Dragon: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 37)

by Robert J. Crane

“Wait.” Holloway sat forward now. “There's a corporation linked to our China investigation in the building, and another Chinese businessman owns the building? You get his name?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and Holloway spun around to his computer, ready to type. “Wu Huang. That billionaire who just jumped into bed with Socialite. Or, with Jaime Chapman and his associated companies.”

  “Hummm,” Holloway said, tapping the keys. “I'm going to send an email to a friend of mine in the fraud division. He's good at linking corporate ownership and finding out what else this Huang guy might have in terms of properties in the neighborhood. Gonna include that front company HKK-whatever, too.” He finished typing it out and hit send. “I'll text him to let him know it's coming. He's generally pretty quick to do a favor, especially if he sees some value in it for himself.”

  “What kind of value is in it for him?” I asked, because I didn't see it.

  “A bottle of real quality scotch,” Holloway said, and stuck his hand out. “So fork over fifty bucks.”

  “To quote what I'm sure is you, talking to a long line of women in your past, 'I'm not paying shit until I get some satisfaction,'” I said.

  Holloway laughed. “That does have a familiar ring to it.”

  “Here's another thing,” I said. “That ambassador's aide? Liao, I think his name was? You can't tell me the average Chinese citizen gets that kind of on-the-spot, personal service like Huang did.”

  “Huang's probably part of their ruling junta or something,” Holloway said, giving himself a single spin around in his chair. “I hear it's like a cartel over there at the top.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “If so, he's got some real sway with the government, and to me that makes this smell even more suspicious, given that this HKKCME corp is tied to our case. It's a little too much China to be a coincidence, right?”

  “It's suspicious, yeah,” Holloway said, “but devil's advocate? It could be a coincidence. Long odds, but not impossible.”

  “This Liao, though...him showing up suggests to me that whatever Huang's relationship with the situation, it's got the imprimatur of the government's hand on it. One way or the other, they're involved somehow. Either in the scheme all along, or at least the cover-up. The circumstantial evidence alone is starting to make quite a pile.”

  “Lay it out for me,” Holloway said. “Like a prosecutor. Convince me.”

  “Okay,” I said, and drew a deep breath. “Stolen guns linked to this company are used in a kidnapping attempt to take an American citizen, the daughter of Chinese dissidents, a professor of Chinese culture. I track them back to this furniture store, tangle with a meta and accomplices who have multiple Chinese passports–”

  “Which China says are fraudulent,” Holloway interrupted. I must have given him a look, because he quickly added, “Devil's advocate.”

  “You want to advocate for the devil, don't be surprised if you go to hell later,” I said, doing a little tapping of my own at the keyboard. “Anyway, Chinese passports, either real and generated by their government or intel agencies, or fraudulently obtained. Again, circumstantial evidence. Add it to the pile. Chinese nationals, acting as thugs and kidnappers. Actual ID and connections to China – unknown. Though we should get autopsies from them, and maybe something will turn up. Anyway, we tie the guns to this HKKCME, which is renting an office space from Huang, a Chinese billionaire with indeterminate ties to the government.”

  “'Indeterminate' is a big word,” Holloway said, “and a big stumbling block for a case.”

  “Fine, more circumstantial evidence, but it's becoming a mountain, like Rushmore, except instead of faces it's a bunch of stone fingers pointing at China, China, China–”

  “That's the worst metaphor I've ever heard.”

  “Then there's that State Department employee,” I said, “Bridget Schultz, which is unrelated to our case – I think – but who just so happens to be suffering from a sonic weapons attack, and the Secretary of State suggests–”

  “She's a China opponent,” Holloway finished. “But like you said, probably unrelated, because her condition was in motion long before you took this case.”

  I picked up the list of targets we'd been working. “Yes, but maybe not before our kidnappers started working this case.”

  Holloway stared at me blankly, then he got it. “I'm willing to accept some of the circumstantial stuff – outside of my devilry advocation – but that one's a bridge too far for me. I think you can mark her down as independent of this, unless you find some compelling reason they'd want to take her off the board at the same time they're engaging in this kidnapping case.”

