Specter: Circuit Series Book One

by Dailey, Lacey

  And believe me, I tried tracking them down. Each gift I tracked down to the exact place it was bought and what time the transaction happened. Each time I found what made me close to yanking my hair out.

  Cash.

  My little gift giving phantom paid in cash.

  But I was no quitter. And finding out where the gifts were bought was child’s play for someone who’s been hacking more than ten years. So, I took seven minutes and hacked into the store's security cameras.

  Bingo bitch.

  I had to wait for the right moment considering two out of the four stores they used didn’t have cameras and one didn’t even bother to hook them up. Businesses still thought they could use them as a scare tactic to prevent shoplifting. It worked on some level but not enough to warrant not turning the damn things on.

  So on the fourth time, I found her.

  Yep.

  My phantom friend was a girl.

  I’d watched her as she walked up to the register at a candy store and purchased one hundred and four dollars worth of candy. I chomped on my breakfast as I studied her movements. She looked young. I’d say too young to know how to be sending candy to hacktivists, but what the hell did I know? I was twenty-three and looked like I was going on twelve. I got carded trying to go to an R-Rated movie.

  Still. The girl looked so young. The quality on the camera was shit, and I couldn’t do much to fix it while I was sitting at my counter in Fred Flintstone pajama bottoms eating Lucky Charms. I didn’t like to hack too much on my personal computer. So I shoved more marshmallow goodness in my mouth and dealt with it.

  “Who’s that?”

  I choked on my cereal, milk threatening to come out my nose. “Give a dude a warning!”

  Lilah chuckled, looking down at her heels. “I wasn’t actually trying to be quiet. You’re just focused.”

  I turned my laptop screen to give her a better view and pointed with my spoon. “This is my phantom friend who left me all that candy last night.”

  “Oooo. She’s pretty.”

  I rolled my eyes. This chick had been borderline stalking me, and my sister is first concerned with the way she looks. “Lilah, this is the girl who knows all my secrets.”

  “All your secrets?” Her eyebrows raised as she rounded the counter and towards the coffee pot. “Does she know you pissed the bed when you were fourteen?”

  “I hate you.”

  She burst out laughing, pouring too much sugar in her coffee.

  And she gave me shit over my Diet Coke.

  “Run facial recognition and figure out who she is then.” She waved her hand, sipping her coffee slowly. “Hurry up before I have to leave. I wanna know who she is.”

  I gaped at her. “I am not hacking into a facial recognition system on my personal laptop. Especially since I don’t know who this person is or what they want. I’m not gonna give them more ammunition if they’re working with The Feds. Circuit is a million times more secure.” I slurped up my sugary milk and wiped at my milk mustache with the back of my hand. “I’m taking the day off. You want to know who she is? Take the day off too and come with me.”

  Her face twisted like she smelt something funky. “Never going to happen.”

  It was easy for her to blame her desire to stay far away from Circuit on not wanting to miss out on a day’s worth of work. But I knew it had more to do with Cruz. I wouldn’t even begin to pretend I knew anything about the dynamics of their relationship. It was all one big mystery. Fitting. Considering Cruz was half of the relationship.

  “Ya know.” I said, standing from my place at the counter and placing my bowl in the sink. “You are the only person who has been inside Circuit that isn’t actually part of Circuit. You should feel special.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I am special. Specter is my baby brother.”

  “Ace has a sister. Polly has no idea Ace spends his evenings as Mischief.”

  She stared me down, her stormy eyes growing darker. “I don’t know where you are going with this.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  She finished her coffee, her eyes never leaving mine. “You’ll fill me in later.”

  “True.” I agreed. I’d tell my sister everything. Phantom girl didn’t just know where I lived. She knew where my sister lived too. “But it’s not as cool as watching it play out on Cruz’s forty-two-inch touchscreen monitor.”

  Her eyes finally left mine. She placed her mug next to my bowl and grabbed her purse off the counter without another word about Circuit. “Enjoy your day off.”

