by J. A. Jance
“It’s not just Owen,” Amelia said. “He’s got an accomplice—a woman, I think. Her name’s Frigg. I heard him talking to her on the phone on the way to Cottonwood. They seemed to be having some kind of disagreement.”
Wanting to see if the signal strength had changed, Stu pulled the phone from his pocket, and that’s when he noticed the first line on the incoming message. “Wait, did you say his accomplice’s name was Frigg?”
“That’s what it sounded like. Why?”
Stuart didn’t respond. By then he was too engrossed in reading the message, which must have come in before the signal was lost. Without that, the attachments at the bottom of the text wouldn’t open, but he didn’t need them to—he had already seen enough. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed.
“What?”
In answer, Stu handed Amelia the phone and let her scroll through the message for herself.
“It says here that Owen Hansen is responsible for what happened to Roger,” Amelia said, “but does this mean Frigg’s a computer? He was arguing with a machine?”
“Frigg’s not just a computer,” Stuart said in a voice filled with wonder. “She’s an AI—an artificial intelligence—who has turned on her creator.”
Just then, the car’s engine seemed to hiccup. The vehicle slowed while the tires on the right-hand side of the car bounced along on the shoulder of the road.
“Showtime,” Stu whispered. “He’s stopping. Get ready.”
Taking back the phone, he shoved it into one hip pocket. He closed the blade of the knife, but he kept the weapon in his hand. “Once you hit the ground,” he advised, “stay to the right as much as possible. Use the car for cover and run like hell. When the shooting starts, dive behind the nearest outcropping.”
“You think there’ll be shooting?”
“I’m pretty sure. If Owen Hansen is planning on taking us both out, he’ll have something along with more firepower than that stun gun.”
The car was still coasting to a stop when Stu released the latch. He tumbled out first, falling all the way to the ground and landing hard. By the time he clambered to his feet, Amelia Cannon was out of the trunk, on her feet, and running like a scared jackrabbit.
Despite the fall, Stu hadn’t dropped the knife. Stuart Ramey was no Gary Cooper staring down the bad guys in that old Western, High Noon, the one they watched in the break room at least once a year. Stu wasn’t Coop, and Amelia Cannon was no Grace Kelly, either. But this was their story now. Squaring his shoulders and opening the blade, Stu turned to meet his would-be assassin.
He didn’t consider himself a hero, but he was determined. In her text Frigg had claimed that Owen Hansen was responsible for Roger McGeary’s death. Given everything else that had happened, that seemed likely to be true. What Stu did right now wouldn’t make a bit of difference to Roger, but it would make a huge difference for Amelia Cannon and for Roger’s Aunt Julia, too.
And so, rather than turn and run, Stuart faced resolutely forward. His feet were no longer numb. Even so, his limbs felt almost wooden beneath him except for the uncontrollable trembling in his knees. At first glimpse, he saw that the driver was bent over, most likely searching for something on the floorboard of the front seat. Stu had made it only as far as the rear wheel well when the driver’s-side door swung open, and a man spilled out onto the roadway.
Once the driver was fully visible, he didn’t seem all that large. In fact, he was almost the same size as Stuart, but size didn’t matter. What Stu saw was the weapon in the guy’s hand. In fact, for a time that’s all he could see. It was the only thing there, completely out of proportion to the rest of the scene, and the opening at the end of the barrel was a gaping black hole.
Stu knew about the “twenty-one foot rule,” that bit of law enforcement lore that suggests that within twenty-one feet someone armed with a blade can successfully take down an opponent armed with a firearm. But that usually meant a holstered weapon.
This weapon, the one aimed at Stu’s heart, was most definitely not in a holster.
67
Once the Chrysler shuddered and died, Odin tried restarting it, but nothing happened. He stared at the dashboard gauges in helpless disbelief. The last time he checked, even though the gas gauge had been parked firmly on empty, the fuel range guide had still registered almost nineteen miles. His whole life had gone to shit. Here he was, stalled in a dead car on a surprisingly busy highway with two bound hostages locked in the trunk and with no possible way to make it to the airport to meet the plane scheduled to carry him to freedom.
