So they’d eaten and then Joe had shown Felicity the mystery message.
“Was she a chef?” Felicity mused, tapping on her laptop’s nearly invisible keyboard. The keys were barely raised and allowed Felicity’s hands to float and conjure up miracles with what looked like the merest strokes. “Have any chefs gone missing lately?” She briefly consulted a website then sat back. “No.”
For an instant Joe was distracted from the problem of someone stalking Isabel. “There’s a website for disappeared chefs?” he asked, astonished.
“No, dummy.” Felicity shook her head. “I consulted a list of notable chefs and wrote a little algorithm to check for people who were on last year’s list but not on this year’s lists. There were ten people missing but they were all men. Three had died and one is doing time.”
Joe slid his eyes to Metal. Felicity had done all that in less than a minute. “She’s scary.”
Metal grinned smugly. “That’s my girl.”
“Well, someone knows enough about Isabel to know that we see each other on a regular basis and that’s scary, too.” Joe ground his teeth.
“Does she see other people?” Metal asked.
“No.” Joe’s voice was abrupt. Issue closed.
Metal recognized that tone but Felicity didn’t. “How can you be so sure?”
The good thing about Felicity was her smarts. The bad thing about Felicity was her smarts.
“I just know,” Joe said, his tone chilly enough to get a frown from Metal.
Felicity’s head cocked as she studied him. She wasn’t afraid of him in any way, which was good but damn, Joe wished they were in the military and he could shut her down with a command.
Though it was entirely likely that if Felicity was in the military she’d be a general by now. Head of Cyber Command.
“You keep tabs on her,” Felicity said.
Joe sighed. “Yeah.” He made an impatient gesture. “It’s not like I’m stalking her or anything. She’s not in a good way and to tell you the truth, she worries me.”
There, that sounded normal and sane. Concern for a neighbor, no more no less.
“Plus, she is a fabulous cook,” Felicity said dryly.
“Yeah, there’s that too.”
“And probably beautiful, judging by the expression on your face.”
Busted. Joe sighed. “Yeah. She’s a looker.”
Metal rested his arm against Felicity’s seat back and she leaned into it, the movement so natural because she’d probably done that a thousand times.
Metal was a lucky guy. Felicity was a looker, too. Joe and Metal were old enough not to be attracted by looks alone. As a teenager, Joe’d been turned on by just about any girl who didn’t make dogs whine and cringe. The pretty ones had been like catnip. Experience had taught him the hard way that pretty features didn’t mean shit. He’d met some vain and vicious pretty women and his radar was fine-tuned for that. Felicity and Isabel didn’t ping any of his warning buttons.
Like Isabel, Felicity wasn’t vain or neurotic about her looks. She and Metal were lovers, but they were also a team. A pretty cool one, too.
The same with a lot of guys in ASI. At first, Joe had thought it was something in the water out here in Portland. A lot of the guys were in tight, solid relationships. Maybe because the two owners, John Huntington, aka Midnight, and Douglas Kowalski, known as the Senior, had fantastic marriages. Jacko was also engaged to a looker. They were crazy in love, too.
Weird, so many solid couples in one place.
“Someone knows you’re interested,” Metal said soberly. “Otherwise that message doesn’t make sense. You don’t tell someone to look after their neighbor unless you know there’s some relationship there.”
“And you don’t take high-level precautions to hide your identity,” Felicity added. She touched her magic computer. “This guy, or this woman, employed a lot of difficult tricks to hide his or her identity. It’s not just a question of an anonymizer. The person who sent the message had to take a number of steps to hide their identity, and not easy steps, either. That person had to work, and work hard, to hide from me.”
She said it without false modesty. Felicity was the best of the best and she knew it.
“Someone’s watching you,” Metal said. “No way around it.”
“Or watching Isabel.” Joe didn’t know which thought bothered him more.
“And you’re not catching it.” Metal shook his head. “I don’t buy it. You’ve got good situational awareness. You haven’t noticed anything, anything at all?”
