"Oh, sure that makes me feel a whole lot better." If I ever saw that Dalby sonuvab.i.t.c.h again and I'd make sure I would he was going to be in a world of hurt. Another Cole maxim: Somebody sets you up, they pay. That way, they won't do it again. "I take it that you're the Alphas?"

Another shake of the head. "No, we're the Betas. That other guy, Stinson he's about all you'll see of the Alphas."

"Other guy you mean, that I just had to deal with at the hospital?"

"That's the one."

So Perry had been right about the name. "You know . . . for a while, I'd just been thinking of him as the Challenger guy."

"You mean those big muscle cars he drives?" Jerry shrugged. "Yeah . . . those are real environmentally friendly."

Simon sniffed. "Cars like that are one of the reasons the ice caps are melting. They shouldn't even be legal."

I had a pretty clear vision of this Stinson fellow in my head, and somehow I just couldn't imagine him behind the wheel of a Prius. The gritted teeth and the maniacal look in his eyes as he'd gunned the Challenger straight for me, led me to believe that he wasn't overly concerned about the fate of fluffy polar bear cubs. A guy like that probably would have taken a blowtorch to the ice floes, just to watch the bears drown.

"Wait a minute." There was a bunch of stuff that wasn't clear to me yet I'd have to pick through this muddle, one bit at a time. "You said Alphas so there's more of them than just Stinson?"

"Oh, yeah I think he's got a couple dozen people in his operation already. He's burning pretty quick through the start-up capital he's already managed to pull together. But he wanted to nail down his programmer talent, get 'em under binding contracts and NDA's before anybody else could scoop them up."

"So . . ." The picture was starting to get a little clearer but not much. "This is some kind of fancy technology thing? Computers, Internet like that?"

"Bigger," said Jerry. "Way bigger."

"You probably wouldn't understand," said Simon.

"Look." My voice went as cold as the hunk of metal in my lap. "If my brother were here, there wouldn't be anything you people are doing that he wouldn't be able to explain to me. Or at least close enough. And when he's your age, he'll be kicking your a.s.s, both money- and tech-wise. And you'll be the old farts."

That much, I didn't get any argument about. Jerry just nodded, while all the rest of them looked somber.

"You're right," said Jerry. "The window of opportunity for accomplishing anything it gets smaller and smaller all the time. Thirty years old is the new seventy. That's a lot of pressure. I mean, if you're going to make any significant money before you're put out to pasture. That's why we jumped on this whole thing, when we were given the chance."

"So that's why you're hooked up with Dalby." I pointed to both Jerry and Simon. "You've got some kind of brilliant idea like the next Google or Apple or whatever. And you and your team will all be multibillionaires in a couple of years, if you can just get it financed and off the ground."

"Yep." Jerry spoke with thuddingly obvious a.s.surance, as if I'd asked him if the sun rose in the West. "It'll be big. No doubt about it."

"So if this is such a great idea, no doubt about it, et cetera, et cetera what's the holdup about lining up the financing that would get you and your bunch up and rolling? Yeah, maybe it's not like it used to be, but my understanding is that there are still a bunch of venture capitalists out there who'd listen to you. I mean, if this business idea of yours really is so hot."

"Yeah," said Simon, "there are. But that's the problem with so many of them having gotten burnt when the first Dot Com bubble burst. There were some big write-downs lot of money got lost. Just evaporated. More than got reported in the business papers. So the ones who are still in the game, they're only looking to bankroll absolute sure things. Absolute guaranteed winners."

"I thought your idea was a sure thing. That's what you just told me."

"Okay . . ." Simon looked annoyed. "There are sure things, and then there are other sure things. Some stuff, anybody can look at it and see how it'll work. And make money a lot more money. Basically, you just look and see what people are already doing, and then you figure out a way to do it cheaper. No big deal. But other stuff is different. They're sure things if you've got the vision."

"And that's what Dalby has, I take it." I bent my head down, peering into Simon's eyes. "He's got . . . vision."

