“What the fuck?” John bit out.
Shouting and curses erupted in her ears as the screen went blank, and the lights came on.
Nadia’s phone vibrated. Quickly fishing it out, she checked what came in.
Anonymous_754: I was part of the cover up.
“She’s made contact,” Nadia said through comms, heading rapidly for the exit. She typed back.
Me: It’s okay. We can talk about this.
Anonymous_754: Stairwell beside the Sparbro booth. Come alone.
Me: Got it.
“Wait for Levi,” John ordered. “This could still be a demo for the mob.”
Or Sally was making one last ditch effort to come clean. “She wants me to come alone. Stairwell beside Sparbro booth.”
“We talked about this …” John cursed at someone again. Revenant Films might regret allowing the LAPD to use their company for cover.
“I’ll watch her,” Kelso said. “I’m right beside the booth. Crowd is thin. Woodward, anything from your end?” She was in the CCTV room of the convention center, monitoring security feeds.
“This is a nightmare,” Gabby replied. “I can’t tell the real gangsters from the fake ones.”
Or the real monsters from the make-believe.
The phone in her hand vibrated with another message.
Anonymous_754: Are you in costume?
Nadia hesitated.
Bubbles for a long time … and then…
Anonymous_754: Well? Don’t play me again.
Me: I’m in a demoness costume. You?
Anonymous_754: No costume. I’m me.
Nadia cleared the door. She was stopped a few times by fans who wanted to pose with her and after the third photo op, she turned down the rest. “Boy, Revenant is going to get bad publicity for its ornery creatures.”
“We’re just staying in character,” Levi said as she heard a roar in her earpiece followed by delighted screams from the crowd behind her.
Nadia glanced briefly over her shoulder. “I think you missed your calling, Levi.”
Facing forward, she weaved through the crowd and spotted Kelso who shook his head. “Haven’t seen signs of her yet.”
“No heat signature in the stairwell,” Bristow said. “But the walls might be too thick for our drone to penetrate.”
“Do not go in that stairwell by yourself,” John said. “I’m heading your way.”
“You’re going to bring a mob with you,” Kelso said. “Stay where you are. Powell, I’ll follow you.”
“Fuck that,” John seethed. “Everybody’s talking about the hijacked trailer.”
“G, you better not punch anyone,” Declan joined into the jumble of communication. He was acting security for the Hodgetown panel. “It’s gone loco over here. Should I explain?”
“Negative,” Kelso said. “Just tell them we’re aware of the perp.”
“Shit, they’re still crowding me. Fucking lights. Use Theo as a distraction,” John demanded. “Just get these bloodsuckers off me.”
As she listened to John bitch about his fans, Nadia slowly approached the door to the stairwell. The employees around the Sparbro booth gave her a curious look, but largely ignored her in favor of making a sale of the toys and action figures representative of the many participants in StreamCon. She pretended to browse the merchandise while waiting for Kelso to get into position close to her without attracting attention.
Kelso’s voice exploded, “Coming your way, Powell. Man in Witcher costume.” His voice shook as if he was jogging. “Intercept—”
A stream of profanity blasted from behind her, and she wheeled around and smacked straight into a big man with long pale hair in a warlock costume.
Dmitry Vovk.
His silver eyes slitted. “You’re not Sally.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Someone’s got Powell,” Kelso growled.
More shouting and cursing erupted in comms.
Nadia couldn’t see beyond the mountain of man in front of her who crowded her toward the stairwell. Reaching past her, he shoved the door open and pushed her inside.
He swung her around and, with a hand to her throat, Dmitry pinned her to the wall. “Who are you?”
Her knees knocked together, but she glared at her captor. “I’m a demoness.”
The hand on her throat tightened. “Do not test me. What have your people done to Sally?”
“I should be asking you that, Dmitry Vovk,” she choked out.
The door to the stairwell slammed open and a roar exploded before the hand on her throat disappeared.
John had taken off his headpiece and was grappling with Dmitry. The two men exchanged grunts and punches. Levi also showed up, and his mask had a rip.
“Get her out of here,” John shouted.
The SEAL held the door wide open for her to get through, and when she glanced outside, it was chaos. Kelso was bleeding from the nose, but it looked like he was directing his undercover officers to secure the groaning men on the floor who Nadia figured worked for Vovk.
“I’ll stay with Kelso,” Nadia said. “Make sure John doesn’t kill Dmitry.”
“I’ll try my best,” the big man muttered.
The detective was maybe ten feet away, but on her way toward him, a small figure in a hoodie turned around and grabbed her arm, yanking her inside the Sparbro booth as though they were convention goers looking at products.
“Keep walking.” It was Sally.
“You were here this whole time?” Nadia snapped, wrestling her arm away.
Sally looked around her nervously and nudged her so they were in between booths. “Dmitry was hot on my tail.”
“So you played him. Told him you looked like a demoness?”
“Powell, where the fuck are you?” Kelso demanded through comms.
“She’s talking to someone.” Levi was coming their way, so Nadia waved her arm to acknowledge.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “I’ve got Sally.”
“What?” Kelso said. “You have her?”