Joe shook his head.
“Security cams,” Felicity said suddenly and both men turned to her.
“What?”
But she was too busy communing with her laptop, fingers flying over the keyboard. She sat back and turned the monitor so he and Metal could see. Joe’s eyes widened.
She had some kind of map of their street with an overlay of security cameras with their field of vision. His street with projected cones over several houses.
“Okay, these are the security cams on your street, including yours and Isabel’s. Someone has probably hacked into some of them.”
“Not mine,” Joe said heatedly.
“No,” Felicity said softly. “I set yours up myself and they are not hackable.”
“And I set up Isabel’s system using your equipment and software.” So nobody had hacked his vidcam system or Isabel’s.
“What about the vidcams in the neighborhood,” he asked. “Are they hackable?”
Felicity had kept up the computer patter, fingers flying. “Oh, yeah,” she said and turned the monitor toward him. He and Metal bent forward.
And shit. Sure enough, there was his front doorstep, front and center of the camera view of his neighbor across the street, Edward Crawford, a retired doctor. Isabel’s doorstep was at the edge, barely visible. But when she walked down the small paved path to her gate, she’d be visible.
Felicity scrolled, from vidcam to vidcam, and he got a choppy view of his side of the street down to the park, where security vidcams took over.
“Are these vidcams hackable by someone who’s not you?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” Felicity said. “You’d need a little nimbleness and savvy but they are hackable. You don’t have to be me to do it.”
Again, she said that without false pride. She knew how good she was.
Joe swallowed. “Have they been hacked?”
Felicity frowned. “Now, that I can’t say. Because I’m assuming that whoever is doing this is pretty good. Good enough to cover his traces.” She gave a half smile. “Or her traces. I’m assuming it’s a guy, though.”
“Yeah.”
“You still have that same email address? You didn’t change it to Joe.Harris123 did you?”
Felicity had a thing with passwords and email addresses. All of her passwords were created using a randomizer—and she remembered them all—and her email address was impossible to guess.
“Yeah.” Joe rubbed the back of his neck. “You pounded that home to me. To all of us. So not only is this guy following me and following Isabel, he—”
“Has a stake in this. He cares for some reason,” Metal said.
“That’s the thing that has me worried.” Joe looked at his friend who was looking as grim as he felt. “Someone is watching us who cares. And reaching out and touching me. So, yeah, he’s saying I need to protect Isabel but how do I know he’s a friend?”
Felicity’s pretty face was scrunched up in thought. “I’m not too familiar with tactics, not like you guys are, but didn’t he just show his hand? For what purpose, if not to focus you on Isabel?”
“And you’re already pretty focused,” Metal said, jabbing Joe with an elbow. Metal was a strong guy and his elbow jabs would knock over a lesser man. Joe wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of budging.
“I mean, what does he have to gain?” Felicity persisted. “So I think we’re going to have to take this message at face
value.” She held up a slender hand and started counting the points off her fingers. “One, he’s probably not in town. He’s at a different location and can’t make it in time if she needs immediate help. Two, he’s on Isabel’s side. I think we need to simply assume that. Otherwise the message makes no sense. Because if he wanted to hurt her, he wouldn’t have alerted you to his presence. Three, he’s been able to peg Joe as a good guy and as someone who has a stake in Isabel’s safety. To reveal himself like that to Joe, he has to have done some digging. Though Joe’s military history is probably heavily redacted as to specific missions, the facts are publicly available. He’d know you were a SEAL. And he trusts you. So I guess in a way we’re starting to get a picture of him.”
“Okay.” Everything Felicity was saying made sense. “So now what do I do?”
Felicity cocked her head and smiled.
“Uh-oh,” Metal said. “I know that smile.”
“We do two things.” Her fingers moved on the keyboard. “First, we answer the guy.”
“Okay.” Joe sighed. “So, what am I going to say?”
“You already said it,” Felicity declared, showing him the message she’d sent.
You bet your ass I’m going to protect Isabel.