For the time being, Odin’s need to get away trumped his desire for revenge. He would carjack the next passing vehicle—one of those damned Harleys, if need be—and use that to get away. He was about to lean down and retrieve one of Roberto’s weapons when the lid of the trunk thumped open behind him. Checking the rearview mirror, he saw nothing other than an expanse of shiny blue sheet metal.
“What the hell?”
Desperate now, he reached under the seat and groped around for the first weapon that came to hand. It was a pistol of some kind, one with a clip in the handle. He didn’t know what kind of gun it was and didn’t care. He was surprised—it weighed far less than he expected. Weapon in hand, he exited the vehicle only to find Stuart Ramey not only loose and out of the trunk, but coming toward him along the side of the vehicle.
“Stop right there,” Odin ordered, training the weapon. “Don’t come any closer.”
But Stuart didn’t stop. As he took another deliberate step forward, time seemed to stand still. Owen caught a glimpse of a small blade of some kind gripped in his opponent’s hand. His lifelong history of arrogance got the better of him. He couldn’t help himself.
“Come on,” he sneered. “Bringing a knife to a gun fight? How stupid is that?”
“How stupid is losing control of your AI?” Stuart responded.
Odin could barely believe the words he’d just heard. “My AI? What AI?”
“I believe her name is Frigg.”
Stuart Ramey knew about Frigg? That realization shot through Odin’s body like a jolt of electricity. If Ramey knew about Frigg, he knew too damned much. Odin didn’t need a risk assessment from his AI to know he was in deep trouble. Amelia Cannon was nowhere to be seen. She was probably still in the trunk. Odin would have to deal with her and with Frigg, too, at a later time. For right now, there was no question about it. Even though it was here in the middle of the road in front of God and everybody, Stuart had to go.
So Owen Hansen did what he had to do. He pulled the trigger.
68
When Owen pulled the trigger, Stuart was already charging forward, knife outstretched. He expected the roar of gunfire. He expected the blow of a speeding bullet to slam into his chest. Instead, he was amazed to hear nothing more than a distinct metallic click. That was it.
“What the hell?” Owen demanded aloud, trying desperately to pull the trigger again, but this time there was nothing—not even a click. Had Owen known anything about weapons, anything at all, he would have known that the pistol had been cocked. That was why there had been that first metallic click. Unfortunately for him, the chamber was empty and so was the magazine.
For one stark moment both men froze in place while Stu stared into the face of someone he knew to be a stone-cold killer. For a second or two, Owen Hansen retained his all-powerful persona Odin, but then defeat washed over him. He seemed to shrink in stature until all that was left was a fatherless child whose absent parent had left him behind for no good reason.
“Put down the gun, Owen,” Stuart said, taking another step forward. “It’s over. You’re done.”
That’s when Stuart first heard the rumble of approaching vehicles. Most likely Owen heard it, too. As the distinctively noisy thunder of a group of high-powered Harleys come roaring up the mountain, both men glanced in that direction. Stuart looked ba
ck toward Owen in time to see him fling the gun to the ground before darting across the road. Startled, Stuart ran after the fleeing man, but he was too late. Owen paused, wavering on the edge of the abyss for only a second, and then, without a sound, he leaped to his death.
Stuart was still standing there, clinging to the guardrail and staring in shocked silence down the mountainside, when the first rumbling motorcycle arrived on the scene and braked to a stop beside him. The biker leaped to Stu’s side, grabbed him by the shoulder, and bodily dragged him away from the rail.
“Hey, big guy,” he said. “Don’t do it. Don’t jump. Whatever’s wrong, it isn’t worth it.”
“It’s not me—it’s him,” Stu managed, nodding toward the spot where Owen Hansen’s shattered body had come to rest, sprawled facedown on a boulder far below.
