“Good. Now, hang up and toss your phone in the trash,” Mr. Clean said.
“That’s it? How will I know what to do next?”
“I’ll take care of the rest, just make sure the disc remains in your palm. You’ll have five seconds to dispose of the phone once you hang up.”
Nervous, Sam bit his lip, but this person who called himself Mr. Clean had shown him too much this evening not to give him the benefit of the doubt. That, and he seemed to be eight steps ahead of whoever it was that had been watching Sam the last few weeks. Besides—the time to turn back had already passed.
“Alright,” Sam said. He hung up, tossed the phone onto a pile of used towels, and stared down at the disc resting in his palm.
Someone tried the doorknob from the outside. When the door didn’t open, the sound of picks feeling out the pins of the lock followed. The lock wasn’t complicated, and a short time later a man and a woman stepped inside. It was a single person bathroom, no stalls, or windows—nowhere to hide if one were inclined to try. So, they didn’t take long confirming the room was empty.
The woman eyed the Slurpee melting on the sink. “Tracking on his phone says he’s still here.”
A moment later the man pulled Sam’s phone out of the trash and held it up to her. “No way he gave us the slip, we had eyes on the door since he entered. Unless he flushed himself, there isn’t anywhere to go.”
The woman nodded, already taking out her phone. The man re-locked the door to make sure no one entered while they were communicating.
“We lost the subject,” she said.
The man couldn’t make out what his boss was saying but his partner’s half of the exchange told him enough.
“We’re standing in a single entrance bathroom. He went in and never came out, left his phone behind. Either to make us think he was still in here or because he knew it would tell us where he went.”
For the next few moments, his partner listened without having anything to contribute, but the man could tell from her expression that something was up.
“Understood, we’re coming in now.”
As she hung up her phone the man raised his eyebrows to ask what was going on.
“We aren’t the first team reporting a disappearance tonight,” she said.
“How many others?”
“No one’s sure yet, but too many to be a coincidence. Everyone is scrambling to confirm their subjects’ locations. There is already talk that we might be looking at a complete wipe.”
“Jesus,” the man blinked a few times trying to process. “All of them?”
“Still a bit of a shit show. We don’t know if the coordinated disappearances are only in the United States. Command is reaching out to our international teams and our allies.”
The man shook his head. “They got any idea what it means?”
She shrugged. “You know everything I know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
OCT 15, 2005 | 9 PM | SEATTLE
BY THE TIME the sun began to set, every curtain in the house was drawn. Paige, Evelyn, and Mr. Silva had spent more than a few hours discovering the extent to which the people watching them had taken their surveillance.
Evelyn was first to notice her, though even Mr. Silva sensed the change in the room as Paige had come down the stairs. She slammed three cameras down on the kitchen table, adding them to the growing pile of devices they had found hidden throughout the house.
“My room,” Paige said. “The vents in the bathroom.”
Rage isn’t smart—and it’s dumbest when it has nowhere to go. There is a look a person gets when they are capable of murder. It warns others not to get too close, because if they do, they might accidently get that rage’s attention.
No one said a word right away, not even when Paige pulled a hammer from the toolbox and began smashing the hell out of the offending devices.
But, as the girl’s anger turned to tears, Evelyn had to stop her. “I know, Paige, I do. But it’s all the evidence we have.”
Mr. Silva, brought up to speed over the last few hours, had looked as though he had wanted a turn with the hammer for some time now. He looked like a father told that strangers had been watching his daughter when she was most vulnerable.
“Jonathan knew, he had to know,” Paige said. “Grant . . . all of them, they just let this . . .”
She trailed off, the hammer dropping out of her hands as she trembled with rage. She felt as though she wasn’t sure of anything—anyone. Had Hayden known? Was that the reason he hadn’t been sleeping the last few months? If he knew, then Collin must have. Why else were they taken along with Jonathan? Leah and Jack, why were they suddenly gone?
Leah . . .
Was it a coincidence, her moving in the same week as Jonathan’s attack? Had Paige been the only one living in the dark these last few months?
“Am I the fool?” Paige asked.
Evelyn looked at her and shook her head. “We can’t start thinking that way.”
She held her eyes for a while, and eventually, with a shudder, Paige nodded. Evelyn turned to Mr. Silva. “Is there anywhere in this room we haven’t checked yet?”
Mr. Silva returned an uncertain shrug.
Paige wiped a tear away, tore herself free of the rapidly deteriorating spiral of her thoughts. “I doubt we’ve found everything. A job like this, we’d need people who knew what the hell they were looking for to find it all.”
Evelyn’s lip drew into a line, but she seemed to have come to the same assessment. “Then we’ve done the best we’re going to. I think it’s time.”
“Time?” Mr. Silva said. “Time for what?”
“We’ll explain in a minute,” Evelyn said. “For now, kill the lights. No idea if it will help, but why make it any easier for them? Keep an eye outside, we might not have much time if they can see what we’re up to.”
Paige did the best she could to place herself in the views that would have been covered by the cameras they had discovered. Even when she was pulling the envelope out of the pastry box, she tried not to be obvious—kneeling below the kitchen counter when she finally did so.
