by Mike McCrary
“That’s the one.”
Murphy’s mind clicks.
He thinks of Kate.
Oh my God.
He remembers how they used to study together. He helped her with a big paper she stressed about. She spent weeks on it. It had her twisted in knots.
Pouring over the data every night.
Working the numbers. The topic was how three companies were responsible for ninety percent of the stock market. The entire US—and most of the global—economy is tied to only three companies. Those three companies hold important manufacturing, distribution, or funding relationships with the vast majority of the companies around the world. If a company had any ties to those three firms, they got hurt by a downturn.
Kate had all the data.
As she always did.
When those Mega Three companies took a hit on anything, like missed earnings, or a sexual harassment issue with management, or any form of negative news, the overall stock market took a hit. Didn’t matter if they were a tech firm or not. It was a spiral in the markets that would spread to all industries with nobody immune from the pain.
“That’s it,” Murphy says. “That’s what she’s doing.”
“What?”
“She’s going to crash the market. The final death blow to a reeling economy.”
Violent riots plus a lighting fast, catastrophic financial meltdown.
That might do it all right.
And if that’s not enough, she’ll keep going.
The pieces fall in line inside his mind. One by one landing, making sense. The talking head news shows over the last few days. The takedown at the hedge fund house. Going after Pruitt. Why she didn’t kill him—she needs him to get to where they’re going. She tortured him.
There’s a beauty to what she’s doing.
Beauty in her brutal simplicity. The brutal combination of Brubaker and Kate.
“She will kill all three of them and watch the world burn,” Murphy says.
“They’re meeting tonight, a house in Montauk.”
“How the hell do we get there?”
She looks to Murphy, takes a deep breath, calm and cool.
“If you can get us out of this park alive,” Peyton says, pointing toward the roof of the building they came from, “I can get us a ride.”
A guy with a baseball bat charges. Murphy lays him out with a single punch.
He hands the bat to Peyton.
“Destroy anything that slows us down.”
Chapter 37
The elevator dings.
Blood drips.
Peyton pretends to watch the floors light up one by one.
A gloss coats her distant gaze. Murphy can’t remember when she last spoke or what she said. He cracks his neck, grips his gun, then fixes his hair.
The fight to escape the park was rough, but Murphy knew what to expect.
Peyton did not, and it shows.
She still clings to the bat, more for comfort than as a weapon.
Dirt mixed with sprays of blood cover their faces. Their clothes hang from their bodies, pulled out of shape by the angry mob. The bones in Murphy’s hands ache, ligaments throb and pulse. The punches, the aggression, the push to survive a riot growing in real time, it has taken a toll. He only fired his gun into the air as needed—clearing tactic—a fact Murphy takes some pride in. But the sum of all the violence absorbed and produced weighs heavy.
He wants to use this time to maximize this brief moment of peace.
Deep breaths in and out. He used to work this technique before a job or a drop into a hostile area. He remembers sitting in a helicopter in some third-world shithole waiting to go in. Doesn’t remember the job, or the mission, or the reason, but he remembers this exercise of filling up his mental tank. Taking that beat to gather and clear the head. Find calm before the storm.
Closing his eyes, he relaxes his shoulders, breathing in slow and deep.
In and out.
An undisciplined rhythm in search of a steady beat.
“Tell me again.” Peyton’s voice cracks as she blankly stares at the elevator doors.
“What?”
“When you find her, tell me you’ll do the right thing.”
Murphy doesn’t respond. He doesn’t know what he will do. Not sure what the right thing even means anymore.
The elevator dings, only a few floors until the roof.
“When we did this. When we combined Murphy and Noah. We did it to create a more balanced, more stable human being. One that had a chance at a peaceful, normal life. And maybe we did. Time will tell.”
“Finding murder and mayhem is easier.” Checks his Glock. “Stable human being kinda sucks.”
“Murphy, please listen.” She swallows, turns to him. “The agency? The CIA sponsored company? That’s not what they wanted. They wanted killers who could blend in. Mix among the stable human beings and dig in without detection, then slaughter on demand.”
“I know what she is.”
“You sure about that? Because you have two people in your head does not mean her dual brain is like yours. She was engineered to be deceptive.”
Memories of Kate flash. Thoughts of Brubaker pop.
“You should try a little mobility in your consciousness, dear Dr. Peyton.” He taps his temple. “So damn entertaining.”
Last ding.
They’ve reached the top floor. The rooftop waits for them beyond the doors. The same roof where Murphy, Peyton, Thompson met earlier. As the doors open, the sounds of a chopper whirl. Murphy doesn’t see Thompson’s body. He can only assume this has been dealt with properly.
“Murphy.” Peyton presses the down button. “I’m not going with you.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t make sense. I can do more here. I’ll have a team waiting for you. It’ll be small, best they can scramble under the circumstances.”
Murphy nods, looking out into the night.
“Promise me.”
Murphy doesn’t respond.
