Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5)

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “Dammit,” Sanders said.

  He closed his laptop and stared out at the early winter dusting painting the environs of the nation’s capital in a lovely, cleansing white. Like the darkness, the temporary skim of snow could conceal all manner of faults and vices. It could distract from the realities which lay just beneath it.

  It’s a beast…

  Ezekiel Sanders had come to believe that about the government he served, and which he worked against at times. Mr. Pritchard had always believed that the bureaucracy could, at its essence, be ultimately tamed. But he came from a generation of cold warriors who had fixated on external threats. Danger existed there still, but it also manifested itself within, in this day and age.

  There was too much power in one place, Sanders had come to believe, having existed among it for more than two decades. His worries and fears toward such a behemoth of political might would end soon. All his worries would.

  This one, though, he had to deal with before that time came to pass. He had to save Simon Lynch before the beast, or others, cut his brilliance, and his life, short.

  * * *

  ‘Twenty years ago, I handed Simon Lynch over to an intelligence group that existed within the government because I believed they would protect him. They didn’t.’

  That was the very first line of the memo that Art Jefferson had written. The first thought he wanted to express. A thought that did two things in Emily’s eyes—confirm the tale which Sanders had told her, and brand his group as unworthy of her trust.

  She read on, perusing the copy of the memo which had been archived as it was passed up the chain of command in the Bureau. It included a litany of accusations against those operating The Ranch, from staff he referred to as technicians all the way to General Vance. He, too, made note of the lax security posture, but in the end, he saved his harshest criticisms for Dr. Warren Michaels.

  ‘Simon Lynch responded with one word when I asked him what he thought of Dr. Michaels: hate.’

  Emily could imagine the man reacting to that characterization. She didn’t know anything about Art Jefferson beyond what others had told her, but in this memo, in his own words, she understood without any doubt what it was that motivated him in his final months and weeks and days on earth—everything he did, everything, was for Simon.

  She closed the memo but stayed logged into the Bureau system, making her way through the electronic data to the report on Jefferson’s suicide. The same photos she’d seen before on the file that Gant had retrieved filled her screen. Jefferson lay there, on his bed, dead by his own hand, the gun he’d used to blow his brains out free from his grip, lying on the floor with an evidence marker next to it.

  You were afraid, Emily thought. But of who?

  She dug through the report, scanning photos, taking note of the alarm control console mounted just inside the bedroom door. From there the system could be armed before going to bed, or disarmed. Another control console was mounted near the front door downstairs, each linked to the other. Reports subpoenaed from the alarm company that served Jefferson’s house showed that the system had been disarmed just prior to his estimated time of death. Investigators believed that he’d done that to facilitate discovery of his body by authorities.

  Bullshit…

  It stank. Everything had the same stench to it. The kind present when someone wanted to wrap up an incident nice and tidy. To lay blame upon another far from those whose decisions set events in motion.

  ‘Special Agent LaGrange allowed the situation to develop beyond her ability to control it…’

  Double bullshit…

  Someone wanted the Jefferson situation buried alongside his corpse. He was dead, so who could argue against conclusions which were being stamped with an authoritative sense of certainty? Label him disturbed and all that he’d done could be explained away and laid at his feet.

  Label you incompetent, Em, rinse and repeat.

  They were ruining Art Jefferson the same way they wanted to ruin her. Not the same people, but the same system. The one that protected itself.

  Jefferson knew that Simon was in danger, she believed. He had to. Maybe he had the same information that Sanders had shared. Or maybe it was just indicators he was picking up in the wind. A man like Jefferson had a long history of contacts in law enforcement and intelligence. Information could have trickled to him.

  Or, he could have just been following his gut.

  In either case, if he believed that Simon was in danger, from both inside the apparatus supposed to protect him, and from external forces seeking to harness his incalculably brilliant mind, Art Jefferson would have done the only thing he could have. The same thing he had done before.

  “Son of a bitch,” Emily said quietly, piece after piece tumbling into place now as her understanding of the man she’d replaced grew by leaps and bounds. “You were going to take him.”

  The missing cash. The food supplies. Jefferson was setting himself up to be as off grid as possible to keep Simon Lynch safe somewhere. Which meant one thing—either Jefferson had figured out the location of The Ranch, or he was close to doing so.

  If that was true, it meant that Jefferson was a valuable target to anyone who wanted to get their hands on Simon. And he knew that.

  “Jesus,” she said aloud, scanning the few nearby passengers to see if her quiet outburst had been heard. It hadn’t.

  That deified expression of shock signaled almost too much for her to immediately process. So much of what Jefferson had done had seemed linked to a mental state believed to have been tenuous, at best. But, she now knew, the man’s mind had been as sharp as it had ever been. As clever. As determined.

  She turned her attention back to the suicide report, coming to her own conclusions now. Art Jefferson might have killed himself, but not for the reasons in the report. If he was afraid of something, or someone, as Gant had suggested, it had to be because he feared for Simon’s safety. She believed that with her every fiber of her being.

