Operation Blackout

by J. L. Middleton

  The conversation had regrettably drained the last of her reserves, and she’d crumpled to the ground, folding her legs beneath her once she’d placed the NDA safely in her purse. “What’s wrong?” her husband had asked as he’d crouched on the dried grass beside her in concern, rubbing her back reassuringly.

  Her duty completed, her thoughts were free to turn dark again as she remembered another endless night during which she’d searched for her lost child, Shaun. Cassie might not have been her biological daughter, and she’d been a poor fit for the hole that had been left by Charlene’s son, but she’d nevertheless developed affection for the child in the short time that she’d been in their care, and her mind drifted back to the ditch where they’d found Shaun’s body. She was terrified that the same fate had befallen the girl. Cassie had been abducted—the violence at the scene had left no doubt about that—and Charlene worried about her safety. Would Cassie return to her in one piece, or had that morning’s breakfast been the last time she would see her? Like Shaun, she’d taken Cassie’s ongoing presence for granted.

  Then there was the matter of her queer biology. Cassie had only been placed in their home because she was an Other and Orion Starr had believed that the Vickers were good parental candidates. When she’d become Cassie’s foster mother, she’d acquired the additional duty of monitoring an Other. She’d received additional training centering on the control procedures for Others and how to disable them, and while she had not enjoyed the experience, it had instilled in her the importance of the mission. The BSI manifesto dictated that Others were to be kept under strict control or euthanized, and Charlene feared that this incident would reflect poorly on Cassie. If fortune smiled on the siblings, Cassie would only be transferred to Plum Island, where she would be closely monitored, but it was the alternative that weighed heavily on Charlene’s mind. The BSI did not believe in gray areas, and Cassie had escaped their authoritarian control, however brief or unintentional the action might have been.

  “I don’t want Cassie to come back,” she admitted suddenly, surprising even herself. Timothy’s brow furrowed, and he strained to keep his expression neutral in an attempt to conceal his deepening concern; perhaps he thought she’d lapsed into shock and was expressing it in an outlandish fashion. “I’m afraid if she comes back, something bad will happen to her,” she explained, wondering if she should clarify her meaning by revealing the BSI’s euthanasia policy, but she instead paused when a worse thought occurred to her. “But if she doesn’t come back, then something bad has already happened to her.”

  The burden she carried suddenly became a crushing weight, and she bowed her head against its might. Shaun had been only eighteen—he would have turned twenty-two this year—and Cassie was even younger. She remembered the Jaws of Life tearing apart the shell of his Ford Escort and paramedics rushing in to treat her son before they’d determined that his broken body had been too far gone. She remembered the panic she’d felt all the way to the emergency room as it had risen to consume her future, as well as the numbness that had descended when he’d been pronounced dead. Despite a significantly weaker bond between herself and Cassie, she knew that she’d be no more able to bear the burden again; her mind would break.

  Timothy held his composure, holding her through the sobbing and wiping her tears away, and this was why she loved him; he’d been her rock after Shaun’s death. However, in this moment, he failed to find comforting words and instead focused on solving the problem. “It’s starting to look like a kidnapping,” he said, his voice solid and earnest. “A neighbor saw a strange car departing Eden Avenue around the time of the murders. It matches the description of a suspicious car that had been seen hanging around the high school.” Hindsight undoubtedly told him that the vehicle sighting should have been better investigated when it had been originally reported, but he hid his anger and frustration well. “The license plate on that vehicle had been reported stolen, so it was a dead end.”

  He became quiet, holding his breath, and Charlene pulled away from his embrace to look at him. His brow was furrowed, mirroring the frown on his face, and he looked exhausted. He shook his head, adding dolefully, “These guys staked out our house, figured out Cassie’s schedule, and followed her to Felix’s. They must have realized no one would be home at the Buchanan’s and figured it would be a good opportunity to ambush her.”

  She sat up, her heart in her throat. Despite being concerned for her foster daughter’s safety, she also suddenly felt violated and wondered what the perpetrators had seen, when they had been near the house, and whether she’d seen them and had failed to take note. “So what do we do?” she asked, ill at ease.

  Casually, Timothy continued to stroke her back, and he gently restored some of her calm with his touch. “We wait for the kidnappers to make contact,” he answered confidently. Disapprovingly, he added, “Your friends are trying to make a good case as to why the FBI can’t take over, and I have to say I disagree. They’re the experts in this sort of thing, and it’ll only help us get her back quicker.” He shook his head and sighed, looking at the darkness around them. Several individuals were still using flashlights to search the wide yards between trailer homes, but their numbers had dwindled, and Parker and Foster had joined the cluster of people at the Buchanan place to make their petition.

  “In the meantime, we’ll continue looking for clues and see if we can figure out who these people are,” Timothy finished, sounding startlingly optimistic.

