Treacherous

by Sara Rosett

  Fossa lunged at Kaz.

  At the same moment a high-pitched stinging sound pierced the air. Fossa fell to the side, clutching his right arm. A second whine split the air, and Kaz jerked backward with a yelp, crashing into the display along the wall of the corridor, his gun falling to the floor.

  A red line appeared on Kaz’s thigh. He stared at it a moment, clearly confused. The line widened, and it was only at that moment that Zoe realized Kaz had been shot, grazed by a bullet. Kaz must have realized it too because the color drained from his face as he let out a cry and gripped his leg.

  Zoe hadn’t had time to move from her huddled crouch, but now she sprang up and darted for the door. Another shrill whine sounded. A circle appeared on the glass door in front of Zoe, a spider web of cracks radiating out from it.

  She jerked to a stop. The door vibrated with the impact of the bullet, but didn’t open.

  A female voice said, “Don’t go anywhere yet, Zoe.” The voice came from the door to the sanctuary beyond the glow of the lantern.

  The sharp tap of heels sounded, then Mary Thacker stepped into the light of the lantern, which was still sitting on the panel display. “As you can see, I have no qualms about shooting anyone.” She held a gun with a silencer attached, which she kept trained on Fossa, but the corridor was so narrow that with a movement of a few millimeters she would be lined up to fire at Zoe again.

  Zoe remained motionless—mostly because of the gun—but she was also rooted to the spot as she stared at Mary. She looked the same, yet different. Her hair was still bouffant and blond, and her face was again perfectly made up, but something about her expression had changed. Her gaze had a hardness, a detached coldness, as she looked over the two men. Her clothes were different, too. Instead of the flowing flowered top and chunky jewelry Zoe had seen her in before, Mary now wore a tight red tank, black slacks with high-heeled boots, and a black leather jacket that fit her rounded figure perfectly. A little tab collar flapped back and forth at her neck as she leaned over Fossa and expertly removed a gun from a shoulder holster under his jacket. She kept her gun with the silencer trained on his face the whole time.

  Fossa, one hand clasped to his upper arm, was breathing hard. His gaze locked with Mary’s, but he didn’t move as she took his gun.

  “Good choice, not fighting me,” she said to him as she put his gun in the pocket of her leather jacket. “You’ll notice that I shot you in your right arm. Consider that a compliment on your skills. I respect you enough to make sure you’re not a threat to me. Unlike this one.” She tilted her head to Kaz. “Him, I shot in the leg. I know he’s no good with a gun.”

  Kaz didn’t seem to have heard her. He was leaning forward, groaning as he pressed his hands on his thigh. “Don’t be such a baby,” Mary said. “It’s barely a scratch. You’ll be fine.” Zoe still couldn’t see any movement through the glass doors. She shifted a bit so she’d have a better stance and could lunge at the door at her first opportunity. Mary was keeping watch on all three of them, and Zoe had no doubt that Mary would shoot her if she made a dash for the door. And judging from the state of Fossa and Kaz, Mary could hit a target.

  As Zoe altered her position slightly, she felt the pull of the tape holding the microphone in place. It was still there. Was it still working? Had being thrown to the ground damaged it? Surely if the microphone went silent, the police would move in. Because the reflection of the lantern was masking any movement from outside the temple, Zoe thought she’d probably hear something outside before she saw anything. She tensed, ready to move at the first moment she heard the whir of the motor opening the doors.

  In one smooth movement, Mary squatted and picked up Kaz’s gun, which lay in the middle of the corridor. “Stop whimpering.” She tilted her head and gazed pointedly at Kaz’s leg. “That’s what happens to people who go behind my back.”

  Kaz had been focused on his leg, but at her words, he looked up. “What? What are you talking about?”

  She shook her head, her gaze bouncing between Kaz and Fossa then occasionally over to Zoe. “You think I don’t know you’ve been poking around in my email and on my computer?” Mary said to Kaz. “I know what you were doing—looking for something to blackmail me with.”

  “No! It was nothing like that.”

  Mary narrowed her eyes as she watched him for a few extra beats. Kaz scrambled backward, wincing as he jarred his leg. “I thought someone had been in the system—I had to check it out. It’s my job. I believe in privacy. I’d never snoop around just to see what I could find. I had to check to make sure no one had breached the system.”

