To Catch a Rat

by S J Grey

  “You wanted Caleb. Not me. All this was so you could get to Caleb. Why?” Why did you break my heart? She managed to hold that back.

  “I can’t tell you that. Not yet.”

  She breathed in his fragrance—the scent that was so uniquely Mark, or whatever-the-fuck his name was. “Answer me honestly. Are you going to hurt him? Lock him up again?”

  “No and no.”

  “I’m not going to ask if you’ve done this before, because I know you have. You are so good at lying and becoming what I need, that this isn’t new to you.” All the signs were there, but she’d ignored them. She’d taken his word over all the evidence to the contrary. The research Si did at work with his data matching. The Round the Bays photo. And when she told the police that Mark’s identity was probably fake, she expected him to be arrested. “Does DS Miller know who you work for? Are the police in on this too?”

  “Miller knows now. He didn’t at first. Not until my brilliant girlfriend put the pieces together and discovered the truth.”

  “Don’t call me that, either.”

  “What? Brilliant?”

  “No. Your girlfriend, as if you didn’t know.”

  “Em, I want—”

  Whatever it was that he wanted, the sharp knock on the bathroom door took priority. “It’s Lin,” called a voice. “Emma’s phone is ringing. We need you in here.”

  Emma was confused when she returned to the office and found her burner phone connected to a complicated piece of equipment—some kind of recording device with headphones and microphones hanging off it.

  “Sit here,” said Mark, tugging out a chair at the table for her. He sat too, and then handed her a set of headphones. “Don’t say anything, unless we ask you to.”

  She nodded.

  Maxine pressed a button on the console. “Hello?” She sounded frightened and not too unlike Emma.

  “Have you found him yet?” It was the same icily perfect English voice as before.

  Mark covered Emma’s hand with his own. A reminder to stay silent? She kept her lips zipped.

  “Yes,” said Maxine. “He’s with me now.”

  Maxine nodded to Caleb, and he joined the conversation. “What do you want from me?”

  “Mr. Rush. We speak at last. I’d like to talk about Ekho.”

  Caleb’s dark web tool. He told Emma everyone wanted it, but this was a whole new level of wanting.

  “Yeah… no. It’s been lost. Stolen, more like. Didn’t you take it?”

  “If I had it, I would not be asking you about it. Rather careless of you, to lose a tool with such power. Would you like to reconsider your answer?”

  “I don’t have it.” Caleb emphasised the words. “For all I know, the police took it when they searched my house.”

  “Perhaps I should ask Emma Blackthorne what she did with it.”

  Caleb met her gaze. “Why Emma?”

  “We saw her take something from the safe in your room. We think she gave it back to you.”

  Jesus Christ. They were the ones watching her take it out of Caleb’s safe. Perspiration gathered on Emma’s forehead, and her palms were clammy. Let them go, she wanted to shout. Her parents had nothing to do with this. She had dragged them into this mess.

  “That wasn’t the source code,” said Caleb. “I don’t have it. I can’t give it to you.” Stress lined his voice.

  There was a pause, and then the kidnapper sighed. “Very well. You can rewrite it instead.”

  Caleb snorted. “Do you know how long it took to develop? Months. Best part of a year.”

  Emma died a little inside. Did that mean they were going to keep her mum and dad until he rewrote the programme? She gazed at Caleb. He looked pretty freaked out by the idea too. God. She couldn’t cope with that. She just couldn’t. They had to do something. Maybe he could fudge the coding, to make it look good?

  “So, we compromise,” said the cold voice. “We take you, and you can rewrite Ekho under our supervision. When it works to our satisfaction, we will let you go.”

  “You let the Blackthornes go free, in exchange for me,” said Caleb.

  “Yes. We will, of course, continue to watch Miss Blackthorne and her family. If you fail to deliver, they will pay for your inefficiency.”

  Wait. What? Emma darted her gaze between Caleb and Mark. Was she hearing this correctly? The bastards were watching her?

  “Deal,” said Caleb. “How do we make this work?”

  “Where are you now, Mr. Rush?”

