“Fine. But if you're scared of the jail time, then you made a big mistake in tying me up like this. Kidnapping plus whatever else you've got going on with Langhorne.”
“Why are you always so fucking nosy?” he asked. “That's the reason why you're in this mess. I liked you. We both did, Langhorne and I. But then you had to start nosing around in our business, and then ratting on us to some security firm?”
Mira's mind raced, wondering where Jackson was, if he was safe. He must be safe. Of course he'd have better sense than Mira to wind up unconscious and tired up in a room somewhere. He'd probably been through scenarios like this hundreds of times. He'd see it coming a mile away. He had seen it coming... Jackson had been suspicious that this night was a trap from the very beginning. But she’d insisted on coming anyway. Well, shit.
“You're here because you fucked everything up for me,” said Chuck. He grabbed an open wine bottle and took a swig. “I know it was you. The whole thing crashed right after I caught you messing around with his computer. And then I started watching you, following you with a little help from some handy spyware. Just how many coffees do you drink a day, Mira? But, oddly enough, you seemed to have no idea I was doing it. Now, how is that possible? How could you create such a heinous virus, but then be so clueless about a little digital surveillance?
“I... I don't know what you—”
“Maybe I should bring your date in here and ask him about it?”
“Good luck.”
“Maybe he could explain it all to me.”
“He'd never help you.”
“He would if I had a knife up to both of your throats.” Chuck put the bottle down on a table before looking at Mira, smiling. “Right? Don't you think he would, then?”
Chuck was a total lunatic, and Mira was done talking. She stayed silent. But her silence only seemed to provoke him.
“Huh?” he said, stepping up close to her “You wouldn’t want that right?” He put his small, clammy hand to her throat, squeezing it gently.
“Stop,” she said, choking.
Chuck slid his hand down her throat to her chest, over two straps and then firmly around her breast, holding it and massaging her. “Or would you rather we just keep this between me and you?”
Mira squirmed, unable to move away from his grasp. “Fuck you!” she yelled.
Chuck removed his hand and cocked it back as if preparing to backhand her across the face. “Keep your voice down or you'll get the tape. Or worse.”
“Then stop touching me, you miserable fuck. You're so fucking pathetic.”
Chuck’s face eased up into a smile. “You're always so mean to me,” he said, backing off.
“Was that your first time touching a woman?” Mira asked. “You're a virgin, right?”
Yes, provoke the madman holding you captive, great idea.
But Mira couldn’t hold the words back.
Chuck laughed. He seemed to be having a wonderful time.
“You hate us all so much,” Mira said. “It's amazing.”
“Hate who? Women? No, I just hate rats. You're not a woman, you're a rat.” He took another pull from the wine bottle.
Mira looked around the room for an escape, or a tool. Anything.
“What's going on, Mira? Looking for something?”
“No,” she said, pretending to adjust herself under the tight straps.
“The only way you’re getting out of here is to cooperate with me.”
“What do you want?”
“First, I want to know what you did to my computer. And then I want you to fix it so I can get back in touch with my good friends in Kenya. The delivery is only a few days away and you're gonna have to fix whatever the fuck you did.”
“I can't help you. I don't know how. I got my instructions and carried them out. And that's it.”
“So what you're saying... is that you're useless to me? Is that it?”
“Yes. I am.”
“So I can just go ahead and off you right now, then?”
Don’t give in. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
Mira stared into his eyes, suppressing a cringe at the malevolence she saw deep inside. How could Chuck not care if he was arming small children, for fuck's sake!
“Come on, give yourself some credit. You decrypted our communications; that takes skill. You know how to help me. You're not even trying!”
“How can I try? I don’t know this computer shit. Really.”
“Okay. Fine. I'll make it easy.” Chuck walked behind her again. The door opened and he muttered something to someone out of her line of sight.
“How do you expect to get away with this?” Mira said over her shoulder. “You're being investigated as we speak.”
Chuck came away from the door, his footsteps approaching Mira's chair. “You think it's the first time the senator has been investigated?” With a grunt, Chuck tipped her chair onto one leg and then spun it around until she was facing the door. He dropped the chair back on its legs. “It's a crooked town, and he's got a lot of friends. It'll get dropped, don't you worry.”
Mira heard deep voices and scuffling noises outside the door.
“There's someone I want you to meet,” Chuck said.
“What?”
“I couldn’t find Jackson. But I've got the next best thing.”
Two large men walked in. They were dragging a third man between them, each of them holding onto an arm. At first, Mira couldn’t tell who it was. The man's head was slumped down. He was stripped to his underwear and covered in bruises.
“Okay, that's good,” said Chuck. “Thanks. Just toss him on the ground there.”
The two thugs dropped the man into a heap on the ground. It was an elderly man. White hair. He wasn't moving. Chuck walked over to him and grabbed a handful of whatever white hair he had left, lifting up his head so Mira could see the swollen and bloodied face of her father.
“Dad! No!” Mira cried out at Chuck, sounding like a wounded animal.
“Think you can help me out now?” he asked. “Or do we have to make him look worse?”
“You fucker!” She looked in horror at her father, the frail wisp of a man who seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.