She stood up. “And now I’m going to go visit our mystery woman.”
Joe’s eyes widened. “Wait!” he said but it was too late. Felicity moved fast when she wanted to. In a second she’d grabbed the pot the beef stew had come in, and which they’d washed, and was out the door.
Joe and Metal looked at each other when the door closed.
“She doesn’t take no for an answer,” Joe finally said, glancing at his friend.
“Nope.” Metal shook his head. “She doesn’t. And she usually does exactly as she pleases. But living with her, I have learned one thing and that’s that she’s usually right. So I’ve learned to stop worrying.”
And he had her back. That went without saying. Metal was always there for her and always would be.
They sat in the silence of the house and simply waited. As SEALs they’d been taught patience the hard way—through pain. So they were perfectly capable of waiting anything out. Because clearly, Felicity wasn’t just dropping off the pot. She was staying at Isabel’s, God only knew for how long.
“So,” Metal finally said, looking at him keenly. “Isabel.”
“Isabel,” Joe nodded.
“She’s pretty.” Metal had seen her when he’d tended her knee.
“Yeah,” Joe sighed. “Very.”
“Pretty women can be dangerous.”
“Can be,” Joe agreed. “But she’s like Felicity. Nice, not nasty. But she’s also...damaged. Something’s happened to her, only I don’t know what and she isn’t talking. It’s like there’s this huge no-go zone she’s created and I don’t have the courage to step into it.”
Metal gave him a sidelong glance. Joe had courage in battle. He’d proved that time and again. He’d spilled blood time and time again, once in saving Metal’s ass. But it was true. Squeezing info out of Isabel that she didn’t want to give—he just couldn’t go there.
“What?” He met Metal’s eyes. “You’re not gonna make a crack?”
“Nope.” Metal zipped his lips. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned lately it’s the power of women. She doesn’t want you to know something, you’re not gonna know it until she wants you to.”
Joe nodded. Man, yeah.
He’d been present when CIA agents interrogated jihadists and their methods had been brutal, even the psychological ones. Necessary, but nightmare inducing. Joe was down with breaking terrorists. The thought of coercing Isabel in any way, however, made him nauseous. But damn, he wanted to know her deal, find out what happened to her.
Because the truth was, there was that really ugly suspicion rolling around in the back of his brain. He couldn’t get it out of his head that she’d been abused. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about but it stuck in his head like a nasty burr. That first day—she’d been hollow-eyed and terrified. Joe knew that look. None of his teammates had had it, of course, they bent but were never broken. But Joe’d spent the better part of a decade in war zones and he’d seen shell-shocked civilians. They had that same look.
Actually, it drove him bugfuck crazy, the thought of someone hurting Isabel. He could picture it in his mind and it was almost more than he could bear. Isabel’s skin was delicate, incredibly fine. The idea of her covered in bruises made his heart beat faster with rage.
Of course, he couldn’t go anywhere with these thoughts. Who would he talk to about it? Metal and Jacko would just look at him funny. And he couldn’t ask Isabel because she wasn’t talking.
Because if Isabel was on the run from some man, if that cryptic message was from someone who wanted her to be safe, well whoever sent it had sent it to the right guy. Joe had never backed down from a fight and never would. And to protect Isabel? He’d go to the wall.
“What are you thinking?” Metal asked. The guy looked like a WWE wrestling champ, a big slab of meat and Joe had seen people treat him as if he was a few sandwiches shy of a picnic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Metal was sharp—he just had nothing to prove and he liked being underestimated.
So Joe knew better than to lie to Metal. But he could put a little Vaseline on the lens and misdirect.
“Trying to figure out what’s wrong with Isabel. What happened to her.”
Metal narrowed his eyes. “You figure she’s running from some guy who hurt her.”
There it was, out in the open. Joe sighed. “Yeah. I think about it all the time. Drives me nuts.”
“I hear you,” Metal said. “Every time I think about that fuckhead slicing Felicity open, I can’t see straight.”
