To Catch a Rat

by S J Grey

  Maybe not a hotel, then. More like a cheap side-of-the-highway motel? “If you give me your number, I can give you updates on the house. I’ll store it under a fake name. You could be Agnes. Or Edith. Or wait—how about Pauline?”

  She chuckled, and the sound warmed him inside. Damn it to hell, but he missed her with an ache that cut as deep as the hole in his thigh. “Nice try, Mark, but no. I haven’t decided if I trust you yet. For now, you go through Mum and Dad to get to me,” she said.

  “Eh, it was worth a try. Is Caleb there?” He held his breath. Would she try to keep up the pretence that she didn’t know where he was?

  “I’m not answering that.”

  That meant yes. “Okay, but if he is, I want you to pass a message to him. Tell him I want to help.”

  There was a pause. “And how do you propose to do that? You’re an accountant, Mark. Or was that another lie?”

  “I used to work for a security company. And I still have access to equipment you can’t buy on the street. Camera jammers, like the ones the guys used in your house, Em. Bug sweepers. Surveillance equipment. I’m guessing you’re in reaction-mode at the moment, while he figures out a long-term plan. I can help with that too. I know people that can get him a new identity. It won’t be cheap, but I can make those connections.”

  He let the words hang there, aware of Sandra’s wide-eyed stare burning into him. He glanced at her and gave a little shrug. “You still there, Em?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you pass that on, please?” He’d no doubt at all that Rush was listening to the call, and while it was beyond unlikely that he’d take the bait so quickly, Mark wanted to plant the seed. Give Rush the illusion of an option.

  “Even if you could do all that, why would you?”

  “Because I love you, and I want to make sure you’re safe. While you’re somewhere out there with Caleb, you’re not.” There wasn’t much more to say, but he wanted to leave her happy with him. “Hey, Minerva slept with me last night. She purrs so loud.”

  “And are you sniffly this morning?”

  He heard the smile in her voice. “Yeah, but your mum gave me some great pills. She tells me you want a cat of your own one day, and I’d be happy to give that a try. Minerva’s converted me.”

  “Okay. Go give her a snuggle from me. Catch you later.”

  “Bye, love,” he said, but she’d gone.

  Back in his room, Mark used his phone to place a call to Gordie, but it went to voicemail. “I’m following up some leads and will update you by end of day.” By then, he might have gotten a look at either Sandra or Geoff’s burner. Sandra kept hers in her jeans, and Geoff was likely to keep his close as well. Mark could be as light fingered as any pickpocket, but that skill worked best on people not expecting to be robbed. He needed to come up with a valid reason to use the burners, rather than trying to extract one unseen.

  Until then, he’d try to narrow down Rush’s location to a manageable list of options. He tucked his phone into his messenger bag with the laptop, and then headed out with Geoff and Sandra. Today’s plan was straightforward. Check in with his team and update them on the new developments, then start the clean-up at home. He felt a pang of disappointment. He no longer had the right to think of it as home. It was Emma’s house, and the security system needed a radical overhaul before she returned.

  He accepted the ride from Geoff and sat in the back of the man’s truck, sifting through messages on his phone. If Rush was hiding out with tourists, finding him was akin to finding a needle in a freaking giant haystack. This would be so much easier in the UK, with automatic number-plate recognition systems on every highway, and CCTV on every corner. Here in New Zealand, everything had to be done the old-fashioned way. Legwork.

  Getting his hands on one of the burner phones was his goal for this evening.

  The police had gone quiet on their hunt, and Mark didn’t recall seeing anything in the news since the day Rush escaped. Were they using social media to appeal to the public? Or was he not considered dangerous enough? He’d get Jonathan to make some calls and hit up his contacts on the force.

  They arrived at Emma’s house, to find it still sealed off as a crime scene, even though there didn’t seem to be any activity at the moment. Mark’s car was untouched, as was Sandra’s, and Emma’s was still neatly parked outside the garage.