  “Maybe you're right,” I said, nodding along with his chain of logic. “But to me it speaks to the pattern – China is engaging in increasingly bad and hostile behavior. Aggressively so.”

  “Could be,” Holloway conceded. “It certainly fits. But you're lacking a smoking gun, which means...there's no case here. You've got crimes. I even agree with your chain of reasoning on these suppositions. But in terms of an actual case? You're nowhere. No prosecutor worth their salt would bring anything except the charges against the guy you call Firebeetle. China'd be free and clear in our courts. Not that we have any influence over them anyway.”

  “Okay, Mr. Devilry Advocate,” I said, “what's the flip side of this?” He gave me a funny look. “If you were looking to make the case that I was not only wrong about China, but spectacularly wrong, what would you say all this means?”

  “Well...” Holloway started to take a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. I couldn't wait to hear what he had to say.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Chapman

  “Well...”

  They were in.

  Devin had been as good as promised, logging into the trojans that Chalke had made sure were implanted in Nealon's FBI team’s computers, their cell phones, even Nealon's TV and laptop at home. Chapman's best engineers had designed them, and now...

  They had everything on her. Full audio anywhere she carried her phone, full video from the camera, even her computer.

  Some of that had been Chalke's idea, when they moved her to Washington. Traditional FBI bugging had been one avenue, but Chalke had gotten kind of skittish about that. Its traceability bothered her.

  Chapman had her covered, though. And now they had Nealon covered. He'd had a small team sifting through the video and audio files live, watching and listening to them, reporting on her moves. He got a neat report at the end of each day, which he'd been disregarding.

  Until now.

  Now...he needed to take a more active hand in the situation, clearly.

  Which was why he was staring at the video feed from Nealon's computer camera, looking at her dull face as she looked at her partner, a washed-up FBI agent who looked like he'd pulled himself out of a dirty clothes basket. Thank God the surveillance didn't have an olfactory component, because Chapman sniffed just looking at him.

  “...If I were going to make the case against Chinese involvement,” the male partner said, “I'd start with you. Personally.”

  “Me?” Nealon's voice was a little higher than usual in her reply.

  “You're the weakest link, dumbass,” Chapman muttered under his breath.

  “You need anything else, sir?” Devin asked, waiting across the desk from Chapman.

  “What's this idiot's name? The one she's talking to?” He didn't care, he just wanted a name to go with the face so he didn't have to mentally tag him “schlubby loser” while watching this shit play out.

  “Agent Holloway, sir.”

  “Great, perfect, get out.” Agent Holloway's face was moving, his mouth opening, he was about to pour forth his utter lack of wisdom, Chapman sensed.

  “You're a soft target for dedicated political operatives,” Holloway said. “You ought to know that. It's not like they haven't hit you before.”

  “Thank you for acknowledging that,” Nealon said softly. “Most people just think I accidentally fell
into being a fugitive from the law.”

  “Naw, I've seen political ops play out before,” Holloway said. “And that was an op. But regardless, you've left enough bodies and been hit enough times that there's plenty of fertile ground to blast you on. If I were China, looking to do some damage to your case – yeah, I'd take aim at you first.”

  “Awesome,” she said with clear sarcasm. Clear to Chapman, anyway. Maybe the moron Holloway missed it.

  “You know all the evidence is weak,” Holloway said. “That's the problem with circumstantial. You tie enough of it together, you can paint a picture – if you can get it admitted. But regardless, how do you put China on trial?”

  Chapman's pulse quickened. Here it was. How the hell could Chalke and Bilson have missed this? It was right there; he'd been watching her for two minutes. Idiots. Even in the Network, competence was at a premium. It was a constant frustration for Chapman, and he considered himself lucky that Socialite was one of the best companies to work for in the world. It allowed him to skim the cream of talent and keep these relative morons out of personal contact with him. Except for now, when he was unfortunately forced to watch these stupid normies have their dumbass, idiotic conversations, because they were shaking up his neatly constructed world.

