#RedTeam Attack
Page 23
“Seems unlikely.” The drugs were planted; that was obvious. “Do the cops buy that story?”
Delilah shrugged. “Who knows? That leads nicely into what you know about last night. Tit for tat. What can you tell me?” She leaned forwards, hands wrapped around her glass, and Caleb strived to keep his gaze on her face, and not her curves.
He’d already decided to give her a flavour of the truth. It remained to be seen if she bought it. “There was a tunnel underneath the street,” he began. “Constructed by Civil Defence, it dated back to the sixties and led to some kind of underground bunker. Just like the one under the Beehive. There are a few in Wellington, I’m told, but this one filled up with natural gas, and you know the rest.”
Delilah frowned again and pursed her lips. “I call bullshit.”
“On what? Talk to Civil Defence, and they’ll tell you about the bunker.”
“That’s plausible, but gas? Nu huh.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Nobody smelled it. Not even a whiff.”
“I’m sorry. That’s what I was told. That’s all I know.”
Delilah reached into her shoulder bag and tugged out a notebook. She flipped to a page and read aloud. “Seventeen people hurt from the restaurant. No fatalities.” She glanced up at Caleb. “Sound about right?”
“Yep.” He nodded for emphasis.
“So what were the body bags for?”
“What?”
“After the police shooed me away from the scene, I snuck into the Triple-X Club and watched the proceedings from an upstairs window. It was impossible to see what was going on, because they had one of those white tents over the scene, but I saw them loading body bags into a van.” She tapped her phone and spun it around to Caleb. “Look.”
Fuck. The blurry photo showed two men in white forensic overalls, carrying a bag between them. Caleb knew exactly what was inside it. Nausea rose in his throat.
“You shouldn’t have that.” He grabbed her phone, deleted the image, and scrolled through, wiping the others of the scene.
“I’ve got backups.”
What could he tell her? This was such a clusterfuck. “It’s classified,” he said finally. “I can’t tell you.”
“Classified?”
“Yup.”
She opened her mouth, and he knew she was going to ask another question. His phone chirruping at the same time was the perfect out he needed.
“Excuse me.” He lifted the phone to his ear without checking Caller ID. “Hello.”
“Hey, you.” Emma. “I’m in town at the moment, and wanted to catch up with you. Are you in the middle of anything right now?”
She sounded more cheerful than he expected.
Delilah sat back and watched him, while nursing her wine. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stay here and be interrogated about the explosion, or lie to Emma about Mark?
“Sure,” he said. “I’m in the CBD too. Should I meet you somewhere?”
“I guess you’re not on your bike. Why don’t I give you a ride home? Where are you?”
“Lambton Quay.” He glanced at Delilah. “The Old Bailey.”
“I’m at the New World supermarket, in Thorndon. I can be there in a couple of minutes. See you outside the pub?”
“That works. See ya.” He disconnected and prepared to make his apologies.
“You’re leaving.” Delilah was smart, and also pissed at him.
“Sorry.”
She sighed. “My turn to buy the drinks next time.”
He ought to smile and hobble away, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You’re on,” as he picked up his jacket.
Chapter Forty
Emma was suspiciously bright and chatty when she drove them back to Owhiro Bay. Was she relieved Mark broke up with her? No. That made no sense. Did anything at the moment? He toyed with the idea of asking her outright but shied away from it. He’d try to be more subtle.
He didn’t need to be. He was working up to asking how she felt, when she parked outside his house, and turned to face him.
“I’m taking a couple of weeks off,” she said, “and I wanted you to know. I’ve not been on holiday in ages.”
“Okay?”
“I’m going to the UK. I’ve got a flight booked on Thursday.”
Like the cloud parting to reveal the sun, Caleb understood. “Don’t,” he said, as evenly as he could manage. “You’re going to look for Mark.”
“I’m going on vacation.”
“Where, exactly?”
She hesitated. “Not sure yet. I’m going to hire a car and go exploring.”
Fuck. He should have seen this coming. “No, Em. Please don’t do this.”
“I have to. I don’t believe for a minute that he wants to break up with me. I think he’s in trouble, and pulling some stupid hero stunt to keep me safe.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen what he does. I’ve been part of it. Christ, Caleb. I’ve been shot at more than once. It’s not like I don’t know how dangerous his work is.”
Caleb gripped the edges of his seat. “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t go. D’you think he wants you to make yourself a target? Again?”
“Aha.” She pounced on his words. “You do know more than you’re saying. What did he tell you, Caleb?”
He was on thin ice. “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.” She slammed the steering wheel with one hand. “Not you as well. I’m telling myself that Mark will have a really good reason for lying, but you don’t. You promised to be honest with me.”
They stared at each other in silence.
Emma broke first. “You’d better be telling the truth.” Tears gleamed in her eyes.