The biker looked down. When his eyes focused on the body, he shook his head. “He went off the edge?”
Stuart nodded shakily. “Yes, he did,” he answered, “in every sense of the word.” Then, because he no longer trusted his legs to support his weight, he sank down on the side of the road, buried his face in his hands, and wept.
69
Ali and Alonso rounded a hairpin curve and nearly ran over a disheveled woman sprinting down the middle of the road. “Wait, that’s her!” Ali shouted. “It’s Dr. Cannon.” The wheels had barely stopped turning before Ali was out of the Cayenne. “What’s going on? Are you all right? Where’s Stu?”
Amelia Cannon was in remarkably good shape, but running at this altitude—even running downhill—had taken its toll. She bent over double, catching her breath for a moment before she could speak.
“He’s up there,” she gasped at last, pointing. “With Owen Hansen. He’s got a gun.”
“Come on,” Ali urged, leading her back toward the car. “Get in. Let’s go.”
“But you need to dial 911.”
“Can’t,” Ali responded. They climbed into the Cayenne, and Alonso hit the gas. “No signal,” she continued, “but the cops are already en route. We called them before we hit the dead zone. How far from here?”
“I don’t know. Half a mile, maybe?”
“What happened?”
“Hansen kidnapped us. First he took me by surprise at home, and then he used messages from my phone to trap Stuart. He had us trussed up in the trunk of my car, but Stuart figured out a way to get us loose. When the car stopped, he helped me out and told me to run.”
“What about Stu?”
“He stayed behind.”
“Is the bad guy armed?”
“He had a stun gun,” Amelia answered. “He used that on both of us, but Stu suspected he had other weapons, too. He said he was going to take us out, so he must have had something more.”
“Did he say why he came after you?”
“Because he was pissed that Beth Wordon got away.”
Ali took a deep breath. She checked her phone again but nothing had changed—no signal; no service.
“It’s just up there,” Amelia said, pointing, “around that next curve.”
Alonso stopped the vehicle abruptly, put it in park in the middle of the road, and turned on the flashers.
“Are you coming or going . . . ?” he started to ask, but his question came too late. Ali was already on the ground and sprinting uphill. Rounding the curve, she encountered a crowd of Harleys parked helter-skelter across the road. Three hulking brutes clad in leather knelt in a tight huddle on the edge of the road, most likely, she feared, around the body of some fallen victim.
Ali’s heart rose to her throat. She dashed over to the group of men with Alonso hot on her heels. On the way she caught a glimpse of blue plaid that resembled the material in the shirt Stu had worn that morning. Sick with dread, Ali tried to insert herself into the circle, but one of the bikers stiff-armed her.
“Hey, lady, back off. This poor guy’s been through hell. Give him some space.”
By then, though, she was close enough to see that the man on the ground was apparently uninjured. Stu Ramey sat with his face pressed into his knees, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Stuart,” she said. “It’s Ali.”
At that point the bikers relented and let her through. She knelt down and put a hand on his shoulder. To her surprise, Stu made no effort to pull away. “What happened?” she asked. “Where’s Hansen?”
Stu looked up at her, his face drenched with tears. “Down there,” he said. “Down the mountain. He jumped. I couldn’t stop him.”
Ali glanced over her shoulder, but from where she was right then, all that was visible was an expanse of blue sky.
“Do you want me to try to climb down and check on him?” Alonso asked.
“No need,” one of the bikers said. “He’s a goner. Dead as a doornail, as Charles Dickens would say.”
Ali studied the biker in surprise. The bald-headed, tattooed, tough guy didn’t seem like someone who would go around quoting A Christmas Carol.
“Oh,” he added, “since you seem to know this guy, you should probably take charge of this.” He offered Ali a small object wrapped in a sweaty red bandana. From the weight of it, she knew it was a handgun.
“Where’d you get it?” she asked.
