“Your honesty is a breath of fresh air—and you’re also driving me nuts.”
Black chuckled. “Why? Because I expect results so quickly?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s not how things work when it comes to laying a trap. You have to bide your time and wait for the person to make a mistake.”
“Not when you scare the hell out of someone like I just did.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“Of course not,” Black said. “I simply told him that the agency didn’t think that he was the target from the attempted assassination.”
“And how’d he respond to that?”
“Just like you would suspect: shock, awe, disbelief. The usual suspects.”
Shields sighed. “And look where that got you.”
“Actually, I can’t see where that got me, which is why I’m calling you,” Black said. “I was hoping that you could tell me what became of our stunt.”
“Why? Because you wanted to know if your story put the fear of God in him?”
“Something like that,” Black said.
“Unfortunately, he hasn’t done a thing since you left,” Shields said. “Right after you exited the room, one of the guards went in with a doctor and a couple of nurses. The doctor addressed Gaither directly and urged him to take some pills. Gaither refused, resulting in a tense standoff, which is still taking place as we speak.”
“If anything changes, keep me posted.”
“Roger that,” Shields said before she hung up.
Black sped along the surface streets and pondered how any so-called public servant could lose his bearings so much that he drifted this far off course. Participating in a human trafficking ring to line your pockets seemed like a massive detour from helping people. To profit off the vulnerable and destroy their youth? The thought angered Black the more he considered the consequences of such an organized crime. The base commander certainly knew what he was doing. And Gaither was involved on some level, though to what extent is what Black wanted to know. Was it simply a stunt to gain public sympathy? Or was he a pawn used by his aides? Or was he actively participating in helping Roman ferry teenage girls around the world and reaping a windfall? If the latter was true, Gaither wouldn’t wait long to reach out to Roman and warn him.
When Black pulled into the parking garage, he drove to the bottom level and entered the building through the secure access door.
“Tell me we’ve got something good,” Black said as he pulled up a chair next to Shields.
“If your definition of good is footage of the senator snoring, I have it,” she said. “Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”
Black sighed and shook his head. “I so wanted that jerk to be involved so if anything I’d never have to hear from him again. His very voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.”
“And most Americans feel the same as you do,” Shields said. “He’s got an eighteen percent approval rating nationwide. Eighteen percent! Do you know how awful something has to be to earn a rating that low? Osama Bin Laden had at least twenty percent.”
Black chuckled. “I think Brussels sprouts are at least twenty-five percent.”
“They’d be at a hundred percent if people cooked like them like I do.”
“What’s your secret?
“Cheese and bacon,” she said with a wink. “I could make a pile of dirt taste like a gourmet meal with enough cheese and bacon.”
“I had no idea you were a chef,” Black said.
“I know what you’re doing here, and it won’t work.”
“What? I just made a statement.”
“You’re fishing for a dinner invite. But it’s not gonna happen, so just forget about it.”
Black sighed. “You show interest in a colleague’s hobby and this is what happens.”
Shields slapped Black with the back of her hand. “Look, Gaither’s awake.”
They both leaned closer to the monitor streaming the images from the senator’s room. Gaither sat up and glanced around the room. He appeared to scan the ceiling, as if searching for something.
“What’s he looking for?” Black asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks there are security cameras in the ceiling.”
After a few seconds, he leaned toward the bedstand on his right and snatched up his phone. He entered his passcode and started scrolling.
“It looks like he’s texting,” Black said. “Can you zoom in?”
“This is as close as we can get here,” she said. “But I think you’re right. There is something I can do to enhance this a bit on my other monitor.”
Shields captured a still shot from one screen and moved it to another before typing furiously on her keyboard.
“Is it working?” Black asked.
“Patience, patience,” Shields said. “I’m almost there.”
A few seconds later, Shields cropped in on the phone, which was held at just the right angle for the camera Black had planted on the lampshade to pick up what was on the screen.
“He’s texting all right,” Shields said, pointing at the image. “And look who he’s messaging.”
Black leaned in again, trying to make out the name. When he saw it, he leaned back and slapped the table.
“Jackpot,” he said. “It’s Roman.”
CHAPTER 17
San Francisco, California
TATIANA TRUDGED UP THE STEPS on the Greyhound Bus, pausing to flash her ticket for the driver. She navigated to the back and sat down at a window seat. Clutching her bag to her chest, she studied the passengers as they boarded. After getting passed over by a handful of people, a girl who appeared to be in her early teens settled next to Tatiana.
The two girls remained silent until after the bus was loaded. As it chugged out of station underneath a dusky sky, the girl cast a furtive glance at Tatiana. The driver addressed everyone over the intercom, giving the riders an idea of how much longer before they reached their next destination.
“We’ll be stopping in Reno,” he said. “If you need to use the restroom before then, I suggest you utilize the toilet in the back of the bus.”
