Caesar thought for a moment and took another sip of his tea, keeping his eye on the crowd around them. He knew Sean was right, but he wasn’t ready to show it.
“You worry too much,” Sean said. “Government workers are too busy watching the clock to catch guys like me and you. And that’s even if we had left a trail for them to follow, which we haven’t. Enjoy. The. Morning.”
Caesar nodded, noticing that the sun had drifted past the angle of the windows. The beam of light was now shining above them, across the crisscrossed white and brown façade of the restaurant.
“I just can’t—” Caesar fought to find the right words. “I can’t focus knowing they are trying to hunt us down. I have to know what they know.”
Letting out a loud exhale, Sean pointed down to Caesar’s laptop. “So, log back in. Check on their progress.”
Caesar felt his mouth pull up to a lazy grin. “Really? You wouldn’t mind? I mean, it’s a risk.”
“It’s a risk having you complain all the time,” Sean said. “A risk to my sanity. Just get in and out if it’ll calm you down.”
Caesar quickly brought up his browser and logged back into the NSA system, excitedly checking the case file for any new updates.
“What’s it say?” Sean asked.
“They’ve still got the Endling in custody,” Caesar muttered as he read. “They’ve been interrogating him, but he hasn’t given them anything. Nothing about the election, and nothing about us. They think he’s holding out for a deal.”
“See?” Sean said. “Even if they give that clown a deal, it would take weeks to put it together. And like you said before—he doesn’t know anything, anyway.”
Caesar nodded, leaning back in his chair, feeling a cold wave of relaxation drift over his body. They don’t know we’re here. They don’t even know what we’re trying to do. This is perfect—this is going to work. As he enjoyed the moment, he tabbed lazily through the folder labeled: “Personnel.” He clicked in and saw a list of IDs, ordered by date.
“Huh,” he said. “They’re adding people to the team. Last time I checked there were ten on the list, now I’m seeing fifteen. You’d think they’d be cutting back the numbers after finding their guy.”
“Let me see,” Sean said, flipping the laptop over in his direction. He navigated through the page with one hand while scratching his chin with the other. “Wow, these guys don’t take any chances—even the names of the agents are in code. ‘AN-AD-19899.’ ‘NO-PE-17899.’”
“Those aren’t all agents,” Caesar said, spinning the laptop back around. “The number in each string tells their rank. Anything starting with a ‘1’ is an agent, ‘2’ is an analyst, and so on. ‘9’s are guest users.”
“How do you know that?” Sean asked.
“I was an intern, remember?” Caesar said. “We used the same system. It’s an easy pattern to remember: first two letters of the first name, first two letters of the last name, and then the ID number. I still remember my handle: ‘CA-BL-78739.’ My boss called me ‘The Cable Kid.’ ”
“The Cable Kid?” Sean laughed. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“I know,” Caesar said. “Like you said—not a lot of geniuses running around.”
He scanned the list, picturing each agent on the other side of the world trying to piece together the mystery behind the Endling. Each agent trying to outsmart the other, wanting nothing more than to burst into the Lead Agent’s office with a big break in the case. Caesar played with the sorting function on the screen, reading the list from different angles. He clicked on the “date created” column, bringing up the list in order of newest to oldest. His hands froze.
“The latest team member,” Caesar said. “It’s—”
He blinked, swallowing whatever he could down his throat, as the ID stared back at him. His brain flew into motion, putting the pieces together.
MA-MI-90667
Caesar looked up to Sean, his jaw dropping.
“I don’t believe it,” Caesar said. “The newest guest account, it was created just a few days ago. First two letters ‘MA’ last two letters ‘MI.’”
Sean’s eyes flicking down to the laptop with a mild show of panic. He was doing the math on his side of the table as well. He looked up to Caesar as a mix of panic and doubt flashed across his face.
“Mason Mince,” Caesar said. “It’s him. It’s has to be him.”
“You don’t know that,” Sean said. “That’s got to be a coincidence. It could be someone else—lots of names start with ‘m’ and ‘a.’ And besides, what would he be doing on the Endling team? He’s too busy running around planning his next world order.”
“He put it together. He’s on to us. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Forget about it, man,” Sean said. “Even if it is him, it doesn’t change the fact that there’s no way he can get to us in time. There’s no way for him to stop us. And it doesn’t change what we need to do.”
Caesar’s heart plunged as his eyes scanned the user handle, over and over.
MA-MI-90667
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
NSA Texas Cryptologic Center
San Antonio, TX
November 1st, 9:03AM
“Mary Milward, Inmate #45099256. Please come forward.”
She rose from the bench, stretching her legs one after the other, and shuffled her way towards the guard. Her palms faced the ceiling, straining against her handcuffs—a gesture that wasn’t mandated while in custody, but she had learned over the years that it was usually appreciated by the guard on the other side. Sometimes, in here, small gestures went a long way.
She glanced off to the right, avoiding any eye contact that might be taken as aggression, as the guard checked and double-checked her paperwork. He pulled a keychain from his belt and unlocked each of her hands from the cuffs.
Mary looked down in curiosity, rubbing her wrists. The guard nodded over to the door.
“They’re waiting for you in there.”
