“And we won’t move on this until I hear the words exoneration come from your lips along with a thorough apology. Understand?”
“Got it,” Young said. “Look for something from me within the hour.”
Hawk hung up and looked at Alex. They embraced, tears streaming down her face.
“Alex,” Hawk said as he drew back. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
CHAPTER 46
Sydney, Australia
SHIELDS LOOKED UP when the military policeman opened the door to the detainee quarters. She roused Mia, who’d spent the better part of the last hour asleep. As Shields eyed the man closely, she stood.
“Are you finally going to let us go?” Shields asked.
“I shouldn’t because of your attitude,” the soldier said, “but I always follow orders and play by the rules, unlike some of you scum.”
“Scum?” Shields said as she walked past the man. “I ought to stick a healthy load of carbon fiber and titanium up your ass for talking to me like that.”
“When you’re so close to being released?” the man said with a faint laugh. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Why?” Shields said, her eyes narrowing “Because it’d hurt my chances of getting out of here … or it’d hurt your pride?”
He led the two women out of the room and into a special interview area with a two-way mirror. After gesturing for them to sit down on a small sofa, he exited and locked the door behind him.
“Wonder what this is all about?” Mia asked.
Shields shook her head. “It can’t be good, especially if Falcon Sinclair is still alive.”
Moments later, a member of the U.S. consulate entered the room. The man introduced himself as Horace Volker and finger combed what was left of his wispy dark hair across his balding head.
“Let’s get right down to it,” Shields said. “Why are we here?”
Volker glanced down at a clipboard in his hand before locking eyes with Shields. “You should know the answer to that since you killed two of Falcon Sinclair’s body guards.”
“Says who?” Mia asked.
“Sinclair told the police that he was asleep and was awakened by a Christina Shields, which would be you,” Volker said, glancing at Shields.
“So, what am I doing here?” Mia asked.
“You were listed as an accomplice,” Volker said. “Now, I’m not here to argue the merits of your case. The fact of the matter is both of the men you killed were wanted by the South African police in the murder of a high-ranking member of parliament. In fact, you did them a favor. However, that’s not what earned you your release today.”
Shields’s eyes widened. “We’re going home?”
Volker nodded. “President Young has called and asked for you to be released. It’s conditional, of course, but something about a special assignment for you.”
“Wait. What?” Shields asked again, her head spinning from the news.
“I was told to get both your signatures on these documents and then to have you call this number as soon as you’re released.”
Volker slid the page across the table to the women.
“Just sign here and we walk free?” Shields asked.
“I trust that you’ll make the call,” Volker said, “but, yes, that’s the deal.”
Shields scribbled her name on the bottom of the page and pushed it back across to Volker. He handed them each a bag with all their personal effects that had been confiscated upon their detention.
“Good luck, ladies,” Volker said. “I trust you’ll make better choices in the future.”
Shields snarled at him before leaving the room with Mia on her heels.
“Is this what it’s like working for the government?” she asked. “They just let you walk out the door even if they have evidence on you?”
“They didn’t have any evidence,” Shields said. “This was all a political show. The authorities here were kowtowing to the most powerful man in this country. And somehow, the president has changed his tune, which makes me suspect about what’s going on.”
Once they left the building, Shields picked up her phone and dialed the number.
“This ought to be interesting,” Mia said.
“Finally, you’re out,” came the familiar voice on the other end of the line.
“Alex,” Shields said. “Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
“Look, I’ll fill you in on all the details later, but the down-and-dirty version is that we have a chance to expose Falcon Sinclair once and for all.”
“I like the sound of that,” Shields said. “Just tell us what we need to do.”
* * *
SHIELDS DONNED a crisp uniform shirt with Sydney Tech emblazoned on the left breast pocket. She approached the gate to Falcon Enterprises and rolled down her window.
“Got a maintenance call,” Shields said to the guard, who then scanned his clipboard.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing anything.”
“Call Sabrina Estes at extension 214,” Shields said. “She’s the one who summoned us. Said it was an emergency.”
“Hold on one moment,” he said, raising his index finger in the air.
The guard dialed the extension, which Mia had wired ahead of time to forward to her phone.
“Sabrina Collins,” Mia said in her best Australian accent as she answered.
“Hi, Sabrina. This is Michael from the guardhouse. There’s a—” he paused as he leaned forward to read the name on Shields’s shirt. “Uh, a Shelia from Sydney Tech here to see you.”
“Oh, good. We’ve been waiting for her. Please buzz her through.”
The guard hung up and hit the button, opening the gate.
“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked.
“I’ve been out here more times than I can count,” she said.
“Good luck,” he said and then waved and smiled at Shields.
She returned the gesture before easing down the driveway leading into Falcon Enterprises.
“That went well,” she said in her coms.
Mia reprised her accent. “Well, that bloke was easy to fool.”
Then Mia gasped.
“What is it?” Shields asked.
