by K. C. Archer
“She never—”
“I never heard from her again,” he said. “I went back to the base, but Sector Three was destroyed. It looked like there had been a massive explosion.”
Teddy’s stomach twisted. That matched the landscape that she’d seen months ago in Clint’s memory of the desert. She felt trapped in the classroom. As if the story of her parents, of her past, were too big to fit into the small room. She stood, but there was nowhere for her to go. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“I wanted to,” Clint said. “But every time I tried, I thought, If she finds out now, she won’t want to come to Whitfield. Or It will distract her from her studies. Or It might influence the outcome of her exam.” He sat back in his chair. “I owed it to your parents to look after you,” he said. “And that’s what I did. I wanted to wait until the right time to tell you.”
The anger was back. “There isn’t a right time,” Teddy said. “Every day you waited made it worse.”
He nodded, rubbed his hands on his pants legs. “I used every contact I had in law enforcement to try to find her. Every psychic contact, too.” He shook his head. “I traced every Jane Doe that came across my desk. Missing persons, hospitals, arrests. Nothing.”
But she wasn’t gone—at least not according to Yates. “Okay,” Teddy said.
“Okay? That’s it?”
“What am I supposed to say? You want me to make you feel better about yourself. Make it seem like you did the right thing. You tried to find her. Guess what: you didn’t.” Because despite everything he had just said, he still was keeping things from her: about the theft, about Yates, about what was really happening at Whitfield.
“Teddy, I—”
“You know what?” Teddy said. “I’ll take a page out of Boyd’s book on this one: sometimes trying isn’t good enough.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
TEDDY WENT OVER THE PLAN in her head for the millionth time, partly to prevent her mind from spinning into what-ifs: What if the boat doesn’t start? What if the USB doesn’t work? What if my mental influence doesn’t hold?
After the brief session with Jeremy, Teddy had gone to the Cantina to “practice” mental influence on unsuspecting customers. And every time she’d tried to force someone to bend to her will, she felt that same horrible feeling, the bile at the back of her throat. She’d had to spend whole minutes with her hands on her knees, breathing just to steady herself, after commanding someone to turn left instead of right. It had worked. But with nerves and pressure added to the mix? Suggesting that a drunk person change direction and an FBI agent look the other way were entirely different ball games.
She went over the sequence of events one more time. One: Molly, Dara, Pyro, and Jillian get day passes from the front office and leave Angel Island to set up at the Embassy Hotel, across the street from the FBI offices. Check.
Two: Ditch the ferry. Jeremy drives his speedboat to Pier 39 with Teddy. Check.
Teddy kept her eyes on the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, juxtaposed with the mountain backdrop. For Teddy, the view just never got old. Jeremy coasted into a slip he had rented in the bustling marina. Teddy was glad to see how busy it was—that meant their coming and going wouldn’t be noticeable among the crowds of spring visitors.
Teddy took a deep breath and looked around, imagining returning to this spot after a successful mission. Her brilliant exit strategy? Convincing Nick that she was coming down with food poisoning. It sounded more like getting out of a bad date than a highly secure government facility. Pyro would pick up a car and park it near the FBI building, ready for them all to jump in the moment Molly located the video file with the damning footage. Pyro would drive them back to the pier. They would board Jeremy’s speedboat and return to Angel Island immediately.
Simple.
At least Teddy told herself it would be simple. Over and over. Funny how that didn’t seem to settle her nerves any.
Teddy checked her phone. It was ten after three. She was meeting Nick at four in the lobby of the FBI offices. Teddy looked up and saw Jeremy staring at his phone, too. Molly had shared the smuggled devices so they could communicate over the course of the day. Though they could link up psychically, none of them had tried to sync with more than one person over great distances before. Going digital rather than psychical was logical.
“Should you be doing that while the engine’s on?”
“Sorry.” He stuffed his phone back in his pocket, cut the engine, and secured the lines. Teddy had started toward the taxi stand when she realized he was tailing her.
