by C G Cooper
But who was the spymaster? Not the tall man himself. In Mac’s experience, prime movers didn’t descend from on high to do their own dirty work. No. There was somebody over the tall man’s head, some central figure acting as energizing power to the black-clad trio. Anne, no doubt, knew that figure’s identity. Inside a few hours, Mac would know it too.
A shadow parted from larger shadows as he approached the door to Admin. Mac dropped back a step, reaching back to where the coat concealed his firearm.
“Whoa,” said the shadow. “It’s me. Frosty the Freakin’ Snowman.” Chance stepped forward, into the light.
“Don’t sneak,” said Mac. “I’m jumpy. What are you doing here?”
Chance shrugged. “I felt guilty, you doin’ all the hard work. Can we go in, please?”
Mac tried the door. It was unlocked. He held it for the detective, who passed in under his arm. The inner door was locked. With a wave of Mac’s keycard, it clicked open. Cocooned in blessed warm air, Mac removed his gloves.
Chapter Thirty-Two
They worked methodically, following a blueprint of the office layout on Mac’s phone. Starting with the offices along the south face of the building, Chance unlocked each office with Mac’s keycard. Then, Mac walked the transmitter through the office in a slow circle, pulsing the wake-up signal at intervals. Before leaving, he kicked lightly at the bottom of the door, signaling Chance to let him out only if the coast was clear.
Aside from the cameras in the hallway, which Kreisburg’s team at Langley had under remote control, nobody observed their progress. Making good time, they completed a full sweep of the windowed offices in about twenty minutes. The interior offices took longer, as there were twice as many. They were smaller, however, so the circuit of Admin’s second floor was complete in about an hour.
There were fewer offices on the third floor. The whole middle space had been apportioned as conference rooms. Mac peeked into Chandra’s office in the southeast corner. He felt guilty checking up on her. She’d done everything she could to make herself his ally. Still, he couldn’t play favorites. He entered the dark room and orbited the standing desk. The bug sweep showed no surprises. The transmitter’s display continued to show a graphic of concentric circles radiating out from the dot that represented his position, with the words “NO CONTACT” in blinking red letters underneath.
Ducking out of Chandra’s office, he paused in front of Brian Jarrald’s door. He regretted not taking the gregarious man up on his invitation to chat. The most mentally exhausting aspect of espionage, he’d always felt, was the effort it took not to bring up trivial matters he learned covertly. Any curios or knickknacks he saw for the first time today, he’d have to remember not to talk about until the affable man invited him in again. Then, when he did, he’d have to react to their presence with fake surprise.
He frowned at what a muddle his feelings about the school had become. He’d almost certainly be gone before noon the next day. This struck him as sad, which was ridiculous. He had only to picture St. Alban’s rising from the snow to be instantly reminded of how badly he needed to put the place in his blue sedan’s rear view. Troubled by conflicting emotions, he stared at Brian’s door.
“Something wrong, big man?” said Chance.
“Huh?” Mac started. “No. I was just thinking I’d rather be here by invitation. This Jarrald guy is a character.”
“You wanna skip this one and come back?”
“No. No skipping. We go ahead.”
The door lock clicked. Mac stepped inside, breathing in the smell of leather and musky cologne. In another era, Mac was sure, the wood paneling would have been filmed with cigar smoke. The brandy decanter standing on a side table in arm’s reach of the desk was evidence enough of Brian’s indulgent appetite.
Mac turned on the radio transmitter and began circling the room. He took note of the marble busts of James Watt and Robert Burns, the curiously curved sabre that was certainly not European hanging in a bracket on one wall, and the crowning glory of Jarrald’s eccentricity, a zebra print worsted-wool rug in front of the mahogany desk.
A sliding door on the sabre-hung wall revealed a walk-in closet that was not a feature of Chandra’s layout. Mac poked his head in to find the closet lined with suit jackets in every color except gray and navy blue. Then he paced to the desk, which was old and carved with patterns that were almost runic. Its top was crowded with photos in an eclectic mix of frames. One photo in particular caught Mac’s eye.
