Oracle's Hunt

by A. Claire Everward

She nodded.

  “If you ever pull something like this again, I’ll shoot you myself.” Although he was using this particular statement he’d said to her before, knowing she would know what he really meant, there was nothing mild or joking about the way he said it, or about the way he looked at her. “Are we clear?”

  She said nothing.

  His eyes bore into hers. “Are we clear?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Now, that was a generalized statement. Which means that there’s a whole lot of things I can shoot you for.”

  “Like what?” Her own unexpected giddiness took her by surprise. Where did that come from?

  The dark blue she knew so well by now and that now ruled in his eyes told her she was playing with fire. “We’ll figure them out as we go along. Although we might not have to. I’m thinking I just might shoot you before this is over after all.” He stood up again.

  She spoke before she thought better of it. “Ever.”

  He looked back at her.

  “You said ever. This will be over soon.”

  “This is. We’re not.” He turned and walked over to the techs who were beckoning him. Time to test the new security system. He was being direct, he knew. But he didn’t care. He had spent most of his life on the edge, and too much of it without something he never missed because he never thought it existed for him. He knew now what that was, what it was like, what it could be, and he’d almost lost it. He wasn’t about to let it go. To lose her.

  She watched him, the mug still in her hands, forgotten, her heart caught in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions surging inside her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Several hours later the house was finally quiet again. It was just them now, just Lara and Donovan, and the protective detail outside.

  And Scholes, Evans, and Martinez on the screen in Lara’s living room.

  “So this is what we know.” Martinez hadn’t been the bearer of good news.

  “Let me get that straight,” Donovan said. “So far we’re aware of the three who had been at Edwards’s home and Elijahn himself.” These were the four unaccounted for following the attack. Security cameras installed by the protective detail outside Edwards’s home had shown the three who had come to kill him, and their angry departure when they found the house empty. It also showed the SUV they had used, which was later found abandoned, burned, in a location that indicated that they had been on the way to where the attack on Lara had taken place. They themselves were gone. Other than Edwards, Elijahn had only sent people to the home of one more name on the list, Dr. Miles. But those three militants had been intercepted and killed by the forces who bore down on Elijahn.

  “The good thing,” Evans said, “is that according to the DNA supplied by your people, Donovan, the samples they collected in the warehouse that we were able to compare to the bodies we have, we suspect these four are all that’s left. Unless Elijahn has more people stashed somewhere.”

  “His headquarters,” Scholes said, remembering what Lara had told them about her encounter with Elijahn. “He’s got his headquarters.”

  “Which we have no idea the whereabouts of,” Evans added.

  “How are we doing on tracking these people?” Donovan asked.

  “Not as well as we’d like,” Martinez said. “Someone shot a motorcyclist about a mile down the path crossing the woods where the attack took place. We can assume it was Elijahn who did it, the bullets are similar to those found in the warehouse. We have no idea about the other three, the burned SUV was all we found. We do know that they were warned by the ones who had been at Miles’s place and who’d been met by our guys on their way to the attack site—since we’d intercepted them we could check the phones they had on them. We have profilers on it, to see if we can anticipate their moves, but it’ll take time.”

  “We’re trying to cover all transportation modes, but if they’ve got some private transport or go into hiding . . .” Evans didn’t finish the thought.

  “We’re all on the lookout, and we’ve tightened the grid and will hold it for as long as it takes. Eventually we’ll find a trail,” Martinez said. “Especially for the three who’d been to Edwards’s house, if they’ve separated from Elijahn. He’s the brain and drive behind this, not them. There will be a trail of theft or bodies they’ll leave behind them, and we’ll find it.”

  “The problem is time.” Evans rubbed his eyes in frustration. “We need to finish this before Elijahn gets the idea to release the information about Oracle or before his people at that headquarters of his catch on and run, and then it’ll all be futile.”

  So far Lara had said nothing, just listened, her head lowered. She now raised her head, her eyes narrowed. She looked at Scholes. Scholes looked back at her. He knew that look.

  “I agree,” he said to her. “We have to get him. Not only did you get in the way of his plan, you also got away from him, and his people were killed in the process. You basically pulled another Chad on him. And he knows now to come after you, and he will, no matter what, and no matter who he hurts on the way.” Scholes wasn’t talking to anyone else now. Only Lara.

  She nodded.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “My office, for one. Eyes—space, ours, flexible zero-delay access. Intelligence—mixed, chatter, cyber, live undercover.” She looked at Evans. “Can I assume there has been no chatter about the attack?”

  Evans nodded. “Not a word. In a nutshell, you had to be there to know it happened, or hear about it from someone who was there. We also had the police keep silent about the warehouse, and we spread some story about what happened there to civilians around. Just in case he’s got someone listening.”

  “Good. I want no mention of my name or code name. The same goes for Elijahn’s name. I want everyone who has anything to do with this guy guessing.” That would keep them off balance for a while longer, she hoped. She had lost precious time here already, it had been only hours short of a day since Elijahn had escaped.

  Martinez looked confused for a moment, then caught on. “Hey, are we saying what I think we’re saying? You’re coming in?”

