Third Hour

by Lisa Phillips

  Stanton looked baffled. “You need to get that dog out of here.”

  “She stays,” Dakota told him, practically shouting it across the room.

  Victoria straightened. Neema shifted, then sat beside her leg. Position claimed. “She’s a federal dog, and she’s part of my team.” Stanton didn’t look overly impressed by that. He started to argue, but Victoria cut him off. “Let’s go sit in your office. You can tell me all about Prometheus.”

  Dakota tapped Talia’s arm. When Talia glanced over, she saw Dakota tip her head to the side. While Victoria took Stanton’s attention, the two of them wandered to the hallway.

  “The bank robber guy is downstairs?”

  Talia nodded, then directed Dakota to the stairwell. They headed down and checked in with a uniformed security guard at the desk. Hopefully they’d get information from the bank robber before their names were flagged and Stanton—or whoever showed up—hustled them out of the interrogation room.

  Dakota said, “You want to go in first?”

  Talia only needed a split second to think before she pulled the door open. The bank robber could know who their hacker was. Or, he could be the hacker. Either way, he had valuable information in his head and she needed to know what it was.

  She strode in. “Time to talk.”

  Only that wasn’t going to happen.

  The bank robber sat in the chair. His head was cocked at an unnatural angle.

  “That guy is dead.”

  Talia glanced at Dakota. “You think?”

  . . .

  As soon as Alvarez got off the phone, Mason said, “Well?”

  “Mark Welvern just got out of surgery. They’re expecting him to wake up in a few hours. No visitors until tomorrow night.” Alvarez pocketed the phone.

  Josh Weber was driving. Interesting guy. Mason had gotten to know him a little bit during the two-hour drive into central Washington. They’d told Mason that Dakota had been shot the same day as Alvarez, though her bullet had been in the thigh and not in the chest as the marshal’s had been.

  The Northwest Counter-Terrorism Task Force didn’t lead quiet lives. That was for sure. They’d told Mason about the weekend when Dakota and Josh had met, and then a crazy story about their NCIS Special Agent, Niall, and their office manager, Haley. Something about a mind control app and contaminated water.

  The whole thing was bizarre, but they’d tied it all together for him. The mind control thing was when Talia had been abducted from their office by mercenaries and nearly sold. It still turned his stomach, just thinking about it, and he hadn’t lived it the way Talia had.

  He was still putting the pieces together. One thing he had picked up on was the connection to this. “The money behind both investigations was the same?”

  “Yep.” Josh gripped the steering wheel. “Whoever funded the lab at that college. Cerium was the name.” He shook his head. “We still haven’t managed to figure out who it is.”

  “Because Talia should have?”

  Josh shrugged. “She’s the tech guru. But she’s been…subdued lately. Taking that bank job was supposed to be a big step back toward normal.”

  “And now she’s going to be twice as cautious.” Alvarez, in the backseat, spoke without looking up from his phone. Evidently he was totally tuned in to their conversation. He was probably playing Candy Crush, or watching a dog video on YouTube.

  Mason blew out a breath and shifted to look out the window. He wanted to fiddle with the radio, or adjust the heat…or download that game on his phone. Anything to cover how hearing about Talia and what she’d been through affected him. It was probably pointless, though. He doubted Josh or Alvarez missed the tension in him.

  Could this really all be directly related to Prometheus? He could hardly believe someone had potentially hired a hacker—one with a grudge against Talia—all to compromise the protective detail of such a high-value target.

  Locked down. A cushy prison, but a prison nonetheless.

  Prometheus could never get out. Despite what Stanton had said, that couldn’t be what happened. If he escaped, those loyal to him would rally. The Secret Service would have a serious mess on their hands.

  The rest of the drive had been pretty quiet, so he’d broken the silence, asking Josh about his life before the team. Talking about the Marine Corps had led to a bunch of stories from the DEA agent’s time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mason had been to Iraq years ago, on a detail of agents sent with the Secretary of State at the time.

  Four days of jet lag and sweating. Standing at attention for hours on end. Followed by a flight home that was all turbulence and nowhere to sleep.

  The safe house, whose address he’d been forced to disclose to them despite its top-secret nature, was in the middle of nowhere. Not so isolated they couldn’t get to it after a forty-five minute drive through a maze of dirt roads that snaked up a mountainside. Why people lived like that, he didn’t know.

  “So who is he?”

  Mason twisted to look at Alvarez. His bruises sent sharp pains through his chest at the movement, but he ignored it. “What?”

  “The guy y’all have locked up here?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Mason had been given particular clearance because of that work in Iraq and the conversations he’d been privy to. It had stuck and meant that upon transferring to Washington state, he’d been “read in” on the operation. “And I’m not sure I can tell you, even given the circumstances.”

  “And if we end up hunting this guy, what then?”

  Alvarez had a point, but Mason had to say, “I’ll get it cleared from Stanton that you’re authorized. Then I’ll show you a picture. I highly doubt you’ll ever be in the know on his name, or who he is.”

  “Whoa.” Josh shook his head. “I thought Victoria was paranoid about need-to-know.”