“What are you doing?” she asked. He had been standoffish since that lesson, even though he’d assured her that he felt fine.
“Going with you, of course.”
Teddy gritted her teeth. “You know that’s not the plan,” she said.
“What good am I, just sitting here?”
“You’re the getaway driver. It’s a lot of good to have you sitting here.”
“What if you need someone else for mental influence? I could—”
“I’ve got it,” she interrupted.
“I want to go in there instead of waiting on the boat. I can’t wait somewhere and do nothing if something bad happens.”
“Nothing bad is going to happen,” Teddy said. “We all know the plan. We’re all going to look out for each other.”
He looked down, playing with the keys to the boat. “You can’t promise that. And if something happens to Molly again, and I’m not there to . . .”
Teddy put her hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be fine, Jeremy. She’s staying in a hotel room. She’s not going to be in any action.” He stiffened. She removed her hand. He obviously didn’t want her comfort. “If we want this to work,” she continued, “we all need to stick to the plan. Your role is critical. You stay with the boat. Okay?”
* * *
Teddy left Jeremy by the dock and hailed a taxi. It hurried her away from Fisherman’s Wharf and past the noisy cable cars that clanged along Hyde Street through the historic district of San Francisco.
Eight stomach-churning minutes and twenty dollars later, the driver dropped her at the Embassy Hotel. Pyro sat in the lobby, casually reading a paper. He stood and greeted Teddy with a peck on the cheek. They were just another average couple visiting San Fran on vacation.
Teddy forced a smile. “Everything okay?”
“Room’s ready. All checked in.” He took her hand and guided her into the elevator. But instead of pressing the button for the top floor, he hit three.
“Hey,” Teddy said, “I thought we—”
He squeezed her hand. His gaze flicked toward a camera located in the ceiling, near the upper-right corner. She waited until he’d ushered her into a third-floor suite, where Dara, Jillian, and Molly were already inside, to voice her concern: “I thought we needed a room on the top floor to pull this off.”
The three women stood near the window, huddled around a table with Molly’s tech paraphernalia: two laptops, an old-school radio, a cell phone, a hard drive, and a bunch of other wires and devices Teddy didn’t recognize.
Dara crossed her arms. She was clearly pissed. “I booked a top-floor room. But the hotel screwed up the reservation. This was the best they could do.”
“At least we’re still facing south,” said Jillian.
Dara tilted her head toward the window. “Take a look. There’s Nick’s office.”
Teddy glanced at the tinted facade of the FBI building. “How can you tell which one?”
Pyro picked up a pair of Steiner special-ops binoculars—swiped from school, no doubt—and handed them to her. “Sixth floor, third window from the left.”
Teddy lifted the infrared binoculars to her eyes and adjusted the lenses. Through the slits in his office window blinds, she spotted Nick, feet propped up on his desk.
She set down the binoculars and transferred her attention to Molly. “How’s it going?”
Molly didn’
t bother to look up. “I’m trying to find some way to compensate for our position. We may be too low, depending on the amplitude and frequency of the radio waves. Problem is, there’s no way to know for certain until you start transmitting.”
“That’s why we were supposed to have a room on the top floor,” Pyro said through his teeth. He wasn’t directly accusing Dara of being incompetent, but Teddy assumed she got the message.
“I know that,” she said, her voice rising. “That’s why I booked a room on the top floor.”
“Wait a minute.” Teddy’s throat went dry. Weeks of planning undermined by a reservation glitch? “Does that mean this won’t work?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Molly said, her fingers flying over her keyboard. “It just means I need to recalibrate some of my numbers to compensate for our current position. If I could actually focus while I do that, it would be a huge help. So, hey, everybody? Shut up.”
Molly would hook in to the hotel Wi-Fi. From there, she would download malware from the Darknet onto a flash drive.
“I’ve got it,” Molly said. She passed the drive to Teddy. “You remember what to do?”