Felicity had been coming to visit her friend Lauren and instead she’d been met at the airport by a guy who wanted to kidnap her for what was in her pretty head. Felicity had escaped because she was Felicity, but not before getting a nasty knife wound. Metal said it still gave him nightmares.
“Men who can do that...” Joe trailed off. Men who could do that weren’t worthy of being called men.
“Yeah.” Metal looked grim. They both got sick at the idea of men abusing women and children.
“So, suppose a guy like that is after Isabel?” It was his worst nightmare. “How would I know about that if she’s not talking? This guy could just show up one day...” He shuddered.
“Like the email said—protect Isabel.”
Fuck, yeah. Joe opened his mouth to answer when the front door opened and Felicity came in together with a gust of cold air. She was carrying something big wrapped in tinfoil and set it on the kitchen counter.
Felicity started slowly taking off her gloves, picking at each finger, enjoying the attention. One glove, the other...
Joe couldn’t stand it. “Well?”
“Well?” she echoed.
“What did you find out? Did you guys talk?”
“Yes, we did. We chatted. And she said absolutely nothing about herself. But she didn’t have to. One look at her and I knew. I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out yourself.”
Joe followed her out of the kitchen. “Figure what out?”
Felicity sat at her computer. Joe could swear that she didn’t touch the keyboard but it suddenly lit up. He’d often wondered if she had arranged her software to mess with their heads. When she was gone from her computer it automatically shut down. When she sat down in front of it, it automatically turned on.
“Who she is,” Felicity answered. Her fingers flew over the keyboard.
“So.” Joe bent as a number of photos appeared on Felicity’s monitor. “Who is she?”
She pointed at the screen. There was some kind of political event, someone at a podium, surrounded by other people. Joe peered closer and frowned. The person at the podium was Alex Delvaux. Joe had been in-country and then in rehab so he wasn’t too up on politics, but it looked like a rally. He remembered that A
lex Delvaux had been contemplating a run for the presidency before being killed, together with his entire family, in the Washington Massacre.
Felicity placed a fingertip over a woman in the background on the podium. The features weren’t clear, all the faces were a blur. She was good-looking but all the Delvauxes were good-looking. Had been good-looking. Now they were all dead.
“So what is it?” he asked, impatiently. He wanted to know what she’d found out about Isabel.
“Here she is. Your next-door neighbor.” Felicity tapped once on the face. “Isabel Delvaux.”
Washington, DC
Phase two was tall and distinguished-looking, with a shock of iron gray hair and craggy features. Phase two was also dumb as a rock, which Blake was counting on.
“Hector!” John London stood up with a fake smile showing fake teeth, manicured hand outstretched. Nice dry handshake. “Sit down, sit down! Can I offer you something? Cup of coffee? They have a nice Colombian roast, hill country beans. Or maybe a cup of tea? Loose leaf Darjeeling, none of this tea bag shit.”
“Tea would be fine,” Blake murmured, knowing better than to ask for a drink, which he would have preferred. London was an aggressive teetotaler, having been a drunk half his life. He was a dry drunk, incredibly vain and a massive hypocrite.
Blake had hated him for thirty years.
“Wife and kids?” Blake asked, sitting across from London in an old cracked Chesterfield. The Voyagers Club, founded in 1895, was proud that it hadn’t updated the decor in over two hundred years. There were no more explorers in the upper reaches of America’s elite, but the old tradition of what happened in the Voyagers Club staying in the Voyagers Club still reigned. As old-fashioned as it was, some pretty high-tech people went over it weekly, checking for spyware. It was as safe a place to talk serious business as existed in Washington.
Elites need safe spaces and this was one. A lot of secret business had been done here and it had never escaped these walls.
“Wife and kids are fine,” London said easily. They all hated his guts, as Blake knew. London had two kids. One was a high-functioning cocaine addict who worked on Wall Street and the other was on her fourth husband. London’s wife was a dedicated fashionista who disliked her husband but who wanted ferociously to be First Lady.
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