Liberation Day - A Thorn Byrd Novel

by Dustin Stevens

After four years together, Abby knew Thorn’s moods better than anybody. Her head rose from her seat on the couch and her backside quivered as he entered, both falling right back into place instantly.

  “Hey girl,” Thorn mumbled, walking straight to the island in the kitchen and booting his computer to life. Choosing to stand, he rested both hands against the edge of the counter on either side of it, leaning forward as the video conference system came to life.

  “Pick up, pick up,” he muttered, waiting as a second ring sounded out, followed by a third.

  Just thirty seconds after arriving home he was connected, Ingram’s face staring back at him on the screen.

  “Jesus. I thought you said it was a little altercation?”

  No preamble, no introduction of any kind.

  “It was,” Thorn said, lowering his face to look at the ground, offering Ingram a view of the top of his scalp.

  “I’d hate to see the other guy right now.”

  “He looks a helluva lot better than I do,” Thorn intoned, remaining bent over before raising his attention to look at Ingram. “So, what do you have?”

  Ingram’s eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch, but he left it alone. “Did you get the coordinates I sent you this morning?”

  Thorn glanced down to his phone still tucked into the front pocket of his jeans. He hadn’t bothered to open it since leaving the coffee shop, his mind too preoccupied on the drive home.

  “I saw them,” he lied. “Where do they go?”

  “I tracked them from the docks up the coastline to a point just south of Salem,” Ingram said, holding a sheaf of papers up in his hand, the profile of his face visible onscreen. “They stayed in the water the entire time, just off the shore. Traveled that way for the better part of an hour before the signal blinked out.”

  “Blinked out?” Thorn asked, allowing his face to show his confusion.

  “Blinked out,” Ingram repeated. “Meaning either they found the bug and destroyed it or they went somewhere where it could no longer transmit.”

  A moment passed as Thorn considered the information, chewing at the inside of his cheek. “No way they just found it. I buried it in that guy’s head. They’d have to know it was there and go in after it.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Ingram agreed.

  “You said before it was pretty powerful. What does it take to block the signal?”

  Ingram rifled through the papers, settling on one toward the back and pausing a moment to read from it. “The model is too powerful to be thrown off by a scrambler or EMF signal. They would have to be deep underground or somewhere that a signal couldn’t penetrate.”

  “Such as?” Thorn asked.

  “Something lined with lead, granite, or marble. That’s about it,” Ingram replied, dropping the papers onto his desk and turning to face forward.

  Thorn ran a hand along the back of his head, feeling the bristles of his short hair against his palm. His head ached and his eyes were beginning to burn from exhaustion, though he forced the feelings aside.

  “So we can either sit tight and hope the signal resurfaces...“ Thorn began.

  “Or we can go check it out,” Ingram finished.

  Thorn cast a look up at the screen, nodding in agreement. “Do we know anything about the place it disappeared? Is there anything there?”

  Pushing the previous stack of papers aside, Ingram took up a legal pad, a splash of blue ink strewn across it. Onscreen Thorn couldn’t make out what it said, but could see it covered most of the page.

  “I’ve been digging for a couple of hours now, will continue to do so. A property exists there, though it seems to be tied up under a mountain of false identities and corporate holdings.”

  “Doesn’t exactly sound like something on the up-and-up,” Thorn said.

  “Agreed.”

  Both sides fell silent, each processing the new information.

  “What about satellite imagery?” Thorn asked. “While you do that I can take a look around, see what I find?”

  “I thought about that,” Ingram said, nodding. “This all came on so fast, we haven’t entered you into our visualization system yet. I sent it over to them first thing this morning, told them to fast track it.”

  A deep scowl crossed Thorn’s face, the right half of his nose pulling up into a snarl. “And how long will that take?”

  “Couple of hours,” Ingram said. “Once you’re active, a man named Steubin will call and walk you through everything.”

  “And in the meantime?” Thorn asked. “Should I head up there and see what I find?”

  “No,” Ingram said, pushing the directive out quickly. “We know they don’t move much during the day. Let’s wait until I figure some things out and you’ve had a chance to look around from the air.

  “We’ll regroup this afternoon and decide then.”

  There was a simple logic to the plan Thorn couldn’t argue with, no matter how much he wanted to. Already he could feel his stamina flagging, the sustained burn of adrenaline starting to wear off. He wasn’t sure if there was any way his racing mind would allow for sleep, but at the very least his body could gain some much needed rest.

  “Try to get some sleep,” Ingram said, sensing what Thorn was thinking and moving the conversation ahead. “And put something on that eye, you can’t afford to have it closing up on you right now.”

  The mention of the injury brought the scowl back to full effect. Thorn fought the urge to reach for his face, using his fingertips to assess the damage. Instead he extended his hand and shut the laptop, ending the conversation without signing off.

  Chapter Thirty-Five