  Charlene couldn’t quite yet buy into his positivity. “What if they don’t ask for a ransom?” she asked, thinking of all the things that went wrong in the movies. If the police were notified or got too close, the victim suffered, losing their limbs or even their life. Sometimes the abductee was being forced into slavery or a murder dungeon as part of a larger operation. At other times, even the abduction itself went wrong, and the victim was accidentally killed during transportation. In real life, things were more likely to go wrong, and with the innumerable unsolved cases around the world, she was afraid that tonight might be the end of the road for Cassie and that there would be no closure for her.

  “They will,” he replied with certainty.

  “But what if they don’t?” she insisted. “Cassie would put up a struggle, but you said she didn’t. What if something went wrong? We’d never hear from her again!” The knot in her stomach tightened, and she was thankful that she was already seated or her legs might have failed her.

  Timothy was silent, looking into the distance rather than meeting her gaze, and after a moment, he stretched an encouraging smile across his face. There wasn’t much he could say to reassure her, so he pulled her closer and whispered soothingly into her ear. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her,” he promised and kissed her head.

  - - -

  Regardless of his personal feelings on the subject, Connor had an obligation to catch up to his partner, who had displayed surprising strength that had heretofore been unrealized in the younger man. Orion refused to yield to Connor’s normal tactics of irksome behavior, and despite having to fall back on supercilious browbeating, Connor was the one who eventually surrendered and reluctantly accompanied the younger man to his rendezvous.

  The address directed the pair to a string of warehouses near the docks, and the taxi driver wouldn’t venture further into the district, instead dropping them at the avenue entrance and forcing them to proceed on foot. There were a handful of dingy streetlamps, faintly illuminating the warehouse numbers as they counted down to their destination, and Orion insisted that Connor wait a few buildings up the street so that he would not be seen. The distance was too great for Connor’s comfort, as he could barely see in the dull, dingy amber light provided by the scant lamps. But Orion was immovable, and Connor watched from the shadows as the younger man continued alone.

  Connor doubted he could even hit a target at this distance, given his limited training. He p
ressed himself hard into the metal siding and, realizing his form would nevertheless remain conspicuous, slid around the corner so its cover would provide both concealment and protection. He hadn’t seen or heard anyone since the cabbie had left, but he knew that at least one person must be lurking in the area to meet Orion, and he drew his firearm as a precautionary measure.

  The combination of sights, sounds, and smells sometimes made it difficult to differentiate anything in New York, but Connor felt a creeping sensation that an intruder was in the immediate area. As the hairs on the back of his neck raised, he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and spun around immediately. His attacker caught his wrist, impeding the proper deployment of his weapon, and pulled him deeper into the darkness between the two buildings. Connor reluctantly relinquished his gun as his arm was repeatedly beaten against the wall and pressure was properly applied to his grip. He pushed back, lashing out blindly in the hopes that pure adrenaline would be his ally, but it let him down instead. His attacker shoved his knee into his abdomen with enough force to make him double over in pain and finished the assault by clubbing the back of his head with his fists. Connor saw stars and defeated, he recovered breathlessly on the ground as another man claimed his firearm.

  The lanky man clucked his tongue, detaching the weapon from the useless leash, and chuckled. “Didn’t do you much good, did it?”

  - - -

  “I told you that would happen,” Parker said as they exited the Buchanan trailer. Barton waited at the bottom of the stairs for him to join her, and they walked down the short lot that served both as a driveway and a parking space. There was a thinning group of searchers lingering near the north corner of the mobile home. Barton hoped these people were only stragglers and that the main body was still out conducting its hunt for the Starr girl. She made a mental note to speak to Timothy Vicker about them. She remembered a statistic from when she’d still been on the force—that the first forty-eight hours were crucial to solving a crime and that every hour thereafter diminished their chances of success—and she deemed time an especially important factor in this case, so no one should have called off the search yet. Cassiopeia Starr’s disappearance wasn’t an ambiguous question; a crime had occurred, though time would tell whether she’d been a victim or a collaborator.

  They’d already uncovered two clues in the short period following the discovery of the crime scene. The first had been the partial imprint of a man’s dress shoe found in the tacky mud next to the stairs, and it had been used to estimate the general weight and height of its owner. It had already been determined that the footprint did not belong to Mr. Buchanan, and its size eliminated Cassie’s brother as a suspect, though it did not absolve him of being involved just yet. Forensics were already working on determining more about the shoe itself, including the manufacturer and where else the owner might have traveled.

  The second lead had been provided by a neighbor in the form of a probable getaway car. The description had sounded familiar, reminding the two agents of a suspicious vehicle they’d seen when following the subject during her daily rounds. Its driver had been a lanky man with slicked hair and a sleazy grin, and at the time, they’d reported him to the local authorities because they’d seen him take pictures of the student body using a zoom lens. In retrospect, Barton wished that she’d paid closer attention to him; perhaps they could have prevented the kidnapping. He was too lean to have been the man who’d left behind the footprint; nevertheless, an all-points bulletin had been placed on him, as it was possible that he was an accomplice or a person of interest.

