No Strings Attached

by Julie Moffett

  “Who are the others?” Slash asked.

  “Sam and Charlie, as well as Marek from OSI. The party is ready to start.”

  “Where’s Trevor?” Slash asked.

  “Trevor is now Acting Director of IAD and is being debriefed at FBI headquarters as we speak. Your presence here has been requested from the very top.”

  He didn’t say who at the very top, and what top we were talking about. No one asked for clarification, so I didn’t either. Guess it didn’t matter at this point.

  “Please follow me,” J.P. said, motioning to us. “Even though the area where we will be going has already been processed by the crime team, please don’t touch anything.”

  “Where are we going?” I whispered to Slash as we followed along.

  Slash leaned down and spoke softly in my ear. “They’ve got the surveillance footage from the front door queued and ready for us to review.”

  We followed J.P. around the lawn to a side door that was already ajar and guarded by an officer. He stepped aside and we slipped inside a laundry room, then through to a sitting area with a large screen television and pool table. It looked like it had been set up as a game room, presumably for his kids.

  I’d met Grant only once, but he’d seemed like a nice guy. Slash had clearly respected him. Now there were three kids who didn’t have a father. We passed through the room and down a small hallway until J.P. stopped at a small room to the left. Charlie, Sam and Marek stood in the hallway looking grim and shaken.

  I peeked into the room. It was completely dedicated to house surveillance, both inside and out. It struck me that while Slash had to endure a detail following him around 24/7, the Director of IAD actually had a team of agents living in his house. How bizarre was that? I guess I’d never fully appreciated the sacrifices certain officials high in the government, my boyfriend included, made in the name of national security.

  I swallowed as I stepped into the room. It was crammed with laptops, several large monitors, a couch, a mini fridge and a small table. A cup of coffee sat next to one of the monitors. The swivel chair had been pushed up against the wall, which made me imagine that whoever had been sitting in it had jumped up quickly.

  “Do we know if the hit man ever made it down here?” I asked.

  “It’s doubtful, which is why this area was able to be so quickly processed by the crime unit. There was no time for that. Agent Moraites had already sounded the alarm and engaged the shooter on the front stairs. After the shoot-out with her, he went upstairs to find and confront Grant.”

  “Grant had barricaded himself in a bathroom and alerted 911, but the hit man managed to shoot his way in anyway. It wasn’t pretty.”

  J.P. pulled the swivel chair over and sat down. “Let’s take a look at the surveillance footage.”

  He tapped on the keyboard and a video popped up. According to the time at the bottom right corner of the video, the sedan pulled into the driveway at precisely eight fifteen. The driver got out and walked around the front of the car toward the door.

  “No glances up at the security camera yet,” Slash murmured. “He knew. He’d been here before and knew exactly where the cameras were. He knew there was surveillance on the door.”

  “The hat obscures his face,” Sam said. “Look how it’s pulled down over his face.”

  “He’s about the same size as Henry Chang,” Charlie observed. “That was clever. Someone had either been watching or did their homework.”

  The driver proceeded to the front door.

  “He’s going to have to look at the security camera at some point,” Shawn said. “It’s protocol.”

  The driver rang the bell and sure enough, for a fraction of a moment, lifted his head toward the camera and held up a hand.

  “Freeze,” everyone in the room yelled at the same time.

  J.P. froze the frame. The hand he had lifted partially obscured the man’s face—on purpose, for sure. A closer inspection indicated the driver wore sunglasses.

  “Sunglasses at night?” I said. “There’s a red flag.”

  “Agent Moraites didn’t notice?” Sam asked curiously.

  “Yes. My guess is it happened in a nanosecond and she didn’t notice,” Shawn replied. “Or she saw what she expected.”

  “Can you magnify that frame?” I asked leaning over J.P.’s shoulder and staring at the screen.

  J.P. tapped on the screen until the face was magnified. The face was blurry and slightly obstructed by his hand, but something seemed familiar about the shape of the face.

  “Magnify it more,” I said.

  We were practically looking at pixels now, but I noticed something to the left of the screen. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a dark shadow. It would have been near the left ear of the driver.

  Everyone squinted and then Slash lifted his eyes and looked at me. “It’s an earring.”

  The earring, the small shape of the hand, the chin and cheekbones. It all added up for me.

  “Gentlemen, that driver is not a he,” I said. “It’s a she.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “A she?” J.P. asked in surprise. “You know who that is?”

  “I think her name is Feng Mei,” I said. “She’s the woman from the bar. The hacker who took the money and code and tried to kill me.”

  Sam looked at me in surprise. “How can you be sure that’s her from just this glimpse?”

  “I can’t be a one hundred percent sure, but I feel comfortable with a 96.7 percent certainty. I have a photographic memory. The shape of her face, cheekbones and mouth is familiar. Too familiar to be a coincidence at this point.”

  “Even with the sunglasses obscuring her face?” Sam asked.

  “Even with the sunglasses obscuring her face.”

