“Ah… no, not yet,” I said. “Not that I know of.” I saw the tightening of his shoulders. There was a slight trail of water on the side of his neck where he’d obviously hurried through his morning wash. He was wearing his jeans and one of my undershirts, noticeable for its lack of ironing. The muted khaki color suited him; it blended well with the dark flush of his skin. We used to do that a lot, borrow each other’s clothes when we stayed over. As I stared at him, words temporarily eluding me, he reached across me for a spoon and the fabric rode up on his torso.
The scar was still there, a shallow, shining red tramline across his side, slashed across his waist. I glanced away quickly, before he caught me looking, and moved a pile of papers from under the coffee pot with a growl of mock annoyance. “Be careful, will you? I didn’t want to wake you, so I laid some stuff out here to work for a while.”
He turned then, examining the sticky notes all over the counter and the doors of my cupboards. “What’s all this?”
“It’s the way I work,” I said, defensively. “Bit of brainstorming. Sketching. Word patterns….”
“I know that.” He shook his head, dismissing the explanation. He was used to the method. I’d moved into several colors of highlighter and three shades of sticky notes. It had exhausted my small supply of stationery. Niall stared at the tabulated numbers and the lines of letters ranged against them. Place looked like a small nuclear device had gone off in a paper mill. “The e-mail address?”
I nodded.
He moved back to the doorway, but stood there watching me. “Tell me about it,” he said. His voice was tight. The tension was still there. “Or do you want to get dressed first?”
I looked down at myself. When I woke properly after Joe’s call, I finally shucked off the grubby sweats and shirt I’d been wearing since I was shot, showered carefully, and changed into some more comfortable shorts. I’d just forgotten to put another shirt on. The thoughts had started to crowd my mind and I’d stumbled into the kitchen, grabbing for pen and paper to scribble down my first thoughts. Decency was the last thing on my mind.
“No,” I replied, my voice tripping over itself with eagerness. “No, I don’t want to get fucking dressed, I want to tell you about it first! That a problem?”
He smiled, and his eyes lifted from my bare chest. Nine months ago, I’d have recognized the look in his eyes as one of eagerness for some other kind of communication; three months ago, I’d have taken it for distaste and disapproval. This morning I didn’t have the faintest idea what it was, but I realized I didn’t want to spend time analyzing it.
“Joe updated me while you were asleep.” I reached to peel my first sheet of notes out from under a couple of forks. The forks clattered into the sink, completely ignored. “He told me the materials used in both the poison attack and the bombing of your apartment were possibly Department issue. He said some of them only came into use since Mission Dove, as in relatively recently.” I ignored Niall’s raised brows and hurried on. “Also, Brad told us to check out his notes, didn’t he? I found them in amongst your stuff.” I looked across quickly, to check he was all right with me rifling through his papers while he slept. He nodded to me. “So I went through the whole pile. Most of the mail that was being diverted was only since we began Dove. Again, within a relatively recent time frame. A lot of it was to do with the raid on the club, right at the beginning—our plans, the attack on you, the subsequent investigation and recommendations—even though there was plenty of other stuff that might have been useful to an enemy. Brad puzzled over this apparently selective process for a while. I managed to decode his own brand of shorthand to read some of his initial thoughts. He just never spent the time on following them through.”
“Did he come to any conclusion?”
I grimaced. “Some. Notably that the hacking concentrated on the attack at the club and its aftermath, then on the subsequent movements of the Project Team members. You, especially.”
Niall frowned, absorbing this information. “What do you think, then? That it’s a personal vendetta? Why the attacks on everyone else, then?”
“No, not personal against you except to the extent that you were on the team that raided the club in the first place. There were several medical reports diverted, fairly boring except for information about your wounds and the weapon used and such. But there were other e-mails selected, full of anecdotal stuff about the rest of us, what our duties were during the rest of the mission, hints as to where our current homes were, what transport we were using.”
