What bothered him most about bringing Bram in right now was that an innocent girl was also in the mix. This was troubling, but once again, the stakes were too high to be squeamish. The background check on Riley Ridgeway had revealed that she had been raised by law-abiding parents on a farm in Indiana, and had as bland of an upbringing as one could imagine, followed by a saintly stint at an animal shelter.
Carr would make sure she was cleared from any danger as soon as possible, but she was about to learn some truths about David Bram that were sure to be devastating.
It wasn’t every day that you learned that the man you were dating had lied to you about what he did for a living since you had first met. Not to mention being suspected of acts of sabotage that would put him at the top of most wanted lists in dozens of powerful countries around the world.
Carr took a deep breath as Bram’s front door began to swing open.
15
David Bram and Riley Ridgeway stood at the entrance to the door, eyeing Carr warily. “What can I do for you, Agent Parker?” said Bram.
“Can I come inside?”
Bram nodded and held the door wider, stepping back to allow the visitor entrance.
“Thank you,” said Carr as he stepped inside the entry foyer. He shut the door behind him, never taking his eyes from Bram’s hands.
Carr raised a gun and pointed it at the couple. Both shrank back in horror.
The lieutenant looked into Riley’s green eyes and sighed. “I’m so sorry to have to do this,” he said as sincerely as he could, “but I can’t risk that your boyfriend will try to get the drop on me. Or run.”
Bram shook his head. “Get the drop on you?” he said in dismay, with an expression that indicated he couldn’t believe this phrase was still in use. “Run from what? I have no idea why you’re here.”
As Bram stared at the unwavering gun pointed at him, he appeared to realize that it was a bad idea to be belligerent with a potentially unstable stranger who could kill him in an instant. “Look, I’ll cooperate,” he continued, his tone now submissive. “Just, please, put that thing down.”
Carr didn’t respond. Instead, he thoroughly frisked Bram while holding the gun to his head, and then ordered his two temporary prisoners to lead him to the dining room. When they arrived, Carr bound Bram’s wrists tightly together with a hard plastic zip tie and had him sit on one of eight chairs that were positioned around a lacquered walnut table. He then used another zip tie to bind Bram’s left ankle to one of the table’s legs.
Bram’s background didn’t include combat skills of any kind, but Carr liked to err on the side of caution.
With Bram secured, Carr used several zip ties to cuff Riley’s wrists together, but loosely, and with plenty of play in between, choosing not to bind her ankle. Finally, he had her sit near Bram at the table, leaving an empty chair between them.
With this complete, Carr remained standing and alert on the opposite side of the table, but returned his weapon to the small of his back, seeing no reason to continue to hold a gun on the frightened couple.
He would have loved to let Riley leave at the outset, but there was no way he could. She would go straight to the police, and even with nearly unlimited authority, he didn’t need the headache that would cause.
Besides, Volkov would be sure to snatch her up when he realized Carr had taken Bram out of his reach. If the Russian couldn’t have his primary target, the least he could do would be to interrogate the woman who was currently sleeping with his primary target, and find out what she knew.
It was a move that Carr would make, also, if the tables were turned. The difference was that he would leave her alive and unharmed, whereas the Russian would almost certainly subject her to lengthy torture before ending her life.
As much as Carr might regret it, he had no choice but to bring Riley Ridgeway along for the ride.
“What’s this all about?” said Bram, trying to keep his tone conversational rather than confrontational.
“I wanted to have a brief talk before we leave.”
“Leave?” said Bram. “Leave for where?”
“After we’ve chatted for a few minutes,” replied Carr, “I’m taking both of you to a highly secure safe house, where I can make sure you’re protected and off the grid.”
“Right now it seems like the only protection we need is from you,” said Riley pointedly.
Carr smiled. “I know it seems that way, but trust me, you have nothing to worry about from me. I’m going to level with you. I’m not with the FBI. But I really do work for the US government.”
“For what agency?” asked Bram
Carr frowned. “I’m afraid I can’t give you any more details about my role,” he replied. He considered adding, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” to lighten the mood, but realized that in their current situation they would take this statement as anything but amusingly sarcastic. Instead, he finished with, “Trust me, I’m one of the good guys.”
Both parties looked decidedly unconvinced. Hard to blame them.
“You work for the US government,” said Bram, “and you’re one of the good guys. But you trick your way into my home and hold us at gunpoint. Why do these two statements not seem to match up?”
Carr ignored him. “There is a Russian agent named Marat Volkov in town,” he said. “Does that name ring a bell?”
Bram’s expression made it clear that it didn’t. “What about him?” he asked.
“He’s very good, and very ruthless. It seems that Russia’s best efforts to achieve Artificial General Intelligence keep getting sabotaged.”
Bram’s eyes widened as the mention of AGI.
“As have the efforts of . . . a few other parties,” continued Carr. He had no other choice but to reveal that he was investigating AGI sabotage. If you were going to interrogate someone, you needed to tell them the nature of the information you were after. But he had minimized the importance and extent of his mission. Besides, if Bram was the one he was looking for, this wouldn’t matter, anyway.
