by Jack Mars
Camilla nodded once. “Got it.”
“And if you’re lying and I catch you using, I’ll throw you out in the snow myself.”
Camilla’s throat flexed. Sara had seen her friend’s hotheaded tica roots show themselves on more than a couple occasions, standing up to guys twice her size, but at Sara’s threat she merely nodded meekly.
“Got it. Um, bathroom?”
Sara pointed down the hall and Camilla scurried off, closing the door behind her.
She leaned against the counter and sighed. This was not at all how she’d imagined her evening going—but at least she wasn’t alone. And if Camilla truly wasn’t using anymore, this could be a real opportunity to help a friend. Something in the older girl seemed… different than it was before. As if something was broken. Whatever that guy had done to her seemed to have had a serious impact on her, enough to send her running from Florida to seek out a friend she hadn’t seen in four months.
She thought of that support group in the community center. What was it called again? Oh, right—“Common Bonds.” Sharing trauma, sharing hope.
She and Camilla shared trauma. Maybe they could share hope too.
But only if they could avoid sharing a relapse.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Maya used her dad’s spare car key to unlock the SUV and slide behind the wheel. It wasn’t hard to get past the gate that admitted entrance to Langley’s parking lot; she’d simply flashed her West Point student ID and told them she was here to be interviewed for an internship. The guard had waved her through, him knowing that the security checkpoint inside the building would confirm her story and her knowing that she wasn’t going that far.
She glanced up at the enormous compound, the white and teal contemporary structures, the dark blue windows.
Wonder which office will be mine.
She hadn’t given up on her dream of becoming the youngest CIA agent in history, though if she ever made it back to West Point she would have serious catching up to do. One way or another it was going to happen. Maybe she would change her name so that no one accused her of nepotism; but then again, no one knew the great Agent Zero by his real name of Reid Lawson anyway.
That was for the best; she didn’t want to have to explain to anyone that her goal had almost nothing to do with her father. In fact, she’d made the resolution at a point in her life when she was furious with him for the lies he’d kept from her and Sara. For the fiction he’d weaved around her mother’s murder. No, Maya’s motivation had come from her own experiences at the hands of Serbian human traffickers. It was those men she wanted to stop, to grind their industry to a halt, to see them imprisoned in dirt holes in the ground where the sun would never shine on their faces again.
Despite the dark thoughts, she smiled and waved to the kindly old guard at the gate house on her way out of the parking lot, him giving her a puzzled frown and her wondering if he’d even gotten a good enough look at her to place her face a second time. Unlikely, she decided.
As she navigated back to the main road, she reviewed what she knew in her head.
One: Dad is looking for a former CIA agent with the first or last name of Connor.
Two: There was a doctor involved. Was some kind of procedure done on this guy?
Three: Alan was helping him.
It wasn’t much to go on, but she at least knew where to start. As she headed there, she thought about Sara and leaving her alone in the apartment. Sara was sixteen, almost an adult, certainly liked to act like one. But at the same time, she was more like her sister and her dad than she’d ever admit. She wouldn’t ask for help when she needed it, and she’d definitely never admit that she didn’t want to be alone.
Why? Sara’s words in her head. Why do you need to help him?
It was a valid question, and not one she’d been entirely honest in answering.
Because I feel utterly useless. That was one answer. Because if I’m ever going to go back to that school, I need to know that I’m capable. That I deserve what I want.
If she was being honest, even only with herself, she needed to succeed where an actual CIA agent had not.
She parked the SUV two blocks from Third Street Garage and dialed Alan on her cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Maya wondered if he’d gone with her dad to wherever it was he’d gone. She left her rucksack in the car, opting for a smaller bag of necessities that anyone would think was a purse. Then she walked the short distance to the garage. She didn’t actually think anyone was following her, but she couldn’t shake her dad’s suspicion that their apartment was bugged—and if the apartment was bugged, the SUV might be tagged too.
Third Street Garage was a simple place, a boxy building with three bays and a small attached office. Maya knew that behind this place, forming an L shape with the garage, was a small apartment where the burly mechanic “Mitch” lived. Mitch, who had once taken Maya and Sara to a WITSEC house in Nebraska for their safety. Mitch, who had taken a few bullets for them when members of a mercenary group came to seek them out. Mitch, who was the alias of former CIA agent and now CIA asset Alan Reidigger.
But the office door was locked. All three garage bays were shut tight. Maya cupped her hands around the small office window and peered in. It was dark inside. She unzipped the small purse; this was a perfect opportunity for her to exercise one of her “extracurricular” skills, the ones she had learned on her own time during West Point breaks when she wasn’t going home or speaking to her dad.
Inside the purse was a pick set. She’d had plenty of time to practice when all the other kids and most of the faculty were gone home for holidays, picking the locks of other dormitories, of classrooms. One afternoon she’d gone down an entire corridor, unlocking every door, and then going back the way she came and locking them back up again.
