by Fiona Quinn
“Steak. Potato. Dark. Laughter. China clattering.”
I waited.
And waited.
I scratched my teeth over my lips. I clasped my hands tightly in my lap. My breath came in shallow pants as I worked against my desire to shake the information from Major Trudy.
“Female companion. Hidden.”
“Hidden–describe.”
“Identity comes into my mind and slips out. The identity of this person has been hidden using an anti-remote viewing protocol.”
“Go back to the time before the remote viewing protocol was utilized.”
“There.”
“Do you know a name?”
“Tabby Cat.”
“More?”
“I’m coming back.”
Major Trudy was covered in sweat, and he breathed like he’d just done a sprint. He tipped his head back and gazed at the ceiling. Gater must have been watching, because he climbed back in the car. “And?” he asked.
“You’ve got yourselves one hell of a problem.”
Thirty-Seven
“You’re sure?” I asked for the third time.
“Tabby Cat was Indigo’s daughter’s nickname. I can’t recall the her real name. His wife Melody and son Greyson were killed. He and his daughter survived.”
“And this is the person who is keeping Striker and Vine from checking in and has them in a vehicle–some kind of camper. Why in the world would Tabby Cat care about Striker and Vine?” I asked, knowing Major Trudy didn’t have any more information.
“I only looked for the one tasked individual. This being Indigo’s daughter in the mix and surely trained in remote viewing, it explains the who and why of prepping the fucking place. It doesn’t explain why this is happening at all.”
My mind went back to Indigo’s phone conversation. “No,” Indigo had said. “Do not increase the dose. He’s a big guy, but you don’t want him to go into cardiac arrest. Wait it out. He should get sleepy soon, and once he’s unconscious, you can secure him.” Was Indigo talking about Striker? Maxx had been killed with a triple shot. Was Vine still alive? Could we get to her in time to keep her safe? I needed a white board, room to pace, and Deep at the computer.
“Titus is here. What’s the plan now?” Gater asked.
Major Trudy reached out and took the tasking paper from my hand. “I’m going to Wyoming. As soon as I get there, I’ll get General Coleridge to work on this task with me. We’ll get you that actionable data.” His gaze was intense. “This is personal, isn’t it?”
“My fiancé, who is also Spyder’s right hand.”
“Spyder McGraw?”
I nodded.
“We’ll get you everything we can as soon as we can, I promise,” he said as he popped the door open. I got out too, and even though I knew Major Trudy liked that three-foot wingspan of space around him, I still gave him a big hug. “You’re pretty awesome, Major Trudy. Please be safe.”
Major Trudy wiped his palms over his wet eyes, gave me a nod, then jogged over to Titus’s Hummer, where Gater stowed his gear.
As soon as the Panthers were headed down the highway, we moved back onto the road. I turned to Gater. “Before we even head back to the Puzzle Room, let’s go to Striker’s apartment and give it a shake.”
“And by shake, you mean, give you an opportunity to go behind the Veil to see if you can’t get some quick answers?”
“Roger that.”
“The sooner the better,” Gater said, and pulled into the garage.
As we headed up on the elevator, I asked, “Striker dated Scarlet Vine. I know it was a while ago, but do you remember how long they were together?”
“Not long. Six weeks, maybe? As soon as she started talking baby names and family vacations, Striker let her know he was married to his job. She was the mistress in the relationship, and he didn’t plan on a divorce.”
“In those terms?” I stood there, wide-eyed.
Gater shook his head as we exited and made our way to Striker’s door. “There cain’t be no ambiguity—sometimes you just gotta be harsh. Take Amy. Even though I told her and told her I weren’t going to marry her—that I enjoyed her company, but it was going no further . . .” He sniffed. “I wanted her in my life, so I didn’t say it and end it. And that’s how she got hurt so bad. It was selfish on my part. Even though I was clear, she always thought she’d turn me around and head me down the aisle. And I knew that. But. . . yeah, once they start seeing a future with you, you’ve got to make a clean cut.”