He bent to examine it. The photo showed a city street paved with white brick. An ancient half-arch connected two buildings, one hung with ivy. In front of the arch was an open double door. Above the wall into which the door was set, a portion of white fencing and a sign with minuscule lettering could be seen. Mac thought the language might be Arabic.
In the middle of the road stood Brian Jarrald. He had twenty years less belly and was sporting a ginger beard to match his impressive hair. His arm was slung around the shoulder of a woman who looked familiar. Her face was careworn but lovely. She was quite pregnant. From the way Brian held his free hand over her abdomen, Mac knew he was looking at a proud father.
There was a little girl in the picture, too. She stood between the two adults, holding the woman’s hand. Her dark features made it plain she was not Emma Jarrald. Mac remembered the report he had read, how Brian had lost a wife and daughter in a car wreck. The report hadn’t mentioned another child. Perhaps the tragedy had happened shortly after the photo was taken, while the baby was still unborn. He made a mental note to research the oversight and correct it if necessary.
Straightening up, he passed behind Brian’s high back chair. The transmitter pulsed. As he came around the far end of the desk, the concentric circles on its readout vanished. “CONTACT” flashed in red letters. Mac froze, waiting for the display to resolve into an arrow that would point him to the bug.
The arrow appeared, pointing ahead and slightly to his right. The text “2.45ft” gave the distance. Below this was a line reading “Elev +7.15ft.” Mac raised the device and the elevation number spun down. He lowered the device. The number spun up.
Heart thumping, he tapped on the door. Chance let him out.
“It’s upstairs,” said Mac.
Chance had to jog to keep up with his long strides. As he reached the stairs, Mac deliberately slowed, letting the detective take the lead. It was tough. He barely held himself back from exploding past him onto the fourth floor. Chance checked the hallway through the narrow security glass, nodded, and went out.
“Where to?” he said.
“One back from the corner, just like below.”
The transmitter’s display had winked out as soon as Mac was more than a few yards from the office. As he rounded the corner, he watched for it to wink on again. Only a single hallway stood between him and the identity of the covert operative sending encrypted signals to parties unknown. Only a single hallway until he gave Chance the name of person responsible for Tiffany Garrett’s death.
He closed the gap in seconds, skidding to a stop in front of a slender door whose only decoration was a brass holder with slots for two nameplates. The bottom slot was empty. The top had been fitted with a nameplate made of olive-green plastic.
He blinked at the embossed white lettering, reading it again and again. No matter how many times he tried, it continued to spell out, “Mikayla St. Simone, PhD.”
“This it?” said Chance.
Mac looked his way. He couldn’t speak, but he realized as he turned his head that his jaw was hanging open.
Looking at Chance now, thoughts whirled in his head. He saw Chance mouth the words, “You okay?”
Before the sound reached his ears, he’d figured out what he had to do.
With a thousand times more conviction than he felt, Mac nodded and said, “This is it.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
—One Week Earlier: Tiffany—
When Tiffany said his name, Jordan froze. He sta
red at her blankly, muted by guilt. At a gesture from Niko, he clamped his jaw shut and reached for Tiffany’s arm. The kick she delivered to his crotch was vicious and unforgiving. She wanted him to feel the ache of his betrayal.
She had betrayed him first, of course, luring him into the honey trap for which Velvet had recruited Tiffany as bait. The access she had gained to DIOS had come as a direct result of flirting with Jordan, pretending to see past his ghoulish appearance. Unexpectedly, she’d stopped needing to pretend after a few weeks.
When they were alone, Jordan made her feel like the most beautiful, most intelligent, most important person in the world. They’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder, and even in the presence of Niko and Cora, felt unafraid.
Remembering how her initial deception had transformed into something like love complicated her anger, but it didn’t make it go away. She knew what Jordan was, after all, barely the shell of a man, hulled out by the horrible things Niko had made him do. What a fool she’d been, convincing herself there was something left of him to save.
For months, she’d taken his confession in the warm comfort of her bed. Even after what he did to that girl in the park, she’d believed he could make it back. Niko was to blame, after all. But wasn’t Tiffany guilty too? She’d let Niko’s game go on far too long.
