“How’s that possible?”
“Parrots talk,” I said. “Doesn’t mean they know what they’re saying. Come on, let’s go.”
Toby Cavanaugh and a group of friends stood in a semicircle in the hallway outside the door, waiting for us. The girl Tess had called Adrienne at lunch the previous day hung on Toby’s arm like a fashion accessory. Two other couples completed the group, the guys tall, athletic, and good-looking like Toby, the girls perfect, unblemished proxies for teen-magazine models.
“Tess, I’ve been looking for you,” Toby said.
Tess jerked her head up. “Toby. Adrienne? Is that you?”
“Yes,” the cheerleader said, nose wrinkling. “It’s me.”
“Thought I smelled you,” Tess said. “What do you want, Toby?”
Toby colored, unsure how to defend Adrienne’s honor. He took the cowardly, and smart, way out—by doing nothing.
“Look, Tess,” he said, “we want you to be straight with us.”
“We?” she said. “Who’s ‘we?’ Are there more of you?”
She turned her head side to side. A couple of them squirmed in discomfort. I knew the feeling; she had the uncanny knack of making people forget she was blind. No one else in the group spoke up.
“A couple of guys from the team,” Toby said finally. “It doesn’t matter. We just want to know—did you set Carl up or not?”
“Set him up? What do you mean?”
“After what happened in the commons yesterday, we just thought—”
“Listen, asshole,” I said, stepping toe to toe with him, “Tess had nothing to do with what happened to Carl. And FYI, neither did I. Carl and his buddies were all primed to thump on me to get the keys to Tess’s car, and I figured it just wasn’t worth it, so I gave them to him. But neither one of us had any idea he’d get killed. You ask me, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we find out he just pissed someone off bad enough to shoot him. You ought to pick your friends better.”
Toby shifted his weight and looked around before answering. “Friend or not, he was a teammate. And nobody deserves that, not even Carl.”
“So what are you saying, Toby?” Tess said. “You’d rather have seen me get shot? Or Oliver? Is that why you’re here?”
“No, I . . . I—we just thought there might be more to the story than what we’ve heard.” Toby fidgeted with his belt buckle. “It just seems strange, doesn’t it? I mean, I know Carl could be a pain, but he wasn’t that stupid. I just can’t believe someone went after him like that.”
Adrienne stroked Toby’s arm and straightened a little, eyeing Tess. “Are you sure you didn’t, like, say something to your uncle about the car? Wasn’t he, like, some spy or something? Maybe he put a hit out on Carl.”
“That’s an even dumber idea than me shooting Carl,” Tess said. “And no, I didn’t tell Uncle Travis. Toby, I can’t believe you would think I had something to do with this.”
“You haven’t exactly been the same old Tess this past year.”
“How would you know? I’d say your attention has been elsewhere.”
“Hey, that’s not fair! You didn’t—”
“No, Toby,” she said, “you’re the one who changed. What do you care, anyway?”
“I just want to see you get out in front of this, whatever it is.”
“He doesn’t want to see you get hurt,” one of the guys said.
Adrienne glanced up at Toby, in shock. “You care about her? You do! Oh, my God, Toby!”
Toby flushed. “It’s not like that, Adrienne. Come on, you know me better than that.”
“I don’t think I know you at all,” Adrienne said, lower lip trembling. “Do you like her?”
“No! I mean, not like that.” He glanced at Tess. “Sorry, Tess.”
“Whatever.” Tess shrugged. “You and Adrienne deserve each other. I hope you’re happy.”
“We are happy!” Adrienne turned and quickly kissed Toby on the cheek.
She could vamp all she wanted, but it wouldn’t make Tess jealous if Tess couldn’t see it.
“Come on, Tess,” I said. “We’re done here. These people aren’t worth your time.”
I took her elbow and shouldered my way through the gauntlet. Toby lifted his shoulder and let it fall. He stepped to one side, looking almost apologetic. He and his friends may have been on the same baseball team as Carl, Tad, and others from the night before, but they gave off a completely different vibe. They didn’t seem the kind to go around bracing people. It made me wonder if someone had put them up to it. I felt Toby’s eyes on my back on the way down the hall.
He called out after us, “We’ll be watching you, Tess.”
CHAPTER 30
Travis wheeled the Range Rover into the reserved parking space on P-1 and got out. The sign affixed to the wall in front of the SUV’s grill made him pause on the way to the elevator. It conveniently read “Barrett,” so he’d never had to change it. But he knew it had marked James Barrett’s spot, not his. Travis had never been prone to bouts of insecurity where James was concerned. James had been brilliant, Travis knew he was merely clever. But Travis had had his own role to play. He’d been the more physical of the two. James had ridden circles around him on a skateboard, but Travis had been faster, stronger—a better athlete in every other sport.
They’d never really competed with each other, partly because of the difference in their ages. But looking at the sign meant for his brother, Travis wondered if he was cut out for the roles he’d assumed now that James was gone: CEO of a major software company, parent of a teenager, civilian. Travis reminded himself that it still wasn’t a competition. James wasn’t around, to begin with, and Travis wasn’t trying to play any of the parts as well as James would have. He was doing things his own way. He always had, even in the army. That’s why he’d been a perfect fit for the SICC unit. His superiors hadn’t cared how the missions had been completed so long as the job got done.