  “The FBI has clear jurisdiction in the event of a kidnapping,” Parker continued to lecture her. They’d reached the end of the short driveway, which was blocked by police cars and equipment, as well as a grieving Mr. Buchanan and his extended family. Parker appeared uncertain where to head and turned toward the street, trying to isolate their conversation from casual eavesdropping. “Unless you wanted to bring up terrorism charges, we didn’t have a chance of taking the case from them.”

  “Maybe we should,” Barton replied grimly, letting the insinuation hang sinisterly for a moment. She watched Mr. Buchanan embrace his mother while his teary-eyed sister looked on; her husband hung back, possibly unsure how to comfort his wife and in-laws. “VSION previously went after the girl,” she reminded him, establishing precedence of terrorism.

  “You don’t believe they were involved this time,” Parker replied soberly, calling her bluff.

  “Maybe not, but it’ll give us jurisdiction,” she said, glancing toward the temporary incident command post that the police had set up and the FBI had taken over. The trailer’s phone line had been redirected to the tent because the mobile home was an active crime scene, and a negotiator waited tensely for a call, but no one had made contact yet. “Maybe I’m changing my mind.” It was an idle threat—one that had been made to alleviate the helplessness she felt—to seize jurisdiction under false pretenses because Parker would never allow it, but available evidence made the list of probable perpetrators exceedingly short. The Vickers had no known enemies, so the subject’s kidnapping had nothing to do with them. The alternative was that her alias had not been as well constructed as previously believed, and this left two possibilities: VSION or the Starrs. While the Starr couple’s crimes had been horrendous, most of their victims had remained unidentified, and it was unlikely that anyone would target Cassiopeia Starr for retribution, especially since her adult brother lived openly under his legal name. It was far more likely that VSION was the culprit, even if Barton didn’t believe that they were behind the abduction.

  “You bring terrorism into this case, and it’ll accelerate out of our control,” Parker warned her; they were the same age, but his stern tone reminded her of her drill-sergeant father. “You heard the chief: We need to keep this contained.”

  She sighed heavily, hearing his words and then absorbing them, as she remembered their conference call. She was angry and would remain this way; they’d lost good agents tonight, and someone would pay. “We’ll keep it contained, but I’m not going to just stand here,” she promised, retrieving her gun from its holster and giving it a function check. Although she wasn’t planning on starting a conflict, she hoped that one of their leads would pan out soon or that she’d find an Other to confront.

  - - -

  The stench of the dim warehouse was repulsive, overpowering the ordinary briny ammonia stink of the docks, and Connor detected a strange scent of rancid meat among the intermingling odors as Orion and his escorts herded them into the center of the building, where a small group of people waited. The ache in Connor’s head already required a fraction of his attention, as did the several new bruises that were blossoming across his body, but they were washed away by a sudden wave of vertigo. His dizzying headache grew, slowly consuming his sight and concentration, and he couldn’t help but massage his complaining temples. However, as he sought relief behind closed eyes, he was instead revisited by his unwelcome vision, and he realized, to his great dismay and incomprehension, that this well-dressed criminal boss, who had them at his mercy, had also been the pitiless blond murderer he’d inexplicably imagined.

  Between complications from his physical state and mental shock, Connor lost his balance and fell flat on his face. The lanky man who’d disabled him snickered before picking him up off the cement, which also left its mark, and held him steady.

  When Connor’s sight and faculties had fully returned, he reexamined the manicured blond. He did not recall the man from his hallucination in any great detail, only the impression of the Starr family resemblance. He, therefore, could not accurately compare their features, but this man bore the same similitude. In addition to Connor’s rising confusion stemming from an inexplicably accurate hallucination, his equilibrium was further disrupted by an invisible tug toward the man, except that the flavor of his metaphysical gravity also broadc
asted a danger resembling the insidious ergosphere of a black hole.

  Jack granted him a wide, charming smile. “Ah, so the bloodhound has shown some loyalty after all,” he observed, stirring up disturbing thoughts that had been deep within Connor’s mind; there was an insight he was failing to comprehend, and he conceded hazily that he might be rejecting whatever it was. However, he did not linger long on the sensation, allowing the handsome stranger to keep his attention. “Fascinating,” he continued in a tone that held traces of both amusement and patronization.

  He gestured behind him to where a small table had been set with several courses. A single man stood to the side; attired similarly to his boss and guests, he was dressed in a suit, although his was not custom-fitted and appeared to have been inadequately maintained. He had a serviette draped over his arm, much like the waiters in fancy restaurants, and the combination of the pattern and condition of his ensemble and his unenthusiastic expression made the unfortunate man appear to be an unwilling choice of servant.