Shadows (Black Raven Book 1)

by Barcelona, Stella

  She held his eyes for a long minute, before nodding.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  From the peace of his office, Trask observed Barrows’ youngest on the monitor, listening to her every delicious sniff through the audio system. She’d been there for an hour, and was long past the incessant screams of ‘no’ that had marked her arrival. She was also past the harsh sobs that had torn at her throat, so that now she gasped and choked just to breathe. Now, trussed up in the pure white straight jacket that had taken three men to strap her into, she was no longer capable of tearing at her hair or self-harming. She’d been responsible for most of the scratches on her face. Her long black hair hung stark and straight, as she rocked and mewled like a hurt animal. A beautiful, meandering rivulet of crimson blood dripped from her right nostril, past her lips, and down her chin.

  He’d watched her long enough to know that a clean bullet to her fucked-up brain would be a mercy killing. Yet in the same manner that he craved killing and torture, he wanted to get closer to the beautiful girl. Wanted to touch her, to look into her denim-blue eyes, to smell her, but her uniqueness presented a problem for him. His captives never saw his face. The molded silicone mask’s colorful distortions disturbed even grown men, who weren’t afraid of anything. Research told him that Spring wasn’t normal. By the abject, wide-eyed fear that was in her eyes, fear at her surroundings, fear with each gentle touch of his medical staff, he knew that she wouldn’t be able to handle his mask.

  Not that he gave a flying fuck if he put her into cardiac arrest before this was done, but he needed her right now. Later, he’d play.

  The daughter was in the room that adjoined Treatment Room B, where Barrows was now positioned, once again in his wheelchair, with firm ankle and wrist restraints. The man couldn’t move. All he’d been able to do, for the last hour, was listen to his daughter’s cries. Thanks to the media system, they’d amplified every sound that had come out of her. He turned his attention to the monitor that showed Barrows. Eyes squeezed shut, Barrows sobbed brokenly.

  She rocked with increasing power. He could watch her for hours, but time was a luxury he didn’t have. He pressed a button on the intercom system, which was connected to the treatment room. “Medicate the girl,” he said, to the lead doctor on his staff. “I need her to calm the fuck down. Her father needs to hear every word I say, and I don’t want her hysterics to get in the way. When she’s sedated, remove the straight-jacket.”

  The monitor that showed Barrows revealed a man who was shivering with grief and fear. Blisters from yesterday’s water torture were bursting, and his skin was cracking. Trask couldn’t comprehend loving anyone–or anything–as much as Barrows apparently loved this kid, but that would work in his favor. “Let’s give him a glimmer of hope. Make him believe he can control the situation. Once she’s calm, clean them both. Let her have her things, if that’s what it’s going to take to calm her down, until the medicine takes effect.”

  He’d looked through her rhinestone-covered backpack, seen the tablets with endless pages of numbers and words, and had immediately handed it all to his tech people. It was too fucking bizarre not to mean something. Whether the idiots who were working for him would be able to figure it out, though, was another matter entirely.

  “Keep a copy of those tablets with the analysts, but make sure the originals are in her backpack. I want to see if the numbers and words mean anything, and maybe father and daughter’s actions will tell me. Give father and daughter a few minutes of a reunion and then I’ll go in.”

  He gave more instructions, staging the scene so Spring wouldn’t see him, just in case the drugs didn’t put her out entirely. He waited as his instructions were implemented.

  Cleaning, drugging, and bandaging the two of them took his medical staff about an hour. Barrows was freed of his restraints. Bandages on his face covered the worst areas. His hair was combed, and he wore a fresh gown and a robe. Spring was calm, barely awake on the gurney that they’d use to wheel her into the room. Her backpack was on the shelf below the mattress.

  Together again. At last.

  These two were a living testament as to why emotions and attachments reflected weakness and stupidity.

  At the sight of his daughter, Barrows became less broken. He stood as the gurney entered the room, even though his broken left leg could support no weight. He hobbled to where the aids positioned Spring, bent to her and smoothed her hair back.