She chewed her bottom lip as she worked the picks in both hands, feeling for the sliding pin tumblers as she kept an eye out for onlookers. After about two minutes she felt the final pin fall into place; the knob turned, and the door swung inward.
Hold up a second. One of the other skills she’d picked up had been profiling. She’d consumed about a dozen books on the subject, and while she wasn’t particularly well-versed in practice, there wasn’t much she didn’t know about theory.
Alan is a paranoid ex–CIA agent. There’s no way his defenses would be this thin if there was anything worth finding here.
She slipped into the office and closed the door gently behind her.
Unless he knew that others would think the same… which means anything worth finding would be cleverly hidden.
Maya quickly searched the small office, the drawers of its rickety steel desk, the undersides of the two ratty guest chairs, behind a wall calendar and under a loose corner of the carpet. She checked the decade-old desktop computer for hidden files. She stood on the desk and lifted a panel of the drop ceiling, finding nothing but dust.
Then she pushed through the door that led to the garage bays. Two of them were empty, but the center one was occupied by a red sports car, definitely older than she was but in absolutely pristine condition. It stood out like a sore thumb in this otherwise dark and gloomy place full of rusting tools and the smell of grease.
Maya circled it twice, slowly, thinking of Occam’s razor as she did. The explanation that required the least amount of assumptions is usually the correct one. The car was mint; there were no smudges on the hood from greasy fingers lifting it for repairs. But, she noticed, there was the slightest of fingerprint oil on the driver’s side door. A close inspection of the passenger side told her the same. Behind the exhaust pipe at the rear was a dark mark on the concrete where fumes had stained it.
Two men got in this car. Or one man got in on both sides. Car repairs don’t require getting in the passenger seat. Someone turned it on and sat here with the engine idling for some time. None of those were assumptions; they were facts. The single assumption was that there was more to this car than met the eye.
The steering wheel was clean. As she’d suspected, this car had been detailed but not driven. But there was some dirt on the floor mats on each side. She had the increasing feeling that her intuition had been right, that two men had sat in this car, turned on the engine…
So no one would hear them speaking if anyone was listening in.
“Yo, Mitch?”
Maya froze at the sound of a male voice drifting to her through the open door between the garage and office. She quickly leaned over, pulled the car’s door closed—fingerprints be damned—and laid herself across the passenger seat.
“You here, man?” The voice sounded young. “Door was unlocked… Mitch?”
If he heard me close the car door, I’m screwed.
Sure enough, a moment later there was a silhouette against the tinted window on the passenger side. The latch clicked, and the door swung open.
Maya, seated in the driver’s seat with her legs folded against the door and her torso sprawled over the passenger side, found herself staring up at a young white guy, mid-twenties at best, with blond dreadlocks, a fuzzy patch on his chin, and an expression of utter bewilderment in his eye.
“Whoa!” The guy leapt back. “What the hell?!”
“Wait,” Maya said lamely. “Just let me explain…”
“Uh, no thanks. I don’t want any part of whatever this is.” Apparently this guy had the complete wrong impression about Mitch’s garage. “I’m just gonna… go.” He spun on a heel to leave.
Maya couldn’t just let him go. She planted one foot against the driver’s side door and pushed off, propelling her body across the seats and headfirst through the open door. She tucked into a shoulder roll, came up on one knee, and threw out a hand. Her fingers just barely closed around the strap of the guy’s messenger bag as he tried to scoot out the door that led to the office.
The strap went taut; the guy’s legs flew out from beneath him, and he landed on his back on the concrete. “Oomph!”
Maya scrambled to her feet as the guy struggled to catch his breath. She kicked the door closed with one foot and put herself between it and him.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Me?” he wheezed. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Mitch’s. And I don’t know you.”
The guy rolled over with a groan and got to his knees. “Well, I’m a friend of Mitch’s, and I don’t know you either.”
“That’s…” Maya frowned. “That’s a fair point, actually. Fine. My name is Maya.” She’d managed to stay honest so far, but now seemed like a good time for a slight pivot. “Mitch is… away. He sent me here to retrieve information.”
“Away where?” The guy staggered to his feet.
“None of your business. Who are you?”
The guy sighed resignedly. “Name’s Jay. I work in… IT.”
Maya raised an eyebrow. “IT?” A hacker. He’s got the intel Alan was helping Dad get. “I’m going to need that messenger bag.”
Jay’s left hand clutched the bag suddenly. Protectively. “Still don’t know you. Where’s Mitch gone?”
“He’s gone…” Maya bit her lip, wondering if she could play a trump card here—if this guy was snooping in CIA databases, he probably knew some things. Yet she scolded herself for even considering it, since she’d just been thinking about nepotism. “He’s away with my dad. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Agent Zero?”
Jay’s eyes narrowed at that, but Maya stared resolutely. Slowly a grin spread across his narrow face. “Agent Zero? You’re telling me that the Agent Zero has teenage kids—”
“I’m nineteen—”
“Fine, that the Agent Zero has adult kids, and that Mitch works with him?” Jay laughed. “Prove it.”