“I know, I know,” he waved a hand almost dismissively. “Now, listen, I'm going to untie your hands so you can type. But if you try anything stupid, it's game over. Got it?”
“Just stop hurting him,” said Mira, barely able to breathe.
Chuck came around to unbuckle the two straps that were cutting into her arms. “I can't have you hyperventilating like that, Mira. I need you to work.” He flung the straps loose and pushed her head down to her knees. “Take deep breaths. Deep breaths.”
From the moment her hands came loose, Mira had to fight the urge to claw them against Chuck's ugly face. At that moment, as he stood over her, it was an instinct as powerful as breathing, the need to inflict damage at any opportunity. But she needed to think long-term, when she could cause some real pain, like sending his scrawny ass away for life in a maximum security penitentiary.
She delayed the gratification and dug her nails into her thighs instead.
“There you go,” said Chuck softly. “Keep breathing. I just need you to do a little computer work and then everything will be fine.” He slid a laptop over her knees. “Okay, show me what you did.”
Mira looked at an encrypted email on the screen. “What do you mean?” she asked, sniffling.
“Come on,” he said. “What did you use to decrypt this?”
“I didn't.”
“Mira, I told you...” Chuck pulled a black semi-automatic pistol from his waistband. “I told you about playing dumb.” He aimed the gun at her father.
Before Mira could scream she felt the concussion of a gun blast ripple through her body. And then she heard the groans of her father as he gripped his bleeding thigh. He was fully awake now, rocking back and forth in pain.
“The next one's in his head!” Chuck shout
ed over Mira's screams. “And if you need another one, it'll be your head!” He pointed the gun at Mira and she instinctively squirmed away from the muzzle. “But you won't need another one, right? Wasn't one enough? I think your father would agree.”
“Kill me,” her father said. “Kill me and let her go. Please.”
Mira sobbed uncontrollably. “Okay,” she said, “I'll do it, I'll do it.”
“You can read it?” asked Chuck.
“Yes! Yes, I can read it. Just put the gun away.”
“Oh? How can you read it? I thought you were clueless with computers.”
Mira blinked away her tears to get a good look at the screen. “I can translate it,” she said.
“What's the email title?” asked Chuck, lowing the gun slightly.
She squinted at the top lines of text, quickly discerning which line was the title. “The title says... Ship delay.”
“What about the body? What's the rest say?”
“Uh... There's a cargo ship in the mid-Atlantic. Repairs being made. It will take an extra... two extra days.”
“I knew it,” he said, laughing. “I knew you were the code breaker.”
As she looked at the screen, Mira could hear her father groaning again. She'd never heard him make those kinds of noises before.
“Hey, Mr. Swanson. Congratulations. Your daughter is too smart for her own good.”
“Stop talking to him,” Mira barked. “What do you want me to do? Come on, hurry up.” It felt truly disgusting to be offering her help to Chuck. But he was the one holding the gun.
“It's simple,” he said. “Certainly not worth dying over. I want you to pretend you're at work and translate all those emails into English. That's all.”
A sudden beeping sound made Chuck search through his pockets. He pulled out his phone and answered it with a harsh, “What is it? I'm busy.”
“Infiltrators,” said the voice on the other end, loudly enough for Mira to make out what he was saying. “They're making a real mess of things out here.”
“Hold on,” barked Chuck. “I'll be right out.”
The words gave Mira a glimmer of hope. Even though she had two thugs keeping watch on her, she was at least free of Langhorne's lackey. Maybe she could whip up some miraculous plan in his absence. His goons didn’t look all that bright.
“Don't be a hero,” Chuck told Mira before storming out the door.
Fuck that. Nothing would stop her from being a hero. Certainly not Chuck's goons, who could hardly tell the difference between Mira's email reading and something else. She only hoped that Tansy—and the special extra toy he’d built for her—were still watching.
20
Jackson
Controlled chaos.
Or at least a thin veil between the calm, orderly search for Mira, and what Jackson really wanted to do: scurry from room to room in a desperate, frantic rush.
“Slow down,” Matthias had told him when he noticed his boss was about to take the latter approach. “We can’t afford to attract any more attention.” But Jackson knew he could only keep it bottled up for so long. As time wore on, and as they cleared room after empty room, the leader of DARC Ops was dangerously close to screaming Mira’s name at the top of his lungs.
Throughout their search, they were yet to come across either Langhorne or his assistant—which bugged the shit out of him. Maybe it was normal for her to be rushed off with them somewhere, for some official business perhaps. An emergency translation. But no amount of hopeful rationalizing could take away the sight of her purposely crushed earrings. Nor the immediate impression they gave him, a nausea that seemed to grow and rot in his stomach even as he hustled down the ballroom stairs.
In the banquet hall, the party was in full swing. The lights were dimmed. The music and the chatter were equally loud. Everywhere he looked, happy couples were dancing, laughing. His eyes stopped on every woman in a short, black dress, wanting so badly for each of them to be Mira. But when they finally turned around to reveal their faces, or when he noticed their hair was a different color or cut, he'd feel his heart sinking deeper and deeper. With each non-Mira, a new level of anxiety bloomed in his gut. At this point, he'd be perfectly fine if he'd suddenly caught her making out with Chuck on the dance floor. He'd be overjoyed with that if it meant she was safe and unharmed.
