by Hart, Stella
“It’s fine. I get it,” I muttered.
“So what happened? How do you know she’s been kidnapped?”
“Long story. You might want to sit down.”
He nodded slowly and sank into his computer chair. “Why haven’t I heard anything about this?” he asked. “Shouldn’t the Secret Service and police be all over it?”
“They don’t know she’s missing yet.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
I lifted my gaze to the ceiling, eyeing it for any surveillance devices. “We’re safe to talk in here, right?”
Rowan nodded. “Yes. I don’t trust the usual security measures, so I’ve installed my own.”
“Of course you have,” I said with a ghost of a smile. I sat down on a chair opposite him. “I need to tell you some things. They’re pretty shocking, and you might be tempted to tell someone else, but you can’t.”
“Okay.”
I leaned closer. “I can trust you, right?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Here goes.”
I filled him in on everything. The existence of the Order. The contract binding Willow to me. The suspicions we shared about the Order’s true nature. The facts we’d managed to confirm so far. Q’s identity. Willow’s sudden disappearance from the White House Christmas party.
When I was done, Rowan let out a long sigh and leaned back in his chair.
My forehead wrinkled. “You don’t seem particularly surprised about any of this.”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not. You just confirmed almost every suspicion I’ve ever had.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve suspected that there was a deep-state secret society in D.C. for years. I just didn’t know any details about it.”
My brows furrowed. “You heard the part where I said my mother is the leader, right?” I asked. “Surely that came as a surprise.”
Rowan shook his head. “Nope. She’s been number one on my list of suspects for the society leader for about four years now.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I wouldn’t joke about this stuff. Especially if Willow’s in trouble.”
“Then how the hell did you know about the Order?” I asked, eyes widening. “Why was my mom your prime suspect when no one else had a damn clue?”
He leaned forward. “If I tell you, do you promise not to mock me for being a crazy conspiracy theorist?”
“Of course I won’t. If you figured out all of this stuff on your own, then you might actually be the sanest person I know.”
“Like I said before, I didn’t exactly figure anything out. I just suspected a few things.” He hesitated and leaned back again. “So this is the part you’ll want to mock. I’m an active member on TruthAnon. Have you heard of it?”
“I think so. It’s an online conspiracy theory forum, right?”
“Yeah. It’s where all the tinfoil-hat crazies congregate. Like me,” Rowan said with a rueful smile. “Anyway, about five years ago, a new member joined. They only made one post, and it got deleted a few minutes later. A lot of people took screenshots, though, including me. After that, the hardcore theorists on the forum went nuts trying to dissect it.”
“What did the person say?”
“The first thing they said was that they’d chosen to post on the forum because they knew they would sound totally crazy to anyone else, like their friends or the media. We were the only people who wouldn’t dismiss them as a lunatic right off the bat.”
“Fair enough.”
“They claimed they had information about an explosive scandal, and they wanted us to look into it for them and expose it to the world, because they weren’t sure how much time they had left to do it themselves.”
“What was the scandal?”
“They said they knew for a fact that there was a secret society operating out of Washington. Apparently this society has access to all the money and power you could possibly imagine, and they’re up to a lot of shady shit. They have a stranglehold over politics in this country, and everything that happens in that arena is because of them. Oh, and they also said the society was planning to assassinate a president somewhere between 2018 and 2020 in order to create chaos in the country.”
“That sounds pretty accurate so far.”
Rowan nodded. “Yeah. Everything you just told me matches up to it,” he replied. “Anyway, the original poster was very vague, which is unfortunate. They didn’t name the secret society or any of the members, even though they claimed to know a lot about it. The whole thing seemed very rushed. Like they were afraid of getting caught at any second.” He paused and held up a hand. “This is the part that sounds ultra-crazy. The post ended by saying the supreme leader of the society is a lizard.”
I snorted. “A lizard? Are you fucking serious?”
“Yep. Most people on the forum thought the whole thing was a joke.”
“No shit.”
“Some of us didn’t,” he said with knitted brows. “I’ve been hearing rumors about a deep-state secret society for years, so that post was like catnip to me.”
“Even with the lizard shit?”
“Yeah. We thought the whole lizard thing might’ve been some sort of code. But then I started to wonder if it was something else. An autocorrect error, maybe. After all, the post seemed really rushed, and then it just… ended. The main body of it was written like they were going to give us a ton of names and details later, but that never happened. So I thought: what if they were writing it out on a cell phone, but they got caught halfway through? Maybe they quickly pressed ‘enter’ and posted what they had, figuring something was better than nothing, and they didn’t realize there was a mistake.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, slowly tapping a finger on my jaw.
“I went and looked at the screenshot. I was right. It was definitely posted from a mobile device. It was just too bad the post got deleted right away, or else I could’ve traced the phone,” Rowan said. “Anyway, I reread the end, and I realized I could be right. It didn’t actually say: ‘The leader is a lizard’. It just said: ‘The leader is lizard’. There was no ‘a’ in there, and no period at the end. It just trailed off into nothing. So it looked like the poster was actually trying to tell us the name of the leader, but then they got disturbed and quickly pressed enter without realizing there was a typo.”