  “We should both be home by the time you get back,” said Sandra, twisting in her seat to face him. “But if we’re not, there’s a spare back-door key hanging up in the glasshouse.”

  “Really? Not very secure, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “We have an alarm that we set at night, and floodlights on the doors. Well, on the front door, but we’ve never needed to worry about security before.” She gave him an indulgent smile. “I’m still not convinced that we’re at any higher risk, but if it makes you feel happier, I’ll stop leaving the spare key there.”

  He rewound her words in his head. “You don’t have a light over the back door?”

  “It kept going off, and was so annoying that we disabled the sensor. The light from the kitchen reaches the back doorstep, anyway.”

  Mark made a mental note to upgrade their system too, before he finished this job. They’d been good to him. It was the least he could do.

  He eased behind the wheel of his car and felt under the driver’s seat. His secure phone was still there, moved to a new hiding place after Emma had seen it in the glovebox. He’d been careful to keep his personal phone separated from anything to do with his mission, but it seemed pointless now. The replacement that Jonathan provided had all the numbers he might need.

  Driving was uncomfortable but not impossible, and Mark was glad he didn’t have far to go. His team worked out of a small, rented space in the nearby town, sharing a building with an architect, a lawyer, and a chartered surveyor. They looked like a satellite office for a respectable accounting firm, and the proximity meant he didn’t have to commute into Wellington every day.

  “You look like shit,” said Devin, by way of greeting when Mark hobbled in. “Don’t tell me—you’re trying to get the sympathy vote?”

  Mark gritted his teeth and forced a smile. “I’m trying to get the job done. I finally have a solid lead.”

  “Gordie just phoned,” said Lin, “and he was pissed. You need to call him back, pronto.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Gordie was in a bad mood? Nothing new there. Mark allowed himself a moment to feel smug. He had a lead so fuckin’ solid, it could be coated in concrete, and Gordie would be pleased. Bringing Rush in would be sweet. Promotion beckoned.

  Mark went into his cubbyhole of an office and closed the door before making the call.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’ve good news. We have a reliable lead on Caleb Rush. He’s in hiding with Emma Blackthorne, and they’re using burners to communicate with her parents. I just need to get my hands on one of their phones, and I’ll get her number. I’m confident they’re mingling with a biker rally, and we can pinpoint their location from the phone GPS.”

  “How quickly can you do that?”

  “Getting access to the phones is proving difficult, but I’ll do it tonight, narrow down their position, and pick them up in the morning.” And then his job here would be done.

  “That won’t work. We need to move sooner.”

  With all the planning and build-up this op had taken, digging in for the long game, another twenty-four hours was nothing. “I can’t, without making her parents suspicious. I need to keep them onside in case he gives the pickup team the slip.”

  “We have a situation here.” Gordie blew out a frustrated breath, and Mark was instantly on his guard.

  “Looks like the fucking Russians have reverse-engineered his code,” said his boss, “and they’re using it on us. Either that, or the target you’ve failed to bring in has sold them a variant. It’s a bit of a coincidence. He’s been free for two days, and boom, we’ve been hit.”r />
  What? “Has it gone far? The virus?”

  “It’s spreading faster than an Australian bushfire in the dry season. Our Middle Eastern assets are compromised, and it’s chewing through the database for Europe and South America. Our systems are locked out, and we’re sitting here like ducks at the shooting gallery.”

  “Holy shit,” whispered Mark.

  “We could do with some divine assistance right now. Quite apart from the shitstorm when the Prime Minister learns our most secure databases are blown wide open and all our global assets have been identified, we have an even more pressing problem.”

  There was more?

  “Remember when the WannaCry cyber-attack hit the NHS and took their systems offline? The Russians have bundled a little present for us. GoldRush. They’ve crashed the emergency network. Thousands of 999 calls are going unanswered. It’s a clusterfuck of supreme magnitude, and there’s only one person that can stop this.”

  “Caleb Rush.”

  “Correct. He refused to hand over the kill switch when he sold it to us. We need that, and we need it now.”