Teddy would surreptitiously slip the flash drive into Nick’s computer, which was hardwired in to the FBI’s main air-gapped server. The flash drive would then upload a virus that would turn on the computer’s FM-radio frequencies. As Teddy’s smartphone was equipped with a built-in FM radio, all she had to do was leave her phone near Nick’s computer. That would let Molly use the FM frequencies to remotely hack in to Nick’s computer, directly access the air-gapped server, and grab the video file.
“And if I need more time?” Molly said.
“Dara will text me,” Teddy said. “I’ll keep an eye on my phone.”
Molly nodded. “Remember, agents in that building routinely monitor the main server. We won’t be able to hide what we’re doing for long. Once we signal you that we have the video file, get the hell out of there.”
“I will.” It couldn’t happen fast enough.
“And while all that’s going on,” Dara added, motioning to the window, “I’ll keep an eye on Nick’s office. Jillian and Pyro will be on the street level, patrolling the exterior of the building. If anything looks weird, we’ll text you.”
“It’s time,” Pyro said. “Nick’s probably waiting.”
Teddy looked at her watch: 3:54 p.m. She smoothed down her crisp white blouse and navy slacks, which she had worn instead of her usual jeans, T-shirt, and combat boots. She had wanted to avoid detection on security footage if it came to that (which she hoped it wouldn’t). But there was a small part of her that also wanted to, well, look nice. For Nick. When the thought had formed in her mind, Teddy had tried to push it away. She was a lot of things—but nice? She wasn’t nice. She didn’t want to be nice. So why did she want Nick to think she was?
“Can I talk to you for second?” Dara said.
“Is this still about the room thing? Molly says she has it handled.” Teddy brushed some lint from her blouse.
“Um, not quite.” Dara looked at Teddy’s shirt and then said in a louder voice, “Teddy, you ripped your shirt. I’ll loan you mine. Come change in the bathroom.”
“I didn’t—” Teddy began, but Dara was pulling her into the small hotel bathroom.
“I didn’t want to freak out in front of everyone,” she said. “I think I had a death warning.”
“You think?” Teddy said. The list of what-ifs grew by one: What if I’m putting someone’s life in danger?
Dara played with the silver bracelets on her wrist. “I’m not sure. I just saw a rope snapping. But we don’t have any rope. That’s not a part of the plan. I’m sorry, Teddy. It’s not a science. I don’t understand until it’s happening. Maybe it’s about someone two thousand miles away.”
“If it’s someone two thousand miles away, then why are you telling me?”
Dara continued to fumble with the bracelets. “Because I saw you standing over the body.”
Teddy would have thought that with news like this, her heart would go into overdrive; instead, it stopped. “Are you saying that someone will die?” How far would she go to get this information? She had bent a few rules, but would she—could she—take that risk? She looked around the small, yellowing hotel bathroom. It felt like a cell. “But just because you see it doesn’t mean it happens. You’ve seen things before that didn’t happen.”
“But I couldn’t not tell you.”
There was banging on the door and Pyro’s voice. “Okay, ladies, time’s up.”
Teddy’s heart kicked in again. She opened the door. Another item on the checklist, Teddy thought. Make sure no one dies.
“You’re still wearing your shirt,” Pyro said.
“Oh, yeah,” Teddy said. Pyro raised one eyebrow. She added, “I fixed it.” She slipped the flash drive and the cell phone into a small black clutch. It wasn’t too late to back out.
“Remember. We got you, Teddy,” Jillian said. “If what Yates said about his organization coming for you next is right, then we have to do this. Someone’s coming for one of us. That means they’re coming for us all.”
