One had managed to get a punch in, but she’d twisted enough to make the blow a glancing one and then shoved the weapon under her armpit, firing the electrified round blindly behind her and into the man’s chest.
Tyler Lawson raised his left hand slowly, making his surrender as obvious as possible. “Easy now. Don’t shoot. You got me. Okay?”
He put on his best innocent face, like a child who’d stuck his hand in the cookie jar only to pull down the whole thing and shatter it on the floor.
Adriana stepped through the archway and into the living room. The space opened up with a tall cathedral ceiling that shot up to the pinnacle of the roof. The ceiling itself was made from pale wood planks and separated by dark wooden beams. The hardwood floor was dark, textured oak. If she had to guess, Adriana would have said it was reclaimed from somewhere.
Her head twisted to the left. She scanned the area in a second. The room stretched over to a study. The desk sat in the center of an octagonal space that was surrounded by tall bookshelves, each lined with hundreds of books. The shelves rose a full fifteen feet until the tops reached a point in the ceiling that angled to a single point. The conical roof was made from huge glass panels that allowed natural light to pour in during the day and perhaps some stargazing at night.
Adriana’s eyes only lingered on the study for a couple of seconds before she returned her attention to Lawson.
He was still sitting as before, one hand in the air and the other clutching the snifter.
“Would you like a drink?”
Her eyelids narrowed. “Little early for brandy, isn’t it?”
His head twitched an inch to the side, and he flashed a smug grin. “Or a few hours too late, depending on how your day is going.”
“Your day is about to get a lot worse.”
“Now, now. Don’t be that way. I saw how you handled my guards.” He raised the glass an inch or two and then took a short sip. He let out a satisfied sigh and returned his elbow to the armrest. “I had to make sure it was you, Diego’s daughter. I haven’t heard that name in a while. Surely you can understand my…suspicions.”
She kept the weapon trained on his neck, just above the sternum where the throat met the chest. “I could have killed your men.”
“I knew you wouldn’t do that, not if you were Diego’s daughter. Your father is a good man. I would expect his little girl would be no different.”
Adriana felt her irritation melting, though her focus remained. “That’s an awfully big gamble to take with the lives of people you trust, people who trust you.”
He shrugged. “I suppose it might have been, but I like to think I know people. You may have killed in the past, but I didn’t expect you to murder my guards.”
“The next time I come here I might not have a choice.”
He snickered, and shook his head. “We both know there won’t be a next time. You’re here for something. I’m guessing information since that’s what I do. But you won’t come to me again. That’s how it works, and you know it.”
Adriana knew what he meant. If she tried to come around again, Lawson wouldn’t hesitate to order his men to kill her. It was a fact she could live with. Of course, Adriana also knew there were other ways to get past his security detail, and she was confident those methods could be exploited if necessary.
She hoped this was going to be her only visit, though, and decided to stop with the pleasantries.
“I need to know who took President Dawkins.”
He looked into her eyes for a moment, sizing up the level of her sincerity. Then he started laughing. It was muted at first, short, then it erupted into a full bellow.
She stood there unflinching with the weapon still trained on him.
It was another minute before he cut the laughter. He rubbed his nose and shook his head. “You came here to find out who took the president? You could have saved some time by watching the news.”
“We both know the media doesn’t spread the truth.”
He puckered his lips for a half second and nodded. “I guess we do.”
“Sean didn’t take Dawkins. I need to know who would do something like that.”
Lawson listened and then nodded his head slowly, dramatically. “I see.” He took another sip, this one longer, taking in the remaining contents of the snifter. He swished the warm liquid around in his mouth, savoring the flavors before swallowing. He let out a satisfied sigh and set the glass down on a round end table next to his seat, then stood.
He kept both hands out wide, palms facing the intruder. “Please,” he said, “put that thing away. I assure you, I will do you no harm.”
“Forgive me if I don’t trust the guy who just tried to have his guards kill me.”
“If I wanted you dead, you would be. Besides, your father sent you here. If he trusts me, maybe you should, too.”
She considered his point, eyeing him suspiciously. Finally, she lowered her weapon. “Fine,” she said. “But if you don’t impress me, I might shoot you with this thing anyway, just for wasting my time.”
“What do I get for you wasting mine?” He arched one eyebrow.
“Fair enough.”
A smile cracked his lips. “Your father helped me once, several years ago when I was just getting into this game. I don’t think I would have survived if it wasn’t for him. So, today only, I’ll help you out. No cost. But if you ever come back, the next one won’t be free.”
“Understood.”
His smile broadened. “Perfect.” He threw his hands up in the air with the exclamation. “Let’s get to work, then.”
He walked through the archway, leaving Adriana standing in the living room for a confusing moment before she turned and caught up with him.
“You’re not trying to figure out who took Dawkins,” Tyler said as they passed through the kitchen and turned right. There were stairs leading up to the second floor and another set leading down to a lower floor. He took the downward steps, letting his left hand run along the oak railing propped up by wrought iron.