“You are quite the catch, Gater. Who wouldn’t want to be Mrs. Jean Marie Rochembeau? It has such a nice ring to it.” I unlocked the door and flipped on the lights. The apartment had the stale empty smell that happens when humans aren’t around for a few days.
“Yeah, well, point being, through experience, Striker learned to wince and rip the Band-Aid off. It hurts. But it hurts for a lot less time. He said he got his lesson coming out of high school and his relationship with Felicia.”
Yeah, Felicia’s wound had never scabbed over, and she still believed Striker and she would live happily ever after. And obviously, from what I saw from Scarlet Vine, she too had delusions in abundance.
“What’s Vine’s real name?”
“Grace Hays. Why?”
“Curiosity. I imagine if she got tied to a railroad track, Striker would try to stop the train.”
“Gotcha. I can tell you from the mission where them two met, she’s got a lot of smarts, and she uses her looks to get what she wants pretty effectively, but as a field operative? I’m not sure why Secret Service took her on.” Gater posted his hands on his hips. “So that might be what happened. Striker let someone take him along for a ride, so he could stick close to Vine and keep her from harm’s way. It were a Secret Service contract, and someone might be trying to find out why they had Maxx in the S.S. sights–they might need to know what part of their criminal operation was compromised. Only way to do that would be to capture the source.”
“The source being Scarlet Vine.”
“My guess, anyway. You ready? Need anything besides some water and a trash can?” Gater asked, pulling two bottled waters from the fridge.
I shook my head and grabbed a pillow from the couch.
“Do you want me to hook you up and watch your vitals?”
“Can’t. I have the equipment over at Sp– someplace else.” I lay down on the kitchen floor. It was the easiest to clean if my body fluids flowed outside of my body.
The Veil was faint. Barely a shiver in the air, but I caught hold of a corner and propelled myself behind it with sheer will. There, darkness met me. My nose and throat vibrated with light snores. Striker was asleep. That was so weird. I focused on each part of his body to gather information. His heart beat its normal slow beat. He seemed a comfortable temperature. His limbs stretched out as he lay on his back. Nothing pain-wise disturbed him. No one else touched him—and without that, I couldn’t move into anyone else’s body to get more information. I focused on Striker’s spine to see if there was a rumble or sway that would indicate he was in a moving vehicle. But no. Nothing. Peaceful, in fact. I couldn’t pick up on a single stray emotion or thought—he must have been in a delta-wave sleep cycle. Maybe later. . . I came back to my body, feeling exhaustion.
“Sleeping,” I said, disappointed not to get anything substantive, but glad that Striker seemed alright.
“Okay, let’s see what they’ve got together in the Puzzle Room.”
Gater lifted me to my feet, and I jumped up and down a few times to shed Striker’s fatigue. Then, we took off at a jog.
Gater and I burst through the door to my office to find a hive of activity—busy bees working with singular focus. Striker’s last known location was the Cross Roads Steak House. That was what Major Trudy described as a stopping place before they were put in a viewer-protected vehicle. Steak and potatoes – that would be appropriate dinner food from such a place. Last known time was at their check-in twenty hours ago
.
I added to the board: Applicable? Twenty-one-fifteen–overheard conversation– “Do not increase the dose. He’s a big guy, but you don’t want him to go into cardiac arrest. Wait it out. He should get sleepy soon, and once he’s unconscious you can secure him.”
If Indigo’s daughter went after them, then they must have been drugged. That might account for Striker’s being asleep at this time of the day. Striker ran like a fine-tuned machine on only four hours of sleep. He didn’t catnap while the sun shone. Ever.
The men stopped and stared at the board. A general groan rose into the air.
“Where are Axel and Randy?” I asked.
“In the field,” Jack said. “We can’t pull them back.”
“Okay, sorry to interrupt. Go back to what you were doing.” I moved toward Deep. “Can you pause what you’re working on and get me some information about Allan Leverone?”