Interesting.
The table at the center of the room held nothing, save an old ankle bracelet, lying with the transmitter face-down on the tabletop and the cut, frayed ends of the black nylon band extending into the air, like a turtle dead on its back. Agents Wilcox and Hernandez sat across the table, wearing matching expressions: a mix of equal parts confusion and panic.
“Good morning, Mary,” Agent Wilcox said. “Won’t you have a quick sit and join us? We thought we’d have a chat—that all right with you?”
“Is that what I think it is?” Mary asked pointing down at the device on the table.
“That bracelet used to be attached to Haylie’s ankle,” Agent Hernandez said. “You happen to know anything about it, Mary?”
“We know you and Ms. Black got along, is all,” Agent Wilcox said. “Thought we’d ask before jumping to any conclusions.”
“Now how would I know anything about that?” Mary asked.
“I’m going to go ahead and take that as a ‘no’,” Agent Wilcox said. “But I should tell you that any assistance you may provide would put you in a favorable position when parole time comes round. Unless, of course, you were somehow involved in the escape.”
Laughing, Mary rubbed her wrists and sat back. “Involved? My goodness, you two have a flair for the dramatic, don’t you? Involved. From in here? You think I snuck out of federal prison to cut off a girl’s ankle bracelet? You realize she’s one of the smartest hackers in the world, right? What makes you think she needs my help?”
“Like I said,” Agent Wilcox responded, “you two got along.”
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Mary said. “And besides, if I were you, I’d be more concerned about Haylie’s safety than anything else right now.” She lowered her voice. “I just hope that poor girl is all right.”
“And why’s that?” Agent Wilcox asked, slinking against the back of her chair.
“You assume she ran,” Mary said. “But she’s a celebrity now, no t
hanks to all of your press conferences, all of your chest-beating and your ‘justice has been done’ talk after the whole London thing. This is a girl who has taken down powerful people. Why on Earth would she want to run all alone into this big, scary world? Maybe you should have kept a better eye on her, Agent Hernandez. Maybe one of those powerful people came back to find her.”
Shaking her head, Wilcox cracked a slight grin. “Ms. Black’s safety has always been our priority,” she said. “We have no evidence of foul play here. If you ask me, I think there’s something else going on.”
“How could she plan something without you knowing?” Mary asked. She pointed up to the corner at the camera angled down at the table. “What, with your IP trackers and your fancy security, always watching, always knowing. You can see everything she could see. You’ve seen more than I have, that’s for sure. Why would I know something you don’t?”
Agent Hernandez turned to Agent Wilcox. “She’s protecting Haylie. I knew she’d do this.”
“No, dear,” Mary said. “You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t owe Crash a thing. I can just see more clearly than you. I can see what you don’t see.”
“And what’s that?” Agent Hernandez asked. “Enlighten me.”
“You’re under pressure, and you’re panicking,” Mary said. “You aren’t thinking straight, Agent Hernandez. You let her get away, and now you’re reaching out for any solution to the problem, other than yourself. ‘This must be Mary’s fault. There must be some grand plan in the works.’ Maybe you should just do your job better?”
Agent Hernandez stood, pacing back towards the back wall and buttoning his jacket tight. He turned, pointing back at Mary. “You know something. I know you do.”
“Even if I did, what makes you think I would hang that poor girl out to dry?” Mary said. “After everything you’ve put her through? You should be ashamed of yourself. She’s, what, eighteen? What if she did outsmart you and sneak away? Can you blame her for that?”
“Damn right I blame her,” Hernandez said. “She broke out of federal custody. She is in violation of—”
“You think she had a choice?” Mary said. “Your agreement was a trap. You knew she wouldn’t last—everyone knew that. Besides, she’s not the type to run without a reason.”
“And what would that be?” Agent Wilcox asked. “What’s the reason, Ms. Milward?”
Mary sat back, stretching her wrists, one over the other, and brought them back down to the table.
“You can’t see it from the inside,” Mary said. “I think that’s your problem. You’re smart, but sometimes smart isn’t good enough. You need the right angle, the right viewpoint, to see things clearly. You have been destroying people’s trust for years, bit by bit. One little piece at a time. You get away with it—what, with your fancy lawyers and your gray suits—but there’s payback. There most certainly is payback.”
“Ms. Milward, I’m going to have to ask you to stay on topic,” Agent Wilcox said. “Do you or don’t you have information that can—”
“This system you have,” Mary said. “The system that you two work for, every day. The reason you wake up in the morning—it’s a failed experiment. A panopticon. Nothing more.”
“Sorry, a what?” Hernandez said.
“A panopticon,” Mary said with a raised voice. “Agent Hernandez, it seems that your knowledge of history is worse than your babysitting skills, if that’s even possible. It’s an old prison design—cells arranged in a circle facing a tower. It was designed to scale the power of the people in charge. Knowing there was a possibility of being watched was just as powerful as actually being watched. The theory was that the threat of authority would keep prisoners in line. Eat away at them, every minute of every day.”
“This is fascinating,” Hernandez said with a wave of his fingers, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Not helpful, though. Not at all.”
