Oracle's Hunt

by A. Claire Everward

  As for the explosive devices used to destroy the data center, without any remnants of them left the purchase of the parts they were made of could not be traced, even though it would have been made in the United States—whoever was helping Elijahn with the technological side of his plan wouldn’t have known exactly what devices would be needed to destroy the data center until after they had the details of its exact structure and built-in systems, that is after they had gotten into the monitoring station’s mainframe, which gave them the access they needed to this information.

  Donovan’s contact not only provided him with valuable information, she would also ensure, through her widely dispersed organization, that Elijahn had not divided his purchases into additional deliveries or among additional suppliers to better conceal the quantities of firearms he was procuring, and that those, the firearms he had purchased from her dealers, were indeed the only ones he had. Although Donovan had asked her to run some checks to that effect, he didn’t think earlier purchases had been made or that Elijahn had begun to set up his local cell before he himself arrived, simply because he was a hands-on man who had been burned before, and it seemed unlikely that he would trust anyone or risk in any way his chances of getting what he wanted.

  Assuming that Donovan’s supposition was right, and that the purchases he now knew about were all Elijahn had, he no longer had any doubt that Elijahn wasn’t preparing to attack a secure complex such as IDSD, in an attempt to reach what he might think was a technology, a machine. He had a more localized attack in mind. He was going for the people. And the number of firearms he was known to have purchased showed that he planned to employ only a small number of militants here, enough to carry out his plans but not enough to be discovered.

  The sun was still considering whether to wake up a short while later, but Donovan was already showered, dressed for the day, and looking at Lara’s patio doors while putting on his jacket. Good, they were closed, and the house was still locked down as he’d asked. After considering for a moment, he smiled, took out his phone, and texted her. “Are you up?”

  Still smiling, he sent the message.

  Seconds later the doors slid open to reveal Lara, dressed a bit more informally again today. He hoped that meant no planned missions. A more relaxed day perhaps, whatever that meant for her, even under the threat she was under.

  “Really? Texting?” She was clearly amused.

  He shrugged, grinning.

  She was still laughing when she walked to the kitchen, with him following her. “Coffee?”

  “Oh, yes, please.” He sat at the counter, rolling his shoulders to get the kinks out.

  She threw him an inquisitive glance. “Have you slept at all?”

  He smiled a little. “I guess we both have jobs that keep us up the occasional night.”

  “This one was me.”

  “No, this one was Elijahn. You’re a different story.”

  She raised her eyes from the coffee she was making to meet his. He held them without the least bit of hesitation.

  Her heart wasn’t supposed to flutter, she reminded herself. She tried to think. She knew what to do. She was experienced at this, at pushing men away. Well, not at this, not the way it was with him. Funny, with him she couldn’t think of one thing she should be doing. Yes, one. Disregard.

  He watched her. He knew she was aware of his advances. Knew she was turning away from them intentionally, that it wasn’t because she wasn’t attracted, had no interest in him. There was something else there, something hidden which he’d already had quite a few clues about, and not only from her, and he intended to understand what and why. He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening here, where this was going, but he sure as hell was going to find out.

  “Cheese rolls?”

  He started. That one he didn’t see coming.

  She shrugged, a hint of mischief in the golden flecks’ dance in her eyes. “I told Rosie you liked them when you and I had breakfast here yesterday, so she made about a million of them.”

  “She did?” He got up himself and went to the refrigerator. She wasn’t kidding. There were humongous amounts of cheese rolls in there. He took out a bunch and heated them. “That’s it, I’m hooked.”

  Lara laughed. “Good, because she is just going to keep making them for you.”

  “After we stop Elijahn, there must be something nice I can do for her. Any ideas?”

  They were still going to be neighbors, it suddenly occurred to her. He was still going to be there when this was over. She raised her gaze to him, caught him looking at her. What she saw in his eyes sent her reeling. Anything much less than that look on a man’s face always sent her turning away and never seeing him again.

  With him she didn’t want to turn away. When did that happen?

  Donovan was the one to turn away, busying himself with placing the heated rolls on a platter. Giving her time. “Maybe I could cook her dinner.” He took the rolls over to the counter. “Maybe I could cook you dinner.” As he spoke his eyes fell on the screen that was sitting on the far end of the counter, the one he’d seen her work with. He immediately recognized what it was showing. He stopped, reached out. Pulled it to him, turned it around. Sat down.

  “This is the intelligence file on Elijahn.” His brow furrowed. He thought they’d established some trust between them, even if not as much as he wanted.

  “No, it’s not what you think, it’s not like it was.” She wanted to explain, wanted him to understand. Even if she couldn’t tell him all of what was going through her mind, not yet. She tried to find the words, then remembered he knew who she was, had seen what she did. She didn’t have to censor herself, not with him. “I’ve only ever seen the original file, before the Chad mission. I know that after it was over, the joint intelligence task force set up for the mission added to it, before they finally concluded he must have died there. I don’t know, I keep thinking, maybe if I know enough, if I can put things in contemporary context, I can help. I mean, I was there, I touched everything he had built, I should be able to . . .” She fell silent.