Both Simon and Jerry nodded.

"So why didn't he just give you the start-up cash you need? Instead of coming up with some dopey contest, or game, or whatever you want to call it."

"Dalby is . . . kind of a funny guy."

"I noticed that already."

"He's got vision, all right . . ." Jerry's gaze drifted away from me, as though he were peering through the van's side wall and out into the night. "But if you want him to do something for you . . . you know, like give you money, the whole venture capital thing . . . then you have to earn it." Jerry looked back at me. "You have to prove yourself to him."

"What Dalby always says . . ." Simon spoke up. "Is that he doesn't invest in ideas. There are plenty of good ideas out there. Great ideas, even. But if they don't happen, if they don't come into reality and change the world, and make a lot of money that's because of the people who had the ideas. They weren't the right kind of people. They weren't the kind who'd fight to make their ideas come true."

"I see." Actually, I did. If this Dalby guy wanted to make other people jump through weird-a.s.s hoops before he'd give them money I couldn't say he was wrong about that. The only thing that really bugged me about the setup was that doing stuff that could get me killed was apparently one of those hoops. Pull that off and win a prize.

"Let me see if I've got this straight." I left the .357 in my lap, rather than gesturing with it these guys already were weirded out. "So this contest that Dalby set up it's actually between you and . . . whatsisname. Stinson. The guy with the muscle car. Right?"

Another group nod.

"So how's the score kept? In this contest."

"Score?" Jerry frowned, puzzled by the question. "What do you mean?"

"How do you know who's won? When it's all over." I spread my hands apart. "If I'm the football, how's the touchdown scored? I mean, is the winning team the one that stops me from making my delivery up in San Francisco, or the team that gets the parcel away from me " I reached behind me and tugged one of the backpack straps. "Or what?"

"Oh, no we don't have to get it away from you." Jerry pointed to the backpack, sitting up higher behind me. "We just have to get our hands on it. Really and just for a couple of seconds. After that, you could keep it, deliver it, do whatever you want it wouldn't matter."

"Okay . . . but you did have your hands on it. Remember? Back there on the freeway you got it away from me, but then you hooked it to that drone thing and sent it flying. Or at least you tried to. If just getting your hands on the package I was carrying is how you win this stupid contest, what was all that other stuff about?"

"All right," said Jerry, "it's a little more complicated than that. To win the contest, we do have to get the package away from you but just long enough to trigger the proximity sensor inside it."

"The what?"

"Proximity sensor. It's a battery-powered receiver, with an extremely short range like a couple centimeters. It has to be placed right next to the trigger, for it to catch the coded signal."

"So who's got this trigger?" This whole thing was starting to sound less like a football game and more like a shooting range. "I didn't see anything like that, when we were going through all that freeway commotion."

"Simon." Jerry pointed next to himself. "Simon's got it."

"Where? I don't see anything."

"Show her."

I watched as Simon grabbed the bottom half of his shirt with both hands and pulled it upward, exposing his pale white, and somewhat flabby, abdomen. To the right of his navel was an adhesive bandage, like the one I still had on my forehead. Only his bandage was bigger, about six inches square or so.

"It's actually about all healed up already." Still holding his shirt, Simon looked down at himself. "I just keep the bandage on because it itches once in a while, and I don't want to start scratching at it. You know, so it won't get infected or anything."

He took one hand away from his shirt and peeled back a corner of the bandage. Underneath was the pinkish line of a recent surgical incision, healed the way he'd said. The faint little dots of the st.i.tches that held it together were just visible on either side.

"That's where the trigger is?" I pointed to Simon's bare stomach. "Somebody cut him open and stuck it in there?" I shook my head in amazement. "I hope you had a real doctor do it. And it wasn't just something you did with your Boy Scout knife."

"Don't worry." Simon rolled his shirt back down over the scar. "Dalby pretty much gets the best there is. Why not he can pay for it."

