The Breaker

by Nick Petrie

  “He came after you twice and he’s still out there,” Peter said. “I’m not leaving. Although here’s an idea. Why don’t we go somewhere together? We can stay at that new hotel downtown.”

  She gave him side-eye. “Like you’re going to be able to sleep inside tonight. You’re just trying to get me to back off this story.”

  “I just want you to be safe,” he said. “We still don’t know why he’s after you.”

  “Of course we do. He called me reporter lady, for chrissake. He wants me to sit down and shut up. Just like you.”

  “That’s not fair, June. I don’t want you getting hurt, that’s all. This guy is dangerous.”

  She glared at him. “Edgar didn’t come after you, Peter, he came after me. I’m a goddamn journalist. All I have is my willingness to keep digging, to keep fighting. If I let some weirdo scare me off a story, I’m done. And whatever this thing is, it’s nowhere near resolved. In fact, it’s getting bigger. And I’m in the middle of it. So I’m going to stick. And you are not getting in my way. Do you fucking read me, Marine?”

  She didn’t bring up his trip to Iceland last year, or his chasing a gunman into the market just yesterday. She didn’t have to.

  She watched Peter pull in a deep breath, then release it.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Loud and clear, ma’am.”

  Maybe he wasn’t completely hopeless, she thought. “Good answer. Your next question is, ‘How can I support you?’”

  His mouth twitched as he suppressed a smirk. “Yes, ma’am. How can I support you?”

  “Grab your go-bag and get the fuck out of here, please. I’ll stay with Lewis and Dinah tonight.” She turned to Lewis, who was watching them with amusement. “Is that all right?”

  “Of course,” he said. “The boys will love it. Mingus, too.”

  “Great,” she said. “Lewis, can you get rid of Edgar’s light post cameras? If the police ask about Peter, I’ll tell them he’s my boyfriend and he went bow-hunting up north.”

  Lewis nodded, then tipped his head to the side, listening. A siren rose into the darkening sky. “Six blocks away, maybe five,” he said. “Jarhead, you take off and I’ll get June up to speed on today.”

  “Wait,” June said. “What happened today?”

  Lewis said, “We found someone connected to the market shooter. A woman.”

  She spun to face Peter. “You went looking? After you agreed to fucking chill out last night?”

  He told her about the camera glasses taken from their counter. “In fairness, it happened after I agreed to stand down. It wasn’t just a break-in. Someone targeted us.”

  She glared at him. “And you didn’t tell me? Who’s the asshole now, Peter Ash?”

  He raised his hand. “That’s me. My bad.”

  “Four blocks.” Lewis cycled the shotgun and popped the shell out of the chamber. “You two clearly need to work on your communication skills,” he said. “See a counselor. But right now, Jarhead, you got to go.”

  Peter leaned in for a kiss, but June leaned away. “Oh, no. I’m still pissed at you.”

  “Can I at least drive you to work tomorrow?”

  “Depends on the cops,” she said. “But if you do, it’s gonna be in my car, not your crappy truck. And you don’t get to come up to the newsroom. Dean Zedler is already trying to find better pictures of the dumb-ass good Samaritans from other cameras around the market. You don’t need to make it any easier for him.” She didn’t mention that she might be on that camera footage, too.

  The siren was much louder now.

  “Wait,” he said. “My truck is crappy?”

  She gave him a push. “Will you fucking go? Lewis will text you.”

  As he jogged backward across the yard to the house, he blew her a kiss. She stuck out her tongue. Idiot, she thought.

  Then wondered how long it would be before she saw him again.

  24

  PETER

  Peter slipped off the side of the cantilevered deck and dropped down the darkened edge of the ravine. He moved slowly on the steep and slippery grade, boots careful and quiet in the damp fallen leaves. He wore his go-bag on his back, and carried the old Colt Commander chambered and ready in his hand. He’d already turned off his phone.

  The siren had stopped, and the flashing blue and red lights at the top of the slope told him the patrol car had arrived at the house.

  There were two reasons to slip away. The first was to keep himself out of jail and June out of trouble. The second was Edgar, or as June had called him, Mr. Cheerful. The fat man with the axe obviously knew where she lived. There was a real possibility that he’d use the greenway to circle back for another attack.

  This time, Peter wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

  He didn’t mind June yelling at him to stay out of her way. She was right about all of it. This wasn’t about him. This was about her and her story. He would stand guard while she did her work and found Edgar and the market shooter. If he needed to go kinetic to protect her, he would.

  The truth was, he appreciated the clarity.

  It was good to have a mission again.

  It took him fifteen minutes to descend eighty silent feet. Sound carried strangely in that part of the ravine, something about the flat slabs of rock inside the folded land that acted like an amplifier, and he didn’t want his haste to betray his presence. He kept his eyes moving, checking his flanks and the hill behind him, police lights still bright on the branches of the uppermost trees.

  When he finally arrived at the dirt ribbon of the main trail, he found a slender dark figure ten yards away, hands held out away from the body.

  Peter had the gun up and aimed without conscious thought, all slack gone from the trigger.