  “Okay,” Nealon said, appearing to take a long breath to compose herself. Not too bright. Fast fists, slow mind. Not a total moron, but extremely average in Chapman's estimation. “How would you do it?”

  “You want me to spell it out for you?” Holloway asked. He seemed wary. Maybe of pissing her off. “Fine,” he decided. “They'll go after every weak point they can find. The big one: the number of people you've killed. Because it's a lot.”

  “I'm just going to defend myself here by saying almost all of them had it coming.”

  Chapman chuckled. “That'll play well in the media.” It was an obvious weakness, one that had been exploited before. No matter how much the average Joe Sixpack might respect Sienna Nealon as a hero, show them video of her burning someone to death and she immediately lost favorability points with suburban housewives. Or so Bilson had said. Chapman hadn't cared until now.

  “Maybe,” Holloway said. “But you pair a good attack campaign with some of that ubiquitous video that's out there...” He shrugged. Maybe he wasn't a total idiot. But nearly.

  “What else?” she asked, posture tightening. She was getting defensive. Good.

  “Everything you can imagine,” Holloway said. “Attacking the witness on every avenue possible is a time-honored tradition. The media are on-call for Beijing. Every single network and major agency has a bureau there. They get most – not all, but most – of their stories from China hand-fed to them by the Chinese government. Write an unfavorable story, and they hear about it straight from the top. The threat of bureau closure there is persistent. Get too critical, you get cut out of the loop.” He shrugged. “So what do most western media with a stake in things do?”

  “Feed straight from Beijing's waiting nipples, I assume.”

  Holloway laughed, but behind his monitor, Chapman cringed at the crude assessment. Disgusting.

  “You gotta admit,” Holloway said, “it's an elegant way to control them. They decide to write a few articles about you...these major outlets dig up a few 'golden oldies' from your exile period...”

  “Isn't all this...violence stuff about me...kinda baked in at this point?” she asked. “Everyone knows what I've done. What is rehashing it going to do for them?”

  “Muddy the waters, I assume,” Holloway said, “but if you think that's bad, that's just their first line of attack. The one the press used on you before. They've got other ones, new ones. Your alcoholism–”

  “Dirty.”

  “–your sex life–”

  “Hey that's...extremely boring, especially lately.”

  “You can absorb a soul during the act. I don't care how boring it is in actuality, I was shocked last time they didn't play that up for titillating effect. It's tailor-made for catching the attention, especially of men, who think of little else. Any man who knows what a succubus was – prior to you – had that one damned thought on their mind when you came along.”

  “Ewwww! You're telling me the male population of America–”

  “Probably the world.”

  “–That they've thought about me like–”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  Chapman let out a chuckle under his breath. That was a wonderful smear idea. Hard to believe it came from an idiot. He made a mental note to press that particular button first if need be.

  “This is not the first time I've thought of my power as a sort of disability,” Nealon said, doing a full-body shiver, “but it is the grossest time I've thought of it as such, if that's what's going on in guys heads' when they think about me. Yuck.”

  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news vis-a-vis your position in the sexual fantasies of men worldwide.”

  “I hate this. I hate knowing this. And right now, I hate you.”

  It was Holloway's turn to chortle. “You're going to hit me with some sort of subtle, femme mind-fuck later to make up for this aren't you?”

  Nealon's face curtained, losing all emotion. “I strike you as the subtle type?”

  Holloway laughed, but it died quickly, giving way to seriousness laced with discomfort. “No. You're more the sort that would set my car on fire. With me in it.”

  Nealon winked, snapping a pointed finger at him. “Your insight into people is super keen. What else would China do?”

  “Run the PR playbook. Drag out old lovers, people who hate you for a variety of reasons. Anyone you've failed to save – you know all this.”

  “No, I suspected it. But you're giving me new avenues of paranoia.”