  “Lord, please don’t let today be the day Craig burns the place down.”

  She flipped me off and headed towards the door. “I sincerely hope you change your pants before leaving the apartment.”

  “Don’t dis my jammies!”

  Once the door slammed shut, I fixed my gaze back on my computer and tried to figure out if I knew this girl from somewhere. I doubted she was a former classmate. I went to a small, private high school and knew all the people I graduated with by first and last name. In college, I was a recluse. Ace and I locked ourselves in our crappy apartment and spent our evenings playing League of Legends and hacking into shit.

  As I studied her and the way her white hair spilled down her shoulders like a curtain of snow, I decided I wouldn’t ever have forgotten her. She was… gorgeous. Plain and Simple. Despite the shitty camera quality, I knew that for a fact. She looked almost angelic with her snow-white hair and skin that reminded me of vanilla ice cream. Her stature was petite and not at all threatening. If she didn’t already look and seem enough like a ghost, she wore a long white dress that went down to her feet and draped around her small body. I half expected her to rise a foot off the ground and float right out of Lily and Millie’s Wonder Emporium.

  I slid off the stool and grabbed my computer, walking the five steps it took to get to the living room and plopped down into a burgundy recliner my sister despised. It wasn’t exactly trendy. And didn’t at all match the hues of gray and blue my sister had in here, but it’s mine. I bought it in college with my first paycheck from my first actual job, and it’s been in my possession ever since.

  Not to mention, it was comfy as hell. It may be burgundy corduroy, but the cushions were stuffed with clouds.

  I sat back, pulling on the lever that engages the footrest and relaxed with my laptop propped on my stomach. I clicked rewind on the screen and watched her as she walked up and down the aisles, packing six pounds of candy into a small basket. I observed the way she kept her eyes from meeting anybody else’s and handed the lady at the register the perfect amount of change and didn’t bother to wait for a receipt.

  If it weren’t for the way she lifted her head to brush the hair from her eyes, I would’ve never seen her face. I wasn’t really in the business of talking to people of the opposite gender. Actually, I was pretty fucking awkward and failed epically at it. I had one girlfriend in college. It lasted less than three months, and I haven’t had big enough balls to ask a girl out since. I was an introvert, through and through. My last girlfriend dragged me out to bars and clubs, begging me to go to group outings and spend my Saturday mornings going for walks. She talked to so many strangers, it actually made me cringe. I would’ve rather stayed in and watched a movie. Or played video games.

  Yep. I knew how much of a loser I was. And I was okay with it.

  Mostly.

  Because if my phantom girl wasn’t seemingly stalking me, and I’d just met her on the sidewalk or we happened to run into each other in the deli down the street, I’d be all sorts of disappointed with myself when I let her walk away without attempting to learn her name.

  My lack of experience with the ladies meant I wasn’t great at pick up lines or knowing which words to use when complimenting them. But if I had to choose something worthy to say to my phantom girl for the first time, I’d wait until she lifted her head to brush her hair from her eyes, and I’d ask her if she was okay.

  Seeing how I was both a pro
ud introvert and walked everywhere I could, I was an expert at watching people. And the more times I rewound the footage and studied this girl, I noticed she seemed wound up. Jumpy. As if she were terrified of someone or something. The way she scooted a few steps away when another shopper stood next to her and scanned the same small shelf told me she had a hard time around others. There was no missing the way she angled her body to avoid anybody’s accidental brush or the lack of her lips moving. It appeared as though she didn’t speak once. Didn’t even lift her head until it was her turn to pay and it could no longer be avoided.

  She reminded me of glass. I’d only been able to see her through the bird's eye view of a low-grade security camera, but she appeared so fragile. Like she’d crumble if I snapped my fingers too loud. And the more I watched her, the more I wondered if she’d already crumbled and somehow, it was Circuit that helped put her back together.

  Question after question about this girl filled my head until they spilled out of my ears. I was determined to answer every single one of them. But first, I just wanted to know her name.