  Alvarez leaned forward to stick his head between the front seats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Josh said, “Didn’t Niall tell you she had the whole office bugged in Portland?”

  “So?” Alvarez huffed. “Didn’t that mean we had surveillance footage of those men abducting Talia? We knew right away who it was.”

  Josh shrugged one shoulder. “She still could have told us. If she had, I could’ve gotten to the footage of Haley shooting Dakota before my fiancé could burn a copy and go home and watch it a hundred times.”

  Alvarez sat back.

  Mason decided to ask, “Why would she want to watch herself get shot?”

  “Haley was drugged,” Josh said, like that helped Mason understand. “But she still wanted to see if there was anything she could’ve done differently.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” Josh huffed a laugh, and shook his head. “That’s Dakota for you.”

  “You’re the one who put a ring on it.”

  Mason shifted to look at Alvarez.

  “What?” The marshal glanced between Mason and Josh. “Isn’t that what the kids say?”

  “I don’t know what to do with that.” Josh glanced in his rearview for a second. “I’m going to just let it go, because that was way too bizarre.”

  “I can be hip with the lingo.”

  Josh laughed. “Sure you can.”

  The safe house was down a street that was essentially a blind corner off the dirt track they called a street. They were forced to make a U-turn and come at it from the opposite direction. Just to see the street Josh was supposed to turn down.

  Two miles from the highway, as the crow flies, Josh pulled up in front of a single-story home. The kind that had two halves delivered on trucks and attached together on site.

  Mason looked around, then looked at the house. “There should be a guard.”

  “Looks pretty quiet.” Alvarez had his attention on the front door.

  Two SUVs pulled up behind them and tactical agents piled out. Mason waited for them to take point, then got out to join the middle of the group. There was zero point in asserting his position. He wasn’t
a hundred percent, and neither was Alvarez.

  “Front door is open.” The lead guy picked up his pace.

  Mason didn’t like the look of this at all. “Be careful.”

  With every step, he felt the weight of everything sit heavier and heavier on his shoulders. There was a small possibility he wasn’t up to doing this, so he let his pace slow to hang back. No point in being a liability. The difference between the team getting out of this with no problems, and an agent getting hurt.

  The lead agent eased up to the front door. Gun ready. Team braced.

  There should have been six agents on the property, two on the road, two in the house, and the other two on roving patrol. A small detail to guard such a huge issue. One that had plagued this administration and the previous two. It did niggle at him that the Secret Service was essentially paid to keep the government’s dirty laundry out of sight.

  But the fallout of everything coming to light would be far worse.

  Already a young woman, the bank manager’s assistant, had been killed. He could only pray that no one else was killed because of this.

  The lead agent reached out and pushed the door open.

  Two seconds of quiet. Followed by a click.

  Before Mason could realize what it was, someone yelled, “Run!”

  Chapter 16

  Talia was leaning against the wall in the hallway outside the interrogation room when Stanton marched off the elevator, followed by Victoria. She hadn’t gotten anywhere near the body, and had no intention of doing so.

  Inside the room, Dakota straightened. She’d been peering at the man’s mouth from close up. She turned to the two of them. “Looks like poison, but I can’t be sure. There’s foam on his lips.” The dark look on her face was likely a result of there being a dead guy in the room. And the fact she’d dealt recently with the victims of a version of VX gas.

  Before Stanton could speak again, Dakota glanced at Victoria. “Neema?”

  Victoria pointed at the door. “In the break room, asleep on the couch.”

  Dakota nodded.

  “Two agents are on their way down. Both have experience in homicide investigations.” The Secret Service Assistant Director stared at the dead man with a frown.

  The security guard moved past Talia to stand in the doorway, blocking her view. The flash she’d seen of his face looked seriously guilty. She figured that was more about this happening while he wasn’t watching than anything else.

  “You really saw nothing?” Talia guessed he’d probably been on his phone instead of paying attention to his job.

  “Nothing to see.” He glanced back at her. “According to the screens, you all aren’t in here and he’s still sitting there.” The security guard waved at the dead man.

  Talia looked at the camera, high on the wall, then at the desk. Stanton followed her. “You’re not authorized to touch any computer in this office—or operate any technology, for that matter.”

  She shot him a look, then turned to the screen. The footage of the cell where the bank robber had been held showed an image of him sitting in the same chair he now sat dead in. Only he was very much alive.

  Stanton said, “Tell me you didn’t allow the hacker access to our network again.”

  She wasn’t going to respond to that. “Clearly the bank robber is not the hacker, given this has occurred.”

  “So a murderer came in before you and Special Agent Pierce came downstairs. Whoever it was killed the man in custody, messing with the security feed in order to do so.” It wasn’t a question. Was he giving her his opinion, or stating a theory?

  Talia said, “Your network security technicians should be able to find out if this was the result of the…earlier breach.”

  It very well could be, and they would be able to tell. Someone had caused the video to loop. She’d been staring at it long enough that she could see, despite the fact the bank robber remained relatively still, the image was on a two minute or so repeat.

  She turned to the security guard. “Who came down before us?”

