“So Søren figured out a way to pay my father back for that betrayal. It didn’t matter to him that all those other people, including my mother, died on the plane he took down. He called it ‘collateral damage.’ That’s when I realized all the times I’d thought he’d been joking about the things he’d done, he hadn’t been. And that’s when I snapped.”
Shaggy sees the despair on my face and moves in for the kill.
“Where is he?”
I look up. “If I knew that, he’d already be dead.”
His amber eyes narrow. He doesn’t believe me.
“Okay. Let me tell you how this goes. If you don’t cooperate and lead us to him, you’ll spend the rest of your life here.” He points at the floor. “Right here, in this room. No jury. No trial. You’ll just disappear. You’ll get a bucket to piss and shit in that will be changed once a week. You’ll get a cot in that corner to sleep on. Maybe you’ll get a pillow. Maybe not, but definitely no TV and no computer. You’ll eat the same thing every day, for every meal. You like chicken soup?” He gifts me that celebrity smile. “Personally, I find it overrated.”
He stands with a smooth unfolding of limbs. “So. Are you going to help us, or are you going to rot?”
I want to roll my eyes, but I’m too tired to expend the energy.
“Honestly. Why do you think I’m here, Shaggy?”
“You’re here because you hacked into our mainframe, which is the topic for another conversation.” He pauses. “Incredible work, by the way. Off the record, that was the first time I’ve been truly surprised in years. How did you do it so fast?”
“Thank you. And duh, with a universal encryption key.”
Shaggy’s left eyebrow shoots up, like Spock when he’s parsing some bit of human behavior that makes no sense to his Vulcan mind. “There’s no such thing.”
“Right. And there are no alien aircraft at Area 51.”
His other brow shoots up.
“And no, hacking your database isn’t why I’m here. Well, technically it is, but that’s just what got me here. Why I’m here is to help you. By helping you, I help myself, and…well, pretty much the entire human race. It’s time for me to put an end to this game, once and for all.”
The man has the patience of a Buddha. He waits for me to explain myself as if he’s got all the time in the world.
I rub a hand over my eyes. They feel gritty. Suddenly I’m more than tired. I’m completely spent.
The rows of fluorescents overhead flicker and snap. Shaggy looks up, frowning.
With a pop and a sizzle, they’re extinguished, plunging us into blackness.
Into the dark, I sigh.
“It’s been nice chatting with you, Shaggy, but my ride’s here.”
Twenty-Nine
Connor
I don’t know how long I was out, but when I come to, I’m on the floor in the office next to the COM center, flat on my back. They must’ve dragged me in while I was unconscious.
By “they,” I mean the four FBI agents flanking either side of the closed door.
I sit up, wincing, and gingerly touch the back of my head. Sticky wetness, an open gash, a big-ass lump… Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.
I’ve had worse. And right now, I’ve got something much more important to worry about.
One of the agents says into the mic at his wrist, “He’s awake.”
They’re all miked, with small plastic receivers nested in their ears. Two of them have shotguns in hand. All of them are wearing their standard-issue Glocks on their belts. In appearance, they’re almost identical. Average height, medium-brown hair, beige trench coat, utterly forgettable. One of them works a toothpick between his teeth, but aside from that, they could be quadruplets.
I know enough to keep my mouth shut until their boss arrives. I busy myself by wiping the blood from my fingers onto the leg of my pants.
When the door opens a few minutes later, it’s the tall, iron-gray-hair dude who walks through it. He folds his arms over his chest and appraises me with an air of faint disappointment.
“Mr. Hughes—”
“Call me Connor. Where’ve you taken Tabitha West?”
Ignoring my interruption, he begins again. “Mr. Hughes, I’m Deputy Director Overton Downs.”
I wait for a second to see if he’s joking. When no one cracks a smile, I decide he’s not. “That’s a helluva name. Sounds more like a place. In England, maybe. ‘Come visit the spectacular gardens at Overton Downs,’ like that.”
Downs finds my humor lacking. His gray eyes take on a distinctive chill. He gestures to a chair. “Have a seat, Mr. Hughes.”
Guess we’re not gonna be on a first-name basis, then. Somehow I didn’t think we would be. Probably on account of that gun he shoved into my face.
I stand, cross to the chair he indicated, lower myself into it, and wait.
If he were going to arrest me, he’d have done it already, so this little meet and greet must be part of the debrief process. Most likely Ryan, Miranda, and everyone else have been separated and are getting raked over the coals as I’m about to be.
Deputy Director Downs—Overton? Really? What the fuck were his parents thinking?—pulls up a chair and straddles it backwards, very casual, very Mr. Government cool, very “we’re all just friends here.”
I’m not buying it for a second.
“I need to ask you a few questions, Mr. Hughes.”
His voice is clipped, precise as a scalpel. I peg him as an anal-retentive, by-the-book type, which won’t leave me much wiggle room to negotiate.
I nod. “I understand. Where is Tabitha West?”
His look sours. He reaches into the pocket of his trench coat, removes a travel-sized bottle of Tums, flips the cap open, shakes a few pale pink tablets into his mouth, and grinds them between his molars. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
Fighting the urge to curl my hands around his throat and choke the information out of him, I lean forward and rest my forearms on my knees.