  “Paraparaumu.”

  “Miss Blackthorne, if you want to see your parents again, you will deliver Mr. Rush to me. Drive north to Otaki. Stop at the halfway point of the bridge over the river and let him out there. What kind of car will you be driving?”

  Mark scribbled on a notepad in front of him and showed it to Maxine.

  “A silver Ford Falcon,” she said. “I need time to get there.”

  “You have thirty minutes. Just you, Ms. Blackthorne, with Caleb Rush. If anyone accompanies you, your parents will die. Do you understand?”

  “I can’t drive,” said Maxine. “I hurt my wrist. I need to get someone to drive us there.”

  “No. Either you come or you send someone else in your place. The clock starts now. Thirty minutes.”

  The line went dead.

  “Shit.” Maxine tugged off her headphones and sat back in her seat. “Great negotiation skills—not. I let him drive the conversation. God damn.”

  Caleb’s face was pale. “Anyone think that was too easy? I hand myself over, and they let Sandra and Geoff go free?”

  “I don’t trust them in the slightest,” said Mark, “but this is our only option for the moment. And what the fuck is an Ekho?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Caleb sighed. “Ekho is another programme I wrote. They want me for that, while you want me to fix a different piece of code. I can’t begin to tell you how fucked off I am that everyone wants a piece of me and there’s jack all I can do about it.”

  Emma looked at the others sitting around the table. “So we just… What? Drop Caleb at the bridge, and that’s it? I thought it’d be a swap. We’ve no guarantee about anything. What if they’re bluffing?”

  “What if they’re not?” Caleb asked. “I was going to spend the next three years in jail. I may as well work for whoever they are for a year.”

  “Do you think they’ll really watch me?” Emma’s voice rose as she spoke. “Can they do that?”

  “They watched Joss for years. I’d say that’s a big yes.” Caleb crossed his arms. “It’s enough of a risk for me to believe them. They killed my sister. I can’t stomach anything more happening to you and your parents.” He glanced at his watch. “Who gets to drive me to Otaki?”

  “No,” said Emma. “We can’t do this.”

  “We have no choice.” Caleb was firm.

  “It’s not quite so cut and dried.” Mark broke into the tension. “Yes, we need to deliver you, but we can increase the odds of finding you again after they’ve dropped off Geoff and Sandra.”

  “How?” Caleb injected a wealth of scathing into the word. “These guys are down with all the tech toys. If you fit me with a wire or a GPS, they’ll find it.”

  “We’ve got something new,” said Jonathan. “A prototype we’ve been running trials on. You swallow it, and it transmits for up to seventy-two hours.”

  “Won’t it show up if they sweep me?”

  “No.” Jonathan twisted his lips. “It shouldn’t. We’ve tested it against most detectors, but there’s always an element of the unknown with new tech.”

  “It’s the best chance we have,” said Mark. “Will you take it?”

  There was a flurry of activity, and then Jonathan held out a tiny pill, no longer than a grain of rice, while someone else offered a glass of water.

  Caleb eyed the tiny device. “Seventy-two hours inside me?”

  “Unless you get the shits and it comes out sooner.” Jonathan pulled a face. “Sorry.
Sense of humour failure.”

  “If it works, you’ve got three days to find me, right?”

  “Yes.” Jonathan was hesitant.

  Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like there should be a but on the end of that.”

  “It’s a prototype,” said Mark. “Although it’s supposed to be fine for long distance, we’ve only tested it so far over a few hundred kilometres.”

  “Whoopee. Let’s hope they don’t throw me in a container and ship me back to Russia or wherever the fuck they come from.”

  “We’ll find you. This isn’t our only lead.”

  Emma wanted to believe him. “Find Caleb and take down Joss’s murderer at the same time. You make it sound straightforward.”

  “I wish it was. But I promise you, we’ll do everything we can.”

  “Okay,” said Caleb. “Here goes nothing.” He gulped down the device, swallowed, and grimaced. “Let’s get this show on the road. Who’s my driver?”