  J.P stared at me openmouthed. “So, the woman you encountered at the hotel bar is both a hacker and an assassin? Of this level?”

  I glanced at Slash and he nodded. “Apparently so,” I said. “It’s not a stretch. She did a good job of almost killing me. If Slash hadn’t called the police while she was chasing me and showed up in time to save me, I’m sure I would have been dead.”

  Slash tensed beside me and I pretended not to notice.

  Marek shook his head. “Chasing someone to kill them on the spur of the moment is a lot different than a hit of this magnitude. The planning and execution that went into this had to be a long time in the planning.”

  “Looks to me like they just needed a name and an address,” I said. “Exactly what they stole with the hack.”

  “There had to be easier ways to get that than a hack into the NSA,” Sam protested. “Come on, people, this is nuts.”

  “It’s not nuts.” I crossed my arms against my chest. “You can’t just go poking around in databases at the NSA. You have to have a reason, a need-to-know for being in that particular database. Every name, every keystroke is logged. A hack is one way to circumvent that without arousing suspicion.”

  “A heck of an expensive way,” Sam said.

  I shrugged. “Whatever gets the job done.”

  “So, what are we saying here?” Charlie said, aghast. “That the hack was for murder?”

  Slash studied the frozen picture of the driver. “Maybe. We can’t rule it out.”

  Charlie unzipped his coat. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. “But it doesn’t make sense. I’m with Sam. Why a hack? An insider threat at that level could have simply memorized Grant’s address. It has to be something else.”

  “What if they didn’t need or want just one address?” I offered. “Maybe they aren’t sure who they are looking for, so they’re going down a list. Or they intend to take out everyone in the department.”

  The room felt completely quiet, so I felt like I had to clarify. “I’m not saying this is
what that is—I’m just throwing possibilities out there.”

  “So what are you saying?” Sam looked alarmed. “Are we next?”

  “Possibly.” I glanced at Slash and he lifted his eyes to meet mine. “It’s as good a guess as any at this point.”

  “But why?” Marek asked. “What’s the motive?”

  “Revenge,” Slash said, taking my elbow. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

  “Wait,” Marek said. “What do you mean by revenge? Where are you going?”

  Slash glanced over his shoulder at Marek, his eyes dark. “To put a stop to this. I’ll report to Trevor later. We’ve got work to do.”

  * * *

  To my surprise, we didn’t drive to my apartment or Slash’s. Instead Slash drove directly to the Zimmermans’.

  “It’s almost four o’clock in the morning,” I reminded him as we got closer. “Normal people are often asleep at this hour.”

  “They’re not normal. Neither are we. They’re awake.”

  When we got to the driveway, sure enough, the lights were on in the house. Our FBI detail pulled up to the curb and turned off their headlights. I was almost getting used to them following us around.

  Slash and I walked to the front door. Before we could ring the bell, Elvis opened it. “Did you get my message?”

  “I did.”

  I glanced sideways at Slash, wondering when Elvis had contacted him and why.

  We walked inside. Xavier was madly typing something on a keyboard in the living room command center. He lifted a hand in greeting and then pushed his swivel chair down a long table before checking something on another monitor. He made a notation on a piece of paper and stuck the pencil behind his ear.

  “Hey, guys, thanks for coming at this hour.”

  “We were already awake,” Slash said. “What have you got?”

  “We’ve got a confirmed trail to the Red Guest,” Elvis said. “Want to see?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Elvis led us to a laptop hooked up to a large screen. He sat down and pulled up several windows. “Take a look at this. I worked backward from the data you gave me on the intrusion into the NSA. My focus was where did the information go once they were in and had gathered what material they wanted? What trail did they leave on the way out?”

  He pulled up another window, shifted to another string of code. “I can tell you they left a very complex trail. I’m not done tracing that down yet and I’m not sure it will lead anywhere worthwhile. But what was more useful at this point was to run an exhaustive comparison of the extraction data to the code you gave me from last month’s hack into the Transportation Security Agency. The hack you suspect came from the Red Guest.”

  “And?” Slash leaned forward intently studying the code.

  “It’s a match. I can say with near certainty that whoever followed the instructions for the hack worked for the Red Guest. There are other little nuances in the code that support that, but bottom line is, it’s the Chinese.”

  Slash looked over his shoulder at me. “There you go. The Red Guest on a platter.”

  I blew out a breath, leaned against the back of a table. I didn’t know what to say. What could I say?

  Elvis spoke. “I’ve got more news.”

  “Good or bad?” Slash asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Elvis. “I suppose it’s all in your perspective.”

  “And that means?”

  “Jiang Shi, the leader of the Red Guest, is here in Washington right now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “What?” I pushed off the table, incredulous. “Shi is here?”

  “Yep. He’s in Washington as part of an official Chinese diplomatic delegation.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Don’t laugh,” Elvis said. “A special conference sponsored by the joint US-Chinese Partnership for Cybersecurity Peace or better known as PCP.”

  Oh. My. God. The irony.