Jackson, along with Tansy and Matthias, left the ball to circle back to the storage rooms. It was where their search had begun, the site of Mira's earrings. They retraced their steps, ending up in some dark little room full of empty cardboard boxes. Jackson had Tansy pull out his computer to try to find a signal again, any signal at all. They huddled around its glowing screen as Tansy worked his magic.
“If she's still got her phone, we might be in business,” said Tansy. “I told her about the ping-back trick.”
“So maybe you should stay here and set up a command post. You can help guide the search while monitoring for any incoming pings or contact.”
“Can you try pinging her phone the other way?” Matthias asked.
“There's no response,” said Tansy.
Fuck... Even if her phone was out of battery power, it should still register and show its physical location to Tansy. The fact that it was a complete no-show meant it was either a dozen miles away or destroyed like her earrings. Jackson wasn’t comfortable with either scenario.
“What else does she have on her?” asked Matthias.
Tansy shook his head. “Just those fucking earrings. Well, she did have them.”
“Try her phone again,” said Jackson.
“There's nothing. It’s vanished.”
“I know,” The distinct lack of options left closed down around Jackson like prison walls. “But sometimes”—damn, he was grasping at straws now—“Maybe it's a glitch.”
“It's no glitch, Jack.”
“Just try it.”
Tansy sighed and pinged her phone again.
Please, please, fucking please... Jackson watched impatiently as the dots moved across the screen:
….........................................................................PING ENDED.
“Fuck it. Alright, Matthias, let's go.” Jackson said, and the two men walked to the door. “I'll check the top floors and the roof. You head down for a perimeter check. And while you're doing that, look out for Team Charlie and give them orders to sweep the building from the ground up. I don't care if that means we have to put a damper on this little—”
“Jackson!” Tansy shouted. “I got something!”
He rushed back to the computer, where a glowing dot pulsated on the screen.
“Is that her?”
“I don't know, I need to access it. Hold on.” Tansy typed furiously through a few different screens and interfaces. “We can't go all gung-ho just yet. It might be someone on Langhorne's team trying to figure us out or lure us in.”
Without looking, Jackson ran his hand along the compartments of his utility belt, taking a mental inventory of his weapon and magazines. In his head, he went through the rudiments and the checklists of close-quarters contact. He was ready for contact. He wanted it.
“I can gain access through my backdoor if it’s one of their infected computers,” said Tansy. “Yep, see? We've got their IP now and I think we're close enough for a wireless signal.”
“Can you access the webcam?” asked Jackson.
Tansy didn’t reply, his hands moving faster than his mouth. The computer screen suddenly flipped to someone else's desktop. Remote access. They now had access to the computer that had just pinged them.
“Just a warning,” said Tansy. “Depending on how good this guy is, he might be able to tell our location.”
“What if it's Mira?” asked Matthias.
His question was answered when the webcam flicked on.
At first, Jackson was elated.
It was Mira.
But the way she looked almost made him wish it wasn’t.
21
Mira<
br />
“Ninaomba msaada,” Mira said, a plea for help directed at the two brutes standing by the door. But it just made them laugh. She then asked if they had souls, and if they were worried where they would end up in the afterlife. Apparently, they weren’t worried because their response was a simple shrug of the shoulders. “Well, can you at least check on my father?” she asked in English. “Please?”
Her father had stopped moving since Chuck left the room about fifteen minutes ago. On one hand, it was a nice reprieve from having to witness his agony, his twisting and groaning on the floor. But now, with his stillness, and the blood pooling into the carpet beneath him...
“Is he even breathing?” she asked as one of Chuck's goons poked her father with the sharp end of a snapped broom handle. “Is he alive?” Her voice rose in pitch and Mira felt like she was only a few breaths away from slipping into hysteria.
“He's fine,” said the man with the stick. “Kulala.” Sleeping.
The door suddenly swung open and Chuck appeared. He looked angry. Beads of sweat were glistening across his forehead. “Why do I hear talking?” he asked his guards. “Don't say a fucking word to her. Got it?” And then he turned his attention to Mira. “You think they'll help you just because you speak Swahili?”
“I just wanted to—”
“Stop it. Stop trying to get into their heads,” said Chuck. “They're dumb as rocks, anyway.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and then walked over to the table with the wine bottle, grabbing it and taking a few more gulps. “And on top of that, these are some real sinister dudes right here. Who do you think beat up your dad like that? Huh? Not me. You think I've got the strength to crack his skull like that? The guy probably has brain damage.” He turned to his thugs. “Hey? This guy got brain damage or what?”
They shrugged again and started chuckling like the evil henchmen they were.
“Yeah, you cracked him up pretty good. You shoulda seen him, Mira. Fuckin' blah-blah-blah, babbling like a retard after that. Brain damaged, probably. Now, if you want, we can keep going. It doesn’t matter if he's already unconscious, we can keep going. It's all up to you.”
Dark Secret (DARC Ops Book 1) Page 17