because I thought he was going to try and kill the man staying in the room. His name is ...,"

"Jefferson Washburn," Angie finished the sentence for Eve. "Mr. Scott or Walter Lewindowsky thought Washburn had something to do with his father's death."

"Yes," agreed Eve and was impressed by the work and deductions the agent had made and hoped she wouldn't have to kill her in order to get out of this room. "Somehow, Washburn turned the tables on Monty, that's what Scott called himself," she explained when she saw the puzzled look on Angie's face.

"If there's no gun like you claim then that puts you in the clear for the murder," replied Angie jerking her thumb at the body on the floor. "It doesn't explain who or what you are."

"I would like to be able to tell you, I really would," replied Eve, "but that's not my decision. I think you are probably ok, but I can't be sure of anyone. I've got to find Washburn and more importantly his phone, but even that doesn't end the threat."

"What's so important about the phone?" demanded Angie, "and what threat? Is someone after the President?"

"I've said all I can," responded Eve. She really thought Angie was in the clear, but she could still be a Hunter, or her superior could be a Hunter and Eve couldn't risk revealing too much of what she knew. Even if Angie wasn't a Hunter, Eve's employers had definite restrictions on revealing her true nature to other humans as it could have catastrophic effects on the timeline. More practically, if she told Angie about the bombs, the Secret Service would almost certainly try to evacuate the President and if Washburn saw that, he was likely to just trigger all the bombs immediately and take his chances with eliminating the President with the resultant destruction. The odds were damn good he would succeed in that goal.