  “Spring, baby.” Her eyes opened, and the cameras behind Barrows captured the moment. For a second, she was confused, before her eyes widened in fear. She shrank away from him. “It’s me, honey,” he said. “Dad. Everything’s going to be…” his voice trailed off as he looked around the room. He leaned closer to her. The high-tech audio picked up even the faintest whisper, as he lied to his daughter, with remarkable conviction, “You’re going to be fine. You just rest, okay?”

  They were positioned exactly as he had requested. Barrows was against the wall, Spring, drugged and drowsy on the bed, was lying on her side and facing her father. Her eyes were shut. The treatment room was large, and there was enough space between Spring’s bed and the door for him to do what needed to be done. They had set up a workstation for Richard, with a stainless steel table at a height that was comfortable with his wheelchair. On top of the table was a laptop computer that was not networked with anything except the lead analyst in the computer room, who was going to be overseeing each of Barrows’ keystrokes.

  Enough of this saccharine-sweet, fucking reunion. Time to get down to business.

  Trask entered the room. His masked presence inspired Richard to assume a protective huddle, with his upper body leaning over his daughter. “Where’s Skye?” Richard asked.

  “Unable to join us at the moment.”

  “You sick fuck. I demand to see her.”

  “Your demands have no bearing on what happens here.” He nodded in the direction of the young woman. “Count as a blessing that I have provided you with an opportunity to be with this one.”

  Barrows glared at him. He refocused his attention on Spring, who lay still and unresponsive, even as he talked to her. Fury on his face, he glanced up. “What did you give her, you depraved psycho?”

  Barrows had no idea. Hell. Trask had no idea, nor did he care, what drugs the medical staff had given to her. “A strong dose of Valium.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “She doesn’t react like this to Valium.”

  He shrugged. “Well, she’s had something else. Doesn’t matter. I wanted her quiet. In my world, I get what I want.”

  “She can’t open her eyes, you son of a bitch.”

  The girl whimpered.

  Well, maybe she couldn’t open her eyes, but she could certainly hear or sense her father’s agitation. “Put on her headphones, if you don’t want her upset more than necessary. And I can assure you, our conversation is about to take a turn.” Barrows had enough energy to shoot him a look of pure hatred.

  “She doesn’t have…”

  He gestured beneath the gurney. “Her backpack.”

  Barrows snatched up the bag, reached inside, and pulled out the pink headset, which he gently placed over her ears, smoothing her hair and kissing her forehead as he did.

  Without the aid of the cameras, he couldn’t see the girl’s face, but she was quiet and still. He didn’t give a shit if she was sleeping, drugged, or almost dead. Her role here was done.

  “Here are the facts on which you need to focus,” he informed Barrows. “If you do not do exactly as I say, you will lose both daughters today.”

  Barrows tried to lunge at him, but since he was almost as incapacitated as the kid, he didn’t get close. He didn’t even have the force to move himself around the gurney, which separated them. “Bring Skye to me,” Barrows said.

  “You’re in my world, and here we play by my rules. Rule number one is the time for conversation is over. I don’t want to hear you. Rule number two. If
you want to live, if you want your daughters to live, you do exactly as I say. There are no other rules.”

  “Shadow Technology will never be yours,” Barrows said, defiant, as he stroked his daughter’s arm. “Even I can’t break the encryption technology that I designed for the LID.”

  “My patience has run out. And when my patience runs out, I like to hurt small, innocent things.” He cast a glance at the back of the girl. She was still. He returned his attention to her father. “Time for procrastination and playing games is over. I have the backup from both Hickory Lake and South Carolina. Even so, we need some assistance in running the programs. My world. My rules. You’re smart enough to understand the very simple rules that now govern your actions. You just broke rule number one.” He walked over to the girl’s bed, leaned over it, and gently stroked the curve of her hip, drawing fuel from the fear he saw in Barrows’ eyes.