Peyton stands in front of him, harder to ignore. “If she finishes what she started…”
“Yeah, this all sounds about right.”
“If she succeeds? We all lose. Everyone.”
“You dick around while I do all the work.” He moves past her out of the elevator. “Pretty much sums up our relationship to date.”
Peyton slaps her hands on the closing doors, holding them open.
“I’m going to find your kids.”
Murphy’s heart sinks.
The wind whips around him as the lights from the helicopter strobe the rooftop behind him. The faint sound of sirens wail from the park below. A riot still in session. A drop of blood drips from his fingertips.
The desire to believe her is unbearable.
“Not to be an asshole,” Peyton says, “but you probably should have found out where your kids were before you blew off Thompson’s head.”
Murphy can’t help but crack a smile.
He shrugs. Oops.
Peyton shrugs back. Oops, indeed.
“Can you find them?” he asks.
“I can. I will. Thompson would keep them close. He loved a good fail-safe.”
Murphy nods.
Peyton removes her hands from the elevator doors.
“Don’t fuck this up, Murphy,” she says.
The doors shut.
Chapter 38
The helicopter landed in an abandoned field once used for horse shows.
An open, grassy area a few miles off the water.
Close, but far enough away from the target house.
They came in dark and low on the off chance Brubaker had the heavy tech to track them coming in. Anything and everything is possible considering who she is. She’s also traveling with a tech giant with endless resources, and not to mention, they are heading to a house to meet with some of the most influential people in the universe. Brubaker has had more than enough time to work over Eryk Pruitt for everything he has to offer.<
br />
Already took Pruitt’s hand, if memory serves.
Pruitt’s company is the more fuzzy, cuddly company of the Mega Three. Murphy didn’t pretend to understand it all, but Eryk’s little corporate baby has more of a sales and customer happiness slant to their business. Give them what they want quickly, keep them smiling, and sell everyone everything all the time. Eryk was also, apparently, the only member of the Mega Three who was accessible via a high-end prostitute. Young, ego-fueled, single, and has a stoic history of placing his penis into dicey locations.
The big picture is much clearer to Murphy now.
The helicopter flight was only a little over thirty minutes, but Peyton provided him with some intel on the house and on the other people who will be in the house. He soaked it all in as he traveled across New York, away from Manhattan and into the Hamptons. Past the city’s wealth en route to where that same wealth goes to unwind.
Also along for the ride is his Glock, his Ka-Bar and multiple injectors loaded with the same knockout juice as he had in Baghdad. Murphy knows Brubaker had time to gather and move while he and Peyton fought and clawed their way through Central Park.
Murphy used to love this part.
He hums an old Johnny Cash tune as he checks the load on his Glock.
Noah doesn’t love any of this, but he’s beginning to appreciate his role among the crazy.
Blake Bakshi is the most powerful of the Mega Three.
Not by much, but he has the largest capital size of the companies, with the biggest footprint. While they are all knee deep in tech-generated revenue, his organization writes the songs that make the whole world sing.
They control the internet of things.
The connections and access to that internet, and thus, the heartbeat of the global economy. They were on the ground floor of the mind-blowing G6 networks that reinvented the web a few years ago. A development that wiped out most—if not all—of their competitors. Not a single byte of data can travel on this planet—or any other—without Bakshi’s fingerprints all over it.
They also set up several financial firms along the way to help with the mountains of cash they hold. Everything from private equity to questionable auto loans are run through the pipeline. In short, Blake Bakshi holds all the data on every breathing thing.
Eve Ono’s company owns the content.
All of it. Every musical note. Every story. Every line of dialogue ever written or spoken on any screen large or tiny is owned by her massive organization. They swallowed up everyone’s childhood favorites years ago, and create the favorites for the new and next generations. They took streaming to the next level and are seconds away from piping content directly into human beings’ heads.
The last screen available.
The final frontier, if you will. Perhaps most important screen of them all. Tapping into the theater of the mind. Ono is the one who set up the house in Montauk and called this meeting of the Mega Three.
Peyton has declared Thompson an enemy of the state.
She was able to dump his texts and all his emails.
Thompson had direct communication with Eve Ono.
Peyton believes—although she can’t prove it given the extreme time crunch—Ono is the link between Peyton’s research and the CIA sponsored firm Thompson pushed for. The potential commercial use of Dr. Peyton’s work is vast and could spiderweb into many areas, but a deeper understanding of how ideas and thoughts can be transferred from mind to mind perhaps helps Ono most of all. How the mind compiles information inside our heads and plays it back, that’s something Ono can mine. That tech is far off, but Peyton’s findings are a solid start. A gigantic step. A beginning.
A revolution starts with the first brick thrown.
Ono wants all the bricks.
That plan is also something far removed from the goal of Peyton’s research. Far enough removed that it would be difficult to tie it back to Ono—or any of the Mega Three—if things went sideways.
Doesn’t get much more sideways than the situation they are in now.