He took an elevator from the garage directly to the sixth floor and walked down the corridor to the executive suite. Robyn Alia, James’s assistant—now his—met him with a big smile outside the door to his office. A petite brunette a few years younger than him, Robyn kept the office running smoothly, organizing his schedule and handling all of his correspondence. She had an innate sense of how to prioritize everything, including blowing off a board meeting to take a simple phone call that might result in billions in new business or prevent the loss of an existing contract. She also had an uncanny knack for reading people as quickly and easily as search engine tags—from their general personality type to their mood on a particular day. Her intelligence analysis had been key to the successful outcome of countless meetings, saving Travis and the company time, money, and embarrassment on many occasions.
“Good morning, Mr. Barrett,” she said as he approached. “How was your trip?”
“How many times have I asked you to call me Travis?” he said. “James may have been ‘Mr. Barrett,’ but I’m just plain Travis. Please, Robyn.”
She flushed. He knew she addressed him formally to ensure there was no question about their relationship. But it seemed old-fashioned to him. The global business environment had become very casual, particularly at companies like MondoHard. Most of the employees had never owned a tie let alone a suit, and the use of first names was a matter of course. The only place he knew of that still insisted on using formal titles was the Wall Street Journal, though he didn’t doubt there must be other places—old-money private clubs, embassies, and Britain’s royal family, maybe—where titles were part of everyday speech.
He realized that he had more selfish reasons for pushing Robyn to use his first name. He wanted their relationship to be something more than boss and employee. He knew almost nothing about her personal life other than what he’d gleaned from her personnel file. She drew an indelible-if-unseen line between the job and her after-hours activities. As much as he’d wanted to suggest lunch or a drink after work, between the demands of the
job and the invisible barrier she’d erected, he’d never summoned the courage. The irony, considering his two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star, brought a wry smile to his lips.
“The trip was not what you’d call a success,” he said. “Latham wants to pull the plug on our DoD contract.”
Robyn’s smile faded. “Sorry to hear it. What can I do?”
“Am I jammed up today?”
“No, actually your day is pretty light.”
Travis glanced at his watch. “What’s left of it. I need to see Williams right away. And could you check on when Cyrus is free this afternoon?”
“I’ll get on it right away.”
“Oh, and Robyn? Sorry I’m late. Some things came up at home. I should have checked in.”
“Problems with Tess again?”
“You might say that.” Travis wished he could tell her everything.
“Nothing to worry about,” she said. “You didn’t miss anything.”
Travis nodded and entered the huge office reserved for the company president. Furnished in glass and stainless steel with ash wood highlights, the room was almost stark in its simplicity. A large, glass-topped desk was centered against a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. A small conference table took up one side of the room. A small sitting area next to a bookcase occupied the other. Travis had altered nothing, but not because of any superstition or maudlin effort to preserve it as a shrine to James. He found it utilitarian, and had collected no personal knickknacks or photos of his own to decorate it with—not that he had any.
That’s what ten years in a war zone would do for you. Until a year ago, the army had been his family. He’d had no permanent address except an APO and an e-mail account he rarely checked. His friends had been the men he’d served with, most of whom had moved on to other assignments, either undercover or in other parts of the world. The transience of his nomadic life had suited him then, but now he felt an unfamiliar restlessness, a desire for some permanence, some stability, a place to put down roots. He shrugged it off and sat at the desk to check his voicemail and return the calls he’d missed while in DC.
Fifteen minutes later, Williams knocked softly and entered without waiting for a response. Tall and gaunt, his long, thin nose under bushy eyebrows gave him the aquiline appearance of a raptor searching for prey.
“You wanted to see me?” he said.
“Where are we on the project?” Travis said.
Williams took a deep breath. “Close.”
“How close? Days? Weeks?”
Williams shrugged. “Can’t say. Every time we think we’ve got this thing figured out, it morphs. It’s the most adaptable worm I’ve ever seen. Attack it, and it builds new defenses. Delete it, and it replicates somewhere else.”
“But you can beat it, right Bill?”
“We think we can learn to live with it. Neutralize it so it doesn’t screw things up. Kind of like a dormant bug. We’ve been testing different ‘inoculations’ to see if we can’t immunize the system against it.”
“We don’t have much time,” Travis said.
“We’re doing everything we can.”
“Better figure out how to do it fast, or we won’t have a project anymore.”
“That bad?”
Travis nodded. “Damn James anyway.”
“You don’t know it was James,” Williams said.
“Who else could it have been?”
“You know as well as I do, Travis, how many people want to see us fail.”
“No one else could create a worm like that. And who else knew the system software well enough? Or had access?”
Williams scratched his head. “Why would he sabotage his own work?”
Travis sighed. “I never knew reasons for half the things my brother did. Just fix it, okay?”
“Of course.”
Williams turned for the door, but Travis stopped him. “Bill, who’s our best coder?”
Williams faced him, brows furrowed. “We’ve got several excellent programmers.”