  You didn’t turn the alarm off…

  If phones could be hacked as easily as hers had been, then how difficult was it to compromise a ten-year-old alarm system?

  They were coming for you. To get to him.

  “Simon,” Emily said quietly.

  She eased back against the seat’s hard surface, absorbing all that she’d learned, or come to believe. Some of it was supposition. Guesses, even. But each possibility she was embracing was born of pieces of information that, when taken as a whole, painted a picture she could not ignore. Could not deny.

  Emily LaGrange, at that moment, realized she’d been sent into the lion’s den by people unaware that there were beasts even lurking about.

  Or they do and don’t care…

  The spiel that Sanders had given about dark forces within the government was maybe the most truthful thing he’d shared. All indications were that Art Jefferson believed the very same thing. That was why he was going to take Simon Lynch. The only person he knew for certain he could trust was himself.

  Emily was intimately familiar with that very belief.

  She needed to think. Art Jefferson might feel himself capable of somehow snatching Simon, but she didn’t harbor the same confidence. He’d made his decision, then was forced to make another. The way forward for her was not yet clear.

  A sudden rush of exhaustion rose. She was drained, mentally and physically. Constant travel and focus on all things related to Simon Lynch had worn her down. What had been sold as an easy assignment had turned out to be anything but that.

  Relax, she told herself. Take it eas—

  She never completed the self-direction. An errant glimpse of something on the screen of her laptop whipped her focus back to the matter at hand.

  It was a note in the coroner’s report appended to the Bureau’s investigation of Jefferson’s suicide. So innocuous that should be unremarkable. But it wasn’t. Not to Emily.

  ‘Five days…’

  That’s how long before he died
that Jefferson first came to Gant for help, according to the old hacker. Only, there was one problem with that.

  ‘Scar on back of left hand. Healed over.’

  The coroner’s report held that notation. And that proved a lie on Kirby Gant’s part.

  ‘Jefferson cut himself good there…’

  Emily didn’t doubt that he had. But a gash like the one which would have been caused by the jagged edge of Gant’s desk would not heal over to a scar in five days.

  “You lied to me, Kirby,” Emily said to herself.

  She closed the laptop and slipped it into her bag, gathering her things and standing. Her flight home would be boarding soon, but, for the second time that week, Emily LaGrange would be making a detour first.

  Twenty One

  Kirby Gant opened his eyes and saw the barrel of Emily’s gun pointed at his face.

  “I don’t appreciate being lied to,” she said.

  He slid his hands clear of the comforter and held them in a surrender position next to his face. It wasn’t a dream he’d been having. The sound of a door opening. And footsteps. It had been her. Breaking in. Coming for him.

  “Jefferson wasn’t just going off grid,” Emily said. “He was going to take Simon with him.”

  “Listen…”

  “You were helping him,” Emily said. She inched the pistol closer to his forehead. “He didn’t come to you a few days before he died. It was months.”

  Gant slid slowly up until he was half sitting against the headboard.

  “Wait…”

  “That cut on his hand was scarred over,” Emily said. “It was noted in the autopsy report. There were no other fresh cuts. And what that tells me, Kirby, is that you lied to me.”

  He puzzled at what she’d just told him.

  “You didn’t see that part of the autopsy when I showed you,” he said.

  She pressed the barrel of her pistol against his forehead now.

  “Agent LaGrange…”

  “You’re not the only one who can get information,” she told him. Then, without prefacing her action, she withdrew her weapon and held it at her side. “I need to know everything, Kirby. Everything.”

  There was no turning her down, Gant knew. And no turning back. There hadn’t been since he’d agreed to help Jefferson. But he’d thought that avenue forward had been cut off. He’d thought, maybe, he could just slip back into the duality he’d managed since being paroled. Gant and Rothchild, reformed hacker and continuing felon.

  Emily LaGrange, it seemed, was going to make his return to that way of life impossible. If it had ever been possible at all.

  “We should take that walk again,” Gant said.

  Emily nodded and holstered her weapon. “My thoughts exactly.”

  * * *

  Gant powered up the systems and took his place at the desk. He reached behind his main display and pulled out a small metal box with a simple toggle switch protruding from it. A series of thin wires snaked from it, seeming to connect the device to every computer and server in the space.

  “What’s that?” Emily asked as she sat.

  “If you haven’t realized it yet, you’re hot,” Gant told her.

  Emily stared at him, long enough that that he realized his statement could be taken quite differently than he’d intended it.

  “No, not like…I mean…no, I just meant that you’re deep enough in this now that eyes are on you. More than just through your phone.” He carefully touched the silvery box, keeping his fingers away from the switch. “Eyes on you mean eyes are on me. This is insurance. I throw this kill switch, and every bit of data in this room goes poof.”

  Gant’s gaze drifted to the shoulder bag she’d carried from his apartment to his lair. It lay against the wall near the door where she’d set it down as they entered.

  “Computer in there?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  His eyes closed briefly as he nodded. “Idiot.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No,” Gant said. “Not you—me. I thought about your phone, but never thought to ask about…never mind. It’s blocked in here. I’ll wipe it when we’re done. You can’t trust anything electronic that I haven’t given you, all right?”