  He started to speak, but Stanton held up a hand. “Don’t answer that. Save it for your report.”

  Seriously? She looked back at the feed. “Look at him. I think he knows he’s being recorded. That the feed is looping.”

  Which meant the bank robber and the hacker had communicated. In the event the bank robber was here, he’d known what to do. Maybe.

  “So he was murdered, or not?”

  She motioned to the computer, which she hadn’t actually touched yet. “May I?”

  Beyond him, Dakota and Victoria were having a quiet conversation in the interrogation room. Two agents walked down the hall and went in carrying duffel bags. Evidence collection supplies. Not Talia’s thing, but she understood the mechanics of it. How long before a coroner was summoned?

  Talia didn’t want to be here when the body was removed.

  Stanton’s lips thinned even more. “I’ll be watching everything you do.”

  Sure, but would he understand what she was doing? Talia nodded, determined to maintain that professionalism she drew around her like a coat. “Mason’s life was at stake. I do not put security above someone’s life. I never have, and I doubt I ever will.”

  “And that’s why you’re part of my team,” Victoria said from the doorway. “Not a rule-following, paper-pushing NSA analyst.”

  “It’s not procedure.” Stanton folded his arms.

  Talia lifted her chin. “You’d have been prepared to allow Mason to be killed?”

  “He knows what he signed on for.”

  She shook her head, seeing her feelings mirrored in the expression on Victoria’s face. They felt the same way, and they both knew it.

  Talia said, “His daughter didn’t sign on for her father to get killed just to protect the Secret Service’s butts. The stakes outweighed the cost.”

  The assistant director shook his head. Stanton wasn’t going to be persuaded.

  “May I please use this computer?” Just to prove she could be polite, as well as professional.

  Stanton motioned to it with a nod.

  Talia clicked the mouse at the corner of the screen, then typed into the window that popped up. She rewound the feed, and they watched in reverse.

  She hit pause. “There.”

  Stanton took a step closer. Talia pressed play, and they watched the bank robber lift his left arm above his right shoulder, then bring his palm across his body at a diagonal angle to his hip on the left side.

  “What was that?”

  Talia pointed to the code in the window, scrolling as the feed played. “It was a signal the system recognized. A command code left behind in the network, just in case it was needed. The code initiated a program that proceeded to record the next two minutes of feed in this room. After that, it replayed those two minutes on a loop.”

  “He did this?” Stanton motioned to the dead man in the interrogation room.

  Talia nodded. “He gave a signal. I’d hazard to guess that no one came in and killed him. There was nothing the security guard could have done.” She straightened. “I think he killed himself.”

  The man flushed, stood off to the side. He obviously had no clue this had occurred right under his nose.

  Talia typed on the keyboard. “The camera was still recording.”

  She found the footage underneath the loop. She had to fool the command code into thinking everything was still in working order. Then she played it. They watched as the bank robber pulled something from his cheek and swallowed it. Seconds later his body convulsed.

  He went limp.

  Talia had to tell Stanton the truth. “I’d need to check in order to know for sure, but I’m pretty certain the hacker left this when he accessed Prometheus. He probably knew it was possible the bank robber would be caught at some point. This gem was left behind in the system for just such an eventuality.”

  At least, she was mostly sure of that fact.

  Stanton’s gaze darkened.r />
  “It isn’t like I killed him.” Why she’d felt the need to say that, Talia wasn’t totally sure, but it was out now. “I was in the conference room with you.”

  Stanton pressed his lips together. He was about to say something when Dakota said, “Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker. Everyone is here.” She touched the screen of her phone and stepped out into the hall.

  “…total chaos here.” It was Josh.

  Victoria moved close to the phone. “What happened?”

  Talia’s stomach churned at the thought of any of them injured. They were breaching the house where Prometheus—whoever it was—had been holed up. It should have just been a simple operation. Make sure everything was all right. Check in to confirm things were still good, that the hacker hadn’t gotten to the house.

  Josh said, “Everything is fine, no one got hurt. But—”

  Someone cut him off. “Give me that phone.” Mason coughed. Was he okay? Josh said no one was hurt, but why was Mason coughing? Something had to have happened.

  Stanton said, “Armstrong?”

  “Yes, sir. Prometheus is code black.”

  “Copy that.” Stanton spun around and raced for the elevator.

  . . .

  Mason moved to the head of the conference table. He smelled like smoke from the explosion that had ripped through the house. Stanton was on the phone in his office still. He paced back and forth the same as he’d been doing for the past hour.

  Victoria, Alvarez, Talia, Dakota and Josh all sat around the table. Eyes on him. Even the dog was in a “down” position by the wall.

  Josh and Alvarez smelled the same as Mason did, and Josh had a scraped-up elbow. Mason had thanked God out loud the moment he realized there had been no serious injuries.

  Josh had said, “Amen.”

  Mason glanced at each of them in turn now. Good people. “As much as the Secret Service believes we can handle this problem, I’m of the belief that the more skilled agents we have on this, the better.”

  Victoria nodded her approval. She likely knew what he was about to say, but seemed content to allow him to talk.