Caleb’s heart lurched. What could he tell her? “If Mark was in danger, do you think he’d want you to go find him?”
“I don’t give a flying fig what he thinks is best. If he’s in trouble, he might need my help.” Her lower lip wobbled. “I’m flying out on Thursday. If you have any idea where he is, I’d appreciate you telling me.”
“There’s nothing I can say to stop you?”
Her gaze skittered away, before returning to Caleb. “Tell me what he said to you.”
Caleb was damned if he said anything, and damned if he didn’t. “You promise to stay here?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“He thought he was being set up to take the fall for the cyber-attack. We agreed on check-in dates and times, and if he missed one, I was to alert a friend of his. Then he called and broke up with you, and I figured—”
“You figured he was trying to protect me.”
“Yes.”
“And this friend of his… Would that be Jonathan?”
“No, it’s a Brit. A guy based over there.”
Emma nodded. “What did he say? The Brit?”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
Her face had gone pale, her freckles standing out. “So what happens next? You leave it?”
“No. Of course not. I’m going to get Jonathan involved. He’s been busy, but as soon as he’s free—”
“As soon as he’s free? God damn it, Caleb. Mark’s in danger, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Mark made me promise not to tell you.”
“I’m sorry too. You lied to me. I trusted you, and this is how you repaid me. By lying to my face.” She held up a hand, to stop him from speaking. “I need the contact name he gave you. You owe me that.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.” She huffed a breath. “I lied too.”
Relief nudged at him. “You’re not going after all?”
She shook her head. “My flight’s tomorrow night.”
Sunday 7 April
Epilogue
Caleb dragged himself awake to the familiar ringtone. Jonathan. He groped for his phone and stared, bleary-eyed at the time. Not-quite-seven in the morning. He’d been asleep for almost five hours. It felt more like five minute
s.
Waking up hurt, and the remnants of concussion meant a near-permanent headache at the moment. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Wassup?”
“You asked me to call you back.” Jonathan sounded every bit as exhausted as Caleb felt.
That’s right, he did. “I need to talk to you.” He rubbed his eyes and thought longingly about hanging up and going back to sleep.
“So talk. I’ve been working all night and I need to crash.”
The events of the previous evening slotted into place in Caleb’s brain, like stills from a movie. Promising Emma he’d give her Aiden Bradley’s contact details. Watching her drive away. Wondering if there was any way to repair their long-standing friendship, and the anxiety that clutched at him.
And the need to explain to Jonathan that Mark thought his life was in danger.
“Erich Morgen hasn’t cracked yet,” said Jonathan when Caleb didn’t speak. “We’re getting close, though. I told him we knew he was behind the explosives, and that’s when he decided to call for his lawyer. We’ve put him in a holding cell for a few hours while we get some sleep, and then I’ll have another crack at him later. Damned spec-ops guys. I need to find a new angle before I interview him again.”
“Eleven counts of murder isn’t enough to rattle him?” One for each of the girls that died in the bunker.
“It’s no comment to everything. We’ve probably got enough to put him away for life, but he’s just a bit-player. We want the guys at the top of the tree, and he’s our only link. We have some working theories, though.”
“Go on.”
“We picked up more CCTV footage of Morgen trailing Nicole, from several days before she came to your office. He’s been watching her at work, too. So, on that basis, when she came to ask you for help, it would’ve made the perfect opportunity for Morgen to divert everyone’s attention by throwing you under the bus.”
Was that plausible? “I wondered about that. Wrong place, wrong time. I made an easy target.”
“Yep. And we finally have a concrete link between Freddie and Morgen. Freddie had a drug habit, as we know, and appeared to owe Morgen a substantial amount of money.”
“So Morgen was using Freddie to get easy access to Nicole?”
Jonathan yawned. “That’s what we think. Can this conversation wait? I think my brain cells are shutting down.”
That reminded him. Caleb needed to do a clean-up on the Immigration server, to remove any traces of the searches he ran. He’d do that as soon as he finished this call. “There’s something you need to know. It’s about Mark. He’s in trouble, and Emma’s flying out to the UK to try and find him.”
“What?” There was a rustling noise down the line. “I don’t know which part of that to unpick first. Jesus. I turned my back for five minutes.”
Caleb was fully awake by now. “Mark said if he didn’t check in at regular intervals, to alert you.” And since Aiden Bradley seemed to be untraceable, Jonathan was all Caleb had.
“How long has he been AWOL?”
“I last spoke to him on Friday, but then he broke up with Emma over the phone, and now he’s not taking any calls. He gave her some bullshit story, which of course she refuses to believe.”
“Of course,” Jonathan echoed. “When is she leaving?”
“Tonight. I couldn’t talk her out of it.”
“And you think I can?”
“No, but you can ask the right people for information about Mark.”
“I’ll make some calls. You think Mark’s in trouble, not just late to call you?”
