by David Pepper
And, like a ringing in your ears that wouldn’t go away, that shriek still reverberated now.
“Jack, what did you kill in that bed?” Tori asked, pulling my attention back to the room, gesturing at the bloody towel on the back corner of the bed.
“Oh, that.” I looked toward the mess, patting my right leg. “Just a little minor surgery.”
I chuckled, trying to let the lighthearted conversation block out the shrill echo in my head. Tori suddenly felt like my oldest, most intimate friend.
“Let’s go grab a bite across the street. The perch is amazing.”
PART 3
CHAPTER 101
YOUNGSTOWN
Who’s behind it all?”
Mary Andres posed the question over the din of a crowded Sunday morning at a popular Youngstown deli.
“Those two women I wrote about in the draft. Natalie DesJardins and Katrina Rivers.”
“I’m all for women’s lib, Jack, but two thirty-somethings? Somebody’s behind them.”
“We’re still digging into that. It may be a rich uncle of Katrina’s.” This was a stretch, but she needed something.
“A rich uncle?” Her gray eyes narrowed. “There’s no rich uncle in the stuff you sent me.”
“Because I don’t know enough yet to write him in.”
“Then we don’t know enough yet to print the story.”
I glanced over at Tori, who was sitting to my left. “See, I told you she was demand—”
“And why is he doing it?” Mary asked. “What’s he after?”
“Who?”
“Your mysterious rich uncle?” She made it sound ridiculous.
“We don’t know that yet, either. We’ve been too busy proving the scheme is happening to fig—”
“We have to know what he’s after.”
“How would we know? You get so much from flipping Congress for a decade, he could be after all sorts of things.”
“But he’s not. He, whoever he is, is after one thing. It’s always about one thing, usually preceded by dollar signs.”
Tori stayed quiet, her head swiveling back and forth, watching our tennis match.
“Well, when he grants me an interview, I’ll be sure to ask.”
Mary ignored the sarcasm. “You’ve got yourself a strong start here. But until we know—”
“Strong start?” I asked, exasperated. “Mary, to win hundreds of upcoming elections, someone is accessing databases housing the private information of millions of Americans. That’s big enough by itself. But because the winning candidates will begin drawing congressional districts only months from now, this will usher in a sea change in American politics for a decade.”
“I get it. But we still need to know—”
“C’mon, Mary.” Heat rushed from my chest up my neck. “If you knew a fleet of planes were flying toward Pearl Harbor at four a.m. on December seventh, 1941, would you hold up the story because you didn’t know they came from Japan?”
“If I’d known on November seventh, I would have.” She flashed a know-it-all smirk. “Calm down, Jack. You need to fill a few holes, that’s all.”
She stood up from the booth. “Get to work. I’m going to budget this story for two weeks from today.”
My whole head throbbed. “Two weeks? That’s a long time—”
“But it’s a Sunday. Fill in those blanks and we’ll run it sooner.” She walked away.
I sat in silence. “Well, that was fun.”
A cat’s smirk came across Tori’s face. “It’s about time someone bossed you around a little.”
I dug my fork into the plate-sized pancake I’d forgotten about and chewed in silence.
“Jack?”
“Yes,” I answered, my mouth full.
“When you said there’d be a sea change in politics, what did you mean? We’ve never talked about it that way.”
“I was trying to sell her,” I mumbled.
I was fuming. Two weeks was too far away, given that I’d barely survived the past week. And identifying this rich uncle from one lousy entry in a yearbook was a wild-goose chase. Cassie would’ve called if she had any more than that.
“Sure, but you meant it, right?”
“Of course.” I dug my fork back into the pancake.
“How, specifically, would that sea change play out?”
I closed my eyes briefly. Exhaled slowly.
“The stakes are so high in Washington right now, but everything’s at a stalemate. It’s like a championship game that’s all tied up. You flip the House from Republican to Democrat in a permanent way, we’re talking about a flood of change for ten years. . . .”
The pounding in my temples subsided. My posture loosened. Talking it out was helping. We’d been so busy proving the precise method of the hack and running for our lives, we hadn’t talked about the big picture since that rainy afternoon at my lake house.
“The president’s agenda alone would turn things upside down,” I added.
“Right. And is there anything specific she wants that this might be about?”
I gazed up, chewing on an especially large piece of pancake, a blueberry exploding in my mouth.
Tori kept prodding. “Let me ask it differently. What’s the biggest thing that would change if she had a Democratic Congress?”
“The biggest? She’s got a lot of standard liberal things she wants to do.” I finished the bite, washing it down with a swig of orange juice. “So those might happen.”
“Think about what Mary said. One thing. Something big. Something concrete.”
“I’m the one who told her that once, by the way.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Then it must be right.”