“I shouldn’t have ordered this,” the girl said aloud as she stared at her cup.
“Is it not good?” Tatiana asked.
“It’s from a machine,” the girl said, shaking her head. “In a world with a Starbucks on every corner, this stuff is barely above watered-down dirt. And now drinking it is going to mean I have to use that glorified porta-potty back there.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” Tatiana declared.
The girl’s eyes widened. “You don’t drink coffee?”
“No.”
“It’s the only way I stay awake during the day. Well, that and the liquor—and the occasional extra pick-me-up.”
“Pick-me-up?” Tatiana asked. “What’s a pick-me-up?”
The girl eyed Tatiana closely. “Where are you from?”
“Here and there,” Tatiana said, parroting her prescribed answer.
“I’m Amber,” the girl said, offering her hand.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Emily,” Tatiana said.
According to the general, Emily was the quintessential American name. “If you use your real name, they will be suspicious of you,” he’d warned her. “But if you always use Emily, they won’t think about it twice. America is a great melting pot, and they’re so concerned with offending one another, even if they think you might not be one of them, they won’t say anything.”
Tatiana watched in amazement as Amber continued chatting away without even giving pause to the fact that her seatmate might not be an American. The general stressed that Americans were anything but accepting of foreigners.
“So do you understand what a pick-me-up is now?” Amber asked.
Lost in thought, Tatiana nodded absentmindedly. “Of course. That makes sense.”
“Were you listening to me?” Amber asked.
Tatiana sighed and shook her he
ad. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else. It’s been a rough few weeks.”
“You too, huh?”
Tatiana nodded. “If I told you what I was doing, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Amber shrugged. “I probably would. This world is a crazy place and full of people who want to hurt you.”
Her sentiment is one the general repeated nearly every day. “The Americans want to bring harm to you and our citizens,” he’d said. “It’s a dangerous place with corrupt people running all branches of their government—and they must be stopped.”
While Tatiana had heard this mantra repeated, she still had questions about it. “There are people who want to hurt you?”
Amber nodded. “That’s why I’m running away.”
“What kind of people?”
“Powerful people, rich people, poor people, men, women—it really doesn’t matter. My parents didn’t want me when I was a child, and so they threw me into the system. I’ve lived all over this country in some of the worst conditions imaginable. And when I told people in authority about what was happening, I was told to keep my mouth shut or else people would get hurt.”
“The system?” Tatiana asked.
“Yeah, foster care. It’s the worst.”
Tatiana nodded as if she understood, but she didn’t fully comprehend what foster care was. She’d never heard of such terms. And she certainly never knew parents getting rid of unwanted children was a common practice in the United States. In Russia, mothers and fathers used to sell their kids with alarming frequency to American couples eager to adopt, but a few years ago the president had put an end to it. There were still ways to sell a child into adoption, but it was risky, and people weren’t interested in taking big chances, especially when the government was offering substantial sums of money for couples to have more children.
“What will you do now?” Tatiana asked.
“I’m not sure yet, but I’m sure not going to stick around and let anyone take advantage of me, if you know what I mean.”
She had a good idea about what Amber was saying, so Tatiana nodded emphatically, hoping that the conversation didn’t go any further. During her training, Tatiana had remained skeptical about everything the general had told her class regarding life in the U.S. If it was really that bad and Americans were as wealthy as they were portrayed, she wondered why they all didn’t leave. But Amber didn’t appear to have the means to travel abroad and stay there. Tatiana was quickly learning that life was far more complicated than when she was younger—and the world was far darker.
And I’m going to make it a better place, a place without some of these cruel people to torment kids like me. Papa will be proud of me.
CHAPTER 18
Washington, D.C.
BLACK PLACED HIS WATCH on his dresser and then eased beneath the sheets. He was exhausted from a long day, and a good night’s sleep was at the top of his momentary wish list. Armed with knowledge that Gaither was working with Roman, Black could rest easy knowing that next steps for the Firestorm team would be straightforward when it came to dealing with the Missouri senator.
But there was still a nagging feeling that Black couldn’t shake. He threw off the covers and sat upright. After snatching his phone off the bedstand, he dialed Shields’s number.
“You do realize it’s after 1:00 a.m., right?” she asked.
“Stop complaining,” Black said. “I know you’re up.”
“You think that just because I know my way around a mainframe computer that I’m some kind of night owl who guzzles lattes after midnight and never goes to bed before 3:00 a.m.?”
“That’s exactly what I think you do.”
“Well, you get no bonus points for having a grossly simplified characterization of me fed to you—and by me, no less.”
“So, do you need a latte or an energy drink?” Black asked.
“I need you to leave me alone and get some sleep.”
Black sighed. “I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have called. But I just can’t help this nagging feeling that Gaither knows we’re on to him.”
“If he knew we were on to him, he wouldn’t have called Roman.”
