“Drop your weapon,” I urge, stress making my voice hoarse.
His laugh is hard and short. “There’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening. Whoever’s coming through that door is getting a belly full of lead.”
“If you resist, it will only piss him off! Just lay down your weapon and get behind this fucking table—”
BOOM!
Following that deafening blast of sound, several things happen at once.
The door flies open with a scream of rendered metal. A concussion of air, hot and gassy, blasts through the room with such force, it blows the table back, taking me with it. I hit the far wall. The breath leaves my lungs in a sharp gust. There’s a crunching sensation in my right shoulder, followed by searing pain. A flash of light, brief but intense, illuminates the room just long enough for me to see Shaggy blown clear off his feet, flung backward until he collides brutally with the wall. His head hits it with a sickening crack.
He slides limply to the floor, where he lies unmoving.
Everything takes on the surreal quality of a dream.
Sound is muffled as if I’m underwater. A murky red light permeates the smoky air. The light moves in odd, zigzag lines, cutting this way and that. I roll to my side, cradling my arm, which hangs at an unnatural angle, and try to regain my balance. I get my legs beneath me and shakily rise.
Crowded in the doorway are imposing figures dressed all in black combat gear. Boots, pants, jackets, gloves. Black helmets cover their faces, reflecting a faint green light from within.
Night vision, I think, at the same time I realize what the strange red light is.
The figures in black each carry a rifle with a tactical infrared light mounted on the bore. Five little red dots land in the center of my chest and wriggle there angrily like a nest of wasps.
Sounding very far away, an emotionless masculine voice says, “Target acquired.”
The men in black swarm into the room to take me.
Thirty-One
Connor
I’m pacing. Back and forth across the entryway of Miranda’s office, my boots wearing a track in her expensive Turkish rug.
Across the large room in front of a wall of glistening windows, Miranda sits behind her imposing oak desk. Regal. Silent. Watchful. Hands pressed flat against the polished wood.
Her hands are still. Her body is still. She gives no indication of stress.
That’s how I know she’s guilty. No normal person faced with a roomful of armed men—and one with the attitude of a bear woken early from his winter hibernation—should be that calm.
The quadruplets are behind me, flanking the door as they did in the room where I woke up, standing in the same tense, gun-gripping readiness that seems to be their default.
Downs stands to one side of Miranda’s desk, hands in his overcoat pockets, staring out the windows. In contrast to her watchful silence, he’s whistling a jaunty tune, rocking back on his heels, enjoying the view.
“My favorite time of day,” he muses, looking into the sky, a pale, glittering blue dome beyond the windows. “You can get so much done in the morning, I find. Don’t you?”
Miranda says flatly, “I’m a night owl.”
Downs glances at her, momentarily disturbed. “Like my ex-wife. Huh.”
Then, with a shrug, he returns to his window gazing and whistling.
After a long, uncomfortable silence during which the only sounds are my footsteps thudding against the floor and Downs’s merry whistling, Miranda says with a touch of irritation, “I’ve already spoken with your associates, Agent Downs. I’ve told them everything I know.”
The whistling stops. “Deputy Director Downs,” he says, looking down his narrow nose at her.
Miranda wears the disgusted expression of someone who’s just eaten a bad piece of shellfish at dinner but is too polite to spit it back onto the plate. “My apologies. I’ve never been a stickler for titles.”
More silence, except for my footsteps. Another moment passes before Miranda, exasperated, pleads, “Connor, will you please sit down?”
Downs smiles, his pleasant demeanor back in place. “Oh, he’s just working off a little steam. On account of his lady friend being taken into custody. I’m sure you understand.”
Miranda shifts her weight in her seat and gazes at some fixed point above my left shoulder. “Yes. Well. I’m sure it’s very difficult. No one enjoys being taken by surprise like that by someone they think is a friend.”
Downs and I share a look. I’ve told him my theory already, and he allowed me to be in the room while he questioned her on the condition that I not interfere.
He didn’t say anything about pacing, however. So back and forth I go.
Honestly, it’s the only thing keeping me from tearing this room apart with my bare hands.
“Indulge me if you would, Ms. Lawson. I know you’ve already been through this, but please tell me what you can about Søren Killgaard.”
A muscle beneath Miranda’s left eye twitches. “Hardly anything, really. Only what I’ve learned through this investigation. I’d never heard of the man until a few weeks ago.”
Downs smiles his government-issue, “we’re all buddies here,” totally untrustworthy interrogator smile. “Understood. Just whatever pops into your head. I’m trying to get a more rounded picture. Everyone recalls different things, but when you put them all together, the puzzle begins to take shape, so to speak. Whatever you recall will be helpful.”
Miranda’s lips tighten, but then it seems she forces herself to relax them into a neutral shape. “Let’s see. Well, he’s obviously an expert at computer hacking.”
Downs chuckles like an affectionate uncle. “You can say that again!”
Miranda offers him a hesitant smile. “And judging by his demands and other communications, I’d say he’s quite well spoken. Intelligent, clearly. Educated.”