“What I can see from the outside, from my view,” Mary said, “is that you’ve designed your whole system wrong. You can watch anyone at any time—through wiretaps or Roar-4 or whatever else you have hiding in those rooms back there—but you don’t tell the people that. You’re ashamed of it. And that means the people don’t bend to the weight of authority you have; they are surprised by it when it’s finally revealed. They are outraged by it. A system like that doesn’t build law and order, it builds mutiny.”
Agent Hernandez threw his arms up in the air, rolling his eyes.
“But that’s not your problem,” Mary said. “Not with Haylie Black.”
“Be a dear, Ms. Milward,” Agent Wilcox said in a mocking tone. “And tell me—what is our problem?”
“Your problem isn’t that Crash is running,” Mary said. “It’s that you and your failed system did nothing to change her before she ran. You never meant to rehabilitate that poor girl. You just cut her off, put her on pause. Put her behind glass. When you do that to someone—to someone like Crash—they don’t change for the better, they get bottled up. They explode.”
Agent Wilcox nodded over to Hernandez. They stood and made their way to the corner, whispering. They argued a few volleys, with Agent Wilcox taking the lead towards the end. The two agents walked back to the table.
“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.” Agent Wilcox took a pen and paper out of her bag and placed it on the table. She spun the pen counterclockwise under her fingers as she kept her eyes locked on Mary.
“I’m out of time,” Wilcox said. “And I’m out of options. There’s a full pardon here in this folder. This paperwork will get you out of jail, and you’ll never have to see my beautiful face again.”
She reached down to the folder on the table and flicked it across to Mary, followed by the pen.
“But awarding you this pardon is completely up to my discretion,” Agent Wilcox said. “It’s my call. So I’m going to need to you start speaking English, and start working along with us and save us any further history lessons.”
Mary reached out and held the folder in her hands. She couldn’t force herself to open it, she didn’t want to learn it wasn’t true.
“I want you to forget about Ms. Black for now,” Wilcox said. “And I want you to focus on what we need. The Endling wasn’t working alone—you know it, and I know it. We need to find out who he was working for, and why. And we need to do it fast.”
Mary nodded, silently, still grasping at the folder.
Wilcox continued. “I’ve got Washington breathing down my neck. Forty-eight hours, that’s what you’ve got. Full access to any system you want, the accounts are ready to go. If you hand me hard evidence, you’re a free woman. If you don’t, the cuffs go back on. If I were you, I’d do yourself a favor and get to work, because you’re never going to see another deal like this. Not in your lifetime.”
Mary ran her finger across the edge of the folder, her heart pounding.
Forty-eight hours.
Mary peeled back the top side of the folder and read the deal word for word, front to back. She closed it, resting both hands on top, one folded over the other, and looked Agent Wilcox dead in the eyes.
“When do we start?” Mary asked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
La Grenouille Hotel
New Orleans, LA
November 1st, 8:45PM
Haylie tossed the brass key onto the antique desk and watched it slide across the shine of the tabletop, spinning into the cord of the desk phone and landing right smack under the bottom of her new shopping bag. The sounds, smells, and soul of Bourbon Street drifted up through the window, pushing back the curtains in flaps and twists towards the desk. She kicked off her boots, sat down and rubbed her feet.
The past twenty-two hours had been a long, drawn-out blur. Driving across central Texas in the middle of the night felt as alien as Mars—just a whole sea of uncharted nothing. She and Vector had agreed that New Orleans was the perfect next stop for them—far enough away from Austin, but still with direct flights to most of the world. The pa
ir had passed their time in the car planning and brainstorming ideas for their steps to find Caesar, the whole time trying to concentrate on their next move, and not on the fact that they were now fugitives.
They had made good time, with the occasional stop for food, and one stop for hair dye and clippers from a drug store a few miles off the highway just before the state line. There, Haylie and Vector had given each other makeovers—her hair now jet black, his long locks sitting at the bottom of a trashcan somewhere outside of Beaumont, Texas.
“Right,” Vector said, pulling a rectangular box from the shopping bag in dramatic fashion, like a sword from a sheath. He handed it over to Haylie, flashing a smile. “We’re on our way now.”
Haylie peeled the plastic wrap from the laptop box, balling it up and tossing it close enough to the trash can to count. She pulled the cover off the box with a satisfying sucking noise, revealing a brand new, aluminum laptop shell.
“You know,” Vector said from over her shoulder. “You can do anything you want now. They’re not watching anymore—at least, that is, until we get caught.”
Haylie cracked the laptop open, running her fingers across its perfect, slick black keys. It was the first thing she had asked for after they hit the road—she needed to get her hands on technology. Not just to feel its power again, but because she knew it was the only thing that could close the distance between them and her brother, the only thing that could save him from a lifetime of regret.
She hit the power button and inhaled as the laptop let out a dull chime. The machine booted up and she clicked through the basic setup instructions, entering the hotel’s free Wi-Fi code and soaking in the blank desktop, full of nothing but possibilities. It was ready for whatever she wanted to throw its way.
“It’s going to take me an hour or so,” she stammered as she opened a browser window. “To set it up. To—”
Crash Into Pieces (The Haylie Black Series Book 2) Page 20