“Look. I know how this works. You lunge, I parry. You thrust, I feint. We go round and round, rapiers clashing, until someone gets fatally stuck. Let’s just cut to the chase. You need information about what went down on this op and information about her. Anything you need to know about the op, I’ll tell you. Anything I’ve learned about Søren Killgaard, I’ll tell you, with the exception of what’s not mine to tell. I was entrusted with certain things. I’m not gonna break that trust. And I’ll tell you right now that if you ask me how she did it, I don’t have a clue. But I do know it wasn’t an accident. She knew exactly what she was doing.”
Downs seems surprised. “So you admit she hacked the NSA’s database.”
I scoff, “She admitted it right to your face. And technically, I don’t know exactly what she did because I wasn’t watching, but I do know that you busted through the door screaming bloody murder about an NSA breach, so I think everyone in the room put two and two together without needing a fucking calculator. All that’s a sideshow, anyway. You’re missing the bigger picture.”
He crunches thoughtfully on his antacids. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the bigger picture?”
“Why she did it.”
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
“I’m gonna have to spoon-feed this to you, aren’t I?”
“You’re saying she wanted to get caught.”
“I’m saying the woman does nothing without a good reason.”
Crunch. Crunch. “Hypothetically, why would she want to get caught?”
“So you’d take her wherever you took her. She anticipated that outcome.”
He looks dubious. Even his crunching stops. “Uh-huh.”
We stare at each other. The ticking of the clock on the wall is painfully loud. My patience—never my strong suit—is already growing thin. “You talk to Chan yet?”
Downs nods. “That we did.”
“And?”
“And I think he’s almost as in love with Tabitha West as yo
u are.”
It’s a shot in the dark, but when my jaw tightens, he can see he’s hit his target. He crunches the last of the Tums, swallows, and runs his tongue over his teeth.
His tone turns philosophical. “You want to know the problem with love?”
I growl, “No.”
He taps his temple. “It messes with your head. Turns a sane man stupid. Take you, for example.”
“Let’s not.”
“You were a spectacular soldier, by any measure. Immaculate service record. Such valiant, almost comically fearless leadership during multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, you earned a Medal of Honor, a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, a Campaign Medal, a—”
“You don’t have to recite a fucking laundry list for me, Downs, I’ve got the hardware in a box on my dresser at home.”
“Yet in spite of half a lifetime of discipline, honor, and service to your country, you seem willing to toss it all out the window to protect a skirt. From very deserved incarceration, I might add. What she did is a felony. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act guarantees her twenty years in a federal pen for that little stunt.”
I feel the blood rising inside me, hear a marching drum beating out an old, familiar song.
Semper Fi. Semper Fi. Semper Fi.
Always faithful. Not only to corps and country, but also to the people I love.
“A ‘skirt’?” I repeat, deadly soft. “A word of advice. Do. Not. Ever disrespect my woman within earshot of me again, or they’ll be sending you back to Washington in a body bag.”
I let that sink in. There’s a rustle of movement from the agents by the door, someone getting a better grip on his gun, but I don’t break eye contact with Downs.
“That girl you just reduced to an item of clothing is the most beautiful, brave, and brilliant person I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. Yes, she plays by her own rules, but that’s only because there aren’t any other rules worthy of her. Not mine, not yours, definitely not any government’s. But even with all the power she wields—and believe me, she’s extremely powerful—she chooses not to harm anyone or anything. You think breaking a few lines of code in a government website is a prison-worthy offense? If she wanted to, she could break everything. She’s got a key inside her head to how everything works. Technology, electronics, satellites, weapons, she’s got a road map of the entire system. She knows all its vulnerabilities. She could create chaos and disruption on a global scale, but she doesn’t. She chooses not to.
“Think about that. If you had the ability to do anything you wanted without ever getting caught, what would you do? Make yourself rich? Change property title records so you owned the Hawaiian Islands? Start a war in the Middle East?”
Seemingly unoffended by my threat on his life, Downs considers my question. “I’d stuff my ex-wife’s boyfriend’s computer with kiddie porn and make an anonymous phone call to the relevant authorities.”
“Exactly my point. Think about the pure decency it takes to be able to rule the whole world, and choose not to.”
He mulls that over for a while. “But she did get caught.”
“You’re still not listening. She got caught because she wanted to.”
“Why would she want to get caught?”
I close my eyes, pinch the bridge of my nose for several seconds, breathe in and out slowly for a count of five. That usually helps when I’m developing a massive headache, but this time, no such luck.
“Don’t pop a blood vessel, Mr. Hughes.”
I mutter, “Going in circles like a chicken with its fuckin’ head cut off makes me want to pop something, I’ll tell you that.”
“Let’s recap. For some mysterious reason known only to her, Tabitha West decided to hack into the NSA’s database—”
“Knowing you were on the way, knowing she’d be taken into custody immediately, possibly knowing the exact location where you’d take her.” A thought occurs to me. Wheels turn inside my head. Gears start to click, coming together like fingers interlacing. “But maybe that wouldn’t even matter. Maybe all she had to do was…”
Set the trap.