"So this is part of the contest? That you had to have this trigger implanted in you?"

"That's the deal."

The things people will do for money though I knew we were talking about a lot of money. Enough to float whatever crazy business idea it was that they had cooked up. They wouldn't have been talking to somebody like Dalby, if it'd been otherwise.

"So that's the trigger for the Beta team. I suppose the Alphas have one just like it right?"

"Yep." Another nod from Jerry. "Stinson's got it."

"Same deal? An implant?"

"Those are the conditions. Of the contest. If we want to be in on it, we have to do it the way Dalby wants."

"Couldn't he have just handed the receiver to you? So you could just carry it around. Why put it under somebody's skin?"

"Simple," said Jerry. "I mean simple, if you think the way Dalby does. Before he does his venture capitalist thing and hands out the money, he wants to know which team, the Alphas or the Betas, have more of what's required to bring our big ideas into reality. Guts, or drive, or sheer craziness whatever you want to call it. So getting the receiver device up close enough to the package you're carrying, so that it gets the trigger signal, is something the teams have to do on their own. We've got to have our own skin in the game that's what Dalby told us. If we just had the receiver device in our hands, floating around loose, we could just hire somebody to track you down before you could make your delivery. Somebody who does that sort of thing you know, somebody a little more . . . umm . . . action-oriented than us."

Which would've been just about anybody in the world, judging from the look of these guys. They were probably kick-a.s.s coders and tech whizzes, but their thumb muscles were the most developed ones in their bodies, from all those video-game marathons they were undoubtedly into. No wonder I'd been able to cream them all when we'd been on the freeway. Most girls could've.

"We still could've done that." Simon sounded like he was nursing a grievance about his fellow Betas' plans. "I told you guys that you wouldn't be able to pull it off. You're just lucky you all didn't killed. I mean, look at her." He nodded toward me. "Look at that freakin' gun she's got."

"Yeah, but . . ." Jerry shrugged. "Where were we going to get some kind of action dude, anyway? Off Craigslist? So, we thought . . . all things considered . . . we had a chance."

"No." I could look right through his skull, and the others', and read his mind. "What you really thought was that because it was a female carrying the package, then you had a chance. What a bunch of s.e.xist b.s." I held the .357 up. "You know, I've blown away guys, just for not respecting me."

Eyes wide, they both shrank back against the van's metal walls.

"I'm just jerking you around." I put the gun back down in my lap. "I really don't care what you think. I never care what anybody thinks long as I get paid."

They relaxed. But not much.

"But about your big plan, for getting to the package I'm carrying. If the whole idea is to get the trigger, that your buddy Simon there has got planted next to his stomach, next to the proximity sensor why wasn't he there on the freeway with you and the rest of your guys? Team Beta, or whatever you call yourselves."

"Kind of a strategic decision." Jerry had recovered himself, at least enough to talk. "We had to figure what would be best, given . . . umm . . . certain factors, let's say. Whether it'd be better to bring the receiver there on the freeway I mean Simon and get him right next to the package to get the trigger signal or get the package away from you and bring it to someplace where he'd be waiting for it."

"I was at a motel," said Simon. "Just hanging out." He smiled. "While the other guys did all the work."

"So much for that genius plan." I peered closer at Jerry. "What 'certain factors' are you talking about?"

"Well . . ." He shifted where he sat, looking uncomfortable. "Stinson, mainly. That kinda impacted our thinking."

"Yeah " Simon spoke up. "That guy's crazy. Seriously deranged."

"True that." Jerry nodded. "He's got a real reputation in the tech community on the West Coast, at least. Even when he was a kid, he was a whack job. He pulled a knife on somebody one time, at a LAN party."

"That's a "

"I know what a LAN party is," I said. "My brother used to go to them, once in a while." I mulled over what I'd just heard. "Okay, I got it he's crazy. I can believe it. From what I saw of him on the freeway, he looked like some kind of bulked-up steroid case."