  “Me,” said Mark. “And we won’t be alone. Jonathan, Devin, and Maxine, I want you out there in separate cars with dashcams running. Jonathan, you go now, so you can turn around in Otaki and take up a position on the far side of the bridge. Devin and Maxine, trail behind me, leaving plenty of gaps. Lin, get as many agents as you can in the area, all with eyes on the bridge.”

  “In the meantime”—Mark looked at Caleb—“if I give you access to the network, how quickly can you open your backdoor? If you even can. We have a few minutes at best.”

  “You’re going to trust me this time?”

  “Don’t make me regret it.” Mark glanced at one of his team. “Frederic. Is the emergency network still down?”

  Frederic nodded. “Yes.”

  “Give me a connection,” said Caleb. “I can work quickly.”

  “Sit here.” Frederic pulled out a chair. “What do you need?”

  “I need to telnet to port four-three-two-one on the server. There’s a shell script built into my programme, and it’s waiting for a command from me. You realise that, if this works, it means the story you’ve been fed is bullshit. My programme hasn’t been re-engineered at all.”

  Mark shrugged. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  Emma was glad Mark’s team seemed to understand what Caleb was saying. It meant nothing to her.

  Frederic was busy typing a string of commands, and glancing between Caleb and the monitor. “I’m trying to re-route,” he said. “The main connection is down. I don’t know if I can get access.”

  “Try.” Mark’s voice was like steel. “This might be our only go at shutting this cyber-attack down.”

  “Write down the instructions for me,” said Frederic. “I’ll keep trying after you leave.”

  Caleb dug his fingers into his hair. “It’s not that easy, man. You don’t know how I structure the lines of code. Without that, it’d be as useful as me, talking to you in pigeon Greek with a bit of Latin thrown in.”

  The already high tension levels in the room were going stratospheric.

  “What about Si Finch? He used to work for you,” said Emma. “Would he be able to do this?”

  All eyes were on Caleb. He gave a short nod. “He might. It’s worth a try. Let me have a console or a tablet, and I’ll type out the instructions and the details of the shell script.”

  While Caleb typed at speed onto a tablet, Mark came to Emma’s side. “Stay here until we have news,” he said. “I don’t want you anywhere near the drop site. Okay?”

  She nodded. “Should I contact Si? It would give me something to do.”

  “No, love. I don’t want you connected to this in any way. I’ll get the Wellington people to pick him up. Thanks, though.”

  Her gaze was locked onto Caleb. If this ended badly, it might be the last time she’d ever see him.

  Caleb pushed his chair back and stood. “That’s all I can do from memory. Good luck with it.”

  On shaky legs, Emma scrambled out of her seat to Caleb’s side and threw her arms around him. “Make sure you come home again. Okay?”

  He squeezed her, but she knew he couldn’t stay any longer, and when he pulled free, she let him go.

  Mark caught her hand as he walked past. “I’ll update you as soon as anything happens.”

  “Thank you.”

  The office, previously bursting at the seams, emptied rapidly, leaving Emma with Lin and four guys. Stay here, Mark said, but what was she supposed to do with herself for the next hour or three?

  She turned to Lin. “Is there anything I can help with? I can’t just sit here.”

  “Not really,” said the woman. She softened the words with a sympathetic smile. “We’re all busy, monitoring comms, and you’d only be in the way.

  Emma curled up in a chair in the corner of what appeared to be Mark’s office. She deduced that from the way he seemed to be in charge of this operation. It was little more than an educated guess, as there were no identifying features that gave any clues. No cute photos in frames on his desk. No familiar mug. The office was empty. Sterile. And yet, if he was to be believed, he’d used this as his main work location for the past year. How was that possible, without leaving anything of him behind?

  On an impulse, she peeked in the little waste-paper basket under his desk, but that was empty too. No gum wrappers. Either they had a supremely efficient cleaning service, or Mark—or whatever his name really was—was careful about leaving no traces behind.

