Shadow Rising (A Lacy Merrick Thriller Book 2)

by Robin Mahle

  “And who gave you this information?”

  “Our friend who has helped us before. Word reached him earlier today.”

  “I have to go there.”

  “Sir, I implore you, do not travel. Your passport has been revoked. You will not be allowed to travel in any event.”

  “Ahh, you see that is where you are wrong.” He began to meander inside his office. “The minister and I have begun to see eye to eye once again. He has come around to the fact that there are things that must be taken care of in order for us to move forward.”

  “It would be all too easy for the other CIA agent to track you down. There’s too much risk.”

  “Your warning is duly noted, my friend. However, these road blocks that have kept us from completing our mission have become cumbersome and I believe it must come down to me to make them disappear.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Ahsan? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, sir. I will wait for your arrival then, sir.”

  “Don’t worry, Ahsan. This will be over soon and you will be able to return home and I will again return to the position of which I was unfairly robbed.”

  16

  The fact that the safe house would be Lacy’s home for an indefinite period of time made her all the more anxious to resolve her current predicament. Like the others, she wanted to go home and getting her children back was her biggest priority. She hadn’t attempted to reach out to Jay’s sister in the past week and began to wonder if Olivia and Jackson believed she was never coming back. To a child, time moved slowly and that must have rung true for them. Day after day in a new home, in a new school. It must’ve felt like they’d been gone for an eternity. And it was beginning to feel that way for her too.

  The route back to the safe house was to be continually altered in an effort to evade followers. Today, it would add an extra twenty minutes to the journey and she was ready for it to end. Alone with her thoughts, she drove along the secluded roads. It would’ve been so very easy to just keep going; get her kids and drive all night. Perhaps that was what a good mother would do—not try to save the world, but save her own family.

  She unlocked the gate and continued through, noticing Aaron’s car already in the driveway. Pulling around to the side of the home, Lacy stepped out and made her way to the front door. While she did feel fairly safe here—the barrier the trees provided, the remote area—a constant threat loomed and it had begun to take its toll. Pressing on would be one of the most difficult decisions she would have to make, but press on she would because Keith Colburn deserved it. Her husband deserved it.

  Inside, the warmth enveloped her, soothing her shivering nerves, but offering little more than physical comfort. Aaron was the first to offer a welcoming smile. “Did you just get here?”

  “A little while ago. How’d it go today?”

  As soon as she closed the door, Will and Trevor appeared from the kitchen. “Looks like I’m the last one to the party.”

  “We’re all taking different routes and leaving at different times,” Axell said. “It’s the only way to be sure we have no tails.”

  “I have some interesting news we need to discuss.” She hadn’t spoken to Will about the meeting, assuming it was best to keep him at a distance at work in the event she was being watched there too, which she’d begun to feel was highly likely now. “We’ve been asked to analyze information and data that was transmitted twenty-four hours prior to and after the restaurant shooting.”

  “I’m not surprised by that,” Will said. “I heard it was being investigated as an attack, although my team hasn’t been asked to take part.”

  “Which is unusual, don’t you think?” Axell replied.

  “Not really. We have multiple teams, and the fact that I was there means they probably don’t want me involved in the investigation.”

  Axell grunted his displeasure.

  “So who’s running the show?” Will asked her.

  “SSA Kelly is coordinating with Delgado.”

  Will’s expression hardened. “Delgado? The same man who replaced Mendez?”

  “That’s right. Now do you think it’s unusual?” Lacy replied.

  They returned to the living room and Lacy sat down. “I asked Vogel for a favor, one she granted late this afternoon.”

  “You talked to her about this?” Aaron said.

  “You know how she helped us before. I have no reason not to trust her now.”

  “Lacy, we can’t keep bringing people in on this. Jesus!” He turned away from her. “You’re putting everyone in danger.”

  “Like we haven’t been in danger every minute of every day since Jian’s release?” Her defenses shot up.

  “Okay, let’s just calm down and take a step back.” Will turned to Lacy. “What was the favor and how is it going to help us?”

  “She’s given me clearance to view the requests Kelly and Delgado have made in the past six months.”

  “Requests?” Axell asked.

  “Yes. Each department of the Bureau submits to the Cyber Division requests for information, analysis—things like that. We process them and present reports back but not before reviewing them with Michelle so that she’s aware of everything coming and going through the department. Prior to the attack, I analyzed web traffic coming into the east coast region from IP addresses in red flag countries, among other requests made by other divisions. Now I review the information from my team and submit to Michelle for final analysis.”

  “And she gave you authorization to view these requisitions?” Axell continued.

  “Yes. However, I won’t be able to access it until tomorrow. It was too late in the day and I had to be sure and leave at the right time, per our agreement.”

  “Right.” Aaron finally turned and rejoined the conversation, appearing to have calmed down. “I can get you into the FBI’s server. You don’t need to wait until tomorrow. I know you can’t risk accessing information from here, but it won’t be under your login or originating from this location.”

  “Can anyone trace anything back to here?” Axell asked.