“Prove it?” Maya scoffed. “Prove that my dad is a secret agent? You think I carry a card around or something? I don’t have time for this.”
“Sorry. No proof, no bag, no info. I have no way of verifying that anything you say is—”
Maya kicked out suddenly, using her left leg to deliver a smack to the back of his right knee with the flat top of her foot—not to hurt him, but to buckle the leg. As his knee gave and his body pitched forward, she twisted her hips and kicked out again, this time with her right, the shin smacking solidly across his chest.
Neither blow was intended to harm him much, but the quick one-two sent him once again to his back on the garage’s concrete, and elicited another “Ooph!” of deflated lungs.
“How’s that for proof?” She knelt and scooped up the bag quickly. “Are you going to stay right there, Jay?”
He flashed her a weak thumbs-up.
“Good. Because that was me trying not to hurt you. I’m taking this.” She slung the messenger bag over one shoulder. As she turned toward the door, she noticed a set of keys dangling there, and she bet she knew what they fit in. “These too. Now I want you to stay right there, just like that, until I’m gone.” She slapped the black button for the middle garage bay and the door rumbled upward, bringing with it the biting February air. “Once I leave, count to one hundred. Then close this place up and lock it before you go. Mitch will be in touch.”
Maya rounded to the driver’s side of the Skylark and slid behind the wheel. The passenger side was still open; she leaned over to pull it closed, but not before issuing one last warning to the “IT” guy. “If you try to contact Mitch before he contacts you, I’m going to tell him you stole his car.”
Jay muttered something that Maya was pretty sure was “bitch,” but she let it slide and shut the door. A twist of the key brought the powerful engine to life, thrumming beneath her fingers on the wheel like a growling animal.
It wasn’t the most inconspicuous ride she could have chosen. She was practically begging cops to pull her over. But damn, it feels good.
She backed out of the garage bay and drove the Skylark the few blocks back to her dad’s SUV to retrieve her rucksack. After making sure no one was watching, she left the keys on the driver’s side wheel well. She could call Sara later and have her retrieve it. The classic Buick was practically calling her name.
She got back into the Skylark and drove a couple of miles, eventually parking in the lot of a pharmacy to see what she’d taken from Jay. There was only one thing inside the messenger bag: a black binder, inside of which was about thirty neatly punched pages. It didn’t take her long to discern that these were stolen CIA profiles on doctors—neurosurgeons, to be precise—all of whom had been contracted by the agency between four and five years ago.
That’s a pretty specific timeline, she noted. There were nine of them in all. Two of them were marked as since deceased. But it was the final page of each surgeon’s profile that caught her attention the most. They were bank statements, dated sometime during that year with a single transaction highlighted.
Every single one of the neurosurgeons listed had received a deposit in the tens of thousands from a company that was actually called General Consulting, Inc.
They really could have come up with something better than that.
Maya paged through the profiles. Two were dead. Another had retired and moved to California. She couldn’t very well go hopping around the country after these doctors. A few were still active, it seemed, and even local.
There was a standout, however; one particular neurosurgeon, a Dr. Howard Bliss, had been the only one to receive a six-figure payment from General Consulting. He owned his own practice in the Flatiron District of New York, near Gramercy Park, and lived on the Upper East Side.
It was farther than s
he’d hoped to have to go. By the time she reached the city, it would likely be dark. His office would be closed.
Am I really going to drive to New York, go to this guy’s house, and try to shake him down? A neurosurgeon with ties to the CIA, when I’m hardly aware of what I’m even looking for?
Maya started the car again, and for some reason the resonant rumbling of the Skylark’s engine strengthened her resolve. She reminded herself why she was doing this in the first place. If she couldn’t accomplish this one task, she didn’t deserve the lofty goals she had set for herself.
Yeah. I guess I am.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zero popped the latches on the large black footlocker at the rear of the plane and lifted the lid as the Gulfstream hurtled over the Atlantic at top speed. None of them doubted that Shaw and Walsh were tracking the jet and were well aware it was heading in the wrong direction, but there had been no attempt to contact them.
They want to see where we’re going first, Zero reasoned. His superiors wanted to see just how many direct orders they would defy—the short answer, he knew, being “all of them.”
At least Penny had ensured they were well supplied. Beneath the lid of the footlocker was a wide shallow tray laden with numerous gadgets and implements, not the least of which were flashlights, zip ties, sunglasses, radios with wireless earpieces, and a trio of satellite phones. He tugged on the tray and it lifted easily, unfolding into four tiers like an oversized toolbox. Beneath the first tray were weapons, including his favored Glock 19 and the compact LC9.
He couldn’t help but smile; one of the black Glocks was clearly inscribed with a slashed zero on the barrel. He lifted it, the weight of the gun familiar enough to tell him it was fully loaded. His right thumb rested naturally on a soft oblong pad; a biometric trigger lock already encoded to his thumbprint.