Was that alarm in his voice?
Nadia turned back to the woman before her, but the gleam in Sally’s eyes chilled her blood to sludge. As if a curtain had been raised, and she could see the deception etched in them. Kelso’s urgent words faded as she came to an alarming conclusion. They were trying to find the monsters hiding behind the masks, but sometimes monsters were comfortable using their own skin.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Kelso instructed. “We just got a call from Henderson. Sally’s mother is awake. Or should I say, Evelyn Brown is awake—and she’s not Sally’s mother at all.”
Nadia jumped back from the woman in front of her as though she’d been bitten by a rattlesnake. She frantically searched for Levi and saw two men intercept him in the Sparbro booth. When her gaze spun back to Sally, a stun gun was in her hands.
The lights went out.
A roar went up in the convention center just as a jolt hit her.
And then there was nothing.
33
In the pitch-black darkness, fear took hold of John’s heart.
Pure terror that Nadia was not in his sights.
“I tried to stop this,” Dmitry hissed. “You shouldn’t have interfered.”
“You were hurting one of our own.” John hauled the Gray Wolf to his feet. The emergency lights came on just as they rushed out from the stairwell, the buzz of conversation was deafening, the pandemonium adding to the chaos in his head.
“Garrison,” Kelso shouted, fighting his way through a panicked crowd. “Nadia’s not answering.”
“Where’s Levi?” John barked.
“Here.” The SEAL appeared by their side. He had a body over his shoulder that he dumped at their feet. “Two men attacked me. The other got away. Nadia’s gone.”
“What do you mean she’s gone?” John shouted.
“She’s not responding to comms,” Bristow came over their earpieces. “Guys. The entire city’s gone dark.”
34
With the help of DHS’s Cybersecurity division, partial power was restored to SGC, but its central command was down, and blackouts continued to roll. There was a provision to borrow from the LA power grid, but the immediate supply wasn’t enough. Only essential facilities had power, and they kept on blinking. Patrols were brought in from other parts of the county because all the traffic lights were down.
StreamCon was shut down.
No one was sure what Sally’s endgame was, but John was going to get to the bottom of it. He sat across from the Gray Wolf of Odessa in the LAPD trailer. The crime boss had already admitted that Sally Davis was, in fact, Yelena Ivanova. She was thirty-three, not twenty-four. She was planted as a student at Caltech a year before she was hired by Huxley.
“I found that information in Maxim’s files,” Dmitry said. “What you found in the house where you were held was simply misdirection. I’m sure you already know.”
“What does she want from Nadia?” John asked through gritted teeth. Bristow was hitting a dead end locating her because her phone stopped pinging.
“The source code.”
“Nadia doesn’t have the source code,” John said.
Dmitry raised a brow. “Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Garrison. She may not have direct access to it, but she can get it through you.”
“Is Sally doing the sale herself?”
“Maxim stated in his emails that Sally was becoming hard to control. She helped Huxley figure out the problem in the device, but Huxley took all the credit. Maxim told her not to argue or call attention to herself.”
“That’s some shitty treatment,” Garrison derided.
“My brother told her to wait for the bigger payout.”
“This event.”
“Yes, but she hasn’t reached out to any of the crime bosses yet.”
John mocked, “So she made you all dress up for nothing.”
“I do not find this amusing. And you’re one to talk.”
He leaned forward, his lips curling into a snarl. “Oh, I assure you, I am far from amused.”
There was a knock on the back of the trailer. The door cracked open, and Bristow slid in. His face grim. John’s gut tightened. “Nadia?”
“Negative. Levi was able to get something out of the man he knocked out.” Bristow glared at the Gray Wolf.
“If he said he’s one of mine, he’s lying.”
“He didn’t, but he has a record in our agency database. He’s a North Korean agent.”
“What the fuck?” John muttered, and his gaze sliced to Dmitry who didn’t seem surprised.
“You knew?” He spat. His chair scraped back, lunging over the table to grab Dmitry by the collar and hauling him up. “What are you not telling me?”
John slammed him up against the wall. “You better start talking.”
“The Crown-Key was just a means to an end.”
“The end of what?”
“CalTech has been developing a guidance system for the U.S. military’s newest HellRaiser missiles.”
John turned to Bristow. “Did the power outage hit CalTech?” The research university was on the outskirts of SGC.
“Yes.”
“Dammit. Check if there’s been a breach.” As Bristow hurried out, John turned back to Dmitry. “This power outage was just a distraction.”
“Maxim didn’t plan the attack on infrastructure to be this elaborate. He only meant to embarrass Revenant Films for refusing to cooperate and to use it to demo the power of the Crown-Key.”
“And sell it to the highest bidder.”
“Correct.”
“Except he didn’t realize Sally Davis had loftier goals.”
Dmitry’s grim expression told him the Ukrainian crime boss was not pleased with how his own people had turned on him.
John released Dmitry and stepped back, raking fingers through his hair, feeling like the bald cap he wore earlier was still compressing his skull. Nadia had been gone for forty-five minutes. That was forty-five minutes too long.
“You care for this Nadia Powell.”
