by L. T. Ryan
"Come on, Jack," she said three times while the phone purred in her ear.
No answer.
No voicemail.
Constant ringing.
She hung up, then entered another name into the program. Riley Logan. Unfortunately, the software had limitations, and a history search would not always return a positive match if the name had not been previously monitored. The search yielded no results.
Perhaps she had his contact information in her address book. She searched through her digital memory, but found nothing. She could've sworn it had been in there. With four hundred contacts listed, it was more likely her brain was playing tricks. They'd only worked together briefly, and only because he'd turned up in London the day she met Jack the first time, at the bombing site. In order to get Bear's information, she'd have to travel to the office. A couple large gray clouds trudged across a blue sky beyond her bedroom window. Better than the day before. And with it being Saturday, a jaunt to Legoland wouldn't eat up too much time.
She tried Jack's number again.
No answer.
No voicemail.
Constant ringing.
"Christ, Jack, where are you?" She rose and tossed the phone onto her bed, then paced the length of her room, from the window to the door and back again. The process always jogged her memory.
And it didn't fail today.
Erin Carlisle.
Jack's ex and the mother of his daughter, Mia. Perhaps she had spoken to him recently, or could reach out on Sasha's behalf.
Sasha rushed to her laptop. She launched a new instance of the program, tapping on the shift key while urging the software to load quicker. Once the cursor appeared in the dialog box, she entered Erin's name. At Jack's request, she had kept tabs on Erin and Mia for him while he was away from London. If someone had accessed her information, anywhere, Sasha would know. She continued to tap on the shift key while the program cycled. A multicolored wheel spun on her screen, center of the window.
Then it stopped and returned a hit.
Someone had accessed Erin's file within the past twenty four hours.
Sasha searched through her folders until she found and opened another program. This one top secret as well, and used mostly by MI5. It searched multiple government databases and returned contact information. In addition, it allowed them to access any recent financial transactions on credit, as well as travel arrangements for a specific individual. She plugged in Erin's name and waited while the program connected to and cycled through multiple databases.
Two hits came back within thirty seconds of each other.
Sasha waited another thirty seconds for the program to finish its search and terminate operations. After, she clicked on the first item. A financial transaction. Over two thousand pounds paid to Air Europa. There was no doubt what the next item on the list was. She opened it up and found travel arrangements for Erin, her daughter Mia, and Hannah, the nanny from the States. They were departing Heathrow in ninety minutes on a trip to Tenerife.
The next program she needed wasn't installed on her computer. No one she knew at MI6 had access to it. But she knew a man that did.
Mason Sutton answered on the third ring.
"I need your help, Mason," Sasha said.
"My help," Mason said. "You know, I'm afraid this relationship has become quite one-sided and I don't see it benefiting me these days."
"I don't have time for this. I need your help." She paused, then added. "And Jack needs your help, too."
Mason's tone changed. "What's going on?"
"I've kept tabs on him since he left. Deemed it necessary, especially in light of what happened in Florida."
"Yeah, sure." Mason was aware of what had occurred when Jack got mixed up in a murder investigation that turned out to have major implications in the espionage world.
"Well, someone recently accessed Jack's files. Twice now. I've been unable to reach him. That number he gave us, you remember it?"
"Yeah."
"It just rings and rings. In fact, I'd like you to try it. Are you around another phone?"
"Yeah, hang on a sec." His cell banged against something heavy like a counter or dining table. Thirty seconds passed before Mason returned. "Same thing, Sash. No answer, only ringing."
"Christ."
"So who's accessed his information?"
"I can't tell that. But no one should be looking at him. It was quite the coordinated effort to expunge much of what could do him harm. It's very concerning that anyone would be looking into him."
"Right, well, what can I do to help?"
"Short of hop across the pond and check in on him, I need you to investigate the passenger list of an Air Europa flight to Tenerife, departing this morning."
"Tenerife? Why?"
"You remember Erin and Mia, right?"
"Of course."
"I got a hit on Erin. Then I dug into that program you MI5 chaps use, and, well, it told me they are departing from Heathrow in about ninety minutes from now."
"What's the flight information?"
Sasha read it off to him.
"OK," he said. "So, I suspect you think someone undesirable will be on that flight, yeah? Well, what I'll do is run this through ATIPLs, get the passenger list. Then I'll cross-reference those names and see who, if anyone, stands out."
"Can you do that while mobile?"
"Absolutely. Why?"
"Meet me at Heathrow," she said. "Get there as soon as you can. If your program returns anything while en route, call me."
Sasha terminated the call, then phoned a taxi service. Ten minutes, max, they told her. That'd put her at the airport in under forty.
She took a shower, cold, as there wasn't time to wait for the water to warm up. Nor did she have time to put on makeup after. She threw on a pair of worn jeans and a faded blue t-shirt. With her laptop bag and cell phone in hand, she hurried down the stairs, tossed a cold mug of coffee in the microwave and grabbed an apple and banana out of the fridge.
The taxi driver honked to let her know he was there five seconds before the microwave signaled that the coffee was ready. She emptied the contents of the scorching ceramic mug into a travel container, then exited her house.
