by Brandt Legg
She pressed his finger against the screen of her phone. An app would record his prints. Back in the bedroom, she did the same to the other man. “Get the land line,” she yelled to Chase.
He ripped the phone out of the wall, yanked the cord from the base, and shoved it in his pocket.
She parted the curtains and looked out the window, happy to see no action below. “Let’s go.”
With her gun ready, Wen opened the door slowly, checking the hall both ways.
“Let’s take the stairs,” she said. “Police and paramedics will use the elevator.”
“You really think that guy is going to live?”
“For a few more minutes,” she said. “Ten at the most.”
“What about us?”
“Depends on who’s waiting in the parking garage.”
Wen looked at the big brass number eight hung on the hotel stairwell’s wall. She wanted to get down to the parking garage fast, but knew a killer could be waiting for them on each floor.
Seven.
“Why did they only send two?” Chase asked softly.
She shook her head. He wasn’t sure if that meant “shut up” or that she had no idea. Both, he decided.
Six.
An old woman in a white robe suddenly appeared on the stairs below them, strangely silent. Wen could have easily shot her by accident, and then considered shooting her on purpose just to be sure, but let her pass.
Five.
“How do we know there aren’t ten guys waiting in the parking garage?”
“We don’t.”
Not the answer he wanted, but the one he expected.
Four.
Wen glanced up at one of the security cameras and wished they had time for The Astronaut to tap into the hotel’s surveillance system so they could see each floor and the parking garage.
Even if there was time, where is The Astronaut? she thought.
Three.
The sound of walkie-talkie static broke through the din of their footsteps on the stairs, and she stopped for the first time. It was hard to tell exactly where the noise was coming from in the rebounding echoes of the stairwell. Chase pointed up. Wen nodded and began moving again—faster.
Two.
The door to the third floor, which they had passed seconds before, opened. Another walkie talkie. This one sounded like police. “Code-3, shots fired.”
One.
Chase was about to grab the doorhandle, but Wen pointed down, reminding him they had to go to the parking garage. Two hotel security guards burst through the door, almost knocking into Chase. Wen managed to conceal her gun.
“Hotel guests?” one of them asked.
“Yes,” Wen said. “What’s going on? We heard gunshots.”
“Room number?” the other asked, ignoring her question.
“Five-ten,” she answered.
“Last name?” he asked, pulling up a computer tablet.
“Denkensly,” she said.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
“No, we aren’t waiting around to get shot,” Chase said. “You shouldn’t be harassing guests, you need to be concerned about our safety instead.”
Wen and Chase started moving again.
“Stop!” one of the security officers yelled.
Twenty-Five
Undisclosed location
Tolstoy looked at the technician, trying to decide how competent he was. She generally didn’t like weaselly, brainy people who looked as if they never exercised or encountered the sun. Although she appreciated and utilized their skills, Tolstoy did not believe that they were as loyal to the government as they should be, instead seeming more interested in advancing science and technology.
“We’ve replicated and dissected it,” the technician said. “It’s all been done under strict conditions. I think we can power it on now, if you agree.”
She blinked. Other than some brief training, she didn’t know about the inner workings of cell phones. “It’s not going to explode or emit some poison gas, is it?”
The technician was amused, but also nervous. A smile tried to form, but retreated in a few quick flashes before he recovered. “No, nothing like that. Hopefully there will be data.”
She nodded, having more important things to do, but glad to finally be able to find out what was on The Astronaut’s phone.
As soon as the phone completed its start-up cycle, she could see stress on the man’s face.
“What?” she asked.
“No . . . no, that shouldn’t be.”
“What?” she repeated more urgently.
“It’s sending.”
“Sending? Sending what?”
“I don’t know, a message.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop it!” she demanded.
“It’s too late.” He powered the phone off.
“Did it send?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked at him as if he were a fly that had just landed on her cupcake. “Find out if it sent, what it sent, and who it was sent to!”
“I’m sorry Tolstoy, that will take time.”
“We don’t have time!”
“This was unanticipated.”
“I certainly hope it was unanticipated!” She could barely contain her rage. They had killed The Astronaut to prevent him from disclosing Blackout to anyone, and now, from the grave, he may have done just that. “You solve this problem and get that information to me immediately, or you are going to lose much more than your job.”
Washington DC
The security guards ran down the stairs after Chase and Wen. One of them grabbed Wen. “I said stop. I need some—”
In less than a second, both men were crumpled on the ground, unconscious.
“Was that necessary?” Chase asked.
“Apparently.”
“Are they—”
“No. They should wake up with bad headaches soon enough.”
“Good. Just doing their jobs.”
“Yeah, they’ll be fine . . . unless they had some underlying medical condition.”
G-1
“Which floor?” Chase asked.
“The vehicle is supposed to be on G-3.”
G-2
“Here,” Wen said.
“I thought you said G-3? Why are we getting out on two?”
