by Michael Todd
That left him alone with what looked like a pile of misplaced crap. He stepped up to the table and smoothly palmed and pocketed the external hard drive that Bial had pointed out earlier. Of course, he’d return it once he’d taken a quick look to check if there was anything his new friends could use on it.
“What time is it?” Madigan asked. She rubbed her eyes as she and Sal were herded into the server room by their suddenly very enthusiastic IT expert. The Russian had crashed into Sal’s room and tried to haul the two of them from the bed before she realized that they were both naked. After that, she showed a little restraint and gave them time to get dressed before she dragged them down to the dark room full of screens.
“I don’t know,” Anja replied honestly, dropped into her seat, and rolled the chair over to the screens. “Seven-thirty in the morning.”
Sal resisted the urge to say, “Fuck all this,” and head back to bed for another couple of hours. It had ended up being a longer night than he thought it would be, and since they hadn’t scheduled any other trips into the Zoo until they heard from Anderson, he had hoped to be able to sleep in.
“I found some information I think the two of you should be aware of.” She peered at them, her expression definitely on edge. “And since I need to get some sleep myself, I don’t think it can wait until we all are nice and rested.”
“Fine,” Sal muttered and shook his head. “What’s this important news?”
“I didn’t make much headway in tracking the payments made to the mercenaries that you killed in the Zoo,” the hacker explained. “Well, nothing that we could have used, anyway. The leads on the metal exports led to similarly dead ends, so while I set some programs to dig into those, I decided to look into the problem that Dr. Monroe sent our way. You know, the woman who wants us dead—the one who was a part of the company that her father owned?”
“Right.” He sat on the spare seat beside her and Madigan remained standing. “What did you find?”
“Nothing at first,” Anja said. “There wasn’t much of anything to explain why this woman stole from the company, considering that she has a large amount of her money sunk into its stocks. That was until I realized that the company had been tied up in litigation over the use of intellectual property—one that Dr. Monroe pursued personally.”
“Courtney was doing this?” Sal leaned in to see the dates involved. “She couldn’t have been. She was right here when these things started.”
“Not her,” she corrected. “Dr. Monroe, the father. He was the one who said that they were stealing from his company’s work to inflate their stock prices. The rest of the company was willing to take a million-dollar settlement, but Dr. Monroe, with his control of the majority of the stock, made them continue the litigation. He wasn’t interested in the money. He wanted them to pay for stealing his work. All this came to an end, however, when Dr. Monroe died, and the company settled the litigation for a cash payout before Dr. Courtney Monroe took control.”
“Wait,” Sal said. “Who was it that they were in court against? I see a lot of shell corporations but no real tie to a major player in the stock market.”
“They hid themselves well, but eventually, all the shells fall back to a single parent company by way of CEO ownerships. Pegasus International.”
“Pegasus,” Madigan muttered. “Them again. That’s bad news.”
“Wait, so what are you saying here?” he persisted. “The reason that Monroe’s company dropped the lawsuits was because Dr. Monroe died. Was there any kind of indication that there was foul play involved there?”
Anja pulled up the autopsy report on the screen. “The autopsy…wasn’t particularly thorough. It was well known that Dr. Monroe had lung cancer, and when there was a large amount of fluid found in his lungs when he died, the medical examiners ruled it a massive pulmonary hemorrhage, so death from natural causes. He was cremated, so no further details can be found on the body.”
“Wait,” Kennedy said and narrowed her eyes. “Are you really trying to say that someone murdered Courtney’s father?”
“She told me that he was paranoid about security,” Sal explained. “He’d installed advanced security measures in his house, and the police reported multiple calls from him over the previous weeks before he died. They chalked it up to a side effect of the medication that he was on, and when he died, nobody really investigated it. Courtney arrived, and someone broke into her house and tried to kill her too. It makes sense—to me, at least.”
Anja shrugged. “It sounds plausible to me as well.”
Madigan dragged in a deep breath before she fixed him with a hard look. “You know that your thought process is full-on aluminum foil hat, conspiracy-theory-shouting paranoia here, right?”
He nodded. “I’m aware of that. But coincidences like these aren’t the kind of thing that we can afford to ignore. Not out here. Not with our lives at stake.”
She shook her head and acknowledged that she had worried that he would have this kind of reaction. He wasn’t thinking with the logical side of his brain that put him head and shoulders above everyone else, even though she had to concede that he’d raised a couple of good points. The coincidences and the fact that everything constantly tied back to Pegasus somehow was definitely an avenue to explore, but what he thought about now was vengeance for someone he cared about.
“It’s not easy to kill a billionaire and get away with it,” Madigan finally said and shook her head. “She’ll be well-protected, and from what you told me about Courtney, the woman probably knows we’re coming too.”
“Who says I have to kill her?” he asked, his tone challenging. “I simply have to tear her down piece by piece.”
“That’ll be even more difficult than killing her,” she pointed out.