Downs is nodding, saying in a friendly way yep, uh-huh, that’s for sure, but at the same time, he’s slowly moving around to the front of her desk so he can get a better look at her expression as she speaks.
My gaze glued to her face, I turn on my heel and pace left.
“What was your reaction when you received his first demand for money?”
“Panic, quite frankly. I called Connor immediately because I thought it merited a thorough investigation. I saw what happened to Sony when they were hacked.” She shudders. “I wanted to avoid that.”
“And what did Connor find?”
When she looks to me as if for confirmation of what I might have told him, Downs says, “Unfortunately, he’s a bit too upset at the moment to provide anything useful.”
When he says the word “upset,” he makes a motion toward his head that’s supposed to be only for her, a conspiratorial gesture that suggests my mental function is sketchy right now on account of the recent relationship between my skull and the butt of a shotgun. Miranda’s mouth makes an O. She nods solemnly in understanding.
“After an initial scan of the network, there appeared to be nothing amiss. Connor then worked in conjunction with my internal IT team to tweak a few things, make the system bulletproof, et cetera.”
“But as it turned out the system wasn’t bulletproof.”
“That’s correct.”
“What happened?”
“Information was stolen. Proprietary information pertaining to the workings of the studio, our projects and the like, along with highly sensitive personnel files, electronic communications—”
“Emails, you mean,” clarifies Downs.
Miranda nods.
“Anything else?”
“Oh, the list was extensive. I’ll have my IT guys catalogue it for you.”
“That’s all right, I just wondered if there was anything else of particular value that came to mind.”
Miranda pauses for slightly longer than seems natural. “Yes, actually. My software was stolen.”
Downs lowers his rangy frame into one of the angular mo
dern chairs in front of Miranda’s desk, crosses his long legs, removes the bottle of Tums from his pocket, and shakes a few out. As if only half listening, he says, “Oh?”
She drums the fingers of her left hand on the desktop. “InSight. It’s a statistical analysis product I developed myself to measure and predict audience engagement.”
Downs tosses back the antacids.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
“Huh. Developed it yourself? Impressive.” Over his shoulder, he asks the quadruplets, “Guys, did we know about this InSight thing?”
The one who’d been chewing the toothpick in the other room—at least I’m pretty sure it was him, they all look so freakily alike—says, “It’s in the report, Deputy Director.”
Downs turns back to Miranda with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Ms. Lawson. You’re not a stickler for titles, I’m not a stickler for reports. I like to leave the paperwork to the bean counters, if you know what I mean. I more of a big-picture guy.”
“I do know what you mean. I’m the same way myself. Leave the details to the underlings, I always say, it’s the big picture that really matters.”
“Exactly! That’s exactly what leadership is!” He slaps his palm on the metal arm of his chair. “Well, I can certainly see why you’re the big boss around here, I’ll tell you what.”
When Miranda smiles, pleased by his compliment, I realize Downs is doing his Columbo impression to soften her up, make her think he’s a bit of a doofus, get her to let her guard down.
It seems to be working.
Hurry, Downs. Hurry. I turn and pace the other direction.
“All right, Ms. Lawson, I’ll get out of your hair in just a moment. Sorry to bother you again, we’re almost done. Let’s recap. A few weeks ago, this Killgaard individual contacted you via email with a threat of extortion, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And after you received that threat, you took the appropriate precautions to prevent any breaches in your network, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And then he somehow got in anyway, yes?”
“Yes.”
His questions are coming faster. Her answers are easy, automatic. They’re getting into a rhythm.
“And once he was in, he demanded more money, yes?”
“Correct.”
“And that’s when our rapid response team arrived to help, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And then Connor and Tabitha West arrived, correct?”
“Yes.”
“After which there were several communications between Tabitha and Killgaard, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“And the information gathered from those communications led to a team being deployed to Miami, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“And when did you first meet Søren Killgaard?”
Miranda answers without hesitation, “Two thousand seven.”
I stop dead in my tracks. Deputy Director Downs stares at Miranda. The quadruplets tighten their grips on their guns.
It’s several long moments before Miranda realizes her mistake. When she does, her face drains of color.
“No. Wait. I-I didn’t…I meant—”
“You meant that you first met Søren Killgaard in two thousand seven.” Downs speaks evenly, quietly, with a dangerous edge to his voice, the friendly, aw-shucks act vanished. “Mr. Hughes, it appears your gut instinct was correct.”
Miranda shoots to her feet. “No! That’s not what I meant! I was confused!” Outraged, verging on hysteria, she looks at Downs. Her eyes bulge with fury and desperation. “You were deliberately misleading me! You were trying to put words into my mouth!”
Like a deer that suddenly recognizes it’s in the hunter’s crosshairs, Miranda skitters back from her desk, panicked, arms flailing, stumbling awkwardly in her high heels, bumping first into her chair and then the wall of windows.
Downs rises. When he snaps his fingers, the quadruplets leap into action.
You’ve never seen four men in trench coats move so blindingly fast.