“Only if he didn’t think we were watching him,” Black said. “He’s paranoid and trying to alert Roman.”
“But that doesn’t mean Gaither knew we were watching him.”
“No, it doesn’t. But you know when you get that feeling when you’re holding what you believe is a trump card but you think the other person might know?”
“I hate cards. They’re so—”
“Predictable?”
“Most definitely. Give me a strategy game any day.”
“Well, I feel like we might be coming across as predictable,” Black said. “And Gaither is going to do everything to bring chaos upon us. My promise to find the person responsible for shooting him might not be what he wants.”
“Of course it isn’t, if he’s really guilty of orchestrating some illegal scheme to traffic young girls all over the world.”
“So what do we do now?”
“The only thing we can do—wait.”
Black got up and paced around the room. “I’m not sure which will kill me first: waiting for this to reach some resolution or one of Gaither’s thugs.”
“Just take it easy,” Shields said. “Nobody knows where you live. Blunt saw to it that information is kept under wraps.”
“I’m still sleeping with my Glock underneath my pillow.”
Shields chuckled. “Would there ever be a reason not to?”
“Good point,” Black said.
“Try to get some sleep. I’ll update you in the morning with what this latte-drinking night owl learns before I go to bed at 3:00 a.m.”
“Talk to you tomorrow,” Black said before he hung up.
He climbed back into bed and checked his weapon.
Maybe I’m just paranoid.
Black struggled to go to sleep, his mind racing with all the possibilities of what Gaither might be up to. But after an hour, Black finally drifted off.
Yet it wasn’t long before he sat bolt upright in bed, certain that he’d heard one of the floorboards creak.
Thinking quickly, Black stuffed a blanket and one of his pillows underneath the sheets, giving the illusion that he was in bed. He scrambled underneath the mattress and waited.
Ten minutes passed before he started to wonder if he was overreacting. Just as he was about to go investigate the noise, he saw the handle turn slowly and the door ease open. A man wearing dark clothes glided up to the foot of the bed. He pulled out his gun that had a silencer on it and fired two shots at where Black’s head would’ve been.
“Huh,” the man said as he strode up to the edge of the bed and ripped the covers back. That’s when Black sprang into action.
Black shot the assassin in his leg. As he instinctively reached for the wound, Black fired three more shots, hitting the man twice more in his leg before finishing him off with a shot to the side of the head after he tumbled to the floor. Black wormed out from underneath the bed and stood over the man, blasting him again in the chest with a bullet just to make sure.
Once Black turned the light on, he kicked the gun away from the man and knelt to check his pulse. He was gone.
Black pulled out his phone and took a couple pictures of the man before sending them to Shields in a text.
She wrote back moments later. “This is not the kind of picture guys typically send to women this late at night.”
“Most typical guys don’t have an assassin invade their bedroom at night and try to kill them either.”
He counted aloud. “Three, two, one . . .”
His phone rang with a call from Shields.
“Someone just tried to kill you?” she asked.
“That someone I just sent you a picture of,” Black said. “I’m hoping you can run that image of him through your database and find out who he is.”
“I can do that. Does he look familiar?�
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“He’s not the same guy who tried to kill me at Union Station, if that’s what you mean,” Black said. “This guy’s eyes are quite memorable.”
“I see that,” she said. “Crystal blue.”
“There aren’t many people who know where I live, much less those who can get through my security system. He had to have some help.”
“Good thing you trusted your gut.”
“It’s rarely wrong,” Black said. “And now it’s going to be hungry because I’m have to spend the rest of the night getting rid of this body.”
“Need any help?”
Black chuckled. “You’ve got other fish to fry, like figuring out who this guy is. I’ll take care of this on my own.”
“Roger that. I’ll be in touch.”
After Black hung up, he wasted no time in enacting his protocol for body disposal. The process consisted of creating interference for all nearby closed circuit cameras before lugging the dead man down the steps in a large wagon topped with a cooler and several lawn chairs. He didn’t figure he was likely to run into anyone in the elevators at 2:30 a.m., but there was always a chance.
And tonight was one of the nights he did.
The elevator stopped on the third floor and was boarded by a man with his shirt unbuttoned halfway and a pair of sunglasses sitting cock-eyed and clinging tenuously to his nose. With him was a pair of doting women.
Black scooted aside to make more room for them, hoping they wouldn’t engage in conversation with him. But the man’s breath smelled as if he’d spent most of his evening guzzling liquor as he staggered inside and leaned against the back wall.
He took his sunglasses off and used them to point at Black’s wagon. “Kind of late for a picnic, isn’t it?”
Black nodded and forced a smile, hoping the acknowledgment of the man’s comment would end the prying.
“So, where you headed, pretty boy?” the drunk said. “Got anything in there for me?”
The man reached for the cooler and tried to open it. Black slammed his foot on the lid, refusing to even look at the man.
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