As she knelt to remove the envelope from the donut box, she remembered her father’s one piece of advice. Do it smart. Well, the chance to follow that advice had passed a long time ago. They all felt it. Knew a clock was ticking, and eventually someone was going to come for them.
Truthfully, she was surprised that it hadn’t already happened.
She tore open the envelope; all it contained were a few folded documents. She leaned against the cabinet, studying them by the light of a flashlight. Whatever they were supposed to tell her didn’t jump off the pages. Mostly, there were copies of invoices paid by companies with generic sounding names. The exact job or service that was being paid for was always vaguely described, though her father had highlighted one line item that specified, analysis of samples from Seattle site.
While the companies making the payments didn’t seem to have anything in common, the ones being paid were all audio decoding or restoration specialists.
On the back of the last page, she found a note and recognized the colonel’s handwriting.
“A government adjacent entity has been hiring various specialists in the private sector, looking for a method to clean audio recording samples that US intelligence agencies have been unable to make discernible. These expenses began in June, within a week of your roommate’s hospitalization. Payments came from various front companies to hide the identity of whomever wanted the audio cleaned.
“Gigi, I believe whoever is watching cannot hear you while you’re in that house. Please, burn these documents as soon as possible.”
Just as she finished reading, Paige saw the cellular signal on her burner phone drop to zero, the house’s Wi-Fi following shortly after.
“Shit, shit,” she blurted out, not taking the time to explain to anyone as she hurried to the stove and lit the Colonel’s papers on fire. She dropped them into the sink and watched
them quickly turn to ash.
“Guess it’s a good thing we removed the smoke detectors,” Mr. Silva said.
“Evelyn,” she said. “Turn the lights back on.”
“I already tried, power’s out,” Evelyn said.
“Two men,” Mr. Silva said from the front window. “In the driveway. They’re just standing there watching the house.”
“What, what did the papers say?” Evelyn asked.
“The short version, they probably can’t hear what we are saying,” Paige said. “A fat load of good it does us now.”
“We got two more,” Mr. Silva said. “They aren’t moving either, just standing at the end of the driveway.”
“Everyone wait here,” Evelyn said, grabbing one of the flashlights. “Yell if they move.”
“What? Where are you—”
“I’ll only be a second,” Evelyn said, disappearing into the garage.
Paige had no idea what could possibly be worth the risk of separating the group, but last time Evelyn disappeared into the garage their current predicament had been put in motion. Adrenaline was taking its toll as Paige ran to the sliding glass door to search the backyard. With the power out, there wasn’t a lot of light, but she wasn’t imagining the outline of at least two people standing sentinel out in the dark. The way they watched but didn’t move sent shivers down her spine.
What . . . what are they waiting for?
Evelyn burst back into the room carrying a long box. She quickly brushed everything off the table onto the floor to make room for it.
“You grew up on a military base,” Evelyn said. “You know how to handle one of these?”
Paige turned her light on the table. The guns—the firearms they had found in the footlocker the day Jonathan disappeared.
“Evelyn . . .” Paige said, shaking her head. “They aren’t going to let us shoot our way out of here. We’ll just force them to kill us.”
While Mr. Silva had been keeping an eye on the men surrounding the house, he had dropped the curtains shut as he realized what the two women were discussing. He was slow to approach, but in the dark even his silhouette said that finding out they were armed wasn’t making the situation feel safer.
Suddenly, the three of them froze. They all felt it at the same time—went quiet in the same instant.
It had nothing to do with the guns on the table—in that moment as they strained to listen, the guns were forgotten. Something strange had just happened in the darkness around them. There hadn’t been a sound, not exactly, rather, an unnatural stirring of the air. A faint smell of ozone, a bending of the floorboards beneath them. A sense that there were too many people breathing in that room.
In that silence, a man’s voice suddenly spoke from the darkness. “Listen to her, Ms. Tibbs, she has the measure of things.”
Startled, Evelyn raised the handgun, aiming past Paige into the living room. “Who’s there? Who the hell are you people?”
Paige, already standing closest to the voice, shivered as she turned her light. The beam illuminated a young man’s face a few steps behind her. His hands were raised in surrender. He was tall and slender but with broad shoulders. Her light hurt his eyes such that he looked aside, but other than that he remained still.
“Ms. Tibbs, please, lower the gun,” he said. “We are not with the men outside.”
“We?” Evelyn asked.
Paige was already searching the rest of the room with her light and finding a second man standing in the kitchen. Unlike the taller man, he was short and thickly muscled with his head shaved clean enough to shine. His hands were raised as well—as though both were doing all they could to seem less threatening. Nevertheless, Mr. Silva made no effort to hide his distrust, immediately placing himself between the man and Evelyn.
“My name is Shane. My partner in the kitchen is Rourke. He’s Russian, doesn’t speak much English,” Shane said. “But we are here because you are in desperate need of assistance.”
Paige decided to keep the light on the prettier one doing the talking. “How did you get in here without us knowing? How’d you get past all the men outside?”