  “Do. Not. Break. My. Rules. Again. There’s a laptop behind you. We have reached a point in the program where we need a password. We’ve received a prompt that contains the word cardinal. We know there are words, numbers, and letters in your daughter’s tablet that translate into code, but the word cardinal is not there. We will figure this out eventually, but I thought it would be more expedient to ask you the question directly. Our next option is to awaken your daughter and see what we need to do to get her to cooperate, because it is obvious to us from the material in her tablets that with her ability to translate words to letters and letters to numbers, she is a tool that will be useful to us in figuring out your passwords. If you want to spare your daughter that interaction with us, type the correct input on the laptop that’s behind you. I’ll know in a matter of minutes whether it works. If you make a mistake or fail to cooperate, the excruciating deaths of your daughters will be on your head.”

  Face gray, eyes wide, Barrows shook his head. “You can’t do this.”

  “I can, and I am. You just broke rule number one. Again.” Trask had anticipated this. “I warned you of the consequences. Bring Skye in.”

  His aides led a woman into the sterile exam room. The captive wore a white linen hood, loose white pants, and a white shirt that was fitted just enough to show a female shape. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back and her feet were chained together. Medicated and barely able to walk, she had a similar body type to the older daughter.

  Barrows’ abject horror was everything for which he’d hoped. The aides let her drop to her knees, about ten feet from Spring’s bed.

  His assistant handed him his Beretta, equipped with a silencer. He squeezed the trigger, firing two rounds in quick succession to her chest, in the heart. Blood splatter and flesh particles rained down on Barrows and the back of his sedated daughter.

  Objective fulfilled.

  Jennifer dead and Barrows mortally afraid for his other kid’s life.

  He loved a good two-fer.

  Barrows was braced against the gurney, but it was clear he was about to collapse. Face grim, hands shaking, he hobbled across the room to the body. Halfway he stumbled to his knees, and on all fours, the last several feet. Like a pathetic mongrel, he rested his head on the shrouded head of the dead woman. An aide was at each arm, their sole job for the moment to keep Barrows from figuring out the identity of the dead woman. Barrows’ chest heaved and his body shook with the force of his cries. Trask watched the outpouring of grief in a purely scientific way. In his wildest dreams he couldn’t imagine caring for any one human so much.

  “One down. One to go. The responsibility of her death lies squarely on you. Ready to go to work now?”

  As Barrows started to lift the blood-saturated cowl, the aides pulled him away. Barrows’ harsh cries of heartbreak bounced off the walls of the stark examining room.

  “My world. My rules. Listen closely, because I’m adding one. Rule number one. I don’t want to hear from you. Rule number two. You’re going to do exactly as I say. Rule number three. Don’t forget how you feel right now. Remember it every second. Be aware of the power I have over you. If you force me to kill that one,” he pointed his gun at the gurney, “I assure you it won’t be a mercifully quick shot to the heart. I’ll give her to my men to play with for a while, after I’m done playing some unique mind games with her. I’ll make fucking sure she loses every last bit of her mind and her humanity in slow, agonizing increments. However, if you do as I say, you and your daughter will walk out of here, once I have access to the LID,” he said. “The word is cardinal. Type the code that will get us past it.”

  ***

  A dusting of snow blanketed the steps that led to the stately Georgetown townhome of Senator Robert McCollum. Though he had a staff of housekeepers, security, and executive assistants, Senator Robert McCollum personally opened the red-lacquered door for Sebastian and Zeus. McCollum was a tall, good-looking man, with a full head of salt and pepper, wavy hair. He had friendly green eyes, ruddy cheeks, a booming voice, and an accent that had intentional, slight undertones of good-old-boy-from-Texas. Broad-shouldered and erect, he was in decent shape for a fifty-five year old man. Being a down-home-yet-sophisticated-good-old-boy was part of his charisma, a trait with which the man was abundantly blessed.

  Sebastian had long known that Bob McCollum was also an heir to an oil fortune. McCollum had come to DC with more than his share of money. He didn’t need the perks that came with being a senator. Most people would have thought that made McCollum a more honest man than someone who was in political service, simply because they could turn it into a money grab. In Sebastian’s estimation, McCollum’s motivation for being a politician was far more dangerous than the motivation for money. He was there for power, and Sebastian had understood that about him for years. The D.C. political scene was a chess game for McCollum, and the man thrived at it, all the while running an oil company with interests that spanned from the Gulf of Mexico to the Middle East.