“Yeah, based on what he told me. Let’s catch up this afternoon and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
They said their goodbyes and disconnected. Caleb lay back against his pillows and stared at the ceiling, and sifted through his jumbled thoughts. Could he join Emma and help her search? Was staying in EnZed a condition of his parole? He could ask his parole officer, and pretend he wanted to go on holiday. Emma would be pissed, but she was furious with him at the moment anyway, so he couldn’t make that any worse.
Did he miss anything while he slept? He’d check, but first, he needed to log into the Immigration server.
It was offline. Damn. It’d either completely crashed, or the server techs had taken it down. Either way, there was nothing Caleb could do with it at the moment. He may as well catch up on everything else.
He skimmed through his email. There was an update from Andi, to say Griff was still in a coma.
If Griff didn’t show any signs of improvement, he might end up being the twelfth victim of the bombing.
Was it too early for Caleb to call her? To offer support? She worked for him, so technically she was one of his team, but they’d been online friends before that, and friends were there for each other.
He sent her a text.
Caleb: Saw your email. How are you doing?
Her reply dropped in a few minutes later, as he hobbled back from the bathroom.
Andi: You okay to talk at the mo?
He called her number, and she answered on the first ring. “Hey,” she said, her voice croaky. “Thanks. It’s all a bit shit right now, and there’s only so much I can tell his family, you know?”
He knew. Only a handful of people knew the truth of it, and Griff’s family weren’t on that list. As far as they were concerned, Griff had been in the Greek restaurant above the bunker.
“It must be hard,” Caleb said, and immediately wanted to kick himself. He wasn’t good at conversation at the best of times. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Help Jonathan to find the bastards that were behind this. It’s too late for those girls, but that won’t be the only private brothel. And help me find Kaali. There’s no trace of her anywhere.”
“Jonathan and the cops are doing everything they can,” said Caleb, and felt inadequate all over again. If Andi hadn’t befriended Kaali, nobody would be any the wiser about the atrocities being committed. “Erich Morgen will talk. Jonathan and his team are like rottweilers when they’re interviewing a suspect. If he gives up the names, they can take out the entire organisation. It’s just a matter of time.”
“It’s killing me that I don’t know where she is,” said Andi. “What they’re doing to her. She trusted me.”
“It’s not your fault. Christ, Andi. If it hadn’t been for you, those girls would still be prisoners.”
“At least they’d still be alive.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s all so fucked up.”
“Yeah.” She huffed a sigh. “I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
“You sure?” He imagined she’d want to sit at Griff’s side, in case there was any change, but what did he know?
“I need something to occupy myself with, Caleb. I need a distraction. If anything,” she hesitated, “if anything happens, I can get to the hospital in ten minutes from your office.”
“Okay. He understood about needing distractions, and an idea glimmered. “You said there was a lawyer in Auckland that was investigating Kaali’s case?”
“Yeah. D’you think I should tell her the key witness has been kidnapped? Make her as depressed as the rest of us?” Bitterness lined Andi’s voice.
“What’s her name? Can you give me her details?”
“She’s called Sia Patel. I’ll text you her number and email. What are you thinking?”
“Eh, I’m not sure. I’ll let you know.”
This might be a great opportunity for Delilah. She was hungry for news stories, and hustling for promotion, and desperate to be taken seriously as a journalist. It’d also give Caleb an excuse to see her again. Purely for information purposes, of course.
~ * ~
Thank you so much for reading #RedTeam Attack. I hope you enjoyed it.
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The next full
-length book in the series is Exit Node (Darknet #3) and this is due to be released mid-2020.
Darknet series
~ * ~ Read the series FREE in Kindle Unlimited ~ * ~
To Catch a RAT (Darknet #1)
#RedTeam Attack (Darknet #2)
Wetware Protocol (a Darknet short story) available May 2020
Exit Node (Darknet #3) available mid 2020
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Playlist
Music is interwoven so tightly into my writing that I can’t untangle the two. Either I’m listening to a playlist on my iPod, have music seeping from my laptop speakers, or there’s a song playing in my head – sometimes on auto-repeat.
If #RedTeam Attack had a soundtrack, the playlist would include:
Villainy: Ammunition
The Police: So Lonely
Weta: Let it Go
Pearl Jam: Nothing as it Seems
Kaleo: Way Down We Go
The Blue Stones: Be My Fire
Black River Drive: Bullet for your Gun
Listen along to these—and more—with my Spotify playlist: Spotify
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About SJ Grey
SJ Grey is the author of the Darknet suspense series. She studied at Manchester University, graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree, and worked in IT for over twenty years, before settling in New Zealand.
When she's not writing, you'll find her with her nose in a book and a coffee at her side. She's also written a number of romantic suspense novels under a different name, before returning to her first love - high tech thrillers.