  “Not the way I do it.”

  “You’ve done that before, Hunter, and it ended in an ambush,” Will added.

  “That wasn’t his fault. That was mine for not ensuring a fully vetted connection to the CIA secure net. That’s not on Hunter; that’s on me,” Axell replied.

  “I can do this, Will. I’ve got decent skills, and I thought I was pretty good, but since going to work as a technical analyst, I’ve seen things I never considered before. Ways around, ways inside. It’s made me better than I was. If I was a lay person, seeing that stuff for the first time, I’d be scared to death of my own government.”

  “I already am,” Lacy replied. “Aaron, if you think we can do it safely, then let’s do it. The sooner the better. These are the only two variables in our equation and I’m hoping one of them will shed some light on who’s after us besides Lei Jian. We don’t have anything yet from Turner, is that right?”

  “Nothing yet,” Axell began. “He’s stalling and I think it’s time we get Fraser to push him along. Yesterday, I only thought he was hiding something. Now I know he is.”

  While Aaron began to set up his laptop, Will approached Lacy. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He began to walk toward her bedroom.

  Lacy followed with curiosity and once they reached her room, she began, “Why do I get the feeling something happened that you’re not telling me? Or that you don’t want the others to know.”

  Will closing the door made her feel all the more uncomfortable and her nerves shot up on end. The two sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I want you to know that I had someone check on your kids.”

  “What?” Her eyes immediately welled. “Are they okay?”

  “Yes. Yes, they’re fine. They’re more than fine. He said they seemed happy.”

  She placed her hand over her mouth and took a moment to l
et the news sink in. With a calming breath, she continued, “How did you? I didn’t tell anyone. My God, if you found out…”

  “I’m sorry. I—I shouldn’t have kept this from you, but when we were at your house, I checked the burner you kept in the foyer, knowing that we were being listened to. I didn’t want to just ask where you’d sent them and I figured you had to have made a call or two to set it up. I thought if you knew how they were, it would settle your mind. So I called in a favor with a friend in New York, where the calls were made to. You don’t have a large family and I remember seeing Jay’s sister at the funeral. Anyway, he drove by the house in Long Island.”

  “They’re okay? They looked okay? Like they were eating?”

  He smiled and chuckled a little. “Yes. He said they appeared healthy and happy.”

  She held his gaze. “I should be pissed at you. You know that, right?”

  He nodded.

  “If I can’t have confidence in you to be straight with me, Will, then what do we have?”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to worry about them. That’s all.”

  Her prolonged silence finally ended when she wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you. You have no idea what it means to me knowing they’re okay.”

  He pushed her back gently as her emotions began to spill over. “Hey, hey. It’s okay.” With a gentle touch, he wiped away a fallen tear from her cheek. “This is more than any of us should have to bear and especially you.”

  “It has impacted everyone, including Trevor. He’s trying to be stoic, but I know the loss of Keith hurt him. It hurt all of us.”

  “Of course, it did. But you’re a mother, Lacy, and your children are young and they need you. And right now, you’re off fighting the evils of this world and, someday, they will know what you’ve done for this country. And don’t worry. I covered my tracks.”

  Lacy averted her eyes from the intensity of his stare. “We should get back out there and see if Aaron’s ready.”

  “Sure. Yeah. Let’s go.”

  “There you guys are.”

  Aaron noted their return and Lacy spotted an unusually wary look mask his face. She dismissed the uncomfortable exchange and continued, “You ready?”

  “Yeah. Okay, so what I need from you is the server address.”

  That was the easy part. As Lacy relayed the information, she wondered how he planned to gain access. She’d always simply logged on with her own credentials but knew that each and every time she did, the information was kept on file. If someone on the inside was operating against them, surely this person would be monitoring her activity, delving into every piece of data she’d reviewed, written a report on, or forwarded to any other member of the Bureau. The frightening part, that if all of this were true, she’d probably been monitored since coming back to work after the attack.

  Aaron began to work his magic and Lacy, while fairly well versed in such things, knew her skills paled in comparison.

  “What’s it like there?”

  Aaron stopped. “At the CIA?” He glanced to Axell for a moment as if to make sure it was okay to speak on the subject. “Incredible. Brilliant minds with extraordinary abilities. And it seems they’re all there for one thing—to protect the country.”

  “Do you think they wield too much power? I feel like that at the Bureau sometimes. Like we’re invading our own citizens.”

  “Because of what they know and what they have access to?” Aaron replied. “There’s a sense of a humble fear—well, respect really—for what they’re doing. For me, being an outsider and, of course, knowing what I know now, I think they have tremendous power and if someone came along who had an agenda, it would be dangerous.”

  “You mean like you do?” Will asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, Lacy, what’s the password you use to log on to the server?”

  “Won’t they be able to tell it’s me if I enter my password?”