“To get us out of the stairwell sooner, and because it’s better to come down the ramp. Lots of cover.”
“I heard the guy say no one was down here.”
“He was lying.”
They entered the parking garage as if walking into a surgical suite inside the library of a church. The musty air felt gritty, and smelled of rubber, oil, and fried food. Scanning for threats, they stayed close to the open end of the switchback concrete ramp and made their way down to G-3. Wen had memorized every detail of the G-2 layout, which she knew would be identical on the level below.
“That’s why we yanked the phone? So he wouldn’t call his buddies?” Chase whispered.
She nodded, touching a finger to her lips. They came around the corner and G-3 opened in front of them. Chase spotted the car, tapped Wen, and pointed. Eight vehicles up the row.
“That one. Dark blue Ford,” she said, talking about another sedan four cars down on the row across. “There’s the backup.”
“Can you see if one of them is Grimes?”
“He won’t be here.”
“Why?”
“Grimes is running, too.”
Chase still wasn’t convinced. “Okay, what’s the plan?”
“You get to play decoy.”
“Don’t you think they know what I look like?”
“Yes. I’m sure they have a nice collection of your photos. Probably staring at them right now, thinking about how cute you are.”
“I am cute, but—”
“Don’t let them see your face. Act like you’re just walking through, looking for your car.”
> She crept into the row behind them, determined to take at least one alive before the police showed up.
Chase picked up a green beer bottle someone had left next to a concrete column and stumbled out, gazing around, confused, pretending he had misplaced his car.
One of the shadow people pushed his window down to get a better look. The two men chuckled at the drunk, but an instant later Wen pounced, slitting the throat of the driver and shoving her gun in the face of the passenger.
“Don’t even move,” she hissed. “You are the last one alive. I killed the other two upstairs. Unless you want to join them, drop your gun out the window.”
“Okay,” he said, seeing Chase was now sober and standing by his window, pointing a gun at him. The man slowly dropped the gun, which Chase kicked under the car.
“Now, tell me how you communicate with Belfort,” she said. “Chase, backseat.”
Chase looked in the back and saw the thugs had brought duct tape. He grabbed the roll.
“Don’t know nothing,” the man replied bitterly.
“I wouldn’t bother tying you up if I planned on killing you,” Wen said as Chase opened the car door, pulled the man’s arms behind his back, and began taping his wrists together, “so make this easy on yourself.”
“I don’t communicate with him.”
“Who does?”
“Carl.”
“Who?”
“The guy you just killed,” he said, nodding his head toward the dead driver. “He was the one in charge. Got the orders from Belfort.”
Chase taped his legs.
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s too bad.”
She shot him in the thigh. “Too bad for you.”
He screamed profanities.
“I’ve got more bullets.”
“No, no, wait . . . Belfort calls us, we don’t call him.”
“Which phone?”
“In my pocket.”
Chase carefully extracted the phone from the man’s coat.
“When is he calling next?”
“In like fifteen minutes to check on the job.”
“To see if we’re dead?”
“Yeah.”
Wen aimed her gun at his other thigh. “Tell me your password.”
He told her. She unlocked the phone, quickly changing the password.
The sound of sirens echoed through the garage.
Twenty-Six
Washington, DC
The sirens wailed louder. “We’ve got to go!” Chase said.
“Gonna kill me?” the man asked.
“No.”
“Then I owe you one. It won’t be me that kills you, but you’re never gonna be safe until you’re dead. Belfort has an army, and they’re all looking for you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m looking for him.”
“Won’t ever find him,” the man said, wincing as he adjusted himself in his seat. “Dude’s too careful. They got money to throw around like they print it up themselves.”
Wen pointed the key fob at the other rental car to unlock it, half expecting it to explode.
Chase ran over and found two cell phones in the glove box.
“Looks like we’re collecting these,” Wen said, pulling one out of the dead man’s pocket. “You don’t happen to have his password? And don’t lie to me.”
“No. Not exactly friends.”
She nodded, snapped a photo of both men, and took their fingerprints. “Okay, I need you to get in the trunk.” She cut the tape securing his legs.
He suppressed a grunt of pain as he limped to the back of the car.
She looked at him closely as he leaned against the trunk. “You an ex-cop?”
His face registered surprise. “Former military police.”
Wen nodded tightly. “If I see you again, I won’t just put a bullet in your thigh.”
“You won’t see me again. You’ll be dead by then.”
“Maybe,” she said, securing his legs again, taping his mouth, then shooting two holes in the trunk before slamming it shut.
She jogged over to Chase. “You drive,” she said.
“This one?” He pointed to the shadow people’s rental car.
“I don’t think we have time to call an Uber.”
“All right.”
Chase pulled onto New York Avenue as two white Washington Metropolitan police cruisers passed them.
“Probably going to the front entrance around the block,” Wen said. “It’ll take them a few minutes to realize they should also be checking the garage.”