It made no difference now, of course. Velvet had promised her that they could rid the world of this evil. Now that Tiffany was on the receiving end of that evil, the hope that her mentor could deliver on that promise was all she had to hold on to.
Niko dodged around the cringing Jordan, crooking Tiffany’s elbow in his own. He tried to slip for a half-nelson, but Tiffany spun with his momentum. She seized his mask, trying to snatch it off like she’d done with Jordan’s. But the red-eyed mask was stitched to its wearer’s collar. Niko tripped her to the ground. The force of the impact made her want to vomit.
Shoving Jordan aside, Cora struck out at Tiffany’s stomach. The kick wasn’t one of her strongest — Tiffany knew this because her spine was still inside her body afterwards — but it was enough to make her ball up, hugging her body like she was cradling a baby. Cora stooped over her, aiming Jordan’s pistol at her head. The eyes behind her mask were dark pits of madness.
“You won’t shoot,” said Tiffany, pausing to cough up phlegm. “Too loud.”
Niko said, “Of course we won’t. What would shooting you prove?” His tone was detached, as if all her efforts to fight back on the stairs and here on the roof had been cataloged by his robotic brain as unimportant, forgotten.
Tiffany opened her mouth to scream. Before she could draw breath, Niko’s broad, gloved hand, covered her mouth and nose. She thrashed but couldn’t move him.
Puckering his lips, which she could make out through the balaclava’s mouth hole, he scooped up a handful of snow. Swiftly and mechanically, he pushed it into a gap between his glove and her face. She spat the snow out, but he repeated the motion, again and again, until her nose and mouth were clogged. Melted water trickled down her throat. Her eyes bulged with the effort to breathe. She was drowning.
From her position on the ground, Tiffany tried to strike again and again. Cora pinned one arm while Niko batted away the other.
“Help Cora,” Niko commanded Jordan. In a moment, the pale face she’d learned to love appeared. Jordan pinned her other arm.
She bit at the snow, chewing and swallowing like a rabid animal. It was no use. She couldn’t suck enough air to sustain her need for oxygen. After what felt like an eternity, her shoulders slumped. Her world darkened as her vision narrowed. She’d lost the will to fight.
Cora and Jordan sat her up. Gagging, Tiffany puked up water. Her throat burned. Through her tears, she could see Jordan’s blank expression.
“Rise,” said Niko.
Jordan took a moment to respond but not so long Niko felt the need to repeat himself. Tiffany spat out the last of the snow as Niko’s fist took her breath again. She tried to wrench her arm away from Cora, but without effect.
“Don’t,” Tiffany said. She hated how puny her voice sounded, but she was trembling too violently to do more than squeak.
Jordan turned his head. Niko slapped him. Jordan gaped at him, shocked. Keeping one fake blue eye on Tiffany, Niko pulled something out of his jacket. It looked like a small thermos or a guy’s body spray can stripped of its painted label.
Handing the object to Jordan, Niko said, “Do it.”
“It has to be you,” Cora said.
For an awful second, Tiffany wondered if they meant for Jordan to beat her with the cylinder.
Not looking her way, Jordan took the cylinder and twisted off the top, revealing a plastic nozzle.
Tiffany tried to scream. Niko silenced her with a backhand across the face.
“I— I can’t,” said Jordan.
Niko reached for the spray can, but Jordan pulled away. “No!” he said, loud enough to echo. In a flurry of blows so fast that Tiffany could only see the after effects, Niko brought Jordan to one knee. Instead of wrenching the spray can away, he whispered something to the rebel.
Niko motioned to Cora. She responded by dragging Tiffany backward by the hair. Tiffany kicked at her, but Cora pounded the butt of her gun into the middle of Tiffany’s back. The force of the blow was incredible, forcing a gasp out of Tiffany. Cora shoved her captive forward. Niko caught her, and put her in an arm lock but didn’t squeeze.
Jordan was shaking.
“Do it now,” said Niko.