  “You have got to be kidding,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t kid about something so ugly,” Elvis said. “Slash was right. Apparently China is on a mission to spread peace and cyber cooperation in order to soothe the anger at all the high-profile hacks that have been traced back to them.”

  “By bringing their biggest hacker to the US in this capacity?” I couldn’t wrap my head around this. “It’s a slap in the face.”

  “Agreed,” Elvis said. “Arrogance at its worse.”

  Slash who had been quiet up to this point, finally spoke. “It’s all good.”

  “Good?” I threw up my hands. “What could possibly be good about Jiang Shi being in our neighborhood?”

  “Saves me the trip.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  Slash remained silent.

  It took me a second to get there. “Wait. Slash. You’re not thinking about snatching Jiang Shi. He’s a Chinese citizen.”

  “So is Quon.”

  “That’s different. Quon was caught in the act of kidnapping and torture,” I argued. “Besides, he wasn’t on US soil and he certainly wasn’t part of an official delegation in the nation’s capital.”

  “Jiang Shi is murdering people.” His expression was cold, remote. “Even if he’s not pulling the trigger, he’s pulling the strings. Same thing.”

  “What?” Elvis said in shock. “Shi is murdering people? What the hell don’t I know?”

  Slash tersely filled the twins in about Grant’s murder and my identification of Feng Mei as the probable hit woman.

  Xavier blew out a breath. “Dude, that’s unbelievable. A hit on the director of IAD? Unbelievable.”

  “You’d better believe it,” Slash said. “That’s what things have come to.”

  I needed to bring the testosterone down a level before things got more out of hand. “Regardless of what’s happened, Slash, you can’t go down this road.” I reached over and brushed my fingers with his. “There are rules of engagement.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I shot an exasperated look at Elvis. “Tell him I’m right, Elvis. Please.”

  Elvis avoided eye contact. “I’m sorry, Lexi, but I can’t do that in good conscience. We’ve just confirmed the Red Guest sanctioned the hack, which, by extension, includes the hit on Grant. Grant was a great guy—Xavier and I knew him personally. If the Red Guest is trying to kill you and killing employees at the NSA, then I’m with Slash. I’m not saying we have to do it, but I’m not taking it off the table either.”

  Had the freaking world gone crazy?

  Panicked, I glanced at Xavier. “Xavier, please tell me you’re not going along with this, too.” My voice had taken on a desperate, pleading tone.

  Xavier closed his eyes. “Man, this is beyond ugly. But Slash and Elvis are right. If the Red Guest is shacking up with Quodan and sanctioning hacks and hits on the NSA, I can’t in good conscience say no. If it can be done with the approval of either the CIA or FBI, then I say do it. Cut off the head of the serpent and you hurt the body. It’s been a historical option for thousands of years.”

  Slash finally stood, put a gentle hand on my back. “Breathe, cara. We’re not saying we’re going to do it. We’re just not ruling it out. Okay?”

  “But you will consider alternative courses of action, right?”

  “Of course.”

  We spent the next few hours sorting through our options and discussing the technical parameters needed to construct the code. At some point, my phone rang. I pulled it out of my purse and looked at the number.

  Faylene’s Bachelorette Parties and Supplies.

  I exhaled. “I’m sorry, guys. I’ve got to take this. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I pushed the answer button as I walked out of the living room into the kitchen
for some privacy.

  “Hi, Faylene. What’s up?”

  “I hope it’s not too early to call.”

  I glanced at the time on my phone. It was already after nine o’clock in the morning. “You’re fine, Faylene. What do you have for me?”

  “Well, I’ve put together a couple of package deals for you to choose between.” The raspy sound of her voice, coupled with the heavy Southern accent, made it difficult to understand her. “You can choose the basic, the upgrade or the full deluxe.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked

  “Well, you have more control and more options with the full deluxe, but it’s more expensive. I can email you the details.”

  “Perfect. Shoot the info my way.” I gave her my email address.

  “There is also the matter of the menu, the goody bags, the games and the centerpieces.” she said. She started rattling off a long list of options. I tuned out about a second after she started.

  “Whoa, Faylene, please stop,” I interrupted. I had no idea planning a party was so freaking complicated. “Look, to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what you are talking about. Can’t you just do the regular thing? You know, whatever it is you do for everyone.”

  “There isn’t a regular thing. Everyone is different. It might help if you tell me a bit about the guests and the bride.”

  I blew out a breath. “The problem is I hardly know anyone who’s coming.” Anxiety was feeding my irritability. “It’s a bunch of the bride’s cousins I’ve never met and a couple of our mutual friends. I would presume the women are normal. The bride speaks multiple languages, has a petite stature and is allergic to cat dander. How the hell do I determine games or a centerpiece from that?”

  Faylene sighed. “Okay, I see I’m going to have to change my strategy. How about I provide you with some options and all you have to do is click the box with the option you want.”

  Oh, thank God. Boxes worked for me. Boxes were linear and logical. I could definitely handle boxes.

  “Perfect, Faylene. Thank you so much.”