Ryan realized that Adam must have seen Mae while he was away with the Lit Dragons.
"Have you seen her much since then?" Ryan asked.
"Yeah, one other time." Adam folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. "But other than that, no. Not until she called me and asked if I could pick her up. And I'm assuming she called me to pick her up because of you."
"Why would she have called you?" Ryan asked, ignoring Adam's question. Even as he said it, he felt like he was interrogating Adam and knew he was being too harsh.
"I told you we were close," Adam said, and cocked a half grin for a split second. Ryan saw the grin and felt his face getting hot. He was jealous, plain and simple, but didn't know why. He had feelings for her—stronger than he'd ever had for anyone before—but they'd never talked about being a couple.
A couple.
He almost laughed at the thought. When he got right down to it, he didn't even know Mae. She was just a girl he'd met on an airplane—someone obviously in trouble and needing help. In just those first few hours after meeting her, he'd seen that she was incredibly resourceful and resilient, but had reached the end of her rope. She’d had no one to turn to, and he was willing to help her. Their relationship was tentative at first, but they'd grown more comfortable with each other as the days went on. He knew that there was something she was running from, something dark and secret, but he wanted to wait for her to be comfortable enough with him to share her secret. In the meantime, he was content to just be with her for as long as she wanted to stick around. In the back of his mind, he knew she would move on eventually, but as the days ticked on, the more he hoped that she would stay. Ryan had fallen hard for Mae Edwards, and he couldn't help the emotions that roiled in him when hearing about her and Adam. He couldn't bear the thought of Mae sitting with him and talking and smiling and being close. Ryan thought of her laugh and how she would put her hand on his and tease him with her eyes. He remembered how her hair and skin had smelled, like vanilla and coconut, and he tasted her kiss.
Ryan wondered if Adam had ever kissed Mae, or if he'd just talked and laughed with her. He wondered if Mae's hair had smelled the same way when Adam had held her close, and he could feel the heat rising in his face. He immediately put the thoughts from his mind, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. It was silly to even think such a thing. Of course she had had a life before him, and if it wasn't Adam, then surely it was someone else. But even the thought of someone else in her life, someone she cared about. was hard for him to consider, even as unrealistic as he knew that was.
It was just so confusing to him. Mae had come to his house to apologize for fighting with him, and they had kissed. The kind of kiss that was urgent and necessary, like someone dying of thirst who's given a glass of cold water. They had kissed and it reminded him of the time they'd kissed in the empty bowling alley, lights glittering all around.
But Adam has been in the car, waiting in the driveway. Was she planning to leave with him, after that breathless kiss? He didn't know, and the thought that Adam, this guy from her past, even driving Mae to his house and waiting for her was almost too much.
But at the end of it all, all he wanted was for her to be okay. Ryan wanted to make sure she was safe. Even if she couldn't be with him, he wanted her to be okay.
"What about you?" Adam said, cutting through the silence. "I don't remember you in high school. How do you know her?"
Ryan hesitated before answering, unsure of how much he wanted this guy to know.
"I only met Mae a few weeks ago, but let’s just say that we've also grown close," Ryan said, and Adam smiled.
"So we're both close to the famous Mae Edwards. And she's gone," Adam said. He paused, as if thinking about his words carefully before speaking them. "Do you know anything about why she was taken? Or where?"
"No. I don't." Ryan stared back at him, his jaw set. Finally, he asked, "What about you?"
"I have no idea where she's been taken." Adam hesitated again. "But it's not the first time."
"What do you mean?"
Adam looked away from Ryan and out the window for several seconds before standing. He seemed to be looking at something far off, and he shuffled from foot to foot, as if nervous.
"I don't know you. I don't know who you are," he said finally, "I don't know if I can trust you. Not when this could hurt Mae."
Ryan sat up straighter in the hospital bed and swung his feet and legs out over the edge. Adam turned and they stood facing each other, toe to toe, as if ready to fight.
"Does it matter?" Ryan asked. "She's gone. They're already hurting her, or maybe she's dead. You don't trust me? I don't care. She needs help and I'm going to help her. If you care about her as much as you say you do, then you'll want to help her as much as I do."
Adam sighed and nodded. "Well, what are we going to do about it then?"
"We're going to get her," Ryan said. "We're going to save her."
Chapter Nineteen
Nearly 12 hours later, Heather awoke to the screeching brakes of the bus at it exited the Eisenhower Expressway into a bus station. They passed a sign that read: Chicago GREYHOUND STA, and she felt a fresh wave of nerves. She was here, and there was no turning back.
One of the first things she noticed was the snow. There had been snow where she lived as well, but nothing like this. Drifts of dirty snow and ice blanketed everything she saw, from the sidewalks to the cars and buildings. Frost had formed on the window, and she wished that she’d had time to grab a coat before she’d left her apartment, but then chuckled at the idea of the soldiers allowing her a few minutes to pack a bag before hunting her down to kill her.
The driver opened the doors to the bus and a gust of freezing wind swept in from outside. Heather shivered and pulled her clothes tighter to her body, wrapping her arms around her chest. All around, people were gathering their things and pulling on heavy coats, hats and scarves.