“That’s too bad,” said Brain warily. “But what’s that got to do with me?”
“Volkov seems to believe you have something to do with this. Either you’re responsible. Or you know who is.”
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” protested Bram.
Carr arched an eyebrow. “I know nothing about you, Mr. Bram, so I can’t say. But I do know that Marat Volkov is planning to visit you here in a little over an hour. And he doesn’t believe this is ridiculous. Not at all. And he’ll be willing to kill you without even blinking.”
Bram swallowed hard. “So if you really are one of the good guys, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be stopping him?”
“I would be,” replied Carr, “but he’s very, very good, and he doesn’t make mistakes. So if he believes you’re involved, I do too. And if you are, I want to know everything you know. So in just a few minutes we’re all going to leave here for the safe house I mentioned. I have satellites watching him and his men to be sure they don’t arrive here early. We wouldn’t want to be disturbed,” he said, trying to put an air of menace into the statement.
Riley Ridgeway had her eyes glued on Bram’s face. She had no idea what was happening, but she could tell that he had been keeping secrets from her. “What do you really do, David?” she asked, her face pained. “Do you even work at Apple?”
“Yes!” he replied emphatically.
Carr turned to face Riley. “I really am sorry you had to be involved with this,” he said. “You’re at the wrong place at the wrong time. Your boyfriend here does work at Apple. But on a secret program, in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but more broadly defined. Something called Artificial General Intelligence.”
Riley shook her head and looked like she might vomit. Carr had expected her to show feelings of anger and betrayal after learning she had been lied to for so long. And while he could detect these emotions in her expression, she also demonstrated what seemed to Carr to be di
sgust.
A tear came to her eye. “David, do you know what he’s talking about? Is he right? Are you engaged in espionage? Tell me!” she demanded.
“No! Of course not! It’s true that I work on AGI,” he said. “He’s right about that. And I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you, Riley. But I couldn’t tell you. Apple insisted on crazy levels of secrecy.” He shook his head fervently. “But that’s my only secret!” he insisted. “I’m not sabotaging anything.”
Riley studied Bram’s face in horror, unsure of what to believe.
“How did you know about my work in AGI?” Bram asked Carr.
“It’s my job to know. Keeping secrets from a woman who helps families adopt pets is one thing. Keeping secrets from me is another. I’d remember that going forward if I were you. If you lie to me, I’m going to know it.” He turned to Riley and winced. “Not that pet rescue isn’t a noble calling,” he hastened to add.
But Riley Ridgeway wasn’t paying attention. She had clearly made up her mind about her boyfriend’s claims of innocence, and it hadn’t gone his way. Tears of anger and betrayal were now running down her face and she was becoming completely unglued. Her eyes were wild, like a rabid dog, her full attention and malice focused on David Bram.
“I trusted you!” she screamed. “I was falling in love with you! You asshole!”
With that she rose up from the table and in the blink of an eye was behind him, moving with balletic grace. She put her hands over his head and pulled back, the slack in her plastic handcuffs catching Bram around the throat, threatening to garrote him, while she continued to shout curses.
Carr had known the news he would deliver would be tough for her to take, but he hadn’t expected this. She probably wouldn’t really kill Bram, no matter how filled with rage, but Carr couldn’t take that chance. The man was his only lead.
Carr brought his gun back out in an instant. “Freeze!” he screamed, pointing it at Riley while Bram struggled for breath. “Stop choking him!” he demanded. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
She either didn’t hear Carr or didn’t care, continuing to focus entirely on making Bram pay for his duplicity.
Carr slid across the glossy table and landed beside her, an athletic move that few could have matched. He grabbed her hands, forced them away from Bram’s throat and back over his head, and then threw her to the floor, quickly turning back to check on Bram, making sure he was still breathing and his trachea hadn’t been crushed.
The moment he confirmed Bram would make a full recovery, he turned back to Riley Ridgeway on the floor, but he was too late. Even loosely bound, she had managed to reach into a pocket and remove a small stun gun, which she pressed against his ankle, accompanied by the violent crackling screams of raw electricity. She held the electroshock weapon against Carr’s leg until it pulverized his every muscle and he collapsed to the ground beside her, spasming.
Electroshock weapons had become ever more powerful and more concealable, and Riley’s model was no exception. The moment Carr was down she hit him with the device a second time, and what surely must have been enough electricity to light up a city shot through him once more.
Paralyzed and helpless, Carr knew he was completely at their mercy. After everything he had been through, after surviving gun battles, hand-to-hand combat against impeccably trained men, was this really how he would die?
How could he have grown so careless, allowing himself to be outwitted by a girl with no training? Just because she had checked out as being harmless didn’t mean he could lower his guard. He, of all people, should know that on rare occasion, even the most weak-kneed pacifist could come out fighting when their back was against the wall. And Riley’s strategy had been brilliant, attacking Bram like a crazed demon, knowing Carr would be forced to pull her away at close quarters.