“Let me . . .” he punched a few keys on the keyboard. “Okay, what do you need?”
“I need the most recent names and photos of the Leverone family. They’re probably going to be found with the obituaries and the carbon monoxide articles in February, 1998.”
“Yup, got them, Allan Leverone–husband, wife Melody, son Greyson, survived by daughter Tabitha Catherine.”
Tabitha Catherine, Tabby Cat.
I wrote on the board: Confirmed from Major Trudy: Tabby Cat is Leverone’s daughter.
“What does that mean?” Jack asked.
“I had a remote viewer try to search for Striker. He got snippets of things that didn’t make much sense, in and of themselves. The information everyone’s been entering into our data files, until Striker failed to check in, was from Allan Leverone’s remote viewing log books. I think Leverone’s daughter might be the one who got hold of Striker and Vine.”
That information was met with scowling silence.
“What would Leverone have to do with Striker and Vine’s going missing?” Blaze asked.
I shook my head. I had no idea how these two cases could have enmeshed.
“And you need the pictures because you want to go behind the Veil to figure out the connection?” Gater asked.
“It’s a long shot. I don’t know how these can be connected. But since I’m not getting anything from Striker. . . I don’t know. It’s worth a try. I’m just pulling at straws here.”
“Here you go. I’m printing them out now.”
I moved over to the printer and blinked. Your house IS on FIRE – your family WILL burn. I swallowed the bile that crept up the back of my throat and croaked out, “Deep, do you see what I’m seeing?”
Deep leaned closer to the screen and scanned his gaze over the photo. “I’m not seeing anything interesting. Want to give me a clue?”
“Could you do your computer magic, zoom in on the mom’s face, and fill in the pixels as much as possible?”
The men in the room went back to their tasks of sifting through known information from Striker and Vine on the Maxx Schwartz case, trying to make 1+ 2 = 4.
“Look at that,” I said.
Deep shook his head.
“Deep, pull up the New York Times photo of Bryce and Claire Mason at the Kennedy Center.” I waited for the picture of Striker and Vine to come up. “Okay, now can you crop out Vine’s face and make it larger, like you did the other?”
Deep pursed his lips. I could tell he thought I was wasting his time, barking up the wrong tree. He printed out the result, and I took a piece of paper and covered their hair.
Scarlet and Allan’s wife could have been twins.
“Deep, how old is Tabitha Leverone?”
“Um, let’s see. Birthdate is 1988, that would make her—”
“Twenty-six. Gater, Scarlet Vine is known as Grace Hays?”
“Yeah,” he said, moving over and looking at the pictures.
I pointed at the newspaper article in my hand that said that Melody Grace and Greyson Hays had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
“Ding, ding, ding. Guys,” Gater called out. “We’re not looking for Vine and Striker. We’re looking for what Vine did with Striker.”
My butt hit the floor hard as I completely missed the chair. Gater hefted me up and set me on my intended destination. He used the pad of paper in his hand to fan air over my face.
Before the room completely stopped its whirling, my phone buzzed. With the tiniest spark of hope that Striker was on the other end, I jerked my cell phone from my pocket.
Gather Strike Force. Go to the safety zone in Iniquus until further notice. Out. A text from Spyder.
That shocked me solidly back in my body. When Spyder typed “out” it meant out, as in, I will not respond to you – you get no more information. What in the heck was going on?
“Team, up and at ’em,” I yelled. “Deep, put the computer system on the push cart. Everyone gather your things. We’re headed to the safety zone.”
Confused eyes landed on me as I gathered the ream of paper that were the images of the logs from Indigo’s desk. “Seriously, grab everything we’ll need for the long haul, and let’s move it.” I effected my best Commander Rheas voice and the men fell in line, grabbing things as they went. I took a picture of the white board so we wouldn’t lose any of the information they had already put in place, and we took the elevator down.
The safety zone – you had to go to the very bottom level, past the soundproof rooms. We moved into the conference room, which smelled stuffy with a tinge of mold, and spread ourselves out.