“Then the person who caught them found the post and deleted it,” I said, brows furrowing.
Rowan nodded. “Probably, yes. Anyway, what name is the most likely to autocorrect to ‘lizard’ on a cell phone keyboard?”
“Liz.”
“Yes. Or Liza. Maybe even Lisa.” He paused to take a quick breath. “After I realized that, I started considering every power player in D.C. with those names. The first person I looked into was Liza Winters.”
“The Treasury Secretary?”
“Yeah. She’s fairly powerful. Rich, too. I figured it was possible she could be the leader of a secret society, so I looked into her.” Rowan hesitated again, brows puckering. “I won’t bore you with all the details, but that went nowhere. There was just no way it was her.”
“So then you thought of my mom.”
“Yeah. It sounded stupid at first, because I always thought she was a vapid socialite, but—” He stopped abruptly and winced. “I mean… no offense.”
I held up both palms. “None taken. Go on.”
“I knew she was a Hale before she got married, and they’ve got a ton of connections and more money than God, so theoretically, she’s always had access to a lot of power. I figured it was worth checking out because of that, even though she was the last person I’d ever suspect.”
“So you started looking into her?”
“Yes. I found something pretty interesting right off the bat. You know she went to Yale, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I overheard her talking to my mom and some other women at a party once. Someone ment
ioned that she went there, and she laughed and said she only got in as a legacy. I went and looked it up. It’s not true.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Your mom got into Yale all on her own. She could’ve had help from her family if she needed it, but she didn’t. Her grades were perfect.” Rowan frowned and leaned forward. “It made me wonder. Why would someone downplay their achievements or intellect like that? It seems totally pointless.”
I lifted a brow. “Unless they were trying to cultivate a certain image for themselves.”
“Exactly,” he said, touching the tips of his fingers together to form a steeple. “It seemed like she was trying to portray herself as an airheaded socialite, when really, she’s a total genius.”
“So after that you knew she had to be the leader of this alleged secret society?”
Rowan shook his head. “No. Even then, I was only mildly suspicious. I mean… Liz Thorne? Her? It just seemed ludicrous,” he replied. “But I couldn’t shake the feeling I was onto something, so I kept digging.”
“And?”
He looked down for a moment, twisting his lips in silence. “Remember how you asked if you could trust me?” he finally asked.
I stiffened. “Yes.”
“I need to tell you about something, but I need to know I can trust you too,” he said, forehead creasing. “No one else can hear about it.”
“You can trust me. What is it?”
His eyes narrowed. “Seriously, Logan, this is huge. It can’t leave the room under any circumstances.”
“I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
He scooted his chair closer to mine and lowered his voice. “Okay. Remember that scandal a few years back, when an NSA employee blew the whistle on a surveillance program that was being used to spy on private citizens?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the bigwigs here acted like it wasn’t as big of a deal as it sounded, and it all blew over eventually. It was heavily implied to the public that they shut the program down, so that helped.”
I lifted a brow. “Let me guess. They didn’t shut it down?”
“Actually, they did. But they made us create a new program called Vigil first. It’s like the old one, except it’s ten times bigger and better. You wouldn’t believe what we can do with it.” Rowan went over to one of his computers and started typing rapidly. “Come and have a look.”
I stood up and moved closer. “What exactly am I looking at?” I asked, peering at the screen.
“This is Vigil. It allows us to spy on literally anyone. Even the president, if that’s what we want to do.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really. We can.”
“How?”
Rowan smiled. “If you have a phone, a TV, a computer, or any kind of smart home device, we can use that to listen in on you. Most people have at least one of those things. It doesn’t matter if you’re actually using the device at the time; we can listen anyway. As long as you’re simply around any one of the devices, you’re fair game. They don’t even have to be yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“Say you don’t have a phone, but we know that you’re at your friend’s house, and we want to listen to you for some reason. We can do it via your friend’s phone, TV, virtual assistant, smart fridge… you name it. None of the devices have to be yours. We just have to know you’re standing within range of one.”
“Jesus.”
“Let me show you an example.” He started typing again. “This is my mom’s profile. According to her phone’s GPS data, she’s at home right now. We should be able to figure out what she’s doing pretty fast.”
He clicked his mouse a few times. Nothing happened.
“Am I supposed to hear something?” I asked.
“Nothing is coming up right now. That means she doesn’t have her phone on her at the moment, or she’s just being quiet,” Rowan explained. “Give me a minute. We’ll use something else.”
He clicked a few more times, and faint voices started emanating from the computer speakers. Rowan raised his brows. “There we go. Hear that?”
“Yeah.”
He turned the speakers up. The voices grew louder and clearer.