  Mary’s lips thinned. “I half believe you. You do have a streak of the do-gooder about you.”

  Kaz let out a shaky breath. “But how did you know?”

  “That you’d been nosing around?” Mary laughed. “You’ve seen my bio—it’s on the company website. You know I was one of Freddie’s first employees.” She shook her head in a disappointed manner. “You thought I was his secretary, didn’t you?” She shot a quick conspiratorial look at Zoe, who had begun to think that maybe Mary had forgotten about her.

  The quick look hit Zoe like a punch in the gut. Was she about to swing the gun her way? No, Zoe took a shuddery breath that matched Kaz’s uneven breathing as Mary said, “Gender can be such an advantage.” She leaned toward Kaz and spoke slowly. “I was Freddie’s first programmer at Eon.”

  “You? But you’re not interested in programming. You didn’t know what hashing was or TOR or man-in-the-middle attacks—oh. You were playing me.”

  “Exactly.” Smugness layered her words. “And you were so busy making sure no one was paying any attention to you at work, you left your own phone wide open.” She glanced at Zoe again. “Isn’t it surprising that the people who truly know how vulnerable we are to a hack often overlook the most basic security precautions themselves? Using the same password for your phone at work and your personal phone—so lax! But of course I was careful. You’d have to look quite deeply to see what I did to your phone, which has worked out so well. With you tracking Zoe through her phone, I had all the details on both you and her. So efficient. It saved me so much time.”

  Mary caught Zoe’s look. “Yes. I’m afraid it’s true. You downloaded the Eon company app that Kaz sent you. It had a bit of special code, didn’t it, Kaz?” Mary shook her head at him. “You’re such a hypocrite, spouting about privacy, but planting a hack on poor Zoe’s phone so that you could track her.”

  “I didn’t like doing it,” Kaz said, “but it was for the greater good.” He looked at Zoe. “I wouldn’t have done anything with it. I didn’t even look at your email or your bank or anything. Once you brought back the zero-day, I would have disabled the tracking.”

  Zoe closed her eyes briefly. Jack was right—burner phones were the way to go.

  “Kaz always knew where you were.” Mary smiled brightly. “And so did I. That tracking app and a look at your search history showed me everything I needed to know.”

  “That explains so much,” Zoe said, and hoped the microphone was still working—that Munez was getting all this. In case it was working, Zoe said to Mary, “And I suppose you want the flash drive so you can sell it.”

  “Of course.” Mary sent a withering glance at Kaz. “I can’t believe someone would be so stupid to literally throw away millions of dollars.”

  “But if you take the hack, you can’t go back to the U.S. after this,” Kaz said. “We’ll know it was you who took the zero-day. Not even Thacker can protect you.” He trailed off as if he just realized it wasn’t a good idea to remind Mary not to leave any witnesses.

  “Go back to Thacker?” Mary laughed. “That’s the last thing I want to do. I’ve had my fill of his silly games, like that stunt with the ballet dancer.” Mary rolled her eyes at Zoe. “Forget the elaborate story Thacker told you at lunch about the ‘mix-up’ with the packages. He planned it all to reel you in. He wanted you to look for the blue butterfly painting—why he picked yo
u, I don’t know—and he didn’t think just picking up the phone and calling you would do the trick. No, he had to go overboard with the whole lost sculpture and misdirected package scenario to get you interested. And to test you,” she added.

  “The whole thing did feel a little off,” Zoe said, forcing herself to keep her gaze away from the glass door in case someone was sneaking up to it. She hoped Munez’s officers were moving stealthily outside.

  “Tell her, Kaz,” Mary said, gesturing with the gun toward him.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Mr. Thacker thought of sending you the ballet dancer as an evaluation,” Kaz said to Zoe. “He wanted to see what you’d do with it. If you contacted the authorities, he figured he could trust you, and he’d hire you.”

  “What was he going to do if I didn’t contact the police or the FBI?”

  “He said he’d call them himself and say he had a tip that you had the sculpture. Either way, he’d get his ballet dancer back, and he could vet you at the same time. ‘Win-win’ he called it.”