“There is a complicated explanation,” Shane said, as he took a few slow steps closer. He made a point of stopping well before he was within arm’s reach. “One best given once we get the three of you to safety.”
“You’re gonna have to do a lot better than that if you expect us to go anywhere with you,” Evelyn said. “Starting with how you know our names.”
“We were sent here to retrieve you on your son’s orders,” Shane said.
Paige and Evelyn swapped sideways glances. Both finding the idea of Jonathan issuing orders preposterous.
“If you know my son, then, where is he?” Evelyn asked.
“He’s a prisoner being held by the very sort of cloak and dagger organization you already know you’re dealing with,” Shane said.
“If he’s a prisoner . . . how the hell did he send you orders?” Evelyn asked.
“Also, a complicated story,” Shane said. “But, your son will escape his captors over the course of the next hour. His people are positioned to free him and his friends. But his success depends on a very fixed schedule. A schedule of which the five of us are all a part. Rourke and I taking you to safety is one in a series of dominoes that must fall tonight. Your son needs you to trust me . . .”
Shane’s eyes briefly left Evelyn to look at Paige. “All of your friends need you to trust me.”
It wasn’t difficult for Paige to convey to Evelyn with a look that no, she didn’t like this, but yes, she didn’t like the idea of dealing with the men outside even more.
“You plan on asking me to hand over this gun?” Evelyn asked. “Because that will end badly for you.”
Shane bowed his head in agreement. “I will not. But, do as I ask and you have my word that you’ll have no need for it.”
Mr. Silva hadn’t taken his eyes off Rourke, but he chanced a glance at Shane. “What about my daughter? Is Rylee a prisoner of these people as well?”
Shane didn’t look to Mr. Silva, he kept his attention on Paige and Evelyn, as he spoke. “I’m sorry Mr. Silva—the last person to know your daughter’s whereabouts was Jonathan. If anyone can help you it will be him. If you want the chance to ask him, you’ll need to come with us.”
Mr. Silva considered—finally looking to Ms. Tibbs he said, “Not much choice for me here.”
To be fair, everyone remained skeptical of the two men, but Evelyn’s face was doing nothing to hide it. Paige could feel the tension playing out between Evelyn and Shane. Almost as though he were waiting for her to say something.
“They could be with the men outside,” Evelyn said. “Just trying to walk us into a trap.”
Shane gave a single nod.
“No one would call you paranoid for thinking that. But the people outside don’t care about you or your son—they don’t yet understand why he is so important. They could have taken you at any moment and been accountable to no one. You’ve given them plenty of reason . . .”
Shane paused, nodding to the pile of devices on the table.
“You’ve been wondering all night why they haven’t?”
Paige gave Jonathan’s mother another telling look. There was no denying it, they had been wondering this all night.
“Their leader is afraid to do anything more but keep you in this house. Your son put that fear in her. But it won’t last. If he remains a prisoner, she will lose her fear. Your son’s escape depends on you coming with me the moment I ask.”
Shane swallowed, as though what he had to say next was difficult.
“When Rourke and I were asked to be the ones to bring you to safety—we were honored. We believe in Jonathan Tibbs. I know, you can’t understand why anyone would say that about your son just yet . . . but trust me for this, and you’ll see that there are many people all over this world ready to give their lives for your son.”
As Paige listened to Shane, she was unabl
e to keep the incredulous look off her face. If the man was acting, he deserved an Oscar—but it didn’t make any of what he said easier to accept.
Still, there was something about the man, his conviction—perhaps his high cheek bones—that was disarming. Paige looked at Evelyn, saw a dumbfounded expression staring back at her. Might as well have been a reflection.
“Don’t look at me, I don’t know which freakin’ way is up right now,” Paige said. “Who the hell have I been living with?”
Evelyn lowered the gun to point at the floor. She shook her head at Shane. “What . . . what is it you want us to do?”
Shane glanced at his watch again. “We need to keep up the appearance that we’re talking until our people are in position.”
“Fine,” Evelyn said. “Then what?”
“Then we’re all going to hold hands.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
OCT 15, 2005 | 9:30 PM | JBLM FACILITY
OLIVIA WAS SEEING Jonathan’s game more clearly. He had told her the rules. It was as though he’d designed a special sort of hell just for her.
As she sat alone in a private viewing chamber reminding herself for the umpteenth time to unclench her jaw. She reviewed the footage of him talking to Leah once more.
“In six cycles. I’m going to tell you everything Olivia wants to know about you.”
“Don’t be afraid, the truth will set you free. Rachel.”
He was choosing every word with an infuriating precision. Rachel—the name was an appetizer. Enough to make her hungry, but far too common a name for her to do anything with.
“I’m going to tell ‘you’ everything Olivia wants to know about you . . . Rachel.”
He’d promised never to lie to her. At the end of the sixth cycle he was promising to tell Leah everything he knew about Leah. If she was patient, Olivia would get to hear it all via the recording. She’d have to be an idiot not to realize he had a reason to make her wait for that moment.
But therein lay the problem. What if he actually wanted her to call his bluff? Take him out of the shell again.
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