“And they’ll find the guy in the trunk, and eventually the two dead bodies in our room,” Chase said as an ambulance raced past them. “Good thing you’re wearing vIDs,” he said.
They both had a large selection of false identities complete with credit cards, passports, driver’s licenses, and assorted other documents. However, vIDs was something else. The virtual Image Deviation system was an incredible collaborative invention jointly created by The Astronaut and Chase. Its purpose was to fool the algorithms that powered facial recognition cameras. The ingenious, spray-on application covered a subject’s face with hundreds of nano micro-processors, each thinner than a human hair. The translucent gold specks were virtually undetectable to the naked eye.
“We were wearing it when we checked in, but I don’t know how much is left on our faces now,” Wen said. “Cameras could’ve picked us up.”
“We’ll need The Astronaut to do a quick scrub then.”
“Three and a half dead bodies?” Wen said. “If we can’t reach him in time, we may need to get some help from Tess.”
“Try him,” Chase said, stopping for a red light at the intersection of New York and Florida Avenues. “Tess might be able to help us with identifying the bodies of those shadow people back there.”
“Why? She’s never given us much help with the shadow people before.”
“This time she’s going to have a live body. Assuming they find the guy in the trunk before he bleeds out or suffocates.”
“I don’t think he knows much more than he told us,” Wen said. “But you can never be sure. Maybe they can connect some dots. Or maybe Tess will let me question him again when we aren’t so rushed.”
“I’ll call her after we reach The Astronaut.” Chase checked the time—just before five am. “He’s certainly awake.” They knew The Astronaut had odd sleeping schedules, but he was almost always up for the day by four am.
“Voicemail,” Wen said, frustrated. “I hope he’s all right.”
“No one can find him,” Chase assured her. “He’s a magician.”
“At least he’s in the city. How many times have we needed him when he’s on the other side of the world?”
“Yeah, but we don’t know where in the city.”
“I’m calling again. This time I’ll leave a message. Meantime, we need to get rid of this car.”
“Great, let’s go get breakfast. I’m starving.”
“Aren’t you always?”
Wen left a detailed, yet cryptic message for The Astronaut, and Chase found a bakery just opening.
“This isn’t a breakfast place,” Wen said.
“What?” Chase scoffed, offended. “They sell cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, cheese filled croissants—what are you looking for, Eggs Benedict?”
“Real food, not pastries.”
Chase gave her his best confused expression. “Okay, how about we get a couple bags of cinnamon buns and whatnot, then we’ll go find some place for a ‘real breakfast’?”
Wen checked the sideview mirror and scanned the area before they got out of the car. “Make it fast.”
Chase ran inside while Wen paced the front sidewalk, recalling the parking garage man’s warning.
Belfort is out there, with an army, hunting us.
She looked over her shoulder, back up New York Avenue. “They’re getting closer,” she whispered. “But so are we.”
Twenty-Seven
&nb
sp; Washington, DC
Chase kept the steering wheel steady while munching on the best cinnamon rolls he’d had since Mexico. “See how much better I drive with cinnamon buns?”
“We’re only going thirty,” Wen muttered as the morning traffic began to increase around them. She was looking through the phone she’d taken from the man in the parking garage. “This guy did have a lot of pictures of you. Oh! And here’s a cute one.”
“What about the others?”
She shook her head. “You look kind of goofy . . . as usual.”
Chase laughed.
“Actually, this is horrifying.”
“Now that’s mean.”
“Not you,” she said, “but he has photos of us in the Caymans, Miami, Mexico, San Diego, these are from Barcelona, Amsterdam, on and on. They’re everywhere we go.”
“How are they finding us?”
“Money,” she replied. “It’s hard to hide in the modern world, but it can be done, unless someone is willing to spend whatever it takes to find you.”
“Yeah. Still . . . they’re good.”
“We’re alive.”
He finished the center bite of a cinnamon roll. “After the Caymans and this morning, I think we need to move forward with assembling our own team.”
“Speaking of spending money.”
“I don’t care what it costs. We need our own army.”
Wen’s phone vibrated. She looked at the series of numbers displayed. “It’s Nash!” she said in gleeful relief.
“Finally,” Chase said.
“Nash, are you okay?” Wen asked. “We’ve been very worried.”
“He’s dead.”
“What? Who? Who’s dead?”
“They killed him.”
Wen looked at Chase questioningly, as if he might somehow know who had been killed. He shrugged.
“Who?” she tried again.
“Hayward. They killed him.”
Wen knew that if Nash Graham had a best friend, it would be Hayward Hughes. They were both Astronauts of similar ages, backgrounds, and abilities. Although Nash exceeded Hayward in mathematics, patterns, and concepts, they had similar gifts. The two had worked together many times. Tess Federgreen sometimes referred to them as ‘brothers from different mothers.’