“So I was telling Sonia about that time we went to Aspen,” a lilting, feminine voice was saying. “And… oh, damn! There goes my coffee. I’m so sorry. I’ve become so clumsy lately.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you a cloth,” a familiar voice replied. It was Rowan’s mother, Karen Harris.
Rowan clicked again, and the sound went away.
“That’s our front living room,” he said, turning back to me. “Sounds like Mom is sitting in there chatting with our neighbor. I used the TV in there to listen to them. I could’ve used the neighbor’s phone, too, if I knew she was there. Or I could’ve used the Alexa speaker that’s sitting on the coffee table.”
“So you can really spy on anyone?”
“Yes, as long as they’re around a Vigil-compatible device.”
“I’m guessing there’s a long list of compatible devices.”
“Yes. You’d be shocked at some of the stuff that can be used. For example, any coffeemaking machine manufactured after 2014 can be used to listen in on a person.”
“Really?”
“Yup. And get this… some electric toothbrushes and razors contain little chips these days too.”
“So you’re not even safe in the fucking bathroom. Christ…”
“No. Sorry to break it to you. If the NSA wants to listen to you, they can. Doesn’t matter who you are or how important you are,” Rowan said. “Like I said before, even the president isn’t safe. Vigil can be used against literally anyone.”
“Why the hell don’t any of the other agencies know about it?” I asked. “The Caldwell guys would love to get their hands on something like this.”
“I know, but the directors here don’t want it to be shared. I guess it’s like an ace up their sleeve.”
I nodded slowly. “Right. Why did you tell me about it, anyway?”
“Because I used it on your mother,” Rowan said, face reddening.
“You’ve been spying on her?”
“Yeah. For a few years now.”
“What have you found?”
“Not much, but enough to keep her at the top of my list of possible secret society leaders.” He hesitated, scratching his chin. “The first thing I noticed was that she lies to you and your father. A lot. She’ll say that she’s going to get her nails done with ‘the girls’, or she’ll claim she’s going shopping, but it’s always bullshit. According to her phone’s GPS data, she ends up here every single time.” He pulled up Google Maps and entered in a series of coordinates. Then he pointed at the screen. “Does that name sound familiar to you? Lilith Hall?”
I frowned. “I don’t think so. What is it?”
“It’s a winery with a luxury resort on a massive piece of land your family owns in northwest Maryland. It’s about a two hour drive from D.C, but on a helicopter—something I assume your family has plenty of access to—it’s only twenty minutes away.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said, scratching my chin. “Are you sure we own it?”
“Yes. Your mom’s side of the family owns it. Her great uncle Enoch Hale bought the land a long time ago,” Rowan replied. “According to Google, it’s very popular, even though it’s quite far out of the way.”
I cocked my head slightly to one side. “So... my mom is constantly flying up to the middle of nowhere to hang out at a winery?”
“At least once a week, yes.”
“Hm. That’s not exactly the kind of behavior you’d expect from an evil secret society leader, is it?”
“No, it definitely wasn’t the kind of place I was picturing when I started suspecting her,” Rowan said, forehead wrinkling. “At first I thought it was nothing, even though she felt the need to lie about going there. I figured she could be having an affair. Or maybe
she just loved getting blitzed at the family winery, and she was too embarrassed to let anyone else know how much she drinks.”
“But you ruled that out?”
“Yeah. I mean, why go all the way there just to have an affair? Or get drunk? There’s plenty of closer places.”
“True.”
“Once that occurred to me, I went deeper. I monitored her call logs—we can do that from here, obviously—for months. Then I made a list of the numbers she contacts the most frequently. There’s about thirty of them, and I started tracking the GPS data on them too. Guess what I found?”
“They all hang out at Lilith Hall too?”
Rowan smiled. “Yup. Every time your mom calls or texts them, they go straight there.”
“So it’s her favorite meeting place for some reason,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “I’m guessing the other people are her shadow council.”
“Maybe. I’ll show you the list later. It’s a mixture of her relatives, prominent people from the city, and unidentifiable burner numbers.”
“Have you ever listened to any of their calls?”
“I’ve listened to a few of your mom’s conversations, yeah, but I haven’t been able to pick up much. I can’t exactly sit around all day trying to monitor everything she does.”
“That’s true.”
“She’s too smart to say anything incriminating on the phone anyway. The best way to hear her say anything damning would be to listen to her with Vigil when she’s not on the phone.”
“Yeah.”
He leaned back, twisting his thumbs. “Anyway, that’s it. That’s how I figured out there was probably a secret society operating in Washington with your mom as the leader,” he said. “I just wish I knew more, so I could help Willow.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You said you’ve suspected this stuff for four or five years now. Why didn’t you tell her?”
“I tried to bring it up a few times, but she always brushed me off,” he replied. “Then I started dropping a few hints here and there to see if that would work. It didn’t. She wasn’t interested in hearing any wild conspiracy theory stuff.”