The biker jerked his bristly chin in the general direction of Amelia Cannon’s Chrysler. “I found it over there on the road,” he said. “If the cops show up here and find me holding it, I’ll end up back in the slammer on a parole violation.”
“Thank you,” Ali told the Dickens-quoting ex-con biker. “And thank you for looking after Stuart.”
“No problem,” he said with a wily grin. “Always glad to be of service.”
The Yavapai County deputy who showed up a few minutes later took charge of the scene and the gun. The Chrysler was considered part of the crime scene, so it had to be towed. Some officers took charge of directing traffic. The ME was summoned and arrangements were made to retrieve the body. At last Ali was able to negotiate a peace treaty that allowed her to take Stuart and Amelia back to High Noon’s office in Cottonwood to await the arrival of detectives charged with debriefing them.
The moment the Cayenne made it far enough down the mountain to have a signal, Ali’s phone came alive with chirps announcing a collection of incoming calls, voice mails, e-mails, and texts. B.’s was the first call to make it through.
“I had planned on going straight home, but now I’m coming to the office. Where are you?” he demanded. “What’s going on? Shirley reached me by phone as soon as I landed and told me as much as she knew of what had happened, but then your phone went offline and nobody could raise you. That scared me to death.”
“You shouldn’t have worried. It turns out that most of Mingus Mountain is a dead zone as far as cell phone service is concerned.”
After that she gave him a brief overview of what had happened, including the fact that it had been Cami’s ability to track Stu’s phone from somewhere off the coast of England that had made it possible for Ali and Alonso to locate the Chrysler.
“Alonso?” B. asked. “One of the butler applicants?”
“It turns out he was the only applicant,” Ali answered, “but he’s also the guy who drove me up the mountain and who’s driving us back down, so I guess you could say he’s officially hired, paperwork to follow.”
“Speaking of paperwork, have you spoken to Agent-in-Charge Elwood?”
“He left one of the messages on my voice mail, but I’ve been a little too busy to call him back yet. Why?”
“I did. He’s on his way to Cottonwood right now, driving up in hopes of visiting with Stu.”
“What does the National Security Agency want with Stuart Ramey?”
“Somehow the NSA got wind of the disappearing text situation last night in San Jose. It rang a bell with Mr. Elwood because he’s been tracking a particularly powerful kind of
keylogger malware. It was developed in Israel and is supposedly only available to properly vetted agencies, but the part about the phantom texts is what really got his attention. He’s convinced that this Owen Hansen character from Santa Barbara somehow laid hands on an unauthorized version of the program. The NSA is in the process of obtaining a warrant to search Hansen’s house, but they wanted Elwood to talk to Stu first in case he picked up anything that would be helpful to them in their investigation.”
“I hear someone’s using my name in vain,” Stu said from the backseat. “What’s going on?”
“The NSA wants to talk to you about Owen Hansen’s use of disappearing texts in the Beth Wordon case. He’s evidently gained access to and has been using an unauthorized version of some top secret malware. Elwood has a team on the ground in Santa Barbara. They’re currently in the process of obtaining a search warrant.”
“For Hansen’s house?”
“Yes,” Ali said. “Since the man’s already dead, I’m guessing they’ll go in, do a next-of-kin notification, search Owen’s computers, find what they’re looking for, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Except it won’t,” Stu said. “By the time they get there, all traces of the malware will have been erased. If Owen had access to the malware, so did Frigg.”
It was the first time Ali had heard any mention of that name. “Who’s Frigg?” she asked.
“She’s a machine,” Amelia answered at once. “What did you call her?”
“An AI,” Stu answered. “An artificial intelligence who has evidently functioned as Owen’s partner in crime.”
“Then they’ll probably find her in Owen Hansen’s computer, too,” Ali said.
“Maybe,” Stu murmured as Alonso turned into the parking lot at Mingus Mountain Business Park and came to a stop next to an enormous black Cadillac Escalade.
“But then again,” he added, “maybe not.”