  The reality of the phone call was sinking in now. Those bastards would be watching Emma until they were satisfied Caleb had delivered his Ekho programme. Were they watching her now? Were they busy planting cameras in her house, the same as they did with Joss? Emma couldn’t live like that. She had to believe that Mark and his team would find the kidnappers—the killers—and stop them. As soon as Mum and Dad came home safely, maybe they’d get the police involved too, but not if it put Caleb and her parents in more danger.

  She gazed out of the window at the quiet courtyard below, but she didn’t see any of it.

  “Emma.” It was Lin. “We’ve got dashcam footage from the teams near the bridge. Do you want to come watch?”

  Try keeping her away. She followed Lin to a wide desk with no less than eight screens on it. One appeared to be monitoring security camera footage of the courtyard outside, the stairwell, and the different rooms on this floor, cycling through the images. It didn’t include the bathroom, thank goodness. Five others showed dashcam feeds, while the remaining two screens held data and code.

  Lin handed her a headset, like the one she wore. “We have radio comms with each car.”

  Each screen had a piece of tape stuck to the bottom, with a name scrawled across it. Mark. Jonathan. Devin. Maxine. TJ. Luke.

  Jonathan and TJ were stationery and facing in a different direction to the others. They appeared to be parked on the far side of the familiar bridge, cameras pointing directly at it. Traffic flowed over the river without any disruption. Emma looked at Mark’s screen. The bridge was in his sights, and he appeared to be slowing down.

  “TJ has him,” murmured Lin, and she pointed to where Mark’s car now appeared on a camera, Caleb clearly visible in the passenger seat. “Frederic is tracking his GPS signal. It’s working perfectly at the moment.”

  The instructions were for Caleb to be dropped in the middle of the bridge, and looking at the images, Emma realised how difficult that would be. The bridge was long, almost three hundred metres across the Otaki River, and there were two lanes of traffic, one in each direction, with only a narrow strip of pavement on each side. Just enough for a pedestrian to walk. Not enough for a car to stop, without blocking the traffic behind them. Mark would have to move away immediately after letting Caleb out.

  Where were the kidnappers? Emma scanned each monitor in turn. There were no motorbikes idling at the side of the road or ominous-looking vans waiting. If they were in a car, they had to also be in the flow of traffic, which meant Mark and the others would get a good look
at them, if not in person, then via the dashcams.

  “Slowing down for the drop,” said Mark, his voice slightly crackly over the radio. “There’s more traffic than I expected. I’m going to piss some drivers off. Do we have visual from the other side?”

  Voices chimed in, confirming locations. On the screens, the impact of Mark’s slowing to a stop filtered back through the traffic, brake lights blossoming on the monitors.

  “Where are they?” Lin spoke under her breath. “Come on. Show yourselves.”

  Emma leaned closer to Mark’s screen. The weather had finally cleared up, and the sun beat down on the road. Surely the kidnappers knew they’d be followed when they picked up Caleb? Or was it a trap? Were they just waiting to see if anyone made chase, before making a decision about her parents?

  Her pulse accelerated. “They won’t be obvious about following the kidnappers, will they?”

  Lin glanced at her. “They’ll be discreet. Don’t worry. We do this all the time.”

  It didn’t do anything to comfort her.

  “Releasing in three—two—one.” Mark’s car stopped as he spoke, and then lurched forward again. A faint clunk sounded over the radio. The door closing behind Caleb? “There’s nobody else on the bridge,” he reported. “I’ll turn around at the first junction. Make sure we have eyes on the package. It goes nowhere without us seeing it.”

  Devin was next to get there, the traffic still crawling from the knock-on effect of Mark’s stopping, albeit briefly. Caleb stood on the pavement, back against the bridge, watching the cars go by.

  “No movement,” said Devin.

  “Jonathan, can you move forward?” Lin asked. “We can’t quite see him.”

  “Affirmative.” Jonathan eased into a different position. “Better?”

  “Yes. Stay there.”

  They waited. Traffic flowed. Caleb, visible through two stationary dashcams stood still, arms folded. Waiting.

  The tension was going to kill Emma. She daren’t take her eyes off the screens.

  “Turning around now,” announced Mark.