Adriana ignored the paintings on the walls, despite them being full of bright colors and striking surrealistic imagery.
“What do you mean?” she asked, following him down the steps, just over his right shoulder.
“Someone is behind this. You know it. I know it. The only people who don’t know it are the ones who trust the mainstream, those who believe everything the news outlets tell them.”
She knew he was right. And while she did want to find the person who took Dawkins, she knew that the best way to kill a snake was to cut off the head.
“What you’re looking for is someone who’s never quite had everything they wanted, someone with considerable power and influence but not enough to be the top dog.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs and were confronted with two doors and a hallway with a glass exterior wall looking out to the pool area beyond. A hot tub leaked steam through the seam of its cover.
The door directly opposite of the staircase was open. Inside was the back of a wide, black leather sofa. It was facing the front of the room. The lights were dim, and no sounds escaped.
“Makes sense,” Adriana said.
“That’s the theater room,” he said, pointing into the lavishly decorated entertainment area. She could make out the design of Gothic architecture inside, complete with gargoyles positioned over stone archways that held sconces within their recessions. “Had it designed to look like the Bat Cave.”
Adriana raised both eyebrows. This guy’s a comic book nerd. She didn’t judge. She’d read her share of comic books back when she was little and always thought Wonder Woman was amazing.
“There’s another option, though,” he said as he opened the door to the right. Tyler stepped in, and the lights automatically flickered on.
This room was smaller than the theater room. There were no windows, and the walls were painted white. Adriana’s attention wasn’t on the walls. It was on the array of computers that Tyl
er had set up in the room. There were at least a dozen 42-inch monitors stretching around the far wall, the wall to the right, and the closest one. Each screen displayed different information. Some were host to scrolling lines of code that rolled slowly toward the top of the screen before disappearing. Others contained images or video, and still more had multiple windows open showing the latest breaking news out of several countries.
There were three black desk chairs scattered around, one for each table. Blue cables ran from the many computer towers. They stretched along the top of the wall and into a metal plate fixed into the corner.
The setup wasn’t entirely unlike the one her father had in Ecuador, though this one was more advanced. Everything was newer, probably more powerful, too. She could see through the clear side panel of one of the computers and noted two Nvidia Titan graphics cards, powerful and necessary when working with so much information.
The room had two big vents in the right-hand side wall, constantly blowing cool air into the space. There was a long tube that ran along the wall on the floor. It had smaller versions of itself stuck into ports built on the sides of the computer towers.
“Air cooling vents?” Adriana asked. “But it looks like you’re running liquid-cooled computers. Pretty high end stuff.”
“Have to have the vents for the pumps, plus it keeps the water cooler,” Tyler said. “You should see the setup I have for the servers out back.”
She wondered if he had his own servers on site. It made sense to do it that way. Anonymity and autonomy were pillars of what Tyler and her father did. Those pillars she knew all too well.
“Like I was saying,” Tyler went on, “we’re not just looking for the guy who took your friend. We need to figure out who in the hierarchy is missing out. Who is always looking for something bigger? Who wants more power than they already have? Or who feels like they’ve been slighted all along?”
“Or who might Dawkins have angered during his tenure?”
He jabbed a finger her way. “Now you’re thinking. We need to dig deeper, get into the weeds, and see who would have had it in for Dawkins.”
“That could take a while. We don’t have that much time.”
Tyler nodded.
“Lucky for you, my babies here might already have something. We just have to look and see.”
She didn’t know what to think about the man calling his computers his “babies,” so she decided to say nothing. Like her father said, the guy was eccentric.
“Information is everywhere,” he went on. “Most of the population just thinks of it being available on the internet. You and I, however, know that isn’t true.”
Adriana nodded absently. She understood a little about what her father did, but the real ins and outs of it were foreign to her. How all of it worked didn’t concern her; this was an alien world and one that she didn’t really care about as far as the details were concerned. Right now, she just needed to know who had set all these wheels in motion.
Tyler plopped into one of the chairs and rolled it close to the nearest keyboard. “When Dawkins was taken, I immediately started looking around. I was curious.”
“Curious?”
“Yes. I didn’t for one second believe that Sean Wyatt took the president. So, in my mind, that meant that he was being set up.”
“That’s a big leap to take for a total stranger. For all you know, Sean might have been totally capable of doing something like that.” Playing devil’s advocate felt strange to her in regard to her husband, but she had a reason behind it. Adriana wanted to know what this guy’s game was, what his price would be, and why he was helping her.
“You see?” He raised a finger and pointed it at her. “That tells me I’m on the right track. If his own wife is willing to be objective about all this, that means something fishy is happening.” He turned back to his computer.
His fingers flew across the keyboard faster than nearly anyone she’d ever seen. When he was done, he hit the enter key and the screen blinked, then the images changed.
The monitor filled with pictures of men, dozens of them. Some were mug shots taken by police departments from all over the world. Others were images of men on the street captured by surveillance cameras or perhaps private investigators.