She avoided eye contact as she slid into the rear seat, and pulled out her laptop to signal that she needn't be disturbed. The cabbie already knew her destination.
Along the way, she phoned Mason. Her end of the conversation was spoken in generalities.
"Nothing yet," he said. "I'm about ten minutes out."
As was she.
The cabbie drove on.
When they reached the airport, she paid him and exited the taxi, laptop bag and phone in hand. Inside, she made her way toward the Air Europa check-in counter. Mason waited for her there, a few feet away from the roped off maze they put travelers through prior to obtaining their boarding passes.
"Anything new?" he asked her.
"No," she said, scanning the passengers in line.
"Yeah, well, I've got something." He also searched the faces, studying each one a second before moving to the next, as though looking for someone in particular. "I had one of the guys manning a terminal at the office dig in since my mobile signal is shit today."
"And?" Sasha's heart pounded against her chest like a sledgehammer trying to take down a cinder block wall.
"No terrorists. Nobody wanted in England, or anywhere else, at least places we can check."
"Am I just being paranoid, then?"
He grabbed her wrist and led her to an empty spot in the phone bank.
"One name came back, Sasha. Former US Special Forces. Now a mercenary. Name's Jared Akers."
She searched her internal database but came up with no match. "What else?"
"He purchased his ticket in the past twelve hours."
"Oh, God. Do we have a visual reference?"
Shaking his head, Mason grabbed the back of his head and glanced down. "Working on it. So far, it's been scrubbed from any file
we have access to, and given how things are looking, I didn't feel it appropriate to peer into other networks and tip them off."
"What would we be tipping them off to?"
"I'm not sure. But something doesn't feel right. Surely you understand that?"
Sasha pulled her phone out and opened a travel application.
"Who are you messaging?"
She extended the phone so he could see. "Not messaging. Getting us two tickets to Tenerife."
"What?" He leaned back and peered over the short walls of the space they occupied. "Sasha, I can't leave now."
"Just for the weekend. I've got an awful feeling about this, Mason. And I told Jack that I'd watch over his daughter while he's away. How can I face him again if something happened to her and I didn't do everything in my power to save her?"
Mason stared at her, lips drawn, slight shake of his head. Had she been so transparent that her feelings for Jack bled through in her words?
"Listen," he said. "We can call the authorities there. They can escort her."
"No, listen to me. I don't trust anyone but us to be involved in this." She finalized the transaction. "Besides, the tickets are paid for. You have to go with me now."
He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "I'm armed."
"You're MI5. They'll be honored to have you on board."
"I've got no luggage."
"You've got two hours. Their flight was full. We're on a different one."
"You don't give up, do you?"
"Never."
Mason smiled, briefly. "Why didn't Jack stay, then?"
"Who said I've given up on the idea that he'd be back?"
The two agents separated for an hour, then met again near security. An hour after that, they were seated on their flight, bound for Tenerife.
Chapter 21
New York City.
JACK HAD SPENT the remainder of Friday looking over his shoulder and hopping from cab to cab before finally returning to his apartment building and entering from the rear alley. He waited inside the door for twenty minutes, where he observed the path he had taken. Then he moved to the front of the building and watched for anyone lingering amid the foot traffic. Confident that he had not been followed, Jack headed upstairs and holed up with his Beretta in his lap. He had placed a couple calls to Brandon, first to tell him about the tail near Central Park, and later to find out if Brandon had uncovered anything. Eventually, worry faded, and he'd fallen asleep on the couch.
Now, five hours later, he woke in a cold sweat, unable to shake the image of Mia and Erin plummeting thirty thousand feet into the Atlantic.
Only a dream.
He repeated the thought over and over until it turned into a mantra, and the remnants of the chilling nightmare broke apart and faded into the recesses of his mind. For thirty minutes he tried, and failed, to fall back to sleep. It wasn't so much the images that lingered, as the fact that he had to get moving in order to reach South Carolina with daylight to spare. Attempting to locate Merrick, the owner of the condo where he'd had the strange meeting, in the dark in unfamiliar territory could prove to be a problem. Best to avoid it.
Finally, Jack rose and started a pot of coffee and threw a pound of bacon into a large skillet.
As the fresh brew dripped, and pig fat sizzled, Jack placed a call to Brandon.
The man answered, sounding as though he hadn't woken yet. "I know you're a bad ass super spy and all, Jack, but some of us need to sleep. Is this important, or can I call you back in three hours?"
"Three hours? It's six now."
"Your point?"
"It's important."
"You know what I have to go through to get up, right?"
Jack pictured the guy reaching for a metal triangle suspended from his ceiling, and using it to hoist himself out of bed, his frail, lifeless legs trailing behind, weighing him down.
"Did you find anything last night?" Jack asked.
"No." Brandon hesitated, then said, "But I've got a laptop up here. Let me remote into the other system and check for you. I'll call back in fifteen, all right?"
"I can hang on."