A we need to meet in a private location and work shit out type of situation.
Murphy doesn’t know everything about global economics. Doesn’t give a shit. But he knows enough to imagine the outcome when that globe sees massive blood-soaked riots, then learns that the leaders of the most powerful companies in the universe have been killed in cold blood.
Most companies around the world depend on the Mega Three for their own survival. If the world wakes up to find that the CEOs are dead—more to the point, murdered by an insane domestic terrorist organization—the markets will melt down faster than anyone has ever seen.
Jobs will turn to dust.
It will feel like the earth has been ripped out from under everyone. Financial stability gone. No one will feel safe. The riots will grow until they become the norm. The establishment will eventually lose control. They will not be able to contain them.
A world gutted.
The system cut wide open, with Lady Brubaker holding the knife.
This is her master plan. Her masterpiece.
Now, Murphy has to stop it.
Murphy breathes in deep. He changed into some tactical gear during the flight. Black on black. Lightweight. Works like a second set of skin, designed to move without sound or any drag that might slow him down. A carbon fiber, Kevlar garb that might help keep him alive.
It might not.
He’s covered his knife wound with extra padding and injected enough painkiller into his bloodstream to kill all the horses that used to prance around these grounds. Murphy read once how pro and college football players would shoot up back in the day. Large doses of Toradol to numb the injuries so they could play through the pain.
Just enough to get through the game.
Enough to perform, then worry about the damage later. Not the best strategy for long-term health, but Murphy has eyes on the short term tonight. Long term might not be necessary. Murphy is keeping his life choices short and simple.
Get in that house.
Do what needs to be done.
Stay alive.
The what needs to be done part is still up for debate.
She will have people of her own in that house. They will try to kill him. She might even try, but he has to talk to her. Needs to know for himself. He needs to be sure about Kate. Owes that to her and their family.
Murphy was told by the chopper pilot there is a tactical team waiting for him.
Peyton said it would be a small team.
Calling it a small team is the understatement of the year.
A team of two stands a safe distance from the twirling blades of the helicopter. Murphy recognizes them both from yards away.
He sighs internally. Almost breaks his eyes keeping them from rolling.
One of them is the large man from the hotel room. The one Murphy took out with some smart-ass talk and a whiskey bottle. The other is his dear friend, the heart-eating agent from Baghdad.
Murphy hugs her.
He thumps the large man in the nuts.
“That our ride?” Murphy thumbs toward a white van with a fake plumbing company logo.
They nod.
“Cool.” Murphy motions for them to lead the way. “Please, let’s enjoy the sweet release of death together.”
As they move toward the van, Murphy jams an injector into each of them. His tactical team slumps down to the grass.
Murphy wants to dance this dance alone.
Chapter 39
The house Eve Ono selected is one of Montauk's iconic Seven Sisters.
A spectacular stretch of moorlands overlooking shadbush-laced dunes with the ocean laid out behind it. They built the seven fabled summer cottages in the late 1880s as an exclusive summer colony for a Montauk land baron and his buddies. The Central Park landscape architect chose the location so each residence could take advantage of the stunning views in every direction.
Murphy picked up these little tidbits while study
ing the house.
Loves the irony nestled in the details.
A two-point-three-acre property sits on an elevated perch, providing a panoramic view of the Atlantic and a vast expanse of green moors. One hundred acres surrounding the property provide some much-desired privacy.
Perfect, Murphy thinks.
Room to roam, inside and out. Multiple entry points.
Two floors, four bedrooms and just under four thousand square feet of space.
He read that over the last hundred and fortysomething years, these Seven Sisters properties have been home to titans of business, artists, international celebrities, and a long list of legendary douchebags.
And tonight, the celebrated CEOs of the Mega Three might just die here.
Murphy crouches down in the brush just outside the finely kept lawn that surrounds the home. The house is lit up both inside and out, with the curtains drawn closed. He can see shadows of the guests moving inside. Counts the distinct body shapes, and best he can tell there are at least six people inside.
He checks the load again on his Glock, slipping it behind his back.
His Ka-Bar is strapped to his leg, and he added a Defender double-barrel pistol shotgun in case of emergency. He swiped it off the large man after he knocked him out. Murphy wanted to travel light, so the Defender will allow him to go heavy and light at the same time. He loads two shells, one in each barrel, then snaps it shut and slips it into his shoulder holster.
The house is up and in an open area, but private. There are homes close by but still at a safe distance. Yet, with all that known, Murphy wants this to be fast and clean. He wants to be the one dictating the outcome.
Not Brubaker.
He has seen no one come outside, yet. Surprised there is no sign of bodyguards or security for the CEOs. No visual sign of a struggle. Nothing to suggest a fight. The Mega Three are also not expecting anyone. Arrogant enough to think this was an unbreakable secret.
He needs to move fast.
Brubaker will want to do what they came to do and get out quick.
The waves crash in the distance. A cool ocean breeze caresses his face.