He raised an eyebrow. “No,” I said, anticipating the question. “Not a lot about Simon. Just the rest of us, including Judith as controller of the mission.”
“But if someone wanted to know what had happened, wouldn’t they have been better served by stealing a look at the Mission file itself? Everything was in there.”
I nodded. “But it’s only since I looked through Brad’s notes that I realized the file hasn’t been with the Team since then. After the attack on you, Judith’s bosses requisitioned it for the investigation, and everything we did since then had to be passed through them. I think she’s been on some kind of probation, even though the investigation found no one specifically to blame. Most of us knew what was going on throughout Dove because we were directly involved and kept in touch with each other. But it would have been difficult for anyone else to find a single comprehensive record of the mission in one place at any one time.”
“So we’re back with our original theories.” Niall narrowed his eyes and folded his arms as if to protect himself. He looked casual, leaning against the doorway, but I knew different. “It all has something to do with Mission Dove.”
“But not the peace talks, I reckon. The pattern of the intelligence is far more specific than that. It’s about the raid on the club—the attack on you—and the Project Team who carried out that raid. There’s no interest in the rest of the mission except as a means of tracking our whereabouts. No reference to governmental committees, the overseas ambassadors, or the needs of global peace, for God’s sake. It’s all about a seedy club with some abused kids and the team of agents who were in there mopping up the crap at the start of it all.”
Niall glanced up at the sticky notes again. “So did you crack the code?”
“Please,” I said, with exaggerated affront. “You insult me. It’s a nine-number matrix, like those number games that are so popular. You have to fill each box with one each of the numbers 1 to 9, never repeating on a line or in a box or on a diagonal—” Niall coughed, pointedly. I sighed. “I fitted the patterns to the alphabet, though I don’t know how long it’d have taken me if I hadn’t found a couple of messages that Brad intercepted that were also in the code. There was only one letter repeated in the e-mail address, but that helped me to—”
“What is it, Tanner?” There was a dangerous edge to Niall’s voice. Of course, he hadn’t had breakfast yet.
“Melting pot,” I said, simply. “That’s what the e-mail address is. Something that Joe said to me—or I said to him—about mixtures and patterns, made me think about the numbers again, made me consider this kind of encryption. Made me think about the phrase itself.”
“But….” Niall looked stricken. “But that’s what Simon calls the Team office, isn’t it? We’ve all heard him say it. And all your theories about no one having access to Mission Dove—isn’t Simon the one whose records would have been the most complete? He knew where we all were, where we were posted, what we were using, how we were resourced. Any gaps in his knowledge were things he could have discovered from us directly because we worked together on the mission. I know I was the one who brought him to mind yesterday, but I really hoped I was on the wrong track. Doesn’t all this lead straight back to him? Shit, Tanner, couldn’t you be wrong?”
“Chill.” I could see I was annoying the hell out of him in my refusal to get upset. “Yeah, Simon could have got all the information he wanted from us, Niall, you’ve put your finger on it there.�
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“What?”
I started to laugh.
“What the hell is there to laugh about?” Niall sounded both astonished and angry.
“No, I’m sorry.” I hiccupped, trying to rein it in. “But you see, that’s the whole point! That’s why I’m sure now that Simon doesn’t have anything to do with it. Why should he go through this ridiculous charade of diverting e-mails and hacking into medical reports when he already has access to any information he might need to turn against us, discreetly and—more importantly—secretly? And this whole hacking thing is just so juvenile that it’d offend me if I weren’t so shit scared of one of us coming to serious harm.” I waved a sheaf of my notes at him by way of emphasis. “Think about it. Which one of us would be so stupid as to use a code name that referred to his own department? To his own personal nickname for it? Even if it’s encrypted, it’s so blindingly ridiculous that it’s alien to us. It’s like leaving the network password on a scrap of paper in the drawer by the local PC. You know?” Niall was staring at me, his mouth half open as if he were trying to find a suitable response to my excitement. “Niall, don’t you see? Simon is no fool, very far from it. And this ridiculous numeric code that’s been used—that wouldn’t have been Simon’s doing either. Dammit, he hates these things! I can’t even get him to spend time on a crossword, let alone a numbers game. Only numbers he likes are the serial numbers in procurement catalogues for special equipment, or the telephone and zip code numbers for safe hotels, or the amount of money you spent last month on ammunition alone against the current credit limit—”
“Okay, okay, I get you.”