Mia’s voice turned serious. “He’s calling me again. What do you think he wants?”
“Just play it cool,” Shields said.
Shields listened in on Mia’s half of the conversation.
“This is Sabrina Collins,” Mia said.
A pause followed. Then Mia spoke again.
“What for?”
Another moment of silence.
“What do you mean you just need her to come back to the gate? We’re dealing with a level five emergency here since we’ve had some of our platforms down for almost a half-hour. Do you know how much money that’s costing the company? And you just want her back to sign in?”
Another few seconds of quiet.
“Just forge her signature,” Mia said. “I won’t tell anyone anything.”
There was a long period silence this time, enough that Shields started to worry
“You do what you have to do, Michael,” Mia said, her voice teeming with exasperation. “But I’ll definitely be letting my team leader know about this when they ask why it took so long for the Sydney Tech repairperson to get here.”
Mia hung up, her anger almost palpable on the coms.
“Is everything all right?” Shields asked.
“No,” Mia said. “Michael wants you to go back to the gate and sign in. But I say screw it. Just know you might encounter some resistance. Flash that badge we made, and you should be fine.”
When Shields reached the entrance to the building, a security guard flagged her down.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’re going to need to return to the main gate,” he said. “Michael needs you to sign the visitor’s log.”
Shields glanced at her watch. “I’m not g
oing to have enough time to do my job here. I’ve got another one lined up in forty-five minutes a few blocks away, and I can’t miss my check-in time. Not here or there, do you understand?”
“I sympathize with your situation, but I can’t let you on the premises unless you’ve signed in.”
Shields shook her head and started walking. “Not my fault.”
“Miss, please,” he said.
“If you want to explain to your boss that he lost a half-million dollars during the time it took me to come back here because you wanted the technician to sign her name on a sheet of paper, be my guest. It’s going to be on you when I fill out my report.”
She looked at his badge dangling from a lanyard around his neck.
“Sam Hillshire,” Shields said aloud. “I’ll have to make a note of your name for my report if you really feel like protocol is worth that much money.”
“Well, no, but …”
Shields didn’t look back, throwing her hand dismissively in the air. “In that case, I’ve got a job to do, Sam.”
She marched off and headed toward the stairwell. She ascended to the second floor and found the server room. While Shields wasn’t certain, she guessed that there was enough space to put several football fields in there.
“This place is massive,” she said in the coms.
“And that’s why we need to move fast,” Mia replied. “Head to the northwest corner of the room and tell me what you see.”
Shields hustled in the direction Mia had indicated before skidding to a stop. The back corner wasn’t just comprised of machines, but there were rows and rows of workers staring at monitors. Shields gasped audibly, enough so that Mia heard it.
“What do you see?” Mia asked.
Shields eased around the back of a bank of servers and slinked to the ground. “There are people watching videos.”
“Can you tell what’s on them?”
“Unfortunately, I can. And I can’t believe it.”
“We need evidence,” Mia said, “not just your testimony. Look for the main server nearby.”
Shields shuffled along the rows near the bank of monitors until she identified the machine she was looking for.
“Got it,” Shields announced.
“Okay,” Mia said. “You know what to do. I’ll take it from here.”
Shields inserted the device into the back of the machine, allowing Mia to connect to it.
“Don’t go anywhere in case I run into trouble,” Mia said.
“Roger that,” Shields said.
After about a minute, Mia clucked her tongue. “You weren’t kidding about this footage. Unbelievable.”
“Yeah, get as much as you can,” Shields said. “We need to get this back to the team as soon as possible.”
“Making backup copies as we speak,” Mia said. “There’s no way anyone will have anything to do with Sinclair and his companies after this becomes public knowledge.”
Shields walked back to the lobby. When she saw Sam, she stopped and gave him a coy wink. “I’ll put in a good word for you with the higher ups.”
He glanced down at her leg. “I appreciate that. So, what happened?”
“Got attacked by a German Shepherd,” Shields said, resuming her walk. “Damn thing gnawed my leg to the bone. Cheerio.”
She pushed open the door and hustled down the steps back to her car.
“Do you always tell stories like that about your leg?” Mia asked.
“I do to people who are real schmucks,” Shields said. “But we’ve got a real story to tell now about Falcon Enterprises. And I can’t wait to share it with the world.”
CHAPTER 47
Los Angeles, California
FALCON SINCLAIR TIGHTENED his grip on the transcript of his presentation as he bumped along in a golf cart. He glanced around at the facades decorating the streets of Paramount Studios, some of the buildings partially exposed as construction teams redesigned the sets. After drawing in a deep breath, he started to focus on his upcoming performance, musing how this event couldn’t have come at a better time for him.
With the news of Nazari’s failure in New York City two days earlier, Sinclair had one final pitch to make to the world. If he was successful, his Freedom Homes would dominate the news cycles for days to come. And then he’d be on the precipice of achieving his ultimate goal.