  Ragno had provided just enough information for Sebastian to question the look of concerned sincerity that flooded the man’s face. When McCollum gave him his usual firm, friendly handshake, Sebastian wondered whether anything about the man was genuine.

  Darkness blanketed the city with a chilly, wintry gloom, penetrated only by headlights from incessant traffic and streetlights. The sidewalk was busy with speed-walking, bundled pedestrians. Snowflakes floated in the moist air. Sebastian followed Bob into the warmly-lit townhome, his mind clicking as fast as the constant keystrokes he heard through his earpiece. Ragno hadn’t yet been able to provide answers, but she was getting closer. Linked to both him and Zeus, she fed them damning information, as the profiles of BY Laboratories, Young, Root, and McCollum began intersecting.

  With the luxury of time, he wouldn’t have needed a personal visit to McCollum. He had no time, though, and he was desperate enough to find Spring that he’d do anything for an answer. Anything, he reminded himself, even being calm and playing the ridiculous game of charades that came with doing business with one of D.C.’s elite power brokers.

  As McCollum led them through the entry and into the living room of the spacious townhome, with its stark white, modern decorations and its museum quality sculptures and paintings, Sebastian mentally formulated questions for McCollum as Ragno fed him information. Zeus was there as a reality check, a balance to make sure that what happened in McCollum’s office wasn’t to the detriment of the operation or to Black Raven.

  Sebastian had called ahead and told the senator that they were going to deliver a status report on the search for Barrows. Nothing more. The senator, wearing a burgundy cardigan over a crisp white dress shirt, led them into his spacious first-floor study. A navy blue tie was neatly knotted and tucked into the cardigan. Crisp navy slacks were pleated with precision. Dark loafers completed his important-man-at-home look. A fire crackled in the study’s oversized fireplace. A black Labrador retriever with gray in her muzzle lifted her head when Zeus and Sebastian entered the study, came over for a good long sniff, and Sebastian petted the dog behind the ears.
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  “Lucy’s looking good,” Sebastian said, knowing that the senator adored the dog, who had recently had hip surgery.

  McCollum nodded. “She’s twelve this year. I’m keeping her in shape with swim therapy. Can you believe that? There’s a vet in Virginia who does physical therapy for dogs. Costs a fucking fortune.” McCollum waved away the aide who lingered in the doorway. “Tom,” he said, “you can shut the door.” As he settled into his leather chair, on the business side of a desk that was a solid, oversized plank of polished mahogany, he said, “Gentlemen. Would you like to remove your jackets and get comfortable?”

  Sebastian shook his head, keeping his leather bomber on. “We won’t be here long.”

  “At least have a seat. I have to admit,” he paused, as Sebastian and Zeus sat in the large guest chairs that were on the other side of the desk, “with the afternoon’s news that Richard Barrows’ daughter was kidnapped while under Black Raven’s protection, I’d have thought that you’d be too busy to provide me a personal update on the prison break.”

  “Well,” Sebastian said, studying Bob’s face, careful to keep his own expression calm and trying hard to do nothing to reveal the roiling urgency that was boiling in his gut, “this isn’t simply an update.”

  The senator was too smart to reveal anything in facial features. “Oh?”

  Sebastian’s first goal, a strategy he had developed with Zeus and Ragno, as the information started to click, was to test how committed the man was to towing the government’s official line. “When did the National Security Agency start implementing Shadow Technology?”

  “Excuse me?” McCollum’s brow furrowed. Whether the puzzlement was real or not, Sebastian had no idea.

  “Since September 11, 2001, you’ve been on three committees that had direct oversight on intelligence gathering and the workings of the National Security Agency. The Patriot Act Implementation Committee, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Implementation Committee, and the Committee for the Implementation of the Protect America Act.”