Sal shrugged. “If all else fails, we can simply shoot her, if you like. For the moment, though…”
He laid his plan out for Anja, who nodded and made a couple of different faces ranging from impressed to questioning his sanity.
“Can you do this?” he asked once he’d explained everything carefully.
“Sure,” she said with a nod. “I probably need funds to put bribes out there. Contrary to popular thought, much of what people call hacking is merely exploiting human error and greed.”
“How much do you need?”
“Maybe…start with half a million dollars? I’ll let you know if I need more,” the Russian said after a moment’s thought.
“Do it,” Sal said firmly. “And don’t hesitate to let me know if you need extra funds. I’ll sell Madie if I have to.”
Anja looked up from her screen and turned to Madigan as confusion spread across her face.
“I can guarantee that it’s not what you think it is,” the other woman said with an encouraging nod. He hadn’t told anyone about having a Pita plant in his safe—and probably wouldn’t until he had finished his tests—but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t casually and inadvertently mention it to the rest of the staff. It was a good thing that he’d named it after her, or these little name-drops might pose something of a problem.
The hacker shook her head and immediately set to work. “I’ll never understand you Americans and your sense of humor.”
Chapter Eleven
“Sal, we need to talk,” Madigan said as they moved out of the server room. It was doubtful that they would have any more sleep today, so they might as well get their shit together—which meant coffee and breakfast. He started on the former while she worked on the latter.
“What about?” he asked and looked briefly at her before he turned to rummage in a cabinet.
“About…all this,” she exclaimed and waved her hands around. “You on a vendetta run. Courtney making enemies in the States. Everything is barreling too fast toward a disaster that we might not be on the right end of. It’s one thing to tackle the Zoo. But to take on a multi-billion-dollar weapons conglomerate like Pegasus is an entirely different ball game and I need you to see that.”
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“I do see it,” he said, his voice softer than before. “And for the record, we’re not taking on the conglomerate itself, merely one of the minions and only because she tried to fuck with our friend.”
“Whatever,” she snapped in exasperation. “And don’t think for a second here that I’m not with you on that revenge wagon, because I am, one hundred percent. But you need to think about what you’ve built out here. It’s not only you and me anymore. How the hell will we actually fund this whole escapade of yours? Are you really thinking of selling Madie?”
“Hell no,” Sal said with a smirk. “That plant and I have been through too much shit together. She’s almost a part of the family.”
“So what are your ideas for getting the money?” Madigan asked and scooped the first batch of bacon onto a paper-covered plate.
“Well, I’ve worked on some designs with Amanda.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, unlocked it, and opened a couple of engineering designs before he handed it to her. “I realized that there’s a way to get around the way that the Pita plants release those pheromones that provoke all the animals and drive them to fight. Isolate the plant first and then uproot it.”
“Huh,” she said and took a moment to study the designs. “So you want to go in there, get another plant, and sell that instead?”
“A couple more plants,” Sal said with a grin. “Three, maybe even four. When we talk business, there’ll be people who’ll want to buy everything we have instead of only one rather than allow their potential competitors a possible advantage—or at least an equal playing field. They’ll pay a lot more for all the items that we have than we’d get for each one individually, if only to screw over the competition. That should give us more than enough to pay that bitch back.”
She shook her head. “How do we know that someone else hasn’t developed something like this already?”
“If they have, they haven’t put it into use yet,” he said and shrugged, clearly unconcerned. “There would have been news about it if anyone had. My guess is that, at best, they probably already came up with some write-ups for a similar design but haven’t been able to find someone crazy enough to put it to a field test.”
“Enter us, the crazy people willing to test it out.” Madigan laughed and shook her head. The second batch of bacon was done, and she added eggs, toast, and a handful of other breakfast foods to the mix before she placed it all on the table. “Look, Sal, I admire this side of you, don’t get me wrong. You’ll do anything to take care of the people you care about, and it makes me think the world of you. But you have to realize that it’s a dog-eat-dog world that we might not be prepared to handle at this stage.”
“Dogs don’t survive that long in the Zoo,” Sal pointed out and joined her at the table with a couple of mugs full of coffee. “And neither would that bitch who tried to kill Courtney and threatened to kill us. Madigan—” He took her hand and squeezed it. “You know I love your face, and don’t think I don’t realize that this is you looking out for me, like a gunner should her specialist.”
“I think we’re a bit past that, don’t you?” she asked, and squeezed his hand gently in return.
“Damn straight.” He grinned. “But the point remains. I know you’re only looking out for me, and I appreciate that. But it’s a matter of principle at this point. She’s fucked with our friend, killed her father, tried to kill her, and thinks that her scrawny ass is untouchable because she’s in a position of power. I want to teach her a very valuable lesson. You don’t fuck with a PhD doctoral candidate. Will you help me to educate her?”
“Yeah, like I’ll let you do this on your own.” She smirked as she chewed a strip of bacon. “But I wanted it to be on the record that I actually tried to be the voice of reason around here for a change. Now that it is, let’s go find us a Pita plant or three so we can wreck this bitch’s ass.”