"Steroids aren't the half of it," said Jerry. "Yeah, he does all that body building stuff, but there are other things he's into that are even weirder. That's why he went all lone wolf, about coming after you and the package. Stinson really is kind of an action guy. When Dalby set up the contest, Stinson totally dug on it. It was everything he'd ever wanted to do. And there's the big money involved."

"So this Stinson guy he's got some big idea as well. Some tech thing. What is it?"

"Does it matter? Even if I could explain it to you, what difference does it make? Stinson wants to get it to fly, and he needs venture capital to do that. A lot of it and Dalby is the only person who's crazy enough to give him a shot. As long as Stinson wins the contest, that is."

If nothing else, talking to these Beta guys had cleared up one mystery. Now I knew why Stinson, when I'd been caught with him in his private hospital room, had yanked the backpack away from me and done that weird business of pressing it to his side, like he'd been trying to alleviate the first symptoms of an attack of appendicitis. He'd actually been trying to trigger the receiver device that'd been implanted there, just like the one that Simon, here in the phony paramedics van, had just displayed on his own bare abdomen or the bandage pad covering up the incision. At least until Stinson realized he'd gotten the wrong bag, and my spare clothes and toiletries weren't going to be triggering anything.

"So that's the game, huh? I mean, the contest." I looked over at Jerry and his colleague Simon. "Whoever got the package off me first and stuck it up close enough to their trigger implant that team wins. Either the Alphas, which is basically Stinson, or you guys, the Betas. I've got that right?"

"You got it." Jerry pointed his thumb toward Simon's stomach. "That thing's got a pretty powerful transmitter built into it. Soon as it's set off, then it sends out a confirmation signal. Dalby has a custom app for it on his phone it lights up, and he knows who won, us or Stinson."

"And the game's over. And one of the teams gets the money the financing, the start-up capital, whatever you want to call it. For your big idea."

"Pretty simple, huh? I mean, once it's explained."

"No, it's not." I stared back at him in amazement. "This is just about the stupidest, overly complicated notion I've ever heard. Plus, that whole bit with snagging the backpack with your drone and sending it flying down the freeway Stinson was ready to run me over, right into the cement."

"In retrospect," mused Simon, "the drone was a little overly elaborate "

"A little?"

"But our reasoning was fundamentally sound. We figured that if we could get the package away from you, then we still had to get it out of there as soon as possible, or Stinson would've taken it away from us. If we'd just thrown the package into the back of the van, or into another vehicle, and tried to get away with it, he would've been able to run us down. No question about it."

"And that's not just because of those fancy, hopped-up muscle cars he drives." Jerry shook his head. "That dude could run us down on a bicycle."

"Yeah," I said, "he probably could."

"So that's what we were going for. And it almost worked."

I didn't figure on wasting time by reminding these guys that the reason their big plan hadn't worked was because they had seriously underestimated their target namely me. Then again, from their looks, about the biggest chance any of them had of getting a date actually would've been by slapping an anesthetic gas mask over some girl's face. Of course, when she came to, she would've kicked their a.s.ses pretty much the way I already had, so just as well they'd already learned that it was an uncool thing to do.

"But it didn't," I said. "And I take it that's why you're so hot to talk to me now."

"Well, yeah." Jerry spread his hands apart. "You're a reasonable person "

Not sure where he got that from.

"And we're reasonable people. So we should be able to work something out."

"Other than ga.s.sing me and then trying to steal the package I was paid to deliver? Look however reasonable you think I am, I was that way before you tried the funny stuff. So maybe you should've tried the reasonable stuff first and saved us all a lot of trouble."

"You see?" Simon glanced over at Jerry. "This is what I'm talking about. It's not just the gun it's a whole att.i.tude thing with her."

"Just shut up, okay?" Jerry turned back toward me. "Ignore him, okay?"

I shrugged. "Not the first time somebody's commented on my att.i.tude."

"Like I said. Let's work something out here."

"I'm listening."