“So he’d never use ‘melting pot’ himself. It’s been used either in ignorance, or as a deliberate ploy to make us think it’s Simon. To turn us all inside out with confusion. I think there are quite a few red herrings swimming around in the murky depths of recent events. Place is starting to stink of them, in my opinion. Soon as we find out where Simon himself is and sort this whole thing out the better. It’s all getting beyond a joke.”
Niall’s expression cleared. I’d never seen such a look of relief. “So we are back where we started. But we know how it was planned and what was used. Maybe even a clue as to why we’ve been targeted. And we seem to know who it’s not! We can work on that, right?” He grasped my arm, and I felt his excitement at the prospect of positive action. Its warmth coursed through me like fresh blood. “That’s smart work, Tanner.”
Then his other hand slipped around my bare waist, and he pulled me in for a kiss.
I don’t think he’d thought it through; it was instinctive, a result of the sudden rush of satisfaction he was feeling after a period of such frustration and inactivity. All sorts of psychological shit like that, you know? I could empathize with it, all too well.
But I didn’t restrain him this time. It was a firm, rich kiss, full of enjoyment and fun and an intimacy that we used to take for granted. Not necessarily sexual, but bringing us as close as we could get. I opened my mouth and joined the kiss with just as much enthusiasm. I tangled my hand in the hair at the nape of his neck and hugged him tightly.
We broke after a couple more moments, both a little breathless. It had been exciting, yeah—but something more than that. Something that thrilled more of me than just my treacherous groin. His hand still lingered at my waist, his fingers warm on my flesh. His eyes were wide and shining.
“Wow,” he said, softly. His lips looked rather swollen. “That was… unexpected.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. I wanted to grin. I wanted to cheer to the heavens, to tell you the truth; I hadn’t felt so good for months. Oh, and by the way, I wanted more. I leaned back into him, and he looked just as keen to continue.
Then there was a boom of noise and the trailer rocked on its very base. My papers slid spectacularly all over the kitchen floor, and we were thrown back against the doorway. In other circumstances, I’d have joked that the earth-moving was caused by our making out, but Niall’s face was very pale and the sudden reverberation rang in my ears. I knew the sound of an explosion when I heard one—and a damned big one.
Wednesday 09:32
NIALL PUSHED me to one side and, this time, he was the first to cross the trailer. He snatched up his gun from under the couch as he went, but the minute he opened the door, we saw that this was no new sniper attack. The air outside was thick with smoke and dust. Bricks and torn metal scattered the ground around the trailer; people were coughing and shouting. I peered over Niall’s shoulder to see shadows in the filthy fog. I could hear someone cursing. A dog was barking loudly, and although I was no expert on pets, it sounded a lot like Dylan.
Junk’s bulk reared out of the mist, his hand wiping at his stained face. “Mac? You okay? What the fuck’s goin’ on?”
“What about you?” I called back, knowing full well what was going on.
He waved a hand dismissively. “It was under your trailer, man. Dylan was nosin’ around there yesterday. Whined all fuckin’ night, too, so I let him out early this mornin’. He pulled this bundle out from under your trailer, dragged it over to mine. Fuckin’ thing’s a bomb, I think. Grabbed it from him, pushed it away from ours and Ruthie’s. But didn’t have enough time to get rid of it. I was callin’ some of the guys to help me when it went off.”
“Where? Who—?”
“’S okay, exploded outside the empty trailer, but there’s a couple o’ my boys hurt….”
Niall had already left the trailer and plunged into the smoke himself.
“Let him help!” I called. “Get everyone back, there may be more devices.” I started coughing myself. “Junk, tell me what the damage is.”