“Figuratively speaking,” Sal said with a grin while he made himself an egg and bacon sandwich. “I hope.”
She was about to open her mouth when Amanda entered. The woman looked like she’d worked on the security system outside all night and grease, dust, and grime covered almost every inch of her body. She was deeply engaged in a conversation, except there was nobody around to be engaged with.
“The…AI, remember?” Madigan said when she figured it out first. “Connie?”
“Yeah.” Sal said and looked dismayed. It was still an intriguing conversation, even though they only heard the one side of it.
“I know sixty-nine isn’t fucking online,” the armorer shouted and waved her hands in the air. “I did that on purpose, you useless machine. Why? Oh, you want to know why? Because I’m sick of hearing your ridiculous jokes about it, that’s why. It’s the same reason why I didn’t turn sixty-eight on either. Yeah, I’ve heard all the fucking jokes, and I’m tired of them.”
Amanda paused in her argument as she poured what might easily have been her tenth mug of coffee, all of which had given her a jittery temper. She didn’t seem to notice the others staring at her as she turned away to head out to work once more. “Oh, great, with the knock-knock jokes now, how fucking… Oh, that’s actually a good…and then you went and ruined it. God damn it, Connie, you sex-crazy bitch. Do not make me turn your voice function off again.”
“I think she needs some sleep,” Sal said finally and sipped his coffee cautiously.
“Nope. I think she needs to get laid,” Madigan contested. “Have you noticed how well she and Anja are getting along lately?”
“Don’t start playing matchmaker,” he warned. “That never ends well for anyone. If they’re interested, they’ll figure it out. In the words of my own personal hero in science, life…uh…finds a way.”
Courtney was tired of paperwork. She wasn’t sure why, but the day before, she’d found herself daydreaming blissfully of being back in the middle of the Zoo. There, she’d hunt down monsters and riches of all kinds with Madigan and Sal and whoever the new people on the team were.
The truth was that she had begun to admire her dad. The man had run this place like a machine for over a decade, and from the look of the meticulous paperwork he’d left behind, he’d had no assistant to help him keep on top of things like hers did for her.
Robinson had been almost a saint over the past couple of weeks and helped her get into the swing of things without actually pushing her into it. She was in a leadership role in a Fortune Five-Hundred company, and it was time that she acted the part. The board didn’t appreciate loafers and people who didn’t pull their weight, so if she wanted to use her influence as the majority shareholder of the company, she needed to make some appearances and shake some hands.
As it turned out, she began to do a lot more than that. She found she didn’t mind digging through all her father’s old research to find some rhyme and reason why he’d opened and maintained the research and development section of the company funded with government money. So far, he’d researched a wide variety of things but not focused on anything in particular. Even stranger, the only kind of source she could find for all the different studies was…well, her.
The man had followed her published works like he was a fan, picked them apart, examined the various theories she speculated on, and worked hard to prove them. She apparently had him to thank for keeping most of her research alive. And, unlike before, she didn’t feel like she lived off his name but rather that, even though she hadn’t known it and they were thousands of miles apart, they’d worked together as a team.
One of the most interesting things she noticed was that he’d started an investigation of a piece of metal that had been removed from the Zoo. It had been a government option that he’d picked up which required research into the various mineral aspects of a piece of metal that had been dug out of a place that had previously held no mineral value.
As she looked over his notes, it was hard to keep the tears that welled in her eyes from streaming out. He’d tried to develop a new kind of armor, lighter and more
versatile, that allowed for better protection for the people who went into the Zoo on a regular basis.
He’d called it the Ceecee Project in his notes.
She smiled and wiped away the tears that escaped. The project had been put on indefinite hold, she saw, with the case file number of a litigation attached. She made a note of the number so that she could look into it later. Any enthusiasm she might have felt earlier had dissipated and she needed a drink.
Courtney pushed away from her desk and stretched luxuriously before she strode to the door of her office. When she opened it, Robinson sat at his desk, deeply engrossed in a couple of files that she didn’t doubt would be on her desk the next day.
“I’m calling it early today, Robinson,” she said with a smile. “It’s been a long day and I’m not feeling great.”
He looked up, a pen lodged in his mouth, and tried to speak around it. His effort produced nothing that could be deciphered as anything but grunts so he removed the pen and nodded. “Well, feel better, Dr. Monroe. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Of course,” she said and crossed leisurely toward the elevator. She couldn’t promise that she would be any use to him or anybody, but she would be there.
Covington hated these little parties. It was supposed to be for some charity or another but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember which one. She looked around at all the pink ribbons included in the decor. It was, she thought, probably something about breast cancer. But the reality was that it was simply people begging for money in the best way possible, by stroking the ego—and anything else—of the richest people in town until they coughed up for the ten thousand dollars a plate setting. Their so-called charitable contributions allowed the who’s who to show all the other socialites in town how socially active they were.