“Other than this, I’m at a total loss as to our captors’ motives,” she said. “If they wanted my money, they could just force me to give it to them. No need for this elaborate set-up. They must think I’m useful in some other way. But if I am, I sure don’t know how that might be.”
There was a long silence in the room. This line of reasoning had come to a dead end. Bram decided that if Riley couldn’t divine the intent of the Russian, no one could. “Do you feel like talking about your past?” he said softly. “About what happened? About how you happen to be alive?”
She nodded, and a faraway look came over her face.
He waited for her to gather up her thoughts, and her courage, without a word.
“I was still in my teens,” she began, “with two bratty younger brothers, and a world-famous father who also happened to be the wealthiest man who ever lived.”
Even as she said this, Bram could see a change come over her aura, a sense of relief at finally being able to share this with him.
“I clashed with my father a lot,” she continued. “I admit that much of this was my fault. Teen girls aren’t always easy to deal with. In addition to transitioning from a child to an adult, I was bright, headstrong, and spoiled beyond measure.” She paused. “But so was he. Maybe we butted heads so often because we were so much alike.”
She cringed and lowered her eyes just after she said this, and Bram now understood this reaction perfectly. Her biggest fear was being like her dad—for good reason—and this was another reminder of how alike they really were.
“He was also a workaholic, as I mentioned,” she continued. “And he thought he knew everything. Thought he was smarter than everyone else.”
Bram suppressed a smile. Hundreds of millions of teen daughters around the world complained of fathers who thought they were smarter than everyone else. When it came to Isaac Jordan, though, this just happened to be true.
“But deep down I knew that he loved me,” added Riley, as a single tear rolled down her face. “And I loved him too. He was ruthless and driven. Arrogant and demanding. But he was never cruel. And I knew that he cared for us.”
She sighed. “At least I thought he did.”
“And then Turlock happened,” whispered Bram.
Just as the term 9/11 had come to be used as shorthand for the attacks that had taken place on that day, the word Turlock now served the same purpose, instantly evoking a memory of the mass casualties that Isaac Jordan had wrought.
“Everything changed,” she said, profound sadness in her tone. “I lost my entire family. Because of him,” she spat bitterly. “This alone would be enough to make me hate him forever, but there was much more, as we all know. The cold-blooded massacre of many thousands. He went from being revered around the world to despised in a single night.”
She paused to collect herself. “And I lost more than just my family. We had lived in Turlock for almost two years. I went to high school there. I had made good friends. But most couldn’t afford a house like mine. Most lived within the blast radius in apartments or condos.”
“So you lost most of your friends, as well.”
“All of my friends,” she corrected. “Most were killed. The few who lived beyond the blast zone, including the girl whose home I was staying at when the rod hit, all suffered terrible losses of their own. They lost friends and loved ones. When they learned my father was responsible, they wouldn’t talk to me. They shunned me. They hated me.”
Bram’s mouth dropped open. It was much worse even than he had thought. Family, friends, town, reputation—all torn from her in one fell swoop.
“I had been dreaming of going on to college. Of graduate school. But how could I go forward now? How could I even complete my senior year of high school, facing raw hostility everywhere I turned? I became the subject of worldwide focus, although the authorities at least did protect me from the worst of it.”
Bram remembered. The media had largely honored her request not to be photographed or filmed, and the bodyguards who had been assigned to her helped ensure her privacy as well. Isaac Jordan had always done a good job of keeping his family from the public eye, and many of the photographs of Melissa Jordan that were in the public domain depicted a much younger version, with braces and acne, who would clearly grow into a beauty like her mom, but who hadn’t yet fully blossomed into the swan she would become.
While many among the masses were sympathetic to Melissa Jordan, many others blamed the daughter for the sins of the father. She was despised by millions.
“The psychological and emotional toll this all took on me is impossible for me to describe,” she whispered. “I became unstable. I was melting down. Emotions are heightened at that age, anyway, but mine were on a different plane entirely. I became suicidal, something that the men guarding me couldn’t fail to notice.”
Riley paused. “But just a few months after Turlock,” she continued, “I was approached by a government agent. He was well aware that I was at the end of my rope—ready to let go. He asked if I was interested in going into the equivalent of a witness protection program.”
Her features brightened, even from the memory. “Interested?” she said. “I told him I would do anything to disappear. To get out from under the glare of the worldwide spotlight, to distance myself from my father’s infamy. I’ve never wanted anything more than I wanted not to be Melissa Jordan anymore.”
“Who could blame you?” said Bram softly.
“The agent told me not to tell anyone else, including my bodyguards or other members of the government. No one. Never had a case been this high profile, he said, and since the wealth that I’d inherited might make me a target, he needed to be sure there would be no leaks. He would set up my new identity, place me wherever I wanted, and throw away the key. He and I would be the only ones to know—ever.”
Bram continued to hang on her every word.