  “I’ll talk to Emma’s parents—”

  “The time for talk is over. The news hasn’t broken yet, and the media outlets have been told to keep a lid on it, to avoid panic breaking out, but it’s only a matter of hours before that changes. Get the local police to bring the parents in for questioning. Throw the bloody book at them. We need Rush’s location, and we need it now. I want that bastard’s head on a shiny platter. You hear me?”

  “What about the deal?” The deal he’d been building up to, for the past two years.

  “If that fucker sold the code to the Russians, the only deal I’ll consider is whether he spends the next thirty years in solitary or in maximum security. I won’t be screwed over so he can make a quick buck.”

  Mark had no reason to trust Rush, but this didn’t sound right. “With respect, sir, Rush has been off the grid since he escaped. It’s highly unlikely that—”

  “I don’t care. Find him, and find him now, otherwise you’re looking at a posting to Afghanistan. Or maybe Syria. Whichever looks worse.”

  In that moment, Mark didn’t care where Gordie sent him next. The further the better. Somewhere Emma would never have to lay eyes on him again. The flickering, wistful hope he carried inside for a happy-ever-after guttered and died. He had to hand her parents over to the police, in order to give up Rush’s location, and the only person who knew they were in contact with Rush was Mark.

  He had no other option. The idea of the UK trying to function without an emergency switchboard was un-fucking-believable. One car crash or house fire, and how many people would die because the ambulances and fire engines wouldn’t get the call? Of course the press had to withhold the news; it’d be chaos. But they couldn’t keep it quiet for ever.

  Mark went into the outer office, phone clutched in his hand. “We need Jonathan to call it in to the police, to pick up Emma’s parents. They have the contact details for Emma. I mean, for Rush.” Focus. “Lin, call him now. This is as high a priority as it gets. I’ll text him the details of what they need to search for.”

  There was a stunned silence, and then Lin grabbed her phone.

  “You okay, bro?” Devin looked uneasy. They wouldn’t know what was unfolding back home. Mark’s home.

  “Yeah. We need to end this. Right now.” Mark sank into the nearest chair and started a text to Jonathan, tapping out the details he knew.

  Two burner phones. One each, for Sandra and Geoff. They held Emma’s number, and since Emma was undeniably with Rush, that would give his location.

  They gave Mark a bed and fed him.

  Geoff and Sandra were helping Rush evade the police. They were accessories.

  They bought Mark’s favourite tea, because it reminded him of home.

  Emma would be justified to hate him now. He hated himself.

  He pressed Send and waited for the notifications to drop in. Delivered. Seconds later. Read.

  An answer flew back.

  Thank you. Mobilising now. Stay away from the location, to avoid complications.

  Complications. Yeah, right. How long until they were picked up? Geoff said they were going straight home, so it would be any time now. And it wasn’t like they were going to be interrogated or anything. Just arrested.

  Fuck. How would Mark feel if it were his parents, being arrested for helping one of his trusted friends?

  He couldn’t face Lin or Devin and their curious stares, so he limped back into his office and closed the door. He needed to think.

  Would Rush sell them out to the Russians? On the assumption they planted the first set of cameras in Joss’s house, and then stormed in and trashed the place, killing Joss in the process, it was incomprehensible that he’d ally with them.

  If he wanted money?

  Maybe, but from everything Mark knew of the guy, Rush had strong principles and morals. In another world, Mark might have become friends with Caleb Rush.

  What if the Russians were leaning on him, threatening him with something? That made more sense, but what collateral was left? His sister was gone. He’d no family left.

  Emma. What if they threatened Emma? Might Caleb respond to that? Hell, yes.

  Mark spoke to her an hour ago, and she was fine then. He didn’t know when the cyber-attack was unleashed, but he could find out.

  He called Gordie.

  “Yes?”

  “When was the virus released, sir? How long ago?”

  “Between three and five hours. It wasn’t picked up until the servers failed. Any updates yet?”