Stoic, her mascara-streaked cheeks pale, Miranda sits at her desk in handcuffs.
She’s waived her right to have an attorney present in exchange for a promise of leniency for her cooperation. She changed her tune of innocence as soon as she had a few shotguns jammed in her face.
The quadruplets didn’t take kindly to finding out she’d been hiding knowledge of the man who murdered nine of their own. Law enforcement folks are funny like that.
The quadruplets, Downs, and I stand in a row in front of her desk, bristling and seething as one.
“Let’s pick up where we left off,” says Downs. His entire demeanor is that of a man barely holding himself back from committing an act of violence. His hand rests ominously on the butt of his sidearm, a fact Miranda doesn’t miss. Her face bleaches a paler shade of white.
“You met him in two thousand seven. Where?”
She sniffles, looking down, somehow still elegant and regal despite the handcuffs and raccoon eyes. “In Seattle. I was attending the annual meeting of a professional women’s organization called Ellevate. I’d recently founded my own studio and had been invited to speak about young women in business.”
“What about them?”
Miranda looks up at Downs, a glint of defiance shining in her eyes. “About how difficult it is for them to be leaders because of all the cocks blocking their path to the top.”
With a heavy dose of snark, one of the quadruplets observes, “Feminist.”
She snaps, “You try fighting against the patriarchy as a woman in this country and see how far it gets you! If you don’t have a dick, the boys club won’t let you in unless you’re twice as smart and ten times as ruthless. And even then they’ll call you a bitch and a cow and a frigid, stuck-up twat, all because you’re simply better than they are.”
“You have a valid point,” I say.
That surprises everyone in the room, including Miranda, who blinks at me in surprise.
“But that’s a shitty excuse for getting in bed with a terrorist.”
Her eyes swim with moisture. She bites her lower lip and then whispers miserably, “You think I don’t know that?”
“Back up, I missed something,” says Downs, irritated.
“The software,” explains Miranda. “InSight. I didn’t develop it. Søren did. It was my way to get a real foothold in the industry, to crush my competition, all of whom were men.”
Downs looks at me. “You’re spooky.”
I lift a shoulder. “I know.”
“No, I’m serious. You’re scary. I swear it’s like you’re the first guy who looked up in the sky and saw half a dozen stars two hundred million light years apart and went, ‘Hey, that looks like a really big dipper!’”
“Instincts, I guess.”
“Sheesh,” says Downs, shaking his head. “Remind me never to try to blow smoke up your ass.”
Miranda makes a noise of disgust. “Let me know when you two are done jerking each other off and want to get back to the questions.”
When one of the quadruplets sets the tip of his shotgun on her desk, Miranda says scornfully, “Typical male response when faced with an outspoken woman: threats.”
After a tense moment, Downs motions with his chin. The shotgun is reluctantly removed.
Downs waves a hand in the air, indicating she should proceed.
Miranda takes a big breath, expels it with force. She closes her eyes briefly. When she opens them again, she’s regained her composure.
“Søren came up to me after the speech and introduced himself. He complimented me, empathized with the difficulties I’d described. As a foreigner with an accent, he’d also faced discrimination in this country.” She adds wistfully, “Even though he was so impossibly beautiful.”
My back teeth are in danger of shattering, I’m grinding them together so hard.
“He said he found it disheartening that at thirty I’d probably already hi
t the glass ceiling. Although I’d achieved substantial success, my position was insecure. A few flops and my studio would be blacklisted. You have to understand, this business is brutal. The only thing that matters are the numbers on your latest release. Søren implied he’d developed software that would be able to secure my future permanently. He said he’d give it to me at no cost. All he wanted in return was a promise.”
I say sharply, “Of what?”
“I didn’t know at the time. He said it would be a favor, to be called in whenever he needed it sometime in the future.”
Downs asks, “And you didn’t find that odd?”
“Of course I found it odd! But he was so incredibly charming. And young, my God he was young. Early twenties or something like that. I had no way of knowing, I never would have imagined that such a sweet boy with such an angelic face would turn out to be…” She swallows. “What he apparently is.”
“Then what?” I ask.
“Then nothing. Not for years and years. I thought he might never call in the favor. Until…”
When her pale-blue gaze focuses on me, I get a chill all the way down my spine. “Until?”
Her voice is quiet. “Until one day he called me and told me to hire you.”
The chill turns to a deep freeze, all the way to my bones. “What?”
“He refused to say why. He just said to hire you in whatever capacity I liked, and keep you on retainer. And not to tell you he was behind it. I was happy to accommodate him, it seemed like such a nothing request in return for the software that made my company what it is today. I thought perhaps you were old friends, or someone he owed a favor to who needed a job.”
Downs looks curiously at me. “And that was the favor?”
Miranda drops her gaze to the desk. “The first favor.”
I flatten my palms on her desk, brace my arms, and lean in. “What was the second?”
She moistens her lips, hesitating. “The second favor was to let him pretend to hack my mainframe.”
Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) Page 26