I paused, replaying past interviews and discussions with the president in my head.
“If I had to name one thing . . .”
The issue that had gotten me fired from Republic was the same issue Cassie had talked to the president about. And it was the same agenda item that Speaker Paxton and his big corporate donors were most determined to bury.
“. . . I’d say it’s her plan to take a battering ram to monopolies across corporate America.”
I was talking casually, but my mind was racing. Although it was good politics, I had never taken the president’s rhetoric entirely seriously. Given the split in Washington, it had never seemed plausible. The big-money donors were too strong, and the political lift too heavy.
But . . .
“If she had the support in the House to do that, for enough time to see it through, it would revolutionize the American econo—”
I stopped, biting down on a growing smile. Tori’s eyes blazed as she realized where this was going.
I slapped my palm against the edge of the table, the silverware and glasses jingling.
“That’s gotta be it.”
CHAPTER 102
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Forty planes total.”
“For the whole weekend? Are you sure you got them all?” Cassie asked. She and Rachel were lying in bed as she answered the 10:00 p.m. Sunday-evening call. “That doesn’t sound like very many.”
“It’s Aspen in September,” said Axel, the cabdriver. “It gets a lot busier during ski season. I mean really frickin’ busy.”
His voice kept modulating, sounding high or drunk. Which didn’t help her confidence in his research.
“You get all the tail numbers?”
“Yep. Got ’em all.”
“And were you able—”
“Every. Last. One.”
Definitely high.
“Thank you, Axel. And were you able to see which planes used the high-end car service?”
“Those dark SUVs?”
“Yes. The ones that take people to the ranch.”
“I did my best on that. It’s all marked down.”
“Do you think you got them all?”
“Definitely.” He coughed. “I mean, probably.”
Cassie ran her fingers through her hair.
“Great. Go ahead and email through what you got.”
As she was about to hang up, her phone beeped. It was Republic’s news line. Chuck Massa had been calling all weekend to see what she’d gotten from Aspen. She finally had something good to report.
“Chuck, I told you I’d—”
“This isn’t Chuck.” A female voice with a British accent was doing the talking. One of the weekday morning show’s producers.
“Ginger, shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“We’ve got a major breaking story we need your help on.”
“Tonight?”
Rachel looked up from her book, glaring at the phone.
“First thing in the morning. But you may want to do a little homework tonight.”
“Okay. I can do it. Where am I going?”
“To Baltimore. We already got your Amtrak ticket.”
“Baltimore? I was just—” She stopped short. They had to be related.
“Cassie? You there?”
“Yeah. All good. What’s the story?”
“It’s about that star council member up there, the Republican. You know, the one we always have on?”
Razi.
“Yeah. What about him?” She swallowed to suppress the lump in her throat. Bad news was coming.
“No one can find him.”
CHAPTER 103
LONDON
Good morning, temptress. I see you were thinking of me as well.”
Katrina cringed, not in the mood for the Armenian’s bile so early in the morning.
“Have you heard from the Butcher, Mr. Terzian?”
“I have not. But I rarely hear from him when he is on a mission. It is safer that way.”
“He was updating us at least daily. But he has been silent since Friday.”
A long pause. “Nothing?”
“No response at all.”
“Well, he’s either in the final stages of his mission and cannot communicate, or he’s dead.” He presented both options in a bloodless, monotone voice. “Do you need me to send someone else?”
“I don’t. And please let me know if you hear from him. Thank you.” She hung up the phone.
“Nothing.” Fuming, she glared at Drac across the conference room table. “He’s dead.”
Drac stood motionless. “What next?”
“Election operations continue to move forward, correct?”
“Oh, yes. The model is working perfectly.” He gestured up at a large monitor displaying an electronic map of the United States. Diagonal stripes overlaid districts where they were actively engaged. “We are well on our way to hitting our targets, without detection.”
She glanced at the map. This part of the plan was in good shape. Natalie and Drac could handle whatever came up.
The threat was elsewhere. And the hired henchmen had proven incapable of dealing with it.
She stood up from the table.
“What next?” Drac asked.
“Please get me all the information on the girl.”
CHAPTER 104
BALTIMORE
We told you guys,” the council aide snapped through the six-inch opening in the door. “The police are handling this. We aren’t saying a word from this office.”
Minutes after airing a live update on Razi Dallas’s disappearance, Cassie had knocked three times on the door of the councilman’s city hall office. The six reporters behind her grumbled that she’d cut past them.
“Oh, you don’t think we’ve tried that?” an icy voice asked from behind her. “They aren’t letting anyone in.”
But through the crack Cassie spotted Iris, the councilman’s aide and punctuality cop.
“Iris! Iris! Remember me?”
Iris looked up, eyes red-rimmed. After a double take, she stood up.