  “Hello, Mr. Ash.” A calm, measured voice carried effortlessly through the dusk. “I mean you no harm. I hope to have a conversation.”

  Peter knew the voice. He’d last heard it several years ago, at a very strange dinner party.

  “Oliver Bent. What the fuck are you doing here?” Peter released the pressure on the trigger and scanned left and right, looking for a white dress shirt. It would glow faintly in the deepening night.

  “I believe we can help each other, Mr. Ash.” The dark figure stepped closer. “You have certain unfortunate legal troubles. I have a difficult problem that requires your abilities.”

  Oliver Bent ran a technology incubator that acted like a cross between a strategic national laboratory and a venture capital group, except for the off-books team of special operators. DARPA with teeth, June had once called it. Oliver had funded her father’s think tank for more than a decade. He’d also tried to recruit Peter at that same strange dinner party. Right after he’d ordered an execution in cold blood.

  “I’ve seen how you resolve difficult problems.” Peter pivoted to check behind him and saw no chubby ghost in the trees. At the top of the slope, the red and blue lights had gone out. “The answer’s the same as last time. I’m done taking orders, and I sure as hell don’t want to be your pet killer.”

  “That would not be the nature of this work.” Oliver was three yards away now. His hands still held out from his sides, his face in shadow. “Allow me to explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. Besides, I don’t do technology.”

  “But Ms. Cassidy does. I called her an hour ago, and left her a voicemail.”

  An hour ago, June was still riding home from work.

  Peter snapped back to focus on the man in front of him, the gun again raised into firing position.

  “Oh, no. Absolutely not. I’m keeping her safe. Someone already tried to kill her twice today, and that’s just over a story in the paper.”

  Oliver’s hands dropped. “Ms. Cassidy was attacked? Today?”

  “Twice. So there’s no way we’re stepping into
your kind of shit.”

  Oliver’s voice was soft and patient as a glacier grinding stone. “Unfortunately, Mr. Ash, I believe you have already. Why on earth do you think I am here?”

  Peter felt the air go out of him. He lowered the pistol. He needed to talk to June.

  Then her voice floated down through the trees. “Oliver.”

  She sounded as crisp and clear as if she were speaking directly into his ear. That trick of the ravine and the damp night air. She’d obviously found a moment to check her messages.

  Peter looked up and saw her silhouette, illuminated from behind, standing at the edge of the cantilevered deck at the top of the slope. There was no railing, just a thin cable strung tight between corner posts, invisible now in the dark and distance. The earth dropped away below.

  “Ms. Cassidy.”

  “You’ll make Peter’s Iceland problem go away?”

  “Yes,” Oliver said. “I will.”

  “All right. Come up to the house.”

  Then she turned away and was gone.

  25

  The backyard looked empty, but Peter could feel Lewis somewhere in the shadows, keeping watch for Edgar. Two uniformed MPD officers stood in the front, waiting for the evidence techs to arrive and process the wrecked van.

  June had told him that it was Franny who had called 911 after the wreck. June had stood on the elderly woman’s porch and listened to Fran give the officers a clear, accurate description of the driver fleeing with his double-bladed axe. Her memory was oddly vague regarding the two men who had chased him up the street.

  Now June and Oliver sat at the kitchen table with the lights low and the blinds down at every window. Peter stood against the counter, the heavy Colt in his wide, knuckly hand. The safety was on, but he still had a round in the chamber. The static hummed in his blood. It wasn’t the room, it was the company.

  June had her notebook open in her lap, a pen in her hand, and two more on the table. “Before you tell me your problem, give me a little more background on your outfit, the Longview Group.”

  “Ms. Cassidy, you know all about us.”

  June smiled gently. “Actually, I don’t.” She looked relaxed, but the pen twitched between her fingers. “I spent several days researching your group when we first met. I learned almost nothing.”

  Oliver Bent was slender as a reed, with a crisp thatch of black hair and almond-shaped eyes that showed at least one Asian ancestor. He sat easily in the hard wooden chair, poised and still. His calm face revealed nothing as he glanced from June to Peter and back again.

  “It’s not complicated,” he said. “The Longview Group provides funding, encouragement, and technical assistance for innovative scientific research with an emphasis on applications that will be beneficial to society. Renewable energy, genetic medicine, that sort of thing. In other words, the greater good. The long view.”

  He wore a long black coat of some high-tech fabric over a dark brown sweater and moss-green pants, all of it durable and invisible and appropriate for any occasion except testifying before Congress, which was the single thing Oliver would never be asked to do.

  “That’s a very nice elevator pitch,” June said. “I think you left out the top-secret military part.”

  “National security is a core part of our mission,” Oliver admitted. “Your late father’s work, for example, had profound military implications.” June had helped manage the day-to-day operations of her dad’s think tank in its final years.

  “Please, Oliver. Stop dancing. We’re all adults here.”

  “Very well,” he said. “On the condition that this entire conversation is off the record. I want that to be clear.”

  “Of course.”

  “Humanity,” Oliver said, “is in a race against itself. A race between our best intentions and our worst impulses. Technology is not just advancing, it is rapidly accelerating beyond the ability of governments to assess and regulate it. It is also getting much cheaper. Small private organizations are now capable of developing technologies that once required the resources of national governments.