  “Is that why you didn’t sleep last night?” His voice was soft.

  She lowered her eyes. It wasn’t the only reason, not even the main one, but that was the last thing she wanted him to know. “I slept.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “A little. It’s enough. And it’s more than you did.”

  “Point taken.”

  Her eyes went back to the screen. “There must be something I can do, Donovan. I can’t just sit and wait while he . . . we don’t know who he’ll go for. I mean, I’m Oracle. Isn’t there anything you need me to do?”

  “I need you to be safe.” He surprised her by putting his hand on hers.

  She looked down at it. After a silence, she raised her eyes to his. “You thought I was following your investigation again, not trusting you,” she said, her voice quiet.

  “The thought has crossed my mind.” He let out a breath. “But at least now I know you have every right to be in on this.”

  “But I wasn’t.” She shrugged. “You said you would update me. I believed you.”

  He nodded. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll update you right now if you eat a cheese roll.”

  “That’s a pretty good deal.” She took the roll he offered.

  He updated her, and answered all her questions. An hour later found her sitting on the sofa, her second cup of coffee growing cold in her hands as she stared at it. She could feel him watching her. He does that a lot, she thought absently. But this time his gaze, when she met it, was pensive. She nodded slightly. Yes, she’d been thinking it too. Ultimately, no matter what Elijahn knew or intended to do, one thing was a certainty. She was the true target. This man was looking for her. Coming for her.

  “I don’t want you to leave IDSD alone tonight.”

  “Donovan.”

  “I’ll come for you.”

  “You can’t play bodyguard. You have more important things to do. And I do
have a protective detail tailing me.”

  He said nothing, but he wouldn’t take his eyes off hers.

  Finally, she nodded. “I’m still taking my own car.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  She thought of the man called Elijahn. How badly he wanted Oracle. She was on his list.

  Donovan wasn’t.

  “I’m taking my car.”

  Frustration flared at her stubbornness. Just when he thought he was making headway. But her eyes were steady on his. “Fine,” he said. “But keep its top up and the windows closed. I’ll follow you—along with your protective detail—to IDSD this morning, and you’ll wait for me at IDSD tonight.”

  She nodded. A fair compromise.

  That wouldn’t stand in her way.

  “We got it,” Ben said, and put alternating views of the site up on the screen. “It’s a warehouse that was used as a supply center for robotic parts until eight months ago. The company had gone bankrupt, and this warehouse remained empty up to three and a half months ago. That’s when it was sold through an attorney to a—get this—private start-up company that is developing some sort of a pharmaceutical product. That’s the cover they used to pretty much rebuild the place, looks like, including some substantial security to keep people out. The site is kept clean, is quiet, and hardly anyone comes and goes. An SUV with the start-up’s name on it arrives and leaves regularly, according to people who work in the area, I’m thinking supplies maybe, but otherwise nothing. We checked the company, it exists. Registered and all, nothing that would raise undue suspicion.”

  “Municipal traffic and security cameras?”

  “They don’t cover that corner.” Ben glanced at Donovan meaningfully. “They’re positioned to focus on the mall down the street. This warehouse is standing in a blind spot. All we have are street photos that are pretty current, and blueprints we sort of hacked the construction contractor for, the one who had renovated the place, we didn’t want him to know we were looking just in case he would think about warning anyone. Although from what we could find, neither he nor the firm that handled the sale knew what the warehouse was really being bought and prepared for.”

  He brought up the post-renovation blueprints. One story, above ground, with an internal room made of soundproof walls and ceiling, which made up most of the main area of the floor. An enclosed area for vehicle parking stood on the left of the structure, connected to it. It was originally an open parking lot, Ben informed Donovan, but was built around as part of the renovation. The structure in its entirety wasn’t very large, but it was big enough for what Donovan thought Elijahn would need. And with the security around it and the soundproof interior, it seemed it was indeed what they had been looking for.

  As for the time frame—the warehouse having been bought and prepared only three and a half months earlier—that didn’t bother Donovan. Elijahn wouldn’t need this place until he and his militants, whom he must have sent here at around the same time he himself arrived, had use for it. Whoever had handled the technological side of the data center break-in didn’t have to have the warehouse. In fact, the initial scanning of the security signal would have been done from a far more suitable location closer to it.

  And then there was the damning evidence. Communications from the place were high starting two months earlier, coinciding with the time since Elijahn had arrived, and right up until the data center was destroyed, and then again when IDSD’s administrative system was accessed from the outside. But what worried Donovan the most was the fact that on the night after that second incident communications from the warehouse increased again until some hours into the next morning. They then stopped for several hours and then increased again, far more this time, and were still at that level, even now. This would, he thought, be explained by hacking attempts.

  Either that, or Elijahn was watching, tracking. The people he was after?