  She considered the odd caring the man was exhibiting, though she suspected there was a healthy dose of self-preservation wrapped within it.

  “Wipe?” Emily asked, doubtful. “Like you can wipe all this?”

  “Precisely,” Gant assured her.

  “Erasing evidence in here still leaves it out there,” Emily reminded him. “You’ve broken into systems. I’ve dug around where I shouldn’t. There are trails. People just aren’t looking now.”

  “You’re right, Agent LaGrange. But keeping you off their digital grid will keep you…safer. And turning this space into a black hole will slow down anyone who comes looking.”

  “For who? You?”

  Gant nodded and smiled wistfully. “And Art.”

  She regarded the genius felon with wonder for a moment, a realization rising that she would not have expected in a million years.

  “You were going to go with him,” Emily said. “On the run. With Simon.”

  He nodded slowly. “All that planning is for shit, now.”

  Emily quieted. The depth of feeling that Jefferson had toward Simon Lynch was becoming more and more clear with every passing moment. That same sense of caring, of protectiveness, had transferred to Kirby Gant, it seemed.

  “He didn’t kill himself because he was crazy,” Emily said.

  “I know.”

  The lack of candor Kirby Gant had used as a shield was pointless now. Regardless of what happened, his life as an ex-felon was soon to end. In days, maybe hours, he’d once again be a felon on the run. With Art there would have been a purpose attached to that. A noble action. Maybe not enough to make up for the pain and destruction he’d wrought when his life was ruled by Rothchild, but it would have been a start.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t straight with you about everything,” Kirby said. “I had to keep the escape plan quiet. With Art gone, it was only a matter of time before I’d have to bug out and bury myself in the hole he dug. Either side could be zeroed in on me as we speak.”

  Emily understood what he was saying, and why he hadn’t spoken of it before.

  “You and Art had a place picked out,” Emily said. “A hideaway.”

  Gant nodded. “Picked out and stocked up. Mostly. Some stuff didn’t get there before…”

  “Before they got to Art,” Emily said. “He killed himself because he was afraid they’d get information from him that would help them get to Simon.”

  For a moment, Gant simply marveled at the agent. “For a plain old Bureau type, you’ve done well.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said, almost smiling. “I think.”

  “They were in the house,” Gant said. “I pulled the alarm registers from the company. It was bypassed on a secondary switch. It also registered a six minute and thirty second power interruption.”

  “A break in,” Emily said. “Cut the alarm and the lights.”

  “Yeah,” Gant confirmed. “Whatever they sent at him, Art knew he couldn’t fight them off. He did the only thing he could to protect Simon.”

  She’d been right in her own read on the situation that Art Jefferson had faced. He’d had to make the most difficult decision of his life. Worse than a ‘shoot or don’t shoot’ scenario that any law enforcement officer might find themselves facing.

  ‘Pull the trigger!’

  Emily closed her eyes briefly, but not so quick that Gant didn’t notice.

  “Agent La Grange…”

  She opened her eyes and looked to him. “It’s nothing.”

  “You’re worried,” he said.

  Emily knew he was misreading her, but that didn’t matter. He need not be pulled into that very specific demon she was facing.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  “Art would say the same thing,�
� Gant told her. “Even when he knew it wasn’t true.”

  Emily thought for a moment, wondering if there were further similarities between her and the agent she’d replaced. One possibility came to mind.

  “I think I was followed,” Emily said. It was more than suspicion, she knew. Sanders had basically confirmed as much, but she didn’t want to bring the stranger into this dynamic developing between her and the old hacker. “When I was flying out to meet Simon.”

  “You probably were,” Gant told her. “Art thought their security was for shit, so he took extra precautions. Everything from before the van ride to the chopper was his. He stopped using their flights, their motels.”

  “He told you,” Emily said, only half surprised. “Everything.”

  “He had to,” Gant confirmed. “It was the only way we could figure out where Simon is.”

  Emily absorbed that, the unspoken revelation validating her own sense of the situation.

  “How long had he been planning to take him?” Emily asked.

  “A while,” Gant replied. He thought for a moment, wondering just how far Emily’s digging had taken her. “Did you know he wrote a memo?”

  “I read it,” Emily said.

  “Pretty damning,” Gant commented. “And nothing happened. I think that’s when he took the leap and decided he had to act.”

  That made sense, Emily thought. But so did something else. A straight up negative.

  “You were never able to find where Simon Lynch is,” she said. “If you had, Jefferson would have made his move.”

  Gant nodded. “The van and the chopper were impossible to track. I couldn’t link one to the other to get a full picture on the flight path. You add the whole hood thing and the uncertain route, and the target is anywhere within five hundred miles of Idaho Falls.”

  “You have no idea?”

  “I thought south of there,” Gant said. “One of Art’s last trips mostly solidified that for me.”

  “How?”

  Gant allowed himself to smile. “Kung Fu.”