He’d picked Paramount Studios as his location for the event because he needed the kind of space and audio-visuals a studio warehouse could afford him. While videos were effective for introducing concepts, Sinclair had long since discovered walk-throughs were more awe inspiring. Touching the technology and seeing it at work could launch the type of brand ambassadors that could influence a new wave of prospective consumers. In his rise to the top of the business world, he knew the “cool factor” was just as important as a product’s function. And the experience he was about to offer a group of five hundred hand-selected journalists from around the world would exponentially escalate his vision. The infrastructure to sell his houses was all in place. All he needed to do now was wow the audience.
“You nervous, boss?” asked Rocky as he maneuvered the golf cart toward the warehouse.
Sinclair pressed his hand down on his knee, stopping the shaking. “I’m fine.”
“You’ll do great, sir.”
Sinclair managed a smile as he glanced at his head of security. Two more guards rode on the back. And while Sinclair felt safe from any attack, he’d never felt more vulnerable than when he was on stage. He hated making public appearances when he was the center of attention. It was much easier to control things from backstage, much like one of his favorite characters in literature, the Wizard of Oz. But there was a time when a leader had to step into the spotlight, and Sinclair’s moment was now.
As they drove past the long line of journalists anxiously awaiting the doors to open, Sinclair could feel the energy. He could see their sense of anticipation. Many of them held up their cell phones, capturing footage of Sinclair while he rode past them. He waved and gave a thumbs up signal as they rounded the corner of the building and headed to the back entrance.
Rocky and the other two guards escorted Sinclair backstage where he prepared to make his remarks. A short woman wearing a headset handed him a bottle of water as well as a schedule.
“Here you go, Mr. Sinclair,” she said. “Everything will get started in about fifteen minutes.”
“Can I inspect the Freedom Home one more time?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” she said, gesturing toward the door leading to the stage. “The curtains are still drawn and will remain that way until you signal for us to raise them.”
“Brilliant,” he said before heading toward the structure.
He walked through the house and checked out every major function to ensure that he would not be embarrassed with a faulty device. All he wanted to hear were glowing articles written and reports shared about how Freedom Homes were going to revolutionize the world. He’d gained some traction with the reports out of New Orleans and how they kept people inside safe and fed for a few days in the aftermath of the Zeus Chemical leak. But that hadn’t moved the needle like he’d hoped. Not even the marketing campaign of giving away houses in a lottery for everyone who’d downloaded the app managed to generate much buzz.
Sinclair rubbed his hand over the light fixture, the secret to hiding the cameras. They were virtually undetectable with even the best technology used to sweep rooms for bugs.
Perfect.
Once he finished his inspection, he returned to the green room and awaited his introduction. Rocky stood near the doorway and nodded at Sinclair.
“This is your time to shine, sir,” Rocky said.
“I appreciate the pep talk, Rocky,” Sinclair said, “but don’t worry. Even if I flop today, you’ll still have a job. Plenty of people still hate me.”
“We’ve got your back.”
The event’s producer poked her head into the room. “Mr. Sinclair?”
/>
“Yes,” he said as he stood.
“It’s time.”
She led him back to his spot in the wings and waited for his introduction to end. When the woman on stage finished, she turned in his direction.
“Let’s give a warm welcome to Mr. Falcon Sinclair,” she said.
The crowd applauded with a smattering of whoops and cheers in support of Sinclair. He strode onto the stage and placed his speech on the lectern before raising his hands to silence the audience. He gripped the side of it and glanced down at his speech before beginning.
“As the world has grown, so has its instability,” Sinclair said. “In an age where technology has transformed our way of living, it has remained fundamentally stagnant for the past twenty years. Instead of using new innovations to help address global issues like poverty or hunger, companies have used advancements to line their pockets. But what if you can meld the desire to be profitable as a business while also addressing the issues of our day that have created a widening gap between the haves and have-nots?”
He took a sip of water and then continued.
“Now, you might find it somewhat tiresome for someone like myself to call attention to these things, but I’m not hoarding my wealth for my family. No, I’m wanting to reinvest it into the world. And that brings us to the point of today’s presentation. I want to show you firsthand how our Falcon Enterprises’ new Freedom Homes work as well as give you a chance to explore one for yourself.”
He nodded at the producer in the wings. A second later, the curtains parted and revealed the interior of one of his Freedom Homes.
Sinclair continued his speech, ambling from one room to the next while pointing out the various features of the room. He could hear the responses from the journalists as they oohed and ahhed at some of the things he demonstrated for them. If Sinclair could’ve walked off the stage at that moment, he would have. The Freedom Home demo had done all the talking that needed to be done. But he needed to show them one final detail.
However, he never had the chance.
The lights went out and then images started flashing up on the screen above his Freedom Home. He looked up and gasped in horror as the lights fell dark. Pyrotechnics exploded at the back of the room. Some people in the crowd started screaming before everyone stormed toward the exits.
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