Teddy knew the plan. But that didn’t mean she was ready. She hadn’t had enough time to practice mental influence. Hadn’t had enough time to come to terms with the fact that she was lying to Nick once again. No, not lying to him, tricking him. Putting his job on the line. And Dara’s vision. The bile rose in Teddy’s throat. She hadn’t even tried to influence anyone and she already felt sick. But as she looked around at her friends and realized what they were risking for her, she knew there was only one thing she could say, even if she wasn’t sure she believed it herself: “I’m ready.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
TEDDY WIPED HER HANDS ON her slacks and walked through the doors of the San Francisco FBI headquarters. The building was a monument to concrete and glass. There were no flashing lights, no slot machines ringing, no smell of booze in the air, but she was still playing to win.
She was supposed to meet Nick in the lobby. She’d received those instructions from the secretary in the front office before she’d left campus that morning with her day pass. Teddy was sure Nick would’ve liked to tell her directly, but she had avoided being alone with him since That Night.
Because she felt bad. For manipulating him, yes. But mostly because she’d gotten something she’d wanted for all the wrong reasons. She now sounded like a story in Chicken Soup for the Messed-up Millennial Psychic Soul. Once Teddy would have written it off. Given herself props for bagging a guy like Nick.
She smiled when she looked up to see Nick waiting by the reception desk, dressed in the standard FBI suit.
“You’re here,” he said, the left corner of his mouth ticking up slightly. God, she wanted to kiss him right there. But that wasn’t part of the plan.
She took out the piece of paper with the note from the secretary. “As directed.”
Nick cleared his throat, shifted on the balls of his feet. All tells, Teddy knew. He was nervous. “I was thinking maybe we could talk before we start?”
Teddy sucked in a breath. They couldn’t talk. If they talked, Teddy wasn’t sure she could go through with this, as much as she wanted one more moment with plain ol’ Nick. She looked around the lobby, playing up the nerves she was already feeling. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
Nick followed Teddy’s gaze. “I guess you’re right.” He reached for her hand, then stopped himself. “If you’ll follow me, Ms. Cannon.”
They checked in with a security guard, who scanned her ID, snapped her photo, and issued a visitor’s pass. The security guard waved Nick ahead and directed Teddy through a metal detector. No problem there. She wasn’t carrying a weapon.
Next, however, came the X-ray machine. This was where things could get sticky. Teddy knew that visitors were not permitted to bring cell phones or other electronic devices into the building. This would be her first test. Teddy placed her clutch on the moving belt
and braced herself.
“Hey, Nick!” a man called over from the elevators a few feet away. “Did you hear we finally got a call from Lambert?”
Nick turned to Teddy. “One second,” he said.
She couldn’t have asked for better timing.
Teddy watched as the security guard flicked the button to pause the belt once her purse was inside the scanner. Fixing an expression of polite interest on her face, she reached out to his mind. Nothing here, she said. Scan clear. Move on.
When someone fought against her influence, she felt like she was swimming against a current. The inky darkness of the security guard’s mind churned like an ocean before a storm. He was resisting her command. She swallowed the taste of bile.
Nothing here. Scan clear. Move on.
The last wave crashed and the ocean settled, now smooth as glass. The security guard’s face slackened, and his pupils expanded. He flicked the button again, sending her purse out the other end of the X-ray machine. Teddy watched his pupils return to their normal size.
“Thanks,” she said as she walked slowly toward Nick. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the security guard rub his temple as if he had a headache.
Check.
She joined Nick at the elevator, still uneasy from the effort. Teddy toyed with her clutch, her fingers tracing the outline of her cell phone.
“I thought we’d start at the crime lab,” he said. “That’s probably the most interesting place here.”
As much as Teddy actually wanted to see forensic equipment, she had a mission, and time was running out. “We could start with your office,” she said. She chewed her bottom lip. There were only so many moves she could make. “I was thinking about what you said earlier. Maybe we should talk.”
He stared at her. Two minutes ago, she’d been trying to keep it professional. And now . . . if she were a guy, she’d think girls were crazy, too.
“What changed in the two minutes since I went to talk to Bradley?”
She sighed. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know, I’ve never done this before.”