"No, you can't, 'cause I don't want to hear your Neanderthal breathing in my ear while I'm trying to help you."
Jack laughed, then told Brandon he'd call back if he didn't hear from him by six-thirty.
He stepped back into the kitchen and pulled the pot off the warmer despite the fact the coffee still brewed. Then he flipped the bacon over and waited for the second side to cook up. Once it had, he scooped it onto a large plate, and carried it and the steaming mug outside.
Stepping onto the balcony was like passing through a soaked towel. The air temperature felt fine, cool even. But the humidity hovered in the mid-nineties already. He hadn't eaten two slices of bacon before sweat formed at his temples and hairline.
He used the vantage point and sleepy Saturday morning sidewalk to scan the area for any possible watchers. Of course, anyone out there would likely be looking up and have spotted him as he exited his apartment onto the terrace. Jack's chances of spotting them would be slim. But if he did, it'd be a race to see if he could get to them first, or if they managed to get away.
But he saw nothing. The cityscape remained silent.
Jack headed back in around six-twenty, pulling out his phone as he crossed the humidity threshold. No missed calls. Ten minutes to go until the deadline he imposed. Screw it. He called Brandon anyway.
"I still got a few minutes. And I did try calling, but you didn't answer."
"Never heard it ring. Whatever. What've you got?"
"OK, so I did a bunch of checking for you, Jack. So far, I've got nothing on you. But, your ex over there in England, someone did a huge database search on her a few hours ago."
His heart rose in his chest. Felt like it might crack a rib or two. "From where?"
"UK, best I can tell."
"Can you narrow that down?"
"Maybe. Uh, London, that's for sure. Still working through the maze of IP addresses to pinpoint the address. Anyway, they checked on Erin's recent financial transactions and flight plans."
Jack paced the room. "Sasha has access to do that, and I asked her to keep track of Erin and Mia for me, watch over them while I'm away."
"Think it's her?"
"I don't know who else in London would be checking on them."
And he didn't know what reason Sasha would have to do so on a Saturday morning.
"So, that's it?" he asked while his mind navigated through possible scenarios. Could the mystery meeting, a man in South Carolina, Feds tailing him, and someone spying on Erin have something in common?
Other than him.
Brandon said, "Looks that way, my man."
"Do me a favor and keep digging for me. You've got access to me twenty-four-seven."
He set the phone on the counter and poured another mug of coffee. Wouldn't be as strong as the first, but that didn't matter. At this point, coffee provided comfort and settled his racing mind. He carried it back to his room and started the shower. He had to get moving within the next hour if he wanted to reach Little River, South Carolina before dark. He was already behind an hour of his original plan. He'd thought that he might stop off in D.C., but that looked less likely now. Not if he planned on boarding a flight to Tenerife on Sunday. If things went smoothly in Little River, perhaps he could arrange a long enough layover in D.C. to get out and meet a few contacts in person. Possibly Frank Skinner. He couldn't call the guy, but if anyone would be clued into why a Fed had been tailing Jack, it'd be Frank.
Jack cut the shower, toweled off, skipped the shave, and changed into a pair of cargo shorts and a lightweight button-up shirt. Casual and easy for the long drive ahead.
In the kitchen, he set his Beretta next to his cell phone, then filled a travel mug to the brim and grabbed a handful of lunch meat from the fridge, which he bagged and tossed into a small cooler. He lined all the items up on the kitchen counter and went to the front do
or. Before walking out with his hands full, he had to scout the hallway and make sure no one waited for him.
A pinprick of light passed through the peephole. A good sign. Meant no one stood outside the door. Now he had to investigate the rest. Jack disengaged the locks. Pulled the door open. His expectation of an empty hallway was not met. He leaned away from the large knuckles inches in front of his face.
They hovered for a moment. A grin spread across the face of the man standing in the corridor.
"Jack, how are ya?"
"The hell you doing outside my apartment, Chuck?"
Charles's smile faded. He shook his head. The corners of his thick jaws bunched with muscles.
"I know," Jack said. "Don't call you Chuck."
"May I come in?"
Ten steps to the Beretta. Jack could get there before Charles could shut the door. Even with a suppressed pistol, the guy wouldn't take a shot with the door open.
So Jack turned his back and hurried to the kitchen counter and allowed Charles to enter.
"What's the hurry?" Charles said. "Left your piece over there? Go ahead, take your time and get it."
Jack looked back. Charles lowered himself onto the sofa, hands on his knees, groaning like an old man.
"All that money and yet you live like this." Charles gestured around, shook his head some more.
Jack tucked his Beretta in his rear waistband. "I don't have as much as you might think. Bad investment decisions."
"Drugs always pay off in the end." Charles leaned back, looked up, shrugged. "Then again, not always. Anyway, I'm the wrong guy to ask for money advice. Seems you fit the mold, too. But at least I live well."
Jack took a seat opposite Charles. "Sorry to hear about the Old Man."
Charles smiled as he wrapped his big hands around the back of his head. "No you're not. And neither was I. You and I both know that Feng should have retired a couple years back. He got crazy in the end, and that got him dead."