  “They'd put surveillance on you. Tails. Bug your place. Hit you with one of those sonic devices, maybe–”

  “Huh.” Nealon sat back in her chair. “You know, I would not have thought they'd go that far, given I'm an FBI agent, but now that we've seen some of the things they've done...” She nodded slowly. “Yeah. I need to watch my back.”

  “PerSec is going to be an issue if you're right about this,” Holloway said. “And–” He stopped, an electronic dinging ringing out over the speaker.

  “What?” Nealon asked, sitting forward in her chair.

  “Already got an email back from my guy,” Holloway said. Now Chapman was watching him through the camera on his own computer, reading the screen, eyes scrolling.

  A couple taps, and Chapman could see what he was reading. It looked dull, boring procedural stuff, then–

  Oh.

  Suddenly it wasn't so dull anymore.

  “What the f–” Chapman breathed.

  “This is something,” Holloway said on the monitor. Well, duh. The dumbass.

  “What is it?” Nealon asked, leaning forward over Holloway's idiotic, old-school, Marlboro man shoulder, framing her slightly doughy face in frame with his like the most puke-worthy selfie Chapman could imagine. And as the chief of the world's largest social media site, he'd seen his fair share.

  “This HKKCME company that lost those guns? Whose offices we–”

  “I know who they are. What did your guy find?” Nealon said, looking like she was about a half second from shoving him aside to read for herself. She really did have a hair trigger and the violence was always ready to manifest. Chapman had seen it in her eyes when she'd been here, in his office. Just below the surface, ready to blow up like a dormant volcano.

  “They've got exactly one other asset on their books,” Holloway said, face bearing a trace of a smile. “A lease on a pier at the Port of Baltimore.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Sienna

  The ride to the Port of Baltimore came at rush hour, of course. Holloway rode shotgun while I drove, spending his time on the phone with our FBI lawyer. They had a warrant from a judge for us to search the pier by the time we reached the halfway point, but we were stuck in traffic moving a sol
id fifteen miles an hour, so I knew it was going to take a while.

  “So about this whole China thing,” Holloway said, breaking the silence he'd punctuated with news of our warrant procurement. “What is the motive here? There's got to be something. Even if we go from the assumption that China's getting too big for their britches, there has to be a reason to snatch these folks. They're not just doing it for kicks.”

  “I agree,” I said, white knuckling the wheel as some tool in a Prius (but I repeat myself, because all Prius owners are tools at heart) with little regard for their own life angled in front of my big SUV, cutting in. I toyed with flipping on the lights and siren just to get them out of the way (and maybe give them a well-deserved heart attack), but this wasn't an emergency and I didn't have the power to write traffic tickets. Though sometimes I wanted that power. “It's either a shift to a more aggressive strategy for stifling dissidents – if that's what those people are – or there's something else going. Something we're missing.”

  “But how's the tiger fit in?” Holloway asked. He looked about a second away from propping his feet up on the dashboard. “That's what I want to know.”

  “We figure out who the Firebeetle is,” I said, “we'll get a better idea of who the tiger is. They're linked somehow. The tiger keeps showing up at the same places as Firebeetle. That can't be a coincidence. There's a death match going on there.”

  “What if that's not it?” Holloway asked, looking very pensive, so unlike him. “What if the connection is you?”

  I was pretty sure I made a face. Then had to tap my brakes because the Prius stopped for no reason. Seriously, he had miles between him and the car in front of him. “Asshole!”

  Holloway swayed forward and back with the motion of my braking. “Whew.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “For a second there I thought you were talking to me. Just relieved is all.”

  “Yeah, I haven't forgotten your little revelation that the men of America have contemplated what it'd be like to have me take their souls, and 'asshole' definitely still applies to you. But in this case...” I frowned. “...You may have a point. He does keep showing up and saving my bacon. The tiger, I mean.” I shook my head. “Ugh. This one's too tightly wrapped. So many threads to keep track of. Something needs to start making sense soon or I'm gonna lose it.”