  “Longview’s mission is to move quickly enough to evaluate radical emerging technology and its long-term implications in real time. We can’t stem the tide, but we hope to steer the ship. When a technology is too radical, when the negative applications far outstrip humanity’s ability to adjust in the short term, we intervene.”

  Peter had seen one so-called intervention. It had involved a strike team of six men against four vehicles filled with trained ex-military contractors. The outcome was never in doubt. Peter had to admit, he hadn’t minded at the time. The contractors had been coming to kill him and June.

  “We take these technologies to a highly classified R&D facility known as the Vault. Several years ago, we had a data breach.”

  “Oh, dear,” June said. “What was taken?” Her expression was open and encouraging. Who wouldn’t want to tell her their secrets?

  Oliver appeared immune. “I’m afraid I cannot share that information.”

  “Who took it?”

  “If I knew, I would not be here, speaking with you.”

  June smiled. “Yet here you are, Oliver. In my kitchen.”

  “Yes. Your role as a journalist and the breadth of your contacts in the tech world give you a kind of access my people will never have.”

  Peter opened his mouth to talk. June put her hand up to silence him without taking her eyes off Oliver.

  “You know that’s not what I meant,” she said. “Why here? Why now? Why me?”

  “After our breach, we asked the NSA to monitor all traffic for specific data signatures. Yesterday, after years of silence, we got our first hit. Over a hundred gigabytes of data passed through an unencrypted commercial cell network in downtown Milwaukee.”

  June’s pen stopped twitching. “You think this is connected to the market shooting.” Peter knew she was replaying the event in her head.

  “That is my working assumption,” Oliver said. “The time stamp on our data hit correlates well with the security footage. The cell node is the closest node to the market.”

  June stared at the ceiling, thinking out loud. “Were they buyer and a seller? No. Why take the risk of staging a shooting? What’s the relationship?” Smoke was practically coming out of her ears. “Of course. It’s a second robbery. A data heist. Your thief got jacked. The gunman is the new thief. He took the victim’s phone and had him unlock it.”

  Oliver raised his eyebrows. “This detail was not in the paper. The gunman made his victim unlock his phone?”

  “Yes,” Peter said. “He did a few things on it, but left it behind when he ran. I thought it fell out of his pocket, but maybe he left it deliberately.”

  June asked, “Why didn’t he just keep the phone?” Then answered herself. “Because he only wanted the data. He’d be afraid of the owner tracking the hardware’s GPS.”

  “Both phones were prepaid models,” Oliver said. “Bought with cash, thus anonymous, and apparently running excellent commercial encryption. But fast, top-of-the-line equipment. The data transmission would only have taken a few minutes.”

  “You can’t track either phone?” Peter asked.

  Oliver shook his head. “We tried, but they’re both offline. Almost certainly destroyed.”

  “You came to me because of my byline on the story,” June said.

  “Yes. And our preexisting relationship.”

  “What do you want with Peter?”

  “Mr. Ash’s presence is a useful side effect,” Oliver said. “I cannot disclose this breach to anyone outside my group. Certain parties have become aware of the Vault, and would like to see its contents sold into the marketplace. A data breach would be characterized as negligence and provide the perfect excuse. So I need an operator who is off the radar entirely. Mr. Ash is as unofficial as it is possib
le to get. Especially with his current legal status. But he is extremely effective.”

  “No,” Peter said. “Hell, no.”

  June said, “What’s the problem, Peter? This is a chance to do some good. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “These aren’t just small-time gangsters, June. The people who could pull off this breach, these are serious people, a whole different level. Someone has already made two attempts on your life. And Oliver is basically saying we’re on our own. There’s no backup, no air support, no hostage rescue team. If something goes wrong, he’s never heard of us.”

  She looked at him. “And how is that any different from the half-assed way you usually operate?”

  The pistol felt heavy in his hand. “Are you not listening to anything he’s said? Longview is an extralegal, fully deniable program. Blacker-than-black, extra super double fucking secret, with tacit permission to execute civilians at will. Once you get into bed with people like this, you’ll never get out.”

  Her gaze was steady, her green eyes wide open. “I got into bed with you, didn’t I?”

  * * *

  —

  Oliver cleared his throat. “Mr. Ash is correct about the risk. This will be dangerous. But you have my promise, made in good faith, that I will do right by both of you in whatever way is necessary. And you, Ms. Cassidy, will never be in harm’s way. Mr. Ash will do the field work. Your tools will be the telephone and the Internet.”

  June shook her head. “You only get three lies, Oliver, and that’s one. Because you know I won’t learn much behind a desk. People have to trust me to talk to me, and they won’t trust me over the phone. Most of this work is face-to-face. I’ll never get the story without it.”

  “Except there will be no story, Ms. Cassidy. You will never publish any of this. You will sign a nondisclosure agreement with significant penalties attached.”

  June shook her head. “You came to me, pal. I don’t work for you. You want good faith? It goes both ways. There will be no NDA. We’ll have a conversation about the right thing to do when we get these guys.”