“You didn’t have to hijack the first one,” Gus said. “You didn’t get anything out of it.”

“I got major street cred,” Shawn said. “Especially after I threw the driver off the bridge, then landed the bus on top of him.”

“Listen to yourself,” Gus said. “You sound like a maniac.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Shawn said.

“Your measures aren’t desperate. They’re stupid,” Gus said.

“The whole point of the game is to take over Morton’s crime syndicate, and you can’t do that unless you can win his trust and get close to him,” Shawn said. “So first thing, you’ve got to establish yourself as the new face of crime in Darksyde City so he’ll invite you to join his organization. And you call that stupid?”

“It is when we have a job in the real world,” Gus said. “Gaining street cred with a fictional mobster in a computer game isn’t bringing us any closer to finding Macklin Tanner.”

That was one thing the events of the game had in common with those of the real world. Nothing they had done before entering the virtual world had offered a clue to the whereabouts of the man they’d been hired to find.

Macklin Tanner, founder and CEO of VirtuActive Software-one of the biggest computer-game companies in the country-had disappeared mysteriously a week before. The police had done some investigating and found no traces of foul play; in fact, they’d found a note on his computer saying he was going on vacation for a few weeks. That closed their investigation.

But when the company’s president, Brenda Varda, came to the Psych offices, it was clear she didn’t believe a word of it. Although her manner was cool and professional, they could tell she was seriously troubled. She had the seemingly effortless beauty that often came with a multimillion-dollar salary, but there was a haunted look in her eyes as she explained the problem.