“I’m not talking about code monkeys. I mean someone who knows it all, someone who sees the big picture.”
“I’d probably say Dave Bradley,” Williams said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Probably the best systems designer we’ve got.”
Travis waved dismissively. “Too cautious. Come on, Bill. There must be someone who at least comes close to James’s level.”
Williams gazed past him at something out the window for a moment. “There is a kid in the gaming division who shows some promise. But I don’t think he’s ready for a project like this.”
“Who is he?”
“Derek Hamblin. But I’m telling you, Travis, he’s not your guy. Not for this.”
“Maybe not, but let me take a look at his file first.”
“It’s your call. Is that all?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Fix this, Bill. We’ve come too far to let the Senate Appropriations subcommittee shut us down.”
“We’ll do our best.”
Travis reached for his keyboard as soon as Williams closed the door and typed a password to access the HR files. He pulled up Hamblin’s information and scanned it, quickly deciding the kid was worth meeting. He closed the file, straightened his desk, and went to see Cyrus.
He found Cooper in his office, a windowless room behind the reception area on the ground floor. To get there, he first walked through a large space filled with closed-circuit television monitors, computer terminals, and radio equipment. Two uniformed security guards routinely scanned the activity on the monitors. One of them nodded to him in passing, his bored expression fleetingly relieved. He turned his attention back to the pixelated screens.
Cooper looked up from his desk when Travis entered, his underslung jaw and permanent scowl giving him the appearance of a bulldog. He was hunched over some paperwork, his powerful, simian arms covering much of the desktop, his thick neck disappearing into broad shoulders. His short, gray hair stuck straight up like the bristles of a stainless-steel brush. Pale blue eyes that looked as if they’d been bleached out like denim jeans bored through Travis as if he was a nervous supplier or dishonest employee.
Cyrus was a brutal man who’d gone from high school nose tackle straight into the Marines. Travis knew Cooper had seen action as a grunt in Grenada and later in Desert Storm, the first war in Iraq, before resigning his commission in the early nineties as a second lieutenant. From there he’d gone to Bosnia and fought as a mercenary before getting into the security business. Travis also knew there’d been rumors Cooper had illegally profited from the Iraq war, but he’d never been proved of wrongdoing. He was good at what he did, but Travis had never been sure of how far his boundaries extended.
Cyrus grunted. “You’re back. Thought you’d be in yesterday.”
“Got in yesterday afternoon, but some things came up at home,” Travis said. “You may want to tighten things up here.”
“They’re tight. They’re always tight. Why? That little incident yesterday with your niece?”
“Well . . .”
“Well nothing. We could have stopped her. Braced her and shaken her up—the two chuckleheads with her, too. But she does have a valid key card. And, as you’ve pointed out, technically she’s a majority stockholder in this company, which means she’s my boss, not you. Excuse me, not you, sir.”
“Enough with the sarcasm, Cyrus. I never said you didn’t handle the situation properly.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Not yet. But she knows I know. I told her we’d talk about it when I get home tonight. No, what I meant was we may have a bigger problem.”
He told Cooper about the attack on Tess, Alice, Yoshi, and Oliver. Cooper listened without expression until Travis had finished.
“You want me to put a detail on your house?” Cooper said.
Travis brushed the words out of the air. “I’ve already taken care of security at the house. I’m more concerned that whoever ordered the attack migh
t try to breach security here. They’re after something specific, Cyrus.”
“Let me get this straight. Your niece thinks she’s getting e-mails from James? And the attackers want whatever it was that he’s instructing her to get?”
Travis nodded. “Near as I can tell. I may know more tonight after I talk to her.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Whatever it is she thinks she’s finding for your brother—or his ghost—it obviously isn’t here. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
“Humor me. Make sure we’re buttoned up. I’ve got enough problems with the folks in Washington. I don’t need Senator Latham breathing down my neck over a break-in or lapse in security, too.”
“Fine,” Cooper said gruffly. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks, Cyrus. I’ll let you know if I get anything else out of Tess. But you know teens.”
“Yeah, actually, I do. My boy Tad is a senior this year. He was pretty upset last night. I guess one of his friends got killed. I didn’t want to bring this up, but in light of what happened yesterday, I think I better.” Cooper paused. “Tad says Tess had something to do with it. This kid, Carl, was driving her car?”
Travis clenched his jaw. “All I know is what Tess and this new assistant of hers, Oliver, told me. They say Carl threatened to beat up Oliver if he didn’t hand over the keys. My guess is that whoever attacked the house yesterday went after the car thinking Tess was in it. But it’s a police investigation now, Cyrus. It’s out of our hands.”
Cooper drummed thick fingers on the desk. “What do you know about this Oliver person?”
“Alice ran a standard background check. He’s clean.”
“We’ll run another. Hers might’ve missed something.”
Travis shrugged. “Suit yourself. I think it’s a waste of time.”
“Look, I understand she’s your niece, Barrett, but even you have to admit something’s not right. So, like it or not, I’m putting some eyes on her.”
“I’ve got people on her twenty-four/seven,” Travis objected, even though he knew Cooper was right. Tess was definitely acting squirrelly.
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