  7

  Wren

  Marshall strode into Circuit looking like he was just chewed up and spit out. His normally pressed dress shirt looked like it just came from a fight with the dryer. His tie was crooked and suit jacket missing. Brown eyes were sunken into his face, his lips pressed into a line as he made his way through the maze of workstations and towards Cruz. There was a manila folder in one hand and a coffee in the other. If I had to guess, I’d say that coffee is the only thing keeping him awake.

  “She ain’t a damn ghost.” Marshall clipped, dropping down at his desk and rolling his neck.

  Ace trotted across the building, dropping his hands to Marshall’s neck and kneading aggressively. When Ace wasn’t breaking the law, he was working as a masseuse at a spa. Why? Because he had no idea what to do after high school. The thought of going to a university made him wanna hurl, and he wanted a job that didn’t require a suit and tie. He saw a brochure for a program, thought “I love touching people” and signed up.

  Marshall made a sound of appreciation, closing his eyes.

  Ace beamed, patting the top of his head. “Can’t have our little chocolate swirl all wound up."

  If Marshall’s eyes were open in that moment, they would’ve rolled to the back of his head. The shit that comes from Ace’s mouth is borderline offensive.

  Marshall came from mixed parents. His dad was white and mom was African American, making his skin the color of hot chocolate after all the marshmallows had melted inside.

  Marshall's membership of Circuit has lasted triple the time mine has though he was rarely around. He was an intelligence analyst at the FBI, risking ten times more than the rest of us. He was the walking definition of a double agent, warning us when the FBI was getting too close, and giving us intel on a new project.

  His Circuit name was Judas.

  The moment my phantom girl’s face appeared on the massive screen built into one of Cruz’s desks, we’d both went quiet and called Marshall. I choked on nothing but air while Cruz re-ran the software. I’d witnessed a lot of weird ass shit in my time at Circuit. Cruz probably quadruple that. I was prepared to find out she was a missing person. Or that she’d somehow been in jail and was out now. Maybe one of our hacks had helped a family member of hers. Maybe she wanted to join the organization. I was even mildly prepared to handle it if she were some sort of cop.

  What I wasn’t prepared to handle was the idea that my phantom girl... was actually a phantom. What Cruz and I found first was a missing person’s report filed by Rod and Janice Maddison more than two years ago. That was unsurprising. What was surprising and had me questioning every single move I ever made in life was the death certificate.

  Her name was Sage Maddison, and she was dead.

  Sage’s funeral was announced in The Washington Post five months after she went missing. The article basically told us squat. Gave no more than a picture of her with rosy cheeks and a beaming smile that looked nothing like the girl on the footage, and a few sentences explaining she’d been believed to have died.

  If it were a normal day, I would’ve believed she was dead. It’s not exactly hard knowledge that if a person is missing more than seventy-two hours, the chance they’re dead escalates to ungodly high percentages depending on the area one lives.

  After Cruz and I got a short message from Marshall stating he’d hit the motherload in the FBI’s database, we let him do his thing and focused on the three people who were poised in black in front of a church.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon learning all we knew and about Sage’s family. Her father Rod was a prosecutor that worked at a General District Court here in Arlington. Her mother Janice worked as a middle school English teacher until three weeks after Sage’s disappearance when she quit her job. She grew up with a brother. Brett. He was four years older than her and pulled himself out of classes at Trinity Washington University around the same time his mother quit her job.

  It seemed like Sage’s disappearance should’ve shaken the town more than it did. Sadly, I wasn't at all shocked the public heard nothing of her. Arlington was a sister city to DC, where bad shit happened more than it should. Sage got filed away like the other runaway teens and nobody thought anything of it. Her parents believed she was gone enough to throw her a funeral.

  And by the looks on their faces while they stood at the door of her funeral, Sage’s death destroyed them all. Her poor mother had permanent tears on her cheeks as she clutched her son’s hand. Brett didn’t even open his eyes for the picture. He kept his eyelids closed and chin down as if he were talking to her. And her father? The man looked as though he didn’t want to believe it. His face was stone, refusing to crack or show the emotion he had to have been drowning in.