  Zoe thought she should be more upset than she was at hearing that news, but being manipulated paled in comparison to being trapped in a small area with a woman wielding a gun. Mary held the gun with the silencer in her right hand in a comfortable grip. In her left, she held Kaz’s gun.

  Suddenly her forehead wrinkled. She bounced Kaz’s gun up and down as if her hand were a scale, and she was weighing the gun, then her face cleared. She chuckled. “A toy gun, Kaz? Only you would bring a plastic gun to threaten an international criminal.”

  She dropped the gun on the floor. It landed with a hollow bounce instead of a weighty metal thud. “I suppose it would be difficult to get a real gun on short notice in a foreign country. You certainly couldn’t bring one on the plane, could you?” She smiled in a superior way. “Having a private jet is so nice. So much less scrutiny. And if anyone does seem interested…a few thousand dollars—or euros—does the trick.”

  She swiveled her attention to Fossa. “And it’s amazing what people will let you do for a few hundred euros. The guard on the day shift will let you in with the last group of tourists viewing the temple and conveniently overlook you when he does his final round of the building before closing up and going off his shift. He was such a nice man. He even let me bring in a camp chair, so I wouldn’t have to sit on the hard floor while I waited for your meeting.”

  She scooped up the laptop, which was at Kaz’s feet. “Now, let’s see what we have here.” She propped the laptop on the display near the lantern, but kept her body turned so that she had everyone in her view.

  “Cute,” she said with a glance at the lip balm tube that extended from the side of the laptop.

  She held the gun with a casual confidence, but never let the barrel of the gun waver from Fossa. Zoe wondered how Mary could be so calm—she’d just shot two people. But she was navigating the laptop’s keyboard one-handed with fingers that didn’t even tremble.

  With her blood zinging through her body and her erratic heartbeat, Zoe felt like she’d overdosed on caffeine.

  Mary said, “Okay, Zoe, let’s see if I have to shoot you, too.”

  35

  That weak, shaky-leg feeling that comes on after a bout with the flu swept over Zoe as Mary’s gaze darted back and forth between the code on the laptop screen and her three captives. Thank goodness Jack had insisted that she bring the original flash drive with the authentic code. Zoe had no doubt that if Mary didn’t like what she saw, she’d be quick to switch the aim of the gun to Zoe. She certainly hadn’t been stingy with her bullets so far.

  Mary gave a quick nod. “Very good. I’m glad to see you’re smart enough to bring the real thing.” She yanked the lip balm tube out of the port, and the computer pinged at the unapproved removal. At that same instant, Fossa shifted closer to Mary, kicked out one of his legs in a lightning movement, connecting with the back of her knees. Her legs buckled as Fossa rolled to the side so that he wasn’t under her. Zoe ducked as the gun went off again with a sharp ping.

  Zoe uncurled enough from her crouched position to see Mary flat on her back, gasping for air. Both her hands were empty. She must have dropped the gun and the flash drive when she fell. Mary lay motionless for a second, her raspy breathing the only sound in the corridor. Then she rolled onto her side, her hands already sweeping the floor as she continued to wheeze.

  Fossa was already on his feet, his gaze scouring the floor.

  Zoe saw Mary’s gun first, which had landed only a few feet away from Zoe. The lip balm tube had rolled farther. Fossa had seen it and was already moving.

  He scooped up the lip balm tube and sprinted for the glass doors, a grimace of pain on his face as he clamped his injured arm to his side. The doors swished open, and he shot through the doorway at an all-out run.

  Mary was on her feet now. Zoe scrambled forward and gave the gun a solid kick, sending it straight down the corridor. It whizzed by Mary before she could react and disappeared through the doorway into the dark recess of the sanctuary.

  Mary made for the door, giving Zoe a look of such intense hatred that Zoe was sure Mary would have liked to stop and strangle her with her bare hands if only she wasn’t so intent on chasing Fossa and getting back the flash drive.

  The doors had swished shut behind Fossa, but they whisked open again too soon for Mary’s approach to have set the sensor off. Suddenly the entrance was like an elevator at a busy hotel with people pushing and shoving as Mary surged forward and several police officers, Munez in the lead, pressed inside the temple.