  “I believe that’s exactly what we’re saying,” Evans said. It was, after all, the best, the only way. They were constantly a step behind Elijahn, it was time to reverse the odds.

  “Gentlemen, we’ll continue this conversation ourselves. Donovan, Lara will update you. Security is your call,” Scholes said, and terminated Lara’s end of the call.

  Donovan was looking at her.

  “It’s the only way,” she said quietly, her eyes still on the blank screen.

  “Oracle,” he said, his voice low, its undertone unmistakable. “How was that just decided? After all that’s happened, how was it just decided that Oracle is going in?”

  “Frank knows that I have the missing piece. I can find Elijahn.”

  “We’re looking for a man who has succeeded in evading us for days now and for his headquarters that could be anywhere in the world and that no one even knew about for the past two years. And after everything, we still have no viable intelligence on him. What’s changed?”

  “I talked to him.” She shrugged. “That was the missing piece.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Before, I had whatever intelligence was previously collected about him, and I went against him myself once, and even then not against him personally, but against everything that he had built, that came from his aspirations, his mind, had his distinct fingerprint on it. And it still wasn’t enough. But now I’ve talked to him. I saw him. Related to him. And he attacked me, directly.”

  It took him a moment to get it. “You’re going to use yourself as the anchor, the focal point, to go against him.” He tried to translate what little he knew so far about the way her mind worked, into how she meant to deal with this situation she was in.

  “In a way.” It was a bit more complicated than that. Actually, a lot more.

  She had changed during the vide
oconference, Donovan realized. Right before his eyes. After the attack she’d been dazed, injured. Then she was quiet, a pensiveness about her. He understood that. After a long time during which she’d been protected, kept safely away from those whose path she crossed as Oracle, those in whose way she got, she ended up being targeted right here on her own turf, where she should have been safe. True, when it came down to it, she had stood up to Elijahn and had escaped him. But that didn’t change the fact that she’d been through an assault. And that after all that had happened, she was still not safe, still a target, still being hunted.

  But now there was strength in her eyes. Calm determination. Like cornered prey, she was turning to face her hunter. It was her turn to strike, with everything that she was. Except that she just happened to be Oracle.

  She turned to face him. “I need to do this, Donovan. And I’m the only one who can.” She said it as a matter of fact. It was, simply, the way it was.

  She needed to find her footing, and she needed to fight back. Donovan could understand that. But he wanted her alive. “It won’t help anyone if you die. Did you consider that? This man is out there, and we have no idea where he is, what he’s planning for you now.” His eyes flared. “Right now my job is to protect you. I need to protect you.”

  “Protect me? While everybody is out there, trying to find him? You were there, you heard Martinez. They know who I am and they will do all it takes to protect me. I won’t have them get hurt for me. That’s not what I am about. And what happens if he runs, if he goes back to unfriendly territory, some place where we have no reach? What would that mean? More missions? Soldiers and agents dying trying to get to him there? Will he take vengeance by targeting IDSD elsewhere in the world? Internationals like me? How about US citizens, because US soldiers came to help me? And what if he comes back in a year, ten years, after he’s had time to regroup, to plan better based on what happened this time around?

  “This is the guy who built the most sophisticated terrorist base ever and planned to attack the alliance headquarters in Brussels, the guy who destroyed an alliance data center, something that was thought impossible. And this is a guy who is still unable to let go two years after Chad. He’s deadly, he’s tenacious, and he’s good, too good. I will not stay here, protected, while he’s still out there, killing people. If someone dies because I don’t find him now, or if I go into hiding and they die because I wasn’t there to do my job, looking out for myself instead of them, it’s not worth it, nothing is! These people are out there risking their lives, and they’ve got families too, moms and dads and husbands and wives and children and others who love them and want them to come home. They pay enough as it is, they all do. I’ve got to be there with them, I’ve got to bring them home!”

  She took a step toward Donovan, and he found himself mesmerized by the passion in her eyes. Despite what happened to her, Oracle was not done. And she wasn’t just talking about Elijahn, about herself, about this thing they were in the midst of, not anymore. She was talking about them all, every person who relied, who would rely on Oracle. And there was something else there, something painful, something personal.

  He realized with shock that her eyes were brimming with tears. He instinctively moved toward her, but she raised a hand to stop him, keep him at a distance, and took a step back.

  “No,” she said. Not now. She needed to find the strength inside her that would let her get through this—and win. She closed her eyes, calmed down. When she opened her eyes again and met his, she was in control of herself.

  He wasn’t. And she saw his concern, his fear, what she meant to him.

  She sighed. “How long are you going to protect me, Donovan? For how long are you and I going to stop our lives and stay here, waiting? And when Elijahn does come, what then? He kills you to get to me?” She shook her head. “If he gets away now, he can disappear for as long as he wants and choose when to return. Just like he did last time. And he will come back. He is not going to stop, Donovan. He knows who I am now. And even before that, something about me must have awoken either his interest or his instinct, otherwise he wouldn’t have sent most of his men after me, and he wouldn’t have come after me himself. And he will come after me again. He will kill me, if he can’t—” She fell silent.