“And he did a brilliant job,” she continued. “I became Riley Ridgeway. He altered computer records going back to Riley Ridgeway’s birth, with all the right paperwork and records in all the right places. And he did more. In a true feat of magic, he found a way to go back and find every recent photo of me that existed in the digital world. Not that there were many. As Isaac Jordan’s daughter, I wasn’t the typical teen posting every second of my life to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. I never wanted to draw attention to myself. I had too much attention already, even before Turlock. When he found photos in the public domain, he didn’t delete them. Instead, he used a program that could alter them in subtle but effective ways. I altered my appearance in subtle ways, as well, changing my hair color and style. And my looks have naturally changed over the years. The twenty-five-year-old me looks quite different from the seventeen-year-old me.”
“So if someone suspected you might be Melissa Jordan—unlikely since she was widely accepted as being dead—and checked photos of her online, they wouldn’t match up well enough to sustain the suspicion.”
“Exactly,” said Riley.
Bram nodded. It was a remarkable tale in every way. He had found Riley Ridgeway to be the most extraordinary woman he had ever met, but he hadn’t known the half of it. After having gone through all that she had, and emerging from it as well as she had, she was even more extraordinary than he had thought.
The government agent who had done this for her deserved a medal. He had surely saved her life, saved her from a weight that was crushing her, from the toxicity of being who she was.
Bram’s eyes widened as the final piece of the puzzle snapped into place. “It was Michael O’Banion, wasn’t it? He was the man who put you into witness protection?”
Riley nodded. “Not really my uncle, obviously,” she replied. “But over the past eight years we’ve developed a relationship even closer than this. I owe him everything. He got me out of an inescapable hell. And since he’s the only person to know my true past, the only one I can really confide in, he’s nice enough to visit whenever he can.”
/>
Which explained why she didn’t want Bram along for her recent dinner with the man. The two of them alone could let down their hair. With him there, they would be forced to maintain a charade.
Riley sighed. “So now you know,” she said. “Isaac Jordan accomplished many spectacular things. His work on the R-Drive will catapult humanity to new heights. It has already. His contributions to the future of humanity are arguably among the greatest in history.”
Her face fell and she shook her head in disgust. “But the day I learned he had been killed in that car accident was the happiest day of my new life,” she said. “He took everything from me. And he left me fearing that I’ll turn into him someday. No amount of good that he was able to do before this can ever make me forgive him, can ever erase this.”
Bram nodded supportively. “I understand completely,” he said.
22
Riley Ridgeway felt numb inside. Too much had happened too quickly for her to keep up with it emotionally.
She was realizing just how much she cared for David Bram, as much as she tried to fool herself into thinking she could manage the relationship. She was almost certainly in love with him. The fear she had felt when she thought his life was in danger, her fear of life without him, had been too great for her to fool herself any longer.
Which meant she had to finally end their relationship. Now that he knew her history, he would understand. If he had any sense at all, he would count himself lucky to have escaped her grasp. To not have to look over his shoulder and wonder when she would try to take his severed head as a trophy.
She would simply explain that she loved him too much to allow herself to love him. Too much to allow him to fall in love with her, to get involved with a mirage, a false identity, the most complicated woman ever.
The clear emergence of her true feelings for David Bram was potent enough, without coming about during a firestorm of guns and chases and zip ties. Without her being trapped inside a veritable bomb. Without armed men who knew her real identity and who wanted her for reasons unknown.
Despite her secret, she had truly thought recent events were all about David Bram. The man calling himself Jeff Parker had seemed so sure this was the case. The fact that he was investigating AGI sabotage, and Bram did secret work in this field, seemed to cement it.
But if her captor was this Marat Volkov that Parker had mentioned being after them, after Bram, then Parker had gotten the Russian’s interest in the couple totally wrong. Which meant that Parker didn’t know about her past, had just assumed that Volkov was after Bram rather than her.
It also meant that Uncle Mike had done an extraordinary job with her false identity. Whoever Parker was, she didn’t doubt he had access to high-quality intelligence, and the fact that her Riley identity had held up under this kind of scrutiny was a testament to O’Banion’s thoroughness.
In a strange way, she was grateful this was about her. Now she could trust Bram again. And it had given her the chance to come clean with him, which had been even more of a relief, more cathartic, than she had expected.
She actually felt upbeat. Truly happy. For the first time since she could remember. At least at this instant.
The problem was that she might not have many instants left. Her likelihood of surviving even another day was solely dependent on the motives of the Russian and his comrades. She only wished she had a guess as to what these might be. The only thing she was sure of was that mercy and compassion weren’t the Russian’s strong suits.
She was now standing, with Bram behind her, his arms wrapped around her as though they were watching a sunset, but with much different motives. Protective and consoling rather than romantic.
The Russian entered with two armed flunkies on either side of him, presumably having first disarmed the trap they were in.
“We’re ready for you,” he said to Riley.
She pulled away from Bram and stood beside him. “Can you at least tell me your name?” she asked the Russian. Then, with a forced smile she added, “After all, you know both of mine.”
The man laughed. “My name is Marat,” he replied. “Marat Volkov.”
Riley kept her expression passive. A glance at Bram showed that he, too, was pretending this was the first time he had heard this name. To admit otherwise would be admitting that they had lied about Parker not having made any disclosures.