  Donovan glanced at his watch. And made a call.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I’m right here with her, in her office,” Scholes confirmed. “I will,” he said when Donovan asked him to keep Lara at IDSD.

  “He wanted to know that you’re here, safe,” he said after ending the call.

  On the other side of the desk, Lara was leaning back in her chair. She looked at him questioningly.

  “He thinks they’ve found Elijahn, his hiding place. They’re going to raid it.”

  She sat up. “Donovan is going himself?”

  “He’s heading the investigation. It’s what he does,” Scholes said, looking at her curiously.

  She turned her chair around toward the window, and sat staring outside.

  “This is odd.”

  Elijahn approached the hacker with a measured step. There was no time for problems now. The men were already busy preparing behind him, beside the vehicles.

  “The targets’ cars haven’t moved. Since last night. They’re still at their homes.”

  “All of them?”

  “Two, the men. The woman is at IDSD.”

  “Show me.”

  The hacker showed Elijahn the tracking data for each of the three targets.

  Elijahn looked at the data carefully. This was odd. Although, it could be a coincidence, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. Unless . . . was it possible they knew of the threat to them and had therefore remained in their homes? Would IDSD know his hacker had obtained information about them? The way to ascertain that would be to see what the others on the list of names the hacker had initially gotten him were doing. But there was no longer time for that. And in any case, why was the woman at IDSD, and not in her home? This made it unlikely his enemies knew what he was up to.

  Instinct made him look back on all he had done so far. No. He had been careful. They would not know about him, nor about what he was doing. Not this time. This time, he had been so much more vigilant. And they had every reason to think he was dead, that was a decisive factor to consider. It was the pillar of his plan.

  As for the targets’ locations, all it did was make things simpler for him. He would send three people each to the two in their homes. That would do it. His men were good, and he would not even be sending this many, but the two men had families who might get in the way, a probable occurrence since they were now to be killed in their homes, in the deep of night. Elijahn did not care, the families were of no consequence to him.

  But his plan had been to hit them all at the same time, if that was possible, certainly all at the same night, hit and get away before anyone understood what was going on. Which meant that the woman would still have to be targeted at the same time as the two men. And since she was at IDSD, and with the hours she kept, that meant he would have to be ready to get her when she left. But he was prepared, he had been ready for the possibility that he would have to follow all three of them in order to hit them simultaneously on their way from IDSD to their homes. Yes, it was better this way, that he would have only her to deal with on the road, only her from among all his targets. It would make what he wanted easier.

  “What do you want me to do?” the hacker asked.

  Elijahn’s eyes narrowed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Miles away from the raid site, Donovan’s phone signaled an incoming call. He pulled it out of the pocket of his bullet-proof vest.

  “Communications at the warehouse just stopped. Electricity use too,” Ben, two cars back, reported with unmistakable urgency. “The place just went dark, we’re getting no signals. Just heat. Lots of it.”

  Damn, Donovan thought. Always one step behind. He got on the comms and ordered the police officers deployed in cruisers and on foot in the area to stand watch. He reiterated that anyone they might encounter would be armed and dangerous, but had a sense of foreboding that the raid was already too late. Elijahn had proven to be elusive. If Donovan would find what he thought he would when he finally reached the warehouse, this guy and his militants would be long gone by now.

  He willed the operation
to go faster but knew it couldn’t. The deployment was tactically careful, anticipating the potential dangers ahead. The police presence comprised only the outer perimeter and the force that would shield any civilians who might still be around, in one of the restaurants near the mall, perhaps, this time of night. The warehouse itself would be raided by two USMC Special Reaction Teams accompanied by USFID agents, with Donovan in charge, and USFID-SIRT techs would be ready to go in once the site was cleared and work the scene as quickly as possible without overlooking anything. But once again, Donovan’s gut feeling was telling him any findings would only be good for the aftermath of wherever this was already going.

  The comms chirped, but he didn’t need to hear what the voice was saying. He already saw it even before the heavy military protected vehicle he was in skidded to a halt in front of the one-story building. The raid was delayed not by resistance, but by the black smoke that was already escaping even this carefully sealed space, blending in with the night sky as soon as windows and doors were broken by the USMC teams. Which was only after the techs had cleared the place from the outside, concluding that whatever security had been set up in the building to protect its contents had been rendered harmless either by the loss of power and communications or by the fire inside, whichever came first, and that Elijahn did not leave any booby traps.

  Nor did he use explosive devices here in his attempt to destroy all evidence of his activities, as he had done at the data center. The robot the USMC teams had brought with them was able to easily move through the fire inside, find its origins and quench it. The USMC teams then followed it in, along with the USFID agents, and tackled the rest of the fire, clearing the place as they did, although they already knew there was no one inside. No one alive, that is. Still, it paid to be careful. It was not beyond Elijahn to try to use something that would interfere with the technology they were using to identify any traps. The man had already proven that he valued technological advancements over the more traditional means.