  “The police are mobilising to pick up Emma Blackthorne’s parents. We’ll know more soon.”

  Gordie grunted in response and disconnected.

  Mark let out a relieved breath. They weren’t threatening Emma—or at least, not directly. It didn’t make her any safer, but there was fuck all Mark could do about that. When Emma was arrested alongside Rush, it was guaranteed that Mark would be the last person she’d want to speak to.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was no use. Mark couldn’t sit here and do nothing. He couldn’t stop Emma’s parents’ being arrested; that ball was already in play. But he could minimise the shock. It would piss Gordie off to the max, but he couldn’t think about that now.

  “I have to go out,” he told his team, as he made his way outside to the car. Adrenaline helped him move quicker, and he drove back to Sandra and Geoff’s house. Fuck the rules. He was going to tell them a version of the truth. Enough to get them to hand over the burner phones and—if they knew it—Rush’s location.

  Their cars were both parked outside when he arrived, and there was no sign of the police. That was a relief. He could break the news and convince them to cooperate fully. He knocked on the front door, and then rang the bell, but there was no answer. Maybe they were around the back.

  He took the path down the side of the house, past the neat little herb garden, and to the back door. He couldn’t see Geoff or Sandra, and heard no voices at all. Shit. The police had moved quickly and taken them already. It was barely twenty minutes since he contacted Jonathan.

  The back door was ajar a short way, and Mark paused in his tracks. He couldn’t leave it like that, open to any passing burglar. He’d make sure it was secure inside, and then he’d go back to the office and wait for updates.

  Walking into the kitchen, the first thing he saw was Minerva, sitting on the counter and gazing at him. She gave a little chirrup and stood, stretching out one paw towards him. It looked as though she was saying hello, and he automatically reached out, to run a hand along her back. Her fur was soft.

  “Hello, puss,” he said. “Sandra released you early.” Minerva chirruped again and pushed against his hand. Amused, he stroked her some more. “I don’t really like cats, you know,” he told her, now sliding his fingers over her head, but she ignored him and purred instead.

  A muffled ping sounded on the other side of
the kitchen. What was that? A timer? The oven wasn’t on, and the stove top was clear. He didn’t think the microwave was running when he came in, but he checked anyway. Empty.

  “Sandra? Geoff?” he called out. “Anybody home?” They might be in the office area, or the space they used for packing and storage. He turned around to leave the kitchen, and paused at another ping. Huh? He was too curious to ignore it.

  It came from somewhere near the kettle. He scanned the shelf above it. A cat-shaped egg timer stared down at him, but that hadn’t been running either. He tugged open the nearest drawer and found kitchen utensils. Nothing that should make a noise.

  A third ping was much closer to hand. Next to the teabags and jars of coffee? What was he missing? He picked up the cardboard box of Earl Grey. It was heavier than it should be.

  He flicked up the lid, and found a cellphone. Judging by the strip of tape across the front, and the S written over it, this was Sandra’s burner.

  Why the fuck was it buried in the teabags? He huffed a laugh. Great hiding place, Sandra. It was clear to see where Emma got her smarts from, with a mother as intelligent as hers.

  He pressed the button on the front and up popped three new messages, from Em.

  Hi. You there?

  I can’t get hold of Dad. Are you okay?

  Mum. Call me back pls. x

  The phone wasn’t locked. It was the work of moments to flick to the contacts page and transfer the three stored numbers to his own phone. E, C and G. No prizes for guessing who they were.

  Did Sandra hide her phone to stop the police from getting their hands on it? Probably. Did Geoff hide his too? There was one way to find out. Mark dialled the number for G, but it connected to an automated message. The number you are calling is not available. It may be switched off. Yup, that answered Mark’s question. He’d bet Geoff’s phone was currently sitting in a ziplocked evidence bag.

  A noise outside caught his attention, and he looked up to see two uniformed police officers approaching the back door. One spoke into his radio, but Mark couldn’t make out the words.