My entire body goes cold.
Downs cocks his head and says, “Looks like you just had quite the epiphany, Mr. Hughes. Care to share?”
“The only way you’ll catch him is by using me as bait.”
“I still have the dagger…you know what has to happen next.”
“Let the hunt begin.”
I bolt to my feet, knocking the chair over. A sound I’m intimately familiar with instantly follows.
Downs doesn’t need to reach for his sidearm because I’ve got a pair of freshly cocked shotguns and two Glocks pointed at my chest. He looks up at me, his brows raised.
“You know what a margay is?”
Downs nods. “A nocturnal predatory cat native to Central and South America that can mimic the sounds of baby monkeys in distress to lure worried adult monkeys, who the margay then kills and eats. They’re a highly intelligent trickster, but small, so they use brains instead of brawn to hunt.”
When I blink, surprised, he shrugs. “Animal Planet. My ex loved that show. You were saying?”
“I’m saying Tabby just took a page from the margay’s book.”
A pause follows, but he’s quicker than I thought. His face clears with understanding. “She’s pretending to be a baby monkey.”
“Yep. And I bet wherever you took her, that’s where the big monkey is about to go.”
He gazes at me for a beat, and then motions for the others to stand down. They lower their weapons—a bit reluctantly it seems—and stand in tense readiness.
“And then what?”
“My best guess? He’ll take her back to whatever rock he crawled out from under.” My chest tightens at the thought of Tabby alone with Søren, and at the reckless, desperate thing I think she’s about to do.
Downs stands. He takes out the bottle of Tums. He shakes a few into his mouth and starts to crunch. “There are miles between those dots you’re connecting, Mr. Hughes. And even if you’re right, you and I both know he can’t just waltz into a secure government facility and whisk away a detainee like he’s escorting her to a school dance. Where she went makes Fort Knox look like a wide-open door.”
“And yet you don’t look like you’re not buying it.”
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
“Had a little convo with the director of the NSA on the way over—well, you know. Anyway, it seems they’ve been aware of Killgaard for a while now. More like, they’ve been aware of the effects of Killgaard. Described him as a black hole. Things within his orbit get all”—he makes a wiggly gesture with his fingers—“warped. But the man himself is invisible. He can only be detected by indirect observation, by looking at the distorted things he’s left his fingerprints on.”
Warily, he adds, “Meaning no disrespect but…like Tabitha West.”
Whatever he sees on my face makes him take a small step backward. The agents by the door take a step in.
“Does the NSA know where he is?” My voice is an animal rumble in my throat.
He shakes his head. “Unfortunately, no one knows where he is.”
A movement at the door catches my eye. I turn and see two agents walking past. Miranda Lawson is sandwiched between them. She glances over, our eyes meet, and she pales.
It hits me like a lightning bolt.
Heart pounding, I say, “Wanna bet?”
Thirty
Tabby
In the dark I sit, waiting. Listening. Because the walls are made of concrete, there’s nothing to hear except my shallow breaths and the thrumming of my heart.
And Shaggy withdrawing his gun from the holster at his waist.
“If you move, I’ll put a bullet in your brain,” he says quietly. “Nothing personal.”
“I don’t know, that seems pretty personal to me.”
He doesn’t answer or make any other sound. I feel him listening, feel his attention intently focused into the darknes
s that surrounds us, and on the door.
The electrically operated door, which, with the power out, is more like the lid of a crypt. We’re not getting out of here unless someone lets us out.
Shaggy says, “Just stay put. The backup generators will come on in a second.”
That’s what they all say.
After a while when nothing happens, I start to count. It keeps my mind occupied, keeps me from thinking how Shaggy might actually be able to see in the dark with those cat eyes of his and decide to pull the trigger even if I don’t move. Keeps me from thinking about Connor, and what he’s thinking right now.
Keeps me from focusing on how much I wish he were here with me.
Finally, when I’m nearing six hundred, I hear a noise.
Bang.
It’s far away, the sound muffled by the thick walls, the reinforced steel door. It comes again several seconds later, louder and closer than before.
Bang.
“Did you—”
“I heard it,” says Shaggy grimly.
“Gunfire?”
“Or explosives. Charges of some kind. Hard to tell.”
Another thirty seconds and then—
BANG!
The floor vibrates. My gasp is audible.
Speaking low and rapidly, Shaggy says, “Tip the table over. It’s steel, heavy, you’ll have to put all your weight behind it to get it over. If you can, drag it left a few feet so it’s parallel to the door. Then get down behind it and don’t get back up until I tell you to.”
I move without thinking. I’m on my feet, the chair kicked out from beneath me, my hands curled around the cold edge of the table, lifting with all my might. When my biceps fail to do the job, I crouch low, set my shoulder under the edge, and shove using the strength of my thighs.
The table topples over with a crash.
I drag it blindly by one leg to the left as instructed, guessing how far I need to pull it to put it parallel to the door. The sound of metal grinding against cement doesn’t mask the next earsplitting bang, which produces a tremor in the floor that I feel to the marrow of my bones. I quickly kneel behind the table, listening to Shaggy mutter a curse.
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