Lake effect, thought. It was much colder here, and she did not look forward to climbing off the relative warmth of the bus. She made a mental note to stop at a store and pick up a coat. Even as she thought about it, she knew that the chances of her remembering to buy a coat were slim. Her mind and thoughts were elsewhere. For nearly the entire bus ride, she'd been thinking about her plan and her next steps. She had to get into Paul's apartment, but then what? She had no idea what information he had, and even if he did, what good it would do. He had been an investigative journalist, and he hadn't been able to come up with any solutions.
Is... he is an investigative journalist. She had to remind herself to think of him in the present tense, even though she feared the worst was true. There had been no sign of his cell signal returning to life, nor any activity on his home computer since he'd disappeared. Heather didn't want to assume the worst, but those last images of the Duke continued to remind her that the people she was up against were not playing around.
So, even if she could get into his apartment, there was the problem of putting the pieces to the puzzle together. Granted, she did have a clearer idea of what the end picture would look like than Paul had, but still, Heather knew it would be difficult.
Once she had the pieces in place, she had to figure out what their end game was, if they had one. From the files and documents the Duke had found, it seemed as though the organization was planning something very large and secret. Something they needed the girl for. Considering the attack in Miami, and the other incidents that the Duke had been able to uncover, she was afraid that whatever they were planning, it was going to be bad. She was sure that it had to do with the girl somehow, but had no idea why or how this girl could be important enough to their operation to warrant several orchestrated attacks. One to recover the girl, and two to silence herself and the Duke.
Heather climbed off the bus and the cold stung her exposed skin, needling the raw area on her scalp. She winced and shivered at the same time and hurried toward a line of taxis waiting on the other side of the bus terminal.
Ice and snow covered the sidewalk, the wind blowing flakes into the air, and already she was counting down the minutes until she could leave this frozen wasteland. Heather jumped in the first taxi she came to and gave the address that she’d pulled from Paul’s ISP.
“That’s downtown, off Michigan Avenue,” the driver said as he pulled away from the curb. “Around twenty minutes or so.”
“That’s fine.” Heather pulled out a wad of cash from her pocket and held it, watching the meter climb as they drove.
“What kind of music do you want to listen to?”
“I’m fine with no music,” Heather said, sure that he would not have any Anarcho-Punk in the CD player, and that was fine. She needed the silence to think. She ran through the mental list she'd been compiling on the bus ride to Chicago. The first step was getting inside Paul’s apartment.
She had Paul's address and the access code to the room that he made his home. Before he disappeared, Heather had hacked into the reporter’s personal computer and made a copy of the hard drive. She plugged the data into her research bot and extracted the information necessary to gain access to his home. Of course, she’d never planned on using that information, but now, she was glad she had it.
Once inside his apartment, she would quickly go through any physical files she hadn’t had access to on his computer. She vaguely remembered something about a briefcase he’d taken from the police officer the night in the hospital when he’d been shot. She was doing this assuming that if she found any more documents, they would shed some light on who Mae Edwards was and what Il Contionum was planning. But then what? She could use the information to expose the secret group, but that wouldn’t help Ryan get Mae back. Ryan would be in the same situation as before, unable to do anything without getting killed. It would be especially dangerous after Heather was done with them, and they would be desperate to cover it up, and desperate for revenge.
She planned to be far away as the organization crumbled, but that wouldn’t help Ryan. When it came right down to it, Heather had no idea how she could help him. Il Contionum had Mae. They had gone to great lengths to retrieve her and would probably go to great lengths to ensure that they didn’t lose her again. How could Ryan possibly be successful in any attempt to rescue her?
And of course, that was assuming Mae wanted to be rescued.
Her mind spun as the different scenarios presented themselves with so many unknown variables. They only thing she knew for certain was that if Ryan attempted to save this girl without any help, he would be killed.
Outside, the streets were bustling with cars and pedestrians, which was surprising to Heather, given the time of day and the dropping temperatures. Even inside the heated cab, her breath was misting, and she shivered against the cold.
Heather wondered why she felt such a responsibility to keep Ryan safe. She didn’t know him aside from the Lit Dragons, and she had no interest at all in his well-being beyond his role as a top driver for their games. She had no feelings for him, and why would she? Heather didn’t know him, and he clearly had feelings for Mae. If Ryan wanted to charge after Mae, guns and machismo blazing, sure to be killed within minutes of his attack, who was she to stop him?
And then suddenly, she realized the solution to her problem—or a possible solution.
Ryan had said that they were transporting Mae in what had looked like a semi-truck. If they were still transporting her, and she was able to locate their exact location, she had a system already in place.
Lit Dragons.
It was risky, and of course she would convey that risk to Ryan, who would then probably dismiss it immediately. She would also have to tell him that it would be last game, the last time the Lit Dragons would ride, because she would surely burn every connection she had with the auto industry.