He should also have known she’d be carrying a means of self-defense. A girl this breathtaking would want to carry something that could deter unwanted attention.
How could he have been so sloppy? So careless?
But Carr didn’t have any time to contemplate his mistake further as the stunner was pressed into his body for a third time, and he was blasted into unconsciousness.
16
“Really sorry about the whole choking-you thing,” Riley said to Bram as they rushed into his garage and climbed into his white BMW four-door sedan, with Bram at the wheel.
“No apology necessary,” he replied as he started the car. “I knew it was a ruse. I know you too well. No way you’d react like that, even if you learned I was Attila the Hun.”
When she had said she was falling in love with him, this was even more of a tip-off that she was acting, but he didn’t want to bring this up at the moment. “And I could tell you weren’t bearing down on my throat nearly as hard as you could have.”
“Only because you were quick enough on your feet to pretend you were choking to death,” said Riley.
“So if I hadn’t been convincing enough, you would have pulled harder? Is that what you’re saying?”
The hint of a smile crossed her face. “Whatever it took to coax the proper response from you,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye. “But you were very convincing. You’re a lot better at pretending to choke than you are at pretending you’re not home.”
Bram laughed. “Where to?” he asked.
“Am I in charge?”
“You think faster than I do,” he admitted. “And if it weren’t for you, we’d still be captives, so, yeah . . . you’re in charge.”
She nodded and then tilted her head in thought. “Okay. Before we go, leave your phone here,” she instructed. “If there are boogie men out there, they’ll be tracking our cell phones for sure.”
“What about yours?”
“I may have other plans for it,” she said enigmatically. “Hurry. Leave it and let’s get out of here.”
Bram opened the car door and set his phone gently on the floor of the garage while Riley continued to plan.
He pulled into the street and then stopped, putting the car in park so both he and Riley could look around. Both craned their necks to complete a full three-hundred-sixty-degree examination of their surroundings, anxiously trying to spot suspicious-looking people or cars. None appeared to be present, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being watched, just that they were immune from any obvious surveillance.
“We have to assume the worst,” said Riley. “Be the most paranoid we can be. Which means we have to assume this car will stick out like a sore thumb. We have to do classic spy-type stuff to shake any watchers—satellites and otherwise. Use misdirection and stealth.” She paused. “How much cash do you have on you?”
“Two or three hundred.”
“Do you know of anywhere nearby that is under something—trees, an overpass, whatever—that hides it from overhead surveillance? Preferably somewhere off the beaten path, that isn’t likely to be covered with street cams.”
Bram thought for a moment. “Yeah. There’s a railroad bridge near Dog Beach that fits your criteria.”
“Accessible from the street?”
He nodded. “We can be there in about ten minutes.”
“Good. Here’s what I propose: First, I use my Uber app to find a driver who can meet us as soon as possible.” She paused. “Let’s say at the Shell station on Del Mar Heights Road.”
Bram nodded. He knew the station well. It was about a mile away. He had never used Uber himself, but was familiar with one of their many tag-lines: “Tap the Uber app and get picked up in minutes.” Apparently, Riley wanted to put this to the test.
“When we meet our driver at the Shell,” continued Riley, “we explain that we have a colleague attending an important meeting at the Hotel del Coronado, who needs his extra phone. Which will actually be this one,” she added, waving her phone. “We pay the driver a hundred dollars to deliver it to the reception desk.”
Bram nodded. “Very nice,” he said. “You’re hoping that if anyone is out there, they’ll
follow your phone, thinking it’s us.”
She shrugged. “It might work. It might not. But it’s worth a try.”
“And meanwhile, we’ll be heading to our railroad bridge near Dog Beach, right?”
“Exactly. We hide the car there and walk away as rapidly as we can. Before I send my phone off to Coronado Island, I’ll arrange for another Uber driver to pick us up about a mile from the bridge. While we’re walking, we try to buy hats and maybe a change of clothing if we can, to further confuse anyone after us.”
Most people would have been astonished by Riley’s ability to come up with such an impressive plan on the fly, but Bram knew this was just par for the course.
“We have the second Uber driver take us to a scummy, beat-up motel,” she continued. “The sort of place that even rats try to avoid. Then we hole up there for a while until we can figure out our next move.”
Bram nodded. “I’m in,” he said. “Set it up.”
Riley manipulated the Uber app on her phone and waited. Less than a minute later it had all been arranged. The service was as responsive as advertised. Impressive. Riley’s phone showed a picture of the driver, his rating, and a map giving his location and his progress toward the Shell.
Bram put the car in gear and sped off through the early evening. They would barely beat the driver there. “If our endgame is a seedy motel,” he said, “I assume this means you’re ruling out going to the cops.”
“Yes.”
“I know we could be in hot water for attacking a government agent,” he said, “but our best bet might be to go to the authorities and take our medicine.”
Riley shook her head. “Until we know for sure who we can trust, we can’t risk the cops.”
“You think a local cop might be in on it?” said Bram.
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