  Cruz and I went silent, staring down at the photos and information of her family, attempting to swallow with thick throats and heavy hearts. It’s clear by the footage Sage is not dead. And any decent human would find it absolutely gut-wrenching to learn her family grieved her anyway.

  And after I learned her name, I was desperate to know why the world thought she was dead.

  And that’s where our double agent came in.

  “Sage Maddison was kidnapped.” Marshall announced, standing swiftly out of his chair. He tore off his tie and walked up the steps to join Cruz and I on the platform. He slapped down the folder and pulled a USB drive from his pocket, sliding it into the back of one of Cruz’s computers. It took two clicks of the space bar before we were staring into Sage Maddison’s life over the last two years.

  “Two years ago.” Marshall started, smacking the mouse and pulling up a news article on a bank robbery. “Sage and her best friend Trish Summers stepped into Wells Fargo Bank at exactly fifteen hundred.”

  “Duuuuuude.” Ace groaned, dropping into Marshall’s chair. “Real people words, please? Some of us didn’t care to learn military time.”

  “Three o'clock.” Marshall clipped. “She stepped inside the bank at three o’clock. Four minutes after that, this mother fucker and his band of assholes showed up.”

  “Kade Wilson.” The name left Cruz’s mouth with a heavy dose of disgust the moment the man’s face appeared on screen. I cringed at his mugshot, tasting bile in my mouth. There was thick, brown hair matted to his forehead, dark eyes rimmed with red as he snarled at the camera. When he turned to give a profile view, the dried blood crusted to his face stood out against his sticky skin. I’d bet my riot points the man was high as a kite when this picture was taken.

  And I doubt he went down without a fight. The dude was a monster. As slimy as they came. He ran two major drug rings in the US, changing their location of operation every three years to stay underground. Not only that, he was heavily into trafficking. Took and sold humans of all genders and races to make a quick buck.

  The thought that this man had anything to do with Sage made it harder to keep the vomit down.

  “Kade
Wilson and three other men robbed this bank-"

  “Why?” Ace blurted. “He’s a God damn drug dealer! Why would he do that?”

  “Don’t know, man.” Marshall rubbed the top of his head, tugging on the short dark strands. “Some say he needed fast cash. My supervisor thinks he did it as sport.”

  The color left Ace’s face.

  “It says they killed everyone inside.” Cruz rasped, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

  “Everyone except Sage.” Marshall cleared his throat. “Kade kept her.”

  “Kept her?” I burst out. “What does that even mean?”

  Marshall’s eyes went void, staring directly at my chest though it was likely he wasn’t seeing anything. “I think only Sage knows what that meant, Wren. All we know is that Kade spared her life, threw a canvas money bag over her head, and held her for sixteen months.”

  “Wait.” Ace flew from Marshall’s seat. “If she was taken, why did her parents assume she was dead?”

  “That’s the thing, man. Her parents didn’t know she was taken. They didn’t even know she left the house with Ms. Summers that afternoon. They were both working.”

  “And what?” Ace snorted. “There ain’t no cameras in a bank that show her being taken?”

  Marshall’s muscles went taut. “They took them down with a gunshot.”

  “You’re fucking with me.”

  “Wish I was, man. Footage picked up Kade and his friends walking into the bank. They shot out the lenses the moment they walked through the door. Sage said she and Ms. Summers were coming from the bathroom when they heard the shots firing. Forensics reports Trish died almost instantly from a shot in the chest. My guess is Sage decided to attempt to run and was taken seconds after that.”

  “Mother fucker!” Cruz spat.

  Marshall cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. “I have the footage. If you guys-"

  “No.” I choked out, a cold sweat breaking out on every surface of my body. My throat felt dry but I knew if I tried to drink water, it’d come right back up. “No. I do not want to see the moment dozens of people die.”