Nodding, Jordan raised the spray can. Tiffany pleaded with her eyes, but she could tell that Jordan wasn’t seeing her anymore. He had a look she had seen before, on the one, terrible day when she attended the “training session” with Niko.
She held her breath. He struck her mouth with the back of his hand, making her feel his knuckles through the glove. But she didn’t break. He struck her again. Snarling, she shook her head. He struck her again.
As he drew back his hand for the fourth time, she shouted, “I hate you!” as loud as she could. Jordan blinked. Cora clapped her hand over Jordan’s thumb, pressing it against the nozzle. Tiffany heard a faint hiss.
Niko let go. Obedient to a signal she didn’t see, Jordan tugged her around to face the opposite direction. There was nothing to see. Only a span of snowy rooftop framed by a low parapet and the blinking red light of a cell phone tower, far away on a distant hill. As she strained for breath, flakes of snow drifted onto Tiffany’s face. A flurry had set in, blown in on the steady breeze.
The night was calm. Tiffany felt numb, exhausted. She wanted to lay down and sleep for days. Wouldn’t that be nice?
A song began to play. Tiffany glanced to her left and saw Niko tilting a phone in her direction. She recognized the track he was playing from a relaxation playlist Jordan had compiled for their anniversary. Some tripped-out, synth-heavy instrumental from a Pink Floyd tribute band. She’d listened to it on her headphones countless times.
At a gesture from Niko, Cora palmed Tiffany’s cheeks, turning her head to face forward.
“Pay attention,” Niko said. “This is for science.”
As much as Tiffany wanted to ask what he meant, she found that she could neither speak nor move, only stare at the red light flashing on-and-off in the distance.
“Go to it,” said Niko.
She tried to say, “What?” but nothing came out.
“Go to the light,” said Niko. The metallic rasp in his voice had become a chainsaw growl. He stepped sideways into her peripheral vision. The red ring around his eye gaped and shimmered. It hinged open, revealing itself as a serpent’s mouth. A forked tongue flicked past dripping fangs. Behind the mouth, mounds of snow humped themselves up, arranging themselves in serpentine coils. They began to slither, shuddering across the roof.
The snow sharpened, became splintered glass. It stung Tiffany’s cheeks as it fell. Through holes in her eyelids she saw it tumble out of a darkness that was not the night sky, but the vast, loathsome belly of a tenta
cled abomination. Discordant music filled her head. It reverberated, swelled, became the howl of the monster’s limitless hunger. Her pulse skipped. The beast’s crystallized saliva slashed at her throat. She looked for a way out, any way out, desperate for escape.
Niko’s voice was honey sweet, mother gentle. “Go to the light, Tiffany.”
Tiffany ran, terror falling away as she obeyed his command. She sprinted along a shining path through the middle of the reptilian avalanche and the windblown shrapnel. At end of the path, the winking light of home beckoned.
Her right kneecap hit the parapet first. The collision ignited a firestorm of pain that burned the psychedelic fog from her mind. Too late, Tiffany realized the gas was some kind of hallucinogen, a mind-controlling poison that had sent her running.
And it had killed her.
She was already tipping over the wall. Tipping, tumbling, falling. She had just enough time, before the void took her, to glance back at Jordan. He was standing stock still, looking in the direction of the blinking light she had mistaken for safety. No human expression showed on his face. The snow-dappled starlight shadowed his eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
He’s shed his skin, Tiffany thought. I’ve loved Death, all along.
In the split-second before she hit the ground, she dug a hand into her pocket and grasped hope.
Chapter Thirty-Four
—Day Four: Mac—
Grease was sizzling in the pan when Mac heard a groan from the living room. He gave breakfast a good stir and looked around the kitchen, making sure the stage was set.
The bottle of codeine tablets was sitting on the counter, but he’d hidden the rest. His laptop was open on the table beside a couple of empty tumblers and what was left of the scotch he’d swiped from Brian Jarrald’s office. Chance’s shoulder holster hung on one of the chairs. Mac psyched himself up. He only had one shot at staying on the detective’s good side.