Gater turned the twenty-four hour news station on the TV with muted sound. Sometimes the stations got word even before the first responders did that something big was happening. And something big would have to be happening—why else would Spyder want us down here?
If this was Spyder getting ready to release all of the necklace data to the public—all of the information that would implicate the felons from Omega, Sylanos’ cartel and the Assembly. Wow, the Assembly held so many of the decision maker and power holder positions in all branches of our government. They were like stage four cancer in our body politic. What would happen when they were exposed? America was going to get rocked on its foundations. Did Spyder review this with the President? Surely. . . no, there was no surely.
When the enormity of Hydra going down and Striker missing hit me, it came with such velocity that I almost landed on my butt again.
Work. That was what Spyder would tell me to do. Take one step, then another. Keep moving proactively. Me huddling in a ball in the corner wouldn’t help Striker. Screw the Hydra – I needed to focus on what was going on for Striker, and that journey started with the why.
CODE YELLOW. CODE YELLOW. CODE YELLOW, came over the intercom. My team moved to the supply closet and handed out bulletproof vests, helmets with face visors, and rifles. I accepted mine with confusion.
“We stay on task,” Jack said, as he strapped his vest in place, then laid his helmet and weapon within easy reach. He shot me a look that said, spill.
“My partner, your superior, ordered us to the safety zone. The rest is classified.”
He nodded. “No man left behind. Our job is to find Striker.”
I blew out hard. “There must have been psych evals. Grace Hays can’t work for the Secret Service if she were insane, so we aren’t looking at an Annie Wilkes here. This isn’t Stephen King’s Misery with a serial killer.” I crossed my fingers as I said that. “She has to have an agenda.”
“NASA does a lot of psych evals too,” Blaze said.
Jack shook his head, not making the connection.
“You remember,” Blaze continued, “about nine or ten years ago, that chick who gave every man with a crazy ex in their rearview mirror a shiver?”
“Lisa Nowac?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know her,” I said.
“Yeah, you do, she’s the psycho who put on space diapers and drove from Houston to Florida, only stopping for gas, so she could have a little chat with her ex-boyfriend’s new gi
rlfriend,” Blaze explained.
“Why do you know that she was wearing diapers? Is this a joke?” I asked.
“She confronted the girlfriend and had shit in her trunk like a rubber hose, eight-inch knife, duct tape, plastic bags, hammer, a wig and some kind of gun.”
“Crap, and they caught her? That’s not funny at all.”
“No one’s laughing,” Jack said.
“Vine didn’t come after me, though. She took Striker.”
“She may not know what your name is. She obviously wants a relationship back. She’s hit replay. This assignment and her antics are almost identical to what happened before they started dating. Striker might have explained that he wasn’t interested in having a relationship with her now because he’s in love with someone else,” Blaze said. “That might have made her desperate. Desperate circumstances lead to desperate measures.”
“And she may need him to tell her who you are. Which will never happen,” Deep said.
If she was a remote viewer, why couldn’t she just look? I stared at the floor while I considered this line of thinking. Striker was energetically dense, and I’d guess I was too. I shook my head. I was only speculating. I needed to verify, verify, verify. I had to start with facts before I could make such wild leaps.
“Okay, show of hand—who knows about the Galaxy Project and remote viewing?” I searched across the room every single hand was up. “That is what we are dealing with here. Allan Leverone was a member of the project, and he was tasked with three things, as far as I can tell. He did remote viewing. He was able to hide information using a protocol he was developing, and lastly, he was one of two influencers who were testing the Stanford protocol and methodology. The other influencer is deceased. I believe that Leverone taught his daughter what he knows. Or some of what he knows. While this is absolutely not psychic in nature, some people are still more dexterous with mastering the techniques than others. Allan Leverone is also known as Indigo and the Puppet Master. He headed the Assembly, Omega, and Sylanos’s cartel.”
Gater let out a long, low whistle that seemed to sum things up pretty well.