Junk moved forward out of the maelstrom, Dylan at his heels. The dog had a layer of dirt and dust along his coat, but he seemed healthy otherwise. I looked down at him and he wagged his tail.
“Fuckin’ animal!” Junk announced proudly. “Saved your ass again, Mac.” Then he caught sight of the wildness in my eyes, and his enthusiasm calmed a bit. “Okay, right. It went off between the steps and the base of the old trailer, just smashed up the corner o’ Ruthie’s and took the windows out o’ Zac’s. If it’d gone off directly under yours, Mac, we’d be pickin’ bits o’ you out o’ the crap for weeks to come.” He looked at me curiously and continued. “Zac’s girl was under one o’ the windows, got her arm injured. One o’ my kids was hangin’ around having an early morning smoke behind the empty trailer and caught a metal panel on the head, dislodged off the roof. Just scratches on him and a bump the size of an egg, and serves him right, ’cause he’s too fuckin’ young to be smokin’ anyway. The older guys are scared but they’re fine, so’s the baby, and if you can let Sheri know all her sisters are okay—”
“Sheri?” I stared at him, my mind racing.
“Ain’t you in touch with her?” His expression was puzzled. “The message came she was helpin’ you out.”
I stared at him. Niall strode back into view, his hair dusty, a single streak of dirt along his cheek. The swirling cloud of smoke and fine debris was slowly settling. He caught my eye and nodded. “I’ve checked the rest of the nearby trailers, no further problems,” he said, curtly. I understood perfectly. This one device was meant to have done the trick. He turned back to help with the injuries and the clearing up, while I stepped out of the trailer and drew Junk to one side.
“Who gave you the message about Sheri?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but Junk’s eyes narrowed.
“Where is she, Mac? Is she in fuckin’ trouble?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “She visited me after the shooting; you’ll remember you were there as well. Niall said she called in later, too, but I was out of it for a while. Neither of us has seen her since. Tell me what you know. It’ll all be fine.”
He glared at me like he didn’t believe a word. Not sure I did myself. The concern was glinting in his eyes, but he spoke quickly and concisely to me. “She took that cockroach off the site yesterday afternoon, that kid
who was around at the shootin’. He was messin’ about around here for a while, scared of Dylan so he said, so she offered to take him to his car. Then I got a message she was going to go help out with somethin’ else, somethin’ you’d asked from her, and she’d be back later on.” He saw the questions in my wide eyes. “No, she never came back last night, though that ain’t unusual. She goes her own way, you know? And no, I can’t remember who gave me the fuckin’ message about her. Someone on the site, they’d heard it from someone who’d heard it someplace else. You know how it is. Didn’t come to check it with you, because you were hurt, and… well, because it was a job o’ yours. I know she has this sorta soft spot for you. I reckoned she’d be okay.”
Niall came back over, hugging a grimy bundle of cloth in his arms. We both turned to look at it. “The dog found this under the empty trailer alongside the device.” He glanced down at Dylan, standing patiently beside his master. The Rottweiler’s dark eyes stared up at Niall’s—seemed like they sized each other up, and neither was found wanting. Niall unwrapped the cloth, and we all stared at the scorched remains of a rifle.
“Guess that’s the one that got me,” I said quietly.
Niall met my eyes and nodded. “I should have searched more thoroughly, at the time. I should have looked around the site for the weapon, not just the shooter. Maybe the bomb was in place then too. I’d have found it before now. Tanner—”
I held up a hand. “Not now, it doesn’t matter. It’s just Sheri—”
“Tell me what the fuck’s goin’ on, Mac!” Junk’s voice was full of fury, but fear too. “I’ll search for her myself. Just tell me where the hell to start.”
I grasped his shoulder. He looked very startled, like he’d never seen me properly before. “We’ll find her, you hear me? And she’ll be okay.” I know I sounded fierce. I was damned angry myself, as angry as the girl’s father.
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