“Don’t you dare fucking say her name.”
The man’s lips flattened, but there was something in his silvery-gray eyes that seemed to penetrate into John’s soul. An understanding. A reflected pain.
Bristow burst through the door. “I think we have something. We have several drones in the air. I directed one to CalTech and I’m getting an SOS from a building across from the university.”
“The Crown-Key needs to be close to its target,” John said.
“And the distress call is in Nadia’s signature encryption.”
“You found her.” A glimmer of hope sparked through the bleakness hanging around him. Ever since his woman was taken, John fought with the panic and fury he’d contained in his ragged compartments. To find the woman he loved, he needed to be in control.
He loved Nadia.
“Kelso and Gabby are already on their way.”
The door to the trailer opened again, and Roarke poked his head in. “What’s the hold up? Let’s go.”
Nadia’s head throbbed, and she was still groggy from being stunned. She sat back against the wall, the iciness of the cold, tiled floor seeping through her bodysuit. They were in an abandoned building, or maybe it was just unoccupied office space. The outline of CalTech University loomed outside Palladian windows. The lights of the university blinked as electricity fluctuated.
With the unreliability of the power grid at the moment, only her feeling for Sally was certain.
Contempt.
She hated that two-faced, triple-faced bitch with a passion. No amount of silicone masks could hide the ugliness lurking behind that innocent, seemingly helpless face she tried to project. Who the hell was she that she duped everyone?
Sally was talking to Asian commandos dressed in black fatigues. Was she selling secrets to the Chinese? To the North Koreans?
When Nadia woke up, they’d immediately put her to work, threatening her with a cocktail of drugs unless she complied with their demands. Sally had already managed to break into Homeland Security and download the source code. That was why she’d been laying low between the time of Morris’ death and the days leading up to StreamCon. However, Sally failed to break into a block of program that Nadia had inserted as an extra safeguard against events like this. Sally needed that part of the code to complete whatever nefarious goal she intended.
Making a judgement call, Nadia did as she was told because that also activated a constant stream of SOS that her drones could pick up. She only hoped her other defensive measures worked.
“We’ve initiated the cryptocurrency transfer,” one of the commandos said.
“I’ll release the missile program once I’ve confirmed payment.”
“Sally,” Nadia groaned. “What the hell did you do?”
The other woman turned to her. “That’s not my name.”
“Who’s that poor woman in the hospital?”
“Someone Maxim and I picked up off the streets to build my cover.”
“Did you betray him?”
Sally snorted. “No. I didn’t. It didn’t come to that, but I was getting tired of being dictated to.” Her eyes flashed. “Especially by men. I elevated the Crown-Key to what it could do, not Huxley.” She puffed an irritated breath. “I saved his reputation.” She thumbed at her chest. “Me.”
Nadia wasn’t sure if she understood her right. “You were part of the design?”
“The device”—her mouth sneered— “has my code. My circuitry. Huxley was a visionary. He was also a genius, but a fraud when it came to this. And don’t get me started on those morons Morris and Wagner. Maxim was tolerable, but he got himself killed and left me with those two. And then Dmitry came along.”
“He wants the Key?”
Sally shrugged. “Who knows. But I’m done being used by stupid men, including the rest of the Argonayts. I told Maxim we should go big. Rogue nations like China and North
Korea instead of these greedy arms dealers.” She scowled. “All my life, I’ve been used by the mob.” Her mouth twisted. “But look at them now, all costumed up for StreamCon.” Sally giggled. “I showed them, didn’t I?”
Nadia could understand the frustration of people taking credit for another’s hard work but would never understand the extent of Sally’s retaliation. But maybe she could still reach her. “Sally,” she said quietly. “How are you sure these men won’t kill you and steal the Crown-Key?”
The other woman rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot. They double-cross me, and I’ll have every one of them exposed … they could never leave the country. Besides, they know I’m more useful to them working as an information broker.” Sally gave her one last look before shifting her attention back to the screen.
The woman was a megalomaniac. Nausea roiled in Nadia’s stomach. She hoped her baby was okay. Tears pricked her eyes. Bristow would know to use the drones, and they would find her. John would come for her.
“Funds received. Initiating program transfer …what the hell?” Sally whispered. “No. No. No.”
Nadia smiled grimly.
After a few minutes of hammering at her computer, one of the commandos approached the other woman. “What’s taking so long?”
Sally’s face mottled red, the expression on her face evil, poisonous. Again, Nadia asked herself how she could have been so deceived. The other woman stabbed a finger in Nadia’s direction. “She ruined it.”
“What?” the man asked.
Sally lunged at Nadia, fingers digging into her scalp and pulling her hair, making Nadia wish that she still had her wig and mask on.
“What did you do?” the traitorous bitch screamed.
The back of Nadia’s head cracked against the wall. Her eyes caught a glimpse of Sally rearing back with her right leg.
Instinctively, she curled into a ball, protecting her head with her arms and drawing her knees in to protect her belly, her baby. Sally continued her assault. Kicking her, clawing at her hair.
Her Covert Protector (Rogue Protectors Book 4) Page 30