  Mary crumpled against the display. Her eyes welled with tears as she pointed a shaky finger at the crowded door. “He went that way. That man who ran out of here—he tried to kill me.”

  Munez shook his head. “No, Mrs. Thacker. We know exactly what happened. We heard your whole conversation.”

  Zoe was barely listening. The doors opened again, and Jack pushed his way inside the crowded corridor, his face pale as his gaze swept over the corridor. “Make way. Zoe?”

  “Over here.” Zoe waved her hand above the heads of the two police officers who blocked her path. They stepped aside as Jack reached her.

  At Zoe’s elbow, Munez, his hand in a firm grip around Mary’s bicep, frowned. “Mr. Andrews—you were not to enter—”

  Jack ignored him and caught Zoe’s shoulders, his gaze roving over her. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “All good now.”

  Munez sighed. “Highly irregular,” he said, then waved his hand, motioning them to the door. “But you did an excellent job staying calm and not moving around, Mrs. Andrews. We have the whole encounter recorded.”

  Jack squeezed Zoe’s shoulders. “You didn’t do anything. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Not my usual way. It was killing me! And this wire thing has to come off. It’s so itchy, it was all I could do not to scratch away like I had chicken pox.”

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” He stepped back another few inches and ran his gaze from her head to her feet. “Those shots—” He swallowed.

  “I’m fine. Not a scratch. She shot Kaz and Fossa. Mary didn’t even see me as a threat—oh!” Zoe spun away from Jack to Munez. “She’s got a gun—another one. In her pock—”

  But it was too late. Mary had jerked her arm away from Munez. Fossa’s gun was already in her hand, the barrel aimed at Zoe and Jack. The bustle and movement in the temple cut off instantly. Jack shifted Zoe so that she was behind him.

  Above her mascara-stained cheeks, Mary’s gaze was steely. “I’m walking out of here. No one touches me, or I shoot the lovebirds.”

  Munez made a pressing down motion with his hands, and his officers remained still.

  Mary took a step to the door, and Jack shifted position to keep himself between Zoe and the gun, then took a step toward Mary. She fired at his chest.

  Zoe screamed—or at least she thought she did. The report of the gun without the silencer was deafening in the tiny space.

&
nbsp; Ears ringing, Zoe watched unbelievingly as Jack doubled over for a second, then straightened. Mary’s eyes widened in shock.

  Before she could react and move to the door, Jack grabbed Mary’s wrist, twisting it with both his hands. Zoe heard Mary yelp, but it was a fuzzy, muffled sound as if she were far away instead of only across the room. The gun fell to the ground, but the droning sound in Zoe’s ears silenced any sound of impact.

  The second after the gun fell, Jack disappeared into a scrum of uniformed officers as they closed in on Mary.

  A burning smell filtered through the air, stinging her nose as the ringing faded a bit. Her ears felt less like they were stuffed with cotton, and she began to distinguish the voices of the police officers as Jack pushed his way out of the crowd.

  “What? How?” She was probably shouting, but she didn’t care. She gripped his arms, ran her hands over his chest, then stopped abruptly at the unfamiliar contouring. “A bulletproof vest? I don’t know whether to slap you or hug you. You didn’t tell me. What are you doing wearing that?” A singed area with bits of his shirt threads around the edges showed where the vest had stopped the bullet.

  He caught her hand as she poked and prodded. Leaning close to her ear, he said, “Easy. I think I’ll have a bruise,” he said, then seeing her face, he added, “but that’s all. I’m fine.” He tapped the vest. “Munez insisted. Let’s get out of here.” He gripped her hand and they worked their way through the press of officers still gathered around Mary.

  The doors swept open, and they stepped into the cool night air. Several more officers were spaced around the perimeter of the temple, but they weren’t interested in Zoe and Jack. “That’s better,” Jack said as they moved down the steps. “How are your ears? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, it’s getting better, but forget about my hearing. A vest? When did that happen?”

  “While you were being fitted up with the wire, Munez had me put it on. Everyone had to wear one, except you, of course. It might have tipped off Fossa.”