“Let her in,” she said to the kid at the door.
He opened it another foot, allowing Cassie to slide through.
“Hey, wait a second. We’ve been here for forty—” The door slammed shut, cutting off the rest of the guy’s grousing.
“Let’s go in here,” Iris said, stepping into the councilman’s office, a good sign that she, too, wanted to talk in private.
Photos of Dallas, his wife, and his two young boys—one of them Aiden’s age—stared at them from all corners of the office in a way Cassie hadn’t noticed the day before. A beautiful family now going through hell. Because of her.
“We’re off the record,” Cassie said as they sat down in two chairs facing each other. “Do you know anything more than what the police are saying?”
Iris crossed her arms. “Nothing. What do you know?”
“Why would I know anything?”
“Because he was distracted all day Friday about whatever you talked about.”
“He was?” Cassie recalled the lost look in Razi Dallas’s eyes as they’d discussed Katrina.
“He wasn’t himself in meetings all morning. Then he insisted on calling you back.”
Cassie pursed her lips before responding. “He remembered a detail l had asked for.”
“Well, he didn’t get any better after that call. He sat through an important lunch like a zombie.” She paused. “What were you guys talking about?”
Cassie arched her back. She’d once been cross-examined in a defamation trial, and Iris’s battery of accusatory comments and questions felt the same.
“I can’t share much, Iris, and I want to find him as badly as you do,” she said, leaning forward. “I might be able to help if you share any other details of what happened.”
Iris blinked repeatedly, then took a deep breath.
“After lunch, Razi wanted me to dig up the contact information of a New York City councilwoman he’d met at a conference a few months back.”
“New York? Any idea what district she represented?” Had to be Brooklyn.
“Brooklyn. He was calling about an old friend from there. They talked so long, I had to leave someone waiting for ten minutes—something we never do.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
Iris’s face softened slightly. “Then she called back an hour later. They had a much shorter call, after which he bounced back.”
Cassie wrote down “Brooklyn call” on her notepad, then circled it. That must have been the trigger.
Iris looked straight at Cassie. “So do you know the friend?”
“I don’t know her at all. But I came here yesterday to ask about her.”
“It’s a she?” Iris asked, her voice cracking as if a scandal was brewing.
“Yes, but it’s not what you think. They went to Oxford together. They were close a long time ago but hadn’t spoken in eleven years. And she was from Brooklyn.”
“Well, however long ago it was, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
Cassie nodded. A ghost indeed. The perfect description of the Kat Simmons she’d been tracking all over the country, and beyond.
“Can you get me the name of who he called in Brooklyn?” Cassie asked.
“Of course. I’ve got the card at my desk.”
CHAPTER 105
YOUNGSTOWN
Did you write these notes with your toes, Jack? I can’t read your chicken scratch.”
Two years of reporter’s notebooks took up most of the Vindicator conference room table. When I’d walked out the doors of Republic for the last time, I took them, thinking I’d write a book someday. I never imagined they’d be so helpful this quickly.
“It’s called shorthand, Tori. You try taking notes while you’re looking right at someone spew
ing a million words a min—”
“I wait tables, Jack. I do it every day.”
“Okay, okay. Just keep handing me the ones with any reference to her, and I’ll decipher the Sanskrit.”
Janet Moore and I had had several lengthy conversations during the general election, and three more after she’d won. A stack of six notebooks with those interview notes sat in front of me, which I was now scanning through one page at a time.
The first two notebooks covered the campaign and her strategies to win it, and the fourth was all about a shutdown that she’d averted. Nothing on monopolies came up, so I set all three aside.
But conversations about her anti-monopoly agenda took up big chunks of the three remaining notebooks.
“Here’s one more.” Tori handed me one last notebook. “June 22” was scribbled on the front.
“The last conversation before I was fired. We talked about it extensively then.”
I leafed through the pages slowly, the details of our off-the-record discussion coming back to me.
“She was especially concerned about how the newest technology companies were getting so powerful.” I read one direct quote aloud: “‘It’s like they don’t think antitrust rules apply to big tech. Mergers and acquisitions are being approved that never would’ve been allowed decades ago.’”
Tori typed my words on her laptop.
“Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp. Google grabbing search companies left and right, putting others out of business, then grabbing companies like YouTube and Waze.”
“I didn’t know they owned all those.”
“I didn’t either until she told me.”
I read further.
“She never had notes when I interviewed her but knew the industries cold. Banks, airlines—consumer goods, too.”
Tori typed it all in. “Yep, higher prices, more fees, lower wages, and nothing anyone can do about it.”
I took out the previous notebook. The words “political power” were circled on the first page.
“She worried about how these large entities were accumulating political power, reinforcing their ability to stay at the top of the heap for good.”