The last ride for the Lit Dragons, which she was sure wouldn’t bother him. Ryan and others had, after all, started wrecking cars for fun without the organization and purpose she had brought to them. A surprise attack from the Lit Dragons might just do the trick.
he removed her phone from her bag, made sure her cellular connection was encrypted, and opened her internet browser. She entered through a VPN and routed her connection through a server in the Philippines, then opened the email address she used to communicate with the players for the Lit Dragons. She began composing her last message to the drivers.
Chapter Twenty
“She’s on the phone again, accessing the internet.”
“Great,” Morales said into the phone and watched the yellow taxi cab make a left hand turn down a street. He instructed his driver to keep following.
“She’s using a VPN and rerouting her connection.”
“Can you still see what she’s doing?” Morales asked.
“Yes, we have a clone of her phone and computer, so as long as she’s using her current devices, we see every image she sees, every key stroke she enters.”
“And if she ditches her current devices?”
“Well, it would require another manual sync,” the voice said, “like we did on the bus.”
Morales hadn’t been on the bus when their specialists had synced her phone and computer, but he wished he’d been there. ANONX^17 had fallen asleep, despite her apparently obvious efforts to stay awake and alert. She’d fallen asleep for only a few minutes at a time, leaving their specialists a limited window to make the connection and clone the devices.
"What is she doing on her phone?" Morales asked.
"She is composing a message," the voice said. "Simple line of text. I'll forward the message to your phone."
Morales grumbled, removed his phone from his pocket and saw that the message had already been forwarded. He slid the icon across the screen, and the message ANONX^17 had composed appeared:
COME NOT BETWEEN THE LIT DRAGON AND HIS WRATH. HERE BE DRAGONS TO BE SLAIN, HERE BE RICH REWARDS TO GAIN.
"What does it mean?"
A short hesitation and Morales heard typing. After a few seconds, the voice said: "The first section appears to be a line from Shakespeare's King Lear, although the word 'lit' has been added. The second sentence is a phrase by Dorothy Sayers."
"What does it mean?" Morales asked again, reading through the text once more.
"Well, sir," there was another hesitation. "Appears to be gibberish."
"A code, maybe?"
"Could be."
"Who were the recipients?"
"The message was sent to an encrypted server. From there, we cannot track the message."
Morales scowled, struggling to maintain his composure. Up ahead, the taxi made another turn, and they followed.
Rather than track ANONX^17, Morales would have preferred that they just end her right then and there on the bus. Administer an injection of his signature potassium chloride cocktail and call it a day. There was simply too much risk with letting her run amok and possibly make connections with other hackers who could prove to be just as dangerous. But Harrison had ordered her devices cloned and had assigned Morales to tail the girl until the order came to terminate her.
Morales hoped the order would come soon so he could finish up what had turned out to be a much longer stay in Chicago than he’d wanted. As he watched the taxi make another turn, he thought about how he would kill ANONX^17. Probably not anything so melodramatic as the face mask with the rats, although that had been fun. His mind returned to the look of pure horror in the reporter’s eyes as Morales had affixed the mask to his face, buckling the leather straps and listening to the squeaks and skittering claws of the writhing rodents.
But there was simply not enough time. Morales was sure the order would come to dispose of ANONX^17 quickly and then join the party in Colorado. So maybe he would do just an old fashioned killing with a knife in the bathtub, or maybe with a gun out in the forest, like he’d done Mae’s mom. Either way, it’d be quick and easy to clean up.
He admired this girl, Ms. ANONX^17, almost as much as he admired Mae Edwards. Both
were more resourceful than Il Contionum had given them credit for. Both girls were scrappy, not only possessing a heightened will to live and survive, but also the ability to find resourceful friends in the most unlikely of places.
The man who’d gone by the moniker Duke_of_Darkness83 had surprised not only Morales but the specialists who monitored the networks for Il Contionum. The Duke, as he so quaintly referred to himself amongst online friends, had come dangerously close to breaching the digital security measures that protected their organization’s secrets. Morales knew nothing of firewalls, networks, and the digital world—preferring to get his hands dirty with real blood and real people—but he understood the threat the Duke, and hackers like him, presented to Il Contionum. It was a threat that continued as long as ANONX^17 was still alive.
He peered through the windshield as the tail lights of the taxi cab flashed red and the car pulled to the curb in front of the hotel where the reporter used to live. He watched the girl climb from the cab, hand the driver some bills, and approach the entrance to the hotel. A man wearing a heavy overcoat and standing by the front door smiled and nodded as he opened the door for the girl, and she was inside.
Morales was impressed. He'd thought that she might be coming here, but he didn't know how she would have retrieved the reporter's home address, nor how she would gain access to the room.
Removing any incriminating documentation, and the reporter's computer, from the now deceased reporter's room had been on Morales' list of things to do before leaving Chicago, but he hadn't gotten around to it yet. The reporter was dead, after all. Now, Morales wished that he'd made it more of a priority.
Again, he considered killing ANONX^17 right then and there, or possibly following her into the reporter's room and doing it there, but Harrison would be furious. His orders to wait were explicit. They needed to see how much she knew, and who she told, before she could be terminated.
The Snow Swept Trilogy Page 54