  Donovan took a step forward. “If he can’t what?”

  She braced herself. “‘You will like my headquarters. Perhaps you might even learn to like my home. You look better than your photo, by the way.’” She quoted word for word the one thing Elijahn had said to her that she would never forget. The one thing she had not told anyone until now.

  Donovan froze, realizing just how much worse than he had thought the situation had been for her the night before, what she had almost lost.

  “Donovan, I have to do this. Last night I chose to run. To risk it, to run, to live. And now I have to fight back. I want to fight back. You did your thing. You found him. And you prevented him from getting me, you saved my life, and now you know just how bad it could have been. Now it’s my turn. I’m the best bet for this. Nobody can do what I do. Nobody.” She shook her head as she remembered. “I saw his face. I spoke to him. Heard his feelings, his anger, his need for revenge. His hate. His arrogance. He was sure he was going to take me, so he opened up, showed me enough of what’s inside him. And that was his mistake. It was all that was missing, all I needed.”

  She met his eyes again with the simple truth, a smile playing at her lips. “I’m Oracle. I can find him. I can find them all.”

  He figured she probably could. And he now knew she had to. “I won’t let him get to you,” he said.

  For the first time, it was she who took a step toward him. “He won’t. I’ve got you.”

  He put his brow against hers, felt her soft hand in his. His thumb stroked her fingers. The last time he had her this close to him, her hunters were just yards behind her. So close. If he hadn’t gotten there when he had . . .

  He made his decision, as she’d made hers. He straightened up, nodded. “Are you up to it? I mean, physically.”

  “You made sure I would be.” She held his eyes then, hers finally letting on what her heart already knew and her mind, her past were just beginning to accept.

  He saw it and couldn’t even begin to steel himself against a reaction he had never had before. Oh my God, he thought. I’m in love with her.

  He focused. Right. Let’s do this. Let’s get this guy out of our way. “You do as I say,” he said. “Stray once and I’ll . . .”

  “Shoot me,” she finished the thought mildly.

  His hand closed around hers. He wasn’t in the mood to joke. “I’ll have you in protective custody for the rest of our lives, and you won’t have a say in it.”

  She nodded, somber.

  “Okay. You need IDSD Missions.”

  “Yes.”

  “So we get you there. Safe. And you stay there. Safe. You do not leave the war room. I’m going to be with you at all times. If for any reason I’m not near you, you do not go with anyone else unless I say so.”

  “I’m supposed to be safe at IDSD, certainly in the war room.”

  “You are. But at this point, I don’t want to err by guessing wrong how far Elijahn would go, Lara. I don’t know if he would be able to get someone in, or if he’s got some contingency suicide thing going and would try to attack IDSD after all. He already got to a security agent, remember? Despite all we think we know, this guy is smart. Which is why I’ll leave agents here too, as a diversion, as if you’re still here.” He was already planning this in his head. “Right. I need to set this up.”

  Lara remained standing where she was, watched him walk away, take out his phone, start making the necessary calls. After a while, she went upstairs to change.

  Donovan put his jacket on. “Lara,” he called out, standing at the bottom of the staircase. She came out of the bedroom and descended the stairs toward him. “Frank called. They’ve set everything in motion. We’re ready to go, so it’s y
our call.”

  She came to a stop two steps above him. She looked at ease in slim-fit blue jeans and black boots, and a black top. She held a black blazer in her right hand.

  “You managed with the shirt.” He smiled.

  “That painkiller you got into me helped.”

  So she guessed. He shrugged.

  “I mean the second one. Not with the soup. With the coffee, just before the videoconference.”

  So she knew about both of them. He passed his hand through his hair, cleared his throat. “Yes, well, you should still be careful. The meds are masking the pain, but those bruised ribs of yours still need to heal. Quite a lot of you needs to heal, as a matter of fact.”

  “After we get him.”

  He sighed. “Are you always that stubborn?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  He laughed. “You ready?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t have . . . my IDSD ID was in the car.”

  Everything had been there. Her phone, too, and her briefcase. Everything but the secure laptop she had left in her office, not wanting to risk Elijahn getting it.

  “I’ve got everything covered. Don’t worry about it.” He reached out his hand.

  She hesitated for only a short moment before she took it and descended the rest of the stairs.

  Instead of going outside, they went directly into the garage where Donovan’s USFID car now stood. When Lara faltered at the entrance, half expecting her car to be there and getting hit all over again by why it wasn’t, he said, “I know. But I didn’t want you in plain sight. And the windows are tinted, so no one can be sure you’re in the car if you get in here.”

  “It’s okay, it was just . . . a moment there.” She walked to the car resolutely, determined not to let memories stop her.

  When the garage door opened to the darkness outside, the two agents before it moved aside, looking around them. They remained where they were, but as Donovan drove down the street two cars slid into place before and after them.

  Lara saw the car before them, then turned and looked behind them. “This is crazy. As if having a protective detail isn’t enough, there are now more agents than before. How many are there?”