“Are you ever going to tell me what this is about, Marat?” she asked.
He smiled. “Nice use of my first name,” he said. “Trying to establish a rapport with your captor. You instinctively make the right moves, don’t you? Gifted like your father.”
She bristled at this mention of her father. “Is this your way of deflecting the question?”
“No need. All of my preparations are complete. So now it’s show time. I was going to tell you why you’re here, anyway. You’re going to love this,” he added cruelly. “You see, I plan to use you as bait.”
“Bait for what?” said Riley.
Volkov raised his eyebrows. “Bait to draw out your father.”
Riley’s mouth dropped open. “You’re insane,” she said. “That bastard is long dead. You know he is.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” noted Volkov in amusement. “You’re long dead too. Or haven’t you heard?”
“Not the same at all,” insisted Riley. “I went missing, but was only presumed dead. But they found his body and matched his DNA.”
“For a man of your father’s skills and resources, faking this wouldn’t be any trouble at all.”
“Impossible!” shouted Riley.
Intellectually, she was vaguely aware that Volkov’s point was valid, but she was incapable of accepting it on an emotional level. “My father is now frying deep inside the bowels of hell,” she spat. “Nothing is going to change that. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll have an eternity to get to know him once you’ve passed on to the other side.”
“As much as I admire your spirit,” said Volkov, his face hardening, “you’d better hope that you’re wrong about that. Or you and your boyfriend are in for very painful deaths.”
Bram swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said, striving for a calm, reasonable tone, “let’s say we humor you. Say for a moment Isaac Jordan is alive. How could Riley possibly be useful in drawing him out?”
“When he learns I have her life in my hands, he’ll do whatever I tell him in order to protect her.”
“What?” snapped Riley in utter disbelief. “I thought maybe you planned to lure him here with the hope of killing me. Give him the chance to finally murder the last of his children. What could possibly make you think he’d do anything to protect me? He doesn’t even know who I am.”
“You are mistaken,” said Volkov. “He cares about you deeply. So much so that he’s been watching over you. Like the god he thinks he is. He had bugs planted in your car and living room that transmit both audio and video. There is one in your bedroom, but this transmits audio only. At least he has no interest in seeing his daughter naked. Not that a man like him has time to watch you 24/7. I’m sure he’s programmed an AI to monitor the feed and only pass on what he might find of interest.”
Riley shook her head in contempt. “You’re dangerously psychotic.”
Volkov pulled a steel container from his pocket and flipped open the lid. He removed a tiny electronic device, about the size of a fly, with a pair of tweezers that were also inside, and held it up for her and Bram to examine. “Here is one of your father’s bugs,” he said. “One we removed from your car late this afternoon. We put it into sleep mode temporarily. We can reactivate it with the proper Wi-Fi signal. You see how important you are? I had no idea how to contact him, or where he was. But now that I’ve found you, I can contact him through this bug and get him to come to me.”
Riley felt as though her head might explode. Could what Volkov was saying be true?
The Russian affixed the tiny bug to his comrade’s shirt and pointed him at a nearby wa
ll. He gestured to Riley. “Your role is simple. You just have to stand against this wall looking beautiful and in distress. I’ll want you to say a few words so your father can get a voice match, but I’ll tell you when.”
He turned to Bram. “As for you,” he said, “you couldn’t be more expendable. You’re only alive now so I can use you as leverage against Melissa.”
“My name is Riley!” she screamed.
“Calm down,” insisted Volkov. “I’ll call you whatever you want.” He turned back to Bram. “As I was saying, you’re only here so you can be used as leverage against Riley.”
Volkov nodded at his female hostage. “Happy now?”
“Not even a little,” she replied bitterly.
“Nevertheless,” said Volkov, “I’ll require your full cooperation throughout. Or your boyfriend will pay the price. Understood?”
Riley looked into his eyes and detected not even a hint of mercy there. “Understood,” she replied.
She positioned herself against the wall and Volkov moved beside her, pressing his gun into the back of her head. “Reactivate the bug on my mark, Sergei,” he instructed his comrade, who was holding his phone at the ready.
Volkov smiled and faced the tiny bug on his comrade’s lapel. “Three. Two. One. Mark.”
Sergei nodded sharply, letting him know the bug was now transmitting.
“This is an urgent message to Isaac Jordan,” began Volkov. “As you can plainly see, I have your daughter. She’s the one whose head is at the end of my gun. And as you are no doubt aware, I’m contacting you using a bug I removed from the car of one Riley Ridgeway earlier today.”
The Russian paused. “Here’s the thing,” he continued conversationally, “I have no interest in your daughter, beautiful as she is. My interest is in you. So I’m going to read off some coordinates. I need you to meet me there at four p.m. Pacific Standard Time tomorrow. Plenty of time for you to make it, regardless of your starting point. I need you to come alone and unarmed.
“I’ll be leaving here shortly to be sure I’m there in plenty of time to arrange for a proper greeting.
Infinity Born Page 14