“I collected a list of names that would have been impaired the most by Sean’s operations back when he was working for Axis. And yes, I know all about Axis.” He twisted his head and gave her a smirk, then returned to the screen. “This one just died two months ago, so he’s out.” Tyler clicked on one of the images and dragged it to the trash bin located on the bottom corner of the monitor. “This one, this one, and this one are still in jail.” He held on to the command button and clicked the three pictures then put those in the trash bin.
One by one, he eliminated the rest of the faces until there were only three left.
“Who are they?” Adriana asked.
Tyler reached over his keyboard and tapped on the image of the man on the far left. “This one is Mawri al Bakra. He was a known arms dealer that Sean took down. His business brought in tens of millions, and when Sean intervened he lost everything.”
“Where is he now?”
Tyler’s fingers tapped on the keys again. A moment later, a list of locations appeared in a separate window over the man’s face. “Looks like his last known whereabouts was Turkmenistan. Date says two days ago.”
Adriana cradled one elbow in her opposite forearm, her jaw resting on a middle finger as she rubbed her chin with the index finger. “He wouldn’t have the resources or the capability to get to Dawkins. And the man on the video spoke clear English, even if it was muddled by the voice modulator.”
“Fair enough. He’s gone.” Tyler deleted that image, leaving only two. A white man, probably in his late thirties, and a Hispanic man with tattoos on his neck and forehead.
“Might be safe to say that we can eliminate Jorge Espinoza,” Tyler said. “He was one of the top dogs in a Colombian cartel. No known whereabouts, but he went underground a long time ago. Our guys are still hunting for him as we speak.”
Adriana knew what he meant by “our guys.” Tyler was referring to the efforts of the American government to reel in drug trafficking. That started by cutting the head off the snake. Espinoza, apparently, was one of those heads.
“That leaves us with this little guy.” Tyler pecked at the keys one more time, and a new window of information popped up above the image on the screen. “Andrew Boyd. He’s an interesting one.”
Tyler expanded the window. The information contained within it spread out, covering much of the monitor. He dragged the guy’s picture to the top-left corner to make room for the extensive dossier.
“Andrew Boyd, former military. Seems he was court-martialed for an incident in the Middle East. Looks like Sean and his team busted into a house about the time Boyd was involved with an interrogation. According to the testimony, Boyd wanted to torture the family. Sean stopped him and had him arrested.”
Adriana leaned closer. Her eyes moved rapidly back and forth as she read the man’s background.
“He came from a wealthy family. Went into the military. Spec ops?”
“Looks that way. Sounds like a rich brat with a chip on his shoulder. Didn’t want to do things Daddy’s way, so he joined the army. Wanted to make a name for himself, get some respect.”
“Or forge connections he could call on later in life.”
“Perhaps. Either way, I’d say he might be your guy.”
“Where is he now?”
Tyler leaned forward and scanned the information on the screen. He turned slightly and looked at more intel on the monitor to his right. His head shook quickly. “I have no idea.”
“What do you mean, no idea? He couldn’t have just disappeared.”
“No, that’s true. And it’s also incorrect. There are still plenty of places on this planet for a person to hide if they don’t want to be found. I’d say, based on Boyd’s past, that he has both the
know-how and the connections to make that happen.”
Adriana sighed and ran fingers from both hands through her hair. She stopped on the back of her head, stretching her arms for a moment.
“Of course,” Tyler said, “there is another possibility.”
Adriana’s hands dropped, and she looked at him.
“Boyd doesn’t have the finances to pull this off. He could put together a team, sure, but even a group like that would have a tough time extracting a former president from his home.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“I’m saying Boyd may only be half of the equation in all of this.”
17
North Dakota
Sean eased into a corner seat at the diner and plucked a laminated menu from the metal holder next to the window. He scanned over it, only taking a few seconds to decide what he wanted.
He’d driven throughout the entire day, cutting through northwestern Missouri and then skirting between Iowa and Nebraska before continuing into South Dakota. By the time he’d reached Sioux Falls, he was ready for something to eat and a place to sleep for the night, but he decided to just stop for food, thinking a little nourishment could help him push on the next few hours until he reached Fargo. Whether or not he could make it to Bismarck was still in doubt. It was probably a safer plan to stop in Fargo and wake up early the next morning to drive the remaining hours to Bismarck and then up to Fort Mandan. Then again, he didn’t have a ton of time. Sean was up against the clock, and he still hadn’t reached the first of what he figured were at least three locations he’d have to visit before—if at all—learning the secret Meriwether Lewis took to his grave.
A woman in a blue shirt and a white apron approached. Her curly brown hair framed a round face. She wore glasses that looked like they could have been twenty years old or more. She, herself, appeared to be in her mid-fifties. There was a tiredness in her eyes, enhanced by the droopy dark circles surrounding them. The bags of skin hung low onto her cheekbones. Sean wondered how long she’d been doing this job, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he tried to stay as unmemorable as possible.
The Omega Project Page 14