  “Yes. Your initial log on will be authenticated. They’ll know you’re in the mainframe. However, once I’m inside, I’ll overwrite the authentication protocol by using SAML. It allows me to navigate to different portals, like, say, the database we need access to inside the FBI’s server without secondary authentication.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” She did to a certain extent, but more importantly, Aaron was prone to delving deep into that world if left unchecked. And there was no time for that right now. “I’ll type it in.”

  “You afraid I’ll hack into the FBI’s server on a regular basis?”

  “Maybe.” She smiled. “I’m in.”

  “Great.” Aaron began typing again. “Let me see where it is we need to go.” A few minutes later, he’d finished. “And we’re in.”

  “You mind if I take the captain’s chair?” Lacy asked.

  “Be my guest.” Aaron stood and gestured for her to take a seat.

  Lacy knew the system well and wasted no time getting to the information she needed. “Okay, here are the requests that have come from Kelly.” She began to scroll through. “We should save this. You have a flash drive?”

  Aaron placed it in the machine.

  “I’m going back to the point where I returned to work. I figure if someone’s looking, that’s when it started.”

  “Agreed.” Axell hunched over her shoulder. “What kind of requests would you be looking for?”

  “Anything relating to me, which will have my employee number only. No name. Anything relating to Will. And finally, anything relating to the mall attack and, most recently, the shooting at the restaurant.”

  Will stood at attention and folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t think it’s Kelly. He and Mendez have known each other a long time. They’re friends. He helped to expedite my transfer.”

  “Then that’s all the more reason to be concerned, Caison.” Axell cocked his head. “The ones who you trust the most are the ones who end up stabbing you in the back.”

  “Maybe in your line of work. Not mine.”

  “Don’t be so naïve. This isn’t Afghanistan. These people are not your brothers in arms.” Axell pulled upright again. “You’ve been at this what, two, two and a half years? I’ve been at it for twenty-five. I hate to burst your bubble, but in this line of work, our line of work? Trusting someone can get you killed.”

  Trevor Axell was a grizzled and hardened man, and Lacy had occasionally heard this line of rhetoric come from him before, but nothing so harsh, and to direct it to Will, who yes, was still new to the game, but had already been through more than his share. This wasn’t Axell. This was anger at the loss of Agent Colburn talking now and this was how he dealt with it, good or bad.

  “I haven’t seen anything unusual. In fact, I’m not seeing much from SSA Kelly at all, not for my department.” She turned to Will. “It could be that Delgado asked him for help and not the other way around.”

  “Which would make sense if he wanted to keep tabs on me too,” Will added.

  “I agree. I’ll move on to Martin Delgado.” She pulled up a new screen and typed in the commands. “He came here, what, about two or three weeks after the attack?”

  “Sounds about right. That was when Mendez was shipped back home.”

  “Right. And you know, Aaron and I meet him that day, the day we got the audio files from Porter. You remember that, Aaron?”

  “How could I forget? I nearly pissed my pants when Vogel showed up with him.” Appearing slightly embarrassed, Aaron turned to the others. “I didn’t. Just so you know.”

  Lacy smiled and continued, “Anyway, I didn’t trust him then.”

  “What makes you say that?” Will asked.

  “I knew he was doing his job. They were never going to tell me anything about the investigation once I got booted out. But just his demeanor. The way he talked. Condescending as hell and just kind of an asshole.”

  “We need more than the fact that he’s an asshole,” Will replied. “But I understand your meaning.”

&
nbsp; Lacy continued to view the information. “This is my employee number, here.” She pointed to the screen. “This request was made in June. After the attack, and after I returned to work.”

  “What’s it asking?”

  “It’s a request to look into the online activity from my workstation.” She turned to Will. “Looks like he wanted to keep an eye on what I was doing.”

  “And he could just ask that and no one would question it?” Aaron said.

  “Oh yeah. We’re routinely screened for security checks. We’re civilian employees, remember? And there’s still quite a bit of animosity between us and the law enforcement side of the Bureau. Been that way for a long time.”

  “Okay. So that’s not unusual.”

  “No.” She continued to scroll. “But this does appear more frequently than I would have expected. Another request thirty days later, then again in October.”

  “That was when I put in for my transfer,” Will said.

  “Holy hell.” Lacy shook her head. “Take a look at this.”

  “What is it we’re looking at here, Lace?” Aaron asked.

  “My number is in here more than fifteen times since October. And look at this, Will. Since you got here, he’s put in four requests. That’s your number, right?”

  “Yep. Hell, I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

  “I know.”

  “So we think this is our guy?”

  “Hang on. Let’s reel this in for a moment,” Axell began. “What do you see on there that makes you believe he’s after you?”

  “You see this column here?” She pointed to the right side of the screen. “These are codes. These numbers designate the type of request. For example, security checks are coded with the numbers starting with 7. Here, you see these? These all start with 3.”

  “And that means what?”

  “Security risk assessment. This gives them authorization to monitor, essentially keylog, my workstation. Record calls coming into my office line and maybe even my work cell phone. Goddamn it.” She peered at the screen again. “He’s been watching me for weeks.”

  “So what do we do? How the hell are we going to go after him?” Aaron asked.